Tag: Image Processing How To

While black-and-white photography has enjoyed a rebirth of interest, color is still how the world appears and is mostly photographed. Yet colors you see and experience often don’t quite translate to the picture you compose. We also sometimes want to interpret the world’s colors in ways that better express how we felt about a subject.

Although digital camera sensor technology has made big strides in recent years, there still are limits to the range of tones sensors can capture. So we often end up with highlights that are too bright or dark, muddy shadows.

The trouble with creativity in Photoshop—going beyond the basics to more imaginative, artistic changes—is knowing where to start. The possibilities are almost endless and therein lies the rub. That’s where Photoshop plug-ins like Nik Color Efex Pro 3 provide a launchpad for experimenting with a variety of effects that can add drama and graphic punch to your images.

I think most photographers have a somewhat love-hate relationship with Photoshop. It’s a great program, to be sure, and it offers the most comprehensive and expandable set of tools for photographers. But on the other hand, it takes time to learn and use, and working on a computer isn’t what most photographers wanted to do when they began photographing. There are ways to make your workflow in Photoshop go faster so that you can spend more time with photography and less time trying to work through software. Here’s how you can accomplish that.

Constructed in a remote area of Peru in the 15th century, the lost city of Machu Picchu, the grandest of all Inca sites, is truly one of the photographic wonders of the world. Adobe Photoshop and its little sister, Adobe Photoshop Elements, can be considered wonders of the photographic world, too—wonders for creative photographers who want to get the most out of their images. In fact, much like Hiram Bingham, who discovered the famous lost city, photographers can discover and recover seemingly lost details in their images.

Check out the opening image for this installment of Quick Fix. It’s the result of using both Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop CS3 on enhancing a photograph that I took in Cappadocia, Turkey, during a 2007 family vacation.

With a digital SLR, and even with many compact cameras, you can manually select the shutter speed and ƒ-stop for powerful creative control. Fast shutter speeds (1⁄500 sec. and higher) freeze most action, and slow shutter speeds (1⁄30 sec. and slower) blur action. Wide apertures (ƒ/4.5 and wider) can be selected for shallow depth of field, and small apertures (ƒ/8 and smaller) can be used for greater depth of field.

One of the most challenging situations for a photographer is getting a good exposure of a subject when shooting into the sun. That’s because the contrast range between the background and the backlit subject is usually too great for a good exposure of both the background and the subject. 

Taking, organizing and perfecting your images is a good start, but the best part of photography is getting the “Wow!” from friends and family when you share your shots. Online services and software are making it easier than ever for even casual photographers to create polished, pro-quality slideshows, greeting cards, Web-based projects and more.

Part of the fun of photography is putting those finishing touches on an image and then putting it to good use. Here are a few of our favorite ways to be creative with photography.

Good color in pictures is subjective. Some people like pictures that pop with saturated hues, while others prefer pictures more subdued. What’s more, we see colors differently at different times of day—even our mood affects how we see colors. In this article, I’d like to touch on the basics of color in digital photography, with the focus on getting the best possible image at the time of capture. To illustrate the techniques, I’ll use some pictures that I took on a recent trip to Panama, where my goal was to take color pictures of the three indigenous tribes: the Kuna, the Emberá and the Ngobe.

No matter what camera model you shoot with or file type you capture with, every image needs a little work before it’s ready to show. Three key adjustments—exposure, color and sharpening—should be the foundation of your digital darkroom work. The approach to making these adjustments varies depending on the software you use, but the basic principles are the same. We’ll look at different solutions for addressing these adjustments and techniques for getting them right.

The opening image for this column was inspired by something that I try to do all the time in real life, with my photography and in the digital darkroom: have fun! The image looks as though my son and I are soaring at top speed high above beautiful blue water in a colorful biplane. It’s one of my favorites, which I created after a family trip to the Florida Keys, and it captures the speed, fun, excitement and togetherness of our experience.

This column is about how to use the digital darkroom to transform a straight-out-of-the-camera shot into the image you envisioned when you pressed the shutter-release button. First, I’ll share some techniques for working in a high-contrast situation—getting an image to appear how it actually looked to our eyes when we initially took the picture. That’s mainly my objective when working with image files in Photoshop. Then we’ll see how we can bring a fanciful idea to reality to create an out-of-this-world image!

Apple and Adobe have developed new approaches to image processing that strip away deep menus and focus on the typical digital workflow, from importing to output, and placing the tools needed for common digital darkroom work in easy reach.

Photoshop and most other digital-imaging programs offer you many options for image enhancements. With a few clicks of your mouse, you can change, improve and rescue (to a degree) your images. These programs also can help you create works of art. Here, I’ll share with you the several basic Adobe Photoshop/Photoshop Elements image enhancements and adjustments that you can quickly and easily use to improve your images.

One of the big challenges of photography has always been how to best capture the tonalities and brightness of the real world. Every film, every sensor (and its processor) will interpret it slightly differently. 

One of the differences between a good photograph and a great one is how we handle the details. Check out this image of a beautiful Kuna woman who I photographed at the San Blas Hotel in the San Blas Islands, an archipelago of 365 islands that lies off the Atlantic coast of Panama. Compare it to the second and third photographs in this column, and you’ll see that it has stronger colors and more contrast. I’ll show you how to easily create a similar effect using Adobe Photoshop Elements. Of course, you can get to the same place using Adobe Photoshop. 

Adobe Photoshop CS3 offers many new features, including those found in the new Adobe Camera Raw, that help us enhance and save (to a point) our exposures. From an exposure standpoint, two of the most amazing features in the latest version of Photoshop are High Dynamic Range and Photomerge, both greatly improved from previous versions—so much so that I want to share with you some of their capabilities. 

That’s right, Photoshop fans—and Elements users who are considering moving up to Photoshop—the latest version of the world’s most powerful image-editing program has just gotten better, big time! Read on, and you’ll see why it’s indeed faster (great for RAW shooters), smarter (if you use filters), better looking (if workspace is important to you), more fun (how cool) and more inspiring (creatively speaking) than ever. 

Of all the tips and techniques that I cover when presenting or teaching, I’m most adamant about the value of Adjustment Layers. Next to the invention of the layer itself, Adjustment Layers arguably represent Photoshop’s best feature for retouching.