549510 cover 8/19/02 2:26 PM Page 1

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Ken Milburn Professional photographer and author of Master VISUALLY Photoshop 6
Ron Rockwell
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page i

Digital Photography
Bible
2nd Edition
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page ii
549510 FM.F 8/23/02 10:01 AM Page iii

Digital Photography
Bible
2nd Edition

Ken Milburn
Ron Rockwell
Mark Chambers
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page iv

Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
909 Third Avenue
New York, NY 10022
www.wiley.com
Copyright  2002 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Library of Congress Control Number: 2002110299
ISBN: 0-7645-4951-0
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Published simultaneously in Canada
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01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page v

About the Authors

Ken Milburn started taking pictures the year he entered high school and was work-
ing professionally as a wedding photographer by the time he graduated. He has
been involved with photography both as a hobby and professionally ever since and
has worked in advertising, travel, and fashion photography.

Ken has been working with computers since 1981 and has written hundreds of arti-
cles, columns, and reviews for such publications as Publish, DV Magazine, Computer
Graphics World, PC World, Macworld, and Windows Magazine. He has also published
ten other computer books, including the first edition of Digital Photography Bible,
Master VISUALLY Photoshop 6.0, CliffsNotes Taking and Sharing Digital Photographs,
and Photoshop 5.5 Professional Results.

Ken also maintains a practice as a commercial photo-illustrator and has become

internationally known for his photo-paintings, which have been featured twice in
Design Graphics Magazine, in the all-time best-selling poster for the 1988 Sausalito
Arts Festival, and in the 1999 American President Lines calendar.

Ron Rockwell began his career as a technical illustrator in the days when eraser
crumbs and ink-stained fingers were a sign of the trade. With a degree in commer-
cial art, he became an art director at a Silicon Valley print shop. After that, he
launched a long freelance career peppered with a year here and there as art direc-
tor for both large and small advertising agencies in California, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, and Hawaii. During that time, he continued servicing freelance clients he
had acquired in the early seventies.

Besides being a graphic designer and technical illustrator, Ron is a successful

professional photographer with a fully equipped studio consisting of traditional
medium format equipment and state-of-the-art digital equipment. You can see some
of his work at www.nidus-corp.com. In 2001, Ron wrote FreeHand 10 f/x & Design,
and he is hard at work on a book for the next version of Macromedia FreeHand. Ron
is an active member on FreeHand Web forums and a member of Team Macromedia.

Mark L. Chambers has been an author, computer consultant, BBS sysop, program-
mer, and hardware technician for over 15 years. His previous books include Building
A PC For Dummies, Scanners For Dummies, CD & DVD Recording For Dummies,
Microsoft Office v. X for Mac Power Users Guide, and others. Mark is currently a full-
time author and tech editor. He recently served as an HP Web Clinic instructor in
the use of CD-RW drives.
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page vi

Credits
Acquisitions Editor Project Coordinator
Melody Layne Ryan Steffen

Project Editor Graphics and Production Specialists

Kala Schrager Beth Brooks, Melanie DesJardins,
Kelly Hardesty, Joyce Haughey,
Technical Editors Clint Lahnen, Kristin McMullan,
Mark Chambers Barry Offringa, Brent Savage,
Michael R. Sunsdahl Rashell Smith

Copy Editors Quality Control Technicians

Rebekah Mancilla Laura Albert, John Greenough,
Rebecca Senninger Susan Moritz

Editorial Manager Permissions Editor

Kyle Looper Carmen Krikorian

Vice President and Media Development Specialist

Executive Group Publisher Angela Denny
Richard Swadley
Proofreading and Indexing
Vice President and TECHBOOKS Production Services
Executive Publisher
Bob Ipsen

Executive Editorial Director

Mary Bednarek
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page vii

To my son, Lane. Thanks for all the help.

01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page viii
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page ix

Preface
T his edition of Digital Photography Bible is packed with tips and tricks that help
you become a better photographer. These tips and tricks are in each chapter,
so they pertain to every aspect of digital photography, from what to look for in a
new camera to how to solve persistent digital photography challenges by using
Photoshop (and quite a lot of other software).

The digital photography industry has expanded exponentially every year since
its inception, but last year was the biggie, with nearly a 600 percent explosion in
growth. It was also the first year that, excluding disposable cameras, the sales of
new film cameras was exceeded by the sales of digital cameras.

More importantly, because this book is intended for digital photographers who are
serious about their use of this technology, the state of the art in digital photographic
equipment has risen markedly. When the first edition of this book was published,
the majority of digital cameras in the thousand-dollar price range sported between
two and three megapixels of resolution. Today, semi-pro (often called prosumer)
level cameras are moving into the six megapixel range, which is roughly equivalent
in resolution to medium speed (ISO 200) moderately priced 35mm color film.

This book is for anyone who wants in-depth information about digital photography.
Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition, is written especially for the person who
wants to make the most of those digital cameras that are in a price range appropri-
ate for serious hobbyists, business professionals, and professional photographers
who are not quite ready to spend more than $3,000 on a digital camera.

What’s in This Book

Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition, covers digital photography basics, tips and
tricks, and loads of digital shooting and processing details. This book is broken
down into seven parts.

Part I: The Role of Digital Photography

This part of Digital Photography Bible begins with an in-depth analysis of the role of
digital photography as it relates to traditional photography, including who should
use it, why, and when it is more appropriate to use than film. The first chapter touts
the advantages of digital photography, counters with the advantages of film-based
picture-taking, and then wraps things up by talking about how to get the best of
both worlds by digitizing photographs shot on film.
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page x

x Preface

Chapter 2 enables you to get the most from your digital camera — either the one
you own or the one you hope to get. I explain what characteristics to look for, what
the various shooting mode options are, how and when to take advantage of these
modes, how to overcome parallax distortion, and how to judge the quality of optics
in a potential camera purchase. I also discuss why certain sensor characteristics
are sought after, how to determine which cameras have the best ergonomic design,
and describe the various options in digital film memory cards, batteries, and
connections for transferring images from camera to computer.

Chapter 3 is a basic manual of photographic techniques that every serious photog-

rapher should employ. It covers exposure, lighting, focus, motion capture, composi-
tion, how to capture the critical moment, and how to deal with inclement weather
while on location.

Part II: The Shoot and the Equipment

Chapter 4 covers situations that arise on location. I cover many types of photogra-
phy employed on location shoots such as event, candid, sports/action, travel,
portrait, nature, macro, and architectural photography. If your interests lie in
other areas, it’s a good bet that they have a lot in common with one or more of
these basic fields.

The subject of Chapter 5 is working in the studio: how to change backgrounds

quickly, the most basic setups for shooting people, how to make a glamour or
business portrait. Finally, I describe the basic setups for shooting flat artwork
and still lifes.

Chapter 6 covers useful photo accessories including add-on lenses and filters,
devices made to keep your camera steady, external flashes, and digital card readers.

Chapter 7 is all about how to equip your computer to get the most out of digital or
digitized photographs. It also happens to be a good guide for equipping a computer
for most any type of full-color, bit-mapped graphics work.

Part III: Before You Edit an Image

Part III is all about planning ahead so that you waste little time when you do get
around to image editing. It’s all about efficiently digitizing images, transferring
images to the computer, cataloging and managing images, and choosing an image-
editing program.

Chapter 8 covers converting analog to digital and concentrates mostly on choosing

and using the right scanner for the right purpose.
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page xi

Preface xi

Chapter 9 is a primer on the software and methods for cataloging, naming, and
otherwise managing images so that you can quickly find the one you need when
the time comes.

Chapter 10 discusses the considerations for choosing an image-editing program.

Part IV: Image-Editing Software

Part IV is devoted to the subject of using image-editing software to solve everyday
professional problems.

Chapters 11 and 12 cover problems that can be solved with affordable mid-level
image editors such as Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro.

Chapter 13 covers more esoteric problems that can only be solved with the highest
level of image-editing programs.

Chapter 14 introduces you to the basic techniques used for converting digital
(digitized) photographs into illustrations that look like traditional paintings.

Part V: The Versatility of Digital Photography

Part V is all about new uses and forms for digital photography. The first of these,
covered in Chapter 15, takes you through the steps and software needed to help
you get your pictures onto the Internet. You learn to quickly and easily create your
own portfolio site as well as how to prepare images that gives you the best compro-
mise between performance and quality for use on any Web site.

Chapter 16 introduces you to a variety of software that produces special results, such
as panoramas, super-high resolution images from a matrix of stitched photos, photo
mosaics (each pixel in the image is a photograph), movies taken with still cameras,
stereoscopic images taken with ordinary digital cameras, aerial photographs taken
from kites, balloons, and model airplanes, and digital infrared photography.

Part VI: Producing the Best Output

Appropriately enough, the last group of chapters in Digital Photography Bible is all
about what you do with your images when you’ve gotten them to the point where
you’re really proud to show them to the world.

Chapter 17 presents the criteria for choosing and using a desktop (or on-premises)
printer.
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page xii

xii Preface

Chapter 18 is a thorough discussion of how to make and use device profiles that
guarantee predictable output to a variety of devices — particularly commercial
printing presses.

Chapter 19 wraps up the book with a discussion of special purpose output options
such as wide-format printing for fine art and commercial exhibition, printing with-
out a computer, and printing via Internet services.

Part VII: Appendixes

Appendix A is an index of equivalent commands in the most popular image-editing
programs. The step-by-step instructions I provide enable you to perform the same
capabilities for the image-editing software you own. Appendix B covers resources
for buying and evaluating all sorts of digital photography hardware and software.

Appendix B outlines the contents of the CD-ROM that accompanies the book. This
appendix also details the minimum system requirements needed to use the
CD-ROM.

The bonus material on the CD-ROM includes a chart comparing the most widely
advertised digital cameras in the $500 to $2,500 price range. I concentrate on the
cameras that offer high enough resolution and a wide enough range of controls to
produce professionally usable photos.

Color Insert
The color insert in this book is meant to be more than just decorative. Each of the
images is shown in full color that has been exquisitely reproduced. You see exactly
the results produced by a specific procedure.

Who This Book Is For

You’ve probably guessed from its girth that this is not a beginner’s guide or meant
for those who have only a casual interest in digital photography. You probably fall
into one of two categories:

✦ Serious photographers transitioning to digital photography or those already

using digital photography and wanting more information
✦ People in business having serious and professional reasons to produce
professional quality photographs but who must or would rather do it
themselves than hire a professional photographer

Although you can certainly sit down and read it from cover to cover, it really has no
beginning, middle, and end. It’s a reference book — a sort of digital photography
encyclopedia.
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page xiii

Preface xiii

Hopefully, you find the writing style conversational and friendly. If you’re new to
digital photography, you’ll find it reasonably easy to understand. At the same time,
I expect you have in mind some serious applications for digital photography and
need in-depth information.

How to Use This Book

This entire book can be found on the book’s CD-ROM. This means you can read it in
book form while you’re sitting in bed or eating in a restaurant. On the other hand,
you can keep it in your computer and use it for a quick reference whenever you
like. The PDF file on the CD is searchable, so you can quickly find every reference
to a topic quickly and without having to interrupt what you’re doing.

This is a reference book — it’s designed to be bought, used to find what you need
when you need it, and then put on the shelf until you need it again.

Conventions Used in This Book

Words that are technical jargon and require a definition are italicized followed by a
brief explanation.

Everything in this book, with the exception of products that are platform specific,
is meant to be equally applicable to both Macs and PCs — computers that run
some version of the Windows operating system. I always tell you how to perform
keystrokes for a particular operation. The Mac keystroke shortcut is abbreviated
first, followed by a slash (/) and then the Windows keystroke. I put the Mac com-
mand first because, historically, Mac Photoshop users came first and comprise the
largest percentage of professional users of image-editing software. The equivalents
between the two computers are as follows:

✦ Cmd/Ctrl
✦ Opt/Alt
✦ Backspace/Delete
✦ Control/Right Click

Notice that the Macintosh Control key is spelled out in full, whereas the PC control
key is always abbreviated as Ctrl. I refer to keys with the same name and purpose for
both operating systems (such as the Space bar) without the Mac/PC equivalents.

When you need to press several keys simultaneously or in sequence, those keys are
named in that sequence and separated by a plus (+) sign.
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page xiv

xiv Preface

Following the conventions I use in this book, the instructions to issue a command
follow this format: Choose Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Levels (Cmd/Ctrl + L). The Levels
dialog box appears. You then make specific choices in the dialog box.

Make This a Better Book: Talk to the Author

I may not be able to answer all the e-mail I get, but I certainly read all the messages
and your voice will have an influence on future editions. Please don’t let my lack
of response to an e-mail discourage you from letting me know what you think —
especially if you have constructive suggestions for improving this book.

Immediately following the completion of this book, my Web site (www.kenmilburn.

com) was completely redesigned. One of the new features is a gallery of photos with
“how I did it” tips attached. There are also lots of updates, news, and reviews of
breaking developments in the field of digital photography. You can find my e-mail
address through the Web site.
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page xv

Acknowledgments
T he editorial team at Wiley Publishing: Melody Layne, Kala Schrager, Rebekah
Mancilla, and many others.

My agent, Margot Maley Hutchinson at Waterside Productions, who usually man-

ages to keep me sane and on track and is able to apply brilliance, patience, and
understanding when things just get overwhelming. Thanks for being a good friend
and the best agent on the planet.

My friend (and often, co-author) Gene Hirsh who not only contributed to this pro-
ject by writing the chapter on photopainting and two of the appendixes, but is just
one of those few brilliant people who knows how to jump into any situation in a
pinch and then perform miracles.

Fellow authors and steady, sturdy, and brilliant friends Janine Warner and Robert
Cowart, both outstanding authors whose advice and support are always valued
more than I can say.

Also Ron Rockwell, Mark Chambers, and Gregory MacNicol who contributed greatly
to this project by writing several of the chapters in this edition.

All the manufacturers of digital photography products who went out of their way
to supply products for testing, photographs, and help and advice. I especially want
to emphasize the support given to this effort by Karen Thomas and Chris Sluka at
Olympus and Lisa Baxt at Nikon. There has also been on-the-spot help, support,
and permission to use images of products from numerous other companies: Adobe,
ArcSoft, Corel, Deneba Software, JASC software, Microsoft, Ulead Systems, Monaco,
Sony, Océ Display Graphics Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Epson, Xerox, to name a few.
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page xvi

Contents at a Glance
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

Part I: The Role of Digital Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 1: Using Digital Versus Traditional Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Chapter 2: Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Chapter 3: Think Before You Shoot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Part II: The Shoot and the Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Chapter 4: On Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Chapter 5: In the Studio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Chapter 6: Useful Photo Accessories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Chapter 7: Outfitting Your Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Part III: Before You Edit an Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255

Chapter 8: Converting Analog to Digital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Chapter 9: Cataloging and Managing Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Chapter 10: Choosing an Image-Editing Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

Part IV: Image-Editing Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337

Chapter 11: Essential Image Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Chapter 12: Special Effects Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Chapter 13: Advanced Image Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
Chapter 14: Photopainting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549

Part V: The Versatility of Digital Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611

Chapter 15: Prepping Images for the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613
Chapter 16: Miscellaneous Digital Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659
549510 FM.F 8/23/02 10:01 AM Page xvii

Contents at a Glance xvii

Part VI: Producing the Best Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703

Chapter 17: Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 705
Chapter 18: Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output . . . . . . 733
Chapter 19: Specialty Output Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 767

Part VII: Appendixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 807

Appendix A: Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors . . . . . . 809
Appendix B: What’s on the CD-ROM? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 843

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 851

Bonus Chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . On the CD-ROM

Chapter 1: Information on the Web
Chapter 2: Hardware and Software Resources
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page xviii
01549510 FM.F 8/22/02 2:35 PM Page xix

Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv

Part I: The Role of Digital Photography 1

Chapter 1: Using Digital Versus Traditional Photography . . . . . . . . 3
The Advantages of Digital Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Fewer barriers to taking a photograph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Instant gratification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Instant delivery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Facilitates using images on the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
No film to buy or waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
No darkroom or chemicals needed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Lower long-term costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Easy proofing and presentation of images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Continually improving image quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Digital images can hold more information about
the subject and technicalities of the photograph . . . . . . . . . . 12
Digital copies are identical to the original . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
A digital camera is the perfect artist’s sketchbook . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Digital cameras have new and exciting capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . 15
The Advantages of Analog Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Lower cost of high image quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Lower cost cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
More versatility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Instant response (capture the moment) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Accepted as traditional medium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Easy and affordable to make archival prints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Consumer confidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
And the winner is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Hybrid Digital Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Make use of equipment you already own . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Get the best of both worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Use established technology with predictable results . . . . . . . . . . 19
Get higher resolution for your buck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Digitize existing images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
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The Characteristics of Digital and Digitized Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Pixel depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Bitmaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Chapter 2: Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera . . . . . . . . 27

Maximizing Image Definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Image resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Lens quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Image sensor size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Image bit depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Image compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
File formats (RAW or TIFF) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Length of the exposure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
ISO adjustment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Proper exposure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Camera steadiness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Image treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Shutter lag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Delay between shots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Understanding Operating Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Automatic mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Aperture priority and depth-of-field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Shutter priority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Full manual control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
White balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Programmable (or pre-programmed) settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Auto bracketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Best-Shot Selector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Burst mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Time lapse mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Special panorama settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
ISO rating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Noise reduction, ISO settings, and long exposures . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Saturation controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Contrast control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Utilizing Camera Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Overcoming parallax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Choosing a sensor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Ergonomics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Digital Film Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Start-up time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Battery type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
External flash connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Transferring Photos from Camera to Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Devices for reading images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Connections for transferring images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
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Chapter 3: Think Before You Shoot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Exposing for Highlights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Blooming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
White balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Long exposures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
The Rules of Good Lighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Use natural lighting whenever possible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Use reflectors and fill flash in bright sun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Use the shade or a cloudy day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Keep the light off your lens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Use hard light for drama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Use soft light for most situations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Use backlight to highlight the subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Use sunrise, sunset, and clouds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Focusing Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Depth-of-field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Autofocus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Continuous autofocus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Manual focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Capture or Eliminate Motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Freeze the subject and blur the background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Use high shutter speed to freeze everything . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Use low shutter speed to blur everything . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
The Rules of Good Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
These rules are made to be broken . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
The two-thirds rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
The shapes of a composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Framing the Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Don’t include anything unimportant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Keep the background simple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Use lighting contrasts to strengthen composition . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Leave space in front of motion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Use perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Account for shutter lag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Part II: The Shoot and the Equipment 95

Chapter 4: On Location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
The Essential On-Location Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Portraits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
The subject’s position and expression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Lighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Keep the background plain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Use makeup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Keep shutter lag to a minimum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
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Pay attention to the subject’s eyes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

A portrait photography checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Candid Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Be prepared to be mistreated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Dress to blend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Use a swiveling LCD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Use short shutter lag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Be ready . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
A candid photography checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Event photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Get a schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Make a shot list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Take an assistant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Use two cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Make arrangements to be in the front row . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Learn to use supplementary flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Take a preview screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
An event photography checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Sports and Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Use a zoom lens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Freeze the action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Pan with the subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Be where the action is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Use burst mode whenever possible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
A sport and action photography checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Travel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Always have your camera(s) with you . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Have a way to download images from memory cards . . . . . . . . . 113
Take supplementary lenses and a backup camera . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Use guide books to plan your shoots in advance . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Get out early, stay up late, and rest at midday . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Take along a monopod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
A travel photography checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Architecture and Urban Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Minimize parallax distortion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Use a tripod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Shoot panoramas and high-resolution, multi-shot images . . . . . . 117
Shoot when the light is most dramatic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Shoot multiple exposures for extended range . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Use light balancing filters when shooting indoors . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Balance window light with flash (or several slaves) . . . . . . . . . . 120
An architecture photography checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Move around . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Shoot when the light is most dramatic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Use a polarizing filter for dramatic skies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Put some life into the picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Look for texture and color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
A nature photography checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
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Macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Use supplementary lenses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Keep the lighting flat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Focus with precision at the center of interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Stop down for maximum depth-of-field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
A macro photography checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Chapter 5: In the Studio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Studio Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
The workspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Batteries and AC power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
People conditioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Studio Lighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Lighting sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Lighting accessories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Lighting setups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Light meters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Backgrounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Camera mounting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Essential accessories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

Chapter 6: Useful Photo Accessories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Your Camera Bag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Holding the Camera Steady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Capture the image without touching the camera . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Tripods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Other means of bracing yourself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Accessories for panoramas and object movies . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Buying External Flash Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Event strobes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
Studio strobes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Other strobe accessories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
The cost of strobes and their accessories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Choosing Light Meters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Built-in meters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Ambient light meters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Ambient/strobe meters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Choosing Lens Accessories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Adapter rings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
Lens hoods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Focal length and macro lens adapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Cap keepers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Digital Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Card Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Instant Upload . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
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Batteries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Odds and Ends That Count . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Going the Extra Mile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
The nik Color Efex Pro! Workspace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Getting a little wild in the Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Optional Products to Make Life Easier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Gobo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Rain Protection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Quick Release Mounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Wacom tablet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
penPalette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

Chapter 7: Outfitting Your Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Operating System: Windows or Mac? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
How fast is fast? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
How much and what kind of memory? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
How much and what type of disk storage space? . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Managing Your System’s Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Macintosh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
RAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Disk storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Choosing a Display Card . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Setting Up Your Display Card . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Macintosh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
Choosing Monitors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Dual Monitor Capability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Adjusting Your Monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Hardware adjustments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Making a monitor hood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Calibrating Your System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
The test-chart method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
Calibrating your monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Using a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Choosing Output Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
PostScript interpreters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Office printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Laser printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Inkjet printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Dye-sublimation printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
Snapshot printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
Photographic process printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
Wax thermal printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
Film recorders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
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Set Up a Workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

Archive unaltered original . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
Make exposure and color corrections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
Crop to maximum usable proportions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Save to lossless file format that preserves layers . . . . . . . . . . . 254
Duplicate files that will be altered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254

Part III: Before You Edit an Image 255

Chapter 8: Converting Analog to Digital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
Scanners and Scanner Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
When and why to choose a flatbed scanner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 258
When and why to choose a film scanner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Choosing and using the right film scanner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Choosing and using drum scanners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Scanner features and price . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
Digital Ice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Altamira Genuine Fractals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Calibrating a Scanner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Calibrating by estimating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266
Precision calibration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Paying Someone to Do Your Scanning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Film processing labs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
Service bureaus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274
Proper Preparations for Scanning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Choosing the best film for scanning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Keep it clean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Turn it on and keep it warm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
Properly orient the original . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
Calibrate and experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
Using the Scanner Software Properly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
Using a Scanner as a Camera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
Using a Camera as a Scanner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

Chapter 9: Cataloging and Managing Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

Painless Camera-to-Computer Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Serial connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
USB connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 282
FireWire connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Card readers: Pros and cons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Digital storage devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
Must-have software features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
Painless Computer-to-Computer Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Wired networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 286
Wireless networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
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Removable media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289

Using FTP, Web, and e-mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
Cataloging Software on Parade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
iPhoto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
Jasc Media Center Plus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294
Extensis Portfolio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
Cataloging with Photoshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
Editing images with cataloging software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Keeping Track of Photos in Windows XP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
Archiving for the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
CD versus DVD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Organizing your archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
Storing your archive discs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
Adding an Image as a Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
Adding an image in Windows XP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304
Adding an image in Mac OS X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 306

Chapter 10: Choosing an Image-Editing Program . . . . . . . . . . . 307

Important Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
Price . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
Free software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
Automating command sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
Image-processing features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Layer editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
File and device support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Photoshop plug-in compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309
Interface familiarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
Painting and retouching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
Vector path drawing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Image editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
Special-effects processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
Wacom tablet compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
Prepress preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
Image compositing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
The Adobe Photoshop Dynasty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314
Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
Power for Less . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
JASC Paint Shop Pro 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
Corel PHOTO-PAINT 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
Corel Picture Publisher 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
Ulead PhotoImpact 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
Image Editing for Beginners and Special Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Corel Picture Publisher Digital Camera Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Microsoft Picture It! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Ulead Photo Express . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
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ArcSoft PhotoImpression 4.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333

MGI PhotoSuite 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335

Part IV: Image-Editing Software 337

Chapter 11: Essential Image Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Employing Quick Fixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Using Auto Contrast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
Using Auto Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342
Correcting color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
Using Fill Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
An alternative to the Fill Flash command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
Correcting backlighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
Converting to grayscale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
Converting to black and white . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
Turning an Image into a Poster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352
Creating Instant Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Tweaking Image Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
Sizing, cropping, and rotating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
Resizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
Using the Levels command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 362
Using the Variations option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 366
Adding a color tint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
Using the Burn tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
Using the Screen mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Reducing noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
Retouching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
Using the Clone tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
Using the Healing brush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 376
Getting rid of dust and scratches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
Creating sepia tone and hand-colored photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Glamour techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
Making a Composite Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
Controlling Image Sharpness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395

Chapter 12: Special Effects Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397

Extract and KnockOut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Ultimatte KnockOut and the transition to Corel . . . . . . . . . . . . 398
Complex extractions with Photoshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
Liquify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
Photoshop Blend Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
Notable Effects with Plug-in Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421
Image correction filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
Art effects filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
Special effects filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
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Special Third Party Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453

Kai’s Power Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
Andromeda Photographic filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460

Chapter 13: Advanced Image Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461

File Browser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 462
Tree View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
Thumbnail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
Preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
Healing Brush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
Patch Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465
Paint Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466
Automatically Correct Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
Customize Your Toolset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
Precise Distortions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
Turbulence Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
New Ways to Create Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470
Create Personal Workspaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
Spell Checker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
Protect Your Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
Picture Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
Web Photo Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
ImageReady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
Dithered Transparency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480
Weighted Optimization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
Isolating Edits with Masks and Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
The Lasso tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486
The Pen tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
Geometric Selection Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
Editing a Selection with Quick Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 494
Color Range Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498
Fuzziness and multiple selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
Selection versus Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501
Selection preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502
Using Channels to Blend Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502
Staying on the Straight and Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
An exercise using levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 512
The Levels dialog box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 514
How much adjustment is enough? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516
Where do you start? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 516
Curves Ahead! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517
Knockouts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521
Black-and-White Conversions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526
Grayscale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526
Lab mode and grayscale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 526
Lab mode and RGB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
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Channel Mixer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528

Lab mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530
Channel Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 531
Digital dirt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
Cleaning up edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535
A History Lesson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 536
The History Brush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538
The Art History Brush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541
Creating an action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 541
Creating Droplets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 548

Chapter 14: Photopainting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549

What is Photopainting? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
Photographing with Photopainting in Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552
Focus on the essentials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 552
Image quality and size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 553
Detail versus design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 554
Painting Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
Painting Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 555
Natural media brushes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556
Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556
Natural media filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 558
Pattern brushes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559
Cloning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 560
Autocloning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 560
procreate Painter 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 561
Adobe Photoshop 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 586
Other applications of interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 602
Post-printing Painting Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 608
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 609

Part V: The Versatility of Digital Photography 611

Chapter 15: Prepping Images for the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 613
Optimizing an Image in Photoshop Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614
Enhancing your Web Pages with Photographs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617
Alternatives to Using Photographs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 618
Bitmaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 618
Vector graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 619
Web graphics file formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 619
Understanding Color Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 623
Rules Governing Web Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 624
Rule #1: File size is everything . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 624
Rule #2: The Web is a low-resolution medium . . . . . . . . . . . . . 625
Rule #3: The Web is color-sensitive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 626
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Rule #4: Choose the right format for photographs . . . . . . . . . . . 627

Rule #5: Keep images reasonably sized . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 627
Rule #6: Use images repeatedly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 628
Rule #7: Don’t depend entirely on automated converters . . . . . . 628
Rule #8: High bandwidth is no excuse for inefficiency . . . . . . . . 631
Categorizing Web Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 631
Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 631
Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 634
Backgrounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 635
Content dividers and picture frames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652
QuickTime panoramas and other virtual experiences . . . . . . . . . 653
Making Web photo galleries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 653
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657

Chapter 16: Miscellaneous Digital Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659

Batch Image Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659
Drawing Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 663
Vector tracing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 665
Auto-tracing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 666
Enlarging Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 667
Genuine Fractals 2.5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 668
S-Spline 2.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 670
Controlling Grain and Noise with Grain Surgery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 672
Making Panoramas and Object Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 674
Taking panorama photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 675
Photoshop Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 677
ArcSoft Panorama Maker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 679
Roxio Photovista Virtual Tour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 680
Stitching a High-Resolution Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 681
3-D Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 682
Special-Purpose 3-D Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 684
Canoma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 684
Poser 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 687
Bryce 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 689
Making Photo Mosaics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 691
Making Small Movies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 692
Capturing Stills from Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 692
Stereoscopic Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 694
Infrared Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 699
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 702

Part VI: Producing the Best Output 703

Chapter 17: Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer . . . . . . . . . . 705
What Type of Printer is Right for You? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 705
Inkjet printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 706
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Contents xxxi

Dye-sublimation printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 709

Color laser printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 710
Printing Photographs with a Multifunction Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 711
Choosing the Right Ink and Paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 711
Plain bond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 712
Semi-gloss and high-gloss photo paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 712
Fine-art paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 713
Exotic papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 713
All inks are not created equal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 714
Installing Your Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 714
Unpacking your printer — the right way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 714
Adding a parallel port printer under Windows XP . . . . . . . . . . . 715
Adding a USB printer under Windows XP and Mac OS X . . . . . . . 717
Improving Printer Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 719
Enabling print spooling in Windows XP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 719
Defragmenting your hard drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 720
The importance of system RAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 723
Adding standalone printing hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 723
Tips for Inkjet Printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 725
Avoid refilling cartridges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 725
Check your paper feed often . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 725
Load multiple sheets of the same type of media . . . . . . . . . . . . 726
Specify the paper type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 726
Proper Printer Care and Feeding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 727
Checking cartridges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 727
Tackling dust inside . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 728
Cleaning and calibrating ink cartridges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 731
Using a laser cleaning sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 732
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 732

Chapter 18: Making and Using Device Profiles

for Predictable Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733
Color Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 733
The monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 734
The scanner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 734
The printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 735
The solution: Device profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 735
Introduction to Color Management Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 736
What comprises CMS? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 736
Rendering intents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 738
Monitor Calibration and Profile Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 740
Calibrating by eye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 742
Electronic sensor calibration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 745
Scanner Calibration and Profile Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 748
Printer Calibration and Profile Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 751
Printing with Color Management in Photoshop . . . . . . . . . . . . 751
Optimizing images for printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753
Sharpening an image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 753
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xxxii Contents

Going beyond “good enough” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 754

Optimizing file size with Genuine Fractals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 760
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 765

Chapter 19: Specialty Output Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 767

Choosing, Using, and Hiring a Large-format Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 767
Creating Output for Exhibition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 769
Understanding the Print Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 770
Laser printer mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 771
LED color printer mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 773
Inkjet color printer mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 773
Large-Format Laser Printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774
Xerox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774
Xerox DocuColor 2006 printer/copier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 774
Xerox Phaser 7700 color printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 775
Xerox Phaser 2135 color printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 776
Inkjet and Dye-Sublimation Printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 777
Epson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 779
Roland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 782
Iris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 783
Hewlett-Packard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 785
Canon S9000 Photo Printer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 787
Digital Continuous Tone Printers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 788
LightJet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 789
Durst . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 790
Chromira . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 791
Printing without a Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 792
Self-contained inkjet and dye-sublimation snapshot printers . . . . 792
Printing via the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 799
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 806

Part VII: Appendixes 807

Appendix A: Performing Equivalent Tasks
with Various Image Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 809

Appendix B: What’s on the CD-ROM? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 843

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 851

Bonus Chapter 1: Information on the Web . . . . . . . . On the CD-ROM

Bonus Chapter 2: Hardware and Software

Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . On the CD-ROM
02549510 PP01.F 8/22/02 2:36 PM Page 1

P A R T

The Role I
of Digital ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Photography In This Part

Chapter 1
Using Digital Versus
Traditional

P
Photography
art I puts the role of digital photography into proper
perspective for you. First, I discuss the role of digital Chapter 2
photography in today’s world and when it may be preferable Getting the Most from
to film photography. I also cover how to get the most out of Your Digital Camera
the experience of using a digital camera, and I highlight the
things that a digital camera can do that a film camera can’t Chapter 3
do — or that you wouldn’t bother to try with a film camera. Think Before You
Finally, this part includes a conversational discussion of Shoot
the most basic guidelines for making successful digital
photographs. ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
02549510 PP01.F 8/22/02 2:36 PM Page 2
03549510 ch01.F 8/22/02 2:36 PM Page 3

Using Digital
Versus
1
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Traditional In This Chapter

The magic of digital

Photography photography

The characteristics of
digital images

The advantages of

I f digital (filmless) photography isn’t the best thing since

sliced bread, it’s certainly the best thing for instant gratifi-
cation since the invention of the Polaroid camera. If you take
digital photography

The advantages of
analog photography
your photographs with a digital camera, you can see the
results much faster than the time required to process an
“instant” Polaroid. In the couple of seconds that it takes to Hybrid digital
see the results of your shot on a Polaroid print, if you don’t photography
like what you see from a digital camera, you just erase it.
Erasing these images ensures that embarrassing shots have ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
been removed from the proof sheet by the time you show it
to the client (or anyone whose opinion you value).

Some folks may tell you that digital photography hasn’t quite
arrived and that conventional photography can do a better
job. However, digital photography can result in a superior
product that can be produced more quickly and cheaply over
the long term, even though the initial investment can be con-
siderably higher. This is why you would have difficulty finding
a publication of any kind today in which the photographs have
not been taken with a digital camera or at least, been digitized.
More often than not, these photos have been digitally manipu-
lated before publication. If you’re talking about news, sports,
or in-studio commercial photography, the odds are very high
that they were photographed with a digital camera.
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4 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

For many people, digital photography has also replaced film for personal use. Even
fairly low-resolution digital cameras can produce album-size prints and digital cam-
eras make it nearly instantaneous to e-mail or share pictures over the Web. Instant
turnaround and quick communications are also good reasons why a good many
professionals such as legal researchers and real estate agents use digital cameras.

Now, it’s true that we have a ways to go before digital cameras can produce the
image quality that we’re used to receiving from conventional cameras at an equip-
ment cost comparable to similarly-featured film cameras. But it’s a far, far shorter
lead than it was a couple of years ago when the first edition of this book was written.
Highly portable and very easy-to-use digital cameras are now available that can pro-
duce results that meet or exceed the quality of all but the best quality 35mm film
emulsions shot with the highest quality optics and processed in a professional lab.

Having stated these caveats, however, let me jump back to the subject of digital
cameras. Even the inexpensive digital cameras have a definite place in the profes-
sional’s camera bag or the businessperson’s briefcase, because they’re easier to
keep at the ready and can produce pictures in the moment. Digital cameras are also
magical tools for artists and serious hobbyists. The image quality of the best of
today’s thousand-dollar digital cameras is good enough to let you make 11 x 14-inch
prints that — given a good, affordable, state-of-the-art desktop color printer — can
fool most people into thinking that they’re looking at a well-made Type C color
photographic print (Type C is the name Kodak gives to its most popular paper for
making color prints from color negatives). Additionally, the information and gratifi-
cation that you get from being able to instantly see your photographs will make you
a better photographer in much less time. Why? Because you can instantly judge
what you did wrong and take the needed steps to correct it. Before long, you’ll sim-
ply stop taking pictures in which a telephone pole appears to be growing out of the
subject’s head — and you’ll know how to compensate for unusual lighting condi-
tions. Even if you can’t control your shooting position or the subject’s position,
you’ll have the post-shooting option of easily removing the telephone pole or
(more often than not) fixing the exposure.

The Advantages of Digital Photography

Digital imagery is to traditional photography what the Wright brothers’ first aircraft
was to the railroad industry. Photography that uses film and processing will always
be around because it has a look, among other advantages, that is unique. For the
most part, however, digital photography has characteristics that will ultimately make
it the most widely-used means of taking photographs. Moreover, digital photography
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Chapter 1 ✦ Using Digital Versus Traditional Photography 5

is taking over more quickly than most would have imagined a scant year or so ago.
During the Christmas season of 2001, digital cameras were the second most popular
electronic gift after DVD (Digital Video Disc) players! The reasons for this surge in the
popularity of digital cameras can be attributed to numerous factors:

✦ Fewer factors to discourage you from taking a photograph

✦ Instant gratification
✦ Instant turnaround
✦ Easy to create an image for use on a Web page
✦ No film necessary
✦ No darkroom or chemicals necessary
✦ Lower ongoing costs
✦ Easy proofing and presentation of images
✦ No generational degradation when unaltered copies are made
✦ Increased capabilities when compared to film cameras:

• Capture panoramas
• Combine several photos into one higher-resolution image
• Make short Web or demo videos
• Do automatic recording of multiple frames to capture rapid action
sequences

Fewer barriers to taking a photograph

Given possession of a digital camera, most of us are much more likely to take a
digital photo than an analog photo. This preference is based on some key charac-
teristics of the digital photography medium:

✦ Accessible: A digital camera can be carried in a purse or shirt pocket. Even 5

megapixel resolution and 3:1 zoom lenses can be made to fit within a tiny pro-
file. (For example, the Nikon D5000 is only about 2 inches thick, as shown in
Figure 1-1.) So, it’s easy to fall into the habit of having a camera with you at all
times. This means you’ll be able to document everything from prospects you
meet at a party to accidents, thefts, and news events.
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6 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Figure 1-1: Even some semi-pro, high-resolution digital cameras will fit into a
jacket pocket.

✦ Forgiving: No one ever needs to see your mistakes because you can erase
them instantly (or later). Most digital cameras (and certainly any that I’d
recommend) come equipped with an LCD monitor, like the one shown in
Figure 1-2, that lets you instantly see your most recent shots. If time and
circumstances permit, you can also instantly review all the images in a
session. You can also erase any images that you don’t like at that time. Finally,
when you download the images to your computer, you have another chance
to erase your images.

✦ Cost-effective: A discarded digital photo costs absolutely nothing. No precious

film or processing was expended. The data space that it utilized in the cam-
era’s or computer’s memory can be reused upon erasure. At most, all that the
images consumed was a fraction of the rechargeable camera battery’s power.

Instant gratification
In far less time than it takes a Polaroid shot to develop, you can see and show your
digital image. I’m surprised the phrase “shoot and show” hasn’t caught on yet as a
slogan for some consumer-level digicam. The word digicam has become the buzz
name for digital still cameras — particularly those aimed at consumers.
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Chapter 1 ✦ Using Digital Versus Traditional Photography 7

Figure 1-2: This is the LCD screen of Olympus 3120, showing one of the
camera’s settings menus. Many digital cameras use their LCD screens for this
purpose, as well as for previewing and reviewing in-camera images.

Selfish gratification isn’t the only reason you’ll want to be able to instantly see your
images. If you’re shooting images that require the approval of a client or the input of
a colleague, you can satisfy that need by using a digital camera. You can get instant
client approval and avoid the cost and disappointment of being asked to reshoot.

Instant delivery
The speed with which you can deliver a digital image to a client is limited only by
the speed of your computer and its access to your client. For example, you can
deliver the results of an entire news or sports shoot within minutes. Even a 40MB
advertising image can be transferred in far less time than would be necessary for a
physical photograph to travel via express delivery — especially if that delivery had
to cross national borders.
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8 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Facilitates using images on the Web

Any image that you see on a Web page is digital. The resolution of Web images is
generally lower than that of even the least expensive digital still camera. When
viewed on the Web, full-color images larger than 640 x 480 take more time to load
than necessary and will extend beyond the limits of the browser window. Virtually
any digital still or video camera will shoot 640 x 480 images. (A few inexpensive
palm cams that have a maximum image size of 320 x 240 pixels are now available.
These images are pretty tiny, but they are still big enough for the Web.) This means
that you can use any digicam or camcorder to shoot the item that you want to
place on your Web page, and post it to that Web page within moments.

Cross- Chapter 16 tells you more about using video cameras for capturing digital images.
Reference
Chapter 15 shows cool techniques for tweaking Web-destined images for peak
performance.

No film to buy or waste

An electronic image sensor formulates digital images and the numerical data is then
stored in one of several re-recordable memory devices. These devices are often
referred to as “digital film,” but they are no more film than is your computer’s RAM,
hard drive, or floppy disk. In fact, the only permanent cost of storing a digital image
is likely to be a fraction of the space on a write-once CD-ROM that you record on
your own computer.

Cross- You can find a thorough discussion of various types of devices used for storing dig-
Reference
ital images and how each fits into the overall plan for equipping your digital dark-
room in Chapter 7.

No darkroom or chemicals needed

Many photographers bitterly regret that the pressures of time and money make it
impractical for them to do their own darkroom work, because it means giving up
control over the result that will be given to the client or seen by the public.
Furthermore, many traditional photographers will tell you that digitally processed
images are “not really photographic” or “not really art.” These are people who wish
that this were true because they know that traditional darkroom is onerous enough
to be a barrier to competition. Besides, they don’t realize how blatantly they are
displaying their ignorance. The truth is, you have far more power and flexibility in
your ability to interpret a photograph digitally than in a wet darkroom. True, the
digital photographer can stretch the truth in more ways that are much harder to
detect, but anyone who tells you that the film camera never lies is a bald-faced liar.
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Chapter 1 ✦ Using Digital Versus Traditional Photography 9

Lower long-term costs

Although digital cameras are still several times the price of their analog counter-
parts, the fact that film and processing costs are eliminated ultimately evens the
overall cost. Remember, as stated previously, that you will use the digital camera
more than you would have used its analog counterpart. Of course, the truth of this
statement depends on the extent of your use of the camera, which depends on what
you use the camera for:

✦ Casual shooters are people who use cameras to photograph their family
vacations.
✦ Prosumers are serious hobbyists or businesspeople who produce profes-
sional-quality photographs. Prosumers may get paid for some of their pho-
tographs, but photography isn’t their sole means of income.
✦ Professional photographers’ cost of film is higher because they usually buy
more expensive grades of film and have it processed by a custom lab or hired
assistant. The figure given in Table 1-1 is actually a bit conservative.

The relationship between how you use your digital camera and the costs you will
incur are outlined in Table 1-1.

Table 1-1
The Long-Term Cost of Film, Processing, and Prints
Rolls per week Cost per roll Cost per month Cost per year

Casual Shooter 2.5 $11 $27.50 $330

Prosumer* 10 $11 $440 $5,200
Pro Photographer 100 $15* $1,500 $18,000

Costs are also lower over time because of the “instant client approval and
turnaround” factor and because shipping charges are seldom involved when
transmitting these images. Kinda makes a new $5,000+ Nikon D1-x seem downright
affordable, doesn’t it?

Easy proofing and presentation of images

All of your pictures can be proofed electronically and instantly. You and your client
(if present at the shoot) can even view results immediately after the shutter is
pressed.
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10 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Both Windows XP and Mac OS X have been greatly enhanced in their ability to visu-
ally identify and present photos. In Windows XP, for example, you can view image
folders as filmstrips, slide shows, thumbnails, or (when you need to save some
room) as icons. Figure 1-3 shows a slide show created in Windows XP.

Figure 1-3: A Windows XP slide show

If your computer’s operating system is a system that precedes Windows XP or Mac

OS X or doesn’t show your picture files as pictures, several software packages are
available that can automatically prepare proof-sheet-sized thumbnails of all the
images inside a folder (sometimes called a subdirectory) — and even print them out
as proof sheets. You can then add comments, rotate thumbnails, and either show
the results as a slide show onscreen or print proof sheets on a color printer. Figure
1-4 shows just such an electronic proof sheet.

Another tool that’s useful for instant sharing of your images is a direct-to-print
color printer. You don’t even need a camera or computer to print to some of these
machines. Direct-to-print printers generally produce a type of print that looks and
feels almost exactly like a Polaroid or a 1-Hour jumbo print. Some of the latest print-
ers of this type will even let you insert the memory card from your camera and then
ask how many images you want to print per page — so you can make either proof
sheets or any size print up to letter size.
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Chapter 1 ✦ Using Digital Versus Traditional Photography 11

Figure 1-4: An electronic proof sheet created in ACDsee 4.0

Continually improving image quality

It is now possible to get truly photographic quality 8 x 10-inch prints from digital
cameras that currently sell for well under $500 — so long as they advertise “2
megapixels” or higher resolution. Newer cameras that boast “4 and 5 megapixel”
resolution can produce 11 x 14- or even 16 x 20-inch photo-quality prints. Four- and
five-megapixel cameras also produce even better 8 x 10 inch prints than a two- or
three-megapixel camera, which is more than adequate for high-quality, full-color,
and full-page magazine photos.

Another significant, but less obvious, indication that image quality will keep
advancing at a major clip: The physical size of the image sensor in 4+ megapixel
digital cameras is generally twice as large as those in the previous generation (less
than 3.4 megapixel) of cameras. This increase in size has occurred for two reasons.

✦ The cost of manufacture has dropped dramatically enough to make bigger

sizes practical.
✦ Crowding more pixels into the same physical space was becoming
counter-productive.
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12 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

When the individual sensors that represent each pixel are too close together,
electrical cross talk occurs and causes an unacceptable level of noise artifacts to
appear in the image. Today’s larger sensors exhibit far less noise, which results in
better picture quality.

In fact, for many types of subject matter, as long as truly fine image detail and
sharpness aren’t of primary importance (think of Ansel Adams landscapes or hair-
styling ads as examples of when sharpness is absolutely critical), today’s best digi-
cams enable you to make acceptable prints at virtually any size. However, you will
have to understand processing workflow, know how to make use of high quality
printers, and (probably) own some special purpose software for making larger
images and prints.

Digital images can hold more information about

the subject and technicalities of the photograph
Because digital images are stored as data, you can store all sorts of other data with
them. Some cameras enable you to link to global positioning systems (GPS) satel-
lites that can automatically annotate each image’s time and location. Several cam-
eras let you record voice annotations (and even ambient sound effects) in the
camera.

Although it’s still rare, the latest models of some cameras come with downloading
software that lets you assign names to image files when they are being transferred
to your computer (at last, no more filenames like P00022.jpg).

After you’ve downloaded digital images to your computer (or scanned them in),
you can use image data-management software, such as Extensis’ Portfolio, to cate-
gorize images by type and to assign numerous fields of descriptive data.

Finally, some late-model digital cameras such as the Nikon CP5000 also attach an
EXIF information segment to each image. The Nikon CP5000 includes the following
information in its EXIF file:

✦ Caption
✦ Date taken
✦ Resolution
✦ Protection attribute
✦ Camera ID
✦ Camera make and model
✦ Quality mode
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Chapter 1 ✦ Using Digital Versus Traditional Photography 13

✦ Metering mode
✦ Speed light (yes or no)
✦ Focal length of zoom
✦ Shutter speed used (exact to within tenths of a second)
✦ Exposure compensation
✦ White balance
✦ Lens
✦ Exposure difference
✦ Flexible program
✦ Sensitivity (ISO rating assigned)
✦ Sharpening mode
✦ Image type (color, grayscale, sepia, etc.)
✦ Color mode
✦ Hue adjustment
✦ Saturation control
✦ Tone compensation
✦ GPS latitude
✦ GPS longitude
✦ Altitude

As you can see, you can find out nearly anything you want to know about how and
when you took the picture, and you don’t have to be bothered with taking notes on
your pictures. Due to the time constraints and the pressure of the circumstances,
these notes are usually inaccurate, so this ability to record vital information can be
extremely helpful. For me, this is a personal coup — more often than not, I forget to
take notes that I should have taken.

Digital copies are identical to the original

Because digital images are simply numerical data, one copy of the file is exactly the
same as another. As long as the data is kept intact, the image never degrades over
time. A print made from a digital image a thousand years from now will look as
good or better than a print made from the original. (The reason the image may
look better is because printing technologies, papers, and inks are constantly
being improved.)
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14 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

This aspect of digital images concerns many art collectors, who fear that images
will lose value when they can be reproduced too easily. The answer is careful regis-
tration and numbering of limited print editions, which have been in use for some
time in photography, lithography, and many forms of printmaking. As long as the
prints have been carefully and legally registered, there’s no real reason why limited
edition digital prints should be any less valuable.

A digital camera is the perfect artist’s sketchbook

The resolution limitations of “point-and-shoot” digital cameras aren’t a factor when
you simply use the photograph as the basis for a “painting,” as shown in Figure 1-5.
You can enlarge the image to any size, and then use the brushes in your image pro-
cessing program to paint over or smudge the original pixels. The result can look
similar to many styles of traditional painting. You can also use plug-in filters to
automate brush stroking over selected areas of the image.

Cross- The methodology of photopainting is covered in more detail in Chapter 14.

Reference

Figure 1-5: Photo before and after being turned into a painting

At this point, you may be convinced that it’s time to pitch your trusty Nikon F.
Actually, you probably know or suspect that, as I said earlier, it isn’t practical to
entirely eliminate the traditional photographic processes. In fact, I doubt that it will
ever be eliminated entirely. For one thing, the traditional photographic process has
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Chapter 1 ✦ Using Digital Versus Traditional Photography 15

a unique and familiar “look and feel,” and that will always have a certain value
among collectors and connoisseurs. More important, it will be some time before the
cost of buying digital equipment can compete with the cost of analog equipment.

Digital cameras have new and exciting capabilities

Digital cameras can do things that aren’t easily done with film cameras: shoot
panoramas, combine several photos into one higher-resolution image, make short
Web or demo videos, and do “motor-drive” rapid action sequences.

Many digicams come with software that enables you to combine a series of pho-
tographs into a seamless panorama, which can either be edited and printed from a
single standard-format image file, or saved as a QuickTime panorama that you can
view on a standard Web page through a standard image size window.

Shooting a short video with sound is a feature available on many digicams. These
“video-ettes” are best for use on the Web or in presentation software as an eye-
catcher, a documentary of how something works, or as a product demonstration.
They typically max out at 320 x 200 pixels in size and about 15 frames per second
(fps). TV-quality video runs at 30 frames per second and is typically two to three
times the resolution.

Finally, many digital cameras perform one or more types of sequence photography:

✦ Automatic bracketing, in which the camera automatically changes the expo-

sure for each frame by a user-specified amount of over- and under-exposure.
Of course, one of these frames is also shot at the exposure indicated by the
camera’s internal meter.
✦ 2 to 5 fps “motor-drive” stills, which can be very useful for ensuring the cap-
ture of a peak moment (such as Barry Bonds hitting the ball out of the park
for the record-breaking 72nd time in a single season).
✦ Time-lapse photography that can make a movie from stills taken over long
time intervals. This includes familiar items such as the 15-second weather
report movie that shows how the clouds moved throughout the day.

The Advantages of Analog Photography

Conventional film photography offers the following advantages:

✦ Photographers are more familiar with the medium (although these days,
you’d be hard put to find a pro who isn’t comfortable with both film and
digital cameras).
✦ The cameras are cheaper — especially those that have interchangeable
lenses — than comparably featured digital cameras.
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16 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

✦ Photographers don’t require a means of downloading images when they are

traveling.
✦ No “shutter lag.”
✦ Accepted as a traditional medium.
✦ Easy and affordable to make archival prints.
✦ Known function and quality of components and manufacturers.

Lower cost of high image quality

The resolution of even the least expensive 35mm film (even if you use it in a ten-
dollar “shoot and pitch” camera) is higher than all but the latest and most expen-
sive of digital cameras based on 35mm single-lens reflex (SLR) film cameras. See
Chapter 2 for more information on specific camera models. Digital SLRs with image
resolution approaching that of 35mm film start at approximately $2,000 — and move
up rapidly from there.

Lower cost cameras

For the $1,000 you will spend on a state-of-the-art 4 or 5 megapixel digicam, you can
buy a feature-packed, name-brand 35mm SLR that has all of the features demanded
by most professionals: a carrying case, flash, tripod, and two or three supplemen-
tary lenses. This choice is illustrated in Figure 1-6. To look at it another way, the fea-
ture equivalent (regardless of resolution) 35mm pocket camera (with auto focus,
zoom lens, optical viewfinder) will cost you between $100 and $300.

Figure 1-6: $1,000 worth of semipro digicam versus $1,000 worth of 35mm
SLR film camera equipment
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Chapter 1 ✦ Using Digital Versus Traditional Photography 17

More versatility
The versatility of film cameras is just another way of looking at their lower cost.
Digital cameras that feature interchangeable lenses, through-the-lens viewing, and
that accept the full range of lenses and accessories made for 35mm analog cam-
eras start at around $6,000. The same level of versatility in a conventional 35mm
single-lens reflex camera run between $600 and $3,000 (depending on model and
manufacturer).

Instant response (capture the moment)

A conventional camera captures the intended picture at the instant the shutter
button is pressed. Top-of-the-line professional and prosumer digital cameras have
come to the point where “almost” no shutter lag exists — however, “almost” no lag
and the exact instant of shooting are still distinctly different time variables. More
affordable digital cameras may take as much as a full second to record an image
after you’ve clicked the shutter.

Accepted as traditional medium

The capabilities and qualities of conventional cameras are a known quantity to
virtually any client. So, it may be easier to convince a buyer that you can produce
a worthy result if you are using conventional equipment.

Easy and affordable to make archival prints

When it comes to printing color images from conventional film, analog camera own-
ers have lots of choices, knowledge, experience, and competition. Buyers expect
the product to have a reasonable life span, so they aren’t timid about the long-term
value of conventional prints. This is an especially important consideration for those
who are interested in creating collectible or fine art prints. Be assured, however,
that it is perfectly possible to make collectible digital art prints. You can even make
conventional photographic prints from digital images (or have them made for you).

Consumer confidence
People have confidence in the value of their investment when they are contemplat-
ing the purchase of a conventional camera made by a long-established and trusted
name, such as Canon, Hasselblad, Leica, or Nikon.
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18 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

And the winner is . . .

At first glance, it may seem that the advantages of conventional photography make
it the obvious choice. Think again. The advantages of digital photography make it
irresistible to many of us — especially casual snapshooters, advertising illustrators,
news and sports organizations, documentarians, and Web users.

However, conventional cameras are often the logical choice for capturing images
destined to become digital images. I call this process hybrid digital photography.

Hybrid Digital Photography

Hybrid digital photography is just what its name implies: part analog and part digi-
tal. Hybrids can either start with analog cameras and film that end up being digi-
tized by some type of scanner, or they can be digital images that are digitally
recorded to conventional film and then printed on conventional photographic
papers. For the purposes of this book, hybrid refers to conventional photos that
have been converted to digital through the use of a scanner.

Make use of equipment you already own

You may have already invested a lot of time and money in learning and equipment —
which doesn’t have to go to waste. If you’ve made a successful analog picture, you
can certainly digitize it. As this book was being prepared, scanner manufacturers
were doubling the resolution of desktop slide scanners at the same time that prices
were dropping. Desktop flatbed scanners have become dirt-cheap. You can even
send an image out for drum scanning if you have really demanding imaging
requirements.

Get the best of both worlds

You may not be able to adapt a 400mm telephoto lens or an 8mm fish-eye lens to
your digital camera, but you certainly can interchange if you own a Leica, Cannon,
Nikon, or other conventional interchangeable lens. If your usual subjects and
clients require large- or medium-format conventional photography, you can
convert the results from those cameras to digital.

Also, if you have requirements for both digital and analog versions of an image (and
now that computers and the Web are such a big part of our lives, who doesn’t?),
hybrid digital photography is the shoot-once way to go.
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Chapter 1 ✦ Using Digital Versus Traditional Photography 19

Use established technology with predictable results

Hybrid digital photography has been around — especially in the analog-to-scanner
version — for much longer than digital cameras. Service bureaus and prepress
shops have been using high-end drum scanners for decades, and flatbed scanners
have been around for nearly as long. This makes many users feel that digitizing
tools are more accessible than digital cameras.

Get higher resolution for your buck

As stated previously, digital cameras are expensive relative to their analog counter-
parts, and only the most expensive (5 megapixel or higher) of these can match the
resolution of medium-speed 35mm film. Because you can buy a slide scanner that
creates an 18MB image for about the same price as a camera that produces a 4 or 5
megapixel image (roughly 14 megabytes), it’s easy to see that hybrid digital photog-
raphy will give you better definition per dollar.

Digitize existing images

No image is too old, too big, too colorful, or too precious to scan (or to photograph
and scan). In other words, it’s never too late to make an image digital. Remember,
digital images maintain their data integrity forever, as long as the media doesn’t
deteriorate, isn’t physically damaged, or accidentally erased. If you want to pre-
serve the images forever, digitize them, make backups for safety, and recopy the
originals every few years.

The Characteristics of Digital

and Digitized Images
Digital images can be created from conventional photographic prints, negatives, or
slides, or from scratch by using a digital camera. This book covers both processes. It
also covers the basic techniques and aesthetics as they apply to either traditional or
digital photography. More important, it covers those tools and techniques that are
specific to digital photography in depth. So, the natural starting point is a descrip-
tion of the characteristics that define a digital (or digitized) image. Figure 1-7
depicts a digital camera workflow and a digitized photograph workflow.
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20 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

conventional
camera

wet
darkroom

slide or
digital camera
negative

scanner computer

file manager

image editor

photograph publication web

Figure 1-7: Digital camera workflow and digitized

photograph workflow

Photographs, whether analog or digital, are composed of a mosaic of points of col-

ored light, as Figure 1-8 demonstrates. In digital imaging terms, the color of each of
these points of light describes both the color and the intensity of the light that is
either reflected from or transmitted through any one of these points of light. The
technical differences between analog and digital photography stem from the
method of describing the color of a single dot, pixel, or grain of light.

In traditional photography, the point is a speck of a light-sensitive physical material

that has been chemically processed to change the color of that material. In digital
photography, the point is called a pixel (short for picture element). A pixel is one
cell in a row-and-column matrix that is one shade of a particular color. That shade
is represented in the computer as a piece of hexadecimal code, like this: 009139.

Note that not every digital image is a digital photograph. Digital photographs, by
nature, must always fall into a category of computer graphics generally referred
to as a bitmap. It is also possible (using such graphics software such as Adobe
Photoshop, Live Picture, and Corel Painter) to create bitmapped images that are
entirely produced by the hand and mind of the artist (that is, without the aid of a
camera). In the analog world, these works are called paintings or drawings. Bitmaps
are so called because all information is conveyed by assigning a specific color to
each individual pixel in the image.
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Chapter 1 ✦ Using Digital Versus Traditional Photography 21

The other type of digital image is usually referred to in computerese as a drawing

rather than a painting or photograph. Computer drawings are so called because
most of the information in the image is defined by shape outlines, as they would be
in a conventional technical drawing or engineering schematic. Digital drawings are
technically categorized as vector images because all of the information in the image
is described by geometric formulae (and by other formulae that describe such
things as the characteristics of the shapes, such as line weight and color and
shaded fills).

Figure 1-8: A bit-mapped digital photo and a vector-based digital drawing of the
same subject

In the context of this book, a digital photograph can refer to either an image made
with a digital camera or to an image digitized (scanned) from a conventional photo-
graph. Because scanner technology has been with us longer than digital cameras, it
has already been covered thoroughly in other publications. Therefore, this book
will spend more time on digital camera technology than on scanners. Still, you’ll
find extensive information on the various types of scanners regarding those aspects
of their operation that are specific to digitizing photographs. No time is spent on
office-related scanner operations such as document archives, optical character
recognition, or faxing.

The digital imaging process parrots recording an image on film. You still need a lens
to gather and focus the light reflected from the surface of the image. That image is
projected onto a light-sensitive surface. If the light-sensitive surface is film, the
image needs to be chemically processed. If the result is a negative, the image
must again be projected onto a light-sensitive surface and the result chemically
processed into a print or transparency.
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22 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

If the light-sensitive surface is digital, it consists of a chip array that converts the
color and intensity of the light into numerical data. That data is then interpreted by
computer software (either in or out of the camera) as an image containing a certain
number of data points. The number of data points assigned to the picture deter-
mines the amount and sharpness of detail that can be discerned by a viewer. This
characteristic of a digital image is referred to as its resolution. Resolution is
expressed in pixels, a computer term that is short for picture elements. A pixel in a
digital image serves the same function as a single grain of silver or dye in a film
slide or negative, or of a dot in a screened image printed on an offset press.

Resolution
Resolution is referred to in several different ways. If an advertiser (or this book, for
that matter) wants to give you a general idea of how much detail a camera is capa-
ble of recording, he or she will refer to resolution as VGA (approximately 640 x 480
pixels) or SuperVGA (approximately 800 x 600 pixels) if the image contains less
than a million pixels. Prior to 1989, cameras capable of producing truly photo-
graphic prints up to 4 x 6 inches were referred to as megapixel cameras and were
the highest-resolution cameras available for less than $2,000. Today, that criterion
has been moved up to 5 megapixels. In fact, several 5 megapixel cameras sell for
well under $1,000. The difference in price is primarily due to differences in features,
user conveniences, and the quality of optics and viewfinders.

The only factors limiting the potential resolution of digital cameras are the cost of
high-resolution image sensors and marketing considerations on the part of manu-
facturers. In fact, some digital cameras for professional studios exceed the resolu-
tion of 4 x 5-inch film. However, these cameras sell for tens of thousands of dollars.
Keep in mind that in 1981, a typical desktop computer had 8MB of RAM and sold for
around $5,000. Today, you can buy a computer with 256MB of RAM for under $900
and it comes equipped with many more features and peripherals.

A more accurate way to judge the resolution of a camera (or any digital image) is by
its pixel dimensions. Width is always stated before height, so you will see figures on
a spec sheet stated this way: 1,542 x 1,024 pixels.

You will also see image resolution referred to in terms of file size. File size is the
result of multiplying the total number of pixels by the bit depth of the image, times
the number of colors in the image, divided by 8 (because there are 8 bits to 1 byte).
So, if we look at the 3.4 Mp, 2048 x 1536 Nikon 995 example, the file is in RGB color
(three colors: red, green, and blue), and 8 bits of data are assigned to each color (as
is the case with 24-bit color, also known as true color), the uncompressed file will be
4,681,728 bytes (4.7MB). The same file, if I were talking about a four-color CMYK
(cyan, magenta, yellow, black) file, would be 9.4MB.
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Chapter 1 ✦ Using Digital Versus Traditional Photography 23

By comparison, an image from one of the new 5MB cameras would be just over 15MB.
A roll of 35mm film scanned at 2,800 dots-per-inch is typically just over 18MB, as
shown in Figure 1-9. Therefore, today’s cameras theoretically come very close to
being able to capture the quality of film. In fact, they come closer than the bare statis-
tics may indicate because the digital images carry more picture detail (particularly in
the shadows) and no generational loss of detail occurs as a result of scanning. In
other words, the image quality from under-$2000 prosumer digicams is getting very
impressive when compared to where it was even as recently as a year ago.

Note Film scanners that scan at 4000 dpi, although they can’t record any more detail
than is already in the film, greatly enhance color depth and minimize noise and
other factors that contribute to generational image degradation.

2800 dpi scan

5 MP

Figure 1-9: The proportional difference in image

size between an image photographed with a 5
megapixel camera and one shot on film and
scanned at 2,800 dpi (dots-per-inch)

Pixel depth
Another factor that influences the amount of perceived image detail is pixel depth.
Pixel depth actually defines the number of individual shades of color that can be
displayed when a file is printed or viewed. (For purposes of clarity, I’ll momentarily
ignore the characteristics and circumstances of the viewing device or material and
the surrounding light.) A pixel depth of 8 bits per color allows us to represent 16.8
million colors in an RGB image. That’s actually a few more colors (actually, colors
and shades of the same) than human eyes can discern. Nevertheless, you gain the
following benefits by assigning even more colors per pixel:
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24 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

✦ The additional information can be used for other data, such as additional
color channels for masking.
✦ You can capture a much wider range of color.

Therefore, if the scene that’s being photographed ranges from very bright (the sun
on fresh-fallen snow) to very dark (detail in the moss-covered rocks under the
mountain stream), you have much more choice in how to process the digital infor-
mation in that scene. Without the additional color depth, if you darken the high-
lights in an image that contains no information for those highlights, you just get
muddy gray highlights. Conversely, if there is information in the captured image’s
highlights, darkening the highlight areas will produce detail in the highlights. The
same is true of the ability to lighten shadow areas.

Cameras and image processing programs commonly record or store an image at

more than 24 bits. That’s 8 bits per primary RGB color. It’s confusing, but it’s
becoming more “fashionable” for cameras and scanners to state their color depth
in bits-per-color. So if your camera is recording at 12 bits, it’s actually recording a
36-bit file. Many cameras record at 12 to 16 bits per color, but will only output to 24
bits (8 bits per color). You still get a big advantage because you can decide what
range (contiguous portion) of the 30 or 36 (or even 48) bits that were captured will
be included in the final image.

Bitmaps
Digital photos fall into the category of computer graphics known as bitmaps. The
other type of computer graphic is called a vector or raster graphic, as shown in
Figure 1-10. Vector graphics have some valuable characteristics, but nearly no
application to digital photography, so you won’t be bothered with them in the con-
text of this book except when it comes to adding text or drawing paths in some
image editing programs, such as Photoshop.

On the other hand, it’s a good idea to develop a good understanding of how
bitmapped graphics work. Pixels are square (or rectangular) and are arranged in a
grid. Depending on the resolution of your camera, image file, or monitor, these pix-
els are arranged in a grid of rows and columns. Each of the “cells” in this grid is
assigned a color (more specifically, a shade of a specific color). The changes in
color within the grid make up the visual shapes in the image. If the grid cells are
small enough, you can see subtle transitions between adjacent colors, resulting in
an image that seems to mirror real life.

If the concepts in the preceding paragraph seem too abstract, think of a mosaic tile
tabletop. The artwork on the tabletop is created by placing different colored
ceramic tiles in rows and columns.
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Chapter 1 ✦ Using Digital Versus Traditional Photography 25

You need to know the following three things about bitmaps:

✦ You can’t change the resolution of the image without having some effect on
image quality.
✦ The higher the required definition, the higher the required original image
resolution and, therefore, the larger the size of the file.
✦ The definition of the image has no direct relationship to the resolution of a
print, printed page, film slide, or Web image made from that image.

These three facts will determine many of the decisions that you make regarding
purchasing the components of the digital photography “food chain.”

Figure 1-10: The image on the right shows a small portion of the image on the
left after being enlarged 16 times without benefit of interpolation.

If you make the image smaller, some of the colored pixels have to be thrown out,
resulting in lost detail. If you make the image larger, some pixels will have to be
duplicated. Some programs, such as Adobe Photoshop, make very good guesses as
to which pixels should be added or subtracted (and even as to how they should be
added and subtracted so that edges stay smooth and sharp), but you will still expe-
rience some loss of sharpness.

The downside of higher resolution is that larger files will require more camera
memory, faster processing in the camera to decrease the lag time between pictures,
faster connection from camera to computer to transfer files, and more storage
space on the computer that will do the processing.
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26 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Summary
This chapter provides an overview of digital photography and the reasons why digi-
tal photography will revolutionize your life as a photographer. My purpose is to use
this chapter to give you a clear understanding of the difference between pure and
hybrid digital photography. This chapter also covers the difference between
straight-out digital photographs and hybrid digital photographs and when each was
most likely to be appropriate to your individual needs. I’ve also emphasized that
both have their place in the serious photographer’s kit.

✦ ✦ ✦
04549510 ch02.F 8/22/02 2:37 PM Page 27

Getting the
Most from Your
2
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Digital Camera In This Chapter

Characteristics that
make or break digital
images

T his chapter examines various factors that you should

consider before you buy a new digital camera — or
before you make further use of the one you already own.
Understanding the
benefits of shooting
modes
Thinking about how these factors can affect your photogra-
phy will help you make better use of the camera(s) that you Overcoming parallax
own and help you make good decisions when you are upgrad-
ing or buying for the first time. Ensuring the best
optics that your
budget allows

Maximizing Image Definition Settings that solve

your most frequently-
The amount of image definition that you need depends on encountered
how you plan to use your digital images. For example, if problems
you’re just shooting pictures to share with friends on the Web
or if you’re only using your camera as a sketchpad for creat- The sensor that gives
ing digital paintings, then you won’t need a lot of image defini- you the best image
tion. The same is true if you prefer images that are blurry and quality
emotion-packed.
The value of good
At the opposite end of the spectrum, if your aim is to shoot ergonomics
wall-sized posters for hair salons or super-detailed nature
photos for a museum exhibition, then you’re going to need Versatility and value
every bit of image definition that you can afford . . . and then from the right digital
some. film type

In the middle, if you’re shooting images for magazine Having the power
publication, you can generally get by with the level of defini- when you need it
tion afforded by cameras that produce 3 to 6 megapixels of (batteries and
resolution. Of course, the higher up that scale you go, the chargers)
safer you’ll be.
Getting the right
connections and
transferring images

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
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28 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Most of us have been led to believe that the primary indicator of image definition
(image quality) is resolution. In reality, several other equally (or nearly equally)
important factors affect the definition of an image that a digital camera produces:

✦ Image resolution
✦ Lens quality
✦ Image sensor size
✦ Image bit depth
✦ Image compression
✦ File formats (JPEG, RAW, or TIFF)
✦ Length of the exposure
✦ ISO adjustment
✦ Camera steadiness
✦ Proper exposure
✦ Image treatment (after being transferred from the camera)

You can’t get better image definition than you start with, and only when you fully
appreciate this fact do you realize the importance of striving for as much defini-
tion as possible in your photographs. Although you can do a lot in digital imaging
to create the illusion of greater definition than existed in the original, there’s no
true way to replace what didn’t get recorded in the first place. Each of the follow-
ing sections describes what you have to do in order to ensure the best possible
image definition.

Image resolution
Image resolution describes the total number of individual pixels (pixel is short for
picture element) present in the file. Each pixel is one “tile” in the matrix of single
color tiles that are arranged in the rows and columns that comprise the image. The
more pixels used to record the image, the more information that exists to describe
the image. This is why image resolution is so often seen to be the criteria of poten-
tial image definition — because fewer pixels mean a coarser or “grainier” image.

The four different ways of expressing image resolution in pixels are as follows:

✦ As the number of pixels in a given unit of measurement. This is a linear

measurement and includes measurements such as pixels per inch. If the
resolution is 2,700 ppi, then a 35mm slide would be 2,700 x 4,050 pixels.
(The 35mm slide image measures approximately 1 x 11⁄2 inches.)
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 29

✦ As an array. This includes measurements such as 640 x 480. (When citing a

dimension like this in this book, pixels are the understood measurement,
unless other measurements are used in the same context that may confuse
the issue.)
✦ As a total number of pixels. This is the result of multiplying the pixel (or dot)
dimensions of the array. Thus, a 640 x 480 image has 307,200 pixels, and 1,280
x 960 image has 1,228,800 pixels — or 1.2 megapixels.
✦ As the file size of the image. This is the result of multiplying the pixel dimen-
sion of the image by the pixel depth of the image and then dividing that num-
ber by 8 (the number of bits in a byte). Thus, the file size of the 640 x 480
image, if it is recorded in 24-bit color, is (307,000 x 24) ( 8 = 921,600, which is
popularly rounded off to 920K.

The issue of resolution is mightily confusing to many of us, mainly because so many
of the devices used in digital photography have an inherent resolution of their own
that interacts with the resolution of the original digital/digitized file. The relation-
ship of image resolution to the resolution of output devices is discussed in Chapter
17 in the context of how to output to various devices. At this point in the book,
though, it’s sufficient for you to know that no direct correlation exists between
image resolution and output resolution. In other words, no amount of output
resolution will result in more definition than existed in the original image.

Lens quality
You can find authoritative reviews of virtually every digital camera in existence in
the digital photography magazines, on the Web sites of many of those same maga-
zines, or various digital photography Web sites. Of course, if you are the proud
owner of one of the simpler digital cameras, just check the reviews for what others
think of the image quality of the camera you plan to buy. If, on the other hand, you
need the best image quality you can afford, your own testing will prove to be worth
the time invested.

To test a lens before you buy a camera is a bit trickier proposition, but here’s how
you go about it:

1. Go to your local professional camera store (you can tell if it meets that qualifi-
cation if it has lots of studio strobe lights and darkroom equipment in stock)
and buy a lens-testing chart. It should be large enough to fill the camera’s
frame from a distance of three to four feet.
2. Buy the type of memory card used by the camera that you’re most interested
in. If you’re upgrading your digital camera, you may want to buy a camera that
uses the same card so that you don’t also have to buy new memory cards.
You’ll want to take a look at the “Digital Film Type” section later in this chap-
ter to find out how to get maximum lens quality for your investment.
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30 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

3. Take the memory card and the test chart and a tripod (this is absolutely
necessary — the store may be able to loan you one) to the store that you want
to buy the camera from. Go during a slow period so you’ll be more likely to
get the store’s cooperation.
4. Ask permission to shoot a lens test. Prop or paste the lens chart to a flat
vertical surface (it may have to be outside the store window).
5. Put the camera on a tripod, and use a string to connect the center of the lens
to the center of the lens chart. If the string is perpendicular to both the chart
and the lens surface, you can be certain that the lens chart and the lens sur-
face are parallel, as shown in Figure 2-1.

lens chart lens chart

string
camera

camera

Figure 2-1: The position of the camera in relationship to the position

of the lens chart

6. Take a picture of the chart. Use the camera’s LCD monitor as the viewfinder
and frame the chart so that the outer borders are as close to the edge of the
frame as possible.
7. Repeat the first six steps for all the cameras you want to test.
8. After you’ve made the test chart exposure, shoot a street scene and a self-
portrait outdoors in the shade. That way, you’ll also have some real-world
images from each camera to compare for quality. For all the test shots, keep
the camera tripod mounted and use the self-timer so that “camera shake”
isn’t a factor.
9. Take the memory card home (or to a photo processing place that can print
digital images directly from memory cards) and print out the test chart image
from each camera. Be sure to use the highest quality printer available.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 31

10. Examine each test chart print carefully, and ask yourself the following
questions:

• How sharp is the picture at the corners and at the edges?

• How much contrast exists between the lines and the type? (More
contrast is better.)
• Do the lines at the edges of the frame bend? (Don’t be alarmed if they
do — some barrel or pincushion distortion is typical of digicams priced
under $1000. Just make sure the bending isn’t extreme.)
You should see results similar to those shown in Figure 2-2.

Figure 2-2: A properly photographed lens chart

Courtesy of Sciencekit and Boreal Laboratories

Certain lens characteristics are as important as — if not more important than — the
optical quality of the lens. In my opinion, the most important of these characteristics
are the following:

✦ A large maximum aperture (usually called a fast lens)

✦ Macro focusing capability
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32 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

✦ Threaded lens barrel

✦ 3:1 (or more) zoom lens
✦ Movement canceling mechanism

Having a large maximum aperture is important because it allows you to shoot spon-
taneously at lower lighting levels, such as those you encounter at dusk, at indoor
events and public places, and in bad weather. That’s because larger apertures let in
more light, so you can take pictures at higher shutter speeds than would otherwise
be possible. The effect of various shutter speeds is illustrated in Figure 2-3.

Figure 2-3: The photo on the right was taken hand-held at 1⁄125th second, and the
photo on the left was taken hand-held at 1⁄30th second.

You will also notice in Figure 2-3 that there is little difference in sharpness between
the subject and the background of the image that was shot at the smaller aperture.
A faster (wider aperture) lens than the one used would have produced less depth-
of-field, thus softening the background more. A softer focus background would have
helped to focus out attention on the subject.

Macro photographs are pictures of small objects taken from very short distances.
One of the things I really value about my Nikon digital cameras is their outstanding
ability to do macrophotography. Most Coolpix models can focus at distances of
under one inch. If you want to be able to capture small details, then you definitely
want a lens that can focus down to less than one foot.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 33

Threaded lens barrels are extremely useful because with them, your camera will be
able to securely mount lens accessories. These accessories may include items such
as macro adapters (the solution to close-up photography for cameras with less-
than-ideal macro focusing lenses), color and special effects filters, and supplemen-
tary lenses for telephoto and wide-angle use.

You also want a zoom lens that, at minimum, ranges from moderate wide-angle
(about 38mm) to moderate (sometimes called portrait) telephoto. That is because
in-the-field digital cameras still don’t have high enough resolution to make cropping
a desirable choice, so you want to be able to frame your picture in-camera as often
as possible. The more resolution you have in the original image, the more flexibility
you have in the resolution at which it can be printed at some future date for some
unforeseen reason. Some cameras have much greater than 3:1 zoom ratios, but they
are generally lower resolution because they want to combine extreme (as much as
400 mm) telephoto capabilities with an image stabilizer. Often, these image stabiliz-
ers work with electronic gyroscopes that move the image on the image sensor to
compensate for any movement caused by the unsteadiness of the camera. This
issue brings us to the next lens capability worth looking for: an image stabilizing
mechanism.

Image stabilizing mechanisms for digital cameras with non-removable zoom lenses
are (so far, at least) found only in cameras with greater than 5:1 zoom ratios. This is
because they provide the most noticeable benefit for 200mm and higher cameras.
Image stabilization enables you to catch fast action from a distance (and when it’s
too crowded or otherwise impractical to use a tripod) and still get pictures that
aren’t blurred due to camera shake.

Image sensor size

The larger the image sensor, the less likelihood of excess electronic cross talk
between the individual light-sensitive cells that capture each pixel in the image.
This cross talk can cause image artifacts or noise — the equivalent to grain in an
analog photo — and less accurate interpretation of color. The effect that this noise
can have on an image is demonstrated in Figure 2-4.

Figure 2-4: The same portion of an image with and without noise artifacts
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34 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Someplace on the specification sheet, you’ll find the size of the image sensor.
Unless the camera is larger than 35mm, the image sensor will most likely be either
2
⁄3-inch or 1⁄3-inch. If the camera is a professional camera based on a 35mm camera
body (or something that looks and feels very much like one — as is the case with
the Olympus e10 and the Olympus e20 — you can be sure that the sensor is at least
2
⁄3-inch. If the camera is a 3.4 megapixel or lower resolution prosumer or consumer
camera, the sensor will typically be 50 percent smaller at 1⁄3-inch.

Image bit depth

All digital cameras record at least eight bits of information for each pixel, resulting
in 16.8 million possible variations of hue, saturation, and brightness. (In digital pho-
tography, the combination of these three items is called a color — go figure.) Most
of the time, that’s all the color information we can perceive. However, our eyes and
nature play tricks on us. Even though we can’t technically see more than 16 million
colors at a time, our eyes will often adjust to collect a greater range of information
over a few fractions of a second. Our minds will remember having seen all that
color information in the same instant. Consider a similar phenomenon: a single
motion picture frame looks much blurrier and has lower definition than the movie
that it belongs to. So when we look at a print of a still, our minds are locked into
seeing as much color information as is actually in the print. If you like to shoot
highly detailed images, a lot of that detail comes from color information that our
minds can see over time. So if you can record more color information than you can
see, you can then decide exactly which parts of that information you want to see
when the information is processed in an image editor that can work from 16-bit
color files. Even if the camera records 12 bits, that’s 50 percent more color
information than usual.

Image compression
Virtually all digital cameras save their files in JPEG format (.jpg file extension),
which squeezes files down to a fraction of the size that they would be if not com-
pressed. JPEG files achieve this compression by considering shades of color that
are very close together to be the same color. Generally, you can make a choice in
the camera’s menu as to how much compression you want the camera to use. The
compression level is generally given on the menu as a quality level. For example,
on the Nikon Coolpix 5000, you have a choice (from best to worst) of High, Fine,
Normal, and Basic. The best quality compression will cause the least (usually dis-
cernible only to the practiced eye) loss of image definition. The trade-off is that
you can store more images in the camera at lower-quality compression. Also, lower
quality files, because they are smaller, upload to the Web at much higher rates.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 35

File formats (RAW or TIFF)

If you want to ensure the highest definition images and if you have a camera that
lets you save your files to an uncompressed format (usually either RAW or TIFF),
then take this option. However, be aware that the best quality JPEG offered by most
5 megapixel cameras will store a file that is approximately 1.25 megabytes (1⁄4 the
size of the original). The same file, saved as a TIFF, will be approximately 15
megabytes (four times the size of the original and then three times that in order to
separate each interpolated primary color into its own RGB channel). So you can see
that quite a bit of data is lost when you compress the file, even though it may not
be obvious. Many of the newer cameras will also let you save to a RAW image for-
mat, which is usually a 12- or 16-bit file. You will eventually have to edit it down to
an 8-bit file in order to save it to a standard format, but you will have far more color
information to choose from when deciding which areas of detail you want to keep.

If your camera is capable of saving files in RAW format, it will save the file in a com-
pletely lossless, non-compressed file format that is capable of storing as many bits
of data as the camera can handle. Many of the newer digital cameras (and virtually
all of the professional models) capture 12 to 16 bits of color information, which
gives you lots of choice over how much and what parts of that data will actually be
kept in the file (provided the camera doesn’t make that choice for you). Many of the
newer semi-pro digital cameras capture 12 bits of data per pixel, but then pick the
range of colors that shows the most detail and automatically store that in an 8-bit
file. Check your camera’s menus or the manual to be sure that the camera saves to
RAW files and what file format extension it uses. After you’ve determined this, fol-
low these steps to open a RAW data file in Photoshop 7:

1. Choose File ➪ Open or File ➪ Open As (Windows).

2. From the File Format menu, choose RAW. If the current folder contains RAW
files, they will appear in the file list. Highlight the files that you want to open,
then click the Open button.
3. In the Width and Height fields, enter the dimensions of the file. You can click
the Swap button if you want to reverse the dimensions in the Width and
Height fields in order to open a file with the same dimensions as a previously
opened file, but that is oriented vertically rather than horizontally (or vice
versa).
4. In the Channels field, enter the number of channels (if you don’t know, 3 is the
likely number).
5. In your camera’s manual, find the statistics for the header, color depth, and
byte order, and check whether files are saved with an interlaced data option.
Enter this information into the appropriately labeled fields.
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36 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Tip I type this information into my computer, print it out, and tape it to the bottom of
each camera that I use. Then I don’t have to look it up every time I download.

6. If you don’t know and can’t find the dimensions or header value (usually the
same for any given camera), Photoshop can “guesstimate” the parameters.
You do need to have either the correct height and width values or the correct
header size and then click Guess.
7. If you choose the Retain When Saving option, Photoshop will memorize the
header when you click Save.

If you foresee occasions when you’ll want all the image detail that you can possibly
squeeze out of the camera, be sure to look for a camera that lets you save to TIFF or
RAW image formats. However, you won’t want to use these formats unless image
quality is critical. Overuse of these file formats may mean that you’ll have to be
tethered to a computer for storage or you’ll have to use a camera with a 1GB
Microdrive installed so you won’t be downloading every five minutes.

Length of the exposure

If you have to keep the shutter open longer than about 1⁄8th second, chances are you
will pick up some cross talk between individual pixel sensors that creates noise
(grain). How much noise you get depends on how much longer the shutter stays
open.

Cross- I show you some techniques for getting rid of (or at least minimizing) such noise
Reference
during the image editing process in Chapter 16.

Some cameras, such as the Nikon Coolpix 5000 and the Olympus e10, have built-in
noise reduction modes that help quite a bit. However, most cameras will force you
to use less than maximum image size when noise reduction is turned on.

Here’s a tip for getting around the size limitation, as long as your camera has a
noise reduction feature:

1. Turn on your camera’s noise reduction feature.

2. Choose the largest image size that you can. You probably won’t be given the
choice of any sizes larger than permitted because you’ve already chosen
noise reduction.
3. Take the picture.
4. Transfer the image to your computer for image processing.
5. Use one of the third-party filters (Genuine Fractals Print Shop or Shortcut S-
Spline) that is made specifically for keeping sharp, smooth, well-defined edges
in the pictures that you enlarge. As a rule, it’s a good idea to make sure that
the original file is at least 2MB in size.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 37

ISO adjustment
The next factor that contributes to noise is adjusting your camera to raise the ISO
rating (the camera’s sensitivity to light). Most cameras default to a setting that lets
them automatically raise the ISO rating whenever there’s too little light for a shutter
speed slower than the manufacturer deems safe for a reasonably blur-free, hand-
held shot. I have a friend who can get a razor-sharp shot a 1⁄2 second long, but for
most people, even a bit of practice won’t help them achieve a steady shot at less
than 1⁄60th second.

Tip The difference between my rock-steady friend and the rest of us is practice, prac-
tice, practice. Wrap the neck strap around your body so that it’s taut and press the
camera tightly to your face. Use the spot meter mark in your viewfinder or the cen-
ter of your LCD and concentrate on making sure that it doesn’t jiggle. Take several
long, deep breaths to relax and calm down. The biggest cause of blur is jangled
nerves due to excitement or pressure. If it’s cold, dress warmly. Exhale the last
deep breath very slowly while squeezing the shutter release.

The same thing happens when you pump up the ISO as when you keep the shutter
open — you get cross talk noise from the sensor.

Not all cameras have noise reduction. Several methods for removing noise in your
image editor are covered later in this chapter. Another option is third-party soft-
ware, called Grain Surgery, which is dedicated to the task of controlling noise. Grain
Surgery is a Photoshop-compatible filter offered by a company called VisInfo.

Cross- I show you how to use Grain Surgery in Chapter 16.

Reference

Proper exposure
Remember that one of the great advantages of digital photography is that test shots
are free and you can see the results immediately. Keeping that in mind, try to find
an exposure that will capture as much image information to your file as possible
from the subject you are photographing. As long as the information is present, you
can control brightness and contrast in any or all of the images during the image-
editing process.

If you have time before your subject moves, try bracketing. Bracketing is a photogra-
pher’s term that means you’ve taken at least extra shots of the same picture — one
or more that are overexposed and one or more that are under-exposed. Typically,
you would make the over and under exposures at intervals of one-third to a full f-
stop. Of course, if you’re going to do your bracketing with your own choice of set-
tings, you have to place your camera in manual exposure mode. Alternatively, many
digital cameras have a shooting mode called auto-bracketing that will automatically
create a series of exposures over a (approximately) one-second interval (or for a
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38 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

specified number of shutter clicks, each one-third to a full-stop apart). If you’re

shooting scenics, architecture, or still-lifes, auto-bracketing is great insurance that
you’ll get more image data in one of the shots than in the others. If the camera is
anchored so that it doesn’t move between exposures, you can stack all of the parts
on image layers and then use different parts of bracketed frames in different parts of
the image to ensure maximum detail.

Camera steadiness
If the image blurs because the camera shook or the subject was moving too fast,
you’re going to lose a lot of detail. No amount of after-the-fact image sharpening will
recover it for you, either. If you want maximum detail, always use a tripod or other
rock-steady camera brace. The difference between these two techniques is illus-
trated in Figure 2-5. Using some means to fire the camera that doesn’t involve pok-
ing it with your finger — either a cable release, remote control, or self-timer — can
also reduce the blur in an image.

Figure 2-5: The difference between hand-held (right) and tripod-mounted (left)
exposures at 1⁄30th second

The least expensive and most reliable of these devices is the good old-fashioned
cable release. Unfortunately, modern business practice dictates that companies
find ways to make you spend more money than necessary rather than attempting to
give you maximum practical value. Thus, exceedingly few digicams come with a
cable release thread. Personally, I’m baffled by the fact that companies such as
Olympus and Canon include much more expensive electronic cable releases with
their cameras, but thank heavens they do. Others, such as Nikon, make electronic
corded releases that they will be happy to sell you for around $100.

Image treatment
It’s easy to overlook, but if you want to maintain maximum image quality, you can
never, never, ever re-save a JPEG image. That is because the image-editing or
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 39

previewing software almost always resamples the image each time it is re-saved. So
each time you re-save, you lose a little more data.

You can open a JPEG as much as you like, but you have to simply close the file with-
out saving it. Make sure you don’t use a program that automatically saves files
when you close them without first warning you.

Here’s what you really have to watch out for: Don’t use a program that resamples
the JPEG image when you rotate it. Many cameras come with transfer software
(such as Nikon’s Nikon View, version 4.1 or later) that will let you rotate the image
without resampling it.

If you want to see your image right side up, be sure that your image previewer
(which may be your operating system if you use Mac OS X or Windows Me or —
especially — Windows XP) doesn’t resample the image in the process. The File
Browser in Photoshop 7 and Photoshop Elements 2.0 is very safe. It rotates the
thumbnails, but only rotates the files themselves when you open them, in which
case you have the opportunity to save to a non-lossy format, such as PSD or TIF. If
you can’t find out from reading the literature whether the image previewer that you
are using resamples the image, then send your software manufacturer’s support
team an e-mail and ask.

Here’s how to be sure you’ve saved your precious images to a lossless format:

1. Open your image in a respected image-editing program.

If the photo was shot vertically and the image previewing software won’t
rotate it without resampling, then now is the time to rotate it. After all, you’re
never going to be able to use it in horizontal mode. Heck, you may not even
know if you like the picture until you see it upright.
2. Save the file as a TIFF file.
Immediately issue the Save As command, which can usually be done by
choosing File ➪ Save As. Usually, a Save As dialog box is available that enables
you to save the image to one of several file formats. Save the file to TIFF
(.tif) format. (If you’re incredibly picky, don’t use LZW compression, though
it’s virtually lossless.) Your file now takes up more room on your hard drive,
so be sure to save only those files that you’re likely to use.
3. From now on, use the TIFF version of the image for any image editing.
This will ensure that you’ll always be able to go back to a virgin copy if you
want to give the image a new interpretation.

Shutter lag
One of the problems traditionally inherent in digital cameras has been the delay
between the instant the shutter release is clicked and the instant the shutter itself
clicks. The technical term for this delay is shutter lag.
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40 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

The problem with shutter lag is that it prevents you from being able to accurately
predict what’s going to be happening when the shutter fires. For example, your
friend looks perfectly perky when you push the button, but by the time the camera
actually takes the picture (sometimes as much as a second later), her mouth is
drooping and one eye is closed.

One way to solve the problem of shutter lag is to spend more money on your cam-
era. The Olympus e20, the Nikon Coolpix 5000, some of the newer cameras with
10:1 ultra-zooms and image stabilization that are especially made for fast-action
reportage, and almost any professional SLR made since the turn of the century are
lag-less (or so close to it that you’ll hardly notice the lag).

Those on a more normal budget can do a few things to minimize shutter lag. First,
choose your camera carefully. If shooting speed is critical, it pays to do some
research before you purchase a camera. Some digital cameras are capable of two to
three shots per second. On the other hand, some cameras take as much as three to
seven seconds between shots. In the consumer range of digital cameras — those
priced under $1000 — much of the delay between the moment that you press the
shutter until an image is captured is caused by focusing and setting the exposure
in auto mode. However, you may be able to cut the delay between shots.

The following tricks are very effective at cutting shutter lag — even for cameras that
hardly have any lag:

✦ Prefocus. By pressing the shutter release button halfway down, most cameras
will figure out the focus and lock it in, so the camera doesn’t have to try to
focus when you finish depressing the shutter to actually take the shot.
✦ Preset the exposure settings. Half-depressing the shutter release can also
lock the exposure settings. Better yet, if you can use fully manual exposure
settings, the camera won’t have to waste any time at all calculating exposure.
✦ Turn off the camera’s LCD display and image-review function. Like most of
these techniques, this works because it lightens the load on the camera’s
computer and conserves power.
✦ Turn off the flash. If the camera is waiting for the flash to recharge, then all
the other things you try won’t matter much. If you really need flash and your
camera has the ability to use an external flash, then get one. This way, the
juice and calculations needed by the flash are off-loaded from the camera.
Your camera’s batteries will last longer, too.
✦ Use a “continuous” mode. Some cameras have a rapid sequence mode that
is a sort of electronic motor drive. Rapid sequence modes sometimes use a
smaller image size or higher compression, but might help capture that action
shot you have been trying to get.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 41

Delay between shots

After the capture has begun, the speed with which the camera can write the image
to the memory card is pretty much up to the camera’s design. The most important
factor that impacts the speed of transfer is the size of the camera’s memory buffer.
The larger the buffer, the more images you can capture before permanently trans-
ferring them to the flash memory card (digital film card). To minimize the delay
when transferring images, try any of the following steps that can be employed by
your camera model:

✦ Consider using smaller memory cards. The BIOS programming of some older
digital cameras prevents them from writing accurately to memory cards past
a certain capacity. If this is the case for your camera, its manual should inform
you what that card memory limitation is. Also, you can ask other users of
your camera for info on this subject.
✦ Consider using faster memory cards. There are some cards that operate
faster than others in some cameras. Lexar and Sandisk are constantly battling
one another with speed claims. Check them out in a store than sells more
than one brand.
✦ Use a smaller image size. When speed is critical, smaller images create
smaller image files and thus process faster in the camera. A 640 x 480 image of
the shot you needed is better than not getting the shot at all with the camera
set to 1280 x 960.
✦ Adjust image quality settings. This one is a reach, but it might be worth an
experiment. The compressed size of the image or the amount of processing it
takes to compress it may have an effect on the camera’s processing speed.

Understanding Operating Modes

Almost all digital cameras give you a choice of special modes of operation. Not all
of these modes are found on every camera, but knowing what problems each of
these modes can solve may ease your picture-taking stress and help to ensure
picture-taking success.

Automatic mode
Almost all digital cameras give you a choice between fully automatic (sometimes
called programmed) shutter priority and aperture priority. More advanced cameras
also give you the choice to use fully manual exposure settings.
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42 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Automatic mode is the right choice in the following circumstances:

✦ You don’t know Jack about how to use this camera.

✦ You just barely have time to get the shot, and there’s no time to fiddle with
settings.

In fully automatic mode, the camera uses the slowest shutter speed consistent with
a steady shot in conjunction with the smallest aperture that will ensure a decent
exposure. The result is that — even if you don’t have the time (or the experience)
to stop to make the calculations — you’ll get a reasonably blur-free shot with
maximum depth-of-field.

I make it a rule to leave my camera set in automatic mode so that when I turn on
the camera, I’ve got at least an 80 percent chance of getting a technically decent
image. This is an especially good rule for digital photography because you can do
so much more to control focus, blurring, color balance, and composition in your
image-editing program. Thus, your priority should be to have a good starting point.
Moreover, if I have to hand off the camera to someone else, they stand a decent
chance of getting a decent shot, too. Sometimes the other person is in a better posi-
tion to get the right shot (especially if you’re driving or want them to take a picture
of you).

Note When you put the camera in fully automatic mode, the camera invariably sets the
flash to fire any time it is forced to use a shutter speed of less than 1⁄ 50th of a sec-
ond (or whatever that camera’s manufacturer deems to be too slow to ensure a
reasonably steady shot). Personally, I’d rather have a somewhat blurry shot taken
in available, natural-looking light than by the ugly light of a built-in flash. As a
result, I’ve gotten into the habit of turning off the built in flash when I put the cam-
era into automatic exposure mode. The camera will beep or flash a red light when
it senses that there’s not enough light for a hand-held exposure. At that time, you
can decide whether you really want to use the flash.

Aperture priority and depth-of-field

When you choose aperture priority, you are able to set the f-stop (the little hole,
also called the aperture, that determines how much light passes through the lens)
so that it remains at that setting until you intentionally change it. This allows you
some control over depth-of-field, which is the distance between the closest and
farthest points from the lens that are in sharp focus.

Depth-of-field control is typically more difficult to control in digital cameras than in

film cameras because the “film plane” (actually, the sensor surface) is two to four
times closer to the center of the lens. This increases depth-of-field to the point that
it is difficult to take a picture of a subject in bright light that is more than three feet
away in which everything in the picture isn’t at least fairly sharp. True, the distant
mountains and trees may be a bit soft around the edges, but they’re still easily
recognized for being what they are.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 43

Thus, the most important reason to use aperture priority is to control depth-of-field
for portraits and other subjects that are even closer to the camera. For those pic-
tures, set the camera’s f-stop to the smallest number (widest opening) available.

Note For some reason, the industry decided to give the largest apertures the smallest
numbers. To make matters worse, although the aperture is set in the same way
and with the same controls on almost every film camera, the digital camera mak-
ers have chosen to put these controls on a different menu or knob on almost every
camera. This is something you must know how to do if you’re going to get the
most from your camera, so please read the manual.

Aperture priority is helpful in a couple of other situations, such as the following:

✦ To ensure the fastest possible shutter speed in dim available light by forcing
the widest possible aperture
✦ To ensure interminable depth-of-field by using the smallest possible aperture

Shutter priority
Shutter priority is a shooting mode that gives you the choice of shutter speed
setting, at which point the camera automatically chooses the aperture needed
to make a “correct” exposure.

You should use shutter-priority to accomplish the following:

✦ Force a slow shutter speed when you want to make certain that the picture is
going to be blurry enough to “put the body in motion” or to enhance the feel-
ing that things are just out of control
✦ Force a high shutter speed when you want to make sure that your jitters won’t
blur the shot
✦ Force an even higher speed when you want to freeze fast action, like freezing
the soccer ball as it bounces off the goalie’s head

Full manual control

As you gain experience, you’ll be able to recognize when a particular shutter speed
and f-stop combination will produce a specific result or will give you your most
consistent chance at the right shot, given a specific set of prevailing conditions,
such as strong backlighting.

Full manual control is also an advantage when a subject is moving through a back-
ground that constantly changes in brightness. You know that the main subject must
be perfectly exposed and you don’t want to have the background (or moving traffic
lights or other photographers’ flashes) giving your camera the wrong signals.
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44 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Full manual control is especially important to digital photographers when shooting

panoramas. You need to be able to freeze the camera at one specific setting.
Otherwise, the overall brightness of the image will change as the angle of the light
in relation to the angle of the lens changes. This situation makes it much more diffi-
cult for panorama software to seamlessly join the individual frames that will make
up the panorama. You will find a full discussion of how to make a panorama and
how panorama stitching software works in Chapter 16.

Full manual control is actually a convenience when your main lighting source is
strobes that aren’t set on automatic. Most studio strobes fall into this category. You
want to be able to take a reading with a strobe meter that can read the flash’s brief
burst of light accurately. You then want to be able to set your camera according to
the dictates of the external meter.

Finally, you will encounter other occasions in which an external meter is a better
choice than your camera’s internal meter. Of course, you can’t use an external
meter effectively if you can’t follow the meter’s advice when setting your camera’s
aperture and shutter speed. An external meter is virtually indispensable if you need
a more accurate spot meter for reading a small point of light against a dark sky. An
external meter is also useful if you want to use an incident light meter that mea-
sures the overall amount of light falling on your subject scene, rather than how
much light is being reflected by the coal in the bin or output by the Christmas
tree lights.

White balance
Most digital cameras will automatically make their best guess at setting the proper
color balance or white balance for the prevailing light falling on the scene. The
terms white balance and color balance have slightly different meanings, but the
terms are often used interchangeably. When the white balance is correct, anything
that’s white actually looks pure white. Whenever the whites are white, the other
colors in the photograph are also likely to look natural. This is the case because
any overall color tint has been removed in order to achieve white balance.
However, like Hal, the computer doesn’t always make the decisions that are right
for you.

The overall color tint of an image is caused by the color of light that falls on the
scene. Your eyes and brain automatically compensate for the colors of objects
when viewing them under different lighting conditions. Cameras can do the same
thing if they’re equipped to compute the necessary calculations or if you place a fil-
ter over the lens that rebalances the color of the prevailing light to that of daylight
on a cloudless day. If you take a photo of the same subject at dusk, the prevailing
light will be significantly warmer (more yellowish/orange). The same subject
photographed with tungsten light the same subject will appear to the unadjusted
camera to be almost completely orange/yellow.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 45

Digital cameras can adjust to compensate for these changes in lighting conditions,
and most default to doing this automatically. However, there may be times when
you want to deliberately set a particular color balance. For instance, perhaps you
want to convey a particular mood by making the overall tint warmer (more yellow)
or cooler (more blue). In those cases, it helps if the camera gives you the choice of
setting white balance for daylight, tungsten, or fluorescent lighting. Some cameras
will even give you choices for specific lighting conditions, such as Dawn, Dusk, and
Overcast.

All image-editing software will allow you to change the overall color balance of a
photograph. However, you do gain some real advantages by getting the white bal-
ance right in the camera, chief of which is that you will want to be able to preview
whole folders full of pictures without having to be embarrassed by the presence of
off-color images. This is even more important if you have to preview the pictures
for a client before he or she decides exactly which ones will be used. Also, having
white balance correct in the original image makes it easier to judge which pictures
are “keepers.” Finally, if the camera corrects the white balance, there’s less to do
before you can be proud to email the picture to a client or a friend.

Shooting under indoor lighting conditions is one situation in which you are better
off to use a color filter to correct lighting. This is because if the camera (or your
computer software) has to re-calculate such a drastic difference in color balance,
it will create a substantial amount of image noise (graininess) in the process.

Here’s the cure: Get yourself an 81A filter that’s used in conventional photography
for converting the temperature of tungsten light to daylight. Then when you’re
shooting indoors at night, you can just shoot through the filter. A side benefit is
that you’ll get a better quality image because the camera won’t have to reinterpret
the range of colors originally recorded by the sensor. You see, what your camera
does when it makes white balance adjustments is pretty much what you do in your
image-editing program. The difference is that your computer has a lot more com-
puting power and the program has room to employ much more comprehensive
algorithms for making those adjustments.

Note The best possible solution is to have a setting that enables you to measure white
balance from a neutral surface. From your camera’s LCD menu, choose the Manual
White Balance setting. Next, place a neutral surface, such as a sheet of typing
paper in front of the camera, and press the shutter button partway. You’ll get a
perfect white balance setting for the light that you’re currently in. It won’t matter a
bit if strange colors are reflecting from brightly painted walls or that you’re shoot-
ing paintings or colored fabrics, because you’re taking the reading from something
you know to be perfectly neutral in color.
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46 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Programmable (or pre-programmed) settings

In addition to the priority options previously listed, many digital cameras enable
you to program your own settings or provide various pre-programmed settings.
These settings apply to different situations that you may encounter as you are
taking photographs and they fall into two types: pre-programmed and user-
programmable. Because nearly every digital camera manufacturer offers
different options, I’m going to list only the most common pre-programmed
situational settings. You can only use one of these settings at a time:

✦ Backlighting: The camera is automatically set to overexpose by one or two

stops in order to expose for the shadows and let the highlights block up. This
setting is most commonly used for sunlit portraits (including pets) when the
photographer chooses not to use fill flash.
✦ Fill flash: The flash is turned on, even if there’s plenty of direct sunlight. This
causes the flash to light the shadows when direct, unfiltered sunlight creates
too harsh a contrast between highlights and shadows.
✦ Snow: The camera uses an aperture one to one-and-a-half smaller than normal
to compensate for the brightness of the snow so that you will be able to see
some detail in a snow-covered landscape. If you shoot people in the snow, use
the Backlighting or Fill flash settings instead.
✦ Portrait: The lens is set at or near the widest available aperture in order to
limit depth-of-field. Then, when the camera automatically focuses on the face,
the background should blur enough to make the subject stand out from it.
Portrait mode is also good for plants, pets, and some still-life photography.
(For commercial still-lifes, you usually shoot in a studio against a plain back-
ground using very bright flash that permits very small apertures, in order to
ensure that all the important characteristics of the product stay in sharp
focus.)
✦ Action: The highest possible shutter speed consistent with proper exposure
is chosen. Some cameras will also turn on the flash if the subject is focused to
within flash range and there is too little light for maximum shutter speed.
✦ Cloudy Weather: The image contrast is increased, the color balance is
warmed slightly, and the color saturation is increased.

User-programmed settings enable you to choose how you want the camera to be
set up — including the use of any of the controls that happen to be features of your
camera. You do this by switching to a “programmed” mode and then choosing vari-
ous options from a menu on the camera’s LCD. Some cameras enable you to save
these setting under a name of your choice (for example, Action Still-life or Super
Blur), while others only let you save them to a numbered set. It is then up to you
to remember what a given-numbered set is used for.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 47

Auto bracketing
Auto-bracketing is one of those marvelous tricks at which digital cameras excel —
provided the camera has a large enough RAM buffer to permit storing at least three
images before writing them to the memory card (which can take several seconds).
The purpose of bracketing is to ensure that you get the exposure that makes the
picture look as close to the way you want it to look as possible — regardless of what
the camera’s stupid computer thinks.

Best-Shot Selector
The Best-Shot Selector (BSS) seems to exist only in the Nikon line of digital cameras.
Nevertheless, I must mention it here in the faint hope that other manufacturers will
find a way to incorporate a similar feature.

BSS takes a rapid-fire sequence of images for as long as you keep the shutter button
depressed, and then automatically discards all but one of them before writing the
image to the camera’s memory card. The image that the camera keeps is the one
that shows the highest contrast between contiguous lines of adjoining pixels. To
put that in English, it throws out all but the sharpest picture.

This little trick does amazing things for situations in which you have to hand-hold
the camera, when there’s not enough light for a high shutter speed, or when you
have to sacrifice shutter speed for depth-of-field. I’ve even used it to get fairly sharp
candids of people in nightclubs and cafés while hand-holding the camera at 1⁄4 sec-
ond! Of course, you may have to make more than one attempt to get a really steady
shot, but that’s much better than not being able to get the picture. Besides, remem-
ber that a bad digital photo costs absolutely nothing unless you print it or keep it.
So there’s never any harm in trying.

Burst mode
Quite a few cameras will let you take rapid sequences of shots. You achieve several
great benefits by being able to do this. First, it’s a great way to make little anima-
tions (such as a walking man or a girl winking) for the Web. Simply choose the
smallest size image that the camera can shoot, save each shot for the Web in GIF
format, and then use a Web image-editing program (such as Adobe ImageReady or
Macromedia Fireworks) to display each image as a frame in an animation.

Burst mode is also very handy if you have a camera that doesn’t have a Best-Shot
Selector feature. The difference between using the burst mode and the Best-Shot
Selector is that the camera doesn’t throw out all but the sharpest shot — you do. In
fact, you even gain an advantage by doing it this way: The best shot isn’t always the
sharpest shot. In fact, shooting a sequence is a great thing to do when you’re trying
to shoot a blurry shot. Then you’re more likely to get just the right amount of blur
at just the right time.
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48 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Finally, burst mode is often the way to go when you’re shooting sports or other
events in which things happen so fast that it’s nearly impossible to anticipate the
“peak moment.” You just set your camera for burst mode (this usually works best at
high shutter speed) and press the shutter button an instant or two before the peak
action happens. If you choose a smaller-than-maximum image size, you’ll be able to
shoot more frames per second, which helps to ensure that you catch the peak
moment. You may not be able to make as large a print, but you can show the whole
sequence side-by-side or as a rapidly changing slide show in a presentation or on
the Web.

Time lapse mode

If your camera has a time-lapse mode, you’ll be able to take pictures with long inter-
vals between shots. Of course, you’ll be able to choose the intervals. You can then
show how something progressed or evolved over time — including how the light
and weather changed in a given situation. After you have made the images, you can
put them into a slide show, print them as a series of prints, or place them as frames
in a movie by using video-editing software or a Web animation program.

If you’re going to make time-lapse sequences, remember these pointers:

✦ Make sure your camera is protected from thieves, the weather, and passing
traffic.
✦ Mount it on a very steady tripod. You will rarely want the camera to move
between frames.
✦ Be sure you’re plugged into an AC power supply. Batteries won’t last if the
camera has to stay turned on for hours at a time.

Note Don’t let anyone mislead you into believing that your still digital camera is a good
substitute for a video camera. The difference in both resolution and quality
between the lowest-price DV camcorder (very good) and the highest-priced still
camera with a “video” mode (barely passable) is like night and day! You can make
some very nice little movies, but there’s no way you’re going to be able to record
sixty minutes worth of video — at least no practical way.
If it is important to you to be able to make short movies with your digital camera,
look for a camera that will save its movies in QuickTime format, which will ensure
that most people will be able to view the images on the Web.

Special panorama settings

All digital cameras (in fact, all cameras) will let you take pictures that can be used
to make a computer-stitched panorama. However, some cameras (most notably
Canon’s) have a special panorama-shooting mode that lets you see the portion of
the previous frame that should overlap the current frame. You can then visually
rotate your camera so that you can precisely overlap sequential frames — even if
you’re hand-holding the camera. The result is very precise stitching.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 49

Settings that lock the exposure, focus, and zoom ratio so that they don’t change as
you shoot the frames that make up the panorama are more prevalent than the over-
lap feature mentioned previously. Although locking the settings between shots is
not as cleverly inventive as the overlap feature, locking the settings can be even
more valuable in ensuring a successful panorama. Nothing will ensure the success
of precision frame overlapping as well as a pan-head made especially for taking
panoramas, such as those made by Kaidan.

Cross- You’ll find an entire section on how to make panoramas in Chapter 16.
Reference

ISO rating
The ISO (International Standards Organization) rating is a measure of the light
sensitivity of an image-recording device. For old timers in photography, this is the
same rating we used to call the ASA (American Standards Association) rating. The
ISO rating is equivalent to the shutter speed at f16 that would produce a “normal”
exposure of an average scene in bright sunlight. So every time the ISO rating
increases or decreases by a factor of 2, the required exposure is one full f-stop
greater or smaller.

Most digital cameras will either adjust their ISO sensitivity automatically or let
you choose full stop increments between ISO 50 (same as very fine-grained 35mm
film) and ISO 800. The most typical range of choices is between ISO 100 and 400.
Professional 35mm cameras will even let you go all the way up to ISO 3200 or even
6400 — a sensitivity high enough to allow for shooting at very high shutter speeds
for stopping sports action or at normal speeds in very dim lighting conditions
(think street lamp lit, back alleys and the bars in nightclubs).

Noise reduction, ISO settings, and long exposures

If you need to boost the ISO rating in order to get the picture, then that’s what you
need to do, but there is a drawback to doing so. As is the case with film, each time
you boost the ISO rating the image gets grainer. Film grain occurs as sensitivity
goes up because the light-sensitive grains of silver are more light sensitive when
they are larger. In digital images, the grain gets larger because turning up the sensi-
tivity means “turning up the volume” by increasing the electrical signal that passes
through the sensors, which causes more information to be shared between sensors,
so the “dots” appear to get bigger and some are somewhat discolored.

A few digicams (mostly more recent and closer-to-$1,000 models) feature one or
more noise reduction modes. You can use several methods to reduce noise to your
image after it’s been shot; using these methods will give you more control. On the
other hand, it’s nice to have the image look as good as possible when you send the
images straight from the camera to your client or to a Web site for the general pub-
lic to ponder.
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50 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

An interesting sidelight to this is that some of the newest and highest resolution
(4-5 megapixels at this writing) consumer digicams force you to use a smaller image
size if you turn on noise reduction, thus causing you to lose some of the advantage
you would have expected to gain. So if your primary purpose in taking the picture
is to get it onto the Web or a proof sheet as quickly as possible, use the noise reduc-
tion mode. If your primary purpose is to use the photo for print and it needs to be
as high quality as possible, shoot at the higher-resolution larger image size and
then use the instructions in Chapter 16 to achieve the noise reduction. If you have
to accomplish both goals — and you have the time and presence of mind — shoot
one picture for each purpose.

Another cause of grain and noise is using long exposures to capture scenic night
scenes. Because these exposures tend to be far longer than anyone could hope to
hand-hold, the camera is generally going to be mounted on a tripod.

Saturation controls
Digital cameras tend to be over-sensitive to some colors (mostly bright reds and
deep purples). On the other hand, when the lighting is very flat — especially if
atmospheric haze is also present — colors tend to go gray and dull.

The more advanced digital cameras have a built-in cure for both of these problems.
It’s called saturation control, and it gives you some control over the intensity of col-
ors. So the next time you have to shoot on a foggy day, turn on your camera’s satu-
ration control and crank the saturation up. Conversely, next time you shoot a
close-up of a poinsettia, lower the saturation.

Contrast control
The same cameras that feature saturation control generally feature contrast control.
Contrast control can also make colors seem more intense, but what you are really
doing is making the difference between brightness levels more distinct.

Contrast control is a lifesaver when you have to shoot scenes that simply have
more levels of brightness than you could ordinarily hope to record. It’s also a god-
send when you are trying to capture texture or create the impression of sharpness
in a subject of very limited tonal range.

Of course, you can control brightness and saturation after you’ve taken the picture
using your image-editing software. However, controlling contrast and saturation
after the picture has been taken doesn’t give you more flexibility in the range of
tones that you can capture — only in what you can do with them after you’ve
captured them.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 51

Utilizing Camera Features

In addition to the settings and modes that you can use to control the image that
your digital camera produces, you can also benefit from hardware design of various
of your camera’s components. Everything from ergonomic considerations to the
type of battery that you choose can have an impact on how your camera functions
and how you use it.

Overcoming parallax
The word parallax sounds intimidating, but it’s simply the difference between
what your camera’s optical viewfinder sees and what the film sensor sees, as shown
in Figure 2-6. In other words, it’s the difference between the framing you see and the
framing you get. The closer the camera is to the subject, the greater the difference
in how the subject is positioned in relationship to the edges of the picture. Another
problem that’s so closely associated with parallax that most just consider it to be
a part of the same problem is the difference in frame size between viewfinder and
final image.

Figure 2-6: An image as seen through an optical viewfinder (left) and as recorded
on film (right)

One way to overcome parallax is just to move the camera up and to the left in
order to place the lens more or less exactly where the shutter button was when
you clicked.

The best way to compensate for parallax, however, is to eliminate it. To do so, sim-
ply use a camera with a through-the-lens viewfinder. Almost all digital cameras have
that capability because you can use the camera’s LCD monitor, but here’s a better
way: Use a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera. The difference between what you see on
an LCD and what you see through an SLR viewfinder is that LCD monitors are usu-
ally hard to read when the outside lighting is much brighter than average indoor
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52 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

room lighting. Some cameras are much better in this respect than others, but the
only way you’ll find out is by making a live comparison in broad daylight or by read-
ing reviews on the Net or in camera magazines. Also, the resolution of an LCD is
generally not high enough for critical focusing and often only shows about 85
percent of what the camera sees (as opposed to an SLR’s typical 95 percent).

Some camera’s LCD monitors let you preview your shot, no matter what the rela-
tion of the position of the camera to the position of your eyes. These cameras have
viewfinders that swivel and tilt so that you can shoot behind you, shoot self-portraits,
see the image when you have to stand at a distance from the camera and shoot by
remote control, or shoot from angles that are at a level that is practically impossible
to view from eye level. The good news is that most SLR cameras let you preview
through the LCD as well and some of them even swivel. The most versatile swivel-
ing LCD monitors work like the one shown in Figure 2-7.

Figure 2-7: The swiveling viewfinder on the Nikon Coolpix 5000

You can also overcome the difficulty of seeing the LCD in bright light by using an
LCD hood like the one shown in Figure 2-8.

Some digital SLRs have viewfinders that are small LCDs behind an optical lens that
magnifies the LCD. Although this arrangement overcomes parallax, these viewfind-
ers are typically of such low resolution that you have to depend entirely on your
camera’s auto-focusing mechanism for accurate focus. The advantage of this
arrangement is that the camera manufacturer can claim that the camera is an SLR
while considerably cutting costs and pricing.

A true SLR is entirely optical. The image is projected from the primary lens onto a
mirror or prism that directs the image onto the viewfinder’s virtually grainless
ground glass. You can see a startling difference between the image clarity and color
on an optical SLR and on a LCD SLR. Figure 2-9 shows the difference between the
two types of SLR viewfinders.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 53

Figure 2-8: A Hoodman LCD hood

Figure 2-9: A simulation of how the same subject looks when seen on an optical
SLR and and LCD SLR
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54 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Choosing a sensor
The light-sensitive mechanism (image sensor) in a digital camera is a solid-state
device that’s manufactured in much the same way as your computer’s processor or
memory chips.

When it comes to image sensors, bigger is better for the following reasons:

✦ The light sensitive area of the image sensor chip is closer to the size of con-
ventional film, so there won’t be such a disparity between the actual focal
length of the lens and its equivalent analog camera focal length.
✦ There’s room for more light-sensing units, so resolution is potentially higher.
✦ Light-sensing units are farther apart, so there’s less likelihood of blooming.
Blooming is the bleeding of colors that can occur when adjacent pixels sense
and record a color that should have been limited to its neighbor. Blooming is
one of the most significant differences one sees in image quality between
images recorded by professional and semiprofessional cameras.

The two types of image capture devices commonly used by digital cameras are the
charge coupled device (CCD) and the complementary metal oxide semiconductor
(CMOS). The more common of these is CCD, which has been around for some time —
it was invented as an image sensor for video cameras more than a decade ago. The
one advantage that CCD chips currently offer that can’t be outweighed yet is manu-
facturing quality. Manufacturers have simply had more experience with this type of
chip when it comes to their ability to capture images and have become really profi-
cient at making them.

CCDs offer other advantages, as well. For one, they’re tiny, so they can be placed in
tiny cameras. However, because bigger is better, its size is also a disadvantage. CCDs
tend to be highly sensitive to low light, although sensitivity seems to go down as
image quality goes up, so still-camera CCDs tend to be far less light-sensitive than
their video camera cousins. CDDs also respond smoothly to varying light levels.

On the downside, CCDs crowd pixels too closely together. They also use way too
much power when compared to their CMOS competitors. Additionally, CCDs can’t
be used to store programming instructions, unlike CMOS.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 55

CMOS, the newer technology, has some great potential advantages. The first profes-
sional (or even semi-professional) level SLR camera to use a CMOS chip, the Canon
D30, has received considerable critical praise. CMOS appears to have great poten-
tial for the future. This CMOS potential over current CCD sensors in the same price
range and level of cameras includes a larger light-sensitive area with less pixel
crowding, lower cost of manufacture (eventually), and a higher level of integration
with other chip functions so that features can be programmed onto the sensor chip.
Also, fewer support chips are needed, which may lower the overall cost of making
the camera.

CMOS chips also tend to be larger for a given resolution than CCD chips. Therefore,
it’s likely that the first sensors to be the same size as a 35mm frame will be CMOS
chips. This will make it possible to buy an interchangeable lens, 35mm-style,
professional SLR digital camera that can actually use the same collection of lenses
that the photographer uses on his traditional 35mm camera at the same equivalent
focal length.

If you must choose between the two technologies, compare the CCD picture with a
picture of the same subject taken with a highly respected CMOS-equipped camera
of the same resolution. If you don’t have the opportunity to do the testing yourself,
check out the computer and digital photography magazines that review the latest
equipment.

Ergonomics
Look for a camera that feels like part of your body when you hold it. When you
wrap your right hand around it, you should feel confident that the camera won’t
drop from your hand, no matter how active you have to be when taking the picture.
Your index finger should just naturally fall on the shutter release. The zoom con-
trols should be right by your thumb, which should also easily reach the various
mode and menu buttons on the back of the camera.

The basic modes (Auto, Program, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, and Manual)
should be immediately available by turning a clearly-marked dial at the top of the
camera. The purpose of all other controls should be clearly labeled in English. If
they are labeled with cryptic icons, they may be hard to understand or remember
and send you chasing after the manual each time you need to make a special-
purpose setting. This labeling issue is illustrated in Figure 2-10.
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56 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Figure 2-10: Which controls are easiest to understand? (C-3020 versus

Coolpix 5000)

Camera size can be very important. If you’re a professional, you probably want a
camera that’s big enough to impress the art director and rugged enough to with-
stand a trip through the Australian outback. If you want to be sure your camera is
always handy, compactness is of critical importance. Even if you need portability
over in-your-face ruggedness, look for durability. Perfect examples of small but
rugged cameras that will fit in a shirt pocket are the Canon S300 and the Pentax
Optio 430.

Make sure that it’s easy to connect external accessories (especially third-party
external flash units) and that the input for external power doesn’t get in the way of
being able to hold the camera comfortably. (This is the same place where you con-
nect an external battery pack.) Finally, it should be fairly obvious how and where to
connect the USB cable (something only the cheapest cameras should be able to get
away without), the microphone (if the camera makes videos with sound), and the
video output.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 57

Digital Film Type

The type of digital film that your camera uses can be very important, especially if
you’re serious enough about your pursuit of digital photography to expect to keep
up with the state-of-the-art by upgrading your camera as new models come out. For
that reason, you may want to look at which cameras use which type of digital film
and then choose the digital film type that seems to be used on the most popular
brands of cameras. Then, as the theory goes, you will stand a better chance of
being able to make use of your investment in memory cards when you change cam-
eras. It’s not unusual to collect half a dozen memory cards over time, which is not
an insignificant investment. Also, if you work in an organization that utilizes several
(or many) digital cameras, it can be helpful to stick with one memory card format
that can be shared among users.

Frankly, that’s tough advice to follow. At the time of this writing, new memory card
types and products that use them pop up on an almost weekly basis. In order of
popularity, the most common types of flash memory digital film cards are: Compact
Flash, Smart Media, Memory Stick, Multimedia Memory, and removable disk (stan-
dard floppy, super-floppy, or miniature compact disc). To help you make up your
mind, each of these types — along with their major advantages — is described in
the following sections.

Compact Flash
Compact Flash cards are available in two types: Type I and Type II. Type II cards
look the same as the Type I card externally, but they are a bit thicker and the slots
for them can accommodate the IBM Microdrive and some higher capacity flash
memory cards. At the time of this writing, the maximum capacity of either is 1GB,
but that’s triple what it was a year ago.

By a slight margin, Compact Flash is also the most widely used type of digital film. It
can also be used in Handspring PDAs and quite a few MP3 players. The reason for
the popularity of this format is its ruggedness, comparatively low cost, size (small,
but not so small as to be too easy to lose), and versatility.

Smart Media
Smart Media is about 1.5 times as tall as Compact Flash, but only half as thick as
a dime. The thinness means that you can pack three or four of them in the same
space as a single Compact Flash card. The popularity of these cards runs a very
close second to that of Compact Flash cards. While some swear by the durability
of these cards, their circuitry is printed on the unprotected surface of the card.
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58 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Memory Stick
Memory Sticks are a Sony invention. The card is about the size and thickness of
a small stick of chewing gum and was designed for use in a variety of electronic
devices. Although they certainly work well in cameras, their main advantage is their
small size, which makes them ideal for use in small wireless devices, such as cell
phones, digital voice recorders, PDAs, and game machines. By introducing a small
proprietary format that is ideal for its top-selling wireless and PDA devices, Sony
offers an advantage to customers who also want to buy Sony’s digital cameras and
camcorders: One device can be used in all equipment. The strategy seems to be
working. Memory Sticks have already become the third most popular flash memory
card format, falling barely behind Smart Media. Ask yourself this question: Do I
want to be married to one manufacturer’s products just because I’ve invested in
their memory cards? Also, am I willing to pay more per megabyte of memory?

Multimedia memory
This is the latest thing, and probably the best format for ultra-small cameras, such
as pen cams and “spy” cams, because the media is only about the size of a thick
postage stamp. Yet it currently holds up to 64MB of memory or about 22 to 40 low-
compression 5MB JPEG image files. Like the Memory Stick, this memory format was
designed more for miniature wireless devices such as cell phones, PDAs, walkabout
game consoles, media players, and digital video cameras that also capture stills.
Currently, this format is just establishing itself.

Removable disk
One of the most popular memory formats is one of the oldest and most common-
place: the floppy disk. Sony’s Digital Mavica range of digital cameras was designed
around this format and their cameras that use it are still among the most popular
digital cameras. I suppose that people feel comfortable with the storage media and
seem to like the idea that they can send their pictures right along with a letter to
home without having to worry about whether the cameras will be able to hook up
to a computer right away. Besides, most people have a few hundred 3.5-inch flop-
pies that they want to find a use for.

This format, however, also has some serious problems: You’re lucky if you can store
more than two or three compressed 2 megapixel images, yet for what you have to
pay for the camera, you could get a much more versatile and high resolution unit of
up to 3.4 megapixels. Also, it takes forever to write each image to the floppy, and
the higher the image resolution, the longer the wait. Finally, floppies are anything
but reliable when it comes to archival qualities. One day the data is there and the
next you simply can’t read the disk.

Sony has a new removable media camera that takes 3 megapixel images and writes
them to 3-inch CD-R (write-once recordable) discs. You can put several hundred
images on one of these CDs and it’s easy to transfer the images to your computer
by reading them from any standard CD-ROM drive. The camera costs as much as
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 59

some 5 megapixel semi-pro cameras, but there’s a 2 megapixel model that sells for
about $300 less and it will record even more images on the 3-inch CD. Aside from
price, the biggest drawback to these cameras is that they’re relatively large and
heavy. After all, they have to make room for an on-board 3-inch CD-R drive.

Start-up time
One of the most important (and most often overlooked) camera features to look for
is fast start-up time. A few cameras, such as the Olympus E-20, the Minolta Dimage X,
and the Canon S-200 and S-300 start up within two or three seconds of being
switched on. Many others don’t start up until the opportunity to take the photo
has long since passed.

How fast you need your camera to start up depends largely on the nature of the
subject matter that you prefer. If you’re a reporter or if you want to catch important
family moments as they happen, start-up time can be critical. If landscapes and still-
lifes are your specialty, you may prioritize lens, viewfinder, and image quality over
start-up time.

Battery type
You should consider several things when choosing a camera in regard to the type of
batteries that it uses. These considerations include whether replacement batteries
can be found and whether you can use an external battery pack.

Replacement batteries
In terms of availability, you’re best off if your camera uses standard AA batteries. If
you can use AAs, you can buy replacements virtually anywhere. Buy NiMH rather
than NiCads — they do less damage to the environment and have no memory loss
problems, so they last longer. Rechargeable batteries are clearly marked as to
whether they’re alkaline, NiCad, or NiMH.

It is, unfortunately, becoming more fashionable to use camcorder-type proprietary

batteries. The good thing about these is that they are a little larger and may have
marginally more lifespan before recharging. The bad thing is that they are an excuse
for the manufacturer to make more money because you’re forced to buy batteries
from them at roughly four times the price of AA-style batteries. Now, ask yourself:
Am I better off being able to afford four times as many batteries so that I can put in
fresh ones when I need them, or to have a battery that costs four times as much
and lasts only about 20 percent longer than four AA’s?

Some manufacturers (Olympus is a good case-in-point) are clever enough to make a

proprietary battery that will fit into the same space as AA batteries or very long-
life, single-use lithium batteries. This is a superbly intelligent way to design a
battery compartment.
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60 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Chargers
If a charger isn’t included in the price of the camera, you’re going to have to pay
(approximately) between $14 and $50 for one. If it’s not compact enough so that
you can easily take it with you, you will definitely find yourself out on a trip or at
your daughter’s wedding and totally unable to take any more pictures. By the way,
the newest chargers will recharge the batteries in an hour or less and are intelligent
enough to automatically turn off when the batteries are fully charged. If one of
these doesn’t come with your camera, get one. Of course, you’ve always thought to
bring along lots of fully charged spare batteries.

Battery life
Even if you have lots of spares, you don’t want to find yourself running out of juice
just when the picture taking gets exciting. The higher the MAH (milliamp hours)
rating of the batteries the longer the batteries will last. (1600 is considered a very
good rating for AAs, but some are now rated at as much as 1800.) How long they’ll
last in terms of the number of shots you can take or how many hours they’ll last in
your particular camera depends partly on your camera, but mostly on how you use
it. If you constantly zoom, use flash, and keep the LCD viewfinder on, and always
review your pictures right after you’ve shot them, buy an external battery pack.
Otherwise, your batteries are bound to die just when you’re ready to take the
world’s greatest shot.

External battery packs

You can buy external battery packs that are rechargeable and small enough to fit in
your shirt pocket or to clip onto a belt for only about $50 (the same price as some
of the proprietary in-camera batteries). They’re indispensable if you’re shooting
extensively at an event or on-location because they have enough capacity to let
you shoot several hundred 5 megapixel shots without having to change batteries.
They’re also small enough and affordable enough to just keep in your camera bag
for those occasions when you suddenly realize that someone “borrowed” your AA
batteries or that you forgot to charge them overnight.

These battery packs generally come with adapters for virtually all AC input plugs —
just make sure your camera has provision for using external power (it’s the same
plug that’s used for an AC adapter). So if there isn’t an AC adapter plug, there won’t
be any way to use an AC adapter when you’re shooting indoors for still-lifes, por-
traiture, or document copying.

External flash connections

Two types of connectors are commonly used to connect external flash to your cam-
era: PC connector and hot shoe, each of which is shown in Figure 2-11. Both propri-
etary and generic versions of each are available. Figure 2-12 shows a proprietary PC
connection. In either case, they add very little to the overall cost of the camera and
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 61

give you access to a very useful source of lighting. In fact, for several types of
shooting situations, external flash is all but indispensable. Be sure that the camera
you buy has one of them.

Figure 2-11: At the left is a generic PC connection, at the right a generic hot shoe
connection

Figure 2-12: Proprietary PC connection

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62 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Hot shoe connections are more versatile than PC connections because they will
work with both proprietary and generic flash units. On first use, they may seem
less versatile because the flash must be a hot shoe flash and it must be connected
directly to the camera. However, adapters can be readily purchased that provide a
generic PC connection as well as a generic hot shoe connection. This allows you to
use any type of external flash unit. However, the circuitry in some generic external
flashes can short the internal connections in your camera.

One hot shoe adapter that seems to work well for all cameras is the Wein safe
synch adapter. At $50, it’s a bit pricey, but it contains a circuit that protects against
short-circuiting from more powerful flash units. It is especially advisable to use a
Wein safe synch if you are connecting to studio strobes.

Transferring Photos from

Camera to Computer
Professional digital cameras communicate to their host computer via very fast con-
nections — either SCSI or FireWire. As a result, you can download images directly
from the camera as quickly or more quickly than if you were to use an external card
reader. In fact, professional studio cameras are usually hooked to the computer full-
time because the computer is their only means of storing an image. If you take one
of those cameras into the field, you simply take along a fast laptop with a large hard
drive. Professional field cameras generally use PCMCIA cards for storage, many of
which are internal hard drives. You can read the images from those cameras by
putting them into the PCMCIA slot in a computer (usually a laptop) or download
them directly via a FireWire or SCSI connection. Download times are comparable in
either case.

Lower-priced cameras are a different story. All semi-professional digital cameras

and all point-and-shoots (with the exception of the Sony Mavica series, which use
floppy disks, and digital video cameras, which use FireWire) come with a cable that
tethers the camera to a computer via a USB port. In most instances, the software
that comes with the camera can be used to control the camera, to change its set-
tings via menus, and to transfer the images from the camera’s storage medium to
the computer. The image transfer process typically takes half an hour. If you have
high-capacity media, it can take what seems like a lifetime.

Devices for reading images

If you own a digital camera and plan to make much use of it, invest in an external
card reader. Three types of external card readers are available: floppy disk
adapters, card readers, and PCMCIA adapters. Floppy disk adapters are an option
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 63

only for cameras that use SmartMedia digital film. Cameras that use CompactFlash,
Memory Stick, or SD cards will have to use card readers or PCMCIA adapters. Card
readers are available that fit into one of your computer’s disk drive bays, and
although they are the fastest card readers, they cost more and can’t be moved from
computer to computer. PCMCIA card readers come in formats for all types of mem-
ory cards. You slip the memory card into one end of the adapter and the adapter
then fits into a PCMCIA card slot. If you plan to transfer your images to a laptop,
PCMCIA adapters are the handiest and fastest way to go.

Floppy disk adapters for SmartMedia

Floppy disk adapters operate at the transfer speed of a floppy disk, but they can
hold several megabytes of data (however many your SmartMedia card holds). So it
can take a few minutes to transfer all the files to your hard drive. This is a fraction
of the time it takes to transfer files from the camera via serial cable, but several
times longer than it takes to transfer files from a USB-connected card reader.

If your camera uses SmartMedia cards, you can buy a floppy disk adapter that will
fit into almost every computer on the planet, other than those with external parallel
port drives or with Imation SuperDisk Drive drives. Of course, your computer has
to have a floppy disk drive in order to accept a floppy disk adapter.

To use a floppy disk adapter, you must have your images stored on SmartMedia
because CompactFlash is too thick to fit inside an adapter that’s the size and shape
of a floppy disk. You push the SmartMedia card into a slot in the side of something
that can easily be mistaken for an ordinary floppy disk. You must have driver soft-
ware installed on the computer that uses the adapter, but you can put the driver
software on a floppy disk. Then this device makes it possible to read your digital
camera files much faster on any computer.

