Access Digital Photography

The longer we live with digital imagery, the more amazing the opportunities become to turn photographs into more abstract and subjective imagery than the “objectivity” of pure, untouched photography could ever provide. Now, we have more and more powerful stacking algorithms, layers and smart layers, automatically masked adjustment layers that can be painted, and can combine artistic effects…to mention only a fraction of the power in our hands.

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Photographers embrace technology. Most of us use digital cameras and rely on technology such as Lightroom, Photoshop, and plug-in filters to bring our work to the light of day. Technology, however, can be a daunting mistress. Just when you think you’ve got all of the equipment and software you need, new equipment or new software is available. And the new is often a quantum leap forward.

Recycling Old Technology

Digital cameras are a perfect example of changing technology. I use an EOS 5D MKII for my professional work. My previous camera was the first iteration of the EOS 5D. I loved that camera, but when Canon announced the EOS 5D MKII, I knew I had to have one. With nearly double the megapixels, a new sensor capable of capturing relatively noise free images at high ISO settings, and built in high-definition video, this camera was definitely a quantum leap forward. I did not want to finance this purchase, so I did some Spring Cleaning and found lots of technology that I wasn’t using; but technology that still had value. I put the old technology up for auction on eBay. When the auctions were over, I had over half of the purchase price of the new camera. So I bought the new EOS 5D MKII, and put my old camera up for auction on eBay. When the auction ended, I received enough money to completely pay for the new camera with a bit left over for my savings account. I was quite pleasantly surprised at how much of my original purchase price I received from the eBay auctions. You can’t get that type of return on investment for other technology, for example: a car or truck.

Digital point and shoot cameras are another example of technology that’s run amuck. About a year ago, I purchased a Canon G10. I thought it was the ideal solution for a daily shooter. It was small, lightweight and had professional features. I liked the camera, but was never crazy about the idea of cramming 15 megapixels on a miniscule sensor. Something else that was lacking on the G10 was a swivel monitor. Canon listened and recently announced the G11. The new G11 features a swivel LCD monitor and the ability to capture 10 megapixels on a CCD sensor. That’s right; Canon took a step backward and put fewer megapixels on a better sensor. In my opinion, 10 megapixels is just fine for a point and shoot camera. Early reviews indicate that the camera will produce images with less noise at higher ISO settings, just what the doctor ordered.
Buying a New Digital Camera without Breaking the Bank Read the rest of this entry »

Image Doctor 2, from Alien Skin, is actually five Photoshop-compatible plug-ins in one package that are meant to “cure what ails” your “almost great” images. All of these utilities depend on your making a selection with any of the Photoshop selection tools first, then using one the five sub-programs to fix a specific type of program: Blemish Concealer, Dust & Scratch Remover, Skin Softener, JPEG Repair, or Smart Fill. Of course, you can use any or all of these on the same image, should you need to.

Smart Fill

If you’ve had any experience at all with retouching, you know how time-consuming and tedious it can be. If you’re a photographer competing for money in the real world, you know how important it is to get it right.

Photoshop itself has three tools, called the Healing Tools, that make retouching much easier than in the “days of yore,” but Alien Skin’s Image Doctor has a Smart Fill feature that’s kind of like having a cross between the Spot Healing tool and the Patch Tool. You just select an area to fix it, click on the area you want to fix it and wham-o, you’re done. It not only works on portraits, but can be a great way to get rid of trash on a lawn or ripped posters on a telephone pole.

Here’s an amazing example of the Smart Fill Feature in Action. I loved the way the scavenger birds grouped themselves in such a compositionally interesting way, but that out-of-focus branch at the top of the shot really bugged me. So I selected it very loosely with Photoshop’s Lasso Tool, choose Exposure 2 from the Filter Menu, and then clicked on all the choices in the dialog, waited for a few seconds, and saw the result of that choice. When I saw what I liked most, I left it that way. What you see below is the before and after of doing that…plus copying part of the sky and tree to a new layer, flipping it, and dragging it to the other side of the tree to make the “stray” branches and leaves come to life.

