Adobe Photoshop CC Part D

This is the 4th installment in my blog post series about Adobe Photoshop CC which is based on what I learn on the video training course by Infinite Skills on this software. To label a photo with in Adobe Bridge you can select a photo /label/ and then select a rating 1-5. Alternatively you can select a photo and click on a star rating under the photo. You can also select approved or reject under the label menu. Cntrl + A is a useful shortcut in this because it selects all. When you select a photo alt + backspace is a shortcut for reject. A photo isn’t deleted when you reject it merely labeled as such. You can add keywords to the keywords panel simply by clicking on it and typing the appropriate words. It is then a matter of selecting a photo and ticking the right keywords to add them. There is a sort option. You can also click on the search box and search for photos. There is a filter tab where you simply click on it and enter your keyword criteria to apply a filter. You simply select your photos and drag and drop to the collections tab to create collections. You can type all or part of a filename and it will immediately search for relevant photos. You can select a photo or photos and press delete and it will ask you if you are deleting or rejecting them and then you just choose. If you delete something it goes in the recycle bin so can be restored if you change your mind. By default the filename is a 4 digit number and 2 letters and this is added to sequentially when photos are added. You can search for files by this sequence of numbers and letters. You can organise most filetypes with in Adobe Bridge and in the latest version they have limited some of the export options to encourage people to use Adobe products. You can do a contact sheet of your photos if you go to Tools/ Photoshop/ Contact Sheet 2 and this is particularly useful if you have made a photo cd and want thumbnails of what is on it. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is similar to this program in that it primarily organises photos although that program has more photo editing capabilities and is aimed at photographers who in particular have to adjust light levels in photos.

 

Adobe Photoshop CC Part C

This is the 3rd installment in my blog post series on Adobe Photoshop CC which is based on what I learn on the video training course by Infinite Skills on this software. The hand tool which has an icon of a hand on the button lets you move the image around the screen. The zoom tool has an icon of a magnifying glass and lets you magnify either in or out of an image. If you double click the zoom it goes to 100 %. The scrubby zoom option when selected lets you zoom in when you drag the mouse to the right of the screen and zoom out when you drag to the left of the screen. Window/ navigator brings up the navigator panel. In this panel when only a portion of the workspace is shown a red box in a picture shows what portion you are looking at. If you highlight the zoom figure you can delete and enter a new figure or increase or decrease it by the – or + keys. Adobe Bridge is an organiser program that is a standalone program in its own right. It first appeared as such in the Creative Studio Suite although was a part of Photoshop in version 7. You can use the left and right arrow keys to go back and forward in steps. If you right click an image you can rate it out of 5. Normally you don’t rate it lower than 3 and will leave it unrated if it is poor. If you click the stack button then review mode it compiles your pics you you can scroll through and have them blown up in size so you can see them clearly. Right clicking essentials then reset, restores your workspace. You can drag the menu bar across the screen to reveal more menus. Film strip reveals all pics in a format where you can scroll through them. Light table reveals all pics in several rows and the idea comes from having lots of slides laid out on a table to work on in traditional photography. Favourites is one of the key elements of this program and lets you find stuff without trawling through thousands of pics. If you drag and drop a folder into your favourite folders until you see a green line between 2 favorite folders it creates a new favorite folder there. To remove from favorites simply right click the folder and select remove from favorites. It removes it from favorites but not from the computer.

