1.  Pay for the cost of entry

2.  Pay for the cost of travel

3.  Pay for hotel accommodations

4.  Pay for the cost of food

It’s an expensive proposition, which I conservatively estimate at nearly $1000.  This does not mean it isn’t worth the money, because it most likely is, even if for networking purposes only (and I am sure there are educational opportunities galore)!  Let’s face it – if you want to be a “player” in the photography world, there is usually justification to attend PSw either in Orlando (Spring) or Las Vegas (Fall).

My problem is that I am something of a one-man-show.  And photography is very much a secondary stream of income, when it even does present opportunities.  My primary job has always been in IT.  I suspect it always will be.  So, to find the time off for a traditional working stiff is tough – I am often needed, and earn precious little vacation time every year.  So, unless a company that values both my IT and photography skills hires me (Adobe, are you listening? ), I will likely not be in a position to attend this event.

As is often the case, I know I am not alone.  So, here’s your chance to let your non-PSW light shine!  What are you doing this week?  For me, I am taking a little time off between jobs actually.  After accepting an offer at a new company (I am not holding my breath for Adobe), I have a week or so to spare from my calendar (but not my budget) to travel a little, and am visiting family in both AZ and NY.  Let’s face it, family should always come first, and here is no exception.  This last weekend I spent in AZ, and coming up later this week is a trip to NY.  Maybe I’ll get in a little fall foliage out east, but not sure as the fall seems to be late arriving all over this year.

So, there’s my plans, and why I won’t be there!  What’s your excuse?  Why are you not at PSW?  Sound off in the comments!  See ya back here tomorrow, and keep on shootin’!  I’ll be back again with the August contest winner and a new contest for September that will knock your socks off!

Comment Contest

I just got word last night from Nicole that a copy of both her 60D and 7D books will be donated to the comment contest – so there’s gonna be two winners!  All you have do to is comment on the podcast post from Monday!  Yup, that’s it – no fuss, no muss – just comment and win!  Pretty generous of her and Peachpit to donate like that!  Oh yeah, and be sure to listen to the podcast, we have a great conversation about how to strike a balance in your photographic life!  All that’s available from here.

Photoshop Cs5 Webinar

The folks over at Nations Photo Lab just keep on giving!  In addition to the monthly Flickr contest (where you get $50 certificates just for playing), they’re also the sponsors of the Live Learning Lab – a free live webinar served up on the 2nd Wednesday of every month, hosted by myself and Kerry Garrison of Camera Dojo.  We just had the February one last night, and it was quite the hit!  You can watch the archived shows for free too if you can’t be in attendance – just can’t ask questions in real time.  Anyway, the archive is here

If you’d like to participate in the March webinar – be sure to sign up in advance as we can only take 100 people.  More details are forthcoming on that shortly.

And more…

Okay, there really isn’t much in the way of “more”, but since I like to have images for every post, here’s a quickie from my own archives just for a dose of inspiration (in hopes of a Spring thaw soon!).  Happy Shooting!

The way I understand the digital photography landscape (no pun intended), is that there are three phases in which you can (and should) sharpen your images:

1. Capture Sharpening – This type of sharpening is done on initial import from your camera to your image editor.  Whether that is through ACR in Photoshop, in Lightroom (which has ACR built in), or any other application.  This initial one is of utmost importance because of the inherent softening of images during the demosaic process when interpreting raw sensor data.  As I understand it, the settings used here are relative to the camera you are using, but not so much the specific image.


ACR Sharpening

2. Creative Sharpening – After import, this would be the time when selective and subjective interpretations are done on images.  Whether you choose to apply USM (unsharp mask) in Photoshop, a High Pass overlay layer, or some other means, these types of effects are always done to taste, and very much open to interpretation.


Creative Sharpening using High Pass Filter

3. Output Sharpening – Last, but not least, output sharpening is when you apply sharpening effects specific to your output device.  These settings are dependent on the output device, such as a printer, the web (screen), as well as the size and resolution of the output image (smaller size requires less sharpening than larger files).  Even within output sharpening there are settings specific to the printer you are using, and to the paper you are using,

Again though, these are just my impressions on whether sharpening is needed in a digital age or not. I know someone is going to ask, so should probably state here that an entirely different set of criteria should be used when talking about film sharpening techniques…but I digress!   Back on topic, there’s actually a couple really good resources (from my biased perspective of course) that discuss sharpening in much greater detail than I did here.  First off, a book called “Real World Sharpening” by Bruce Fraser and Jeff Shewe is one I would highly recommend.  For those with an online reading preference, here’s another good article on the subject, also by Bruce Fraser.

Am I off base?  What are your thoughts on sharpening?  Is it needed in a digital world?  When and how do you sharpen your images (if at all)?  Sound off in the newest poll (also in the sidebar):

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

In Photoshop CS5 one of the JDI (just do it) features that was “fixed” was to add a Rule of Thirds guide to the crop tool.  It’s quiet handy to have and is turned on by default:

Most people I know (granted they are photographers and not graphics designers) absolutely love this functionality!  However, a few have asked me if there is a way to disable it.  Naturally, pretty much anything in Photoshop is customizable for your own purposes.  So, if these “Marching Ants” lines are distracting to you though, and you want to turn them off, you can do this from the Options bar at the top of your display.  Simply look for the dropdown menu just to the right of “Crop Guide Overlay”  and choose the option that best suits your needs.

As with most tools in Photoshop, the Options menu gives you a lot of flexibility to configure things however you like for most purposes.  So, be sure to check the Options bar the next time you are inside of Photoshop!

Got an idea for another Photoshop or Lightroom tip?  Feel free to share your own ideas and questions in the comments section!  Have a great day and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow…

Purists may scorn such activities, and while there are some situations where editing a photo significantly can have moral, ethical, and professional consequences (such as photo journalism), I can’t help but wonder how Photoshop came to have such a bad association.  Clearly, there are differences of opinion across the spectrum on what lines shouldn’t be crossed (or “photoshopped”).  Overall though, I would say that Photoshop is not innately a bad thing (whether you think of it as a software application or a verb).

I said just a moment ago that I always try to get the picture right when in camera.  It’s not that I am opposed to pixel editing, but I’d rather avoid it if I can.  There are times (for me) though when some things cannot be avoided.  Take for instance a ballgame we went to just last weekend.  The Milwaukee Brewers were in town and it made for a great birthday present and combination Father’s day gift for Tracy and the visiting in-laws.

Being one to always take a camera in tow, I did.  A beautiful sunset ensued at the game and of course, I had to take a few shots.  When I got to skim through things the other day, noticed something in the scene that I wished wasn’t there – power lines! So, the decision had to be made – will it significantly help the composition to remove those lines?  For me, the answer was yes.  So, into Photoshop I went, and after a few minutes of editing, produced the results (click on the picture for a larger view).