What I should have done for this particular image was use the other tab,  Basic. Also, this works most easily if you’re getting rid of something that’s surrounded by a pattern, such as the grass on a lawn or clouds in the sky. So to get the result I got here, I did a bit of “edge touchup” with Photoshop’s Clone Stamp. Worked out pretty nicely, as you can see. Read the rest of this entry »

Exposure 2, one of Alien Skin Software’s excellent collection of plug-ins for Photoshop, is also one of the many ways I’ve been looking into to effectively “stylize” the look of one’s photographs. Enhancing the dynamic range, color range, and local contrast of digital photographs is a subject that has me nearly totally engrossed these days. You’ve probably noticed that my friend Doug is also entranced by what, for lack of a more generalized “industry-standard” name, I’ll call Image Stylization Tools.

IMHO, the “birthplace” of all these tools was Adobe Photoshop’s own HDR Merge command. Then along came HDR Software’s Photomatix, which suddenly set the world on fire with the extreme control it gives photographers for controlling dynamic range. In fact, if you have the time and the courage to push and pull enough combinations of sliders, you can probably make it do even the types of “special effects” image interpretations to both merged and individual images that Exposure can do.

Personally, though, I have and am grateful for both these tools (as well as a few others that I will cover later). Why? Because they can save me a lot of time and can, much more quickly, give me an overview of options that I can apply before I make a final choice. [Mention here the possibility of LR Virtual Copies for keeping these options organized and quickly presentable. Check out to see how compatible the filter is with LR and Aperture].

Chief among Exposure’s (currently version 2) benefits is the ability to instantly imitate dozens of film stocks.  Now, there are already many Lightroom presets that imitate film stocks. Exposure, however, manages to have just about everyone of the traditional favorites. Exposure 2‘s dialog has 5 tabs and the film interpretations are in the tab called Settings. Films are listed by categories: Print, Print w/ Grain Off, Print Low Contrast and Print Low Contrast Grain Off, Slide and Slide Grain Off. All you have to do to interpret your image as one of the films would interpret it is to click it’s name. I’m just going to give you a few examples of what one click can do. First, here’s an image that I processed in Lightroom and then tonemapped the single RAW image by exporting it to Fotomatix from Lightroom.

An FDR Tonemapped Image...before Exposure

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I’m a big fan of Photoshop plug-in filters simply because they make the creation of a specific feat…especially having to do with special or photographic effects…so controllable and easy. Some folks consider this a cop-out because, let’s face it, if you have the time and the knowledge and the mental retention, there’s dang little you can’t do using Photoshop alone. Here’s the way I figure it: If the plug-in doesn’t save me enough time to pay for itself within a couple of months of use, don’t buy it. Whether this is true for any given product is going to turn out to be a different reality for different people. And that’s the nice thing about blogs like this: I can relate my experience and you can see if you can relate to it. This first experiential review is about a new filter from Alien Skin called Snap Art. It’s job is turning digital or digitized photos into “works of art.”

The original photo of the clown, "normally" Photoshoped

I figure the easiest way to show you what the program can do is to take one photograph and then “re-interpret” in all the different styles the program can do. The photo I started with is the one above. I figured it was a great compromise between a color chart and a portrait. Read the rest of this entry »

Layers are undoubtedly one of the most versatile and (at least, somewhat) non-destructive features of most of today’s image processing software. This article introduces you to the various characteristics, modes and commands for layers.

Layers can help in many types of operations, and I’ll cover the most important of these here. I won’t have room, however, to cover every possibility. If you want to know even more, check out the Adobe site, AccessDigitalPhotography, and the many sites associated with the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. At least this article will clarify the basics. I’d suggest printing it out and keeping it handy until you’ve pretty much got it memorized.