 

Adobe Photoshop CC Part B

This is the 2nd installment in my blog post series on Adobe Photoshop CC which is based on what I learn on the video training course by Infinite Skills on this software. You can select any panel under the windows menu or from the menu on the right of the screen above the panels. You can drag and drop panels around the screen. If you drag a panel until you see a blue line on the left of the panels you can attach it to the toolbar and the workspace shrinks accordingly. Shift & tab hides the panels temporarily and tab hides the panels until you bring them back up. Where you put the panels is saved when you save and close the program and they re-appear in the same position when re-opened. Window/workspace saves your settings for things like panels and designated shortcuts. You can use the default shortcuts or define your own. File/ place linked links to an original file and file/ place embedded copies a file in to the program. You can drag and drop a file into photoshop with the mouse. If you use shift you can drop a linked object into it.  File/ open brings a file into photoshop which you select. If you right click a photo a menu appears and you click open with … then photoshop. You can open in any adobe creative cloud program that is compatible with that filetype. If you double click the workspace you can double the file name. If you double click a .psd file it opens in photoshop automatically. File/ info brings up file information for a particular image. It is stored in xml and you can fill in many of the fields. Some fields auto-fill with information for example from your camera. DICOM is medical information and is used by hospitals for things like digital x-rays. If you click on a file tab on your workspace it becomes active. Window/ arrange has various display options like 2 across for multiple files to be shown on your workspace.

Adobe Photoshop CC Part A

This is the 1st installment in a blog post series on Adobe Photoshop CC based on what I learn on the video training course by Infinite Skills on this software. Photoshop CC where the initials stand for creative cloud is a hybrid cloud form of software which if you buy the whole suite I think retails for approximately £30.00 per month. It is a cloud service and you can also download the software which has proved very popular. Photoshop is the industry standard photo editing software used by most professionals. Compared to what previous versions sold for it is excellent value.  There is an options bar below the menu bar that changes according to what tool is selected. Adobe have tried to make the Apple and Windows versions as alike as possible. The tools toolbar is on the left. The menu bar has keywords and menus in text and there are the shortcuts for each tool displayed. There are 2 figures at the bottom of the screen, the compressed size and actual size of image you are working on. You can have up to 8,000 layers in Photoshop. Pixels make up every image in Photoshop and we call it a raster or bitmap program. If you magnify an image you see lots of little dots which make it up. When a picture is distorted through magnification we call it pixellated. The more pixels are in an image the larger the filesize. They are measured in ppi or pixels per inch. Most images are 8 bit with the exception of RAW which is 16 bit. 8 bit has 16 million colours which come from 3 color channels. 16 bit has trillions of colours and doubles the filesize. Cntrl + k is the shortcut for preferences. You can change the background in one click and many people prefer one of the lighter grey colors. The scratch disc option lets you use more than one hard drive. Edit/preferences/ sync settings lets you synchronize more than one computer via the cloud. Most people store their work on their cloud site. If you click edit/ color settings you can load color settings for your printer driver with the load button. You just then select it from a list. A general purpose setting that works with most uses is either north america general purpose 2 or europe general purpose 2 depending on where you live.

HDR Digital Photography Part C

This is the 3rd and final part in my blog post series on HDR Photography which is based on what I learn from the video training course by VTC that is about this subject. If you go to http://www.hdrsoft.com there is a program called Photomatrix that works equally well with windows and mac and there is a 60 day fully working version you can download for free. It is a way of trying before you buy it. You can also use Merge to HDR Pro which comes with Adobe Photoshop. When importing photos into either of these the import options you select do no harm to what you import but should be used sparingly as they slow the import process down. Both programs display a merged photo in the main screen and the separate photos that make it up at the bottom. To get from Photoshop to Merge to HDR Pro select tools/ photoshop/ merge to HDR pro. When you use Photomatrix one of the images at the bottom of the screen is dominant in making up the composite photo. This image has a green border and to designate another image as dominant merely click on it. You can apply a preset in both programs to an image which then brings up various settings you can adjust. You can also in Photomatrix place one photo over another by dragging it and combine them. You can use HDR with black and white photos although it is better with color. When you adjust the settings in a preset you can adjust it by either dragging the pointer across the adjustment bar or by dragging up and down or across the image. You just select the bar prior to doing it and it lets you have more control over it. You can also tint all or part of a picture and get some outstanding effects.