Before Photoshop:

And after:

It may not seem like much to others, but to me, the shot looks a lot better without the power line.  So, what’s your take on this?  Is Photoshop a bad word?  Does the picture look better, the same or worse?  Sound off in the comments!  Keep on shooting too and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

The 5 Best Kept Secrets of Photoshop CS5

1.  Sharing Your Monitor – In Cs5, the feature has been added where you can share your monitor with others so you can show people exactly what you are looking at.  I can totally see this as a feasible solution for clients that are remote to your location, and travel costs need to be kept down.  Even training seminars could be conducted this way…imagine sitting at your computer at work (or home) and watching an instructor teaching you live from their own desktop!  Very cool!

2.  Refine Edge Backgrounds – I know, refine edge has been around for a while, and we are used to seeing the “marching ants” around our selections…but now Adobe has gone and added different backgrounds to help you better make refinements to selections.  The options are the traditional Marching Ants, and several new options like Overlay, Black, White, and Layers (my favorite).  This is a huge time saver when trying to make selections from within a photo!

3.  Paste in Place – Another godsend!  After making selection refinements and masking off your layer selection, it’s now super easy to take another image from your clipboard and paste it directly into the active document.  Done with a simple keyboard shortcut: Shift+CTRL+V (Shift+Command+V on the Mac)

4.  Cache Settings - are now adjustable to your own library preferences.  If you have mostly smaller sized images in your library, you can tweak the cache to Tall and Thin to accommodate your particular editing and library needs.  Likewise, if you are used to working with larger files, then you can customize Photoshop to Big and Flat for those purposes as well.

5.  Stroke Settings – I cannot remember if this was in CS4, primarily because I didn’t have much interest in CS4, but now having used CS5 to a pretty decent degree, I am so glad this is now black instead of read by default, so I am including it here.

There’s my five “best kept secrets” of Cs5!  It takes some time to kick the tires and check out everything that new programs have to offer, so be sure you download a trial copy from Adobe.  It’s free!  Have you downloaded your trial yet?  What are your favorite “under the hood” features?  Any that you feel aren’t getting enough press or coverage in the photo circles?  Sound off in the comments!  In the meantime, don’t forget to step away from the computer periodically and take pictures!   Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

1.  Dependencies – While Photoshop is insanely popular, this popularity has spawned an entire industry of third party applications called plug-ins that get installed into Photoshop.  If you simply remove Photoshop without considering these 3rd party “apps”, you could lose their functionality.  There are also other things that become part of your work flow in Photoshop that you may want to save too, including actions, scripts, font folders, brushes, and much more.

2.  Licensing – Because it’s not a cheap application, Adobe has to carefully manage licensing, which means that any serial number can only be activated twice before it gets “locked”.  This allows you to have an installation on a desktop and a laptop, or a work computer and a home computer.  Well, if you go an just un-install or delete the files for Photoshop, you may find yourself unable to activate again should you re-install on a new computer.  The way to avoid this is to ensure you de-authorize (or deactivate) before uninstalling.  This will free up the license for use again.

3.  Other add-ons – Photoshop also has other add-in elements like automation tasks you may have added over time.  I have a few from On One, Topaz Labs, and a few others that I’ve gathered over time.  Make sure you check to make sure these don’t have installers with licensing too, because that can also be problematic for a software migration.

4.  System settings – Unlike e-mail, some settings and preferences don’t stay with you during the course of a migration.  So, it’s often helpful to grab screen captures of various setup windows so that you can get things configured just right once you get in your new digs!  Here are the 11 screens you may want to capture before un-installing off any computer:

As you can tell, there’s a lot to consider.  And, given the length of this post already with the included screen captures, to make things easier in terms of reference information, I’ve put together a step-by-step procedure to migrate Photoshop from one computer to another that you can download for free!  Enjoy!

Migrating Photoshop

Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

The Easter Egg had some cool trivia too. For instance – does anyone (outside Adobe) know how many babies were born to members of the team during production? WHo is the queen of the tenth floor? Is the wizard still there? If so, where is he now? Neat little nuggets just waiting to be discovered all in CS5!  Got the answers or your own nuggets?  Sound off in the comments!

Also, a final reminder about the April giveaway – some lucky participant will win an Expo Disc from the folks over at Expo Imaging.  Get your balance-themed photos in before midnight tonight to have a chance at winning!  Here’s the link:  April Giveaway

So, without further ado – here’s the most common questions I’ve seen on Adobe Creative Suite 5:

1.  I own  ***** – can I upgrade to CS5?

Pick your product, it doesn’t really matter too much if it’s a single product upgrade (not part of a suite).  If you want to upgrade  to Photoshop, CS5, here’s the list of products that are eligible for the upgrade path to CS5, courtesy of Adobe (I added the product to my shopping cart, and got this list of eligible products and the pricing path (upsell versus an upgrade):

• Photoshop Elements 6, 7, or 8 on Windows – (upsell = $599)
• Photoshop Elements 4, 6, or 8 on Mac  – (upsell = $599)
• Photoshop CS4, CS3, or CS2 (Regular or Extended) – upgrade = $199

2.  What if I purchased CS4 recently – do I have to pay for the upgrade to CS5 now too?

While there is no official “window” from Adobe, all indicators suggest that if you have recently purchased CS4, you may be able to get an upgrade.  Some sites claim the window is between certain dates such as April 12th and August 10th, but I’ve not been able to verify this information independently so the site is not linked here

3.  What about Lightroom – can I upgrade to Cs5 from that since it’s part of the Adobe Photoshop family?

No.  Although there are similarities, Lightroom is a different software path than the Creative Suite, and you cannot upgrade from LR to CS5 anymore than you could upgrade a Dell to a Mac

4.  Speaking of Macs, can I upgrade my Windows software to a Mac equivalent or vice versa?

Adobe does allow for this in what is called a “cross-grade”.  You must sign a release that states you have destroyed the other media, and pay a small fee (I think it’s something like $20) to do this.

5.  What about converting from one Suite of products to another, or converting to a single product?

While I don’t have the space to cover extensive details on the many options, and this is not official Adobe policy (I could not find anything specifically addressing all the possible conversions), I think it’s a safe assumption that you can downgrade from a more expensive suite to a lesser expensive suite or product, but not vice versa.  So, say for instance you had the Master collection.  It is likely that you could downgrade that to a web collection or a design premium.  It is also likely that if you had a suite of products, you could downgrade to a single product within that suite.  However, adding additional products to your existing ownership for free is not likely.  As the old saying goes, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

6.  Are there any discounts available?

Of course there are – and if you are an eligible member of any one of a number of communities, you are eligible for discounts on products from Adobe.  The most common ones I know of include educational discounts, governmental agencies, and NAPP.  The other question that usually arises from the “discount” one is whether you can apply multiple discounts, and the answer here is no…Adobe does restrict you to one discount per purchase, so if you are a NAPP member and also a teacher or college student, you cannot apply both discounts.  Pick the one that gives you the best savings, and be happy to are eligible – many people are not.