Floppy disk adapters don’t transfer files quite as quickly as a card adapter, but
are much faster than through a serial cable. To use them, you simply slip your
SmartMedia card into something that looks like a 3.5-inch floppy. You then insert
that into your floppy drive and your operating system recognizes the disk and its
contents — just as if it were a real floppy. The difference is that SmartMedia cards
can hold up to 256MB of information (at the time of this writing), versus 1.4MB for a
double-density floppy. So one of these adapters and a SmartMedia card could make
a great way to transfer downloaded programs and documents to your laptop with-
out having to go out and buy an external Zip drive or having to burn a CD.

Floppy disk adapters are actually somewhat less portable than you may think, how-
ever. First, you need to check the list of incompatible devices to make sure that the
host computer will be friendly. Second, you have to carry around different versions
of the driver for Macs and PCs. Finally, they are battery-powered. If the batteries
die, you can’t read your files. Keep a spare set on hand. They use very thin watch
batteries.
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64 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Card readers
Card readers are devices that enable you to insert the camera’s memory media into
a slot in a device that acts as a removable-media disk drive. They are available for
all types of digital camera memory cards. Card readers come in versions that can
be attached to the computer internally or externally via SCSI, parallel port, USB
port, or PCMCIA card slot.

Card readers look like a mouse with a mouth, the mouth being the slot into which
you place the memory card, as shown in Figure 3-13. Card readers cost between $25
and $75, depending mostly on how many different card types the adapter can read.
The type of connection to the computer also plays a role: Firewire models cost a bit
more than USB models. Most manufacturers offer models of card readers that read
both SmartMedia and CompactFlash. Recently there have been some models intro-
duced that read all four different form factors. If you buy a new adapter that reads
Compact Flash, make sure that it can also read Compact Flash II, which can accom-
modate the new high-capacity Micro Drives from IBM.

Multiple format card readers are great if you have a field staff (realtors, insurance
adjusters, or people who contribute to your company newsletter, for instance)
equipped with cameras from various manufacturers. Also, if you decide later to buy
a different make of camera, there’s a better chance that you won’t also have to buy
a different kind of card reader.

Internal units that attach to your computer’s hard disk controller are generally the
fastest drives, but they can take up space and resources that you may prefer to
devote to a CD recorder or removable-media drive (or both). Internal readers also
cost significantly more. Of course, internal card readers aren’t portable at all.

Camera Transfer Software

Every digital camera I’ve reviewed or used comes with software that lets you trans-
fer images from your camera. Windows XP has a built-in capability to transfer
images from most cameras and scanners without forcing you to use your camera’s
software. Many image-editing software packages also have this ability built in. So
look around. Chances are you already have the software means to transfer images
directly from any USB-equipped camera. However, there’s good reason to examine
what the image transfer software you use will do because it is definitely more effi-
cient to combine image transfer with image management and at least some basic
image editing for color-correction, exposure correction, and red-eye removal.

Connections for transferring images

An earlier section in this chapter pointed out the advantages and disadvantages of
using various devices for reading images. This section focuses on how to use those
same devices.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 65

PCMCIA adapters
PCMCIA (the term has been popularly shortened to PC card) adapters are available
for all the types of flash memory cards currently in vogue for use as digital film. If
your computer has an internal PCMCIA slot (found on almost all portables), this is
the fastest way to transfer your image files to a computer. However, keep in mind
that unless you buy a PCMCIA internal slot for your desktop computer, you may
have to spend extra time transferring the images from your laptop to a removable-
media drive and then to your desktop computer. Or, you may have to transfer them
via a LAN (local area network).

Put your camera’s flash memory card into a PCMCIA adapter. Then slide the PCM-
CIA adapter into a PCMCIA slot on your laptop, and the flash memory card is imme-
diately recognized as a standard drive. You can then rename the files if you like, or
simply select them and drag them into a folder on your hard drive — time elapsed:
somewhere between a few seconds and a couple of minutes. A PCMCIA adapter
(shown below) will fit directly into any standard Type 1 or 2 slot on either a Mac or
Windows laptop computer.

Using the parallel port

You can find card readers for all the types of camera memory (including PCMCIA
cards) that will attach to the parallel port of a Windows computer. These are not an
option for Mac users. The good thing about parallel port connections is that they
are as common to Wintel PCs as floppy disk drives. In other words, you can pretty
much count on being able to find a computer that you can download to in any cor-
ner of the world. The bad thing is that they are slow and comparatively bulky (par-
allel connectors are a couple of inches wide and they use thick, stiff cables).

The cable connections for a parallel port drive also connect to a PS/2 keyboard
port. Both cables have pass-through so that you can connect a printer and/or exter-
nal removable-media drive to the parallel port, and an external keyboard, mouse, or
digitizing tablet to the keyboard port.

Using a USB 1.1 port

USB stands for Universal Serial Bus — a magical new invention from Intel that origi-
nally was intended to be competition for Apple’s FireWire. USB 1.1 can transfer data
at 12 megabytes per second (Mbps), and you can attach as many as 127 devices to
a single port (most computers and adapters provide two ports). You can also plug
in and unplug devices while the computer is running. After you’ve installed the
driver for a device, the computer will recognize automatically when it’s plugged in
and will know to deactivate the device when it’s unplugged.

It didn’t take long for Apple and Intel to figure out that these two new serial proto-
cols — USB and FireWire — complemented, rather than competed with, each other.
USB is much faster than standard serial connections, and it is also compact (the
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66 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

connections are a fraction of the size of standard serial connectors) and affordable.
In fact, adding USB and FireWire to new motherboards does little to affect the price
of the motherboard. Nearly all current-generation computers are being supplied
with USB ports, regardless of platform.

Even if you don’t have the latest-generation computer, you can buy a USB card for
any PCI bus machine for around $40. You can use the same card for Macs (at least
those models that support the use of PCI expansion cards) or PCs, so this is a piece
of gear that you can hang onto if you want to switch platforms or expand your com-
puter system — even if you’re moving up to a computer that has built-in USB. If your
computer runs Windows, you’ll want to upgrade to Windows 98, Me, or XP for USB
support. If you must stick to Windows 95 or NT, you will need a computer with the
latest OEM (original equipment manufacturer) extensions to the operating system.
Check with the manufacturer of your computer to see if this is the case. USB cables
and connectors aren’t much bulkier than modular phone cables, so it’s quite easy
to pack one of these units into your camera bag.

Finally, adding USB ports to your computer can pay off in other ways. It’s an ideal
connection for all sorts of peripherals, such as spare floppy drives, mice, key-
boards, monitors, and modems. Best of all, you don’t have to worry about device or
IRQ conflicts, nor do you have to worry about having too many devices on your
standard serial, parallel, or SCSI ports. The prevalent buzz is that USB ports will
eventually replace all conventional serial and parallel ports.

USB 2.0
The most recent version of USB is USB 2.0, which transfers data at 480 Mbps.
That’s 80 Mbps faster than Firewire (see the next section “Using a FireWire port”).
However, USB 2.0 devices are just now coming online and older operating systems
may not support the standard directly. To find out the latest status of USB 2.0,
check with manufacturers of USB adapters such as Keyspan and with the USB-IF
(www.usb.org), the USB standards organization.

If you don’t have a USB card installed in your computer yet, you can buy a PCI-
based adapter that will work in many late-model PCs and Macs. Because the stan-
dard is backwards-compatible, you can use current USB devices and will be ready
for the super-high speed devices as they become more and more available. PCI
cards are selling for around $70 and PC cards are currently selling for around $100,
but these prices will surely come down as the standard gains in popularity.

Using a FireWire port

FireWire is one of several names used for a very fast serial interface that was origi-
nally invented by Apple Computer as a way to transfer digital video files to a com-
puter’s hard drive in real time. Since then, it has been rapidly adapted for use by
such data-transfer intensive devices as CD-RW and DVD-R drives, professional level
still cameras (including most SLRs) and a few card readers.
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Chapter 2 ✦ Getting the Most from Your Digital Camera 67

Note FireWire connections can also expand your creative horizons: If you happen to
interested in digital video as well as digital photography, FireWire is the de facto
standard connection for real-time data transfer from a DV camcorder.

FireWire is very similar to USB. The most significant differences are as follows:

✦ FireWire is up to 400Mbps faster than USB.

✦ FireWire costs slightly more than USB.
✦ FireWire is marginally less common than USB, but it is now commonly
installed on late model Macs, virtually all Sony PCs and laptops, and on many
higher-performance Windows computers.
✦ USB doesn’t support the hardware control that FireWire does. For example,
you can’t control your digital camera or DV camcorder with a software appli-
cation through a USB connection.

FireWire is only one of the names by which this interface protocol is known. Others
are IEEE 1394, I-Link, and Lynx. FireWire is best suited to digital video and other
ultra-high-volume transfer operations. On the other hand, if you have it or can
afford it, it’s also by far the quickest way to transfer images from camera to com-
puter. Many professional digital still cameras, particularly studio cameras, are
counting on it because it can transfer very high-resolution files virtually instantly.
This greatly reduces the time needed between shots.

If you have a staff of people turning in photos on a variety of cards, the speed of
transfer provided by FireWire card readers is a godsend. If you use high-capacity
(320MB or more) Compact Flash or Microdrive cards and a Firewire card reader,
you can work around the fact that your camera may not have a Firewire connection.

FireWire cables and connectors are nearly as small and convenient as their USB
counterparts. However, adding FireWire adds to the cost of the system. At the time
of this writing, you can add FireWire for a fairly nominal amount (about $100), and
the cost keeps dropping.

FireWire, like USB, became officially supported in Windows as of Windows 98. All
more recent versions of the operating system (Me, XP) will support FireWire.

FireWire is also plug and play, like USB. You can connect as many as 63 devices, and
as many as 17 of the connected devices can be daisy-chained. Hot-plugging, which is
the ability to plug in and unplug devices while the computer is running with auto-
matic device recognition, is also supported.

If your cards tend to have hundreds of files stored on them, as would likely be the
case with a 1GB CompactFlash or IBM Microdrive card, look for a card reader that
connects through a Firewire port.
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68 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Using a serial port

Virtually all cameras made before 2001 will attach to either a Mac or a PC only
through a standard serial port. It works, if you have patience. However, it typically
takes half an hour to download an 8MB memory card. Remember that some of the
newest cards are 64MB and even 96MB capacities. Imagine how long that takes to
download one of those through a serial port!

If a serial port is the only way your camera connects to your computer for transfer-
ring images, buy a USB, USB 2, or Firewire (in reverse order of speed and cost) card
reader. USB 2 is backwards compatible with USB 1.1 devices, so upgrading now will
prepare you for the future. Serial connectors were popular in last year’s models
because only serial ports were widely available on both PCs and Macs. When
they’re built into the camera, however, image transfers tend to be painfully slow via
serial ports. Currently, the availability of USB and FireWire is universal (although, if
you have an older computer, you may have to buy a PCI-slot adapter card.)

Note PC and Mac serial ports are not compatible, and the same cable will not work on
both systems. However, adapters are available that convert Mac serial to PC serial
or vice-versa.

Summary
This chapter explains the purpose of each of the most prominent hardware features
of today’s digital cameras. Each of these features also presents some solutions to
commonly encountered digital photography problems and those are described as
well. I also outlined which camera features can be especially helpful, the purpose of
the various shooting modes, how to overcome parallax, how to make sure you find a
camera with high-quality optics, and the value of good camera ergonomics. I also
talked about how to find the best value and performance in batteries and digital film.
This was all followed by an in-depth discussion of hardware that makes it possible to
move the pictures from your camera to your computer as quickly as possible.

✦ ✦ ✦
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Think Before
You Shoot
3
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Chapter

T his chapter covers the essential habits and considera-

tions that contribute to the creation of consistently good
pictures. Although many of the rules described in this chapter
Forming good digital
photography habits

The rules of good

apply to any type of photography, these descriptions are modi-
lighting
fied slightly to take into consideration the “gotchas” in making
digital photographs. By my definition, a good picture is one
that conveys the emotions you felt at the instant you took it. Focusing techniques
You might think of this chapter as a book of rules, but if you
do, realize that the most exciting pictures are those that have Dealing with subjects
broken the rules. This is because, sometimes, by breaking the in motion
rules you create a fresh point of view. On the other hand, if you
don’t first learn to follow the rules, you are almost guaranteed The rules of good
to produce an unacceptably (in your eyes) high percentage of composition
unpresentable pix.
Framing the subject

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
Exposing for Highlights
Digital cameras, especially those priced under $2,000, tend to
overexpose highlights and bright reds. As a result, these areas
have no detail or texture. If there are important bright areas in
your subject, reduce your exposure value by one f-stop (EV -1).
Most of the time, you can do this even when the camera doesn’t
offer any exposure control. Simply point the center of the image
at the very lightest part of the subject (use spot metering if it’s
an option on your camera) and press the shutter button until
you feel a slight resistance (or, as they say in most of the camera
manuals, “halfway”). This locks the exposure reading so that
you can move the camera to frame your subject as you desire.
Press the shutter button all the way down and the shutter clicks
to actually take the picture. Even underexposing by a full EV is
preferable to burned-out highlights — especially with the knowl-
edge that your image-editing software can recover a great deal
of detail in the shadow areas.
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70 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Tip When you’re exposing for highlights, shoot at the highest-quality compression set-
ting that your camera allows. This is important because when you use your image-
editing software to compensate for underexposed shadows, there is a tendency to
exaggerate the noise (random flecks of bright colors) that collects in the shadows.
The more highly compressed the image, the more objectionable the noise in the
shadows is likely to be.

Of course, you have much more control over this situation if your camera provides
some means of manual exposure control. Most of the cameras over $500 (and even
some lower-priced ones) will let you change the exposure value. To expose for the
highlights, set the camera at EV –1. Then, when your camera manually calculates
the exposure, it will automatically underexpose by one f-stop.

More advanced (and usually more expensive) digital cameras actually let you set
the shutter speed and f-stop (aperture) independently. Usually, such cameras will
display the currently chosen settings. So, you just reduce the meter reading by one
f-stop to make the shutter speed twice as fast. F-stop apertures are smaller when
their designated number (f8, f11, f16, and so on) is higher, just as shutter speeds are
faster when the number is higher (because they represent a fraction of a second).

Blooming
Blooming is what happens when adjacent image sensor cells pick up the light that is
actually focused on a neighbor. Blooming occurs to a much greater degree in pho-
tographs taken on less expensive cameras and is especially a problem in very
bright highlights and colors from red to purple. Because of blooming, light-colored
fabrics and the petals of flowers in the red to purple range can lose much of the
detail that gives them texture and depth.

If you own a professional camera, you probably won’t have much of a problem
with blooming. If your camera cost less than $300, I can almost guarantee you that
blooming will be a noticeable problem. Higher priced cameras vary in how much
blooming occurs, although they are improving as new models are introduced and
image sensors are made larger because the cells are less crowded. However, just
because a camera exhibits some blooming when used for shots of very bright
highlights or pinks and fuchsias shouldn’t entirely disqualify it. The camera
may do very well in many other respects.

Cutting your exposure slightly can solve the problem of blooming. If you have lots
of reds — especially very bright and light shades — drop your exposure by about
one half stop (EV –0.5). Your picture may seem too dark on preview, but you’ll be
able to fix most of that in your image-editing program. Digital image sensors seem
to be much better at capturing detail at lower light levels (up to a point) than at
very bright light levels.
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Chapter 3 ✦ Think Before You Shoot 71

Note Cameras with CMOS image sensors are reputed to have the lowest incidence of
blooming. The first two professional cameras to appear with CMOS sensors are
the Canon D-30 and, very recently, the Canon D-60. Both of these models have
been getting rave reviews regarding their lack of blooming and noise and may be
a precursor of things to come. The D-60, which sells for around $2,000 (with no
lens), is the first professional camera to drop within the price range of prosumer
cameras and the first to offer resolution at or near that of popular 35mm film
emulsions.

White balance
Different ambient light sources have different colors (or, more scientifically, color
temperatures). That’s why slide film comes in daylight (outdoor) and tungsten
(indoor) flavors. Color temperatures are measured in degrees Kelvin. The color
temperature of your average household bulb is around 3,200 degrees Kelvin. The
average color of daylight varies considerably depending on the distance of the sun
from the horizon, whether the sun is rising or setting, and what the influence of
clouds and atmospheric gases may be at the time. However, the mean temperature
of daylight ranges between 5,000 and 5,400 degrees Kelvin.

On the surface, white balance isn’t much of a problem. Most digital cameras have
an automatic white balance mode that most digital cameras utilize by default. Even
if the values set by the automatic white balance are inappropriate for the current
situation, you can generally use an image editor to correct the settings. The one
reason to dwell on the topic of white balance is that digital camera sensors are
designed to get optimum results when the color temperature of the prevailing light
is around 5,000 degrees Kelvin. You’re best off putting a color correcting filter in
front of the lens — that is, if you don’t mind taking the time and spending the
money. This action is called analog white balancing.

Most digital cameras automatically compensate for the color temperature of the
ambient light, though they vary considerably in their ability to “guess.” Some cam-
eras measure the actual light coming through the lens and — better yet — some will
let you take a white balance reading through a milky-white plastic lens cap. This is a
feature that is especially common on video cameras.

For creative purposes, it helps to have a camera that lets you deliberately set the
white balance to match the color temperature of a specific type of prevailing light. If
you have such a camera, you will be able to make it intentionally record a daylight
scene that is “too warm” by setting the color balance for tungsten light or too green
by setting the color balance for fluorescent light. Daylight and flash are essentially
the same color temperature, although flash is often slightly bluer.

Shooting a picture at the wrong color balance isn’t nearly the problem for digital
images as it is for film. This is because you can easily compensate for color balance
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72 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

in your image-processing program. However, you will lose some image definition
(data) in the process. This loss of data is only noticeable in extreme cases or when
you also do considerable exposure compensation. Just remember the garbage
in/garbage out rule: The cleaner the image you start with, the cleaner the image you
end up with.

To perform analog white balancing, you will need to purchase at least an 81A tung-
sten filter to correct for indoor light. Check your camera manual for the filter size if
your lens has screw-in threads or buy your camera manufacturer’s recommended
filter adapter and a filter that’s the right size for the adapter. It’s not critical that
you correct for all the variations in indoor lighting, since the differences are small
enough that you can easily do these in your image processing software without cre-
ating excess noise.

Long exposures
Your film doesn’t care how long you have to leave the shutter open in order to col-
lect enough light to get visible detail in your image. If you have to shoot that black
cat in a coal bin at midnight — no problem. Just dose the cat with sleeping pills so
that it won’t move for an hour or so and put the camera on a good, solid tripod.

However, attempting to use same technique with a digital camera — especially one
that costs less than several thousand bucks — will most likely result in nothing but
Jackson Pollock-like specks of color against a brownish-black field. Digital engineers
call this pure noise, which occurs because digital image sensors don’t like making
exposures much longer than half a second. If getting the picture is more important
than getting the picture quality, you can get away with an exposure of a few sec-
onds, which should get you a pretty decent shot of the Las Vegas Boulevard at
night, for example. After a few seconds, it’s all downhill, and you may want to fall
back on your film camera.

The Rules of Good Lighting

Photography is nothing without light. In fact, strictly speaking, a photograph is
nothing more than a record of the way that the ambient light reflects off the sur-
faces that are framed by the camera’s viewfinder. The sooner that you learn what to
expect from the way light behaves and how to make the best of it, the better pho-
tographer you can become.

Use natural lighting whenever possible

Granted, you will encounter plenty of occasions when using the prevailing natural light
just isn’t possible. However, all other things being equal, natural lighting is almost
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Chapter 3 ✦ Think Before You Shoot 73

always preferable to artificial lighting. Why? Well, because it looks believable —

we’re used to seeing things that way. You can shoot in natural light, crop the subject
so closely that you can barely identify the surroundings, and still make a pretty good
guess as to the subject’s general surroundings. You know instinctively whether the
photo was taken in direct sunlight at midday, outdoors in the shade, indoors by
lamplight, or in a neon-lit nightclub.

The worst kind of unnatural lighting that you can use is the built-in flash unit.
However, if you must choose between using the built-in flash and missing an
important picture, use the flash. If your camera won’t let you shoot a long enough
exposure, operate at a wide enough lens aperture, or boost the ISO rating of the
image sensor, then you’re probably not going to be able to shoot candids indoors
or at night without a flash or some other type of supplementary artificial light.
Motionless or nearly motionless subjects usually won’t pose a problem — as long
as your camera is advanced enough to let you make long exposures, and as long
as you have a tripod or some other means of keeping the camera steady while
the shutter is open.

If you’re going to shoot candids in dim available light, it’s a good idea to use an
external incident light meter. This is a helpful tool in these circumstances because
you’ll almost always be shooting in high contrast lighting conditions, in which only
the light falling directly on your subject is important. An external incident light
meter enables you to measure the brightness of the actual prevailing (ambient)
light and to determine exactly what your shutter speed and aperture combination
should be. If you don’t have access to an external incident light meter, the next best
thing is a camera with spot metering, which allows you to read from the area of
greatest importance to you (such as the highlights on faces).

Use reflectors and fill flash in bright sun

If you have to shoot close-ups in bright sunlight, you may want to consider balanc-
ing the harsh lighting contrast by supplementing the light directed into the shad-
ows. Nearly all digital cameras with a built-in flash let you choose a fill-flash mode,
which is an easy way to solve the problem, as shown in Figure 3-1. However, not all
cameras are equal in their ability to balance the fill flash with the brighter light.
Some (usually less expensive) cameras just fire the flash without adjusting its dura-
tion. This may work if the sunlight is really bright or if you’re more than six feet
away from your subject. Otherwise, the fill light is likely to be brighter than the sun-
light. The only way to know for sure is by testing or reading reviews of the particu-
lar camera you’re using. Also, most digicams priced over $500 will actually adjust
the duration of the flash in relationship to the brightness of the prevailing light.

Tip If your tests indicate that the flash tends to be too bright in relationship to the sun-
light, tape a few layers of facial tissue or tracing paper over the flash; this action
diffuses the flash so that it doesn’t create harsh countershadows, as shown in
Figure 3-2. It’s also a good technique for extreme close-ups because the amount
of light from the flash is reduced.
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74 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Figure 3-1: The model was shot in direct sunlight without built-in flash fill (left) and
with built-in flash fill (right).

Figure 3-2: Taping tissue over the built-in flash diffuses the light and also reduces
the amount of light used for fill or close-up flash.
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Chapter 3 ✦ Think Before You Shoot 75

Use the shade or a cloudy day

You may be able to control extreme contrasts in lighting by simply moving your
subject out of the glare of a direct main light, such as the sun. If you want detail in
your shadow areas, take your pictures when it’s overcast or hazy. If the subject is
small and moveable or if you are photographing people and you can control the
location, then use a shaded area — preferably one in which light is reflected off a
nearby building so that you’re not overpowered by toplight. Of course, if you are
shooting candids or news photos, you may not have this control over the lighting.

Keep the light off your lens

If the main light source (whether this is the sun, a flash, or a flood light) is aimed
directly at your lens, you’ll get something called lens flare, as shown in Figure 3-3.
Lens flare is the reflection of light on each of the elements of your lens. As a result,
the exact effect varies from camera to camera and from lens to lens.

Figure 3-3: An example of ugly lens flare

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76 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Most of the time, lens flare is a highly undesirable effect because it hides the sub-
ject. The solution to this problem is to shade the lens in such a way that shadow is
cast over the lens without showing up in the picture. An even smarter solution is to
use a lens shade that is made for your favorite lens. You can buy a lens shade with a
thread diameter as large as the largest thread diameter that you’re likely to need
and then use a step-up adapter for smaller diameter lenses, but then the shade may
be too big to be effective when the sun’s angle from the lens narrows. In other
words, the lens shade won’t be effective over as wide a range of circumstances.

Essentially, you really need to buy a lens shade that covers the widest range of cir-
cumstances for each lens as possible. The lens shades that I find most useful are
rubber and can be extended. The optimal solution is a rubber lens hood that can
extend to several depths. When the lens is zoomed to a wide-angle, the shade can
be pulled back; when the lens is zoomed out to telephoto, you pull the shade out
until it’s deeper. In some cases, there is also a middle setting for telephoto. Such a
lens shade is shown in Figure 3-4.

Figure 3-4: An adjustable focal length rubber lens shade

I can almost guarantee you, however, that you’ll forget your lens shade just when
you need it most. As long as you have the ability to preview through the lens by
using either your LCD monitor or an SLR camera, there’s an easy cure: Use your
hand as a shade. You’ll be able to see the lens flare in your SLR viewfinder or LCD
viewfinder. Just hold the hand that’s not holding the camera in front of the lens and
move it around until the flare is gone. Then quickly check to make sure no part of
your hand is still in the frame.

Use hard light for drama

Hard and contrasty lighting (a situation that often occurs in direct, midday sun-
light) tends to hide too much detail in the shadows. However, this type of lighting
is effective in certain circumstances because the shadows can become a strong
element in the composition and dark shadows tend to make a picture feel more
dramatic — or melodramatic.
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Chapter 3 ✦ Think Before You Shoot 77

The level of drama tends to increase with the angle of light. Moreover, the angle of the
light tends to dictate the mood of the drama. If the light comes from below, the mood
is menacing. If it comes from the side, you see strength and masculinity in male sub-
jects, as shown in Figure 3-5; and pensiveness or mystery in female subjects.

Figure 3-5: Strong sidelight on a male subject

Hard light is usually best for male subjects or in landscapes and still-life photogra-
phy when you especially want to dramatize the detail in highlights. Figure 3-6
shows an example of how texture can be enhanced by using hard light.

If you want a hard light effect, use one or a combination of the following techniques:

✦ Use very little (or no) fill light or reflectors

✦ Use direct lighting and avoid backlighting
✦ Use an undiffused light source, such as lightboxes, and avoid soft reflectors,
such as umbrellas. (Lightboxes and umbrellas are used for soft, diffuse light-
ing with soft-edges and open shadows.)

Cross- For more on different types of reflectors, see Chapter 5.

Reference
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78 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Figure 3-6: You can really feel the texture in this wood grain, thanks to
contrasty lighting.

Use soft light for most situations

The most all-purpose type of lighting is soft, diffuse lighting. The versatility of this
lighting is due to the fact that it allows for detail in both the shadows and highlights
and that more of the range of brightness in the subject can be recorded on the
image sensor.

However, soft lighting varies. Outdoors, for example, truly soft and diffuse lighting
usually occurs on very cloudy days and even more so if there’s fog or smoke in the
air. If you’re shooting portraits or close-up details, you’ll find even more opportuni-
ties for shooting in soft light by moving into the shade. If you do so, you should
look for what is known as open shade, which is shade that is open on the side facing
the subject — or on the side that you face the subject toward. The opposite of open
shade is closed (or enclosed) shade, which forces all the light to come from above,
thus creating dark holes for eyes. (See Figure 3-7.)
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Chapter 3 ✦ Think Before You Shoot 79

Figure 3-7: The same subject in open (left) and enclosed (right) shade.

Indoors or in the studio, you can create soft lighting by using either reflected or dif-
fused light — or a combination of the two. The softest (least directional) light is
reflected (or bounced) light. Reflected light is achieved by aiming the main light
source at anything bright enough to bounce the light back in the direction of the
subject as well as in practically all other directions. Most professionals control the
direction of bounced light with an umbrella reflector, which scatters the light in
many directions. Figure 3-8 shows a portrait taken with the light reflected from a
single umbrella.

Reflected light is often used in situations where the photographer needs to take pic-
tures with a portable flash. The flash is external and is fired at a ceiling or wall so
that the light is softer, and comes from an angle that reveals the shapes in the sub-
ject and creates a more natural-looking atmosphere. You can also use various
attachments to the flash to bounce or diffuse the flash if there is no reflective wall
or ceiling available.
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80 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Figure 3-8: The result of using an umbrella can

be seen in this portrait.

Use backlight to highlight the subject

Backlighting is lighting that’s aimed toward the camera. Backlighting is useful for
separating the subject (especially if it’s a close-up, such as a portrait or still-life)
from its background. In Figure 3-9, you can see how this has been effective in two
examples.

As lovely as backlighting can be, it does have potential negative effects; for exam-
ple, you can get lens flare due to the fact that the backlight is aimed toward the
lens. You can avoid the lens flare by using a lens shade or otherwise blocking the
light from hitting the surface of the camera lens.

Backlighting can be also be so bright that it throws the side of your subject facing
the camera into shadow. You’ll almost always want to balance backlight with
enough foreground light to fill the shadows. This is the best use for the built-in flash
in your camera — as fill flash for outdoor lighting. You can also fill the foreground
with light from a reflector, such as a white foamcore mounting board or a silvered
car windshield reflector.
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Chapter 3 ✦ Think Before You Shoot 81

Figure 3-9: Two examples of how backlighting separates the subject from
its background

In the studio, photographers usually create backlighting by placing a small, low-

powered, focused light behind the subject, as shown in Figure 3-10. This light is usu-
ally lower-powered than the main light, so filling to compensate for the brightness
of the backlight is unnecessary. Also, the potential for lens flare is minimized by
shading the backlight, usually called a hair light, by using a snoot, which is a long
black tube that fits around the light’s reflector.

Use sunrise, sunset, and clouds

If you’re shooting outdoors, you’re almost always better off if you do it in the hours
closer to sunrise and sunset. The light tends to be both softer and at an angle that
is more flattering to the subject.

You’re almost always more likely to take a successful outdoor picture if there are
clouds in the sky. For one thing, it just makes the sky more interesting and adds
atmosphere to the photo. For another, you’re more likely to get softer lighting on
the landscape, and the shadows aren’t so deep.
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82 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Figure 3-10: The bright rim of light in the hair was

accomplished by backlighting with a hair light.

Focusing Techniques
Understanding a little bit about focusing techniques can allow you to control the
image that you create. Among other things, you can learn to control which part of
the subject attracts the most interest and how to sharpen or blur the foreground
and background.

Depth-of-field
Depth-of-field is the range between the nearest and farthest subjects that appear to
be in sharp focus. Figure 3-11 shows an example of extended depth-of-field.

Digital cameras almost always give you too much depth-of-field — a characteristic
that they share with video cameras. That is because the CCD image sensors used in
these cameras are typically 14⁄ to 23⁄ the size of a 35mm still frame. So, a digital camera
lens that is the equivalent of a given 35mm camera’s focal length has to actually be 14⁄
to 23⁄ the size of the real focal length of the equivalent lens. In other words, a 50mm
“normal” lens on a 35mm camera would be only a 35mm lens on a prosumer-level
digital camera — or a 25mm lens on a digital camera with less than 4 megapixel
resolution.
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Chapter 3 ✦ Think Before You Shoot 83

Figure 3-11: Nearly everything from foreground

to background is in focus.

Now, here’s the problem: The shorter the actual focal length of a lens, the greater
the depth-of-field. Sometimes, especially when shooting extreme close-ups, the rela-
tively extreme depth-of-field offered by a digital camera is an advantage.

More often, extreme depth-of-field is a drag. All of the distracting elements such as
phone wires and flowered wallpaper are just sharp enough to make the viewer’s
eyes wander away from the main subject.

What can you do about the too-much-depth-of-field problem? Well, if worse comes to
worst, you can always use your image editor to isolate your main subject and blur
everything else, as shown in Figure 3-12. However, this isn’t quite as easy as it sounds.
In order to keep the out-of-focus areas looking natural, you’ll have to blur closer objects
first and less, and then select the areas that are farther away and blur them more.
Feather your selections so that the differing degrees of focus deficit blend together.

Here’s what you can do to avoid having to resort to your image editor:

✦ Shoot from an angle that places your subject against as plain a background as
possible.
✦ Use a slow shutter speed and have your subject move parallel to the lens
while you pan. The subject will stay sharp and the background will streak.
✦ Shoot in strong backlight and expose for the shaded side of the subject.
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84 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Figure 3-12: The background in this figure was blurred in an image-editing

program.

Autofocus
Almost every digital camera can focus automatically. Many also provide for manual
and continuous autofocus. Under most circumstances, autofocus is the best option
because it improves your chances of getting the correct focus in the least amount
of time. In other words, you’re more likely to get that shot that you didn’t foresee
wanting to take until almost the minute it happened. Many situations that you want
to capture may arise suddenly, such as your kid deciding to take that leap off the
diving board, the lady stepping into the street without looking and nearly getting hit
by a passing bus, or a deer suddenly walking into a patch of tree-filtered sunlight.

The primary consideration when using autofocus is the position of the subject.
Most autofocus cameras automatically focus on whatever is at the dead center of
the frame, and you rarely want your subject in the center of the photo. The follow-
ing steps outline a technique that you can use to work around this problem, and the
effect of this technique is illustrated in Figure 13-13:

1. Aim the camera so that the spot you want to be most sharply focused is
smack in the middle of the viewfinder or LCD.
2. Press the shutter halfway. You should feel a slight resistance, and you will usu-
ally hear the lens move as the camera autofocuses.
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Chapter 3 ✦ Think Before You Shoot 85

3. When the image is in sharp focus, do not release pressure on the shutter
release button. This is called locking focus (exposure is usually locked at this
point as well). Swing the camera to frame the picture as you prefer, then con-
tinue pressing the shutter button until it hits bottom. You’ll hear a click or see
a light flash to let you know that the picture has been taken.

Figure 3-13: The position of the subject when locking focus and when the picture
is taken

Continuous autofocus
Continuous autofocus is a feature found only on some digital cameras; although
this feature is not necessarily tied to price point, it’s also not generally found on the
least expensive models. The purpose of continuous autofocus is to accurately track
the distance of moving subjects from the lens; it’s great for sports, action, and
wildlife (both human and animal). The following steps outline how continuous auto-
focus works:

1. Select the continuous autofocus option on your camera. The process for
doing this varies, so you’ll have to look in your camera’s manual. Usually, you
choose it from a menu on your LCD preview monitor.
2. Aim the camera so that the subject on which you want to maintain focus is
dead center. Then depress the shutter button halfway. Because you’ve set the
camera in continuous autofocus mode, the camera now automatically focuses
on the subject no matter where it moves.
3. Fully depress the shutter button when the moment that you want to take the
picture arrives.

Manual focus
If you’ve had enough practice and the camera controls are easy enough for you to
access, full manual control of focus is hard to beat — especially if you’re using a
conventional (not LCD) SLR and have good eyesight and quick reflexes. Then you
can always place the focus exactly where you want it to be — which is sometimes
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86 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

not where the camera may expect it to be. For example, suppose that one person in
the picture is handing another person a very special gift and you want the focus to
be on the gift and not on the person giving or receiving it, or perhaps you want the
focus on the flying football and not on the receiver.

A more common reason for wanting to employ manual focus is when you’re shoot-
ing through or past a foreground object to the object of your photograph, which is
further away. In autofocus mode, the foreground objects are those likely to be
sharp while the object you really want to see is either fuzzy or really fuzzy. This sit-
uation is illustrated in Figure 3-14.

Figure 3-14: Attempting to autofocus through a chain link fence

Most SLR cameras let you manually focus in the same way as on a conventional
camera: You turn a switch to manual focus mode and then twist the focus ring on
the lens. However, the lenses on smaller digicams may be so small that ring focus-
ing is either impractical or there just isn’t room for a ring. With these cameras, you
usually have to pick a specific focusing distance from an LCD menu. If you want to
focus on something like the object mentioned in the previous example, you may
have to measure its distance manually or at least make an accurate guess. If the lat-
ter is the case, use a smaller aperture (higher f-stop number) and slower shutter
speed to increase depth-of-field.
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Chapter 3 ✦ Think Before You Shoot 87

Capture or Eliminate Motion

A consideration that you’ll often have to make when taking a picture is whether to
freeze all motion (including camera jiggle caused by your nervous excitement).
Sometimes you’ll want to keep the cyclist sharp and blur the background. On the
other hand, when he breaks the ribbon at the finish line, you’ll probably want to
freeze everything in that moment. The choice is yours.

Freeze the subject and blur the background

If you want to create the impression that your subject is moving very rapidly and if
the subject is moving primarily in one direction parallel to your camera (think of a
cyclist or Indy car versus a hurdle-jumper), you may want to shoot at a moderately
slow shutter speed while you pan (swing the camera) to keep the subject in the
same relative position within the frame. You can do this while hand-holding the
camera, but it takes practice to keep the camera from moving vertically while
you’re panning horizontally. In most cases, it is best to use a tripod with a panning
head. You can use the following steps to capture motion in your image:

1. Place the camera in shutter-priority mode and set the shutter speed at 1⁄60th
second (make it even less if the subject isn’t moving all that rapidly). The
camera will then set the aperture automatically.
2. Make sure that the subject is always in the same position within the frame. I
usually use the focusing/metering mark in the center of the viewfinder to
track a particular point on the subject.
3. Place the camera in autofocus mode or continuous focus mode, which is bet-
ter if you have it.
4. Be sure that you’re focused on the subject.
5. Take several shots as the subject moves past the camera from one side to the
other. If your camera has a rapid sequence mode, use it. Taking several shots
is good insurance that you’ll get at least one shot where the subject is sharp
and the background is blurred. See Figure 3-15 for an example of a series of
shots.

Figure 3-15: Several shots of the subject in motion

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88 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Use high shutter speed to freeze everything

Most of the time, you won’t want anything to be blurry on account of motion,
whether the motion comes from your shaky hands or the subject’s sudden and
unpredictable movement.

Unless you’re cold or have very shaky hands, it’s a pretty safe bet that a shutter
speed of 1⁄125th of a second will keep the picture reasonably steady, as long as you’re
not taking a telephoto (more than approximately 85mm focal length equivalent).
Double that if you’re using more than 150mm focal length equivalent and double it
again for each additional 100mm that the focal length increases.

Note The focal length of digital camera lenses (or zoom settings) is usually expressed as
the equivalent focal length needed to get the same angle of view on a 35mm
camera.

If you really have to freeze fast action, such as in most sports photography, use the
highest possible shutter speed. The following steps provide an easy way to accom-
plish this:

1. Set your camera in shutter priority mode.

2. Set the shutter speed at or above 1⁄1000th second. The aperture setting will be
taken care of automatically.
3. Check to make sure that a red light isn’t blinking at you to indicate that you’re
going to under-expose the picture. If you are in danger of under-exposure,
drop the shutter speed one full stop. Continue slowing down the shutter
speed until you stop getting alarm signals (these vary from camera to camera;
check your manual to be sure).

Use low shutter speed to blur everything

Sometimes, a really blurry picture just works magic and creates excitement. I’ve
seen this technique work to imply the hustle-bustle of movement in a big city at
rush hour, the frenzy of nightlife, or just the uncontrollable nature of the situation.
A good example of this is shown in Figure 3-16.

Forcing motion-blurring is easy:

1. Use the shutter priority mode.

2. Set the camera’s shutter speed low enough that the camera can set exposure
accurately at the lower three to four f-stops of your camera’s aperture range.
A shutter speed of 1⁄5th second is a good place to start, but experiment to see
that this is the case before you start taking pictures for real. You can delete
the test shots (unless you accidentally came up with a winner, of course).
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Chapter 3 ✦ Think Before You Shoot 89

Figure 3-16: The intentional motion-blurring

implies excitement at this party.

The Rules of Good Composition

No matter how good the digital camera is, digital photographers can benefit from
an awareness of the guidelines for making good photographs. Awareness of the
rules that tend to lead to good composition is the best place to start because these
rules are applicable regardless of the location or conditions in which the photo-
graph is shot.

Composition, in case you’re not familiar with the term, refers to the arrangement of
the various objects in the picture in relationship to one another. Even when these
objects are immobile, you can affect their arrangement in the image by changing
your point of view. Also, the highlight and shadow areas of the picture, especially if
they are prominent, can contribute as much to the composition as the positioning
of objects themselves.

These rules are made to be broken

The first rule of good composition is that there really are no rules. This is because
following certain rules too closely can result in visual clichés that may cause a
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90 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

viewer to lose interest. Cliché composition tends to make viewers feel that they’ve
“been there and done that.” This is especially true if a particular composition of a
particular subject has become an icon, such as Ansel Adams’ classic study of
Yosemite’s Half Dome. Take another picture of Half Dome from the same POV (point
of view) and the viewer’s likely first thought is, “Not as good as Ansel Adams’ shot.”
It probably doesn’t even matter that the vegetation, weather, and mood are entirely
different. To put it another way, the first rule of good composition is: Try to find a
fresh point of view.

Now that I’ve drummed that into your head, you can start to appreciate the other
rules with some perspective.

The two-thirds rule

The two-thirds rule is one of the oldest and most tried-and-true compositional guide-
lines. It’s also called the rule of thirds. The idea is to draw an imaginary 3 x 3 grid
across your picture. Any point where the grid lines intersect is a point where the
eye naturally tends to find a center of interest. The intersections that are two-thirds
from one edge of the picture are the points of greatest interest — thus the two-
thirds appellation. Figure 3-17 shows this grid at its points of primary interest.

Figure 3-17: Amazing how this seemingly random composition follows the
rule of thirds.
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Chapter 3 ✦ Think Before You Shoot 91

In the real world, you’ll find it nearly impossible to strictly place the center of inter-
est at one of these points. Fortunately, “somewhere in the vicinity” is close enough.
Also, virtually any placement of the center of interest that is closer to one of the
two-thirds lines is more desirable than placing it too close to the center or too close
to one of the edges. Placing the center of interest too close to the center of the pic-
ture tends to make it a boring composition. Placing the center of interest too close
to the edge tends to lead our eyes completely out of the picture, rather than draw-
ing them in.

Of course, this rule has exceptions. For example, when you’re trying to picture
power and intractability, placing the subject dead center makes us feel that there’s
no way around it.

The shapes of a composition

You may not even know that compositions have shapes. Strictly speaking, maybe
they don’t. But compositions in which the eye is led in a circle, along an S-curve,
about the perimeter of a triangle, up or down a C-curve, or down a V all tend to
work in particular ways:

✦ The S-curve: S-curves gently lead our eye into the picture. S-curve composi-
tions are generally soothing, pass multiple points of interest, and also have a
way of denoting femininity.
✦ The Triangle: A triangle is the strongest geometric shape. Use triangular com-
positions to denote strength.
✦ The C-curve: A C-curve is useful for framing the subject or gently leading our
eye into the picture.
✦ The V-shape: A V-shape tends to emphasize perspective and to pull you from
one of the edges of the picture to its center of interest.

Seldom is there only one center of interest in a photograph. Different points of

interest can form the path of a compositional shape. This helps to ensure that the
viewer’s eye will travel from one point of interest to another. Shapes also tend to
carry emotional messages.

For example, the shape of a circle imprisons our eyes and forces our eyes toward
the center of the circle. Circles are also liberating, in that they can take us away
from the rectangular boundary common to almost all photographs.

The most common use of circular composition is the vignette. You can make a
vignette by fading the image out from the center until it is framed in a circle of light-
ness or darkness. Usually, the vignette fades to complete white or black, but it can
be much more subtle and still be effective. Figure 3-18 shows a traditional vignette
surrounding a traditional portrait.
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92 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Figure 3-18: A vignette forms a circle to hold

the focus of attention on this portrait.

Framing the Subject

The main thing that distinguishes a color photograph from real life is that it is
seen in a square frame, rather than as a panorama with no definitely defined edges.
Along with composition, what we put into that frame makes the difference between
a picture and a great picture. The following sections discuss some considerations
to make when framing the subject.

Don’t include anything unimportant

This concept is best summed up with the phrase “move in close.” Force the viewer
to concentrate on the thing that you want to show. This advice goes for panoramic
landscapes as well as for macrophotographs of bugs. In other words, you may want
the viewer to see something that includes a lot of territory. Nevertheless, you want
to be sure that the frame doesn’t include so much that your audience misses the
point.
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Chapter 3 ✦ Think Before You Shoot 93

Keep the background simple

Unless clutter is the point of the picture, such as a portrait of your great aunt’s
attic, avoid it. Clutter, by my definition, is anything that distracts from the subject.
Unless ugliness is the point of the picture, clutter is anything unattractive: tele-
phone lines, litter, and so forth.

The following are the three best techniques for keeping the background simple:

✦ Place your subject against an area of relatively unadorned space, such as a

wall or a distant (and preferably out of focus) landscape.
✦ Throw the background out of focus. If you’re shooting with a prosumer or
consumer-level digital camera, you may have to resort to blurring the back-
ground in your image editor.
✦ Blur the background with motion. To do that, pick a background that’s in
motion or put your subject in motion and use a long enough exposure that
the background is truly blurred. It will take some practice to get this tech-
nique down. Fortunately, with digital film, all you lose is time.

The exceptions to this rule are those occasions when the background itself is a
strong contributor to the picture’s message. Maybe it is all the “stuff” that enriches
the subject of the portrait. Maybe it’s just the texture of the atmosphere. If the
background is important, you want to do everything possible to keep it razor sharp,
which you can do by using a tripod and a small aperture.

Use lighting contrasts to strengthen composition

Strong lighting contrast is often undesirable, as discussed previously in the section
on lighting. However, in those instances where it is desirable, you capitalize on that
fact by using it to strengthen your composition and the compositional shapes.
Don’t be afraid to use light to lead the eye.

Leave space in front of motion

If you are shooting action, especially if speed (as opposed to climax) is the point,
leave lead space in front of the subject. Remembering the rule of two-thirds, keep
the fast-moving subject headed into the empty two-thirds of the frame.

Use perspective
Place your main subject between objects that are large and close to the camera
and others that are small and far away. Alternatively, find converging lines that
give the viewer a feeling of space and depth. This gives the viewer the feeling of
being there — of being surrounded by real space.
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94 Part I ✦ The Role of Digital Photography

Account for shutter lag

If your pictures depend on timing, be sure that you are using a professional or pro-
sumer-level camera with 3 megapixel resolution or higher. This is not an absolute
requirement, but most less-expensive and earlier-generation digicams exhibit a
marked delay between the time the shutter trigger is fully depressed and the time
the exposure is actually made.

If you have such a camera, you can do something about it: practice, practice, prac-
tice. Practice anticipating the peak of a motion or expression. For example, suppose
that you’re shooting a baseball game and you need to capture the instant before the
ball actually strikes the first baseman’s glove. You will have to learn to shoot an
instant after the ball leaves the second baseman’s hand. Furthermore, you’ll have to
get good at picking just the right instant.

If you frequently shoot similar situations, such as a model breaking into a smile, try
videotaping such moments. Then play back the repeat moment over and over while
you practice firing your camera. You’ll get a good sense of when you have to shoot
to anticipate that peak of action or expression. In fact, you’ll be amazed at how
much your timing will improve as a result of such practice — even when you don’t
have to worry about shutter lag.

Tip When you are faced with anticipating shutter lag in order to get the peak of the
action, start counting aloud at the instant you press the shutter button. After a
while, you’ll get a good idea of how many “beats” must pass before the shutter
fires. A bit more practice and you’ll figure out how far ahead of time you need to
press the shutter in order to have the shutter “click” at the desired moment.

By the way, because many digital cameras don’t have actual shutters (the image
sensor just activates for the required fraction of a second), there’s no shutter click.
Look for a camera that gives you some audio cue as to when the picture-taking
instant occurs. Many digital cameras will give you a little beep. Several Kodak mod-
els actually simulate a shutter click — a great idea. Unless all your digital photos
will be of static subjects while your camera is mounted on a tripod, don’t even
think about buying a camera that doesn’t give you some sort of audio signal at the
firing of the “shutter.”

Summary
This chapter was all about forming the right habits and routines so that you can
take good photos. In particular, I focused on getting into habits that keep you pre-
pared, learning good lighting and focusing techniques, and understanding the rules
of good composition. I also discussed how to keep the subject in motion and how
to frame the subject.

✦ ✦ ✦
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P A R T

The Shoot and II

the Equipment ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Part

P art II contains four chapters that discuss how to prepare

for different types of shooting situations. I advise you on
what to take with you when you have to shoot on location,
Chapter 4
On Location

Chapter 5
whether you are going to be on the road or down the block. I
In the Studio
also explain how to set up a workable studio for digital pho-
tography, with a special focus on some indoor lighting equip-
ment that’s uniquely affordable for digital photographers Chapter 6
without compromising functionality. The section concludes Useful Photo
with how to equip your computer specifically for digital Accessories
image editing.
Chapter 7
Outfitting Your
Computer

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
06549510 PP02.F 8/22/02 2:37 PM Page 96
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On Location 4
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

I n photographer’s vernacular, when you take your camera

away from home and the studio, you’re shooting on loca-
tion. In this chapter, I address the most typical on-location
In This Chapter

types of shoots, whether they are photo-projects or assign- Events

ments. Each type of shoot is described in a self-contained
section so that you can refer to it before you leave home. Candids
Every shoot requires some standard equipment, but each
section has a checklist of additional accessories that you Sports and action
will need on that particular type of shoot.
Travel

Portraits
The Essential On-Location
Nature
Equipment
Macros
You should never be without some specific items when shoot-
ing on location — especially if you’re driving to get there. If
Architecture and
you’re driving to the location, you can keep tripods and reflec-
urban views
tors in the trunk. As long as they’re in the car, they’re at least
relatively accessible. If you’re traveling, take along a backpack
that’s made for digital photography and can hold all of the ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
essential equipment. On days when you don’t need it, you can
leave the backpack in your hotel and take along a smaller bag.

The following list is meant to be comprehensive. You won’t

need everything all the time, but this is a good checklist:

✦ Camera safety items:

• Neck straps
• Lens shades
• UV filter
✦ Camera bag or backpack
✦ Extra memory cards
✦ Extra batteries or a battery pack
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98 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

✦ Filter set
✦ Any supplementary lenses that you own
✦ Tripod or monopod
✦ Table-top tripod
✦ LCD shade
✦ Off-camera flash
✦ Battery recharger and (if necessary) cord

When one of these accessories is especially important to a particular type of loca-

tion shoot, the reason for its importance is discussed in the following sections.

Cross- Neither this list nor the rest of this chapter is meant to be a complete reference for
Reference
your accessories. If you want descriptions, details, suggestions for use, and recom-
mended manufacturers for each of these items, check out Chapter 6, which covers
accessories for both outdoor and indoor shoots in detail and presents the major
strong and weak points of alternative choices.

Portraits
Pictures of people and animals are by far the most popular category of photogra-
phy. Most of us put the subject in front of the scenery so we can save film and
prove that we’ve been there. Be aware, however, that combining the subject with
the Louvre or Mt. Rushmore is usually a bad idea because it confuses the viewer
as to what the center of interest should be.

Using a camera’s built-in flash is very useful for filling shadows in strong backlight-
ing or high-contrast settings, as shown in Figure 4-1. On the other hand, if it’s the
only light source (which is true more often that not), it’s the least flattering light
source you can find.

Cross- Chapter 5 provides more information on portrait lighting.

Reference

The subject’s position and expression

The subject of most people’s pictures is other people. After all, that’s who we
mostly like hanging out with. Here are some ideas on how to improve on your
pictures of people.
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Chapter 4 ✦ On Location 99

Figure 4-1: Fill flash in bright sunlight

Get to know your subject

The more you know about your subject, the easier it is to interact with that subject.
You have a better chance of knowing what makes your subject smile, frown, and
otherwise communicate his or her passions. Those passions will be obvious to the
viewer of the photos, so they’re important. Models will often bring along a bio —
be sure to ask them for it. Most professional business people have a bio as well. If
you’re shooting with a stranger and you have time to interview them before the
shoot, do so. If you know your subject’s background and interests, you are likely
to have insights, which can inspire more expressive poses. Your primary interview
question should be: What’s really important in your life? Be sure you’re ready to
shoot while you’re conducting the interview. Some of the subject’s most sincere
expressions will come out naturally during the course of the interview. Some
expressions can come off as funny faces, but don’t be concerned with accidental
bad shots — they can be easily erased and cost nothing. The bad shots just
increase your chances of getting the exceptionally good shots.
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100 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Make the subject act

Whether or not you know your subject well, it’s a very good idea to ask them to pre-
tend to be in situations that will bring out the character you want to portray. Ask
them to flirt with the camera (not with you — that can be threatening or impolite),
take command of the imaginary audience, think about a sad or nostalgic moment,
or imagine winning something or getting a great gift. You can get different results by
asking these questions repeatedly in different surroundings, at different times of the
day, and in different lighting situations.

Change locations and clothing often

You’ll keep your model more interested and engaged if you don’t insist on maintain-
ing the same pose, lighting, or surroundings for more than a dozen shots or so. The
exact number of shots in one setting or position depends on how fast you shoot
and on how expressively versatile your model is.

Don’t let your subject square their shoulders

Unless your subject is a wrestler, weight-lifter, or in the military, you don’t want
their shoulders parallel to the lower edge of the picture frame. Have the shoulders
turned so that one is closer to the camera than the other. This makes an angled line
that leads the viewer’s eyes to the subject’s face as demonstrated in Figure 4-2.
After all, the purpose of a portrait is usually to concentrate the viewer’s eyes on
the subject’s face.

Figure 4-2: The subject has her shoulders squared in the portrait on the left.
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Chapter 4 ✦ On Location 101

Keep the subject’s chin down

Unless you want the subject to look as though they’re about to dominate you, it’s
a good idea to keep the chin down. The subject’s eyes are larger because they’re
closer to the camera. The face becomes longer and thinner (most women love
that one).

Lighting
In general, I recommend that you use soft light for women and babies and stronger
light for male subjects, as in Figure 4-3. Lighting sources that don’t create sharp-
edged shadows generally create a more feminine mood. They also soften skin tones
and discoloration and tend to minimize wrinkles and skin problems. On the other
hand, if you want the macho, rugged look, go for more direct sunlight and a non-
diffused flash. Not only is the character of the lighting more rugged, but you’ll also
pick up more texture and contrast in clothing and hair. If you do use bright hard-
edged lighting (especially side-angled sun), it’s usually a good idea to fill the shad-
ows with your built-in flash.

Figure 4-3: Male portrait in strong sunlight

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102 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Keep the background plain

Generally, if you are shooting anything other than a character or culture portrait,
the less you see of anything but the subject, the better. I love to use backgrounds
like nearly blank walls that have just enough patina and character to set a mood,
but not enough to draw attention from the subject.

If you don’t have a flat background handy or if you want some of the surroundings
to give character to your subject, the easiest way to keep the viewer’s attention
centered on your subject is to throw the background out of focus. How far out of
focus you make the background depends on your purpose for taking the picture.
Obviously, if you’re shooting swimsuit fashion in the tropics, you want the sur-
roundings to contribute to the mood and the message. On the other hand, if the
surroundings are just unavoidable, use as large an aperture (lowest-numbered f-
stop) as possible so that the background will be as much out of focus as possible.

This is another arena in which the digital darkroom can be a big help. Information
presented in Chapters 11 and 12 will help you find ways to digitally blur or totally
remove the surrounding background. Keep in mind, however, that such digital
tricks can reduce the credibility of the image and they take time to create. In other
words, don’t place all your bets on fixing something digitally that you wouldn’t
have to fix if you had followed proper procedures in the first place.

Note In order to ensure the shallowest possible depth-of-field, use your camera’s
Aperture Priority mode. Aperture Priority mode allows you to set your camera’s
aperture to a fixed setting. Using the widest aperture, which is the smallest f-stop,
ensures that your camera has the shallowest possible depth-of-field while auto-
matically setting the shutter accordingly.

Use makeup
If your subject is female and knows how to apply makeup (especially a pancake
foundation) so that it doesn’t look overdone — encourage her to do so. It can save
you a lot of retouching time; and the proofs, which are usually not retouched, will
look much more flattering.

Keep shutter lag to a minimum

Minimizing shutter lag is crucial in any situation when the moment that the shutter
clicks must be in synch with a critical moment that you are trying to capture. For
example, this magic moment may be when a sparkle in someone’s eyes corresponds
with the peak of his or her smile. In sports, this instant may be the split second when
the tackle hits the receiver. Chapter 3 gives you a routine that will ensure that you
obtain the shortest shutter lag possible for your camera. However, the most critical
factor is the inherent shutter lag in the specific camera that you own. Generally
speaking, shutter lag decreases with newer and more expensive cameras. Most pro-
fessional SLRs have virtually no noticeable shutter lag. The latest generation of circa-
$1000 prosumer cameras tends to have extremely short shutter lag times as well.
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Chapter 4 ✦ On Location 103

Pay attention to the subject’s eyes

The eyes (unless they are closed or in profile) are usually the most emotionally
attention-getting aspect of a portrait, as you can see in Figure 4-4. If the subject’s
face is changing too rapidly to pay attention to everything and you have to shoot
quickly, you should watch the subject’s eyes most carefully.

Figure 4-4: A message can be conveyed almost solely through the eyes.

A portrait photography checklist

If you’re setting out to shoot portraits, you may find the following items most useful:

✦ A warming filter is especially useful to warm skin tones in the shade or on a

cloudy day.
✦ A diffusion filter can help to soften the lighting and spread the highlights,
which reduces the appearance of wrinkles.
✦ A car windshield reflector is a useful tool for bouncing light back into
shadows.
✦ A gray card can be used to check color balance when light is bouncing from
nearby colored walls, stained glass, or mixed lighting.
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104 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

✦ A tripod and remote camera control can free your hands so that you can
hold reflectors or objects to shade or intrigue your subject. These items are
also indispensable when shooting portraits at dawn or dusk, when longer
exposures are required due to failing light.
✦ A portable mirror allows your subject to check their makeup and the details
of their clothing or accessories.

Candid Photography
Candid photography is very closely related to portraiture, as in Figure 4-5, so you
may want to check the previous section for any hints that sound workable for can-
dids, as well. Because you usually have to capture a moment that happens sud-
denly and will never happen again, you may also want to check out my suggestions
for action photography, located later in this chapter. The most distinguishing char-
acteristic of candid photography from your perspective as the photographer is that
you should do whatever you can to make yourself invisible. Otherwise, your sub-
jects are likely to become self-conscious and won’t behave naturally or in a way
that’s realistic for the given situation. That’s why most of the following hints relate
to the human aspect of shooting candids. Most journalistic photos are considered
candids because the photographer reports on what actually happened, rather than
on what the subject wanted the world to see.

Be prepared to be mistreated
It is my understanding as a professional photojournalist that if your subject is out
in public (as opposed to being at home or in a private office) you have every right
to photograph that person — provided that the photograph is not used to exploit
that person. However, you may not subsequently use that photograph in order to
promote a commercial product or to provide a testimonial of any sort. I don’t mean
this as legal advice, however. For the real thing, be sure to check with a lawyer.

Unfortunately, there has been bad press about paparazzi (freelance press photogra-
phers) who will shoot any picture that embarrasses the subject — just because this
type of picture is the easiest to sell. We read and hear about this so much that the
general public has become increasingly paranoid about having pictures taken. So
don’t be surprised if you get a hostile reaction.

Generally, the best thing to do if you get a negative reaction is to explain that you’re
taking the photo to be used as fine art and that you don’t want any self-conscious
or unnatural behavior or expressions in the photo. Then offer to show them the pic-
ture and, in the same breath, offer to erase it if they find it embarrassing. Offer to
e-mail them a copy if they like the photo. Chances are, others in the area will over-
hear your explanation and will relax. On the other hand, you may have to fight off a
crowd if you make yourself too popular — but worse things could happen. Of
course, the fact that you are using a digital camera is what gives you the ability to
make yourself popular by being able to show off the picture as soon as it’s taken.
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Note If you want to take pictures of strangers that you may later want to sell for com-
mercial purposes or to a stock agency, or if you just want to make sure you’re cov-
ered, ask your subjects for model releases. A model release form is included on
this book’s CD-ROM that you can print out for that purpose. I usually ask for the
model release after I’ve taken the picture and shown it to the subject. At least the
subject knows at that point whether it contains anything embarrassing.

Dress to blend
Try to fit in with the crowd as much as possible. Dressing the way they dress is really
only part of fitting in. Darker clothing and black equipment are much less noticeable
than anything loud or shiny (unless you’re in a crowd of dancing gypsies).

Use a swiveling LCD

Preview monitors that swing and tilt in virtually every direction are a big help in
shooting candids. When you’re in a crowd, you can shoot over people’s heads, and
when you want to shoot from a very low point of view, you don’t have to lie in the
mud. My favorite swiveling monitors are those on the Nikon 5000 and the Canon G2
because they not only make the monitor viewable from virtually every angle, but
they also swing shut in such a way that the surface of the LCD screen is protected
from bumps and scratches.

Use short shutter lag

Capturing the meaningful instant is a required stop on the path to making a great
photo, and reducing shutter lag is instrumental in achieving that goal. Be sure to
turn off any feature (such as automatic flash and the LCD monitor) that may cause
your camera to need any extra time for computed calculations.

Be ready
If you interrupt a candid shoot to go inside for lunch or to make a phone call, take
advantage of the break by changing batteries and film cards. Using your time wisely
will help to minimize the risk of missing a shot because you were too busy making
those changes.

If it’s a really sunny day and you can’t wait until the light is a little less contrasty
and a little lower in the sky, you may want to turn on your interior flash and use the
Fill Flash mode (if that’s a feature on your camera). Remember, however, that the
flash will attract attention. You may find it a better compromise to use the Fill Flash
command in Photoshop Elements or something similar in Photoshop 7 by adding a
layer, filling it with white, and putting the white layer in Soft Light mode. If you plan
to use either of the last two tricks, be sure to use spot or center-weighted metering
and to expose specifically for the highlights.
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106 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

I recommend that you put your camera into one of the automatic modes so that no
matter how unexpected the photo op, you’ve got a good chance to capture the pic-
ture. However, if you prefer to shoot in Manual mode, use an old press photogra-
pher’s trick called the “10-foot f8 rule.” If you set your manual focus at ten feet and
your aperture at f8 in Aperture Priority mode, then virtually everything in the pic-
ture will be in sharp focus from about one foot to infinity. You can let the camera set
the shutter speed and, unless the lighting is really dim, it will be adequate to stop
normal motion (anywhere between 1⁄60th second and 1⁄500th second at ISO 100). If
you’re shooting later in the day, boost the camera’s ISO rating to 200 or 400. The
picture may be a bit noisier, but that beats not getting the picture or getting a
blurry picture.

Figure 4-5: A coffee house candid

A candid photography checklist

Here are a few items that may make your candid shooting more successful:

✦ Model releases: This document is especially useful in case you make friends
with one of your subjects and think that you may want to publish the photo.
You’ll find the text for a model release on this book’s CD.
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Chapter 4 ✦ On Location 107

✦ Extra memory cards and batteries: You don’t want to have to plug-in and
download images or stop to change batteries before you’re ready to shoot
again. Memory cards have become too affordable to make it worthwhile to try
to work without an extra.
✦ A supplementary telephoto lens: It’s much easier to shoot candid close-ups
while remaining unnoticed if you use a lens that will keep you 20 to 30 feet
away from the subject. One of my favorites to use on my Nikon Coolpix 5000 is
the Kenko 6X telephoto. This type of lens also comes in very handy for shoot-
ing small things in nature.

Event photography
Event photography usually refers to photographing planned and highly scheduled
events. Such events usually take place in very rapid succession, so you will con-
stantly find yourself in new situations and locations. Events usually (but certainly
not always) take place indoors. Finally, because events generally have sentimental,
marketing, or traditional significance, they tend to be paid assignments and you are
expected to not miss anything of importance. Event photography includes weddings,
graduations, press conferences and product announcements, and corporate meetings
and celebrations.

Get a schedule
If you’re planning on recording an event with photographs, be sure to contact the
event planner(s) to discuss the schedule, significance, location, and participants
for each important occurrence during the event. This is the only way you can sensi-
bly plan ahead and expect to be prepared for challenges that may be posed by
crowd presence, lighting quality and level, sensitive issues surrounding the event,
and so forth.

Make a shot list

Working from the schedule and with the event planners, make a “must have” list of
shots. You may even want to “storyboard” this shot list to include snapshots of the
participants so that you and your assistant can identify the important participants
and know why they are important.

Take an assistant
If you’re going to be serious about event photography, you must have a trained
assistant. An assistant can check your camera readings and set up the camera for
the next shot. The assistant can also keep an eye on the schedule and let you know
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108 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

when you must leave one scene to go to the next. An assistant also pins wrinkled
wedding dresses, provides makeup for shiny noses when necessary, and can act as
your clone when you have to be in two places at once. Having an assistant also
means that you have the honor of training a future world-class event photographer.

Use two cameras

In an ideal world, your main camera and your spare camera are identical. This
means that you will instinctively know where all the buttons are when your assistant
hands you a camera that’s already been metered and otherwise set up for the next
shot. Remember, you may have to shoot one scene that requires a telephoto lens
extension followed by another scene that requires using three slave-synchronized
flash units.

Make arrangements to be in the front row

If there are times in the schedule where the scene involves a crowd, be sure you get
to the location soon enough to ensure that the crowd won’t be blocking your shot.
If you want to shoot a wedding ceremony, you want to be in the front row. To cap-
ture the couple coming down the aisle, you need to be in position where you can
jump into the aisle just ahead of them. When the rice is thrown, you want to be out-
side next to the car. For all these highlights, the key is planning ahead so that you
are in the right place at the right time. I use a wedding as an example because it’s
such a common one, but similar highlights exist for every kind of event.

Learn to use supplementary flash

Most events are indoors, but you still need to light the whole venue evenly and in a
way that appears natural on camera. At the very least, you’ll need an external flash
that has a guide number three to four times as high as the internal guide number on
the built-in flash. If you have to light whole ballrooms or a whole group of gradu-
ates, you’ll need several flash units attached to slave units that will fire at the same
instant as the flash that’s attached to the camera. Most slave units make the flash
that they are attached to fire when they “see” the light from another flash. However,
if numerous photographers are attending the event (such as a press conference),
light sensor slaves will fire every time another photographer’s flash fires. This will
automatically make you the most annoying photographer at the event. To get
around this, simply use sonic or infrared slave sensors that can be tuned to fire
only at a certain frequency that is unique to the slave-firing unit attached to the
camera’s flash connector (or trigger).
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Chapter 4 ✦ On Location 109

Take a preview screen

At certain types of events, you may want to take along a digital picture frame (a
laptop-size LCD screen in a frame) or even your laptop. You can then set up a table
that shows a continual “slide” show of the pictures you have been taking as the
event moves along. This can encourage more guests to order prints or souvenirs
from the photographer. It’s also good event entertainment.

An event photography checklist

✦ Multiple external flash units and slave triggers
✦ A schedule of the event
✦ A shot list
✦ Twin cameras

Sports and Action

The chief requirements of sports and action photography are a high shutter speed
and a long lens. You also have to practice following the action until the precise
moment when the shot will be best composed and most meaningful. If you are
going to shoot baseball, go to lots of little league games and practice, practice,
practice. That’s how you get into Sports Illustrated. Watching an activity to practice
capturing highlights also teaches you about the sport or event, which can help you
to acquire an instinct for when the peak of the action may occur.

Use a zoom lens

The ideal piece of equipment is a camera that features a 7:1 or 10:1 zoom lens. It’s
even better if the same camera has built-in image stabilization. Image stabilization
utilizes a variation on an electronic gyroscope, which keeps the image in the same
place on the film plane, even if the camera jiggles when the shot is being taken.
Image stabilization is important because it becomes nearly impossible to keep the
camera steady enough when the focal length of the lens is more than the equivalent
of 300mm. The equivalent of a fully extended 10:1 zoom lens can be close to
400mm.

The reason you will need such a long lens is that close-up action photos generally
have more impact. Additionally, most sporting events simply don’t allow you to get
close enough to make the ball or the athlete much more than a fly-speck.
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110 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Freeze the action

Most of the time, when shooting sports or action, you want to freeze the action. If
you’re indoors and within range, using a flash is a good idea because it can freeze
almost anything short of a speeding bullet (and some special-purpose flashes can
even do that). A flash isn’t very practical for indoor sporting events, however. First,
it’s often prohibited because it can temporarily blind an athlete. Second, only the
highest-powered external portable flashes will reach out far enough to light the sub-
ject. If you have to shoot indoors, boost your ISO rating to 400 (or even 800, if the
camera permits). You’ll get a lot more noise in the picture than is really desirable,
but that’s a lot better than not being able to take the picture at all.

If you’re shooting outdoors, you can’t depend on the short duration of the flash to
freeze the action, because the prevailing light will be brighter than the flash and will
determine your choice of shutter speed and f-stop. Because you’re trying to freeze
action, don’t even consider using a shutter speed of less than 1⁄500th of a second. In
fact, boost the shutter speed as high as lighting conditions permit. Depth-of-field is
always a secondary consideration. Besides, a wide aperture and shallow depth-of-
field help to keep attention focused on the star athlete.

Pan with the subject

One way to freeze the action at slower shutter speeds is to visually register the
position of the subject within the camera frame and then carefully maintain that
position while the subject moves. This works best if the subject is moving parallel
to the film sensor plane, rather than toward or away from it.

The result of panning to follow the action while using a relatively slow shutter
speed is shown in Figure 4-6. Notice that the subject is relatively sharp while the
background blurs in such a way as to show the direction and speed of movement.

Be where the action is

Most peak action occurs so quickly that it’s a big help to know where the action is
most likely to happen. If it’s a sporting event, watch the press corps to see where
they position themselves. If you’ve participated in the sport yourself, you’ll proba-
bly know where the action is going to be. Most extreme sports, such as skateboard-
ing and snowboarding and ski jumping feature one spot where all the action occurs.
If you are interested in boxing and wrestling, the action is confined to a ring, so it’s
not too hard to be within reasonable distance.
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Chapter 4 ✦ On Location 111

Figure 4-6: The skateboarder was shot at 1⁄60th of a second.

Use burst mode whenever possible

Unless you’re an experienced sports photographer or are otherwise already experi-
enced enough to anticipate the moves of the sport (maybe you were a high school
quarterback or an Olympic swimmer), it’s going to take lots of practice, luck, or
both to precisely catch a peak moment that may occur in less than 1⁄100th of a sec-
ond. The best thing you can do until you get good at it is to take lots of pictures.

One feature that’s really a godsend is variously called burst, rapid-fire sequence, or
continuous mode. All these modes shoot between 3 and 15 frames as rapidly as the
limitations of your camera allows. The number of frames and the speed at which
they are shot varies so widely that you may want to investigate the capability of
your current or future camera, especially if you are choosing it to shoot sporting
events. If you haven’t bought the camera yet and action photography is your
main passion (during daylight hours, at least), you can buy cameras (such as the
Olympus C-2100) that are made primarily for sports photography. These cameras
are great for rapid sequence shooting and also sport 10:1 zooms (or closer) and
stabilization. Most of these cameras feature lower resolution than more general-
purpose cameras. Generally speaking, the lower the resolution, the faster your
burst mode can shoot — and the more frames per second it can shoot.
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112 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Speaking of frames per second, if you’re shooting for the Web and 640 x 480 fps (or
thereabouts) is good enough for your purposes, you can guarantee catching the
moment by shooting a movie instead of a still. Then you can use just the right
frame from the movie as your still. This is a perfect technique for illustrating a
Web magazine, presentation, or TV show. Simply preview the footage in your
video-editing software and save the frame that you want as a still image.

A sport and action photography checklist

The camera that you take on this type of shoot should have the following capabilities:

✦ Extreme telephoto capability

✦ Image stabilization
✦ High ISO setting
✦ Rapid sequence and movie modes

Travel
Travel photography requires special considerations that can affect how you equip
yourself and what you should look for when you’re shooting:

✦ You are generally too far away from home to run back for something you for-
got, so plan ahead.
✦ You may not have another opportunity to capture an image, so try especially
hard to get the picture.
✦ You never know what circumstances you may encounter or what transporta-
tion will be available, so you will want to have portable equipment.
✦ You can’t predict the level of security, so you need to protect yourself from
theft.

Always have your camera(s) with you

The chances are slim to none that you’ll ever be back here again. Even if you are
traveling to a favorite vacation spot, the chances that the fashions will survive
another year or that your kids will look the same next year are pretty slim. In other
words, you aren’t likely to have another opportunity to take the same kinds of pic-
tures. If you’re bothered by the idea of being loaded down with equipment (believe
me, some people appreciate the extra workout), you can carry along one of those
tiny pocket cameras or a pen camera. You can even get pocket cameras with zooms
and 4 or 5 megapixel resolution. So you have no excuse not to have at least one
camera along.
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Chapter 4 ✦ On Location 113

Having said that, I favor always being ready for most anything. A small photo day-
pack can carry two or three digital cameras (or one or two SLRs), a selection of
supplementary lenses, and at least one shoe-mount external flash for indoor and
night scenes. You can strap a monopod onto the outside of the pack. You’ll also
want to take along an 80A filter for converting tungsten lighting to daylight. If you
will be staying in hotels, take along a laptop computer for downloading and review-
ing your pictures, and a tripod. A tripod is the best insurance that you’ll get steady
sunset, indoor, and evening shots. You can also use your tripod to hold your exter-
nal slave flash when you want the lighting to come from the side.

Have a way to download images from memory cards

If I’m going to be staying in hotels, I take along my laptop (it has a built-in CD-RW
drive), a PCMCIA card reader, and lots of adapters for changing the plugs and cur-
rent of the country I’m visiting to 110-volt U.S. current. The current adapters are
necessary for running my battery chargers, external hard drives, and my laptop.

I also use a Minds@Work Digital Wallet for downloading images if I’m on a backpack-
ing trip and can’t afford the weight and bulk of the laptop. In fact, I just carry it
along on every trip because it’s small and can be used as an external drive for work-
ing on the laptop. With the built-in CD-ReWritable on the laptop, I can move photos
off the Digital Wallet and onto the CDs. This combination makes it impossible to run
out of space to take and store photos while I’m on the trip. This gives me peace of
mind that’s well worth the extra price of equipment.

Of course, all these items are not absolute requirements. The Digital Wallet alone
will provide more than enough storage space for most professional photographers
on a travel assignment — even if it involves a couple of weeks’ worth of shooting. If
you already have a laptop and can’t afford the extra monetary hit for the Digital
Wallet, using a laptop is a workable (if less portable) alternative. Of course, if you’re
just a hobbyist and on a limited budget, just take along a couple of 128MB memory
cards. Chances are good that you’ll be able to find a local computer store that can
transfer their contents to a CD-R disc. It’s also a good idea to make backups.

Take supplementary lenses and a backup camera

I’ve mentioned the value of carrying a backup camera in other sections of this chap-
ter. This is the only addition I can make to that statement regarding travel: The less
likely that you’ll be able to go back to repeat the pictures, the more important it is
to take along a second camera. If you’re moving up to a newer generation of digital
camera, hang on to the older model, too. You can let a friend or another member of
the family use it when you don’t need it as a backup camera, and you won’t suffer
the financial hit of the second camera.
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114 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Use guide books to plan your shoots in advance

At the risk of getting boring, I’m going to say it again — plan ahead. Long before
your trip, head for a bookstore and look for two types of travel books written about
the location that you’re traveling to: A pocket guide and a tabletop picture book.
The pocket guide should be one that suits your personality. In other words, don’t
get a guide for wealthy retirees if you’re young and adventurous. If you want to
experience the lifestyle of the inhabitants of the location that you’re visiting, the
Lonely Planet pocket guides or the Poor Richards guides provide a good start. Long
before you leave, read the pocket guides thoroughly and use a yellow marker to
highlight the sights and experiences that you want to be sure not to miss. The pic-
ture book will help you to visualize in advance the societies and scenery that you
want to shoot.

After you’ve used both resources to plan ahead, make an itinerary that will guaran-
tee you the largest number of promising photo ops. I promise that you this advance
planning will result in at least two or three times as many photos that you’re proud
to show off. Besides, your neighbors (or clients) are much less likely to leave the
slide show yawning.

Get out early, stay up late, and rest at midday

One way to really increase your chances of success is to shoot when the prevailing
light is at its most flattering. Find out at what times of the day the sun is closest to a
45-degree angle (or less) to the earth’s surface. Generally this will be before 10 a.m.
and after 3 p.m., but this rule is greatly affected by where you are in a given time
zone, what your geographical longitude is, and what time of year it is (in other
words, whether you’re in daylight savings time). Also, if your photography of the
local architecture is paramount, find out what general direction your target build-
ings face. Then you’ll know whether it’s better to shoot them in the morning, if the
building faces east; or in the evening, if the building faces west.

Wherever you are, you can be pretty sure that the lighting stinks at midday (an
important thing to remember for any type of outdoor shoot). I recommend that you
plan to use your downtime during midday, say 10:30 a.m. through 2:00 p.m., for a
few crucial activities:

✦ Have a long, relaxed lunch in a local café. If you’re a photo-taking addict, you
can spend your time shooting your fellow patrons.
✦ Go back to your hotel and take a nap. Then you can stay up later for the night
action.
✦ Do your traveling to your next location. This isn’t always the best plan,
though. Some of your best shots may be those taken along the road, so you
don’t need lousy lighting.
✦ Use your laptop to review the photos you shot in the morning.
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Chapter 4 ✦ On Location 115

Take along a monopod

Know before you go that you don’t want to miss out on shots that are best taken at a
slow shutter speed. These will include almost all interiors, everything shot at sunset
(often the most beautiful shots of the entire trip), anything shot in a dark alley (hid-
ing places are sometimes the most interesting places), and many other situations.

Monopods should fold down to less than two feet and expand out to at least six
feet. If you don’t have room to carry a tripod, you have no excuse for not carrying a
monopod. They’re even useful as walking sticks, are good defensive weapons if you
encounter a rough situation, and can be made rock steady by clamping them to
anything that is unlikely to move — from a table to a monument.

Note Unless your subject is dynamic and requires being captured at a specific instant,
use your camera’s self-timer when shooting from a monopod or tripod. This is the
best insurance that you won’t jiggle the camera when pressing the shutter button.

A travel photography checklist

✦ Extra batteries and film cards
✦ Backup camera
✦ Backpack
✦ Monopod with ball or tension head
✦ Tripod
✦ Remote control
✦ Supplementary telephoto and wide-angle lenses
✦ C-clamp
✦ Power adapter
✦ Chargers
✦ Laptop (preferably with built-in CD-RW drive)

Architecture and Urban Views

Shooting scenes that are populated by buildings poses certain problems. Chief
among these is a phenomenon called parallax distortion, which gives the illusion
that all the buildings are leaning away from the camera. The next most prevalent
problem lies in the fact that the character of buildings lies in small details, such as
the patina of their surfaces or the sculpture of the gargoyles. So it’s important to
keep the camera rock steady and to max out depth-of-field. The following sections
outline a few more considerations that pertain to architectural photography.
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116 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Minimize parallax distortion

Taking pictures of buildings poses one really nagging problem, called parallax
distortion, that most digital cameras aren’t equipped to solve. Although it sounds
awful, parallax distortion is really nothing more than the fact that perspective
causes parallel lines, which form the edges and many of the details in buildings, to
appear to converge as their physical distance from the camera increases. You can
see an example of parallax distortion in Figure 4-7.

Figure 4-7: Notice that the parallel lines seem

to converge as the distance from the lens
increases.

Unless you have a digital back that fits on a view camera, your camera probably
can’t adjust for parallax distortion, but you can minimize it by carefully choosing
your point of view. If you can stand facing the building dead-on and position your-
self so that you are equidistant from all four of the building’s edges, you’ll never get
parallax distortion — just really boring architectural studies. Besides, it’s very diffi-
cult to position yourself halfway up a tall office building — unless you’re a bird. So,
what can you do? Just minimize the distance between your shooting position and
the center of the building as much as possible, consistent with finding a composi-
tionally interesting point of view.
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Chapter 4 ✦ On Location 117

Although you can’t always correct parallax distortion with your camera or view-
point, image-editing programs can be helpful. Figure 4-8 shows the original shot of a
building and the same building after some perspective correction in Photoshop.

Figure 4-8: The second version (right) is a completely corrected

perspective, but it has narrowed the building and made it look unnatural.

Use a tripod
Not only do you want your shots to be steady, you want to be able to take your time
composing the picture in such a way as to capture the most compositionally excit-
ing point of view. A tripod will keep the camera in the same position while you
ponder the alternative possibilities. Using a tripod also makes it possible to shoot
smooth panoramas and multiple exposures for extending the brightness range.

Shoot panoramas and high-resolution,

multi-shot images
As is the case with scenic nature shots, super-high resolution and large size exhibit
prints tend to appeal because, psychologically, they place the viewer inside the
scene.
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118 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Almost any digital camera is capable of creating a seamless panorama with the help
of a special kind of program called panorama-stitching software. Some stitching pro-
grams will let you stitch vertically as well as horizontally. By shooting a matrix of
images that are 3 x 3, you can create a stitched image that is nine times the resolu-
tion your camera is capable of shooting in a single frame. At this point in the book,
however, I concentrate on techniques for shooting panoramas and high-resolution
composite images.

Cross- You’ll find lessons and commentary on a variety of programs that stitch together
Reference
panoramas in Chapter 16.

If you are shooting a series of frames that will be stitched together, you will get the
best results if you use a tripod, so that the camera rotates around a fixed position.
Use a tripod head that will let you position the focal point of the camera, which is
usually about halfway between the front lens element and the camera’s sensor
plane (or the film plane as it is known in traditional photographic terms).
Affordable versions of these heads are available from Kaidan, one of which is
shown in Figure 4-9.

Figure 4-9: A Kaidan panorama head

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Chapter 4 ✦ On Location 119

When shooting a shooting a series of frames that will be stitched together, keep the
following considerations in mind:

✦ Be careful to rotate the camera without tilting it or altering its height.

✦ Overlap each frame by the amount suggested in the stitching software’s man-
ual. This usually requires about a 20 percent overlap on all but the first and
last frames.
✦ Set your camera in Manual or Fixed mode so that the exposure doesn’t change
automatically when panning across areas of differing brightness.

Quite a few digital cameras will place marks on the LCD to help you position the
camera for overlaps. Some cameras even come with their own stitching software,
or have other “panorama” features. So far, however, Canon is the only company
that makes hand-held panoramas a practical possibility. You can tell the camera
whether you’re going to rotate from right to left or vice versa. Shoot the first frame,
and a portion of that frame is then shown as partially transparent and protruding
just enough from one edge so that all you have to do to get the proper registration
and overlap is line up the partially transparent edge with the new image on the
preview screen. It’s really very quick and slick. It’s a feature I’d like to see on all
digicams.

Shoot when the light is most dramatic

Pay attention to the angle and color of the sun on the face of buildings. If the light is
likely to be more flattering in an hour or two, you may want to concentrate on other
subjects for a while and then come back. For more information about the angle of
sunlight in architectural photography, see the section on travel photography
located earlier in this chapter.

Shoot multiple exposures for extended range

Buildings are one of the few types of subjects that can look very good in bright,
hard-edged light. However, you usually want to see copious highlight and shadow
detail in architectural photos — whether the shots are interiors or exteriors of
buildings. Because buildings rarely move, you can take advantage of a technique
that can really help this situation. Place the camera on a tripod so that it doesn’t
move at all between shots. (You can see an example of bracketed photos in Figure
4-10.) You then take three to five frames that vary in exposure by between one-third
to one-half a stop. Place each full frame (don’t crop before you do this, the images
must all be the same size and in perfect register) on a different layer in your image
area. They must be organized so that the lightest layer is on top, the darkest layer
on the bottom, and those that are in between in the proper sequence from dark to
light. You then erase all but the brightest area that still shows detail from the top
layer, merge that layer with the layer just below it, and again erase all but the
brightest areas that still show detail. You just keep merging and erasing until
you get to the bottom of the stack.
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120 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Figure 4-10: The three photos automatically taken at different exposures

Note This technique is also very useful for shooting product still-lifes in which you want
to light the subject from more angles than you have lights. For example, you can
light to highlight the edges of bottles in one frame, then light to perfectly expose
the labels in another, and then combine the two exposures.

Use light balancing filters when shooting indoors

If you’re using tungsten lights that are always on to light an interior, balance them
to daylight lighting temperature. If sunlight is coming through the windows, you
will want to use daylight gels in front of the lights. Daylight (80A) gels are inexpen-
sive (usually about $2 for a 12-inch square) and can be purchased through any
professional camera store. You should also purchase clip-on brackets that will keep
the gels far enough away from the lights to ventilate the bulbs so that they don’t
explode or melt the gels.

If you’re worried about having to mix daylight (very blue) with tungsten (very yel-
low) because the room has no windows or because you are shooting at night, you
should still use an 80A filter over the camera lens. Digital camera sensors are really
balanced for daylight. When you have to balance for tungsten, the camera’s logic
circuit has to adjust the picture digitally, which invariably creates some noise and
loss of sharpness.

Balance window light with flash (or several slaves)

If you have to color-balance daylight streaming through windows with artificial
light, it is better to use a number of slave-driven external flashes that have been
spread around the room so that they light all areas evenly. Try to place them so
that they face away from the camera and at intervals that will keep the overall level
of light consistent. This is generally easiest to do if the flashes use umbrellas to
diffuse the lighting source. A diagram for typical architectural interior lighting is
shown in Figure 4-11.
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Chapter 4 ✦ On Location 121

Windows

Flash

Camera
Flash
Flash

Figure 4-11: Placement of strobe flashes to light an interior

An architecture photography checklist

✦ Tripod
✦ Panorama head
✦ Two or three slave-driven external flashes (for lighting interiors)

Nature
One of the most photogenic subjects is nature. Of course, nature takes many forms
and can be seen in infinite climates and lighting situations. Still, some considera-
tions come up over and over again, which I discuss in the following sections.
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122 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Move around
Nature photography tends to have a lot in common with travel photography. For
one thing, you’re most likely to do it while you’re moving around. Whether you’re
out in the woods or photographing your backyard garden, get in the habit of look-
ing at both the close-up and the long view of nearly everything. Because a lot of
things in nature demand a fresh point of view, don’t forget to take along anything
what will help in that effort — especially a supplementary telephoto lens.

Shoot when the light is most dramatic

Dramatic lighting definitely makes nature more interesting. Right after a rainstorm
is one of my favorite times because the lighting is soft and hazy, lending a dreamy
quality to the scene. At the same time, the vegetation and flowers have a sparkle
that is a wonderful sign of life and new beginnings.

Of course, sunrises and sunsets, dawn and dusk, nighttime, and lightning storms
also present opportunities that you shouldn’t miss. (See Figure 4-12.) If you only
wander into nature when it’s bright and sunny, you will definitely miss lots of
opportunities to take wonderful pictures.

Figure 4-12: Drama in the natural lighting

of nature
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Chapter 4 ✦ On Location 123

Use a polarizing filter for dramatic skies

Polarizing filters are a powerful force in nature photography. Depending on how
they’re rotated, you can use them to control the intensity and shade of the sky.
Because they can also cut lighting glare on surfaces, you can also use them to
enhance the shade and saturation of color in vegetation. Due to the fact that most
digital cameras provide at least one means of previewing the image through the
lens, it is easy to preview the changing effect that a polarizing filter has when you
rotate the filter. Figure 4-13 shows a scene as interpreted by different polarizing
filter rotations.

Figure 4-13: The only difference in these photos is the degree of polarizing
filter rotation.

Cross- The fundamentals of creating pleasing composition are covered in Chapter 3.

Reference
Immediately before embarking on a nature shoot is an excellent time to review
these photography fundamentals.

Put some life into the picture

Nature photos are usually more interesting when they include some form of animal
life. Of course, this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. Ansel Adams shot numerous classic
nature photos in which not a single creature was stirring. On the other hand, any
ambulatory life form, from a butterfly to a bear, is likely to draw the viewer’s atten-
tion into the picture. Then you must consider the fact that the life form often is the
picture. Who can resist an iridescent hummingbird, a poison dart frog, or a beauti-
ful buck wandering into a sunlit clearing in the forest?

Any time an animal comprises the picture, you’re going to want to have a 200mm to
400mm equivalent telephoto lens along. Otherwise, you just won’t get close enough
to the animal (unless it’s a cow or sheep) before it runs away.
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124 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Look for texture and color

The details and patterns in nature are almost always fascinating. Try to shoot in
lighting that emphasizes the texture and color, as well as dramatizing the shapes
in the composition. As Ansel Adams, the world’s best-known nature and landscape
photographer, proved by his invention and use of the zone system capturing as
broad a range of brightness as possible is of utmost importance. If your camera’s
settings allow you to control contrast or saturation, set both to a minimum. You will
capture a much broader range of overall brightness and color. You will undoubtedly
want to adjust both, but you are much better off making these adjustments by using
your much more powerful computer and placing bracketed shots on layers to
insure the widest possible range of brightness and detail.

A nature photography checklist

✦ Polarizing filter
✦ Tripod
✦ Raingear and umbrella
✦ Camera raincoat
✦ Reflectors

Macros
Macro is the photographer’s term for pictures that are taken from very close dis-
tances (usually less than two feet). Many digital cameras — most notably those
in the Nikon Coolpix series of consumer and prosumer digicams — can focus in
extreme macro range. My Nikon Coolpix 5000, for instance, can focus down to as
close as 0.8 inches when zoomed to full wide-angle.

Macro photography is indispensable for photographing the small details in nature,

in medical photography (especially dermatology and plastic surgery), in many sci-
entific applications, in cataloging (of jewelry or small machine parts, for example),
and in forensics.

Use supplementary lenses

If your camera doesn’t shoot extreme close-ups unaided, you can get supplemen-
tary close-up lenses. You can buy sets of these lenses that you can stack in various
combinations that will let you get as close to that flower’s pistol or the butterfly’s
wings as you need to, as shown in Figure 4-14.

Cross- See Chapter 3 for more details on this topic.

Reference
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Chapter 4 ✦ On Location 125

Figure 4-14: Photos of a flower taken with supplementary lenses of 1 power and
3 powers

Keep the lighting flat

Of course, it’s not an absolute rule that you must keep the lighting flat: You’re
welcome to light in any way that will help you to make a great photograph. From a
practical standpoint, however, it usually works better to have the light coming from
all sides. First, there’s less danger that the photographer or camera will cast a
shadow across the subject because they are so close to it. Second, one of the
purposes for shooting extreme close-ups (ECUs) is to show detail, so you don’t
want to mask that behind shadows.

One of the preferred lighting techniques for ECUs is a special type of flash called a
ring light, which is a flash that completely encircles the lens and fits over it some-
what like a lens hood, as shown in Figure 4-15. Because the light is coming from all
sides, it casts no shadows whatsoever. This is especially useful in scientific and
medical applications, as well as when copying small documents, coins, etc.

Another technique that’s more useful for more artistic shots, such as flowers or
jewelry, is to use a lighting tent. Just take a sheet of plastic or artist’s vellum and
make it into a teepee, then cut a hole into for the camera lens. Then, light it from
outside the tent, which will both diffuse and reflect the light. You can vary the
direction and contrast of the light by surrounding the tent with more or fewer lights
and by changing the intensity of the light from one side of the tent to the other.

For more casual outdoor macros, I like to shoot on days when the light is just bright
enough to see the LCD preview clearly so that I can compose and focus accurately. I
then use a diffused external flash to freeze the subject and a white cardboard reflec-
tor on the opposite side of the subject to fill the shadows. Because the minimum
aperture of most digital cameras ranges between f5.6 and f11 (as opposed to
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126 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

between f16 and f32 on larger cameras), it’s very important to power down the flash
or to use two diffusers to ensure that the subject isn’t over-lighted. Fortunately, you
are using a device that gives instant feedback, so you’ll know right away if you have
to further dim or back off on the external flash.

Figure 4-15: A macro taken with a ring light flash

Focus with precision at the center of interest

I love using my Olympus SLR for macros because I can see so clearly what I’m get-
ting and can focus so well. However, true (non-LCD) SLRs are not within the price
range of many folks. The second best choice is to use the camera’s viewfinder. If
you do that outdoors, however, you’ll need to shield the LCD from the surrounding
existing (ambient) light. Hoodman makes very useful hoods that fold flat and attach
to the camera with an elastic loop or two — which makes them easy to remove. I
also frequently use an inexpensive plastic slide viewer. I use a pair of chef’s scissors
to cut away the frosted slide holder and then attach of band of felt that will keep
out the light. Then I have a magnifying hood that enables me to focus as well as
possible given the graininess of LCD displays. Figure 4-16 shows you what the end
result looks like. Total cost is a wallet-busting three to four dollars.
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Chapter 4 ✦ On Location 127

Figure 4-16: An LCD viewing hood made from a cheap slide viewer

Stop down for maximum depth-of-field

Because macros are taken from such minimal distances, depth-of-field is extremely
shallow. In fact, it can be so shallow that it seems that nothing is in focus because
the area that is in focus is so small. The cure is to use as small an aperture (high f-
stop number) as your camera will allow. Place the camera in Aperture Priority or
Manual mode so that you can deliberately set the camera to minimum aperture.

Note Using minimum aperture may be overkill in the case of pro SLR cameras because,
for the most part, they use the same lenses as film cameras. Many film camera
lenses (especially macro lenses) sport minimum apertures that are so small (up to
f64) that they either create too much depth-of-field or require such a long expo-
sure that you find all sorts of noise in the image. An aperture of f11 to f16 is prob-
ably as small an aperture as is really safe.

A macro photography checklist

✦ Close-up (macro) lenses
✦ External flash or ring flash
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128 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

✦ Cardboard reflectors
✦ Small light tent
✦ Flash diffusing hood
✦ Tripod
✦ LCD hood or magnifier

Summary
This chapter gives you a quick overview of challenges and solutions associated
with some of the most common types of photographic assignments. For each of
these types of assignments, I have given you the essential means to prepare and
equip yourself. I have also given you some hints and provided a checklist of things
to take with you.

✦ ✦ ✦
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In the Studio 5
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Y our digital studio is the hub of your digital photography

activities. In contrast to location shooting, the studio
photographer has the subjects — whether they are people or
In This Chapter

things — come to the studio. The well-equipped studio should Setting up the digital
provide you with all the resources you need to achieve quality studio
work and should represent organization, preparation, and effi-
ciency. This chapter guides you through meeting these goals. Lighting in the studio

The advantage of a central location dedicated to digital pho- Common lighting

tography is that you have what every photographer wants: schemes
control over the image creation. In any type of photography,
having control over the lighting is of utmost importance and Using backgrounds
can be achieved with knowledgeable use of lights (flashes,
incandescent bulbs, and so forth), a proper setting, and all of Camera mounting
the essential support equipment. In your digital studio, you
should expect to have all the equipment that you need for Essential accessories
your everyday work as well as for all the surprising and
unpredictable encounters that you may want to capture. ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
Furthermore, you want the studio to allow you to make cre-
ative choices, such as using an unusual filter combination
or bizarre lighting. You also want to be able to make these
choices with full confidence that your work path is stream-
lined for quick and desirable results.

Studio Setup
Studios that are used by professional photographers can
be daunting to the businessperson who needs to produce
professional results because of the presence of an enormous
array of highly specialized tools. The tools range from sophis-
ticated lights, specialized armatures on light tables, camera
add-ons, to things that you just can’t figure out. You may also
find yourself calculating the amount of money that all of this
great equipment costs. However, creative photographers also
know how to build, modify, fix up, and work around the plight
of ever-real, limited budgets. I recommend the following alter-
native means of acquiring equipment:
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130 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

✦ Buy used equipment: Garage sales and thrift stores are an unending source of
discarded items that you can use. For example, “found” items can be a snake-
neck floor light that can act as a perfect gobo light (described later in this
chapter), or a large and sturdy metal frame that can act as your diffuser
frame.
✦ Check out your local art supply store: The contents of your local art store
are worth perusing and remembering because you may find creative solutions
to common problems. For example, you may discover that synthetic clay
putty in the sculpture department works perfectly to keep small props from
falling over. Additionally, pre-made stencils can be used for dramatic lighting
effects. In fact, if you knew how high-end shots were created in big production
facilities, you’d be amazed — and reminded — that creativity and vision tow-
ers over any budget.

It is worth remembering that even the best photographers also have a limited
budget. Yet, they are great photographers — not because of their resources —
but rather because of their creative use of this art form.

The most important everyday tools in a digital studio are the lights, backgrounds,
and camera stands. These pieces of equipment are regularly discussed by studio
photographers — often with great passion and heated opinions. However, before I
explore this equipment in detail, I discuss some important fundamentals that are
essential to digital photography in a studio.

The workspace
The space in which you shoot your work should be equipped with your workstation
(computers, printers, peripherals, and so forth) and an area for taking the pho-
tographs. Yet no matter how large your “studio,” before too long you’ll probably
want a bigger space, so plan ahead. The physical room should be spacious enough
to include the following:

✦ Your workstation table (with lots of surrounding space for peripherals)

✦ The area in which you pose your subjects or set up your product shots
✦ An area for backdrops
✦ The camera and tripod
✦ Your lights and stands

You want to allow plenty of space for your lights and stands — and I do mean
plenty — because you will often move the lights around and you must still have
enough room for everything else, including yourself.
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Chapter 5 ✦ In the Studio 131

Although it may seem obvious, make sure that the walls and ceiling reflect a neutral
color. If you’re shooting in a space where you can’t paint the walls, consider drap-
ing them in fabric or just propping inexpensive foam insulation boards against the
walls, which can also serve to block stray light from windows and be used as reflec-
tors. Neutral colored walls are particularly important if you are planning on doing
your photo editing in this space. Neutral gray is fine. However, in some situations
where no reflections are acceptable, black is required.

Tip The ideal “color” to use for the walls of your image-editing environment is called
N8/Grey from the Munsell books of color and has 60% reflectance. Guidelines for
lighting conditions in a digital editing room are available through the ISO
(International Standards Organization) and are called ISO 3664 and ISO 12646.
You should use these guidelines for exacting digital editing where precise color
proofing is involved.

You may find that you have to set up a space in an office environment, in which
case, the overhead lights are not color-balanced for white and are not color-stable.
Common fluorescent lights have a distinct color spectrum and color spikes that will
affect the color of your target. Fluorescent lights also flicker. As a result of these
issues, you must find a way to eliminate the overhead lighting so that you have
complete control of your environment. Lighting from a nearby window can also be
annoying because of unwanted reflections. The reflections are particularly notice-
able when shooting computer screens. If black blinds are not sufficient to block
reflections, an opaque fabric sunscreen must be used instead.

A good work environment includes appropriate storage. You don’t want clutter, but
inevitably you will have lots of adaptors (electrical and optical), cords, and all sorts
of small odds and ends that are essential to your work. Some pros use the top drawer
of a cabinet fitted with foam to store lenses. This makes it easy to get to a particular
lens or adaptor fast. Also, labeling everything is a wise move. If things are labeled, it
is easy to ask the person standing next to the cabinet, “Could you reach over and
hand me that quartz dihexagonal dipyramid?”

An inevitable attribute of today’s “paperless office” is the myriad of cables that

collect. Even worse, storing the cables anywhere often looks downright ugly.
However, if you hang your (labeled) wires from the inside door of a cabinet, you can
quickly spot the cable that you need and retrieve it without having to untie a huge
knot.

Tip A tie rack is ideal for hanging cables.

Did I forget the “other” computer? In the incredibly unlikely event of a computer
failure, it’s a great idea to have an extra generic, pokey computer that you can use
for e-mail and other mission-critical communication. In case the it-could-never-
happen-to-me scenario happens to you, you will appreciate Pokey.
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132 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Batteries and AC power

The most pervasive problem with digital cameras is that they consume batteries.
However, if you’re working primarily in the studio, you can avoid this nuisance by
using a plug-in battery supply instead. These power packs often have a short cable,
which means you should have a multiple-output extension cord near the camera/
tripod. A more sophisticated power supply provides all types of power for different
cameras, flash units, and video cameras. You should consider investing in a power
supply if you are going to have a fully equipped studio.

Nevertheless, keep a good stock of high quality batteries. Surprisingly, various

types of everyday AA NiMH batteries have differences. Look for a battery with the
highest ampere per hour rating and a quality name brand. You should also use a
smart charger, which determines the optimal amount of current that it can pack into
the batteries without causing damage. Conventional chargers are acceptable if you
don’t mind the 14-hour charging time, but when you are doing studio work, you
need a charger that can refresh a number of batteries fast.

AC power throughout the studio is also very important. Keep the following consid-
erations in mind when setting up your studio:

✦ Outlets: First, you must have plenty of outlets to make power available to all
areas of the studio. It’s amazing how many components you end up using that
need power. For safety and organizational reasons, you don’t want a situation
in which you have multiple power strips connected to each other.
✦ Clean power: The cleanliness of your power is also important. You want a few
important pieces of equipment:
• Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS): For your computer, peripherals,
and camera power supply, make an important investment in a UPS.
These units provide immediate replacement power when you experience
an outage. A low power UPS rated at 650 watts (which is actually more
like 500 watts) is less than $200. The battery capacity of a UPS is often
enough for 20 minutes of power, which is enough time for you to prop-
erly power down your system. However, don’t use it for laser printers
or copiers because it spells disaster for both. The only “extra” items I
connect my UPS to are my answering machine (so it will always catch
messages) and the VCR (to avoid potential jamming of a video tape).
• Power stabilizer/regulator: For photographic lighting equipment, if
you have any doubt about the stability of the voltage coming out of the
sockets — often the case in industrial areas — get a power stabilizer/
regulator. Even distant electric motors can cause annoying power fluctu-
ations. Power stabilizers keep the voltage constant, which then keeps
the intensity — and often the color — of the lights stable.
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Chapter 5 ✦ In the Studio 133

• Power surge arrestors: All equipment that isn’t attached to a power

stabilizer/regulator should have power surge arrestors, which are often
found on high quality power strips. They are designed for clamping
spikes in the line voltage, but they are limited to small spikes and only
last for a limited time. Nevertheless, it’s a good first wall of protection.
• Extension cords: Use heavy-duty extension cords, particularly with your
lighting equipment. You will be drawing a fair amount of current, and you
also want your cords to be rugged because they tend to get trampled in
the rush of shooting.

People conditioning
If your subjects are people, don’t forget that they are people. You need to provide
them with the creature comforts that will allow them to relax and be ideal subjects.
If at all possible, you should provide the following:

✦ A bathroom/dressing room
✦ A small refrigerator for refreshments
✦ Appropriate music (yes, Mozart works)
✦ A relaxed sitting area

Tip You’ll also find that when working with people, it helps them a great deal by
letting them see what you see. A monitor connected to your camera that they can
easily view gives them immediate feedback and involves them in the activity of
creating a great image.

Studio Lighting
The key to good photography is good lighting. In your digital studio, therefore, you
should make wise decisions when choosing what lights to use with a particular
shot. The subject of lighting, incidentally, is huge and many books specialize in just
this topic. For the purposes of this book, though, I show you only the essentials for
lighting in a digital studio.

Lighting for digital photography requires extra consideration because you need
extra light. Not only are the sensors less sensitive than with film, but also the dark
regions in an image possess more digital noise than in brightly lit regions. With con-
ventional photography, the dark regions are simply dark. With digital images, how-
ever, shadows and dark regions are noisy and can look awful. You must also be
more conscientious than with film because your dynamic range — the range
between the darkest dark and the lightest light — is more limited with digital
images. You have to limit the dynamic range, or overall contrast, of the image to
match the capability of the image sensor. You may think that you can compensate
a low-light situation with long exposures. However, long exposures also increase
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134 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

digital noise. On the plus side, the anomalies that you inevitably experience with
different metering systems, hotspots, internal exposure control, and lights are
easily viewable — and can therefore be corrected immediately.

Lighting sources
Studio lighting may be categorized into three types of lights, each offering specific
advantages — and subsequent costs. The following sections provide a summary of
the three choices.

Hot lights
Hot lights have a continuous output and can use conventional tungsten or halogen
bulbs. They are the simplest lights to work with and don’t require sync information
from the camera. Hot lights are not the best choice for photographing people
because they’re hot and require long exposures and because people move and
sweat. However, they are excellent for still objects because you can take your
time and see exactly what the camera is exposing.

You can control the brightness of a hot light by varying its distance to the object.
Without going into the math, 1.4 times the distance is about half the amount of
light. Therefore, you can get a 2:1 lighting ratio by placing one light at 5.6 feet and
the other light at 8 feet. The sequence is 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, . . . (Do these numbers
look familiar?).

A common question is whether a combination of light types can be used together in

a shot. Most often the answer is yes. With conventional photography, this isn’t the
case. However, with the ease of digital color balancing — before or after the shot —
digital cameras can compensate for the correct individual color or overall white
balance.

Fluorescent lights
In the past, photographers avoided fluorescent lights for studio lighting because of
their inherent flicker (which can be a real problem with digital photography), unsta-
ble color, and variable light. However, newer fluorescent lights operate at a high
frequency, they eliminate flicker, and the bulbs are color-balanced for photographic
lighting. Fluorescent lights offer other advantages:

✦ They provide a large lighting region, which is often what you want.
✦ They are actually cool “hot lights” (temperature-wise, that is).
✦ They can be intermixed with traditional halogen lights.

Make note, however, that fluorescent lights have spectral spikes. Therefore, some
colors, such as blue and yellow-green, can make objects reflecting these colors
appear artificially enhanced. When buying fluorescent lamps, the proper color
temperature to choose is 5,000 degrees K, commonly referred to as D-50 (daylight-
balanced) lights. The 5,000 degrees K-compliant lamps are based on international
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Chapter 5 ✦ In the Studio 135

standards, such as ISO and CIE. (Don’t confuse these color temperatures with your
monitor’s 2.2 gamma at 6,500 degrees K white point, or 1.8 gamma at 5,000 degrees
K.) Although these lights are rated for 10,000 hours of use, it is wise to replace them
after a few thousand hours because their color shifts with time.

Halogen lights
Halogen lights provide good lighting, although their brightness may make people
squint. You must also be aware that with such bright lights, you may lose the warm
tones in faces. You can remedy this problem by setting the white balance of your
camera to “cloudy day.” When purchasing halogen lights, aim for a color tempera-
ture above 4,700 degrees K, also called D-50 compliant lights. Also note that small,
halogen desk lights, often used for lighting tables, operate at an unregulated 12
volts. Therefore, without a voltage stabilizer, the color of the light varies over time.
Luckily, digital photography allows you to fix this when you take the photo or dur-
ing photo editing.

Halogen lights, with their comparative limitations, offer the best simulation of natu-
ral sunlight. Therefore, when you need an ideal light source for people or products,
halogen may be preferable.

When working with halogen lights, follow some good, general advice:

✦ Halogen bulbs can explode unexpectedly. Therefore, always have a screen

over the front of your light fixture.
✦ When using the bulbs for a long time, the color temperature will shift, result-
ing in off-color images. If you start to see discoloration on the bulb itself,
replace it.
✦ Don’t hold a halogen lamp by the glass section with your fingers. The oil in
your fingers will burn when the lamp is on and cause it to fail. Instead, use
non-slip paper or cloth to hold the lamp.
✦ Never exceed the specifications of the fixture that you are using — unless you
want “real,” once only lighting and momentary drama.
✦ When setting up your lights, you want to have control over the brightness of
the lights, which you can easily achieve by using variable power supplies.
However, at lower settings, the color may change. So (like always), take a
white-light test.
✦ If the image is going to be edited and cropped, place a color test card with a
white zone in each shot to help provide a constant reference to white. When
editing, go to the white zone and look at the RGB values. They should be all
the same, or 255, 255, 255 for the whitest white. The 18% gray should also
have identical values for RGB.

When lighting large areas, powerful tungsten or fluorescent studio lights can be a
problem because they are often too heavy to hang on the end of a typical boom
arm. Not only can they topple over, but also lifting them up a few feet to adjust their
orientation is cumbersome. For shots such as these, use any type of strobe light.
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136 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Power pack studio strobes

All flash units have a flash tube and a capacitor. With power pack strobes, the flash
tube is located in a separate light head — typically on a stand — and the capacitor
and power supply are on the ground. A thick cable connects the power pack to the
head. In this setup, the camera is connected to the power pack and controls the
timing of the flash. Pros use these types of units because of their versatility and
great power output.

One great advantage provided by power pack strobes is that they allow you to con-
trol more than one head from a single power pack. Multiple strobe heads can then
be connected to the power pack. The most versatile power packs are those that
allow you to control the brightness of each strobe. The advantage of this arrange-
ment is that you can arrange the heads exactly where you want easily and safely
because the heads are small and lightweight and the power supplies are big and
heavy.

Monolights or self-contained studio strobes

The difference between monolights and power pack strobes is that the capacitor
and power supply are located within each head. The advantage with monolights is
that each strobe can be controlled independently of the others and allows conve-
nient control over the output of light from each one. These units are popular
because they can be purchased one at a time, depending on need and budget. (You
can even use units made by different manufacturers.) The main drawback is that
that monolights are top-heavy and must be secured to the floor. Often, sand sacks
are placed over the tripod legs to be sure they don’t accidentally get knocked over.

Another type of flash is specifically designed for macrophotography. These flashes

are rings that attach over the lens and provide 360-degree illumination to the
objects being photographed close-up. These types of units are often designed with
digital photography in mind and often have their own flash triggering mechanism.

Most digital cameras have inadequate flash capabilities; even worse, they often
don’t provide a connection for an external flash, which is why slave flashes are used.
A slave flash is any flash that fires from the flash originating from another flash unit,
typically from the camera. However, ordinary slave triggers are often not compatible
with most digital cameras because they use a rapid series of pre-flashes — typically
two. These pre-flashes are not the same as the pre-flash that’s used for red-eye
reduction. Instead, the pre-flashes are used to set the camera’s white balance. A
conventional slave unit fires on the pre-flash that it senses; however, the digital
camera only captures the image on its last flash. Therefore, the light emanating
from the slave flash won’t appear in the shot. You can achieve proper control with
flash units designed to work with digital cameras, such as those from Digi-Slave.
Their DSF-1 is a flash slave that counts the number of flashes that it detects before
it triggers the flash. The DSF-1 can be triggered by either 1 or 2 flashes, which you
indicate by flipping a switch on the unit.
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Chapter 5 ✦ In the Studio 137

You can also trigger your main flash unit remotely. You can attach a peanut-sized
device to its hot shoe or pc-cord, and it senses the camera’s flash and fires. Using
this device removes another cable that would otherwise be cluttering the floor.

Flash triggering uses three types of connections: the hot shoe, the pc-cord, and pro-
prietary connectors. Although the proprietary versions offer more features, avoid
them. You don’t want to be in a situation where you don’t have the type of adaptor
that’s necessary in order to work with other equipment. The hot shoe and the pc-
cord connectors work fine, and most quality flash units offer both on the same
body, which is a convenient feature.

Lighting accessories
With the basic choices of lights listed previously, you need other accessories that
are available — and essential — in order to achieve the correct lighting for your
shots. They allow you to shape the lights; control the beam; diffuse, block, color,
and reflect the light; and then mix and balance other lighting sources in order to
achieve the ideal illumination. Although all of these are commercial and well
thought-out solutions, if you have a limited budget, you can build many of the
setups on your own. A typical lighting arrangement is shown in Figure 5-1.

Catch Light

Diffuser

Reflector

Umbrella Fill Light

Figure 5-1: An example of a generic lighting arrangement

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138 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Diffusers
Diffusers are used with any kind of light. They are placed between the light and the
subject and disperse the light in many directions. As a result, diffusers soften hot
spots caused by reflections on shiny objects.

Diffusers can also be used for projecting colors onto objects. All you need to do is
place colored gels (gelatin filters) into the slotted fitting in front of the light source.
High-tech shiny objects that have absolutely no color (and that have no immedi-
ately perceivable function) are often lit with opposing colored gels to induce visual
interest. The most popular colors of gels for this purpose are red and blue.

Many photographers rely on a diffusion panel as their main light source because
they are inexpensive yet versatile. With a diffusion panel, you can create an unlim-
ited number of light source sizes and shapes. You can make a simple diffusion panel
that consists of two large frames of 1-inch PVC pipes covered with white rip-stop
nylon, as shown in Figure 5-2. One panel connects to another panel with black rip-
stop nylon using a series of snap-on, double-C clips that act like hinges. The white
translucent panel provides a versatile source of light and the black panel supports
it while blocking unwanted light. With this panel arrangement, you place the panel
set near your subject: two feet away for a headshot, and six feet away for a full-
length shot. From there, you can orient the light source to achieve the look that you
desire. The distance between the light source and the white panel determines the
size of your light source.

Elbows Elbows

Side pipes Side pipes

T's T's

Feet
Figure 5-2: A PVC diffusion panel
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Chapter 5 ✦ In the Studio 139

Reflectors
Two kinds of reflectors are used for studio flash:

✦ Units that fit around the flash head: This type of reflector controls the direc-
tion and beam of the flash and is the more efficient of the two types. Higher
quality flash manufacturers provide a wide range of reflectors that allow you
to control the quality and spread of the beam of light, as you desire. For exam-
ple, the coating of a reflector may be white or metallic. The white coating
offers a more diffused light source, while the metallic has a more focused and
directed beam.
✦ Units designed so that the flash head is aimed to reflect the light onto the
subject: Bounce reflectors have an infinite variation of types. The most common
is the umbrella reflector, shown in Figure 5-3. Foldaway reflector panels are also
convenient and have metallic reflective surfaces. These, like umbrellas, can be
stored in tiny spaces. You can use almost any surface with uncolored reflective
properties as a bounce studio flash, including the ceiling.

Figure 5-3: An umbrella holder

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140 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Note You may have seen photographers use a simple reflector, such as tape holding a
stiff white card on the flash unit, in quick-and-dirty situations. This type of arrange-
ment does work acceptably in a pinch. However, for studio work, where you want
the same results every time, it’s better to use the right tool.

Soft boxes
Soft boxes are designed so that the light is evenly distributed over a large translu-
cent surface. This creates the effect of a much larger light source mimicking a per-
fectly uniform natural light source. The light that a soft box produces is soft and
even and ideal for portrait work and everyday studio photography. The box design
is similar to cardboard boxes, except that they are made of plastic fabric and the
inside is shiny and highly reflective. One side fits over the flash head and the other
is larger, flat, and translucent; the whole apparatus is very lightweight. Installing a
soft box over a flash is fast work, and they often have a special ring (often called a
speed ring) that is first attached to the head making installation quick. A soft box is
an essential accessory for a basic studio.

Umbrellas
The most common studio flash accessory is the umbrella because it is incredibly
versatile and yet inexpensive. Although umbrellas are used primarily as reflectors,
you can also use them as diffusers by removing their black backing and shining
light through them. Umbrellas are available in a wide variety of sizes, configura-
tions, and surfaces that provide a digital photographer exact and rapid control over
the degrees of beam spread, diffusion, and reflectivity. Furthermore, it easily folds
down for convenient storage and can be set up quickly again.

An umbrella allows you to adjust for different angles of coverage by simply chang-
ing the distance between the umbrella and the flash unit. When using an umbrella,
make sure that the light source’s beam matches and fills the umbrella’s diameter.
By doing this, you can efficiently use the flash’s light source and create the maxi-
mum amount of softness and effective brightness in your lighting.

If you are budget-conscious, you can use an umbrella with your favorite hot shoe
flash. With this arrangement, you can orient the flash and umbrella in various con-
figurations to achieve soft lighting. To do this, you need an adaptor that attaches
the stand to the umbrella and includes the hot shoe connector for the flash. It may
seem crude, but it works fine. The bottom line is this: A photographic umbrella is
an essential tool for your studio.

Hemispheric domes
Dome diffusers provide an excellent method for lighting highly reflective objects
that require completely uniform lighting, such as jewelry and gems. The dome,
which can be as small as five inches and up, is placed on a table and the object is
positioned inside. Spotlights can be aimed at the dome from different angles to pro-
vide the best lighting condition. The shot is then photographed through a hole in
the dome. This produces a perfectly soft and even reflection on metal. When using
a dome, you may choose to illuminate it from the bottom as well.
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Chapter 5 ✦ In the Studio 141

You can build a dome from plastic bowls, but because of uneven surfaces and
uneven colors, you should instead purchase a professionally made product. This is
especially important for consistency when you are cataloging inventory or writing
appraisals.

Snoots
Snoots are the conical-shaped coverings that convert a flash into a spotlight by
channeling the light into a tight beam. Snoots are used to highlight a region or to
provide specific highlights, such as those within the eye and highlights behind hair.
(This specific lighting effect is also called a catch light.)

Barn doors
Barn doors look like, well, doors on a barn, and they block light coming out of a
light source based on how you angle the doors. They are used to prevent light from
straying into areas where it’s not wanted. They are placed over a flash head and can
be opened and closed exactly to achieve the appropriate illumination over a region.

Honeycomb grids
A honeycomb grid filter can be placed in front of soft light reflectors that provide
excellent control over the lighting diffusion. The total light beam is diminished
smoothly from the center to the edges and corners. Honeycomb grids with 1⁄4-inch
cells, for example, aim beams of light at 60 degrees; and 1⁄8-inch cells cut the light to
32 degrees. Common beam sizes are 10 degrees, 20 degrees, 30 degrees, and 40
degrees. The cell sizes are available in either black or white for dramatically differ-
ent effects. White grids produce a more gentle gradation of light falloff and black
grids produce a sharper falloff of light. Black grids are best used with objects that
are semi-transparent, such as glass sculpture and jewelry.

Gobos
Gobo is a shortened version of “goes between subject.” Gobos are often made of
black cards that are placed in front of the light source to block light. They are used
to keep light from hitting a particular region on the shooting area or to cast a
shadow on the background. A gobo of any size can also be used to block part of a
soft box to create a smaller light source or to reduce specific bright highlights in
reflective surfaces.

Lighting setups
Each photographic application requires a different setup, according to its purpose.
Therefore, you must determine the application and its requisite setup before you
consider purchasing lighting equipment. Note that some lighting arrangements are
not designed for visual appeal. For example, documenting museum sculptures or
historic items requires lighting that illuminates all regions of the object, and artistic
use of dark regions is not desirable.
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142 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

The shooting table

For shooting objects on a table, nothing is better than a table (preferable move-
able) that is set up for easy shooting. You can buy a table specifically designed for
photography, which are excellent, primarily because of their well thought-out versa-
tility for lighting and articulating arms. Often these tables offer specific qualities,
such as a translucent base and cove. However, many photographers make their
own custom table to suit their studio size, typical object size, and application
requirements. An ideal table would have a tabletop and background made of milky
Plexiglas so that you can light the subject from behind or below. If you are going to
build your own table, here is some advice to follow:

✦ Put wheels on the base so that you can move it around when you need the
space or want to orient lights in unusual locations.
✦ Make sure that the slope has the proper curve and size for the largest objects
you will shoot.
✦ Plexiglas is more bendable when it is warm. Use a heat gun (at a good distance)
to warm up the curve before you bend it or set it into its curved sides.
✦ Plexiglas cracks easily, particularly near the edges where you attach it. So drill
holes that are slightly larger than the screw width.
✦ Plan for plenty of space on the sides for lights and articulating arms.
✦ Include a region above the table where you can place a bar for holding paper
background rolls.

Photographing people
Taking photographs of people is considered by some to be the most enjoyable
aspect to photography. Portrait photography is an art form in itself and requires
expertise in more than just technology. Yet, the most important advice regarding
portrait photography is to know the intent of the photograph before you shoot it.
When this is clear, your objective is easier to meet.

The subject of portrait lighting in the studio is vast and many books focus on this
topic alone. In this section, I summarize the primary types of lighting that enable
you to choose what style you want and how to set it up quickly.

When starting out, you should first learn the basic methods for good lighting and
then master them. Then, you can experiment with more complex lighting arrange-
ments by using the basic techniques as your foundation. Later, you’ll gain experi-
ence and expertise in matching the assignment with the best lighting, while always
having a standard setup for backup.

The first lighting arrangement that you should know is how to simulate everyday
sunlight conditions. This is the type of lighting that people are used to and find
most pleasing. Here, you position the light to roughly 45 degrees away from the
camera, thus allowing light to strike the subject at 30 degrees. It’s that simple. This
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Chapter 5 ✦ In the Studio 143

arrangement illuminates the subject’s forehead, nose, cheeks, and chin, just as sun-
light does, and shadows appear appropriately below their most prominent features.
The light position is best when the shadow of the nose is apparent, yet just above
the lips.

With this type of single-source lighting, you may notice that the contrast is too high.
For this reason, you can use fill lights, which may be either strobes or hot lights, to
fill in the dark regions of the shadows. (The second light, which has less intensity, is
called a fill light and the primary light is called the main or key light.) Note that the
fill lighting is more essential with digital photography than with conventional pho-
tography. The fill light should be diffused and is best placed just above the sub-
ject’s eye level so that it creates a soft shadow below the chin. The contrast ratio of
the key-to-fill light is often 4:1; however, you should determine what is best in the
image. For higher-key fashion and glamour photography, you usually want to cut
the ratio to 2:1.

You can also use a single light for the key source and fill light. You can use umbrella
reflectors for this purpose and the results are reasonably good. However, for better
control, use two lights and position them exactly for the best position and contrast
ratio.

You have a lot of control with this simple two-light arrangement. For example, as
your key light source becomes larger (and softer), you can use less fill light to cre-
ate a deeper (and therefore, harder) contrast ratio. Alternatively, as your key light
becomes smaller (and harder), you can use more fill light to create a lighter (softer)
ratio. This controls the shadows and prevents them from becoming too dark and
contrasty, which is more important in digital photography than with conventional
photography. The lighting that you choose to illuminate your subject should be
an appropriate match, too. For example, flat lighting is best for thin-faced, poor-
complexioned people. More directional lighting should be used for rounded, wider
faces and those with better complexions. The deeper shadows make the rounded
faces look thinner. Also smoother complexions can tolerate higher contrast ratios
because deep shadows are zit enhancers.

A catch light is a small, directional light source designed to add life and sparkle to
the eyes in a portrait. However, it isn’t necessarily a third light source and can sim-
ply be a reflector. The result looks like a small bright reflection in the center of each
of the subject’s eyes and appears more natural when it is round.

Basic light setups for portrait photography

It’s important to be familiar with the common types of lighting for portrait photog-
raphy — even if you don’t use them all. When you are knowledgeable about the
standard types, you can easily choose the type of lighting for the intent of the shot
and how best to illuminate the subject. However, don’t treat these setups as rules.
Experiment with these arrangements so that they offer you creative choices during
your shoot. The following are the primary types of portrait lighting:
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144 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

✦ Broad lighting: Broad lighting primarily illuminates the broad side, or the
most exposed side, of a person’s face, assuming that his or her face is point-
ing at an angle (such as 45 degrees) to the camera. It flattens the illusion of
depth, de-emphasizes facial features, and is useful for making an overly
narrow, thin face appear wider.
✦ Butterfly lighting: Butterfly lighting positions the light directly between the
eyes. This simple and balanced arrangement works well when used with soft
lights and is best with oval faces. This popular arrangement can be your
everyday lighting setup.
✦ Short lighting: This type of lighting illuminates the less exposed portion of
the face and is the opposite of broad lighting. Short lighting produces a fine
and slightly dramatic lighting, which is good for wide faces and for enhancing
facial features.
✦ Paramount lighting: In this type of lighting, the key light is 45 degrees to the
right of the camera and placed high. The fill light is higher and is located
behind the key light source. This type of lighting, made famous by Hollywood’s
Paramount Studios, flattens features and reduces facial characteristics. This
type of lighting emphasizes cheekbones and gives a broad look to narrow
faces.
✦ Loop lighting: With loop lighting, your key light should be lower than with
paramount lighting. The fill light should be the same distance from the subject
as the camera, yet higher, while remaining opposite the key light. When set-
ting up the lights for loop lighting, make sure that the eyes are properly illumi-
nated because people look at the eyes first. Loop lighting is the most classic
of all portrait lighting styles and should be mastered as your ideal lighting
arrangement. This type of lighting helps to broaden the face and works very
well with narrow faces. Loop lighting creates a shadow from the nose that
goes down toward the corner of the mouth without touching the corner of the
mouth. The shadow generated from the key light should follow the natural
line of the face, from the nose to the mouth. This is the loop.
✦ Rembrandt lighting: In this type of lighting, the key light is lower than with
loop lighting and is moved closer toward the background. Like loop lighting,
the fill light should be with the same distance from the subject as the camera,
positioned higher than the camera, and opposite to the key light. Rembrandt
lighting gets its name from the lighting seen in Rembrandt’s paintings. It
brings out the individual characteristics of a person’s face and produces a
very dramatic but pleasing effect. A diamond-shaped shadow should be
formed below the farthest eye, thus creating a partial shadow on the camera
side of the face. You should also see slight illumination on the opposite cheek.
✦ Split lighting: With split lighting, the fill light should be positioned even with
the camera and placed high. Here, the lights should be positioned so that shad-
ows fall off past the far eye. The key light should be opposite the fill light and
placed lower than the position used with Rembrandt Lighting. Split lighting is
very dramatic, has high contrast, and brings out the texture and details of a
person’s face by illuminating half of it. It also makes faces appear narrower.
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Chapter 5 ✦ In the Studio 145

Don’t forget that when orchestrating your lighting set up for the ideal lighting con-
dition, many digital cameras, such as those from Nikon, allow you to adjust the con-
trast before you shoot. This feature is excellent because, although you may have
the best lighting orientation, adjusting one light inevitably changes the ratio to the
other light. Readjustment can take a frustratingly long time. When using this fea-
ture, lean towards reducing contrast. You can always increase it later in the editing
process.

Finally, when working with people, remote-controlled triggering of your shot allows
you to time the exposure at the exact time you want. Not all cameras have this fea-
ture, but you will find it a blessing if it is available. Keep in mind, of course, the
annoying delay typical of digital cameras. When shooting people in any type of sit-
uation, experienced photographers know how to anticipate people’s expressions.
So, with digital cameras and their inherent delay, this knowledge is even more
essential.

Light meters
Light meters are essential for attaining good exposures when shooting in the field.
Yet in the studio, lighting conditions are more controlled, thus reducing the need
for a light meter. So if digital cameras have internal light meters — including some
that are very sophisticated — why do you need another light meter? All cameras
rely on reflectance of the light for assessing how much light is reaching the camera.
However, this may be inaccurate. For example, imagine the difference between
shooting an object on a black background and shooting the same subject on a white
background. Ideally, the exposure should be the same. With reflectance measure-
ment, however, it isn’t. In contrast, incident measurements taken with a light meter
in the position of the object read the intensity of light falling on the target. It pro-
vides readings that create accurate and consistent renditions of the target’s color
and contrast — regardless of reflectance, background brightness, or texture. Colors
are rendered accurately, and highlight and shadow areas appear natural — with
little or no need to alter the histogram in the digital editor.

For hot lights, a light meter also helps you to determine exactly how bright a high-
light is. This highlight, which may be something like a section of highly reflective
metal, can throw off your digital camera’s exposure setting. Additionally, if you are
trying to attain a 2:1 ratio between two lights, you need to measure the light arriv-
ing at your target. All of the foregoing is also true with flash lighting, but for lighting
with flash, you use a flash meter instead.

You may not need a meter, particularly because you get immediate results from a
digital camera. However, you may encounter many situations when it does help.
When you do decide to purchase a light meter, choose a unit that can serve as an
incident, reflectance, and flash meter.
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146 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Backgrounds
In the studio, you have the option of providing different types of backgrounds, often
called backdrops, in the shot. This additional visual element is often a compelling
attribute to a great shot. Having choices is convenient because you have complete
control over the visual, how bright it is, and how it should be photographed. You
can, of course, digitally add and edit a layer as a background after the shot.
However, you’ll find that the best seam between the two visual elements is one
that originally blends the background image with the foreground image.

Backgrounds can be clean with no visual characteristics or they can be any one of a
seemingly infinite choice of textures and pictures. So, here too, you must ask your-
self, what is the intent of the image? What is it that I want the viewer to experience?
Your answers to these questions should describe what type of background is best
for your shots.

Caution Beginning photographers often enthusiastically choose backgrounds that are too
brightly lit or that contain images that compete with the subject or object. When
you see a background that distracts from the foreground, you know that your mes-
sage to the viewer is confusing. Try to create backgrounds so that they visually sup-
port the intention of the image.

You can use seamless roll paper to create a curved, shadowless background that
you can use and throw away when it becomes wrinkled and dirty. The paper roll
hangs on a rack that is often up to nine feet high and is typically around 100 inches
wide. Typically, between three and six rolls of background paper in different colors
or textures hang on a single rack. A professional rack of this sort would cost
between $300 and $900. However, you can easily build your own rack. You can build
a simple and steady rack yourself from PVC pipe for less than $50, but it will only
hold one or two rolls and you have to unscrew the pipe to put the rolls on the rack.

Professional paper rolls are often flame retardant and are available in an amazing
range of colors and textures. For digital photography purposes, Chroma-Key blue or
green is available. Special digital filters are available that take advantage of these
specific colors, which is the ideal choice for automatically creating perfectly
shaped selections from semitransparent objects or worse, billowy hair. With these
specific colors as backgrounds, the digital filter can detect the color and automati-
cally build a selection of any degree of complexity, which you can then copy to
another layer without any “spillover” of the background color. Keep this in mind
when you need to place a subject in front of another digital photograph and make
it look like they (and you) were there.

Another method for creating realistic backgrounds that appear as if they were shot
“on location” is to use a front or rear projection screen to project a variety of
images behind the subject. This works fine but requires an expensive setup and
experimentation to achieve ideal and believable composites.

Instead of paper, you can use hand-painted muslin, canvas, and synthetic Tyvek
backgrounds when you want a thematic image. These are available as seamless or
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Chapter 5 ✦ In the Studio 147

scenes, or can be custom made. If you do the painting yourself, use flat latex paint.
Otherwise, the shiny surface from a glossy paint reflects a bright hot spot when
using a flash.

Camera mounting
In the studio, the camera is attached to some kind of stand, making the camera sta-
ble throughout the shooting session. You have lots of choices; so making the right
decision is dependent on your needs and your budget. In this section, I take a look
at what’s available.

In photography, the tripod is one of the most important accessories other than
the camera itself. It is an essential tool for a photographer, and as a result, most
photographers have several tripods, each designated for a particular purpose. I
strongly recommend that you have multiple tripods, but in this discussion, I focus
on your studio tripod. A tripod for use in a digital studio is different than one for
use outdoors. Tripods that are used outdoors should be heavy, rugged, and have
simple rubber feet so that they are steady — even in a strong breeze. On the other
hand, you want them to be with you when you need them, so they need to be light
enough to carry. Luckily, digital cameras are lightweight compared to large format
studio cameras. Therefore, you can use lightweight tripods with quick release
hinged latches that allow you to extend the legs and set up quickly. Lightweight
tripods are available in plastic, carbon fiber, and aluminum alloys. For the studio,
use steel. It’s heavier, sturdier, and cheaper; and because it’s in your studio, you
don’t have to lug it around on your back.

Tripods commonly have an elevator that you can crank to raise the head up and
down, and they may be locked into position. Many professionals leave their tripods
extended and place them securely on a dolly so that they can be moved about.
However, if you build your own dolly, make sure that the wheels can be locked
securely in position.

One of the most important parts of a tripod is the head assembly. Serious photogra-
phers choose their tripod head with as much care and diligence as the tripod. In
fact, you can buy the tripod and head separately, so you can get exactly what you
want in both components. Yet, if you get an inexpensive tripod, don’t expect any
choice in head types.

You can choose from two common types of tripod heads:

✦ Ball head: A ball head lets the camera tilt in any direction with one adjust-
ment because it rides atop a large ball bearing. This is a good choice if you
have to quickly reposition the camera. Many photographers love them, but
others are afraid that if they loosen the head and forget to hold the camera
with their other hand, the camera will flip down, causing damage.
✦ Three-way heads: Three-way heads are an alternative and provide three sepa-
rate, screw-like controls that tighten along the X, Y, and Z axes. The advantage
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148 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

of a three-way head is that it is easier to precisely control the individual axis of

the camera. With three-way heads, you gain accuracy but you lose the speed
that you have with ball heads. However, they’re absolutely necessary for pan-
ning across a level axis, which is essential for making stitched panoramas or
for smoothly following motion with the intent of blurring the background.

Because the tripod head is the part of the tripod that you use most, you need to feel
completely comfortable with it. Take your time with hands-on testing and select the
one that feels best to you. Be sure to test its full range of movement before you buy it.

You don’t have to buy a carpenter’s level at a hardware store and place it on the tri-
pod base to know what’s level — although you can. Instead, you can get a spirit
level, which is a level that is just the right size and attaches directly on the tripod.

