Tag: Quick Fix
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I usually devote this column to fixing and enhancing pictures in
Photoshop Elements or Photoshop CS3 and, more recently, Adobe
Lightroom. For a change, I thought I’d share my digital start-to-finish
process, covering what I do, and what you can do, in the quest to make
a picture-perfect inkjet print.
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.
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!
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.
We all love watching sunsets, looking at pictures of sunsets and, of course, photographing sunsets! The warm colors—deep shades of red, orange and yellow—evoke feelings of peace and tranquility and a sense of awe at nature’s wonders.
Adobe Camera Raw rocks! RAW shooters know that. But get this—the new
version of Adobe Camera Raw in Photoshop CS3 isn’t only for RAW
shooters and wannabe RAW shooters who may have been intimidated by RAW
image processing. This image enhancement tool is for all digital photographers, JPEG and TIFF shooters included. You see, the
new Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), with all of its creative controls, actually
lets you process JPEG and TIFF files, too. Who would have ever thought?
Thanks to digital, I have total control over my images—and so do you.
If I couldn’t see the effect of exposure settings on the LCD and make
adjustments on the spot, I’d have a lower percentage of keepers. What’s
more, I couldn’t make enhancements—creative decisions would be left to
a photo lab, as it was when I first got into photography. And don’t
forget the power of a RAW file, from which you can recover up to one
stop of an overexposed area! Here, I’ll share a few enhancements made
using Adobe Photoshop Elements.
Readers of PCPhoto know that for my professional work, I depend on Photoshop CS2 for my image enhancements. For pros like me, it’s the coolest program around. However, Photoshop Elements, CS2’s little brother so to speak, offers many professional image-enhancement features, too. In fact, most of the image enhancements and creative stuff you want to do can be accomplished in Elements.
Recently, my good friend Karen Ippolito e-mailed me a fun
self-portrait. Karen is a good photographer and a talented artist who
has taken many creative photographs with her Canon EOS 5D. However, for
this self-portrait, she used a tiny point-and-shoot digital camera.
In my workshops, I used to tell students that the background was almost
as important as the main subject. Today, I tell them that it’s just as
important as the main subject and that it can make or break a
photograph. When we’re traveling, we don’t always have control over our
subject’s surroundings, so we may have to take photos with backgrounds
that distract from the subject.
Technically, the Posterize adjustment in Photoshop is designed to
analyze the pixel colors of a selected area of an image and reduce the
number of colors—while maintaining the “look” of the original image.
Creatively, you can apply this adjustment to make photos look like
wood-block color artwork.
Transforming an old photograph into one that looks as though it was
taken with one of today’s top-of-the-line digital SLRs is relatively
easy in Adobe Photoshop CS2 and other image-editing programs. You’ll
find many retouching and restoration articles on the topic on the Web
and in photography and Photoshop magazines.
Have you ever taken a seascape or landscape picture from inside a
moving plane, boat or car, where the view of the horizon line was
tilted? Have you ever had to shoot fast to get off a shot without
making any exposure adjustments, resulting in an over- or underexposed
picture?
With
winter in full swing, I thought we’d work with a tropical
photo—remember, it’s summer for our friends in the southern hemisphere.
Summer is obviously a great time for photography, and before we know
it, the warm days will be back again. Winter isn’t all bad news,
though—it’s the perfect opportunity to catch up on photo fixes that we
left waiting when we were playing in the sun.