7.  So, where do I purchase CS5?

You can’t yet – the announcement that Adobe made was kind of a teaser, to build excitement and to sort of “ramp up” for the eventual release date.  It’s all part of the marketing, hype, and advertising of upcoming products.   Also, keep in mind that Adobe, like any other software developer, has approved channels for distribution.  So, when it does become available, make sure you find a reseller in your area through their partner page.

8.  When will it be available for purchase?

Well, you can pre-order it any time you want.  But if you want an official release date, take a seat with everyone else outside of Adobe headquarters, because that information is not available (that I can find anyway).  There are several indicators that suggest the release will be in early to mid-May based on their history (Adobe usually does product releases on about an 18 month cycle, or ever year and a half) with the Creative Suite of products.

9.  What are the differences in all the packages?

Excellent question!  This is the one that vexes a lot of people, but thankfully, Adobe has put together a comparision page that not only show syou the products that go into each package, but the retail cost of each.  Rather than regurgitate all that information here in some confusing chart, simply bookmark this link:  Adobe Product Comparison Chart

10.  Are you going to upgrade?

Yes I am.  I will probably not be an early adopter, primarily because I have a couple other purchases to make first (hardware, a lens, and some lighting gear), but the advancements in CS5 are probably among the most significant of any version in the last 7 years!  I may also need to upgrade my computers to handle the  processing requirements.

That’s it – the top ten questions I’ve seen (and been asked) about Creative Suite 5!  Got your own questions?  I may not have the answers, but I can either give you my best guess, or pass the question on to someone who may know the answer, so feel free to sound off in the comments.  Also, if I got anything wrong, or if you can shed additional light, all contributions are welcome!

Happy shooting all and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

We had a bunch to talk about ranging from:

• iPad release from Apple
• Lightroom 2.7 RC from Adobe
• Lightroom 3.0 Beta 2 from Adobe
• Drobo FS release from Data Robotics
• and then there was that one about Photoshop CS5!  Here’s the topics we cover:
  • Content Aware Fill
  • Merge to HDR
  • HDR style adjustments to single images
  • Noise Reduction
  • Add Grain
  • New Vignetting
  • Lens Corrections based on Camera/Lens
    • - Shared lens profiles
  • Natural Media Brush tips
  • Mixer brush tool
  • Puppet Warp

Add in the listener questions and we talked for nearly two hours.  It was a lot of fun and there was some awesome information for everyone that we just kept rattling off.  Some of the links to products we talked about in the show are listed below…if I miss any let me know in the comments and I’ll come back and insert them as needed.  Additionally, I have a couple reminders that are specific to LDP, so here you are:

1. Zosh
2. Don’t forget you can now call your questions into the show for free at:  866-809-8663!  You can call in from any phone, whether it be land line, cellular, or Skype!
3. The monthly winner for the Cheetah Stand was Josh, so congrats to him for his shot, and the April contest is now live.  Check the Guidelines, Rules of Engagement (new!) and submit your photos in the Flickr thread.  This month’s theme is Balance and the winner (lucky dog) will get an Expo Disc from the generous folks over at Expo Imaging!

Phew!  Lots of content for  a Tuesday including web links, podcasts, software and hardware news!  Take some time and soak it up!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for more photo goodness!

The community quickly sprung to action, pointing him in several directions, and it occurred to me that I had never done this sort of tutorial before!  It’s not too difficult but there are some pitfalls to be aware of when dealing with borders and logos in photos, especially if you are trying to program these steps into an action or script.  Suffice to say, I figured this was as good a time as any to jump back into Photoshop and keep the digits (and brain) fresh!  So, here’s a new video tutorial on creating borders and logos!  Enjoy!

Your thoughts and feedback are welcome and encouraged as always!  Thanks for stopping in, have a great week, and be sure to stop back in tomorrow for more photo goodness!  Oh yeah, and don’t forget the March contest is in full swing where the winner will go home with one of these super cool Cheetah Quickstands – the theme is wild and the link for submissions is here!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you tomorrow!

For those of you that read my previous post that had panoramas in it (“The Moment it…Oops”) you’ll notice this is a different picture, and in all fairness, I should note that this had more images in it, and I was using a different lens during capture.  But, when I get down to the nitty gritty and review all the programs side by side, it will be the same image.  This one was from our recent Denver Photo Walk group outing to RMNP that I had talked about last Friday here on the blog.  Thoughts, comments, feedback and critiques are always welcome, and since the blog doesn’t really work well with displaying panoramas, if you click the photo below, you’ll be taken to a full (web size anyway) image where you can see all the details!  Enjoy!

Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

So, in the interests of putting some sort of creative graphic design effect together, I started playing around in Photoshop when I got home with a few different tools, effects, and all that fun stuff.  When all was said and done, the effect of all of this playing produced something that I thought would be worthy of a Photoshop tutorial.  However, I did run out of time to put all the screen shots and steps together for a blog post, so here is a teaser of what you might be seeing later this week!

The End Result

The ones that got me there…

The final result is a little surreal, but using the various effects were fun.  It also took some rather plain photos and turned them into…well, something not so plain!  When’s the last time you played in Photoshop?  Can you identify the effects used here?  Share your own pictures in the comments (remember, we have image upload now!), as well as any thoughts and or feedback.

Special thanks and shout outs to Brian for hosting the DALPUG meetings and for encouraging our creativity- he puts a lot of time and effort into these and it shows!

Only a couple blog notes for today, first that the Monthly Giveaway only has a limited amount of time left for submissions, so make sure you submit your Circles themed photos to the Flickr thread before the deadline!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow for more creative encouragement!

Denver Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop Users Group

No, this isn’t spam, the blog has not been hacked, and I am not speaking in tongues here.  DALPUG refers to the Denver Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop Users Group.  Started relatively recently by a guy I know named Brian Reyman, it’s a great local resource for photographers to not only learn from one another, but also to network and get an opportunity to see some of the latest developments in the industry.

I had a chance to attend the meeting last night, and the mini-workshop that Brian ran on plugins included quick looks at things like OnOne Software, Topaz Labs, Nik, and a bunch of others.  Not only were they showing you how to use the plugins, they were offering up giveaways too!  It’s a great group, offering people opportunities to learn, share, and network with others in the field in the area.  Definitely worthy of a diversion from the regular blog schedule to give some shout outs here today.

I’ve also learned that these sorts of groups are all over the place – Adobe sponsors user groups across the globe!  So, here’s a chance to sprad the word about your area groups.  Got one you know about?  Attend any regularly?  Let me know here in the comments and link to your website or user group site so people can find you!