Another feature that you should consider with a tripod is a quick-release camera
plate, which is a small pad that screws into the bottom of the camera and stays
there. You then leave the plate connected to your camera all the time, even when
you are not using the tripod. When you are ready to shoot, the camera plate snaps
into the tripod head assembly and locks in place. A quick-release lever releases the
camera so that you can detach it from the tripod when you need to handhold the
camera. This allows you to move quickly in response to the actions of a moving
subject. You can also buy several spare camera plates and attach them to different
digital cameras, thus allowing you to switch cameras quickly.

I should also mention rollable camera stands. Many pros rely on these units due to
their stability, versatility, and small footprint. Camera stands consist of a pole with
feet and have a crankable arm that holds the camera. Rollable camera stands can
position a camera, even heavy ones, up to eight feet and still be very secure
because of their impressive weight. A rollable dolly generally costs about the same
as the tripod it supports, but it sure makes it easier to move the camera when you
need to keep up with a live subject.

Essential accessories
Some accessories are downright essential in a well-equipped studio. Here is a short
list of must-haves:

✦ Batteries: You always need batteries — for your flash, camera, and more.
Always have a spare set of fully charged batteries and keep your discharged
batteries in a ready-to-charge container.
✦ Lenses: Better digital cameras provide a screw mount of some kind to attach
adaptor lenses for macro or telephoto applications.
✦ Filters: You will find that having a variety of filters comes in handy:
• Neutral density filters allow you to control focal depth by reducing the
amount of light.
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Chapter 5 ✦ In the Studio 149

• Special effects filters can be useful for realistic starlight effects, for
example.
• Good soft focus filters are often better than what you can achieve digi-
tally in an editor.
• A polarizing filter is essential. Polarizing filters are great for reducing the
unwanted reflections from shiny surfaces. You can change the angle of
light that the filter absorbs by rotating the filter to the ideal position.
However, when using an auto-focus camera, use a circular polarizing fil-
ter instead of a linear filter. (Because the auto-focusing is done through
the lens, the linear filters affect its ability to focus correctly.)
✦ Adaptors: Inevitably, you will need to adapt one lens or filter to another lens.
Plan ahead and match up your equipment before you need it.
✦ Paperwork: Yes, paperwork. Have model release forms ready and enter your
work in a logbook. Your logbook is a legal document and is essential for calcu-
lating what you did and how long it took. Consider this an essential part of a
well-equipped studio.
✦ Fans: Lights get hot and so do the items and people that you are shooting.
Having a well-ventilated space helps your human subjects and helps you, too.
✦ PCMCIA Card Adapter: This can download your images directly from your
SmartMedia card typically at speeds up to 300 times faster than a common
serial connection. Get at least 128MB.
✦ Extra memory: You will always need extra memory, regardless of the type
that you use. Don’t forget to label each one.
✦ Standard office supplies: This list should include the following:
• Tape (colored, clear, duct, gaffer’s, cable path, and so forth)
• Scissors
• A tape measure
• Pens
• A stepladder
• Seamless paper clips
• Photo clips
• Rubber bands
• Alligator clips
• Wood blocks
• Glue (superglue, rubber cement, and so forth)
• A box of tools
✦ Extension cords: You never want to be in a situation where you lack just one
more power connection. (Get good quality cords.)
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150 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

✦ Sitting: For portraits, you need at least one posing stool, but don’t forget
chairs and cushions for everyday use.
✦ Gofer: Everybody needs someone to “go for” this or that. What would you do
without one?
✦ Camera bracket: A camera bracket allows you to grip a camera and flash com-
bination, as shown in Figure 5-4.

Figure 5-4: A camera bracket and how to hold it

Summary
A well-equipped digital studio offers control over all aspects of the photographic
process, thus allowing the photographer to attain the highest level of productivity.
In this chapter, I covered the tools for achieving this goal. I described the consider-
ations for creating an ideal workflow in the studio. The sections on lighting (the
most critical activity in photography) included the primary choices of lights and
how to set them up by using classical lighting arrangements. I discussed the
various choices of backgrounds that provide you with maximum control over the
image. And finally, I briefly discussed all those little accessories that you need so
that you can make the shooting process fast, predictable, and enjoyable.

✦ ✦ ✦
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Useful Photo
Accessories
6
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Chapter

U sing the right add-ons and accessories often con-

tributes to the success of a photograph as much
as using the right camera and exposure. Having the right
Planning the contents
of your camera bag

Keeping your
accessories can also make your life easier. Choosing your
camera steady
accessories ranges from selecting the right camera bag to
picking an efficient camera-to-computer interface. It is impor-
tant to have the right tools for the job, but it is also crucial to Using external
have tools that are easy to use. After all, you know as well as portable flash units
I do that when the new toy is too much trouble to use, it just and studio strobes
gets neglected.
Using internal and
external light meters

Your Camera Bag Understanding the

types, care, and use
One of the greatest characteristics of today’s digital cameras of lens accessories
is that they’re small enough to keep with you at all times.
Almost all digital cameras are even small enough to fit into the Choosing digital
pocket of a jacket or a pair of cargo pants. (Ah, cargo pants! film cards
Now that’s an accessory no photographer — digital or other-
wise — should ever be without.) Despite the portability of the Using card readers
cameras, however, you’ll soon acquire enough accessories to
make a camera bag necessary. The Wacom tablet
and helpful software
I actually use two camera bags. One is small enough to carry
with me at all times. My bag is a small (about ten inches ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
square and four inches deep) black nylon bag with a fairly
generous front pocket, as shown in Figure 6-1. This bag is
padded — a very important feature because digital cameras
can be allergic to hard knocks — and has Velcro strips on
panels inside, which enable me to compartmentalize the
bag according to the gear I need for a particular shoot.
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152 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Figure 6-1: The “constant companion”

camera bag

I keep the following items inside this bag:

✦ Two digital cameras (an Olympus 2020 and a Nikon 950)

✦ Three CompactFlash memory cards
✦ Three SmartMedia memory cards
✦ A homemade LCD hood (which I sometimes use as a lens hood)
✦ My checkbook
✦ A calculator
✦ A cell phone
✦ A Palm Pilot
✦ A portable flash
✦ A tabletop tripod
✦ Extra batteries
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 153

✦ Bug repellent
✦ A pair of accessory lenses (telephoto and wide-angle)
✦ The remote control for the Olympus
✦ A polarizing filter

With this equipment handy, I hardly ever encounter a situation in which I can’t take
a picture.

You may be tempted to buy a bigger or fancier bag. You can certainly do so, but
remember this: fancier bags tempt thieves — especially if the bags are made of
leather or brushed aluminum. I figure I’m carrying around $3,000 worth of techno
stuff in my bag and I sure don’t want to lose it. If my camera bag was lost or stolen,
I would lose more than just expensive equipment — I would lose information. (I use
the TRG palm computer, which is Palm-compatible but uses the same CompactFlash
cards for memory as the Nikon 950, to store all of my valuable notes.) Another con-
sideration to remember is that larger bags hold more equipment, which means they
also weigh more. After a few hours of lugging a large bag around, your shoulders will
start to ache. As a result, bigger bags tend to get left at home.

My bigger bag is a sports equipment bag that holds the lamp heads for my strobe
units, light stands, a roll-up windshield reflector, a backup tripod, and other items
that I may need on a location shoot. I leave that bag in the trunk of the car until I
really need it.

You don’t necessarily need a camera bag, however. For example, several brands of
photographer’s vests are available on the market. Tamrac offers one that’s made of
100 percent cotton with nylon mesh vents so you’re not bathed in your own perspi-
ration. The vest boasts ten pockets on the front, four of which have Velcro closures
that are pretty easy to get in and out of (as opposed to fishing for zippers). The vest
also offers four pockets of various sizes that have nylon zippers for secure storage
of smaller objects. You can use the two other pockets for warming your hands on a
cold location shoot. A typical photographer’s vest is shown in Figure 6-2.

Naturally, if you’re hauling 35mm or medium format gear, a vest may not be the
only answer. However, if you’re only using a basic digital camera setup with an
accessory lens or two, a cell phone, extra batteries, and maybe a polarizing filter,
a vest may fit the bill.
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154 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Figure 6-2: A cotton vest loaded with pockets may be

all you need for a really portable setup.

Holding the Camera Steady

Before you think about how you’re going to mount the camera, you need to
consider how you’re going to keep it motionless while you press the shutter.
Otherwise, you won’t achieve all the benefits from having the camera mounted. Of
course, you can simply try to press the shutter button very carefully. Unfortunately,
if your hand is the slightest bit unsteady or if you get anxious and press a little too
hard or fast, you’re still going to jiggle the camera at the moment you take the shot.
If this happens, the picture may be a little less sharp than you wanted. A very slight
movement is often more distracting than an obvious motion blur.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 155

Capture the image without touching the camera

You have three ways to fire the camera without touching it:

✦ Use the self-timer

✦ Use a cable release
✦ Use a remote control

Use the self-timer

This is likely to be the only method available to you. Digital cameras priced under
$1,500 rarely feature a cable release-threaded coupling to which you can attach an
inexpensive cable release. In my opinion, this is brain-dead design because it costs
only pennies to add this very useful feature and you can always buy another cable
release if your remote control breaks or fails.

However, most digital cameras do have a self-timer feature, which is usually built
into the camera’s firmware. To activate this feature, you typically push a button or
make a menu choice on the camera’s LCD, depending on your particular camera.
Then, when you push the shutter button, you experience a delay of several sec-
onds before the shutter fires as the lens finalizes focus and exposure details. As
soon as you push the shutter button, take your hands off the camera to give it a
chance to steady itself before the shutter fires. This feature also comes in handy
when I have to be the “hand model” for a product or assembly shot and I have no
one to assist me.

A self-timer is woefully inadequate, however, when photographing people. You can

certainly tell your model to freeze at the peak of an expression in order to make an
exposure that lasts 1⁄15th second. However, don’t expect your model to “hold it” and
still “look natural” when the shutter fires ten seconds later.

Use a cable release

This brilliant invention, shown in Figure 6-3, was around long before anyone
thought of such high-tech innovations as self-timers and remote controls. With a
cable release, you don’t have to wait a split second longer than the moment when
you want to fire the shutter. Additionally, a cable release doesn’t jiggle the camera.
Best of all, you can buy a cable release at any camera store for a few dollars and it
will fit almost any camera — except for most low-end digital cameras (and the most
amateurish of 35mm cameras).
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156 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Figure 6-3: A cable release

Cable releases work on most professional digital cameras. This is because most
professional digital cameras are really professional film cameras that have been
modified or that use a replaceable digital back.

Use a remote control

You are really lucky if you can use a remote control with your camera. Olympus
rules in this category (among many others) — the C2000, C2020, C3030, and the
C2050 all ship with a remote control. Unfortunately, these remote controls are still
a rare feature at the time of this writing, but they are so useful that it can’t possibly
stay that way for long. The Olympus remote control, as shown in Figure 6-4, not
only fires the shutter, but also operates the zoom lens. This remote control also
features a pair of buttons that increase or decrease the exposure by one f-stop.
My one complaint with this unit is that it’s so small — even smaller than a
SmartMedia card — it can be easily lost or misplaced.

Tip If you are working in the studio and your camera has a remote control, you can
hook the camera to a TV set and use it as a viewfinder. Then you can zoom the
lens and fire the shutter without having to be behind the camera itself. This is an
excellent way to communicate with an art director during a commercial shoot or
stay comfortable when the camera is mounted at an extremely high or low angle.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 157

Figure 6-4: The Olympus remote control

Tripods
Tripods are three-legged devices made to keep the camera steady — even on uneven
terrain. Full-size tripods have a center post that lets you fine-tune the height of the
camera platform. The camera platform (also known as the tripod head) should have
an adjustable tilt from front to back and from side to side and should also rotate
360 degrees horizontally.

Tip If you already own a tripod for your video camera, consider buying a new head for
your still camera. Video heads have no side-to-side tilt.

My favorite tripod head is the single control ball-bearing type, as shown in Figure 6-5.
With one twist of the tightening screw, you can move the camera into any position.
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158 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Figure 6-5: A ball head lets you adjust the camera with
one twist of the screw. The slot in the side makes it possible
to take vertically oriented shots.

A tripod is one of the first accessories that you should consider buying. Most digital
cameras have an ISO rating of around 100. This means that handheld pictures taken
in anything but bright lights are going to be blurry, especially with the press-to-click
shutter lag. Sure, you can use the on-camera flash — but not if you want the situa-
tion you’re shooting to look natural or the people you’re shooting to look good.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 159

If you are working in windy conditions or in a crowd, consider rigging a weight

under the tripod. I use a small nylon cord to tie a five-pound dumbbell to the apex
of the tripod’s legs. Whatever you use, be sure to rig the weight so that it’s close to
the ground in order to overcome the top-heaviness caused by placing a camera on a
lightweight tripod.

Of course, the idea of toting around a heavy and clumsy tripod probably doesn’t
appeal to you. Besides being obtrusive, it’s too easy to clunk some poor soul as
you’re shifting positions. Far less cumbersome alternatives are available. For those
occasions when you really do need a full-size tripod, take solace in the fact that most
digital cameras are lightweights. A lightweight camera (even traditional 35mm and
APS film cameras) can do well with a fairly lightweight tripod or even a monopod.

All digital cameras use 1⁄4-inch tripod threads, so be sure that any camera-steadying
device that you buy also uses a 1⁄4-inch mounting screw. Otherwise, you’ll be . . .
unscrewed, so to speak.

Tripods aren’t just for holding the camera steady; they’re also handy for the
following:

✦ Keeping the camera stationary: Tripods are the best way to keep the camera
in one place while you do something else, such as holding an external flash
unit high and to one side of the subject.
✦ Viewpoint: Tripods ensure a consistent point of view when you’re shooting
pictures in a series.
✦ Freezing action: Tripods are useful in the studio when you’re shooting with
strobes that are fast enough to freeze both the subject and any possible cam-
era motion.
✦ Panoramas: Tripods are a necessity if you want to create a panorama, since
the camera’s rotation must be confined strictly to a plane. A hand-held
panorama isn’t going to give you the results you want.
✦ Flexibility: Tripods free you to adjust the lights, stand to one side to direct
the model, or step aside and let the client peer through the viewfinder.

Miniature tripods
I don’t always carry a full-height tripod with me, but I always carry a miniature tripod.
These little jewels can be lifesavers. As long as a tabletop, a countertop, or any other
solid surface is available to place it on, you have a steady mount for your camera. The
hood and roof of my car have also performed this duty more times than I can count.
Miniature or “tabletop” tripods come in a wide range of prices and sizes. Figure 6-6
shows a miniature tripod that cost a mere $20 on sale at my local camera store.
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160 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Figure 6-6: A miniature (tabletop) tripod

One thing to watch out for with miniature tripods: If you set up the bed for a verti-
cal (portrait) shot, the weight of the camera will probably tip it over. You can either
hold the tripod in place with your hand (not very convenient), get an L-bracket that
keeps the camera centered over the head, or get a tripod that has a wide enough
leg spread to keep this from happening. The tripod shown in Figure 6-6 is very inex-
pensive and easy to stow, but I recommend using one with a ball head and three-
or four-section legs, which can be nearly as compact and are much more useful.

The WING™
EagleEye manufactures a product called the WING that provides extra support for
the Nikon 950 and 990 cameras. (You’ll need the WING II for Nikon 995 cameras).
The WING, shown in Figure 6-7, is a simple bracing system made from aluminum
that places a support point beneath the lens and prevents strain at the camera’s
swivel point. If you have the camera mounted on a tripod in the normal fashion and
connect an accessory lens to the camera, the lens has a tendency (due to gravity)
to slowly — or not so slowly — twist the lens body unit down. The WING places
support directly beneath the lens to keep it securely in place. An additional tripod
mounting point is centered under the lens. If you connect the unit to the tripod at
this point, the camera will then pivot on the lens’ vertical axis so you can take
panoramic shots. You can order the WING at www.photosolve.com.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 161

Figure 6-7: The WING adds lens support and provides a pivot point for
panoramic shots.

The $62 WING (the WING II costs $58) is cushioned at all points of camera contact,
so you don’t scratch your camera. You can purchase a few optional items that make
the WING especially versatile:

✦ A shutter release kit ($25): The shutter release is an aluminum shaft that
bends over the top of the Nikon shutter. You then screw your cable release
into the shaft and fire away. The flexible shaft within the cable release presses
down on the shutter button to take the picture.
✦ A flash mount ($37): If you want to use an optional compact flash unit above
the camera, the flash mount places the flash shoe about three inches above
the camera.

✦ An Xtend-A-Mount ($10): Normal mounting of the Xtend-A-View™ involves

applying self-adhesive Velcro to the camera body. With the Xtend-A-Mount,
the Velcro is attached to the mount instead of the camera. (The Xtend-A-View
is further discussed later in this chapter.)

The Pod
This little gizmo is incredible! Remember the last time you wanted to take a shot
using the self-timer on your digital camera? Without a tripod, your main problem
was getting the camera set up so it wouldn’t fall over. You took the time to get it
propped up with crushed beer cans and candy bar wrappers, only to find after the
third try that everybody had to get on their knees in order to get into the only shot
possible. Well, this doesn’t have to happen again. Enter the Pod, which is shown in
Figure 6-8. This little gizmo is so simple, somebody should have thought of it years
ago. It’s a 5-inch wide, 2-inch thick nylon beanbag with a1⁄4-inch camera mount
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162 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

threaded screw attached to keep your camera fairly stable on a variety of semi-flat
surfaces. The base material is constructed of a sort of rubberized nylon, and is just
a tad slick. (It will slide off of a car’s fender easily enough.) However, the Pod is less
than $15 and fits easily in your camera bag. The Pod weighs 13 ounces — almost a
pound to lug around — but it’s much less bulky than a tripod. You can find one at
www.adorama.com (search for “Pod”).

Figure 6-8: The Pod is no ordinary beanbag.

Full-size tripods
A full-size aluminum tripod should be black because bright aluminum tripods can
cast strange, striped reflections onto your subject. Your tripod should have at least
three adjustable sections in the legs to give you as much flexibility as possible in
adjusting individual legs for height or for uneven terrain. You want the maximum
extended length to be at least five feet so you can keep the camera steady at eye
level.

Although they can be very hard to find, a boom arm for your tripod makes it possi-
ble to aim the camera straight down or to extend it over a tabletop for close-up
shots. Bogen makes an excellent accessory “side arm” or boom that fits most
tripods and costs less than $50. It is double-headed, so you can attach your pan/
tilt head to either end of the arm, as shown in Figure 6-9. You can also hang a
counterweight (or your camera bag) on the other end of the arm.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 163

Tip You can jury-rig a boom by clamping a pipe or board to your tripod head and then
using a clamp to secure a counterweight so the camera/tripod doesn’t fall over.
The only thing worse than redoing a setup is replacing a lens!

Figure 6-9: The Bogen accessory side arm lets you mount the
camera vertically over the floor or a table.

You can make it possible to roll your camera and tripod across smooth floors by
adding a dolly, as shown in Figure 6-10. If you’re going to do a lot of studio work, a
tripod dolly is a most convenient accessory. If you also do video, a dolly is virtually
a necessity.

Figure 6-10: A typical tripod dolly

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164 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Other means of bracing yourself

Tripods may be the best way of keeping a camera steady, but they won’t always be
around when you need them. You will also encounter some situations in which a
tripod is simply not the best tool for the job.

Monopods
A close relative of the tripod is the monopod. (Mono means “one.” Pod means “foot.”
Think of a monopod as a tripod without crutches.) The monopod was invented
shortly before the bipod, which became a tripod moments later because the darned
bipods kept falling over.

Monopods are much easier to carry than tripods. If you’re careful, you can shoot at
about 1⁄3rd the normal shutter speed that you use for a sharp, unassisted, handheld
shot. Get a monopod that can use the same head as your tripod. You may not want
to carry a tripod on a hike or into a crowd, but a monopod is far easier to carry. On
a hike, you can use it as a walking stick, and in a crowd, others are far less likely to
trip over it. Finally, if you need a rock-steady shot, you can always clamp it to a
chair, ladder, or fence. I’ve even known photographers who piled rocks around the
foot of their monopod. If you do that, put a plastic bag over the foot so that you
don’t get dirt, sand, or water into the working parts. A monopod can be fairly
pricey — Linhof used to sell one for $180. Adorama (www.adorama.com) currently
offers an $89.95 model, shown in Figure 6-11, that’s 14 inches long when collapsed
and extends to 58 inches in seconds. It even accepts a ball head.

Figure 6-11: The Adorama Podmatic

monopod creates a fairly stable and
very versatile shooting platform.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 165

At first thought, you may decide that a monopod is a waste of money. After all, it
doesn’t stand up by itself, it can wave back and forth, and you can twist the cam-
era. However, these negative aspects can actually be advantages. For example, if
you’re shooting in a crowd — at a race or a parade, perhaps — you’re free to pan the
scene, and you still have a pretty steady platform when you take the shot. Most
objective camera motion occurs as you’re depressing the shutter. As you create a
downward force on the shutter release, you have a good chance of moving your
arm or hand at the same time. Having your camera firmly mounted on a monopod
negates any downward movement of the camera. The Adorama Podmatic comes
with a zippered nylon carry case and shoulder strap, and the Podmatic itself also
has a carry strap.

Neck straps
Sometimes, you just won’t have a tripod handy. If you’re smart, you’ve already
found some means to attach a professional neck strap to your camera. This won’t
always be easy because a lot of digital camera designers haven’t been thoughtful
enough to place neck strap loops on either side of the camera. Most (but not all)
cameras have at least one place where you can attach a strap. Get one of those wire
key-ring loops and thread it through that retainer. You can then attach the neck
strap clips, as shown in Figure 6-12, to the key ring.

Figure 6-12: A professional neck strap

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166 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

A good neck strap is the first purchase that you should make in order to protect
the investment in your digital camera. A neck strap enables you to always keep the
camera on you and at the ready, and it makes it difficult for a thief to quietly pocket
your small camera when you’re not looking. Plus, you won’t drop your camera on
the concrete when you’re pushed or startled. Best of all, using the neck strap pro-
vides a way to steady your camera:

1. Sling the neck strap so that it passes your neck on one side and under your
arm on the other.
2. Spread out the strap until it’s so tight that you feel pressure pulling the
camera toward you.
3. Hold the camera on both sides with your hands and push out, as shown in
Figure 6-13.
4. Start breathing in very slowly as you press the shutter button.

I don’t claim to have a very steady hand, but with practice, I’ve been able to
achieve acceptably steady shots at 1⁄5th second.

Figure 6-13: The neck strap brace

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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 167

Finally, you can also use a variety of pistol and rifle grips (these usually require a
cable-release socket), as well as chest braces.

Accessories for panoramas and object movies

Most (if not all) of the Olympus digital cameras ship with a program that enables
you to seamlessly join a series of images from side to side so that you can shoot
a 360-degree panorama. This “stitching” software is getting better and better at
finding the areas in adjoining images that should match one another — even if
they’re a little out of alignment. So, if you have the right software these days (see
Chapter 16), you can shoot a pretty decent handheld panorama.

Tip Some of the Olympus cameras come with panorama software that places a grid
on the LCD to help you keep the horizon aligned and to give you a guideline for
overlapping the edges. If shooting panoramas is something you’re likely to want to
do often, you may want to keep your eyes out for such a feature.

On the other hand, no matter how “clever” your stitching program, you will do a
better job if you keep the camera absolutely level as it rotates, if you take pictures
at regular intervals of rotation, and if you rotate the camera on its optical axis. This
last requirement is the hard part. Most professional and semiprofessional film cam-
eras have a mark that indicates the location of the camera’s optical axis; however,
most digital cameras do not bear this mark. This mark allows you to adjust your
panoramic tripod head so that it, and thus the optical axis, is centered over the tri-
pod’s mounting screw. (You may need a special mounting device in order to center
this mark.)

At the very least, you will want to use a level on your tripod head when taking
panoramas. Some tripods come with levels built into their heads. You can also buy
tilt and pan heads that have a built-in level.

If your tripod doesn’t have a level, you have another solution. Take a small, flat
piece of sheet metal and drill a hole into it; this makes it easy to place the sheet of
metal over your tripod screw. Now you have a platform that protrudes out the back
of your camera. You can place a small carpenter’s level on the metal. The whole rig,
shown in Figure 6-14, should cost you less than $5.

Kaidan (www.kaidan.com) is a company that specializes in making accessories for

shooting panoramic and object sequences. You will discover that quite a few of
these accessories are available in quite a wide price range.
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168 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Flat steel plate

over tripod thread
Carpenter's
line level

Figure 6-14: A small metal scrap makes a nice level platform,

which is especially useful on ball-bearing heads.

Buying External Flash Units

The capability to use a flash unit that can be fired at some distance from the cam-
era is only available in upper-echelon prosumer cameras and in most professional
cameras. This is equally true of both film and digital cameras.

You can choose from two basic types of external flash units, each of which can be
used in many different situations. I break them down into units that are used at
events and those that are used in the studio, but depending on the site and the
equipment, studio equipment will work fine in the field as well.

Event strobes
Event strobes integrate the battery pack and the flash head and are small enough to
be dropped into a camera bag. They vary in size from as small as a pack of cigarettes
to as large as a small saucepan. Event strobes also vary in power; generally speak-
ing, the more power the better. Event strobes are built with portability and ease of
setup in mind, whereas studio strobes are meant to remain relatively stable on
wheeled or stationary stands. However, depending on your budget and your
requirements, you should pick the best compromise between versatility and price.

Try to find a strobe unit that gives a guide rating of around 120 at ISO 100, which is the
typical speed rating for a digital camera. This means that you can shoot at an f-stop of
about f11 if your subject is about 10 feet away. In fact, you want to shoot with the flash
to one side of the camera and at least a couple of feet above it to avoid red-eye and
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 169

produce some shadows. The rules for lighting with portable flash are no different than
for any other type of lighting, which is discussed in Chapter 5, except that when you
are using portable equipment, you’re generally not in circumstances that permit
heavy equipment and light stands. If you don’t have an assistant, you may have to
bounce the flash off the ceiling (or a nearby wall) in order to get a natural effect.

To avoid having to buy several different strobe units, try to find a single unit that
you can use in as many ways as possible. Choose a unit with a flash head that tilts.
Another very useful feature is a built-in slave sensor, which allows you to trigger
the unit from your camera’s built-in flash. (See “Other Strobe Accessories” later
in this chapter for more suggestions.)

Some cameras, such as the Nikon Coolpix 950, are only intended for use with pro-
prietary external flash units. These flashes are generally automatic and respond to
information that the camera collects on how much light is striking the subject dur-
ing a flash. The unit then automatically adjusts the duration of the flash for the
proper exposure.

You can also purchase automatic flash units that work independently of the camera’s
electronics. These units have a built-in light sensor that internally adjusts the flash
for the proper duration. Automatic flash units are helpful when you’re just getting
used the to flash, if you have to do a lot of bounce lighting, or if you don’t have the
experience to quickly “guesstimate” the proper settings. Automatic flashes are also
extremely helpful if your camera doesn’t give you direct control over the f-stop.

If your camera does give you control over the f-stop, you can save money by buying
a nonautomatic unit, which does what you ask it to do rather than what it insists on
doing. Personally, I’d rather save money by investing in a handheld combination
strobe meter. (See “Choosing Light Meters” later in this chapter.)

Event flash units have three types of connectors:

✦ Proprietary: Proprietary connectors are designed to force you to buy your

flash from the manufacturer of your camera. Incidentally, they may also make
it possible to use some automated flash exposure features. Most importantly,
they prevent you from being able to use a unit that offers just the features you
want at the price you want to pay for them. Personally, I avoid proprietary
connections like the plague.
✦ Pc cord: The pc cord connector is the most universally useful choice. You can
buy all sorts of extension cords for them; they work well with studio flash;
and you can always buy a replacement cord when the one that came with the
unit wears out.
✦ Hot shoe units: Hot shoe units work off the hot shoe synch connection fea-
tured on some cameras. A hot shoe connection is actually an excellent way to
go. You can easily buy a small connector that lets you connect a standard
synch cord, yet you still have the option of mounting a hot shoe flash on the
camera itself.
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170 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Studio strobes
Studio strobes are often taken on location for advertising and interior
photography — but it takes a crew. These are big units, often powerful enough
to light an entire room (or SUV). All of them work off of standard pc cords. If your
camera doesn’t have a digital delay, you can also use them with slave units — so
you may be able to fire them without a synch cord.

Studio strobes come in two basic types:

✦ Monolights
✦ Powerpacks

Monolights
Monolights have the powerpack built into the lamp head. Most will only fire one
light, but most of these units have a built-in slave sensor. The built-in slaves and
powerpacks make them very easy to take on location because you can pack three to
six of them in a single case that’s easily transported in the trunk of a car. Monolights
are also nice on location because they’re not tethered together at the powerpack, so
it’s a little less likely that the public will be tripping over the cords. I say “a little less
likely” because most of these units are not battery-powered, so they still need to be
plugged into a wall socket.

Of course, you can certainly use monolights in the studio. Their portability simply
makes them more versatile. Also, because the lights are independent of a central
powerpack, you can add lights as your budget increases and the need arises.

Powerpacks
Powerpack units are divided into those designed for use on location and those
designed strictly for studio use. The location units generally contain a battery pack.
This means that they can be used in areas with no electricity. On the other hand,
virtually all battery packs are meant to power more than one flash head. Look for a
unit that lets you adjust the power to different levels for different heads (a fairly
common feature).

Other strobe accessories

As soon as you think about using off-camera flash, you’d better start thinking about
the accessories that make them work — from flash connectors to light stands.

Slave units
Slave units are used for firing flash heads that are some distance away from the
camera without the need for daisy-chained synch cords. Slave units are available
in three types; in order of least to most expensive, they are as follows:
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 171

✦ Photoelectric: Photoelectric slaves are very inexpensive. They make it possible

to use an external flash with any camera that has a built-in flash — including
most digicams. They’re often built into external portable and monolight units.
In fact, you should shop for units that come equipped this way because they are
much more versatile. You can also buy individual units that have either a hot
shoe connector or a pc cord synch post (shown in Figure 6-15), so that they can
be connected to either studio or portable strobe units. This is an item that you
should always have in your kit. The downside to photoelectric slaves is that
they’re useless at press events and parties. This is because everyone who has a
throwaway camera will set off your slaves every time they take a shot. Also, you
can’t use most of them outdoors, so they’re no good for fill flash.
✦ Infrared: Infrared slaves are the next step up from photoelectric slaves.
Unauthorized flashes don’t set them off, so you can use them at events. Their
limitations are that they have to be used in the line of sight and their range is
limited when compared to radio-controlled remotes.
✦ Radio-controlled: Radio remotes are the best thing since sliced bread. You can
place auxiliary units behind walls (so that they can light a distant area without
being seen), use them at events, and use them outdoors on location. Their cost,
at around $100 per transmitter/receiver, can get a little scary when you’re equip-
ping multiple units. On the other hand, if you have an important event to cover
or a major on-location commercial shoot, you’ll cover their cost in one sitting.

Figure 6-15: A typical photoelectric slave used to

fire remote flash units

Light stands
If you’re going to use an off-camera strobe at anything more than arm’s length from
the camera and you don’t have an assistant, you need one or more light stands. You
can find single-leg light stands that have a heavy weight at the bottom. They’re
sturdy and take up little space, and they’re also excellent for holding up backdrop
rolls. However, moving them around is nasty work.
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172 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Most light stands have a tripod base and several telescoping sections, as shown in
Figure 6-16. Look for a unit that has adjustable leg spread and buy 10- or 12-foot-tall
units.

Figure 6-16: A typical lightweight 10-foot light stand

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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 173

You may need diameter adapters (small sleeves with a hole in the center) to make the
lamp heads attach securely to the light stands. Generally, these are supplied with or
can be ordered from the manufacturer of your lamp head at a very reasonable price.

Another accessory that I find very handy is a hot shoe light stand adaptor, as
shown in Figure 6-17. These make it possible to mount a hot shoe-type portable
flash atop a light stand. Because light stands weigh little and assistants can be
expensive, this is an excellent way to light event portraits and on-location scenes.

Figure 6-17: A hot shoe adaptor for a light stand holds this
Digi-Slave flash unit in place.
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174 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Reflectors
Reflectors are the most portable and low-cost means for lightening the shadows in
an image, regardless of the type of light source used. The type of reflector that I find
most useful for both studio and location work is foam-core sheets. You can buy
these at your local office supply store; they are either black on one side and white
on the other, or white on one side and silver on the other. You can buy one of each
for less than $10. The advantage of foam core is that it’s lightweight, so you can eas-
ily clamp it to a light stand, as shown in Figure 6-18, or a ladder and position it
where you want it. The variety of colors also provides versatility:

✦ White: The white side is the side you’ll use the most. It provides a soft neutral
fill with no hotspots.
✦ Silver: When the reflector has to be some distance from the subject, silver is
better because it reflects brighter and more focused light.
✦ Black: Black is useful for occasions when you want to set a strong mood by
deepening the shadows rather than filling them. A large piece of black felt
(which can also double as a background) is also useful for absorbing light
on the shadow side of the subject when you have a larger subject.

Windshield sunscreens also come in versions that are silver on one side and white
on the other. They, too, work well with clamps and light stands. However, I usually
hand-hold them when shooting close-ups outdoors. The silver side is especially
useful on cloudy days to lend a little contrast to the scene and to brighten up the
shadows under your subject’s eyes.

Flats (foam core covered with insulation) are terrific studio reflectors for large
subjects. I make a frame of 1 x 2-inch fir and staple the foam core to either or both
sides. You can paint one side flat black to use as a light absorber. I also use these
flats during open studios for hanging fine-art prints of my work.

Umbrellas make wonderful semidirectional reflectors for imitating the light from an
open window. These look just like the umbrellas you carry out in the rain, except
that their stalks are straight so they line up directly with the lamp head, as shown
in Figure 6-19. (When you buy your lamp heads, make sure that they can accommo-
date an umbrella reflector.)
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 175

Figure 6-18: A sheet of white foam

core attached to a light stand with
a spring clamp
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176 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Figure 6-19: An umbrella reflector

attached to a studio strobe

Lightboxes, like umbrellas, project a soft light, but it is noticeably more focused
than the light from an umbrella. Because of the soft light they emit, they’re some-
times called softboxes. Lightboxes are extremely useful in product shots when you
want directed but soft-edged light.

A lightbox, such as the one shown in Figure 6-20, envelops the lamp head in black
nylon, lined with either a white or silver lining. They come in a whole variety of
sizes. Many have fiberglass rods that act as the framework of the box. These rods
must be bent to some extreme angles in order to get the box together. The bigger
the lightbox (often called a light bank for reasons that entirely escape me), the
softer the light and the more appropriate for lighting large subjects. Lightboxes are
the preferred primary light in Richard Avedon-type glamour portraits. They are also
widely used in product shots.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 177

Figure 6-20: A top-of-the-line Chimera lightbox

The cost of strobes and their accessories

Table 6-1 is designed to make it easier to judge what you have to spend in order to
gather appropriate lighting equipment. Keep in mind, however, that prices change
overnight, and thus a great disparity may exist between manufacturers’ suggested
retail prices (which I try to use here in Table 6-1) and the prices you can find on the
Internet or in Shutterbug magazine.
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178 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Table 6-1
Prices of Strobes and Accessories
Type Typical Features/Power Low High

Portable strobe Hot shoe (GN 100) $50 $70

Bracket portable strobe Professional press (GN 150) $200 $600
Monolight 250 to 1,500 watt seconds (ws) $350 $2,000
Powerpack 240 ws to 2,400 ws $290 $2,000
Light head Up to 1,000 ws $175 $400
Light stand 8–12 feet, lightweight to heavy duty $25 $200
Umbrella reflector 24–48 inch diameter $30 $100
Photoelectric slave Pc-cord synch; 1/4” jack; hot shoe; $25 $50
light receptive angle
Radio slave Pc-cord synch; 1/4” jack; hot shoe; $100 $400
light receptive angle, xmtr/rcvr costs;
power source
Lightbox 12 x 6 to 54 x 72 inches $90 $500

Choosing Light Meters

Three types of light meters may be useful to you:

✦ The meter built into your camera

✦ Ambient light meters
✦ Ambient/strobe meters

Built-in meters
Built-in meters vary considerably in their options and in their accuracy. All of them,
however, give you daylight exposure that produces a readable image — provided you
have access to decent image-editing software. As you get closer to the $1,000 price
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 179

range for digicams, you can expect greater accuracy and versatility. Depending on
the brand, the meter will likely be sensitive to much lower light levels and will give
you a choice of one of three types of metering:

✦ Center-weighted
✦ Matrix
✦ Spot

Center-weighted metering
Center-weighted metering gives more weight to the brightness values in the center of
the image than to the values at the edges. The idea behind this type of metering is to
avoid too much influence from the shading in overly dark or light (such as the sky)
backgrounds. Unfortunately, photos are usually compositionally stronger when the
subject is not dead center. Most digicams let you aim at the subject to focus and get a
meter reading, freeze those settings when you depress the shutter slightly, and then
move the camera before completing the shot by fully depressing the shutter button.

Matrix metering
Matrix metering is a specialty of late-model Nikon cameras, though other cameras are
now featuring it, too. Matrix metering divides the picture area and then averages the
meter reading, depending on the location of the various metering segments. More
weight is given to segments in the center of the screen than to those at the sides,
and more weight is given to segments at the bottom of the screen than at the top.

Incident light reading from built-in meters?

All built-in meters read reflected light. (See “Ambient light meters” later in this chapter for
more information.) However, if you want to get an incident light reading without buying a
separate meter, you can try a couple of tricks involving 18 percent gray cards and ping-pong
balls. Purchase the gray card from your local camera store and take a reading from it; you
will get the reading for the brightness of the light falling on the subject at that angle. You
can read either the highlights or the shadows, depending on which way you face the card.
An even better idea is to cut a ping-pong ball in half and place it directly in front of your
meter’s lens, which may or may not be the camera’s lens — read your manual. Because you
are reading a half-dome, you will get a reading for both highlights and shadows. You may
have to adjust exposure to compensate for the density of the ping-pong ball, so it’s best to
shoot a few test photos before you depend on this technique for critical exposures.
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180 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Unfortunately, the sophisticated level of matrix metering found in professional and

semiprofessional film SLRs is not yet available in under $5,000 digicams. The film
cameras with the best matrix metering let you assign your own importance to each
segment of the matrix. Of course, this almost requires an SLR because you need to
be able to see the matrix overlaid on the exact view of the picture being pho-
tographed. Of course, you can do this on the LCD, but you won’t be able to see
much of anything in bright sunlight.

Ambient light meters

Ambient light meters are external meters that read existing continuous light. They
don’t read the light from strobes, which is fine if you don’t own or plan to own
strobes. They’re also about half the price of meters that also read strobe.

Ambient light meters come in models that can read incident light, reflected light, or
both. Some models even have a spot-metering mode. The brands that seem to gener-
ally get the highest praise are Sekonic and Gossen; both companies make a wide
variety of meters. I’ve been using meters from both companies throughout the pro-
duction of this book and have found them both to be extremely accurate. However, I
should qualify this by saying that I have not tested every single model in both lines.

Ambient/strobe meters
Personally, I’m a big fan of combination meters that do “everything.” Of course,
how much of everything that meters can do varies from model to model. My
favorite meter is the Gossen Luna-Pro Digital F (shown in Figure 6-21), which is
entirely battery-powered and doesn’t need to be connected to a strobe unit in order
to get a reading. It reads both incident and reflected light. You switch modes by
simply sliding the dome from one side to another. For ambient light, I like to use the
meter in both modes and then make a subjective judgment on how I want to com-
promise the readings. To take a strobe reading, set the meter for strobe, press a
button, fire the strobe, and take a look at the resultant reading. Using this meter
well requires a bit of study, but the uses for the controls are obvious enough to be
discovered by experimentation. I also like this meter for its compact size — it easily
fits into my digital camera bag. Best of all, if you shop around you can buy one for
under $200 — a pittance for a device that can keep you looking like a pro.

My “other” meter is a Sekonic L508 Zoom Master that performs all the functions
mentioned in the previous paragraph, and then adds a very precise spot meter,
shown in Figure 6-22. Spot meters are indispensable when a small area in the
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 181

frame contains the most visually important subject matter. They are also great
for calculating the exact range of data that you want to capture. Some digital cam-
eras, such as the Nikon Coolpix 950, 990, and 995, let you adjust the contrast of the
image. So, if the spot meter tells you that you have an unusually wide range of
brightness to cover, you can adjust the camera to record lower contrast. Lowering
the captured contrast helps you to capture as much of the existing tonal values as
possible. Doing so gives you much more freedom in your image-editing program to
adjust the final values to your liking.

Figure 6-21: The Gossen Luna-Pro combination

ambient/strobe meter
Courtesy of Bogen Photo
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182 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Figure 6-22: The Sekonic L508 ambient/

strobe meter that measures reflected,
incident, and spot areas

Choosing Lens Accessories

One of the big drawbacks of digital cameras that are priced under $2,000 is the lack
of interchangeable lenses. However, if your camera has a screw-thread ring inside
the front of the lens barrel, you can probably add supplementary lenses. You may
also need filters and lens hoods in certain circumstances.

Note Some cameras can’t use lens accessories. This is usually because they have lens
barrels that retract into the camera when the lens is not in use. The Olympus
C2000, C2020, and C3030 have such a barrel, but Olympus makes a special
adapter that fits outside the lens. Check with the manufacturer of your camera.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 183

Adapter rings
On the front of the lens barrel, you see a measurement in millimeters; this is the
diameter of the screw thread. If filters and auxiliary lenses are commonly available
in this diameter, you may not need adapter rings. On the other hand, you may want
to use filters or lens hoods that you’ve already purchased for your film camera. In
this case, you’ll want a step-up ring like the one shown in Figure 6-23.

Figure 6-23: A step-up ring adapts larger standard-size

accessories to a smaller mount.

The following sizes of filters are readily available through Tiffen:

✦ 37mm ✦ 40.5mm
✦ 43mm ✦ 46mm
✦ 49mm ✦ 52mm
✦ 55mm ✦ 58mm
✦ 62mm ✦ 67mm
✦ 72mm ✦ 77mm
✦ 82mm ✦ 86mm
If your camera’s thread diameter doesn’t match one of these, you need a step-up
ring made by your camera’s manufacturer, Tiffen, Coken, or another filter manufac-
turer. These adapters typically cost less than $30.
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184 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Filters
Photographic filters are optically treated and coated glass that either corrects the
color of light or lends a special effect to the scene. You may wonder why you would
want to use a filter. After all, you can do almost anything to the image when you get
it into an image-editing program. However, with an on-camera filter, you can see the
effect you want immediately. For instance, there’s no substitute for the look and feel
of rotating a polarizing filter, and the same effect cannot be created by software
alone — unless the real-world lighting just happens to fall in line with the way the
software creates the polarizing effect. Here are the most important categories of
filters, along with a description of why you may want to use them:

✦ Ultraviolet: If you want to protect your investment in a precious digital cam-

era, the first accessory that you should purchase is a UV (ultraviolet) filter.
The primary purpose of a UV filter is to protect the front surface of your lens.
They also remove ultraviolet haze, which tends to lighten skies and distant
objects. UV filters have little effect when you aren’t shooting skies or distant
landscapes, so you may as well leave them in place at all times — except, of
course, when you need to mount a different filter. A UV filter costs about $15.
✦ Polarizing: Polarizing filters remove glare caused by reflected light. They
also tend to improve color saturation and darken blue skies much more
dramatically than UV filters. A polarizing filter costs about $30.
✦ Light balancing: Light-balancing filters come in two varieties:
• Neutral density: Neutral density (gray) filters reduce the light coming
through the lens so that you can use a wider aperture to get less depth-
of-field when shooting in brightly lit environments. These filters come in
one-stop increments.
• Color temperature converters: Color temperature converters change
the color of light to balance the type of film being used. They aren’t nec-
essary for digital cameras because you can do the same thing faster by
using your camera’s white balance. Some cameras, however, won’t let
you manually dictate the lighting type. For these cameras, you may want
to use a color temperature converter to force a specific mood effect.
Still, you can do a better job of that by just changing the color balance
in your image-editing software.
✦ Special effects: Special effects filters are most often used to soften all or part
of the image. Sometimes they are also slightly tinted to warm the image at the
same time it is softened. Softening filters may also be slightly scored so that
light spreads along the score lines to create effects ranging from misty land-
scapes to star highlights. Of course, these are all effects that you can create
after the fact in most image-editing programs. Andromeda (www.andromeda.
com) makes a whole series of plug-in filters that imitate special effects filters.
Another set of filter effects by nik multimedia is explored later in this chapter.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 185

✦ Color correction: These are filters that are meant to take an overall colorcast
out of the image. If you’re working with digital images, you can usually do a
better job of this in your image editor.
✦ Color enhancing: Two types of color-enhancing filters are widely used: warm-
ing and saturation-boosting. Once again, you can easily do both of these jobs
to a more controllable degree in your image-editing software.
✦ Black and white: If your camera has a black-and-white mode, you may be
interested in some of the filters commonly used to create effects in black-
and-white photography:
• #8 yellow or #15 deep yellow (often called “orange”): Yellow filters
are generally used for outdoor photography with black-and-white film
because they darken skies and make them more dramatic. You can use
a polarizing filter to achieve virtually the same effect.
• #11 green: Green filters tend to lighten Caucasian skin tones and to
make them contrast more strongly with their surroundings. They are
often used in black-and-white fashion and portrait photography.
• #25 red: Red filters create very dark skies and bright clouds. When
they’re used with infrared film, foliage turns white and shadow detail is
increased immensely.

If you set your digital camera to shoot in black and white instead of color, you’ll get
a better black-and-white image with greater resolution than you can get by chang-
ing the color mode from RGB to grayscale. To that end, filters can be a great boon
to your photography and can bring a lot of fun and excitement into your shooting.
Use the following generalizations provided in Table 6-2 for filtering with black-and-
white shooting.

Table 6-2
Common Filter Recipes for Black-and-White Shooting
Subject Desired Effect Filter Suggestion

Blue sky Natural Yellow

Almost black Red + Polarizer
Darkened Yellow-green
Appearance of night Red + Polarizer
Buildings Natural Yellow
Textural enhancement Yellow or red

Continued
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186 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Table 6-2 (continued)

Subject Desired Effect Filter Suggestion

Distant landscapes Natural Yellow

Haze reduction Yellow + Polarizer
Add slight haze None
Increase haze effect Blue
Greater haze effect Red
Trees and plants Natural Yellow or yellow-green
Lighten plants Green
Lakes and ocean with blue sky Natural Yellow
Darken water Yellow-green
Sunsets Natural None or yellow
More brilliant Yellow-green or red
Snow in bright sunlight, blue sky Natural Yellow
Textural enhancement Yellow or red
Portraits against blue sky Natural Yellow-green or
yellow+Polarizer

Lens hoods
Lens hoods prevent stray light from striking the lens; stray light creates lens flare
when you don’t want it. They are also great protection against scratching your lens
by bumping into something when the camera is hanging around your neck.

You can buy lens hoods for professional digital cameras anywhere because
professional digital cameras use the same lenses as film cameras. However, lens
hoods that will fit the small diameter of most prosumer digital cameras’ lenses
can be hard to find.

Tip If you have a hard time finding lens accessories or a step-up ring small enough to
fit your digital camera’s lens, try places that sell video cameras. Most home video
cameras have lenses that are comparable in diameter to those found on most
digicams.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 187

Focal length and macro lens adapters

If your camera is able to take screw-on lens adapters, chances are good that you
can use an optical adapter that effectively changes the focal length of your lens at
its widest aperture to a multiple of its usual focal length. You can also purchase
adapters that make it possible to work at closer focusing distances. Figure 6-24
shows the Tiffen 1.8x telephoto adapter mounted in front of the Olympus D620L’s
lens. This adapter can only be used when the lens is zoomed all the way out.

Figure 6-24: The Tiffen 1.8x telephoto adapter and a 52mm

step-up ring

Screw-on lenses and adapters work best with SLR-type digital cameras because you
can see what you’re getting while you’re shooting, and because the cameras focus
automatically through the lens. However, you may be able to use these accessories
by viewing your shot on the LCD of the camera.
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188 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

You can purchase adapters that increase or decrease the focal length of the lens by
1.4 to 2x. Macro adapters are available that enable you to focus 2x, 4x, and 5x closer
than normal. Rough costs for these accessories are as follows:

✦ Step-up ring: $15

✦ 2x or 4x Macro: $100
✦ Wide-angle adapter: $75–$150
✦ Telephoto adapter: $75–$150

Some adapters can be reversed to provide either 2x or 4x closer focusing in a single

adapter. The same is true of telephoto and wide-angle adapters for film cameras,
which you may be able to adapt for use with your digital camera.

Cap keepers
While I’m on the subject of lenses, let me ask you a question: How many times have
you taken a shot in a hurry, and half an hour later tried to remember where you left
the lens cap? Some cameras have sliding lens covers or shields, and the new Nikon
Coolpix 2500 simply twists the lens unit inside the main body for protection. How-
ever, most cameras come with a simple lens cap that snaps onto or slips over the
lens. When you remove it, you either slip it into a pocket or set it down somewhere.
Do yourself a big favor and spend $1.98 for a simple lens cap keeper. They’re avail-
able at camera stores and are just a little self-adhesive button and string. The button
attaches to the lens cap, and the string ends in a sort of attachment for the camera
strap ring.

Digital Film
As soon as the image sensor reads a digital image, it is stored on memory media —
anything from floppy disks to miniature disk drives. For professional studio cam-
eras, the storage media is generally a computer’s memory because the camera is
tethered directly to a computer. For professional SLR-format cameras, the storage
media is generally a PCMCIA card (often simply called a pc card) of the same type
used by your laptop. Lately, small hard drives, such as the 350MB drive made by
IBM, have become popular.

Prosumer- and consumer-level digicams generally use either SmartMedia or

CompactFlash cards, which are shown in Figure 6-25. The Canon A70 uses
two CompactFlash cards and the Olympus C2500 can simultaneously use one
CompactFlash card and one SmartMedia card.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 189

Figure 6-25: A CompactFlash (CF) card (left)

and a SmartMedia card (right)

Each of these memory formats has unique advantages, but have something in
common: widespread standard use. CompactFlash is slightly more popular than
SmartMedia, but if you choose a camera that uses both formats, you can move up
to a wider choice of cameras after you’ve collected several of these cards. You’re
also more likely to find extra cards when you’re in a foreign country on a location
shoot.

Both formats come in a wide variety of capacities, and the maximum capacity of
both formats keeps going up. At the time of this writing, you can buy a card in
either format that holds 128MB worth of images. Microtech has CompactFlash
cards that can handle a whopping 512MB, and SanDisk recently introduced a 1.0GB
CompactFlash card. With this space, you can store about 1,000 “superhigh-quality”
digital images on a single card. This tiny card with the big memory comes at a hefty
price as well — just under $800. I can painfully remember spending $400 for 4MB of
RAM for my Macintosh SE, so the price seems quite reasonable.

The advantages of the CompactFlash card are programmability and ruggedness.

The circuitry isn’t exposed, as it is with SmartMedia, so you face less risk of ruining
the card by scratching or fingerprinting it.

The cost per megabyte of digital film tends to decrease with the capacity of the
memory card, although very high capacity cards may sell for a premium for the
near future.

It’s always a good idea to have more than one memory card. Otherwise, you’ll find
yourself away from your computer and “out of film.” Of course, you can always
erase some images. However, you don’t want to rely on this option because you’ll
inevitably have to erase images that you’d rather keep.
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190 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

The following list gives you a rough idea of the costs of digital film:

✦ 32MB: $25–$30
✦ 64MB: $40–$50
✦ 128MB: $75–$90
✦ 384MB: $270–$360
✦ 512MB: $300–$500
✦ 1GB: $700–$900

If you purchase several SmartMedia cards, you may want to purchase the Olympus
SmartMedia Wallet to give yourself an organized way to carry and protect the extra
cards. These are available through B&H Photo at www.bhphoto.com.

Card Readers
If you’re new to digital photography, it won’t be long before you’ll want a card
reader of some kind. Card readers cut the time necessary to transfer images from
your camera to a computer to a fraction of the time necessary to transfer them
directly from the camera. This is even true (to a lesser degree, of course) if your
camera has a USB port, as many of the newer Kodak models do.

Lexar, Olympus, Simple Technologies, and Microtech all make card readers (though
that’s not an exhaustive list). Some models even read multiple card formats.

Be sure that your computer hardware will accept the card reader’s connection
interface. Some older computers or operating systems will not accept USB, and
newer computers won’t take SCSI without additional PC cards. Card readers are
available for all of the standard interfaces: serial, parallel, SCSI (though not very
popular), and USB. The best of these choices is USB, for the following reasons:

✦ The data transfer rate is much faster than all but the latest SCSI or FireWire
standards. Olympus states that their USB readers download 80 times faster
than a serial connection — about one image per second at the super high
quality compression setting.
✦ The connections and the interface are exactly the same — regardless of
computer platform.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 191

✦ You can plug the device into any computer with a USB port — though you
need to install the driver for the card reader first. This makes it much more
likely that you’ll be able to find a computer to download to when you’re in
the field.
✦ The readers easily fit into a small camera bag because the cable and connec-
tor are very small and no power supply is required. (USB card readers can
take their power from the computer.)

Most card readers sell for around $50, though I have seen a few bundled with cam-
eras and have occasionally found them on sale for as little as $15. Card readers that
can read multiple formats cost more, but it certainly beats having to buy more than
one if your business has to support users of different brands of digital cameras.

If you own a laptop computer, you may also consider a PCMCIA adapter as your
card reader. In fact, if your laptop doesn’t have a USB port, this is your best choice.
Furthermore, PCMCIA cards are even faster at transferring images than USB read-
ers, but then you’ll probably want to transfer the images from your laptop to your
desktop computer. In either case, a PCMCIA card is the fastest and most portable
way to download your images.

Note It is possible to buy a PCMCIA card with a USB connection. This isn’t as fast as
using a PCMCIA card reader, but it may make it easier for you to use the same card
reader on your desktop machine as you use on your laptop.

Instant Upload
Many new products are being developed every day for the digital camera market,
and one type that’s caught my eye is the new breed of USB reader/writers, like
the one shown in Figure 6-26. Microtech makes one called the ZiO! that has a USB
connector on one end and a slot on the other end that accepts mainstream storage
media. This connector is only slightly larger than the media itself. You have to get
one for each type of device, but at under $30 each, it’s a good thing to have in your
camera bag. Just plug the ZiO! into the computer’s USB port and slip the memory
media into the other end. It shows up on the computer’s desktop as if it were any
other kind of removable media, such as a floppy or Zip drive. The ZiO! has no cords,
no external power supply, and draws any necessary power from the computer for
the file transfer.
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192 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Figure 6-26: The single-format ZiO! (left) and the multi-format

FlashGO! (right)

Imation has introduced their version of a memory reader called the FlashGO!. This
device is USB-powered and boasts to be the first reader/writer to support all types
of flash/memory card formats. It will also be adaptable for any future miniature
storage formats, and currently supports CompactFlash (I and II), SmartMedia,
MultiMediaCard, SecureDigital, Sony Memory Stick, and IBM’s Microdrive. This
product retails for less than $60, and it works on all USB-endowed computers.

A step farther up the road is the realm of the MindStor from Minds@Work.
The MindStor is a palm-sized device that weighs 12 ounces, and reads/writes
CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Sony Memory Stick, Panasonic SD Memory Card,
IBM’s Microdrive, Intel StrataFlash, and MultiMedia Card. The reader comes in
three configurations: 5GB, 10GB, and 20GB, ranging in price from $289 to $399. The
MindStor boasts an LCD screen with scrolling menus, but the main feature is that it
is both USB and FireWire (EEE 1394) ready. By using USB, you have a transfer rate of
600–800Kb/second; with FireWire, you can slide those photos to your computer at
18MB/second. Considering how many images you can get on even the smallest 5GB
model, the FireWire connectivity alone makes it a good deal. With the MindStor in
your camera bag, you can upload your digital film in a few seconds instead of get-
ting out the laptop and connecting a card reader to it. Unfortunately, you can’t view
the images that you’re transferring, but if you’re on the road or in the field a lot, a
MindStor is a definite must-own.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 193

Batteries
Digital cameras eat AA batteries at such a rate that they will cost you more than
film unless you buy rechargeables. These come in two varieties: NiCad (nickel-
cadmium) and NiMH (nickel metal-hydride).

The batteries that you want are the NiMH batteries. They last two to three times
longer than NiCads when used in a digital camera and they don’t have to be fully
discharged before recharging. Of course, NiMH batteries cost two to three times as
much as NiCads and they’re a little harder to find. However, you can buy a set of
four Quest batteries with a Maha charger for about $30 online.

Note I mention the Quest batteries because they’re getting all the buzz on the digital
camera list servers as being the longest lasting and least expensive.

Odds and Ends That Count

When it comes to accessories, the possibilities are endless. A couple that fall out-
side the obvious categories are LCD hoods and exposure targets.

LCD hoods are an absolute necessity for anyone serious about shooting with a digi-
tal camera. This is because it’s tough to see the image on the LCD clearly if you’re
shooting in light that’s bright enough to enable a handheld exposure at ISO 100
(even though they’re getting a lot better — and some are a lot better than others).
You can easily make your own LCD hood from a piece of lintless matte-black
cardboard, available at any art supply house. See the diagram shown in Figure 6-27.

Another way to keep the LCD shaded is to simply throw a dark cloth over your
head. Your local fabric store can offer something appropriate. A square yard piece
of tightly woven black nylon, seamed around the edges, will do quite nicely.

Now, if you want something much more professional and sexy-looking (and you
don’t mind spending $20), the Hoodman nylon LCD hood fits 2–4-inch LCDs. You
can order it through the Web site at www.hoodmanusa.com. The Hoodman installs
to the camera with elastic bands that make it easy to put on and take off. It folds up
so you can conveniently put it into a pocket or your camera kit. It extends about
two inches from the LCD screen, providing darkness so you can see the image
better. You still have to view the image from normal distances, however, because
it doesn’t include a magnifying lens.
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194 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Figure 6-27: A homemade LCD hood

A model that makes you feel like you have an SLR in your hands is the Xtend-A-View
from Photosolve, shown in Figure 6-28. It’s made out of aluminum with a magnifier
that fits over the LCD screen. The view is quite similar to putting a loupe on your
monitor — you see the actual pixels that make up the image in the LCD window. You
must apply Velcro to the camera body — this involves self-adhesive goo going onto
your camera’s body — so you want to consider the fact that you have to ultimately
remove the adhesive if you sell your camera later on. The upside is that if you have
multiple digital cameras, you can move the Xtend-A-View from camera to camera with
ease. This makes it somewhat easier to use the LCD screen for focusing as well as
shielding it from light. You can check out this item at www.photosolve.com. Two
models are available: The Xtend-A-View that fits most LCD screens is $25, and the
wide model goes for $28. An optional rubber eyecup for comfort (and if you squeeze
it to your eye socket, stability) sells for $5.

Gray cards are very useful for setting your built-in meter to a neutral brightness
level. You can purchase a pair of Kodak R-27 18 percent gray cards from B&H Photo
for $14.95. No-name gray cards are available from the same source for about half
that price.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 195

Figure 6-28: The Xtend-A-View creates darkness

around the camera’s LCD and adds a magnifying
lens to aid you in composition and focus.

Going the Extra Mile

The last section of this chapter focuses on some fun stuff and the ability to create
the image that you wanted in the first place. I briefly explore a nik product, named
Color Efex Pro! This plug-in can turn a cloudy day into the sunniest day you’ve ever
seen; it can turn the sunniest photo in your collection into a dark, foreboding mid-
night scene; and it can take a shot that you photographed yesterday and make it
look as if it were printed 50 years ago — all with a mouse click or two. You can
download demos of nik programs from www.nikmultimedia.com.

The Color Efex Pro series contains many filters that are considered useful to some
and unusable by others, depending on the user’s point of view, profession, and
desired end result. To that end, nik broke out three different sets from Color Efex Pro,
each of which runs around $99, to more closely dovetail filters with user interest:

✦ Classic: This set contains the traditional filters that a professional photogra-
pher may have for his or her lenses:
• Several Graduated Color filters
• Lighten Center
• Monday Morning
• Old Photo
• Skylight
• Sunshine
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196 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

• Brilliance/Warmth
• Classical Blur
✦ Design: This set has the following filters:
• Brilliance/Warmth
• A Couple Bicolor filters
• B/W Conversion
• Five Contrast filters
• Two Graduated filters and Midnight filters
• Duplex
• Monday Morning (Blue)
• Polarization
• Pastel
✦ Artistic: This set has the following filters:
• Brilliance/Warmth
• Three Bicolors
• Color Stylizer
• Duplex
• Two Graduated filters
• Ink
• Three Midnight filters
• A Sepia Monday Morning
• Old Photo
• Solarization
• A Quick Sunshine filter

The Color Efex Pro Abstract set is described later in this section, but also has a
couple Monday morning filters.

The complete set is a “best bargain” with a list price of $299. Color Efex Pro is a series
of 55 filters that range from 46 conventional photographic filters that a professional
photographer may use while taking photos or printing them, to a group of 9 abstract
filters. The price may seem steep at first glance, but if you’re a professional photogra-
pher or artist in need of creative solutions to everyday problems, the package pays
for itself in the first couple jobs you use it on. It also saves you a bundle against the
cost of “real” filters that you have to worry about losing, breaking, or carrying around
in your bag. After you try it, you’ll agree that beyond “saving” the occasional job, the
creative license that it provides offsets any price. With a few mouse clicks, you have
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 197

images that were once impossible to attain in any photo-editing program without
hours of masking, layering, and filtering.

The nik Color Efex Pro applies a color or contrast filter to an image, thus allowing
you to adjust the amount of color, the midpoint of a graduated bicolor filter, the
width of the colored blend, the angle of the gradation, and the intensity of the
effect. You can accomplish all the adjustments in a single window with one to five
input sliders. Some filters modify saturation; others modify contrast, color, blur,
and special effects. All you have to do is drag the nik Color Efex Pro folder into the
Plug-ins folder of your Photoshop-comparable application. The plug-in appears at
the bottom of the Filter menu.

The nik Color Efex Pro! Workspace

If you’ve used nik Sharpener Pro, you’ve seen the basic Color Efex Pro workspace,
as shown in Figure 6-29, because the windows are very similar. The image preview
dominates the right side of the window and slider controls occupy the left side.
Buttons for Save, Load, Help, and Acceleration are below the sliders. A Text Output
Area is located at the bottom that provides information about the filtered image.

Figure 6-29: The nik Color Efex Pro! window contains minimal but powerful
control sliders.
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198 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

You may run individual filters successively to create intense effects or deliberate
moods. At times, you will use Color Efex Pro to correct an image, but most times
you will enhance the image to make it more like what you wanted to photograph in
the first place. For some projects, such as product catalogs or Web sites, you may
want to run a particular filter on all the images to create an environment for your
audience. With 55 filters, you can create a lot of environments.

Fifty-five filters is a lot to work with — and to explain — so I only run over generali-
ties for the majority of the filters and get specific with a few. The basic operation is
to start your image-editing program and open an image. Select nik Color Efex Pro!
from your Filter menu, and prepare yourself for a lot of happy results.

You can start with the most dramatic filter, the Sunshine effect. The effect (or filter,
as you wish) has one of the largest amounts of controls of the collection. Taken in
order, the following is a brief description of the controls:

✦ Saturation Correction: This control holds the top slot in the section and the
slider controls the saturation in (mostly) bright colors. Overuse of this vari-
able can get ugly, and so restraint is necessary. A little goes a long way.
✦ CCR Effect: The Cold Color Reduction Effect warms cool colors, and like
Saturation, should be used sparingly or “soft” images will result.
✦ Light-Casting algorithm: This collection contains three algorithms and one
“off” switch. Each of the three variables describes a different way to add or
cast light in the image. The settings are labeled A, B, C, and D. D is the off
switch. Because each image that you work on has its own set of variables in
color, contrast, brightness and so on, a B setting in one photo may work well,
but not be effective at all in another photo. You’ll probably find that the A
setting provides the best overall appearance.
✦ Sunlight Intensity: This slider works in conjunction with the Light-Casting
algorithm to determine the amount of “sunlight” added to the image.
✦ Radius: In real life, objects reflect light, and this is most dramatically seen
with bright objects reflecting light onto darker shadow areas beneath those
bright objects. This effect is carried out in the plug-in, but you need to enter a
maximum radius in order to make the effect “work” correctly. The engineers
at nik suggest a setting of 1⁄80th, or 0.0125 of the height or width of the image as
a starting point. For example, an image that’s 1000 pixels wide receives a
radius of 12 to 13 pixels. Naturally, you can change that figure to suit your
image.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 199

✦ Prefilter: Before the “sunshine” is added to your image, the program runs a
prefilter that you determine in this slider. The names are rather general, such
as Nature, Special Contrasts, and Combination, but by selecting them and
observing the preview, you’ll find one that works — regardless of the name.
✦ Prefilter Strength: This slider simply defines how much of the prefilter effects
show in the image.

You can use other filters to create some special moods. I shot the photo shown in
Figure 6-30 in the mid-afternoon. In color, the photo isn’t too bad, but it’s just not
very interesting. By running the Midnight filter on the image, however, I ended up
with the image shown in Figure 6-31. The filter has darkened the entire image with
a deep blue and added a soft blur to highlights in order to create that moonglow
effect. Talk about repurposing images!

Figure 6-30: A daylight shot of a Bahamian beach

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200 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Figure 6-31: How the shot may look at midnight, thanks to Color Efix Pro

Taking the lighting one step further, I ran the Lighten Center filter on the image, the
result of which is shown in Figure 6-32. This filter is similar to a lens flare without
the lens attributes. It creates a bright spot in the exact center of the image. You can
decide how bright and how large the center light spot should be.

Other filters include a versatile B/W conversion, bicolor filters, contrast filters,
graduated color filters, five types of midnight, and four Monday mornings. All have
some sort of slider adjustments that you can make to stylize the photo exactly the
way you want it to look.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 201

Figure 6-32: A harsh glare off the surf may be the particular effect that you’re
hoping to create.

Getting a little wild in the Abstract

Color Efex comes with a set of Abstract filters, which include the following:

✦ Infrared
✦ Pastel
✦ Pop Art
✦ Remove Brightness
✦ Saturation To Brightness
✦ Solarization
✦ Stairs
✦ Weird Dreams
✦ Weird Lines
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202 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Most of the Abstract filters are wild in the extreme, but remember that in
Photoshop, you can fade the last command and lessen the effects of the filter if
you’ve gone over the top.

Running the Infrared filter on the scene shown in Figure 6-33 makes it look like the
atomic bomb tests from the Pacific during the post World War II years.

Figure 6-33: The unfiltered Caribbean neighborhood

The building colors border on garish, and color in the image is saturated beyond
belief. To push it a step further, the Stairs filter has been applied to the image in
Figure 6-34.

Using the Saturation To Brightness filter allows you to control the brightness of
the image and the saturation of the colors. The Nudge Colors slider, shown in
Figure 6-35, acts the same as running channel operations in Photoshop. The only
difference is that you create the changes as you move the sliders. In image-editing
programs, you need a more thorough understanding of how the channels work in
order to create these effects.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 203

Figure 6-34: Stairs refers to the “steps” that the filter creates from color changes
within the image.

Figure 6-35: The Saturation To Brightness filter window

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204 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

The Saturation To Brightness effect can be used very successfully in creating a

unique look for a catalog or editorial illustration. However, you can achieve similar
success with most of the 55 effects available from Color Efex. Exploration is the key
to arriving at personal image enhancements within the Color Efex package. You can
conceivably waste a lot of time, but it’s my personal opinion that this is time well
spent because sooner or later you’ll want one of these filters and to remember
where you found it. All in all, if you can’t afford a bag full of glass filters, and still
want to use filters on your photos, you can’t go wrong with this plug-in.

Optional Products to Make Life Easier

Quite a few pieces of equipment can make your photography more professional.
Some cost a little money, some cost a lot, and others you can make yourself.

Gobo
You use a gobo to block the light. In an emergency, your hand will do, but I have
several different gobos in my studio. Most are made of small, usually circular
shaped, pieces of black foam board taped to lengths of wooden dowel or coat
hanger wire, as shown in Figure 6-36. They’re very useful for knocking back a
specular highlight or any kind of glare, and can be held, hung, taped, clamped,
or suspended over the stage.

Figure 6-36: Gobos block extraneous light from your shot, preventing
unwanted specular highlights or glare.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 205

Rain Protection
If you’re going to be doing any shooting that involves water or heavy weather, look
into getting a waterproof enclosure for your camera. RTS photo (www.rtsphoto.
com) carries a line of waterproof housings for all sorts of cameras and video cam-
eras, including what they call the Rain Cape, which is shown in Figure 6-37. The
Rain Cape is basically a large bag made of thick plastic/vinyl, but this is different
from putting your camera in a baggie or zipper bag. They’ve installed oversized
optical glass front ports that let you shoot right through the rain. The Rain Cape
has a connection system that installs in the tripod mount of the camera. It’s open at
the bottom, so your hands just slip up inside it to operate the controls. This is not a
substitute for an underwater housing, so don’t even think about it! The Rain Cape
keeps your equipment reasonably dry, but it has no protection at all against pres-
sure, and because it’s completely open at the bottom, it certainly isn’t waterproof.
This accessory is more like a really tight-fitting umbrella for your camera and
shooting hand.

Quick Release Mounts

If you do a lot of tripod work, then you probably have a quick release mount lying
around somewhere. A quick release mount is a means of attaching and detaching
the camera from a tripod with as few steps and as little complication as possible.
I guess it’s because photographers get confused easily by screwing the mounting
threads to the camera — is it “righty-tighty or righty-loosey?” Photographers don’t
get confused so much as they have other things on their minds — such as, is the
client going to pay? The quick release, though, gives you one less thing to worry
about.

Whereas most quick release mounts simply provide a means to connect the camera
to the tripod in a jiffy, the quick release mount shown in figure 6-37 is one of the
most versatile on the market today. It’s called the Q-top for its shape when viewed
from above and a slight angle (and because “Q-tip” was already taken). All you do is
screw the “shoe” into the camera’s tripod thread to finger tight — by the way, it’s
“righty-tighty, lefty-loosey” just in case you were still pondering that. Then mount
the base to the tripod. The Q-top has a bubble level installed right on top where
you can use it to your advantage after you’ve put it together. Two reducing bush-
ings are used to adapt the Q-top to any possible combination of camera and tripod
threads.
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206 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Figure 6-37: The Q-top quick release mount has three cams.

Now, simply press a small button on the back with your thumb, and squeeze the
larger button in the front with your index finger. This moves one of the three grip-
ping cams toward the center of the mount, and you can slip the camera shoe onto
the base. Release the buttons, and the camera is locked firmly in place. To get the
camera off in a hurry, just squeeze the buttons together again and lift the camera
off the base.

As an added attraction for this little jewel ($108 at www.adorama.com), the shoe
has indents at every 30 degrees. Why? Well, if you want to make panoramic shots
to stitch together later, just squeeze the mount to release the camera, rotate the
camera, and reattach it. When you release the locking buttons, the cams nestle the
camera in the slot, leaving you ready for the next shot in the series. On a Nikon 950,
the camera has enough room to twist by the shoe, but the shoe must be removed
to get at the CompactFlash card.

Wacom tablet
For years, the idea of a digital tablet seemed more of a novelty than a useful tool.
But after using one for the last four months or so, I can hardly work without it.
Older tablets don’t have the flexibility and responsiveness as the new Intuos2 and
Graphire2 tablets. As an artist/photographer, the pen is a natural way to work. The
only time the pen becomes inconvenient is when I have to do as much type input
as drawing. In this case, working with the pen is a matter of constantly putting the
pen down and picking it up — in these instances, the mouse or trackball are better
tools. Work in the graphic arena (whether with vector or bitmap), however, is ruled
by the pen.
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 207

The Graphire2 tablets have a working area of 4 x 5 inches, and are priced just under
$100. For this price, you get a mouse and a pen with 512 levels of pressure. It comes
bundled with Adobe Photoshop Elements and Corel Painter Classic.

The Intuos2 tablets come in sizes from 4 x 5 inches to 12 x 18 inches, and are priced
from $200 to $750. The 6 x 8-inch model shown in Figure 6-38 costs about $350, and
seems to be large enough for comfortable work, but not so large that it takes up
your entire workspace. The 4 x 5-inch and 6 x 9-inch tablets are bundled with a 2-D
mouse, Photoshop Elements, and Painter Classic. The 9 x 12-inch, 12 x 12-inch, and
12 x 18-inch tablets only have Painter, but do have a 4-D mouse that has five pro-
grammable buttons and a fingerwheel for easy scrolling. The 2-D and 4-D mice only
work on the tablets — you can’t make the cursor move if they’re on a coffee-stained
mouse pad next to the computer.

Figure 6-38: The Wacom Intuos2 digital tablet and pen. The mouse only works
on the tablet’s active surface.
Courtesy of Wacom Technology Corp.

All the Intuos2 pens have 1,024 levels of pressure. The Grip Pen comes standard
with all Intuos2 tablets; it features an eraser on the opposite end from the working
tip, and a DuoSwitch that allows you to designate one end of the switch for one
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208 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

modifier key or keyboard shortcut, and the other end of the switch for another
command or modifier key. For a more realistic feel when working with the Wacom
tablets, you can purchase additional pens. The pens come in five variations; some
are more decorative, such as the Classic pen ($50); and others are more functional.
The Stroke Pen has a flexible tip that gives the pen a brush-like feel as it’s drawn
across the tablet. It doesn’t have an eraser or DuoSwitch. The Inking Pen doesn’t
have an eraser or DuoSwitch, but enables you to write or draw with ink. The Inking
and Brush pens are $80 each. A $100 Designer Pen is made from brushed metal in
the same shape as the Grip Pen, but lacks the eraser. Finally, the Airbrush has the
control and feel of a traditional airbrush right down to the top-mounted fingerwheel
for ink flow. It also has a pressure-sensitive tip and eraser and a programmable but-
ton, for about $100.

penPalette
At this point in the chapter, I’ve convinced you to get a Wacom tablet and a nik
Color Efex Pro plug-in. How about having the flexibility and creativity of those fil-
ters flowing out of your digital pen? Well, nik has introduced the $99 penPalette to
do just that.

The penPalette works on Macs (from 8.6 through OS X) and PCs (from Windows 95
through XP), in Photoshop 5.5 and up, and Photoshop Elements. The software is
extremely versatile because you can now selectively retouch specific areas of an
image while leaving the rest of it alone. The plug-in comes with eight photo-
retouching filters:

✦ Warm Tone
✦ Cool Tone
✦ Contrast
✦ Colorize
✦ Add Noise
✦ Despeckle
✦ Soften
✦ Contrast Only

With the Wacom pen, you can paint or brush, erase, clear, or globally fill with the
filter you’ve selected — in the area you need it. More good news: You can add the
other nik Color Efex Pro filters to penPalette if you already own them. Better yet,
you can install nik Sharpener Pro so that some areas of the image can be sharp
and others soft for special effects.

You can set the pen’s pressure sensitivity to determine brush size or the strength
of the effect. Any Photoshop tool or brush works with penPalette, too, so you can
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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 209

make soft airbrush edges or keep them sharp and crisp. All pen functions, including
tilt and airbrush wheel, are operative. What if you don’t have a Wacom tablet? Good
news. The plug-in works with trackballs and mice as well as the tablets, but natu-
rally, you lose the digital tablet controls.

This all may sound silly. After all, you can accomplish all of this by creating a
mask or two, or a few adjustment layers, and then working Hue and Adjustment,
Brightness/Contrast, and change a few blending modes. Sometimes you also have to
use Undo or Revert because things just didn’t work out as you planned. However,
doesn’t it seem a lot easier to just select and paint? The program does all the work in
the background. When you finally click the Apply button, all the layers are flattened,
and the alpha channels are trashed, leaving your image looking like a million bucks.
Oh, and if you think you may have gone just a tad too far, you can always choose
Edit ➪ Fade, and kick it back a couple notches.

For example, look at Figure 6-39, which shows the root system of some tropical
trees. At the time, I thought it was interesting just for the texture and tangle of
nature crawling along the ground. Later, it became just another shot that I wouldn’t
show to anyone. Other than increasing contrast and playing with Curves, I couldn’t
do much to the photo, and it was still a very ho-hum picture.

Figure 6-39: Tangled Caribbean tree roots lacking direction in nature and in
photographic style
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210 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

However, when I went to Filters ➪ Automate ➪ penPalette, the photo began to take
on a new life. The floating palette that appears contains eight fully functional filters
in the top section. Immediately below these are more filters that start life as demos.
If you have one of the other Efex sets (Artistic, Classic, Sharpener Pro, and so
forth), then you can click the Settings button to add the larger set to this palette.
Only a dozen show in the palette, but the More button contains a flyout menu that
displays all your filters. I selected the Midnight (blue) filter, and instead of painting
the entire image, I chose Fill in the Editing Functions section. This ran the filter over
the entire image. Then I clicked the Erase button, set a large, soft brush, and selec-
tively erased a portion of the filtered image. I then repeated the process with the
Soft filter. To make the brighter area more interesting, I then chose the Sharpener
Pro button and selectively sharpened key areas in the picture, as shown in Figure
6-40. These actions took less than five minutes, and turned a lifeless image into
one with at least a little mystery.

Figure 6-40: A dead photo brought to life

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Chapter 6 ✦ Useful Photo Accessories 211

You can use the penPalette in other ways, too. If you want to make hand-tinted
black and white photos, this tool combination is a natural for you. By clicking on
the Colorize button, you can choose the color you want and apply it selectively
with a natural feel. You can use the Soft filter to blur backgrounds down so that
the foreground features really pop.

Summary
This chapter explained the real cost of working with digital cameras, especially cam-
eras of the prosumer variety. To put it another way, this chapter is a compendium of
the accessories that you’re most likely to need in order to get specific types of jobs
done. You’ve also been exposed to some really nifty tools and software — if you suf-
fer from techno-envy as I do, you’re about to spend some money.

✦ ✦ ✦
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10549510 ch07.F 8/22/02 2:39 PM Page 213

Outfitting Your
Computer
7
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Chapter

I n order to set up to shoot and produce the best possible

traditional photos, choosing darkroom equipment most
suitable to your goals is of paramount importance. In digital
Choosing an
operating system

Configuring the ideal

photography, choosing and setting up the computer and soft-
“eDarkroom”
ware that compose your digital darkroom is no less important.
Speed

Operating System: Memory

Windows or Mac? Storage space

The vast majority of operating systems that are used for work- Graphics cards
ing with digital photography run under either the Windows or
Macintosh operating systems. Windows runs the great major- Connections
ity of desktop computers (most experts peg this figure at over
90 percent). However, the number of computers running the Monitors
de facto standard in image-editing applications, such as
Adobe Photoshop, is almost evenly divided between the two Making room for
operating systems with the balance slowly tipping towards creativity
Windows. Lots of people will argue that one or the other of
these platforms is vastly better than the other. The fact is, Setting up a workflow
however, that your decision regarding which platform to use
is most likely to be based on which platform you’re already ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
using. It is simply much easier to use what you already know
than to learn a whole new system.

Currently, however, deciding between operating systems is a

tough task because neither operating system offers a huge
advantage over the other unless you have very specific needs.
For example, suppose that you are preparing images that are
destined for a service bureau or advertising agency that will
be used to carry out a job. In this scenario, the Mac has a
clear installed-base advantage. By tradition, a vast number of
pre-press people are more thoroughly acquainted with the
tools, file formats, and font and color standards for the Mac
than they are with similar items for Windows, which have only
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214 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

begun to emerge and mature over the last two years. Furthermore, the Mac preju-
dice of the pre-press world is unlikely to change over the next several years.

Both platforms offer specific advantages and disadvantages. As a matter of fact, I

own and use both platforms. When people ask me which one I prefer, I tell them it
depends on which machine crashed last. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have
good reasons why one of the two operating systems is more important to you. None
of these reasons involve Photoshop, however, which is nearly indistinguishable in
operation from one platform to the other, provided that both are similarly
equipped.

However, if you haven’t already purchased a computer, you may want to consider
which platform is most prevalent among your friends, colleagues, and clients. The
answer will vary considerably from clan to clan, neighborhood to neighborhood,
and corporation to corporation. The more people you have around you using the
same computer, the more support you can get and the more you’ll learn from one
another’s experiences.

After you take into account the system you already have and the system that most
of your peers are using, you will be ready to decide on a computer. If you’re about
to upgrade and don’t mind changing operating systems, or if you’re buying a com-
puter for the first time and just want it to be as photographically capable as possi-
ble, you may have more flexibility in making your final decision. In any case, choose
your computer with the following considerations in mind:

✦ It should give you the most choice in software tools pertinent to your interest
in digital photography.
✦ It should make it easy for you to transfer files between collaborators, clients,
and service bureaus.
✦ It should make it easy to get support and advice from those most likely to pro-
vide it quickly and at no cost.

Ease of use and price are often quoted as the reasons why you should decide on
one particular computer over another; however, neither of these is a good reason
on its own. Ease of use is more dependent on the application that you are working
with than on the characteristics of the computer’s operating system. Think about it:
You spend much more time working within an application than starting up your
computer and opening a file. Additionally, ease of use is often a trade-off with power
and flexibility. These days, both platforms use WYSIWYG (what you see is what you
get) operating environments that borrow heavily from each other. The “borrowing”
isn’t as one-sided as many Mac zealots would have you believe, either.

What about price? Well, it’s not nearly as important as productivity. Time will always
cost you much more money than hardware — unless you insist on staying on the
very cutting edge. Remember that price depends on economies of scale. The latest
generation of any technology will probably cost you twice as much as the previous
generation, but the performance boost you get for your money is only about 20 or
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 215

30 percent. The smart buyer will be on the lookout for the “more bang for the buck”
factor. Having stated all that, however, Windows computers will generally cost you
significantly less. It’s just a matter of competition and economies of scale.

On the other hand, you may want to use applications that are only available on one
platform or another. Live Picture, which many pros still find highly useful for com-
positing (making a picture from multiple images), is only available for the Macintosh
and no publisher is currently selling or updating it. Finally, digital video-editing soft-
ware and hardware are considered more readily available for Wintel computers.

Speed
If you plan to work with the full array of professional image-editing features on files
that are much larger than 18MB, your computer should be as fast as you can afford.
An 18MB file (uncompressed) is about the minimum size for a high quality 8 x 10-
inch print. By today’s standards, most professionals and serious image editors con-
sider a 1 GHz Windows PC or a 450 MHz Mac to be the minimum requirement — and
faster is always better. On the other hand, professionals have managed quite nicely
with computers running at less than half that speed for years.

Working with digital photography will quickly teach you the importance of having a
fast computer. I’m not just preaching the old “time is money” saw — although that’s
certainly an important factor. The simple fact of the matter is that waiting for the
computer — even for a few seconds — is just plain annoying when you’re being
bombarded by creative impulses that you want to experiment with. In addition to
having a fast CPU, you also want a CPU that supports high-speed data transfer and
has the fastest possible graphics processor. A CPU that has a built-in graphics
instruction processing set is another important asset.

Caution The very fastest CPUs generally sell for a price that’s disproportionate to the added
performance that they provide.

How fast is fast?

Let’s face it: Manipulating images in graphics applications involves massive
amounts of data — especially when compared to the amount of data that gets
manipulated in office applications For example, a year’s worth of legal documents
for a good-sized law firm will fit into the same amount of disk space that’s required
for one high-quality advertising photo. Even if you use the computers that are three
to four times faster than was typical when the previous edition of this book was
written, you will still be able to make a phone call or go to the kitchen for a cup of
coffee while some filters are creating a special effect on a high resolution photo.
Therefore, you want to buy all the speed you can reasonably afford in the area of
photomanipulation. If you have viable expectations of making a living in digital pho-
tography, you probably can’t spend too much on making your computer faster (or
on buying a faster computer).
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216 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Don’t judge the speed of your computer entirely by the speed of your processor.
The speed of the system bus (the printed-circuit “wiring” that links the various com-
puter components together), hard-drives (shoot for 7200 rpm), peripheral inter-
faces (FireWire, USB 2, and SCSI are the fastest), and the performance of your
graphics card will all make significant contributions to the overall speed of the
machine. Finally, the more RAM (random access memory or system memory) you
have installed, the faster your computer will be able to complete complex opera-
tions and the more tasks you’ll be able to handle at once. Don’t forget, the more
tasks that you can perform at one time, the faster you’ll be.

How much and what kind of memory?

If you’re just starting out and mostly working with snapshots, if most of your image-
making is for the Web, or if your camera’s images are less than 2 megapixel resolu-
tion, then 256 to 512MB of RAM should be plenty for you. Your ambitions will
almost surely grow as your fascination with this medium grows, so it’s more
important to make sure that your computer has the capacity to grow into 1 or
2GB of RAM.

Recommending a good RAM configuration for a computer used to be easy because

most people followed the “more is better” rule — especially for digital photography.
This reasoning was natural because your choices used to be limited to the amount
of RAM that was compatible with your computer. Of course, compatibility is still a
requirement, but newer types of RAM are also much faster, partly because of their
design and partly because they run on faster system buses (currently around 166
MHz, but always moving upward). New types of RAM are now being introduced
about as often as new digital cameras. You can find out the specifications for the
latest and fastest RAM specifications on the Web at
www4.tomshardware.com/mainboard/.

How much and what type of disk storage space?

As long as you have at least 10GB of free disk space, you should be able to get by —
unless your business is primarily centered on dealing with photography. In that
case, take heart in the fact that you can buy 60GB, 7200 rpm hard drives (which are
significantly faster than 5400 rpm hard drives and better suited to video-editing
applications) for a hundred dollars these days. For the really hard-core photo busi-
nesses, 180GB FireWire or (RSN) USB 2.0 hard drives cost around $300 each. You’ll
also benefit from various forms of removable and portable hard drives — especially
if you’re going to travel or do video.

The real revolution, however, is in CD-R (recordable) and CD-RW (rewritable)

drives. They allow you to continually archive and store your photographs. In the
process, you get to continually recycle space on your computer’s hard drives.
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 217

Most new computer models come with internal CD-RW drives or combination DVD
Playback/CD-RW drives. Today, you can expect to get the most speed for your
money from those that run at 12 to 24 times the normal CD recording speed. CD-RW
recordings usually run at about 20 percent slower than when a record-only drive
is used.

Managing Your System’s Memory

Your computer system’s memory is divided into RAM (random access memory)
and disk storage. You can find most of what you need to know about RAM require-
ments for digital photography in the system requirements section of the user man-
ual that accompanies your image-processing software. If you just want to get the
job done and you’re not hoping to create extremely high-resolution images for
advertising or fine art purposes, you can get by with the minimum requirements.
You should know a few things about memory that are unique to the platform you’ll
be working on, and you should also know some ways that you can maximize the
performance of RAM and hard-drive space. I discuss both of these in the following
sections.

Note The one thing you should never forget when you’re considering serious digital
imaging is that you can never have too much memory — either RAM or hard-drive
space, and you can never have a computer that is too fast.

Windows
Windows doesn’t require that you allocate a specific amount of memory to any
application before you run it. If your image is too large to fit into the available RAM,
Windows automatically uses virtual memory. The amount of virtual memory that
you have depends on the size of the swap disk that you allocate when you set up
your system. You can reserve disk space so that you always have a minimum
amount of virtual memory, but Windows will automatically use any additional disk
space that’s available.

Macintosh
Macintosh users using OS versions preceding OS X need to allocate memory to
each application. This becomes especially important for applications that handle
photographs because the bitmapped files tend to be quite a bit larger than most of
the other data created by other types of applications. Only video and animation are
more demanding of memory. The documentation accompanying your Macintosh
application will almost always tell you how much memory should be allocated. If
you plan to run several applications simultaneously, make sure that the total
amount of required memory doesn’t exceed the total amount of RAM.
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218 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Tip If you’re using Photoshop (and many other imaging applications) it’s best to turn
off the Macintosh virtual memory. Otherwise, Photoshop’s built-in virtual memory
may conflict and cause your system to crash.

RAM
In addition to the requirements set by your application program and the amount of
RAM used by your operating system, you will need about three times as much RAM
as the largest image that you plan to process. For Windows users, this is only true
as far as your limit for maximum performance is concerned. For Macintosh users,
this rule comes closer to being the law.

The more RAM you have, the faster your system will be — even if the RAM is not
required by the applications that you are running. This is because RAM is very fast
compared to hard drive access. The more the computer can do in RAM, the less it
needs to rely on accessing instructions from the hard drive.

Disk storage
The most important thing you need to know about disk storage is that you will
never own a large enough hard disk. Images fill them up before you can say “Jack
Sprat could eat no fat.” Fortunately, prices for hard drives have fallen to the point
that you can buy several gigabytes for a couple of hundred dollars. SCSI drives
(used by most Macs) can cost up to twice as much as IDE drives. If you plan to do
digital video as well as digital still photography, you should invest in SCSI drives
because they are considerably faster.

Finally, removable hard drives (such as the ubiquitous Iomega Zip and Jaz drives)
and compact disk recorders are excellent investments if you will be doing digital
imaging.

Removable hard drives let you offload projects by type or by client, thus enabling
you to move images from one computer to another or transport images to service
bureaus and clients. For this purpose, you will want to choose drives that are most
likely to be owned by others, so I strongly recommend the Iomega products.

Compact disc recorders provide a very inexpensive and universally portable means
of storing large amounts of data. Images can be stored in ISO 9660 format, which
can be read by virtually any computer. Recordable discs sell for as little as thirty
cents each and hold 700MB of data. Look for a recorder that records at 12 or more
times the normal data rate, which will allow you to record an entire disc in just over
15 minutes.
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 219

A subspecies of CD recorders called CD-RW (for ReWritable) have completely

replaced write-once only drives, but these drives will still write to write-once disks.
Re-recordable CD media cost about four times as much as write-once media, but it’s
cheaper on a cost-per-megabyte basis as compared to other types of removable,
rewritable media.

Choosing a Display Card

Five primary considerations determine which display card you use:

✦ True color image: The capability to display a true color (16.8 million colors)
image is crucial because without it, you simply won’t be able to edit color
accurately.
✦ APG compatible: A card that can run in the AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port)
of your computer is useful because, if you have one, an AGP slot is a cost-free
way to assure yourself of speedier display performance.
✦ Extra video RAM on the card: Having extra video RAM on the display card is
essential to preserving system speed. Some cards share system RAM, which
works to produce more colors, but the card has to work through a slower sys-
tem bus and steals some RAM (usually 16 to 32MB) from your other computer
operations.
✦ High resolution: The capability to display at a resolution of at least 1024 x 768
pixels is important because this is the minimum practical size display that will
allow you to see all of the Options Bar in Adobe Photoshop 6 and later ver-
sions. A larger display size is always preferable because most image-editing
programs use a fair amount of screen space for various interface components,
such as layers, palettes, and toolbars. However, you want to be able to see as
much of the image at once as possible in order to be able to judge the effect of
an edit, brush stroke, or special-effect filter on the overall image.
✦ Speed: Speed is of utmost importance to those who want to (or must) work
with large, high-resolution images. If you often work with files of more than
20MB or if you do production work on hundreds of images a day — regardless
of size — then cards that are made especially for high-speed rendering will
make a valuable contribution to the overall speed at which you can get your
work done.

Note Many who work with digital photographs are also involved in digital video. If that’s
the case for you, you’ll want to be sure that your video card includes MPEG
support.
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220 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Setting Up Your Display Card

Because you are working with photographs, deciding which resolution and color
mode to use is a relatively easy matter. You want to view your color photographs in
a neutral setting with as little glare as possible. Furthermore, you want to avoid arty
backgrounds, screen savers, and all that other “cute stuff” — at least while you’re
editing your pictures. Editing photos in anything other than a neutral-color environ-
ment makes it impossible to accurately judge color values in your photos. Then you
can go back to your favorite wallpaper when you’re only using Quicken and e-mail.

Macintosh
For the most part, the Macintosh default settings are the best ones for working with
photographs. Use the following steps to set up your display card:

1. Go to Control Panels and choose Monitors & Sound.

2. When the Monitors & Sound control panel opens choose the Monitor icon.
Under Mac OS 9, this appears as the Monitors Control Panel.
3. In the Color Depth panel, click the Colors radio button and choose Millions
from the Color palette.
If you’re on a budget and can’t afford a high-performance display card that
supports true color, you can limp along by choosing Thousands.
4. In the Resolution panel, choose the Recommended from the Show pull-
down menu, and then choose the resolution for your monitor that gives
you readable type at the highest resolution that your card will support.
5. In the ColorSync Profile panel, choose the profile that you set with your
color calibrator.
If you press the Calibrate button, you can perform a calibration with steps
that are nearly identical to the Photoshop Gamma calibration.
6. Close the window.

Windows
The default Windows Monitors and Sound settings tend to be a bit more “colorful”
than the Macintosh. Furthermore, Windows offers many opportunities to use wall-
paper, screen savers, and truly garish color schemes. Therefore, it’s even more
important for Windows users to use a neutral background so that they can be
colorful accurately.

Use the following steps to set up your display card:

1. Place the cursor on an empty space on the desktop and right-click. A

contextual menu appears.
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 221

2. Choose Properties from the contextual menu. The Display Properties dialog
box appears.
3. Click the Appearance tab, as shown in Figure 7-1.
4. From the Color Scheme pull-down menu, choose Silver.
5. From the Windows and Buttons menu, choose Windows XP style.

Figure 7-1: Choose Silver and Windows

XP style in the Display Properties dialog box.

After you’ve set up a color scheme that you can work with, you want to make sure
that you’re working in true color (all 16.8 million colors and shades visible to the
human eye) and at the highest resolution consistent with readability. Don’t give up
true color in favor of resolution, or all of your calibration efforts will have been in
vain. Also, if you have enough memory, your display card may enable you to
choose 32-bit depth for true color. This is a good choice if you have a camera or
scanner that captures 32-bit information. However, whether you can actually manip-
ulate the digital image at that resolution depends on the software you use and on
the settings you have made in that software.

I make this recommendation for highest resolution strictly on the basis of editing
photographs. In desktop publishing/graphic design applications, it’s important that
type be as close as possible to the same size as it will be on paper. If you constantly
have to switch between desktop publishing applications and photo manipulation,
you’ll want to use the resolution that gets you closest to 72 dpi on your screen. The
Table 7-1 provides guidelines for achieving 72 dpi.
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222 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Table 7-1
Settings Used to Achieve 72 dpi
Screen Size Resolution Closest to 72 dpi

12-14 inches 640 x 480

15-17 inches 800 x 600
19 inches 1,024 x 768
20-21 inches 1,280 x 1,024

Here are the steps you need to take to set screen resolution and the number of col-
ors you can see:

1. If you don’t still have the Display Properties dialog box in front of you,
select Settings ➪ Display from the Start menu.
When the Display dialog box appears, click the Settings tab, as shown in
Figure 7-2.

Figure 7-2: The Display Properties dialog

box as it appears when you choose the
Settings tab

2. From the Color Quality pull-down menu, choose Highest (32-bit if your card
enables it).
3. Drag the Screen Resolution slider to the screen resolution that you prefer
(see the suggestions on resolution that precede these steps).
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 223

You have now ensured that your display card is performing to your best advantage for
working with digital photographs. These settings should work for almost everything
else you do (they certainly do for me), but if you need or want another set of settings
for another purpose, be sure to repeat these steps before editing photographs.

Choosing Monitors
Choosing a workable monitor is a straightforward matter for snapshooters and those
dabbling with the idea of working in digital photography. Just about any color moni-
tor capable of displaying true color will do. (Refer to the section in this chapter about
setting up your display for more information.) However, if you’re going to buy a new
monitor, which are sold for reasonable prices these days, consider the following:

✦ CRT versus LCD — which is better? CRTs — the traditional, tube-type

monitors — are gradually being replaced by slim, lightweight LCD (liquid
crystal display) monitors, the type that you see on laptop monitors. LCDs
are easier on the eyes, show much less distortion, and display approximately
the same amount of information as the next size up in CRT tubes. For exam-
ple, a 15-inch LCD can display almost as much information as a 17-inch CRT.
However, LCDs can rarely be calibrated with as much precision as CRTs and
are significantly more expensive than CRTs. If you’re serious about accurate
color previewing, then stick with CRTs for editing your photos. However,
sometimes you don’t have a choice, such as when you’re traveling. If you do
have a choice, use your LCD as the menu screen and your CRT as the editing
screen in a dual monitor setup (a single ATI Radeon card can support both).
✦ Bigger is better: When editing high resolution photographs, there’s no such
thing as a monitor screen that’s too large — unless it’s so big that your desk-
top won’t support it or your wallet isn’t fat enough to support it.
✦ Flatter is better: Flat screen CRTs will give you a much better sense of how
your picture will look when printed on a flat piece of paper. They also have
less distortion and have fewer surface reflections, which make them much
easier on your eyes.
✦ Higher refresh rates are better: A refresh rate of anything over 72 MHz is
highly desirable because screen flicker is reduced to the point that it is
nearly imperceptible. This means that your eyes don’t tire nearly as fast.
✦ Smaller dot pitch is better: The smaller the number for dot pitch given in the
monitor’s specifications, the less chance that the colors from individual pixels
will overlap and contaminate one another. So you’ll be better able to judge
image sharpness and detail.
✦ Higher maximum resolution is better: The higher the maximum resolution
your monitor is capable of displaying, the more flexibility you’ll have in deter-
mining how much of the screen needs to be devoted to the image and how
much to the user interface. In other words, higher resolution makes your
monitor function as a bigger monitor. Of course, if you have poor eyesight,
you may have a hard time distinguishing small details.
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224 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

✦ Single-gun aperture grill tube (Trinitron, Mitsubishi) is better: Monitors that

use a single-beam electron gun and a shadow mask (regularly-spaced vertical
wires), produce a sharper, higher-contrast, and purer image that is signifi-
cantly better for judging image quality and color.

Choosing a monitor is a primary consideration for those who are serious about digi-
tal photography. Be willing to spend more in order to max out all of the considera-
tions in the previous list.

Flat-screen monitors from Sony, Mitsubishi, NEC, and Radius were beginning to
appear at very reasonable prices at the time of this writing. Flat screens have been
with us for a while in smaller sizes at higher prices, but the new models sell for
nearly the same price as curved-screen monitors, and they are even more distortion-
and glare-free. Several of these monitors also have USB connections and USB ports
located at the front of the monitor, which can be very handy for viewing digital
camera photos while they are still in the camera. This provides an excellent way to
“proof” digital photos during a studio shoot.

Dual Monitor Capability

The best way to gain extra screen space so that you can see as much of the image
as possible is by investing in a dual-monitor setup. Some display cards for both
Windows and Macintosh, most notably the ATI Radeon series, make it possible to
run two monitors from the same card. This is an advantage because you save a
couple of hundred dollars by not having to buy a second card. These cards are also
easier to configure for Windows XP and Mac OS X. Finally, running both cards from
one card ensures that the color signals sent to both monitors from the graphics
card will be identical.

Adjusting Your Monitor

This section will help you to adjust your monitor for the least distorted image possi-
ble, given your monitor. If at all possible, choose a monitor with Trinitron technology;
many companies make such monitors. Some, such as Radius (Miro), sell excellent-
quality Trinitrons at extremely reasonable prices. I don’t make this recommendation
because other monitors don’t have excellent qualities, but because Trinitrons (and
their close cousins, the Mitsubishi DiamonTrons) have a couple of characteristics
that make them especially well suited to editing graphics and, particularly, editing
photographs:
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 225

✦ The tubes are vertically flat, which results in fewer surface reflections and
less linear distortion in the image.
✦ These monitors use a single scanning gun to produce all three primary colors.
As a result, it is much easier to judge colors because there is no chance of dot
misregistration. Most important, all the color calibrators recognize Trinitron
phosphor color.

Hardware adjustments
Your monitor may have either analog or digital controls. Some even have analog
controls for brightness and contrast, and digital controls for horizontal and vertical
size, horizontal and vertical position, and keystoning and pincushion distortion.

Brightness and contrast

If you own Photoshop, use Adobe Gamma. You can also load the color and grayscale
target found on the CD-ROM that accompanies this book. Turn contrast all the way
up, and then adjust brightness until black is solid black and white is a bright, clean
white. Now adjust the brightness so that you see exactly ten distinct shades of gray
in the target.

If you are calibrating with Adobe Gamma or any other calibration software, don’t
readjust the brightness or contrast control for the rest of the procedure. Adobe
Gamma’s Wizard will guide you through the steps necessary to complete the proce-
dure. If you need to readjust brightness and contrast for some other reason, be sure
to rerun Adobe Gamma or whatever other calibration system you might use.

Horizontal and vertical size

Use this adjustment to size the image so that it is as large as possible without being
cut off by the monitor mask. Be careful not to cut off the edges; you may find your-
self cutting off important information in menus and status lines that border your
workspace. See Figure 7-3 for an idea of how properly adjusted vertical and horizon-
tal sizes should look.

Horizontal and vertical position

Horizontal and vertical position (shift) control moves the screen image from top to
bottom and side to side so that you can center the image onscreen. This setting is
illustrated in Figure 7-4.
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226 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Figure 7-3: Properly adjusted vertical and horizontal size

Figure 7-4: In this case, the image needs to be shifted both vertically
and horizontally in order to be centered on the screen.
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 227

Keystoning
The keystone adjustments expand the top or bottom dimensions of the display
equidistantly, either by bringing the corners closer together or by spreading them
apart. Keystone and pincushion distortion are often combined. Figure 7-5 shows
keystone distortion in which the length of the bottom of the display is shorter than
the length of the top of the display.

Figure 7-5: Exaggerated keystone distortion

Pincushion distortion
Pincushion distortion makes an image look as if it were projected onto a sphere,
as shown in Figure 7-6. Pincushion distortion makes the display seem to bulge.
The effect is usually more exaggerated on the sides of the display.

Barrel distortion
Barrel distortion makes the sides of the image look bloated, as shown in Figure 7-7.
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228 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Figure 7-6: Pincushion distortion

Figure 7-7 Barrel distortion

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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 229

Note Another type of distortion, called corner pincushion distortion, can be adjusted on
some monitors. Corner pincushion distortion causes the corners of the display
seem to shrink or blossom.

Making a monitor hood

A good monitor hood will go a long way toward making your monitor’s color more
predictable, which is why you see them on so many high-end calibration systems.
Another bonus is that they cut glare and, therefore, eyestrain. You can pay a fair
amount of money for a prebuilt monitor baffle or you can make your own for a few
dollars and an hour or so of your time. If you have several monitors, you can make
baffles for all of them at the same time, which allows you to cut your costs and time
investment even more. Here is how to make a monitor hood:

1. Go to an art supply store and buy some large pieces of foam core mounting
board.
It should be coated black on both sides, but one side will do.
2. Measure the top and sides of your monitor(s) at their widest point.
3. Cut three strips approximately 10 inches wide.
One strip should be as long as the widest point of the top of the monitor case.
The other two strips should be as long as the widest point of the sides of the
monitor case.
4. Use black tape to hinge the inside (black side) of the baffle.
5. Fold the baffle in and tape the outside hinges.
6. An optional step is to cover both sides of the baffle with an even less-
reflective surface.
You can use adhesive spray to attach 50 percent gray paper to the outside of
the baffle and a felt-flocked black paper to the inside.
7. Place the baffle on the top of the monitor, and tape it down with black
masking tape.

Calibrating Your System

Printed material and your digital input and viewing devices (cameras, scanners,
and monitors) use entirely different means of representing color. Printed materials
represent color by mixing primary colors together to form darker, more saturated
color. Because printed materials can’t produce a true black that way, printed
materials also have to add black pigment.
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230 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Cameras, scanners, and monitors represent color by subtracting primary colors

from pure white light. Black is simply the absence of light. Technically, there’s no
way to make a perfect match between what you see on a monitor by transmitted
light and what you see on paper by light reflected off its surface. Thankfully, how-
ever, you can come “close enough.”

Of course, how close is “close enough” depends on the requirements of your busi-
ness, your budget, and your personal preference. The following sections explore
your options, and I explain them by starting with the simplest techniques and grad-
uating to the costliest and most elaborate. Of course, the latter will come close to
meeting even the most demanding prepress requirements.

Tip Make sure you haven’t installed the software for two color calibrators at the same
time. They will conflict with each other and throw your color printing off. This
happens most frequently when an application asks you to set up for color. If you
are already using another calibrator, just say no. This also holds true for calibration
methods built into the operating system, like ColorSync on Mac OS.

The test-chart method

Regardless of any other methods that you currently use or use after reading this
chapter, you should start with this one. The following methods are mostly con-
cerned with calibrating.

Start with a test print that has a ten-step gray scale, a color chart, and a full-range
photograph on it. You can buy these from print shops and professional photogra-
phy stores. If you use Photoshop, you can also print out the Adobe file called Test
Image, which can be found on the Photoshop CD and use it in the same way. It’s a
good idea to have several identical copies of the test print so you can have it handy
for testing when you get a new camera or new film, when you compare a scan, or
when you’re calibrating your printer after a change of software or when testing
new inks and papers.

After you have the chart, take the following steps to calibrate your camera:

1. Start by calibrating your monitor by using one of the methods listed below.
You will have to judge the performance of your digital camera or scanner by
what you see on your monitor.
2. Take pictures of the chart under controlled lighting conditions:
• You need to know the color temperature of the lighting and make sure
that the print is evenly illuminated.
• If you are going to be scanning your images, shoot with a film camera
and use the type(s) of film you will be putting through any scanners that
you plan to use. If you have a digital camera, be sure to use that, too.
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 231

• Take all the pictures under identical lighting conditions, but bracket
your exposures a full stop on either side of the indicated reading. Be
sure to bracket in half-stop increments. Note the exposure for each
frame.
• If possible, take your reading with an external incident light meter held
at the same plane as the test print. If you are stuck with the meter in
your camera, aim it at a photographer’s gray card. You can buy a
Kodak gray card at any professional photography store.
3. Choose the slide, print, and/or digital photo that looks best without making
any processing adjustments.
• Make a note of which film emulsion or digital camera was used and at
what exposure.
• Also note how much, if at all, the exposure value of the chosen image
differs from the exposure recommended by your meter.
• From now on, you will want to set your camera to compensate exposure
by the same degree (at least as a starting point). You have now cali-
brated your camera.

Now you follow a similar procedure for your scanner, monitor, and printer — in that
order.

1. Scan the image that you photographed on conventional film with your
scanner.
The image should also have been printed conventionally if you’re testing a
flatbed scanner. Every scanner’s software is different, but almost all offer
some way to balance red, blue, and green settings and to change brightness
and contrast.
2. Make adjustments until the scanned image looks like your test print.
If possible, save the settings so that you can recall them any time you make a
scan.
3. Print the image on your color printer.
Your color printer may have an ICC (International Color Consortium) profile
that Photoshop can read, but it won’t matter unless you stick with the same
inks and papers. Ask your printer manufacturer for as complete a list as possi-
ble of profiles for your printer and different ink and paper combinations. Some
folks prefer not to work with ICC profiles, in which case, you’ll have to make a
manual match. When you’ve managed to get these adjustments perfect, just
save the adjustments. Most printer software will let you save a settings file
under a name that you find useful.
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232 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Whatever you do, don’t use the image adjustments in your image-processing pro-
gram. Make the adjustments by using your printer software. You make these differ-
ently in the software for each brand, and sometime each model, of printer. You can
see some of the basic adjustments for the Epson Photo 1270 printer in Figure 7-8.
The Epson Photo 1270 lets you adjust brightness, contrast, and the level of each
color. You can also choose a paper type that is closest in characteristics to the
actual paper you will be using. You can then save the settings to a unique filename
that can be used again.

At this point, you should be pretty close to having a system that will produce more
consistent results from shutter click to final print than if you just leave everything
to chance.

Figure 7-8: The Epson Photo 1270 lets you choose from a wide range of
color and brightness adjustments.

Note Some people will tell you that you should scan in CMYK. This advice holds if you
are scanning strictly for prepress final output and you have a very high-end drum
scanner, such as the Crossfield, which actually scans in CMYK. Almost all other
scanners, if set for CMYK scanning, actually scan in RGB and then make their own
CMYK conversion. You can do a better job in Photoshop. Furthermore, many of the
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 233

commands in Photoshop (and most other image-processing programs) are dis-

abled when you’re working on a CMYK image. Therefore, it’s better to work in RGB
and convert to CMYK only when you’re actually ready to go to press. If you’re still
resistant to that idea, consider the fact that you will probably want to use your
images in several different media, some of which are RGB media (the Web, for
example). If you start with CMYK, you won’t have as rich an image when you con-
vert back to RGB.

Calibrating your monitor

There’s no doubt that in digital photography, as is the case with other digital graph-
ics applications, calibrating your monitor is at the center of success in producing
predictable results. In a sense, your monitor is your light table, where you examine
the results of a shooting session. It’s also the medium by which you judge any sort
of interpretative changes in an image.

How much better (more accurate) you want your monitor calibration to be depends
largely on your budget. All of the methods that I discuss here are much better than
leaving it to chance. Having said that, though, I have to tell you that I have a neigh-
bor, excellent at prepress work, who says that she trusts her eyeballs to calibrate a
monitor more than she trusts any of the technologies that she has seen. Few of us,
however, have her experience. So unless you fall into her category, read on.

Before calibrating your monitor, you should take a few preparatory steps:

✦ Make sure your monitor has been turned on for at least half an hour before
you start calibrating. Phosphors change color during the first 30 minutes and
stay much steadier after that. By the way, this is a good reason to leave your
monitor turned on during your working hours.
✦ Degauss the monitor, if that’s possible. Some monitors don’t have degauss
buttons, which may be a good reason to buy another monitor.
✦ Clean your monitor’s faceplate. If you use a glass cleaner (a good idea, unless
your monitor has a plastic coating) be sure to spray it on the cleaning towel
and not on the monitor, which can cause a short.
✦ Some monitors have a color balance control. If yours has this feature, put
your test picture on the screen and adjust the color balance until you find it
pleasing. If you ever change this control, you will need to recalibrate your
monitor.
✦ If your monitor has a color temperature switch, set the color temperature to
5,000K. If your calibration software asks for the color temperature of your
monitor, just enter this figure.
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234 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Using Adobe Gamma

Many image-processing programs offer some method that enables you to adjust
your monitor’s controls for the best possible settings. Adobe Gamma is a control
panel applet that comes with Adobe Photoshop and is used for adjusting monitor
gamma. In Windows NT and 95, it works only in conjunction with Photoshop. In
Windows 98, it is a control panel for the entire system — as is the case for the
Macintosh. The same is true of all software-based monitor calibration systems.
In fact, this is one reason why the Macintosh still holds the lead among graphics
professionals.

To start Adobe Gamma, you must first install Adobe Photoshop. You then go to the
operating system’s Control Panel menu. On the Macintosh, you will find this on the
Apple menu. In Windows, choose Start ➪ Settings ➪ Control Panel. When the Control
Panel menu or window opens, choose Adobe Gamma. From here on out, operations
are pretty much the same for either platform. The first thing you see is the Adobe
Gamma Wizard, which is shown in Figure 7-9.

Figure 7-9: In Adobe Gamma, you can use

the control panel or a wizard to perform this
simple procedure.

You can choose either the wizard or the control panel. You can do a better job with
the control panel because you can set your brightness and contrast controls prop-
erly and you can control the gamma of each electron gun. First, make sure that the
lighting level is consistent with your usual working conditions. If you work at home,
you’ll probably want to create one profile for daytime and another profile for after
dark. Also, it’s a good idea to put a light baffle around your monitor. (See the section
“Making a Monitor Hood” earlier in this chapter.) Then, perform the following steps:

1. After choosing the Control Panel option, the control panel appears. At the top
of the control panel is a bar called Brightness and Contrast. Adjust your
brightness and contrast controls so that the lower bar stays a bright white,
while the upper bar turns a solid black.
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 235

2. Located beneath the Brightness and Contrast bar is the Phosphors pull-down
menu. If you know the phosphors code for your monitor, choose it. This code
may be stated in the specifications sheet for your monitor; if you don’t find it
there, try checking the manufacturer’s Web site or calling their technical sup-
port line. Trinitron phosphors are always listed. If you don’t know, ignore this
menu.
3. The next adjustment takes place in the gamma panel. Squint so that the
screen blurs slightly. Drag the slider under the gamma box until the center
square seems to match the lined outer square.
4. Uncheck the View Single Gamma Only box. You’ll see three boxes — one each
for Red, Green, and Blue. Use the same technique that you used for the single
gamma box to adjust each primary color.
5. The white point of a monitor shifts over time, so it’s best to make a manual
adjustment. Click the Measure button in the White Point panel. Your screen
will go to black and you will see three grayish squares on your screen. Click
the square that is closest to a neutral gray. When that happens to be the cen-
ter square, you have calibrated your monitor. You’re almost done. Click OK.
6. You will be asked if you want to save your changes to the profile before
closing. If you made your choices carefully, click Save.

Using Colorific
Colorific is another easy-to-use control panel calibrator. You should know the bene-
fits of using it, if only to understand how easy it is to use. I find that it produces
results in print that are somewhat more consistent with what I see on my monitor
than does Adobe Gamma (but make no mistake, using Adobe Gamma is much bet-
ter than taking your chances).

Colorific is published by E-Color, Inc. (www.ecolor.com; 415-957-9940) and retails

for $49.95. It also comes bundled with a good many products, including several
monitors from Compaq, EyeQ, Hitachi, Iiyama, LaCie, LG Electronics, Acer,
Artmedia, and Samsung.

Using Colorific is easy. Follow these steps as prompted by a calibration dialog box:

1. Adjust the brightness and contrast.

2. Adjust monitor gamma by choosing a square that is least visible when
you’re squinting.
3. Measure the monitor’s white point by choosing a type of room lighting that
prevails, attaching a “reference card” to the surface of your monitor, and
adjusting your brightness and contrast controls until the color of the card
matches the color of the monitor.
This is the only tricky part, because the room must be brightly lit during this
one stage Measure the monitor’s black point by using a similar method.
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236 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

4. If you’re running Windows, you need to install a Colorific printer profile in

your printer’s preferences:

a. Go to Settings and choose Printers.

b. Right-click the printer(s) that you are using to print in color and choose
Properties from the Contextual menu.
c. In the printer’s Properties dialog box, choose the Color Management tab,
and then click the Add button.
d. An Add Profile Association browser appears.
e. Choose the Colorific95 profile.

Cross- A new product called Provelt! was recently introduced. It uses a hardware calibra-
Reference
tor and costs less than $300 for both the hardware colorimeter and the software.
You can also find out more about ProveIt! by visiting www.color.com or by call-
ing 858-613-1300.

Using MonacoEZcolor
MonacoEZcolor (www.monacosys.com; 978-749-9944) works by prompting you
through the steps necessary to calibrate your system. It creates custom ICC profiles
for your scanner, monitor, and printer — so you get a complete workflow calibration
system. Best of all, it provides a bridge between higher-end calibration systems,
such as the Radius Pressview, and very inexpensive software-only solutions. You can
buy the system with or without a hardware colorimeter. Called the MonacoSENSOR,
the colorimeter sells for under $250 — which is thousands less than the more
expensive systems.

You don’t have to buy the MonacoSENSOR to use EZcolor. The software sells for
just under $300, but it also calibrates your scanner. If you do a lot of scanning, the
time you’ll save in testing, calibrating, and Photoshop touch-up is well worth the
price.

Running EZcolor is a bit more complex than using the two previous calibration
methods. This doesn’t mean that it’s harder, only that more steps are involved.
The steps are all guided; and as long as follow them, you definitely get more
accurate results than if you just calibrate your monitor by using one of the methods
described previously. One of the reasons for this is that Monaco uses a scanner tar-
get that’s pre-prepared. A reflective target for flatbed scanners comes in the pack-
age. You can buy a Kodak 35mm slide target from Monaco for $80 or buy the same
target from Kodak for just under $30. You can also buy targets for larger-format film.

The MonacoSENSOR makes the whole calibration process even more accurate
because it attaches to your monitor screen and takes direct color measurements
that are immediately specific to the individual monitor.
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 237

Mac owners should also take a look at Pictorgraphic’s Candela ColorSynergy ver-
sion 4.0. (www.candelacolor.com; 612-894-6247). ColorSynergy also does scanner,
monitor, and printer calibration. The software costs just under $500, and it works
with other manufacturers’ color measurement hardware, such as X-Rite’s Colortron
II and DTP 22, so you’d have to pay extra for the accuracy that hardware color mea-
surement can provide. ColorSynergy lets you create ColorSync profiles for most any
type of device in the color workflow chain: reflective and transparency scanners,
monitors, inkjet printers, dye-sublimation or thermal-wax printers, film recorders,
proofing systems, or printing presses.

The X-Rite Colortron II comes with Mac-only color calibration software. The
Colortron II is a spectrometer that you can use to measure color from any surface.
This means that you can also use it to match the color in a printed chart to the
color on the monitor or to check the fading in a color print under certain condi-
tions over a fixed period of time. The device sells for just under $1,000.

Using high-end spectrometers and colorimeters

These are the most accurate of all calibration systems because all of the hardware
is built specifically to produce predictable results (display card, monitor, and spec-
trometer or colorimeter). They’re intended for anyone with a critical need (or per-
ceived need) for accuracy — especially when it comes to collaborating. Two people
at opposite corners of the planet will see exactly the same picture, provided they
own the same system. All of these systems use large screens, and the screens are
hooded to protect them from direct room light and glare. Several well-established
companies make these systems for the prepress industry, as well as for designers,
photographers, and corporations that do their own work in-house.

One of the most pervasive of these is the Radius PressView XL. For a bit less than
$4,000, you get your own highly reputable instrument-based color calibration sys-
tem that includes the following:

✦ A giant monitor: This monitor measures 21 inches, with a maximum true-

color resolution of 1,800 x 1,350 pixels, and has been carefully tweaked to
display maximum color.
✦ A hardware colorimeter: This color measuring device and software lets you
calibrate identically across both Windows and Mac platforms.
✦ A monitor hood: This hood helps cut out stray light and glare.
✦ A set of Radius color profiles: These profiles are for scanners, monitors, and
printers (including presses).

By looking at the technology that comprises this system, you will understand why
such professional systems need to be so carefully designed. For example, the entire
case is made in a 50 percent, color-neutral gray. Faceplates are carefully treated so
that they cut glare without diffusing the image. You can tune colors and focus in
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238 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

quadrants of the monitor, rather than having one adjustment apply to the entire
surface. You can correct pincushion and keystone distortion in more than 20 differ-
ent quadrants of the monitor. The result is absolutely distortion-free images. The
screen has very high refresh rates, so there’s no visible screen flicker at all. This
system even includes automatic compensation for distortion that is caused by the
magnetic fields specific to your geographical location.

I mention the Radius PressView XL (www.mirodisplays.com; 650-988-7270) here

specifically because it has long been one of the most popular systems. However,
other highly accurate systems are worthy of your consideration; these include the
Scitex (www.scitex.com; 781-275-5150) and the Barco (www.barco.com/display/
index.htm).

Using a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet

If you’re going to do much of the sort of image editing that requires you to retouch
small details, to carefully make manual selections of objects (this is pretty much
inevitable), or to do any freehand drawing at all, then forget trying to use a mouse.
That would be like trying to make an etching with a bar of soap. Instead, you really
want a digitizing pad like the one shown in Figure 7-10.

Figure 7-10: The Wacom Intuos 6 x 9-inch digitizing pad

Courtesy of Wavom Technology Corp.

A digitizing pad lets you draw on a flat surface with the pen. The position of the tip
of the pen is always precisely related to a corresponding position on the monitor,
regardless of whether you picked it up and moved it between strokes. In fact, you
can even use a digitizing pen to trace an existing image.
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 239

By far the most widely used digitizing pads for digital imaging and fine arts folks are
those from Wacom. Wacom pioneered the use of pressure-sensitive pens, which can
change the size of the brush stroke or the transparency of the stroke (the type of
alteration that takes effect depends on the setting you make in your image-editing
software).

Wacom is also one of the few makers of digitizing pads that use battery-less pens.
Batteries add considerably to the weight of the pen, which can make them feel less
natural. Also, when the battery starts to die, unpredictable things start happening
to your pen strokes.

Wacom’s latest line of digitizing pads takes the feel of natural media even further.
For example, there are new Photoshop plug-ins called pen tools and a new airbrush
pen that lets you control the volume of paint with a wheel, just like a real airbrush.
Also, when you tilt the airbrush, the paint area expands and fades with distance
from the tip of the brush.

You may be able to find real bargains on other brands of digitizing pads. If so, any
digitizing pad is better than a mouse. The following are features to look for in a
digitizing pad:

✦ Wacom-compatible pressure sensitivity: Many software packages simply

don’t recognize the pressure-sensitive feature of other manufacturers’ pens.
Most of them know this and make their pens and pads Wacom-compatible.
✦ Size: Size doesn’t matter nearly as much as having a pressure-sensitive digitiz-
ing pad. Some artists, however, will feel cramped by smaller pads. Big pads
can take up lots of desktop, so most feel that a 6 x 9 inch pad is the best com-
promise. It feels a little more natural because it’s approximately the width of
letter-size paper.
✦ Versatility: Check for available extras, such as plug-ins for pen tools or special
painterly effects, and different styles of pens and pucks (such as an airbrush,
4-D mouse, or cross-hair puck).
✦ Resolution: Anything over 1,000 dpi is workable. Some go as high as 2,500 dpi.
More resolution simply means more precise control over the exact placement
of the cursor (pen tip). The smaller the tablet in relation to the size of the
monitor, the more important the resolution of the pad.

Choosing Output Devices

So, what happens after you’ve captured and digitized your images and processed
them in almost any imaginable way by using the software mentioned in the previ-
ous section? You need to be able to show them to people. In other words, you need
to output your images. Of course, you may be sending them to someone else for
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240 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

final output, such as to a service bureau or to your client. Another possibility is

that your images will only be used in electronic form, so you may not need to print
them on paper. Most photographers, however, want to be able to see the image on
paper. More importantly, most clients are used to seeing the images on paper or as
slides.

Remember, if you need the output from one of the more expensive printers, you
don’t have to buy the printer to get it. Contact the manufacturer of the printer
whose output you desire. Most maintain a list of companies (service bureaus)
that will print your output for you.

Note Conventional wisdom has been that inkjet printers produce prints that fade more
rapidly than those made by any other printing technology. This has been true until
recently because most inkjet printers used dye-based inks that are very susceptible
to atmospheric changes, ultraviolet light, and moisture. Besides, inkjet printer
manufacturers have only recently begun to pay attention to the quality of paper.
Recently, several manufacturers have been producing pigment-based inks and
acid-free, UV-coated papers. Preliminary tests show that prints produced with the
right combination of these new inks and papers can outlast just about anything
previously known.

The following sections are an overview of each type of printer or other output
device. Each of these sections describes the category, explains its general usage
and price range, and points you in the direction of the right types of products to
look for.

Cross- You will also find a more extensive discussion about the three most common
Reference
printer types — inkjets, dye-sub printers, and laser printers — in Chapter 17, along
with installation, setup and maintenance tips.

PostScript interpreters
A PostScript interpreter, or RIP (raster image processor), translates your images
into the language most commonly understood in the printing industry. This makes
it essential if you want to make match proofs of images that will be used in printed
publications. A PostScript interpreter is also essential for making color-matched
color separations that can be sent directly to a print shop.

Many users will use digital photography as part of a prepress workflow. If you
fit into that category (most users will at some point), you’ll want to consider
the options that your printer offers for PostScript interpretation. You can add
PostScript interpreter software to virtually all popular types of full-color printers.
However, generally speaking, you’re better off if the interpreter is offered by the
manufacturer of your printer. This is because printer features that are specific to
your make and model are most likely to be implemented.
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 241

Printing is significantly faster for printers that have built-in PostScript interpreters,
rather than requiring you to run the interpreter on your computer. However, the
cost of the printer is usually significantly higher because the printer must have a
built-in computer for interpreting the PostScript code.

If you are planning to run a wide-format printer, you will need a PostScript inter-
preter before your printer will print much of anything. Always look into which
interpreters have been approved and recommended by the manufacturer of your
printer.

Office printers
Many modern office printers, especially laser and inkjet printers, are able to repro-
duce color photographs well enough to incorporate them into office documents
(such as letters or inventory records) or informal in-house publications (such as
newsletters). However, it’s rare that a printer that can output business documents
quickly enough to support a small but successful law partnership can also print
photographs that look and feel like photographs.

Printers that are intended primarily for the output of office documents — even
those that can do a credible job of printing photographs — have one serious limita-
tion for digital photography buffs and professionals: print size. Most are limited to
legal-sized (8.5 inches wide) documents. Thus, they won’t be able to do you much
good if you need to make prints for exhibition, proofs of double-page spreads, or
prints for photographer’s portfolios.

Laser printers
Color laser printers simply can’t produce color that’s good enough for exhibition or
for client approval. They can, however, produce very nice-looking photos in office
documents and informal publications.

Most laser printers (and all of those that sell for under $1,000) are black and white
only. Those that are most useful for reproducing digital photographs print at least a
600 dpi resolution.

If you plan to use your office laser printer for informal publications, you’re better
off buying one with a built-in PostScript interpreter. Some models of laser printers
will enable you add PostScript as an option. You can also use a software interpreter,
but then you diminish one of the major advantages of a laser printer: speed.

Laser printers have another advantage: print longevity. Because the inks used by
lasers are pigment-based, their images are far less prone to fading than the output
from dye-based inks. This makes them especially suitable for printing materials that
will be posted on bulletin boards.
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242 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Inkjet printers
Generally speaking, you’ll get the most bang for your buck from inkjet printers.
Many highly affordable inkjet printers can do a good-to-superb job of printing pho-
tographs and a credible job of printing office documents. All of them, regardless of
price, can print a digital photograph on glossy paper that looks and feels like photo-
graphic paper and with a quality that can fool noncritical observers into thinking
that they are looking at the real thing.

The least expensive of these printers are relatively slow (typically 1 to 4 text pages
per minute), so they are best suited to lower-volume personal or entrepreneurial
use. However, this situation is changing. A few new, higher-priced (but still under
$600) inkjet printers can print text at laser-printer speeds and that use variable-size
dots to reproduce the appearance of continuous tone color.

For a few dollars more, you can purchase inkjet printers that either print in six col-
ors (like the Epson Stylus Photo 785EPX shown in Figure 7-11), have variable-size
dot patterns, or both. These machines can make prints that will fool all but the
most knowledgeable experts and are of high enough quality for portfolio and
exhibition work. Some desktop inkjet printers can even make prints as wide as
17 inches and fortunately, most serious individual professionals and hobbyists
can afford them (under $2,000).

Figure 7-11: The Epson Stylus Photo 785EPX

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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 243

Don’t make the mistake of lumping all inkjet printers together when it comes to
print quality. Bubble jets heat the ink until a bubble is formed that forces ink out of
the head. The size of the dot can be somewhat unpredictable and the technology is
still improving. Piezoelectric technology, so far produced only by Epson, minimizes
overspray and splatter, thereby creating noticeably sharper edges and better-
defined dots that result in more vivid and predictable reproduction of the appear-
ance of continuous-tone color transitions so essential to the faithful printing of
photographs.

Another type of inkjet is used in Iris printers that use variable dot size to produce
even more continuous-tone images. I discuss these printers later in this chapter in
the section about wide-format inkjet printers, but I mention them here because the
latest development in desktop inkjet printers is variable dot size. Epson first intro-
duced variable dot size in its Stylus 900, a high-speed office inkjet that can also pro-
duce incredibly sharp continuous-tone photographs by using only four inks (Cyan,
Magenta, Yellow, and Black).

Another technology pioneered by Epson, and since adopted by other manufactur-

ers, is the use of more than four colors of ink. The Epson Photo series of desktop
inkjet printers use six colors. The additional colors are light yellow and light
magenta. This allows for the reproduction of subtle changes in light colors without
forcing dots to be spaced further apart. The result is the appearance of continuous-
tone color, even in such details as highlights and skin tones.

PostScript interpreters are available for many — but not all — models of desktop
inkjet printers. All of these interpreters are software-based as opposed to built-in.
Be sure to check the manufacturer’s literature for the inkjet printer that you are
considering if you feel that a PostScript interpreter is important to you. You don’t
need a PostScript interpreter for a desktop inkjet printer if you just want to print
personal, portfolio, or exhibition photographs.

Inkjet printers that are suitable for use by photographic professionals for larger
than letter-size output fall into the following size and price categories:

✦ Portfolio inkjets: These are desktop printers that can make prints up to
11 inches wide. Most will print at any length. These printers work well for
creating photographers’ and models’ portfolios, making exhibition prints, and
for printing comprehensive tabloid-size double-page layouts. The Epson 1270,
which can make a full-bleed tabloid-size image and can print with long-life inks
and papers, is currently the leading example of this type of printer.
✦ Inkjets for proofing and small gallery exhibition: These are printers that can
print at better than 600 dpi resolution, use archival inks and papers, and can
make prints that are at least 16 inches wide. Although several 24-inch-wide
inkjets meet these specifications, they tend to fall outside the price range of
all but the most successful photographers. The one notable exception is the
Epson 3000, which retails for less than $1,300. You can expect a more competi-
tive situation in the coming months, however.
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244 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

✦ Wide-format inkjets: These printers are generally purchased by service

bureaus or corporate art departments. The most highly honored models
for printing photos come from Iris, ColorSpan, and Epson (9000 and 4000).

Dye-sublimation printers
The best photographic quality and the most accurate prepress proofs still come
from the high-ticket dye-sublimation printers because these printers produce
true continuous-tone output. In fact, if anything gives away their identity as non-
traditional photographic prints, it is the lack of visible grain structure.

These printers work by heating a plastic ribbon that contains the dye. The heat
turns the dye to a gaseous state and these gases are then absorbed by the polyester
surface of the paper. As they are absorbed, each point becomes its exact (one of
16 million) color. Because a dye-transfer head typically contains thousands of heat
transformers, each of these dots is microscopically tiny. This process involves
no halftone dots (as in lithographic printing) and no color dithering (as in inkjet
printing).

So, why doesn’t everyone just run out and buy a dye-sublimation printer? Because
they’re expensive, slow, and limited to tabloid-size or smaller prints. The cost of
proof-quality dye-sublimation printers starts at around $4,000 and graduates up to
around $16,000. Some dye-sublimation printers cost much less than that, but they
don’t produce prints that are as sharp and vivid as the best inkjets. The cost of
materials per letter-size print is $5 to $8, compared to $2 or less for an inkjet printer.
To top it all off, dye-sublimation printers aren’t suitable for printing office docu-
ments, such as business letters or accounting spreadsheets because the require
photo-quality papers and the cost of printing is to high to justify for office work.

Snapshot printers
One type of dye-sublimation printer generally sells for $300 to $600. These are the
small, snapshot-size printers that are used to produce instant prints from prosumer
and point-and-shoot digital cameras. These printers are a lot of fun at a party. They
also have potential applications in professional assignments when you want to
show an instant print to your client before proceeding with the shoot.

On the downside, most of these printers don’t produce prints that compare in qual-
ity to their more expensive brethren. You pay two to four times more for one of
these prints than for prints from a one-hour film-processing lab. Finally, it will take
several minutes to make a print.