Note: If you shot in RAW mode (and there’s hardly ever a good reason not to do that), be sure to do as much of the processing as possible in a RAW processing program such as Lightroom, Aperture, or Camera Raw. Everything you do there will be non-destructive, you can make multiple interpretations from the same image, you’ll get perfect white balance, maximum image definition, and maximum dynamic range (4,086 shades of brightness/color vs. 256). Don’t worry: There will still be lots you can add in Photoshop and you’ll have lots more time to do it because you will have saved so much time getting the basic image to look just as you want it to look. Where Photoshop will shine is in highly “localized” and specialized types of processing.
What is a layer?
Think of a layer as a transparent sheet. Whatever you put on it becomes superimposed on the rest of your image. You want to put the image that belongs on top at the top of the stack in the Layers Palette. If you want to put the contents of one layer over another, just click on the layer’s name and drag it up or down…depending on where you want it to appear. The highest layer always affects all the layers below it unless you make it a part of a clipping path or layer group

The bug is a Smart Object on a Smart Layer above the horse. Note that each layer has been named for its purpose. Blend Modes are on the menu that says Normal. Opacity and Fill are on sliders when you click the arrow. The Eyeballs mean a layer is active. Click to turn it off. Smart Layers have a square taken out of the lower right corner. Commands are on the Layers menu that appears when you click the arrowhead at upper right. The icons in the lower row are: Link, Layer Effects, Mask, Adjustment Layers, Layer Group, New Layer, and Delete Layer. Read the rest of this entry »

Because I like to travel and shoot, I often find myself in situations where I need to take along a laptop so that I can stay in contact with the lessons I teach on line (8 digital photography courses at Sessions.edu), friends back in the States, and those I’ve met “on the road” who’ve moved on to other interesting locations.

Then a terrible thing happened. I was stupid enough to loan it to a friend and the lid got cracked, lots of my hard work was erased, and I had to replace the hard drive. Even after I spent $600 repairing it, I really couldn’t bear to use it and didn’t want to carry it anywhere. And being outside the States, I can’t find anyone who can fix the lid.

Then, one day, luck stuck. Doug called me and said he’d just seen an ad that a “going out of business” computer store was selling the 8.9” Acer One Aspire Netbook refurbs on a “close-out” for just a few pennies over $200. I’d been moaning and groaning for something I could take to a café or on a bus trip without feeling burdened. I wasn’t sure it would have the capacity to do what I needed, but for $200, I figured it would come in handy for something…even if I only used it for writing and teaching. Most Internet Cafes have wireless Internet and so do most hotels and hostels. So, at the very least, I could teach my classes and write about my photographic experiences. So I called the company that was selling them only to find out that, in two days, they’d already sold every one of them.

Then, half an hour later, the salesperson called back and said that they had some blue ones with more memory (2GB) and a larger hard drive (160GB) (exactly what I had been wishing I could afford) for only a few dollars more. Easy decision: The order was placed immediately. Now, I figured, if I could just see the screen clearly enough (due to its small size and my old eyes), I’d even be able to download my shoots on the road and do the basic photo editing and image management when I was waiting for a plane or hanging out in the hotel living room after dinner.

Well, about two weeks later, my netbook arrived in Panama. It seemed like a dream come true. The screen was very clean and easy to read. Even photos looked good enough to edit, though it only had a reader for SD/XD-size cards. It does have three USB ports, so I can plug in a card reader for CF cards that one of my cameras uses.

I did have to train myself to use the keyboard and mousepad. Given the small screen, one of the big advantages is that you can use your fingers to zoom in and out on anything you’re working on, in any application. Trouble is, your thumbs are over the mouse pad constantly and an accidental bump could zoom your text to microscopic size or so big that you could only read two words. So it took a few days to train myself to be careful. The other thing I had to train myself to do was save the doc every time I finished a paragraph…especially if it had anything important to say. The most important part is to remember to hit Control + S at least once a minute. Then you can always just call up your document when the whole thing suddenly disappears.