Short but sweet, so keep on shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Well, the clouds and the sun didn’t really cooperate so I gave up on that and starting fiddling around with some HDR kinds of things.  I saw a traffic light nearby and there wasn’t much traffic so tried to time some bracketed exposures (my shutter speed was getting near 30 seconds on the top end of the bracket).  Some possibilities developed, but nothing too earth shattering, and I was starting to feel a few drops of rain, so I packed up to head back over to the house – about 2 miles away.

As I was coming back to the house, the clouds that evaded me on the mountainous horizon were ominously hanging over the cityline of Denver (another scene I’d been meaning to shoot) and flashes of lightning were coursing through the clouds, with some pretty regular spikes coming down.  All of this was about 30 miles away, and heading away from me so i was feeling pretty safe except for the possibility of some raindrops now and then.

So, I found a nook by the open range, set up the camera on my trusty tripod, and tried to recall things I’d read about how to shoot lightning.  Apparently some of it stuck, because I came away with this:

Lightning over Denver

So, how did I do this?  I kept four key things in mind:

1. I used my tripod!  Stability was key because every single exposure was no less than 15 seconds!  When shooting lightning, you want to open the shutter for a longer time to increase your odds of catching it.  Because it was flashing so regularly I eventually dropped my shutter to 15 seconds and still managed 6 or 7 really good captures.
2. Keep the noise Down – I dropped my ISO to 100 for all shots and made sure long exposure noise reduction was turned on in camera.  Sure it took twice as long to capture each image, but in the long run it was worth it because there was much less noise to process on the back end.
3. Don’t touch the camera!  I set the camera to bracket exposures and put it on a two-second delay.  So, by the time the camera shutter opened I was no longer touching it, and then the second and third shots fired automatically.
4. I made sure I was in a sweet spot of my lens.  Part of this is knowing your gear – I was shooting the 10-22mm (wide angle) from Canon, and know that when it goes below f4 it can get fuzzy.  So, I was at f11 for most of my shots.  Great depth of field and everything is sharp!

Well, a fifth one was post-processing.  After a few rather unpleasant attempts to process as HDR images, I enlisted the aide of friend-of-the-blog Terry Reinert, who you know from our podcast talk a short time ago.  Terry is wicked smart (he’s an engineer) and knows the heck out of HDR.  I asked him what I was doing wrong (because the clouds were getting blotches scattered through them and generally looking poorly).  He gave some insights, what he was finding yielded better results and sent me a low res sample via email.  I liked the path he took, but the colors were not quite where I remembered them from Sunday, so dove in again with the new-found knowledge.  I tried a few quick variations on his technique, but in the interests of time, just did a short version to post here.  Once I get my final edit done (probably this weekend, I will likely be adding the image to my portfolio, so will also post that here as well.  For now though, I wanted to share the back story and a quick version of one processed version that I found appealing.  I am not crazy about the black across the bottom, but since my time was limited here, I’ll likely be addressing that this weekend when I have more time.  For now though, the quick version and a panorama crop looked kinda cool!

Thanks go out to Terry for giving a hand.   In our discussion he also mentioned possibly doing a tutorial on blending using the images, so keep your eyes on Terry’s blog (Where Art and Engineering Collide) as I may be a featured artist!  (How cool would that be?) ETA:  On posting the link to his blog, I see he’s already put his tutorial together – thanks Terry!

In other blog/photo news, as you all know from yesterday, the OnOne Giveaway concluded with Pete Petersheim being the big winner.  The new contest is underway though, with a new thread up at the Learning Digital Photography group on Flickr, so be sure to stop in there and share your images in the new thread (the theme this go around is “Fun” since the price is a Wacom Bamboo Fun!)  Good luck to everyone and don’t forget to have some fun!

Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

Grab the Feed

Well, we all know that ads only show you the quick and flashy parts of things, not the nitty gritty.  Let me tell you here and now – the Mask Pro really has no nitty gritty – it really is that easy.  Take a look at these sequences:

First off, an image I merged together during a trip to SC last summer.  It looked like it could make for a nice HDR, so I did some tone mapping and got this result:

Needless to say, it didn’t really have the “wow” factor I was looking for.  (I should also throw a mention in for the folks at HDRsoft that produce Photomatix, the HDR software utility that I was testing at the time I originally put this HDR together – still working on a review of that – I lost the trial version after re-installing XP, but will get that back shortly.)  Anyway,  given the success I’d had with some other images in HDR and the background I tried, figured it was worth the effort to blend in a different background.  Here’s the results.

Keep in mind, this was after literally hours and hours of painstakingly selecting branches, twigs, and  what not literally zoomed in to almost the pixel level.  Still, not that flattering a result and clearly a less than “stellar” job.  I relegated that to the “learn from your mistakes” folder and had not really touched it since.

So, this was my test for the Mask pro – could it do what I couldn’t after at least ten hours of agonizing masking selections and duping to repeated layers to start up the following day?  Well, let’s see, here’s what happened.

After installing Mask Pro, I loaded the tone-mapped HDR image into Photoshop.  Then, rather than taking any time to tweak, I went straight to Mask Pro (after all, it should do the work for me, right?).  After a short 7-slide presentation on the tools, my first screen looked like this:

Before I go on, let me explain how the tools on the right ended up how they were.  You see, Mask pro gives you eye dropper tools to select the colors you want to keep and the ones you want to subtract.    So, I went and selected the green eye dropper to define the colors to keep.  I clicked a few parts of the branches and signage, which took the better part of 5 seconds.  The end result was this color set:

Then I switched to the red eye dropper to define the colors to drop.  I clicked a few parts of the sky.  This took another 5 seconds or so.    The end result was this color set:

Lastly, I clicked the Magic Brush tool, from the Mask Pro tool panel

and just started painting around the sky.  I certainly did not take my time, as I was running on my Windows desktop which has a single core 2.3 Ghz celeron processor (it chugs when I load my browser fer Pete’s sake).  So, I dealt with about 5 minutes of a magic brush tool as it calculated the mask to apply as I painted impatiently across the image.  (After all, I wrote these blog posts after dinner, so time = sleep here.)