Photographic process printers

This is a class of digital printers that, because they use conventional photographic
paper (silver-halide technology), have the unmistakable look of real photographic
prints. They also have all the archival qualities of the best silver-halide prints.
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 245

Probably 80 percent of digital photographers would produce all their prints using
this technology if it weren’t for three considerations: price, size, and chemistry.
These printers are very expensive. As a result, most photographers must take their
work to a service bureau in order to get these prints. Most of these silver-halide
printers can print sizes up to 50 inches wide and don’t print in CMYK, so no color
or gamma loss results from having to convert the original image data. On the down-
side, they can’t print on substrates such as watercolor paper and canvas. As a
result, they are best suited to art that is meant to look photographic, rather than
“painterly.” The following are the common photographic process printers:

✦ Fujifilm Pictography machines feature a process that uses lasers on conven-

tional silver-halide photographic paper from a self-contained unit. The result
is a continuous-tone print that is indistinguishable from a conventional photo-
graph. Cost of equipment is high, but the materials’ cost per print is much
lower than that of dye-sublimation printers. This is an excellent choice for
minilabs, event photography, and printing small art and portfolio prints.
Pictography printers come in two sizes: the letter-size model 3000 starts at
around $9,000, and the tabloid-size model 4000 starts at around $24,000.
✦ Durst-Lambda makes several high-production volume, wide-format printers
that use silver-halide technology. The top-of-the-line Lambda 130 (around
$330,000) and 131 (around $260,000) models produce prints up to 50 inches
wide. They print at either 200 or 400 ppi (pixels per inch). The Lambda 76
(approximately $175,000) prints are up to 32 inches wide and the printer
maxes out at 200 ppi. Otherwise, the technology and RIPs (Raster Image
Processing) for these printers are the same. They can print on any standard
photographic paper (positive or reversal) or backlit material (which makes
them ideal for large-format signage).
✦ Cymbolic Sciences LightJet also uses laser technology to print on silver-
halide paper. Prints are even crisper than the Durst-Lambda’s. However, the
pros I’ve spoken to seem to feel that the LightJet is better suited to large-
format prints for the art market because of its slower throughput per image.
LightJet printers start at $142,000 for the smallest model. This printer is avail-
able in three sizes: LightJet 5300 (max print size, 32 x 50 inches), LightJet 5500
(max print size, 50 x 50), and LightJet 5900 (max print size, 49 x 97). Cymbolic
says that print time for a 50-inch square print at 200 ppi is 4.1 minutes.

You can’t judge the quality of the prints produced by these machines according to
their printing resolution — at least not in the same way you would with inkjet or
laser printers. I’ve had many prints made on these printers at 200 ppi that are razor-
sharp. At 400 ppi, you can see every minute detail that the sharpest lens can capture.
Durst-Lambda also makes the Epsilon 30, a significantly less expensive machine
(approximately $84,000) that uses fiber-optic LED technology (rather than lasers)
to create true color RGB pixels on silver-halide paper. Maximum paper width for the
Epsilon 30 is (you guessed it) 30 inches. Resolution is 254 ppi at 36-bit continuous-
tone color depth. Durst considers the market for the Epsilon to be primarily por-
trait, even, and fine arts studios because the machine is markedly slower than the
Lambda models. Prices are constantly changing as the technology (and the demand
for it) evolves, but I have been paying roughly $200 for a 16 x 20-inch print.
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246 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Wax thermal printers

Wax thermal printers work much like dye-sublimation printers, except that the wax-
based color ink never becomes gaseous. Instead, it simply melts onto the surface of
the substrate (that’s paper, in plain English). The resulting dots of ink are dithered
by a method that resembles halftone litho printing — except the dots are typically
coarse enough to be easily seen.

The big advantage offered by wax thermal printers is that the cost of their consum-
ables is far lower. Because the technology is so similar to that of dye-sublimation
printers, it’s common for manufacturers (Alps, for example) to combine both types
of technology into the same printer. Then, you can proof in affordable wax thermal
printers and produce final prints from dye-sublimation printers.

Film recorders
Think of film recorders as being reverse slide scanners. Instead of outputting your
digital photograph to paper, you record it onto film. The result can be either a posi-
tive (slide or transparency) or a negative. You can then treat this output just as you
treat the conventionally made counterparts; that is, you can record a negative and
then print on any conventional paper, make reversal prints from slides and trans-
parencies, or use the transparencies for lightbox presentations and slide shows.

If this gives you the feeling that we have come full circle — right back where we left
off when moving from conventional to digital photography — you’re absolutely
right. The difference is in the power we now have over the image’s composition,
color values, content, and special effects while it’s in the digital phase.

The most popular film recorders, partly because of price and partly because of for-
mat, are those that record exclusively onto 35mm film. The following are the most
popular film recorders today:

✦ Lasergraphics Personal LFR Plus is a high-speed (50 slides per hour) 35mm
scanner. One version can accept a Polaroid proofing back. The LFR Mark II
sells for under $10,000, can image up to 700 slides in eight hours, and also
handles 4 x 5 inch and 6 x 7 cm camera backs. Resolution is 4,000 dpi — higher
than the best 35mm film. Amazingly, this unit can shoot up to seven rolls of
35mm film at one time. It can also handle bulk film. The Mark III has the same
features, but resolution drops to 8,000 dpi and the price drops to $14,000.
Models DPM II and III are Mark II and III models that have been specially modi-
fied for negative film. The DPM models are priced $1,000 higher than the Mark
models, but can shoot both negative and positive film. All other specifications
are identical.
✦ Montage Graphics FR2E is a $7,000 recorder that has a 4,000 dpi resolution
and will also take film backs from 35mm to 4 x 5 inches. The manufacturer
does not recommend it for shooting negatives. A PostScript interpreter is
standard for Mac users, but optional for Windows. It works with both Mac
and Windows.
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 247

✦ MGI Opal is a $15,000 slide recorder with a 4,000 dpi resolution that can pro-
duce slides from 35mm to 6 x 7 cm in size. The manufacturer recommends it
for producing both positive and negative film from digital files. The unit can be
configured for either Mac or PC; PostScript is optional. Another model from
the same maker, the Opal Plus, has an 8,000 dpi resolution for under $20,000.
✦ Polaroid 6000 is a film recorder with a 4,000 dpi resolution designed primarily
for 35mm, but it also accommodates a 4 x 5 inch back or a bulk film back. No
6 x 7 cm roll film option exists, however. This unit can typically shoot 32 slides
an hour in 36-bit color. Critics deem it the best for the buck; however, it is not
recommended for creating negatives from digital files. Polaroid does make
the ProPalette series, which is capable of shooting either positive or negative
images. The ProPalette 7000’s resolution is 4,000 dpi. This machine is excellent
for making color negatives of digital images to be output to conventional
prints; however, it’s limited to 35mm film. It’s also noteworthy for being priced
at under $8,000. For about twice the price, the 8000 has backs for 35mm, bulk
35mm, 6 x 7 cm, and 4 x 5 inch film, captures an 8,000 dpi resolution, and
shoots both reversal and negative films. The 8000 can produce 50 slides
per hour and costs a mere $15,000.

Commercial Film recorders include the Cymbolic Sciences Fire 1000 and the Kodak
LVT series. These film recorders are two to three times the price of the units listed
previously, but can be expected to produce “no excuses” output for professional
portfolio presentation or for making final color separations from film. Typically, ser-
vice bureaus and corporate departments purchase these units because they don’t
fit within the budget of most individuals.

The Cymbolic Sciences Fire 1000 sells for a mere $50,000. It can make transparencies
and film up to 8 x 10 inches. A 1,278 dpi, 8 x 10 transparency records in 18 minutes.

The Kodak LVT image recorder records on 8 x 10-inch film, but at much higher
resolutions and at a much lower cost — around $40,000. Resolution is variable,
from 10 to 120 pixels per mm.

A typical price from a service bureau for recording a 35mm slide from a digital
image is around $10 for the first image and about half that for each additional copy
from the same file. Of course, this is an average price. You may be able to get a con-
siderably better price by shopping online, but I find that it pays to be in personal
contact. It also pays to submit a print that matches your expectations as to what
the finished slide should look like. Never expect service bureaus to be able to read
your mind. Otherwise, their individual interpretation is just as valid as your own.

Set Up a Workflow
If you want to assure yourself of consistently top-notch results, set up a consistent
workflow. By workflow, I mean a routine for doing things that assures minimum loss
of image quality once your pictures arrive in the digital laboratory. Here are the
minimum requirements for establishing that workflow:
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248 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

✦ Archive your unaltered original images

✦ Make exposure and color corrections
✦ Crop to maximum usable proportions
✦ Save to a lossless file format that preserves layers
✦ Duplicate files that will be altered

The following sections further explore each of the preceding considerations.

Archive unaltered original

This step is even more important if your original images are in JPEG file format
(you’ll know if you see a .jpg or .jpeg extension as the last part of the image’s
filename). JPEG images allow you to store more images on a memory card at the
expense of losing subtle color differences in the image. Because the image is noth-
ing more than a matrix of solid colors, losing some of that color also means losing
some detail as well as the possibility of creating colors that were never there
(loosely described by the industry as “noise”). If you open a JPEG and then save it
again, it is recompressed and, although the file gets slightly smaller, you lose even
more image data. If you open and save a JPEG image more than a few times, it will
simply turn to unacceptable junk. So if you ever want to start fresh with that image
and give it a different treatment, change its basic settings, or use it at a different
resolution, you’ll need a saved, untouched archive of it.

As soon as you have downloaded your images, change the name of that folder so
that it indicates a status of “to be archived.” Then copy those files to another folder
that indicates that these images are “to be edited.” When you have enough images
that are to be archived to fill a CD-ROM, burn them to the CD-ROM. If you’re super
careful about your images, make two copies of the CD and house the second copy
in a different physical location to protect it from incidents of theft, fire, and natural
disaster.

Make exposure and color corrections

Your next task is to go through your photos and use the following routine to make
basic exposure and color corrections. You are aiming for an image in which none
of the data is wasted on blown-out highlights and shadows, the color has been
brought to an overall warmth or coolness that is flattering to the subject, and the
midtones make the most important parts of the picture readable. You are then
going to want to archive this stage so that you have a faster starting point when
archiving other images.

The fastest way to bring colors to this level is to use your image editor’s commands
to do it automatically. In Photoshop 7, select Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Auto. The following
exercise, in two parts, shows you how to automatically adjust a whole folder of
images. Remember: Don’t do this on a folder of original images. You may not like
all of the results and, if that is the case, you won’t be able to recover them.
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 249

Create an action
This exercise shows you how to autocorrect the levels, contrast, and color in an
image. You can do this for any individual image, but here it’s done within the con-
text of recording these steps into one macro that can be executed at a single
keystroke.

1. From the CD, open the Autocorrect folder.

2. Open any of the files from within that folder, and duplicate it by choosing
Image ➪ Duplicate.
Close the original image by clicking its close button (located in the upper-left
corner of the image window on Mac, upper-right in Windows).
3. Create the macro. Choose Window ➪ Actions. (Actions are Photoshop’s
version of macros.)
The Actions palette appears, as shown in Figure 7-12.

Figure 7-12: The Actions palette

4. From the Actions palette menu, choose New Set.

You can skip New Set if you want to record the Action into the currently active
set, but in this exercise, I’m assuming that you want a special set for your
workflow procedures.
The New Set dialog box appears.
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250 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

5. In the New Set dialog box, enter My Workflow as the name for the set and
click OK.
In the Actions palette, a new folder appears, titled My Workflow. All the
Actions in this set appear under this folder if the folder is loaded. (You can
save, load, and replace actions by using the Actions palette menu.)
6. At the bottom of the Actions palette, click the New Action button.
The New Action button looks like a curled up piece of paper that represents
creating a new entity in any Photoshop or Photoshop Elements palette.
The New Action dialog box appears.
7. Type Autocorrect as the name of the Action and click OK.
The Recording button turns red. You are now recording. It is time to execute
the steps that you want to include in your Action. From now on, you will per-
form this entire series of commands at a single mouse-click or keystroke. At
this point, you are ready to move on to the next part of the exercise.

Autocorrect the image

In this part of the exercise, you incorporate all three methods of auto-correcting an
image: Auto Contrast, Auto Levels, and Auto Color.

1. Choose Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Auto Levels.

This eliminates detail-less highlights and shadows and does basic color
correction with no further ado.
2. Choose Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Auto Contrast.
This adjusts the mid-tones in the image and tweaks overall contrast.
3. Choose Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Auto Color.
This adjusts the color for more natural skin tones.
4. Choose File ➪ Save As.
The Save As dialog box appears. Now save the duplicated image under a new
name that you can increment with a number, so that each filename will be
unique. In this example, I use Model as the basic filename.
5. From the Format menu, choose TIF (it’s lossless and this is a single layer
file). In the Name field, enter Model. Click OK.
The Tiff Options dialog box appears.
6. Click the Image Compression radio button that says None, and click the
Byte Order radio button for IBM PC.
Choose IBM PC because it’s a format that can be read by any popular com-
puter operating system. Leave all other choices as their defaults and click OK.
The file will be saved to disk.
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 251

Run the macro in a batch file

After you’ve recorded the auto-correcting of one image into an action, you will
be able to correct all the images in the folder at a single keystroke or by double-
clicking the action name in the Actions palette.

1. Choose File ➪ Automate ➪ Batch.

The Batch dialog box appears.
2. From the Play section, choose the name of the macro.
In this case, it’s My Workflow.
3. From the Actions menu, choose Autocorrect.
4. From the Source menu, choose Folder, and then click the Choose button.
A browser dialog box appears. Find the folder that you want to correct (be sure
it contains no images that you don’t want to correct) and double-click its folder
icon. The browser dialog box closes and you’re back in the Batch dialog box.
5. In the Destination section, choose Folder from the Destination menu, and
then click the Destination Choose button.
The browser dialog box reappears. Find the folder (even if it’s the same
folder) that you want to save the corrected files to and double-click its folder
icon. You’re back to the Batch dialog box.
6. Check the Override Action Save As commands button.
7. In the File Naming section: enter the name Model in the first field, choose
a two-digit serial number from the menu in the second field, and choose
Extension from the menu in the third field.
8. Click the OK button.
You will see each file open and undergo the autocorrections, and you will
notice that it has been saved under a new filename.

Manually correcting individual files

If your work with images is more critical, you will want to make the base correc-
tions more optimally by doing them manually using the Levels and Color Balance
commands. If the camera properly adjusted its white balance, you may not elect to
use the Color Balance command.

One at a time, open each of the images in the copied archived images folder that
you created and apply the following steps to each image:

1. Press Cmd/Ctrl L to bring up the Levels dialog box (or do it the slow way by
choosing Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Levels.
The Levels dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 7-13. Under the Histogram
(the diagram that looks like a black mountain), you see three diamonds:
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252 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

• Black to indicate the darkest point in the image

• Gray for the midtone (50% gray level)
• White for the brightest highlight

Figure 7-13: The Levels dialog box

2. As previously shown in Figure 7-18, drag the Black slider to the point
where the first significant rise in the Histogram occurs.
If there’s a flat line, I recommend placing the pointer just where the Histogram
starts to rise.
3. Don’t move the Gray (mid tone) slider yet. Drag the White slider to the first
point where the Histogram starts to rise.

Note If your histogram stops declining at either end before it reaches the edge of the
frame, then some of the potential brightness range in the image wasn’t recorded
by your camera. If you can, lower the contrast setting for your camera or put the
camera on a tripod and bracket the exposure. The second technique only helps if
both the camera and everything in the scene is motionless. Later, you can stack
the bracketed frames and then use some information from all of them to get the
scene’s full range of brightness. See Chapter 11 for details.

4. Make sure the Preview box is checked.

Drag the Midtone (gray) slider to one side and then to the other until you’re
happy with the image’s contrast and the brightness of the midtones.
5. Color-correct the image’s overall tint (from the camera’s point of view, the
White Balance).
If there’s an absolute white or black in the image, you can do this by choosing
the black or white eyedropper and clicking that portion of the image. However,
this doesn’t usually work if the area is white or black because it is blocked up
(that is, outside the range of the Histogram). If that’s the case, click OK and go
on to the next step.
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Chapter 7 ✦ Outfitting Your Computer 253

6. Press Cmd/Ctrl + B. (Or choose Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Color Balance.)

The Color Balance dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 7-14.

Figure 7-14: The Color Balance dialog box

7. Drag to place the dialog box so that it is either overlapping your image or
as close to it as possible so that your eye doesn’t have to wander off the
image while you’re making adjustments.
8. Click the Preview box so that you can instantly see the results of your
changes.
9. Drag the three sliders until you’re pleased with the way the image looks.
If you want to reduce the presence of a color, drag the slider away from it (and
vice-versa). Always start by reducing the amount of any color that seems to
be too prevalent, and then adjust for the color that seems to be lacking.
10. If your adjustments go out of control, press Opt/Alt.
The Cancel button becomes the Reset button. By clicking it, you can return
the image to its original state.
11. When you’re reasonably satisfied, stop.
Remember that this version of the image is meant to be a basic version that
you can use in the future to take it in most any direction you may want to go
in. So don’t over-tweak. Click OK.
12. Choose Save As and add Basic to the main filename so that you’ll know not
to alter it (except for the next two processes in this section) in the future.

Crop to maximum usable proportions

Ultimately, you may want to crop this image to fit dozens of different frames and
layouts. For that reason, I recommend against cropping unless you simply don’t
want others to see parts of the picture. If that is the case, now is the time to do that
minimal amount of cropping.
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254 Part II ✦ The Shoot and the Equipment

Save to lossless file format that preserves layers

Because you’ve started doing some Photoshop work and may want to add layers
when you open, duplicate, and do further work on the file, I suggest you save it in
Photoshop format. You’ll be able to read it on either Mac or PC computers, and
many image-editing and paint programs can read the files. You can also save to TIFF
format with layers, but although most other computers and platforms can read TIFF
files, the enhanced TIFF files that will save layers are incompatible with most other
programs. On the rare occasion where you do need the file to be in another format,
it is easy enough to open it in Photoshop and then Save As to another format.

Duplicate files that will be altered

Remember that if you’re going to alter the basic file that you just saved as part
of this workflow, you should immediately duplicate it with the Image ➪ Duplicate
command. Then close the original image’s window (remember to add the word
basic to the filename (or any word of your choice that lets you know that this image
shouldn’t be altered). Next, choose Image ➪ Save As and rename the duplicated file
so that it has something like “V01” (for version or variation) in its title so that you
know that this is an image that has been further altered.

Summary
This chapter has weighed the pros and cons of whether your purposes will be
better served by a Mac or Windows operating system, the sorts of performance
characteristics you will want to aim for if your editing time is more important to
you than the cost of having the best system, and the workflow that you should
begin as you transfer your images and begin their basic editing.

✦ ✦ ✦
11549510 PP03.F 8/22/02 2:39 PM Page 255

P A R T

Before You III

Edit an Image ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Part

P art III discusses how to prepare for digital image editing.

This discussion starts with methods for converting con-
ventional (film) photographs to digital photographs. After all,
Chapter 8
Converting Analog
to Digital
film is still the source of most digital pictures. Then a plan is
Chapter 9
outlined for keeping your images organized in such a way that
Cataloging and
you can find the images that you need with minimal effort.
Managing Images
This chapter is richer than in the previous edition because
of the new ease with which you can display the data that
the camera recorded when the image was taken, and because Chapter 10
the latest Mac and Windows operating systems have excellent Choosing an Image-
image-management capabilities. Finally, I cover how you to Editing Program
choose an image-editing program that suits your particular
needs. ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
11549510 PP03.F 8/22/02 2:39 PM Page 256
12549510 ch08.F 8/22/02 2:39 PM Page 257

Converting
Analog to Digital
8
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Chapter

Y ou can turn an analog image into a digital image in one

of two ways: Scan the analog image or take a digital pic-
ture of it. Most of this chapter deals with the tools, methods,
Flatbed scanners

Film scanners
and tips for scanning images. The techniques for photograph-
ing images are essentially the same as for copy photography. Drum scanners
This chapter begins by discussing the various types of
scanners and when each type is appropriate to a particular Calibrating a scanner
scanning situation. by visual estimation

Precision scanner
calibration
Scanners and Scanner Software Paying someone to
Several types of scanners are available: sheet-fed scanners, scan for you
flatbed scanners, transparency scanners, and drum scanners.
All of these scanners will make a digitized version of any two- Preparing to scan
dimensional image (even if it’s just type or lines). How well it
works, however, depends on what you want to scan and Using scanner
which type of scanner you use. Of all these types of scanners, software
only transparency scanners (which include slide scanners
that accommodate small-format films) and drum scanners are Third-party scanner
really well suited to digital photography. However, the other software
types of scanners may have some limited use. For this reason,
I also discuss how each type may fit in, the uses for each type, Using a scanner as a
and the most desirable features for each type. camera
When you look for a scanner — regardless of type — you Using a camera as a
should look for the fastest connection consistent with your scanner
computer. Best of all, look for a USB connection. USB is cross-
platform, is nearly as fast as SCSI when used for most flatbed
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
scanners, and won’t present address conflict problems.
Additionally, the latest generations of operating systems are
more likely to support devices that are USB-connected than
older parallel, serial, or SCSI devices. High-resolution scanners
that offer a FireWire connection provide higher transfer
speeds, but you need to add a FireWire connection to most
Windows computers. If the FireWire card comes bundled with
the scanner, that’s a bonus, but you still need a spare slot.
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258 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

The price of flatbed and slide scanners is plummeting (right along with most of
the other pieces in the digital photography puzzle). Many of the low-priced scan-
ners are true bargains, but before you make the decision to purchase a scanner,
insist on scanning an image that is familiar to you. Don’t accept a unit that pro-
duces muddy, unsharp, or streaked images.

Don’t be fooled by claims of super-high resolution. The only resolution statistic that
matters is optical resolution. Interpolated resolution is sheer advertising hype.
Your image-editing program can do a better job of interpolating, but that’s some-
thing you want to do only under the right circumstances.

Note Resolutions discussed in this chapter always refer to the highest resolution that a
scanner can capture. Unless otherwise stated, you can count on these scanners to
capture at any lower-than-maximum resolution you may require at any time.

When and why to choose a flatbed scanner

Flatbed scanners are the most popular type of scanner for two reasons: They are
comparatively low in cost, and they are capable of serving multiple purposes. Be
aware, however, that the price range for flatbed scanners is enormous — from about
$70 to tens of thousands. Figure 8-1 depicts a typical flatbed scanner.

Figure 8-1: A typical flatbed scanner

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Chapter 8 ✦ Converting Analog to Digital 259

Flatbed scanners are boxes with a flat glass scanning area. This surface is usually
large enough to scan a legal-size document, though there are no strict scan size lim-
itations. A flap or lid swings down over the glass area to hold the document that is
being scanned in place. Usually, a fluorescent tube illuminates the surface to be
scanned and an image sensor slides from one side of the page to the other.

Flatbed scanners are the type most widely used for office applications and they are
also the most versatile type. They are designed primarily for scanning documents
and photographic prints — that is, reflective positive images on paper. You can
use almost all flatbed scanners to optically recognize and store the content of docu-
ments; some flatbed scanners come with optical character recognition (OCR) soft-
ware for this purpose. Many flatbed scanners are also packaged with software that
enables you to use the scanner as a fax machine.

With the right adapters, flatbed scanners can be used for a variety of purposes:

✦ Scanning either flat or transparent artwork

✦ Optical character recognition
✦ Teamed with software so that your scanned pictures open right into your
image editor

Additionally, flatbed scanners that are also able to scan transparencies (backlit doc-
uments) can also scan color negative film while removing the orange mask that is a
property of color negative film.

Flatbed scanners come in a bevy of sizes, have a whole range of feature sets, and
vary widely in resolution and color accuracy. You may find flatbed scanners pro-
moted for as little as $50 that seem to offer reasonable resolution and color depth,
but be sure to test the unit (or at least buy it from a highly-respected manufacturer)
before buying it if quality photo reproduction is your goal. Most of the flatbed
scanners that do a reasonable job of accurately scanning a 4 x 6-inch snapshot
have list prices beginning at around $150.

If you want to scan film, make sure that the scanner has either a lid that can project
light through the film or (much better) that has a separate drawer for scanning film.
Many scanners come with — or can be accessorized with — a transparency adapter
that consists of a lightbox above the glass bed of the scanner. This makes it possi-
ble to scan film by transmitted light as well as to scan prints by reflected light.
These scanners are perfect for making contact sheets of an entire roll of 35mm film.
However, resolution and other factors limit the scanning of transparencies to proof-
ing and for position only (FPO) purposes.

Tip I often make a contact sheet on a flatbed before I take the time to scan individual
frames on a film scanner, since I generally only use about one out of every several
shots.
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260 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Flatbed scanners with a film drawer do a much better job of scanning film for two
reasons:

✦ The film doesn’t have to be in contact with the glass flatbed.

✦ The film is placed in holders that mask it from the light.

These models are designed primarily for the graphic arts community and range in
price from around $600 to around $2,000. When it comes to scanning 35mm film,
these scanners don’t even approach the quality provided by slide scanners, but
are more than adequate for onscreen, Web, FPO, and proof purposes. On the other
hand, flatbeds with a film drawer can be a workable and affordable way to scan
medium (21⁄4 inches wide) to large (4 x 5 inch) format film. Agfa and Microtek are two
companies that make such scanners.

Some models are now available with a transparency adapter that is just wide
enough to allow scanning film. Generally speaking, these are more accurate than
full-size transparency adapters for scanning film, and they cost less, too. If you’re
going to scan film, check to see if the scanner software can scan both positive and
negative transparencies.

Resolutions of 600 dpi and at least 10-bit scans are commonplace and quite ade-
quate for scanning prints and other opaque art. Pay particular attention to the fea-
tures and power of the scanner’s plug-in software. You should be able to see a large
preview of your scan and to accurately adjust color balance and exposure before
making the scan. After all, if you don’t have the information in the original, you’ll
never be able to improve definition (although you’ll see later in this book that you
can certainly improve the illusion of definition and many other qualities).

Flatbed scanners typically scan images at a maximum optical resolution of 600 dpi,
although mid- to high-end models that scan at twice this resolution are not uncom-
mon. For example, the Epson 1640 scans at an optical resolution of 1,640 dpi for
reflective art and 3,048 x 3,048 dpi for film. That’s a higher resolution for film than
is offered by the majority of slide scanners and the cost is lower than that of many
film scanners intended for large-format film.

The most desirable features of a flatbed scanner are as follows:

✦ Bit depth greater than 24 bits per pixel: This feature is more important for
slide scanners than for flatbed scanners, but will be helpful to anyone using
a scanner for photos. A scanning bit depth of more than 24 bits per pixel
enables you to capture more information and have somewhat more control
over which parts of that information are condensed into what will ultimately
be a 24-bit true-color RGB file. Some scanners capture 30 or 36 bits but export
or save only 24 bits. Try to find a unit that exports the full bit depth to
Photoshop if you want to exercise the ultimate level of control.
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Chapter 8 ✦ Converting Analog to Digital 261

✦ Built-in transparency adapter: One of the primary uses of a flatbed scanner

is to quickly proof your slides and negatives, but you can only do this if you
have the ability to scan by transmissive light. You can also use this capability
to scan some very small images for use on Web sites and other online content.
✦ Worthwhile software bundle: Some higher-priced scanners come with a full
version of Photoshop that’s worth more than the cost of the scanner. You
should also get a decent OCR (optical character recognition) and fax package
in the bargain. Because you may already have all these items, be sure to also
look for software that lets you scan an image that is optimized when it’s
scanned. Remember that you can’t add detail or color depth to an image
after it’s been digitized.
✦ Optical resolution of at least 1200 dpi: The higher your scanner’s optical
resolution, the better your chances of getting the quality you need from
photographic prints — especially if you have to scan snapshot-sized prints or
small portions of prints. High resolution is also especially helpful for scanning
small- and medium-format transparencies. Ignore interpolated resolution
claims altogether. Scanning at higher interpolated resolutions only results in
having to store a file that’s larger than it needs to be for the actual amount of
information that it contains.
✦ Sturdy construction: Flatbed scanners tend to take more abuse because their
size often puts them in harm’s way and because people tend to flop the lids
down when they’re in a hurry. A flimsy scanner that produced nice images in
its early days will stop doing so if its components get out of alignment or if the
case warps.

When and why to choose a film scanner

Most folks who are “serious” about digital imaging start with a desktop film scanner.
The following list outlines the reasons for this fact:

✦ Resolution: Film scanners typically offer much higher resolution, often match-
ing or surpassing the resolution of the film that is being scanned. A year or so
ago, the best desktop 35mm slide scanners scanned right at the “theoretical”
resolution of ISO 100 film, which is about 2,700 dpi. Since that time, the price
of these scanners has dropped by 50 percent, and the new generation of 4,000
dpi scanners that have taken their place on the price scale are becoming more
and more affordable by the moment.
✦ Brightness: Film scanners record a much greater brightness range (than
flatbed scanners) of 12 to 16 bits per color.
✦ Easy positioning and focusing: You waste less time positioning the original.
In fact, the scanner usually positions the film automatically when you slip
the slide mount or film holder into its slot. The scanner then automatically
focuses on the surface of the film, although you can also manually adjust
the focus on most models.
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262 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

✦ Flexibility: Some film scanners, such as the Kodak 3600EFS, allow for scan-
ning multiple frames to separate files in one operation.
✦ Software: Because they’re made specifically for scanning photographs, film
scanners generally come with software that has added features for more con-
trol over the quality of the scan. Additionally, film scanner software generally
does a much better job of converting photographic negatives to positive
images. Several come with scanning profiles for a variety of specific color
negative films.
✦ Size: Desktop film scanners need only about a tenth of the desktop space usu-
ally required by the typical flatbed.
✦ Clean images: Some film scanners (Nikon and Minolta at the time of this
writing) come with Digital Ice software, which can automatically remove
surface dirt.

However, film scanners have drawbacks as well:

✦ Cost: Film scanners are usually about three to six times the cost of a high-
resolution flatbed scanner.
✦ Time: Because film scanners typically scan at optical resolutions of between
2500 to 4000 pixels per inch (compared to 300 to 2450 ppi for most flatbeds),
scans take three to six times as long.
✦ Maintenance: Because they are less commonly used, slide scanners are gener-
ally more costly to repair and maintain, in part because the percentage of
qualified repair people is much smaller.

Choosing and using the right film scanner

The primary reason to choose a particular film scanner is generally based on two
considerations: your budget, and how much you can expect to profit from the level
of scanning capability that you’re considering. If you’re a service bureau that has to
scan hundreds of slides each day or a pre-press house that must be able to produce
any level of quality that the client demands, you’ll simply have to pay the necessary
price for a scanner that can get the job done. If you’re in this type of situation, you
may want to consider a drum scanner.

If you can’t justify spending $5,000 to $25,000 on a drum scanner and if you don’t
have room for a machine the size of a small desk, the choice comes down to getting
the highest quality and operational convenience available for a price that you can
afford or justify.

If you’re a professional photographer or if you have enough money to support your

hobby or habit at peak capability, you want a scanner than can capture as much
image information as possible and also offers the best software and the shortest
scan times for a given amount of money. This means that you will have to use either
a drum scanner or a high-end flatbed scanner with film scanning capability for film
sizes larger than 35mm.
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Chapter 8 ✦ Converting Analog to Digital 263

For 35mm negative film and transparencies, you’ll get peak speed, performance,
and capabilities from the top-of-the-line Nikon Coolscan 4000 series model, which
provides very high construction and software quality, quiet operation, Digital Ice
software that removes surfaces scratches and dirt, and the fastest scan times.

For about half the price of the Coolscan (around $2,000), you can get a scanner
with the same 4000 ppi (or so) resolution from Kodak, Canon, Minolta, Polaroid
and others. The trade-offs are generally in scanner size, convenience, versatility
of the scanner software, and whether the scanner can scan multiple frames in the
same pass.

You can also purchase lower-cost film scanners from the same general group of
manufacturers (named in the previous paragraph) that are essentially last year’s
idea of a top-quality desktop film scanner. These scanners typically scan at the
2,700 dpi to 3,000 dpi resolution that is typical of ISO 100 film. The important differ-
ence is that the lower-priced scanner doesn’t have enough information to capture
as wide a range of light values, the features and technical components are last gen-
eration, and you can’t suck all the definition out of super-fine grained film such as
Kodachrome.

The most affordable film scanners can produce film scans that are adequate for ink-
jet prints of 8 x10 to 11 x 14 inches (roughly equivalent to a 3.2 megapixel digital
camera image). They generally sell for $150 to $400. These scanners are best suited
for office documentation of film files and for hobbyists who are just learning their
way around digital photography.

Choosing and using drum scanners

If you have to print at very large sizes for exhibition or if you want to get as much
information from the original film as possible — regardless of format — then you
want a drum scanner. Also, a drum scanner represents a guaranteed way to get the
most resolution, color-depth, and sharpness from either film or flat (reflective) art.

Drum scanners have been a mainstay in the publishing industry for years. In fact,
it has only been in the past three years or so that you could even expect to find
a flatbed or slide scanner in a pre-press shop, print house, or high-end corporate
service bureau. However, the dividing line between the quality of film and drum
scanners is beginning to fade (some may even say disappear) at the high end of film
and flatbed scanners. Scanner developments are currently coming along so fast and
furiously that it’s silly to make very specific statements about specifications and
capabilities.

Drum scanners are extremely expensive when compared on price alone. Small ones
that fit on a desktop and that are especially great for scanning 35mm filmstrips or
rolls at full resolution start at around $5,000. Some of the scanners that are used to
scan work for large promotional displays, billboards, and fine-art paintings cost as
much as $250,000 or even half a million dollars.
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264 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Scanner features and price

In order to choose a scanner, you may benefit from a bit of guidance as to which
features you can expect to get for a given amount of money. Out of necessity, the
guidelines that I provide are pretty rough. The amount you actually pay is probably
going to be less than it was at the time of this writing, and you will probably get
more features. You will also find some tradeoffs between features. For example,
some units give you better software or a transparency adapter in exchange for
lower resolution. Table 8-1 lists the features and prices for flatbed scanners, and
Table 8-2 lists the same for slide scanners.

Table 8-1
Flatbed Scanners: Features and Prices
Feature Under $125 Under $600 Around $1,200

Transparency Rarely, usually small Larger transparency Should have

adapter but some models don’t drawer or adapter transparency drawer
even have the option
Optical resolution 600 x 1,200 25600 x 1,200 1,600+ dpi
Bit depth 30 bit 36 bit 36–48 bit
Signal-to-noise ratio Mostly acceptable, Professional Superb
but be careful
Density rating Less than 3.0 Less than 3.0 for 3.2–3.6
reflective, slightly
better for
transparencies
Application PhotoDeluxe, OCR, Photoshop LE, Photoshop 4+,
software Fax, Photo-Paint OCR, fax OCR, fax
Pushbutton or “one- Common Sometimes Seldom
touch” operation
Connection USB, parallel USB, parallel, SCSI SCSI

Table 8-2
Slide Scanners: Features and Prices
Feature Around $500 About $1,000 Around $2,000

Optical resolution 1,500-2,400 2,700 dpi 2,700–4,000 dpi

Bit depth 30 bit 36 bit 36 bit with 36-bit output
Signal-to-noise ratio Good Professional Superb
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Chapter 8 ✦ Converting Analog to Digital 265

Feature Around $500 About $1,000 Around $2,000

Density rating Around 3.0 3.2–3.6 3.2–3.6

Application software PhotoDeluxe or Photoshop LE, Photo- Digital Ice, Genuine
Publisher equivalent Picture Fractals
Paint, Digital Ice,
Genuine Fractals
Connection SCSI SCSI SCSI

Digital Ice
Digital Ice is software that scans the top, non-image layer of the film and subtracts the
signal from any part of the image that isn’t perfectly clear. Digital Ice is available on
the Nikon Coolscan III and SuperCoolscan 2000. I have tested this software with the
SuperCoolscan 2000, and it is undoubtedly superior to software such as PhotoDeluxe
or Xaos Tools’ FlashBox that removes scratches. Such software tends to give more
overall softening to the image. (See the section on using scanner software later in this
chapter for more information.)

Altamira Genuine Fractals

Genuine Fractals is another software package distributed with the Nikon film scan-
ners. This is a new category of software for making extreme image compressions
without the visually noticeable lossiness that occurs with JPEG-compressed files.

Unlike Digital Ice, you can purchase Genuine Fractals separately for about $160 (or
$250 for the PrintPro version). Genuine Fractals is able to compress images to a
quarter of their original size and enlarge them to more than ten times their original
size with no sign of pixelization or “jaggies.”

Note You may also want to consider LizardTech’s Mr. Sid, which promises to compress
to even higher degrees with no visible loss in quality or detail. LizardTech has just
acquired Genuine Fractals and currently sells both programs.

Calibrating a Scanner
When you calibrate your scanner, you should also calibrate your system. You can
do this by using guesswork or scientific precision. Because scientific precision
costs extra, though, I show you the guesswork method first. In either case, you
start by calibrating your monitor.
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266 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Cross- These processes are described in further detail in Chapter 7.

Reference

Calibrating by estimating
If you don’t have a calibrator or calibration software — or even Adobe Gamma — set
your monitor as follows:

✦ Reduce the brightness to about 38 percent

✦ Turn the contrast all the way up
✦ Reduce the color temperature to 6,500K, or even better to 5,000K

The resultant display will be duller and warmer, which is desirable because you are
trying to imitate reflective color on paper.

You may have some software that at least helps you to make more educated
guesses. Mac users can use the Monitors & Sound control panel on the Mac OS.
If you have Photoshop, you can use the Adobe Gamma application that ships as
a part of Photoshop, regardless of your operating system. Windows users with
versions older than Windows 98 should upgrade.

You can also take a step up and use the software-only monitor calibration products
from companies such as Pantone/Color Blind (Prove-It), Monaco Systems (EZ
Color), and Praxisoft (WiziWYG). All three of these applications sell for less than
$80 (in their software-only versions) and give you a bit more to go on than Adobe
Gamma. All three also offer versions that will work with a Colorimeter at under
$500. (For more on these versions, see the section on precision calibration later
in this chapter.)

After calibrating your monitor, make a scanner target, such as the one shown in
Figure 8-2. Open an image that you’re familiar with; it should contain a portrait of
a person (because these are the skin tones of which we’re most critical) and a fair
amount of color. At the bottom of the image, make a grayscale chart and a color
chart. You can make the chart by choosing the gray shades and primary colors
from the Swatches palette in Photoshop.

Print the chart on your color printer, and make adjustments until the printed out-
put closely matches what you see on your calibrated monitor. After you’re satisfied
that you’ve come as close as possible to printing what you see on your monitor,
make at least two identical copies. If you’re using an inkjet printer to print your tar-
get, be sure to reprint your target periodically. Most inkjet prints fade over time.

Now you can calibrate your scanner(s). Put the printed target on your flatbed scan-
ner and make adjustments until the preview window looks as much as possible like
the target. Having the target image file open in your image editor while you are
scanning the printed target is another good idea to follow whenever possible.
This way, you get a side-by-side comparison.
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Chapter 8 ✦ Converting Analog to Digital 267

Figure 8-2: A gray card and color chart that can be photographed or used as a
scanner chart

Calibrating a slide scanner is not quite so easy because you have to photograph
your target. This gets complicated because you also have to test film and exposures
until you get a reasonable representation of the target on film. Then you can hope
to match your scan to the original image on your monitor.

Although a homemade target is better than no target, the most successful calibra-
tion results from having a target that is absolutely consistent — no matter where
you find it. Several manufacturers make such targets for a variety of purposes.

Camera targets are useful for coordinating the color interpretation of a digital cam-
era or film with the corrections that will be necessary to make it match the other
components in your system. One particularly popular camera target is the Jobo
Color Card, which sells for about $20. This card has primary and secondary color
patches as well as six gray patches. The 11.4 x 16.9 cm card is large enough to hold
or prop up for shooting at the beginning of each roll of film or memory card. This
gives you a known comparison for balancing the white point of the film or camera.
The card folds to 4.5 x 6.6 inches and is made of plastic so that it can be cleaned
with a damp cloth.

Another favorite camera target is the Macbeth Color Checker, which is shown in
Figure 8-3, and sells for around $50. This is a 9 x 13-inch card with 24 color squares —
including those meant to represent skin, foliage, and sky. The card comes with a list
explaining what each color typically represents.
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268 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Figure 8-3: The Macbeth Color Checker is meant to be a camera target, but can
be used as a scanner target as well.
Courtesy of GretagMacbeth

Monaco Systems provides an excellent target for either flatbed scanners or trans-
parency adapters with their EZ Color calibration and profiling software. Unfortunately,
you have to buy the whole package to get the profiling card. Figure 8-4 gives you an
idea of what such a card looks like.

Finally, for calibrating film scanners, Kodak makes the IT8 target as a slide in sev-
eral formats. The 35mm version is $40, and the 4 x 5-inch version is $100. You can
order these targets from Monaco Systems at www.monacosys.com.

Precision calibration
In order to calibrate your monitor to represent what you print out as closely as
possible, you need to purchase a software system with a colorimeter. A colorimeter
is a device that works by attaching suction cups to the surface of a monitor, and
then reading changes in light and color as the software adjusts the monitor. The
monitor is then brought directly into line with how the output appears on paper.

The lovely thing about working with a colorimeter is that it’s so easy. You simply
follow a few instructions on the screen and, presto, your monitor is calibrated. The
bad thing about colorimeters is that they were expensive until very recently. Now
you can get one with any of the software-only calibrators previously mentioned,
and the prices hover around $500. WyziWIG Deluxe is $600, EZ Color is $500, and
ProveIt! is a mere $300.
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Chapter 8 ✦ Converting Analog to Digital 269

Figure 8-4: Monaco target used for both profiling and calibration

Proving that you don’t always get what you pay for, EZ Color does both profiling
and calibration and can be used for profiling LCDs and networked systems. The
entire interface for calibration is wizard-driven. You just follow the prompts
onscreen. If you get confused about what to do next, you can just click a button,
and that phase of the operation is explained in plain English.

Paying Someone to Do Your Scanning

If you have occasional work that requires resolution, bit-depth, or scan bed sizes
that are beyond your means; if you aspire to do this type of work; or if you have to
make high quality scans of entire rolls of film and just don’t have the time for it —
don’t despair. Some people specialize in doing this type of work in high volume, so
you can get the work done for you at a reasonable rate — especially if you have a
job or product that pays for it.

If you have been on a trip and shot lots of film, or if you have many rolls of film from
a wedding, corporate event, or advertising shoot, you will usually find it best to scan
whole rolls of film at once. You can then use your computer to preview them at
something much closer to viewing size than a contact sheet provides. Furthermore,
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270 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

you’ll be able to preview them for your client (or friends) on a laptop before decid-
ing which shots to use. Or, you can transfer only the photos you like to your hard
drive, then use one of the programs listed in Chapter 9 to print them out as over-
sized “contact” sheets, like the one shown in Figure 8-5, that show all the images
side-by-side.

Figure 8-5: An example of an oversized and edited contact sheet

An edited contact sheet makes you look like a better photographer because the
inevitable weak and awful shots are missing. Without these shots, every picture you
shoot looks like a masterpiece.

You can get someone else to do the work for you in three easy and affordable ways.
The costs vary depending on the volume of work you do, the degree of individual
control you are given by the lab in question, and the resolution that you require.
When you think of the costs of hiring someone else to do your scanning for you,
remember that the alternative is to spend 10 to 30 minutes scanning each frame
using your own computer and a desktop slide scanner (of course, those that scan
half a dozen frames at a time will chop that down to about 4 minutes per frame and
you can do something entirely unrelated for 28 of those 32 minutes).

Film processing labs

When you send film out to be scanned by the roll, it is usually scanned to CD. Some
private film labs simply scan each frame to a standard TIFF format at a fairly low res-
olution. The cost is typically around $3 per roll, though some “volume” labs do it for
$1 per roll. The only differences between these images and those you scan at home
(assuming you are scanning at the same resolution) are that the scanner used in the
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Chapter 8 ✦ Converting Analog to Digital 271

lab is likely to have better optics and more consistent quality. Scanners used in labs
are built to handle volume work and pictures are already archived onto a CD.

Picture CD
For about the same price, Kodak offers an alternative called Picture CD. In other price
and fidelity ranges, Kodak also offers Photo CD and Professional Photo CD, which are
not to be confused with Picture CD and which are discussed in detail later in this sec-
tion. The newest Photo CD (distant) relative is Picture CD, a cooperative effort of
Kodak, Adobe, and Intel. Picture CD is related only to the extent that, thanks to Photo
CD, Kodak has more experience putting images and multimedia on CD than any other
company. Picture CDs can be ordered when you have film processed at a consumer-
level minilab, such as the ones at your local drugstores and supermarkets.

Intel’s involvement makes Picture CD somewhat more Windows-friendly, but the

images are stored in JPEG format at a single resolution of 1,536 x 1,024 pixels. That’s
roughly equivalent to the resolution of medium priced digital cameras. Picture CD
also costs a lot less than Photo CD. Additionally, the fact that the images are stored
in a cross-platform format means that you can open them on the Mac. None of the
other features mentioned below work on the Mac, however.

Picture CD is different from Photo CD in other important respects:

✦ You get your images placed on Picture CD when you drop your film at your
favorite film counter. You don’t have to go to a photo store or service bureau.
Costco, K-Mart, Walgreen’s, Target, and Best Buy are a few of the outlets that
offered Picture CD at the time of this writing, and more stores are being added
to this list.
✦ You get a lot of free software and tips from Kodak on a Picture CD. So it’s a
good idea to try this for at least one roll of film, just to get the software.
✦ You pay quite a bit less for Picture CD than for Photo CD. The cost of an
entire Picture CD, which can contain up to 36 images, is typically around $3.
The cost of a Photo CD is generally between $1 and $3 per image, depending
on the pricing of the company that is selling you the service.

Picture CD opens automatically when you insert it into the CD-ROM drive of any
Windows machine that has the CD Auto-Start setting turned on. The graphics look
like a magazine cover that illustrates the monthly change in the CD’s collection of
bonus articles and software.

The contents of the Picture CD are the interesting part. You get an image-processing
program that’s even more basic than Adobe PhotoDeluxe. This program lets you
autocorrect exposure and color balance, crop the image, correct for red-eye (glow-
ing red eyes caused by on-camera flash), rotate, and sharpen. The program is sim-
ple because you can execute almost all these commands with the click of a single
button. Unfortunately, images are recompressed each time a simple change is made
because you have no way to save to an uncompressed format before you make the
edits. If you want to keep your images in prime shape, save them to TIFF format and
then do the editing in another program.
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272 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Other features of the magazine include a fair amount of trial software from various
“advertisers” and “tips and tricks” articles on a variety of subjects. For example, the
first month’s issue included free software from American Greetings for making
greeting cards, software from MGI Software for making sports trading cards, and
software from MetaCreations for Kai’s PowerGoo — a program for making image
distortions. Tips and tricks articles included “Ten Easy Steps to Taking Better
Pictures,” “Pictures and the PC,” “Software that Makes the Most of Your Photos,”
and “Get Amazing Prints.” Of course, these articles push the sponsor’s products,
but they’re also well designed and highly instructional (especially if you’re new to
digital photography).

Picture CD also automatically posts your thumbnails to a Web site and links them to
the corresponding full-screen resolution image. Once again, you can’t use this soft-
ware to do the same for your other images — only those on the CD. Still, this is a
very handy capability. If you like it, you can do the same for all your images with
inexpensive programs, such as Microsoft PictureIt!.

You can also use Picture CD to automatically make a Picture Disk of all the edited
images, and you can mix images from several rolls. A Picture Disk is a 3.5-inch
floppy that plays an automatic slide show on any Windows computer.

Photo CD
Like Picture CD, Photo CD is a product of Eastman Kodak. Both the CD and the
images are proprietary Kodak formats.

To get a Photo CD, you submit your transparencies or negatives to a service bureau
or lab that offers Photo CD scanning. Like all lab work, the color balance and clean-
liness of the scans will vary from supplier to supplier. If you’re going to have many
Photo CDs made, it’s a good idea to send the same film to several makers and then
compare the results. In my experience, there isn’t always a correlation between
price and quality, either — so don’t let that be your only criteria.

Two basic types of Photo CDs are available: Consumer and Professional. Consumer
Photo CDs can hold 100 images, and you can add images to a partially filled CD
(although this no longer makes much difference in the price because the cost of the
CDs has dropped to under $2). Each image is recorded at five resolutions between
128 x 192 pixels and 2,048 x 3,072 pixels (approximately 18MB). The highest resolu-
tion is roughly equivalent to 2,700 ppi, which is the maximum resolution of most
slide scanners. You can place images from film formats larger than 35mm onto a
Professional Photo CD (APS film is slightly smaller and can be recorded).

Pro Master Photo CDs can hold only 25 images and the cost for recording is typi-
cally $4–$6 per image. However, this format can also take medium and large format
film, and you can get one higher resolution scan of 4,095 x 6,144 pixels (approxi-
mately 75MB). You may seldom have a need for such a large file, but it’s always
safer to have too much resolution so you won’t have to scan the image again. Also,
if the client is paying for it, you may as well have the added insurance of knowing
that you can use the result in very quality-demanding applications.
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Chapter 8 ✦ Converting Analog to Digital 273

Photo CD images are written in a unique format. In order to read them, your image-
processing program needs to know how to recognize the format. A Photoshop-
compatible plug-in is included with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, so if your
image-processing program is compatible with Photoshop plug-ins, you will be able
to read these files. You can’t save the file back to Photo CD format without special
software, so you should save the opened Photo CD format file in a well-understood
cross-platform format such as TIFF. The CD-ROM format for Photo CD is also
unique, but every multisession CD-ROM XA drive can read it.

The following are some reasons that you may want to consider Photo CD to be the
means for digitizing your conventional photos:

✦ No equipment to buy: You just drop off your film at any place offering Photo
CD service.
✦ Thumbnails on the CD: You don’t have to guess which picture goes with
which filename. The Photo CD comes back to you with full-color thumbnails,
each of which is labeled with the number that corresponds to the filename. Of
course, this consideration is less important if you also use a file manager,
such as ACDsee, Thumbs Plus, or an operating system with built-in thumbnail
file management — such as Windows XP or Mac OS X.
✦ Low cost per scan: Do a little shopping around, and you’ll find that you can
get Master Photo CD scans for as little as $1 each. Even at $3–$5 for Pro Photo
CDs, the cost is much lower than the fees charged for custom scanning by
service bureaus.
✦ Multiple resolutions on a single CD: The advantage in scanning at multiple
resolutions is that you get as much detail as is possible at a given resolution.
This is because the image isn’t resampled in order to change its resolution.
Resampling means that the computer has to add or eliminate information
according to the “best guess” of a program. So, if an image has a thin line and
the image is made smaller, the thin line may either disappear altogether or
look much thicker in the reduced image.
✦ Permanence: Your original images are permanently archived on a nonerasable
medium. No one is going to accidentally erase the disk. If you want to be really
safe, you can even have multiple CDs made from the same roll of film.

Consider Photo CD as the preferred method for digitizing your photos under the fol-
lowing conditions:

✦ When you can’t justify the cost of drum scans: If you’re looking for very high-
resolution scans, you have two choices: Pro Master Photo CD or a drum scan-
ner. Custom drum scans can run between $10 and $50 each, and you only get
one scanning resolution. Pro Master Photo CD gives you six resolutions for
each image, and you can record several times as many images for the same
amount of money.
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274 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

✦ When you don’t have a multiple-format slide scanner: If you’re shooting

medium or large format film and can’t (yet) justify the cost of a larger format
slide scanner or a drum scanner, Photo CD is the only answer.
✦ When you don’t have a scanner: If you want to break into digital photogra-
phy without buying a camera that costs as much as the computer, Photo CD
offers you the best chance to get started with high-quality images.
✦ When you don’t want to be bothered with doing scans yourself: If you’re as
busy as most people who make a decent living, then you may want to have
someone else do all your scanning. After all, a handful of rolls of 35mm film
can take hours to scan.

Service bureaus
You have many high-end choices for getting your images custom-scanned. Loosely
lumped together, the companies that do this are called service bureaus, which is a
fancy name for a store that sells some sort of specialized (usually digital) service.
Because a lot of these specialized services (such as desktop publishing and pre-
sentation production) overlap with digital photography, you will find lots of differ-
ent companies with different “personalities” offering different types of scanning
services.

Service bureaus specialize in services that may be unaffordable to occasional

users, individuals, smaller businesses, and may also be appealing to large corpora-
tions that don’t want to organize their own departments for doing such jobs.
However, these bureaus offer services, equipment, and methods and expertise that
are accessible to you and me. Many service bureaus that offer high-quality scans
also offer related services, such as making separations for printing, darkroom work
for traditional photography, or recording your images onto CD-ROMs (sometimes
even in Photo CD format).

If you need to find a service bureau to do a particular type of scanning, the best
place for professionals and those that need high-end services to look is in the maga-
zines that cater to professionals in that industry. If you’re looking for a place to do
desktop scanning before you buy your own scanner, check out your local copy shop.

Tip If you have a large, expensive, or critical project, always test before committing.
That is, give the bureau a small job before committing to a big one. If you find any-
thing questionable about their service or quality, try a couple of other bureaus
before choosing the one you’ll spend the big bucks on.
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Chapter 8 ✦ Converting Analog to Digital 275

Proper Preparations for Scanning

Before you start scanning, make sure that you’re ready to do the best job that you
can. Of course, you can always rescan later. Unfortunately, the chances are excel-
lent that you won’t because you will have already put too much time into improving
and editing the image that you scanned the first time.

Choosing the best film for scanning

Your choice of film may be dictated by considerations other than which film will
give you the best scanning quality. For example, your client may prefer a particular
film, so you take the path of least resistance. In that case, you simply want to get
the best scan you can from the film that you have. Such considerations aside, the
first step to take is to choose a film that gives you as wide a range of colors as pos-
sible and one that exhibits the finest grain and sharpness. Of course, you also have
to use a film that enables you to work within the range of aperture and shutter
speed appropriate to the subject. For example, if you’re working in dim light or with
fast-moving subjects, you need to use a faster (and, therefore, grainier) film than
you would choose if you were working with your camera on a tripod or in a studio
with strobes.

Having stated this, however, I tend to use negative film in most situations because
this type of film, being less contrasty, is able to capture a much wider range of tonal
values, and doesn’t tend to block up in the highlights. On the other hand, if I want
to get the most detail and contrast out of a subject photographed in very flat light-
ing, slide film is likely to be a better choice due to its greater contrast and (typi-
cally) more saturated colors.

Keep it clean
Be sure to keep your film clean. Even though it’s much easier to retouch a digital
image than to retouch a negative or print, it still takes time. You may want to use
some of the following indispensable accessories when trying to keep your film and
equipment clean:

✦ A camel-hair brush (preferably with an air bulb): The camel-hair brush can
get the dirt out of small crevices, such as in film holders, in the hinges of
flatbed scanners, and around the slot in the front of your slide scanner. I
don’t recommend using brushes to clean film, glass surfaces, and lenses for
two reasons. First, the brush can create static electricity on those surfaces
and that actually attracts dust. Second, brushes can pick up finger and facial
oils and transfer them to the surface of lenses and film, which can do more
harm than good.
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276 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

✦ A piezoelectric antistatic gun: This is a piezoelectric pistol-like device that

zaps film and scanner glass with a negative electrical charge that actually
repels dust, hair, and lint.
✦ Optician’s cleaners: Don’t use paper towels and household glass cleaner to
clean your scanner glass (or anything else optical, such as viewfinders and
camera lenses). Paper towels are made of wood pulp and can actually make
minute scratches on lenses and film. Sometimes these scratches are so fine
that you can hardly see them, but they will diffuse light and cause the image
to lose sharpness and contrast. Instead, buy the cleaners and tissues or
cloths that are made for cleaning glasses and lenses from your optician or
camera store.
✦ Canned air or an air compressor: This stuff is indispensable. It gives a good
blast of air to blow dust away from film, lenses, and even the parts of a film
scanner that you can’t reach. I buy it in six-packs at my local warehouse store
for just a little over a buck a can.

Turn it on and keep it warm

Make sure that your scanner has been warmed up for half an hour or so before
doing any actual scanning. If you’re in a shop that makes scans several times a
day, turn the scanner on when you open shop and leave it on until quitting time.
Otherwise, you may find that colors will shift, which can throw off your calibration.

Properly orient the original

Make sure that your negative or print is perfectly squared away. If you have to
rotate your images in your image editor, you will sacrifice some sharpness and
detail. Some scanner software gives you an option to automatically square up the
image. Don’t rely on this feature unless your ultimate use for the scan simply isn’t
critical.

Calibrate and experiment

When you first start using your scanner, carefully pick four to six successful images
that are markedly different from one another in terms of principal color, dynamic
range, and detail. Make sure that a couple of these are portraits. People tend to be
more critical of skin tones than any other subject matter when it comes to proper
color balance. Make adjustments in the controls until the same adjustments work
well for the whole group.
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Chapter 8 ✦ Converting Analog to Digital 277

Using the Scanner Software Properly

After everything has been properly profiled and calibrated, you can start scanning.
Scanner software is different for almost every scanner. Nevertheless, virtually all
scanner software presents some similar choices:

✦ Positive or negative
✦ Type of image: color, grayscale, or line art (bitmap)
✦ Scanning resolution
✦ Exposure adjustment
✦ Color balance adjustment
✦ Elimination of screen patterns

If you have a transparency adapter, film tray, or a film scanner, you should have a
means of specifying whether you want to scan positive or negative transparencies.
Look for scanner software that lets you specify the type of negative film. Negative
films appear quite different after the orange mask is removed from the image.

Almost all scanners let you choose from a wide variety of scanning resolutions. If
you are scanning to create an archival file that will have enough detail for most fine
art and publication purposes, aim for a file size of between 25 and 40MB. Unless
you are working with larger film formats, this will be enough resolution to capture
all the detail in the film. On the other hand, if you know you are going to use the file
for a particular purpose, make another scan that is just the right resolution for that
purpose and you will get a sharper, cleaner scan. If you are scanning for publica-
tion, the resolution should be approximately twice the lines per inch (screen
frequency). If you’re outputting to a printer, it should be one-third the printer’s
resolution (the number of dots per inch divided by three primary colors).

Use your scanner’s controls to bring exposure, contrast, and color balance as close
to your desired goals as possible because this ensures that you have as much infor-
mation in your data as possible. This is why you don’t want to rely entirely on using
your image-editing software for making such corrections. Figure 8-6 shows the inter-
face for controlling the Epson 1650 flatbed scanner.

If you’re not scanning from printed materials, be sure to turn off the feature that
removes screens. It’s usually labeled something like “screen removal” or “de-screen.”
If this feature is left on, you’ll get a slightly unfocused scan because a digital blur
is part of the technique for removing the original screen dot pattern. If you are
scanning from printed materials, you will probably see a pattern that resembles an
oil slick. This moiré pattern results from the pattern of the printing dots being out of
register with the pixel matrix of the scanning resolution.
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278 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Figure 8-6: The interface for controlling the Epson 1650 flatbed scanner

By the same token, if you’re scanning from film, be sure to turn off the scratch
removal feature if your film doesn’t have any scratches to remove. Also, turn it off if
your scanner’s scratch removal doesn’t use Digital Ice or another method of read-
ing only the protective film layer. Other methods, such as Photoshop’s Dust &
Scratches filter, remove scratches by blurring edges.

Most users just “make do” with the scanning software that comes with their scan-
ners. If you’re buying a flatbed scanner, chances are good that those folks will be
more interested in the OCR and fax software that’s offered. The best OCR packages
I’ve tried are (in no particular order) Caere’s OmniPage, Xerox’s TextBridge Classic,
and Visioneer’s PaperPort software. These also happen to be the three OCR applica-
tions that I most often see bundled with flatbed scanners — even those at the lower
end of the price range scale.

Using a Scanner as a Camera

A scanner takes a picture of a flat object. In fact, some beautiful flat objects would
make a better picture if you used your scanner as a digital camera than if you used
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Chapter 8 ✦ Converting Analog to Digital 279

your digital camera. For example, if the object is really close to flat, focus is likely to
be sharper and more accurate. Also, it takes little to no time to set up. Just lay the
object on the scanner bed, and then proceed exactly as though you were scanning a
photo. You shouldn’t have to be concerned about lighting. In the picture shown in
Figure 8-7, I laid the flowers on the bed of the Epson 1650, covered them with my
fleece jacket, and pushed the scan button. As you can see, a scanner can be a great
way to quickly photograph many small objects. Scanners are particularly adept at
scanning small objects (such as coins and stamps) “for the record.”

Figure 8-7: The result of using a flatbed

scanner as a camera

Tip If you have a full-size transparency adapter on a flatbed scanner, you may want to
experiment with scanning the object as both a reflective and transparent scan. Just
make two separate scans, then put each on different layers in your image editor
and experiment with different blend modes, layer opacities, and erasing through
parts of one layer to reveal more of another.
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280 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Using a Camera as a Scanner

If you have to scan large works of art, you’re going to be shocked at the price of
very large flatbed scanners. Never mind the prospect of having to pay a few hun-
dred bucks for a large drum scan. Unless you need to reproduce the large art at its
original size, you may find that photographing it with your digital camera is just the
right solution. Just make sure that the thing you’re copying is evenly lighted from
all sides, that there’s no glare on its surface, and that it is perfectly centered and
perfectly perpendicular to the camera.

Summary
In this chapter, I have outlined how to convert analog images into digital images. I
discussed scanning, how to decide between scanner types, and how to make the
choices for the right type of scanner. I also discussed the features and software
used with various types of scanners. Finally, I told you that you don’t have to buy a
scanner to get good results. Of course, once you do buy a scanner, you want to use
it to maximum advantage. To this end, I explained how to calibrate a scanner, either
by approximation or by using mechanically precise methods. I provided some hints
for properly preparing for scanning, making proper use of scanner software, and for
occasions when you may prefer third-party scanner software. Finally, I explained
how to use your scanner as a camera and your camera as a scanner.

✦ ✦ ✦
13549510 ch09.F 8/22/02 2:39 PM Page 281

Cataloging
and Managing
9
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Images In This Chapter

Moving images from

camera to computer

T
Moving images from
his book is a guide to improving your digital photographs computer to computer
— capturing the moment, creating visual art, and even
enhancing the final product by using an image editor. These Using cataloging
are exciting topics — likely to inspire your creative side — so software
naturally they get the lion’s share of the material, as they
should. Managing images in
Windows XP
However, if you take a large number of photographs that are
important to you, then from time to time you also find your- Manipulating and
self knee-deep in the mundane, hum-drum and — let’s face renaming images
it — just plain boring side of digital photography. I’m talking
about the tedious chores of transferring your photos from Archiving images to
place to place, cataloging your photos for quick and easy CD and DVD
retrieval, and archiving your photos for use in the years
to come.
Adding an image as
a Windows XP
In this chapter, I cover the procedures, the hardware, and the
background
software that you need to keep the boring stuff to a minimum,
so you can get back to taking more great images.
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Painless Camera-to-
Computer Transfer
Whether you’re professional or prosumer, hobbyist or full-
time pixel artist, your images still have to travel somehow
from your camera to your computer. Take it from me — your
friends, family, and clients aren’t going to be satisfied with
the image from your LCD panel.
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282 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

As mentioned previously in this book, a number of popular types of connections are

available (some of which are totally unsuited for any camera above 1 megapixel).
Therefore, to avoid the pitfalls that you may encounter when shopping, in the next
section I answer some FAQs (frequently asked questions) about your transfer hard-
ware and software.

Serial connections
For the sake of being comprehensive, this section explores one of the antiques of
digital photography: cameras that use the original 9-pin serial transfer. Virtually all
cameras manufactured before the days of USB (models that usually offer a maxi-
mum of 1 to 2 megapixels) used serial transfer, and they’re as slow as a donkey. A
single high-resolution TIFF image can take two minutes to cross from your camera
to your PC.

Additionally, PC serial ports can be difficult to set up and troubleshoot, especially

when you’re connecting more than one serial device to two ports (such as an exter-
nal modem). Unlike USB and FireWire, traditional serial ports are not Plug and Play:
A reboot is usually required before your computer recognizes that the camera is
connected.

Cameras that use a serial connection have only one redeeming feature today: They
can be connected to a PC that doesn’t have USB or FireWire ports. If you’re buying
new or late-model hardware, however, you can literally forget about cameras requir-
ing 9-pin serial transfer. Or, if you’re like me, you can hang on to one as part of your
digital camera collection.

Luckily, most of these older cameras use SmartMedia or CompactFlash cards. So if

your kids inherit an older 9-pin serial camera, you can use a modern USB card
reader and transfer images at a decent speed. However, if the camera uses built-in
memory that you can’t remove, you’re out of luck.

USB connections
As the current standard for image transfer, USB is a fine pick for digicams in the 2 to
3 megapixel range. A USB connection is reliable and has cross-platform capability.
USB is also reasonably fast for image files under 400K or so, and it’s Plug and Play
(a big plus in terms of convenience). As discussed in previous chapters, virtually
every late-model PC and Mac laptop computer has at least two USB ports available.

Tip Transferring images over cable takes quite a bit of power, so use common sense to
conserve those batteries! Before you start the transfer, make sure that you plug in
the camera’s AC cable or battery charging cable first, or use rechargeable batteries
that you can “top off” after the transfer is over.
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Chapter 9 ✦ Cataloging and Managing Images 283

Within the next year, you’re likely to see a number of digicams that can take advan-
tage of USB 2.0 — you may also see it referred to as “USB High-Speed” — with data
transfer throughput that actually exceeds today’s first-generation FireWire
connections.

FireWire connections
You can call a FireWire connection by any other name — IEEE-1394 or i-Link, for
example — but until USB 2.0 cameras arrive, FireWire is still the current king of the
hill and top of the heap. In other words, FireWire is the fastest method of getting
images from your camera to your computer. FireWire is common in the Mac world,
but you can also add an inexpensive FireWire card to your desktop PC for transfers.

Although USB 2.0 will take the lead in the horsepower race over existing FireWire
connections, the 1394 Trade Association (which sets standards in the FireWire
world) recently announced the introduction of IEEE-1394b, which uses special
optical cables and delivers data up to a mind-boggling 8 times faster than first-
generation FireWire!

Of course, you’re not likely to see a camera with transfer rates that high anytime
soon, but it’s a good illustration of just how fast this technology train is moving. If
you’re planning on buying a 4 to 6 megapixel camera, I highly recommend either a
FireWire connection or USB 2.0 for the foreseeable future.

Card readers: Pros and cons

On the positive side, a card reader can take care of the chore of transferring images
from memory cards to your computer, thus relieving your digital camera of the
battery-draining cable connection. (Your camera is an artist, not a dockworker.) A
typical card reader, like those shown in Figure 9-1, can handle both CompactFlash
and SmartMedia cards. However, do you really need the extra weight and expense
of a memory card reader when traveling if you’re not planning on taking hundreds
of photographs a day? Ask yourself the following two questions to get an answer:

✦ How many spare cards will you carry? As previously recommended, the eas-
iest solution is to pack additional memory cards to take with you on location.
If you’re traveling light and you only have two or three cards with you, then a
card reader may not be a necessity; you can simply connect your USB camera
with the cable and dump each card in turn. If you’re like me, however, and
your case is bulging with half a dozen cards, then a reader can be a real con-
venience when the time comes to dump all those images to your laptop or
desktop computer.
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284 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

✦ How much is your time worth? If you’re a serious hobbyist, you’re likely
to have the time to connect the camera and AC adapter and shepherd the
images to your computer’s hard drive. This may require 15 minutes, perhaps,
for a 32MB card that’s packed with photos. On the other hand, a professional
photographer on the job probably needs those 15 minutes elsewhere, and a
card reader is a welcome time-saver. You can even leave your laptop running
and your card reader connected for the fastest turnaround time.

Figure 9-1: Three popular models of card readers

PCMCIA adapters
Speaking of laptops, USB isn’t your only option when considering transfer hard-
ware: PCMCIA adapters are common among the road warrior crowd who travel
extensively with laptop computers. These cards are usually cross-platform compati-
ble, so you can use them on both Macs and PCs. Essentially, the adapter turns your
memory card into a “virtual” hard drive, so you can use the familiar Windows
Explorer or the Mac OS Finder to simply copy or move files from the card to the
computer. This convenience can really make a difference after a busy day of travel.

Card adapters are also faster than a USB connection or a card reader. In fact, these
adapters use the same Type I high-performance PCMCIA slot that’s often used for a
SCSI adapter or a PCMCIA hard drive. Unlike a dedicated external card reader, no
cable connection is necessary. Lately, I’ve seen adapters that use the larger Type II
slot as well, and they can handle Memory Stick and Secure Digital cards along with
SmartMedia and CompactFlash cards.

Digital storage devices

Today’s digital photographer can also take advantage of a whole new generation of
stand-alone storage devices that can hold your images until you return home to
your desktop computer. These devices usually come packed to the gills with the
following:
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Chapter 9 ✦ Cataloging and Managing Images 285

✦ Anywhere from several hundred megabytes to several gigabytes of hard drive

territory
✦ At least one slot for memory cards
✦ A USB, FireWire, or PCMCIA connection for your computer

The Digital Wallet from Minds@Work (www.mindsatwork.net) is the perfect example

of a storage device that can eliminate that laptop from your next trip entirely. This
miniature image warehouse can store 3, 10, or 20GB in a unit only a little larger than
your digicam; it measures 3.69 x 5.2 inches and weighs in at a little over 11 ounces.

The unit is completely self-contained and comes equipped with an internal

rechargeable battery. The Digital Wallet also has an LCD display that can display
your directories and the remaining storage space. This device can accommodate
CompactFlash, SmartMedia, Memory Stick, and PCMCIA cards and can transfer
stored images through a USB connection to both PCs and Macs.

Need something even smaller? How about mass storage the size of a keychain? A
new wave of solid-state devices that use no moving parts shows the direction that
digital storage will take in the future. Manufacturers such as Sony and Cyclone are
introducing 128MB storage “keys” that can plug into any computer with a USB port
and retail for around $150. These units need no software or special drivers and are
immediately recognized as hard drives under Windows XP and Mac OS.

Don’t get me wrong — a laptop does have its advantages, and I’m not saying that
every photographer wants to jettison their computer when traveling. For example,
you can’t view your images on the Digital Wallet, and you certainly can’t do any
image editing. Therefore, if you plan to work on your images while you’re away from
your desktop “digital darkroom,” a palm-sized (or keychain-sized) storage device
isn’t going to help.

Must-have software features

Before I move on to other topics, I present a list of features that you should look for
when considering digicam transfer software. These features pertain to both the
software that’s bundled with your camera and the third-party cataloging software
that I discuss later on in this chapter. The more of these capabilities that are
packed into the program, the easier it is to use.

✦ File management functions: Naturally, transfer software should allow you to

selectively copy, delete, and move files — after all, this is the basic function
for this type of software — but you should also be able to rename files and
lock (or protect) files from the program. One feature that I especially like is
the ability to rename multiple files in one step. Due to the fact that many digi-
tal cameras write the same filenames whenever you load a newly formatted
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286 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

card, this helps to prevent conflicts with duplicate filenames on photographs

that you’ve already transferred. Other programs load the images into a new
folder and name the folder based on the date and time of the transfer. (As I
mentioned previously, most digital storage devices that use USB or FireWire
connections don’t actually use a separate program; they simply appear as a
hard drive or removable media drive to the operating system so you can use
the copy, rename, and move commands built-in to Windows or Mac OS.)
✦ Variable thumbnails: Typically, I like to pack as many thumbnail images on a
single screen as possible while I’m browsing the contents of a memory card, but
I also like to be able to distinguish between similar shots if I’m in a hurry. The
best transfer software does both by allowing you to view larger thumbnails
when you’re searching for a specific shot taken from a series in burst mode.
✦ On-the-fly format conversion: If your camera produces JPEGs and you want
your transferred images in TIFF format, you can run a batch conversion after
you download them. Some transfer programs can even save you that step by
converting the images during the transfer process.
✦ Image information: If you’re using a late-model camera that saves additional
information, make sure that your image transfer software can read this infor-
mation and carry it across to your desktop catalog program.

Of course, many of the image-editing and cataloging programs that I discuss

throughout this book, such as Photoshop, Portfolio, or Paint Shop Pro, allow you
to transfer images directly without requiring another program to acquire images.
Commercial programs such as these can usually tackle the tasks that are supposed
to be handled by the bundled software that came with your camera.

Painless Computer-to-Computer Transfer

At some point in your career as a digital photographer, you will need to send data
from one computer to another, whether the machines are located right next to each
other or are halfway across the planet from each other. Perhaps you’re sending
your images to a publisher (such as I did for the figures in this book), sending
electronic proofs to a client, or simply sharing candid shots with the folks who
attended last night’s party. In this section, I discuss the advantages and
disadvantages of each method of transferring images between computers.

Wired networks
Traditionally, a wired network extends only to the boundaries of the cabling. In
other words, the computers that are part of the network are generally within close
proximity, either in the same room or in the same building. However, both Microsoft
and Apple have included features in their latest operating systems that allow
secure external connections to a wired network over the Internet or a dial-up tele-
phone modem connection; this way, you can even log in to your wired network
while you’re on the road.
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Chapter 9 ✦ Cataloging and Managing Images 287

The most common type of wired network in use today is a basic Ethernet configura-
tion, which is illustrated in Figure 9-2, and which typically carries data at either 100
megabit or gigabit speeds. This type of network is suitable for anything from a
home office to a medium-sized office building with 50 computers. Ethernet hard-
ware is cheap, and you can use either coaxial cable or twisted pair cabling, which
looks very much like standard telephone wiring.

Client computer
Server computer

Hub

Twisted pair cable

Figure 9-2: A typical wired Ethernet configuration

Because this book is about digital photography, I won’t go into a long discussion
of how an Ethernet network works here, but the basic idea is this: Any computer
on an Ethernet network can “broadcast” data to another computer, much like a
radio station. Packets of data, which can include anything from operating system
commands to the fruit of your latest work on location, are sent across the wire and
routed to the correct computer. This is all done transparently, and both Windows
and Mac operating systems have all the support you need for basic file and printer
sharing built-in — you don’t need to buy any additional software to set up a home
network.
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288 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Ethernet networking has become such a standard that any new PC or Macintosh that
you add to your network probably already has a network interface card, or NIC, built-
in. If you have a computer without network hardware built-in, you have to add a NIC
(typically a PCI card for desktops, which usually run around $40, and a PCMCIA card
for laptops, which may run as much as $100). To use twisted-pair wiring — something
that I definitely recommend — you need an inexpensive device called a hub, which
connects all the computers on the network. Cabling can run along the floor behind
desks, underneath carpet (with the proper safeguards), or in the ceiling.

Tip “All this sounds like I need a technical support staff just to install a home network!”
This may be what you’re thinking at this point, and if you’d rather not spend time
buying the hardware and software for a small office network piece-by-piece, buy
an “all-in-one” Ethernet networking kit that comes with everything: two or four
network cards, a hub (usually for four computers), and all the cables and connec-
tors you need. These kits typically sell for less than $200, and they’re designed to
be easy to install with full instructions, and everything is guaranteed to work with
everything else. After you have your wired network working well, you can add
other computers and take over the world — or at least your neighborhood.

Don’t forget — a network has other advantages besides just transferring files,
including multiplayer games, shared office applications, and shared Internet
access. Neat!

Wireless networks
A wireless network uses a wireless hub to broadcast the same data packets that
travel over the cabling in a conventional network. Each computer that accesses the
network must have a wireless NIC. Wireless hardware devices are usually about
twice as expensive as their wired cousins, but you can say goodbye to cables! To
access the network, you need only move a desktop or laptop computer within a cer-
tain distance of the wireless hub (generally, this ranges from 50 to 150 feet), and the
rest is taken care of automatically.

Wireless networking sounds great. So, what’s the catch (besides the expense),
right? Here are the two caveats to wireless networking:

✦ Wireless networks are slow. Although engineers are slowly increasing the top
speed of wireless technology, a wireless network still provides only a fraction
of the transfer speed of a wired network — typically about a tenth of the top
speed of a wired network. If you’re adding a network to speed the transfer of
digital photographs from one computer to another, this is a real problem;
hence the continued popularity of wired networks.
✦ Wireless networks are less secure than wired networks. You can make a
common wired network quite secure from outside access (from sources such
as the “hackers” you’ve seen in movies). After all, the data has to travel across
a cable to get from one machine to another. Wireless networks, on the other
hand, can be reached from some distance away. This is rarely a problem
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Chapter 9 ✦ Cataloging and Managing Images 289

because any potential invader still has to get by the login process; so just
make sure that you don’t share your user ID and password for your network
with others.

Tip Both wired and wireless networks can benefit from a simple firewall — a program
that’s designed to secure your network data from outside access. If you’re running
Windows XP or Mac OS X, you’ll be happy to know that both operating systems
have a basic firewall built in. For additional piece of mind, however, get a copy of
Norton Personal Firewall from Symantec (www.symantec.com).

By the way, you may have seen home networks that use either your home’s AC
wiring or your existing telephone wiring; technically, these two technologies aren’t
“wireless” because they are still using a type of cable. Although you don’t have to
add any dedicated cabling, AC and phone line networks are just as slow and expen-
sive as wireless networks — again, let the buyer beware.

Removable media
In the old days, computer tech-types called a floppy disk a SneakerNet, which
simply means that you had to manually eject the floppy and walk over to the other
computer to copy files. Removable media such as recordable CDs and DVDs and
ZIP disks as a method of transferring images from computer to computer still offers
the following benefits:

✦ They’re cheap. You can store hundreds of megabytes of your images on a

single CD-R disc. (I discuss this in further detail later in this chapter.)
✦ They’re compatible. Although DVD-ROM and ZIP drives aren’t available on
every PC or Mac, it’s a good bet that any computer you encounter will have a
CD-ROM drive. Hence, no matter where you go in your travels, you’ll be able
to read your images from your CD-ROM.
✦ They’re easy to transport. No need to run any programs or hunt for an
Internet connection to reach your home network: With your data recorded on
a CD-R, you’re a walking storage device.

Don’t forget, however, that you’ll end up copying all of those files by hand from
your media to the other computer — time enough to grab another soda or cup of
coffee.

Tip Never — and I mean never — trust your images to a floppy disk for the “long haul!”
Floppies are infamously unreliable when compared to recorded CDs, DVDs and
ZIP disks; one moment you can read them, the next moment they’re headed for
the trash can. If you’re using floppies to transfer images from computer to com-
puter (or if your digicam uses them for storage, like many Sony models), copy
them over to your computer or archive them to a more reliable CD or ZIP disk as
soon as possible.
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290 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Using FTP, Web, and e-mail

Finally, you can use the Internet as a method of transferring your images from
Computer A to Computer B. This works best, of course, if both computers are
using a high-speed Internet connection (such as a DSL, cable, or T1/T3 connection).
Three types of image transfer are commonly used these days:

✦ FTP: This is one of the “grand old applications” of the Internet, and it was
around long before the Internet became the fashionable hangout it is today.
FTP is essentially a high-speed direct transfer between two computers using
the Internet. One computer typically runs a FTP server (such as Serv-U32,
shown in Figure 9-3), and the other computer runs an FTP client (such as
AceFTP 2, shown in Figure 9-4). Using the client program, you can request one
or more files from the server and send files to the server from the client pro-
gram as well. I use FTP every day, and it’s definitely the most efficient and
fastest method of getting files from one computer to the other over an
Internet connection.

Figure 9-3: Hosting an FTP site with Serv-U32

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Chapter 9 ✦ Cataloging and Managing Images 291

Figure 9-4: Sending a file between machines using AceFTP 2

✦ The Web: You may never have thought of a Web site as a method of transfer-
ring files, but many offices use an internal Web site, called an intranet, to
transfer a common set of files from one machine (the Web server) to all the
computers on the network. If you’re distributing your images to the public,
of course, a Web site makes the most sense. However, you can also run a “pri-
vate” Web site (one that requires a login with an ID and password) to retrieve
photos while away from your desktop.
✦ E-mail: Certainly, electronic mail is another method of transferring images
from one computer to another over the Internet. However, I consider e-mail to
be a last resort because the total size of the images that you send is strictly
limited by your Internet Service Provider and your e-mail server. For example,
I can’t send any file over 2MB, and anything larger results in my Internet
Service Provider immediately sending me a nasty error message. Also, many
e-mail clients handle attachments differently, so you can’t be guaranteed that
an attachment will be correctly received on the other end. Use e-mail spar-
ingly, and definitely don’t plan on using it as your main method of transferring
digital image files from one computer to another.
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292 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Cataloging Software on Parade

Photography is a visual art, which can make it very difficult to keep track of the
images you’ve shot over the years — no matter how well you’ve organized them by
subject or by date. After all, even a long filename that’s immediately recognizable
today may be difficult to identify a decade from now.

So how can you quickly locate an individual image that may be hidden somewhere
among a handful of CD-R archive discs? This is where cataloging software comes in.
This category of software consists of programs that are especially designed to help
you organize your collection of images through criteria such as subject, date, shot
information (exposure and f-stop settings), and text description.

In this section, I introduce three cataloging programs that are aimed at intermediate
and professional users. I also discuss the cataloging features available within
Photoshop 7.

iPhoto
Figure 9-5 illustrates the first cataloging program in the lineup — and the only one
that’s free (at least, for any Macintosh owner). This program is called iPhoto, from
Apple, and it runs exclusively under Mac OS X 10.1 and above.

Figure 9-5: The iPhoto main window

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Chapter 9 ✦ Cataloging and Managing Images 293

iPhoto is certainly an attractive piece of work because it takes full advantage of the
Aqua interface standard introduced with Mac OS X. As Apple has demonstrated
with other freeware “i-programs” — such as iTunes — iPhoto is likely to be con-
stantly improved and upgraded in the future. This program is not the best of its
kind, but the price is right, and that makes it a good starting point.

This program uses the concept of a “roll” of digital film to separate images into mul-
tiple catalogs. Each session that you spend loading photographs (either from your
camera or from your hard drive) is treated as a separate roll and is created in a
unique folder. You can also sort the contents of a roll by the date that the photo
was taken, or you can arrange them manually by dragging them into the desired
order. Thumbnails can be resized as you like, making it easier to locate a specific
image among a similar set, and you can add your own text comments to each
image.

iPhoto also includes a basic keyword function that allows you to search for photos
based upon keywords that you assigned when you created the roll. You can use the
pre-configured keywords provided by Apple, including “Birthday” or “Kids,” but a
serious photographer is more likely to use the custom keyword feature (you can
create up to 14 custom keywords).

When searching, you can create groups of keywords to search for more than one
subject. For example, if you’ve added images under “Party” and “Christmas,” you
can choose both keywords and search for only those party shots taken during
Christmas.

Unfortunately, iPhoto is quite limited when it comes to editing your photos. You can
rotate one or more images at the same time, crop an image (as shown in Figure 9-6),
remove “red-eye,” and reduce a color image to grayscale. However, Mac owners
have to turn to a native editor like Photoshop to make major changes to an image.
iPhoto allows you to select the program to launch when you double-click on a
thumbnail, which indicates that Apple recognizes iPhoto’s limitations in the area
of editing.

iPhoto also includes a number of unique features, such as a built-in slide show
engine and the ability to order bound photo albums of your work directly from
Apple. If you’re a Mac owner and you’re interested in ease-of-use, basic keyword
searches, and occasionally rotating and cropping images, then iPhoto is worth
a look.
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294 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Figure 9-6: Preparing to crop an image in iPhoto

Jasc Media Center Plus

Media Center Plus, shown in Figure 9-7, is another program from Jasc Software, a
familiar company to those who’ve been using Paint Shop Pro since the days of
shareware and computer bulletin board systems. However, Media Center Plus
leaves the editing to outside applications; it’s purely an organizing and cataloging
tool. This program handles not only your digital photographs but your digital video
clips and sound files as well.

Like iPhoto, Media Center Plus can acquire images directly from your camera or
from your hard drive, but it can also catalog photos from CDs, DVDs, and remov-
able media such as ZIP disks without having to copy them over to your hard drive,
as iPhoto requires. The program can import all of the image file formats available
within Paint Shop Pro, as well as digital video in MPEG and AVI formats and sound
files in MP3, WAV, and MIDI formats. This capability can be a great advantage for
those photographers who also dabble in digital video production.

Media Center Plus organizes these images and media files into albums, and you can
sort the thumbnails in an album by using both a primary and secondary sort order
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Chapter 9 ✦ Cataloging and Managing Images 295

(a much more flexible and powerful setup than iPhoto). Figure 9-8 illustrates the
Primary Sort dialog box. You can add comments to any thumbnail, and it’s easy to
search or select by comments. Each thumbnail can also carry keywords, and you
can search by using those as well.

Figure 9-7: The Media Center Plus main window

Tip I particularly like the Export to Text option in Media Center Plus. This feature pro-
duces a text file containing the filenames, comments, and keywords for all of the
media files in an entire album. This summary text file is perfect for folks that keep
a separate database of their images, or for those who simply need a hard copy list-
ing of their images for immediate reference.

Like iPhoto, Media Center Plus leaves the heavy editing work to other programs.
This limitation makes sense here, however, because Media Center Plus can catalog
so many different file types. You can choose an editor for each format (which may
be an advantage for professionals), and it also sports a built-in rotation feature.
The program also provides batch format conversion and batch rename options,
which come in very handy if you need to make changes en masse on several dozen
photographs.
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296 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Figure 9-8: The Primary Sort dialog box provides control over the sophisticated
sorting in Media Center Pro.

Media Center Pro includes the ability to display images in a slideshow, and you can
build a custom screensavers by using your photographs (but only on the machine
on which the program is installed). The Web album feature can automatically gener-
ate the HTML code to display all the thumbnails in an album as a Web page.

All in all, Media Center Pro is a great deal at $30 for the downloadable version,
which you can find at www.jasc.com. It provides the basic cataloging and
organizing features that most photographers demand.

Extensis Portfolio
If you’ve got about $150 to spend on organizing your photographs, Extensis
Portfolio 6, which is shown in Figure 9-9, is a true professional “asset management”
program. Sounds a little more impressive than media cataloging software, doesn’t
it? Unlike the other two programs discussed in this chapter, Portfolio is also avail-
able for both PC and Mac (although only under Mac OS 9 at the time of this writing;
it runs under Mac OS X in Classic mode).
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Chapter 9 ✦ Cataloging and Managing Images 297

Figure 9-9: The Portfolio main window on the Macintosh

On the surface, Portfolio looks very much like iPhoto and Media Center Pro,
and like the latter, it can also handle audio and video clips, offers keyword and
comment searches, and can export keywords and file descriptions to a text file.
Portfolio can also rename and rotate images. So what else do you get for the extra
cash? A number of unique features:

✦ Instant cataloging: This, my friends, is a good thing! Unlike the other pro-
grams, you don’t have to run Portfolio to add files to a catalog; simply right-
click (or, on the Mac, Ctrl-click) on a file or folder anywhere in your system
and add it automatically to a specific catalog with the Add to Portfolio
command. I find this feature a great time-saver because I can take care of
business directly from Windows Explorer or the Mac Finder.
✦ Custom identification fields: Images can carry any type of identifying infor-
mation that you care to add, making it easy to fine-tune your search criteria
later with data such as prices, Web addresses, and contact info.
✦ Security: Although not a problem for most of us, Portfolio does give you the
option of increased security for your catalogs. You can assign four levels of
access and set passwords that prevent unauthorized eyes from viewing the
contents of a catalog.
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298 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

✦ Support for PDF files: Because I use Adobe Acrobat PDF files in my work, the
ability to add PDF files to a catalog is a handy feature.
✦ Custom searches: You can save a particular set of search criteria as a Find — a
great idea for complex searches that you perform over and over because you
don’t have to specify the exact criteria each time.
✦ Support for watermarks: Portfolio can recognize, display, and embed
DigiMarc copyright and licensing information (usually referred to as a digital
watermark). Professionals who must closely monitor copyright issues (or
want to embed their own information in their images) appreciate this feature.
✦ Support for Photoshop, IPTC, EXIF, and TIF tags: You can extract the tag
information from a photo by using any of these standards.

I haven’t touched on a host of other additional features that are available, but
suffice it to say that Extensis Portfolio 6 is worth every penny to the photographer
who wants total control over the cataloging and organization of all sorts of digital
media. I use this program every day, and I highly recommend it for the prosumer
and professional alike.

Cataloging with Photoshop

Before I close out this section, I should mention that Photoshop 7 now includes a
number of built-in cataloging functions. They are nothing to match Portfolio 6, of
course, but conversely, they are still nothing to sneeze at. By the same token,
Portfolio is certainly not an image editor! (These applications aren’t competitors; in
fact, both Portfolio and Photoshop get an equal amount of use on my hard drive.)

The new Photoshop File Browser operates much like the Browser in Paint Shop Pro,
with variable-sized thumbnails and a sorting feature. To edit an image from the File
Browser, double-click on the thumbnail and it loads directly into Photoshop. You
can easily rotate, rename, and move images from folder to folder, too.

Other Photoshop cataloging features include the following:

✦ Support for EXIF tags: The File Browser can display the information in both
Photoshop and EXIF standard tags.
✦ Custom sort rankings: Need to assign certain images a higher priority than
others? Create a custom ranking, which you can then use as a sort criteria
within the File Browser. This is a great idea for locating photos that are part
of your current contract or project.
✦ Support for scripting: The Macintosh version of Photoshop 7 boasts addi-
tional scripting commands to help automate batch processes, which you
can use to rename or rotate multiple images at once.
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Chapter 9 ✦ Cataloging and Managing Images 299

Editing images with cataloging software

To be honest, no dedicated cataloging software on the market has image-editing fea-
tures that compare in any way with the likes of Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. In
fact, most call on external editors that you can specify, which is the right thing to
do, anyway. In fact, both Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro turn the entire concept
upside-down because they incorporate basic cataloging and browsing features
inside a dedicated image editor.

All the programs discussed in this chapter can rotate images and rename files; you
can call these two features the “lowest common denominator” of editing chores.
Depending on the program, you may also be able to crop and resize your pho-
tographs (I cover these operations more in depth in Chapter 11), and you may even
be able to convert images from one format to another (a feature included in pro-
grams such as Media Center Pro and Portfolio). Therefore, when shopping around
for a cataloging program, look for one that provides the simple editing commands
you use the most — you won’t be constantly shuttling between applications in
order to prepare your photos for serious work.

Keeping Track of Photos in Windows XP

Windows XP is very digicam-friendly. It automatically recognizes most cameras with
a USB connection, and provides a wizard to help you transfer images from your
camera to your hard drive. Naturally, everything is stored in the \My Pictures
folder, but the wizard does create sub-folders for each transfer session.

Viewing a folder of images in Windows XP displays an instant set of thumbnails, as

shown in Figure 9-10. (If it doesn’t display the thumbnails automatically, click View
and choose Thumbnails.) Double-clicking on an image, however, won’t automati-
cally run the image editor. Instead, Windows XP opens the photo in the Picture and
Fax Viewer application, as shown in Figure 9-11. In this application, you can rotate
an image, print it, and (optionally) edit it. Personally, I find the Picture and Fax
Viewer a pain, so I always right-click and choose Open, which loads the image in
Photoshop instead.

Because you’re still within Windows Explorer, you can rename and delete an image
from the My Pictures folder, just as you do for any other file on your hard drive. You
can also sort the images in the folder; click View and choose Arrange Icons by to
display the pop-up menu, and you can set the sort criteria.

Unfortunately, the default Windows XP Search function leaves a lot to be desired.

You can locate an image by its filename, size, and modification date, but that’s
about it. (Another good reason to use cataloging software.)
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300 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Figure 9-10: Voila — instant thumbnails, thanks to Microsoft Windows XP

Figure 9-11: The rather simplistic Picture and Fax Viewer

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Chapter 9 ✦ Cataloging and Managing Images 301

Archiving for the Future

Previously in this chapter, I mention the process of archiving your digital images for
the future. When you consider that most manufacturers of recordable CD media
predict the “shelf life” of a CD-R to be at least 100 years, I think you’ll agree that
optical storage is the safest bet for storing your photographs. (Plus, it just happens
to be one of the cheapest when you consider the cost of a CD recorder and a pack
of 50 blank discs.) Figure 9-12 illustrates the main window from Roxio’s Easy CD
Creator Platinum, available at www.roxio.com. This popular CD recording software
package is bundled with many CD recorders. On the Mac side, Roxio manufactures
Toast, which is a funny name for a very good Macintosh CD recording program.

Figure 9-12: Easy CD Creator Platinum can record your archive discs with ease.

However, DVD recorders are now comfortably affordable as well. The question then
becomes: Is there any advantage to storing your work on DVD-R (write-once) or
DVD-RAM (rewriteable) discs? In this section, I discuss the advantages of both types
of optical media, as well as how you should organize and store your archive discs.

CD versus DVD
Recordable CD hardware and media have two advantages over DVD media:
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302 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

✦ CDs are cheaper. The price of both CD recorders and CD media (CD-R for
write-once, CD-RW for rewriteable) is significantly cheaper than current DVD
technology — $30 buys you 20 650MB CD-RW discs, but you’ll only get a single
5.2GB DVD-RAM disc for the same price. A single 4.7GB DVD-R disc is around
$10 at the time of this writing. DVD recorders are hovering at around $400, but
a CD-RW drive will only set you back about $100.
✦ CDs are more compatible. Virtually every computer still operating on the
planet has a CD-ROM drive, but DVD drives are still a luxury item for most
computer owners in 2002.

As you’ve probably guessed, the attraction for DVD recorders is an issue of capacity:
A common CD-R disc can hold only 700MB of data, but a DVD-R disc can hold 4.7GB.
The question is, how much space do you — as a photographer — really need? Even
with the larger images turned out by the latest 5 to 6 megabit cameras, a mere 650MB
of storage space is probably enough to hold several years’ worth of photographs.

Although DVD recorders can produce the same common recording formats as any
CD recorder (data CDs, audio CDs and mixed-mode CDs), they really don’t offer a
great advantage in terms of recording speed. Therefore, unless you also have need
of several gigabytes of storage for other purposes (such as video editing or audio
recording), recordable CD technology is your best bet.

Tip For a complete discussion of both CD and DVD recording (and step-by-step proce-
dures using Easy CD Creator Platinum and Toast), I recommend the book CD
and DVD Recording For Dummies by Mark L. Chambers, published by Wiley
Publishing, Inc.

Organizing your archives

Even if you’re not using one of the cataloging programs discussed previously in this
chapter, you’ll still benefit from a little logical organization when creating your
recording layout. Keep these guidelines in mind:

✦ Avoid sticking everything in one spot. First and foremost, use folders! A disc
with everything stored in the root directory (such as D:\) is going to drive
you batty when it comes time to locate something. Use folders to separate
and organize your CD-ROM layout before you record your archive.
✦ Use long filenames. Take advantage of every character that you can pack into
the long filenames provided by Windows and Mac OS. You’re no longer limited
to eight-character filenames like those that may be generated automatically
by your digicam, so descriptions are the order of the day. When recording a
disc in Windows, this means using the Microsoft Joliet file system; under Mac
OS, record using the Mac Extended file system.
✦ Duplicate files in different categories. Here’s a trick that I use when archiving
that may help you to locate the proverbial “needle in a haystack” photo:
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Chapter 9 ✦ Cataloging and Managing Images 303

Instead of adding an image to just one folder (such as “Portraits”), duplicate

the same image in both the “Portraits” folder and any other relevant folders,
such as a specific month and year or the name of the subject. Because a CD-R
gives you so much space, use that extra elbow room to increase your chances
of locating a particular photograph.
✦ Include a thumbnail sheet. If your image editor can produce a thumbnail
sheet — a single image that contains the thumbnails of every photograph
stored in a folder — it’s worth it to include one in each folder that you create
before you record your disc. This saves you time later because you won’t
have to browse those images in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro; you can just
load the sheet for a quick look.

Storing your archive discs

Before I move on, I should take a moment to mention how to properly store those
priceless archive discs after you’ve recorded them. Here’s a list of important things
to remember when traveling with your archive discs or when you’re putting them
away for safekeeping:

✦ Keep discs away from heat. High temperature is the archenemy of optical
media. (A disc is essentially a thin layer of alloy film sandwiched between two
layers of plastic.) If a disc is badly warped due to direct sunlight or overheat-
ing, it’s impossible to retrieve anything from it again.
✦ Avoid touching the surface of a disc. Hold a disc by the outside edge while
transferring it from the jewel case to the drive and back again. This ensures
that you won’t smudge the surface of the disc with fingerprints, which can
eventually lead to disc read errors (especially with DVDs).
✦ Store your discs in jewel cases or disc albums. Although discs are tough,
they aren’t indestructible. Keep them safe in their original jewel cases, if you
have the shelf space; if you don’t have the shelf space, buy a disc album. (I’ve
seen albums that can store up to 250 discs in the space of 20.)
✦ Label them correctly. Never use mailing or address labels, which can unbal-
ance a disc. If you do apply a label, don’t try to remove it unless the label is
specifically designed to be removed. If you don’t mind a utilitarian appear-
ance, an alcohol-free CD/DVD marking pen, which you can find at your local
office supply store, can do the job just fine (without spending all that money
for labels and printer ink).

Tip Never pile discs on top of one another! I know that I’ve been tempted to do so
many times, but storing your discs in a pile in front of your monitor is no solution
at all; constant friction and exposure to dust and dirt will ruin them faster than you
may imagine.
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304 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Adding an Image as a Background

Ready to show off your latest work as wallpaper on your desktop? Both Windows
XP and Mac OS X make the chore an easy task — and both operating systems also
stretch your image to fit any screen resolution that you use.

Adding an image in Windows XP

To add an image as your desktop background from any folder on your system,
follow these steps:

1. Right-click on the Windows desktop and choose Properties from the pop-up
menu.
Windows opens the Display Properties dialog box.
2. Click on the Desktop tab to display the settings shown in Figure 9-13.
3. By default, only those images in your \Windows folder and your \My
Pictures folder are available in the Background list. If your image is
listed, click on it once in the Background list to select it.
However, you can use any photo on your hard drive by clicking the Browse
button. After doing so, navigate to the file’s location, click it to select it, and
click Open. Windows displays a thumbnail preview of the desktop on the mon-
itor screen so you can see how it will appear.

4. Windows also provides three layout positions for your background:

• Click Position and choose Center to display the image centered on the
desktop — if the image is smaller than the desktop, it is surrounded by a
colored border. (You can set the color of the border by using the Color
palette control directly underneath the Position drop-down list box.)
• Choose Tile to arrange the image as a seamless grid (if the image is
larger than the desktop, it’s centered instead). Images created for Web
backgrounds are good candidates for tiling.
• Finally, choose Stretch to automatically resize the image so that it
matches the dimensions of your desktop. Although Windows does a
credible job if the aspect ratio of the image is close to that of your desk-
top, the image is likely to be heavily distorted if it has different propor-
tions. Figure 9-14 illustrates the same image displayed in all three
positions on my monitor.

5. To apply the wallpaper without closing the Display Properties dialog box —
a good idea if you’re trying out a number of different images — click Apply.
6. To accept the image as wallpaper, click OK.
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Chapter 9 ✦ Cataloging and Managing Images 305

Figure 9-13: All of your desktop chores

can be performed from the Display
Properties dialog box.

Figure 9-14: The three positions, in order: Center, Tile, and Stretch

Adding an image in Mac OS X

If you’re using Mac OS X, follow these steps to select an image as desktop wallpaper:

1. Click the Apple menu and choose System Preferences; then click on the
Desktop icon.
Mac OS X displays the Desktop window shown in Figure 9-15.

2. Click and drag the desired image from the Finder window to the well.
Mac OS X displays a preview of the image and automatically loads the
wallpaper.
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306 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Figure 9-15: Selecting new wallpaper in Mac OS X

3. Click System Prefs and choose Quit System Prefs to return to your new Mac
OS X desktop.

Summary
In this chapter, I discussed a whole range of topics — all related to transferring, cata-
loging, and archiving the photographs in your collection. I explained which hard-
ware and software is suited for transferring images between digicam and computer,
and also from computer to computer. I covered the features and highlights of today’s
most popular image cataloging programs, as well as the cataloging support built into
Photoshop 7 and Windows XP. Finally, I compared recordable CD and DVD technol-
ogy, and provided tips on organizing and storing your images on optical media.

✦ ✦ ✦
14549510 ch10.F 8/22/02 2:40 PM Page 307

Choosing an
Image-Editing
10 C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Program In This Chapter

Photoshop Elements

Adobe Photoshop 7

W
(Professional)
ith image-editing software capabilities, there’s no
end to the miracles that various programs can Ulead PhotoImpact
accomplish, but first you have to decide which programs to
use. The current professional version of Adobe Photoshop is Paint Shop Pro
the industry’s benchmark program. Recently, sensing a need
for a Photoshop-compatible middle ground between entry- Corel PHOTO-PAINT
level programs for the digitally intimidated and Photoshop,
Adobe introduced Photoshop Elements. In this chapter, I start Adobe PhotoDeluxe
with Photoshop 7, the current professional version of the
product, and then move on to examine the differences
Microsoft Picture
between the much less expensive Photoshop Elements and
Photoshop 7. I then take a look at programs that are priced
equivalently to Photoshop Elements, and finally, I discuss MGI PhotoSuite
programs that typically retail for less than $50 and that are
often bundled with digital photography-related hardware. ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Important Features
The top-of-the-line Photoshop 7 has no direct competition.
However, if you’re considering programs that normally sell for
closer to $100 but still have all or most of the features needed
for serious photo-editing, the following sections outline the
features that are most worthy of your consideration.

Note It behooves you to use a program that is also used by your

client, service bureau, or publisher. This way, you can be
assured that the other party’s program can read your files.
You’ll often want to share the work on a project, and shar-
ing is much easier when both parties speak the same
image-manipulation language.
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308 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Price
Image-processing programs with complete image-processing features start at $99.50
retail. Moderately higher-priced packages may have more “bells and whistles,” but
generally don’t offer the automation, pre-press tools, or installed base support that
comes with Photoshop professional. A covey of programs are also available with
prices that tend to hover at around $50, and that are meant for those who simply
don’t want to have to spend any significant time studying a program in order to do
the basics. Professional users also collect these programs because they are good at
doing odd jobs around the home and office, such as printing small flyers, annotating
contact sheets, creating gift and greeting cards, and so forth.

Free software
Equipment that you need to purchase anyway, such as digital cameras, scanners,
and even flash memory film cards, often comes with very good image-editing pro-
grams. However, you’re not likely to find Photoshop 7 bundled with an inexpensive
digital camera because the camera manufacturers assume that the majority of the
people buying these types of cameras are looking for simplicity and convenience in
the software that they use. Rather than having control over every aspect of an
image, some users would rather have a program that takes care of correcting com-
mon problems at the push of a button. As a result, the image-processing programs
that are included in the price of these cameras fall into a category that I call SOHO
(Small Office, Home Office) image processors.

Mid-range programs, such as Photoshop Elements, are often bundled with scan-
ners, particularly those in the price range over $300 and those that come with a
transparency scanning attachment. Some of the software included with a scanner
may be low-end, but almost all image editors have some unique capabilities, so you
may be able to find a use for certain unique talents that they possess. Before you
buy, check how current the version of the software is and which (if any) of the pro-
gram’s features have been eliminated. The good news is that when a bundled pro-
gram’s features have been limited, you usually have the opportunity to upgrade to
the full version of the program at a very reasonable price.

Tip Bundled software is often the version that was current when the product that it is
bundled appeared on the market. That doesn’t mean you have been cheated.
You’re usually entitled to download a free update from either the software or
hardware manufacturer’s Web site.

Automating command sequences

If you are working in a production environment, you definitely need a program that
enables you to link a series of frequently used commands to a particular menu
selection or keystroke combination. For example, with one click, you can apply all
the necessary commands to fit an image within a particular size and color palette
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Chapter 10 ✦ Choosing an Image-Editing Program 309

and then save it to GIF format for publication on the Web. Photoshop’s Actions, in
addition to its brand-new scripting capabilities, make it the program that is most
highly qualified in this area.

Note If a program doesn’t offer automation (but does include a feature you have to
have), there are utilities (like QuicKeys on the Mac and AppleScript) that can auto-
mate keystrokes independent of the application.

Image-processing features
Any worthy image editor should provide the tools necessary for altering exposure,
contrast, tonal values, and color balance. The image editor should also provide a
wide range of painting and retouching tools; including an airbrush, paintbrush,
clone tool, and blending tools. You should also have numerous ways to isolate por-
tions of the image so that they are protected from subsequent commands. In other
words, your image editor should have a full set of selection and masking tools —
including some that help automate the masking process.

Layer editing
Layer editing is one characteristic of professional digital darkrooms that really sets
them apart from most of their sub-$50 “click ’n fix” counterparts. Layers allow you
to isolate as many images as you like within a given file. These images appear to be
stacked directly on top of each other and any transparent portion of the image
reveals the image below it. You can control how each of the layers affect underlying
layers, meaning that their pixels are added, subtracted, multiplied, and so forth.
You can also control the transparency of the entire layer.

File and device support

Most image editors let you open all commonly used bitmap file types (including the
17 separate file types in Photoshop 7). Photoshop 7 and some other programs also
open and then rasterize (turn into bitmaps) some vector file types.

You should also make sure that the program supports your input and output devices,
such as camera, scanner, and printer. If the program supports TWAIN, then any
TWAIN plug-in for any TWAIN device will work.

Photoshop plug-in compatibility

Photoshop pioneered the use of plug-in extensions. These plug-ins make it possible
to import new types of files or to interface with devices such as new digital cameras
and scanners. They also make it possible to create many special effects, such as sim-
ulating paint brush strokes in various artistic styles, making motion blurs, or distort-
ing selections. With so many powerful plug-ins available now, using a program that
doesn’t support them means giving up considerable image-processing power.
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310 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Interface familiarity
When you drive another person’s car, you probably already know the location and
use of the brake pedal and steering wheel. It’s also easier to “drive” a new program
if you understand the layout of the controls. You want to find a program that feels
familiar. If you’re brand-new to graphics programs, the program that you buy will
serve as a training ground for other graphics programs and when you buy your
next image-editing program, you will know what you like and need in an interface.

Painting and retouching

Painting and retouching tools and features should be as rich as possible. At a mini-
mum, the Toolbox should include the following tools:

✦ Paintbrush: Used to apply color to an image. Some programs also allow you
to set paintbrush options that imitate natural media or create special effects.
✦ Airbrush: Used to apply a soft-edged paintbrush stroke that builds up in color
density. Some airbrushes can do fancier things, such as wet edges or to start
dripping paint when you’ve applied too much.
✦ Pencil: Used to draw hard-edged lines.
✦ Line tool: Used to draw straight lines.
✦ Cloning tool: Used to copy one brush-sized area of an image to another
image.

Check for flexibility in the program’s ability to do gradient fills:

✦ Can it do multiple shapes of gradients?

✦ Can you use more than two colors?
✦ Can you use an unlimited number of colors?
✦ Can one of the “colors” be transparent?

Photoshop and a few other programs also include the ability to create vector paths,
just like those used in illustration programs. Depending on the program, you can
stroke these paths with any of the brushes or automatically convert them to a
selection or mask.

One professional image editor, procreate’s Painter 7, enables you to paint brush
strokes that imitate traditional artist’s tools, materials, and even painting styles.
Some other programs offer some natural-media brush strokes, but none offer as
many choices or as much flexibility as Painter. Nevertheless, any natural-media
capabilities can be a bonus, unless you want to keep all your work looking strictly
photographic.
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Chapter 10 ✦ Choosing an Image-Editing Program 311

Vector path drawing

Some image editors allow you to draw vector paths, which are geometric formulas
for shapes that are resolution-independent; you can edit, re-shape, and transform
them to any size. You can then turn these paths into very accurate and smooth-
edged selections, which can be turned into bit-mapped portions of the image. This
allows you to treat them with photo-editing tools and commands (such as the plug-
in filters for artistic effects). Vector paths can also be used to trim out an irregularly
shaped boundary for a photo that will be incorporated onto a page in a publishing
program such as Quark Express or Adobe In-Design.

Image editing
Image editing is the term usually applied to programs that perform as digital dark-
rooms. The term is also used because the functions that control the qualities of the
image are among the most important, such as:

✦ Color manipulation: You should be able to control not only brightness and
contrast, but also where the whitest and blackest tones in the image fall and
where the midtones lie. A good image-editing program should also give you
control over color balance and saturation, as well as the ability to substitute
one color for another, which is very useful in catalog work.
✦ Darkroom tools: You should also have darkroom tools for editing small areas
of the image, which includes the following:
• Burn (darken)
• Dodge (lighten)
• Desaturate (remove color)
• Blur
• Sharpen
• Smudge
✦ Image rotation: You should be able to rotate the image to any degree —
preferably either by typing an exact number or by dragging a corner of the
image or current selection.
✦ Image manipulation: Another useful effect is the ability to shrink or exagger-
ate portions of the image by stroking them with a brush. The result is very
smooth transitions between rescaled portions of an object and the originals.
This enables you to make caricatures, for example.
✦ Image selection tools: You won’t be able to effectively edit portions of an
image unless you can quickly and accurately select the portion that you want
to edit. Your selection tools should include the following:
• Rectangle: Makes a rectangular or square selection marquee when you
drag diagonally.
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312 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

• Elliptical: Makes an oval or circular selection marquee when you drag

diagonally.
• Row: Makes a one pixel wide selection from one side of the image to the
other.
• Column: Makes a one pixel wide selection from one side of the image to
the other.
• Lasso: Enables you to draw a freehand selection marquee
• Polygon: Enables you to draw a straight-edged polygon marquee of any
shape.
• Magic Lasso: This selection tool automatically adheres to “edges” (rows
of adjacent pixels that are similar in color and contrast with their imme-
diately surrounding pixels).
• Magic Wand: This tool automatically selects an entire area within a
given color range.

Special-effects processing
This is the area in which professional image-processing programs seem to vary the
most. However, most are compatible with Photoshop plug-ins, so you can add an
awesome variety of special effects if you’re willing to pay the extra cost for the
plug-ins.

Wacom tablet compatibility

You will have a much easier time working in image-editing programs if you use a
pressure-sensitive digitizing tablet and pen. This is especially true when making
selections, retouching, and using the tools that affect brush-sized areas of the
image. If your usual control device is a mouse, you’ll have to adjust to these tablets,
but the productivity payoff is enormous. Most tablets, regardless of the maker, are
compatible with Wacom drivers. For this reason, these drivers are the ones most
commonly supported by graphics software of all types (not just image editors).

Prepress preparation
If you are going to send all your images to prepress specialists before publication,
this capability is less important to you than if you plan to do the work yourself. Of
course, these features become very significant if you are the prepress specialist. If
this is the case, you already know what to look for in the program. Just make sure
that the program has what you need.

If you don’t have a great need for accurate color calibration, make sure that you can
use an ICC (International Color Consortium) profile for your display, scanner, and
printer. You can then do a reasonable job of calibration by using inexpensive color
calibration software, such as EZ Color. Some image-processing programs also are
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Chapter 10 ✦ Choosing an Image-Editing Program 313

able to take advantage of Apple ColorSync and Microsoft ICM (Windows 98 or later
only) and their compatibility with ICC profiles.

Cross- Color calibration and prepress considerations are complex topics. You can find a
Reference
helpful and comprehensive discussion of them in Chapters 18 and 19.

Image compositing
All of the features mentioned in the previous sections can help you make smoothly
composited images from multiple image files. However, you will be more successful at
making realistic images with consistent tonal values and image sharpness if you use a
program that renders the composited image from the original files after you’ve done
all the necessary masking, cutting, pasting, resizing, and rotating. If a program has to
rearrange the image’s pixels after you have already accomplished each of these steps,
you simply can’t avoid losing a lot of pixel information. Some programs, such as
Photoshop 5, let you make a number of transformations (scaling, stretching, rotating,
or distorting the image) before rendering the result. However, only programs that let
you work with a lower-resolution representation of the original file until rendering
time are able to do this as smoothly as possible. Such a capability is often referred to
as proxy editing, because the file you are performing the work on is a temporary, low-
resolution version of the original. (The resolution of the temporary file depends on
the zoom level.) Incidentally, a number of image-editing products have been based on
proxy editing, such as Live Picture. However, they seem to have faded from the scene.

The Adobe Photoshop Dynasty

I grew up on Photoshop. From the day it was bundled with a scanner and called
Barneyscan, Photoshop has been my preferred image editor. Adobe, already the
leader in computer graphics software, thanks to its invention of PostScript digital
typesetting, bought the program shortly thereafter. The rest is history. Today
Photoshop is the bread and butter program used by professional photographers,
Web designers, art directors, layout artists, story boarders, and anybody else seri-
ous about digital art. However, Photoshop is generally one of many graphics pro-
grams that these people use; nearly everyone also uses a vector graphics (drawing)
program, a desktop publishing program, and so forth.

Photoshop is king partly because it came first and partly because its interface and
mechanisms were brilliantly designed from the beginning. In fact, the design is so
good that it has become “the language” of digital photo-manipulation. If you work in
Photoshop, most likely anyone that you work with speaks your language. They can
read your files without conversion considerations. Furthermore, when you tell them
what you did and what needs to be done going forward, they’ll know exactly what
you’re talking about. Finally, no other program has the same authority to enforce
color calibration and other pre-press standards that make it possible to accurately
predict what the photo is going to look like after publication or fine-art printing.

Recently, Adobe has divided the Photoshop line in two:

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314 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

✦ Photoshop professional: The Photoshop professional series is simply

Photoshop as you have always known it, plus whatever enhancements may be
added from time to time. Photoshop 7.0 is the current professional version at
the time of this writing.
✦ Photoshop Elements: The Photoshop Elements series was introduced only a
few months ago, but it is already at version 2.0. Elements is perfectly named
because it includes almost all the elements of Photoshop that are necessary
for competent photo manipulation without the bells and whistles that are
essential for production and post-production work.

Adobe Photoshop 7.0

Need to tweak the qualities of a photograph and balance colors for photos before
publishing them to a printing press or CMYK proofing printer? Want to automate the
procedures that are typical of your photo production process? Want to program new
routines for Photoshop that make the use of the product more interactive and tam-
per proof? Need the power to fine-tune every aspect of a digital image and in more
ways than one? Brother (or sister), you need the professional version of Photoshop.

Figure 10-1 shows the user interface for Photoshop 7. The screenshot in this figure
was taken in Windows XP, but the Mac OS X version looks nearly identical and can
perform the same functions.

Figure 10-1: The Photoshop 7 interface, shown in Windows XP

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Chapter 10 ✦ Choosing an Image-Editing Program 315

Photoshop’s most notable features are as follows; those followed by an asterisk (*)
are new in Photoshop 7:

✦ Ability to correct perspective and re-render the image while cropping

✦ Scripting*
✦ Automation (Actions and Droplets)
✦ Color Management
✦ Editable Channels and Channel Operations
✦ Highly controllable and editable brushes*
✦ Automatic “healing” of commonly encountered defects
✦ Semi-automatic separation of objects with complex edges from their
surroundings
✦ Built-in File Browser*
✦ Complete set of Web editing and optimization tools
✦ Transparent and partially transparent JPEG images for Web use
✦ Customizable and reloadable workspace arrangement*
✦ Built-in natural media paint tools*
✦ Automatic color correction at a single command*
✦ Automatic creation of natural patterns*
✦ Custom meshes in the Liquify command*
✦ Password file protection*
✦ Built-in spell checker*
✦ Automated Picture Package production
✦ Self-publishing Web Gallery templates
✦ XMP Support
✦ Pen tool for vector path drawing
✦ Layer effects
✦ 95 built-in special effects filters
✦ ImageReady
✦ Extremely powerful selection capabilities
✦ Watermarking for copyright protection
✦ History palette
✦ Savable tool presents
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316 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0

Photoshop Elements is the perfect product for someone who is getting into digital
photography or a similar graphics field but who also wants simplicity in his or her
image-editing program. Photoshop Elements is also the ideal training ground for
those who want to have a high level of competency when they eventually move
up to the professional version of Photoshop, which is about six times the price
of Elements. The interface for Photoshop Elements 2.0 is shown in Figure 10-2.
Although the interface is similar to Photoshop 7, the Quick Fix dialog box shown
in Figure 10-2 is unique to Photoshop Elements. On the other hand, the Photoshop
Elements File Browser is now virtually identical to the Photoshop 7 File Browser.

Figure 10-2: The Photoshop Elements interface

Actually, Photoshop Elements has some qualities that Photoshop 7 doesn’t, which
fall into the category of features that are essential to automatically correcting the
mistakes most often made by digital photographers:

✦ Quick corrections: With one click or command you can correct contrast,
gamma, and color balance.
✦ Remove red-eye: You can brush out that awful red-eye that occurs when the
on-camera flash fires directly into the pupils of the subject’s eyes.
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Chapter 10 ✦ Choosing an Image-Editing Program 317

✦ Routines: Adobe realizes that Photoshop has a lot of capabilities that may take
a beginner some time to master, so the program performs pre-programmed
routines (similar to what you might produce yourself using Photoshop
Actions); to access them, simply choose one from a thumbnail menu.
✦ Recipes: Photoshop’s Recipes are a lot like the “wizards” used in Microsoft
Word. They take you by the hand and give you instructions while you click
your way through performing various tasks. The dialog box for one of these
Recipes is shown in Figure 10-3.

Figure 10-3: A Photoshop Elements Recipe

Another feature that makes using Elements much more transparent than using
Photoshop — despite the similarity of features and interface — is the use of thumb-
nails in dialog boxes for executing plug-ins and layer styles. When you select a tab
in the palette well at the right end of the Options bar, you can immediately see the
effect of any of the filters by looking at the thumbnail, as shown in Figure 10-4. You
can apply the filter in one of three ways:

✦ Drag the thumbnail onto the image

✦ Click the Apply button
✦ Double click the thumbnail itself

In all three instances, you get the Options dialog box for that particular filter so that
you can choose which settings to use.
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318 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Figure 10-4: The Filters thumbnail dialog box

The most notable features in Photoshop Elements are as follows (those followed by
an asterisk (*) are new in Photoshop Elements 2.0):

✦ The majority of Photoshop’s features and commands

✦ Quick Fix commands*
✦ Hints
✦ Clickable layer styles
✦ Filter thumbnails

Power for Less

Photoshop Elements has lots of direct and formidable competition in its price
range. The best-sellers among these are JASC PaintShop Pro, Ulead PhotoImpact,
Corel PHOTO-PAINT 10 (which is no longer available as a stand-alone product, only
as part of a bundle with CorelDRAW), and Corel’s (formerly Micrografx) Picture
Publisher 10.
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Chapter 10 ✦ Choosing an Image-Editing Program 319

JASC Paint Shop Pro 7

Paint Shop Pro has long been a favorite of those who want near-professional fea-
tures and a well-rounded collection of useful effects and utility features. The user
interface feels comfortably familiar. However, if you normally use Photoshop, you
may need some time to get used to it. Paint Shop Pro sells for $99 if you download it
and for $109 boxed. The Paint Shop Pro 7 interface is shown in Figure 10-5.

Figure 10-5: The Paint Shop Pro 7 interface and the Picture Frame Wizard

Note I really like Paint Shop Pro’s built-in screen capture program, which allows me to
capture screens while I’m editing photos.

The following are some notable features of Paint Shop Pro:

✦ Layers and channels: The program allows you to work in layers, split and re-
combine channels, and do channel math operations for special color effects.
✦ Red-eye removal: Paint Shop Pro has the quickest and most automatic red-
eye removal I’ve ever seen in an image editor.
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320 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

✦ Color balance and temperature: You can correct color balance by color tem-
perature using an interface and method that I haven’t seen in other programs.
Figure 10-6 shows the Automatic Color Balance dialog box.

Figure 10-6: Automatic Color Balance

✦ Photo restoration: Paint Shop Pro offers outstanding photo restoration proce-
dures, such as scratch removal that doesn’t blur the image because it only
fills the radically darker or lighter areas within a selection. A single command
evens out the exposure of faded areas of the photo.
✦ Framing tools: If you like to frame your Web portfolio images, Paint Shop Pro
comes with very nice automatic picture framing tools.

✦ Multiple pictures: You can create great scrapbook pages by using the multiple
pictures feature. This feature is very easy to use and lets you scale and rotate
the images interactively. You don’t have to rotate copies of the pictures
beforehand, as you do in Photoshop, in order to have the face in the desired
direction. (Photoshop rotates pictures so that they fit within the pre-defined
layouts.)
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Chapter 10 ✦ Choosing an Image-Editing Program 321

✦ Gradients: You can paint with a gradient, in which case the color changes
with the same sequence and blend as the chosen gradient.
✦ Photo sprayer: This is a brush that sprays photos, which is an idea “bor-
rowed” from Corel Painter. Photo sprayers like this are very useful for per-
forming such manipulations as populating a field with flowers or putting
leaves on a barren tree branch. They’re also useful for putting fanciful borders
around invitations.
✦ Vectors and text: Not only does Paint Shop Pro have a built-in vector-drawing
tool, but you can add text that follows the path that you draw. So it’s a piece
of cake to do all sorts of text layouts that follow an exact path. (Photoshop
lets you shape text in a number of ways, but you can’t follow an exact path
except by sheer luck.)
✦ Support for Photoshop plug-ins: Any Photoshop-compatible plug-in will work
with this program, including software such as Kai’s Power Tools 3 that no
longer works in Photoshop 7.
✦ Web graphics: Web graphics preparation isn’t as controllable in Paint Shop
Pro as it is in ImageReady, but it’s all a lot easier. You can optimize GIFs,
JPEGs, and PNG files; do automatic simple animations of static subjects;
and do image slicing, image mapping, and rollover effects.

Corel PHOTO-PAINT 10
Corel PHOTO-PAINT has, until very recently, been available as a stand-alone product
as well as being bundled with CorelDRAW. Now that these programs are shipping for
both Macintosh and Windows platforms, Adobe has a fierce competitor on two
fronts. Corel PHOTO-PAINT has a sizeable installed base, thanks to its association
with CorelDRAW, and CorelDRAW was the leading Windows illustration program until
Adobe Illustrator and Freehand came on the scene. Even now, CorelDRAW is a strong
contender and has become more and more established among Macintosh users. The
good news about all this is that if you’re a CorelDRAW fan, PHOTO-PAINT costs you
nothing. To look at it another way, if you don’t have an illustration program, buy
CorelDRAW to get a strong and useful image-editing program.

PHOTO-PAINT’s interface has become increasingly integrated with the CorelDRAW

interface, making it unique. You’re not likely to have much trouble recognizing the
function of the tool icons, but learning the command menus may take a bit longer.
You can see the Corel PHOTO-PAINT 10 interface in Figure 10-7.

Note In PHOTO-PAINT, layers are called objects. As in Painter, the layers are trimmed to
include only the visible pixels (unless you force the program to do otherwise).
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322 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Figure 10-7: The PHOTO-PAINT 10 interface, showing the Objects docker (palette)
and the Channel Mixer

The following are some of PHOTO-PAINT ‘s notable features:

✦ Natural-media brushes: PHOTO-PAINT offers a broadened collection of

natural-media brushes. You can find numerous variations on each brush
in a drop-down menu in the Brush Tools palette.
✦ Clone brush: The Clone brush can be either aligned or not. You can also clone
from a saved file, so you can imitate the effect you get when you clone to a
new layer in Painter.
✦ Lenses: PHOTO-PAINT has a lens feature that is equivalent to Photoshop’s
Adjustment layers. PHOTO-PAINT has more types of lenses than Photoshop
has Adjustment layer types. Many of the additional types let you create filter
effects, such as impressionist brush strokes or noise.
✦ Image adjustment: Image adjustments are even more powerful than in
Photoshop. You can also run plug-ins from inside the Image Adjustment dialog
boxes, so you can filter and make the adjustment at the same time. PHOTO-
PAINT is not compatible with Photoshop plug-ins, but its native effects are
more versatile and more powerful than most of those in Photoshop —
particularly artistic and 3-D filters.
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Chapter 10 ✦ Choosing an Image-Editing Program 323

✦ Special effects: PHOTO-PAINT also provides some amazing special effects. For
example, you can make it rain or snow and even fill the sky with stars. Almost
all of PHOTO-PAINT’s special-effects filters let you see a preview of the image
before you have to commit. Furthermore, almost all filters present you with a
wide range of adjustments, so you have powerful control over noise patterns,
line thickness, and just about anything else you can think of. If you’re a profes-
sional illustrator or need to do a variety of special effects, you may well find it
worth your while to purchase PHOTO-PAINT 10 for its special effects filters
alone. At $99, this program costs less than most sets of Photoshop filters.
✦ Color management: The color management capabilities in Corel PHOTO-
PAINT are not only extensive, but feature an interface that makes color
management significantly easier to understand and to use than any of its
competitors. You can see the basic interface for this in Figure 10-8.

Figure 10-8: Corel PHOTO-PAINT’s new color management

dialog box

✦ Keyboard shortcuts and macros: You can assign keyboard shortcuts to any
PHOTO-PAINT tool or command. You can also customize palettes and tool-
bars. PHOTO-PAINT also has a rich macro recording language; you can save
macros and play them back on any file. PHOTO-PAINT also uses AppleScript
and Action Script as its scripting languages.
✦ Pen tool: Use this tool for drawing and saving vector shapes. You can auto-
matically convert these shapes to selections.
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324 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

✦ Noise lens: PHOTO-PAINT’s Noise lens is the best tool that I’ve found for inter-
actively creating grain patterns that will match another area of the image.
✦ History brush: This tool lets you paint from a previous state of the image.
✦ Object nozzle: This tool lets you paint with previously selected and defined
objects, such as raindrops, flowers, blades of grass, etc.
✦ Web graphics: PHOTO-PAINT can convert any image to any of the three Web
image file formats: GIF, JPEG, or PNG. You are given a fair degree of control
over the appearance of optimally compressed files. You can even preview
your image while changing settings so that you can see the result before you
actually save the file.
✦ Image maps: You can also make image maps in PHOTO-PAINT. The method is
a bit strange: You assign links to the objects (layers) in an image. If you want
to cut different areas of a photograph into an image map, you simply place
each image on a different object level, click a tab, and assign a URL. The pro-
gram also provides the means to publish your image maps as either client-
side or server-side, or both.
✦ Movies: PHOTO-PAINT lets you create movies. You can use an image as a
background and layer objects as the moving “actors.” You can then designate
a number of frames and place the objects in the proper location in each frame
to give the illusion that the objects are in motion when the movie is played
back. You can save movies in either Corel’s movie format or as animated GIFs.

Corel Picture Publisher 10

Unlike PHOTO-PAINT 10, Picture Publisher 10 is still a separate product, but
Micrografx, the original publisher, is now a division of Corel. You can reach the
Micrografx Web site through the Corel site, or you can just save yourself the time
by going to www.micrografx.com.

Picture Publisher comes in two versions — Professional Edition and Digital Camera
Edition. The Professional Edition is $149, which is a bit higher than the target price
for this group. On the other hand, it has some very valuable features, such as the
ability to handle up to 64-bit image files in CMYK mode and to edit portions of the
image separately. This second feature means that you can edit very large files with-
out feeling a memory crunch. The Kodak Color Management system is built-in as
well, so if you need to do careful calibration and prepress work, you may be able
to get by with a much less expensive program than Photoshop 7.

One really unique feature of Picture Publisher is a filter that lets you simulate
depth-of-field effects using an interactive dialog box. You pick the 35mm lens equiv-
alent focal length, which can be made manually adjustable, choose the amount of
light falloff from foreground to background, and then drag the cursor to set a target
where you want the focal point of the picture to be. If you have preview turned on,
you immediately see the result of your adjustments in the dialog box. You get a
better picture of this feature in Figure 10-9.
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Chapter 10 ✦ Choosing an Image-Editing Program 325

Figure 10-9: Picture Publisher Camera Aperture

dialog box

If you want to stitch images together to make panoramas or create high-resolution

images from a grid of side-by-side photos, Picture Publisher makes this process
quite easy. You open the images at the same time, arrange them in the workspace
so that they are in the required order and position, and then place markers at the
points where the images are meant to overlap. You then ask the program to stitch,
and the rest is done automatically. The program can rotate and distort images to
line up; it can also adjust the exposure of images so that all stitched panels are of
the same brightness and contrast.

Some of the other features of Picture Publisher include the following:

✦ Photo Album: This feature lets you create Web portfolios, scrapbook pages,
burn CD-ROMs and screen on-screen or Web slide shows.
✦ Lighting and particle effects: You can generate lighting and particle effects
using Picture Publisher. Lighting effects are generally found only in much
more expensive products such as Photoshop 7 and procreate Painter.
✦ Plug-ins: This program includes a very large selection of built-in plug-ins.
✦ Batch correction: Batch correction allows you to make the same correction
on a whole series of photographs. This is a nearly indispensable capability
when you have to produce batches of buttons for a Web site or have to cor-
rect dozens of pictures from a shoot that uses the same subject in the same
location and lighting conditions.
✦ Edge Wizard: I really like this feature, because you don’t have to purchase a
separate plug-in program in order to use it. The Edge Wizard lets you frame
your picture with 35mm film sprockets, ragged edges, picture frames, and a
large number of other effects. The Edge Wizard is shown in Figure 10-10.
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326 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Figure 10-10: One of the dozens of edge styles built into

Picture Publisher 10, shown inside the Edge Wizard dialog box

Ulead PhotoImpact 7
Ulead makes two image editors:

✦ PhotoImpact 7: This is a small office/home office-level product priced at

$89.00.
✦ Photo Express: This is an entry-level product priced at $29.95, which is
described later in this chapter.

Ulead’s PhotoImpact carries on the tradition of mid-range products by offering fea-

tures that are otherwise found only in more expensive programs or in third-party
add-ons. All the basic point-and-click imaging cures are found here: instant color
and exposure correction, a red-eye cure, and dust and scratches filters. You can
also batch process groups of files. When you combine that capability with the
ability to make flexible layout contact sheets and scrapbook pages, you have an
excellent candidate for quickly processing multiple images from the same shoot for
nearly instant review and presentation. You can also do project printing, such as CD
labels, CD cover sheet thumbnails, and stickers. You can see the PhotoImpact 7
interface in Figure 10-11.

One very nice feature of PhotoImpact is a built-in procedure for correcting the lens
distortion that is so prevalent in — but not exclusive to — beginner-to-midrange
digital cameras. The results of using this feature are shown in Figure 10-12.
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Chapter 10 ✦ Choosing an Image-Editing Program 327

Figure 10-11: The PhotoImpact user interface, and the Object Properties dialog box

Figure 10-12: This filter interactively fixes both barrel distortion and
lens distortion.
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328 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Another very handy feature of PhotoImpact, which is also found in Elements 2.0, is
the ability to automatically e-mail a picture. Within a minute or two, you can down-
load the image, auto-correct it, crop, and fix lens distortion. You then click a button
that resizes the image, optimizes it for the Web, and brings up an e-mail dialog box
that lets you write a note with the photo attached, as shown in Figure 10-13.

Figure 10-13: It is easy to send an image in an e-mail with PhotoImpact.

Speaking of Web pages, PhotoImpact is highly effective at optimizing Web image

performance and creating interactivity effects such as pop-up menus, mouse-over
text effects, and a built-in animation tool. It even includes a built-in, what-you-see-is-
what-you-get Web page editor that even lets you incorporate Flash and video files
into the Web page.

PhotoImpact 7 also has vector tools that let you draw shapes and then automati-
cally enhance them with fill and 3-D effects. You can also place text on a vector
path. These effects are especially useful for creating flyers, business cards, and
the like. More importantly, they’re very handy for creating quick Web page art.
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Chapter 10 ✦ Choosing an Image-Editing Program 329

Image Editing for Beginners

and Special Effects
The programs in this section are aimed primarily at novices and casual hobbyists,
but they all do the essentials. More importantly, many of them create special
effects, such as printing gifts and cards and picture packages that are more versa-
tile than in more expensive programs. Because their prices are so low and they
offer these extra features, they are often purchased by pros as well.

Corel Picture Publisher Digital Camera Edition

The Digital Camera Edition of Picture Publisher has many of the same features as
the Professional version. However, the features have been pared down to make the
program a bit easier to use, more focused on processing pictures, and less focused
on creating technical illustrations. For $100 or less, the Digital Camera Edition does
most of what the Professional version does. The Professional version is covered
earlier in this chapter, so in this section I outline what the Digital Camera Edition
doesn’t offer:

✦ Customizable gradients, effects, and lighting effects

✦ CMYK support
✦ Kodak Color Management
✦ Bevel factory (a filter set for making beveled-edge letters and buttons)
✦ Web graphics tasks, such as rollovers, image slices, and optimization

Microsoft Picture It!