Fixing that was just a matter of re-reading the manual a few times and being careful not to hit more than one key at a time. I also found that if I propped up the back of the computer, so the tiny keyboard was at angle, my typing speed nearly doubled. Then Doug told me there was a 6-cell battery available for another $60-bucks.  It weighs almost as much as the computer, but it’s so big that it perfectly props up the back of the machine. It has pretty close to 7 hours of battery life. If you take any time at all to talk to a friend or read up on what you’re writing about, that really turns out to be about 9 hours because the computer automatically puts itself to sleep. So I ordered the battery, which cost me about another $30 in shipping and duties. It took a couple of weeks of spread-out two hour away from home use to run it down to nothing so that I could “train”it, but now I can re-charge it any time I use it and it seems to regain its full battery life. The best part is, raising the back of the netbook really  made typing a lot easier. Also, I always bring along the original battery, so if I do need a little extra time after the big battery runs out, I can just swap it.

Another thing that made a big difference in “ease of use” was using a mouse instead of the finger pad. At least you know exactly what’s going to happen when you click a mouse button. Optical mice seem to be the only practical answer when working with unpredictable table surfaces and when you don’t want to worry about a mouse pad. The usual long cord, though, was getting in the way of other customers at the same table. I found this amazing mini-mouse from Discovery Labs and the cord automatically adjusts to being only as long as you want it to be:

Then came the big challenge: How to install programs on a computer too small to contain a DVD/RW drive. Well, it so happens that there are some very cool DVD drives that can do everything…including doing all their tasks…even Lightscribe disk labeling…by being powered by the USB ports on the netbook. The one I bought, pictured below, even writes to double-sided DVDs,  so I can get 9.4 GB of photos onto a single disk. So there’s hardly a day’s shoot when I can’t get the whole thing onto one disk. It reads and writes all the DVD and CD formats, too. Here’s a picture of it and the computer. It’s so slim that there’s just no problem at all slipping it into the same bag with the netbook.

Finally, I didn’t want to install the full CS4 version of Photoshop and all the plugins I used with it on the netbook. Photoshop Elements 7 and Lightroom 2.0 do everything I’m wanting to do  during my “waiting times”.  Lightroom does all the “exposure” adjusting, image management, and quick-turnaround slide shows. It also makes it really easy to send a client or compatriot a set of “preview” or quick publishing files, all pre-sized and in JPEG format. When I get back home, I immediately copy the DVDs I’ve made on the road to my big hard drive and it’s twin back-up drive. I even took the whole outfit to a party one night and did all the initial Lightroom work, got some outside feeback at the same time, and then loaded it all up to the iMac in the morning and went straight to work on the final tweaks on my calibrated monitor and did the final retouching and compositing in Photoshop CS4.

The last little part of my “workflow” is to copy individual articles, to do lists, etc, to a flash drive. Then I copy that to my  iMac. When I get a bunch of those on the netbook, I also back them up to a DVD and then erase them from the netbook so that there’s always room to do my next “on the job” photo-editing. Perhaps the biggest benefit of all in all of this is that if your editing work gives you some ideas while you’re on the road, you can probably shoot them while you’re still at that location.

Sunset is an awesome time of day for photographers. The sun is low on the horizon casting warm orange light. Add clouds to the equation, and you have the recipe for great sunset pictures. When you photograph a sunset, the sun is a key player, but you need other ingredients for a great shot. One of them is clouds. Without clouds, you’ve got a boring picture of an orange ball sinking in a cerulean blue sky. You also need an interesting landscape to complete the picture. You can take pictures of sunsets with the skyline of your town in silhouette as the background. You can get an even better shot of a sunset when you have a body of water such as a lake, river or ocean in the picture. The water will reflect the colorful clouds. You can get some great sunset pictures in the final few minutes before the sun sets. After the sun sets, many photographers pack up their gear and head for home. This is a mistake. As long as the clouds don’t go all the way to the horizon, the sun will reflect warm colors on the underside of the clouds for about ten or fifteen minutes after setting. If you want really great sunset pictures, wait a few minutes after the sunset and get ready to take some pictures when the clouds are bathed in giddy shades of pink, orange and purple.