So, after about 5 minutes and 10 seconds, I have a mask that looks like this:

Yes, that was after 5 minutes!  I could already tell this was a wickedly intuitive and powerful tool (and I mean that in the best of ways), so I just stopped there and decided to take it back to PS for final cleanup and adding the new background.  To do that, I simply clicked the File menu, then “Save/apply” (another 2 seconds)…

Now back in Photoshop with the original image.  It looks the same, but take a look at the layers palette:

I know the low-res and smallness of captures for the blog make this hard to tell, but at this point I am pretty much ready to bring in the new background.  My only last step in PS is to duplicate the layer I just created from mask Pro to clean up the big blotch in the upper right, and a few specks in the rest of the sky on the third layer.   So, now I am ready to bring in my starry background again.  I place the object in the PS document to get this (for the record, I went with a different starry background to go for a more realistic effect rather than the Harry potter look of my swimming pool shots):

Finally, I just pulled the stars layer to sit below the Mask Pro layer and here’s the resulting layout in Photoshop:

The last bit took all of another minute, tops (remember, I am working off a slow processor.  The final result, which took literally less than 10 minutes (the first took over 10 hours):

Such is the power of the OnOne mask Pro – just one of the multiple plugins that are available in this Suite.  If you want this kind of power and malleability in minutes, then enter the giveaway today.  it can literally save you hours, if not days, of post processing!  Here’s the Flickr page for photo entries and here’s the link to the rules.

What can I say – OnOne rocks!  Just to give you a true frame of reference – it took me about an hour and a half to write this post – and that includes getting the screen captures, then sizing them for the blog.  I also interspersed some Twitter time and surf time as well, so it’s not like I was really in any kind of “zone” or anything.  It was just another task in an evening of multi-tasking.  The original one took me over ten hours of processing and that was with no other apps running, seriously.  I was restarting the computer just to free up the RAM for usage only by PS every evening.

This feature alone can save you days of time in the digital darkroom.  Don’t delay and enter to win today! Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow.

Grab the Feed

Installation

Installing this product can’t get much easier.  Regardless of whether you are running a Windows or Macintosh environment  (it really doesn’t matter a whole heck of a lot) the system will auto-detect the drivers for your Bamboo fun.  Still, it never hurts to go through the CD installation on their provided media, so I thought I’d share with you the process (and a few bonuses) of installation.  It’s pretty much identical, but I am showing the screen shots from Windows:

Here’s the main splash screen where you can choose what to do, ranging from installation to viewing video tutorials, or browsing the CD contents…

I opted to do the driver installation first, and got this following message…

Then the notice that the pen drivers were being installed…

Then notification that installation was complete…

After finishing that, I was offered the video tutorials on how to do different things.  For first-time users, a very useful resource…

And finally the extras that are included on the CD.  I am not sure about files with an extension of x32, but believe this is a carry-over from Macromedia software like Flash.  Since I do not own Flash, I can only guess based on my own research…

Ad additional CD also gives you a copy of Photoshop Elements 5, Nik Color Efex Pro 2, and Corel Painter Essentials 3.0, which also help to offset the cost the the product.  I didn’t want to open this and negate the serials or licenses of the products contained, but did scan the front side so you can see what you get in the companion CD:

Configuration

The added buttons at the top of the tablet make for some very intuitive advancements in its usability and properties.  Rather than cover each of these in detail, screen views of each tab (there are four total) should be indicative enough of the control and customization you can get:

Pop Up Configuration

The pop-up tab is probably the only tab that isn’t completely self-explanatory, so let me delve into a little more detail here. The reason why is because you can program common keyboard combinations (like the ones I referenced in my post last Friday) to be controlled from the tablet (provided you have “Pop-up menu” selected as on option on the tablet tab (seen next)…

Here’s how you do it:

First, click the drop-down to indicate what it is you want to program on the tablet.  For me, the biggest advantage would be in incorporating keyboard keystroke combos so I have to switch less between kb and tablet.

You’ll get a window now where you can define the keystrokes you want simply by typing that keystroke set in the blank space…

The tablet will detect your keystrokes and populate the fields

Then, give your keystroke set a name…

and Click OK.  You can see the ones I programmed below…

Last but not least, you can also include special keystroke combinations that are unique to your system (like Printscreen on Windows), as shown next:

So, you can see how having the pop-up tab configured with your most commonly used keyboard combinations, as you can reduce the swapping between inputs even more!  Very cool!  And here’s what the right-click menu looks like once inside Photoshop:

But, make sure you have a button set on the tablet to “drop down” (as shown next…)

Mechanics

Here is where your specific work flow may have an impact.  On my Windows desktop environment, I have a 19″ and a 17″ LCD, so that’s roughly 36″ of real estate that this tablet (which measures roughly 6×4″) has to cover.  What this means is that movements on a scale that size makes everything larger proportionally speaking.  You can adjust the tablet settings under the pen mode details screen to manipulate for just one monitor instead of all screens, but if I am going to use a tablet, Idon’t want to jump between that, a keyboard AND a mouse…two inputs is all I really would want to switch between, but that’s just personal preference.  But, for those that are interested, here’s how you make that adjustment in the pen settings tab of the tablet properties.  Click on the pen tab of the tablet properties, then the details button to get this screen:

From here, change the button from “All Screens” to “Monitor”.  It will default to the monitor you have set ot #1:

But you can use the arrows to set it to monitor two if you prefer:

On my Macbook Pro, since I only had the one monitor, the experience was quite different as I had less real estate for the tablet to cover – with only a 15″  LCD of screen space to cover.  So the pen was much less sensitive to location on the touch pad given that less than half the real estate was needed to cover the range of the screen (and I noticed greater position control even when I did just the 19″ monitor versus the 15″ LCD of the MBP – it’s just a happenstance of the tablet size, and the only way to do that would be to increase the tablet size – at the expense of desk real estate space…pick your poison, ya know?)

Usage

Tablets rock!  Let’s just get that bias out of the way right off.  If you want the ultimate in cursor control (and when I say cursor I mean movement of your tool, whether it be a brush, a pencil, an eraser, clone stamp, whatever, it’s just amazing).  The first major difference between a mouse and a tablet is touch sensitivity.  No matter how you tap a mouse, it delivers the same intensity or strength when it paints in Photoshop.  With a tablet, this is not the case at all.  How hard you press determines the strength of the brush.  This is truly remarkable as now you can apply just a touch, or go full hog on anything you want from painting, to clone stamping, and anything you want.  To demonstrate, I created a blank document and selected some brush settings to illustrate what I am talking about.  Take a look:  from left to right are light touches to hard pressing with the pen…followed by dots of the same strength top to bottom.

So now you can control things like jitter, hardness, and a whole myriad of options that you didn’t have before (well, at least not to the same degree anyway) with just a mouse.  I know what you’re thinking now – “Great, for graphic design that’s super cool, but how can I use this as a photographer?”  Excellent question!   Ever catch a picture where the eyes are darker and you want to brighten them up?  Well, now you can with greater ease and control both of area, intensity of the lightening (or darkening) by using the pen tool for the Bamboo Fun.  Take a look at the sample below, where I took an underexposed picture of the dog and selectively lightened the eyes and teeth, here’s the before:

and after:

One of the best parts is that this functionality is there in whatever application you use that incorporates brushes.  I tried it in Photoshop, Lightroom, and Corel Painter Pro (I installed a demo version of the last one for this review).  The Bamboo Fun can also expand your ability to clone things out, say a stray light pole or some telephone wires, or even the nasty -ex that you want out of that super cool shot of you in Hawaii!  The possibilities are limitless both for graphic designers and photographers.