Three qualities really make Picture It! 2002 stand out:

✦ Picture It! has the most easily understood interface. This is because the
designers didn’t feel that you had to get entirely away from the look and feel
of a computer. So if you’ve used a computer, you’ll still know how to open and
save a file without having to crack the manual to find out which magical com-
bination of buttons to click.
✦ Picture It! offers fairly decent performance. It’s not nearly as quick as
Photoshop, but you won’t find yourself impatiently drumming your fingers
nearly as often as you will with Soap, FlashBox, or PhotoDeluxe.
✦ Picture It! has the best combination of home and business features. For
example, it includes templates for business cards, flyers, and certificates.
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330 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

Opening image files in Picture It! isn’t a magical or secret process; you simply use
the File ➪ Open command on the menu bar. As soon as you do so, you’re presented
with a wizard-type interface that lets you open files from any type of a drive
attached to your computer. All the latest trends in file formats are covered: Photo
CD, TIFF, GIF, JPEG, PNG, and Macintosh PICT. You can also open and automatically
rasterize several vector file formats: AutoCAD DXF, generic EPS (PostScript),
CorelDRAW, and enhanced metafiles. You can see the Picture It! user interface
in Figure 10-14.

Figure 10-14: The Picture It! user interface

Note Picture It! supports direct input from cameras that have a Photoshop plug-in mod-
ule installed and from scanners with TWAIN interfaces.

You can do all image processing either automatically by adjusting sliders while pre-
viewing the results in the workspace, or by brushing the adjustments into specific
areas. You can use the image processing controls for brightness/contrast, color bal-
ance, and transparency. You don’t have to turn previewing off and on — it’s always
working.
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Chapter 10 ✦ Choosing an Image-Editing Program 331

This is a two-disk set, so you have room for hundreds of photographs, including
skies and backgrounds. The program also uses layers, and you can see thumbnails
of each layer as you work. You can drag layers to reorder the stack and you can
switch from working on one layer to working on another by clicking the target
layer’s thumbnail.

Picture It! also has an edge-finding Lasso that should be imitated by everyone. It
drags a marquee to show the width of the pixels that it uses to search for an edge.
It’s a visual aid that is a big help when it comes to selecting exactly the edge pixels
that you want. Of course, no automatic tool is perfect.

The dust and scratches feature automatically removes dust spots, scratches, red-
eye, and wrinkles. Picture It! also has a Clone tool, so you can remove unsightly
trash and telephone lines from your pictures. Brush sizes are the same, regardless
of zoom level. This means that you have to zoom way out to make very large
strokes, or zoom way in to make very small ones.

Picture It! doesn’t create any permanent thumbnail files or contact sheets. You do
see thumbnails of any compatible graphics files as soon as you open a folder that
contains them.

Framing is a piece of cake. You choose the frame from a visual catalog, and then
drag the image from the filmstrip to the frame. The image is automatically placed
behind the frame. All you have to do is scale the image by dragging handles that
appear automatically. Unfortunately, the frame doesn’t rescale to fit the photo. If
the image is too small, you have to stretch it to fit — losing detail in the process.

Picture It! contains quite a few templates that are useful for business. These include
business cards, several types of business announcements and greeting cards, a
selection of flyers, and some certificates.

Picture It! lets you automatically send and e-mail greeting cards. You can also place
any number of the images on the filmstrip into a slide show and then e-mail the
slide show.

Ulead Photo Express

Photo Express (the full version) sells for a mere $12.95 and has a full range of quick-
edit features:

✦ E-mail attachments: The automatic attachment of photos to e-mails featured

by its big brother Ulead PhotoImpact 7 is also available in Photo Express.
✦ Visual browser: Photo Express has a visual browser that lets you open files
visually.
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332 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

✦ Imported files: You can import from a full range of scanners and cameras and
even capture stills from video cameras.
✦ Special effects: This program includes an extensive set of special effects fil-
ters that let you create weather effects in addition to the more familiar artistic
and warping effects found in other programs.
✦ Specialty printing options: The features that may convince you to easily
spend the money for this program are it’s specialty printing options (see
Figure 10-15), which include CD labels and covers, fabric transfers, and even
over-sized multi-sheet posters from your desktop printer.
✦ Photo sharing on the Web: Finally, this program includes extensive options
for sharing your photos on the Web, with the ability to create Web pages, Web
greeting cards, and make use of online image sharing sites.
✦ Panoramas: Photo Express also includes a separate program for stitching
360-degree panoramas.

Figure 10-15: The Photo Express screen showing the project printing dialog box
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Chapter 10 ✦ Choosing an Image-Editing Program 333

ArcSoft PhotoImpression 4.0

Unlike most of its competition, PhotoImpression 4.0 runs on both Windows XP and
Mac OS X. Most all of the standard photo-editing commands are available, as well as
red-eye removal and a stitching capability. You also get multi-layer capabilities, a
visual album for organizing and locating images, macros, and batch processing.

This is certainly one of the easiest and most transparent beginner programs
around. Try it — you’ll love it. The user interface is shown in Figure 10-16.

Figure 10-16: The PhotoImpression interface

MGI PhotoSuite 4
PhotoSuite 4 has a great interface for those who are most concerned with ease of use.
You choose almost every command from a button menu on the left. At most, you may
be presented with a few adjustment sliders, check boxes, and radio buttons.
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334 Part III ✦ Before You Edit an Image

PhotoSuite 4 includes a program that makes photo-mosaics. (Ulead calls these

photo-mosaics photo-tapestries.) Photo-mosaics are images that are made up of a
mosaic of small images, as shown in Figure 10-17. It is as if each pixel is an image
within the image. All it takes to create the “tapestry” is to collect the photos by
adding them to the tapestry title through the image browser and then choose a
number of images to use in describing the tapestry and a size for the tapestry.
Then you just click the Create button.

Figure 10-17: The MGI Photo Suite interface for making a photo-mosaic

PhotoSuite 4 also hosts one of the best and easiest-to-use panorama stitching pro-
grams that I’ve come across. You can instantly see how easy it is to use by taking a
look at the screen shot shown in Figure 10-18. I actually took the pictures in my stu-
dio during the East Bay Open Studios showing last year with a handheld camera
using only daylight.

Cross- Chapter 16 explains how to shoot a panorama correctly so that the image stitches
Reference
together seamlessly.
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Chapter 10 ✦ Choosing an Image-Editing Program 335

Figure 10-18: A hand-held panorama stitched in MGI PhotoSuite 4

Summary
In this chapter, I introduced you to the special qualities of the most prominent
choices in image-editing software. With digital cameras now consuming nearly 30
percent of all new camera sales (exclusive of disposable cameras), it’s doubtless
that new image-editing software will arrive as fast as your head can spin. So, if
you’re on a budget, start with the program that came with your camera. As soon
as you’re dissatisfied with what you can do (or with how that program does it) and
you can invest a bit more, move up to Photoshop Elements. You’ll be able to do
most everything the pros can do, and you’ll get pertinent training for the day when
you become totally consumed by digital photography. When that day comes, move
up to Photoshop. By then, you’ll be making so much money that you can afford to
spend the pennies that the other programs charge for being able to contribute their
unique talents to the interpretation of your digital photos.

✦ ✦ ✦
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15549510 PP04.F 8/22/02 2:40 PM Page 337

P A R T

Image-Editing IV
Software ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Part

P art IV is no longer simply a catalog of what’s available in

image-editing software. I’ve categorized the capabilities
of the most popular of the image-editing programs into the
Chapter 11
Essential Image
Editing
various types of jobs that they perform and even provided
Chapter 12
specific lessons that show you how to do some particularly
Special Effects
cool and useful things. Using image-editing software is such a
Solutions
rich and complex topic that I’ve had to devote four chapters
to the subject. The first chapter covers essential image-editing
procedures, or the procedures that you use every day. Then I Chapter 13
discuss how to achieve the most commonly needed special Advanced Image
effects with procedures that you can use in either Photoshop Editing
or Photoshop Elements. Next, I cover more advanced, or
pro-level, editing procedures — the effects that require an Chapter 14
advanced professional tool such as Photoshop 7. Finally, you Photopainting
get to find out how some of today’s great artists are express-
ing themselves through paintings based on photographs. ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
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16549510 ch11.F 8/22/02 2:41 PM Page 339

Essential
Image Editing
11
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Chapter

T he members of the Adobe Photoshop family of editors

are the undisputed champions of image-editing products
among professionals and serious digital-photography addicts.
Choosing Quick
Fixes

Applying instant
There are two current versions:
effects
✦ Photoshop 7: This program is for power-hungry die-
hards who stop at nothing when it comes to the power Tweaking image
to manage, tweak, express and publish their photos. characteristics

✦ Photoshop Elements 2.0: This program is for those Retouching images

needing a less expensive and demanding subset of the
same tools that at least covers the basics. Expanding the image
to fit a layout
The second of these two products is the topic of this chapter.
You should know, however, that you can also do everything in Making a composite
this chapter in Photoshop 7 — more often than not, in exactly image
the same way. When that is not the case, I point out the differ-
ences so you can take advantage of the tutorials in this chap-
Controlling image
ter, regardless of which version of the Photoshop tools you’re
sharpness
using.

Finally, I don’t mean to imply that Photoshop tools are the

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
only worthy image editors. In fact, after spending most of the
last two decades reviewing image-editing software I have to
say that I’ve rarely met an image-editing package that I didn’t
like in at least some respect. Most functionality in these chap-
ters can be accomplished in any of the established image-
editing programs.

Employing Quick Fixes

This section is devoted to operations that anyone, regardless
of experience, can manage by loading nearly any modern
image-editing program — and then choosing a single menu
item, clicking a button or two, or pressing a key combination.
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340 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Best of all, these techniques almost always do an adequate job if you can settle for
less than perfection — for example, when lack of experience or lack of time pre-
vents you from using a more complicated or advanced technique.

Although nothing can really substitute for the specific camera settings that most
flatter the final photograph, your digital darkroom does give you a big advantage
when it comes to recovering from mistakes. For example, instant exposure correc-
tion can give you a picture that is as technically as perfect as possible, given the
amount of data captured. Figure 11-1 shows an example of such a correction.

Figure 11-1: The original exposure (left) and the result of the Auto Levels
command in Photoshop Elements (right)

Photoshop Elements has one of the coolest instant-correction commands in any

image-editing program: Quick Fix. This command brings up a dialog box that lets
you instantly see “Before” and “After” images for several categories of Quick Fixes.
In the next few sections, I show you how to make the instant corrections that are
available in the Quick Fixes dialog box. Each exercise uses a specific file on this
book’s CD-ROM that dramatizes what these commands specifically do. (Of course,
you can use your own files if you’d rather.) At the end of each exercise, I give you
alternative commands for doing the same thing through an individual menu
command in both Photoshop Elements 2.0 and Photoshop 7.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 341

Using Auto Contrast

If you like the approximate color balance (overall color shade or tint) of your
image — but find the contrast between shades of gray too obvious or too subtle —
then Auto Contrast is the Quick Fix to use. (In case you’re wondering, Auto Contrast
does change the color balance, but doesn’t do so as accurately as the Color Levels
command described later in the chapter.)

1. Open the file Alameda Beach-Winter from the CD-ROM.

2. Choose Enhance ➪ Quick Fix.
The Quick Fix dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 11-2.

Figure 11-2: The Quick Fix dialog box, with the result of Auto
Contrast showing in the preview window

3. Select the Brightness radio button in the Adjustment Category column.

4. Select the Auto Contrast radio button in the Select Adjustment column.
5. Click the Apply button.
You see the result of the application in the right hand preview window labeled
“After.”
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342 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

6. If you are through making Quick Fixes, click the OK button.

Alternatively, you can add other Quick Fixes to the result you already have
before you finalize the result in your image. Also, if you don’t like the results
you see, then at any point before you click OK, click the Reset Image button. It
gives you the choice to start over or cancel.

Tip It is best to add other Quick Fixes before you click the OK button. Doing so allows
Photoshop Elements to do all the necessary recalculation on the original image in
one step, which reduces the loss of image information.

The Auto Contrast command appears on its own in both Photoshop 7 and
Photoshop Elements 2.0; you can activate it by pressing Opt/Alt + Shift + Cmd/Ctrl +
L. To reach the menu command in Photoshop Elements, choose Enhance ➪ Auto
Contrast. To reach the menu command in Photoshop 7.0, choose Image ➪ Adjust ➪
Auto Contrast.

Note Many commands on the Photoshop Elements Enhance menu are also available on
the Photoshop 7 Image ➪ Adjust menu.

Using Auto Levels

The Auto Levels command automatically adjusts Levels so the colors in each
channel stretch from absolute black to absolute white, which is the same principle
as Ansel Adams’s famous “Zone System.” In the process, it also corrects color by
balancing each primary channel. In the section called Using Levels, below, I show
you how to do this manually so you can make your own decisions about color bal-
ance and give an individual image the “feeling” you want it to convey. Here’s how
you do it with a Photoshop Elements Quick Fix:

1. Open the file Alameda Beach-Winter from the CD-ROM.

2. Choose Enhance ➪ Quick Fix.
The Quick Fix dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 11-3.
3. Select the Color Correction radio button in the Select Adjustment Category
column.
4. Click the Apply button.
Before you click OK to finalize the operation, you may want to see what
happens if you go back and add the Auto Contrast command to the mix.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 343

Figure 11-3: The Quick Fix dialog box showing the correct settings
for Auto Levels correction

The Auto Levels command also appears on its own in both Photoshop 7 and
Photoshop Elements 2.0, and you can execute the command by pressing Shift +
Cmd/Ctrl + L. To reach the menu command in Photoshop Elements, choose
Enhance ➪ Auto Levels. To reach the menu command in Photoshop 7.0, choose
Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Auto Levels.

Correcting color
If you want to further color correct the image, you can click the Color Balance
and Hue/Saturation buttons in the Quick Fix dialog box, which appears when you
choose Enhance ➪ Quick Fix. When you click the Auto Color radio button, you can
see the result in the After preview window. If you like what you see, click the Apply
button. If you click the Hue/Saturation radio button, the Hue/Saturation dialog box
appears. However, because you’re working in Quick Fix mode, these controls
(Apply Hue/Saturation) appear directly in the third column of the dialog box,
as shown in Figure 11-4.
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344 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 11-4: The Quick Fix dialog box, showing the proper settings
for changing Hue and Saturation

You can adjust several settings in the Hue/Saturation dialog box:

✦ Hue: To change the overall color tint (color balance) of the image, drag the
Hue slider. After you stop adjusting the slider, give the program time to recal-
culate the color balance so you can preview the effect. You can keep changing
this setting until what you see pleases you.
✦ Saturation: When you’ve got the tint the way you want it, drag the Saturation
slider until the predominant colors are as intense as you’d want them to be.
✦ Lightness: Finally, you can change the overall brightness of the image by
dragging the Lightness slider above the midpoint to brighten the image or
below the midpoint to darken it.

After you’ve finished adjusting the color, you can either add another Quick Fix set-
ting or click OK to permanently alter this copy of the image.

If you’re using Photoshop 7, you can reach the Hue/Saturation dialog box directly
by choosing Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Hue/Saturation and then adjust the three sliders as
just described. The shortcut to the Hue/Settings dialog box is Cmd/Ctrl + U.

Note One important difference between Photoshop Elements and Photoshop 7 is that
Photoshop 7 (and earlier professional versions of Photoshop) have buttons in
the dialog box that let you Load or Save the settings you’ve just made. You can
then name these settings so you can load and apply them to a whole series of
photographs.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 345

Using Fill Flash

Sometimes you have to take a picture when the light is too contrasty and you just
don’t have an external flash that’s bright enough to fill the shadows as much as
you’d like. Even more likely, you have to shoot a scene in bright sunlight that’s too
high in contrast for any flash to fill the shadows effectively (or, more importantly,
evenly). Photoshop offers several ways to correct this problem, but none as easy as
the Fill Flash command in Photoshop Elements, which can also be accessed by
choosing Enhance ➪ Fill Flash or by combining the Fill Flash with the other effects
in the Quick Fix dialog box, as shown in Figure 11-5.

1. Open the file Jane’s Window from the CD-ROM.

Notice that the hills and tree branch are in silhouette because I wanted to
expose for the color in the sunset sky. I might have been able to get a little
detail in the tree branches with fill flash, but detail on the hillside would’ve
been hopeless in any case.
2. In Photoshop Elements, choose Enhance ➪ Quick Fix.
The Quick Fix dialog box appears.

Figure 11-5: The Quick Fix dialog box, showing the correct Fill
Flash settings for this particular image

3. Select the Brightness radio button (unless it’s already on).

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346 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

4. In the Select Adjustment column, select the Fill Flash radio button.
The Fill Flash dialog box appears in the third column.
5. Drag the Lighter slider just to the point where the shadows show enough
detail.
Be careful not to set the fill brightness so high that it creates objectionable
artifacts (noise) in the lighter portions of the image.
6. You may want to drag the Saturation slider to the right until the shadow
detail takes on a more lively appearance.
This technique is often useful because the objects in very dark shadows have
been so compressed in their brightness range that they may appear flat and
lifeless, lacking in color intensity. Pumping up the saturation corrects that
problem, and if you do it here, you won’t have to do it later in a separate step.
7. When you like what you see, either click OK to complete the operation or
continue to make other Quick Fixes for this image.

An alternative to the Fill Flash command

If you’re working in an older version of Photoshop that has no Fill Flash command
per se, you can still accomplish the same thing by using one of my favorite tricks
(especially if you’re using Photoshop Elements). Here’s the advantage: You can
control the amount of “fill flash” on any given object by painting a darker or lighter
level of gray on the fill-flash layer that you create in the upcoming steps. Another
advantage is that as long as you don’t merge the fill-flash layer or flatten the image,
you can change the brightness of the fill flash at any time. This is very useful if you
might later add another object on a layer above the fill-flash layer; the composite
image is likelier to look realistic. Here’s how it’s done in Photoshop:

1. Open the file Jane’s Window from the CD-ROM.

2. Make sure the Layers palette is visible.
If necessary, choose Window ➪ Show Layers.
3. Make sure the layer you want to fill-flash is selected, and then click the New
Layer button at the bottom of the Layers palette, as shown in Figure 11-6.
A new, transparent, layer appears above the currently selected layer.
4. Choose Softlight from the Blend Mode menu in the layers palette.
5. Choose Edit ➪ Fill.
The Fill dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 11-7.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 347

Figure 11-6: The Layers

palette, shown with the
proper settings for this
exercise

Figure 11-7: The Fill dialog box

6. Choose White from the Contents menu, Normal from the Blend menu, enter
100 in the Opacity field, and then click OK.
The image immediately shows the maximum amount of fill-flash effect.
7. To lower the intensity of the fill-flash effect, drag either the Opacity or the
Fill slider until you like what you see.
To put the slider on-screen, click the down arrow to the right of the field. If
you don’t feel you need to lower the brightness of the fill on any of the objects
in the scene, you can stop here.
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348 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

8. To darken (burn in) specific fill areas, choose a 50% gray as your fore-
ground color.
Click the foreground swatch to bring up the Color Picker dialog box, which is
shown in Figure 11-8.

Figure 11-8: The Photoshop and Photoshop

Elements color pickers are identical.

9. Enter 125 into each RG and B field and click OK.

The foreground color is now just slightly lighter than 50% gray.
10. Choose the Paintbrush.
11. In the Paintbrush Options Bar, choose the brush size you want to retouch
with and its softness from the Brush palette.
You access the brush palette by clicking the down arrow just to the right of
the Brush Style icon. Drag the slider to choose the brush size you want;
choose the stroke style from the visual menu.
12. Stroke in the image to darken the areas of the fill that you want to darken.
You can change the degree of darkness by changing the opacity of the stroke
in the brush’s Options Bar.

Note I recommended gray rather than black for the brush color because it’s easier to
make the change in fill intensity more subtle. You can, however, use black and
simply use the Opacity slider to control the intensity. There is no absolutely right or
wrong way.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 349

Correcting backlighting
Correcting washed out (blocked up) highlights can be accomplished by using the
Correct Backlighting command in Photoshop Elements 2.0, but it can also be done
with the Quick Fix dialog box. You can use this technique to achieve effects like
dramatizing the sky at sunset.

Note Correct Backlighting cannot cure the problem of completely blocked (absolutely
white) highlights. The highlights must contain at least some color.

1. Open the file Jane’s Window from the CD-ROM.

2. In Photoshop Elements, choose Enhance ➪ Quick Fix.
The Quick Fix dialog box appears.
3. Select the Adjust Backlighting radio button.
The Backlight dialog box appears in column three.
4. Drag the Backlighting slider to the right — about one-third of the way.
You want the darkness of the sky to match the darkness in the original.
5. Click OK.
Figure 11-9 shows the correct settings for this exercise.

Figure 11-9: The Quick Fixes dialog box, showing the

Backlighting settings
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350 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Converting to grayscale
Converting an image to grayscale can be done in many ways, but the two most pop-
ular use the Image ➪ Mode ➪ Grayscale command or (in Photoshop Pro only) the
Image ➪ Desaturate command. If you use the Image ➪ Mode ➪ Grayscale approach
and you want to continue to work in color (as you would if you wanted to “hand
color” certain areas of the image), then you have to immediately issue the Image ➪
Mode ➪ RGB command to put the (now) grayscale image back into color mode.

One advantage of professional-level Photoshop 7 (and earlier) programs is that you

can remove all the color without switching modes, just Choose Image ➪ Adjust ➪
Desaturate. Instantly, the color’s gone, but you’re still in the original color mode. I
can’t show you the result of hand-coloring in this section of the book because it’s
black and white, but you can open the file Deborah Shaded on the CD to see a very
nice example of the technique.

Note If you’re going to have your photo published in black and white, you may want to
use the techniques given here to preview it in grayscale. If you do so by using the
Desaturate command, you can immediately return it to color by using the Undo
command. Photoshop Elements users have to use the History palette to restore
the image to its original state.

Converting to black and white

When I say “black and white,” I am not talking continuous tones from black to
white. Technically, that’s what grayscale (the topic of the previous section) is all
about. Turning an image into pure black and white can create a great deal of drama.
It’s also very effective for making images that can be easily printed on any copy
machine or low-cost one-color printer. Figure 11-10 shows an image that has been
converted to black and white from a full range of tones.

Figure 11-10: The result of converting grayscale to black and white

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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 351

The trick to making a good black and white picture is in finding the right dividing
line between what gets interpreted as pure black and what gets interpreted as pure
white. In any Photoshop program, you can do so easily by using the Threshold
command:

1. Open the file Tree and Sea from the book’s CD-ROM.
2. Choose Image ➪ Adjustments ➪ Threshold.
The Threshold dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 11-11.

Figure 11-11: The Threshold dialog box, superimposed over the

image that you are converting to black and white

3. Drag the threshold slider from side to side to see what effect various
thresholds have.
4. When you find the compromise that is best for your purposes, click OK.
Tip Showing detail in some portions of the image is easy if you duplicate the image
layer and then use the steps just given when you want to adjust different thresh-
olds for each layer. Then erase those portions of the top layer that you don’t want
to keep in the photograph. You can erase large areas of the layer by selecting them
with one of the marquee tools and then pressing the Delete key. (It’s more practi-
cal to erase smaller areas by choosing the Eraser tool.)
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352 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Turning an Image into a Poster

You can easily simplify an image into fewer colors to get something that looks more
like a Toulouse Lautrec Moulin Rouge poster than a photograph. This is a very easy
way to make illustrations for Web pages that can be optimized to very small files
because they contain only a limited number of colors. You can choose to use as
many as 256 colors in a posterized image, which is one way to produce a 256 color
GIF image that can look very photographic — specially if the image is going to be
shown at a very small size. I personally like the results (not to mention the perfor-
mance) that you get when you reduce the image to very few colors (e.g. between
three and sixteen). The image in Figure 11-12 shows the original photograph and
the way it looks in 8 colors. You can see that posterized images can also be very
effective in grayscale.

Figure 11-12: A full-range photo and a posterized version of the same image

Tip If you use a professional version of Photoshop and you want to create an image
that you can print in a limited number of custom colors (such as Pantone colors),
just posterize the image to the number of colors you want to use. Then you can
use the Magic Wand tool (make sure Contiguous is unchecked in the Options Bar)
to select each color individually and then fill with that color by opening the Color
Picker and clicking the Custom Color button. You can then choose the color book
you want to pick the color from, and pick the custom color. It appears as your fore-
ground color. Then you just fill the selection with the color you’ve picked. Repeat
the process for each posterized color.

Making a posterized image is easy:

1. Open the file West Marin Hills from the CD-ROM.

2. Choose Image ➪ Adjustments ➪ Posterize.
The Posterize dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 11-13.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 353

Figure 11-13: The Posterize dialog box

with the correct settings for this exercise

3. Select Preview.
You can instantly see the effect of the number of colors you enter directly on
the image.
4. In the Levels field, enter the number of colors you want to use in the image.
You can experiment with this as much as you like to get the degree of image
abstraction you’re looking for.
5. When you’re satisfied, click OK.

Tip Of course, you won’t be able to control the shapes in the image if you must use a
specified number of colors. In that case, duplicate the image several times and use
the Brightness/Contrast controls to set the image to different levels of contrast.
Then you can posterize each image and pick the one in which you like the shapes
the most.

Creating Instant Effects

Photoshop Elements doesn’t let you automate the execution of a sequence of com-
mands, but you can use macros that have been created for you to execute a number
of very useful routines. These automated routines are called Effects and can be
accessed by choosing them from the Effects palette. By default, the Effects palette
appears in the Palette Well (the long gray bar at the upper-right side of the Elements
Task bar). Effects are unique to Photoshop Elements, although you could create
them by using Actions in any professional version of Photoshop since 5.5.

The lovely thing about Effects is that you choose them from a palette of thumbnails.
Each thumbnail illustrates what the effect does. To make the Effect happen on the
currently active layer, just drag its thumbnail onto the image. Alternatively, you can
click a thumbnail to select it and then click the Apply button or double-click the
desired thumbnail.

After you open the Effects palette, you can choose to look at Effects by category or
you can see them displayed all at the same time. Categories are Frames, Textures,
Text Effects, and Image Effects. You can choose any of these categories from the
Effects palettes Categories menu, or choose All to see them all at once.
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354 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

At first it may seem that these effects simply overlap with filters. That’s almost true,
but achieving the same result as using an Effects would require the use of multiple
user settings in each of several filter dialog boxes — each applied in the same order
as in the Effect.

As is the case with most Photoshop commands, Effects are applied to the currently
selected layer. If you want them to apply to the entire image, first duplicate (choose
Image ➪ Duplicate) and flatten (choose Layer ➪ Flatten Image) the layers in the
duplicated image. Of course, if the only layer in the image is the Background layer,
then no worries.

Each Effects category is illustrated in Figures 11-14 through 11-17:

Figure 11-14: A Frame Effect called Wood Frame

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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 355

Figure 11-15: A Texture Effect called Asphalt

Figure 11-16: A Text Effect called Brushed Metal

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356 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 11-17: An Image Effect called Brushed Metal

Tweaking Image Characteristics

This section deals with methods for controlling the basic image characteristics
using techniques that give you a finer degree of control over a given aspect of the
image’s final appearance. All the same, these are techniques that are still easy
enough for anyone to tackle.

Sizing, cropping, and rotating

You may want more control over sizing, cropping, and rotating images than the
Quick Fixes in Photoshop Elements provide for several reasons:

✦ Save memory: Disk space is precious and image files tend to be dispropor-
tionately large compared to other types of data (except analog sound and
video). Therefore, you want to throw out data you definitely know you’re not
going to use.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 357

✦ Increase resolution: You may need to output to a size that requires more
resolution than your camera or scanner can produce.
✦ Improve composition: There may be more stuff in the picture than you want
your viewers to see because its presence spoils the composition or detracts
from the subject.
✦ Optimize for the Web: You want to minimize the image size and the complex-
ity of its data for optimal Web performance.
✦ Correct distortion: You need to correct the perspective distortion that occurs
when you have to shoot an object that is at an angle and has parallel sides,
such as large building, in order to fit the whole object within the frame.

These problems are so common that if you fix them first, you’ll generally have an
easier time with the later steps.

Using the Marquee tool

Using the Rectangular Marquee tool is the most accurate way to crop if you need to
crop portions of an image that are close to the border. The Cropping tool automati-
cally snaps to the edge of the frame if it’s within a few pixels of that edge. Also, you
can set the Marquee to an exact size, which ensures that the image is exactly the
right size or proportion (which is especially useful when you want to crop a whole
series of images to the same size). Follow these steps to use the Marquee tool to
crop the image to a particular proportion:

1. Open the file Modern Metal Tabletop from the CD-ROM in Photoshop or
Photoshop Elements.
This shot, as is typical of many digital cameras, has the proportions of a
35mm film frame. Suppose you want the image to fit an 8 x 10-inch frame. To
accomplish this, you want the crop to fit a 1:1.25 proportion. (You can get the
proportion for any image by dividing the value for the short side of the target
frame into that of the long side of the target frame.) In this instance, the pic-
ture has a “landscape” orientation (wider than tall), so we want the exact
height.
2. In the Rectangular Marquee’s Options Bar, choose Fixed Aspect Ration from
the Style menu.
3. In the Options Bar, enter 1.25 in the Width field and 1 in the Height field.
The Info palette is shown in Figure 11-18.
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358 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 11-18: The Info palette can always be used to report the size of any
rectangular selection. It’s a good idea to keep your unit preferences set to pixels.

4. Click in the image.

The marquee instantly delineates the precisely proportioned cropping
frame — no matter what overall size you drag it to. Make sure that the
marquee’s dotted line is showing on all four sides. Otherwise, your cropped
image won’t have the correct proportions.
5. Choose Image ➪ Crop.
6. Choose File ➪ Save As.
Save the cropped image with a new name. (You should never obliterate the
original by writing over it.) In the Save As dialog box, choose a file format that
is not lossy (PSD if you want to preserve the layers, TIF for the widest range of
compatibility with other programs). Be sure to add the name of your file for-
mat’s extension to the end of the file so it can be read across platforms.

Because you have cropped the image (and especially because you have cropped it
proportionately), you may want to resize later.

Using the Cropping tool

The Cropping tool is the best mechanism for quickly trimming when exact finished
proportions are not a problem. For instance, suppose you need a picture to give to
your significant other and you only have one, with your arms around your old flame.
You just grab the Cropping tool from the toolbox and drag diagonally across the
part of the picture you want to keep. You can fine-tune the exact area to be trimmed
by dragging any bounding-box handle. You can also drag the handles in such a way
as to rotate the cropping marquee or stretch its side to correct for perspective dis-
tortion. When everything is adjusted just the way you like it, double-click inside the
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 359

bounding box. Photoshop instantly trims all layers of the picture. If the marquee
was rotated, the image is automatically rotated. If the frame was stretched to cor-
rect distortion, Photoshop automatically re-draws the image with straightened
edges that fit neatly within the original frame.

To interactively trim the image to new proportions:

1. Open the file Angel Island from the CD-ROM.

2. Choose the Crop tool from the Toolbox.
The Crop tool Options Bar appears. If you like, you can enter an exact size for
the Crop tool, but skip that for now and just crop interactively for the most
pleasing aesthetic effect.
3. Drag from the approximate location of the upper-left corner to the approxi-
mate location of the lower-left corner.
You can fine-tune the exact shape of the time after you’ve placed the marquee,
as shown in Figure 11-19. Notice that after you have placed the marquee, the
Options Bar’s options change.

Figure 11-19: Cropping with rotation

The horizon line in the original picture isn’t horizontal, so you want to rotate
the image slightly. This is a better time to rotate because the image is straight
within the frame; you don’t have to crop in a separate step (as you would if
you rotated with the Free Transform command).
4. To rotate the image, just place the cursor outside any corner of the cropping
marquee.
The cursor changes to a curved arrow to notify you that dragging will rotate
the marquee. Stop rotating the image when the horizon line is straight.
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360 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

5. Drag the center handles so the framing is as you like it.

Make sure that all edges are inside the boundaries of the original image.
6. When you’re happy with the way the picture is framed, press Return/Enter
or click the Checkmark in the Options Bar.

Follow these steps, which only apply to Photoshop 7, to crop and correct perspec-
tive at the same time:

1. Open the file Yellow Bay Window from the book’s CD-ROM.
2. Choose the Marquee tool.
The Marquee tool’s Options Bar appears.
3. In the Options Bar, check the Perspective box.
4. One corner at a time, drag the corner so the vertical and horizontal lines
in the building are parallel to the edges of the marquee, as shown in
Figure 11-20.

Figure 11-20: Arranging the corners of the marquee

to correct perspective
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 361

5. When you’re satisfied with the way the marquee looks, click the Commit
button (big checkmark) in the Options Bar.
The image is transformed to look like the one in Figure 11-21.

Figure 11-21: The bay window, cropped to simultaneously

correct perspective

Resizing
In order to make an image a different size than the original without cropping, you
have to add or subtract pixels. After all, resolution is nothing more than pixels-
per-inch. If the picture is to be made larger, the pixels would appear to be larger
because you’d simply do the required multiplication of pixels. You can force
Photoshop to do it that way, but it leads to those chunky-looking images that used
to be typical of digital imagery. Today’s programs use much more sophisticated
techniques for something called resampling, in which the program tries to shade
the duplicated pixels so their color and intensity fall in-between those of their
neighbors instead of simply multiplying or subtracting pixels. Usually, the result
is a smooth-shaded image with soft edges. In Figure 11-22, you see a segment of an
image at its original size and two versions that have been magnified by 400 percent.
Notice that in the middle image, there is a pronounced “square pixel” effect that
results from simply reproducing each pixel sixteen times. This is called nearest
neighbor resampling because each additional pixel is a copy of its nearest neighbor.
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362 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

The image at the far right has been resampled using bicubic interpolation so the
new pixels form a subtle gradient between pixels that were formerly neighbors.

Figure 11-22: The image on the far right appears to have much higher resolution
than the one in the middle. However, the middle image doesn’t actually contain
more detail, so the edges look fuzzy.

Of course, you notice that the hard-edged lines still show some stairstepping, even
though it’s less pronounced than in the middle image. That’s because the pixels that
form the edges (lines) and those that form the background contrast so abruptly that
the program can’t put enough pixels in between to form a smooth transition.

The other drawback is that the picture is softer; it appears to be slightly out of
focus because the pixels that form the edges are blended. You can fix this problem
with an Unsharp Mask filter, but doing so makes the edges a bit more jagged.

Using the Levels command

If you’re still using Photoshop Elements 1.0, you can use the Levels command
just as you would in any professional version of Photoshop. The latest version of
Photoshop Elements omits the Levels command; the idea was to make it easier
for beginners to use.

The Levels command presents you with a chart that shows how many of the
image’s pixels are at a given level of brightness along a horizontal line. This chart,
called a histogram, is shown in Figure 11-23.

The Levels controls, accessed through the Levels dialog box, represent the quickest
and most efficient way to ensure that your image contains a full range of tones
while the midtone values are as bright as you want them to be — unlike the image
in Figure 11-24.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 363

Figure 11-23: The Input Levels histogram

(the shape that looks like the silhouette
of a mountain range) shows the number
of pixels assigned to each level of brightness.

Figure 11-24: A photographer would describe this image as flat or muddy.

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364 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

To give this picture a full range of tones that would be the envy of Ansel Adams,
follow these steps:

1. Open the file Yellow Bike from the CD-ROM in Photoshop.

2. Zoom in to at least 100 percent so you can easily judge the brightness of
very small areas.
3. Choose the Eyedropper tool.
4. Choose Window ➪ (Show) Info.
The Info dialog box appears.
5. Drag the eyedropper over what appears to you to be the brightest pixels in
the image.
Watch the RGB values change in the Info dialog box. When the eyedropper
shows the highest number, you have found the lightest spot in the image.
Make a mental note of exactly where that spot is.

Note Sometimes you may want the lightest and darkest spots in the final image to be
different from those that are actually lightest and darkest. That is a perfectly legiti-
mate subjective and artistic choice.

6. Choose Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Levels. (Choose Image ➪ Enhance ➪

Brightness/Contrast ➪ Levels in Photoshop Elements 1.0.)
The Levels dialog box appears. Ensure that the Preview box is checked.
7. Choose the White eyedropper, and click the lightest spot in the image (or
the spot that you want to be the lightest).
The image instantly brightens (as shown in Figure 11-25).
8. Choose the Black eyedropper, and click the darkest spot in the picture.
When you click, the entire image darkens, and you see a full range of tones
from black to white. If you’re satisfied with the result at this point, your work
is done. Most of the time, however, you can improve the image considerably
by changing the gamma. (You want gamma? Boost the gamma.)

In the example shown in Figure 11-26, I wanted to raise the gamma (brighten the
value of the pixels that are currently 50 percent gray). When I do so, Photoshop
raises the other tonal values in a smooth curve from the brightest point to the
darkest point (as do most other professional image processors).
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 365

Figure11-25: Clicking the

brightest highlight on the white
fender with the White eyedropper
makes this the white point in the
image. Any pixels that were
actually brighter will now be
white as well.

Figure 11-26: I wanted to make

the midtones brighter, so I
moved the midtone pointer to
the left until the preview showed
me the result I liked.
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366 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

You probably don’t want to use the Gray (middle) eyedropper. It changes the color
balance so you get a neutral 50 percent gray as that color and all the other colors in
the image are adjusted accordingly. This evenly affects the overall color balance of
the image. This is fine if you’re shooting a series of photos for an illustration. Just
place your Kodak gray card in the scene, shoot a frame, and then take it out. You
can then digitize this frame, set the values for the image as described earlier, and
then click the Gray eyedropper on the Kodak Gray card. Bingo! You’ve achieved
perfectly accurate color (white) balance. You can now change the midtone value
by dragging the gray slider — without affecting color balance.

Using the Variations option

Photoshop 7 and even Photoshop Elements 2.0 offer several ways to get rid of
unwanted color casts — that is, to establish proper (or at least, desirable) overall
color balance. The trouble is, it’s often difficult to judge what really looks best
unless you have something to compare it to. Some photographers even make sev-
eral prints using different color balance techniques, scribble notes on the prints as
to which technique to use, and then make the final print based on what looked best
in the test under room light. In fact, that’s still one of the best ways to do it. In fact, I
know some extremely picky photographers who wouldn’t do it any other way.

The Photoshop family of image editors offer a similar method that much easier
because it’s more or less automatic. Operations are identical in Photoshop pro
products and Photoshop Elements 1.0, but they’ve been even further simplified in
Photoshop Elements 2.0. Remember, however, that the guiding principles are the
same in all the post-Photoshop 5.0 products: You look at a contact sheet that shows
the image interpreted by different color variations. To correct your image, you click
on the one that looks best to you in comparison to all others. The color balance of
your image then changes to match your choice. If you then want to tweak your
choice, you can look for another thumbnail that looks even better than the one
you just picked. Click the thumbnail that represents an improvement and it further
modifies the image. You just keep going until you’re happy — then click OK.

The only difference between the way Variations work in Photoshop Elements 2.0,
as compared to other versions of Photoshop that use Variations, is that Photoshop
Elements 2.0 presents you with few thumbnails and settings to choose from. This
makes it easier to make up your mind about which effect you select. Figures 11-27
and 11-28 show you the Variations dialog boxes for Photoshop 7 and Photoshop
Elements 2.0.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 367

Figure 11-27: The Photoshop Elements 2.0 Color Variations dialog box

Follow these steps to improve color balance by using Variations in Photoshop

Elements 2.0:

1. Open the file Bar Tattoos from the book’s CD-ROM.

2. Choose Enhance ➪ Color Variations (For Photoshop 7 and earlier, the com-
mand is Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Variations).
The Variations dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 11-27 and Figure 11-28.
3. Click to turn on the Midtones button.
Making corrections to the mid-tones generally does the job. The exception is
generally when nearby surroundings or deliberately-colored lights (such as a
neon sign) cast a shade that is visible mostly or only in highlights or shadows.
4. Experiment with clicking the thumbnails.
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368 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 11-28: The Photoshop 7 Variations dialog box

As you can see, this picture has a bit too much green and a bit too much yel-
low. You can click any or all of the thumbnails to see what they do to the pre-
view, then click Undo to restore them to the previous state. You can even do a
lot of experimentation and then click the Reset Image button to revert to the
original image and start all over again if you want.
5. To correct this image, click the Add Green thumbnail.
As you can see in the preview, this looks much better. However, you’ll notice
that all the thumbnails change to reflect the first change, and now the Add
Yellow button looks a little better than the After image now looks.
6. Click the Yellow button, and its effect is added to the After image.
You could keep going, but for now, that’s enough. If the exposure were a little
off or you wanted to add or subtract either brightness or color intensity by
clicking the appropriate radio buttons and then clicking your choice of
thumbnails.
7. When you are totally satisfied with the result, click OK.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 369

Note The Photoshop 7 version of this procedure also lets you set the intensity of the
change. At the top of the dialog box, you see a bar divided into six parts. If you
drag the slider to the right, the effect increases. Drag the slider to the left and the
effect decreases.

Adding a color tint

Sometimes you just want to change the overall shade of the photo for pure effect.
You could use your image editor’s Color Balance command (Photoshop 7 Image ➪
Adjust ➪ Color Balance). However, when what you’re after is an effect, Photoshop
Professional’s Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Hue/Saturation is a very quick, efficient and interac-
tive tool. You can just click the Preview checkbox to see the results of your changes
and drag the Hue slider from side to side until you like what you see. The
Hue/Saturation dialog box is shown in Figure 11-29.

Figure 11-29: The Photoshop 7 Hue/

Saturation dialog box

Tip If you click the Colorize checkbox, the whole image becomes toned in the shade
you drag the slider to. Try duplicating the layer (drag it to the New Layer icon at the
bottom of the Layers palette), and then use the Hue/Saturation dialog box to cre-
ate a monochromatic layer of the image on the top layer. Now experiment with
changing the opacity of the top layer — and also with changing Blend mode on the
top layer. (You choose these from the Modes menu in the Layers palette menu.)

Another easy way to tint an image, which works equally well in any Photoshop
product, is to create a new top layer, and then fill it with exactly the color you want
to tint with. Then all you have to do is choose Color from the Layer palette’s Blend
Mode menu. If you don’t want the tint to be a solid color, drag the solid-color layer’s
Opacity slider to the left until you see the effect you want.
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Using the Burn tool

Sometimes the only picture you’ve taken of a subject has highlights that appear to
be totally blocked to white. If there’s even the smallest amount of detail in the base
image, here’s a trick to let you add some detail to those starkly white areas:

1. Open the file Clouds from the CD-ROM.

Notice that some sunlit portions of the clouds have no detail at all.
2. From the Toolbox, choose the Burn tool.
3. From the Burn tool’s Options Bar, choose a large, soft brush.
4. In the Burn tool’s Options Bar, choose Highlights from the Range menu, as
shown in Figure 11-30.
5. In the Exposure field, enter a fairly small number.
I suggest around 15%.

Figure 11-30: The Burn tool’s Options Bar, showing the

settings used in this exercise

6. Gradually click or drag in the highlight areas.

Detail slowly begins to appear, as shown at the right in Figure 11-31.

Figure 11-31: Notice the detail in the highlighted area of the clouds in the photo on
the right.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 371

Using the Screen mode

When you need a low-contrast, bright image to use as a background under type
(very cool on Web pages), here’s a simple way to get it:

1. Open the file Donna Profile from the CD-ROM.

2. If you want the image to be really light, choose Enhance ➪
Brightness/Contrast ➪ Brightness/Contrast.
The Brightness/Contrast dialog box appears.
3. Drag the Brightness slider to brighten the image, and then drag the
Contrast slider to a lower level to lower the overall contrast.
Photographers call this “flattening” the image.
4. Choose Window ➪ Show Layers (unless the Layers palette is already
in view).
5. In the Layers palette, drag the Background layer to the New Layer icon to
duplicate the Background layer.
The duplicated layer should be active. If not, click it to highlight it.
6. From the Layer palette’s Blend Mode menu, choose Screen.
The whole image instantly lightens up.

Although the whole image has become brighter, none of the tones in the image are
much darker than 50% gray. That’s perfect for use as a high-key background image.
If your objective is to create a high-key photo as a technique for exhibit or publica-
tion, then you’ll want something close to real blacks in the deepest shadows. Follow
these steps to bring the blacks back in:

1. Choose Layer ➪ New Adjustment Layer ➪ Levels.

The Levels dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 11-32. Your adjustments
affect both underlying layers. If you had more underlying layers, it would
affect them as well.
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372 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 11-32: The Layers palette and the Levels dialog box,
showing the settings used in this exercise

2. In the Levels dialog box, drag the shadow (left) slider closer to where the
histogram starts rising from the “floor.”
You may also want to brighten the midtones for an even more “high-key” look
to the skin tones.
3. When you’re satisfied, click OK.

Reducing noise
Most of the operations in the previous sections have the potential for making the
image somewhat grainier or mottled. In digital photography, both of these effects
are called noise. Noise is hard to eliminate without using a third-party program
such as Grain Surgery, which is discussed in Chapter 16. However, one cool trick in
Photoshop Elements can be used to reduce noise. (It works in Photoshop 7 and
other professional versions of the program as well.)

The irony is that this trick works more often than any other I’ve found for removing
noise. Use any noisy image you have in your library for the following exercise:

1. Ensure that you have the Layers palette handy.

If it’s in the Palette Well, drag it out into the open. If it’s not visible at all,
choose Window ➪ Layers. The Layers palette appears.
2. Choose the Zoom tool.
Zoom close enough to easily see the noise.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 373

3. Duplicate the layer and make sure the duplicated layer is active.
4. Choose Filter ➪ Blur ➪ Gaussian Blur, and drag the slider to about 2 or 3
pixels.
This technique blurs the duplicated (top) layer just enough to blend the color
of adjacent pixels.
5. From the Blend Mode menu in the Layers palette, choose Color.
All the color blotchiness in the noise disappears.

Note This technique won’t fix scattered grain. However, if you have only a few areas
where it is so obvious that it’s objectionable, you could brush out the grain with
the Blur brush, which looks like a drop of water in the Toolbox.

Retouching
Nearly every photograph can be improved with a little retouching. This may be
limited to removing dust and scratches from a scanned image or be as complete
a transformation as converting your image to sepia tones.

Using the Clone tool

The tool that all versions of Photoshop use most frequently for retouching has been
with it since the beginning. This tool is called the Clone tool and is used to copy
any area the size of the brush from one part of the picture to another. So you can
paint an area of clear skin over a scar or get rid of the graffiti on a building by paint-
ing over it with an unmarred portion of the same surface. You can even replace win-
dows with walls or dividing line stripes on a road with clean asphalt. Probably the
two things the Clone tool is used for the most are getting rid of the garbage on a
lawn or the pimples on a young girl’s skin.

Follow these steps to get acquainted with the clone tool:

1. Open the Angel Island 2 file from the book’s CD-ROM.

Unfortunately, a parking lot and a sign spoil the otherwise tranquil beauty of
this foggy scene.
2. Double-click the Zoom tool to view the image at 100% magnification (that is,
every pixel is shown at its actual size).
It is usually best to work at this magnification when cloning (or using most
any other retouching technique) so you can instantly spot any “seams” or
mismatches between the original image and the retouched area.
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374 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

3. Press the Spacebar and drag around the image until the part you want to
retouch is centered in the workspace window.
Start with the parking lot in the lower-left corner.
4. Choose the Clone Stamp tool from the Toolbox, as shown in Figure 11-33.

Figure 11-33: Choosing the Clone Stamp tool. At bottom right, you can see the
cross marking the pickup point and the circle representing the cursor size.

5. In the Clone Stamp tool’s Options Bar, select Aligned.

Set the Mode to Normal, Opacity to100%, and Flow to 100%.
6. Place the cursor on the area you want to clone from.
In this case, choose the trees above the parking lot.
7. Press Opt/Alt, and click to establish this as the pick up point.
8. Place the cursor over a portion of the parking lot and start painting.
Fill in as much area with the texture of the tree tops as you can without
starting to paint in other areas of the picture.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 375

9. Press Opt/Alt + click to reposition the pickup point in relation to the posi-
tion of the cursor as necessary to keep the treetop texture reasonably even.
When you’ve finished replacing the parking lot, you’ll want to replace the
small white sign on the right side of the image.
10. Press the Spacebar so the cursor changes to a Hand and drag to reposition
the image so you can see the sign.
11. Right-click (or control-click if you only have a one-button Mac mouse) to see
the contextual menu for Brushes.
12. Scroll through the menu to find the brush size you want, and then click its
stroke image to choose it.
You should pick a brush size that is feathered (fades away at the edges) and
just large enough to cover the defect (in this case, the sign).
13. Position the cursor over an area of the image that you want to replace the
sign with, and press Opt/Alt + Click to set your anchor point.
14. Place the cursor over the sign and click (or click and drag if necessary) to
cover the sign.
The final result is shown in Figure 11-34.

Figure 11-34: The retouched Angel Island photo

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376 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Using the Healing brush

The latest version of Photoshop, Photoshop 7, incorporates a new tool called the
Healing brush, and it rids your photos of small defects one zit at a time as you
stroke. It should be called the Miracle Brush. The miracle comes when you realize
that the Healing strokes match both the color and texture of the part of the image
that you’re covering.

You can use the Healing brush to fix just about any kind of small defect in any kind of
a photo. However, it’s going to become indispensable to anyone who does fashion,
glamour, or portrait photography because it kills pimples, scars, and wrinkles dead.

Follow these steps to use the Healing brush:

1. Open the file Florencia Smile from the CD-ROM.

There’s not much you’d really want to fix in this lovely face, but you’ll quickly
get the idea of what could be done to a much worse case.
2. From the Toolbox, choose the Healing brush.
The icon for the Healing brush looks like a Band-Aid.
3. Place the cursor over the skin texture you want to use, press Opt/Alt and
click.
You need to tell the program which part of her skin most closely matches the
texture of the skin you’re retouching by setting a target point (much like the
pickup point used with the Clone tool).
4. Size the brush just a bit larger than the blemish you want to remove.
5. Place the brush over the blemish and click.
At first, the stroke may seem all wrong. The texture is blurred and the color
doesn’t match. But wait! In a second (or a few, if you’ve done much painting or
are using a large brush) the original stroke fades to a point where the texture
and color match.

Note There is an exception to this ease-of-use. If you retouch a light area that’s very
close to a dark area (or vice versa), the colors may not match. If that happens, first
try using a smaller brush and work on the area a bit at a time. If that doesn’t work,
drag a freehand selection marquee with the Lasso tool so you “fence off” the area
you’re retouching.

You can see the final result of working with the healing brush by looking at the
“before and after” close-ups shown in Figure 11-35.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 377

Figure 11-35: At left is the small skin irregularity that needs to be fixed, at the right
is the result.

Getting rid of dust and scratches

You can use the same techniques detailed earlier to remove dust and scratches.
However, there are sometimes zillions of tiny dust particles and millions of tiny
scratches. This is particularly true of photos that you’re trying to “rescue” from
mistreatment or age. You’re also likely to get dust and scratches when you take
your photos to your local low-end copy shop for scanning (or when you forget to
clean your scanner before putting it to work).

In those instances, use Photoshop’s Dust & Scratches filter. However, use it care-
fully. If you overdo it, you’ll blur the picture to an unacceptable degree. You’ll get
the best results if you use the Dust & Scratches filter just enough to get rid of the
bulk of the defects, then use the Healing Brush on the larger ones that remain.

This technique works equally well in either Photoshop Pro or Elements. Here’s how
to use the Dust & Scratches filter:

1. Open the file Dusty from the CD-ROM.

This is an image on which I purposely created “dust & scratches” that were 1
pixel wide. I then added some slightly larger scratches.
2. To get rid of the majority of the junk without blurring the image too much,
choose Filter ➪ Noise ➪ Dust & Scratches.
The Dust & Scratches dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 11-36.
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378 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 11-36: The Dust & Scratches dialog box set at a 2-pixel
radius. Note that the picture in the preview window is a bit softer
than the picture in the 100% view in the background, but there
are very few spots and scratches.

3. Make sure the Preview box is checked in the Dust & Scratches dialog box.
4. Enter a figure of 1 (pixel) in the Radius field.
If that doesn’t eliminate most of the problem, enter a figure of 2. The higher
the resolution of your image, the higher you can go, but be sure to stop as
soon as overall sharpness becomes unacceptable.
You can restore some edge sharpness by raising the threshold. I was able to
get acceptable results with this particular image at a radius setting of 4 and a
Threshold setting of 27. Those are just guidelines. You’ll have to experiment.
Also, remember that overall resolution is very important.
5. A few of the larger defects may be left over. If so, use the Healing Brush or
(if you only have Photoshop Elements) the Clone Stamp to eliminate them.

If you’re using a professional version of Photoshop that has a History Brush feature,
try this: After you’ve run the Dust & Scratches filter, open the History palette
(Window ➪ Show History). Select the Snapshot and then choose the History Brush
from the Toolbox. You can now paint selected areas back to their original sharpness.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 379

Tip The Dust & Scratches filter can also be excellent for repairing an old photo after it’s
been scanned. Just be aware that you’ll almost certainly need to use the Clone
Stamp tool to eliminate the larger cracks. Sometimes large stains can be removed
with the Burn and Dodge tools.

Creating sepia tone and hand-colored photos

Just because your digital camera takes color photos, there’s no reason why you
need to end up with full-color results. You can easily reduce the image to grayscale
or black and white. You can then change the result so it is tinted in any tone you
like and produce a photo that looks as though it were made using century-old tech-
niques. Finally, you can paint any color over the original color in order to end up
with a photo that looks hand-colored. Indeed, it has been hand-colored, but there
were no transparent oil colors to buy. I can’t show you the results of all these color
changes in a black and white book, but I’ll give you the names of the color files on
the CD-ROM so you can display the color results on your computer.

I’ve already shown you how to convert image to black and white, grayscale, and
toned versions at the beginning of this chapter. Here’s how you create a toned
image in Photoshop Elements and then hand-color it:

1. Open the file Tia Eye Gray from the CD-ROM.

This is a grayscale photo, but should you need to change a photograph to
grayscale in Photoshop Elements 2.0, follow these steps:
1. Choose Enhance ➪ Quick Fix.
2. In the Quick Fix dialog box, select the Color Correction and Hue
Saturation radio buttons.
The Hue/Saturation dialog box appears.
3. Drag the Saturation slider to the extreme left.
4. Click OK.
Now you need to tone the image, even though Photoshop Elements doesn’t let
you work with Channels.
2. Choose Window ➪ Layers to bring up the Layers palette.
If the Layers palette is already visible onscreen, clicking its tab brings it to the
front.
3. Click the New Layer icon at the bottom of the palette.
This creates a new, transparent layer above the background layer. Now you
want to fill the new layer with a color that you want to tone the cat’s face.
4. Click the Foreground Color swatch at the bottom of the Toolbox.
The Color Picker appears, as shown in Figure 11-37. In the Color Picker you’ll
see a gradient color strip with slider arrows on either side.
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380 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 11-37: The Photoshop Color Picker dialog box

5. Drag the sliders and watch the overall color of the Select foreground color
window change.
6. When it’s the shade you want to tone with, position your cursor over the
exact color you want to use and click.
The Foreground Color swatch changes color. If that’s not quite the shade you
want, click a different position in the Select foreground color window until the
color you see in the swatch is exactly the color you want, then click the OK
button in the Color Picker.
7. In the Layers palette, click the new layer’s Name bar to make sure the new
layer is active.
8. Choose Edit ➪ Fill.
The Fill dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 11-38.

Figure 11-38: The Fill dialog box,

showing the chosen settings
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 381

9. From the Use menu, choose Foreground Color.

10. Leave all other settings at their defaults and click OK.
The entire image appears to be colored in your chosen color. Not to worry.
11. From the Blend Mode menu in the Layers palette, choose Color.
Your photo is instantly tinted. If you want to change the intensity of the tint-
ing, you can vary the opacity of the tint color’s layer by dragging its opacity
slider.
12. To color the eye, choose Window ➪ Color Swatches.
The Color Swatches palette appears.
13. Click the color you want to paint with.
You could use the Color Picker, but Swatches makes it handier to switch to
basic colors quickly.
14. Choose the Paintbrush tool.
15. In the Paintbrush’s Options Bar, choose the settings shown in Figure 11-39.

Figure 11-39: The Paintbrush Options Bar, showing the settings required for
coloring a monochrome image

16. Place the brush inside the area of the eye you want to color and drag until
it’s colored.
17. Repeat steps 14 through 16 for each other area of the photograph you want
to color.

To compare the result of what you did with the result of what I described earlier,
open the file Tia-Eye Colored from the CD-ROM.

Glamour techniques
The following techniques are especially suited to flattering human subjects,
although they can certainly be useful in other situations. Add these to the other
procedures I’ve shown you for removing blemishes, and you’ll be able to open your
own portrait studio where using a digital camera can save you lots of valuable time
that quickly turns into more money in your pocket.
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382 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Sharpening and brightening eyes

The eyes are usually the most important item in a portrait. It almost always looks
better to lighten the whites of the eyes and the iris of the eyes. You’ll also get
sharper-looking eyes if you darken the outer rim of the iris. Finally, select the eye-
ball and sharpen it slightly with the Unsharp Mask filter.

Here’s the step-by-step if you need a little more hand-holding:

1. Choose the Zoom tool and drag diagonally so you form a rectangular mar-
quee that encompasses both eyes.
When you release the mouse button, you zoom in so both eyes fill the image
area.
2. Choose the Dodge tool from the Toolbox.
3. In the Dodge tool’s Options Bar, change Opacity to about 15%, and drag
inside the whites of the eyes and around the iris until both are about 25%
brighter.
If you overdo it, the subject starts to look hypnotized and the retouching
simply looks overdone.
4. Choose the Burn tool from the same position in the Toolbox as the Dodge
tool.
5. In the Burn tool’s Options Bar, choose a small brush.
Three to five pixels is usually in the right range.
6. Leave exposure at about 15%.
7. Carefully trace around the outer part of the iris to darken it.
8. Choose the Sharpen tool from the Toolbox.
The default setting in the Sharpen tool’s Options Bar are usually just about
right.
9. Choose a small brush and carefully paint to sharpen the eyelashes, eye-
brows, and the lighter parts of the eyes’ irises.
The results of this process can be seen in Figure 11-40.

Figure 11-40: Before and after lightening and sharpening the eyes
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 383

Airbrushing
Photoshop Elements doesn’t have a Healing brush, but here’s a technique that you
can use in any version of Photoshop that I’ve found very handy for quickly eliminat-
ing wrinkles, small skin blemishes, and softening bags under the eyes.

1. Open the file Kensportrait from the CD-ROM.

2. Choose Window ➪ Layers to bring forward the Layers palette.
3. Drag the Background Layer Name bar to the New Layer icon at the bottom
of the palette.
The background layer is duplicated and become the topmost and active layer.
4. In the top layer’s Layer Name bar, click the eye icon.
The layer becomes temporarily invisible.
5. Click the bottom layer’s Name bar to activate the layer.
6. Choose Filter ➪ Blur ➪ Gaussian Blur.
The Gaussian Blur dialog box appears.
7. Drag the slider until there is a noticeable softening of detail — just enough
to obliterate the smallest wrinkles.
8. Double-click the Zoom tool to magnify the image to 100% so you can see the
exact effect of the next strokes.
9. Click the top layer to activate it again.
The blurred image disappears from view.
10. Choose the Eraser tool.
Choose a brush that’s just a little larger than the defects you want to remove.
The brush should be feathered at the edges so your strokes blend with the
existing image.
11. Erase any defects.
The color from the layer below comes through the erase to more-or-less
match the color of the surrounding skin tone. This looks pretty good if you
zoom out, but the fact is, there’s probably some grain in the sharp version of
the photograph that has been completely wiped out in the blurred layer. You
want to make the grain of the blurred layer match the grain of the original
layer as closely as possible.
12. Make sure the bottom, blurred layer is selected, and be sure the image is
magnified to 100% so you can see when the grain structure of both layers
matches.
13. Choose Filter ➪ Noise ➪ Add Noise.
The Add Noise dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 11-41.
14. Select the Gaussian radio button.
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384 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 11-41: The Add Noise dialog box

15. Move the Amount slider to the point where the grain matches the grain of
the photo.
Sometimes, this is so delicate that I find it easier to type in small numbers and
decimal points than to try to be accurate with the slider. Don’t worry that the
color doesn’t quite match. We’ll take care of that in the next step.
16. When you’re satisfied with the grain match, click OK.
There’s usually one or two finishing touches because the blurred “airbrush-
ing” is a bit darker than the original image. The darker the wrinkles or other
defects, the darker the airbrushing. You can fix most of these differences in
one step.
17. Choose Enhance ➪ Brightness/Contrast ➪ Brightness/Contrast.
The Brightness Contrast dialog box appears.
18. Drag the brightness slider until most of the “airbrushing” is the same skin
tone as the original image, then click OK.
If you still have any differences in tonality, use the Burn and Dodge tools to
fix them.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 385

Adding lighting effects

You can often add drama or increase or diminish attention to a particular part of
the photography. These changes are generally most effective if they appear to be
the result of the lighting that existed at the time the photograph was taken.
Photoshop and Photoshop Elements can impose some lighting effects through the
use of the built-in plug-in effects filters or those of some third-party extra cost fil-
ters. However, some of the best effects are those you can create with the dodge,
burn, and selection tools. They’re also the easiest. I’m going to show you those
effects on a portrait, because it’s easy to see and appreciate the effect of the
results. However, these techniques can be applied to most subject categories
equally well.

Start by using the burn and dodge tools to add a more dimensionality to
Deborah’s face:

1. Open the file Deborah Backlight from the CD-ROM.

Notice that the hairlight on camera left has spilled over onto the side of
Deborah’s nose, making it seem larger and more predominant than it really
is. Besides, it’s just the wrong shape for Deb’s face.
2. Choose the Burn tool.
3. In the Options Bar, lower the Exposure to about 10%.
4. Choose a highly-feathered brush that is just about as wide as the area you
want to burn in.
If you’re not using a pressure-sensitive pen, choose a size that’s a bit smaller
because you can’t vary the size with pressure.
5. Blend slowly and smoothly.
6. If you overdo it in a spot or two, choose the Dodge tool, make the brush
roughly the same size as the Burn tool was, then carefully lighten up the
darker spots, as shown in Figure 11-42.
If you can afford it, spend a hundred bucks on a Wacom Graphire pressure
sensitive pad.
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386 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 11-42: Adding directionality to the

lighting with the Burn (and Dodge) tools

When you’ve finished shading (lighting) the nose, try lighting the background
so the photo has a bit more depth.
7. Choose the Lasso tool and trace a shape outside Deborah’s head and body.
When you reach the outside of the window, drag completely outside the win-
dow until you reach the point where you want to come back in, then close the
selection. If you need to make more than one selection (as was the case here),
press Shift before tracing the additional shapes with the Lasso tool.
8. Feather the selection by choosing Selection ➪ Feather.
The Feather dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 11-43. Enter a large feather
radius, which causes the shadow we’re going to cast to spread gradually on
either side of the selection.

Figure 11-43: The Feather Selection

dialog box, showing the settings
used to feather the selection
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 387

9. When you have the image looking just the way you want, save it to disk.
You can see a black and white version of the finished result in Figure 11-44.
To see it in color, open the file Deborah Shaded from the CD-ROM.

Figure 11-44: The final result of “lighting”

Deborah

Reshaping features
Both Photoshop 6 or 7 and Photoshop Elements have a filter that amounts to a
whole add-in program that can do a million cool things by “melting” the image so
you can push the pixels around any way you like. Learning to use all the features of
this tool can take some time, but one feature you can use right away is its ability to
inflate or deflate portions of the image. For instance, you can easily enlarge eyes
(careful, or you’ll create a caricature) or shrink a waist, which is what you do in the
following exercise.

1. Open the file Back Gamin from the CD-ROM.

This waist doesn’t really need slimming, but slimming it dramatizes the picture.
2. Choose Filter ➪ Liquify.
The Liquify dialog box, which is really a program interface, appears, as shown
in Figure 11-45.
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388 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 11-45: The Liquify dialog box while using the Pucker tool

3. Choose the Pucker tool.

4. Press the right bracket ( ] ) key repeatedly until the brush outline is big
enough to encompass the whole area you want to shrink.
5. Click and hold the mouse with the center of the circle just a little inside the
waistline.
When you’ve put a nice little curve into that side of the waist, release the
mouse button, move the brush to the other side of the waist and shrink it the
same way.
6. Click OK.
That’s all there is to it.

If you want to make things bigger, choose the Bloat tool. If you overdo anything in
the Liquify command, there’s also a Restore brush that gradually returns an area of
the image to its original state if you stroke over it.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 389

Making a Composite Image

Making an image out of a collection of images can be an art form in itself. If
you want to see what is possible, take a look at the work of John Lund (www.
johnlund.com), Gerald Bybee, and Robert Bowen. These are three masters of
the art whose styles differ quite a bit from one another’s.

There’s a more practical (and usually less demanding) side to making composited
images than creating entirely new realities, however. The most practical of these is
replacing a boring, near-white sky in an otherwise lovely landscape or outdoor por-
trait. Or, you might want to fill a bare spot or an unsightly object by adding a new
object to the picture.

There are two secrets to making virtually any composite believable: Lighting and
Selection. The lighting on all the composited objects must have the same angle for
the key light source, the same level of shadow fill and shadow edge sharpness, and
the same color temperature. Second, the edge selection must be made with extreme
care, so you have no visible seams between one composited object and another. It
is also much easier to match pictures that were taken at the same resolution. If the
photos were originally shot on film, it’s easier to match colors if the same film stock
and processing lab are used, but now I’m getting really picky.

If you can’t really get resolution and grain to match, you may be able to “fake it”
by using Photoshop’s Add Noise filter to create the same grain structure for both
images. You could do a more sophisticated version of the same idea by using Grain
Surgery, a program that specializes in matching grain between images.

Having said all that, you’ll get a better idea of how to composite images by starting
with a fairly simple example in which you replace the background with another
image. This example uses a close-up of a flower and another shot of an ivy-covered
wall. Both the flower and the ivy were in front of the same side of the same building
and were photographed at approximately the same time of day. Given those facts,
you should get a pretty good match.

Open Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. The following instructions work in either

program, but I used Photoshop Elements, so you may find a command or two on a
different menu or in a different position in the toolbox.

1. Open the files Marigold and Red Ivy from the CD-ROM.
Click the “marigolds” window to make it the active image.
2. Make the Layers palette visible by clicking its tab in the Palette Well or by
choosing Window ➪ Layers.
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390 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

3. In the Layers palette, double click the Background layer’s Name Bar.
The Layer Properties dialog box opens. Click OK. The layer’s name is now
Layer 0, and it’s no longer a background layer.
4. Choose the Background Eraser, which has an icon that shows scissors
superimposed on the Eraser tool.
We want to keep all the vegetation in the foreground and to loose the black
steel arch and the blue wall altogether. The marigold itself has sharp enough
edges that we could separate it from the background with the Magic Lasso,
invert the selection, press Delete/Backspace and everything but the Marigold
would disappear — leaving a perfectly transparent background. However,
we really want to keep all the foreground marigolds and some have semi-
transparent borders because they are slightly out-of-focus. The solution lies
in using the Background eraser.
5. Look at the Background Eraser’s Options Bar.
Notice that by clicking the right icon, you can switch between the background
eraser, eraser, and magic eraser by clicking the appropriate icon at any time.
For now, leave the Background Eraser selected and set the following options:
• Size = 18 px: This is the pixel diameter of the brush. If you click the
down arrow, you can drag a slider to indicate the size.
• Limits = Contiguous: The limits set by the Size and Tolerance options
apply as long as the cursor doesn’t pass to an area that’s outside those
limits.
• Tolerance = 50%: The Background Eraser considers an edge to be any-
thing that’s within 50% of being the same color as the foreground object.
Notice that the cursor is a circle the size of the brush but has a cross in its
center. The cross is so you can target the color to be removed. The circle rep-
resents the area within which the colors to consider erasing must fall. Figure
11-46 should help you to visualize this concept.
6. Continue dragging the brush around the outside perimeter of the area you
want to keep in the foreground.
If you come to an area where the brush doesn’t erase enough, increase the
percentage in the Options Bar. If it erases too much, press Cmd/Ctrl + Z to
back up and then decrease either the brush size, the percentage of Tolerance,
or both.
7. When you’ve finished cutting out the background, choose the Lasso tool
and drag a freehand marquee through the center of the erased area.
8. Press Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + I to invert the selection and then press
Delete/Backspace to erase the contents of the selection.
The Marigolds and their attached vegetation how have a completely transpar-
ent background, as shown in Figure 11-47.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 391

Figure 11-46: Notice that the color erased was the color that falls
immediately under the cross and that no colors were erased that
fell outside the circle that designates the brush size.

Tip If you have some unnaturally dark or discolored edges, there are two fairly efficient
ways to fix them: Either paint them the same color or erase them. To paint them
the same color, use the airbrush and choose a small brush and choose Color from
the Blend Mode menu. Then pick up the color you want to keep with the eye-
dropper and color the edge. Don’t forget to change the foreground color when-
ever the colored area doesn’t match its surroundings. To erase the “border”, zoom
in to about 300% and make your Background eraser brush very small and give it a
fairly low (about 15% usually works) Tolerance. Then just pan around the image
and erase the background, making sure to carefully place the brush’s center point
(the plus-sign or + in the center of the brush size circle).

9. Press Cmd/Ctrl + A to Select All, the Cmd/Ctrl + C to Copy the selection to

the clipboard.
This selects the entire image and pastes it into the background image as the
foreground layer.
10. Click the Red Ivy window to make sure it’s active, and then press Cmd/
Ctrl + V to paste the Marigolds from the clipboard.
Because the two images were exactly the same size, the Marigolds should be
perfectly placed over the new background, as shown in Figure 11-48.
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392 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 11-47: The Marigolds on a transparent background

Figure 11-48: The composited marigolds and ivy

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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 393

Controlling Image Sharpness

When working in an image editor, enhancing sharpness creates the illusion that
you’ve captured a more detailed picture by creating more contrast between the pix-
els that form an object’s edges, those that form the object’s interior, and those that
form its background. Figure 11-49 shows the difference between an image that is
slightly fuzzy and the same image after it has been enhanced by the Photoshop
Elements Quick Fix Autofocus tool.

Figure 11-49: A slightly blurred image of a pepper and the same image after using
Photoshop Elements’ Quick Fix Autofocus

As you can see, although sharpness is improved, you can’t expect really blurry
images to suddenly become razor sharp. If you have an image editor that has an
Unsharp Mask command, you’ll have much better control. The real danger lies in
not overdoing the sharpening effect because you’ll get unnatural looking results
such as stair-stepped edges, exaggerated graininess (image noise), and strange-
looking edge haloes.

To sharpen using the Unsharp Mask tool in Photoshop professional versions, follow
these steps:

1. Open the file Fuzzy Pepper from the CD-ROM.

2. Choose Filter ➪ Sharpen ➪ Unsharp Mask.
The Unsharp Mask dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 11-50.
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394 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 11-50: The Unsharp Mask dialog

box showing the settings used to sharpen
the pepper

Note Every picture’s adjustments differ according to several factors — such as the overall
image resolution, how much sharpening is required, and your reason for doing the
sharpening. The settings shown in the figure are rather extreme, since what we’re
doing is attempting to fix an image that is an extreme case of what’s fixable. The
best overall advice is to start with the Amount slider and work your way down. For
each slider, at the point where the image starts to get ugly, back off a bit and then
try the next slider.

3. Adjust the sliders, and when you reach the Threshold slider check the
image for artifacts and halos.
If you see any, try pulling each slider down just a little, starting at the bottom
and working your way up.
4. Repeat the three steps above until you feel you’ve made the best compro-
mise you can make, and then click OK.

Actually, the best use of the Unsharp Mask tool is cleaning up images that have
been reduced or enlarged. They almost always loose a little of their “edge” after
such an operation. If the enlargement/reduction is less than +/- 3x the originals,
try setting the Amount at between 50% and 150%, the Radius at 1 or 2, and the
Threshold at 0 or 1.
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Chapter 11 ✦ Essential Image Editing 395

Note Try never to use a Sharpen command twice on the same image. It is always best to
make it the last thing you do to the image before you finish the basic editing. You
may want to use a more advanced tool, such as nik Sharpener Pro!, to do sharp-
ening especially for the output device you use to make your final print. For more
on this, see Chapter 18.

Summary
In this chapter I covered the most basic and essential image-editing commands
used by photographers. For the most part, I used Photoshop Elements as the model
image editors because it has become extremely popular with digital photographers
who want a professional level and Photoshop-compatible program without the more
specialized tweaks that drive the price several times higher. In the next chapter, I
delve into more specialized activities that may require Photoshop 7 to accomplish.

✦ ✦ ✦
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Special Effects
Solutions
12
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Chapter

T his chapter covers some characteristics, tools, and filters

that create special effects that are needed often enough
to be termed life-saving — provided they are used to solve a
Extract

KnockOut
real pictorial problem and not just for the heck of it. In other
words, any effect, no matter how useful, can get overdone, Liquify
silly, out-of-place, or just plain trite.
Photoshop blend
Most of the effects that I describe in this chapter are available modes
in most general-purpose image editing software that’s meant
for people who are serious about their efforts in digital Notable effects with
photography — even if they can’t afford the full-on profes- plug-in Filters
sional power of Photoshop 7. On the other hand, because
Photoshop is the professional standard, is used more than Special third-party
any other program, and has an interface that’s imitated by filters
nearly everyone, the examples shown in this chapter are only
guaranteed to work in Photoshop. All of the effects except ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
the Extract command also work in Photoshop Elements.
Additionally, all of the effects that are based on plug-ins that
work in any of the image editors that are compatible with
Photoshop 3rd-party plug-ins. At this writing, all of the effects
work in Windows XP and some work in Mac OS X (all work in
Classic mode).

The Liquify and Extract commands are found only in Adobe’s

Photoshop programs, and Extract is found only in the
professional versions post version 6.0.

Extract and KnockOut

Perhaps the most widely useful special effect tool is one
that can remove objects with complex edges from their back-
grounds. Complex edges are those that are partially transparent
(usually because they’re glass), have way too many components
to be practical to trace by hand (such as a girl’s windblown
hair), or are so shiny that the background is reflected in them.
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398 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

You can sum all these problems up by describing the objects that have such prob-
lem edges as having transitional edges, which contain some of each of both fore-
ground and background colors. In other words, there is no real defined edge — only
a blend or transition that takes place in the overlapping space between one object
and another.

Ultimatte KnockOut and the transition to Corel

Up until the Extract command in Photoshop 5.5, transitional edges had to be
defined by extra-cost third-party programs such as Ultimatte KnockOut. Ultimatte
KnockOut is now sold exclusively by Corel, Inc and called Corel KnockOut 2.Though
at $349, it’s still three times as expensive as some image editors, KnockOut is about
one-third the price that it was. And now it’s more versatile, much friendlier, and can
be used as a plug-in. If you do composite photography for a living and your work
has to be perfectly believable, KnockOut is one of the best tools you can buy.

KnockOut works on the same basic principle as Photoshop’s Extract command: You
designate an area that you want to keep in the foreground, and then designate an
area you want to keep in the background. The area in between those two bound-
aries is the transitional area. Parts of that transitional area, such as hair, that have
the same colors as pieces of the foreground are kept in the foreground. Parts of the
transitional area that feature the background colors are dropped out to trans-
parency, so you can easily keep a new background. Figure 12-1 shows a flying hair
portrait with a very complex background. The area inside the smaller marquee is
the foreground area, the area outside the larger marquee is considered background,
and in between the two marquees is the transitional area.

It takes some practice drawing the inside and outside rings and using the syringe
tool to pick out areas of small detail and color that must be kept in the transitional
area, but with the practice comes a near perfect job that you just can’t hope to get
any other way. In Figure 12-2, you see the portrait knocked out of its studio back-
ground and placed against the natural background of a tree. You’d be hard pressed
to guess that this photo wasn’t actually taken in that location.
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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 399

Figure 12-1: A flying hair portrait with a very complex background

Figure 12-2: The perfectly knocked-

out portrait sporting a brand-new
background
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400 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Complex extractions with Photoshop

Photoshop 6 introduced the Extract tool to perform basically the same functions as
KnockOut, but with a much easier to understand interface and with the capability
rolled right into Photoshop. Unfortunately, you don’t get the Extract tool with
Photoshop Elements. The following exercise shows you the basics of using this
tool. Even if you don’t have the program, reading this exercise gives you an idea of
the possibilities.

The Extract tool is accurate and efficient as long as what you want to extract isn’t too
fuzzy and as long as the background isn’t full of patches of color that are nearly the
same color as a transitional edge. If you do have these complications, you may have
to spend time practicing in order to get it right and even more time cleaning it up.

The most popular subject for knockouts is people and the most difficult thing to
knock out cleanly is their hair. The picture of Jane, shown in Figure 12-3, is a good
example to learn from, especially because her dark hair contrasts nicely with the
light beige wall behind her.

1. In Photoshop 6 or later, open the Jane 2.tif file from the book’s CD.
The source image is shown in Figure 12-3.

Figure 12-3: Jane and her flying hair

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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 401

2. Choose Filter ➪ Extract.

The Extract dialog box appears.
3. From the Extract dialog box toolbox, choose the Marker, which looks like
the tip of a felt tip marker.
You use this tool to define the width of the transitional area between interior
and exterior objects. If the transitional area is wide (the edge is fuzzy or
hairy), choose a big brush size by dragging the brush-size slider to the right
or repeatedly clicking the ] key.

Tip This particular image has no smooth or close-to-smooth edges. If you’re working
on an image that does have such an edge, check the Smart Highlighting box in the
Tool Options. As long as you keep the edge within the brush’s circle, the marker
will automatically adhere to the edge you want to highlight and that edge will fuzz
out only as much as necessary to cover the transitional area.

4. For this photo, cover everything that is in the transitional area with the
marker.
In this case, the transitional area consists of all the flying hair, as seen in
Figure 12-4. If you have a hard time distinguishing the color of the marker
from the colors in the photo, you can choose any primary RGB color from
the Highlight menu in the Tool Options. You can do the same for the fill color.

Figure 12-4: Jane in the Extract dialog box, after highlighting the transitional
area and filling the foreground
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402 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

5. When you have finished placing the highlights, double-click the zoom tool
and look for clean spaces of background color within the highlight.
6. Choose the Eraser tool and click inside the wider parts of the highlighted
area to erase little spots that reveal the background color.
This helps the program to know better what to extract (turn transparent) and
what to leave in.

Caution Be sure your highlighting completely surrounds the subject unless the subject is
cropped at the edges of the frame. Otherwise, when you use the Fill bucket, the fill
leaks out into the entire picture.

7. Use the Fill bucket to fill the foreground.

This ensures that the computer knows the difference between which colors
should stay opaque, which should be transparent, and which should transi-
tion from transparent to semi-transparent.
8. Click inside the highlight.
One of two things happens: The fill color stays inside the highlight or it won’t.
• If the fill color remains inside the highlight, what you see should look
similar to Figure 12-5.
• If the fill color spills out, zoom in and examine the highlight for a break.
Choose the Marker, and use it to close the gap that allowed the fill color
to leak. As soon as you start to paint in the gap, the fill color disappears
and you can fill in the gap. Then try the Fill bucket again. Just keep
repeating this process until the fill is contained within the highlight.
Your image should now resemble Figure 12-5.
9. Click the Preview button.
What you see probably looks something like what you see in Figure 12-6. If
not, you may need more practice.
10. Now you have some cleanup to do . . . maybe a lot. Wherever there are
rough spots, use the Cleanup tool (fourth from the bottom) while pressing
the Alt key to restore those parts of the picture.
At this point, I usually click the OK button, and do the rest of the cleanup
using the Background Eraser in Photoshop. If you’re working on a subject with
simpler edges, try experimenting with the Edge Touchup tool before you take
the image back into Photoshop by clicking OK.
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Figure 12-5: Ready to preview

Figure 12-6: The preview of the first attempt at extraction

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404 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

11. Once you’re back into Photoshop, use the Background Eraser and the
History Brush to fine-tune your edges.
Now you can place a new background behind the picture. I just made a new
layer, filled it with a solid color, and used one of the lighting effect filters on it.
You can see the result in Figure 12-7.

Figure 12-7: The finished portrait of Jane

Liquify
One of the reasons that Live Picture was so popular with commercial illustrators
was its ability to do freehand distortions of the image. Having the ability to do
freehand distortion is a lovely thing to have built in to an image-editing program
because you can gradually re-size portions of the image in an infinite number of
ways. Why on Earth would you want to? Imagine having the model in a swimsuit ad
being able to loose two inches from her waist and half an inch from her thighs with-
out having to pay either an airbrush artist or a plastic surgeon a small fortune? In
the right hands and for the right account, that can be worth the price of the pro-
gram alone.

You’ll find other good reasons that it pays to be able to push, stretch, reflect, blow
up, and wiggle pixels any time and in any way you want. It’s a great way to make
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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 405

caricatures and you can also use it to exaggerate features in landscapes, especially
if you first removed those features from their backgrounds with the extract tool and
then re-sculpted them before putting them back into place.

Perhaps the most useful application for being able to turn pixels to goo is that you
can re-form objects to fit perfectly with other objects in a composite scene. There’s
a very famous photograph of a dragon that was made from a lizard and (I believe) a
bat. The lizard’s neck was stretched, his legs enlarged and bent, his claws greatly
exaggerated and his tongue turned to flame. All of this was done with the help of
the warping tools in Live Picture. Then, when it came time to attach the bat wings
they were first carefully shaped so that they fit perfectly onto the lizard’s body.
When the picture was finished, you’d swear it was an actual photograph of a
medieval monster.

The following exercise gives you an idea of how easily you can turn a docile
creature into a monster.

1. Open Photoshop 7 and the file Kensportrait from the book’s CD, and then
choose Filter ➪ Liquify.
You see the Liquify dialog box with the toolbox on the left and the options
on the right. In the center is the layer that was open when you issued the
command, as shown in Figure 12-8.

Figure 12-8: The Liquify dialog box showing the tools on the left and the options
on the right
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406 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

2. Choose the Warp tool and push inwards to squeeze the top of my head.
This makes me a pinhead.
3. Choose the Twirl clockwise and counterclockwise tools, center the cursor
on the division between my lips, and click and hold.
This makes my mouth wrinkle up.
4. Use the Warp tool to push out my neck and chin.
This makes my chin big and rugged and makes my neck bulge out, so that I
look mean and tough.
5. Use the Bloat tool to give me great big eyes.
To make my glasses grow with my eyes, press the square bracket keys to
make the brush as big as the glasses. Then center the brush in the center of
the eyeball, click and hold, and watch the eyes get bigger. When you are
happy with the first eye’s size, release the mouse button, and repeat the
procedure on the other eye.
6. Use the Pucker tool to suck my cheeks in, so I’ll look even meaner.
After choosing the Pucker tool, center the cursor on the cheeks and press the
left mouse button to draw the area inward. You can play with this quite a bit to
vary the affect. You can also the same tool to make my mustache a handlebar.
If you had fun messing me up you could keep it up forever, but you can see
what the finished result resembles in Figure 12-9.

Two really powerful things about the Liquify environment: Meshes and Freezing. A
grid that looks like graph paper is hidden from view when you’re working in Liquify.
As you push pixels around, the grid warps accordingly. Now, here’s the magic. You
can save that grid and use it again on an entirely different picture. Use this capabil-
ity to do your liquifying on a smaller image. You could then open a very large ver-
sion of the same image in Liquify and then load the mesh from the smaller version
of the picture and apply it to the current version. Then you can go have a cup of
coffee while the program liquifies the picture in the same way that it liquified the
smaller version. To show and hide the mesh, you place a check mark in the box
under the few options in the options side of the dialog box .To turn it off, deselect
the options.

Turning Freezing on keeps areas of the picture from being affected at all by the
Liquify brush. So if you want to protect certain areas from being warped, there are
two things you can do. You can make a selection in the picture that covers the area
you want to freeze before you open the Liquify dialog box. That area will be frozen
when in the Liquify dialog box. (It’s covered by a red area or rubylith mask.)
Alternatively, use the freeze brush to paint a mask over the area you want to
freeze while you’re working in the Liquify dialog box.
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Figure 12-9: The pinheaded monster

Photoshop Blend Modes

Blend modes create special effects by applying mathematical formulas to the corre-
sponding pixels on two or more layers of the image. They are especially useful for
certain darkroom manipulations, such as burning, dodging, and contrast control.
Blend modes are applicable to layers, brush strokes, and fills.

What follows is a brief description of each Blend mode, followed by a black and
white image that resulted from blending the picture on the left in Figure 12-10 with
the figure on the right. In other words, the figure on the left is the top layer, and the
figure on the right is the bottom layer.

✦ Dissolve: This mode has no effect unless you reduce the opacity of the
blended layer. If you do reduce the opacity, the effect varies according to the
opacity setting. Pixels from the two layers mix in different random patterns
depending on the opacity. Experiment with the Dissolve mode by dragging the
opacity slider. This effect is shown in Figure 12-11.
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408 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 12-10: The picture on the left is the top layer used for all the following blend
modes. The picture on the right is the one the top layer is blended with.

Figure 12-11: With Dissolve mode, layers mix

randomly depending on opacity.
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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 409

✦ Darken: This mode keeps only the darkest colors visible on the interacting
layers. In other words, any color that is lighter on one layer than on another is
discarded. This effect is shown in Figure 12-12.

Figure 12-12: Darken mode keeps the darker

color and throws out the lighter color.

✦ Multiply: This mode multiplies underlying visible colors by the blend color,
resulting in a mix of pixels from both images, which is darker in overall tone
than either original. This effect is shown in Figure 12-13.

✦ Color Burn: This mode increases the contrast between colors in the base
image according to the colors in the blend layer and results in a very bright
and high-contrast image. This effect is shown in Figure 12-14.
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410 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 12-13: Multiply visible

colors with Multiply mode.

Figure 12-14: Color Burn results

in a high-contrast image.
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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 411

✦ Linear Burn: This mode decreases the brightness of the underlying layer by
the amount of brightness at any given spot in the overlying layer. Blending
with white produces no change. This effect is shown in Figure 12-15.

Figure 12-15: Linear Burn mode decreases the

brightness of the color.

✦ Lighten: This mode is the opposite of Darken. Only the lightest colors in the
blend and base layers are kept, resulting in a lighter overall image than the orig-
inal that blends pixels from both images. This effect is shown in Figure 12-16.

✦ Screen: This mode takes its name from the fact that this is the effect you’d get
if you projected one image atop another using a pair of slide projectors. This
is a multiply mode, but what’s being multiplied is the inverse of the colors in
the blend and base layers. You always get a lighter mix of colors than were
originally contained in either the blend or base layers. Screening black and
white leaves the colors unchanged. This effect is shown in Figure 12-17.
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412 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 12-16: Lighten mode keeps

the lighter color and throws out
the darker color.

Figure 12-17: With Screen mode,

one image lies atop the other.
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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 413

✦ Color Dodge: This mode results in the base color being brightened by the
brightness of the blend color and contrast being increased in any given area
of the image. This effect is shown in Figure 12-18.

Figure 12-18: Color Dodge

✦ Linear Dodge: This mode causes the blend color to brighten the base color
by cranking up its lightness according to its brightness. In other words, over-
all lightness is increased, but the extent to which it is increased in any given
area depends on the specific colors on each layer in each given area. This
effect is shown in Figure 12-19.

✦ Overlay: This mode causes the textures and colors of the blend layer to seem
to shape the base pixels while maintaining the base layers highlights and
shadows. This effect is shown in Figure 12-20.
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414 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 12-19: Linear Dodge

Figure 12-20: Overlay mode

maintains the base layers
highlights and shadows.
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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 415

✦ Soft Light: This mode boosts the brightness and the separation of detail in the
shadows and results in the whole image being brightened. Soft Light is espe-
cially useful for burning and dodging on a transparent blend layer by painting
in shades of gray. This effect is shown in Figure 12-21.

Figure 12-21: Use Soft Light mode to brighten

the whole image.

✦ Hard Light: This mode screens colors that are lighter than 50 percent gray,
and multiplies colors that are darker. Hard Light increases overall contrast.
You can also use this mode for burning and dodging, but the results are much
more extreme and pure black and white register only as pure black and white.
This effect is shown in Figure 12-22.

✦ Vivid Light: This mode is closely related to Hard Light but is even brighter
and has higher contrast. Lighter colors both lighten and increase saturation,
while darker colors do the opposite. This effect is shown in Figure 12-23.
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416 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 12-22: Hard Light mode

increases overall contrast.

Figure 12-23: Vivid Light mode

provides higher contrast than Hard
Light mode.
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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 417

✦ Linear Light: This mode works like Vivid Light except that blend colors affect
base colors by brightness rather than contrast. Colors that are less than 50
percent gray get brighter, and colors that are more than 50 percent gray get
darker. This effect is shown in Figure 12-24.

Figure 12-24: Linear Light mode affects base

colors by brightness.

✦ Pin Light: This mode results in color being flattened and darkened. Blend col-
ors lighter than 50 percent of that color replace those in the background, and
blend colors darker than 50 percent of that same color don’t affect the base.
This effect is shown in Figure 12-25.

✦ Difference: This mode appears to produce a negative image. Blending with

white inverts the base color, blending with black invokes no change. Otherwise
the lightest color in either layer becomes the predominant color. This effect is
shown in Figure 12-26.
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418 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 12-25: With Pin Light

mode, color is flattened and
darkened.

Figure 12-26: With Difference

mode, the lightest color becomes
predominant.
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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 419

✦ Exclusion: This mode is a lower-contrast version of the Difference mode. This

effect is shown in Figure 12-27.

Figure 12-27: Exclusion mode is a lower-

contrast version of Difference mode.

✦ Hue: This mode maintains the blend color’s hue, while the base colors keep
their luminance (brightness) and saturation (vividness). This effect is shown
in Figure 12-28.

✦ Saturation: This mode imposes the blend layers color saturation on the pixels
in the base color. This effect is shown in Figure 12-29.
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420 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 12-28: Hue mode keeps

the luminance and saturation.

Figure 12-29: Saturation mode

saturates the layers with color.
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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 421

✦ Color: This mode keeps the shapes in the base layer the same, but they are
colored by the colors in the blend layer. This effect is shown in Figure 12-30.

Figure 12-30: Color mode uses the colors in

the blend layer.

✦ Luminosity: This mode is the reverse of Color mode. The shapes (brightness
or luminosity) in the Blend layer stay pretty much the same, but their color
and saturation are taken from the base layer.
✦ Behind (paint only): This mode paints only inside transparent or partially
transparent areas of a layer.
✦ Clear (paint only): This mode acts just like the Eraser tool, except that you
can use any brush settings to vary the effect.

Notable Effects with Plug-in Filters

One of the most famous (and infamous) characteristics of Photoshop (and now
Photoshop Elements and many other non-Adobe image editors) is their ability to
accept small, special-purpose programs called plug-in filters. Plug-in filters can
perform almost any imaginable function, but they generally fall into one of three
categories:
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422 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

✦ Image correction
✦ Art effects
✦ Special effects

Photoshop comes with 99 different built-in filters that fit into these categories. You
can also find hundreds of filters from third-party manufacturers that can be used in
Photoshop as well as many other image editors, most notably Corel PhotoPaint,
PaintShop Pro, Canvas, and Corel Painter. If your image editor is compatible with
Photoshop plug-ins, that fact will probably be loudly advertised on its packaging.

Image-correction filters
Image-correction filters are those that somehow “repair” a photographic defect in
the image or that imitate a particular photographic effect or lens.

Auto-sharpening filters
Five filters are included with Photoshop that bring more apparent sharpness to the
image. The first four of these are automatics — that is, you have no direct control
over the degree of their effect, except by applying them repeatedly to intensify their
effect. All these filters do is, in one way or another, increase the apparent contrast
between pixels. The four auto-sharpening filters are shown in Figure 12-31.

Figure 12-31: The original

image and three auto-
sharpening filters. From top
left to bottom right: Normal,
Sharpen, Sharpen Edges, and
Sharpen More.
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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 423

✦ Sharpen: This filter makes a slight boost in the contrast between adjacent
pixels, without regard to edges.
✦ Sharpen Edges: This filter looks for adjoining rows of pixels of the same inten-
sity and heightens the contrast between those rows of pixels. The more ran-
domly mixed pixels and the more evenly colored pixels that are between these
rows are left pretty much as they were. You have no control over what will be
considered an edge or what edge width will be.
✦ Sharpen More: This filter is a more intensely contrasted version of the basic
Sharpen filter.

Unsharp Mask
The Unsharp Mask filter actually provides you with considerable control over how
sharpening will be interpreted. When you choose Filter ➪ Sharpen ➪ Unsharp Mask,
the Unsharp Mask dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 12-32.

Figure 12-32: The Unsharp Mask dialog box

Three controls exist for the Unsharp Mask: Amount, Radius, and Threshold. The
following list gives you some guidelines for using these settings — depending on
whether your image is printed or displayed on screen — to improve the apparent
sharpness of focus in the image.

✦ Amount: The Amount slider controls the increase in contrast between edges.
(What is considered an edge can be controlled with the Radius and Threshold
sliders.) You’ll notice a difference as you drag the contrast slider higher, but
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424 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

the differences in the image won’t be nearly as dramatic as when you start
experimenting with the other two settings.
✦ Radius: The Radius slider enables you to vary the thickness of edges that are
sharpened. Generally speaking, lower radius values work better for screen
images, such as presentations and Web images, because pixels are shown at a
1:1 ratio. Small radius settings in high-resolution images tend to increase the
visibility of artifacts.
✦ Threshold: The Threshold slider sets the level of contrast that has to exist
between adjacent areas before sharpening (increasing contrast) occurs. The
lower the number, the more edges are sharpened. Conversely, the higher the
number, the fewer the edges that are selected for sharpening.

You can also use the Unsharp Mask filter to purposely create exaggerated grain,
artifact, and noise effects. When using these settings for pure effect, experiment
with using the highest settings. Also, if you’re really in an experimental mood, try
using the Unsharp Mask filter on individual color channels. It’s an excellent way to
create grain and noise effects that can be quite beautiful.

Blurring
The functionality of the Blur tools can be divided into three categories:

✦ Minimizing noise, grain, or texture

✦ Selective focus
✦ Special effects

Minimizing noise, grain, or texture

The Blur filters that work best for minimizing noise, grain, and texture do so by
slightly blurring the image. The trick is, you don’t want to blur the edges — just the
smoother and flatter colors. Sometimes you’ll be able to get away with doing noth-
ing more than issuing the Blur or Blur More commands to get instant, minimal
smoothing. Figure 12-33 shows a portion of an original image on the left and the
same portion of the image after one application of the Blur and Blur More filters.

Figure 12-33: The original image, Blur applied once, and Blur More applied once
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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 425

If these filters soften the edges too much, see the Find Edges exercise in “Special
effects blurring (Find Edges, Motion Blur, and Radial Blur),” later in this chapter, for
a way to isolate the edges in the picture from the smooth areas that show the noise
most predominantly.

Another option is to use the Smart Blur or Gaussian Blur filters. How to use
Gaussian Blur is covered in the following section on selective focus, which is the
most common use for this feature.

If you want to keep the edges smooth while blending the interior detail, use the
Smart Blur filter. The Smart Blur filter offers you one way to maintain edge sharp-
ness and minimize noise. If the Smart Blur filter gives you the effect you’re looking
for (and it often will), you may not have to resort to the masking tricks described in
the Find Edges and High Pass filters, later in this chapter.

To use the Smart Blur filter, choose Filter ➪ Blur ➪ Smart Blur. The Smart Blur dialog
box appears. Figure 12-34 shows the Smart Blur dialog box with the settings used in
Figure 12-33.

Figure 12-34: The Smart Blur dialog box

After you have accessed the Smart Blur dialog box, you can adjust the following
settings:
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426 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

✦ Radius: The Radius slider dictates how wide a row of similarly colored pixels
must be in order to be considered an edge. For most images that have noise
or defects in the lighter areas, a radius of between 5 and 10 is appropriate.
(The actual number will depend mostly on the size of the image. Larger
images can tolerate higher numbers.)
✦ Threshold: The Threshold slider determines the amount of blurring by stating
how different adjacent pixels must be from each other in order to be consid-
ered an edge. You’ll get more blurring if the threshold is set higher than the
radius.
✦ Quality: To achieve the results shown in Figure 12-35, use the setting shown in
Figure 12-34. (Set the Quality at Medium or High, choose Normal from the
Mode menu, and click OK.)

Figure 12-35: The original eye and its appearance after applying Smart Blur

The edges maintain their sharpness pretty well after applying the Smart Blur filter.
The Smart Blur filter won’t give you as much control as you’d get from using an
edge mask (see the exercises in the next two sections), but it’s a workable solution
if your requirements aren’t too critical, and it’s a lot easier and faster to use than
having to work with an edge mask.

The Smart Blur filter can also be used as a special effect filter when more extreme
settings are employed. Try using the Threshold setting above the halfway point and
then setting the Radius at about half of that. You should get an effect that looks a
bit like a watercolor painting, like the image shown on the right in Figure 12-36.
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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 427

Figure 12-36: An image before (left) after (right) applying high Radius and
Threshold settings in the Smart Blur filter

Selective Focus with Gaussian Blur

The Gaussian Blur filter gives you complete control over the amount of blurring
that occurs. You drag a radius slider to increase the blurring over a specified num-
ber of pixels. Highlights tend to spread into shadows, so the Gaussian Blur filter is
also good for “glamour glow” effects.

Most digital cameras have very short focal-length lenses. Short focal-length lenses
result in images that are sharper over a greater range of distances than you can see
from a lens of equivalent focal length in a 35mm camera. That’s a great thing if you
want the scene you’re shooting to be sharp from your nose to the horizon. It’s not
so great if you want the viewer’s attention to be focused on part of the subject.

Elsewhere in this book, the discussions of Gaussian Blur have centered around sim-
ply blurring the background. In this case, blurring the background is often simply a
matter of extracting (knocking out) the foreground object and placing it on a new
layer, and then blurring the background to whatever degree seems appropriate by
using the Gaussian Blur filter. This process is a form of selective focus.

A more realistic approach to selective focus is to gradually blur the image as the
objects or planes in that image get further from or closer to the camera lens than
the part of the image that you want to keep in very sharp focus. As an example, I
use my cat Tia. In Figure 12-37, I photographed Tia with a 3 megapixel Nikon 995
digital camera with the lens zoomed to about a 50mm equivalent. Despite the close-
ness of the camera, the image is in fairly sharp focus from front to back. What I
really want is to focus on the eye and the closest part of her face.
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428 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 12-37: The original digital photo of Tia

Solving this type of problem is easy. Select the part that you want to keep in focus,
and then invert the selection and feather it so that when it’s blurred, the blurring
occurs gradually over the distance the selection is feathered. After the blur is done,
take more out of the center of the selection so it now surrounds even more distant
objects. Then feather the new selection edge again and then apply even more
Gaussian Blur. Keep making more outward bound selections and using even more
blur until the most distant objects are so blurred they’re hardly recognizable. The
following steps outline this process of created selective focus:

1. Open the file Tia’s Closest Eye from the CD-ROM, and select the area
around Tia’s closest eye and the closest part of her face.
2. Press Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + I.
This inverts the selection and makes it possible to blur the area outside the
original selection.
3. Choose Select ➪ Feather.
The Feather dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 12-38. With the Feather
dialog box, you can feather the edges of the selection so that the blurring is
gradual as parts of the image fade further away.
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Figure 12-38: Tia after inverting the first selection and choosing
Select ➪ Feather

4. Enter a fairly large number of pixels in the Feather dialog box, and then
click OK.
The number of pixels you enter depends on the overall size of your image —
a typical number is around 20. This ensures the focus graduates slowly out-
ward from sharp to blurred.
5. Choose Filter ➪ Blur ➪ Gaussian Blur.
The Gaussian Blur dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 12-39.
6. Drag the Radius slider to a fairly low number, and then click OK.

7. Choose the Freehand Lasso tool, press Alt, or choose the Subtract icon in
the Options Bar.
To blur the more distant area even more, you want to cut a larger hole in the
center of the selection.
8. Feather the wider selection by choosing Select ➪ Feather.
This time, make the feather radius two to three times as wide as for the first
selection.
9. Choose Filter ➪ Blur ➪ Gaussian Blur.
This time, set the blur radius two to three times as high as the first time, as
shown in Figure 12-40, and then click OK.
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430 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 12-39: The first selection, feathering, and blurring

Figure 12-40: The second selection, feathering, and blurring

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10. Press Cmd/Ctrl + D to drop your current selection.

11. Use the Lasso to select the really far away portions of the top of the image.
Make sure you don’t include foreground objects, such as Tia’s ears.
12. Feather and blur these more distant portions of the image even more.
You can see the final result in Figure 12-41.

Figure 12-41: The final selectively focused portrait of Tia

Special effects blurring (Find Edges, Motion Blur, and Radial Blur)
The Find Edges filter isn’t, strictly speaking, a corrective filter; it’s more a special
effects filter. If you apply the Find Edges filter to an image, it not only finds the most
prominent edges, but also places a “glow” effect around them. You can use a glow
effect to create a softened edge mask that is very useful when you want to increase
the apparent sharpness of focus on of the image itself, but don’t want to sharpen
interior surface textures.
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432 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

For instance, in a portrait, you may want to sharpen hair, eyes, and eyelashes
because they draw attention to the most communicative or sensuous parts of the
face. At the same time, increasing the graininess of skin or sharpening blemishes
could be most unflattering.

The same considerations exist in nonportrait photography as well. You may, for
instance, want to see sharply defined building edges, curbs, and windows. At the
same time, you may want interior details to be soft, foggy, and romantic.

The Find Edges filter can be a great help. You may want to use it in conjunction with
the Blur and High Pass filters. The following exercise shows you how you can use it
to make a mask (selection) that sharpens some edges and then, later, allows you to
soften interior details. I’m sure you can think of many other ways to use this mask.

1. Open the file Pigttoo from the CD-ROM.

2. Choose Window ➪ Channels.
The Channels palette appears, as shown in Figure 12-42. I want to create a
mask, which is an alpha channel. The alpha channel is a channel beyond the
primary color or composite channels.

Figure 12-42: The Channels palette after copying the

Green channel
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3. Click each channel to see which has the most contrast between edges.
As you can see from Figure 12-42, in this case, I chose the Green channel.
4. Drag the Green channel’s Name bar to the New Channel icon at the bottom
of the Channels palette.
5. Click the Green copy Name bar to make it active.
The image now appears in monochrome. You are now going to use the Find
Edges filter to make something resembling a line drawing of the image.
6. Choose Filter ➪ Stylize ➪ Find Edges.
The darkest edges are sketched with a darker (close to black) line, as shown
in Figure 12-43. You now want to reduce this to an absolute black-and-white
line drawing.

Figure 12-43: The result of the Find Edges filter

7. Choose Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Threshold.

The Threshold dialog box appears. Now you want to turn the sketch that Find
Edges made into a pure black-and-white sketch.
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434 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

8. Drag the slider until the black and white image shows exactly the detail
you want to see, and then click OK.
The result is shown in Figure 12-44.

Figure 12-44: The Threshold dialog box adjusts the edges to keep

9. Choose Image ➪ Adjustments ➪ Invert (or press Cmd/Ctrl + I).

This reverses the image so that the edges become the selection.
10. Use the Blur filter for the first time. Choose Filter ➪ Blur ➪ Gaussian Blur.
The Gaussian Blur dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 12-45. This
makes these edges wider and softer, so that the sharpening blends with the
surroundings.
11. Drag the Radius slider up to about 4.
The actual setting depends on the size of your image and how wide and feath-
ered you want your sharpening mask to be. When you’re happy with what you
see, click OK.
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Figure 12-45: The Gaussian Blur dialog box and

its effect on the mask

If you want to increase the contrast to make the white portions of the mask whiter,
execute the following steps:

1. Choose Image ➪ Adjustments ➪ Brightness/Contrast.

You should now have a very nice soft-edge black-and-white mask.
2. Click the RGB channel so that you can see your entire image.
Now you are going to load your new mask as a selection.
3. Choose Select ➪ Load Selection.
A selection marquee appears, but I find it much easier to judge my results if I
can’t see the marquee. Press Cmd/Ctrl + H to hide the marquee.
4. Choose Filter ➪ Sharpen ➪ Unsharp Mask.
The Unsharp Mask dialog box appears. Experiment with the settings. I usually
check the Preview box so that I can immediately see the results on the whole
box. Notice in the example that, while the hair and the tattoo are razor sharp,
the skin is still soft and smooth. If I wanted, I could invert the selection (press
Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + I) and further soften the skin.
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436 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

There are two Blur filters that make it appear as though either the camera or the
subject are moving so fast that the motion couldn’t be frozen:

✦ Motion Blur: Creates a lateral blur, the width and angle of which you can
control.
✦ Radial Blur: Two filters in one: Spin and Zoom:
• Spin: The Spin filter swirls the pixels around as if they were going down
the drain. The Amount slider controls the apparent speed of the whirling
movement. The Spin filter is excellent, when used inside a circular selec-
tion, for making wheels, propellers, or dance circles appear to be in
motion — even though you may have shot them standing still. See
Figure 12-46 for an example of the effect. By selecting only the area that
I want to make spin and carefully centering the Blur Center over the
wheel spokes, I created the illusion that one bike wheel is spinning.

Figure 12-46: A spinning bicycle wheel

• Zoom: The Zoom filter blurs in straight radial lines. You can position the
axis of these radial lines so the resulting zoom effect makes it look as if
the viewer were speeding toward that center. As is often the case with
motion filters, the illusion can be much richer if you duplicate the origi-
nal layer, blur the duplicate, and then lower the opacity so that you can
see through the blur to the unblurred objects in the picture, as shown in
Figure 12-47.
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Figure 12-47: The Radial Blur dialog box with the Zoom filter applied
makes it look as though you’re flying toward the end of the dock.

High Pass
The High Pass filter is another excellent filter for making line drawings of edges.
Line drawings can be much more varied in feeling, contrast, and thickness than
those made by other filters that find edges. (Photoshop has quite a few of these
filters: Trace Contour, Glowing Edges, and Find Edges.) The important difference is
that by using the Find Edges filter in conjunction with the Threshold command, you
can create a huge variety of edge effects, masks, and edge-blending effects with this
one filter.

With this exercise, I show you the versatility of the High Pass filter in creating edge
effects and then use these edge effects to emphasize edges and to change their
color and contrast by using them in conjunction with Blend modes.

1. Load the cacti image from the CD.

2. Make sure the Layers palette is visible. If not, choose Window ➪ Layers.
3. Duplicate the background layer by dragging it to the New Layer icon at the
bottom of the Layers palette.
4. Choose Filter ➪ Other ➪ High Pass.
The High Pass dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 12-48.
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438 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 12-48: The High Pass dialog box with the Radius slider set so that only
the most highly defined edges can be seen

5. Drag the Radius slider back and forth.

Notice the smaller the radius, the more the interior details turn gray and the
more highly defined the edges become. If you drag the slider all the way to the
right, you see the entire picture. In this instance, drag the slider to a radius of
about 4 or 5 pixels.
6. Choose Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Threshold.
The Threshold dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 12-49. Change this
grayscale image to something that looks like a line drawing.
7. Very slowly slide the Threshold slider from left to right and carefully watch
the changes in the image.
You may want to spend a month or two experimenting with the possibilities in
this routine, but for the moment, stop when you see an effect that you like.

There are now endless possibilities as to what you can do with this line drawing.
Here’s a list of a few:
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Figure 12-49: The Threshold dialog box and the resultant line drawing at this
setting

✦ Turn the line drawing into a coloring book. Call up the Swatches dialog box
so you can change colors easily. Choose the Paint brush, and in its Options
bar, set the blend mode to Darken. Any of the white areas in the image fill with
the current foreground color, while the outlines stay black.
✦ Run through the Layer Blend modes by choosing the Move tool and then
pressing Shift and the + key repeatedly. You are going to be stunned by how
many of these effects you’d be happy to hang on your wall or make a greeting
card from. But wait! That’s not all. While the line drawing layer is still selected,
press Cmd/Ctrl + I to invert the image to a negative. Now use the same tech-
nique to run through the Blend modes again. You can have even more fun by
changing the opacity of the Blend layer and cycling through the Blend modes
even one more time.
✦ Color the original line drawing layer by choosing a foreground color, and
then choosing Edit ➪ Fill. The Fill dialog box appears. Choose Lighten from
the Blend menu. All the Black lines changes to the current Foreground color.
Now try changing Blends and Opacity. Particularly, try the Dissolve mode at
different opacities.
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440 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

✦ Create a selection from a high contrast version of the photo. To do this,

change the image back to a black and white top layer. Press Cmd/Ctrl + A, and
then Cmd/Ctrl + C to copy the line drawing to the clipboard. Now, make the
Channels palette visible. At the bottom of the Channels palette, click the New
Channel icon. A new, empty Channel Name bar appears. Click to activate the
new channel and press Cmd/Ctrl + V to paste the line drawing into the new
channel. You can now use this channel as a mask or convert it to a selection.
(See the Find Edges exercise in the “Special effects blurring (Find Edges,
Motion Blur, and Radial Blur)” section, earlier in this chapter.)

Noise
The last of the filter categories whose intent is primarily to help you correct images
are those on the Filter ➪ Noise menu. These filters include Add Noise, Despeckle,
Median, Pixelate, and Dust & Scratches.

Add Noise
The Add Noise filter is your primary means of matching the grain in a composite
image or when you’ve blurred the background in an image in order to get selective
focus. Apply the Add Noise filter before you flatten the layers that you blurred, but
if needed, you can always use the Extract filter or use the Background Eraser to
separate the foreground from the blurred background. Then select the layer that is
blurred and choose Filter ➪ Noise ➪ Add Noise. In the resultant Add Noise dialog
box, check the Gaussian box and drag the slider to a low enough number to match
the grain in the foreground image, as shown in Figure 12-50. You’ll be amazed at
how much more unified your image looks.

Note Although it’s not officially meant for this purpose, the Artistic ➪ Film Grain filter can
be a very effective substitute for the Add Noise filter and provides a different set of
controls for matching grain and noise. Check it out.

Despeckle
Use the Despeckle filter for getting rid of noise, grain, and (mostly) moiré patterns
that result from scanning or digitally photographing images that have been screen
printed. In digital photography, it is most often used to minimize the noise that
results from cranking the camera’s ISO sensitivity to too high a level, shooting at
very long shutter speeds, or using lower-quality levels of image compression (usu-
ally in order to try to squeeze more images onto a single card). The Despeckle com-
mand does not add noise; it removes noise by slightly blurring all but the edge
pixels. The idea is that because the edges are still sharp, the picture has the illusion
of sharpness. However, the chunky discolored pixels that make up the noise are
blurred just enough to blend them together.
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Figure 12-50: The Add Noise dialog box set so

that the grain in the blurred background matches
the grain in the foreground portrait

The problem with Despeckle is that you don’t get any control. You choose Filter ➪
Noise ➪ Despeckle and the result is automatic. You can execute the command sev-
eral times, but past a certain point the edges become unacceptably soft. When you
reach that point depends on subjective variables, so you have to experiment.
After all, a person who is afraid to experiment never reaches their potential as
a photographer.

Dust & Scratches

Use the Dust & Scratches filter to remove stuff that seems irresistible to the glass
surface of scanners and to the celluloid surface of film that has been scanned.
Without the Dust & Scratches filter (and the new Healing and Patch brushes in
Photoshop 7), anyone who spends much time with a scanner can plan to spend
lots of time retouching the artifacts left by dust and scratches. The Dust &
Scratches filter dialog box is shown in Figure 12-51.
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442 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Be sure not to use the Dust & Scratches filter on the entire image at once. Why?
Because Dust & Scratches is really closely related to the Smart Blur filter. It tries to
preserve edges while blurring the image, which it does pretty well. But you’re still
going to end up with a picture much closer in sharpness to the original if you
restrict the blurring to the areas of flat smooth color where the blurring doesn’t
matter much. If a few specks are left over here and there, clean them up with the
Clone tool or move the surrounding texture over them with the Healing and Patch
brushes.

Figure 12-51: The Dust & Scratches filter dialog box

The following steps outline how to use the Dust & Scratches filter:

1. Choose the Freehand Lasso tool and the Add Selection icon from Freehand
Lasso tool Options bar.
2. Select the edgeless areas of the image that contain dust and scratches.
3. Choose Select ➪ Feather.
4. In the Feather dialog box, drag the radius slider to a fairly small number.
The number should be just enough so that the slight blurring that takes place
inside the selections and blends smoothly with its surroundings.
5. Choose Filter ➪ Noise ➪ Dust & Scratches.
The Dust & Scratches dialog box appears.
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6. Drag the sliders until they are in approximately the same position as shown
in Figure 12-41.
If you overdo it, you get an objectionable level of blurring.
7. Press Cmd/Ctrl + D to drop the selection.
8. Choose the Healing brush.
Press Alt and click to anchor the point where the surface texture pattern is
picked up. Paint out any scratches that remain. Two reasons why you may
find remaining scratches: They were too large to eliminate without objection-
able blurring or they were outside the selection because they were inside
areas of critical sharpness.

Art effects filters

The Art effects filters attempt to imitate traditional painterly styles and brush
strokes by doing a variety of things to reinterpret the “look and style” of the image.
On their own, they can be an effective means of turning a photograph into a stylized
illustration. However, a single pass is generally worthy only for use as a “highlight”
illustration on a Web page or for some other “quick effect” or attention-grabbing
use. Art effects can also be effective when used to give a style to text and buttons. If
your intention is to turn photographs into paintings, it is generally better to create
different effects (or different settings of the same effects) on different layers of the
image. You can then delete, erase, change the opacity, or any combination to give a
much more professional and “hand-done” look to the image

Thirty-seven built-in Photoshop filters can be described as art effects, divided into
three sub-menus: Artistic, Brush Strokes, and Sketch (mostly black and white). You
will find more specific detail on these filters in Chapter 14.

Special effects filters

A few built-in filters create effects that can be made to look as though they were
part of the original photograph. These include the Lens Flare, Lighting Effects, 3D
Transform, Texturizer, and Offset filters.

Lens Flare
The Lens Flare filter makes the photo look as though the brightest light source in
the image was aimed directly into the camera lens. With it, you can very quickly
create the feeling the picture was taken on a hot and sweaty day at sunset or the
car headlights were blinding you just before you were run over by the car.
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The following steps outline how to use to use the Lens Flare filter:

1. Choose Filter ➪ Render ➪ Lens Flare.

The Lens Flare dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 12-52.

Figure 12-52: The Lens Flare filter and its effect

2. In the Preview window, drag the center of the lens flare to the point where
you want to see it in the picture.
3. Choose the style of lens flare you want by choosing a lens focal length from
one of the Lens Type radio buttons.
4. Drag the slider to determine the size of the lens flare.

Lighting Effects
The Lighting Effects filter can produce very dramatic effects that look as though
carefully controlled studio lighting has been applied to the surface of the picture.
Light sources can be individually controlled by type (directional, omni, and spot-
light), size, shape, color, intensity, glossiness, and overall ambience. You can even
use another photograph to texture the image, so the texture seems to be reinforced
by the direction of the lighting. Figure 12-53 shows the result of using the Lighting
Effects filter as well as the settings you can adjust from the Lighting Effects
dialog box.
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Figure 12-53: The Lighting Effects dialog box

3D Transform
The 3D Transform filter actually bends the current layer to the shape of a number
of geometric surfaces, such as spheres, cylinders, cones, and cubes.

1. To do a 3D transformation, choose Filter ➪ Render ➪ 3D Transform.

The 3D Transform dialog box appears as shown in Figure 12-54.
2. Drag the shape to the size you want in order to project the image onto it.
3. Choose a pen tool to alter the shape by dragging points.
This is done just as you would any vector shape or path when drawing or
editing vector shapes or paths in Photoshop or in an illustration program.
4. Choose one of the rotation tools (the spheres near the bottom of the
palette).
The image glues itself to the surface of the shape. You can then choose an
angle of view and can move in and out on the shape.
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446 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

5. When the 3D shape is just as you want to render it, click OK.

You can then transform that layer to fit the apparent surface of another layer. So
you can, for instance, have this leaf pasted around the cylindrical curve of a
person’s arm or leg. Be warned though, getting it right takes some practice.

Figure 12-54: The 3D Transform dialog box

Texturizer
The Texturizer filter allows you to use any Photoshop-compatible image as a tex-
ture pattern for the currently active layer. This is an amazingly versatile and power-
ful tool. Here’s how the Texturizer filter works:

1. Open the image you want to texturize (or select the layer).
2. Choose Filter ➪ Texture ➪ Texturize.
The Texturizer filter dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 12-55.
3. Choose from any of the standard textures (Brick, Burlap, Canvas, or
Sandstone) by picking them from the Texturizer menu.
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4. If the standard textures don’t meet your needs, you can choose Load
Texture.
If you choose Load Texture you get a file browsing dialog box that lets you
load any file on your computer as a texture. This texture is always treated as
a monochrome photograph and lighter areas are interpreted as raised while
darker areas are treated as depressed when the image is used to texturize the
currently active photo.
5. Choose the Light Direction from the menu.
The light direction consists of any 45-degree angle.
6. Adjust the scaling of the original image and the depth of the texture (relief)
by dragging the two sliders.
7. When you see what you want in the Preview window, click OK.

Figure 12-55: From top left to bottom right: the original image, the Texturizer
dialog box, the image that was loaded for texturizing, and the final result
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448 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Offset and tiling

The Offset filter is the secret to making seamless tiles, which are small photos that
match up from side-to-side and top-to-bottom so that when they’re aligned in rows
and columns they appear to be one solid texture or pattern. The most frequent use
of tiles is backgrounds for Web pages or printed material. However, tiles can also be
very useful for covering areas such as unwanted windows in a building, which cre-
ates the effect of a blank wall. They can also make good backgrounds for portraits
and product shots.

Seamless tiles are easy if they consist of an object on a plain background. All you
have to do is open the tile file:

1. Choose Select ➪ Select All or press Cmd/Ctrl + A.

This places a marquee around the image that you are going to use as a tile.
2. Choose Edit ➪ Define Pattern.
You are now ready fill an area with that pattern.
3. Select the area (or layer) that you want to fill with the pattern.
4. Choose Edit ➪ Fill.
The Fill dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 12-56.

Figure 12-56: The Fill dialog box

5. Choose Pattern from the Use menu.

6. Choose the pattern you want to fill with from the Custom Pattern menu.
7. Click OK.

The area that you want to fill is covered with your seamless tile, as shown in
Figure 12-57.
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Figure 12-57: The seamless tile before and after being used to fill an area

The tricky part comes when you have a real-life texture, such as a photograph of
stucco or a pebbled mosaic, that you want to turn into a seamless pattern so that
you can use it almost anywhere.

Tip When you’re photographing textures that you want to turn into seamless tiles, be
sure to photograph a section of that texture in which the shapes, colors, and light-
ing are as uniform as possible. Also, try to be sure that your camera is as perpen-
dicular to the surface as possible.

In this example, I use a close-up photo of a pebbled sidewalk for a picture. To turn
this into a tile that I can fill an area with so that it doesn’t look like a sea of small
squares, I use the Offset filter. Here’s how you’d go about it:

1. Open the pebbles file from this book’s CD-ROM.

You actually want a much smaller pattern of pebbles, so cut the size of the
image in half.
2. Choose Image ➪ Image Size.
The Image Size dialog box appears.
3. Enter 2.25 in the Height field, make sure that Constrain Proportions and
Resample Image Bicubic are selected, and then click OK.
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450 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

4. Choose the Marquee tool, and press Shift while dragging to enclose a
square selection.
Tiles usually fill more uniformly when they’re square, but it’s not necessary to
always have a square tile.
5. After the marquee appears, drag it around inside the image until the area
includes the most uniform-looking group of pebbles.
Try to leave out pebbles that stand out because of brightness, size, or color
because they signal that the pattern is repeating when it is used to fill an area.
6. Choose Filter ➪ Other ➪ Offset.
The Offset dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 12-58. Overlap the contents
of the selection so that it wraps around and meets in the middle. The edges of
one tile perfectly match the edges of the next — ensuring the fill is seamless.

Figure 12-58: The Offset dialog box

7. Enter figures in the Horizontal and Vertical offset fields until you see a
seam dividing the contents of the marquee in quarters, as shown in
Figure 12-59.
8. Press Cmd/Ctrl + C.
This copies the contents of the selection to the clipboard.
9. Press Cmd/Ctrl + N.
A new window opens that is the same size as the contents of the clipboard.
10. Press Cmd/Ctrl + V.
This pastes the contents of the clipboard precisely into the new file.
11. Choose the Clone tool.
You can use the Clone tool to get rid of the seams that criss-cross the image
as a result of the overlap.
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Figure 12-59: The contents of the tile wrap halfway around and halfway across

12. Press Opt/Alt.

A cross-hair appears in the center of the brush cursor. Place the intersection
of the cross hair over the spot you want to clone from, and click. You have
now designated the pickup point.
13. Clone to blend over the seams until the seams disappear.
You should clone over any pebbles that are too easy to visually single out.
You can see the result of my cloning in Figure 12-60.
14. Now define this tile as a pattern. Press Cmd/Ctrl + A to select the entire tile.
You see a marquee appear all along the outer edges.
15. Choose Edit ➪ Define Pattern.
The Pattern Name dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 12-61.
16. Enter a name for your new pattern.
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452 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 12-60: The clone-blended tile

Figure 12-61: The Pattern Name dialog box

17. To test your pattern, choose File ➪ New.

The New File dialog box appears.
18. From the Preset Sizes menu, choose 800 x 600.
19. Fill the new file with your pattern to test its seamlessness, by choosing
Edit ➪ Fill.
The Fill dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 12-62.

Figure 12-62: The Fill dialog box

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20. Choose Pattern from the Use menu, select your new pattern from the
Custom Pattern thumbnails flyout, and then click OK.
Your tiled texture should look something like Figure 12-63.

Figure 12-63: The test fill of the new pattern

Now you know the basics for making seamless patterns. Now you can make grass
on lawns, sand on beaches, and plaster stucco over unwanted windows or ivy.

Special Third-Party Filters

The following sections provide some examples of tasks that various third-party
plug-ins can accomplish. In particular, I have focused on things that would have
been difficult to duplicate using Photoshop’s built-in filters.

Kai’s Power Tools

Kai’s Power Tools are by far the most popular (and quite possibly, as a result, the
most overused) series of Photoshop-compatible plug-ins. These products made
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454 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

MetaCreations famous — at least until it acquired Painter. Now MetaCreations has

sold most of its products to Corel. The KPT series of filters now sold by Corel and
its subsidiary, Procreate, are KPT5 ($149), KPT 6, and KPT Effects.

KPT5
KPT5 consists of ten special effects filters and each of these is capable of infinite
adjustments and most are sub-divided into sub-sections. The ten special effects fil-
ter categories or interfaces are called Blurrrr, FiberOptix, FraxFlame, FraxPlorer,
Frax4D, Noize, Orb-It, RadWarp, Smoothie, and ShapeShifter.

Blurrrr
Some very cool capabilities are included in this blur filter. The helicopter shown in
Figure 12-64 is a model that I shot in my studio. With the KPT5 Blurrr tool, I was
able to dramatize its flight. The helicopter was hanging from a nylon string against a
blue background when it was photographed. I then knocked it out with Corel
KnockOut2 and placed one of my favorite cloudscapes behind it. By isolating the
propellers with elliptical selections, I was able to spin the propellers with the Spin
and Spiral blur commands. Then, without having to first make a selection to limit
the blur, I use the High Speed blur to make the helicopter look like it’s speeding.

Figure 12-64: The model helicopter in KPT motion

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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 455

A star-filter effect in Blurrrr is well worth using for formal portraits, wedding pho-
tography, and evening night scenes. An example of it is shown in Figure 12-65.

Figure 12-65: The Gaussian Weave blur in

KPT5 blur, which was subtly applied to a
duplicated layer whose opacity was then
reduced to about 15 percent

Noize
The Noize filter enables you to specify a color gradient, which colors an endless
variety of noise patterns. The patterns can be superimposed on your current layer,
but they’re most useful when generated on an overlying layer. You can then experi-
ment with blurring and blend modes, an example of which is shown in Figure 12-66.
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456 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 12-66: Colored noise when applied to the silhouette of a Berkeley

neighborhood at sunset

KPT6
KPT6 has ten effects categories: Equalizer, Gel, Goo, LensFlare, Materializer, Projector,
Reaction, Scene Builder, Sky Effects, and Turbulence. The names of these filters are
fairly self-descriptive. You may guess that this is the most all-around useful-to-
photographers of all the KPT filters. I suppose that depends on your photographic
style and personal style, but nevertheless, it’s safe to say that this is a very
versatile set.

Sky Effects
Sky Effects is actually a filter that was acquired for use in KPT6 from another com-
pany. With it, you can create just about any kind of sky from any sun angle, time of
year, cloud cover, sunlight color, and more. You can control the focal length of the
camera lens, so you can match the angle of view on the sky with the angle of view in
your original picture. You can also tilt the camera up and down, which helps in
matching the horizon line in your original picture.
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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 457

To use Sky Effects effectively, knock out your skyline (I prefer the Photoshop
Background Eraser or using a channel mask for that purpose), and place the fore-
ground on its own layer. Then create a new layer that holds the sky effect. Then
you can scale and position the result of the Sky Effects exactly the way you like it.
Figure 12-67 shows the same neighborhood as in Figure 12-68, but with the sky
generated by KPT6 Sky Effects.

Figure 12-67: Sky by KPT6 Sky Effects

LensFlare
KPT6 adds a whole library of lens flare effects to your photos. You can choose
between several types of video cameras and several lens focal lengths (one or
the other, not both). You can change the size of the halo, the brightness of the
flare, and so forth. An example of the type of effect that you can create is shown
in Figure 12-68. The LensFlare feature is definitely the way to go if you want total
control over lens flare effects.
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458 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 12-68: KPT6 lens flare from a fictitious flashlight aimed out a car window

Texturizer
This makes the Texturizer filter in Photoshop look weak-kneed. You can use any
channel or any loaded image as a texture map. You have complete control over the
reflectivity of the surface and complete control over depth, coloring, and lighting.
Figure 12-69 shows you one example of what Texturizer can do.

Andromeda Photographic filters

Andromeda makes enough special-purpose filters to write a whole book about
them. For now, I’m sticking to those that are especially suited to use in digital pho-
tography. Of all the Andromeda Filters, I find most useful the Photographic Filter,
the Lens Doc filter, and the brand-new Scatter Light filter.

Lens Doc
Lens Doc fixes the barrel distortion inherent in many digital camera lenses. You
place markers to show the program how the perspective and lens distortion must
be straightened. Then (in each instance) you click a button to tell the program to
proceed. In Figure 12-70, you can see the result of the corrections made to one
image originally taken with a Nikon 995.
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Chapter 12 ✦ Special Effects Solutions 459

Figure 12-69: The texture of a rain-flooded window superimposed over a photo

of a rain-drenched street using KPT 6 Texturizer

Figure 12-70: The original image (left) and the result of correcting perspective with
the Andromeda Lens Doc filter (right)
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460 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Photographic filters
The photographic filters are a whole set of filters that produce effects typically
made by the special effects filters used on a camera lens. These filters include such
traditional photo effects as “star glint” highlights and a highlight diffusion filter,
which is a bit more versatile than Photoshop’s Diffuse Glow filter but not as vari-
able as the Scatter Light filter described in the next section. Other photographic
filters include reflections, which can make one portion of the image look like it’s
reflecting another portion, and a Velocity filter for motion blurs.

Scatter Light Filter

This is much more that just the typical portrait diffusion filter (a powerful version
of which is also included). This filter also provides starlight, fog effects, and a
“dream effects” setting that actually applies the effects only to the brightest areas
of the image, creating a Rembrandt-like effect.

Summary
In this chapter, I show you how filters and plug-ins can be used to correct and
enhance certain aspects of your digital photographs. This is but a small sampling
of such tools, but it gives you a good bit of insight as to how powerful and flexible
such tools can be.

✦ ✦ ✦
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Advanced
Image Editing
13
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Chapter

I t’s an endless cycle: Microsoft and Apple make operating

system updates available, and you take advantage of their
offers so you can stay on the cutting edge. Then you find out
New features in
Adobe Photoshop 7

Isolating edits with

that your favorite software packages don’t work in the new
Masks and Selections
OS. As a result, you are forced to either work in the old OS
or make do without your favorites. Sometimes the software
updates happen quickly, but other times, you wait for months Curves
to receive the newest versions.
Knockouts
Adobe has finally released Photoshop 7.0 so you can work
comfortably in Windows XP and Mac OS X without being History Brush
denied one of the bread-and-butter programs. The nicest part
is that Photoshop wasn’t made OS-specific, so you can run it Art History Brush
in older versions of your operating system. You can have your
cake and eat it, too! Actions

Beyond writing the enormous amounts of code necessary ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

to run in all these platforms, Adobe went a step further by
developing what will more than likely become an industry
standard: Extensible Metadata Platform, or XMP. This tech-
nology embeds information in your files so you can quickly
repurpose, archive, and add your Photoshop 7 files to auto-
mated publishing workflows.

XMP takes the metadata (a 25-cent word for file information)

that’s used by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA)
and the International Press Telecommunications Council
(IPTC) to identify images and text that have been transmitted
from the source to the newspaper. This metadata includes
captions, keywords, credits, origins, and categories. On the
Windows platform, you can add metadata to PSD, TIFF, JPEG,
EPS, and PDF formats. Mac users can add the information to
any of the file formats that Photoshop produces.
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462 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

You can add a lot more information to your metadata file, as shown in Figure 13-1.
For example, when I take a photo with my Nikon 950, the metadata list tells me
whether the flash went off, the f-stop and aperture, the date and time, the size of
the file in both pixels and kilobytes, and the color mode. To top it off, you can input
the photographer’s name, copyright information, a URL, and an e-mail address. The
metadata stays with the file even when it’s placed in a page layout program.

Figure 13-1: Metadata tells you more about

an image than you thought you could know.

File Browser
You have a new way to open and manage files in Photoshop. When you go to the
File menu, you’re used to seeing New, Open, and Open Recent, but now you also see
Browse. When you select Browse, a window pops up that is divided into four panes:

✦ A Tree View of your hard drive

✦ A Thumbnail pane
✦ A Preview pane
✦ A Metadata pane

The File Browser is docked in the Palette Well at the right end of the menu bar. You
can either keep it docked or you can remove it from the Palette Well and use it as
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 463

a moveable panel, in which case, you have more options regarding the size of the
panel. After you’ve used this file opener two or three times, you’ll wish every pro-
gram had a file browser like this.

Tree View
The Tree View will be very familiar to Windows users — it’s the same view you get
as you navigate through windows looking for files. Mac users may find it a little bit
confusing at first, but it only takes a minute or two to see how easy it is to zip through
your hard drive. You can move folders and files around in this window. There’s even
a Batch Rename feature for zipping through multiple files.

Thumbnail
One of the absolute best new features in Photoshop 7 is the fact that all the images
that used to show up on my desktop as QuickTime icons (the generic showing from
my digital camera) now show up as color thumbnails. The new Thumbnail pane in
the File Browser shows all the files that Photoshop can open. Each thumbnail is
relatively large (about two inches square at the “large” option), and the name of
the file appears beneath each thumbnail. You can change the name and location
of the file in this thumbnail state. You change a file’s location by dragging the thumb-
nail to another folder in the Tree pane. If an existing file with the same name is in the
new folder location, Photoshop asks if you want to let it Auto Resolve the conflict,
in which case it adds numbers to the end of the filename so that no files are deleted.
If an image is rotated, you can correct its orientation by clicking an arrow at the
bottom of the window. This action doesn’t change the file unless you open the file.
At that time, Photoshop rotates the image as you have done with the thumbnail. If
you open the file and close it again without saving it, the rotation is nullified.