There are a couple of different ways you can photograph a sunset. If I’m going for the grand view, I use a wide angle lens such as my 17-35mm Tamron, and choose the smallest possible aperture for a large depth of field. Sometimes I go the other route and choose a telephoto focal length and a fairly large aperture for a limited depth of field. Recently I photographed a sunset at Caspersen Beach, which is a few minutes from my home. I used my 24-105mm lens and zoomed to 105mm, with an aperture of f/7.1. I focused on some nearby sea oats. The sea oats were in silhouette and in sharp focus, the clouds were a little soft, and the sun was a soft out-of-focus orange orb as shown in the following photo. But due to the telephoto lens, the sun is relatively large in the resulting photo, which makes it clear the photo was taken as the sun was setting.

Placement of the horizon line is another important consideration. Many photographers put the horizon line smack dab in the middle of the picture. This gives a confusing message to the viewer, he doesn’t know where to direct his focus. If you remember one of the rules of composition called the Rule Of Thirds, you divide your image into three sections vertically and horizontally. Place the horizon line in the upper third, or lower third of the image. If the sky is the most important element in your sunset shot, place the horizon line in the lower third of the image, which draws the viewer’s attention to the sky. If the reflection of the clouds in the water is the most important part of your image, place the horizon line in the upper third of the image.

It’s been said that Ansel Adams could predict whether or not there’d be a great sunset in Yosemite by looking at the sky half-an-hour before sunset. Ansel knew the weather patterns of Yosemite like the back of his hand and could predict what would happen. Study the weather patterns where you live. Observe the cloud movement in the late afternoon and soon you’ll be able to predict whether or not you’ll have a photogenic sunset.

A great sunset photo always grabs the viewer’s attention and draws him into the picture for a closer look. Use the information in this tutorial when you’re photographing the sunset where you live. Photograph the sunset often and you’ll end up with a portfolio full of great sunset shots.

I won’t say that this is THE workflow for getting the maximum HDR effect, but it’s certainly an effective one. It’s great for shooting and processing scenics, still-lifes, product photos and anything else that doesn’t move. It gives you complete control over the contrast and detail that can be seen in all areas of the image and the freedom to choose any of several methods for doing so. One end result is shown below:

Your chances of getting perfect exposure and tonal values are pretty close to 100%.  I’m considering “scenics” to be anything from nature to street scenes to long shots that are taken as orientation for an event or story shoot…including night shots. Here’s the step-by-step routine:

1.    Use at least a 4GB, better 8GB, memory card so you’ll have room for all the sequence shots you might want to shoot. Remember, you may be shooting 4-7 RAW files at a time.

2.    Set your camera to shoot RAW.

3.    Set your camera to shoot in Aperture Priority mode. You DO NOT want the camera to change aperture while you’re doing the sequence shots because the same objects in difference shots could have blurred details that wouldn’t register when the HDR is merged.

4.    Set the aperture at f/11, but change it to F/16 if you shoot from a tripod or your basic exposure reading is for a shutter speed of at least 1/50th second when shooting hand-held (1/20th second if you have good image stabilization). If you do shoot hand-held be very careful not to move the camera. Photoshop and most other HDR programs are very good at registering images in a stack, but don’t take any unecessary changes.

5.    Put your camera in rapid sequence bracket mode, with a difference between shots of as much as your camera allows. If that happens to be 2-f/stops, cut that back to 1.5 f/stops. If youíre given a choice of more or less shots in the sequence, take at least 5 unless youíre really cramped for memory. One of my favorite cameras only allows for .7 of a stop difference between exposures, so I have to shoot 5 shots to get the (close to) 1.5 stop difference I want between the first, third, and last shot. Hereís a Lightroom “contact sheet” screen shot of the series that was taken to create the finished image you see at the beginning of this blog.

6.    Set your camera for matrix metering.

7.    Use a tripod whenever possible, which means you should be sure to carry it with you. You’ll always take more time to study the scene and will compose more carefully. That is extremely important in the success of a scenic. You’ll also become independent of shutter speed and IS (Image Stabilization) for keeping your shot steady.