So, this now begets the question of why I don’t have one in my home environment.  The main reason is because I’ve never had the need at home.  Most of the time I am at work, and if I need to work that requires that level of control, the work hardware has always been there for me.  Granted I’ve also gotten used to the Wacom Cintiq which has a much larger surface area, so I have even a greater degree of control over the desktop, cross-hairs, and all brushes, so it’s also a matter of being spoiled – I just can’t afford a Cintiq at home, or justify its need – I am just not that much of a re-toucher either with photos or in graphics design creation.

Additionally, for me, the use is only really there in graphic design, because I am also of the mentality of “getting it right in camera”, so I don’t like to do a lot of edits in photos.  Of course no one is perfect so I do occasionally need to do some fine tuning that requires a tablet.  In cases when I do, I just take the photo in to work and do the retouching there as the tablet does give a much greater amount of control than any mouse or trackball will.

When I’ve not been successful in camera, it’s not that my home work flow is good enough, it’s just that the tools are already there for me if needed at work, so the financial justification really hasn’t been there.   As my personal usage has been increasing lately though, I must admit that I am thinking more and more about adding a tablet to my home work flow.   So, would I would recommend this?

Yes!  This would make a great tablet for anyone who does not have access to a tablet elsewhere, or if you are looking to enter the tablet market – the Bamboo Fun is a great entry level tablet, that takes up minimal desk space while offering a maximum range of precision and control.  I think for my own personal usage, I would probably prefer a larger tablet because I do have the desk space, and have been accustomed (as I said) to the Cintiq, so perhaps the Intuous 4 would be more easily incorporated…but only time will tell!)

Finally, as prone as we are to repetitive motions, and with conditions like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome becoming much more common, the tablet does offer a much less repeated motion tendency than a mouse or a tablet.  So, if you make the move to a tablet, you are only decreasing your chances of things like Carpal Tunnel and repetitive motion problems in your wrists.

Two thumbs up (in Siskel and Ebert style) for the Bamboo Fun from the good folks at Wacom.  Many thanks for the demo product, and I am sure the listening/reading audience appreicates their generosity as well.  Happy shooting everyone, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for an exciting software review that includes the announcement of our latest contest, which is starting in July!).

So, anyway, here’s my Friday Fab Five Photoshop shortcuts and what they do:

1. CMD/CTRL+J = duplicates your existing layer
2. CRTL+ALT+SHIFT+E = Stamp Visible  This takes all your visible layers and merges them onto a new layer.  Increases file size, but very cool
3. CMD/CTRL+’ = (yes, that’s apostrophe) – it activates the grid in your preferences.  Since my grid is set to every 33.33% and one subdivision, it basically shows a Rule of Thirds grid overlay on my images – very handy for compositional cropping
4. Left and right brackets – decrease and increase your active brush, whether it’s for clone stamp, healing brush, eraser, history brush – whatever
5. Alt+Eyedropper = you can drag the eyedropper outside of Photoshop to sample a color in another application (great for color matching)

So, those are my five for this friday – what are yours?  Sound off in the comments!  In the meantime, have a great weekend and happy shooting! I’ll leave you with my favorite What the Duck cartoon of the week:

Grab the Feed

In all honesty though, I think the term “upgrade” may be a misnomer – after all, am I really using all the features of the full version of Photoshop Cs3?  If not, what’s the point in upgrading?  Perhaps I should be looking at a downgrade.  After all, I really do spend less time post processing these days.  So, what are the differences between CS3 and this thing called Elements?  Well, for the loyal readers of this blog, I decided to find out.

First up, I downloaded a trial version of Elements 7.0 from Adobe’s website.  The download is about half the size  of the Photoshop Cs4 download (400+ MB for Windows Elements, and over 800 MB for Photoshop Creative Suite on Windows).  To the geek in me, that means a smaller footprint on my hard drive, and less consumption of system resources.   Something to consider…

Anyway, I decided to really do a side by side comparison, and loaded CS3 and Elements in their default work spaces, then compared notes.  Here’s what I found (CS3 is first, Elements is second):

Photoshop CS3 Default Workspace

Default Elements Workspace

Wow!  Quite a difference.  I first noticed the much darker color of the work space for Elements.  Not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but something that I would necessarily have to adjust to.  So, what else is there?  Well, rather than go over each painstaking difference of the two applications, I decided to just give a quick overview here.  And, with the quick overview, I figured the best place to start would be the toolbars, since that’s what we really need to use in either of these anyway, right?  So, let’s look at them side-by-side:

Photoshop CS3 Extended Toolbar

Photoshop Elements Toolbar

They actually don’t look too diferent when you look at them side by side, do they?  I didn’t think so, and I set out to count the various tool bars.  Know what?  On a quick overview of the 22 tools in CS3, I counted 17 commonalities between CS3 and Elements 7!  That’s a lot of overlap!  Are there more buried tools in CS3?  Most likely.  On quick count, I found 60 tools throughout the CS3 Toolbar.  In elements, 48!  Even still, not a lot extra.  From a percentage perspective, that is 20% additional functionality in CS3 Extended versus Elements 7.0  My guess is CS3 Regular would have less of a difference still.

The question is though – how often do you go searching for some buried tool in CS3?  As a photographer, in all honesty, not that often.  If you think about it, as photographers, we crop, re-size, perhaps straighten an occasional horizon, add some sharpening, and if we want to get really serious with a photo, we’ll do some dodging and burning.  All of these functions are present in Elements 7.0

So, why would you want to go with the CS3 or CS4 version of Photoshop – truly if you want to take your photos to the Nth degree, or do serious work like graphic design, web design, or photo restoration, I can totally see the need for some of the more advanced tools in the Creative Suite.  But more and more, I find myself using CS3 less and less.  Take a look at the commonalities listed below – these are identical features in both applications!  It took me a little by surprise when I noticed the similarities even in tool names.  See if you can find the common tools from the listing below:

Common Tools between CS3 and Elements

So, what other important factors go into an image editing program for me?  Well, having been working in the Creative Suite for a long time – I do enjoy the benefits of layered files for different purposes.  Well, guess what – Elements does that too!  That means you can edit and save files as PSD’s!

I also like using actions to automate my work flow.  Uh Oh…from my initial glance, it does not appear that Elements 7.0 has this functionality built in.  But, can it be added?  Well, a Google search on the topic of “Elements Actions” says yes, so I think I could probably figure it out enough to eek the process to my needs.