You can view the Thumbnail pane in several different ways:

✦ Small: If you choose Small from the drop-down menu at the bottom of the
Browse window, you see icon-sized images to the left of filenames. You can
select a rotated image and change its orientation just as you do with the
larger views.
✦ Medium: The Medium view provides images about 60 pixels wide. The images
are arranged in rows and columns according to the width and height of the
window that you created for them.
✦ Large: Choose the Large view to see thumbnails about 120 pixels wide.
✦ Large with Rank: Large with Rank uses the same view and filename as the
Large view, but adds a Rank beneath the filename. (See the next paragraph
for more on ranking images.)
✦ Details: The Details view has medium-sized thumbnails on the left with meta-
data information displayed on the right.
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464 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Another drop-down menu appears at the bottom of the small thumbnail pane, which
allows you to view the list of images in a dozen orders, including Date Created, Date
Modified, File Size, Copyright, File Name, and Rank. Also new in Photoshop 7 is the
ability to rank your images, which only means that you can apply a modifier name
to the file, such as “Proof,” “Final,” or “Mary’s.” By default, all images are unranked,
but when you rank a photo, you can then use that rank to sort your work. This abil-
ity makes it easy to distribute work and keep track of what’s being done with
shared files.

Preview
Depending on the size that you make the Tree view and the Metadata pane, you
have a large space or a small space for the Preview pane. The small thumbnail that
you selected is enlarged to fill this large Thumbnail pane. This is really a great tool
to check images before opening them so you don’t open something by mistake.

Metadata
The last pane is the Metadata pane. As described previously, information about
the image, photographer’s credits, bit depth, and camera data fills this pane. You
can view it in two ways: All or EXIF. EXIF displays the data taken from your digital
camera, which is now embedded in your document in such a way (XMF) that you
can see it.

Healing Brush
A long-standing joke among digital photo retouchers goes like this: If you can’t afford
the surgery, touch up the X-rays in Photoshop. Well, Adobe has graduated from radi-
ology to plastic surgery with the Healing Brush available in Photoshop 7. For years,
you’ve been able to meticulously use the Clone Stamp tool in order to take out
blemishes, wrinkles, and other artifacts that you consider a detriment to your perfect
image. If you’re one of the lucky who have mastered the art of the Stamp tool, you’ll
really appreciate what the Healing Brush can do. Not only does it take a sample part
of any open image and paints over your live image, it also preserves shading, lighting,
and texture in a way that you have to see to believe. You hold down the Opt/Alt key
and click an area of the cheek to get the sample image. You then drag the mouse over
wrinkles, moles, warts, scars, and even loose hair. All these blemishes seamlessly
disappear! This tool is going to be responsible for some very deceptive portraits.
From now on, you’ll be hearing “How do these people get so old and stay so young-
looking?” Figure 13-2 shows an example of just how easy it is to be young again.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 465

Figure 13-2: The Healing Brush removed all the wrinkles around the left eye but
retained the correct skin texture and shading.

Patch Tool
The Patch tool resides in the Toolbox with the Healing Brush. With such a neighbor,
you may think that the tools are related, and they are. The Healing Brush uses a
brush metaphor to paint elements away, but the Patch tool works by moving
selected areas within the image. You have two choices to make as you work: the
area you want to change, called the destination, and the area that you will use to
create the change, called the source. The Patch cursor acts the same as the Lasso
tool — with the difference that it can’t go into the “rubber band” selection mode
(Polygonal Lasso) — you simply drag the cursor around an area of your image.
Holding down the Shift key allows you to add to the selection, and Alt/Option lets
you remove areas from the selected area.

It doesn’t matter whether you select the source or destination area first because
after you make the selection, you click either the Source or Destination button in
the Menu bar. Then you place the cursor inside the selection and click and drag the
selection to a part of the image that will change or be the source of the change. In
other words, if you make a destination selection (an area you want to change), you
then drag the selection to an area of the image that will be the source (contains the
correct information). A soft, feathering meld occurs, with no visible lines or breaks
in color, contrast, or shape.

I suggest that you are cautious about one action when using the Patch tool. The
Patch tool creates the seamless image integration by collecting pixels from adjacent
areas of the selection. This causes a very slightly blurry border (about 10 to 15 pixels
wide) to appear around the selection. If you’re working with areas of similar color
or contrast, the border is negligible. However, if an abrupt change exists in the shot,
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466 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

such as the sky meeting a roof, the roof’s color blends into the sky more or less as if
you applied a motion blur to the edge of the roof. I suggest that you make the Patch
do its work a distance away from these areas of abrupt change and switch to the
Stamp tool for the final cleanup.

Paint Tools
The new painting engine in Photoshop 7 greatly enhances what you can do with
images. The new features probably won’t put procreate Painter out of business, but
they certainly give you the opportunities to add painterly effects with many different
styles of brushes. You can simulate various traditional painting techniques and even
invent some of your own.

You can dock the Brushes palette in the Palette Well to have it available at all times.
When you select the palette, your screen nearly fills with the window filled with
brushes and options. Click on the name of a brush (not the checkbox), and the panel
on the right changes to an array of options that are available for the brush that you
selected. By moving sliders or by inputting numerical values, you can create your
own brush in seconds. Then you can save it to the Brushes menu for later use.

The image shown in Figure 13-3 shows a photo of flowers on the left. On the right is
the result of about 15 minutes of painting with various sizes and styles of brushes and
textures. Doing a “painting” like this with a mouse or a trackball may be a bit tedious,
but my Wacom Intuos2 tablet made the task a lot of quick and tactile fun. You can
set your brushes to take full advantage of pressure and sensitivity, tilt, and airbrush
thumbwheel so that it feels more like you’re actually painting the image. By combin-
ing two different brushes, the number of painterly effects that you can create are only
limited by your imagination. Just as in Painter, you can adjust shape, tilt, scatter, jit-
ter, spacing, texture, diameter, and other attributes of each brush you use. You can
even scan your own backgrounds and add them to the Texture menu in the palette
for use with any brush.

Figure 13-3: An example of the new painting tools effects in Photoshop 7

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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 467

Automatically Correct Color

For quite some time, you’ve been able to adjust the contrast and levels of your
images with Photoshop. Photoshop 7, however, adds Auto Color to the Image
menu. Auto Contrast and Auto Levels use specific algorithms to adjust your image.
Specifically, Auto Contrast uses the Enhance Monochromatic Contrast algorithm
(found in the Options section of the Levels or Curves dialog box). It makes high-
lights lighter and shadow areas darker while preserving the overall color relation-
ship. This option also clips all channels identically. On the other hand, Auto Levels
maximizes the tonal range in each channel to produce a more drastic correction
in the Enhance Per Channel Contrast algorithm. Because each channel is adjusted
separately, you may cause a colorcast — so be warned. The new Auto Color uses
the Find Dark & Light Colors algorithm to search for the lightest and darkest pixels
in your image and uses those pixels to maximize contrast while minimizing clipping.
Auto Color also uses the Snap Neutral Midtones algorithm to find the average, nearly
neutral color in your image, and then adjusts the gamma values to make the color
neutral.

If you want to create your own personal set of “auto” adjustments, you can do it
easily by opening the Levels or Curves panels and then clicking on the Options but-
ton. The Auto Color Correction Options dialog box opens (as shown in Figure 13-4)
and allows you to modify the default color corrections that Photoshop makes
through the Image ➪ Auto Color selection. The Auto Color Correction Options
dialog box allows you to change the algorithm, add or release the Snap Neutral
Midtones option, and change the amount of clipping in the shadows and highlights.
The norm is between 0.05% and 1% for either value. Click on the Save As Defaults
box to set your preference of Auto Color Correction as the default that will be used
when you choose Auto Color (or Auto Levels or Auto Contrast if you have changed
these settings) from the Image menu.

Figure 13-4: The Auto Color Correction

Options dialog box
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468 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Customize Your Toolset

When you click on a tool in Photoshop 7, the Tool Options bar appears at the top
of your window. The contents of this area change according to the tool that is in
use. This bar was introduced in Photoshop 6, but now has more powerful attributes.
When you click on a tool, such as the Brush or Clone Stamp, you see the following
options, as shown in Figure 13-5:

✦ Current tool: The currently selected tool appears in the box on the far left.
Click on the arrow to see all of your tool presets. Photoshop provides about
a dozen styles, and you can add more easily.
✦ Brush size: Brush size is in the next box; the arrow brings down the various
sizes and shapes you can find in the Brushes panel.
✦ Mode: The Mode menu allows you to decide how the tool affects the image.
✦ Opacity: Opacity determines how much of the tool’s work shows over the
underlying image.
✦ Flow: Flow relates to how quickly the brush tool applies paint.

Figure 13-5: The Tool Options bar at the top of your Photoshop window

If you often use a combination of brush effects such as angle, size, and opacity, you
can save it: Click on the triangle next to the currently selected tool (top left box in
the Tool Options bar), and then click on the drop-down menu button and select New
Tool Preset. You are given the option to retain the name that Photoshop has given
your brush, or you can give it a name of your own. You can even set specific brush
presets for cropping information, such as 35 pixels wide by 35 pixels tall at 72 dpi.
You may not need this particular cropping information immediately, but during the
construction of a Web site, you may need it frequently. This feature can speed up
and optimize your workflow tremendously.

Precise Distortions
The phrase “precise distortions” sounds like an oxymoron if ever there was one!
However, Photoshop 7 has enhanced the Liquify plug-in module from version 6 so
that you can create distortions that are repeatable. Why? Now you can warp a low
resolution image, where the computer can utilize RAM most efficiently, and then
save the Liquify mesh. Then you can open the high resolution image and apply the
saved mesh. You can also save a mesh and return to the image later and do more
distortions. You can even resize the meshes to fit any file.
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Usually, you see people using the Liquify tool to play with images, creating large
noses and squinty eyes. These distortions, however, can actually be used for a real-
world reason, as shown in Figure 13-6. You can do all of this in Photoshop by using
the standard toolset, but you can also use the Liquify feature to create the distor-
tions much more quickly. When I played with this scenario, I carried out the initial
distortions on a 72 dpi file, saved the mesh, and then applied it to the full-resolution
300 dpi file.

Turbulence Tool
The Turbulence tool is a new addition to the Liquify toolbar; it scrambles image
pixels according to the parameters that you assign in the brush size, brush pressure,
and turbulent jitter input options. As with other tools, such as Pinch and Bloat in
the Liquify toolbar, Turbulence creates its effects and lets you view them in a grid
view. The grid size is adjustable, and shows the distortion that is taking place in
real time.

Figure 13-6 shows the Turbulence tool in action. The original image shows an over-
heating part in an engine, which isn’t something that you usually get a chance to
shoot. Setting up a shot like this can be troublesome — not to mention dangerous —
so it’s a perfect use for this filter. I added a new layer to the original image, and
using a light gray color, I added smoky shapes to it, as shown in the middle image
in Figure 13-6. Then with that layer active, I chose Filter ➪ Liquify and dragged the
Turbulence tool through the smoke area. I experimented with brush size, pressure,
and turbulent jitter until I achieved the right effect.

Figure 13-6: The effects of the Turbulence tool are equally effective with water or
wispy clouds.

Unless you select the Backdrop view and then choose the background image to view,
you can’t see anything except the smoke and the grid. When you’re using light colors
for the smoke, as in this image, you don’t see much of anything, so it’s wise to view
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470 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

the background. In the final image (shown on the right side of Figure 13-6), I darkened
the smoke layer a bit above the light source to make it look more natural. The mesh
used in this image is shown in Figure 13-7. I saved the mesh during distortion on a
low-resolution image and loaded it into a high-resolution version of the same image.

Figure 13-7: The mesh from Figure 13-6

If you haven’t used the Liquify feature in the Filters menu, you may not be aware of
the existence of the Reconstruct tool, which is similar to an Undo command. Similar
in that it doesn’t undo the “liquification” that you’ve done in a reverse order as you’re
used to, but instead reconstructs in the area where you drag the tool. Basically, it
irons out the mesh again as you move the tool around the image.

The Freeze and Thaw tools are equally as important as Liquify. As you may guess,
the Freeze tool locks areas of the image that you don’t want to be distorted. This
tool also creates a red (default) overlay on the image where you want pixels to
remain in place. The Thaw tool acts as an eraser on the frozen overlay and opens
that area to distortion.

Tip You can change the color of the mesh and the frozen areas within the View
Options section of the Liquify panel. If you have a large area to freeze, it may be
easier and quicker to select the parts that you want to liquify, and then click the
Invert button in the Freeze Area section of the panel.

New Ways to Create Patterns

Regardless of how often you need to make patterns, it’s certainly easier to do now
in Photoshop 7 than it was with the old tiling process. Using patterns is now just a
matter of making a rectangular section of an image, and choosing Filter ➪ Pattern
Maker. A new dialog box appears that allows you to make a few requests from the
pattern:
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 471

✦ Tile size: You can use the entire image size, the size of the selection that
you’ve made, or the default of 128 pixels square as indicated in the Tile
Generation panel.
✦ Offset: You can ask for a horizontal or vertical offset, or none at all.
✦ Smoothness: You can choose from three degrees of Smoothness.
✦ Sample Detail: You can enter a Sample Detail amount in pixels.

When you click the Generate button, the preview screen is filled with your new tile.
If you’re not happy with it, hold down the Opt/Alt key and click the Reset button
to bring you back to square one. Make your changes, and try again! Figure 13-8
shows a pattern. The patterns you generate are nothing like the tiles that you’re
used to. These patterns scramble the image information in such a way that it’s
barely recognizable — which is what a background pattern should be. The colors
remain basically the same, but with repeated generations, you can totally destroy
any resemblance to the original image. After you’ve created and saved a pattern,
you can use it with any of the brushes for some really special effects.

Figure 13-8: The original image, with a selection made for a pattern. The completed
pattern is shown on the right.

Create Personal Workspaces

If you work in an environment with two or more artists assigned to the same com-
puter, you probably have a frustrating experience every time you fire up Photoshop.
Someone has moved panels and palettes and closed others. You need a few minutes
just to get everything in order again so you can work efficiently without searching
for your favorite things.
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Then again, you may work alone on your computer, but you have to perform different
types of tasks. Some days you need to outline objects in photos in order to create
clipping paths. On those days, you don’t need the Color palette, Info palette, or
Styles. At other times, you’re retouching color images, or readying them for the
Web, in which case you need a different toolset or group of palettes.

Photoshop 7 gives you the option of setting up personal workspaces for each of
these scenarios and more. All you need to do is decide that a particular arrange-
ment of panels and palettes is comfortable for a certain type of project. Go to the
Window menu, and choose Workspace. Save the workspace with a descriptive
name. The next time you sit down to work, go to the Workspace menu and select
the arrangement that you want. Within seconds, all the panels and palettes are
exactly where you want them. I wish my office were as easy to keep orderly!

Spell Checker
I usually choose to set my text in a page layout program such as Adobe PageMaker,
InDesign, QuarkXPress, Macromedia FreeHand, or Adobe Illustrator. You may use
Corel products for the same purpose. My philosophy has always been that an image-
editing program is for the editing of images, and a word processor should be used
for text input. However, Photoshop is attempting to change that. Photoshop has no
way to check the accuracy of my typing, which is one of the main reasons why I’ve
never set type in the program. Adobe has removed this reason with the new Check
Spelling feature located in the Edit menu. The text doesn’t have to be selected. When
you select Check Spelling, all layers are checked unless you’ve deselected Check All
Layers in its dialog box. This feature highlights incorrectly spelled words and makes
suggestions for replacement words. You can also use the Find and Replace feature,
located beneath the Check Spelling item in the menu.

Note Check Spelling compares all the words in your document in the language that you
select as the dictionary in the Character panel. A really impressive note is that you
can choose from 17 languages, including Canadian French and Brazilian Portuguese.
Photoshop isn’t likely to give Microsoft Word a run for its money, but at least you
can now check your document for errors before committing it to film. Spell check-
ing and the addition of paragraph and character attribute options certainly bumps
Photoshop ahead of any photo-editing competitors.

Protect Your Images

You are now able to place a password on Photoshop PDF files in order to prevent
them from being printed from Adobe Acrobat. Acrobat users can open the file and
view it, but they are then required to input the password in order to print the docu-
ment. You can save the file with 40-bit or 128-bit RC4 encryption for restricted access.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 473

When you save your document as a Photoshop PDF, you have the option of selecting
Security Settings. You are then asked to enter a password needed by the user and a
second Master Password that is necessary to remove or change permissions and
passwords, as shown in Figure 13-9. Then you can choose the level of encryption,
and depending on your choice, add more levels of access or access denial. For
example, under Changes Allowed, you have the following choices:

✦ None
✦ Only Document Assembly
✦ Only Form Field Fill-in or Signing
✦ Comment Authorizing Form Field Fill-in or Signing
✦ General Editing, Comment and Form Field Authoring

Printing restrictions limit the resolution of the printing or simply deny printing
entirely.

Note These restrictions apply to the document only when it is opened in Adobe Acrobat.
Anyone opening the file in Photoshop can do what they want with it, including
changing or printing the image.

Figure 13-9: Lock your PDF images up with the new security measures
available when you save an image in Photoshop PDF format.
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474 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Picture Package
If you present package deals to clients, this new feature can save you more time and
money than you thought possible! If you have an exceptionally good inkjet printer,
you can bring smiles to the whole family with groups of wallet-sized pictures of the
kids in no time.

Picture Package is found in the File ➪ Automate menu, and when you choose it,
you’re greeted with a window-sized panel divided roughly in half, as shown in
Figure 13-10. On the left half of the screen, you input information, including the
source image(s), the document size, layout, resolution, and label data. The right
half of the screen contains a large thumbnail view of the page you are outputting.

Figure 13-10: The Picture Package can save you hours of mindless resizing
and placement.

If you want to print a sheet of multiples of the same image, have the document open
and choose Frontmost Document as the source. You can also search for an individ-
ual file or choose a folder. I suggest a little planning if you choose a folder, however.
Basically, Photoshop runs an action, and the original image opens, is resized, is
placed on the page, is opened again, is resized again, is placed again, and so on
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 475

until the sheet is full. Each repetition takes a few seconds, and a folder with several
images in it may take you through your lunch hour. However, you are spared the
time and work of doing it all by hand.

You don’t have many restrictions on print sizes either. Figure 13-11 shows all the
selections available on an 8 x 10-inch sheet. You can also print to 11 x 17 inches
and 10 x 16 inches. You have the option of turning off the flattening of layers on the
page as Picture Package is functioning, but you should have a pretty good reason
for doing so — each image gets its own layer, and those layers add up to image
overhead.

Figure 13-11: The variety of print size arrangements for an 8 x 10-inch sheet

Web Photo Gallery

Similar to the Picture Gallery, the new Web Photo Gallery can save time and energy.
It’s nothing short of slick! Follow these steps to use this feature:

1. Place images that you want to share online into a folder.

I recommend giving the images descriptive filenames.
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476 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

2. Select File ➪ Automate ➪ Web Photo Gallery.

The Web Photo Gallery dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 13-12.
3. Pick your online layout from the 11 choices in the drop-down Styles menu.
A small thumbnail of your layout appears in the column to the right. Nine of
the layouts are static, and two are slide shows that change the large image
every ten seconds. All of the layouts are in tables or frames. The static layouts
consist of various arrangements of thumbnails. Some are in a line; others fill
the entire page. Click on any thumbnail to bring the full-size image onto the
screen, and use the Next and Back arrows to navigate through your gallery.
Layouts with frames have automatic scroll bars that appear or disappear as
required by the number of thumbnails or the size of your large photos.

Figure 13-12: The Web Photo Gallery dialog box

4. Enter an e-mail address, and choose whether to have an extension of

.htm or .html.
5. Choose the folder containing your images and create a destination folder.
6. In the Options section beneath the Destination button, select features that
you’d like for the gallery.
The Options section of the Web Photo Gallery dialog box determines how the
top of your Web page looks. You have the option of creating a size for your
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 477

thumbnails and their arrangement on the page. You can also set the size of the
large images and choose custom colors for the background, the banner, links,
and text.
7. Enter a name for the site, your own information, the date, and the size of
the text that you just input that will appear in the banner.
8. Click OK.
Sit back for a few seconds or minutes, depending on how many files you have
to process. Your browser pops open with your own personal gallery on it, like
the one shown in Figure 13-13.

Figure 13-13: One of the 11 layouts available in the

Web Photo Gallery

You are then prompted to place the gallery in a folder. It’s a good idea to create a
new folder for the gallery because this process generates several components of
the gallery:

✦ A home page for your gallery named index.htm (or index.html, depending
on the preferences you’ve chosen). If the gallery is the only file going onto a CD,
you don’t have to worry about this file’s name, but if you’re going to place the
gallery on the Web, you need to give this file a new name. Otherwise, it may
be the new home page to your site — without navigation devices to get to the
rest of your site.
✦ A folder named Images that contains the full-sized JPEG files.
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478 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

✦ A folder named Thumbnails containing the smaller thumbnail JPEG thumbnails.

✦ The Pages folder, which contains HTML pages (this is the last folder that you
upload).

Be sure to optimize the full-size images for online viewing, including the sharpening
of the photo. As you work with your images, go to File ➪ File Info, and input all the
metadata that you want to travel with your pictures, as shown in Figure 13-14. You
can place a title, photographer (titled author in the dialog box), the caption, job title,
any copyright information, and your URL. If you don’t fill this panel out, the gallery
only contains the information that you see in the Browse window — filename, copy-
right if any, and not much more.

Figure 13-14: The File Info dialog box contains input

fields for all your metadata.

You may not love the gallery layouts, but it sure beats creating a gallery from code
or even a program such as Adobe GoLive, Macromedia Dreamweaver, or Microsoft
FrontPage. I imagine that it’s only a matter of time before you can download dozens
of third-party shareware layouts. In fact, if you’re so inclined, you can go to the
Photoshop 7 folder, open the Presets folder and the WebContactSheet folder inside,
where you’ll find the raw HTML pages that you can rework to your heart’s content.
But do so at your own risk; I recommend working on a copy of the Photoshop file
just in case things head south on you.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 479

ImageReady
You’re probably aware that Photoshop comes bundled with ImageReady, and that
you can use ImageReady to optimize images for the Web. Adobe has pushed the
envelope further in this version of the program. By the way, ImageReady skipped
a few version numbers and is now at 7 to keep current with Photoshop.

ImageReady has been made more user-friendly, with increased accuracy at analyzing
what you will lose in image quality to save on file size before converting your file to
a format fit for the Web. Large strides in transparency effects have been also made
in the Save For Web command. You can select three variations of Transparency and
Matte options in order to have your image blend into the background color of your
choice. If you want to have fully transparent pixels stay transparent, while partially
transparent pixels are blended with a background color, then you should select
Transparency and choose a matte color. You can see the results of the various
transparent options in Figure 13-15. This figure starts with the original image of the
faucet isolated on a transparent layer that has a drop shadow applied to it.

Figure 13-15: Transparency examples, from left to right: The original image;
Transparency selected with matte color; Transparency selected without a matte
color; and Transparency deselected with a matte color.

The transparency concept in Photoshop — as it concerns the Web — is that the image
is silhouetted from its background. Removing the background leaves a pixelated
edge or halo that appears artificial and amateurish when the image is ultimately
placed into a Web page. This is readily apparent when the Web page’s background
is a different color than the background of the original image. You can use the
Transparency and Matte options in the Save For Web command to eliminate the
halo. For the best melding of the image to the background, don’t place the image
on a multi-colored base, and choose the matte color carefully. If you’re unsure of
the color combinations, create a new document with your Web page’s background
color, and try various matte and transparency dither combinations on it.
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480 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Choose the matte color that matches the background of the Web page by clicking
on the drop-down menu and selecting from the following:

✦ None: No color is introduced into the image. This can be useful if the graphic
will be going across a multi-colored background, but jaggies may be visible.
✦ Black: Transitional or edge pixels are converted to black. This should be used
for black backgrounds and is unsightly when the image is placed on a light
background.
✦ White: Transitional or edge pixels are converted to white. This should be used
with white backgrounds and gives unsatisfactory results on dark backgrounds.
✦ Eyedropper Color: To select an Eyedropper Color, you first select the
Eyedropper tool, and then click on the color you want to be the matte color.
Then select Eyedropper Color from the Matte menu. The transitional pixels
become the selected Eyedropper Color.
✦ Other: If you select Other, you get the Adobe Color Picker, and you can
choose any color you want.

The second transparency option is that you may want all pixels that are more than
50 percent transparent to be completely transparent, and any pixels less than 50 per-
cent transparent to be opaque instead of transparent. If this is the case, check the
Transparency box, and choose None from the Matte menu.

The third option is to make all the transparent colors a selected color (the matte
color) and blend partially transparent pixels with the matte color. To get this effect,
deselect Transparency, and select a matte color.

Dithered Transparency
Dithering scatters pixels in an image as a means to show colors that your browser
or monitor is not capable of producing. This section deals with the effects of the
various dithering options available in Photoshop and ImageReady. You can choose
to have no dithering at all if you want, but you can now choose from three different
means of creating a seamless integration of your image into a Web page or graphic:

✦ Diffusion Transparency Dither: The Diffusion Transparency Dither uses a

random pattern of dots across adjacent pixels and creates a significantly less
noticeable effect than Pattern dithering. Seams created by this type of dither-
ing are visible where contiguous pixels become solid or transparent. If you
choose Diffusion Transparency Dither, you can control the amount of dithering
by adjusting the Dither value in the adjustment panel.
✦ Pattern Transparency Dither: Pattern Transparency Dither creates a halftone-
like appearance to the dither. Figure 13-16 shows how relatively predictable
the pattern is.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 481

✦ Noise Transparency Dither: This type of dither uses the same type of algo-
rithm as Diffusion but doesn’t use adjacent pixels. This means that you don’t
get any form of a pattern at all. Figure 13-16 is the same faucet image as the
previous figure, but in an extreme close-up view so you can see the dither
patterns. No matte color is selected for this figure.

Figure 13-16: The effects of Transparency Dithering with

no matte color chosen. From top to bottom: the original
image, no transparency, Diffusion Dithering, Pattern
Dithering, and Noise Dithering.

Figure 13-17 shows the results of how the dithering works when you have a matte
color in use. Notice that in the dither patterns, the dots get progressively lighter
until they reach the matte color at the outer boundary of the shadow. All of these
dithering options work. You decide which one to use in a given situation.
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482 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 13-17: The effects of Transparency Dithering with

a matte color chosen. From top to bottom: the original,
no transparency, Diffusion Dithering, Pattern Dithering,
and Noise Dithering.

Weighted Optimization
You may find weighted optimization useful if you work on the Web and occasionally
want text or vector art included in an image. Photoshop 7 allows you to use masks
to modify JPEG quality so that you can have both clear, sharp areas and softer por-
tions of the image in one piece of art.

In other words, the text or shape layer (the name Adobe gave to vector paths on
their own layers) can remain crisp at high resolution while the rest of the continuous
tone image can be output at a lower resolution in order to cut down the file size. It
works like this:

1. Create text, or use a drawing or Custom Shape tool (from a library of

dozens of shapes) to make a selection.
2. Turn the selection into an alpha channel (described later in this chapter).
3. Choose File ➪ Save For Web.
The Save For Web dialog box opens.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 483

4. Change the file type to JPEG.

5. Click the icon to the right of the Quality field, as shown in Figure 13-18.

Figure 13-18: The JPEG optimization controls

Figure 13-19 shows the mechanics of weighted optimization in the Modify

Quality Setting dialog box. In the figure, All Text Layers and All Vector Shape
Layers have been chosen. You can select individual channels from the drop-
down Channel menu.
6. Move the white slider to the right to increase the quality (and file size)
of the white areas in the Preview window.
7. Move the black slider to adjust the quality of the black areas of the
Preview.
In this manner, you can have a very low setting for parts of an image, and
extremely high quality in other areas, where it counts.

Figure 13-19: The Modify Quality Setting dialog

box. Areas in black yield the lowest quality image,
and white areas are higher in quality.

To understand how the settings can be utilized, see Figure 13-20, which shows the
original image on the left. The middle image has a setting of 80 for the text and the
lightning bolt but a setting of only 40 for the background image. The example on the
right has had a blur applied to both the text and the lightning bolt, and only the text
has been kept at a high quality setting. The rest of the image, including the lightning
bolt, have a setting of only 10, resulting in a slightly smaller file size.
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484 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 13-20: An original image (left), the same image with text and lightning bolt
optimized and the image itself reduced in quality (center), and only the text layer
optimized, leaving the rest of the image at a much lower quality (right).

Isolating Edits with Masks and Selections

You can use at least a dozen tools within Photoshop to create a selection of one
kind or another. At this point in the chapter, however, I ignore the geometric and
more common selection methods, such as the rectangle, rounded rectangle, oval,
and custom shape tools. Instead, I concentrate on making selections the old-
fashioned way with lassos and pens and magic wands.

When it comes to masking, it’s all about contrast. In order to make a selection of
any kind, you must be able to determine an edge, and to do that, you need contrast.
Photoshop needs contrast, too, but instead of seeing shapes, lines, and colors, the
program only sees individual pixels and the adjacent pixels.

When you choose the Magic Wand to make a selection, you must choose the toler-
ance level that it will use when determining which pixels to select. The tolerance
range is from 0 to 255. If you’re working in a grayscale image, the default tolerance of
32 means that the Magic Wand will select all the contiguous pixels that are 32 levels
lighter and 32 levels darker than the pixel that you clicked. By contiguous, I mean that
the pixels must be touching each other at least on one edge. A single pixel that is just
one level out of the tolerance that you set is isolated from the selection. So if you
click a pixel with a value of 165 in the grayscale image, every pixel from 133 to 187 is
selected, just as long as it’s touching another pixel that has been selected. The group
of pixels that have a value of 132 is ignored by the selection. In order to collect this
group, simply click the wand on it. Keep in mind, though, that if these pixels aren’t an
island and are an intrusion from the outside (or inside), you are selecting all the con-
tiguous pixels in the range from 100 through 164. Hold down the Shift key to add to
your selection. (Use the Opt/Alt key to remove areas from the live selection.)

If you examine Figure 13-21, you can see how the Magic Wand has done its job. This
is a Kodak grayscale ramp with 25 steps from white to black. I used the Burn tool on
the light end of the scale to darken an area in the 20 percent range, and I used the
Dodge tool to lighten an area around 75 percent. I gave the Magic Wand a tolerance
of 12 and clicked just to the right of each of the two modified areas.

This example shows that on the light end, the Magic Wand selected three sections —
each section represents approximately a change of 4 percent from the section on
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 485

either side. The selection wraps completely around the darkened area, and loses a
little of the right edge of the last section. When I clicked the Magic Wand — with the
same tolerance setting — just to the right of the light spot on the dark end of the
scale, the selection grew to three full sections and half of a fourth. When I viewed
this half-section selection at an extreme zoom, I was able to see a slight reflection
or shadow that was picked up during the scan. The difference is very small, but it
only had to be one value different to stop the selection.

Figure 13-21: The Magic Wand with a tolerance setting of 12 selected

everything 12 steps lighter or 12 steps darker than the pixel it clicked.
The Magic Wand was clicked at the left side, and then Shift-clicked on
the right side.

Working in color is three times as complicated with the Magic Wand because it
selects the tolerance in each of the RGB channels of the image. As a result, you can
make your Magic Wand selection in one of the RGB channels instead of the color
image itself (a good shortcut to remember). You make the selection in a grayscale
environment where life is a third as complex since there’s only one channel.

To get a clearer understanding of how this works, look at Figure 13-22. Both sides
of the image started as a circular rainbow (found in the Brush presets). The left
side of the image is in RGB; the right is the green channel. I set the Magic Wand to
a tolerance of 12 and clicked at the intersection of the guidelines at the top of the
rainbows. The RGB image only received a few pixels in its selection, but the green
channel got a huge swath of pixels. If you make this particular selection in order to
gather only the pixels that lie between yellow and green, you should go with the
color image and make many tiny selections. If you want a general color area, you’re
better off going with a single channel to make your selection.

Figure 13-22: I clicked the Magic Wand at the intersections of the guidelines on
the color image on the left and the green channel image on the right. Notice the
difference in the amount of pixels that were selected.
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486 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

The Magic Wand works by selecting contiguous pixels within a tonal range, and it’s
great for selecting broad areas such as sky or fairly even-toned backgrounds. Even
in this case, however, isolated groups of pixels won’t make the cut, but you want
them to be in the selection, anyway. You can handle this situation in one of three
ways:

✦ You can click the Magic Wand within the island of unselected pixels. This
way, you don’t have to change tools or travel to the menu.
✦ You can switch to the Lasso tool and run a quick selection around those
tiny areas that the Magic Wand missed.
✦ You can choose Select ➪ Similar. With this command, the entire range of pix-
els that you indicated are selected throughout the image. This range may only
include a few errant pixels, but you may also pick up areas of the image that
you don’t want selected. For example, suppose that you are selecting an evenly
toned sky with winter trees in it. Clicking the Magic Wand in the sky area selects
all the contiguous pixels of sky, but stops around the outline of the trees. To get
the sky within the tree branches, the Select ➪ Similar command is the easiest
way to do so. However, this command may also pick up reflections in a window
or on a sign, in which case, you must deselect these spots. At this point, you
can switch back to the Magic Wand and hold down Opt/Alt to remove these
areas from the selection, or you can use the Lasso tools to remove them. It’s
always a toss-up as to which tool to use in a given situation.

Generally, you don’t use just one tool to make a selection. Instead, you use two, three,
or four tools in order to claim specific areas for modification. In fact, many times it’s
much easier to select what you don’t want rather than what you want. For example,
suppose that your object has a complicated outline, such as a flower arrangement
on a walnut table in a room with dark walls. Selecting the flowers by using the Magic
Wand will take a lot of time and will probably be pretty frustrating. However, two or
three clicks of the Magic Wand in the background area and on the table will almost
make your selection complete. Then choose Select ➪ Inverse, and you’re ready to
work on the flowers.

The Lasso tools

The Lasso is comprised of three powerful tools. Click on the Lasso icon in the
toolbar and hold the mouse down. A fly-out menu appears, shown in Figure 13-23,
giving you the option of choosing any of the Lasso tools. Click the “L” to switch to
the Lasso Tool from whatever tool you’re presently using. Then, hold down the Shift
key and type L to toggle through the various Lassos. You can pre-select a feathering
limit in the Options panel, or you can leave your path unfeathered. (After you make
any selection with any tool, you can add feathering through the Select menu.)

If you don’t have the entire image in the window, the window scrolls when you move
the Lasso to the window edge. This feature can be a little disconcerting if you’re in
the regular Lasso tool because it draws a path as the window scrolls. I’ve muttered
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 487

several epithets and hollered on many occasions because of this feature. The
workaround is to hold down the spacebar, which turns the cursor into the grabber
hand, and you can then move the contents of your window around without adding
an extraneous path. Keep the mouse down, though. If you release the mouse to use
the grabber hand, you will close the path that you started.

Figure 13-23: The Lasso tool selection in the toolbar.

The black square indicates the current tool selection.

Standard Lasso tool

You use the basic Lasso to drag a freehand path around an object or area. As soon
as you start dragging the Lasso tool, a path appears showing where you’ve been.
As soon as you release the mouse, the path closes with a straight line between your
starting point and where the mouse was released. If you make a U- or C-shape around
your object, then you get the selection that you expect. However, if you make an
S-shape, the connecting path leaves you with two semi-circles, which is probably
not what you expect. If you’re attempting to select an S-shaped area, you must con-
tinue around until the Lasso can close without cutting off parts of the selection.

But, wait! You can get around this frustration by simply holding down the Opt/Alt
key. If you’re in the Standard Lasso tool, the lasso becomes a Polygonal Lasso, and
you get the rubber band effect until you release the key. If you are already in the
Polygonal Lasso, the Opt/Alt key allows you to drag a freeform path. The best
part of the key combination is that the path doesn’t automatically close on you.
Depending on whether you drag or click, the Opt/Alt key causes the Magnetic
Lasso tool to draw freeform or straight paths.

Polygonal Lasso tool

This is actually the tool that I prefer to use, along with the Pen tool. With the
Polygonal Lasso, you click the mouse and release it. Then you move the mouse
to a new location and click it again. A line, aptly called a rubber band, connects the
last point you placed with the mouse in its current position so you can see exactly
where your path will be placed. When you return to the starting point, the icon adds
a tiny circle, meaning that the next mouse click will close the path. I like this tool
because you can create really long straight paths without multiple clicks. It also
doesn’t draw a path when the window scrolls. If you have long straight sections, one
or two clicks do the job; if you’re turning a tight corner, zoom in and click wherever
necessary to make the curve correctly. Remember that you get a series of straight
lines with the Polygonal Lasso, which implies that if you go around a large curve with
just one or two clicks, the curve may look like part of a hexagon when you complete
the selection.
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Magnetic Lasso tool

In my experience, the Magnetic Lasso tool is one that you will either love or ignore.
The Magnetic Lasso works a little like the standard Lasso, with attributes from the
Magic Wand. It operates by finding edges or contrast. In addition to feathering, you
select three parameters:

✦ Width: Width sets the diameter (in pixels) that the tool will search in its deter-
mination of contrast. You can use the square bracket keys “[ ]” to enlarge or
reduce the width, or if you’re using a pressure-sensitive pen, you can click the
option to have pen pressure change the diameter. In this mode, the harder
you press, the larger the width becomes.
✦ Edge contrast: Edge contrast is measured in percentages. This parameter is
similar to the Magic Wand, but where the wand selects a range of values of
contiguous pixels, edge contrast looks for differences in value according to
the range of change between adjacent pixels. A low number creates a tight
outline even in areas of little contrast; a high number creates a much looser
selection due to the fact that it needs a greater amount of contrast between
pixels before it will place the path.
✦ Frequency: This works similar to the tab setting in a word processor. The
Magnetic Lasso automatically places points along the path as you create it. If
you select an image that is fairly straightforward — that is, not complicated —
a low number will suffice in the Frequency field. However, if your image is
highly detailed, you’re better off to place a high number here. This way, points
are placed more closely together along the path. The points disappear as
soon as your selection is complete. At any time, you may add a point yourself
by clicking the mouse. This has the effect of cleaning up areas that the Lasso
wants to ignore. If you’ve gone by a lump or bump in an object and the Lasso
gave you a straight path, click the Delete key. Each time you click it, the last
remaining point is removed. Use it until you get to the optimal place, and then
move along the edge and place your own points where needed.

No matter how often you use the Magnetic Lasso tool, you’ll end up using other
tools as well — as part of the touch-up process or as a tool of choice. However,
this goes for all the selection tools — just as you can’t repair an engine with only
a Phillips head screwdriver; you need the whole toolbox. The Magnetic Lasso is a
great timesaver when used on a selection area that has a great deal of difference in
contrast between the object and its background.

The Pen tool

If you want to be more precise in your selecting, then the Pen tool is going to be a
favorite. If you’ve used CorelDRAW, Macromedia FreeHand, or Adobe Illustrator for
any length of time, you’ll be creating selection paths in Photoshop in no time.

The Pen tool creates vector paths. When you place a point (by clicking the mouse),
the program waits for the next point to be placed, and mathematically creates a path
between the points. Each point has direction handles within it that may be drawn
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 489

out from the point. If you want the next section of the path to be straight, hold
down the Opt/Alt key and click the point you just placed. You still have the curve
before the point, but the next section will be a straight shot to the next point. The
handle effects the direction of the path following or preceding it, depending on
which direction the handle is drawn. Figure 13-24 shows points with handles drawn
in various states. As you can see, you have many options when it comes to placing
vector points and creating curves. Four different artists may give you four different
placements of paths and ways to use the handles.

Figure 13-24: Points placed by the Pen tool create a path that can be used as a
selection boundary.

So what happens after you’ve carefully drawn your vector path? First, you can save
it in the Paths panel to be used in the future. This includes using the path as a mask
for retouching, a clipping path, or as a selection used to make creative layer effects.
Second, you can also add or subtract the path (selection) to other selections in
your image. Naturally, you can feather the selection or stroke the path, as well.

I like the Pen tool because it makes my lines extremely accurate — right down the
straight-aways and around the curves. When I make a vector curve, no bumps or
hiccups occur along the way. The path remains smooth and sharp.

The Pen tool has roommates just like the Lasso tool. Figure 13-25 shows the other
Pen tools. From top to bottom these tools are as follows:

✦ The basic Pen Tool: This tool is used to place points and adjust direction
handles as you work.
✦ The Freeform Pen tool: This tool draws a path just like the Lasso tool — just
click and drag to make the path — except when you finally release the mouse,
you don’t get a selection, but a path instead. You can continue the path until
your selection is complete. At the time your cursor approaches the beginning
point of the freeform path, a buttonhole is added to the cursor, letting you
know that the path is now closed.
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490 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

The path has the added benefit of having points placed all on its own. You can
then go back and adjust individual point placement or handle adjustment to fit
your selection perfectly. You can type P to select the Pen tool. Type P and hold
down the Shift key to toggle between the regular Pen tool and the Freeform
Pen tool.
✦ The Add Anchor Point tool: If you can’t seem to get your path to conform
exactly to the shape you need, choose this tool to place a new point in the
path. It has all the attributes of the other points on the path, and you don’t
have to select the path in order to add a point.
At this point, you should understand that when you’re working with the Pen
tool and you place the cursor over a selected path, the cursor turns into an
Add Anchor Point Tool cursor. Click the mouse, and it adds a point to the path.
✦ Delete Anchor Point tool: Run the cursor over a point on a selected path, and
the cursor turns into a Delete Anchor Point tool. Click the mouse to remove
the point from the path along with any effects the point had on the path. Hold
down the Cmd/Ctrl key while the Pen tool is live, and the cursor turns into a
direct selection arrow, which you can use to move points or adjust direction
handles.
✦ Convert Point tool: This tool looks like a carat or an arrow that’s lost its shaft.
The Convert Point tool retracts the direction handles on a curve point — which
leaves a straight segment on either side of the point — or allows you to drag
out a direction handle from a corner point. The handle comes out on both
sides of the point. Use this tool to clean up work you may have done with the
Freeform Pen tool.

Take advantage of the following useful shortcuts when using these tools:

✦ Type P to access one of the Pen tools.

✦ Hold down the Cmd/Ctrl key to switch the Pen into a selection arrow.
✦ Use the Opt/Alt and click on the last-placed point to retract the curve handles
for the next section of the path.
✦ Use Cmd/Ctrl+S to save the document. Use it frequently!

Figure 13-25: The selection of Pen tools

available in Photoshop 7
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Geometric Selection Tools

The really basic selection tools are as follows:

✦ Rectangular Marquee tool

✦ Elliptical Marquee tool
✦ Single Row Marquee tool
✦ Single Column Marquee tool

The Rectangle selector creates a straight-edged selection by clicking and dragging

in a diagonal path from one corner to the opposite corner. When you release the
mouse, your rectangular selection becomes active. Click the cursor outside the
selection or use Cmd/Ctrl+D to deselect the selection. If the selection is too large
or too small, you don’t have much of a choice but to redraw it.

A ruler’s guidelines are very convenient when you’re drawing rectangles and ellipses
in Photoshop. From the menu bar, choose View ➪ Rulers. Then click the cursor inside
the ruler space and drag the guideline onto the image. The guideline won’t print, and
you can drag it to another position or off the page by placing the cursor directly
over the guideline, then clicking and dragging it. You’ll know when you can click
and drag when the cursor switches to the guideline cursor — two parallel lines and
a triangle. Click and drag before you have that cursor, and you will have moved
something in your window.

You should know a few tricks to using the Marquee tools, which are shown in
Figure 13-26:

✦ To constrain a rectangle to a perfect square, or an ellipse to a circle, just hold

down the Shift key.
✦ If you want to draw a rectangle or ellipse from the center out, instead of from
corner to corner, hold down the Opt/Alt key before you make the initial mouse
click. This is a very useful trick to use when making an elliptical marquee
around a portrait. Just make your first click in the center of the person’s
forehead or face and drag outward.
✦ When you need to draw a rectangle or ellipse of a specific size, open the Info
palette and keep an eye on the “W” and “H” fields that indicate the actual size
that you are creating.
✦ Type M to get to a Marquee tool.
✦ Press Shift+M to toggle between the Rectangular Marquee tool and the
Elliptical Marquee tool.
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492 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 13-26: The Rectangular Marquee tool

is selected, as indicated by the solid black box
to the left of its icon.

You may wonder, “If I’m watching the Info Palette, how can I see where the rectangle
or ellipse is being drawn?” This is a good question. The answer is to draw the shape
to the desired size and keep the mouse down while you press the spacebar. The
spacebar acts as if it were putting the drawing tool on hold; any shape you have
drawn prior to pressing the spacebar will be “put on hold” until you release the
spacebar again. By moving the mouse, you move the shape on the image instead
of changing the shape’s size. Release the spacebar to continue making changes to
the shape. If you release both the spacebar and the mouse, the shape becomes a
live selection right where you want it — and at the correct size!

When you need to draw several geometric shapes at the same size or ratio, you can
enter the numbers in the Options bar. Click the Rectangle or Ellipse tool, and then
look in the Options bar for the Styles drop-down menu. You have three choices:

✦ Normal: This leaves you free to draw any size and shape you want.
✦ Fixed Aspect Ratio: This option allows you to enter width and height num-
bers such as 4 x 5. Then when you drag the tool, you’ll have the correct shape,
regardless of size or image resolution.
✦ Fixed Size: If an absolute size matters, just enter the numbers in the fields.
When you click in the image, the shape appears at the correct size, and all
you need to do is drag it to the correct position. It can’t get much easier.

What if you want to use the geometric selection tools without using the Opt/Alt
keys? The Options panel has four selections or buttons (shown in Figure 13-27)
that can help you move quickly through a selection process without fumbling for
modifier keys:

✦ New Selection: The first button is business as usual; the selection tools work
as they always have. Each time you click and drag the mouse you get a new
selection area. Unless you hold down the Shift key, anything that is already
selected will be deselected if you click the mouse. To delete an area from an
existing selection, hold down the Opt/Alt key.
✦ Add To Selection: When you are in Add To Section mode, you can continually
add to your selection by just clicking and dragging in any of the Marquee or
Lasso tools. Everything that has been previously selected remains selected
without the need for the Shift key.
✦ Subtract From Selection: This button works similar to the Add To Selection
button, except it removes (rather than adds) areas from existing selections.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 493

✦ Intersect With Selection: When you select this option as you draw, only areas
that overlap with an existing selection are retained. Everything that “hangs out-
side” the intersected area is discarded. Holding down the Opt/Alt key plus the
Shift key when you’re in the New Selection mode allows you to create an inter-
section selection, but this makes it hard to stir your coffee at the same time.

Figure 13-27: The Elliptical Marquee tool is selected.

The buttons to the right are used to assign the same
action to the Marquee tool each time you use it.

Figure 13-28 shows the results of using the four modifier buttons with the geometric
selection tools. The order of drawing goes from left to right and I used the following
steps to achieve the results shown in the figure:

1. I began with an ellipse.

2. I chose the Intersect With Selection button.
3. I drew a rectangular box around the ellipse, cutting off the top and bottom
of the ellipse.
4. I clicked the Add To Selection button.
5. I added an ellipse to the bottom and another to the top.
6. I used Subtract From Selection to chop off the top of the large ellipse with
a rectangular marquee.
7. Finally, I chose the Ellipse tool to remove an elliptical section from the shape.

Figure 13-28: The Option panel buttons at work with the geometric Marquee tools
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494 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Believe me, I’d never bother to draw a wine glass this way, but the beauty of using
these buttons lies in the coordination with the rest of the options that are available.
For example, I performed the exercise in Figure 13-28 with the style set to Normal. If
you used Fixed Aspect Ratio or Fixed Size, you could do some heavy layout work in
a short amount of time. Suppose that you have a catalog page that requires several
rectangular images on the page to be 15 picas wide by 18 picas tall, and another page
has areas for circular photos. You shot the original photographs with a Hasselblad
camera, which yielded square images that you want to use full-frame. All you have
to do is select the Marquee tool that you want, make the option to use Fixed Size
(15 x 18 picas) or Fixed Aspect Ratio (1:1), and click the Add To Selection button.
Then all you have to do is draw the shapes on the page. Each of the rectangles are
exactly 15 x 18 picas, and all of the ellipses are exactly circular. (Naturally, if you
want to feather the edges, you only need to enter the amount before you begin
drawing the shapes.)

The Single Row and Single Column Marquee tools are strange animals. I mean, how
often do you need to select a single row of pixels? Maybe not so much any more, but
just a couple years back, my old scanner would shift a line of pixels now and then.
It was nearly impossible to shift them back into place, and I usually resorted to
retouching the line. If I’d thought to use the Single Row and Column Marquee tools,
I could have saved a lot of time. These tools are also useful for trimming the edges
of images and have even been used in video capture retouching.

Editing a Selection with Quick Mask

So far, I have only dealt with the creation of selections, but not cleaning them up.
Cleanup with the Pen tool amounts to minor adjustments of directional handles and
points. If you chose to stick with the Lasso or Marquee tools, it’s a matter of adding
or subtracting areas along the selection border. However, there’s definitely an easier
way to do it.

For those of you who don’t remember Amberlith and Rubylith, I’ll explain the concept
of the Quick Mask mode. This used to be a manual process, beginning with the lay-
out, or it as was sometimes called, a mechanical or a paste-up. An illustration board
was used (for stiffness and durability). This board had the elements that were going
to make up a printed piece glued or waxed into their proper positions. The film that
would eventually be used to create negatives that were burned onto printing plates
was orthographic, meaning it didn’t see many colors — basically black and shades of
dark orange to deep red. When a photo belonged in the layout, you had to cut a sheet
of red (or black or orange) self-adhesive film and apply it directly onto the board.
When it was shot in the darkroom, the photo area would reproduce as a clear area
on the negative — just as the black text. A halftone would be shot of the photograph,
and it would be taped over the area left for the photo. The assembled negatives
would be exposed to a photographic plate that would eventually end up on the press.
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So, when the smart old people at Adobe set about creating the Quick Mask mode,
they wanted to use the Rubylith metaphor, and they did a very good job. Here’s
how it works:

1. Get your selection as close as you can with the appropriate tools.
2. Click on the Quick Mask icon at the bottom of your toolbar, as shown in
Figure 13-29.
Double-click on the icon to bring up the Quick Mask Options box. In this box,
you can have the mask cover the selected areas or the masked areas. Being
from the old school, I prefer not to use the default of having the Masked Areas
in red, but it’s simply a matter of choice; the mask works the same either way.

Figure 13-29: You can enter the Quick Mask mode by clicking
the right-most box directly beneath the color well in the toolbar.

3. Double-click the Quick Mask button in the toolbar.

The Quick Mask Options dialog box appears. You can change the color of the
mask in this dialog box. If you’re working on an image of a fire truck, the red
mask may be impossible to see at all. Switching to green or blue helps you get
the mask as tight as it can possibly be.
4. Experiment to find a color and opacity combination that works best for
most of the images you work with.
Figure 13-30 shows the Quick Mask Options setup as it is on my machine.
I have changed the opacity of the mask to 75% (from the default of 50%)
so I can see the mask a bit better.

Figure 13-30: The Quick Mask

Options dialog box
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496 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

5. Click the Quick Mask mode button.

This creates a red mask over the area. (The mask may be another color,
depending on what you have selected in the Options box). Now you can
use any of the painting or editing tools (or filters along edges) to fine-tune
your mask.
6. Use a brush of any style to paint black to add to the mask and white to
subtract from the mask.
You won’t be able to see the white because it’s transparent. The flexibility in
your choice of brushes means that you can get into tight spots or smooth
rough edges on corners.

The mask gets very interesting when you apply less than 100% black or white
because you get a feathered edge. This means that you can have a hard edge in one
place, and a soft edge in another place, all with the same mask. Then, when you run
filters or do whatever adjustments you desire on the masked area, the effect is
softer in some places than it is in others. Figure 13-31 shows how the mask works.
On the left image, the lenses of the glasses have been selected, and the Quick Mask
has been applied. The left lens has a bit of the mask running out onto the frame; the
right lens didn’t get completely outlined. In the right image, however, a brush has
been used with white to paint out the mask on the left lens, and black was painted
in the clear areas of the right lens to fill in the mask. Any filters or effects you run
on the image will only apply to the masked area — in this case, the lenses.

Figure 13-31: Cleaning up edges is easy with the Quick Mask. Selected Areas is
checked in the Quick Mask Options box.

You can’t change anything on a locked layer. Therefore, you can’t go into the Quick
Mask mode if the layer is locked. So if you make a selection, type Q to enter the
Quick Mask mode. If nothing happens, check out the Layers panel. More than likely,
the layer is locked. Double-click the padlock and you’re in mask heaven. Another
minor frustration lies with the Hide Extras (Cmd/Ctrl+H), Inverse Selection
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 497

(Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+I), and Deselect All (Cmd/Ctrl+D) commands. They don’t have any
effect if you’re in a Quick Mask. So if you’ve set up your mask to cover masked
areas, as shown in Figure 13-32 (where any modifications you make to the image
will only apply to the masked area around the lenses), you can’t just use Inverse
Selection to have the lenses selected. You must exit the Quick Mask mode by click-
ing the Standard mode icon, or by Shift-clicking the Q key.

Figure 13-32: The same mask with the

option selected to cover masked areas

It took me a while to get over the notion that the Quick Mask is not a selection. I
guess if that were the case, it would be called Quick Selection mode. As the name
implies, it is a mask. Therefore, it’s relatively easy to use a wide airbrush setting
and spray a wide feathered edge to the mask, or even use the Gradient tool to cre-
ate a softening from one side of the image to another.

An example of this softening effect is shown in the next two figures. I started with
an image of a carburetor. I selected the background, and inverted the selection
so that the carburetor itself is selected. As shown on the left side of Figure 13-33,
I employed Quick Mask. (The red overlay accounts for the weakness of the image
in the figure.) I then used the Magic Wand to select the mask, and then used the
Gradient tool to drag a black-to-white gradient from the top right to the bottom left
of the mask, as shown in the center. In this figure, the mask was moved to a new
layer, and the carburetor layer was hidden so you can see the type of gradient that
was used. The photo at the right of Figure 13-33 shows a slight ghosting of the red
mask applied to the carburetor. Notice how much more contrast exists on the left
side of that carburetor.

Then I deselected the mask (Cmd/Ctrl+D) and applied Filter ➪ Sketch ➪ Charcoal.
The result, shown in Figure 13-34, appears as if a photo has been turned into a
charcoal drawing or a charcoal sketch has become reality. Any of the filters can be
applied to your masks, and the masks can have many different types of gradients,
feathered sections of edges, or blurred edges to give you untold special effects.
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498 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 13-33: The carburetor in the Quick Mask mode (left), a gradient applied
to the mask (center), and the Quick Mask applied to the image (right)

Figure 13-34: A sketch turns into photographic reality, or does

a photo turn into an artist’s rendering?

Color Range Selections

Suppose that you have an image similar to the one shown on the left in Figure 13-35.
You find out that the tulip bulb sales manager that hired you to take the shot just
painted the woodwork with red oxide paint and now wants to have the woodwork
in the photo modified to resemble his handiwork. You can click on two or three
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 499

areas with the Magic Wand, but you’ll also pick up lots of artifacts in the ground
and even parts of the flowers. It would be almost impossible to attempt to outline
the vegetation. So, what’s the easiest way to mask the fence?

Figure 13-35: A tough masking job made easy with Color Range

Give Color Range a try. You’ll find it in the Select menu, and when it’s open, the
panel appears, similar to the right side of Figure 13-35. Color Range may seem a bit
confusing at first, but after a few minutes, you’ll be a pro at it. Similar to the Magic
Wand, Color Range works by selecting ranges of color, but instead of selecting con-
tiguous pixels in a color range, this command selects the range throughout the entire
image. Besides that, it collects pixels that are partially in the color range. This means
that Color Range picks up pixels in the color range that aren’t completely saturated,
as in a grayscale image — all the pixels use black as their base color, but with 256
shades of black. Whether or not this is your goal, it’s a significant factor to remember.

What happens in Color Range? When the panel opens, part of the image is selected,
according to the foreground color you have selected. The default has you sample
colors throughout the image with the Eyedropper tools. When you click on a color,
all areas of that color are immediately selected. By moving the Fuzziness slider, you
adjust the sensitivity to the color, similar to the Magic Wand’s Tolerance setting. A
low Fuzziness setting selects less of the color range, and the further to the right you
drag the slider, the more of the entire image you select. If you’re comfortable enough,
you can enter an amount from 0 to 200 in the Fuzziness field, but the slider gives a
more tactile selection for me.
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500 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Note Keep Color Range in mind next time you want to pull a specific RGB or CMYK color
out of an image so you can change it. Select that color as your foreground color.
Then when you open Color Range, the exact color is already selected wherever it
appears in the image.

Fuzziness and multiple selections

As you may guess, you make a tradeoff when adjusting the Fuzziness level or making
multiple selections. Figure 13-36 gives an example of how much more information
you can pick up by just moving the Fuzziness slider.

Figure 13-36: A single click on red flowers with a Fuzziness of 30 on the left,
and 140 on the right

In Figure 13-37, you see the different selection you get by making multiple selection
clicks in the image. Getting the “perfect” selection is a matter of trial and error for
each image you work with. By and large, an increase in Fuzziness picks up extraneous
pixels in the image, causing you to have more cleanup. Making more selections and
keeping the Fuzziness low seems to give a generally better selection for moderately
busy images. If the item that you are selecting is quite a bit different in color than
the rest of the image, then you can get by with a click or two and a higher Fuzziness
setting.

If you need another color in your selection, you can either click on the eyedropper
with the plus sign or hold down the Shift key as you click. You can remove colors
from the selection by holding down the Opt/Alt key or selecting the eyedropper
with the minus sign.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 501

Figure 13-37: Multiple clicks on the red flowers with the same Fuzziness
as in Figure 13-36

After you finish making your color selection and click OK, you find yourself looking
at your image in the Quick Mask mode. At this point, you are free to clean up the
mask with the painting tools or tackle whatever modifications you need to make.

Selection versus Image

Beneath the Preview window are two buttons: Selection and Image. These buttons
only control what you see in the preview and give you two different ways to work:

✦ Selection: In the Selection view, areas that have been selected are white and
the rest of the image is black. This view gives you a good idea where the “gray”
areas of your color selection are — which pixels are only partially selected.
This view bothers me when I try to work in it because I can’t click on a black
area of the image and know what I’m clicking for sure. Keep in mind, however,
you can click in the main image window itself or in the preview — it makes no
difference.
✦ Image: The Image view shows the preview image in color, making it pretty
easy to choose a particular color or location to click. The Image view never
changes, but the Selection view changes according to what is selected. Tap
the Cmd/Ctrl key to toggle between the Selection and Image views, which
can be very handy when you’re making your selections.
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502 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Selection preview
As you click the eyedropper on colors, the image in the main window shows the
selection in real time in every Selection Preview except None. Other than None,
you can choose from the following:

✦ Grayscale: Grayscale shows you what your image would look like if you wanted
to make this color selection into a channel.
✦ Black Matte: Black Matte turns everything that you have not selected black.
It’s as if everything else in the image has been cut out of black paper and
placed over the image. This preview is useful when you’re selecting a light
color.
✦ White Matte: White Matte works well when you’ve chosen a dark group of
colors. Those dark colors retain full color visibility in the image, and all
of the lighter colors are blasted out to white.
✦ Quick Mask: The last preview option is Quick Mask, in which case everything
you’ve selected is changed to the color of your Quick Mask.

The selection that you choose is applied to the image as you add or subtract from
your color range.

Using Channels to Blend Selections

Have you ever created a hard-edged selection and then decided that you wanted
a soft edge around a shadow area? Photoshop makes it easy to continually modify
selections and masks as you work. You can proceed in many ways, and you’ve found
a few tools that you can operate proficiently. Why switch tools? Channels can be
intimidating, and it may be that when you look in the Channels panel, all you see is
the RGB or CMYK channels that make up your image, and after a look or two, you
conclude that they are as boring as you thought they were.

However, it is worthwhile to pass that threshold and familiarize yourself with how
to use alpha channels, which are beyond the RGB/CMYK channels. All channels are
simple grayscale images lying in the back rooms of the Photoshop studio, waiting
for you to invite them out to play. After you see how easy it is to create a channel,
and how powerful that channel can be, you’ll never work the same again.

Any selection that you make has the opportunity to become a channel. If you work
in Photoshop at all frequently, you have worked on a selection that took you more
than five minutes to create. You then ran a filter or somehow adjusted the selection
and went on about your business. Then it dawned on you that you must reselect
that area to make a further change, which takes another five minutes. From now on,
if you spend more than a couple minutes on a selection, save it as a channel. Then,
at any time in the future, all you have to do is load the channel by choosing Select ➪
Load Selection or Cmd/Ctrl-clicking the channel in the Channels panel, and your
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 503

selection is complete. It’s really not the same as saving the selection as a path. Paths
are very one-way — a pixel is either inside or outside the path. With a channel, you
have many more options.

You can save a channel in one of two ways. The first option is to Select ➪ Save
Selection, which brings up the Save Selection dialog box, as shown in Figure 13-38.
The first time you save a selection to a channel in a document, you only have a few
options, including saving the selection to this particular document, which will be
named in the default Destination menu or opening the drop-down Document menu
and select New. Beneath the Document menu, the Channel menu will be New the
first time, but the next time you save a selection in this document, all the channels
you’ve created will be in the Channel menu. As a last step in the Save Selection win-
dow, you can name the channel, or Photoshop will name it Alpha 1, Alpha 2, and
so on.

Figure 13-38: The Save Selection

dialog box changes a temporary
selection into a permanent channel.

On subsequent channel creations, you can utilize the Operation section of the Save
Selection dialog box. The default is to save the selection as a new channel, but you
can click the radio buttons to make the selection part of an existing channel, subtract
the selection from an existing channel, or create an intersection with an existing
channel. These options are the same as the options you have in the Options bar
when working with selection tools. Click OK, and the new channel appears in your
Channels palette.

The second way to turn a selection into a channel is to make your selection, switch
to the Channels palette, and click the Save Selection as Channel icon at the bottom
of the palette. That action places your selection in the menu before your mouse is
off the icon. It’s got a generic Alpha 1 name, so if you want to name it, hold down the
Opt/Alt key while you’re clicking the icon, and the Save Selection dialog box appears.

If you click the channel in the Channels palette, it becomes active in your document.
By active, I mean a grayscale mask covers your image completely. At this point, you
can alter the shape of the mask by airbrushing soft edges here and there, running
various filters on it, or changing its opacity by adjusting Brightness and Contrast.
Essentially, though, you’re still looking at an opaque grayscale image that can be
a totally black-and-white silhouette.
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504 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Here’s where the magic comes in, however. Instead of just clicking the channel, hold
down the Cmd/Ctrl key as you click the channel. Then instead of a grayscale block,
you see ants surrounding your selection, and you’re ready to make real adjustments
to your image.

Keep in mind that saving all these channels may save you a lot of time, but will create
a monster of a file when you save it. If you don’t need a channel any longer, trash it.
Then, when you are finished with all your modifications and alterations, do a Save
As and throw away all the channels. They eat up a lot of disk space, and some pro-
grams really have trouble even working with a document that has an alpha channel.
Just keep in mind that they’re no different than layers that you can’t see.

This project can help you to get a feel for the power of working with channel masks.
For the photo of the Statue of Liberty shown in Figure 13-39, the concept of the stars
and stripes seemed appropriate. You create several channel masks using different
selection tools and modify the masks using other tools. Open the image Statue of
Liberty.tif from the CD and perform the following steps to modify the image:

1. Select the sky with about three clicks through Select ➪ Color Range.
Use the eyedropper with the plus sign, and adjust the Fuzziness value if
necessary.
2. Create an alpha channel by opening the Channels palette and clicking the
Create New Channel at the bottom of the palette, or choose New Channel
from the fly-out menu.
3. Name the channel “Liberty,” invert the selection, and use it to create a new
alpha channel named “Sky.”

Figure 13-39: A run-of-the-mill

shot of the Statue of Liberty
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4. Using the Elliptical Marquee tool with a Feather of 24 pixels, draw an oval
large enough to encompass the sky, statue, and water.
5. Create another alpha channel, and name it “Oval.”
6. Click the Tool Preset Picker in the Options bar.
Select a White 5-point star from about halfway down the list of custom
Photoshop brushes.
7. Press the Q key to go into Quick Mask mode, and then place the cursor just
about at Liberty’s waist.
The star draws out from the center, so you may notice that you placed it a little
low or high. If this is the case, hold down the spacebar to drag the star shape
around the image without losing shape, orientation, or size. The star will twist
on its axis if you drag the mouse freely. Drag the mouse upward and hold down
the Shift key to keep the star standing on two points. When it is in the correct
position, go back to sizing it. This leaves the star as a red mask, as shown in
Figure 13-40.
8. Press the Q key to go back to Standard mode, and then select the Channels
palette.
At the bottom of the palette, you will see that the Save Selection as Channel
icon has become active. Rest the mouse over the icons for a couple seconds,
and the names of the tools will become visible.
9. Click the Save Selection as Channel icon.
This creates a new channel. Hold down Opt/Alt as you click the Channel icon
to bring up the New Channel dialog box, where you can name the channel and
decide its function — whether it is the selection or a masked area. I gave it the
terribly clever name of “Star” and left it as a selection.
10. Drag several guidelines out in preparation for the wave creation.
Place the guidelines at roughly equal intervals across the width of the image
and as an upper and lower limit to the wave shape. The guidelines are shown
in Figure 13-41.
11. With the Pen tool, click and drag the curve handle approximately halfway
to the first vertical guide.
Continue by clicking the second point at the intersection of the top guide and
the first vertical guide, again dragging the handle midway to the next guide.
Continue across the image until you place the last point and drag its handle out.
12. Save the path for future reference.
13. While in the Path panel, drag the path’s icon to the New Path button at the
bottom of the panel to duplicate the path.
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Figure 13-40: The Star mask superimposed over the Sky mask
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Figure 13-41: Making waves

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508 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

14. Select the path on the image and move it down until the top points align
with the bottom line.
Then it is an easy task to connect the end points of the paths together to cre-
ate one closed path. You can then duplicate this path and drag it into a lower
position.
15. Make the paths a selection, by Cmd/Ctrl-clicking the path’s name in the
Paths panel, and switching to the Quick Mask mode.
16. In order to soften the edge of the mask, give it a slight Gaussian Blur.
This is similar to an Anti-Alias effect, but the edge is a bit softer.
17. Use an airbrush with a fairly wide tip to spray along the bottom edge of
the top wave.
Spray the bottom wave as well. You can see the result in Figure 13-42.
18. Switch back to Standard mode and click the Add Selection as Channel
button.
This allows you to keep the hybrid hard-edged/soft-edged waves.
At this point, the image still looks the same because all you have done is
create masks, but it didn’t take long to see the changes.
19. Load the Star channel.
By the way, you can either go to the Channels panel and click on the channel
you need, or you can type Cmd/Ctrl+”n” (where “n” is the number of the chan-
nel). RGB take up 1, 2, and 3; the rest follow in numerical order. Of course you
can shift their arrangement in the panel, so you must keep the channel’s num-
bers straight.
You can tell that the Star channel is selected, because the row of ants are
marching around the star.
20. Choose Select ➪ Load Selection again, but this time select the Sky channel
and click the box marked, “Subtract from selection.”
This action punches the Statue of Liberty out of the star.
21. Use the same airbrush tool, but with a much smaller brush to go around
the knockout of the statue.
To produce a soft glow around the statue so it pops out of the star back-
ground, use a white brush to go around the statue’s outline. (You can see
the result in Figure 13-43.) Conversely, you can also just open the Sky channel
and use a black brush to go around the statue before subtracting it from the
Star channel — same difference.
22. Switch back to the Standard mode and give the star a dark fill.
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Figure 13-42: The wave’s Quick Mask view with the top wave softened already
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510 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 13-43: A soft glow around the Statue of Liberty sets her off from the
star behind her.

23. Load the oval channel. Then load the softened waves channel with the
Subtract Channel from Selection option chosen.
Hit the Delete key to drop the background out completely. When you switch
back to the Quick Mask mode, you can see the way the mask was mapped to
the image, as shown in Figure 13-44.
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Figure 13-44: The combined masks were used to knock out the background image.

24. For the finishing touches, adjust the Levels and sharpen the image by using
nik SharpenerPro.
The final image is shown in Figure 13-45.
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512 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 13-45: The Statue of Liberty,

star, and stripes created by multiple
masks and feathering techniques

Staying on the Straight and Level

All images, whether they’re color or black and white, consist of varying degrees
of contrast and tonal differences. You can modify these attributes in many ways
in Photoshop, but two of the most efficient ways are in the Levels or Curves com-
mands found under the Image ➪ Adjustments menu.

An exercise using levels

Open the image Dog.tif, shown in Figure 13-46, from the CD. I use this image in the
following example to run through a few basics with the Levels and other Photoshop
commands. The scan was made from an old contact sheet that had been marked up
with a China marker, so start by creating a mask for the background so you can
delete the background:

1. Use the Eyedropper tool to select a middle shade of the background color,
and then choose Select ➪ Color Range to select the entire background and
a few stray pixels within the dog.
Contrast is good in this image, so it should be a simple matter to use the
Fuzziness slider to pick up all of the background and just back off a bit to
deselect most of the dog’s fur that has been selected.
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Figure 13-46: Java’s mom was a

registered Golden Retriever, and
her dad was a registered Black
Labrador. Her portrait was taken
to test a studio lighting setup.

2. In Quick Mask mode, use black as the brush color to delete stray pixels
from the dog, and other hickeys from the background.
3. Give the Quick Mask a Gaussian Blur with a radius of 1.5 pixels, as shown
in Figure 13-47.
The blur has the same effect as adding a feather to the edge so the back-
ground flows more seamlessly into the dog’s fur.
4. Go back to the Standard mode, and while the mask is still selected, delete
the background.
5. Select light and medium colors as background and foreground colors, and
make a gradation from the dog’s collar to an upper corner.
This highlights the dog without making her stand out too starkly from the
background.
6. While still in Standard mode (with the marching ants turned off), invert the
selection by clicking Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+I, which leaves just the dog selected.
7. Finally, you arrive at the Levels command: Choose Image ➪ Adjustments ➪
Levels, and adjust them, as shown in Figure 13-48.
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514 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 13-47: The slight Gaussian

Blur adds a nicer edge to the mask.

Figure 13-48: The Levels dialog box

for the dog project

The Levels dialog box

Although I cover levels in Chapter 11, I also provide a quick explanation of the
Levels dialog box in case you’ve skipped over the other discussions in this book:

✦ Input Levels: Located at the top of the Levels dialog box are three fields
labeled Input Levels. These numbers correspond to the location/values
of the three triangles under the diagram (called a histogram) in the middle
of the window.
✦ Histogram: The histogram is the diagram in the center of the dialog box, and
it gives a visual representation of the grayscale channel (in this case), or RGB/
CMYK channels in other documents. The histogram indicates the values of
gray from solid black (0) to solid white (255).
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 515

✦ Black triangle: The black triangle on the left indicates the black pixels in the
image. Any pixels in the document that are darker than the level you set with
the triangle (that is, any pixels that are registered to the left of the triangle),
will be solid black. The buck stops there. To see where these pixels are as
you’re working, hold down the Opt/Alt key as you drag the slider. This action
puts the image window into a threshold view, and you can easily see which
pixels are being affected.
✦ White triangle: On the far right, the white triangle indicates the white point
of the image. Anything on the right side of this triangle is void of color — you
won’t be printing any dots on the paper here. The threshold view can be
brought up with the white point triangle, just as the black triangle.
✦ The gray triangle: The gray triangle in the center of the histogram is the
Gamma slider, which controls the overall brightness of the image. Moving
the gray triangle to the left causes the middle gray parts of the image to get
progressively lighter, and moving it to the right darkens the gray areas of the
photo. The threshold-viewing trick doesn’t work with the Gamma slider.
✦ Eyedroppers: The three eyedroppers at the bottom of the column on the right
are as follows:
• Black Point: Select the Black Point dropper and find an area in your
image that you know to be solid black. Here’s where a bit of “art” meets
“science.” If you try to print solid black on an offset press, the dots in
the shadow area plug up and fill in and create unsightly dark blotches
when the ink hits the paper. To offset this problem, double-click the
Black Point eyedropper and enter 4 in the “B” for Brightness in the HSB
section of the Color Picker. Now when you click the darkest shadow
area, Photoshop gives that area a brightness of 4%, which will leave 4%
white dots to show in the shadows.
• Gamma: In working with grayscale images, you don’t have the luxury of
the Gamma eyedropper, but when you’re working in color you do. Click
on an area that you know (or want) to be 50% neutral gray. It will remove
any colorcasts, based on the color of the pixel(s) that you clicked. It can
be quite a shock the first time you click on an area that you think is gray
and it turns out to be blue or yellow and the whole image goes
psychedelic on you! Just remember Opt/Alt turns the Cancel button into
a Reset button, and takes you back to the original, unaltered histogram.
• White Point: You must adjust the white point to compensate for dots that
will be blown out by the time they get to the paper. For this, double-click
the White Point dropper and enter 96% in the brightness field. This allows
you to print a 4% black dot in the highlight areas.
Be sure not to select a specular highlight when choosing the white point.
A specular highlight is a bright reflection or glare off of a shiny object —
whether that shiny object is a chrome bumper or a bald head. Leaving
these areas pure (paper) white is acceptable and even desirable. So go
for an area that is very bright, but still contains some amount of detail.
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You have a decision to make with the eyedroppers. Photoshop gives you the
option of selecting a single pixel, a 3 x 3 pixel average, or a 5 x 5 pixel average.
Obviously, a single pixel restricts your range to that one lonely pixel — which
may be exactly what you want. The 3 x 3 determines the average color of the
nine pixels that make up the 3 x 3 square and uses that as your selection. This
may be the way you like to work. Then, you may want a really broad selection
base for a particular image, and choose the 5 x 5 for an average color from 25
contiguous pixels. This choice is located in the Options bar, and you must be
in the normal Eyedropper tool (from the toolbar) to make the choice from the
Sample Size drop-down menu.

How much adjustment is enough?

Enough can be a tough question to answer. Each image is unique, and so are the
printing conditions. It is an extremely important part of your job to speak directly
to the personnel at the printing plant that is going to output your job. If possible,
talk to the people in the pre-press area. They can tell you exactly how large a per-
centage to leave in the shadow and highlight areas. Some printers want more in
one place or less in another; it all depends on their setup and the experience and
craftsmanship of the pressmen. Nothing can replace a heart-to-heart talk with these
people, and it can save you thousands of dollars. Another way to test out your
adjustments is to create an image that can ride along with another of your print
jobs. Create a test strip of the job, and make various adjustments on each part of
the strip. Then when the job is printed, you can judge for yourself — with the help
of the printer — which adjustments work and which don’t. It’s a simple matter to
apply these factors in your future dealings with that printer.

Where do you start?

It’s a safe bet to start by dragging the Black Point triangle to the right until it just
touches the edge of the spikes in the histogram. This “spike” can be one pixel tall in
the histogram — it just marks the darkest pixels in your image. Then drag the White
Point slider to the left until it hits the right edge of the histogram. At this juncture,
you’ve set the black and white points of the image. Now adjust the gamma. About
twelve times out of ten, you will move the slider left, which lightens the image. You
have to depend on your eyes here. Move the slider back and forth until the image
looks like it has the correct amount of contrast to it. Sometimes, you only move the
slider 0.05 or so; other images require 0.6 or more. Figure 13-49 shows the begin-
nings of the grayscale adjustment I used for the dog selection.

Because we’ve created the points at which pixels go black and white by using the
sliders, we need to compensate for the shadow and highlight dots differently than
when we use the eyedroppers. In this case, the Black Output slider was moved to
the right until it read about 12, and the White Output slider to the left to about 247.
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Figure 13-49: Black Point, White Point,

and Gamma have been adjusted. All
that’s left is to slide the Output Levels
in on each end.

Curves Ahead!
The Curves command does everything that the Levels command does, only with
a lot more freedom and flair. Most new Photoshop users adjust the brightness and
contrast of their images in the Levels dialog box. Why shouldn’t they work that
way? It’s easy, the results are immediate, and you don’t have an awful lot to learn.
Besides that, it seems to work okay.

Curves, on the other hand, have a bit of a learning, er, curve. However, it’s not
nearly as complicated as it seems. The Curves dialog box is simply a way to adjust
the grayscale tonality and contrast of an image, or any of the various channels that
make up the image. Any alpha channels that you’ve added can also be altered in
Curves, but they don’t show up in the RGB or CMYK Curves menus. In order to
operate on your alpha channels, you must select it from the Channels palette.
Then you can make your tweaks in Curves just as you would any other channel.

This simple concept allows you to make very broad or extremely narrow changes
to make all the difference in the world in your final image. Not only can you change
the amounts of RGB or CMYK colors, but you can create masks that are very specific
in their content and use. A side effect is all the special effects that you can come up
with in Curves. You can do everything from solarization to chrome with a few clicks
or drags, and a few minutes of well-spent time.

All Curves windows start out looking the same, except for the name of the channel
or channels that you’ve selected. They consist of a basic square that’s divided into
four columns and rows, making it pretty easy to see where 25% increments are
located on the diagonal curve. You can see the two grayscale ramps running verti-
cally and horizontally, as shown in Figure 13-50. The diagonal line represents the
fine line between what is in the image (Input), and what you are going to make it
look like (Output). The area above the line is your image data; everything below the
line symbolizes your changes. This probably makes little sense, but a straight line
means that what you see is what you get.
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At the intersection of the diagonal “curve” and the first two grid lines, the curve is
measuring pixels in the image that are 25% of solid black. If you click the cursor on
that intersection, a black square appears on the line. You can move that point in any
direction by clicking and dragging the mouse, or by using the keyboard arrow keys.
If you move the point up five keyboard arrow clicks, all the 25% black pixels in the
image become 30%. This action causes the curve to bow out of its original straight-
line diagonal, and all the pixels in the image change accordingly. Well, not all the
pixels — the solid white and solid black pixels won’t change, and pixels close to
them in value won’t change as drastically, but they will change.

Figure 13-50: The Curves dialog box

always starts out looking like this.

The opposite is also true. Click the curve line at the third grid from the left (75%),
and give it ten clicks down. Now you’ve taken all the 75% black dots and dropped
their value to 70% (see Figure 13-51). Notice that you can also enter values in the
Input and Output fields to achieve the same results. In order to pull this off, though,
you need to place another point somewhere on the path. If you don’t, the currently
selected point moves to the location that you enter. Look where the center of the
path lies, however; exactly in the middle, meaning that those values won’t change.
This curve is called an S-curve, and is a very common adjustment, although the
shape changes from one image to another. Take notice as you experiment, and
remember that the more vertical you make the face of the curve, the more contrast
you create in the image. If you have a point on the curve that doesn’t seem to do
anything for the image, just drag it to any wall of the grid, and the point disappears,
leaving the curve to snap into a shape dictated by the remaining points.

The curve shown in Figure 13-52 is the curve used to create the final image of Java
the Mutt. Here, the dog’s coat was very dark, and the whites were shifted straight to
the right — in effect, the same as moving the white triangle in when using the Levels
command. The same thing happens on the other end of the curve as the black point
is shifted left. It’s a matter of having Preview checked so you can watch the changes
that your curve makes on the image as you make minor adjustments.
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Figure 13-51: The tonal range has been

adjusted to darken middle highlights
and lighten shadows. Middle values
remain basically unaltered.

Figure 13-52: This curve clips quite

a bit of white and a good amount of
black from the image.

What if you want to select a particular area of you image for adjustment? Keep in
mind that you can change the Sample Size of the eyedropper, and try these tricks:
First, move your Curves panel so you can see as much of your image as possible.
Then move the cursor over the part of the image that you want to sample. If you
hold down the Shift key and click your sample area, you apply a numbered target
to the image. You can have up to four targets on the image at once, and information
about these sample points is shown in the Info panel. As you click the mouse, you
also see the point show up on the curve in the Curves box. The point only lasts as
long as you hold the mouse down, then it’s up to your short-term memory to
remember where that point was. I guess the people at Adobe thought this was too
much work, so they added a keyboard shortcut that’s pretty neat. Just hold down
the Cmd/Ctrl key as you click your target — whether it’s numbered or not. This action
places an active dot on the curve. You can use keyboard arrows to move the point,
or click it with the cursor and move it around. Better yet, if you look at the Input
value and make a decision as to what you want the Output to be, just hit the Tab
key twice and the Output field is selected. Type in the number, and you’re done!
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Okay, I see it, too. An Auto button is right there in front of you. Why not choose it?
It yields the same results as clicking Auto Levels in the Image ➪ Adjustment menu,
and is probably too drastic or bland for you. Do it the hard way — it will actually
take you less time, because you won’t have to go back and correct something that
the software did.

The other item in the Curves panel that I haven’t yet discussed is the Pencil tool.
Instead of plotting points with the mouse directly on the curve, you can draw a
freehand shape. It’s cute, but most artists don’t bother with it unless they want to
create something otherworldly. Figure 13-53 is an example of a freehand curve and
the results on the dog. When drawing curves with the pencil, you’ll soon see that
the curve doesn’t really break — wherever you start or stop a section of your curve,
another section of the curve disappears. An invisible vertical cliff exists that the
curve travels to the next section. In order to create a plot for a particular color
area of your image, click the cursor in the image where you want a sample. A point
appears briefly in the grid, marking that level of gray. Make a path toward the top
of the grid to get a darkening of that section in the image. Place the path lower and
the grays become lighter.

Figure 13-53: The Pencil tool was used to make the curve shown here,
causing the posterization of the image.

With just a little practice with Curves, you can soon be comfortable making tonal
adjustments in very particular areas of images instead of the global changes you
make in the Levels command. You’ll find that Curves give you much more control
so you can finesse the utmost tone and contrast from your photograph. Best of all,
you do this in one environment, and the changes take place in real time — you can
see the effects of every nuance you apply to the curve.
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If you have a setup that you use frequently — for a catalog, for example — it’s a
good idea to save the curve just as you would a Levels adjustment. It almost feels
like cheating to load that curve, and make extremely minor adjustments. All gain
and no pain!

Knockouts
A knockout is nothing but a selection that you use to remove an area from an image.
All of the drawing tools and selection tools can create knockouts, but some take
more time and patience than others. Consider the grayscale alligator shown in
Figure 13-54. Drawing an outline of this beast would take a considerable amount of
time, and you wouldn’t be able to use tools like the Magic Wand or Color Range to
separate the animal from the background.

Figure 13-54: This alligator would eat up a lot of time if you were to outline
it by using conventional methods.

Photoshop has just the tool to ease this procedure and minimize your contact with
nasty beasts like this. It’s called Extract, and it’s found in the Filters menu. Extract
works a little like the Magnetic Lasso, and a little like the Magic Eraser. The Lasso
tool wouldn’t work well — if at all — in this image due to the many tonal changes
within the alligator and surrounding it. The Magic Eraser just wouldn’t know what
to keep and what to throw away (naturally, in a color image, it may be easier, but
this happens to be a black-and-white photo).

Extract asks you to draw an outline around everything in the image that you want
to keep, which you do with a Highlighting brush. Drag the brush around the edge of
the object that you are separating from the background, and the tool’s operation is
not that much different from a regular brush or the Lasso tool. However, instead of
a one-pixel path resulting in marching ants, Extract produces a highlighted border
that straddles the edge of what you want to keep and what you want to lose.
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In order to make the tightest outline, you should use the smallest brush possible.
Zooming in on the image helps you to use a small brush and still see what you’re
doing. If you make a mistake, such as drifting off to sleep and dragging a line
through Aunt Marie’s face, just click on the Eraser tool and wipe out the offending
lines. Then switch back to the Highlighting brush and continue the outline.

You can select the Smart Highlighting option to make highlighting much easier.
Clicking on the Smart Highlighting checkbox creates a brush that acts like the
Magnetic Lasso in that the tool looks for a contrasting edge for you. It’s a very effec-
tive tool when the background and foreground have fairly distinct contrasts with
each other. Whether you use the regular Highlighting brush or invoke the Smart
Highlighting option, you need to clean up the mask later — just like all the other
tools in the Photoshop arsenal.

You can choose how smooth to make the edge transition by changing the number
in the Extraction ➪ Smooth field. For most images, it’s best to stay with smaller
numbers, say from 0 to 4 or 5. Experiment to get the best value for a particular
image.

It’s a lot easier to do this type of outlining with a digital tablet — I’d be lost without
mine. However, one nice attribute of the Extract toolset is that you can make the
Highlighter brush act very much like the regular paintbrush or several other tools.
Just click a point with the brush, then shift the cursor to another spot on the object’s
edge and hold down the Shift key as you click the mouse. You get a straight-line path
from the first point to the next. Make shorter jumps around corners and longer
stretches where you can. The key is to make sure that the highlight overlaps the
object and its background.

Figure 13-55 shows the Extract panel as it first opens. The left side of the window
contains the minimal toolbox consisting of the following tools:

✦ Highlighter tool
✦ Fill tool
✦ Eraser
✦ Eyedropper tool
✦ Cleanup tool
✦ Edge Touchup tool
✦ Zoom tool
✦ Grabber hand

After your outline is complete, click on the Fill tool and then click the cursor inside
the outline. The outlined object fills with the default color of blue, or whatever color
you want to change it to in the Fill drop-down menu. (The highlight color can also
be changed if you want.) When you use the Fill tool, only the object should be filled
with color. If the whole page turns color, then you have a break in your outline
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 523

somewhere. Just deselect the Show Fill box on the Preview panel on the right side
of the window and plug the leak. The leak only has to be one pixel wide to cause
an image-wide leak.

Figure 13-55: The alligator must be removed from grass, the hard slab, and
his shadow, which is a perfect job for the Extract filter.

Note Quite often, an object doesn’t reside totally within the boundaries of the image.
Somewhere along the line, it gets cropped. Extract understands this and saves you
a little time by not requiring you to totally surround the object if it hits the edge of
the image somewhere. Just run the highlight right up to the edge of the window
wherever the object connects with it.

If you want to get a head start on the outlining/highlighting process, you can call
on some other selection techniques. The tricks that you use depend on the type of
image you have before you. You can make a Magic Wand selection for a good part of
the image, or maybe Color Range is in order. After making such a preliminary selec-
tion, choose Select ➪ Modify ➪ Border, and give the border a width of 6 or 8 pixels.
Fill the border selection with black and save it as a channel. When you open Extract,
load the channel in the Extraction Channel drop-down menu. Oddly enough, the
name in the Channel field changes to Custom — go figure. The border encompasses
most of your object for you. Now just erase or add to the outline as necessary.

When the outlining is complete and has been filled, as shown in the left side of
Figure 13-56, click on the Preview button. This knocks out the entire background,
leaving it transparent, as shown on the right side of Figure 13-56. Now you start the
fine-tuning mode of extraction.
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524 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 13-56: An outlined and filled object on the left, and the background knocked
out on the right side of the figure

Until you’ve entered the Preview mode, you won’t have access to the Cleanup and
Touchup tools. When they appear, you can use them to tidy up the selection:

✦ Cleanup tool: This tool works by erasing any pixels to transparency. It works
gradually, however, and if you only brush the surface, you erase opacity. The
tool has a cumulative effect — the longer you use it in one spot, the more
changes occur. Usually, you just use this outside the selection area, close to
the border to pick up a stray pixel here and there. The brush is feathered, such
as an airbrush, so be careful when you get close to the actual edge of the object
or you’ll wipe some of it away. Holding down the Opt/Alt key enables you to
paint the object or its background back into the selection.
✦ Touchup tool: This tool works in a similar fashion, but seems more magical
in its operation. As you move the tool over stray pixels inside the object, they
come back to life. Pixels on the outside of the object are deleted. This works
up to a point, but eventually simply quits making changes to the image. Then
you have to resort to the Eraser tool or the Cleanup tool to add or subtract
from the edge. The Touchup tool also works cumulatively and sharpens the
edge of your selection.

Use the Cleanup and Touchup tools around the outline. The regular keyboard
shortcuts for zooming and moving around the document window work here, so
take advantage of them and work at a high magnification so you can check your
results. To make this process even easier, you can select different modes of proof-
ing in the Preview ➪ Display drop-down menu:

✦ None: This mode leaves you looking at Photoshop’s normal transparent

checkerboard.
✦ Black Matte: This mode places a black layer beneath your knocked-out object,
and it is good for checking objects that have a fairly light perimeter.
✦ White Matte: This is just the opposite of Black Matte, and is great for dark-
edged outlines.
✦ Gray Matte: This mode is good for checking a variety of colors and edges.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 525

✦ Other: If you click Other, you get the Color Picker, which is useful if you know
exactly the color that you are applying to the background of your extraction.
✦ Mask: Choose Mask to see a grayscale image of the area that you have
extracted. The extraction is white and the background is black.

While in the Preview pane, you can also switch between looking at the original back-
ground or just a plain extraction. Depending on the image you have, either one will
work for you — it’s simply a matter of experience and personal taste.

When you have polished the edge of your selection, click the OK button. You are
returned to your original image, where you can either replace the background or
use the extraction as a channel or a selection — the world is your oyster. In the
case of the alligator, I decided to put it back where it belonged: in New York Harbor.
(See Figure 13-57.)

Figure 13-57: The alligator has been

extracted and released in the wild.

One further caveat about the Extract command: When you finally have your outline
looking the way you want it and click OK, you no longer have a background in your
image. So, always work on a copy of the original layer, or use Snapshots. For exam-
ple, you may accidentally delete one of the pointy lumps on the alligator’s back in
Extract, only to find out ten minutes later that people count those lumps and you’ve
just changed the alligator into a crocodile or something. Without a pristine copy to
work from, your only recourse is to do the Extract procedure completely over. Of
course, it will take you less time than it did on the first try, but that’s not much of a
consolation.
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526 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Black-and-White Conversions
As a photographer, you realize that when you’re shooting in black and white, you
have a different mind-set. Everything takes on a different feel, and you just see things
differently. You set up your lights slightly differently in the studio, and worry about
things that don’t even occur to you when you’re shooting color. Sometimes you
even feel handicapped when you have to go back to shooting color.

Your clients don’t understand this, however. They want the job shot once, and they
want to be able to use the images on the Web, in a full-color annual report, and as
black-and-white prints so they can print them from the office copier. It’s not a good
situation. However, photographers have to eat, and it’s not a great idea to irritate
clients by telling them you want to shoot with three different types of film, or that
you need to set it up slightly differently to make the shot in black and white. So the
job gets done in color and the images are repurposed as necessary down the line.

Note You’re probably aware that your digital camera uses 1⁄3 of its software and hard-
ware to produce each of the RGB channels necessary for a color picture. However,
a black-and-white setting on your camera dedicates the whole camera to the
black-and-white image, netting you a whole lot more information.

Grayscale
You’ve already shot the photo in RGB, so now what? You can choose Image ➪
Mode ➪ Grayscale, and Photoshop gives you a very good representation of your
color image. However, with a few other methods, you can get even more from the
program. I use the same color image for each of the next four examples. None were
tweaked for brightness and contrast using Levels or Curves. Each was sharpened
using nik Sharpen Pro, however.

Lab mode and grayscale

The image in Figure 13-58 was scanned in Lab to begin with, and converted directly
into Grayscale. They may look slightly different in their printed forms; in the build-
ing shape in the lower windowpane, however, you don’t see a lot of detail. The lace
curtains in the top panes are discernable, but not overly clear. The reflection of the
telephone pole in the bottom left pane is dark, but has some details.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 527

Figure 13-58: A color image converted

directly to grayscale from Lab

Lab mode and RGB

The next view, shown in Figure 13-59, you can see much more information in the
building reflection and telephone pole reflection. The lace in the curtains contains
more detail, but the curtain itself is a little darker. This is the result of converting
the document from Lab to RGB, then switching to the Channels palette and looking
at each of the RGB channels to see which gives the best result. For this image, the
red channel gave the most realistic appearance. The blue and green channels were
discarded, and the image converted to grayscale. Notice, however, some dark arti-
facts in the top middle two panes, and the sky area is very dark compared to the
“straight” grayscale version. Much detail in the windowsill also fell by the wayside.
At this juncture, you probably want to stay with the grayscale version.
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528 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 13-59: The same Lab image has

been converted to RGB and the green and
blue channels have been discarded.

Channel Mixer
Another popular method of creating grayscale images from color is to combine
channels through Channel Mixer. The Channel Mixer takes data from existing chan-
nels in the document and applies that data to the Output Channel of your choice.

With this procedure, you first change the Lab image to RGB, and then select Image ➪
Adjustments ➪ Channel Mixer. You get a dialog box, as shown in Figure 13-60. You
should know several tricks here that aren’t very apparent:

✦ If you open a color image in Channel Mixer, the Output Channel is representa-
tive of either RGB or CMYK. Because you’re looking for grayscale at this point,
it may be frustrating, but click the Monochrome option in the bottom left cor-
ner to change the Output Channel to gray.
✦ You see the Source Channels. One of them is set to 100% — in RGB, it is the
red channel, and in CMYK, the cyan channel.
✦ The numbers in the numerical fields must add up to 100% to get an image
with all the available data being utilized in the final image. This requires a bit
of math, but you can probably do it in your head.

When the sliders in the Channel Mixer dialog box are set in the center, they’re
basically off — a blank black layer. Moving the slider to the right makes the channel
lighter all the way to 200%. When you move the slider to the left, the channel actu-
ally inverts and gets brighter — again to 200%. This allows you to subtract data
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 529

contained in the source channel from the image. The Constant option adds a brand
new channel to the image. If you want to add it to the image, you use positive num-
bers, making the channel white. Negative numbers create black, subtracting data
from the image.

Figure 13-60: The Channel Mixer dialog box

used settings that created Figure 13-61,
which primarily used the blue channel,
with lesser input from the red and green
channels.

The photo shown in Figure 13-61 shows the effects of Channel Mixer’s efforts. Again,
it’s tough to say how this will appear in the printed version, but you can see a defi-
nite lack of contrast in this particular setup. The image was then converted to
grayscale.

Figure 13-61: This photo has been

turned to grayscale using the Image ➪
Adjustments ➪ Channel Mixer command.
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530 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Lab mode
This last operation uses the Lab mode exclusively. This method seems to hold the
most popularity for the professional photographer’s image requirements. For me,
it’s a natural because my scanner outputs scans in Lab, and I don’t need to do any
conversions. In Figure 13-62, the Channels palette was opened and both the “a” and
“b” channels were deleted, leaving the “L” (luminance) channel on its own. Notice the
high detail in the upper lace, and that the mesh of the curtains is clear. In the lower
panes, the telephone pole reflection has great detail and contrast, and the building
reflection also has good detail for a shadow area. The sky in the center panes doesn’t
have dark artifacts in it, and you can see some detail in the windowsill.

Figure 13-62: The Luminance channel

provides excellent grayscale conversions.

Your scanner can more than likely scan in grayscale mode. It may be sufficient for
your needs, but you’ll probably find that you get better results with more control
over the image if you use some of the techniques described here. The bottom line
in converting color images to grayscale is still based on what you see in a given
image. It is up to you to try these methods to find the best one for any particular
situation. Personally, I go with the Lab trick — deleting the “a” and “b” channels,
and doing my final brightness and contrast tweaks from there, and finally sharpen-
ing the image for the output size.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 531

Channel Operations
Quite often, you end up with an image that is perfect in nearly every way except
for film grain or digital noise. This can ruin your whole day, can’t it? Then you
encounter a situation in which your client insists that you use his files, even though
he’s fiddled with it and oversaturated the image enough to make it almost unusable.
Can you save the day?

You certainly can — in many ways, in fact. You just have to start thinking outside
the Levels, Curves, Brightness/Contrast, and Hue/Saturation box. You must get
outside the box and into the Lab. That’s Lab as in L*a*b color mode.

As described previously, the “L” stands for luminance, and this channel has all the
grayscale values contained in the image. In fact, as noted previously in this chapter,
you get a very good grayscale conversion just by discarding the “a” and “b” channels
and converting the “L” channel to grayscale mode. When viewed by itself, the “a”
channel is an ugly, blobby gray mass — much like the inside of my head on Monday
morning. But it’s really all the information in the image that is comprised of blue
and yellow. Light gray equals red, and dark gray equals green. Anything that is 50%
gray is white in either channel. To explore Lab space, follow these steps:

1. Change an image to Lab.

2. Go to the Channels palette and select the “a” channel.
Leave all the eye icons in the “on” position so that you see the results of all
channels combined.
3. Go to Image ➪ Adjustments ➪ Brightness/Contrast.
Be sure that Preview is checked.
4. Move the Brightness slider to the left.
Notice that all the green in the image gets much more green, and an overall
greenish cast takes over the further left you go.
5. Shift the Brightness slider to the right.
Red becomes dominant.
6. Move the Contrast slider to the right.
Both green and red become stronger.
7. Move the Contrast slider to the left.
This desaturates green and red.

The “b” channel is similar in appearance, but dark (or negative numbers in the
Brightness slider) means blue, and light (positive numbers) means yellow. Moving
the Contrast in combination with Brightness adjustments creates a milder or
stronger color change — the higher the contrast, the stronger the color shift.
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532 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Turning off the “L” and “a” channels allows you to view the “b” channel by itself. It
looks similar to the emulsion side of a strip of black-and-white film. As you look at
the boring grayscale image, notice how little black or white you see in the channel.
Choose a good-sized brush and put a black spot in a relatively neutral area (about
50% gray). Then switch colors and place a white spot next to it. Turn the “b” channel
off and select or view the “a” channel and do the same thing with the brush. Then
click the Lab eye icon in the Channel palette. You see brightly saturated yellow, red,
green, and blue spots in the image.

Digital dirt
Okay, now what about putting that knowledge to real-world use? Suppose that you
have an image with a lot of noise in it, similar to the one shown in Figure 13-63. This
is a digital shot, but it may just as well be film grain lousing up the picture. You can
probably imagine other instances where this technique may save the shot.

Figure 13-63: This image has quite a bit of noise in the dark
end of the blue channel.

Using the Lab Color mode

The blue channel has been extracted in Figure 13-64 to show you the noise and crud
that you want to clean up. Getting this done by using conventional means is not easy,
but by changing the color mode to Lab, we can turn off the “L” and “a” channels
and make some adjustments:
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 533

1. With just the “b” channel showing, choose the Eyedropper tool and select
a sample of the dark noise.
Be sure to zoom in enough to see it well.

Figure 13-64: The blue channel of the RGB image, showing

the offensive digital noise

2. Choose Select ➪ Color Range, and add more grays or adjust the Fuzziness
until you have most of the dirty area selected.
Click OK and go back to the image
3. Click the Quick Mask mode.
4. Run a Gaussian Blur on the mask so that it encompasses all the digital noise.
5. Change to the Standard mode again, and try Dust and Scratches, or a
Gaussian Blur to smooth out the graininess.
When you view all three channels together again, you can see that most of the
digital dirt has been removed without changing the color, contrast, or quality
of the image, as shown in Figure 13-65.

If the noise is part of the grayscale image, then you can do selective blurring on the
“L” channel. If your image has been oversaturated, leaving unsightly artifacts, you
can do this same routine on both the “a” and “b” channels. Then you can desaturate
particular colors by using the Levels command on those two channels.
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534 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 13-65: The image has had the noise removed by

blurring it out of the “b” channel.

Another Lab technique concerns using the Curves command to adjust “a” and “b”
channels to change the color in an image without touching the contrast. Just remem-
ber to use a straight-line curve. It’s an oxymoron, but what it means is, don’t let the
curve curve. Drag the end points only, and keep them on a level or vertical plane.
Move the opposite point an amount that will keep the center of the curve exactly in
the center of the grid. This is the point around which everything is neutral gray, and
if your curve goes to any side of that point, the color in the image shifts accordingly.
Figure 13-66 shows an example of the maximum Lab curve adjustment that you can
make.

Figure 13-66: Keep the curves in

the “a” and “b” channel vertical and
crossing the center of the grid.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 535

Other image cleaning methods

A similar method to what I described in the previous section is to isolate the blue
channel of your RGB file. The blue channel is usually where the most noise occurs,
and is the first place to look. Selectively blurring that channel, or running Dust and
Scratches or Despeckle can go a long way to cleaning up the photo. With Despeckle,
you get what Photoshop gives you, but Dust and Scratches allows you to make
adjustments that you can see, so it’s usually a better choice. This method of deleting
dust and scratches take so little time, you may be ashamed to charge for the work.

This method takes a little time, but with small areas, it’s a better choice than using
the Clone Stamp tool:

1. Select the Blur tool, and select a brush size that’s appropriate to the size
of small corrections you’ll be making — say in the 10- to 15-pixel range.
2. Change the Strength to a fairly small number in the 15% to 25% range.
3. Decide whether you will be removing light spots from dark backgrounds
or dark spots from light surroundings.
If it’s the former, choose Darken in the Mode menu; if you’re deleting dark
spots, select Lighten.
4. Now you need to run the brush over the hickeys and noise, and they just
blur away into their surroundings.
You probably won’t want to do a lot of touch-up this way, but for small clean-
up jobs, this does the trick.

Cleaning up edges
There can be no final note about cleaning up an image — it’s never perfectly clean.
Just when you think you have everything under control, you either see something
that can be just a little better, or you learn a new technique that you have to try.
Usually, time and money come into play and you have to decide that the job is
done. However, there is one Photoshop feature that you should keep in the back
of your mind when you are compositing images: Matting. Just as you use the
Transparency and Matte features with Web images, you can use the same type of
effect in an image that’s destined for print. Matting adds a level of professionalism
to the finished piece by hiding the transitional edges of composited images.

It’s virtually impossible to get a perfectly fitting mask or clipping path. You can get
close, but your image will always have edge pixels that have a little too much of the
background color. If the isolated area is going to go into a similar color environment,
then you may not have much of a problem. For most images, however, the back-
grounds differ enough to cause an edge to show here and there. The most outstand-
ing examples are objects shot on a black or white background. If they are brought
into a situation with the opposite colored background, you see a touch of an edge
surrounding the object. The next time that you encounter this situation, go to
Layers ➪ Matting, and then proceed as follows:
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536 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

✦ White background: If the object was originally shot with a white background,
choose Remove White Matte.
✦ Black background: An object from a black background requires Remove Black
Matte.
✦ Multicolored background: Use Defringe for a multi-colored background. The
Defringe selection brings up a dialog box that allows you to enter the width of
pixels that will be affected.

The Matting/Defringe command takes so little time that it’s a crime not to use it. You
don’t have to run around the entire object looking for holes to plug or fiddle with
the Clone Stamp tool to clean up the edges. These controls take care of it in one
quick shot. I’ve run Matte Removal two or three times on the same object to get it
just right. And if you are really, really picky, you can still go around and tweak here
and there.

A History Lesson
You’ve probably used the History palette in your Photoshop work, but for those
who haven’t, Photoshop keeps track of the last 20 steps you took in your work
on a particular image. That is to say, the default is 20 steps — you can change it
to any number of steps that you have the RAM to accommodate. Keep in mind
that the larger the history file, the more bogged down Photoshop’s RAM gets, and
it can affect your performance.

More than likely, you’ve seen the History function at work but never paid any atten-
tion to it. When a dialog box disappears, when you first open a large file, or when
you’ve done something intense, such as a Gaussian Blur, you’ve seen blocks of the
image build the image on the screen. Photoshop uses these blocks in the mainte-
nance of History. It only keeps history on blocks that have had changes made in
them. If you use the Clone Stamp tool in a small clean-up area, only that block is
remembered in History. On the other hand, if you’ve done a Dust and Scratches, a
Curves adjustment, or run an Artistic Filter, then the entire image must be written (or
saved) to the History file. This is where you start to see a slowdown in performance.

At any rate, every change you make to an image is saved to the History file and is
listed chronologically in the palette, starting with the oldest at the top of the list
and the newest at the bottom. In the default setting, you can click anywhere in the
list, and the image returns to the state it was in at that point in your creative efforts.
You can make another adjustment of some kind, and the remainder of the history
that happened prior to your selecting this History state is deleted (everything
below the currently selected state). However, you can make several changes in the
History Options dialog box, shown in Figure 13-67, to customize your workspace:
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 537

✦ Automatically Create First Snapshot: In the figure, you can see that this
option has been checked. This option is the default, and it provides a starting
point if you go too far and can’t find your way back. It appears at the top of
the History palette.
✦ Automatically Create New Snapshot When Saving: You can select this option
if you want an extra safety net as you save.

Figure 13-67: The History Options dialog box

allows you to create your own level of comfort.

✦ Allow Non-Linear History: The name of this option is a bit misleading. You
can go back in History and delete a step, and this change affects everything
that has been done afterwards. However, you can’t make a change at this point
and keep the rest of the “future” in place. All those steps are history, so to
speak. For example, suppose you have done an Unsharp Mask, then a Curves
correction, and then resized it and changed the color mode to grayscale (I
don’t know why you would do such a thing). When you realize your mistake,
you can go back to the Unsharp Mask step and delete it. The image still has
good contrast, is the right size, and in grayscale. However, if you figure you
just need a little more Unsharp in the mask and you run the filter again, you
end up back to the large, flat, color image. I think that’s fair. With this option
unchecked, as soon as you deleted the Unsharp Mask, you have to do every-
thing over again.
✦ Show New Snapshot Dialog by Default: You can use this option to create new
safety nets as you save and it allows you to name the snapshot and select how
it is created. Figure 13-68 is a screenshot of the New Snapshot dialog box. If you
don’t select this option, you won’t see the New Snapshot dialog box unless you
choose New Snapshot from the History fly-out menu.

Figure 13-68: The New Snapshot dialog

box allows you to name the snapshot, and
choose to save the full document, merged
layers, or just the current layer.
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538 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Tip Regardless of what you’ve read, History doesn’t last forever. When you close the
document, all history and snapshots are deleted. For this reason, whenever I think
of saving a snapshot, I usually just do a Save As in Photoshop PSD format so I’m
really safe with all the layers intact.

The History Brush

A really clean and quick cleanup is handled by using the History Brush. This
tool works by drawing information (literally) from a snapshot or previous state
of the document. Suppose that an image has a lot of dust on it from a dirty scan.
Figure 13-69 is such an image. The clean-up process is simple:

1. Create a snapshot of your image in its pristine state.

This is done just to be on the safe side in case things head south on you.
2. Run Filters ➪ Noise ➪ Dust and Scratches on the entire image.
3. Click the box to the left of the Dust and Scratches entry in the History
palette, and select the original image.
The filter effects are gone.
4. Switch to the History Brush tool in the toolbar.
Select a brush that’s not too large, but big enough to make it easy to hit the
dust spots.

Figure 13-69: The area in the rectangle is filled with large specks of dust that can
be cleaned up with the History Brush.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 539

5. In the Options bar, change the Mode to Lighten for dark dust, or Darken for
light dust spots.
6. Now, click the cursor on the dust specks.
The History Brush reads the layer that you checked in the History palette,
and fills in the dark or light spots in the image. Because it’s coming from
exactly the correct spot, the changes are usually invisible. Whatever you do,
though, don’t use mouse strokes or drag the mouse around the image. These
actions show up every time. You can also adjust the Opacity and Flow of the
brush as you work to get the nicest corrections. The results are shown in
Figure 13-70.

Figure 13-70: The dusty image (left) and the image cleaned up with the History
Brush (right)

Beyond cleaning up an image, you can create some really creative effects by running
an Artistic or other type of filter on the image and then painting particular parts of
the pristine image with the filtered image. Depending on the Mode settings that you
choose, you can make some very spectacular images — which brings us to the
cousin of the History Brush.

The Art History Brush

The Art History Brush is the History Brush after a night at Starbucks. It also relies
on a previous state of the image, or a snapshot, but instead of painting just that
image exactly on the new image, it calls on a gazillion attributes you can set in the
Brushes palette. Figure 13-71 shows the original photograph, taken just north of
Vero Beach, Florida. It wasn’t the great shot I had hoped to get, so it seemed like a
good candidate for a painterly approach.

After experimenting with various brushes, I found a round brush and added a grav-
elly texture to it. I kept to a fairly small brush tip size (27 pixels), similar to what I’d
use if I were actually painting it. Then I adjusted the settings as follows:

✦ I set the Mode to Normal.

✦ I set the Opacity to 100%.
✦ I selected the Dab style.
✦ I adjusted the Area to 20 pixels.
✦ I chose a Tolerance of 100%.
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540 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 13-71: The original pelican photograph, before

painting with the Art History Brush

I find most of the other brushes to be a little unwieldy for the size image I had to work
with. Finally, I added a new, blank layer above my original layer. I wanted to paint on
it so I could finagle other effects at a later time.

It was a matter of painting around the image after that. Depending on the amount
of detail I wanted, in some places I made the brush smaller or larger by clicking on
the square bracket keys “[ ]”, but varying pen pressure was adequate for most of
the work. It didn’t take too long to get to the image shown in Figure 13-72.

Figure 13-72: The entire image has been painted with the
Art History Brush.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 541

After I finished painting, I decided that there was too much paint and not enough
detail and texture. So I copied the base layer by dragging it to the New Layer button
at the bottom of the Layers palette, and placed it above the base layer and below
the painted layer. Then I ran the Rough Pastels filter on the new layer. The painted
layer had its visibility reduced to 46%, and the base layer was discarded, leaving
the image shown in Figure 13-73. Unfortunately, black and white doesn’t do justice
to the subtle colors in the original image.

Figure 13-73: The finished photopainting

Actions
I’m tired. You’re tired. We all work too hard and we don’t get paid enough. Thankfully,
though, Adobe set us up with an Actions palette in Photoshop. Two things to know
about this palette:

✦ If you spend more than a couple minutes creating a selection, you should save
it as an Alpha channel.
✦ If you have to repeat a task more than three or four times, make an Action to
do the work for you. Create an Action especially if you may have to repeat this
task sometime in the future. It pays you back in time and money every time
you use it.

Creating an action
Actions couldn’t be easier to do, unless you had someone else do them for you while
you were at lunch or lying by the pool. It’s a matter of recording your actions —
hence the name — and saving the result. For example, suppose that you have a
folder of 40 portraits of various sizes, but you want them to be equally sized for
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542 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

printing in a brochure. Doing them one at a time will take you most of an hour, and
you’ll have to keep on your toes to be sure that the newly sized images get into the
correct folder. Letting the program do the work is a better choice.

To create an Action, it’s a good idea to go through the steps you want in the Action
before you start recording. This can be a mental process, or maybe you’ll want to
actually do one or two Actions in order to find out exactly what needs to be done.
If it’s fairly complicated, you can resort to writing the steps down so you don’t acci-
dentally leave something out.

For example, suppose that you want to change an image to grayscale and reduce
the height of the image to 9 picas (the width will vary). You also want the resolution
to be 300 dpi, and you also need to use the Unsharp Mask on the downsized image.
While you’re at it, you figure that you will add some copyright information and put
a plug for your Web site into the document information that will follow the image
wherever it goes. Finally, you want to save the document in a particular folder.

With all this in mind, you mentally work out the course of events and go through it
one time — after all, you have those 40 portraits of various sizes to work with, so you
may as well get it right. To create the action, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Actions palette and either click the Create New Action button at
the bottom of the palette, or choose New Action from the Action palette
menu.
As soon as you do either, the New Action dialog box appears, as shown in
Figure 13-74.
2. In the New Action dialog box, name the Action and place it in the default
actions set or one of your own.
You can also apply a Function Key to the Action and give it a specific color to
make it easier to find in the Actions Button Mode.
3. Click Record, and you’re on your way.

Figure 13-74: This is the first window you see

as you start a new Action.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 543

4. Go through the motions that you want to record in the Action.

It’s important to know that things can go sour on you quickly while you’re
writing an Action, so I recommend that you create a snapshot as your first
item in the Action list.
5. Choose File ➪ File Info, and enter information that you want to travel with
the electronic file, as shown in Figure 13-75.
I start here for no other reason than from moving left to right.
6. Choose Image ➪ Mode ➪ Grayscale.
If you want, you can just as easily change the mode to Lab, select the Channels
palette, and delete the “a” and “b” channels and then change the mode to
grayscale.

Figure 13-75: The File Info panel set for the files you
want to modify as a group

7. Go back to the Image menu for Image Size adjustments.

It’s important that you actually enter numbers in fields, or else you may end
up with files that don’t change. I modify the numbers in my dummy document
so I can change every field that I want to change. In this case, I finagled the
Height and Resolution fields and units of measurement. Photoshop’s manual
tells you that if you’re going to make a change in the size of an image, you
have to use percentage instead of any units of measurement, due to the chance
that you may be working your action on a batch of files, and some of them
have different units of measurement. If you want an image to be 9 picas high,
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544 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

and the field opens up in inches, you may have some pretty large files to throw
away. In my experience, I’ve found that if I change the measurement in my
dummy document to Columns, and then make the change to Inches or Picas
as I need, the modifications go as planned.
8. In your Actions recording, change the Height unit of measurement to Picas,
and then enter 9 in its field.
9. Hit the Tab key to go to the Resolution field, enter 300, and click OK.
10. Choose Filters ➪ Sharpen ➪ Unsharp Mask and adjust the sharpness until
you feel it is correct.
Keep in mind that these settings are used on all images that you run through
this Action — be sure that you’re comfortable with the changes if you don’t
want to stop and make the adjustments on each image. (I discuss this further
later in this chapter.)
11. Click OK to exit the Unsharp Mask window.
12. Choose File ➪ Save As.
Change the file type (your dummy has an incorrect type listed so your change
is noted by the Action), and navigate to the folder in which you want the file
saved. Whatever you do, don’t change the file’s name! If you do, every docu-
ment that the Action sees will get the same name.
At this point, you may be excited about being finished with your Action, and
attempt to run it. Don’t do this yet because you’re still recording!
13. Go to the Actions palette and either click the red circle button at the bottom
of the palette, or choose Stop Recording from the Actions palette menu.
You won’t receive any confirmation that anything is different, or that you’ve
completed the action, but you should see all the events that you’ve recorded
in the palette, as shown in Figure 13-76.

Figure 13-76: The custom Action

as shown in the normal mode

The normal Action palette mode allows you to tuck the triangled steps into the
Action’s named slot. If you open the triangle, you can select any of the steps and
run them on your image, but every action below that point on the list is executed
as well. If you don’t want to have the long list of Actions and their individual steps,
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 545

you can choose the Action Button Mode from the Actions palette menu. This menu
is color-coded (as shown in Figure 13-77) with colors that you choose when begin-
ning the Action, and the button shows the Function Key you chose as well. You can’t
cherry-pick intermediate steps in the Button Mode.

Figure 13-77: The custom Action, as viewed

in the Button Mode, is color-coded.

As the Action plays, you see some things happen, and other things happen behind
the scenes. This is fine with me, but if you have a voyeuristic nature and want to
watch every step of the work that’s going on, you can select Playback Options in
the Actions palette menu, and change a few attributes there:

✦ You can deselect the default Accelerated button to show everything in real
time.
✦ You can select Step By Step, which makes Photoshop do a step in the Action
and then wait for you to click a Continue button before it takes the next step.
✦ You can set the Action to pause for a given number of seconds.
✦ You can select or deselect the Pause For Audio Annotation box. If you leave
this checked, the Action stops until the audio is finished. Unchecking this box
allows the audio to play as the Action continues.

You may think it silly to attempt to have the Action run the same Unsharp Mask set-
tings on every document as though they are all the same — and you are right. In
order to make the Action stop to let you change values, move curves, or enter text,
just click the square to the left of the Action’s name. This places a black dialog icon
in the square. When the Action reaches that point, it does everything — such as fill
out all but the filename or caption in the File Info dialog box — and then waits for
you to continue.

Note Certain items, such as a change in views or painting and drawing movements,
can’t be captured and repeated in an Action. If you want to paint or draw some-
thing, insert a stop in the Action when you want to take over and draw. These are
called modal controls. You accomplish the stop by choosing Insert Stop from the
Actions palette menu. Photoshop waits for you to click the Play button, whether
you choose to draw or not. If you need to have a path inserted in the image as part
of the Action, you must have a saved path in the document; then when you want
it placed, choose Insert Path from the Actions palette menu.
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Audio Annotations
If you haven’t toyed with Audio Annotations, you may want to put it to good use — or just
startle the heck out of people. To create an Audio Annotation, you must have a sound card
installed and a microphone connected. A button called the Notes tool in the toolbar is used
for written annotation, and its fly-out button does the audio work. Select the Audio
Annotation tool and click it somewhere in an open image. A small dialog box appears with
instructions to click the Start button to begin recording. Then speak into the microphone.
Click the Stop button when you’re finished.
The annotation stays with the image but it doesn’t print. To make it play during an Action,
just double-click it at the appropriate time and it plays according to the options you
selected in the Playback Options box. If you want to remove the annotation, you can either
click it once and hit the Delete key or drag it off the image. If you crop the image and the
annotation is outside the crop area, it is deleted as well. You can’t copy the annotation from
one document to another by using the normal methods, but you can import them, and they
must come from PDF or FDF files. The idea of annotations (especially the speaking kind)
may seem frivolous, but if you have something that you want to remember in a couple
months when you play the Action again, an annotation can save you a lot of hair pulling.

When you decide that you’d rather not have one command in the Action run, click
the check mark at the far left of the command’s name. Click it again, and it becomes
part of the action, so to speak. To let you know that you’ve turned something in the
Action off, the check mark for the name of the Action turns to red — this way, if
you’ve closed up the triangle to nest the commands, you can still see that some-
thing is different.

Creating Droplets
After you’ve spent the time to make an Action, why hide it inside Photoshop? Face
it — you just loaded 38 images onto the computer. Instead of opening them one at a
time, giving each a name, changing the color space, and saving them with a new file
type to an existing folder, why not let the computer do the work for you? Again, the
Adobe engineers put in the extra thought and energy (bless them!) and made it
easy for us. All you need to do is go to File ➪ Automate ➪ Create Droplet and fill in
the blanks, as shown in Figure 13-78:

✦ Save Droplet In: You must give the Droplet a name and location.
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Chapter 13 ✦ Advanced Image Editing 547

Figure 13-78: The Create Droplet dialog box

✦ Play: You search for the Action you want the Droplet to play, and set options
for a few factors:
• Override Action “Open” Commands: This option is a little tough to
get your head around. Suppose that you have recorded an Action that
required Photoshop to open another file for whatever reason. With this
option selected, the Action ignores the filenames you have specified, and
instead, opens your batched files. Deselect the option if you want specific
files opened, or if you want to work on files that you already have open.
• Include All Subfolders: This option simply lets the Action go through all
the folders in the folder you have selected — the Action won’t stop just
because it sees a folder instead of a document; it keeps looking for more
documents.
• Suppress Color Profile Warnings: This is the equivalent to checking
the Don’t Show Again box in the Profile Mismatch warning box. It’s up
to you, but if you’re serious about color management, you should leave
this unchecked so you can keep on top of your work.
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548 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

✦ Destination: Select the destination for your modified files from the following
options:
• None
• Save And Close
• Folder
✦ File Naming: You have 19 choices in the way your files are named, plus an
additional 19 choices that can be added to your first choice. It’s basically a
choice of document name, a serial number or letter, the date, and a file type
extension. If those aren’t enough, you can make the name all caps, sentence
case, all lower case, one through four numbers or letters, and seven different
ways to note the date. Select any of the choices in the first field, and then select
a second name or convention for a more extensive name. Whatever you have
in mind, Photoshop has probably got you covered!
✦ Platform Compatibility: You have a choice of compatibility in Windows, Mac,
or Unix.
✦ Errors: You can choose to have the Droplet deal with errors in two ways:
• Stop For Errors
• Log Errors To File

When you finally click the OK button, a new icon appears on your desktop or wher-
ever you decided to have it reside. All you have to do is drag that folder of fresh
images onto the Droplet and head out to Starbucks. The Droplet fires up Photoshop,
runs the Action (you can make it run several Actions, by the way), and quits
Photoshop again. It’s a pretty slick tool to become intimate with.

Summary
Whew! This has been quite a chapter. In it you’ve learned about the new features in
Photoshop 7, including the Healing Brush and new painting controls. Then I launched
into quite a few ways to create selections and masks to edit your images. I touched
on the use of Curves, the Levels command, knockouts, Quick Masks, and various
ways and means to clean up dirty scans or noisy digital images. I explored the
History and Art History Brushes, and finally I explained how to make Actions so you
can make the best use of your time. In general, you found out that Photoshop is one
heck of a program!

✦ ✦ ✦
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Photopainting 14
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

T he worlds of photography and painting have traditionally

been separate realities, and furthermore, they have been
at odds with each other for well over a century. The painting
In This Chapter

world has viewed photography as an interloper and a threat. Understanding

Photographers have always felt limited in their ability to photopainting
abstract and expand into expressionist areas that are so
prevalent in painting. These differences have been at the core Taking photographs
in defining artistic principles of both mediums. Therefore, suited to
photography and painting coming together within the new photopainting
realm of digital photography heralds a significant change to
the status quo. This is what photopainting is about: a new Painting skills
partnership between painting and photography. This chapter
answers some basic questions about this new medium: Painting software

✦ What is photopainting? Expanding the

✦ How can photopainting serve my needs as a image to fit a layout
photographer?
Post-printing
✦ Do I need to be skilled in painting techniques to painting techniques
photopaint?
✦ Do I need special equipment, software, or training in ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
order to photopaint?
✦ What are some of the basic tools and principles of
photopainting?
✦ How do I apply photopainting to my photographs?

You are about to get the answers to these questions and more
while getting a good look at the very new and exciting world
of photopainting.

What is Photopainting?
Photopainting merges digital photographic and natural-media
digital painting techniques through automated or hands-on
interactive methods to create a new hybrid style. Natural
media digital painting simply refers to the process of making
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550 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

brush strokes that look like strokes made by traditional artist brushes, pens, and
other tools. The final images are not purely photographic or purely painted but are
rather a blend of the two. When you view a photopainting, it is a new and unique
visual experience, which pushes the envelope of what most people understand as
photography or painting. You’ll get a much better idea of what a photopainting is if
you see an example, so take a look at Figure 14-1.

Photopainting expands the ability of photographers to express more abstract visual

concepts in their photographic compositions. Due to the integration of digital tech-
nology, the lines between traditional mediums are becoming more nebulous, which
is threatening to some but exciting to others. One thing is for sure — a whole new
era of photographic interpretation has begun. This new hybrid is only possible
through the world of digital photography and the new software and hardware that
allow the simulation of real world painting styles within the computer environment.

Figure 14-1: An example of a photopainting

Since the invention of photography, photographers have experimented with ways

to alter the image after the photograph was fixed to film. This involved many tech-
niques done in the darkroom to push the photo beyond what could simply be cap-
tured on film with a camera alone. In fact, darkroom manipulation and photo
retouching can be considered the precursors to photopainting. The desire to do
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 551

more post-processing manipulation of photos is not new; the tools at our disposal
have just been limited. The advent of the digital darkroom resulted in the automa-
tion and expansion of darkroom techniques, but these techniques weren’t redefined
to realms beyond what photographers were commonly familiar with. Natural media
digital painting tools — invented by Metacreations and realized in the software prod-
uct called Fractal Painter more than a decade ago — was the beginning of a revolution
in photography and painting. Even after the introduction of this powerful type of
software, it took years for the input and output devices to catch up and make photo-
painting a reality. Only in the past few years has the potential of photopainting been
realized to its full extent and is now being used to achieve professional results.

The program formerly known as Fractal Designs Painter is now owned by Corel and
is currently selling as procreate Painter. This program has become the standard for
natural media digital painting, just as Photoshop is the standard for image editing.
The current trend followed by most high-end graphic software packages is to com-
bine paint and editing tools. This includes Photoshop 7, which has included a whole
new array of sophisticated paintbrushes. procreate Painter is still in a league by
itself and offers a seemingly endless array of interactive tools to simulate almost
any artist medium — right down to the thickness of oil paint, texture of the canvas,
or bleed of watercolor on paper. These simulations are all done with digital algo-
rithms that interact with the pixels in proximity to the virtual digital brush cursor,
which approximates bristles, pens, chalk, and so on. To augment the software, com-
panies such as Wacom produce pressure-sensitive tablets that allow the user to
manipulate the digital brushes in much the same way as real-life artists would. This
manipulation produces a digital painting environment every bit as sensitive to the
artistic expression as any other painting medium.

Paint software has provided much to allow the trained artist to work in familiar ways,
but it has also provided more automated approaches, which require very little
training in painting techniques to get very dramatic results. I present exercises in
this chapter that help you acquaint yourself with the various levels and styles of
photopainting that you can apply to your own level of skill and need. After you see
what advanced digital painting can do, you may decide to get some extended train-
ing in painting — likewise, many painters have made the camera a common tool in
their studios.

You may be wondering what photopainting can do for you as a photographer.

Simply put, it gives you the opportunity to alter your image in ways that provide
a more subjective and painterly quality. Photographs are usually literal by nature
and viewers of photographs often use the literal reference as a starting point for
interpretation. Photopainting, like some digital darkroom techniques, alters the orig-
inal image through software procedures. Photopainting, however, takes you beyond
the darkroom methods by introducing natural media, a technique that tends to make
the photograph more emotionally appealing and that removes the image from the
responsibility of being absolutely factual. For example, photopainting can introduce
texture that can make the viewer aware of surface quality, as shown in Figure 14-2.
It can also create pastel-like strokes that produce a very soft and ethereal mood or
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552 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

thick, strong brush strokes that indicate a powerful emotion or movement. The key
is in the abstraction of a photograph into a simpler, more dynamic form that more
closely approximates a painting. Paintings often accentuate the key elements and
suppress unnecessary details, which often results in their becoming more powerful
statements of subjective thought. If you want to introduce subjective reality into
your photographic compositions, then photopainting is a good way to do it.

Figure 14-2: You can see how the natural media brushstrokes add a new look to a
photograph.

Photographing with Photopainting in Mind

Before I discuss the techniques that you can use to create a photopainting, you need
to know the considerations that come into play when trying to take a photograph
that is a good candidate for a photopainting.

Focus on the essentials

Because photopainting generally isn’t aiming its result at the literal, but more at the
abstract and subjective expressions, it’s important to consider this fact when you are
composing and shooting your photographs. As with any paintings, photopaintings
often blend elements from numerous sources, such as photographs, special effects,
and hand-drawn elements taken from life or imagination. Keep this in mind as you
gather a series of shots for a variety of source material, which can come in very
handy later. When taking photographs for use as a photopainting, you have greater
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 553

freedom in the types of images that you can create. For example, if the background
is not something you intended to keep in the photopainting, ignore it and you may
gain greater freedom when composing other parts of the shot. Don’t worry about
that branch that is in the way — you can remove it later. Focus on creating the final
work and don’t be so tightly controlled by the single photograph concept. You don’t
need perfection, just the essential elements. Just as a painter may use a number of
photographs for reference, so the photographer can as well when working in this
way. Figure 14-3 shows an example of a photopainting in which elements from a
number of different photographs were combined before turning the image into a
painting.

Figure 14-3: A number of photographs were combined to make a single photopainting.

Image quality and size

In general, the quality of photographs used in photopaintings, in terms of resolution,
doesn’t need to be as high as for literal works. The reason for this is that the process
of abstraction and simplification removes much of the fine detail that is inherent in
literal photos. A medium- to low-resolution photo can make an excellent photopaint-
ing under many circumstances.

A more important consideration than resolution is relative size, which is how differ-
ent reference photographs may fit together, like puzzle pieces, during the process
of compositing. For example, suppose that you’re taking a shot of a tree from a good
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554 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

distance with the intention of having it in the foreground. The detail level in the tree
won’t hold very well when you resize to the foreground over a new background. To
get the detail that you want, you must take a close-up to make it work. Stay aware of
these relationships when composing your source material. However, I’m not saying
that you can’t make an excellent photopainting from a single photograph; I have
done so many times. Just don’t feel that you’re limited by a single image.

Detail versus design

Shooting photographs for photopainting requires an adjustment to the usual
photographer’s mindset. Most photographers strive to see what the camera sees,
but photopainting requires you to shift gears to a certain extent. For photopainting,
you must learn to see what a painter sees and then adjust how you compose your
photographs accordingly. Seeing the abstract elements over the details is essential.
You are the painter, the designer, and the architect, and with photopainting, your
ability to adjust reality just became godlike — so use this power to determine how
to develop and capture your vision. Your job is changing from depicting to design-
ing and the photograph is just the starting point for this process. A good rule to
remember is that minute detail is almost always lost in the transformations of
photopainting, so don’t obsess about the details when taking the shots. (See
Figure 14-4.)

Figure 14-4: Elements such as the parking lot and the apartments shouldn’t stop
you from taking a shot because you can eliminate them in the final composition.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 555

Painting Skills
Do you need to be a skilled painter to photopaint? If someone asked you, “Do I need
photographic skills to take a great photograph?” You would most certainly say “yes.”
However, you would also have to admit that the automation of modern cameras has
made it possible for non-skilled photographers to take good pictures. Paint software
provides many ways to create painterly effects with automated tools by using a
“click and paint” approach. You can also use layering to trace, clone, overlay, and
erase. These techniques can be very effective if used in a sensitive manner. So the
real answer is “No, you don’t need painting skills, but if you have them, you can go
to a much higher level.” Try to think of it from the other direction — the painter that
is starting to photopaint has no choice but to learn photography because the basis
for photopainting lies in the photograph. I think that you, as the photographer,
would be wise to embrace painting in the same way.

Painting Software
Before I give you a closer look at the top software programs used by most photo-
painters, I discuss some of the general features of paint programs so that you can
become familiar with the specialized tools, types, and techniques that are com-
monly used. I then take you through a number of exercises using the two leading
programs, which explain some of the more obvious capabilities of paint software.
These exercises demonstrate the levels of complexity from automated functions to
total hands-on painting techniques, so you can get a good idea of the range of capa-
bility, which is very broad and highly adaptable to individual styles. However, you
should realize that these software applications are very rich and have many levels
of variables, so I can’t go into all the possibilities here.

The two applications that stand out from the crowd are procreate Painter 7 and
Adobe Photoshop 7. Many other applications are available that you can use sepa-
rately or in conjunction with these two (I discuss these other applications later in
this chapter). Keep in mind, though, that no single application can do it all — at
least I haven’t found one that can. If I had to pick only two applications to use, how-
ever, these would be the ones. Everyone has his or her personal favorites, and you
will most likely purchase a group of applications that perform the tasks that you
need for your style. I suggest that you get time on as many applications as you can
in order to determine their strengths and weaknesses relative to your style.

I often use an application for a particular tool that I find especially useful and that
I can’t find anywhere else. How much jumping from application to application is
necessary varies from person to person. Some tell you that you can produce better
work by learning to use one program well, and others want the freedom of using
whatever works to get the job done. In fact, it’s always a good idea to network with
other artists and find out which tools and techniques they use (if they are willing to
share this information). I am always amazed at what other people do with these
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556 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

programs. Painting tools usually have a high degree of customization capability,

which means that you can create tools that no one has ever used before. This
allows you to develop a very personal style.

Natural media brushes

Brushes are the backbone of any paint program and the sophistication of their per-
formance determines, to a large extent, the capability of the program. Paintbrushes
are defined by their ability to simulate real world painting appearances and tech-
niques, which is accomplished with unique algorithms that simulate natural media
painting and drawing on the computer. This allows the brushes to simulate the actual
physics of natural media in the virtual environment. Not only can you change the
shape and size of brushes, you can determine if they act like watercolors, pastels,
oils, pens, pencils, airbrushes, or even markers. The list of changeable parameters
is quite astounding.

Another revolution in paint simulation was the addition of a dimensional reality to

the brushes, which simulated impasto (the visual thickness of paint). In addition, you
can change the texture of the painting surface and reflect how paint flows from the
brush. For example, pastel brushes reflect a textured grain of paper — just like in
real life.

Natural media brushes also take advantage of pressure-sensitive input devices to

enable more dynamic brush strokes, based on the subtle movements of the artist’s
hand. This allows you to make dynamic strokes that can move from thick to thin
within a continuous movement by altering the pressure on the pen — just as you
would do with a real brush or pen. You can set the sensitivity of the pen to control
many painting parameters. Every program handles brushes in different ways, which
gives them unique capabilities and results, as shown in Figure 14-5.