HDR Digital Photography Part B

This is the second installment in my tutorial series of posts on HDR Photography based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this subject. The raw filetype is a 10-14 bit image without adjustments where the camera just photographs what it sees. It is ideal for HDR Photography. TIFF and JPEG are photographs where some of the information has been adapted. HDR Photography isn’t suitable for moving objects with the possible exception of moving water where good results can be achieved. You need a tripod for this type of photography as you need to normally take at least 3 identical photographs which just differ in the settings used. You can rest the camera on a wall or lean against a wall and tuck your arms in to get reasonable results. A light meter lets you measure the amount of light falling on a subject. This is more accurate than measuring the light entering the camera and gets better results. If you make a composite from 3 photos you should use a f stop of a 1/3 either way and if you do more than 3 photos you should use a whole f stop either way each time depending on each photo. If you go to http://www.promotesystems.com they have a gadget called the promote which can over ride your shutter on your camera and keep it open as long as you want. This is particularly good for time lapse photography. It also lets you take as many photos as you need for HDR purposes. Normally the more photos you combine the better the photo although many photographers believe 3 is all you need to take. There are various plug ins that work with Photoshop and RAW files and vary according to the make and model of the camera. Most of your photo editing with in HDR Photography takes place with in these plug ins. You can take one photo and save it several times with different settings to do HDR from one photograph. You are literally left with several photos for the purpose. The mask control darkens light areas and the and the fill light control lightens dark areas. You can also adjust the exposure setting one way or the other. To merge the photos you go into Merge To HDR Pro within Photoshop that shows you the combined results and if satisfied you just click to accept it. The Adobe Group of software also uses Adobe bridge to go from one program to another and is compatible with most filetypes.

HDR Digital Photography Part A

I am not doing any more in the series on Amazon Web Services as that is too complex. This is the first installment in a new series on HDR Photography. This is based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this subject. HDR stands for high dynamic range and you will sometimes see HDRI which stands for HDR Image. The human eye has an exposure range roughly twice that of a decent DSLR digital camera. This range on the camera is normally measured in f stops and the human range is around 18-20. In the old days photographers would use special film and long exposures maybe even for several seconds or minutes to get the right result. The sensors on a camera also are limited and by combining photos we can increase the effective range. The higher the number of f stop the less light hits the photographic plate and as it increases by a whole number the amount is either square rooted or squared on itself. Multiple photos taken at different exposures combine the best things in each image to make a more natural image. Most good DSLRs will let you combine 3 photos and ideally in most cases you want to combine 6-7 so will use a photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop. This has no limit on how many you can combine. If you combine 3 photos you will increase it and decrease it by a third each way in the other photos. Most photos are 8 bit with 3 channels of colour, red, green and blue. There are normally 256 variations in each channel making over 16 million possible colors. If you use a higher bit rate it makes transitions smoother in addition to increasing the number of colors. HDR uses a set resolution set by the camera and if you increase the dpi it won’t improve the photo and will merely increase the file size. You can often reduce the resolution however especially if it is for web use. When you are organizing your photos you should have descriptive folder names with photos in subfolders often organised by date and time. You will often have to search for a folder in the search box where you will enter a term so it needs to be descriptive. You usually shoot in RAW mode in HDR photography and this is usually 16 bit with proprietary software with the camera that lets you adjust settings. The images are normally generated on the camera in RAW not on the computer. There is also a free program from Adobe you can download for free called DNG Converter For Windows. When you are archiving photos and want to save as much information as possible save as a DNG.