The other major functionality I have an interest in is the ability to edit and manage raw files from my camera.  Can I see the raw files?  Sure enough, the ACR converter has made its way into Elements as well!

Adobe Camera Raw Converter in Elements

In fact, a lot of the preferences settings seem to have migrated over from Photoshop CS3…look at the same screen from there:

Photoshop CS3 Preferences Settings

As similarities continue to mount, the last major thing to consider is price.  Retail, CS4 runs at $700 for the full price, an upgrade runs $200.  Elements?  Well, I think y’all know where this is headed:  Retail $139 and upgrade for $119.  I don’t know about you, but that is a HUGE cost savings.  It almost seems too good to be true, and given my penchant for not taking things at face value – I will take a look at the image processing capabilities in greater detail next week.  We’ll take a look at noise handling, speed, performance, and see how it does with a variety of images from my Canon 40D.

The biggest downside that I can see is that you don’t have the color management capabilities in Elements that you have in the Creative Suite – I like making some LAB adjustments from time to time, and filters may suffer in availability too – but more on that next week.

For the time being though, given the similarity in apparent functionality, the reduced price for Elements, and the proportionate footprint on my computer – Elements is definitely a contender.  For all I know – as I learn more about Lightroom after the workshop from Scott Kelby and NAPP on Wednesday, the idea of a separate application for image editing may go by the wayside too, especially when the cost for the CS product is 400% that of Elements.

So, what do you think?  Anyone out there using Elements?  Any other downgraders care to share their thoughts?  Have you enjoyed downsizing?  Found things you missed?  Workarounds?  Add-ons?  Tell me more as I continue to explore Elements next week – I’ll add reader observations there too!  In the meantime, happy shooting, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow after the NAPP workshop!

For the purposes of this post, I am going to talk about one of the most basic rules – the Rule of Thirds.  The Rule of Thirds (or ROT) basically says that if you divide your image area up into a grid, where the horizontal andvertical areas are divided equally into thirds – you will get cross-sections that define where your points of interest should be – often called hot points.  Here’s a diagram to help demonstrate:

So, here the frame is divided (roughly) into thirds both vertically and horizontally.  Where the lines intersect, I’ve created red circles to indicate the “hot points”.  These are your points of interest.  If all else fails, placing your subject matter in these areas (or close to them) will dramatically improve your composition.  Here’s a great example:

Here’s a shot of a carriage girl I took back in Charleston.  See where the cross-sections are?  I changed the color of the grid to make it easier to view – so you can tell that her eye is right on the marker for the right-most third grid line.  This really helps the composition that her eye is there instead of elsewhere (often times, there is a tendency to place the eyes closer to the center of the frame – resist that temptation to give your shots that extra oomph!).

In fact the ROT concept s such a well-known standard, the folks over at Adobe have incorporated that element into their crop tool – so that you can crop your images to adhere to this rule.  Since I will likely get someone to ask – you can create this ROT grid in other variants of Photoshop (CS family), but going to your application preferences and selecting the Grids, Guides, and Slices option.  In there, change your grid size to display lines every 33.3% and number of grids to 1.  Then choose a strong color so that when you display the grid – you can see it!  Click OK and you are done – from now on, to show the ROT grid when cropping or editing in the CS family – simply use the CMD/CTRL key and the apostrophe ( this doohickey  ‘   ) to toggle the grid on and off.  Here’s a capture of the area you need to make the changes:

There you have it – the Rule of Thirds grid – what it means and how to use it!  Any other rules of composition you would like explained?  Feel free to email, share your thoughts, ideas, suggestions and feedback in the comments or privately (if you rather would preserve anonymity).  In the meantime, go out, take some shots and practice visualizing that ROT grid in camera – that’s what will turn your snapshots into great shots!  Getting it right in camera!  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

The best example of this was when I did my upgrade of the Canon XT to the Canon 40D just last year (or was it two years ago now?)…at the time I was using Adobe Photoshop CS2 to process my files.  Well CS2 development stopped as CS3 development started.  My Canon 40D was stuck in between application life cycles, and as a result, I was no longer able to process my CR2 files from the 40D natively in CS2.  Granted, I did upgrade to CS3 because of my interest in the field, but for those that either may not be interested in the software upgrade, or cannot afford to upgrade, there is a free alternative from Adobe – the Adobe DNG converter.

This is a really cool utility and it gets updated on the same schedule as the Adobe Camera Raw utility that is unique to the image-editing applications of all Photoshop applications (CS4, LR, etc.).  The Adobe DNG stands for a Digital NeGative so it may help to think of this as a way of preserving your original data, yet still making it accessible, regardless of what other developments happen in the software world down the road.  I know, we all think that Adobe will be around forever, but the same was also thought of Kodak 20 years ago – and now those Kodak CD’s are becoming difficult to manage.  With that little nugget, it may be useful to consider the Adobe DNG option.  Additionally, the Adobe DNG negative has been submitted to the ISO standards setting organization for acceptance as a universal conversion utility, and are releasing it under the GNU licensing, so it will hopefully always be available for anyone.

With the stage set then,  for those who are not able to or not interested in upgrading, here is a brief tutorial of the Adobe DNG converter (in it’s current iteration as of 4/27/09), with screenshots.  If your folders of images look like this:

Then the Adobe DNG Conversion Utility may be for you.  It starts pretty easily…you can download the Windows or Mac versions of it from here:

Windows DNG Converter

Mac DNG Converter

Once you download and install this utility (did I mention it’s free?), start the application to get this screen:

First off, specify the path where the images are that you want to encapsulate into the DNG format.  You can specify one folder, or you can specifiy a folder and all its sub-folders (in case you want to convert an entire library or set of images at once).  Then specify the output folder and naming convention you want to use.  Once that’s been decided, it’s time to select your preferences for how you convert your images.

Click on the “Preferences button” to specify how you want to conversion to occur:  Do you want full size conversions or do you want to reduce the image resolution sizes for smaller storage requirements?  (I always choose full size for maximum flexibility.)  What about compression?  Adding compression can further reduce the footprint that each DNG file has on your hard drive.  (It’s a judgement call, but I choose not to compress, again to maximize flexibility down the road.)  What about conversion methods?  You can convert to a linear format, but I don’t like this option because it’s a one-way street (you can’t go back).  Last but not least, what about inclusion of the original raw file?  In most cases I would actually recommend that.  It may increase file size, but this way you have access to the original raw date if your software needs ever change and you have access to software that can better handle the raw data you currently may not be able to manage.  All these are things to consider.  Hopefully, this short explanation of your options and the pros/cons will help in deciding how to proceed.