Textures
The use of texture in photography, until recently, was limited to the texture of the
printed surface or the use of special filters in the exposure. Typically, photos have
a smooth appearance because most photographic printing papers are smooth.
Texture is normally associated with conventional painting mediums — not
photography. This mindset is changing since the advent of photopainting.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 557

Figure 14-5: Some typical brush strokes showing the dynamic qualities

In order to achieve many natural media styles, it is necessary for the paintbrushes
to interact with textures. If you’re not familiar with textures, you can see some
examples in Figure 14-6. Textures can be made to look like canvas, pastel paper, or
watercolor paper. The possibilities are really endless. You can achieve textures in
photopainting in a number of ways:

✦ Adding dimension: One method is to simulate a texture in the image by

creating a dimensional surface that reacts to a virtual light source and pro-
duces highlights and shadows.
✦ Using an alpha channel map: Another technique is to use an alpha channel
map that uses the dark and light tones of the map image to alter the luminance
of the pixels to produce a highlight and shadow effect.
✦ Simulating grain: A common way to add texture to a photograph is to add
grain, which is seen on conventional film that’s been blown up to large degree.
You can add grain artificially to photopaintings for effect.
✦ Using a textured printing medium: You can also print the image on a textured
substrate (media on which we print). The effect of texture and grain adds
another dimension to photopainting.
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558 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 14-6: Examples of texture maps

Natural media filters

Natural media filters are generalized algorithms that are applied to all or part of an
image to simulate a natural media style. They usually come with programs or are
added as plug-ins. Filters are different from brushes in that you don’t use a cursor
to interact with them; they are a regional effect. Some come with control panels,
like the one shown in Figure 14-7, that allow you to change the parameters and get
a range of effects. Photoshop 7 comes with a substantial list of these types of filters
that simulate watercolor, fresco, pen, pencil, pastels, and more. One word of caution
about filters: They are limited in their abilities compared to what cloning, a process
that lets you paint in portions of another image or another part of the same image,
or hand painting can achieve. Filters give a very stylized look, which is easy to iden-
tify. To mitigate this canned look, I recommend that you work with multiple filters in
combination to produce more original results. Filters are handy if you need a quick
solution or if don’t have the skill level to achieve more sophisticated results. Plug-
ins such as Xaos’s Paint Alchemy provide a rich interface for complex variations to
filter effects.
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Figure 14-7: An example of a natural media filter

and control panel

Pattern brushes
Some programs, such as procreate Painter and Photoshop 7 can also use patterns
and images — not just color — as a paint source for brushes. You can see a sample
from such a pattern brush in Figure 14-8. The brush references a source image(s)
and paints that source in a continuous tiling pattern. You can queue some brushes
to use a single image or a series of images that are created on a transparent back-
ground. This allows the images to overlap as they are put down on the path of the
brush. You can set size, rotation, color, opacity, and more for image brushes. You
can use pattern brushes to interactively apply textures or backgrounds. Image
brushes can be useful if you have a repeating element that you want to put in many
times, such as leaves, grass, or a floral pattern. You can usually create your own
source material for these kinds of brushes.
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560 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 14-8: A sample pattern brush in Photoshop 7

Cloning
Cloning, a method used by many paint programs, has a large impact on photopaint-
ing. Cloning allows the program to replicate pixel information from one area of an
image to another, from one layer to another, or from one image to another. You can
use this feature to modify a photograph by cleaning unwanted visual elements,
expanding elements already present, transferring elements from another image, or
transforming elements between locations. In its simplest form, the clone function
just duplicates the pixels from a target to a new location. In more complex forms,
cloning uses algorithms to alter the pixel arrangement as you move the Clone
brush, using the source image as reference.

The heart of complex photopainting resides in this latter form of cloning. By using
your photograph as the clone source, you can then apply a host of Clone brushes
that have various natural media qualities to the clone image. The Clone brush picks
up its color and luminance information from the source image and applies it to the
clone in a modified form, based on the algorithm that has been set for that brush.
Cloning is like tracing and painting at the same time. The movements of your pen
make a difference on how the strokes are laid down, but it is not completely paint-
ing by hand. This is a combination method of painting, where the process is partly
automated. The next section examines the fully automated version.

Autocloning
Autocloning uses the same base process as cloning, except you don’t interact with
the image by using a brush. Autocloning operates more like a filter while using the
same algorithms that cloning brushes use. Not every cloning brush works in this
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automatic mode. When you are in Autoclone mode, the program places dabs of the
brush type you have selected, but not all cloning brushes allow dabbing. The pro-
gram has no way to actually draw so it accomplishes the painting by placing enough
dabs to cover the image. So you get a generalized filter-like effect.

A few more sophisticated Autoclone brushes are available. One notable one is the
Auto Van Gogh in Painter. It does some calculations on how to place brush strokes
on varying angles, based on contrast in the image. The effect can be quite nice. I
think more Clone brushes like this will appear in the near future. Autocloning is
quick and easy and very cost-effective for low budget and rushed projects. Just
understand that it isn’t going to give you the subtlety of human interaction.

procreate Painter 7
Painter is by far the leading and most competent paint program on the market
today. Fractal Design Corporation, the company that originally created Painter,
developed a unique set of algorithms that simulate natural media painting and
drawing on the computer in a way no one had ever seen before. Painter is now
owned by Corel Corporation and distributed under the procreate line of products
as procreate Painter 7.

Painter also includes many automated features, which allow the non-artist to achieve
many painterly effects. Many of the preset brushes can be autocloned to apply a
natural media style to a selection or an entire picture. There are also special vari-
ants that are designed to simulate some of the most popular painting styles, such
as impressionism, pointillism, and even the brushwork of Van Gogh. Every brush is
customizable and can be altered and saved as a new brush. The photopainter can
choose to go with fully automated approach, a combination of auto and hand
painted, or fully hand painted depending on the skill level and the desired look.

The brushes have many attributes that allow you to control them in very precise
ways and to customize them to suit your individual style. These attributes fall into
a number of categories:

✦ Airbrushes
✦ Standard brushes
✦ Cloners
✦ Dry media
✦ Erasers
✦ F-X (special effects)
✦ Felt pens
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562 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

✦ Image hose
✦ Impasto
✦ Liquid and liquid ink
✦ Pens and pattern pens
✦ Pencils
✦ Photo
✦ Tinting
✦ Watercolor

The brushes are controlled by a complex array of parameters that determine how
the paint flows from the brush and how it interacts with the selectable texture of
the surface. In addition, some brushes have a pseudo impasto effect so you can set
the thickness of the paint and actually see the dimensionality of the strokes. You
can see an impasto effect in Figure 14-9.

Figure 14-9: The impasto effect on brush strokes simulates mediums

such as oils and acrylics with a high degree of visual fidelity.
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Another outstanding feature is that many brushes actually have individual bristles
that can be controlled in terms of their number, density, and how they pick up, put
down, and move color. You can set some brushes to pick up a unique color on every
virtual bristle of the brush. You can see an example of this feature in Figure 14-10.
This approaches the complexity of real world brush strokes. Furthermore, almost
all the brushes in Painter can be set as clone brushes and are fully customizable.

Figure 14-10: A close-up of a camel-hair brush laying down multiple colors

simultaneously

Painter’s Watercolor brushes are quite amazing. This is about as close as you will
get to real watercolor without getting wet. When you choose a Watercolor brush,
Painter7 creates a whole new layer, called the Wet layer, which is used exclusively
to create watercolor effects. The Wet layer has unique qualities that allow for the
paint to flow and diffuse in to the surface as though the paper were really wet.
Painter 7 has even introduced gravity so you can get colors to flow down the paper
into on another color to produce superb washes. The colors are transparent, like
real watercolor, so they mix in an overlay buildup process. You can wet the entire
surface or dry it, which changes the way the colors mix and interact. By combining
wet layers with other paint layers you can produce some startling looks. For exam-
ple, you can put the photo on one layer and then use a wet layer to wash over the
image to create a nice wash effect. (See Figure 14-11.)
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564 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 14-11: Here you can see effect of using watercolor in

conjunction with pen outlines to create an illustration effect.

It is impossible to go into detail on all the different brush styles in Painter in this
chapter. However, I want to give you a brief look at a few so you can understand the
capability of this program. You can take a look at the others and experiment with
what they can do.

Painter7 has a very robust texturing system that allows the texture to interact with
the paint. When you are simulating certain types of mediums, such as oils, pastels,
or watercolors, texture becomes very important to the final look. The canvas and
paper texture must be visible in order to make it believable. Painter comes with an
extensive library of preset textures, which you can add to by photographing real
world textures and capturing them within the program. Just adding texture to a
photograph can work wonders, as you can see in Figure 14-12.
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Figure 14-12: This image shows the effect of texturing with a watercolor filter.

Creating a quick illustration

In this exercise, I take you through the process of cloning, autocloning, and using
layer attributes and color controls to quickly create a very natural style illustration
that you can use for a brochure or a wine label. I start with an average photograph
of a lily pond that has a wonderful collage of leaf forms with just a touch of water
showing. I want to make this so it has the appearance of a painted, loosely defined
image (more impressionist, you might say).

1. Open the file Lilypond, which is shown in Figure 14-13, from the CD-ROM.
2. Go to the Select menu, and choose Select All.
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Figure 14-13: This lily pond photo is the starting point of this exercise.

3. Go to the Edit menu, choose Copy, and then choose Paste.

This creates a new layer with a duplicate of the image.
4. Operating on the new layer, go to the Effects menu, and choose Surface
Control/Woodcut.
Use this filter to create an outline effect, as shown in Figure 14-14.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 567

5. Set the Woodcut control panel parameters to Output Black, Black Edge 12,
Erosion Time 4, Erosion Edge 1, and Heaviness 41%.
Adjust these controls for a heavier or lighter look.
6. In the Object Palette, set the Layer Composite Method to Multiply.
This merges only the dark portions of the image with the layer below.

Figure 14-14: Creating an automated outline

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568 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

7. Set the Layer Opacity to 50% to reduce the contrast.

If you want to, you can also adjust the color.s
8. In the Layers Menu, choose Drop or Drop All to merge the two layers
together.
This results in an image like the one shown in Figure 14-15.

Figure 14-15: A composite of the two layers

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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 569

9. Go to the Effects menu and choose Tonal Control/Adjust Colors.

The Adjust Color control panel appears, as shown in Figure 14-16.
10. In the Adjust Control Panel, choose Uniform Color, and enter 86% in the
Saturation field.
No need to be too precise; this is at your discretion. This setting increases the
intensity of the colors to make the image look more painterly.

Figure 14-16: The Adjust Color control panel

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570 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

11. Go to the File menu, and choose Clone.

This makes a duplicate of the original image and sets the original as the clone
source.
12. From the Brush Palette, choose Dry Media/Artist Pastel Chalk.
Use the default parameters with the exception of changing the brush size to 4.
You can experiment with different parameters on the brush to alter the effect.
13. On the Material/Colors Palette, check the clone colors option.
This tells the program to get its clone color information from the source
image.
14. Go to the Effects Menu and choose Esoterica/Autoclone.
The autoclone starts running and changes the image onscreen. Autoclone
keeps running as long as you let it. Keep an eye on the changes, and stop
autoclone by clicking anywhere in the image at any time. If you don’t like
where it finished, select Undo, and run it again. You can experiment with dif-
ferent settings in this manner. One possible result is shown in Figure 14-17.

Figure 14-17: The effect of running Autoclone

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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 571

15. Go the Materials Palette and choose Paper and a texture that you like.
In this case, I picked Hot Pressed Watercolor, as shown in Figure 14-18.

Figure 14-18: The Surface Texture control panel

16. Go to the Effects menu, and choose Surface Control/Apply Surface Texture.
The control window appears. I usually reduce the Shine to 0 and lower the
Texture amount to make the texture subtle. You can experiment with various
settings until you get the look you desire. My final result is shown in Fig-
ure 14-19.
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572 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 14-19: The final look

Stylizing a portrait
This exercise takes a straightforward portrait and adds painterly style. With the use
of watercolor cloning brushes, you can add a soft painterly look to a portrait, which
makes the image a prized possession and a nice addition to any album. The addi-
tional bonus is that this technique is easy to use.

1. Open the file Donna, shown in Figure 14-20, from the CD-ROM.
2. Go to the File menu, and choose Clone.
3. Go to the Select menu, and choose All.
This sets the cloned file up for a tracing.
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Figure 14-20: This photo is the starting point of this exercise.

4. Go to the Edit menu, and choose Cut.

5. Go to the Canvas menu, and choose Tracing Paper.
The clone source image is dimmed by 50%, as shown in Figure 14-21, so that
you can trace over it.
6. Go to the Brush Palette and choose Pen/Fine Point.
You can use any drawing brush to trace with. I happen to like the pen for this
image.
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Figure 14-21: The Tracing layer with the clone source image dimmed

7. Set the foreground color to black and trace the picture, as shown in
Figure 14-22.
Once again, choose whatever color you want — it doesn’t have to be black.
8. When you finish tracing, go to the Brush Palette, and choose
Watercolor/Grainy Wash Bristle.
I set the size of the brush fairly large, at 32, to get broad expressing strokes.
Using the grainy attribute lets the paper texture show.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 575

Figure 14-22: The traced image

9. From the Materials Palette, choose Paper/Pastel Paper.

If you prefer a different texture, you can choose any of the presets or create
your own.
10. From the Materials Palette, make sure that the Clone Color option is
selected
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11. Paint the image with the Watercolor Brush, as shown in Figure 14-23.
The colors and luminance information are picked up from the clone source
image.

Figure 14-23: Using the Watercolor Brush with broad strokes

12. Use a Dry Media Brush to touch up the eyes and mouth with accent color.
13. Finally, use the Adjust Color from the Effects Menu to saturate the color, as
shown in Figure 14-24.
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Figure 14-24: Boosting the color saturation gives it a more painterly look.

Creating a logo for a Web site

This exercise shows you how to make a quick, yet powerful graphic for a Web page.
In this exercise, you use the Autoclone feature in conjunction with Artist brushes,
which simulate historic painting styles. In this case, you use the Van Gogh style.

1. Open the file Rose, shown in Figure 14-25, from the CD-ROM.
2. Use the Lasso tool to trace around the rose so that you can remove it from
the background.
You can use the Alt or Shift keys to add or subtract to the selection to fine-
tune it.
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Figure 14-25: The source photograph

3. After you have selected the rose, go to the Select Menu, and choose Invert
so that the selection is switched to the background.
4. Go to the Select menu, and save the selection because you don’t want to
remake such a painstaking selection if you make a mistake.
5. In the Materials Palette, choose Color, and set the foreground color to
black.
6. In the Effects Menu, choose Fill, which turns the background black, as
shown in Figure 14-26.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 579

Figure 14-26: The background is filled with black to accentuate the rose alone.

7. Go to the File menu and clone the image.

8. Make the cloned image the active window. In the Brush Palette, choose
Artists/Auto Van Gogh.
9. In the Brush Controls Palette, choose Size and set it to 16, then choose
Impasto and set it to Color and Depth with a depth value of 12.
10. Go to the Effects Menu and choose Esoterical/Auto Van Gogh.
This autoclone only runs once, unlike most autoclone functions. You can
change the parameters and rerun this until you get the desired look, similar
to the effect shown in Figure 14-27.
11. Save the file as a GIF or JPEG file for the Web.
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Figure 14-27: The effect of Auto Van Gogh autoclone

Fine art: the hands-on approach

This exercise gives you glimpse into the world of fine art photopainting, which
draws more of its disciplines from the painting world, but is still closely tied to
digital photography. This should give you some idea of how far you can push the
photopainting envelope (if you want to) and that no strict rules exist regarding
where you draw the line between photography and painting. I also want to demon-
strate how you can use images from multiple image sources to create a composite
to lay the groundwork for the painting. This process can transform a problem
photograph into a marvelous painting. I am also going to break the rules a bit here,
just to show that no rules exist, and I use both Photoshop and Painter for this exer-
cise to show how it is sometimes more efficient to work with more than one image-
editing program. I am going to do the image editing and composting in Photoshop
and the painting in Painter.
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The following steps are in Photoshop:

1. Open the files Summer1 and Summer2, both of which are shown in
Figure 14-28, from the CD-ROM.

Figure 14-28: The two source images

2. Make Summer1 the active window.

I decided that I liked the midsection of the photo and that the elements in the
foreground and background were not what I wanted. I liked the hills on the
opposite side of the road, which you can see in Summer2. I decided to replace
the background hills for the ones in Summer2 by using a layered compositing
approach.
3. Choose Filter ➪ Extract.
The Extract dialog appears.
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4. Choose the Highlighter tool and cover the area that divides the hills from
the rest of the image.
I use the line of the lower hill in front as a natural separation, as shown in
Figure 14-29.
5. Then choose the Paint bucket tool, fill the area above the horizon line, and
click the Preview button.
Everything that was covered by the preview area will disappear. If you like the
result you got, click OK.

Figure 14-29: Extract the background

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7. Make Summer2 the active window, choose Cmd/Ctrl + A to select the entire
image, and then Cmd/Ctrl + C to copy that image to the clipboard.
8. Choose the original image’s window and press Cmd/Ctrl + V to paste the
clipboard image, which will appear on its own layer.
9. Drag the new layer’s Name Bar below the original image layer.
This places the new hills behind the barn, as shown in Figure 14-30.
10. Adjust the position so that the composition is balanced.

Figure 14-30: Composite of the two images with new hills in the background
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11. Next, use the Clone Stamp to eliminate the foliage in the foreground, as
shown in Figure 14-31.

Figure 14-31: Foreground foliage removed

12. Go to the Image menu, select Adjustments/Hue/Saturation, and set the satu-
ration value at 50.
13. Save the file.
The Next steps are in Painter:
14. Use Painter to open the file that you just saved.

Tip This painting utilizes two brush types, the Impressionist brush and the Camel Hair
brush. The Camel Hair brush is the type of brush that can pick up colors on indi-
vidual bristles. To increase the effectiveness of this brush type, I often add a bit of
noise to the image to increase the randomness of color pickup and add more vari-
ation. I use the Camel Hair brush on the grass areas and the Impressionist brush
on the barn.
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15. Go to the Brush Palette, and select the Cloner/Camel Oil Cloner brush.
You are now going to set this up to use as a mover type brush, not a true
cloner. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Set the Brush Control/Well/Resat value to 0 so that the brush uses only
local color to resaturate the bristles.
2. Check the Brush Loading attribute to activate it.
3. Make sure Clone Color is deselected in the Art Materials/Color palette.
This moves paint around on the canvas.
4. If you want to add some of the foreground color as you move other col-
ors, raise the Resat value a bit until you get the mix you want. I consider
this to be the most natural way to paint on the computer because it sim-
ulates real brush control.
16. Next, set the Impasto level of the brush.
This achieves the thick paint look. Go to the Brush Control/Impasto/Depth
and set to 12. Adjust this to your own taste after doing some tests.
17. Play around with the size of the brush to see how it works for different
painting needs.
You may want the brush strokes in the foreground of the painting to be larger
than in the distant fields to follow the rules of perspective.
18. Go to Canvas Menu/Surface Lighting/Shine and reduce it to 0.
This kills the shiny effect on 3-D strokes, which I find to look entirely unnatural,
but if you want, by all means, leave it alone.
19. Paint the areas of the grass and barn.
20. Go to Brush Palette and choose Cloner/Impressionist brush.
Make sure that Well/Resat is 0, Brush Loading is selected, and Clone Color is
deselected.
21. Go to the Brush Control Palette and choose Expression/Angle and set it to
Direction.
This changes the brush strokes to move in the direction you move the pen.
22. Adjust your brush sizes to your liking and paint.
Your final product may resemble the image shown in Figure 14-32.
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Figure 14-32: The final look after brushing over the entire picture

Adobe Photoshop 7
Adobe Photoshop has been the standard by which all other image editors have
been measured for quite some time now. Photoshop did not excel in the area of
painting — until now. Photoshop 7 has moved the application into a whole new
realm of painting capabilities. It’s not as robust as Painter 7, but the additions
to this version are well worth taking a look at and are a welcome addition to all
faithful Photoshop users.

History and Art History brushes

Photoshop comes with a long list of filters that can be used in photopainting.
Photoshop includes the History brush and Art History brush, which expands the
ability to use filters in conjunction with brushes. The History brush works with a
function called the snapshot, which is like a clone. The snapshot freezes an image
in time and saves it to another virtual file, which you can access from the History
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 587

window. You can save as many snapshots as you want and select them individually
as a source image to use with either the History or Art History brush. Duplicating
an image to many layers and applying different filters to each individual layer and
then taking snapshots of each layer, gives you multiple sources to use for reference
on the History brushes.

The Art History brush takes this concept one step further and is a new to
Photoshop 7. This brush provides a set of parameters that you can set to make the
brush alter the pixels from the snapshot as it draws. This is more like the cloning
brushes in Painter, but nowhere near as diverse or complex. The History brushes
work with some of the dynamic parameters in the new brush system in this version
of Photoshop, which add another layer of capability on these useful painting tools.

Compositing
Compositing is an action you will perform a lot of if you get into photopainting to
any depth, and Photoshop is the program to use. Combining multiple photographs
without having to worry about seamless mergers or blends is a great freedom in
photopainting. You can have a great deal of fun with this — once you get the knack.
I demonstrate some techniques for doing this in one of the following exercises. The
combination of the layering functions and the Clone tool makes for a powerful com-
posting combo.

The new brushes

For many years, I have heard the cry of Photoshop users. “Why don’t they put some
paint functions in this program?” For all versions prior to Photoshop 7, the same
old brush types prevailed with only the addition of some pressure-sensitive pen
options. For the most part, users got most of their paint capabilities from plug-ins
such as Deep Paint, or they used other paint applications. The problem with this
approach is the impact on workflow. Photoshop has the best methods for editing,
color control, and compositing, so I avoid using other applications for these func-
tions. When I’m photopainting, however, I’m constantly going back and forth
between applications to get the best of both worlds. An application that provides
all this functionality has been the Holy Grail of photopainting.

Finally, part of the answer has come in Photoshop 7. Although Photoshop still has
room for improvement, this version is a major step forward and I think Photoshop
users are going to love it. Unfortunately, the new brush types don’t add much to
any of the automated functions. You still have to look to plug-ins or other applica-
tions for that feature. Photoshop has not provided a capability such as the auto-
clone feature that Painter offers. For now, Photoshop 7 offers significantly more
than the previous versions, but it isn’t a total paint system yet.
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The new brush system in Photoshop 7 includes a whole new brush window with
more parameters than you can shake a stick at. For the first time, Photoshop has
a customizable brush. You can set a series of dynamic parameters for each brush
that controls various aspects of the brush’s behavior. These parameters include
shape, texture, scatter, dual brush, color, opacity, and flow. In addition, you can
select noise, airbrush, wet edges, smoothing, and protect texture, which can set
basic characteristics, but don’t have dynamic controls.

A wide array of preset brushes also come with the program; they are arranged into
a number of selectable libraries for you to choose from. You can also create your
own brushes and libraries. The brush tips can be any shape and you create them
by capturing patterns from any image. The brush tip image works with an alpha
map, using the gray scale to determine opacity base lines. One of the parameters,
called Scattering, can multiply the tip image and randomly scatter it around the
brush path, while rotating and sizing it, too. Many of the dynamic functions use a
control called Jitter. Jitter is an oscillation function that causes the values of the
brush characteristic to which it is attached to randomly move within a set range
around the base value.

Another addition that is quite wonderful is the Texture parameter. This uses alpha
maps of tiled texture images to determine highs and lows in the texture and how
the paint flow will interact with them. You can create textures from any image. You
can also use the Patterns Stamp tool in conjunction with the new brush parameters,
which makes it much more interesting.

It is impossible to explore every nuance of these systems with so many interacting

parts; you could take years to discover all the possible combinations, which is part
of what makes them so attractive to artists. This kind of dynamic system provides a
rich creative springboard for individual expression. Some applications have a look
that can be identified in spite of the uniqueness of the artist working with them.
Photoshop 7, however, provides a complex dynamic that is highly adaptable and
definable by individuals.

Using filters and texture to simulate watercolor

This exercise gives you an idea of what it’s like to use a combination of filters to
achieve a natural media effect. When you develop your own methods, store them in
action files so that you can run them in an automated mode. I find that this helps
me remember the sequence and settings, even though I may still run each com-
mand one at a time.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 589

1. Open the file Sunflower1, which is shown in Figure 14-33, from the
CD-ROM.

Figure 14-33: The source image

2. Go to the Select menu, choose Color Range, and use the Add dropper to
select the beige color wall in the background.
3. Go to the Image menu and choose Adjustments/Variations, and adjust the
color to a dark green to blend with the foliage, as shown in Figure 14-34.
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590 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 14-34: Resetting the background to add more contrast

4. In the Layers menu, duplicate the layer.

5. Working on the new layer, go to the Filters menu and select Blur/Smart
Blur and set the parameters for Radius 3, and Threshold 30.
Click OK to apply the filter.
6. Go to the Filters menu and select Pixelate/Facet 3 times in row.
7. Go to the Filters menu and select Blur/Gaussian Blur. Set the parameter
at 1.6.
Click OK to apply the filter.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 591

8. Go to The Filter menu and select Texturizer. Choose Sandstone with param-
eters at Scale 71, and Relief 6, as shown in Figure 14-35.
Click OK to apply the filter.
9. Duplicate Layer 0 and move it to the top-most position.

Figure 14-35: A series of blurs and then a texture to simulate bleed and paper
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592 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

10. Go to the Filters menu, choose Stylize/Glowing Edges, and set the parame-
ters at Edge Width 1, Edge Brightness 20, and Smoothness 15, as shown in
Figure 14-36.
Click OK to apply the filter.

Figure 14-36: The Glowing Edge filter produces a nice outline effect when you
invert it.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 593

11. Go to the Image menu and choose Adjustments/Invert.

The inverted image is shown in Figure 14-37. Inverting the image ensures that
no color artifacts occur.
12. In the same menu, choose Adjustments/Desaturate

Figure 14-37: The inverted image with color removed so no color artifacts occur
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594 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

13. In the Layers window, change the Layer Attribute to Multiple.

Your final result should look like the image in Figure 14-38.

Figure 14-38: The final effect

Using History brushes to get a combination media effect

In this exercise, I demonstrate the use of the History brush and multiple filters. By
saving the image with different filter effects to separate snapshots, I am able to go
back in and selectively paint with any one of the snapshots. This is lot easier and
more free flowing that trying to lasso areas and apply filter effects.

1. Open the file Lilies, which is shown in Figure 14-39, from the CD-ROM.
2. Go to the Filter menu and go to Distort/Ripple. Set it to 325, which will be
used for the water effect.
Click OK to apply the filter.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 595

Figure 14-39: The source image

3. Take a snapshot and name it Ripple.

4. Go to the Filter menu and go to Stylize/Diffuse. Run it 3 or 4 times to
increase the effect. You will use this for the foliage.
5. Take a snapshot and name it Diffuse.
6. Go to the Filter menu and go to Noise/Add Noise. Choose Monochrome, set
at 20, and click OK.
Noise is used to blend and add texture.
7. Take a snapshot and name it Noise.
8. Go to back to the original snapshot. You will use this as a start point to
begin brushing in effects.
9. Select the History brush. Set the size at whatever you are comfortable
painting with. You can always change the size to get into tight areas.
10. In the History window, select the Ripple as a source.
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596 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

11. Begin painting in the water areas and you can see the ripple effect appear,
as shown in Figure 14-40.
12. Next select Diffuse as a source.

Figure 14-40: Brush over the water and the ripple effect is transferred from the
snapshot.

13. Paint in the water lilies and background foliage. Now the water lilies
and the background foliage take on the diffuse texture, as shown in
Figure 14-41.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 597

Figure 14-41: The water lilies and the background foliage have a diffuse texture.

14. Finally, add Noise at 50% opacity to make it subtler and just touch up areas
as needed. Voila! The next Monet is seen in Figure 14-42.
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598 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 14-42: The final photopainting with a wonderful mixture of textures

Brushing up the Background

In this exercise, I put an airbrushed background on a portrait. Photographers often
capture a good image of someone, but the background leaves something to be
desired. Photopainting makes it easy to create an artificial environment and make
the photograph into something special.

1. Open the file Eden, which is shown in Figure 14-43, from the CD-ROM.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 599

Figure 14-43: The source image

2. Go to the Image menu and select Adjustments/Auto Color.

This automatically adjusts for optimal color balance. Sometimes this works
well and sometimes not; you just have to give it a try.
3. Now knock out the background with a tool called Extract. Go to the Filters
menu and select Extract.
4. Outline the head with the Pen tool, as shown in Figure 14-44, and hit
Preview.
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600 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 14-44: Using Extract to remove the background

5. If it looks acceptable, then click OK. If not, adjust the settings and try it
again until the preview is satisfactory.
6. Duplicate that layer and create a new layer beneath it.
7. Fill the layer below with a medium gray blue or any color you like in a mid-
range, as shown in Figure 14-45.
8. Open the Brush window, select a round brush, and enlarge it to over 100.
9. Select the airbrush option.
10. Check the Texture Dynamic and select a texture that you like.
11. Check Other Dynamic and set the control for Pen Pressure if you are using
one.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 601

Figure 14-45: Fill the background with a mid-range color.

12. Select a color that is a few shades lighter than the color you filled the back-
ground with.
13. Make sure that the opacity for the brush is set fairly low, around 15%, and
that the flow rate is higher.
Experiment with these settings until you get it to match the way you work.
14. Airbrush the background, easing your strokes as you move away from the
head to create an airbrushed gradient.
15. Next, choose a color a few shades darker than the fill color and start at the
outside and airbrush in, blending as you go.
The final result is similar to the one shown in Figure 14-46.
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602 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 14-46: A much more dramatic portrait

Other applications of interest

When evaluating software, be aware that when you see software listed in catalogs,
on the Web, or in a magazine as an advertisement, the company always puts their
best face forward and never talks about weak points. Therefore, you need to see
what the software really can do, not what the makers say it can do.

Also, you usually get what you pay for. If a program costs under $100, it’s probably
not a professional level application. You may find very specialized programs or fil-
ters with prices in the $100 range, but you won’t find full-blown editors and paint
programs in this range. Whenever you can, look at output samples or download a
demo so that you can see the real capabilities. You may be surprised how much the
actuality differs from the hype.

If you can locate reviews, they can be a good source for more in-depth information,
but I caution you here. I have found reviews to be misleading and have often won-
dered if they were impartial in many cases. The best barometer for software is you
taking a direct look at the real thing. Many companies offer limited time demos and
I suggest you take advantage of this offer. You can save yourself a lot of time and
money if you take the time to check it out!
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 603

Adobe Elements
Adobe Elements is an incredible value. Remember that rule about getting what
you pay for? I don’t know what the folks at Adobe were thinking, but this is a steal.
Elements is basically a fully functional version of Photoshop without the profes-
sional level color and production tools. If you don’t need production level software,
Elements gives you the full capability of Photoshop plus a few extras that make it
easier to use. The really nice part is that the price is very affordable at $99. This is
definitely one to check out. Find out more about Elements and other Adobe prod-
ucts at www.adobe.com.

Adobe ImageReady
Adobe ImageReady was designed to work alongside Photoshop as a Web graphic
optimization application. ImageReady has a complete set of tools to cover every
aspect of image editing, animation, color conversion, file conversion, and
optimization.

Adobe PhotoDeluxe
PhotoDeluxe is designed with the amateur, home user, or hobbyist in mind. It has
many built-in routines that are designed to be easy to use. They take the user
through step-by-step processes to achieve a certain result. This program is great
for those who want to work with their snapshots to touch up, enhance, and modify
their photos in basic ways. You can create projects for creating greeting cards,
calendars, photo albums, and so forth with simple templates. The program comes
with simple templates and clip art. It is not designed for professional level editing,
however.

ArcSoft PhotoStudio
ArcSoft PhotoStudio is a capable photo-editing program in the same style as
Photoshop. This program was designed specifically to edit photographs and has
a full lineup of editing tools including stitch, red eye removal, layers, undo, image
management, editable text, batch processing, and more. Find out more about
PhotoStudio and other ArcSoft products at www.arcsoft.com.

buZZ
This program is a newcomer in the arena of Photoshop-compatible plug-ins, but
don’t let that stop you from getting this one. It is a gem. A company called Segmentis
out of the United Kingdom produces buZZ. The program is comprised of a number
of routines that you can run alone or in series. The effects change as you add more
routines or change their order. Many of these routines have separate controls.

The mainstay of the program’s set of routines is called simplifiers. This is ideal for
photopainting because their purpose is to average out the details to more general-
ized shape and color. The effect is outstanding and in many instances, can stand on
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604 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

its own with no further work. You can see the result of using nothing but the simpli-
fiers in Figure 14-47. The other routines are nothing extraordinary on their own, but
they can produce some wonderful results when combined together. Find out more
about buZZ and other Segmentis products at www.segmentis.com.

Figure 14-47: The buZZ plug-in using the simplify routine

Color It!
Color It! 4.0 from MicroFrontier, Inc. is a full-featured image editor with a wide array
of features designed to handle many aspects of image editing and Web graphics.
Color It! supports Photoshop compatible plug-ins and boasts a large selection of
built-in filters. Color It! can build animated GIFs and Web image maps and it can
even do color separations. Color It! was designed to work with relatively small
amounts of RAM. 128MB is more than adequate unless you’re working with large
images, which makes a good choice for home users. Find out more about Color It!
and other MicroFrontier products at www.microfrontier.com.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 605

Deep Paint
Deep Paint is a paint program from Right Hemisphere. Deep Paint serves as both
a Photoshop plug-in and a stand-alone application. It is a wonderful add-on for
Photoshop because it does just about everything Photoshop doesn’t. Deep Paint
uses a similar paint system to Painter in that it can also create pseudo impasto,
uses clone brushes, and has a wide array of natural media tools. Deep Paint has one
of the largest collections of preset brushes I have ever seen and lot of them are
pretty wild. I was also impressed with the performance of some of the brushes. If
you don’t want to invest in an expensive paint program to augment Photoshop, this
is a very good choice. Deep Paint also has very powerful brush cloning capabilities,
as you’ll see if you check out Figure 14-48. Find out more about Deep Paint and
other Right Hemisphere products at www.us.righthemisphere.com.

Figure 14-48: Deep Paint’s brush cloning capability

Expression 2
Expression 2 is being produced by the original developers, Creature House.
Expression is a rather unique product that is ideal for professional graphic
artists who need precise control over their elements. Expression uses a system
of skeletal strokes to control bitmapped images, meaning that the pixel alignments
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606 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

are controlled relative to a vector path, which is how most complex brushes work.
Expression is unique in that the vector paths are editable, so you can precisely
adjust the orientation of a very loose image. This program also does a lot of work
with alpha channels and transparency options. Expression was made to fill some
niches that need filling. In addition, it’s loaded with some professional level color
management and editing tools. Find out more about Expression 2 and other
Creature House products at www.creaturehouse.com.

Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7

Paint Shop Pro is a solid paint package that has been around for a while. Paint Shop
is trying to be an all-in-one package with tools for drawing, painting, special effects,
Web page production, digital image editing, and photo enhancement. You may won-
der how they can put this all in a program that costs only $99. If you are looking for
a one-stop shop, and you aren’t looking for a truly professional level application,
then Paint Shop Pro may fit your bill. Find out more about Paint Shop Pro and other
Jasc products at www.jasc.com.

MGI PhotoSuite 4
PhotoSuite 4 is targeted at the amateur user. It has a series of tools to capture, edit,
and manage digital photos with an easy-to-use interface that is modeled after a Web
browser with menus along the side. PhotoSuite 4 includes project templates, stitch-
ing, and Web graphics support. The latest version leans heavily to the Web produc-
tion side and provides many tools to support that activity. Find out more about
PhotoSuite 4 and other MGI products at www.mgisoft.com.

Micrografx Picture Publisher 10

Picture Publisher 10 is a straightforward professional level image editor along
the lines of Photoshop. It includes a robust color management system along with
special effects, wizards, and macros. Picture Publisher 10 is designed to give you
output to any platform, including photographs, production ready art, and Web
graphics. Find out more about Picture Publisher 10 and other Micrografx products
at www.micrografx.com.

Microsoft Picture It!

This is a nifty little package from Microsoft. Picture It! is another program aimed
directly at the amateur or home user who wants to take advantage of all those
digital photos they are taking these days. It takes the wizard approach to image
editing and photo projects by providing lots of templates and guided processes
for common image-editing tasks. Picture It! provides an easy interface for capturing,
managing, editing, and finally posting your images to the Web or printing them. This
program also comes with lots of art, special effects, and projects, along with tutori-
als to help you learn about image editing. Find out more about Picture It! and other
Microsoft products at photos.msn.com.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 607

Studio Artist
Studio Artist was developed Synthetik. It is a more recent entry into the paint soft-
ware market. Their approach is to leave the painting to the computer. If you’re look-
ing for an automated system for natural media and other effects, this is one to look
at. The program uses a complex system of image analysis and then synthesizes a
new image based on parameters that you pick from an extensive list. You can play
with this all day and never scratch the surface of how many styles it can produce.
This process is similar to the autocloning feature of Painter, but on a higher level.
The downside is you really can’t get the subtle detail of human interaction with the
brush itself. One thing that is unique about this program is its capability to apply
these filters to video frames, turning them into rendered QuickTime movies. You
can produce some interesting animations. This is a wonderful tool for the untrained
artist. Studio Artist retails for over $300, and is currently only in Macintosh format,
but a Windows version is planned. Find out more about Studio Artist and other
Synthetik products at www.synthetik.com.

Ulead PhotoImpact
PhotoImpact is another want-to-be-everything package that has aimed its sights
at the illustrator market. It has a good ability to composite vector and bitmapped
graphics together. You will find an extensive set of tools for Web production includ-
ing GIF animations, Java Scripts, slicing, image mapping, color conversion and
much more. PhotoImpact is a solid package. Find out more about PhotoImpact and
other Ulead products at www.ulead.co.uk.

Ulead Photo Express 4

This application is along the same lines as Microsoft’s Picture It. Photo Express was
designed to be a quick and easy solution to amateur digital picture editing and pro-
duction. This application takes you from image capture all the way through to Web
production, providing everything you may possibly need along the way. It is a great
home-use product.

Xaos Paint Alchemy

Paint Alchemy is another Photoshop-compatible plug-in with a click-and-paint
approach to natural media and other effects. Its easy-to-use interface, which is
shown in Figure 14-49, is packed with adjustable parameters that can be used
to change the attributes of the automated brushes. The program comes with an
expansive list of preset brushes and in addition, you can customize brushes of
your own. Paint Alchemy is not subtle, but you can get some stunning effects.
When used in conjunction with layers and the History brush, it can be a useful
addition. Find out more about Paint Alchemy and other Xaos products at www.
xaostools.com.
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608 Part IV ✦ Image-Editing Software

Figure 14-49: The Paint Alchemy interface

Post-printing Painting Techniques

This is another area of photopainting that is less well known. Artists use a number
of techniques to expand photopainting beyond the virtual environment. Many
artists use the photopainting process to create an image that can be overpainted
using conventional media paintings in oils, acrylics, and mixed media. Because
photopaintings can be printed onto many substrates, including canvas, it lends
itself to this process. The underpaintings are usually done in monotones and act
as a luminance map for the painting. This technique closely allies itself with the
Flemish style of painting that made extensive use of monotone underpaintings as a
start point. The advantage of using the computer is that it’s a flexible environment
in which to integrate images and experiment with numerous compositions before
committing to canvas. Other artists draw or paint over full color output to develop
a mixed media approach. This process can be as simple as retouching or extensive
modifications and additions with ink, paint, pencil, and so forth. Let your imagina-
tion fly. Untried techniques are popping up everyday and it is clear that we have
only seen the beginning in this new medium.
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Chapter 14 ✦ Photopainting 609

Summary
This chapter covered a number of techniques for transforming photographs into
abstracted images that make us think more of traditional paintings (even though
the style may be extremely modern) than of photographs. The examples that I used
highlight when it’s best to work in an image editor such as Photoshop 7 as opposed
to a program, such as Painter, that imitates the use of natural media. Finally, I pro-
vided a list and description of other tools that are frequently used for creating all or
part of a photopainting.

✦ ✦ ✦
19549510 ch14.F 8/22/02 2:50 PM Page 610
20549510 PP05.F 8/22/02 2:50 PM Page 611

P A R T

The Versatility V
of Digital ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Photography In This Part

Chapter 15
Prepping Images
for the Web

P art V is where I describe all sorts of things that a digital

camera can do (you may not even know some of them).
I begin with a chapter that is an exhaustive discussion of all
Chapter 16
Miscellaneous
Digital Magic
the ins and outs of making Web graphics for every purpose.
If one of these topics needs further explanation, I take you ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
through the procedure step by step. The next chapter is a
grab bag of software that does a variety of cool tricks. This
chapter covers everything from automatically making
scrapbooks and Web portfolios to making panoramas for
Web exhibition and movies for presentation.
20549510 PP05.F 8/22/02 2:50 PM Page 612
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Prepping Images
for the Web
15
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Chapter

W hen you begin to prepare digital photos for publica-

tion online, the first thing you need to think about
is download time. In other words, ask yourself the following
Enhancing your
Web pages with
photographs
questions:
Knowing when to
avoid using a photo
✦ What image format will best show the type of image I
on the Web
want to publish?
✦ What are the minimum dimensions that will show this Web file formats
file effectively?
✦ Can I get away with using a very limited range of color? Color modes

✦ Do I need to remain faithful to the original image? Rules governing

Web graphics
This chapter explains how to optimize the look and perfor-
mance of graphics — especially photographs — before placing Different types of
them on a Web page. If you expect your photography to make graphic components
a contribution to the professionalism and performance of a used on the Web
Web site, you have to know how to make graphics load as
quickly as possible while simultaneously preserving all the
QuickTime VR for the
necessary color and tonal range; this process is called image
Web
optimization. The specific steps that you need to take in this
process differ from image to image. Optimization varies,
Creating a photo
depending on whether the image is a full range photograph
gallery on the Web
or limited spectrum illustration; whether the graphic is to be
a headline, link, page illustration, or inset graphic; and how
important fidelity is to the original image. ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Unless you don’t care how fast your Web pages load, you
should purchase a Web-specific plug-in for exporting your
images to GIF and JPEG formats, or purchase a stand-alone
program dedicated to that purpose. The professional versions
of Photoshop come with a built-in image-editing program
called ImageReady, which is a full-featured and very powerful
program designed to perform image editing and presentation
tasks that are specifically useful on the Web.
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614 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Tip ImageReady is a very capable tool for making animations from photographs in a
variety of ways. This animation capability also makes it a very useful tool for creat-
ing QuickTime animations for use in presentations and multimedia CD titles.

Massive amounts of information must be posted to many sites every day. If you
have hundreds of images to process every day, I recommend DeBabelizer, which
can totally automate this process for you.

Cross- Chapter 16 offers more specifics on what DeBabelizer can do for you.
Reference

The focus of this chapter is the preparation that is necessary before deciding what
size, format, and software you need rather than the software that you use to do the
job. At the very end of this chapter, I show you some of the more commonly used
processes for prepping Web images for a variety of purposes.

Optimizing an Image in Photoshop Elements

One of the quickest and easiest ways to optimize images for the Web is to use the
File ➪ Save for Web command in Photoshop Elements, which brings up a simplified
version of the Save for Web dialog box in Photoshop Professional. The chief differ-
ence between the two program commands is that in Photoshop Elements, the vari-
ous settings options are reduced to those most popularly used. More importantly,
you can’t simultaneously preview multiple versions of the commands. However,
you can instantly compare the results of any settings changes to the original before
you make your final choice concerning how to store the file to then be served up on
your Web site.

Follow these steps to optimize your image:

1. Duplicate your image.

2. You may want to flatten your image.
3. Size your image for the Web.
4. Adjust the colors.
5. Choose File ➪ Save for Web.
The Save for Web dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 15-1. If your image is
quite small, you can probably save it as a dithered GIF file with a limited num-
ber of colors, which ensures that the image looks acceptable on a wide range
of monitor systems.
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 615

Figure 15-1: Compare the simplicity of the Elements Save for Web dialog box to
the Photoshop 7 version shown in Figure 15-2.

6. Choose GIF from the Optimized file format menu.

Notice that the other choices for options change with the file type that you
choose.
7. Leave the Specify the amount of dither slider at 100%.
This action intermingles the colors of individual pixels to create the illusion
that you are seeing a wider range of colors than is actually the case.
8. Experiment with the number of colors.
Notice that the number of available colors is pre-set to Automatic. If you leave
this option alone, Photoshop Elements automatically chooses the smallest
number of colors it deems necessary to satisfactorily interpret the picture. I
suggest that you find out for yourself. You’ll learn more as you go and you can
maximize your accuracy.
9. From the Maximum number of colors in a color table menu, choose 128.
If the picture still looks good, choose 64. Keep reducing the colors in this
manner until the picture suddenly looks pixilated and the colors seem to
flatten out. When this happens, back up to the next highest color.
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616 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

10. Keep your eye on the statistics under the right window.
When it shows the smallest file size consistent with a decent-looking optimiza-
tion result in the preview window, click OK.

In Photoshop 7, you can follow one of two paths that lead to a very similar interface
for optimizing Web images. You can do all of your image editing in Photoshop and
then choose File ➪ Save For Web, or you can take your image editing as far as you
like in Photoshop, and then click the Jump To button at the bottom of the Toolbox
and complete your optimization in ImageReady. At this point, you get an interface
that is virtually identical to that in the Save For Web dialog box. (See Figure 15-2.) In
either case, this interface allows you to view multiple versions of the optimization
settings before you save the file. Being able to preview multiple versions is a major
time saver. Otherwise, you have to guess at the best compromise between the
degree of compression, the number of colors, whether or not the image should be
compressed, and so on.

Figure 15-2: The Photoshop 7 Save For Web dialog box

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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 617

Enhancing your Web Pages with Photographs

If you want your pages to hold the attention of your site’s visitors, you must use
graphics of some kind. Photographs are a good choice for these graphics for
several reasons:

✦ Credibility: If your site is a commerce or information site, and you need to

show viewers your merchandise or what a crime scene actually looks like, a
photo is the most credible type of illustration. Even though it’s totally untrue
in this digital age, the public perception is that the camera never lies.
✦ Speed: Even if you digitize your photos from analog prints or film, you’ll find
that it takes less time (especially if you don’t have a competent artist on staff)
to produce a professional-looking photo than it does to produce a professional-
looking illustration.

Note Making pictures for the Web is one of the easiest ways to justify the purchase of a
digital camera. Most of today’s consumer and prosumer digital cameras produce
four times as much resolution as you want for a Web graphic and you waste no
time waiting for the pictures to come back from the lab.

✦ Capturing the moment: If either the primary or secondary purpose of your

site is to provide news, then using photographs is imperative. A photograph is
simply the best way to capture a moment in history.
✦ Showing detail: If you need to show your audience detail that’s critical to the
understanding of the subject, there’s simply no better medium than photogra-
phy. This is particularly true of medical journals and other scientific reporting.
✦ Grab attention: Attention spans are significantly shorter when people are
looking at a monitor or TV set than when they’re looking at a printed page. If
they don’t get the picture right way, they simply move on to a more captivat-
ing site. Another possibility for attracting attention is converting layered
photographs to animated GIFs, which can be done automatically by several
image-editing programs.

Graphics can also lend color and texture to your backgrounds, give emphasis to
important points, make logical divisions for page content, and call attention to
advertising on your site — all of which can make a big difference to your company’s
bottom line. In short, adding graphics to your Web pages is the easiest way to make
readers pay attention to you — at least as long as the graphics load quickly and
look good.

Tip Another reason that professional photographers should know about Web image
preparation is that a lot of business is available in the Web photography field.
Excellent photographers make excellent money doing Web photography exclusively.
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618 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

I debated how much information to include in this chapter about nonphotographic

elements. After all, this book is about digital photography — not about page layout
and design. However, I doubt that a single reader of this book deals strictly with
photographs. At the very least, you should know enough to be aware of some of the
alternatives, as well as when you may want to use a photo in place of a more tradi-
tional type of graphic, such as a divider bar or navigation icon.

Alternatives to Using Photographs

Understanding how to effectively use photos on the Web is to also understand
when not to use them. In many cases, it’s more effective to use a bit of clip art or to
draw an image than to use a photo. Photos are always bitmaps, and they are almost
always true-color, so they require 24-bits of information for each pixel in the image.
This means that the file size for a screen-size photograph, even when compressed,
can easily be half a megabyte. If the image you need can consist of geometric
shapes and flat colors, you can create a vector-based image that can display at one-
tenth that size. Needless to say, that file will load to a Web browser a great deal
faster.

Bitmaps
The GIF and JPEG files that are now the standard Web picture formats are
bitmapped graphics. Bitmaps received their name from the fact that a digital pic-
ture is made by coloring each pixel individually. For example, imagine a mosaic
tabletop. Each tile is in a particular place and is a particular color. Make the picture
bigger and you still have the same number and size of tiles — they’re just bigger
and spread farther apart. This is why bitmapped images get rough looking (often
called jaggy, blocky, or pixilated) when you zoom in on them. You can’t make the
picture dimensionally smaller without losing quality, either. Think about it: The only
way to make the picture smaller is to throw away pixels (or tiles, in the mosaic
metaphor). The result is less definition in the image. Even worse, the computer
doesn’t know which pixels are most important to the shapes in the image. It throws
out as many tiles in a pattern as necessary to achieve the target size.

The most notable problem with bitmaps is file size. Because pictures are comprised
of individual pixels, it is necessary to store several bits of data (24 bits per pixel for
16 million colors) for each pixel in the picture. Therefore, to make file sizes small
enough for pictures to load into a Web page within a reasonable amount of time, it
becomes necessary to make as many compromises in image quality as possible.
This means minimizing both the number of pixels in the image (color palette reduc-
tion) and the amount of data used to describe each pixel (compression).
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 619

Tip If you need to change the size of a bitmapped image, you’ll get the best results
when you can multiply or divide the original size by an even number. The software
can then guess more accurately which lines and edges to leave in and which to
ignore.

Vector graphics
Vector graphics are resolution-independent, which simply means that no matter
how big or small you make the image — and no matter how many times you
increase or decrease it’s size — the image is always reproduced at the maximum
definition allowed by the device on which it is displayed. Furthermore, it is possible
to create a highly detailed advertising illustration on a computer with marginal
screen definition and very little memory, and then have that image reproduced as
a freeway billboard and still maintain smooth lines and fills.

How is this possible? Vector images are stored as mathematical (more precisely,
geometrical) formulas. Each shape in the image is a complete formula, known as an
object. Because objects are self-contained entities, it is easy for the computer to
specify changes to that object and its relationship with other objects in the image.
These changes never affect the quality of other objects in the image. The other
important feature of vector images is their small file size, which results from the
fact that images are stored as formulas. Remember, it makes no difference whether
a circle represents something as small as a microbe or as big as the Earth. All the
information necessary to describe the shape, color, line thickness, and other geo-
metrical components can likely be stored in the same amount of space as a para-
graph of text.

Just to keep things in perspective, vector graphics are not always the most efficient
way to communicate an image. They are well suited to drawings, diagrams, logos,
and other simple and clean shapes, but they are useless for displaying the tiny
details and wealth of continuous tones that photographs convey.

Web graphics file formats

The task of choosing which graphics file format to use on a Web site used to be
easier because you had half as many options as are available today. The GIF format
was the only accepted format. The demand for photographic-quality color has
since caused the JPEG format to be nearly as widely accepted. Now the question is,
which format is best under what circumstances?
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620 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

You can choose from four Web-compatible graphics file formats:

✦ JPEG: This format is visible to almost all Web browsers. JPEG is a true-color
format that uses variable lossy compression to reduce file size. This format
doesn’t support transparency (alpha channels) and can’t store images in a
lossless format. JPEGs can’t be animated, either.
✦ GIF87a and GIF89a: These formats use lossless compression and are limited
to 256 colors. They are best suited to hard-edged, flat-colored art such as sym-
bols, text, and info-graphics. GIF89a enables the designation of one color as
transparent and permits multiple images to be stacked in one file, which can
then be viewed as an animation and has become known as an animated GIF.
✦ PNG: A third bitmapped file format, designed especially for network graphics,
is PNG (pronounced ping). PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a new format
intended to be a patent-free replacement for GIF, but the format is just being
incorporated into the most recent generations of browsers. Otherwise, you
need a plug-in to see PNG. PNG is actually available in two file formats:
• PNG-8: PNG-8 can interpret 256 colors and is an alternative to GIF.
• PNG-24: PNG-24 can interpret 16.8 million colors and is an alternative to
JPEG — except that you can have transparency in a PNG-24 file so that
the image can have an irregular shape that “floats” on the page.
Since the publication of this book’s first edition, both Internet Explorer
and Netscape Navigator browsers now include the ability to display PNG
files.

Knowing which format to use in order to achieve a particular goal is a matter of

keeping a few “rules” in mind. The following sections explain how to match each of
these formats with the job.

GIF
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is the Web’s most useful and most widely used
graphics file format, and it comes in two flavors: GIF87a and GIF89a. For static, rect-
angular pictures, both types are fully compatible with all graphical Web browsers.
In fact, the specifications for a rectangular still image are the same for both formats.
All GIF files are restricted to 256 or fewer colors. They are compressed at an aver-
age ratio of about 3:1 over a noncompressed image of the same size and number of
colors. GIF is better suited for storing images that contain mainly flat tones because
its compression technology works most efficiently when the image consists mainly
of patterns made by adjacent areas of solid colors.

GIF is the file format to use when a graphic has the following characteristics:

✦ It is composed of geometric shapes filled with flat colors.

✦ The original contains 256 colors or less.
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 621

✦ It is small (fits within a 150-pixel square).

✦ It is irregularly shaped (think of a triangular traffic sign).
✦ It is intended as an animation not dependent on programming or special
browser enhancements.

The original GIF format, GIF87a, was restricted to rectangular, static images.
However, people wanted a way to make images appear more quickly and to spare
viewers from having to stare at empty placeholders. GIF89a, the more recent stan-
dard, overcomes these limitations by adding three enhancements:

✦ The capability to recognize a single designated color as transparent.

Transparency makes it possible to create irregularly shaped graphics. such as
vignettes, buttons, and icons.
✦ The capability to store and display multiple discrete images in the same
file. This makes it possible to create auto-playing “flipbook” animations and
miniature slide shows.
✦ The capability to interlace images. Interlacing enables the image to load in
several stages of resolution. Interlacing creates the illusion that graphics (and,
therefore, whole pages) load more quickly, thus giving readers a chance to see
a “fuzzy” but recognizable image quickly enough to know whether to wait or
move on.

Saving your file to GIF format is easy, provided it is already in a bitmapped or

rasterized form. If your file is not in this form, first convert it to Indexed Color mode,
which you do in Photoshop by choosing Image ➪ Mode ➪ Indexed Color. After the file
has been converted, open the original file in any image editor, such as Photoshop,
Painter, PHOTO-PAINT, or Windows Paint. From the main menu, choose File ➪ Save
As. When the File Save dialog box appears, open the drop-down list of file types and
choose GIF or CompuServe GIF.

On the other hand, you can almost always do a more efficient job of saving files to
GIF format with a program dedicated to Web graphics, such as Adobe ImageReady
or Macromedia Fireworks 2. If you don’t want to make the investment in either of
these programs, which retail for around $100 each, you can use a plug-in such as
HVS GIF or Boxtop Software’s PhotoGIF. These programs do as good — or better —
a job for half the price, but they aren’t as versatile as the Web image-processing
programs that can save to GIF, animated GIF, JPEG, and PNG and don’t have as fancy
a user interface. Nor, for the most part, can they do other Web-specific chores, such
as GIF animations, image slicing, or Javascript rollovers, which are discussed later
in this chapter. Conversely, the plug-ins enable you to keep working inside your
favorite Photoshop plug-in-compatible, image-processing program.
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622 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

If your image-editing program has layers, then you can use them for “onion-skin-
ning” a GIF animation. That is, you can put each frame on a separate layer. Then
you can temporarily set the exposure controls for each layer so that you can also
see the objects on the layers above and below a given layer, thus enabling you to
scale and position the layer relative to its neighbors. This technique is helpful when
creating a smoother illusion of movement. After you have positioned all the layers
correctly, simply drag the contents of each layer into a frame in a GIF animation
program. Photoshop’s ImageReady can automatically interpret layers as animation
frames.

Note Numerous utilities, which are discussed in later sections of this chapter, enable
you to create GIF animations.

If you are planning to save to GIF format, then you should understand the possibili-
ties for — and ramifications of — color reduction. GIF files that have fewer than
256 colors can be stored at any bit depth from 1 to 8. The lower the bit depth, the
smaller the file size and the faster it will load. Because the Web is a low-resolution
medium as compared to print, you can often employ tricks to fool the human eye
into seeing more colors than actually exist. The most important of these tricks is
covered later in this chapter.

JPEG
JPEG is the file format in which to save your graphics if they are full-color, continu-
ous-tone images (such as photographs) that are larger than approximately 150 pix-
els square. The JPEG graphics file format gets its name from the committee that
originated it — the Joint Photographic Experts Group. JPEG is a 24-bit, true-color file
format that uses a variable lossy-compression algorithm. Variable means that you
can choose just how much data loss that you want to incur in exchange for smaller
file sizes.

When you save a file in JPEG format, you are given the choice of a range of com-
pression levels. The higher the compression, the less faithful the image is to the
original. Given the Web’s resolution (typically 72 to 96 dpi), most of the typically
tiny images used on the Web appear quite similar to the originals at the highest and
lowest levels of compression. However, because colors vary so much from photo
to photo, you need to be able to inspect the image before you save it in order to
ensure that you won’t get any ugly surprises. At maximum compression, a JPEG file
is typically 1⁄100th the size of the original.

A more recent variation on JPEG is progressive JPEG (pJPEG). Like interlaced GIF
(iGIF), pJPEG enables the image to load faster in stages of increasingly higher reso-
lution. The difference between a pJPEG and an iGIF is that the former permits a full
range of color (24 bits per pixel versus 8 bits per pixel for iGIF). However, only
recently have common image editors enabled you to save a pJPEG.

How do you save your files to JPEG? As with GIF, most modern image editors or
paint programs handle the job. You can also use one of several standalone utilities
to convert files from various bitmap formats to pJPEG.
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 623

Note The Macintosh PICT file format, once the most common Macintosh graphics for-
mat (these days, folks tend to use cross-platform formats such as GIF, JPEG, PNG,
and TIFF), enables you to use JPEG compression when saving a file without actu-
ally converting the PICT file to a JPEG file. However, neither the Web nor any pro-
gram expecting a JPEG file will recognize this PICT file as a JPEG file. When
choosing the file type, be sure to pick JPEG, not PICT. PNG format also gives you
the option of using JPEG compression. However, as with PICT files, a browser that
doesn’t recognize PNG files won’t recognize JPEG-compressed PNG files as JPEGs.

PNG
Hopefully, the PNG format will become ubiquitous, because it supports both indexed
and nonindexed color. (See the following section for more information on color
modes.) PNG also supports high (but lossless) compression and transparency. PNG’s
transparency is vastly better than GIF because it is accomplished through an alpha
channel, which makes it possible to have partial transparency. This means that PNG
can provide a way to have drop shadows and vignettes for irregularly shaped graph-
ics without halos — even on patterned backgrounds. If your Web site is designed for
an intranet (a private or corporate Web with restricted access) whose readers use a
single browser that supports the format, you should be using PNG already.

Your image-processing program can’t be more than one generation old in order to
save or export your files to PNG format. Most current versions of image-processing
programs can open and save PNG files. Programs that save to PNG format vary a
great deal as to which PNG attributes they support.

Understanding Color Modes

Three kinds of color “modes” are in popular use for Web graphics:

✦ Indexed-color
✦ High-color
✦ True-color

These modes are known by both their names and by their color depth, so if you hear
one term or another, realize that they’re synonymous. Color depth is the number of
colors possible in an indexed-color image; in other words, a 256-color image is 8 bits
per pixel, a 4-bit image contains 16 colors, a 5-bit image is 32 colors, and so on. The
color depth of an indexed-color image can be anything from 1 to 8 bits per pixel.

The other two modes are high-color and true-color. High-color is also known as
either 15-bit (32,000 colors) or 16-bit (64,000 colors). True-color is also known as
24-bit color, and consists of 16.8 million colors, which is quite a few more than most
humans are capable of perceiving in any reproduced image. In real life, you can see
billions of colors because our eyes rapidly adjust to read multiple levels or layers of
brightness in rapid succession and our minds then blend these together.
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624 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Of the three color modes, only indexed-color relies on the use of a palette. Each
color in a given indexed-color image is indexed to a specific location in a palette
matrix that’s attached to that image. In other words, a specific shade of green in a
picture of a forest may be assigned to the third column of the fourth row in the
palette. If you want to adapt an existing image to a palette other than the one that
was used to create it (usually invisibly assigned by the program that created it),
you have to use a utility that changes the index position of each color in the image
to match it to the index position of the closest color in the new palette. DeBabelizer
is exceptionally good at converting the disparate palettes of individual graphics in a
large collection to a single palette with all the colors in common.

Rules Governing Web Graphics

Web graphics have a number of unique qualities. Paying attention to these can
make or break the success of your Web site. Do you want millions of viewers and
lots of ad revenue? Here come the rules, but remember, every rule has exceptions!

Rule #1: File size is everything

People looking at a Web page have a much shorter attention span than people look-
ing at a printed page. If your graphics take any significant amount of time to load,
you can bet that your reader will quickly surf to another wave. The bigger the file
size, the longer it takes to load. A 28.8 Kbps modem loads data from the Web at a
typical rate of about 1.6 Kbps. In other words, a 20KB file takes 14 seconds to load.
A typical 80 x 100 pixel graphic compresses to an average of about 20KB, provided
you judiciously use the tricks outlined in this chapter. You can also create illusions
to make it seem as though graphics are loading at several times the speed they
actually are.

Two such illusions are commonly used to get around the drawbacks of larger files:

✦ Interlacing: Interlaced GIFs and progressive JPEGs both fall into the first cate-
gory. These images seem to load faster because the image is progressively
rendered. Each rendering uses more pixels (dots) from the file to fill the
image, so the picture appears quickly, but somewhat “out of focus.” Then it
gets sharper until all the pixels have uploaded and the image is fully revealed.
The advantage is that one can usually get the information needed from the
image before it is fully rendered. So you know whether you want to wait for
the detail or move on.
✦ Alt imaging: This illusion, the LOWSRC (low-resolution source) image tag,
accomplishes the same thing as interlacing but with a different technique. The
LOWSRC image can be a very small black-and-white or limited-color image.
The LOWSRC image loads first and stays onscreen only as long as it takes for
the primary image to load.
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 625

Tip You can use code in an HTML tag to scale a graphic to a size different from the
actual file size. This can be a good idea or a bad idea, depending on a few vari-
ables. See the section on low-sourcing later in this chapter for more information.

It’s a good idea to scale down the file if the browser has already loaded it earlier for
use at a larger size. In this case, you already stored the large file on the server and
spent the time uploading the first time. The second time the file is used, it appears
almost instantaneously because all the browser has to do is scale it. Be aware, how-
ever, that the file is a bit “fuzzier” if it’s automatically scaled down. Test your file in
a browser to make sure that the quality is acceptable. If not, scale the file down
conventionally, save it to a different name, and place the new, properly resized
image on your page.

Unless you’re after a pixilated, jagged, “artsy” effect, avoid having the browser scale
a file to a size larger than the original if that’s the size at which you want the reader
to view it. Refer to Rule #7 for information about the use of low-sourcing for another
exception to this rule. It’s also a bad idea to scale an image to a size smaller than
the original because the browser must first load the whole file and then scale it
down (which takes even longer), causing performance to suffer unnecessarily.

Rule #2: The Web is a low-resolution medium

Plan on your Web pages being viewed at a typical resolution of 72 dpi (dots per
inch). Although 17-inch monitors set for 800 x 600 pixel resolution have become
quite popular, a few viewers are still using 12- to 15-inch monitors set at 640 x 480
pixels. A 640 x 480-pixel, 13-inch viewing area is equivalent to 72 dpi on the Mac and
96 dpi on the PC. This compares to a resolution of over 2,000 dpi in a typical corpo-
rate annual report.

Don’t even think about placing page-size (or larger) detailed technical drawings,
blueprints, or even organizational charts directly on your Web page. If you reduce
them so they fit into a typical window at 72 dpi, not enough resolution is present to
see detail clearly. Your diagrams will look like a bad case of acne. The solution to
this problem is to scan the important parts of the drawing in a 1:1 ratio at 72 dpi,
and then cut and paste small “close-up” sections of the drawing into separate files.
These files can then be placed directly on your Web pages, in context with the
appropriate descriptive text.

If you don’t want to use vector-drawing techniques for map details, you can use a
Web image preparation program (such as Fireworks or Image Ready) to “slice” the
image. (You can find out more about programs that do image slicing and linking
later in this chapter.)

Better yet, if you have maps or technical drawings to display, scan them and then
auto-trace them in a program such as Macromedia FreeHand, CorelDRAW, or Adobe
Streamline. Then import the vector tracing into Flash and export the image to SWF
format. Most of today’s browsers (about 78 percent at the time of this writing) can
read this vector format without pausing to download and install a plug-in.
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626 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Meanwhile, another alternative works for some. If you’re in an intranet environment

in which you can control the viewer’s platform, then you can use Netscape plug-ins
for inline viewing of numerous vector file formats. See the Netscape plug-ins page
for a listing of these, located at home.netscape.com/plugins/index.html.

Rule #3: The Web is color-sensitive

Subjects that require photo-realistic shading require display in millions of colors.
Otherwise, they appear to be “banded” or posterized. Artists whose work you
display in this manner will definitely be unappreciative.

Nevertheless, you should make sure that your graphics look okay in black and
white (well, grayscale, actually). Although few people still use monochrome
monitors, some will want to print out your pages on a monochrome printer. Also,
if the picture looks good in grayscale, you’ve ensured that enough contrast exists
between important elements in the picture. Such image contrast is critical to the
success of image maps and the legibility of text superimposed on graphics.

It’s even more important that graphics look good in a mere 256 colors because
many people leave their monitors set at 256 colors and may not know that they’re
seeing the world through dust-covered glasses. Or, someone once told them that
applications run much faster with the monitor set at 256 colors. Although this may
be technically true, the real-world speed difference between 256 colors and true-
color is imperceptible to most people unless they are dealing with a large graphic.

Even if you use 256 colors, type and solid-color graphics really shouldn’t use more
than the 219 “Web-safe” colors, which are called Web-safe because browsers and
Windows reserve the other 37 colors for their own use. Almost all current genera-
tion image-processing programs provide some means to let you convert images to
this “Web palette.”

Having stated this, however, it’s not strictly true that you have to reduce all images
to less than 256 colors in order to be as efficient as possible. The JPEG file format
accommodates only true-color (16.8 million colors) files, and most popular browsers,
such as Netscape Navigator, automatically adjust images (by dithering) to 256 colors
on a 256-color display. However, experimentation often proves that a file reduced to
fewer colors will compress to significantly smaller sizes.

The exception to the 256-color rule is the occasion when you want to display high-
quality images for photographs (browsers will do their own dithering). Even if
you’re showing photographs, they can often be successfully reduced to 256 colors
through techniques explained later in this chapter.

If you decide to reduce a photograph to 256 colors, most image-processing pro-

grams let you choose a palette and dithering method. Always choose an adaptive
palette (one comprised of the most prevalent colors in the image) and diffusion
dithering. Otherwise, the colors convert to solid, banded areas.
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 627

The photographs shown in Figure 15-3 demonstrate the differences between

various methods of color reduction, with and without dithering.

Figure 15-3: A small photo reduced to 256 colors

Rule #4: Choose the right format for photographs

Only two file formats are appropriate for photographs: GIF and JPEG. Both file for-
mats can be read equally well on any type of popular computer. In addition, all but
text-only browsers now support both file formats. Other formats may be promising,
but with the exception of SWF (which is a vector format not appropriate for pho-
tos), the other formats don’t have the universal playability that GIF and JPEG do.

Rule #5: Keep images reasonably sized

Never make a graphic’s dimensions so large that the reader has to scroll. Most
viewers see pages on a screen that measures 800 x 600 pixels. This is roughly the
size of the image on 15- to 17-inch monitors, whether Mac or PC. Although it’s true
that many people these days set their screens to higher resolutions (1024 x 768 is
quite popular) or have bigger monitors, you can’t count on it. Besides, people who
do this are still a small minority.

Unfortunately, you can’t even make your images nearly as big as 640 x 480 pixels
because your browser takes up a lot of that space. If the window is set at maximum
in Netscape Navigator, the area of a viewable page is 610 x 280 pixels, and most peo-
ple don’t even maximize the window. The best rule of thumb is to limit width to
about 450 pixels.

This means that the biggest graphic you should ever use is about 600 pixels wide
and 260 pixels high. If you plan to have anything in addition to the graphic on the
page, the graphic must be appropriately smaller. Thus, your portrait (vertical
aspect) images must be smaller than 260 pixels square.
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628 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

The one exception to these size limitations is backgrounds. Single-image back-

grounds should be as large as the largest screen likely to view them. Also, horizon-
tal tiles should be as wide as the largest window in which they can be viewed.
(1,024 pixels wide is a safe bet.) This way, people using large screens at high resolu-
tions won’t run out of background when these elements are used. Background ele-
ments repeat automatically if they are smaller than the viewing window. If you are
making a tiled background, remember this: The smaller the tile, the faster it loads.
See the section on backgrounds later in this chapter for more information.

Another exception to this size limitation is one that many artists and photogra-
phers insist on making. They feel that their images lose too much detail at such
small sizes. The truth is that these images lose too much detail no matter how they
are displayed on the Web. However, keep in mind that poor image quality can be an
advantage in that it is one defense against the theft of your artwork.

Rule #6: Use images repeatedly

The browser only needs to load an image once, because it caches, which means
that information is held in memory on the local computer. Thus, any subsequent
appearance of that image loads almost instantly. This excellent trick makes the per-
formance of your site seem miraculously fast. Keep this rule in mind when you’re
tempted to make a different bullet for each subject list or to use nine different kinds
of page dividers within the same site. Also, following this rule can save you consid-
erable space on your Web server, and saving server space can save you money.
Finally, it makes site maintenance easier because you have fewer links to track.

Rule #7: Don’t depend entirely

on automated converters
To put it another way, most converters can’t do the refined steps in the Web-
enhanced versions of GIF (GIF89a) or pJPEG (progressive JPEG) and won’t do
anything to create a low-source image as a substitute. Each of these qualities can
contribute to making your Web site faster to load, quicker to browse, and easier on
the eye. The following three sections explain how to overcome the limitations of
automated converters.

Transparency
Transparency refers to making one color in an image invisible, thus enabling the
image to blend smoothly with any background. The same image can then be used
on a number of pages with varying background colors and textures. Transparency
is a property currently unique to the GIF89a and PNG formats, so you can’t make
JPEG graphics transparent. Figure 15-4 shows a transparent GIF89a image. The
transparent area was possible because the image was given a solid-color back-
ground. GIF89a enables you to specify any single color as transparent.
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 629

Figure15-4: A transparent GIF image

Note Some programs, such as Photoshop, enable you to specify that the transparent
area of a layer or an alpha channel determine the border between opacity and
transparency. These programs actually substitute a single color for the masked
area.

Interlacing and progressive JPEG

One way to speed the display of graphics-enhanced Web pages is to make GIFs
interlaced and JPEGs progressive. Both interlaced GIFs (iGIFs) and progressive
JPEGs (pJPEGs) appear quickly because only some of the pixels in the image are
loaded first. As a result, you see a rough (out-of-focus) approximation of the final
image while the rest of the image loads. If you decide you’re not interested in the
detail (or if you’ve seen it before), you can move on without waiting for the rest of
the file transfer.

Never interlace a transparent background GIF. Interlacing in conjunction with trans-

parency causes intermittent problems with some browsers (such as Netscape
Navigator). The result is a “broken GIF” icon in place of the picture. All popular
browsers that support graphics support iGIFs.
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630 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Progressive JPEG quickly places a low-resolution version of the image in your

browser, and then rescans the image several times, displaying it at higher resolu-
tions each time. The last scan produces full resolution. This reduces viewer frustra-
tion because he or she gets a sense of what will be on the Web page much more
quickly.

Built-in support for saving to pJPEG is somewhat more rare than support for saving
to iGIF at the time of this writing, but it’s expanding rapidly. Support for progressive
JPEGs, however, began mostly in the second generation of graphical browsers, such
as Mosaic and Netscape Navigator. AOL’s browser became fully compatible with
progressive JPEGs in version 3.0. Microsoft Internet Explorer incorporated fully
progressive display in version 5.0.

Low-sourcing
Low-sourcing can be a substitute for progressive JPEGs (pJPEGs) or interlaced GIFs
(iGIFs). Sometimes this method is more efficient than pJPEGs or iGIFs, but that
depends on how you make the low-source images.

Low-sourcing gets its name from an HTML tag that substitutes an alternative file
(usually of much lower resolution or monochrome) until the data for a higher-
resolution file has been loaded.

You should use two separate files in an image tag with a LOWSRC attribute, such as
SRC= image or LOWSRC= image. The LOWSRC= image’s file size should be much
smaller than the original image (less than 25 percent). You can use several tech-
niques to make LOWSRC images. The technique that you use depends on the size
of the SRC image and the effect that you want to achieve. The second file can be
smaller, for one or more of the following reasons:

✦ The image is a black-and-white version of the full-color, high-source image.

✦ The colors have been reduced in the image.
✦ The image dimensions are much smaller. For example, you can simply make a
copy of a 200 x 300 image, scale it to 50 x 75 pixels, and then insert a size
attribute in the image tag to force the display of both images at the same size.

Note Using a grayscale image as your low-source image can be a very effective means
of presenting photographs on the Web. Because a grayscale image is 1⁄3rd the file
size of a color image with the same dimensions, it loads quickly and you can still
see all the detail in the image.
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 631

Rule #8: High bandwidth is no excuse for inefficiency

Even if your site is on a corporate intranet where every viewer has a high-speed
connection, you can do better things with bandwidth than waste it on unnecessar-
ily large graphics (such as provide more viewers with more information and not
create bottlenecks in the network).

Categorizing Web Graphics

The kinds of graphics that you’re likely to need on your Web pages can be catego-
rized. Understanding these categories, described in the following sections, can help
you to create these types of graphical elements.

Text
If you want to design your pages for most browsers, using text converted to bitmap
graphics controls the typeface displayed on your user’s screen. Otherwise, the
browser makes the choice. The browsers used by more than 95 percent of Web
surfers allow only two typefaces: monospaced Courier (typewriter) and a variable-
spaced font (typically Times Roman). Furthermore, by using graphics, you can
control items such as the layout of text, headlines, pictures, and other content
elements.

When you use graphical text, you can use any font in your computer at any size.
You can also specify any typographical attributes, such as spacing, kerning, or
leading. You can’t do any of this with HTML text. Unlike HTML text, when you use
graphics, the font style isn’t dependent on the destination system. When you use
graphical text, you can achieve the following effects:

✦ Freehand lettering
✦ Multi-colored letters
✦ Special effects, such as embossing, drop shadows, glow, gradient fills, or
outlining

One of the more attention-getting tricks that you can use in Photoshop is to use
text as a way to frame photographs. This technique has been used in the postcard
industry for a long time. Because Photoshop and Photoshop Elements also present
us with quite a few layer styles that let us automatically perform actions, such as
beveling edges and giving text a metallic look; I show you how to apply a layer style
to the text, warp it, and then place text inside the photo, so you get a result like that
shown in Figure 15-5.
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632 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 15-5: A fictitious postcard, made just to show off what can be done with a
combination of text warping, layer effects, and placing text inside a photo

To achieve results like those shown in Figure 15-5, follow these steps:

1. Open the file Waves from the CD-ROM.

2. Open the file Cliff Houses from the CD-ROM.
This is the image on which you place text. Make sure that this is the active
window by clicking it.
3. Choose the Text tool.
4. From the Text tool Options Bar, choose the following settings:
• Bookman Old Style (from the Font menu)
• Bold (from the Style menu)
• 48 pt. (from the Set the Font Size menu)
• Smooth
• Left justified
• Black
All these settings are shown in Figure 15-6.

Figure 15-6: The Text Options Bar, showing the settings used in this exercise
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 633

5. Click at the point where you want to start the text and type Santa Cruz.
6. Click the Warp menu and choose the Arc style.
Take note of how many other ways you can warp the text.
7. Select Commit Any Current Edits.
The black, curved letters appear as though they were typed on the photo.
Photoshop always places type on its own layer, so the text is actually floating
over the scene.
8. Choose the Magic Wand tool.
Select the inside of each letter. Because the text is on its own layer, you don’t
need to worry about whether the marquee will expand outside the text. Just
select the first letter, press Shift, and then select each letter or independent
part of a letter, such as the dot over a lower-case “i” or “j”. You want to keep a
black rim around the letters, so shrink the selection a bit.
9. Choose Select ➪ Modify ➪ Contract.
The Contract Selection dialog box appears.
10. Enter 4 in the Contract By field and click OK.
The result looks like the image shown in Figure 15-7.

Figure 15-7: The contracted selection where the photo will be placed
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634 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

11. Click to activate the Waves window.

The next step is to place the photo inside the selection.
12. Press Cmd/Ctrl + A to Select ➪ All, and then press Cmd/Ctrl + C to copy the
contents of the selection to the clipboard.
13. Click the Cliff Houses window to activate it, and choose Edit ➪ Paste into.
The swirly surf appears inside the selection marquee that’s inside the letters.
You can use the Move tool to reposition the photo inside the marquee.
14. When you are satisfied with the results, press Cmd/Ctrl + D to drop the
selection.
The next step is to apply a beveled layer style to the warped text.
15. Choose Layer ➪ Layer Style ➪ Bevel and Emboss.
Because you can choose from many settings in the Layer Style dialog box, I
encourage you to experiment. You can add one style to another by checking
the boxes alongside their names in the left column. To set the options for
each of these styles, click to highlight their style name bars. You can see the
settings I used in Figure 15-8.

Figure 15-8: The Layer Styles dialog box with the

Bevel and Emboss styles selected

Illustrations
Illustrations are appropriate at some place in almost every kind of site, though they
may be more important in digital magazines, catalogs, and children’s sites than in
heavily text-oriented sites. Illustrations differ from other types of graphics in that
they are used primarily to mirror or to complement the text. Illustrations are also
usually bigger than other types of graphics. Often, they are full-color photos or
gradually shaded artwork, so file sizes tend to be much larger than for other types
of graphics. Illustrations can be decorative or instructional. Sometimes illustrations
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 635

tell the whole story and are accompanied by little or no text on the page, as shown
in Figure 15-9. Illustrations should never be so large that the viewer has to scroll to
see the whole picture. When creating or placing illustrations, take care to keep their
size slightly smaller than the typical user’s browser window. (See Rule #5 under the
“Rules Governing Web Graphics” section.)

Figure 15-9: A typical Web illustration

Backgrounds
Backgrounds are the “paper” on which your Web content is printed. You should
know how to control your backgrounds so you can design them to complement
your photos. Most browsers default to a medium gray or white background and
black text, but you can specify any color for a background and any color for text.
Any browser that’s compliant with the HTML 3.2 specification, which includes most
current versions of popular browsers, can properly interpret the instructions for
colored backgrounds. Netscape Navigator 2+ and Internet Explorer support colored
text, but it isn’t as widely supported as colored backgrounds. To be safe, keep your
backgrounds light enough that black text is readable against them.

Suppose that you want a photo or paper texture in the background. Most browsers
can now read graphic backgrounds, so you can load any image into the background.
This image repeats itself from left to right and from top to bottom as many times as
necessary to fill the entire frame. Remember, this repetition occurs more times for a
full frame on a 20-inch monitor at 1,024 x 768 pixels than for a full frame on a 640 x
480-pixel, 12-inch monitor.
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636 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Background images can be of any type, but you need to design them so they don’t
interfere with the readability of text or unintentionally confuse the content of over-
laying graphics. Also, because backgrounds are the largest element in a Web page, it
is especially important to design photographic backgrounds to upload as quickly as
possible. Either use every trick in the book to make the file sizes for large images
small, or use very small tiles. Actually, a background tile about 20 pixels square
loads nearly as fast as a 1-pixel tile and fills the screen about 20 times faster
because it has 20 times fewer repeats.

You can expect to achieve several types of “effects” with background images. These
effects are discussed in the following sections.

Background images
1. Open the file Angel Island from the CD-ROM.
Make the image the size it will be when it is used as a background image. This
size should usually be 1024 x 768 pixels at 72 dpi to make sure that it covers
the size of the largest browser window that is likely to be used to view that
page. If your page is going to be a long one with lots of text, the vertical height
must be quite a bit taller.
2. Choose Image ➪ Re-size ➪ Image Size (Image ➪ Image Size in Photoshop 7).
The Image Size dialog box appears.
3. Under Pixel Dimensions, enter 768 in the height field.
4. Enter 72 in the Resolution field.
The other settings are the defaults and should be left as they are, as shown in
Figure 15-10.
5. Click OK.

Figure 15–10: The Image Size

dialog box showing the settings
for re-sizing a non-tiled
background to fit a maximum-
size Web page
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 637

6. Size the image so that the vertical size matches that of the other images in
the collection.
Now, trim the other dimension with the Fixed Size Rectangular Marquee, as
shown in Figure 15-11.
7. Set the Options Bar for Fixed Size.
8. In the Height field, enter 768. In the Width field, enter 1024.
9. Click in the image to show the marquee.
If it isn’t positioned properly, place the cursor inside the marquee and drag it
into your preferred position.

Figure 15-11: The original Angel Island photo, re-sized to 768 pixels high. The
Rectangular Marquee is set at a fixed size so the photo can be cropped to exactly
the right size.

10. Choose Image ➪ Crop.

Your image is now the right size for a background photo.
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638 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

11. Choose Image ➪ Enhance ➪ Brightness/Contrast.

The Brightness/Contrast dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 15-12. You
want to flatten the image into a narrow range of very bright tones so that,
although you see a fairly full range of image detail, the overall tone is bright
enough not to interfere with the text.

Figure 15-12: The Brightness/

Contrast dialog box, shown as
used in this exercise

12. Drag the Brightness level about halfway between the center and the right
side of the slider.
13. Drag the Contrast slider about halfway between the center and the left end
of the slider.
Your image should now be a high-key, soft gray.
14. Add a layer of type to see how it reads, as shown in Figure 15-13, then
delete it.
15. Choose the Text tool.
Place the cursor in the darkest part of the image, and then type some text
over it. If you can read the text, you’re done. If not, go back to Step 12 and
readjust the Brightness/Contrast sliders until the darkest part of the image is
light enough to read the text.
16. Save the image, and then use your HTML editor to enter it as a background
image.

Tip You may want to place the center of interest in the background photo at the
upper-left of the picture so that it is at the center of interest in smaller screens.
Usually, however, it’s best to just use a photo that lends atmosphere without
attracting too much attention to itself.
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 639

Figure 15-13: A background image with test text superimposed on it to check the
readability of the text

Semi-solid backgrounds
You create semi-solid backgrounds by making a background image tile that is as
wide as any viewing window is likely to be (1,024 pixels is a good number). We call
them “semi-solid” because if the window happens to be larger, the background
image will tile. The height can be as narrow as you like because the tile simply
repeats as often as necessary from top to bottom. Because this tile is so wide, its
file size is bigger (unless it is very shallow). A height of one or two pixels is the best
compromise between loading time and screen-painting time. Figure 15-14 shows a
good example of a semi-solid background.
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640 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 15-14: This Web page has a solid color tiled background,
which makes it very easy to read dense text. Solid backgrounds
are also a clean environment for presenting photos.

Full-screen images
Full-screen images provide users with all the necessary information without requir-
ing any HTML text. Usually such images contain graphic text. In addition, an image
map is required for some sort of negotiation. A hybrid full-screen image can be a
full-screen background image tile with minimal HTML text in links (such as a naviga-
tion bar) in the foreground. These images work best if they contain very few colors
and large areas of solid color so they compress to a small enough file size to enable
them to load quickly. Figure 15-15 is an example of a full-screen image.
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 641

Figure 15-15: A full-screen image

Textured and patterned backgrounds

Textured and patterned backgrounds are variations on background tiles. Textured
backgrounds are simply images with no definable subject, such as sand or burlap.
Patterned backgrounds are repetitions of a shape, such as a drawing of an apple,
flower, or company logo. Textured and patterned backgrounds are usually created
as “seamless tiles” that repeat in a contiguous left-to-right, top-to-bottom sequence.
Figure 15-16 is an example of a patterned background.
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642 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 15-16: A patterned background

Multiple backgrounds
Multiple backgrounds use images within an image to compose a full-screen back-
ground image that appears to be several backgrounds, as shown in Figure 15-9.

Strictly speaking, Figure 15-17 doesn’t show a background, but whole images that
have been inserted into table cells. The appearance of text over a background is
“faked” by creating the text as part of the graphic image. The cell borders have
been set at zero, so they’re invisible. The content has been placed within the cells
so that it appears to float over the whole page. To make your design work, you have
to spend some time experimenting with font sizes, colors, and object alignments.

Tip The easiest way to create multiple backgrounds is to create one large graphic,
place your text over it, and then slice the image in a program such as ImageReady
or Fireworks. These programs automatically create the HTML code necessary to
make the table and to place the graphic into the cells.
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 643

Figure 15-17: The multiple-background illusion

Irregularly-shaped graphics
An irregularly-shaped graphic appears to have a nonrectangular border, but is in fact
rectangular. The graphic appears to be irregularly shaped because its solid-color
background is either designated as clear in a GIF89a file or matches the page back-
ground’s color. The name is a little misleading in another way: The shape can actu-
ally be regular, as in an oval, circle, or polygon — it just can’t be rectangular.

Irregularly-shaped graphics have so many uses you will find them indispensable.
For one, they are the only way to make graphics text appear to be a “typeset” ele-
ment of the page layout. Navigation icons, as shown in Figure 15-18, also integrate
better into the layout when they don’t appear to have a separate frame or back-
ground.
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644 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 15-18: Typical

navigation icons

Bullets
Bullets are simple-shaped graphics that call your attention to something. Usually,
they look like tiny buttons without words and are used to set items apart in an
unnumbered list. Several variations are shown in Figure 15-19.

Figure 15-19: All of these images can be used as bullets.

Icons
Icons are small, “high-concept” images meant to quickly give the reader a message
that takes less time to read and is more universally understood than if the same
message were spelled out in words. Some designers suffer from “icon mania” and
use icons in places where a single word may be more easily understood. The most
universally understood icon is a circle with a diagonal line, meaning “negative,”
“no,” or “not.” Traffic signs make good icons for the Web. Figure 15-20 shows
examples of icons.
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 645

Figure 15-20: The row of images at the very bottom of the page is
meant to be used for navigation: Home, Back, Forward, Last page,
Send Us E-mail.

Rounded buttons
Rounded buttons give dimension to your page and can be used for navigation (with
superimposed type) or as bullets to emphasize important text. See Figure 15-21 for
examples of rounded buttons.

Making rounded buttons is easy if you have Photoshop and Kai’s Power Tools
(KPT) or an image editor, such as Paint Shop Pro that has its own version of
the KPT Glass Lens filter. Follow the steps in the next section to create rounded
buttons.

This exercise was written for Photoshop, but you can complete it with almost any
image editor that supports Photoshop plug-ins:

1. Open a file that contains the color or texture that you want to use for your
button.
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646 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 15-21: Here, the Hand icons shown in Figure 15-20 have
been turned into round buttons.

2. Double-click the Rectangular Marquee tool and change it to Elliptical.

3. Drag an ellipse around the area where you want a button.
If the button has to be a particular size, make sure that you have chosen
Window ➪ Palette ➪ Show Info. If you want the button to be round rather than
elliptical, press Shift as you drag.
4. Choose Edit ➪ Copy to save your button to the clipboard.
5. Choose File ➪ New and click OK.
6. Choose Edit ➪ Paste.
7. Save the selection.
8. Choose Window ➪ Palette ➪ Show Layers.
9. Double-click the Floating Layer bar and name the layer.
You now have a floating layer and can fill the background with any color or
texture that you like. Your file is now cropped to exactly the size of your
button. Keep the Selection Marquee active (or save the selection so you can
bring it back).
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 647

10. Choose Selection ➪ Load Selection and click OK.

The selection reappears on the Button layer.
11. Choose Filter ➪ KPT Extensions ➪ Glass Lens (Bright, Normal, or Soft for the
effect you like).
Presto! You’ve got a button!
12. Choose the Options arrowhead at the upper-right corner of the Layers
palette.
A fly-out menu appears.
13. Choose Flatten Image.
This combines all the layers into one.
14. Finally, save the file as CompuServe GIF.

You can also make rounded buttons in any 3-D modeling program that does ray-
traced, Gourard, or z-buffered rendering. Simply make a sphere, map your favorite
texture to its surface, and render. Open the rendered file in your image editor, crop
it, and save as GIF.

Banners
Banners are used to show and announce an advertisement. Banners often contain
image maps to link to specific sites. Even if you don’t have advertisers on your site,
you may want to use banners to promote ideas, announce products that your com-
pany wants to sell, or point out features of your site.

Standard advertising practices dictate two sizes of horizontal Web banners at 476 x
54 pixels and 154 x 56 pixels, and a small vertical banner at 70 x 130 pixels.
However, today’s advertising is less restrictive regarding ad size.

Animations
You may have heard about the Web being “everyone’s” vehicle for multimedia.
Although this statement is somewhat true, don’t think about putting conventional
animated multimedia files on your Web site unless you are working within the con-
text of an intranet with T1 or faster connections. As cable modems and other high-
speed access becomes more widespread, multimedia will reach its full power over
the Web. In the meantime, remember that despite the increasing popularity of DSL
and cable modems, most Web access is still at 28.8 Kbps or slower. This means a
60KB file takes a full minute or more to download; 60KB is tiny for a motion file such
as a QuickTime or Video for Windows (VFW) movie. Surveys show that most Web
surfers won’t wait more than a minute for a page to load. You must really work to
keep your animations as small as possible. Also, give viewers something to read or
some other interesting graphics that will load first. If your viewer is busy looking or
reading, pages will seem to load faster.
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648 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Animations can be anything from simple “flipbook” cartoons to live-action video

footage. Simple cartoon-type animations that consist of only 2 to 10 frames are best
suited for use as inline attention-getters because their file sizes can be kept to a
bare minimum for quick loading.

Animated GIFs
Animated GIFs are one of the most effective, lowest-overhead ways of using anima-
tion to attract attention. With a little time and practice, anyone can make an ani-
mated GIF.

Animated GIFs are simply multiple images saved within a single GIF89a file. When
the file is placed on an HTML page (using the <IMG> tag and viewed with a support-
ing browser such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator), animation begins
almost as soon as the page is loaded. No special plug-ins or helper software is
required.

Numerous software utilities for both the Mac and Windows can assist you in saving
the individual images or “frames” of your animation as a single GIF89a file. Some
also provide drawing tools, and a few even provide “tracing paper” so that you can
superimpose the drawing of a new frame over the drawing of the previous frame to
be sure that the movement between frames is smooth and “in register” with the
position of the same objects in the frames that immediately precede and succeed
the current frame. This helpful feature enables you to check registration (the posi-
tion of objects in one frame relative to the position of the same objects in the next
frame) as you go.

Making an animated GIF

One of the easiest ways to make an animation is to shoot a burst sequence with a
digital camera. For a simple animation such as winking, pointing a finger, or walking,
you can have your “model” move slowly enough to make the three or four frames-
per-second of the burst shot seem to run at “normal” speed when the animation is
played back. It’s really easy to turn these shots into an animation in Photoshop.
To do so, open all the images, reduce the windows in size so that you can fit them
onscreen at the same time, re-arrange the windows in the sequence that you want
the frames to be in, then (in the required sequence) drag each image on top of the
last in the same window. The result is the first frame of the animation on the bottom
layer and the last frame on the top layer. You then jump into ImageReady, click the
Use Layers as Frames button, and play back your movie.

Another way to make an even simpler movie is to copy the same image onto several
layers, and then change the aspect of one item (such as the eyelid in the photo that
you can make into a movie by using the following exercise) on each layer. After
you’ve done this, you just have ImageReady use the layers as frames. The following
step-by-step procedure outlines how to make such an animation:
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 649

1. Open the file Cats Eye from the CD-ROM.

2. Press Cmd/Ctrl + A to select the entire image, and then press Cmd/Ctrl + J.
This automatically creates a new layer with the same content as the present
layer.
3. Repeat the Cmd/Ctrl + A then Cmd/Ctrl + J sequence two more times.
4. Choose Window ➪ Show Layers.
The Layers palette comes to the front.
5. Click the eyeball icon on the left of the top two layer name bars to turn
those layers off.
6. Choose the Clone Stamp tool.
7. Click the Layer Name bar of Layer 2 to activate it.
8. Press Opt/Alt to set the target for the Clone Stamp in the fur of the cat’s
eyelid.
9. Clone the eyelid so that it is slightly closed (about 1⁄3rd of the way).
10. Click the eyeball icon in the Name bar in Layer 3 to turn on that layer.
11. Clone the eyelid so that it is cloned about halfway further down than in
Layer 2.
This cloning process is illustrated in Figure 15-22. If you want to see the eye-
lid’s position in relation to it’s position in Layer 2, drag the opacity of Layer 3
to about 50%. When you’ve finished cloning, drag it back to 50%. You can see
the progression of cloning in each layer in Figure 15-22.

Figure 15-22: Cloning the eyelid so that it closes a bit further in each layer

12. Reduce the image to the size it will be in the final animation.
Make this one about 11⁄2 inches tall.
13. Choose Image ➪ Image Size.
The Image Size dialog box appears.
14. Set the options, as shown in Figure 15-23. After you finish, click OK.
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650 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 15-23: The Image Size

dialog box showing the settings
used to make the image 11⁄2
inches high in a Web browser
window

15. Click the Jump To ImageReady button at the bottom of the Toolbox.
In an instant or two, you see the image in ImageReady, as shown in Figure 15-24.

Figure 15-24: The cat’s eye animation,

as seen in the ImageReady Animation
palette

16. Click the Animation Palettes menu icon (the small encircled arrowhead at
the upper right side of the palette).
The Animation Palette menu appears.
17. Choose Make Frames from Layers from the Animation Palette menu.
Each layer, starting from the bottom and moving to the top, appears in the
Animation palette.
18. Immediately under each frame, you see a small arrow pointing down. Click
it to reveal the Frame delay time menu.
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 651

19. Choose 0.1 Seconds for all but the last frame.
20. Choose 0.2 seconds as the frame delay time for the last frame.
This is so the last frame remains onscreen a bit longer before the animation
repeats (loops).
21. Play the animation by clicking the Play button at the bottom of the
Animations palette.
The image in the main ImageReady menu animates. You can also preview your
animation in a browser. Click the Browser icon near the bottom of the Tools
palette (the Internet Explorer symbol). Your screen is taken over, as shown in
Figure 15-25.

Figure 15-25: Previewing your animation in the Browser

22. To save your Web animation, click the Optimize tab in the main window
and click the Optimized button.
In the Optimize palette, choose GIF 32 Dithered from the Settings menu.
23. Choose File ➪ Save As.
The Save Optimized As dialog box appears.
24. Choose Images and HTML from the Save As Type menu, and click OK.
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652 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Content dividers and picture frames

Content dividers are best known as horizontal and vertical rules. Horizontal rules
are easily placed in HTML by using the <HR> tag, but HTML imposes the following
limitations:

✦ Vertical rules are not available. You have to “fake” them with tables or frames.
✦ Horizontal bars are solid and act as visual barriers to proceeding farther
down the page.

Picture frames are actually not separate graphical elements, because in order for
them to work, they must be merged into a single graphic with the picture that they
frame. Still, you can make one frame and then resize it to fit any number of pictures.

One of the best ways to make picture frames is to photograph real ones. Light them
at a consistent key-light angle, so that if you mix frame styles, they all look like
they’re hanging on the same wall at the same time. Using an image-processing pro-
gram that has layers, knock out the frame’s background. In other words, it should
float on a transparent layer.

1. Copy the frame layer.

2. On each layer, use the Polygon selection tool to draw a diagonal line from
one corner of the frame to the other.
Continue the selection around opposite sides of the frame on each layer.
3. Delete the contents of the selection.
You should have L-shaped frames.
4. Place the photo that you want to frame on yet another layer and drag that
layer below the frame layers.
5. Use the Move tool to place the sides of the frame so that they just frame the
photograph.
6. Use the Polygon selection tool to trim the overlapping end of the frame so
that the corners are mitered.

Note Many image editors, such as PaintShop Pro and PictureIt! have built-in frame-mak-
ing routines that are quicker and easier than the exercise above. However, the
exercise above works in any image editor — even old-fashioned ones such as
Photoshop 7.
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 653

QuickTime panoramas and other virtual experiences

One of the most attention-getting things you can do with digitized photos is to use
them to give the viewer the feeling of being inside an explorable environment. By
far, the most popular way to do this is with a program that can “stitch” together a
series of photographs so that they form a seamless 360-degree view. The result is
then saved as a QuickTimeVR “movie.” The QuickTime plug-in is now built-in to
both the Netscape and Microsoft Web browsers, so most of your viewers can use
their mouse to pan the panoramic view and to zoom in on details within the scene.

Numerous programs can stitch your images. Some image editors, including
Photoshop Elements, Corel PHOTO-PAINT, and Ulead PhotoImpact 5, are also
starting to include stitching capabilities.

Making Web photo galleries

Both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements automate the production of Web photo
galleries. These galleries give you the option of having row and column thumbnails
or filmstrip-type thumbnails that you can thumb through with a big picture above
or to the right of the image.

Some options let you choose different colors for the background, links, and title
banner text. You can also change the color of the overall background, the color of
the banner background, and so forth.

Making the Photo Gallery is so easy it’s almost automatic, if you follow these steps:

1. Create a folder that you want to use to hold all the pictures in this gallery.
The photographs that you put into this folder can be virtually any size and
can be in any Photoshop-compatible file format. I put the files into JPEG for-
mat to save space. This way, I can build new galleries and post them to my
Web site very quickly. Also, this makes it easy to change the mix of photos in
each gallery folder so that I can keep the galleries fresh.
2. Open either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and choose File ➪ Automate
➪ Web Photo Gallery.
The Web Photo Gallery dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 15-26.
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654 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 15-26: The Web Photo Gallery dialog box

with the Banner option selected

3. Choose the settings shown in Figure 15-26.

If you don’t want to crowd your images, be sure that the typeface you choose
is no larger than 4 or 5 points or leave some of the Banner Options blank.
Next, set the options for the larger images that will be shown when the viewer
clicks one of the thumbnail images.
4. From the Options Menu, choose Larger Images.
The appropriate options appear below the menu. For the purposes of this
exercise, choose the options shown in Figure 15-27.

Figure 15-27: The Large Images

option and other settings

5. From the Options Menu, choose Thumbnails.

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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 655

The appropriate options appear below the menu. For the purposes of this
exercise, choose the options shown in Figure 15-28. The smaller the size you
choose for the thumbnails, the more you can see at a time and the larger the
space is for your image. I feel that this also encourages the viewer to click the
thumbnail to see the larger image.

Figure 15-28: The Thumbnails

option and other settings

6. From the Options Menu, choose Custom Colors.

You see a group of six color swatches. Click each swatch to make the Color
Picker appear and use it to pick the color for your preferred item, as shown in
Figure 15-29.

Figure 15-29: The Custom Colors swatches are shown. At right is the
Photoshop 7 Color Picker, which is the same as the Color Picker used
in many other applications, including the native Macintosh Color Picker.

7. Choose the Security Options.

These options place a watermark on your larger images to prevent use without
permission or credit. You can opt to use these watermarks. The information is
taken from the EXIF information that you have stored with your file. If you want
to view this information, preview the image in the Photoshop Browser.
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656 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

8. Click OK.
You see the photos for the gallery automatically open one at a time and be
resized for the gallery. If you have any subdirectories, you get an error mes-
sage saying that Photoshop can’t open some files. Next thing you know, you
see your gallery page previewed in Internet Explorer, as shown in Figure 15-30.

Figure 15-30: The result of the options choices made in the

previous exercise

One of my favorite features in Photoshop is that you can make a browser button
appear that allows the viewer to save the image, print the image to their desktop
printer, automatically e-mail the image, or open the My Pictures folder.

Many other image-editing and Web utility programs have a similar automated fea-
ture for producing Web galleries. Most of these are quite inexpensive and if one has
the design options that you’re looking for, it may be worth their price for this fea-
ture alone.
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Chapter 15 ✦ Prepping Images for the Web 657

Summary
This chapter focused on why and how you should use photographs on Web sites. I
also discussed when to use and when not to use photos (as opposed to other types
of graphics) on a site. I summarized the options available for Web file formats, color
modes as they apply to the limitations of the Web, and the characteristics of differ-
ent types of graphics components used on the Web. Finally, I introduced the possi-
bilities for QuickTime virtual experiences.

✦ ✦ ✦
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Miscellaneous
Digital Magic
16
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Chapter

T his chapter is about what I call “accessory software.”

This term refers to special-purpose software that can
enhance your digital imaging capabilities in a particular
Enlarging images

Controlling grain
and noise
way. This term excludes programs that you use to process
your digital photographs, but can include programs that
create their own images that you can add to your digital Making panoramas
photographs.
Stitching for
I include exercises in this chapter to show you how to use high resolution
some of these programs. I explain why you may want to pur-
chase these programs, and I also detail the chief limitations Making photo
and the learning curve associated with each program. mosaics

Making small movies

Batch Image Processing Stereoscopic images

Batch image-processing programs take the dreariness out Infrared photography

of monotonous jobs. Their job is to perform repetitive image-
processing chores automatically on large numbers of files. In Remote-controlled
terms of complexity, they vary from the simple to the sublime photography
and have prices to match.
Writing to CD-ROM
The most common job required of batch processing software and DVD disks
is converting files from one file type to another. Ordinarily,
you have to open the file in your image processor, make any ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
necessary changes to the orientation and color model, and
then save each image to a single common file format. Now
imagine how much easier it is to perform one operation that
does all this for a hundred files than it is to do all that a hun-
dred times.

It is becoming more and more commonplace to be able to do

batch file conversions and macro routines right inside such
programs as Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, PaintShop Pro
7, and Corel PHOTO-PAINT. These programs do a perfectly
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660 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

adequate job — as long as you need to process only dozens rather than hundreds of
files at a time. These programs are not the right choice if you need to process multi-
ple categories of tasks, such as converting a variety of formats to JPEG, reducing
them to fit within a given vertical and horizontal space, converting all to RGB color
mode, and then optimizing all the files to a given level of Web performance.

If you are managing large (or numerous) Web sites, doing game production, or cre-
ating illustration-heavy multimedia productions, you need Equilibrium DeBabelizer
or “DeBab,” as its devotees lovingly call it. For really complex batch jobs, DeBabelizer
is easily the most professional and powerful batch image processor. It is available
in versions for both Macintosh and Windows, though the interface and features dif-
fer somewhat from platform to platform. Macintosh users who don’t need all the
features of the full version can buy a much less costly LE version.

You can set up DeBabelizer to translate one set of original images (the set can be
any size) into many versions that can be used for multiple purposes. For example,
you may need to create the following:

✦ A set of thumbnails in GIF format all scaled to fit within one size
✦ A set of full-frame Web page images
✦ A series of images for printing on a large format printer
✦ A set of images for use in a print catalog
✦ A set of images to be printed for a photo album

After you’ve set up DeBabelizer to create what you need, one press of a key pro-
cesses all the images in the variety of ways you need. The images can even be sent
to different directories, stored in different filename sequences, and so forth. Heck,
you can even go nuts and set up several different and unrelated batch operations
and then have the program run them in sequence while you take a nap.

DeBabelizer does an excellent job of optimizing a palette that can be used for a
whole group of graphics. This is especially important if you are placing files into
an animated GIF or into some presentation managers because those applications
use the first palette encountered for all graphics. Because colors are indexed to a
particular location in the palette, the colors in any given image will shift according
to the colors that are assigned to a particular location in the common palette.

Some of the features offered in the latest version of DeBabelizer include the following:

✦ DeBabelizer can now automatically process layered Photoshop files into

single-layer files.
✦ DeBabelizer can now recompress animated GIFs to eliminate data that doesn’t
change between frames. Equilibrium claims that this can make the file as much
as 75 percent smaller.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 661

DeBabelizer can automatically acquire, process, and optimize images from any
digital camera. If you are wise enough to save your images to disk in a non-lossy
format, DeBabelizer can automatically convert these images as you acquire them.
The program can also convert and batch-process images from Photo CDs. Among
the zillions of bitmapped file formats that DeBabelizer supports are FlashPix and
MegaPixel.

You may have stayed away from DeBabelizer because of its reputation for complex-
ity. Of course, nothing this flexible and powerful is going to be simple. On the other
hand, the more recent versions of the program (for both Windows and Macintosh)
have been made far more intuitive than their predecessors. To use the program,
load a test file, make your menu selections for modifications, open the log file to
which your commands were automatically added, and then drag any commands
that you want to keep into the script window. Next, open a batch list window and
drag filenames from a browser into the batch list. Now you can just right-click to
run the script on the entire list of files. You can access all of the program’s power
by making menu and dialog box selections, as shown in Figure 16-1.

Figure 16-1: DeBabelizer has a more user-friendly interface.

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662 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

DeBabelizer can also do a considerable amount of batch image processing. This can
be especially valuable in commercial shoots when a lab misunderstands a process-
ing instruction, or if your internal light meter suddenly becomes inaccurate by a
stop or two — this actually happened to one of the cameras I tested for this book.
The image processing DeBabelizer does fall into categories that can be applied
wholesale to groups of images:

✦ Adjust frame (canvas) size without changing the size of the image.
✦ Resize images according to the following criteria, all of which let you specify
the placement of the image in the frame:
• Absolute
• Common
• Specific
• Relative
• Percentage
✦ Scale to specific size, half size, or double size.
✦ PC to Mac and Mac to PC aspect ratio adjustment.
✦ Flip, rotate, or trim the image (by a specific amount across all images).
✦ Change the number of dots per inch (dpi) assigned to an image for printing.
If you want a whole series of images to be printed in one publication, for
example, you can automatically convert all of them to the correct printing
resolution.
✦ Color and exposure controls can be set interactively, using a sample image
with full preview. These settings include the following:
• Intensity
• Contrast
• Gamma
• Hue
• Saturation
• Brightness
✦ Channel control enables quick viewing of RGB and alpha channels.
✦ Swap and shift channels from one location to another.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 663

DeBabelizer is also much easier to use because an expert can set up a frequently
repeated routine and then save all the settings under a name describing the appro-
priate job application. At any later time, anyone else can run that set of settings on
any set of objects. Of course, this is handy for saving time even if you don’t have
assistants.

Drawing Programs
You use drawing programs, like most image-processing programs, to create pictures
and graphics. However, the graphics that drawing programs create tend to have a
cleaner, harder-edged look because their shapes are created by geometric formulas,
rather than by freeform pixel mosaics. At first, you may think that these two types
of graphics are so different from each other as to be as incompatible as oil and
water. However, Photoshop and most other image-processing programs can read
vector images and translate (render) them to a pixel image. You can then place that
pixel image (also called a rasterized image) onto a layer and use the power of the
image-processing tools and filters to enhance it and to make it look more photo-
graphic. For example, you can use the shape from the drawing program as a mask
in order to place a photograph inside it. In fact, drawing programs are excellent
for making all manner of mask shapes that you can use in your image-processing
program.

Note You may wonder why on earth you’d want to use a drawing program when
Photoshop and most other image editors have built-in vector drawing tools. The
answer is that you can do much more editing, shading, and transparency control in
a high-powered illustration program. If you’re only concerned with simple shapes,
then the built-in tools do a perfectly adequate job.

You can also combine a drawing and a photograph in order to abstract or drama-
tize the subject. Most important, though, is that you can draw something that was
inconvenient or impossible to photograph, bring it into a photographic composition,
and then use photographic tools and effects to make it look as though it had been
part of the original composition. Lawyers often use this technique in courtroom
presentations to show how something may have happened. Advertising companies
also use this extensively to combine logotypes or prototype products with a live
scene.

Figures 16-2 and 16-3 show an example of how you can use the Star tool in
Adobe Illustrator to quickly create a shape that’s difficult to draw by hand, and
how Photoshop can quickly manipulate the result to look more photographic.
Figure 16-2 shows how you can use a Star or Polygon tool to automatically make
the star shape, and then how you can fill the star with a circular gradient to make
it brighter in the center. Figure 16-3 shows a mask that you can make in Photoshop
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664 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

from the star shape, which you can then contract and feather for softer edges. You
can then invert the selection and delete the contents so that the edges of the star
blend with its surroundings. A noise filter adds film grain and you can use the Dodge
tool to make the center of the star even brighter. The resultant star can then become
one of thousands in a night sky, the twinkle in a diamond, or highlights radiating
from the water’s surface.

Many drawing programs compete vigorously. Most of them have die-hard fans and
all have features that the others don’t. By far, the program most used by professional
designers is Adobe Illustrator. Other drawing programs that “have the power”
are Macromedia FreeHand, CorelDRAW, and Deneba Canvas (which also includes
bitmap-editing capabilities).

Figure 16-2: You can use a Star or Polygon tool to automatically make the star shape.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 665

Figure 16-3: The star after manipulation in Photoshop

Vector tracing
Not only can you use drawing tools to create shapes that you can export and turn
into “photographs,” you can also use drawing tools to turn photographs into draw-
ings. If you’re familiar with graphics software, you’ve probably seen the best-known
example of this — the drawing of Hedy Lamar on the cover of CorelDRAW 8.

You can use Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia FreeHand, CorelDRAW, or Deneba Canvas,
which also includes bitmap-editing capabilities, to place a photograph on one layer.
You can then trace over the photograph using that program’s vector drawing tools,
as shown in Figure 16-4. To achieve the photograph shown in Figure 16-4, I placed it
on a layer and scaled to the size of the drawing, dimmed the layer to make the draw-
ing stand out, locked the layer, and created a new layer for the drawing. I then hand-
traced lines over the original. If you aren’t a great sketcher, this is a great way to
make yourself look like one. It’s also a very good way to represent a photographed
product as a technical drawing or to make it part of a hand-drawn poster.
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666 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 16-4: Hand-tracing a photograph

You can also use the path tools in Photoshop and many other image-processing
programs to create drawings that can be exported as Adobe Illustrator or EPS
(Encapsulated Postscript) files to most illustration programs where they can be
greatly enhanced.

Auto-tracing
Hand-tracing can produce some beautiful results, but it takes time and practice to
achieve results like Corel’s signature Hedy Lamar drawing. An alternative is to use
automatic tracing, or auto-tracing. The most sophisticated automatic tracing I’ve
found is in a standalone program called Adobe Streamline. However, if you already
own an illustration program, chances are excellent that it will do a decent job of
auto-tracing.

When auto-tracing photographs, it’s a good idea to reduce the levels of color in the
image. The extent to which you want to do this depends on the final effect that you
want to achieve. Also, if you don’t want background objects, mask them out before
doing the auto-tracing. Both procedures greatly speed auto-tracing and also make it
much easier to edit the result. Figure 16-5 shows the same image I started to hand-
trace in Illustrator after I’d already masked, color-reduced, and auto-traced it in
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 667

Adobe Streamline. I masked the background and then filled it with a solid color, and
then posterized the flowers to four colors. Streamline has a full set of curve-editing
tools, so you can easily zoom in and hand-edit the auto-traced result, and then use
the line drawing in an illustration or presentation program.

Figure 16-5: The result of auto-tracing in Adobe Streamline

Enlarging Images
Although digital images have pixels instead of grain, you see a similar effect when
you enlarge images beyond their intended viewing size. The intended viewing size is
the size of the image at the best resolution that the output device (printer, monitor,
and so forth) can produce. The general rule is 72 dpi for standard resolution moni-
tors and 96 dpi for somewhat higher resolution monitors.

The problem is that this rule limits many of the more affordable digital cameras to
print sizes under 8 x 10 inches. What if you want to print your photograph as a large
poster, a double-page magazine spread, or as a print for artistic exhibition? How on
earth do Nikon, Olympus, and Pentax exhibit highly professional-looking enlarge-
ments of images that were taken with 3.3 megapixel cameras? If you’ve been to
trade shows such as Comdex, MacWorld, Photoshop World, PMA, or the Seybold
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668 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Conference, you’ve been seeing such images for years. Up until the time of this writ-
ing, the answer has been simple: Use Genuine Fractals Print Shop Pro, followed by
some careful noise reduction and retouching techniques in Photoshop. Recently, a
new and less-expensive program called S-Spline has given Genuine Fractals some
more affordable competition.

Tip You may be able to reduce some of the “grain” noise in an enlarged image by con-
verting the resulting file to Lab Color mode, selecting the b channel, and blurring it
slightly (about 3 to 4 pixels is usually sufficient). This procedure often works, but is
never guaranteed because the noise generated from adjacent pixels is different in
every image. Also, one way to reduce noise in large areas of “nearly flat” color is to
duplicate the layer, Gaussian Blur the bottom image by 3 to 5 pixels, and then erase
the “nearly solid colors” in the top image, being careful not to erase any sharp
edges in the process.

Genuine Fractals 2.5

The most recent and powerful version of Genuine Fractals (since its acquisition by
LizardTech) is version 2.5. The most noticeable difference between version 2.5 and
earlier versions is a much cleaner and more inviting user interface, as shown in
Figure 16-7 (Genuine Fractals 2).

Two versions of Genuine Fractals 2.5 are available: GF 2.5 and GF PrintPro 2.5.
Genuine Fractals 2.5 allows you to enlarge digital photos to output any image size
from a single file that the program encodes to your choice of a lossless or lossy pro-
prietary image format called STN. You have three rendering choices when you open
the file; you also get RGB, Multichannel, and Grayscale image support. The Genuine
Fractals PrintPro 2.5 also provides CMYK support, ideal for printing professionals
and those who also output to large format CMYK printers that don’t automatically
translate your existing RGB file to CMYK.

Here’s how the program works:

1. Open Photoshop.
2. Use the Photoshop browser to find the image that you want to enlarge.
If necessary, rotate the image to the desired vertical or horizontal orientation.
3. Choose File ➪ Save As ➪ GF Print Pro.
The Genuine Fractals Print Pro dialog box opens. Click to choose from the
following two options:
• Lossless: This results in no loss of image detail, regardless of whether
its perceivable, and thus the STN file is somewhat larger.
• Visually Lossless: This means that although some data is lost, you can’t
perceive it, and the resulting file is noticeably smaller.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 669

4. Click OK.
Your file is converted and saved just about as quickly as it would be to any
conventional format.

To open the file at a different size, choose File ➪ Open in Photoshop. Choose STN
from the file type menu, and the dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 16-6.

Figure 16-6: The Genuine Fractals PrintPro Options dialog box

Notice that the open dialog box is divided into three parts:

✦ Original: This section shows all the specifications in the original file. You
can’t modify these, but you can specify what units they are shown in.
✦ Crop: This section allows you to crop the image to a different width and height,
and to either constrain proportions — so you only have to enter one of these
dimensions or the other — or to enter the width and height separately. If you
click the Advanced options, you can choose where in the image to place the
cropping rectangle, but you have to do this mathematically.
✦ Scale: This is the most important section. You can change the file size by
entering new figures for either print resolution, file size, width, and height.
You can also choose the supported color mode to which you want to convert
the file. Finally, you choose one of three levels of quality in the enlargement.
Moving up in quality increases rendering time.

You can see the result of a 400% increase in file size in Figure 16-7.
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670 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 16-7: A 400% enlargement made in GF Print Pro 2.5

S-Spline 2.2
S-Spline is a standalone program for enlarging TIFF, PNG, JPG, TGA, PCX, or BMP
format files. The procedure for making the enlargement is much the same as using
the Image ➪ Size command in Photoshop:

1. Open the S-Spline.

2. Open the file that you want to enlarge.
3. Select Auto Preview and Maintain Aspect Ratio.
4. Enter either a new pixel size or a new percentage.
5. Click OK.

A large preview window shows you the result at 100% over a portion of the image
and you can move a cursor in a smaller preview window to choose the portion of
the image that will be previewed at 100%. Then you watch the processing ther-
mometer for a few minutes. After it finishes, it saves the file. You have to open it in
your image processer to see the result. The S-Spline dialog box is shown in Figure
16-8, and the 400% enlargement of the same portion of the photo shown previously
in Figure 16-7 for a Photoshop 7 bicubic interpolation enlargement and a Genuine
Fractals Pro 400% enlargement is shown in Figure 16-9.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 671

Figure 16-8: The S-Spline dialog box

Figure 16-9: A 400% enlargement in S-Spline

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672 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

If you look at the previous images, you can see that both the Genuine Fractals and
S-Spline image are a noticeable improvement over the Photoshop 7 bicubic interpo-
lation, which has more noticeable granular noise and more jagged edges in slanted
and curved lines. All three of these images can be improved through the use of
Grain Surgery.

Controlling Grain and Noise

with Grain Surgery
Although you can use certain techniques for controlling grain and noise in an image
editor, if you really want to take control, buy a new special-purpose product called
Grain Surgery. Grain Surgery is a Photoshop-compatible plug-in. It allows you to do
one of three things, and it does them all with style and grace:

✦ Remove Grain: Not only does it find and remove grain and noise patterns,
it re-sharpens and re-smoothes the edges. You can use this mode to greatly
improve the result of Photoshop’s own bicubic interpolation when an image
is re-sized. However, if you want really perfect results, use this program in
conjunction with either Genuine Fractals or S-Spline. The result of the combi-
nation of Genuine Fractals and Grain Surgery is shown in Figure 16-10.

Figure 16-10: The result of Genuine Fractals and Grain Surgery

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✦ Add Grain: This mode is used to create either digital noise or add film grain
to an image for artistic or interpretative purposes. For example, you may want
to make a high resolution studio shot of a dancing model’s face appear as
though it were shot in a night club with high speed film pushed to the limit.
The Add Grain dialog box is shown in Figure 16-11.

Figure 16-11: The Grain Surgery Add Grain dialog box

✦ Match Grain: This Grain Surgery capability is indispensable for the processes
of retouching or compositing. You can automatically match the noise and
grain pattern of one image to that of another. So if you have done “airbrush”
retouching by duplicating a layer, blurring the underlying layer, and then eras-
ing through the top layer — you can then match the grain in both layers so
that you can’t see where the erasures were made. You can also use Match
Grain to sample the grain pattern of one image so that it can then be applied
to that of another or to create a new grain pattern that will then be matched in
the image. The Match Grain dialog box is shown in Figure 16-12.
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674 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 16-12: The Grain Surgery Match Grain dialog box

Making Panoramas and Object Scenes

Many, perhaps most, of the current crop of digicams come with panoramic stitching
software. This category of software knows how to piece together images that were
taken by rotating a tripod-mounted camera a regular number of degrees between
shots so that the shots overlap by about 20 percent. You may want to piece together
three or four frames for a banner-shaped, wide-angle view of a scene, such as a city
skyline. You may also want to piece together a 360-degree view of a scene, put it
into a QuickTime VR movie, and let a viewer use a mouse to pan and zoom through
the scene. Some of this software also lets you encircle an object with a camera, and
then it stitches the frames together so that you can use the mouse to spin the object.
This second method is known as object stitching. I can’t possibly show you in the
static black-and-white pages of a book just how effective QuickTime VR (and some
competitive technologies) can be. If you haven’t experienced it, you should. Go to
www.quicktime.com and play with some of the examples.

Note Some digital cameras have a panoramic shooting mode, which places a grid or
positioning diagram on the LCD screen so you can keep the center of the picture
aligned as you rotate, and the point of overlap is at a consistent distance from the
edges of each frame that make up the panorama. If you plan to shoot many
panoramas, look for this feature. It’s extremely helpful.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 675

Although QuickTime VR movies are the most common use of stitching software,
you can also use it for piecing together vistas that your camera simply can’t shoot
with the lenses that you own. Most stitching programs will (and should) let you
stitch together less-than-360-degree panoramas from a left-to-right sequence of
shots. You should then be able to save the results to a standard file type (preferably
a non-lossy format), open it in your favorite image processor, and crop and retouch
it. Most of today’s color printers print to any length, so you can make large panora-
mas with your inexpensive desktop inkjet. Some stitching programs, such as Roxio’s
Photovista, create panoramas that can be run as Java applets on the Web or that
can be played in Real Audio’s RealSpace format.

Many current image editors come with built-in capability to stitch together images
in many up-to-date versions of image-editing software. Take a look at the features
of various image editors described in Chapter 10 for more information.

Taking panorama photos

In order to take panoramic photos, you must have some means of keeping the cam-
era relatively level and of panning it at the camera’s optical center (roughly halfway
between the outside of the front element of the lens and the film or sensor’s front
plane). Otherwise, objects in the foreground won’t move in the same relative posi-
tion to objects in the background as the camera is rotated.

Only one brand of digital cameras (at the time of this writing) makes it easier to take
panoramas by hand. Most Canon digital cameras have a panorama mode that asks
whether you’re going to shoot the panorama from right to left or left to right. Then,
when you press the shutter button, the LCD image slides in the direction that you
specified until only about 20 percent of the frame is still showing. That 20 percent
then becomes roughly 50 percent transparent, so when you pan the camera, you can
precisely align the 20 percent overlap of the next frame with the 20 percent overlap
of the next frame. When you snap the picture, the frame moves to the position that
lets you overlap the next frame.

If you don’t own a Canon (people who run a business or have a hobby based primar-
ily on shooting panoramas may find it worthwhile to buy one), then you must use a
tripod with a pan head that has a bubble level and is clearly marked for 360 degrees
of rotation. Make sure that the head is exactly level, and then rotate the camera about
15 degrees for each shot. The more wide-angle your lens or zoom factor, the more
degrees of rotation you may be able to get away with; at more than 30 degrees, how-
ever, your panorama software may have a tough time making the left and right
edges match.
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676 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

You start with the camera and tripod absolutely leveled and aimed at the center of
what will become the panoramic scene. If your camera has a Panorama mode, use
it so that the camera doesn’t change exposure as you pan. Otherwise, simply put
the camera in Manual mode and then change the f-stop and shutter speed until
what you see on the LCD screen looks like what you want to take home. Take along
a black jacket (fleece jackets are ideal because they’re light and opaque). Now for
the bad news: If you don’t lock your exposure, if you aren’t leveled, and if you don’t
pan with precision — especially if your stitching software is unforgiving — you’ll end
up with something really ugly like the image shown in Figure 16-13.

Figure 16-13: A badly exposed panorama after an attempt at stitching

Tip You can do a bit better than the example in Figure 16-13 if you forget to put your
camera in Manual mode before you shot the panorama. Before you add the images
to the panorama software, open all of them at the same time in your image editor.
Then use the same auto-correction command (auto-color in Photoshop Elements)
on each of them. Then use the Levels command or the Brightness/Contrast com-
mand to make them all match as closely as possible in overall brightness. Finally,
add them all to the panorama software and make the panorama. You can probably
retouch some mismatches with the Clone tool and even other tonal areas with the
Burn and Dodge tool.

The best and least expensive way to ensure that you achieve precise rotated
panoramic images is with a tripod pan head made for the purpose, such as one
made by Kaidan, Inc. Kaidan makes units for all sorts of cameras and panoramic
application — including a couple that are adaptable to multiple cameras. The
quickest way to learn what Kaidan currently produces is to visit its Web site
(www.kaidan.com/products/pano-prods.html). You can see the universal
Kaidan head that I use in Figure 16-14.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 677

Figure 16-14: A Kaidan panorama head

Photoshop Elements
If you’re a Photoshop Elements user, you already have a pretty decent panorama
composer at your disposal. Follow these steps to make a 180-degree (well, maybe
it’s only 160 degrees) panorama that you can print:

1. Place all the files you want to use for the panorama in a single folder.
Opening and organizing your files is easier if you decide to do more than one
version of the panorama.
2. Open Photoshop Elements.
If there’s any chance that the shots that will make up the panorama aren’t
evenly exposed, follow the advice in the Tip in the last section.
3. Choose File ➪ Photomerge.
The Photomerge dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 16-15. If you want to
make a panorama that’s smaller than the panorama in the original, choose a
percentage from the Image Size Reduction menu.
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678 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 16-15: The Photoshop Elements Photomerge dialog box

4. Open the folder that contains the panorama files.

If any files are out of place in the panorama, remove them, and then highlight
all the remaining files. Their names should all appear in the File Name field.
5. Click the Open button.
Each file is opened in sequence, and then reduced to the appropriate size
for the panorama. Then, with no further prompting from you, the second
Photomerge dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 16-16. You see each of the
pictures in your panorama aligned in the image dock at the top of the screen.
If they aren’t in order, you can drag to change their position. You can start the
panorama at either end. Because left to right usually comes more naturally,
I usually start from the left.
6. Drag the photo into the main workspace, which is the large white area at
the bottom left of the dialog box.
Continue dragging each subsequent photo into place. If some lines won’t
match, try dragging the pictures back to the well, clicking the Perspective but-
ton, and starting from the center. This technique seems to work much better
with panoramas that have lots of straight horizontal lines that must join
smoothly. I used this technique for the Ford Street Studios panorama shown
in this exercise.
7. After you have all the individual photos placed, click the Preview button.
8. If you’re satisfied with your preview, click OK.
The complete image appears in a document window in Photoshop Elements.
Use the Crop tool to trim the image, as shown in Figure 16-17.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 679

Figure 16-16: The second Photomerge dialog box

Figure 16-17: The panorama after being cropped

ArcSoft Panorama Maker

Unfortunately, one of the most versatile and easiest to use panorama programs,
QuickStitch, is no longer being published. However, ArcSoft is just now bringing to
market a new program called Panorama Maker. Panorama Maker stitches together
images in rows and columns or as an end-to-end panorama that can be either verti-
cal or horizontal. Therefore, you can use it to either greatly increase the resolution
of your digicam or to enable it to take shots that simulate the use of an extreme
wide-angle lens (up to 180 degrees of coverage).

This program automates technical details, such as specifying camera lens focal
length, knowing where to join images, matching exposures from frame to frame,
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680 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

and performing ghost elimination and automatic cropping. On the other hand, you
can always exert manual control over any of these features. You have numerous
options for output resolution, you have a choice of three levels of VR compression,
and you can choose the size of the viewer window.

Roxio Photovista Virtual Tour

Roxio’s Photovista Virtual Tour is a redesign of one of the first and foremost
panoramic stitching programs. This panorama software is just as easy to use as
QuickStitch 360. Its weakness is that you can’t save your panorama to a lossless
format, such as TIFF, so if you have to edit the JPEG stitched image, you lose some
quality. In fact, this program is really meant for stitching panoramas that will be
used on the Web for setting up a “virtual tour.” For this purpose, this program just
can’t be beat. This program is really a package of programs: PhotoVista Virtual Tour
(for linking various files together so you can “tour” several locations and view 3-D
objects close up), PhotoVista (the panorama program), and PhotoVista 3-D Objects
(which lets you rotate 3-D objects in space). This section of the book covers only
the panorama-making capabilities of this suite of programs, but you can learn all
about the other two modules by visiting the MGI site at: www.mgisoft.com/
products/webtools/virtual/index.asp.

All of PhotoVista’s commands are represented by icons. To load the frames, you
use a browser-like dialog box to choose files and add them to the list. Then you
drag them to sort their order. When you click OK, the pictures appear in order in
the workspace, as shown in Figure 16-18. At the time of this writing, the complete
Virtual Tour package was selling for right around $249 on the MGI site.

Figure 16-18: With PhotoVista, choose a few

options in the dialog box, click the Full Stitch icon
at bottom center, and your work is done.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 681

PhotoVista Virtual Tour does an excellent job of exposure correction and seamless
stitching, even if the camera isn’t on a tripod and the spacing between shots isn’t
exactly regular. You just try to leave about a 20 percent overlap. One of the biggest
problems in shooting panoramas with point-and-shoot cameras is that they can set
very different exposures for different frames. The result can be very obvious seams
between frames.

Note Cameras that have a Panorama mode generally lock the exposure of all the frames
in the panorama to match the exposure chosen for the first frame. This prevents
the camera from automatically changing exposure when the camera is rotated to
face the sun (or a dark wall). If your camera doesn’t have a Panorama mode, use
a fully manual mode to set the exposure so that it doesn’t change automatically as
you pan.

Stitching a High-Resolution Matrix

A few programs, such as ArcSoft Panorama Maker (described previously in the
chapter), can stitch together a “grid” of photographs that either creates a very
wide-angle lens effect or a very high-resolution picture.

If you want to create a high-resolution picture, you don’t really need a specialized
program. You need to move the camera at regular intervals to shoot the pictures
in each row and column of the grid. You place all the images into your image editor,
enlarge the canvas to accommodate each picture in the grid, and then drag each
layer to overlap the pictures. Move the layers until each image is perfectly aligned
from side-to-side and top-to-bottom. You then restore each layer to 100 percent
opacity and flatten the layers into a single picture.

The real trick is in taking the pictures. You have to be properly equipped with a
camera, a small bubble level, a tripod, a measuring tapel, a ball of string, and small
bricks to hold the string in place. Additionally, before you take the picture, you
must set the camera up and turn on the LCD so you can see exactly what the lens
sees. Follow these steps to ensure that you take pictures that will make a good
panorama:

1. Place and brace the camera so it is exactly at the center of what the lens sees.
2. Zoom your lens to full telephoto.
3. Place your camera on a tripod.
Move it so that the center post is exactly halfway up and the legs are collapsed
enough to let you move the camera where the center of the picture will be.
Then extend the legs to meet the ground and level the camera using the bub-
ble level. Mark the center post at the exact place where it meets the tripod
platform.
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682 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

4. Lower the camera one full frame and make a mark on the center post.
5. Use your tape to measure the distance between the two marks and then
make equidistant marks up and down the center post.
6. Stretch the string across the LCD so that it stays in place when you move
the camera.
You need to do this once when you move the camera vertically and once
when you move it horizontally.
7. Measure the amount of horizontal movement needed for each frame.
8. Put a pair of light stands or tripods on either side of the camera and tie a
string so that it crosses behind the LCD monitor.
9. Mark the center point of the first frame on the string (a black magic marker
is good for this).
10. Move the camera to the right so that the image just overlaps by about
10 percent on the left side.
11. Mark the center point on the string.
12. Take your measuring tape and measure the distance between the two
marks.
13. Measure the same distance to the right of the second point and make
another mark.
Keep this up until you’ve marked about seven or eight points on either side
of the center point.
14. Place the tripod and raise the center post to the exact center point.
15. Move the camera to the center point of the scene that you want to shoot.
16. Stretch the string so that it is exactly parallel to the LCD monitor and
position it so that the center mark is aligned with the center leg.
17. Take a picture at each marked position of the center post.
18. Move the tripod one string mark to the right, make sure the LCD is
perfectly parallel to the string, and take another picture at each marked
position of the center post.
19. Repeat Steps 15 through 18 until you’ve taken pictures for each cell in
the grid.

3-D Programs
If you have — or can get your hands on — a 3-D modeling program that does ray-
traced rendering, you can create photo-realistic product prototypes that you can
composite into a photographic background. Working with a digital model rather
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 683

than the real thing provides an immense advantage, because it allows you the flexi-
bility to alter the camera’s distance, point-of-view (POV), lens focal length, and the
angle and quality of light falling on the subject. Working in a 3D model makes it
much more likely that you’ll be able to match the position of the item to the host
photograph. The scene shown in Figure 16-19 is composed of a digital camera snap-
shot, a 3-D model of an alien that was “lit” to match the on-camera flash used in the
snapshot, 3-D lettering created in another 3-D program, and a 3-D landscape used
as a background and foreground. All these components were pieced together in
Photoshop 5. Notice how the photographer was able to position the alien’s hand
so that it wraps around one woman’s shoulder.

Figure 16-19: Francisco Rivera modeled the alien

in Lightwave 3-D and snapped the photo of the two
women with a Kodak digital camera.

If you don’t have a lot of experience with 3-D modeling, you’ll want to start with
simple shapes and relatively inexpensive programs. Programs such as TrueSpace 4
(Windows only, $595) and RayDream Studio (Mac and Windows, $300) can do
incredible things for a fraction of the price of professional modeling tools. Some of
the special purpose 3-D programs that I discuss in the next section may also work
for the purposes you have in mind. However, if you have a corporate budget and an
engineering or illustration staff that’s already familiar with high-end 3-D programs,
you have more options. You can create anything, put it into a photograph, and
manipulate it to look absolutely real by matching the color balance and film grain,
and adding a little atmosphere and dirt.