I always process my photos in Lightroom 2.4, so I have the choice of making an HDR image by selecting two or three of the shots (depending on the overall tonal range of the sequence), editing multiple shots as layers in Photoshop (easy way to bring in a sky and a foreground), or simply using the Recover, Fill Light, Adjustment Brush, Graduated Fill, Tone Curve and HSL panels. You’re not restricted to Lightroom, though. As long as you’ve got the detail exposed properly for all areas of the picture and haven’t lost a lot of extra time in the process, you can do much more in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to fine tune the final result. I find the Exposure dialog in Photoshop especially useful for the final tweaking of the HDR.

Most people who’ve done any digital retouching at all have depended heavily on Photoshop’s Clone tool. It is very useful if you’re smoothing skin near the edges of a selection…such as one that might separate facial skin from hair. That’s because it won’t try to blend texture that’s outside the selection and cause a dark “blotch.”  Most of the time, however, the three most efficient retouching tools are the Patch Tool, the Healing Brush, and the Spot Healing Brush.

The Clone stamp is most useful when you want to cover part of the image with a particular pattern that exists in another part of the image, such as blades of grass to cover trash on a lawn or the clouds in the sky that were interrupted by an accidentally twisted lens hood.

When it comes to retouching faces, the three ìhealingî tools are much faster and do a much more credibleî job than the Clone stamp. To remove something like a scar or eye bags, you just choose the Patch Tool and drag a selection around that “unwanted” feature, then drag the selection to a nearby “clean” area that has the same texture. If, for instance, there were no freckles where the bags were, don’t drag the bags selection to a bunch of freckles.

A lot of folks use the Burn and Dodge tools to “re-shade” a large area of a face. The problem is that using the Burn and Dodge tools changes the pixels they affect on the layer that uses them, so it’s difficult to fix those strokes when you make the little messes that most of us make when we’re burning and dodging. Besides, unless you have CS4 (and youíre not telling me what youíre using), the Burn and Dodge tools can also change the color balance of the affected area.

So what you need to do is create a new layer, fill it with 50% gray, put it in Overlay mode, and then progressively Brush on a low percentage of White (to Dodge) and Black (to burn). The best part of this is that if the client or AD want to change the degree of the burning and dodging, itís easy to do by simply “painting over” what you did before. You can also change the tone of the burning and dodging by changing the Opacity, Fill, or Blend Mode  of the layer (Multiply and Darken, for instance).

One thing you really have to be careful of is the edges of hair: Though you might want to remove (neaten up) some of those, taking them all out is a dead giveaway that something “phony” has been done. Some people just “cop out” by using the Blur tool to smooth the edge of the trimmed hair. But this “fakeî depth-of-field” rarely looks authentic. Always lift the head and the area surrounding it to a new layer (select, feather, Cmd/Ctrl + J). Then, on that layer, Use the Extract Filter or Background Eraser (if you have CS4) to erase the background without erasing the little streaks of flying hair themselves. Another option is to use Photoshop’s Image > Image Calculations dialog when the original background contrasts strongly with the face. It’s a complicated process, but well worth learning. Truly, this is one of the hardest things to do when retouching, but virtually no pro client will accept anything less. So you’re going to have to put in a lot of time and practice in the meantime…not because I say so, but because it is so.

It’s also really important to understand exactly what your purpose is when youíre retouching. For instance, are you creating this version of a portrait for use on a magazine cover? For use in a business resume? Both will require a sharp, high-impact one-on-one connection of the subject to his/her audience. In both instances, you’ll probably want tight control over the lighting, background, clothing, make-up, and accessories. Then it comes to retouching. For a glamour portrait, the retouching should ‘idealize’ the subject. In a business portrait, you want the person to look like someone you’d like to know and trust.

If the portrait is for a magazine cover or ad, you may have very strict requirements for color accuracy and the placement of type in the image. Thatís why most of these shots use a white or solid color background. You’re also going to want to crop the image to fit the magazine cover.