From here it’s pretty straightforward – you’ve specified everything from your input folder to your output folder, naming conventions, and conversion preferences, so now, simply click the button on the lower right to start the conversion process.  You will get a dialog window showing you the progress:

If you like, you can always click the button in the lower left to stop or abort the conversion process in case you specify the wrong folder or for some other reason.  Once the process is complete, the window will show all converted images.  Simply click “OK” to close the DNG converter utility from that window, as shown below:

Finally, open the destination folder, and voila!  Your image files will now have thumbnail previews again:

There you have it, your files are now prepped for one of the easiest, simplest, and most cost effective ways (did I mention this is free?) for both management, archiving, and accessibility – 3 very important things to consider in your image management workflow.

Granted, as with anything else, the Adobe DNG converter utility is not for everyone, as we all have work flows that call for different approaches.  So, what approaches do you use?  Feel free to share your own thoughts, processes, and suc in the comments or via email.  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!

Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I did do some additional post processing work even after the HDR processing to get the above results.  But Photomatix was superior for a number of reasons.    For starters – Photomatix gives you options in what type of output you want.  Here are the two results, side-by-side, that I got from Photomatix:

The first was the result of  processing from the Tone Compressor tab and the latter of Details Enhancer tab processing.  As you can see, the first produced a smoother sky, but left the foreground a little flat, while the latter had more texture and, well… dynamic range to it.  So, I decided to go with the latter in my post processing.  The Photoshop alternative, however, produced something even less desirable than either of the above.  Take a look:

Not only are the luminosity levels less interesting, but there’s literally no tone curve application.  No color, no tone curve mapping, and decidedly no interest when you consider the options from Photomatix.  I am in the process of putting together a tutorial of how I got the final result, so be on the lookout for that in the next few days.  In the meantime though, I’d like to take a moment to say “Thanks” to fellow NAPP member,  Elizabeth Gast (a.k.a. Firgs,) for the kind thoughts she has over on her blog – Design by Firgs – where she talks up a shot I took a while ago that is premiering on hew new series “Accidentally Awesome” today, so be sure to stop over there and give her a shout-out!  Until tomorrow – Happy Shooting!

1. Camera Raw Conversion – If you aren’t working in camera raw, here is a big reason to think about it – converting images to black and white in camera raw allows you to make a conversion while retaining access and malleability to all image data. The camera raw dialogs that you should use to make conversions here include the saturation slider, then exposure and shadow sliders, followed by the Brightness slider. Don’t forget to play with the contrast slider a little to enhance the effect as desired. Last but not least, for advanced adjustments, the calibration tab can have effects similar to the Channel Mixer.
2. Black and White Conversion – With Photoshop CS3 and now in CS4, the good folks over at Adobe have added a Black and White conversion  option in the image adjustments menu.  This is pure gold because you can duplicate the image before making adjustments and apply the effect to it’s own layer.  You can also add back in tonal values for specific b/w effects that previously were pretty much out of reach without many many edits, layer adjustments, masks and much much more.
3. Channel Mixer – with your image open in Photoshop (7.0 or higher), you can select a specific color set you want to remove from or add emphasis to in an image. The traditional color sets or red, green and blue are available, as well as a constant (think brightness), and a check box for monochrome.
4. Hue/Saturation Adjustment – whether as a dedicated layer, or directly to an image, the Hue/Saturation allows you to account for different intensity levels of a wide range of colors, from Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Magenta. You can also adjust the range of color within one of the default ranges for each set by adjusting the left and right limiters of the color wheel at the bottom of the dialog window.
5. Grayscale Conversions – most black-and-white images aren’t true black and whites, because a little color from a specific range is added back in for emphasis. To make an image truly a b/w, it would only have a range of black and white. This can be done using the grayscale option in Photoshop. Often, this is used as the last step in a digital approach to black and white photography so that saturation and brightness level loss is minimized.

So, what have I added and what have I removed?  The Black and White conversion method is the latest addition, and I jettisoned in-camera conversions.  While pretty much all cameras have the in-camera option to take images in black-and-white, as I have crawled my way up the learning curve, I am cognizant of the fact that if you lose image data in-camera, there is no getting it back afterward.

Well, that’s it – the new and improved post on Black and White conversion options!  If you’d like to read the original post, that can be pulled up from the archives here.  In the meantime, feel free to share your favorite techniques for black and white conversions here in the comments or via email.  As always, Happy Shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow!

1. You go into a sandwich shop and order a Gallery Wrap
2. You wonder whether “Reduce Noise” will work on the kids
3. You look for the healing brush to fix your drywall
4. Your idea of hitting the snooze button involves cloning the digits because it’s quicker
5. When accused of gaining weight, you say it’s layers you choose not to discard
6. When “Vanishing Point” becomes something you hope can be applied to your in-laws
7. When “Sharpen More” is something you wish you could beat your students with
8. You hear about a stimulus plan on the news and wish it had a “Auto-Enhance” or “More Accurate” option attached to it
9. Your write-in candidate for the last presidential election was “A Configurator Panel”
10. You try to move something by just putting your hand in front of it and dragging…

I know this is just a tip of the iceberg – let your creativity and originality shine through in the comments!  Until tomorrow – Happy Shooting!

So, this last weekend I went on the photo meetup group outing for the month of February into Eldorado State Park, south of Boulder, and had many an opportunity to capture some landscape and macro work. Some great views were had and I only hope that they all come out as well as this one did. While hiking up a trail of slippery snow and ice (it was cold out Saturday morning), I saw this fissure that was pretty intense looking because it was only partially lit. I thought about it for a second and decided to bracket some exposures to see if it would turn out with some HDR massaging. Not only did it turn out better than I would have thought, I was also very pleased with how Photomatix did with this. I would highly recommend this software to anyone interested in HDR work. Not only is it more intuitive than Photoshop, the results were much more gratifying! You can buy Photomatix for PS, Lightroom and for either Windows or a Mac over at www.HDRsoft.com.

Some other web links I learned about recently also include www.fotoblur.com and www.usefilm.com Both are much more cognizant and respective of photography copyright than other social and photo networking sites like Flickr and Facebook (we all know about the Facebook Terms of Service fiasco, right?). One thing I like about both Fotoblur and Flickr is that you are limited in how many images you can upload daily. This requires you to be more careful about what you publish, and as a result, you are more thoughtful and objective of what work is worth posting and sharing online.

Last but not least, the podcast that I had intended to put out last week was delayed for a few days as I put the finishing touches up on a home improvement project. (We finished out one of the basement rooms – expect to see some photos on that makeover forthcoming!) The good news is that not only is the basement room on the verge of completion, but that the podcast is up for this week. Naturally, the title of the podcast will match the blog post title, as the show notes follow closely to todays content. Stop on over to Personal Life Media for the show, or pick it up in iTunes! (Don’t forget to leave your thoughts in the review section of iTunes too…the more the merrier!)

Until tomorrow, when I’ll have some more HDR shots to share, keep on shooting – hope all your shots are good ones!