 

Flickr

The book I read to research this post was Flickr In 10 Minutes which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. This book was written a few years ago so some of it might be dated. Flickr is a photo sharing site where people can upload photographs and videos. There are free and paid options. A free account lets you upload 100 MB of photos per month and 2 videos of less than 150 MB per video. A paid which in this book was $24.95 per year lets you upload unlimited photos, videos of less than 500 MB each and also some HD video. People can comment on each others photos and videos and in that sense it is like a social media site. Also Getty Images sometimes contact you and offer to sell your photos on a commision basis if they are really good. Yahoo purchased Flickr and it was rather controversial for some time that everyone on the site was made get a Yahoo ID. There is a software uploadr that you can download for your computer or digital device which will upload your photos to the site. Alternatively you can email them to your account or upload them directly on the website. You can upload them either individually or in bulk. You can also put tags on your photos and videos and can configure them to be seen by either just you, friends, contacts, flickr members or the public. It maybe an idea to limit who can comment. Like a social media you can have friends or followers and there are groups which normally follow a theme like a subject or location. With a free account you can display photos or videos in up to 10 groups and with a paid membership up to 60 groups. The photos and videos are grouped according to safe, moderate and restricted. Moderate is stuff that might offend certain and restricted is stuff that is quite explicit. In some geographical locations you can only search for certain like in Germany restricted content isn’t available. Also if you are underage moderate and restricted content isn’t available. If you don’t label your content appropriately you risk being banned from the site. I did really enjoy reading this book and am very much tempted to join Flickr probably though using a free account.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Part H

This is the 8th and last installment in my blog series on Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 which I base on what I learn on the VTC training course. I will start another series from tomorrow on something else. Anyway getting back to Elements 9. A very in thing in digital photography is HDR or High Dynamic Range Photography. You can do a little bit of this in Elements. It involves having several photos of the same thing on different layers, dragging one onto the other in layers and making them opaque. The sensor in a camera only detects typically 4,000 colours which is far less than the human eye and can make photos look a bit unreal. Pictures taken at different exposures increase those colours when combined and result in a more realistic photo. You should use a tripod to take the photos which of course in other respects should be identical. For Panoramic Stitching the pictures should overlap by 30-50%. You select file/ photomerge panorama. You add the open files, leave on auto and select blend images together. You click ok, select no to the request to fill in the edges and crop the photo. Note these photos due to being combined can have a large file size so that might need adjusting prior to sending in email or putting on the web. If you are creating something like a calendar, collage or photo book there are options like print locally or via a website that will post it to you. You can print a photo book via shutterfly or kodak. The photos are placed in a book in a default way & it is just a matter of dragging them with the mouse and adding things like text. With calendars you can print locally or via kodak. You have to choose your starting month and year. There are various options like text style and page color. You also type in the month for each photo and a description. You might have to resize photos and then you click order and are taken to the kodak site. It should arrive in 10-14 days. I hope enjoyed reading this series as much as I have. The next series might be drupal or joomla & I might start that later tonight.

 

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Part G

This is the 7th installment in my blog post series on using Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 based on what I learn on the VTC video training course. A lot of people especially when learning how to use this software tend to overuse sharp and unsharp. They are mainly for using on parts of a photo that are a little out of focus and overuse degrades the picture quality. The color cast command can be found at enhance/ adjust colour/ remove color cast. It’s particularly good for old photos where the color has degraded. It’s good to use it in conjunction with adjusting the light levels. A bit of advice is if you photograph a lady and want to Photoshop the picture ask her for permission as she might be offended. Men in general don’t seem to mind. If a subject only has minor blemishes it often isn’t necessary to fix them. The color curves command found at enhance/ adjust color/ color curves lets you manually adjust the colors in the picture. Really you have to experiment and gain experience to know whether color curves is better than light levels or histogram on a particular image. If you have washed out color and an indistinct background in an image consider converting it to black and white. It’s found at enhance/ adjust color/ convert to black and white. It has quite a few preset black and white options or you can sort the image out manually. If you do landscape photography the most important factor is do you like the picture. You can often one good photo into several photos each with different settings with in the program. Always look for something different or unusual to photograph. Most subjects look best off centre on a photo. Ideally the subject will take up 1/3 or 2/3 of the photo. Having a fair amount of background makes the picture more dramatic. Finally there is a color variations command at enhance / adjust color / color variations which displays predefined images with settings applied that you can just click on or alternatively you can adjust the settings and then select an image that looks right.