3-D modeling programs are also extremely useful for creating “sets” for use as back-
grounds in digital photographs. These programs are especially good at creating
interior scenes. You may think that interiors take considerable time to model and
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684 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

light in a realistic way — and you are right. However, libraries of interior scenes are
available that you can simply “decorate” with additional furniture, atmosphere, and
lighting. You can also easily change the fabrics on furniture or the color of walls, which
allows one virtual 3-D set to serve as the background for many different photos.

Another use for some 3-D modeling programs is creating atmospheric conditions
such as smoke, fog, rain, and fire. Usually the best way to accomplish these effects
is to project your photos onto flat surfaces within the model and then create the
atmosphere within the model. Then you simply render the finished result as a
bitmapped file, which you can edit further in any image-processing program by
performing tasks, such as cropping down to the original scene.

Special-Purpose 3-D Programs

MetaCreations originally made three programs that are unique in their capabilities:
Canoma, Poser, and Bryce, which are each now made and sold by a different com-
pany. For all the modeling prowess these three programs provide, their price is kept
at an affordable level:

✦ Canoma: This program is now owned by Adobe, but has not yet been re-
released and is not presently for sale. However, because Adobe bought and
paid for the program, it will probably soon reappear in some form. In the
meantime, you may want to contact Adobe for further information. You can
also find out more at www.canoma.com.
✦ Poser: This program is now sold and distributed by Curious Labs (www.
curiouslabs.com) and sells for $219. Numerous new and powerful features
have been added.
✦ Bryce: This program, which is now sold and maintained by Corel, sells for
$299. Bryce now has network rendering, so you can generate very detailed
and complex scenes in minimal time by doing the rendering on several net-
worked computers. Other new features are new Light and Tree labs.

Canoma
Canoma uses a new interface to make it easy to turn a digital photo into a 3-D model.
You can even stitch images together in QuickStitch to get the wide-angle perspective
necessary to see the entirety of a small room. The photograph is opened in Canoma
and shapes are traced around the objects in the scene in such a way that the pro-
gram understands the height, width, and depth of the traced items. It then becomes
possible to move the “camera” around the objects in order to see objects from all
points of view. Canoma also features an Image palette that you can use to hold a
series of photographs containing details of the scene to be modeled. These details
can be used as surface textures for the objects in the scene. Thus, it becomes possi-
ble to create truly photographic models of 3-D objects from digital photographs.
The resulting model can be placed on a Web site or in a CD-ROM presentation.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 685

A viewer can then take a virtual stroll, for example, through a house for sale. You
can use the same technique to show used products on a Web site.

You can also export Canoma models to other 3-D software and use them as the basis
for making whole new models as backgrounds, as described in the section “3-D
Programs.” Canoma exports to the following industry-standard formats: MTS, WRL,
OBJ, PP2, SCN, and DXF. Bitmap images can be exported to image-processing soft-
ware in BMP, JPG, PSD, PNG, and TIFF formats.

Canoma is a program that lets you build 3-D models directly from your digital or
digitized photographs. If you want to put package designs on the Web, you can
easily create a 3-D movie that shows the box from all sides. As shapes become more
complex, it gets a bit more complicated. The next best application is architectural
views in which the scene consists mainly of straight-edged buildings. You can prob-
ably create a model of a basket full of fruit or a crowd of people, but it may take
quite a bit of trial-and-error practice. On the other hand, using Canoma to create a
3-D scene is far easier — especially if you’re not accomplished with 3-D modeling
programs — than working in a conventional 3-D program.

Here are the basics of how it works: You start with an ordinary 2-D photo (a box on
a desktop is the example used in the program’s basic tutorial). You pin the corners
of a box shape to the box, as shown in Figure 16-20.

Figure 16-20: The Canoma interface. You can see the first box being pinned to the
edges of the box in the photograph.
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686 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

In the photograph, you can see three sides of the box; so three sides are mapped to
the 3-D object. You can then more or less instantly move and rotate the object so
that you see the box from different perspectives. Of course, if you turn the box too
far, you see that the back and right side are blank. Also, if you zoom in too much,
and turn the box too far, the picture details can get pretty mushy unless your origi-
nal picture was fairly high-resolution and shot from a straight-on angle. This isn’t a
problem — provided you take your time. You can shoot the sides of the box indepen-
dently and at a higher resolution, and then “pin” them onto the model in another
series of steps. To build the rest of the scene, you keep adding primitives (the
simplest geometric shapes, such as rectangles, ovals, and polygons). You pin the
primitives to the shapes in the photograph and then add supplementary photos
to the backs and sides of all the shapes. In Figure 16-21, you can see the result of
adding a photo of a gray card as a ground plane, rendering all the assigned textures
(which is as quick as clicking a button), and then rotating the image. Note how
quickly this 3-D model was built from one still photograph.

Figure 16-21: A 3-D model built from one photo;

you can add additional photos to fill in the blanks.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 687

The more photographs you have of a scene, the more realistic and complete your
finished 3-D model will appear. Now, if your scene includes trees, people, and a lot
of other organic shapes, you definitely have your work cut out for you. Canoma is a
terrifically useful product, but consider whether it is practical for the project that
you have in mind before you jump into it.

After you make the model, you can make movies by clicking a few icons in the
recording bar to designate keyframes and then render a movie. You have a choice
of rendering the movie as either a QuickTime file or as individually sequenced PICT
files. If you choose to render a sequence of still images, you can drop the still
images into many other animation programs and GIF animators.

Canoma isn’t exactly a casual purchase at $469, but it can pay for itself pretty
quickly if you have an application that demands fast 3-D visualizations of physical
sites, architectural models, or products.

Poser 5
Poser creates 3-D models of human figures and, as of version 3, animals. You can
use the program to create people for crowd scenes, to populate a static photograph,
or to place an animal or two in a farm scene or backyard. As with many 3-D models,
the program may generate models that are a little too smooth and perfect, but that
shouldn’t stop you from being able to take advantage of them. Just pick the sex, age,
and body type of the model that you want. Then use one of the preset poses and
adjust it to suit your exact positioning requirements. Light it and place the camera
at the desired point-of-view with a lens focal length that matches your target photo.
Finally, export the figure as a 2-D object against a solid background that contrasts
with the figure and its clothing. This makes it easy to mask the figure so that it can
be composited with a target photo. Place the figure on its own layer in your image-
processing program and then adjust color, exposure, and grain to match the target
image. If necessary, you can add real faces and hands or retouch details by hand.

Of course, you can also add figures to your digital photos by shooting real people
under controlled conditions in a studio. However, if you need several types of
people, you have to find them and arrange appointments. Depending on your use
of the photo, you may also need model releases signed, which can cost you money.
Finally, you may need poses that are dangerous or impossible to achieve with a real
person or animal.

Poser lets you create people and animals in any pose you want, after which you
can dress them in any way you want, and then light them and “shoot” them from
any angle you want. You can then place your photos into the application as back-
grounds for the people and animals, or you can put the people and animals into
your photos. Figure 16-22 shows you what the Poser interface looks like, as well
as what a fully rendered figure looks like.
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688 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 16-22: A fully rendered Poser figure

I need to mention a caveat, however: Poser’s people and animals don’t look photo-
graphically realistic unless they’re placed at a distance or “dirtied up” with some of
the tools in your image editor after they’ve been composited into the image. They
do work very well, however, when you have a beautiful scenic that needs a silhouet-
ted figure gazing into the distance or standing on a far-away hilltop. Poser figures
are also a good way to add people to crowds.

I’ve also found another use for Poser that helps a great deal in studio setups. You
can model a studio and some reflector panels, place a Poser model in front of the
background, and then place various lights in the picture. You can then adjust the
brightness and the type of the lights until you see exactly the effect you want in the
rendered model. Then you know exactly how and where to place your lighting for
the studio shot. You can even place 3-D models of such props as tables, cars, or
sofas on the set. Just use the stock model libraries that are created for such 3-D
modeling programs as Light Wave or 3-D Studio.
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Tip I’ve also found that Poser is enormously helpful in designing or “storyboarding” a
real shot. You can place the figures where you want them and in attitudes that
enhance the composition and story, lighting them to create the needed drama.
Then, in order to get the models to understand what you’re after, all you have to
do is show them the finished scene.

If you’re familiar with Poser, but haven’t yet seen Poser 5, you’re in for lots of pleas-
ant surprises. You can change skin colors and other ethnic looks, facial expressions,
hair, and clothing. You can morph parts of bodies to give them unusual proportions
or special characteristics, such as a fat boy, a space alien, or a soon-to-be mom.

Bryce 4
Bryce creates amazingly realistic 3-D landscapes, complete with atmosphere and
weather. You can use Bryce to create amazing backgrounds for photographed
objects or to create custom skies for scenes that may otherwise be dull. I find the
program’s ability to create skies practically indispensable. You can create exactly
the sun angle that you need to match that of your photo and you don’t have to
spend hours searching through stock photo libraries.

Bryce is nearly as useful for creating landscapes. For example, you can use it to
create the backgrounds for an entire outdoor clothing catalog. The latest version
of Bryce has improved its capability to create landscapes and skies in some impor-
tant ways. First, it offers a “sky lab” that makes it possible to interactively control
the type of clouds, cloud layering, atmospheric conditions, sun position and angle,
and many other factors. Second, you can import U.S. Geological Survey surface
maps and create the actual terrain of nearly any place in the country. Take a look
at the example shown in Figure 16-23; not a single thing in it is actually real.

Bryce landscapes can be very useful for creating dreamy or glamorous backgrounds
for objects that must be shot in ordinary settings. You can place the viewpoint for
any Bryce landscape anywhere you want, so you can actually use a single model
as the location for many different backgrounds. To better picture this, imagine the
different backgrounds you can get for a fashion shoot by moving around inside
Yosemite Valley.

You can also place masked photos into Bryce, which makes it easy to match peo-
ple, buildings, and other photographed objects with a background. After you have
placed the objects in the scene, you can then move the camera to the angle that
shows the desired perspective and point of view. Furthermore, you can make the
imported photos to cast natural shadows.
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690 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 16-23: This photographically realistic landscape was entirely generated

on the computer.

The drawbacks to Bryce are resolution and rendering time. You can designate the
output resolution to anything you want, but if you want a scene that will fill a maga-
zine page, you’d better have a very fast G4 or dual-processor computer, have lots
of RAM, and be ready to go to the movies while you’re waiting for your result.

Fortunately, you can do quick rendering while you’re working, and you can inter-
rupt it at any time if you decide you want to make a change. This means that you
don’t have to wait for the long, high-resolution renderings until you’re ready to
commit yourself to the final (or near final) result.

Bryce 5 has even better sky rendering capabilities than earlier versions — and those
were fantastic. Although Sky Effects in KPT 5 is much faster, Bryce is that much more
capable of drama.

I mentioned previously that you can use Bryce landscapes as backgrounds (not
to mention scenery on the other side of a window in an interior shot). You can also
use photos in Bryce either as cutouts to place in the scene or as textures for map-
ping onto any of Bryce’s geometric primitive shapes. When you use a photo as a
cutout, you can match the time of day, angle of the sun, and cloud conditions to
those of the photograph, so the photo really looks like it belongs in the 3-D space.
That is, it looks like it belongs as long as you turn it to face the camera. Because
the photo is actually 2-D, placing it at an angle to the camera makes its flatness
apparent.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 691

Making Photo Mosaics

Photo mosaics are pictures that look like each pixel is a photograph within a photo-
graph. The easiest way to make photo mosaics is to use an inexpensive program
that was designed for the purpose. Some inexpensive image editors, such as MGI
Photo Suite, even have the capability built-in.

To make a photo mosaic in MGI PhotoSuite, you simply open the image that you
want to interpret as a mosaic and then place as many photographs as you want
into a library. You then tell the program how many images you want to have in your
mosaic by dragging a slider. The number of images has to do with the resolution (that
is, the number of photos used to comprise the matrix that defines the appearance
of the picture). When it comes to the number of different pictures actually used,
PhotoSuite makes its own choices based on items such as the aspect ratio of the
pictures in the library, their lightness or darkness, and other qualities. You have no
choice in the matter.

After you’ve made these choices, click the Create button. The interface changes to
let you watch the Tapestry (photo mosaic) being created. Then you simply save the
file to your preferred format. The MGI PhotoSuite’s PhotoTapestry interface is
shown in Figure 16-24.

Figure 16-24: This PhotoTapestry was automatically generated from a portrait

of a friend’s face.
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692 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Making Small Movies

The majority of today’s digital cameras — especially if they cost more than $300 —
can make small movies that are useful for grabbing attention on a Web site or for use
in an instructional presentation to show how to do a simple process, such as insert-
ing a card in a PCI slot in a computer. These movies typically run at a slower rate
than real video and are typically limited to frame sizes of under 640 x 480 pixels.

Digital still cameras can do an adequate job of capturing short Web movies. Some
save the “film” as a QuickTime movie (more widely supported on the Web); others
as a WMF (Windows Media File), which is also widely supported on the Web.

Digital video cameras make beautiful video and the more professional models are
even being used more and more to shoot theatrical films. (At least one of these was
in the running for an Academy Award this year. So don’t laugh!). Some models of
video cameras can even capture high-resolution stills, but most of the still captures
are worthy only of low-resolution use.

However, here’s the problem: Most digital cameras don’t provide you with any way
to edit these movie-ettes. At the very least, you almost always have a few frames
that are out of sequence. You may also want to edit several of these small movies
together so that you can tell a bit longer story. However, most any of the low-cost
movie editors and all of the premium movie editors, such as Adobe Premier and
Apple’s Final Cut Pro, can solve this problem with ease.

Ulead seems to have the most popular of the “quick and easy” video editors meant
for home/small business use. Editors in this category seem to be the ones best
suited to managing movies shot from digital still cameras as well as for “stealing”
still frames from real digital video movies for use as stills.

Capturing Stills from Video

Video cameras can do some things that still cameras either can’t do or won’t do
well. Two examples of this are extreme telephoto shots (most current camcorders
have a 10:1 or better optical zoom with steady-cam capabilities), and photography
in extremely low lighting conditions. Don’t be misled, though: You are definitely not
going to get the resolution that’s possible from your cool new Coolpix 5000 — not
even close. You will get a picture that neither the Coolpix nor any other camera that
costs less than $2000 can get in such dim light. You may also get a feeling of motion
and energy that’s hard to replicate with a still camera when shooting under the kind
of conditions that would produce a picture. Incidentally, older S-Video cameras are
generally even more sensitive in low light conditions than are digital video cameras.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 693

In order to capture stills from video, you need to do one of two things:

✦ Have a video capture card and editing software that lets you stop at a frame
and record it. (Most any video-editing software can do this.)
✦ Use a display card such as ATI’s All-in-Wonder series that lets you view the
playback directly from your video camera and then click a camera icon that
records a still image. Then just play the video until you see something you
want to capture and click. The series of photos shown in Figure 16-25 were
all captured by this method. They were shot at a nearly dark New Year’s Eve
party staged by The Anon Salon in San Francisco.

Figure 16-25: These photos were all taken from videos shot in a nightclub
atmosphere on New Year’s Eve.

The advantage of using a video-editing program for capturing stills is that you can
see a thumbnail of the exact frame that you want to capture, so it’s much easier to
capture the precise moment that something happened.
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694 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Stereoscopic Images
You can use your digital camera in two ways to take stereo pairs, which are nearly
identical frames except that they are taken at approximately the same distance
from one another as the distance between our left and right eyes. One way to shoot
a stereo pair is to rig a slider bar that lets you move the camera the right distance,
which is typically about 41⁄ 2 inches when shooting a subject whose near point (the
closest point that’s visible in the frame) is 6 to 9 feet from the camera. Table 16-1
gives you an idea of how far to shift the center of the camera lens if the focal length
equivalent is 50mm. If your lens is shorter, divide the distance by the result of divid-
ing the focal length equivalent into 50mm.

Table 16-1
Shooting Stereo Pairs
Nearest Object Distance Between Lens Centers

3 feet 0.75 inches

6 feet 1.5 inches
11 feet 3 inches
23 feet 6 inches
45 feet 1 foot
90 feet 2 feet
180 feet 4 feet

To rig a slider bar, pop down to your nearest metal working shop and have them cut
you a metal bar with a long slit that’s just wide enough to hold a tripod thread screw.
Also have them drill two holes: A threaded one at the very end of the bar so that you
can attach it to your tripod head; the other at the end of the slit that’s large enough
to slip a second tripod screw through it so that you can slide your camera from side
to side. The drawing shown in Figure 16-26 gives you the idea. The bar should be
thick enough that there’s no danger of its bending, but thin enough not to bind the
tripod thread screw.

Tip You can make the bar long enough to hold two cameras side-by-side, in which
case you need three tripod screws.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 695

Threaded hold for tripod m ounting screw Interval m arkings

Hole to pass tripod mounting screw through

Figure 16-26: Show this sketch to your metal working shop.

Stereo images don’t require a camera with much resolution. Anything over 1 mega-
pixel is more than adequate for most purposes because the best and most popular
means of viewing the pictures is by printing a stereo pair. Although you can make
exhibit-size stereo pair prints from higher resolution cameras, you then need to
provide each viewer with either the training to stand at the right distance in front of
the two prints and then to see the pair in stereo or give them a pair of stereo lenses
that will allow them to view the pair as they go through the exhibit. You can do this
by tethering the lenses to the wall under each print. The viewer can then stretch
the glasses to the end of the tether in order to be the right distance from the prints.

To get the two cameras to fire at the same time, it’s best to use cameras that have
a remote control. You can then fire both cameras with the same remote control so
that they both fire at the same instant.

For private viewing, the method I find most practical for use with digital photographs
is one that lets you make the prints so that they’ll fit in the slide viewer shown in
Figure 16-27.

To take the photographs, place the camera in Manual exposure and Focus modes.
Then set them so that focus and exposure are identical for both cameras.
Otherwise, the two shots may not match and you won’t be able to see the stereo
effect.

Shooting with a pair of cameras mounted side-by-side allows you to photograph

things that move, such as people and pets. You will need cameras that can work
with a remote control
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696 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 16-27: A stereo print viewer. You can

slide the mounted prints closer to and further
away from the eyepiece until the eyes see
them as a single 3-D image.

If you shoot with a pair of cameras, you need to use identical cameras. Mount them
on brackets similar to those shown in Figure 16-28 and Figure 16-29. Once again,
show these to your local metal working shop. They should be able to duplicate
the functionality of these brackets. A company in Mountain View, California called
Jasper Engineering (1240 Pear Ave # A, Mountain View, CA 94043, 650-967-1578) sells
these stereo mounting brackets. You can find out much more, including the very
reasonable prices of its products, by visiting the Web site at www.stereoscopy.
com/jasper/slide-bars.html.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 697

Figure 16-28: The Olympus 3030 cameras, mounted side-by-side for

stereo photography

Figure 16-29: The Olympus 3030 cameras, mounted

vertically and side-by-side for stereo photography
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698 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Because the pictures needed for most stereo viewing situations are square (usually
about 31⁄ 2 inches), it doesn’t matter whether the cameras are mounted vertically or
horizontally, except that when you mount them horizontally the lens centers can be
closer together, which works better for subjects that are closer than 6 feet from the
camera.

Finally, if you practice enough, you don’t need brackets at all. Roger Mulky shot this
stereo picture using only one of his Olympus cameras. He saw this location at a time
when he didn’t even have a tripod. He simply put the camera in manual focus and
used manual exposure. He used the horizontal line formed by the floor tiles to make
sure that the camera was level and perpendicular to the scene. Then he took two
shots roughly four inches apart from left to right. The result is shown in Figure 16-30.

Figure 16-30: To see this picture in stereo, focus your eyes at infinity and hold
the page parallel to the plane of your eyes. Then move the book slowly closer
and further away until you see the pictures in stereo.

If you want a little more assurance that your photos will match, use the knotted
string technique that I described for making stitched mosaics. Tie the knots at the
appropriate distance apart for the distance of the closest object. Then lay it on the
ground with a couple of rocks or bricks to keep it stretched apart. Shoot one pic-
ture at the position of one of the knots, and then move it over at the appropriate
distance for the closest object in your picture.

Tip Be sure that the closest object in your picture doesn’t extend past the edges of the
intended frame.
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 699

To prepare your stereo shots for printing, follow these steps:

1. Open both images at the same time in an image editor that features layers.
2. Open a new image that is about 4 x 6 inches at whatever resolution you
want to print at.
I recommend 240 dpi for most Epson inkjet printers, even if the printer is
printing at a nominally higher horizontal resolution.
3. Resize your camera images so that they are just slightly smaller than that
dimension and place them each on a separate layer in the program.
4. Temporarily reduce the opacity of the top layer so that you can see through
to the bottom layer.
5. Now drag the top layer so that the object in the dead center of the frame is
in perfect register with the object in the dead center of the frame below.
6. Return the opacity of the top layer to 100%.
7. Trim the image, with both layers in register, to 31⁄ 2 inches square.
8. Duplicate the image.
If the top layer is the left image, flatten one of the images, and save it under
the name of the picture followed by the letter L (for Left).
9. In the second duplicated image, throw away the L (top) layer.
10. Then save the image under the same name, followed by an R (for right).
11. Print each image and mount them side-by-side.
12. Get a stereo viewer or a pair of inexpensive optical stereo glasses and show
your pictures to all your amazed friends.

This is one of the simplest and most effective ways of shooting and presenting
stereoscopy with a digital camera. If you become totally fascinated with the sub-
ject or need to have 3-D pictures taken, contact my neighbor, Roger Mulkey, by
e-mailing him at [email protected] or check out the Stereoscopy Web
site in its entirety (www.stereoscopy.com). You can read an excellent and more
detailed article on the site about how to build your own equipment for shooting
stitched panoramas.

Infrared Photography
Some digital cameras are sensitive to the infrared (or near infrared) spectrum of
light. Generally, the manufacturers of such cameras won’t tell you if this is the case,
because infrared-sensitive cameras can see through clothing if they’re equipped
with the right filters and if you can throw enough light on the subject. Sorry, but
this section isn’t going to tell you how to surreptitiously remove clothing. You can
see a great example of an infrared photo taken by Roger Mulkey in Sydney, Australia
in Figure 16-31.
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700 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

Figure 16-31: The Sydney Opera house becomes even more

the center of attention when seen in infrared surrounding in
this photo by Roger Mulkey.

However, infrared photography can bring a unique beauty to many types of subject
matter, most notably, landscapes that have lots of vegetation that turns near-white
and blue skies that turn near-black. The further beauty of doing it digitally is that
you don’t have to switch film to shoot infrared. Film cameras have to use infrared
film in order to do infrared photography.

Manufacturers won’t tell you if their cameras are infrared-sensitive, but you can find
out by experimenting. Just get an infrared visible red cutoff filter (the Kodak 89A is
one of many that works well). Place the filter in front of the lens and look at a blue
light source through the camera’s LCD monitor. If you can see a small speck of light
glowing through surrounding blackness, the camera is sensitive to infrared light.
Another way to determine whether a camera is infrared-sensitive without having to
first buy a filter is to use your infrared TV remote. Turn on the camera LCD monitor,
point the remote directly at the center of the lens from a few inches away while
looking at the LCD, and click the remote. You should see a brief blink of light.

Some near infrared filters require more exposure compensation than others, so you
may want to have different types for different shooting situations. The following fil-
ters are good candidates:
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Chapter 16 ✦ Miscellaneous Digital Magic 701

Remote-controlled photography
You may want to shoot photographs from high in the air, but simply can’t afford the price of
hiring a pilot to fly you to the exact vantage point from which you want to view the subject.
The solution is to mount a lightweight digital camera onto a remote-controlled kite or
model airplane. You may also want to shoot from an extraordinarily low viewpoint, in which
case you can place your camera in a model truck. Ideally, you also want some way to see
(at least, approximately) what the camera sees and to be able to remotely control the
moment the shot is taken and the angle of the camera. Changing the angle of the subject
can also control the angle at which the photograph is taken, especially if the shot is from a
model plane or (better yet) helicopter.
For the most part, you have to spend a pretty fair amount of money to build your own
model airplane, make a cradle that can rotate and spin the camera, purchase remote con-
trols that can control the camera, the vehicle (kite, plane, copter, or car), and the shooting
angle of the camera. You can also do it the cheapest possible way: Get a model hot-air bal-
loon and one of those small APS or 35mm film cameras (they’re lots cheaper than digitals)
that takes a cable release and has automatic film advance, and attach a remote control trig-
ger to the cable-release socket. Suspend the camera from under the balloon, send it up in the
air tethered to a string, and use the remote to fire away when you think that the camera’s
getting the picture you want. Count on wasting lots of film. Then have the film processed
and run it though your slide scanner (the higher the resolution, the better, because you’ll
have to do some cropping to get the composition you want).
You can get much more in-depth information on aerial kite photography from www.
kiteaerialphotography.net. Also, if you’re interested in rigging remote controlled units
for a full range of model vehicles, you’ll find a wealth of information by looking up R/C
(stands for Remote Controlled) model sites on the Web. Quite a few have information on
one technique or another for using a camera, digital camera, or video camera on a model.
You’ll also benefit from spending lots of time in model shops.
One final word of warning: Plan to spend lots of money and training time in learning to fly
and control your models. A remote-controlled helicopter to which you’d entrust a digital
camera will cost at least $1,000 and you’ll probably crash it several times before you learn
to fly it well enough to entrust your camera to it.

✦ Wratten #89B
✦ Wratten #88A
✦ Wratten #87
✦ Wratten #87C

Harrison and Harrison (1835 Thunderbolt Drive Unit E, Porterville, CA 93257-9300

phone 559-782-0121) also make a low-cost 88A filter. Personally, I like to buy the
gelatin versions of these filters. They are very inexpensive (usually under $10 for
a large sheet) and can be cut to fit over any size lens — even big supplementary
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702 Part V ✦ The Versatility of Digital Photography

fish-eye lenses. You can either place them into a slide-in filter holder or simply tape
them into place. If you tape them, be sure that the tape doesn’t overlap into the pic-
ture area. Of course, you can just hold them over the lens while you take the picture.

Also, each near infrared filter is not only more or less dense (requiring more or less
exposure) but affects the interpretation of different colors and surfaces. So it’s not a
bad idea to have a whole collection of them so you can experiment. That’s another
advantage of digital photography: Experimentation is free (except for the cost of
the filters, of course).

To take the infrared picture, put your camera on a rock-steady tripod. Use manual
focus and exposure. Focus at the distance of the closest object that you want to
keep in razor-sharp focus. If you’re using a wide-angle lens, you’ll have much greater
over-all depth-of-field, which is the distance between the nearest and farthest
objects that are in reasonably sharp focus. Frame and compose your picture before
you place the filter over your lens because at that point, you won’t be able to see
anything.

You will have to use exposures that are quite long compared to those you would use
on a camera without the filter. Light meters don’t usually help much but — thank
heavens — you’re shooting digitally and can see the results immediately. Because
most digital cameras sport real focal lengths that are a fraction of those of a 35mm
camera, you have the advantage of extreme depth-of-field. This means that you can
shoot with your lens wide open. In bright daylight (depending on clouds and time-
of-day), your exposure should be between 1⁄ 4th and 1⁄ 16th of a second. You sometimes
get surprisingly different results from different exposures with different subject
matter, so it’s a good idea to experiment. Some cameras have a bracketing mode
that automatically exposes a number of frames by a pre-set variation in exposure
values. If your camera has such a feature, I definitely recommend using it.

Tip If you want to get really wild, shoot color versions of the exact same photos by
simply removing the filter and switching to automatic mode. You can then experi-
ment with stacking your color and infrared photos in your image editor’s layers
and using the layer blend modes and opacity controls to create effects rarely seen
before by the human eye.

Summary
This chapter discussed software that performs peripheral jobs to enhance working
with digital images; this software isn’t specifically or primarily image-processing
software. I also outlined some criteria for choosing the accessory imaging software,
the main purposes of the software, and the names and principle features of the pri-
mary players.

✦ ✦ ✦
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P A R T

Producing the VI
Best Output ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Part

P art VI provides easily understood coverage of how to

ensure that the output image looks like what you saw on
your monitor when you were editing it. The discussion begins
Chapter 17
Choosing and Using
a Desktop Printer
with figuring out what desktop printer is best suited to your
Chapter 18
photographic needs. It then takes you through the processes
Making and Using
of calibration and profiling that will make your output pre-
Device Profiles for
dictable. Finally, I explain how to utilize specialty output
Predictable Output
options, including having your prints made over the Internet
and using wide-format printers for purposes such as fine-art
exhibitions. Chapter 19
Specialty Output
Options

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
23549510 PP06.F 8/22/02 2:51 PM Page 704
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Choosing and
Using a Desktop
17
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Printer In This Chapter

Selecting an inkjet,
laser, or dye-
sublimation printer

A s you already know, a digital image is an incredibly ver-

satile resource. You can ship a digital image to someone
in e-mail, plaster it on your Web page, work magic on it with
Comparing stand-
alone and
multifunction printers
your Photoshop filters, turn it into a piece of psychedelic art,
or create a screen saver for your computer’s idle moments. Selecting ink and
Somehow, all these hi-tech possibilities may make you some- paper
times feel . . . well . . . bored with plain old prints on plain old
paper. Installing your printer

However, I think most of us agree that paper is still the pre- Setting up
ferred media for displaying photographs — and probably your printer in
always will be. Therefore, it’s imperative that you choose the Windows XP
right type of printer for your system, and this choice involves and Mac OS X
selecting the right output quality at the fastest speed and the
lowest price. Optimizing printing
speed
This chapter guides you through the process of selecting,
installing, using, and maintaining a printer under both
Maintaining your
Windows XP and Mac OS X.
printer

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
What Type of Printer
is Right for You?
Many photographers that I talk to automatically assume that a
high-end expensive inkjet is the only “correct choice” for a
photo-quality printer. I’m always quick to point out that the
“correct choice” isn’t necessarily the same for every photog-
rapher. It’s true that inkjets have been the de facto standard in
high-resolution color printing for many years now, and you
may very well have an inkjet in your future. However, some
printing methods offer higher quality, and some are even less
expensive in the long run.
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706 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

In this section, I discuss the pros and cons of three different color-printing tech-
nologies, and you can decide for yourself which one is the “correct choice!”

Tip If at all possible, test each printer that you are considering purchasing before you
make your decision. To produce comparison pages, record several of your high-
resolution images on a CD-ROM and bring it with you to the stores, along with
several sheets of glossy photo paper. (Naturally, this may not be possible if you’re
buying a high-end model that’s not stocked locally; in cases like this, you’ll have to
rely on product reviews from magazines and compare specifications.)

Inkjet printers
The inkjet printer is the affordable answer for most homes and small offices, and
most computer owners know its attractions:

✦ Laser-quality black text: When printing on standard bond paper, the black
text that a good quality inkjet printer produces is indistinguishable from the
same output from a laser printer.
✦ Excellent color image reproduction: Today’s typical resolutions for con-
sumer inkjets — 2400 x 1200 dpi and 2880 x 720 dpi, for example — provide the
level of detail necessary to print everything from display pieces to smaller
prints, including contact sheets and proof pages.
✦ Inexpensive to buy: A high-end inkjet printer that offers a USB connection
should only set you back $300 (or less); those that can accept digicam mem-
ory cards and print photographs directly, such as the HP PhotoSmart series,
range up to $500. For example, the HP PhotoSmart 1315 inkjet, which delivers
2400 x 1200 dpi on photo paper, retails for about $400. Like the other
PhotoSmart printers from HP, you don’t even need to connect it to a computer
to print from your CompactFlash and SmartMedia cards.
✦ Versatile paper handling: Inkjets can use a very wide range of paper weight,
thickness, and material, which provides the photographer more creative
choices when printing images for display.
✦ Replacing cartridges also replaces the print head: Unlike dye-sublimation
printers, most inkjet printers locate the actual print head and nozzles on the
ink cartridge itself. Therefore, when you change an ink cartridge, you also get
a new print head in the bargain (which helps to ensure that the quality of your
photographs remains constant over the life of the printer).
✦ Easy maintenance: An inkjet requires less maintenance than dye-sublimation
and color laser printers. Additionally, it’s generally easier to change ink car-
tridges and clean the interior of the printer than the other two types of printers.
✦ Larger printing surfaces: Wide-body and large-format inkjet printers can pro-
duce pages in much larger dimensions than other printing methods — for
example, the Epson Stylus Color 3000 can produce full-bleed, 13 x 19-inch
pages at 1440 x 720 dpi.
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Chapter 17 ✦ Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer 707

An inkjet printer produces an image by “firing” tiny droplets of ink onto the page —
usually by using two cartridges (one for pure black and one for color, although
many inkjet printers are now using separate cartridges for each ink color), as
shown in Figure 17-1.

Cartridge
shell

Ink

Electrical Paper
contacts

Inkjet nozzles release

dots of ink
Figure 17-1: An inkjet printer dispenses drops of ink
through tiny nozzles onto the paper.

Now for the bad news on inkjet printers:

✦ Most can’t reproduce continuous tones. No matter how high the resolution
or how small and diffuse the droplets, an inkjet still creates images by putting
dots on paper. Therefore, low- to mid-range inkjet printers can’t produce the
continuous tone images that a dye-sublimation printer (or the most expensive
inkjet printers, as discussed in Chapter 7) can deliver.
✦ Banding on large areas of darker color. Because the inkjet printer head can
only cover a small distance of the page at one time and because it doesn’t
diffuse colors like a dye-sublimation printer, inkjets can produce a horizontal
“striped” effect called banding on large areas of darker colors such as blue,
purple, and black. Today’s inkjets reduce banding to a minimum, but as the
printer head within the inkjet cartridge ages, banding can become more
pronounced.
✦ Inks can smudge. You should carefully handle the photographs produced by
an inkjet, because the oil from your hands or a drop of moisture can cause the
printed surface of the page to smear and smudge. Some manufacturers adver-
tise “waterproof” and “water-resistant” inks, but I recommend that you take
such promises with a grain of salt.
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708 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

When considering an inkjet printer for digital photographs, look for these features:

✦ High-capacity ink cartridges. Larger ink cartridges are more economical over
time, because they require fewer replacements. Additionally, many photo-
quality inkjet printers now offer either three or five separate color cartridges
(or ink tanks). This feature allows you to change the individual colors that you
use the most and save money by replacing a single ink cartridge rather than a
whole cartridge that’s simply low on one color.
✦ Flat-out speed. Like any good sports car, the price of a printer — sometimes
even the price between similar models from the same manufacturer — is often
related directly to top speed. For example, most of us won’t spend $50,000 on a
car (which may travel over 80 mph once a year) when we can buy a perfectly
good car for $15,000 that won’t reach the same speed. Only you can decide
whether those two or three extra pages per minute are worth the extra
expense.

Tip You may notice that some printer manufacturers have the (somewhat sneaky)
habit of advertising the number of pages a printer can produce in color in draft
mode. In photography, the quality of the image is what’s important, so draft mode
speeds are irrelevant. (As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ve ever actually used my
expensive inkjet in draft mode.) Therefore, consider only best-quality printing
speeds when comparing the output of different printer models.

✦ Variable-size dot patterns. A number of high-end inkjets can vary the size and
dispersion of the ink droplets that they apply to the paper, resulting in near-
continuous tones that are hard to distinguish from a dye-sublimation printer.
(This topic is discussed further in Chapter 7.)
✦ The highest resolution possible. Although a higher resolution isn’t always a
guarantee of a better quality image — printer manufacturers like Hewlett
Packard, for example, stress raw dpi resolution less than the size of the
droplets and the number of colors per pixel — the general rule still holds that
“higher is better.”
✦ Direct printing from memory cards. This can save you a step — in fact, you
produce an image without even connecting your printer to a computer!
(Naturally, doing this won’t allow you to edit the image first, but I’ve found
that candid shots I take at a party or a game are rarely candidates for
Photoshop, anyway.)
✦ Calibration and cartridge ink level checking through software. The more
fine-tuning and calibration your printer can perform through software, the
better. Later in this chapter, I show you some of the features of the HP
Toolbox program that ships with HP PhotoSmart printers.
✦ Straight-through paper path. If you use a wide range of specialized papers in
your inkjet printer, I recommend that you purchase a printer that uses a
straight-through feed. These printers can accept thicker paper, as shown in
Figure 17-2, so you can avoid the “curled” output that’s produced by printers
that use an under-and-over paper path.
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Chapter 17 ✦ Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer 709

Inkjet Inkjet
print head print head
r ay
dt Paper collection
ee
Paper rf tray
pe
Pa

Paper collection
tray Paper feed tray
Feed roller
Feed roller
Straight-through design Under-and-over design
Figure 17-2: Comparison of straight-through and under-and-over printer designs

Dye-sublimation printers
If accurate reproduction of fine detail, continuous tone, and subtle shading in the
finished output are the most important features that you’re looking for in a printer,
then a dye-sublimation printer is definitely your best bet. In fact, before the arrival
of truly high-resolution inkjets, a dye-sublimation printer was practically the only
way to get a near-perfect, 16-million color, photo-quality print from a desktop-size
unit. Even today, the photo quality of a dye-sublimation image is generally consid-
ered better than even the most expensive inkjets.

Dye-sublimation printers are often called thermal printers as well, as shown in

Figure 17-3. This technology uses heat to melt (or vaporize) and transfer solid dye
from a ribbon to the paper by using either a roller mechanism or a series of pins
(much like the “antique” impact technology used in dot-matrix printers during the
early years of personal computers). The liquid or gaseous dye is formulated to
bond and spread slightly on the paper.
Dye pellet

Hot print head

melts dye, then
dye is released
from nozzles

Paper Dye dries on paper

Figure 17-3: The dye-sublimation printer can produce continuous-tone images.
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710 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

So what’s the downside to dye-sublimation technology? Here’s the short list:

✦ Cost: The printer, the dye, and the paper all cost more than a photo-quality
inkjet . . . a lot more, anywhere from 5 to 10 times as much. Dye-sublimation
printers aren’t designed to work with plain paper, and the same characteris-
tics that make them a superb choice for producing photographs make them a
poor choice for printing simple black text.
✦ Print size: Dye-sublimation printers produce much smaller output. Virtually
all of these exotic beasts are limited to turning out page-sized or smaller
prints.
✦ Speed: When purchasing a dye-sublimation printer, look for one that can print
two pages per minute, and remember that these are pretty small pages. Any
inkjet or color laser can turn out color images in half or a quarter of that time.

Color laser printers

Just a few short years ago, color laser technology was so expensive that I would
have simply glossed over this section. Today, though, a mere $900 or so can bring
you the luxury of printing your digital photographs on one of these units.

To be honest, a color laser won’t beat the appearance of a print made with a high-
end inkjet printer or a dye-sublimation printer; however, that same machine is far
more versatile if you’re looking for a single machine that can “do it all.” Laser print-
ers produce the best grayscale images and black and white text, as well as common
office output, such as transparencies and labels. You can also produce works of art
by using special heat-transfer papers (such as gold foil). For informal documents
and less demanding color work, a color laser printer can do the job just fine.

A color laser brings these advantages to the table:

✦ Built-in PostScript interpreter. A color laser printer is more likely to have

PostScript support built-in than an inkjet or dye-sublimation printer (both of
which may offer such support as an option, but are more likely to force you
into using a software interpreter).

Cross- You can read more about PostScript interpreters in Chapter 7.

Reference
✦ Longer-lasting color. Because a laser actually fuses toner to the surface of the
paper, you don’t need special glossy photo paper to achieve longer-lasting
color from a color laser printer (although you can purchase special papers
that further enhance the archival properties of your prints).
✦ Built-in network support. Virtually all color laser printers have built-in
Ethernet network support, so you don’t need to buy any optional hardware or
use a separate computer to act as a print server. This can be a real advantage
for a home office.
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Chapter 17 ✦ Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer 711

✦ Economical over time. When considering cost per page, a color laser
printer is actually less expensive to operate over the long run than either
dye-sublimation or inkjet printers. In general, laser printers are more reliable
and can handle a heavier workload than inkjet or dye-sublimation printers.

Printing Photographs with a

Multifunction Printer
Most serious digital photographers have turned their back on multifunction (or “all-
in-one”) devices, which offer both printing and scanning in a single box. Regarding
the scanning part of the equation, I have to agree. As you can imagine, scanning a
photograph with a sheet-fed multifunction device results in a significantly lower-
quality image file, because the original is moving past the scanning head (rather
than remaining motionless while the scanning head moves, as in a flatbed scanner).
Also, many multifunction units can’t handle thicker card stock, so you risk the pos-
sibility of both a damaged print and an inaccurate scan.

On the other hand, it’s possible to produce a photo-quality print from one of these
units because most use the same inkjet “engine” that’s also used in the manufactur-
ing company’s printers. If you have an all-in-one in your office, for example, it can
do double-duty printing contact sheets if you suddenly run out of ink for your high-
end primary inkjet printer. When shopping for a multifunction device, consider the
same pros and cons previously covered in this chapter concerning inkjet printers
(and keep a stack of photo paper handy, ready to swap for that recycled plain paper
you’ll usually use in your new all-in-one).

Choosing the Right Ink and Paper

Speaking of paper, it would be a mistake to focus only on the hardware — after
all, even the best dye-sublimation printers turn out really atrocious-looking prints
if you use the wrong paper. Many inkjets are still using dye-based inks that fade
quickly, so your photograph will look like a pair of stonewashed blue jeans within a
couple of years due to UV light and humidity. On the other hand, with the right ink
and archival paper, your inkjet printer can turn out a photo-quality print of a digital
photograph that can last as long as any film print.

In this section, I discuss each of the most common types of paper available for
today’s computer printers. For those who are fond of technical terms, use the word
substrate, which refers to any surface used for printing (including exotics such as
fabric). Inkjet owners can find information in this section to use while shopping for
longer lasting ink cartridges.
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712 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Plain bond
The all-purpose workhorse of the home and office, plain bond (often described as
“suitable for inkjet, fax and laser printing”) is well suited for most printing applica-
tions, and it’s the most inexpensive paper discussed in this chapter. However, plain
bond should actually be your last choice for printing photographs for the following
reasons:

✦ Ink soaks in. If you’re using an inkjet, you’ll find that the surface is too porous
to provide the proper diffusion, so you’ll note the dot pattern in everything
you produce. Fine details are lost, and the colors never match the brightness
delivered by photo paper or fine art paper.
✦ It’s not completely opaque. The printed image is visible from the reverse side
of the page (this by itself is usually enough to alienate any photographer).
✦ It’s not stiff enough. Bond paper is far too thin, resulting in “waves” across
the printed page. It is also easily creased with even the most careful handling,
and the edges of the printed image are likely to curl or nick when cut.
✦ Irregular surface. You aren’t guaranteed that the bond paper will have a uni-
form surface — many types are made from recycled materials, which results in
specks and pits in the substrate. This doesn’t matter when printing a simple
memo, but such minute imperfections will ruin a digital photograph.

Caution A special note to the owners of dye-sublimation printers: Never use plain bond
paper because a dye-sublimation printer can’t produce a proper image without
the special paper recommended by the manufacturer.

“So is there any use for plain bond?” Sure — it’s suitable for photos that your kids
may need for school projects and reports, and I use bond for printing quick refer-
ence thumbnail sheets using Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, and Extensis Portfolio. For
anything more important, however, keep that box of plain bond next to your fax
machine and away from your printer.

Semi-gloss and high-gloss photo paper

These papers are the most common choices for producing simple prints. As you
may expect, semi-gloss papers have a less reflective surface, but both papers solve
the problems related to plain bond. This is the standard paper type for use in dye-
sublimation printers.

Gloss paper has a “sealed” substrate that allows ink from an inkjet or dye-sublima-
tion printer to diffuse and spread, thus producing far better results in continuous
tones and small details. Gloss photo paper is stiff enough for handling, holds its
edge when cut, and has a uniform surface. Most of these papers carry a backing
watermark, so they have an authentic film print “look and feel.” These papers typi-
cally have a longevity period of several years.
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Chapter 17 ✦ Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer 713

Gloss paper is produced in a large range of sizes — everything from single prints
(usually for use with dye-sublimation printers that deliver single prints) to large-
format 11 x 17-inch pages, as well as special formats for greeting cards and
pre-printed postcards. You can easily find gloss photo paper at virtually any
computer or discount store.

Fine-art paper
Matte and semi-matte fine-art paper is your best selection for archival and display
printing, because it reflects less glare than semi-gloss and high-gloss photo paper.
For the best longevity, steer towards acid-free, polymer-coated papers that are
resistant to humidity, ozone, and ultraviolet light. When used with pigment-based
archival ink and an acid-free separating matte, these papers have a display life
that’s as long as any traditional film print. For example, Epson makes a number of
papers that are rated by Wilhelm Imaging Research (www.wilhelmresearch.com)
at over 25 years (under archival glass or Plexiglas), which is several years longer
than color film prints made with Kodak Ektacolor paper.

Most fine-art papers are still thin enough to move properly through the manual feed
on a color laser printer, and they can often be used in dye-sublimation printers as
well. These papers are suitable for the lion’s share of your presentation and display
work, and the cost for fine-art media falls between gloss photo paper and the Rolls-
Royce category of media, the exotic papers.

Exotic papers
Forgive me for “lumping” these media under one heading, but they really are rather
exotic. You won’t use them often, and most dye-sublimation and color laser printers
can’t handle them, so they’re limited to inkjet use. (If your printer manufacturer lists
the maximum thickness and weight for media, you can usually verify that your inkjet
printer can handle a specific paper before you buy it.) Naturally, exotic papers are
also the most expensive, and are typically available only at art supply houses or
online printer supply stores. The list of exotic papers includes the following:

✦ Rag
✦ Canvas
✦ Linen
✦ Watercolor
✦ Parchment

Tip As you may expect, these thicker and stiffer papers are more prone to paper jams,
so make sure that you adjust your paper tray guides to keep the sheets oriented as
straight as possible and reduce side-to-side movement as much as possible.
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714 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

The results from these papers can be spectacular, but it’s a good idea to test the
output on a single sheet first before selecting your favorite and laying in a stock.

All inks are not created equal

When selecting inks for archival or display printing, you’ll find that pigment-based
inks are the longest-lasting — most are rated to last at least 100 years without fad-
ing. However, dye-based inks (which are the standard in the inkjet world) provide
brighter and more even saturated colors, and are much less expensive to produce.
Therefore, a number of manufacturers have been working on extending the life of
dye-based inks, and in some cases, have reached a fade-free rating of 25 to 30 years.

Caution Never leave your prints exposed to bright sunlight or open air for more than a
minute or two. The best storage options are an aluminum frame behind UV-
coated archival glass or in the acid-free pages of a photo print album.

In my opinion, refilling inkjet cartridges is a mistake (I discuss this further later in

the chapter), and using pigment-based ink in a cartridge designed for dye-based ink
is inviting disaster. Therefore, if you’re interested in the longest lifespan for your
prints, you should buy cartridges from the printer manufacturer or use third-party
cartridges that are specifically designed for your unit.

Installing Your Printer

Suppose that you just bought the latest in state-of-the-art printing technology, and
it is sitting in the box waiting to be installed. You’d be surprised just how many pro-
fessional photographers start to get nervous at this point; as a friend of mine says,
“I know the camera inside and out, but either the computer works or it doesn’t!”
Even people who have plenty of experience in digital photography are somewhat
taken aback by the addition of new hardware and the inner workings of their com-
puter’s operating system.

Luckily, the art of preparing a new printer under Windows XP and Mac OS X has
become much easier to master with the arrival of USB hardware — much of what
had to be tweaked in the days of yore is now handled automatically for you. In this
section, I cover both the installation of a USB and — in the event you’re stuck with
an “antique” — a parallel port printer.

Unpacking your printer — the right way

Most computer owners don’t think twice about unpacking hardware, but you may
encounter hazards while setting up your new printer. (Just ask anyone who’s ever
sold or repaired computer equipment.) You may be anxious to try out that expen-
sive photo-quality inkjet, but hurrying through the unpacking process can result in
lost parts or damage to your new hardware. If you exercise common sense and
don’t rush, you’re much less likely to make a costly mistake.
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Chapter 17 ✦ Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer 715

Before you even cut into that tape, make a rule to always look for external damage
to the box! (This is just as important when unpacking monitors and computer
cases.) In fact, if you’re going to buy your printer from a local store and the box is
badly punctured or torn, ask for another unit. If you bought your printer online and
the box is in bad condition when you receive it, carefully check for damage to the
contents as soon as you unpack it, and return the unit if you find something wrong.

Keep these general rules in mind while unpacking your printer:

✦ Follow the manufacturer’s instructions. Check the outside of the box for
unpacking instructions. Also, most manufacturers put the printer manual,
which may include important information about what’s included, on top of the
printer. Open the manual and read before you proceed any further.
✦ Beware of “hidden” parts. Unfortunately, small parts can be lost because
they’re completely buried in Styrofoam packing material, or they’re taped to
the underside of a cardboard insert. The most common items treated this way
include ink cartridges, snap-on paper guides, cables, and the software and
driver CD-ROM. These parts are probably mentioned in the first few pages of
your printer’s manual, but check any packing material or inserts — just in
case — before you place them back in the empty box.

Tip Don’t forget to check the manufacturer’s Web site for the latest drivers. New
drivers are produced to fix printing bugs, enable new features, and improve com-
patibility with your operating system. These drivers may be released while your
printer is sitting in its box on the shelf.

✦ Pull the printer from the box. Never open one end of a box and simply dump
the contents on the floor. Instead, put the box flat on the floor and gently pull
the entire contents out from one end of the box. This prevents an accidental
slide and possible damage to your new printer.
✦ Store the box throughout the warranty period. Most computer hardware
carries at least a one-year warranty, and the box is worth its weight in gold if
you have to return it. Also, if the printer fails within a short time, both online
and local stores require the box to accept a return.

Tip Are you an active hardware seller on eBay, or do you constantly sell your older
used hardware to your friends and family? If so, it’s a very good idea to store your
printer’s empty box for as long as possible because that printer will likely be worth
more if you can sell it in the original box.

Adding a parallel port printer under Windows XP

Although most new printers on the market these days use a USB connection, the
faithful old PC parallel port is still an option. Additionally, a parallel port is the stan-
dard connection for printers made prior to two or three years ago, so it may be use-
ful to know the procedure for adding a parallel port printer under Windows XP.
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716 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

You must first locate the parallel port on the back of your PC — it’s a 25-pin female
port (usually accompanied by a printer icon or the rather cryptic label “LPT1:”). If
you run across a 25-pin male port, you’ve found an older serial port for modems
and serial devices. These connectors won’t work with a parallel port printer cable,
shown in Figure 17-4, so you should only find one connector on the back of your PC
that will work.

PC connector Printer connector

Figure 17-4: A standard PC parallel port printer cable

Tip I always recommend that PC owners mark their cables with a fine point perma-
nent marker. This helps to prevent confusion when you have to unplug that nest of
cables to add new hardware or move your computer from one place to another.

In order for Windows XP to recognize your printer, it must be on during the

Windows boot process, so it’s important that your new printer be ready before you
boot the computer. Connect the AC cord from your printer to the wall socket or
surge suppressor and load the feed tray with paper. After you have installed your
printer, check to make sure it’s turned on before you turn your computer on — one
way to do this is to plug both your printer and your PC into the same surge sup-
pressor, and then turn everything on with the switch on the outlet.

After you’ve located the port and prepared your printer, follow these steps:

1. If your printer came with an installation disc, load it now.

Some manufacturers, such as Hewlett Packard, lead you step-by-step through
the software installation process. If that’s the case, you can ignore the rest of
this list and follow their procedure.
2. Shut down Windows XP.
This typically shuts down your PC automatically, but if necessary, switch your
PC off as well.
3. Attach the printer cable to your printer and to the parallel printer port on
the back of your PC.
4. Turn on your PC.
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Chapter 17 ✦ Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer 717

5. If your printer supports Plug and Play functionality, Windows XP recog-

nizes that you’ve added a printer and prompts you for the driver CD-ROM.
After you’ve located the driver, Windows XP automatically configures your
printer.
If you’re installing an older printer that doesn’t support Plug and Play, click the
Start button, click Printers and Faxes, and then click the Add Printer icon to run
the Add Printer Wizard, as shown in Figure 17-5. Follow the wizard’s instructions
to manually install your printer’s driver and configure it within Windows XP.

Figure 17-5: Adding a printer manually using the

Windows XP Add Printer Wizard

6. Click the Start button and click Printers and Faxes to display the printers
recognized by your computer.
Check to make sure that the icon for your new printer appears in your
Printers folder.

Adding a USB printer under Windows XP

and Mac OS X
USB connections are great — no need to turn off your computer, and the USB con-
nector only plugs in one way (the right way)! Connect the AC cord from your
printer to the wall socket or surge suppressor, load the feed tray with paper, turn
your printer on, and then follow these steps:

1. Connect the USB cable to your printer, and plug the other connector into a
USB port on your computer.
2. Your computer should automatically recognize that you’ve added a USB
device.
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718 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

If your computer’s operating system already has a driver for the printer that
you’re installing, you’re done. However, if your printer requires a new driver,
you’ll be prompted to load the manufacturer’s CD-ROM that came with your
printer. (Many manufacturers provide an Installer program for Macintosh
owners.)
3. To check for the new printer under Windows XP, click the Start button and
click Printers and Faxes.
This action displays the printers that are recognized by your computer, as
shown in Figure 17-6.
Under Mac OS X, click the Print Center icon in the Dock.
You can set the new printer as your default by selecting it, clicking the
Printers menu, and then choosing the Make Default menu item.

Figure 17-6: Displaying the printers available on my system under Windows XP

Tip Remember, you can also remove your USB printer from your system by discon-
necting the cable, without turning off your computer, and you can plug your
printer back in at any time.
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Chapter 17 ✦ Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer 719

Improving Printer Performance

When most computer owners think of printer performance, they think of raw speed —
how many pages per minute that the printer can deliver. If you have a little more tech-
nical knowledge of how a printer works and you’re thinking of a color laser printer,
you may also consider the amount of on-board memory. The more RAM a printer
has, the faster the printer can process the language that makes up the page.

However, you can also take a number of other steps to improve printing perfor-
mance that don’t involve your printer at all, including the following:

✦ Tweak your operating system and drivers. Naturally, printer drivers vary by
manufacturer. However, you can adjust some settings common on most print-
ers under Windows XP to improve performance, like using print spooling.
✦ Optimize your system hardware. This includes defragmenting your hard
drive and adding extra memory to your computer.
✦ Install additional hardware specific to printing. This includes hardware
printer buffers and standalone print servers.

In this section, I tackle each of these performance-enhancing tricks in turn.

Enabling print spooling in Windows XP

Most printers simply don’t have the on-board memory to accept an entire high-
resolution image at once — you don’t have to own a large-format inkjet printer to
find this out quickly! Luckily, since the early days, Microsoft has included a feature
called print spooling in Windows that can help optimize the printing process. A print
spooler takes care of two tasks in Windows XP:

✦ Temporary storage for larger print jobs. A single 5 megapixel image can
actually “overflow” the on-board memory in a typical inkjet printer. To pre-
vent losing any of that image, Windows XP automatically uses space on your
hard drive as “virtual memory” and stores the rest of the file temporarily until
your printer can accept it.
✦ Background printing. In the hoary days of DOS and Windows 3.0, your PC sat
still until the entire image had been sent to the printer; a print spooler allows
Windows XP to return control to your applications (so you can keep typing in
Word or working in Photoshop while your printer is busy). Mac OS has had
this feature since version 8 as well.

Not every printer manufacturer enables print spooling automatically when you
install your printer, but you can turn the spooler on at any time. Follow these steps
in Windows XP:
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720 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

1. Click the Start button and click Printers and Faxes.

This action displays the printers that you have installed on your system.
2. Right-click on the printer you’re using to produce your images and choose
Properties from the pop-up menu.
The printer’s Properties dialog box appears. The location of the print spooler
controls varies according to the manufacturer’s printer driver, but with a little
hunting, you should find settings similar to the ones shown in Figure 17-7,
which are the spooler settings for an HP PhotoSmart P1000.

Figure 17-7: Enabling printer spooling

under Windows XP

3. Enable the spooling feature, and click OK to save your changes within the
Properties dialog box.

Defragmenting your hard drive

If you’re not aware of the benefits of defragmenting, it’s high time I explained this
“power user” optimizing trick. In fact, defragmenting your hard drive on a regular
basis not only improves printing performance under Windows XP and Mac OS, it
also optimizes the overall efficiency of your entire system and all the applications
that you run (including your image editor).

Before I go further, a little explanation is in order. As you delete files from your hard
drive to free up space, you open “holes” between the remaining files; these holes
then become the storage space where new files are saved. Unfortunately, your hard
drive almost never has a contiguous open area large enough to fit a file that’s several
megabytes long (or, in the case of a digital photograph, several dozen megabytes).
Therefore, Windows must store the file in several smaller segments, usually spread
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Chapter 17 ✦ Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer 721

out across the surface of your hard drive, as shown in Figure 17-8. The larger the file,
the more segments Windows must create. When the time comes to read the contents
of the file, Windows automatically “reassembles” the segments back into the original
file. This behind-the-scenes work is all automatic, and mere humans like you and I
aren’t even aware that the file is no longer stored in one piece.

Hard drive platter

Segment 1 of the file

Segment 2
Segment 3

Figure 17-8: A digital photograph separated into segments on a fragmented drive

The problem comes in when most of the files on your hard drive are stored in
segments — something that normally happens after a number of weeks of normal
use, and much sooner if you’ve been using your PC heavily. At this point, your hard
drive has become fragmented, and Windows takes significantly longer to get work
done because most of the files that you open have to be reassembled before you
can use them. In fact, fragmentation slows down Windows XP as a whole, including
the printing process. Remember the Windows XP print spooling feature I mentioned
in the previous section? You can see how a badly fragmented hard drive slows
down the “virtual memory” function that enables you to print very large images by
using disk space as temporary RAM.

Luckily, the good folks at Microsoft have provided a solution. They’ve included a
program called Disk Defragmenter in both the Home and Professional versions of
Windows XP. I recommend that you run this program at least once a week; it reads
in the fragmented files on your hard drive and saves them back to the drive as
whole, contiguous files, as shown in Figure 17-9. In fact, Disk Defragmenter also
optimizes the placement of the files that you use the most as it’s working, so the
applications and files that you use most often load faster.

Figure 17-10 illustrates Disk Defragmenter at work, analyzing the number and posi-
tion of the fragmented files on my drive. To run Disk Defragmenter, select Start ➪ All
Programs ➪ Accessories ➪ System Tools ➪ Disk Defragmenter.
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722 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Segment 1

Segment 2

Segment 3

Figure 17-9: After you’ve run Disk Defragmenter, your image

is one efficient, contiguous file.

Figure 17-10: Windows XP includes Disk Defragmenter — one of my favorite utilities

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Chapter 17 ✦ Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer 723

The importance of system RAM

In this section, I want to stress a favorite maxim of mine (one that I’m constantly
repeating to anyone who owns a computer in my general vicinity): Buy RAM!
Memory is cheap these days, and nothing you can buy for your computer will do
more to improve its overall speed and performance — except, of course, for a new
processor, but that’s a much more expensive upgrade that often means an invest-
ment in a new motherboard as well.

As I mentioned previously in the book, expanding your system from 128MB of RAM
to 256MB or 512MB is a great help for editing digital photographs. You’ll also notice
that your print jobs are queued faster, even with multiple applications open. This is
because the more physical RAM you pack into your computer, the less Windows
must use your hard drive space as “virtual memory” while preparing the print job.

Tip Some manufacturers allow you to “appropriate” a set amount of system RAM as a
soft printer buffer as a setting within the printer’s Properties panel (as opposed to
an actual hardware printer buffer, which I cover in the next section). If you have
this option and you have at least 256MB of system RAM, I recommend that you
reserve 8 or 16MB of memory. If your printer driver doesn’t have a soft printer
buffer option, don’t stay awake at night worrying about it; Windows XP has an
internal buffer that takes care of the job, but you can’t dedicate a specific amount
of memory to it.

Adding standalone printing hardware

Before I close this section on printer performance, I should mention two pieces of
external hardware that can help to improve the efficiency and accessibility of your
printer:

Parallel port printer buffer

Since USB printers have become the norm, these external boxes are less popular
and a little harder to find. However, they can come in quite handy if you have an
older color printer that uses a parallel port connection, which, as mentioned
previously, was the standard connection just a couple of years ago. With an external
printer buffer, you can produce high-resolution images without degrading the perfor-
mance of Windows XP and your other applications (no “disk thrashing” or long
pauses while image data is poured into a printer that has only 4MB of internal mem-
ory). Figure 17-11 illustrates an external printer buffer in action. It’s a simple device —
basically a box that contains anywhere from 2 to 16MB of RAM that accepts data from
your computer and stores it temporarily until your printer can accept it. To locate a
printer buffer, visit Pricewatch (www.pricewatch.com), or search for used external
buffers on eBay.
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724 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Print Print Print

job job job
3 2 1

PC Printer buffer Printer

Figure 17-11: A parallel port printer buffer can help optimize printing
with older hardware.

Tip If you’ve installed all of the optional memory modules that your printer can
handle, a print buffer is another method of optimizing the performance of your
system.

Printer servers and sharing hardware

If you’ve bought a color laser or high-end inkjet printer that has built-in network
support, you can hook your printer directly to your simple Ethernet home or office
network. However, if your parallel port printer doesn’t have network support, you
can use one of these external boxes to share your printer among multiple comput-
ers. A print server requires an Ethernet network, while a printer sharing device like
the one shown in Figure 17-12 uses its own cables and needs no existing network.
Both of these solutions usually include built-in buffer memory as well, so things run
more smoothly while you share your printer.

PC 1

Printer
PC 2
sharing
switch
Printer

PC 3

Figure 17-12: A printer sharing system needs no existing network.

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Chapter 17 ✦ Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer 725

Tip Do you have an older PC just hanging around collecting dust? If so, you can con-
figure that PC to act as a dedicated print server. The computer that you use for this
purpose should have a large-capacity hard drive, a fast network interface card, and
at least 64MB of RAM. Describing this process is not within the scope of this book,
but most books on home and small office networking cover this topic.

Tips for Inkjet Printing

Inkjet printers are the most common choice of digital photographers. Therefore,
the following sections review a number of guidelines that inkjet owners should fol-
low to help ensure the best possible printed image.

Avoid refilling cartridges

Inkjet cartridges are expensive — believe me, I know. My inkjets have a ravenous
appetite, but I don’t use a refill kit to save money, and I don’t recommend that you
do either if you want the best results from your hardware. You should avoid reusing
cartridges for a number of good reasons:

✦ You’re reusing the print head. As mentioned previously, one of the advan-
tages of using an inkjet is that a replacement cartridge provides you with a
brand new print head. When you refill a cartridge, you’re reusing inkjet noz-
zles that weren’t designed for such use. Although your prints may look fine
right after the cartridge has been refilled, you risk a significant degradation in
image quality within a few weeks or a month. (The time you have before
things start to go downhill varies by manufacturer and cartridge design.)
✦ The ink is generally lower quality. The ink used in a refill kit is rarely as high
quality as the original ink from the manufacturer, and you have to recalibrate
your system if the ink varies even the slightest in color from the manufac-
turer’s ink.
✦ You may void your warranty. Check your printer’s warranty to make sure
that the manufacturer allows you to refill cartridges.
✦ It’s usually messy work. Depending on the design of the cartridge and the
manufacturer of the refill kit, you may find yourself creating quite a mess
while you’re adding ink. If you do decide to try refilling, make sure that you’ve
spread newspaper or some other covering over your table before you begin.

Check your paper feed often

It’s always a good idea to check your printer’s paper feed before each print job; it
only takes a second. Here’s what to look for:
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726 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

✦ Adjust the paper guides. Make sure that the paper guides are feeding the
sheets straight into the printer. It’s easy for these guides to be jostled out
of position, which can cause the printer to feed pages out of the proper
orientation.
✦ Disable alternate feed features. Ensure that the right paper is heading to the
printer. For example, one of my inkjet printers has a dual-tray feature con-
trolled from a switch at the front. To avoid printing on the wrong type of
paper, I make it a point to check this switch each time I use the printer. This
also applies to manual envelope feeds.
✦ Make sure that the paper is fed in the proper direction. Even the cheapest
bond paper usually has an edge that the manufacturer recommends you load
first.
✦ Check your media for tears or creases. Naturally, you’ll have less of a prob-
lem with damaged media if you keep your kids away from your printer, but
take a moment when adding paper to check the condition of your media.

Load multiple sheets of the same type of media

Here’s a tip that will help to you avoid paper jams and misfed pages, especially with
older printers: Never print with a single sheet of paper in your printer’s paper tray.
As your printer gets older, the rubber and plastic drive rollers that are used to
“grab” sheets shrink somewhat due to their age, and it becomes harder over time
for your printer to pick up a single sheet.

If you’re using the paper tray instead of a manual feed slot, load at least five sheets
of paper to help elevate the sheets so that the paper is easier to feed. On the other
hand, never load more than the manufacturer’s suggested maximum number of
sheets, which can also cause misfeeds.

Another source of paper jams is a mix of different types of paper — with different
weights and thicknesses — in your printer’s paper tray. Always use one type of
media at a time.

Specify the paper type

Your inkjet printer driver should allow you to select the paper type that you’re
using. In the Print dialog box, click the Properties button next to the printer name
to display the paper type field.

Although these are usually only general categories, such as “glossy photo paper” or
“plain paper,” you’ll still get significantly better results if you choose the proper
type instead of leaving the field set to the default. Figure 17-13 illustrates the paper
type settings for an HP PhotoSmart printer.
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Chapter 17 ✦ Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer 727

Figure 17-13: Selecting the right paper type can

improve the appearance of your photograph.

Note Some printers can now automatically sense the paper type and choose the correct
setting for you.

Proper Printer Care and Feeding

Proper printer maintenance is as important to your final output as the type of ink
and media that you’re using. Unfortunately, many printer owners simply ignore
printer upkeep and only change cartridges when necessary (and then wonder later
why their printers are suffering from paper jams and deteriorating quality). If
you’ve spent several hundred dollars on a piece of hardware, it only makes sense to
spend a few minutes every week to maintain it. In this section, I discuss the steps
you should take to make sure that your printer continues to perform at its best.

Checking cartridges
Although running out of ink or toner while printing isn’t quite as bad as running out
of gas while driving — you won’t end up stranded and walking miles to the next
town — it’s still a royal hassle, especially when you’re running out of time with a
deadline looming. It’s always a good idea to buy a spare cartridge or two, but you
don’t want them sitting on a shelf for too long because the ink “settles” and
degrades over time.
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728 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Luckily, most of today’s photo-quality inkjet and color laser printers allow you to
check the levels of ink or toner remaining, instead of the time-honored method of
shaking a cartridge (which, by the way, can result in clogged and misfiring nozzles
in an inkjet). Printers from Hewlett Packard and Epson can actually display the
approximate level within Windows and Mac OS. For example, Figure 17-14 illus-
trates the ink level display for an HP PhotoSmart P1000 photo-quality printer, which
looks like the owner just bought a new set of cartridges.

Figure 17-14: You can check the ink levels

in this HP printer from the comfort of your
keyboard.

Tackling dust inside

Most of us periodically take a moment or two to wipe down the outside of our com-
puters and printers. As long as you use a static-free soft cloth and make certain that
you’ve cleared any dust from your printer’s fan or ventilation grille, it’s easy to keep
the external case of your printer clean.

However, your printer has a number of openings where dust and dirt can enter —
your computer’s fan may pull dust inside the case as it circulates air, but your
printer is actually open to the outside world. Therefore, it’s just as important to
take care of surface cleaning on the inside as it is on the outside, and the process is
somewhat different for inkjet and laser printers.

Cleaning inkjet printers

Make sure that you check the printer’s manual first for any procedures or warnings
specific to your particular model, but this general cleaning procedure should work
for just about any inkjet printer:
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Chapter 17 ✦ Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer 729

1. Turn off and unplug all cords from your printer.

2. Open your printer’s cover and remove the ink cartridges.
3. Tilt the entire unit to one side.
This step is shown in Figure 17-15.

Compressed air Figure 17-15: The proper way to blast your printer
clean with compressed air

Printer on its side

4. Use a can of compressed air to blast dust from the nooks and crannies
inside your printer.
It’s no wonder that compressed air is such a staple with computer owners all
over the world — you can’t damage anything, and it’s powerful enough to
clean everything.
5. Use a cotton swab dipped in alcohol to wipe down the print cartridge.
This step is shown in Figure 17-16.

Figure 17-16: A cotton swab is perfect for cleaning your inkjet’s

cartridge cradle.
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730 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

6. Visually check the paper rollers for torn pieces of paper.

Remove any paper that you discover. Tweezers come in handy for pieces that
are jammed at the end of the rollers.
7. Visually check the ribbon cable and all internal wires.
Make sure that nothing has shaken loose and needs to be reconnected.
8. Set the unit back upright and reload the ink cartridges.
Don’t forget to make sure that the cartridges are firmly seated.
9. Close your printer’s cover, reattach the cables, and turn your printer on.

Follow this procedure on a regular basis — once a month or so — and you’ll extend
the life of your inkjet printer and maintain its image quality for years to come.

Cleaning laser printers

Take care while cleaning your color laser printer because unlike an inkjet, a laser
printer can reach high temperatures while it’s in operation, and the delicate
exposed parts require a light touch. Also, laser toner can be extremely messy if lib-
erated from its cartridge — it can permanently stain clothing, and it can hurt kids
and pets. Therefore, it’s very important to read your printer’s manual for additional
instructions and warnings before attempting to clean your printer.

Here’s a general cleaning procedure you should follow every three months (this
applies to most laser printers):

1. Turn off and unplug all cords from your printer.

2. Open your printer’s cover and remove the toner cartridge.
If you have a spare cartridge box, it’s a good idea to replace the cartridge in
the box to prevent it from prolonged exposure to light.
3. If your laser printer’s corona wires are exposed, you can usually use a dry
cotton swab to carefully wipe them.
Never use any cleaning solutions or fluids while cleaning these wires.
4. Remove any torn pieces of paper from the paper feed rollers.
As shown in Figure 17-17, you can use a cotton swab dipped in alcohol to wipe
excess toner from the rollers.

5. Replace the toner cartridge and close the printer cover.

Figure 17-17: Use a cotton

Cotton swab swab to wipe down the paper
feed rollers in your laser printer.
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Chapter 17 ✦ Choosing and Using a Desktop Printer 731

6. Use a can of compressed air to blow the accumulated dust from the
outside of the printer’s fan grille.
7. Close your printer’s cover, reattach the cables, and turn your
printer on.

Cleaning and calibrating ink cartridges

Before you go any farther, heed this warning: Never touch the nozzle surfaces
or print head on an ink cartridge! Any contact with your skin is likely to foul
the inkjet nozzles, which will significantly degrade the print quality.

Having stated that, thought, most of today’s inkjets include a nozzle cleaning
feature that you can access from the manufacturer’s driver or printer soft-
ware. For example, Figure 17-18 illustrates the first screen of the two-stage
Cartridge Cleaning Wizard for a Hewlett Packard PhotoSmart printer.

Figure 17-18: Preparing to

clean the inkjet cartridges
on an HP inkjet printer

HP photo-quality printers also include two different calibration features in the

accompanying Toolbox software — one that can fine-tune the position of the
photo paper tray, as shown in Figure 17-19, and one that can identify alignment
problems with the cartridges and make corrections, as shown in Figure 17-20.

Figure 17-19: Calibrating

the photo paper tray for
precise orientation
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732 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Figure 17-20: The HP cartridge

calibration feature can fix cartridge
alignment problems.

Using a laser cleaning sheet

As mentioned previously, laser toner has a nasty way of sticking to just about
anything — including everything that’s on the paper path within your laser printer.
Although this chapter explains how to clean the paper feed rollers and corona
wires within your laser printer, many parts in your printer remain inaccessible to
you but can still be reached by wayward toner.

To clean the entire paper path, I recommend using a laser cleaning sheet — these
sheets can remove blotches and streaks caused by toner spills. By running a clean-
ing sheet through your laser printer (just like a regular sheet of paper) you can pick
up both dust and excess toner; after you’ve used the sheet once a month for three
months or so, toss it in the trash and open another. I use the laser printer cleaning
sheets manufactured by ACL Staticide (www.aclstaticide.com).

Summary
In this chapter, I discussed the world of inkjet, dye-sublimation, and color laser
printing for the digital photographer, including features to look for when shopping
and how to install both parallel port and USB printers. I also covered the various
common types of papers and inks used for printing photos, and I provided tips for
optimizing your printer’s performance and producing the best possible images with
an inkjet printer. Finally, I demonstrated how to maintain and clean your inkjet and
color laser printer.

✦ ✦ ✦
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Making and
Using Device
18
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Profiles for In This Chapter

Color management

Predictable explained

Monitor calibration

Output and profile creation

Scanner calibration
and profile creation

Printer calibration

A t one time or another, you’ve probably taken a digital

photo, or scanned a photograph and viewed it on your
computer. The image may have been exactly what you
and profile creation

Optimizing images
for printing
expected, but more often than not, you had a few surprises.
You may have seen sky areas that were totally blown out, or
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
shadows with no detail at all. People in the photo may have
appeared ill because of a yellow-green cast on the image. If
you printed the image, it may have come out just as you saw it
on the monitor, or it may have come out as you originally
expected to view the image.

What in the world is going on here?

Color Management
The answer lies in color management. To achieve predictable
and acceptable results consistently, you must have three items:

✦ A calibrated monitor
✦ A profile for the input device
✦ A profile for the output device
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734 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

If you only view your images on your computer, or place your images on the Web,
the output device is the monitor. You can control what you see on your own moni-
tor, but you have absolutely no control over anyone else’s monitor or platform.
Later in the chapter, I describe a slightly different approach to assessing and color-
managing images for the Web.

The monitor
The “normal” CRT (cathode ray tube) monitor sends beams of electrons at phos-
phors located on the back of its thick glass. Three separate electron “guns” shoot
their beams at three different sets of phosphors. Each set of phosphors is a solid
color — red, green, or blue (RGB). When a phosphor has been “hit” by an electron,
it gets “excited” by the electronic charge and glows. Depending on the intensity of
the beam, the phosphor either glows a little or a lot. The spaces on the monitor
that these phosphors occupy are called pixels. Macs display 72 pixels per inch
(ppi), and PCs display 96 ppi. For this reason, a graphic from a Mac appears larger
on a PC screen and a PC graphic looks smaller on a Mac. If you’re Mac-based and
surf the Web, you’ve undoubtedly noticed that some sites have extremely small
text. More than likely, the site was built on a PC and is being projected onto your
monitor at about 75 percent of its original size.

Several factors can affect the way your monitor displays an image, and even more
factors determine how you perceive that display. For instance, the next time you
are in the television section of a large store, notice the differences in color, contrast,
and brightness between TV sets from different manufacturers. For the same rea-
sons, two otherwise identical monitors from the same manufacturer can provide
two different images. Ambient light, electric lights (whether they’re incandescent or
fluorescent), the location of the lights, reflections (including the clothes you’re
wearing), and the age of the monitor all play important roles in what you see on-
screen.

Fortunately, you can calibrate your monitor yourself, basically for free. Or, if you
have the money and take your images seriously, you can purchase a monitor cali-
bration device and software to do the job. If you have a good eye, you can probably
do just as good a job of calibration as the electronic devices — maybe even a better
job! I go into more detail on monitors later in this chapter.

The scanner
Flatbed color scanners come in two basic types: one-pass and three-pass. Just as a
monitor projects red, green, and blue light onto the screen, a scanner reads and
records those colors from your photograph. The scanner unit travels along its rails
at a constant speed and shines a light source on the image. As the light hits the
image, it is reflected onto a series of mirrors that ultimately focus the light informa-
tion through the scanner lens. The light is then passed to the CCD (charge-coupled
device) where it is converted to analog voltage. This analog signal is converted into
a digital signal that is transmitted to the computer through the logic board, result-
ing in pixels on your monitor. In a three-pass scanner, a pass is made for each of the
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 735

three colors. A one-pass scanner uses hardware and software that allow red, green,
and blue information to be retrieved in a single pass.

Service bureaus and large printing houses may perform scans on a drum scanner
that uses PMT light sensors instead of CCDs. PMT stands for photomultiplier tubes —
vacuum tube technology. They provide excellent results, but are definitely on the
high end of the price scale. Luckily for those of us with shallower pockets, the gap
between PMT and CCD is becoming smaller all the time.

No matter what technology is involved, each scanner “sees” or interprets color in

slightly different ways. This creates another glitch in the search for the optimal
image. You need to know exactly how your scanner translates the color in order to
make corrections to the image before you print it.

The printer
Ah, now the can of worms. Three basic types of color printers are in use today —
inkjet, dye-sublimation, and laser. If you are not interested in PostScript printing
capabilities, you can find an adequate color inkjet printer for under $200. Color
laser printers start a little higher, and both inkjet and laser printers can run into
five-figure price tags. Naturally, the level of quality goes up commensurately.
Another type of color printer is the thermal wax printer. Because of the way this
printer applies the image to paper, the colors are extremely vibrant and pure.
However, inkjet printers seem to be the most popular, especially if photographic
imagery is your main concern and price is an issue.

Cross- See Chapter 19 for more on the various types of printers.

Reference
Printers interpret information that comes in digital form and apply this informa-
tion somehow to a piece of paper. Laser and thermal wax printers use CMYK (cyan,
magenta, yellow, and black) inks for the imaging process. Inkjets can be CMYK,
RGB, or RGB plus extra colors (such as magenta, yellow, and cyan for a richer, more
vibrant image).

Consider how complicated this process can become. The scanner supplies RGB
information to the computer, and you change the image into CMYK because you
will eventually print this photo at a conventional printing house. However, you also
want to proof it on your inkjet printer that prints in six colors. Every step of the
way seems to be a potential obstacle in getting the photo printed at all. The final
step — getting the film burned onto plates and the image ultimately printed on
paper — contains two more opportunities that invite color interpretation problems.

The solution: Device profiles

Take heart — help is at hand everywhere you look. You can calibrate your monitor,
and you can use the manufacturer’s information provided with your scanner and
printer to get all of these devices speaking the same language. The information
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736 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

about how a particular monitor, scanner, printer, or printing press deals with color
is called a device profile.

A device profile is a small file that contains information that the computer uses to
understand how a given piece of equipment deals with color. The profile is a vendor-
neutral, cross-platform color management system. Because each device has a differ-
ent color range, the profile acts as an equalizer or translator across platforms and
products. The ICC (International Color Consortium) profile specification was cre-
ated and is monitored by the ICC. Eight major companies — Adobe, Agfa-Gevaert,
Apple, Kodak, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems — formed the ICC in 1993. Taligent
and Silicon Graphics were the other two founders but they dropped their member-
ship in subsequent years. If you want to learn more about ICC, you can visit its site
at www.color.org.

Introduction to Color Management Systems

No single device can reproduce all the colors that humans can see. Each step in the
digital photography process can yield a different view of color. Some devices see or
print more reds, and others have more blues. For example, suppose that you take a
picture of a red rose with a green background. Your digital camera sees a deep ver-
milion rose with a darker green background. Your monitor shows a bluer, almost
purple rose, with a blue-green background. Your printer prints a slightly orange
rose with a bright green background. Without a Color Management System (CMS),
these discrepancies can occur.

The colors that a particular device can display or produce are said to be within
gamut. Non-reproducible colors are called out-of-gamut. When a device is presented
with an out-of-gamut color, the device will do the best job possible with the soft-
ware it has to approximate the color. With CMS, you can end up extremely close to
the red rose on the green background that you saw originally. Keep in mind that the
entire concept of color management is highly contentious — opinions abound — so
use this information to make your own choice.

What comprises CMS?

You must remember that the use of CMS doesn’t alter your image in any way. You
aren’t changing the color in your image or adjusting its range of colors. You are,
however, providing each device in the chain of events with information about the
other devices in such a manner that you can make an informed judgment about
the image before you go to final output. In this environment, you can modify colors
and values with the knowledge that your printout will be faithful to what you see
on the monitor. During each step of the process, the profiles interpret the color
information — whether it is data from the scanner, the image on the monitor, the
output from an inkjet or laser printer, or results from a commercial printing press —
to provide optimal output. Many manufacturers have developed software that does
the conversion for various devices, called the color management engine or Color
Matching Module (CMM).
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 737

Color modes
There are five basic color modes. As described earlier, the RGB mode consists of
red, green and blue light. Each factor of the light is divided into 255 steps of bright-
ness. (Full strength is 255, and a total lack of light is 0.) As various levels of RGB
lights are added to each other, they create the colors we see on the monitor. Each of
these color modes result in a different color number. A very bright red in RGB mode
is 255r, 0g, 0b; in CMYK, the color number is 0c, 98m, 83y, 0k; in Lab mode, the color
number is 63L, 90a, 78b; and in HSB, the color number is 0h, 100s, 100b. On the Web,
the color number is FF0000. Because each device in your workflow also perceives
these colors in a different manner, the ICC created the system for developing color
profiles so that color remains standard across all platforms, programs, and devices.

CMS is not software or hardware. CMS is a small recipe each device uses to create
or display colors. A Microsoft Word file has information in a header that you never
see, but that information tells the computer that this is indeed a Word file, not a
Word Perfect or HTML file. CMS works the same way with unique tags that you
don’t see, but they tell the monitor how the scanner interpreted colors and let the
printer know what it must do to provide the color the user expects to see.

These profiles can be embedded in documents as the document is opened in

Photoshop, if you have the settings configured to do so. Go to Edit ➪ Color Settings,
and check the box that says “Profile Mismatches: Ask When Opening.” After making
this selection, you will be asked to apply a profile, to accept the document’s profile
(if it has one), or disregard color management altogether. If you choose to embed
the profile, the document becomes tagged. A tagged document carries the ICC pro-
file with it from one program to another, and from one computer to another. I may
be overstating the obvious, but just so you know, an untagged document has no ICC
profile and contains only raw color data. When you open an untagged image in an
image-editing program, you view it in whatever working space the program is cur-
rently in. At any time, you can open Edit ➪ Color Settings and select or change color
profile settings. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that passing untagged
images between workers or computers is a recipe for disaster.

You may not want to use color management, however, for several reasons, including
the following:

✦ You only work with Web-destined images. Because you can’t possibly con-
trol how people in other parts of the world calibrate their monitors, let alone
their viewing conditions, attempting to create the perfect image is probably a
waste of your time. This doesn’t mean that you can’t use CMS; it only means
that your results will be consistent on machines in your environment, but out
of control when viewed on the Web. If this is your situation and you use
Adobe Photoshop, you can use the Web Graphic Defaults setting, which com-
plies with the average RGB settings of most monitors.
✦ Your printer or service bureau prefers to work with proprietary CMYK val-
ues for their specific printing conditions. Some software and printer manu-
facturers actually suggest that you work with color management off in certain
program/printer arrangements.
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738 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

✦ You don’t plan on repurposing your images. In other words, you control the
final output, and the image won’t be sent to another artist, photographer, or
printer for output or alteration. However, suppose that you took photos for a
catalog that is going to be printed by a commercial printer, and at a later date,
the catalog must be put online. The repurposing of the images from CMYK
TIFFs back to RGB JPEGs may create a lot of heartaches for you without CMS
in place. Colors may vary a little or a lot.

Here is a general rule to follow when considering the use of CMS: The more devices,
computers, and operators that handle an image, the more likely a candidate you are
for a serious CMS regimen. If this describes you, then jump into the next section to
create some profiles.

Source profiles
The source profile is the profile of your digital camera, scanner, or monitor. The pro-
file may be embedded in the file (tagged), and tells the CMS that this RGB data is
from a particular scanner or monitor. The profile tells the computer what the colors
really look like. Your scanner came with a profile that you should use. If the scanner
starts giving you strange but predictable color errors, you can modify the profile as
described in Chapter 8.

Target profiles
The target profile can be about the monitor, a laser printer, an inkjet printer, or a
commercial press. This profile contains information on how the target device per-
ceives the color and how it is output — whether through pixels on a monitor or
halftone dots on paper.

The target profile can also be created by following specific instructions within your
photo editing software, to compensate for different colors of paper. For example, a
newspaper stock is much grayer than typical magazine stock. Papers are graded
(and priced) according to their level of whiteness. Below the brightest white stock,
printing papers have varying colorcasts from blue to yellow to red. Commercial
printing inks are transparent, and the color of the paper stock affects the way
the printing appears. If the stock has a yellow cast, then light blue skies can turn
slightly green (and more than likely, you don’t want that). To compensate, you can
create a profile for each stock that you use so your image-editing program won’t
create bizarre effects when your images come off the printing press.

Rendering intents
If your printer can’t reproduce a particular shade of red, then you can logically
assume that your printer’s approximation of that color will appear distorted. To
deal with these out-of-gamut colors, programs such as Adobe Photoshop provide
rendering intents.

Corel PHOTO-PAINT provides Perceptual and Saturation Intents and Automatic

Intent. The first two have the same basic definition; PHOTO-PAINT uses Perceptual
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 739

Intent for photographic or bitmap images and Saturation Intent for vector-based
artwork. Automatic Intent is the program’s default and makes a software decision
for the best way to proceed. Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements have all
four of the following rendering intents:

✦ Perceptual Intent: The source space is converted to the target space so that
the general appearance of the image looks natural to our eyes. To accomplish
this, some or all colors may be made darker or lighter and have more or less
saturation. Most photographic images can use this intent with good results.
See Figure 18-1 for a comparison of the four rendering intents that Photoshop
provides. Keep in mind that grayscale reproduction doesn’t do justice to the
differences in appearance that rendering intents provide.

Figure 18-1: From left to right, the images have Perceptual, Saturation, Relative
Colorimetric, and Absolute Colorimetric intents.

✦ Saturation Intent: Suppose that, during your trip to the Bahamas, you took a
picture of a clothesline hanging with bright yellow dresses, brilliant red shirts,
iridescent green stockings, and startlingly white t-shirts in front of a turquoise
building beneath an azure blue sky. Saturation intent would be a good method
to use to render the image. These colors are more than likely fully saturated at
the expense of the real colors in the image (grass, tree bark, clouds). The satu-
ration intent converts the source colors to the target colors without paying
any attention to the hue or lightness of the image. Bright, vivid colors are the
result. You wouldn’t want to use this on a photo of Aunt Marge unless you’re
tired of her annual fruitcake — she won’t like what it does to her skin tones,
and she’ll cross you off the gift list. This rendering intent should come with a
warning: “Colors in this image are not as vibrant in real life.”
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740 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

✦ Absolute Colorimetric Intent: Any colors that lie within the target gamut are
unchanged with this intent. The process involved in this intent is to keep the
majority of the color accurate while modifying out-of-gamut colors consider-
ably. If the target gamut is smaller than the source gamut, colors that are dif-
ferent but fairly close can become a single color in the target space. In order
for this method to be optimal, the white point of the image must be set cor-
rectly. The white point can be a specular highlight, or any other area in the
photo that doesn’t contain color.
✦ Relative Colorimetric Intent: This method converts the white point in the
source gamut to the white point in the target gamut. In the case of printing,
the white point is the paper or substrate on which you scan and/or print. In-
gamut colors are produced faithfully, and out-of-gamut colors are reproduced
as closely as the software can get. If you know that the photo you are scan-
ning has a particular colorcast — due to age, for instance — or your ultimate
printing paper has a colorcast, then this is the best rendering intent for you.
Relative Colorimetric Intent does a better job of reproducing “normal” colors
if the image doesn’t contain many out-of-gamut colors, or if the out-of-gamut
colors are not significant. When used in conjunction with Black Point
Compensation (in Photoshop’s Color Settings dialog box), color
relationships are preserved with a minimal loss in color faithfulness.

When you use rendering intents, you’ll see changes in the image on your monitor.
Remember, however, that the image itself has not changed — only the way it is
being displayed. Using rendering intents simply allows you to make accurate
changes in your image and to achieve optimal results at each step along the way.

Monitor Calibration and Profile Creation

Just as hair turns gray with time, monitors also show signs of aging. If you’re so
inclined, you can dye your hair — if you’re lucky enough to keep it in the first place.
But when a monitor starts changing colors, about all you can do is replace it. After
a certain point, no amount of tweaking and calibrating will revitalize an old monitor.
The screen will get progressively dimmer as the phosphors wear out. Depending on
which phosphors go first, you can end up with a noticeable color shift as well.
When this happens, dig deep and get yourself a new monitor.

Your environment also affects what you see on-screen. If your monitor faces an
open window, colors and brightness on the monitor will be different than what you
would see if your monitor were located in a dimly lit room. This discrepancy is
related to the adjustments that your eyes have to make. Think about it — have you
ever watched a movie in a theatre that kept the house lights on? The image on the
screen is washed out and dull. The same concept applies to monitors. If color is
critical in your work, you should have minimal ambient light in your workspace.
The perfect workroom faces south so that the sun doesn’t create moving light
across your room. This light can cause reflections on the monitor and colorcasts.
Your eyes make adjustments to those bright or colored areas that can really make a
mess out of your image’s color enhancement. Many graphics professionals have
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 741

shades on the top and sides of their monitors to further block ambient light and
glare. Some monitor manufacturers offer models with plastic hoods, but I’ve gotten
along fine for years with a piece of foam board painted flat black. It does tend to
make you more prone to tunnel vision, however.

If you have incandescent lighting in your workspace, colors will appear differently
than if you installed fluorescent lights or turned the lights off. Watch for glares from
the overhead lights, too.

When I take a photo of a highly reflective object, I never wear a white shirt or light
colored clothing of any kind because they will be picked up in the reflections on the
object. The same holds true when working in front of a monitor. If you’re wearing a
bright white blouse or shirt and the sun is streaming through the window and onto
your face, the light reflected off your clothing will show up on the monitor. Image
editing becomes nearly impossible to do.

If you calibrate and create a profile for your monitor in your home office and end up
taking the monitor to your business office, you should make a new profile for that
location. Calibrating your monitor once a month just to keep on top of the situation
is a good habit to get into.

Software programs differ in their approach to calibration and the creation of device
profiles. In Jasc’s Paint Shop Pro, you’re pretty limited to the Color Management
controls within Windows 98 and later versions (not possible in Windows 95).
Photoshop has great tools, including Adobe Gamma. Corel Photo Paint is similar to
Photoshop.

You can calibrate your monitor in one of two ways. If you’re timid about the pro-
cess, you can buy a calibration device and software, or you can just do the job man-
ually. If you take your time and pay close attention to what’s going on, the manual
process works just fine — every bit as well as the electronic devices. The bottom
line is that you either depend on software to do the job for you, or you use your
own eyes as the ultimate judge. Neither method is difficult, and it only takes a few
minutes.

Whichever method you choose to use, you should perform a few tasks in order to
achieve the best results:

✦ Have the monitor on for at least an hour before calibrating in order to make
sure it has warmed up completely.
✦ Make sure the monitor’s screen is clean and streak-free.
✦ Remove the fancy background image you have on the screen and replace it
with a neutral gray, pattern-free screen. You can switch back after you’re done
calibrating, although your editing efforts will be easier and more accurate if
you keep the background gray and uncluttered.
✦ If you have more than one monitor connected to your computer, be sure to
adjust them both to the same white point (5,000 degrees K or 6,500 degrees K)
and calibrate them at the same time.
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742 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Calibrating by eye
The term “calibrating by eye” is a little misleading because you use software and
methods from major manufacturers. If you have Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop
Elements, you also have Adobe Gamma on your computer. It was installed as part of
the program’s installation process. In Windows, you can find Adobe Gamma in the
Control Panels folder or in the Program Files/Common
Files/Adobe/Calibration folder on your hard drive. In Mac OS 9, you can find it
in the Control Panels folder from the Apple menu. In OS X, you can access it in
System/Control Panels folder. Double-click the icon to start the program.

When the Adobe Gamma dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 18-2, you are imme-
diately faced with a decision — do you want to go through it step by step, or use the
Control Panel method? You perform the same steps with either method, but if you
choose Control Panel, you have to go through the steps manually. If you’re comfort-
able calibrating your monitor, you can use this method to quickly run through the
routine. If you run into trouble, you can call on the wizard in Windows or assistant
in the Mac OS; both lead you through the process one option at a time.

Figure 18-2: The Adobe Gamma start-up screen

Choose Step by step and click the Next button. Your monitor probably came with a
profile, and you should choose it in the dialog box, which is shown in Figure 18-3. If
you can’t find a profile for your monitor, then you need to go online to the manufac-
turer’s site and download the pertinent phosphor information.

Set the contrast on your monitor (one of those knobs, wheels, and buttons that
you’ve been ignoring for months) to its highest setting. Then you can tackle the
brightness settings. In the dialog box, you see a black square inside a white square,
as shown in Figure 18-4. Adjust the brightness control until the center box is dark
as possible — but not totally black — and the white box stays white — not gray.
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 743

Figure 18-3: Choose your

monitor to begin the
calibration process.

Figure 18-4: This window

helps you get the correct
brightness and contrast on
your monitor.

The next window shows you the monitor profile that is currently active. If you think
it’s wrong, you can change it. Double-click the name to bring up the window shown
in Figure 18-5. In this window, you can input the data that you downloaded from a
manufacturer if you were missing a profile. The x and y values indicate the color’s
position in a chromaticity chart. A chromaticity chart maps the full range of visible
color and the gamuts of various input and output devices. It’s probably not a good
idea to change these numbers just to see what happens — if you lose the correct
settings, you’ll have to start the calibration process again.

Figure 18-5: You can create custom

phosphor profiles here by inputting RGB
values.
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744 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Following the profile selection, you adjust the actual gamma of your monitor. Gamma
is a measurement of the brightness of your midtones. In the middle of the window,
you see boxes that contain thin horizontal lines with a smaller box within them.
Moving the slider makes the inner box darker or lighter, depending on the direction
the slider is moved. You must adjust it until the boxes merge with their backgrounds,
and the easiest way to accomplish this is to squint. When you can’t see the bound-
aries of the inner box, you’ve adjusted the gamma correctly. Next, set the gamma in
the menu. The Macintosh gamma default is 1.8; in Windows, the gamma is 2.2.

More choices await you in the next window. Here you set the white point of your
monitor. The dialog box shows what is currently set, but you can change the setting
in the drop-down menu, or choose Measure. If you select Measure, the monitor
turns completely black, and you see three gray squares in the middle of your moni-
tor, as shown in Figure 18-6. You then choose which of the squares is the most neu-
tral gray. Click the neutral square to move it to the center. If the new square is more
neutral, then click it; repeat the process until you’re satisfied. After you finish, click
Enter or Esc to return to the Adobe Gamma Assistant.

Figure 18-6: These three boxes are various colors of gray. You must decide which
is the most neutral gray.

The next screen, shown in Figure 18-7, allows you to choose a white point to work
with. Most color-critical work is done at 5,000 degrees K, and this is the setting you
should use on a Windows machine. If you’re on a Mac, 6,500 degrees K will provide
better results.

The last screen contains two buttons that allow you to see both the settings you had
before the calibration and the settings that you just created. If you’re satisfied with
the monitor’s new look, choose Save the Profile. Use the name of the monitor and
the current date in the profile’s name so you can keep track of the prevailing profile.
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 745

Figure 18-7: Set the white point of your monitor.

Electronic sensor calibration

A few brands of calibration devices are available on the market. They all work
pretty much the same way by taking the guesswork and subjective judgment calls
away from you and handling it electronically. In this section, I walk you through a
calibration sequence using a Spyder from PhotoCAL. PhotoCAL is a product
of ColorVision, which is owned by PANTONE®. The Spyder is an extremely well
designed and manufactured device. Fresh out of the box, the main unit is assem-
bled to calibrate an LCD monitor. All that’s necessary is to snap on the LCD hanger
and counterweight, and you’re ready to tackle the LCD screen. Calibrating a CRT
requires you to remove a circular filter from the face of the Spyder and add a flexi-
ble mask. After you’ve installed the software from the CD and restarted the com-
puter, it’s pretty much a wait-and-see operation.

On a Mac, open the Monitors Control Panel, select Color, and then click the
Calibrate button. You have a choice of ColorSync or the PhotoCAL method. Choose
PhotoCAL.

If you are running Windows, look in the Programs/PANTONE COLORVISION folder

for PhotoCAL. On a Windows 2000 machine, an alias for PhotoCAL will appear on
the desktop. Double-click the icon to start the program.

The program starts by telling you that you are going to adjust the contrast and
brightness and then the gamma and color temperature. Then you are asked to
select the type of monitor you’re calibrating: CRT or LCD.

The next two windows ask you to set the monitor’s gamma and color temperature.
For the gamma, you have a choice of 1.8 or 2.2. As in the manual method, Mac users
should choose 1.8, and PC users select 2.2. The color temperature window allows
you to pick from 5,000 degrees K or 6,500 degrees K. Here again, with the platform
difference comes a slight controversy. Most graphics professionals recommend
using 5,000 degrees K. If your present monitor gives you satisfactory whites —
meaning, no yellow cast — then stick with 5,000 degrees K. However, you will
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746 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

probably be happier using 6,500 degrees K, even though your whites will be a tad
blue. The next screen asks you to adjust an LCD monitor to factory default settings,
and CRT monitors are adjusted using the monitor’s controls.

With a CRT, you adjust the contrast and brightness in the next window by turning
the contrast all the way up using the monitor’s controls. The Set Brightness window
contains a large rectangle made up of four gray blocks. Adjust the brightness con-
trol on your monitor until the four blocks of dark gray are discernable, but not
distinct as shown in Figure 18-8.

Figure 18-8: This window helps you adjust the brightness of

your monitor.

Next, the program asks you a question that may send you off searching the moni-
tor’s controls. You have to tell the program whether the monitor allows you to set
individual levels for R, G, and B; whether it has presets for 5K, 6.5K, or 9.3K; or
whether it has no controls for color temperature at all.

That was the hard work. From here on out, it’s all electronic, and about as exciting
as watching the lawn grow. You are asked to attach the sucker device to the window
in a designated position on a CRT monitor, similar to that shown in Figure 18-9. If
you are working with an LCD monitor, then the hanger and counterweight must be
adjusted to place the Spyder in the correct location as shown in Figure 18-10. Be
extremely careful not to press on the LCD screen. (Do not use the suction cups on an
LCD monitor.) The window behind the Spyder turns black, and then in gentle incre-
ments, slowly turns to the brightest red that your monitor can create. It goes
through the same routine with green and blue, and then repeats the process. Then
it does a couple passes of black and white and starts to create the profile for the
monitor.
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 747

Figure 18-9: The PhotoCAL Spyder calibration device is

attached to a CRT monitor with four suction cups.

Figure 18-10: The PhotoCAL Spyder hangs from the

top of an LCD monitor with a counterweight dangling
over the back.
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748 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

The last step in the calibration process allows you to name your new profile. A
Windows NT4 computer saves the profile in the directory with the PhotoCAL appli-
cation. Windows 98, 2000, or XP adds the profile to the list of monitor profiles in the
Display Settings Control Panel. The new profile will be set as the default monitor
profile. On a Mac, the profile is saved in the ColorSync Profiles folder within the
System folder. As you’re leaving the PhotoCAL program, you can select the new
profile from the list in the Monitors dialog box.

If you’re doing work that is color-critical, you should calibrate your system at
least every two or three weeks to keep on top of monitor performance and age.
Eventually, when you just can’t get rid of the dingy white cast in the whites, put the
poor thing out of its misery — give it to the kids for their games — and buy yourself
a new monitor.

Scanner Calibration and Profile Creation

Scanners come with a few different types of color management sophistication. Low-
end models have no color management at all — you simply operate the scanner and
bring the raw RGB data into an image-editing program to optimize the color. Basic
color-managed scanners work by creating a scan into your monitor’s color space.
The most efficient workflow, however, comes from a fully color-managed scanner.
The scanner’s profile is unique to that model scanner, and you should use that pro-
file unless you know that the light source has somehow changed with time or use.
You should also check the scanner manufacturer’s Web site occasionally for the lat-
est scanner driver update.

If your scanner didn’t come with a profile, or if you are a masochist, you may want
to create your own profile. In order to do so, you must turn off all the scanner’s
auto-correction features. At this point, it will deliver raw, high-bit RGB data to the
computer. This means that your target profile basically consists of your RGB work-
ing space. The problem is that some low-end scanners don’t give you the option of
turning auto-correction off, so you’re stymied. If you want to create your own pro-
file for higher-end scanners, be warned that by bypassing the manufacturer’s pro-
file, you may be losing color information due to the different gamut of your monitor.
If the monitor’s sense of RGB is significantly different from the scanner’s capabili-
ties of capturing RGB, you have succeeded in eliminating color that may have been
usable further down the line, such as in CMYK printing.

Most users will be better off by just scanning the image and getting all the informa-
tion the scanner can provide. Use all the contrast/brightness features of the scan-
ner during the prescan stage so the image is as strong as it can be. Then bring the
image into a program such as Adobe Photoshop. Depending on the defaults you
have set in Photoshop, you may be asked about the image’s profile as it opens. You
can assign a profile that fits your workflow and save yourself a lot of work. If you
know you are going to take the image straight to the Web, then you can use your
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 749

monitor’s profile. On the other hand, if you are going to do in-house printing on
your Epson Stylus Photo 1280, using its profile will work out perfectly. If the job is
going to be printed in Japan, for example, you can choose a specific printer profile
that will show you how the image will appear when it’s printed with Japanese ink
formulas.

If you are using Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, you can enable the Missing
Profile warning enabled in the Color Settings dialog box, as shown in Figure 18-11.
Then, when you open a document for the first time, you are able to set your scan-
ner’s profile and have the document converted to your working RGB in the dialog
box that pops up, as shown in Figure 18-12.

Figure 18-11: You can have Photoshop ask you what

to do when an untagged image is about to be opened.
The cursor is over the Missing Profiles/Ask When
Opening option in the Color Settings dialog box.

If you don’t have Missing Profile defaulted, then you can go to Image ➪ Mode Image ➪
Assign Profile. This action brings up the dialog box shown in Figure 18-12. From this
dialog box, you can choose from any of the profiles in the list that apply to your
workflow. Then go to Image ➪ Mode Image ➪ Convert to Profile to choose your
working RGB profile. Notice the options that are available in this window, as shown
in Figure 18-13.
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750 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Figure 18-12: The Assign Profile box enables you to turn

off color management on this image, assign the current
working space, or select a profile from the drop-down
menu.

Figure 18-13: The Convert to Profile window allows

you to change current settings to a variety of profiles.

The job of creating a scanner profile is not for the faint of heart or inexperienced
user. The implication of performing such as task is that you know more about the
color that your scanner can collect than the scanner manufacturer knows. However,
if you know that your scanner’s lamps have gotten old and dim, or that they have
picked up a colorcast, then by all means set up your own profile. To do so, follow
these steps:

1. Scan an image with known values, such as a Kodak Q-60 Color Input Target,
as shown in Figure 18-14.
2. Set the monitor profile as the source and RGB Color as the destination
profile.
Unfortunately, this has the result of limiting your scans to the color gamut of
your monitor. This gamut is usually smaller than the scanner’s gamut, so you
will be losing color that the manufacturer’s profile may have provided.
3. Prescan the image and color-correct as much as you can within the
scanner’s software.
4. Get the most tonal range and contrast that you can get from the scan.
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 751

Figure 18-14: The Kodak Q-60 Color Input Target helps you
create an accurate scanner profile.

5. Create a profile and set the software’s default to embed the profile in
the files.
Then, when you bring it into your image-editing program, you can work on
saturation and color balance problems that you couldn’t deal with in the scan-
ning process.

Printer Calibration and Profile Creation

When you upgrade your operating system, or even change from PC to Mac plat-
forms, you need to update your printer drivers and change the profiles, as well.
Before doing any color-critical work, go online and download the most current ver-
sions. This action assures you that the information coming from the computer will
be reproduced as faithfully as possible on a given machine.

Just as you need a properly calibrated monitor and scanner, you also need a prop-
erly calibrated printer. Most printers come with instructions for the calibration pro-
cess, which usually involve printing a built-in or canned image that is compared to
a hard copy provided with the printer’s literature. You can then adjust the amounts
of ink that are laid down until they match the control copy. When your printer pro-
duces output identical to that from the manufacturer, the printer is calibrated.

Printing with Color Management in Photoshop

To set up the correct profiles for printing, go to File ➪ Print Options, then check the
Show More Options box. The drop-down menu allows you to choose Color
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752 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Management or Output; select Color Management. You also see a section for the
Source Space and another for the Print Space, as shown in Figure 18-15. Choose
Document as the Source Space to ask the printer to reproduce the image as you see
it on your monitor. The Proof option prints as close as possible to how the image
appears when coming off of the device that you’ve selected. In the Print Space box,
Profile lists many devices and paper/printing press types. The Intent choices are
Perceptual, Saturation, Relative Colorimetric, and Absolute Colorimetric (see the
section on these options earlier in this chapter).

Figure 18-15: Setting up the printer profiles in Photoshop

By using various combinations of these options, you can get a hard copy of your
image as it should appear when it’s finally printed. If the document is to be printed
on newsprint instead of glossy magazine stock, or even to be sent overseas where
the ink formulations are different than in the United States, you can get a pretty
good idea what the job will look like. This is due to the fact that Photoshop will
apply the various profiles — say for newsprint stock — as the document is sent to
your desktop printer. In the case of newsprint, the image printed on your laser
printer will show a graying of the background, and colors will appear dull — just as
they will in “real life.” Then you can make intelligent adjustments to the image
before you send it out.

You have two more choices on the list of profiles that you can choose from:
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 753

✦ Same as Source: If you have already converted the image to the output space,
then you should select this option because it makes no additional conver-
sions to the image.
✦ PostScript Color Management: If you have a PostScript printer, this option is
PostScript Color Management. If you have a non-PostScript printer, then it’s
called Printer Color Management, and it sends source data to the printer
along with the profile information. This method uses the printer’s software to
manage the color instead of what you can do in Photoshop. You probably
don’t want to use this method because of the different ways PostScript han-
dles color management within PostScript Level 2 and 3.

Optimizing images for printing

A few years back, a movie called “The Big Picture” came out. In it, a young
writer/wannabe director (Kevin Bacon) was pitching a movie that he wanted to be
shot in black and white. In the movie, the producer tells Kevin Bacon’s character
that shooting the movie in black and white isn’t a good idea because all theaters
have converted to color projectors. I think of that scene just about every time I
adjust the black and white points of a color image.

You can do many things to create image perfection, but here are the basic steps
involved in getting the most out of your image:

✦ Set white and black points

✦ Adjust gamma
✦ Remove dust and scratches if necessary
✦ Sharpen the image
✦ Optimize file size

Other chapters explore the first three tasks, but in the next section, I explore a cou-
ple of programs that make the last two jobs much easier than using commands in
your photo-editing program. For sharpening, I explore nik SharpenerPro. If you
want to repurpose your image — that is, put it on the Web now, print it in a CMYK
brochure from a commercial printer, then create Giclée prints to sell later — then
you should know that Lizard Tech’s Genuine Fractals PrintPro 2.5 can’t be beat.

Sharpening an image
You probably know how the four Sharpen filters in Photoshop differentiate, but just
for basic review, sharpening increases the contrast between adjacent pixels in an
image. When colors abut each other, our eyes make subtle adjustments and merge
the colors at their border. This creates a softening effect in our mind. Using a Sharpen
filter raises the contrast along the border by either lowering or raising the darkness
of the colors of pixels immediately adjacent to the border. With a hard edge, our eyes
have something to differentiate the two colored areas; it becomes sharp in our minds.
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754 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

✦ The Sharpen filter performs this action over the pixels in an entire image for
an overall sharpening effect.
✦ Sharpen More is just a bit stronger of an effect.
✦ Sharpen Edges leaves large areas of color soft while sharpening their edges.
✦ Unsharp Mask is by far the most useful of the four filters. This filter is mainly
intended for edges, but creates a dark and light line on each side of the color
border. The sharpening effect is quite pronounced, but you should take care
not to overdo it because artifacts can crop up in the image and ruin it in just a
couple of mouse clicks. Unsharp Mask is a term left over from the days of
darkroom tricks with film negatives and positives in commercial printing.

For most purposes, these sharpening filters are good enough. If you want to get the
sharpening done quickly, efficiently, and consistently, however, you can certainly
use the program that I discuss in the next section.

Going beyond “good enough”

It hasn’t always worked out that way, but I’ve tried to keep a motto of “Good enough
isn’t” in my work. This is what’s so exciting about nik SharpenerPro (I’m not being
cavalier about capitalization — the company doesn’t capitalize the name). You may
have learned a trick or two about the Unsharp Mask filter, but nik has created a plug-
in that takes sharpening to another level. The program lists for $329, but is worth
every penny. Two other available versions of Sharpener are less expensive — the
least expensive of which is nik Sharpener Inkjet/Internet at $199, which sharpens
for inkjet printers and Web imaging only.

SharpenerPro does four types of image sharpening:

✦ Color laser printing

✦ Inkjet printing
✦ Internet imaging
✦ Offset printing

Each of the sharpening types have an Autoscan feature. All but the Internet selec-
tion have manual controls that allow you to go beyond what the program has ascer-
tained is the optimal image sharpness.

SharpenerPro has a working philosophy when it comes to the manner in which the
program accomplishes sharpening. I hate to get into semantics, but it’s necessary
in order to use the plug-in efficiently. To quote nik, the plug-in “does not focus on
maximizing the sharpness of an image. Rather, it maximizes the appearance of the
image through sharpening the image optimally.” If you read that statement two or
three times you may still be confused, but the premise of SharpenerPro is that
before you sharpen the image, you decide the size at which the image will be repro-
duced. Then you make the decision as to how it will be reproduced, and you have
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 755

four choices: color laser, inkjet, Internet, and offset. Then you start SharpenerPro,
and based on image size and the method of reproduction, the plug-in will optimally
sharpen the image.

In other words, SharpenerPro doesn’t just run an Unsharp Mask filter on the image
with maximum values and call the image sharpened. The plug-in provides a differ-
ent sharpness for each type of reproduction, thereby giving you a great image wher-
ever you use it. You can also utilize the program in a Photoshop Action, so you can
do batch processing of many images at once, thus making it a very important tool
in your image-editing toolbox.

Note Don’t use SharpenerPro to sharpen an image that you have scanned from a mag-
azine or newspaper. Sharpening those halftone dots is just not going to give you
an adequate image!

nik SharpenerPro! workspace with Autoscan

SharpenerPro opens a new window. As previously mentioned, you have already
declared the exact size at which the image will be reproduced. The image can be in
CMYK, RGB, or grayscale color modes. The controls are arranged on the left, and
the image is in a window on the right, as shown in Figure 18-16. Above the image, on
the top right corner, you see a number and plus and minus signs. The number
relates to the size of the image, and you can use the plus and minus signs to enlarge
or reduce the view of the image in this window. This may sound exciting, but keep
one simple thing in mind: The image is being sharpened for the manner and size in
which it will be output. Therefore, what you see on-screen doesn’t have a lot to do
with reality. This is not WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). You’re going
beyond that in SharpenerPro.

Figure 18-16: You can use the SharpenerPro window

for optimally sharpening an image for color laser printing.
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756 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Dimensions
Underneath the plug-in title, you are reminded of how you’re planning to output
the image. Beneath that are the first two adjustments, Image Width and Height, as
shown in Figure 18-17. The image shown is 7 inches wide and 5 inches tall. If you
decide to change the output size at this stage of the work, the aspect ratio of the
image remains constant — move one slider, and the other follows proportionately.

Figure 18-17: The Image Width and Image Height sliders

Printer information
The next two sliders concern the dots per inch (dpi) output of the inkjet or laser
printer and the lines per inch used by the offset printer. You also get to decide on
the printer quality, as shown in Figure 18-18. You must be the judge as far as the
quality goes, and this is not a good place to “fudge.” Even if you paid a lot for your
printer and want it to print high quality images, it may not. An offset printer in the
strip mall down the street is not going to print the same quality images as the
printer with 6-color presses. Also keep the paper stock in mind. The results can be
wildly different when printed on plain bond, recycled stock as opposed to coated
paper. Be honest with your assessment of the image and the printer’s output while
you’re working in SharpenerPro.

Figure 18-18: Printer information varies depending on

the output device chosen.

Note If you are printing to a black and white laser printer with a resolution of 300 dpi,
use the Inkjet Sharpener 360 x 360 dpi setting. For a resolution of 600 dpi, use
Inkjet Sharpener 720 x 720 dpi, and for printers with resolutions above 1,000 dpi,
apply the Offset Print Interface with an appropriate setting.

Eye distance
SharpenerPro provides five different viewing distances to further optimize sharp-
ness. The developers realize that images are viewed at different distances, depend-
ing on the use of the image. For example, a catalog, brochure, or book is viewed at a
maximum of arm’s length, but a large poster may be viewed from several feet away.
Each of these scenarios requires a different type and degree of sharpness. The pre-
set distances are book (shown in Figure 18-19), small box, large box, small poster,
and large poster. Again, you must make an honest assessment of the image’s most
common use.

Frankly, I have a philosophical problem with the difference between book and small
box ranges. Small box is defined as a product on a store shelf. The first time the
image is seen, it is at “small box” range, but then the box is in the consumer’s
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 757

hands, or “book” range. You simply have to test print the variations in order to be
the best judge for a particular image, and how important it is at a given range. Each
time you click the graphic icon, you are cycled to the next viewing distance.

Figure 18-19: You can decide viewing distances and

degrees of sharpness by clicking these two icons.

Personal profile
We all view graphics differently, and make adjustments that suit our frame of mind and
personal style. The people at nik realize that, and have provided us with three points
of view or options in the form of personalities. Anna is pretty conservative — maybe
even timid, and likes a softer image. John has been around for a while, and knows that
his work has to appeal to a broad range of people. His sharpening is a little stronger,
but not aggressive. Zap is a happening guy, and wants to be on the bleeding-edge. He
does a lot of Web work, and sharpens his images just a bit more than his co-workers.
The difference between Anna and Zap (A-to-Z) isn’t as great as you may think —
probably less than 20 percent. You get to be the judge again. John is the program
default and probably provides a good solution for most images and uses. As with the
eye distance setting, each mouse click and drag on the graphic takes you to the next
person’s profile. To see the thumbnail image in a before and after setting, click and
hold the mouse down on the thumbnail. The unsharpened image will appear. Release
the mouse to see the sharpening that will occur if you accept your settings.

Save, Load, Help, and a Car?

The menu at the bottom of the window offers several options:

✦ Save: When you arrive at a configuration that will work on many of your
images, you can save it as a preset. Click the Save button to bring up a stan-
dard Save dialog box, and you can navigate the preset to the folder that you
want to use.
✦ Load: Click on Load to find any presets that you may have.
✦ Help: The Help button brings up a nine-page SharpenerPro Help document
that covers the basic operation of the plug-in.
✦ Car: What’s up with the car you see in Figure 18-20? The car indicates the
speed at which the program analyzes and sharpens each image. Two speed
bars indicate normal operating speed and better quality. Four speed bars in
back of the car indicate that the program is running at top speed, but only at
normal quality. The program considers slightly less detail in its analysis of the
image at the accelerated speed than it does at normal speed. The image qual-
ity difference is nominal.

Figure 18-20: You can see the Save and Load settings
as well as Help. The four bars behind the car indicate
that Acceleration is on.
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758 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Text output area

Located at the bottom of the SharpenerPro window is a box, shown in Figure 18-21,
with four lines of text that describe various attributes of the image sharpening
process.

✦ Line One: This line tells you the level of detail in the image as determined by
SharpenerPro’s Real Resolution Index on a scale of 1 to 600. The second half
of the line reports the Sharpening Radius in pixels.
✦ Line Two: The program reports how the size and quality of the image will
reproduce according to the parameters that you have set. SharpenerPro
determines whether the image has enough detail to print optimally at the
specified size. If the reading is 100%, then the image has optimal detail. Less
than 100% indicates that there is more detail than necessary, and below 50%
is a good reason to reduce the resolution of the image. Values over 100% show
that there isn’t enough detail to adequately print the image — in varying
degrees. This line tells you in plain English whether you should proceed.
Values between 50% and 250% are common and quite workable.
✦ Line Three: This line provides boilerplate information as to the image size in
pixels, its color mode (RGB, CMYK), and the sharpening settings
(Acceleration on or off; Autoscan on or off).
✦ Line Four: Other than low memory warnings, you may see three messages here:

• No Warnings: This is what you want to see. This means that the image is
okay to sharpen and print, and everything is within parameters.
• Warning: Please rescan this image! This warning makes you sit up
straight. The program has determined that there isn’t enough resolution
in pixels to get the desired print size, even though the slide or trans-
parency has enough details. Rescanning at a higher resolution can save
the day.
• Warning: Image will appear blurry! This message also wakes you up. In
this situation, the program has determined that there just isn’t enough
detail in the image to print decently at the size you want. You may have a
resolution of 300 dpi, but the details just aren’t there. Rescaling the
image may be your best course of action.

Figure 18-21: The text output area

provides valuable information about the
document and how it will be printed.

nik SharpenerPro! workspace without Autoscan

In this section, I discuss the operational differences between using Autoscan or not.
If you choose not to use Autoscan, you are provided with the two additional slider
adjustments in the SharpenerPro window, as shown in Figure 18-22.
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 759

Figure 18-22: You input the Image Source and Quality in

these sliders if you are sharpening the image without
using Autoscan.

Image source
This slider is divided into ten options. The first four are APS, Small Format Slide,
Middle Format Slide, and Large Transparency. These are conventional film formats.
Casual photographers will probably use the first two, and professional photogra-
phers will use the entire range, depending on their equipment.

The next three settings are intended for digital cameras: Low End (under 1 million
pixels), Mid Range (between 1 and 2 million pixels), and High End (greater than 2
million pixels). If your digital camera has a resolution greater than 4.2 million pixels,
then you should choose the middle or large format settings to gain better results.

The last group of three options is intended for flatbed scanners. Again, Low End
provides images that may not have a lot of contrast, or are soft scans. Middle Range
flatbeds provide normal quality scans that are clear and have good contrast. The
High End flatbed selection is for the higher quality or professional scans.

When you are planning to use SharpenerPro to sharpen your images after you have
scanned them on a flatbed scanner, turn off the scanner’s sharpening features.
Failure to do so may result in an inaccurate sharpening of the image.

If your image is going straight to the Web, then you can choose the Internet/
Autoscan option. The only options you can change are the degree of sharpness
decreed by Anna, John, and Zap, as shown in Figure 18-23.

Figure 18-23: The Internet/Autoscan

SharpenerPro window
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760 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Image quality
This setting requires you to be very objective and honest. You must decide the
quality of the image: bad, below average, average, above average, or good. Just hop-
ing that the image is good is not going to cut it! Keep in mind that you are helping
the program to make the image sharp. You can’t lie to it and get a good result. If you
really can’t decide on the quality issue, just leave it at the average setting. In that
mode, this variable is unaffected.

Should you use Autoscan or sharpen the image yourself?

You should probably use Autoscan as a general rule. You still have control over the
variable inputs and can make a lot of decisions about the ultimate output. Autoscan
has the capability — or intelligence — to divine up to three scratches on an image. A
fourth scratch tells Autoscan that these aren’t scratches, they’re part of the image.
Therefore, if your dog got ahold of that 4 x 5 transparency, or if the JPEG that you’re
working with has been heavily compressed, you may be better off not using
Autoscan.

How does Autoscan work?

Autoscan calculates the level of detail in the image by using algorithms that detect
the “Real Resolution.” Although every image differs in quality, pixel count, and
image data, Autoscan calculates a value, usually from 90 to 250, that is then fed to
the program. Based on this number, the program decides how much and how to
sharpen the image. The results are shown in the workspace, and in plain language
at the bottom of the plug-in window.

SharpenerPro also utilizes its own Fence ’n Foliage Protection. This attribute deter-
mines patterns in an image and sharpens accordingly. Details found in rocks,
shrubs, lawns, trees, and so on will stand out if sharpened as much as the building
that they surround. The sharpening causes lower saturation and reduces three-
dimensionality by sharpening everything in the image equally. The program evalu-
ates such areas, and sharpens these areas to a lesser degree, thus providing a more
pleasing image. Fence ’n Foliage Protection goes a long way in reducing moirés as
well by determining hard-line patterns and sharpening them less than other areas.

Optimizing file size with Genuine Fractals

When you take a photo with a digital camera or get an image on your computer
with your scanner, you’re stuck with the resolution, right? I mean, if it’s 2 inches
square at 72 dpi, you can change it to 300 dpi, but the picture will be 1⁄2-inch square.
If you have to bring it up to 4 inches square, the photo will be at 36 dpi, and pretty
much unusable.

If you don’t have Genuine Fractals PrintPro 2.5, that’s a correct assumption. With
this program, however, size restrictions are a thing of the past! Now you can enlarge
an image up to as much as 800 percent (while reducing file size more than 50 per-
cent) and it will still be presentable.
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 761

For example, I scanned a photo of a carburetor and cleaned it up for dust and
scratches. Then I adjusted the photo for contrast, brightness, and gamma by using
the Levels command. I saved the Levels adjustment and then I saved the file as a
TIFF, and saved it again as a Genuine Fractals PrintPro file. (The PrintPro file has a
file extension of .stn.) I made a second scan of the same section at an enlargement
of 400 percent, and I cleaned it up and adjusted it by loading the Levels adjustment
that I saved earlier. I sharpened all the images by using nik SharpenPro when they
were at the final size needed for printing.

Caution Sharpening an image and then changing the image size up or down causes unsat-
isfactory results.

For a “real world” test of PrintPro, pretend that I’m your boss, and I’ve given you
the original scan, as shown in Figure 18-24. However, I only want you to use a tiny
section of the photo, and that section must be enlarged to 400 percent.

Figure 18-24: The original carburetor photo

If you had the original photo, you would be wise to rescan it at the correct enlarge-
ment, and make your adjustments and sharpening it to the size at which it will be
reproduced. This sharpened image is shown on the left of Figure 18-25. Unfortunately
(in this example), you don’t have access to the original, and you must make do with
the scan. On the right side of Figure 18-25, you see what the results will be if you sim-
ply enlarged the small area by 400 percent and sharpened it with SharpenPro.
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762 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Figure 18-25: From left to right, the image scanned correctly, an image enlarged
400 percent from a PrintPro .stn file, and an image enlarged 400 percent using
Image Size.

However, if you save the image in the PrintPro format and open it at 400 percent,
and then sharpen it, you get what you see in the middle of Figure 18-25. Notice how
the edges are sharper in the PrintPro version than in the enlarged image. When it’s
on-screen and viewed at a high magnification, you can see that the PrintPro version
has an effect similar to the posterizing or pallet knife filters in Photoshop. — only
the effect is in many tiny steps — the areas of change in color information only add
to contrast and detail.

The process is either Lossless or Visually Lossless, as you choose. Lossless will pro-
duce a pixel-for-pixel reproduction of up to 2 to 4:1, and Visually Lossless saves the
file at a ratio of 5 to 10:1 while still preserving the image quality. If you think that you
may want to have extremely faithful reproduction when printing in the future, you
should choose the Lossless encoding. Visually Lossless is fine for most Web work.
For comparison, the full-size scan shown on the left in Figure 18-25 is 3.6MB, the
.stn file is 144K, and the mechanically enlarged version weighs in at 420K.

What does PrintPro look like and how do you use it? The first step is to import an
image in any of the usual methods — scanner, digital camera, original art, or
imported graphic. Do all the image adjustment that you want, except sharpening,
and then follow these steps:

1. Go to File ➪ Save As.

The Genuine Fractals PrintPro Save As dialog box appears, as shown in
Figure 18-26.
2. You only have two choices. After you’ve made your selection, click OK.
The file on your monitor is now named with the .stn extension.
3. Close the .stn file.
4. Open the .stn file that you just created (File ➪ Open).
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 763

Figure 18-26: The Genuine Fractals PrintPro Save As dialog box

The dialog box shown in Figure 18-27 appears. As you can see, your image is
on the right side. The left side of the window is divided into the following
three sections:
• Original: This section lists the dimensions, resolution, and color space
of the .stn file. It also tells you the full-blown image size, and the
smaller, encoded file size. In the example shown in Figure 18-27, the
original is 43MB, and the encoded size is 13MB — pretty significant, even
for the Lossless method!
• Crop: This section shows the dimensions of the unmasked image area in
the thumbnail on the right. Inputting numbers into these fields causes a
red mask to cover areas of the photo that are cropped out when the file
opens. Genuine Fractals came up with a nifty way of cropping the image
manually. Click the mouse over an edge of the photo, and drag towards
the center. A mask appears from one side of the image to the other, and
may be repositioned. You can see that the photo shown in Figure 18-27
has been masked at the right and bottom.
• Scale: In this section, you can change print resolution, file size, dimen-
sions, and color space. Depending on whether you’ve checked the
option boxes, your dimensions and/or proportions may be constrained.
You are presented with three levels of quality: Low, Good, and High.

You can opt to save the parameters that you’ve set in case you have more
images of the same type to process.
5. Click OK.
The image opens in your photo-editing software. Because you’ve set the cor-
rect size and resolution, your last remaining step is to sharpen the image
appropriately for its ultimate use.
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764 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Figure 18-27: The Genuine Fractals PrintPro Open box has many
features and attributes that you can set. A cropping mask is being
applied to the right and bottom edges.

If your work goes on the Web, you may not think that you’d need a plug-in such as
PrintPro, but look at the improved contrast of the photo shown on the left in Figure
18-28. I reduced the image on the right from the large original scan by using Image ➪
Image Size, and then I saved it as a JPEG. I saved the original swan picture in the
.stn format, and I opened it at the correct size and resolution for use on the Web. I
also saved it as a JPEG by using the same compression as the original image. I then
sharpened both images with the Internet/Autoscan option of nik SharpenPro.
Notice the difference in contrast and sharpness in the PrintPro version.

Figure 18-28: On the right, a PrintPro image that has been cropped and resized
shows greater contrast than the Photoshop version that has only been resized
with Image Size.
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Chapter 18 ✦ Making and Using Device Profiles for Predictable Output 765

A better view of what happened in this image is shown in Figure 18-29. These
images have been enlarged approximately 400 percent, so you can see how the
images differ.

Figure 18-29: This comparison is an enlargement of the images shown in

Figure 18-28. Notice the difference in contrast and sharpness, even though
both images were sharpened at the same time.

Summary
This chapter delved into the vagaries of fine-tuning your system and keeping each
of the devices speaking the same language through color management. I showed
you that by optimizing your setup with a calibrated monitor, scanner, and printer,
and then using or creating correct and current profiles for each of the devices, you
can be assured that what you see really is what you get. Then I explored the fine art
of image sharpening using nik SharpenPro so your images will be crisp and clear
when they’re viewed. Finally, I looked at a great little plug-in that allows you to save
disk space by compressing images, and being able to enlarge them beyond what is
normally possible by using Genuine Fractals PrintPro.

✦ ✦ ✦
25549510 ch18.F 8/22/02 2:52 PM Page 766
26549510 ch19.F 8/22/02 2:52 PM Page 767

Specialty Output
Options
19
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Chapter

I n my opinion, there are three major joys in photography.

First, there’s the rush you get while you’re setting up for
the shot, which includes getting the composition just right,
Choosing a
large-format printer

Output for exhibition

checking the lighting, the people or props, the background,
and making sure that everything is just perfect. Then you
click the shutter and the moment is gone. The second thrill is Large-format printers
viewing or printing the image. Seeing the image on the LCD
display on your digital camera, or even on your monitor, just Inkjets
doesn’t cut it; however projecting a slide or making an
enlargement — those are the big moments that photographers Lasers
look forward to. Finally, there’s the look of approval from
someone else viewing your work for the first time. That has to Continuous tone
be one of the biggest kicks you can get out of your photogra-
phy, whether it’s a hobby or an occupation. This chapter Online storage
deals with getting really big enlargements for really big kicks. and printing

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Choosing, Using, and Hiring a

Large-format Printer
If you are a professional photographer or artist and your work
involves large-scale prints on a regular basis, then you may be
thinking about purchasing a large-format printer. The term
large-format refers to printers that produce output larger than
11” by 17”. These printers usually print from rolls of sub-
strate, although some printers are sheet fed. The rolls run up
to about 150 feet long and are between 2 to 10 feet wide. Some
printers can output a single image the full width and length of
the roll, in one session. You probably wouldn’t want to be the
person writing the check for that print, though.

If you do film processing in a custom photography lab or a

commercial printing plant, you may be interested in purchas-
ing a large-format printer. Images from different sources can
be gathered together (ganged up) and printed all at once,
which can save you quite a bit of time and energy. It’s also
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768 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

more efficient and cost-effective to gang jobs, and you can pass the savings along
to the customer, or to your bottom line, depending on your situation.

Owning a large-format printer has drawbacks too:

✦ Cost: Unless you do a huge amount of business with the printer, the cost will
be prohibitive. Large-format printers start at around $3,000, and go up to
$225,000.
✦ Space: These printers live up to their large-format name. It stands to reason
that if a printer can run a nine-foot wide roll of paper it has to have a little
space around it for maintenance as well as day-to-day operation. Some print-
ers have a relatively small footprint that’s just a foot or two wider than the
media, and maybe two feet deep. Others are much bigger than a breadbox,
with dimensions nearing the size of a dumpster.

With that in mind, you may just want to purchase photographic enlargements as
you need them. You won’t have the monthly lease payment, the maintenance con-
tract, the cost of materials, and the disadvantage of the learning curve associated
with the new equipment. Instead, you can go to people who have a handle on their
market and can give you professional results every time. If a print goes bad, they
redo it at no cost to you before you even see the mistake. They’ll probably have dif-
ferent types of substrates as well, which can range from matte, gloss, and laminated
stocks, to film and various textures such as canvas or linen. Maintaining an inven-
tory of several substrates could be a costly investment unless you can effectively
market their use.

Keep a few things in mind when hiring out your large-format print jobs:

✦ Control: You do lose total control of the situation, but if you’ve chosen the
vendor carefully, your mind should be at ease.
✦ Cost: You need to investigate the costs of the service. As in most everything,
you get what you pay for, so don’t use price as your sole determining factor
when you’re choosing a vendor. You’ll be spending $10 to $50 per square foot
for your print.
✦ Quality: Ask to see a sample print. Any good vendor will send you a piece of a
larger image that you can examine for detail, grain, sharpness, and type of
media.
✦ Timing: Can the vendor produce the print within your timeframe, or will you
find yourself making excuses to a client? Will costly rush fees be involved?
Can you wait a few days until your job can be run with others?

Tip Most vendors will have the ability to mount the resulting print on various rigid or
semi-rigid substrates such as foam board, Masonite, wood, or chipboards. If
you’ve ever tried to mount a photo larger than 11” x 14” without the proper equip-
ment, you know how troublesome the process can be. Think of the nightmare of
mounting a print that’s six feet wide!
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 769

Creating Output for Exhibition

There are several factors that you must consider when creating a large image for
exhibition:

✦ Environment: First and foremost in your mind should be whether the print
will be used outdoors or indoors. While some inks have longevity measured in
hundreds of years, placing that ink in an environment subject to sunlight,
moisture, and temperature extremes could drastically reduce the lifetime of
the image. You should talk with the person who will be creating the large for-
mat print for you, and find out the best possible combination of ink, sub-
strate, and type of printer. Hopefully, there is enough information in this
chapter to help you make an educated decision.
✦ Ink type: Many factors influence the longevity of inks, chiefly, their exposure
to the elements — sun, moisture, abrasion, but also the chemical makeup of
the inks themselves:
• Solvent-based pigments: Some inks are formulated with solvent-based
pigments. Usually solvent-based inks are hardier in extreme conditions,
but most people will put a clear laminate over the printed piece for
added protection and ultimate longevity. Solvent-based inks have a good
color gamut, but their main selling point is excellent outdoor resistance
to fading for a period of two to four years.
• Water-based vegetable dye: This is the most common type of ink used
in most inkjet printers. The color gamut of dye-based inks is slightly
larger than solvent-based inks. The colors are lush and intense, and pro-
duce stunning output, but they’re usually used for proofing and indoor
posters. Longevity is somewhat shorter than solvent-based inks, but still
in terms of years — some printer manufacturers claim up to a hundred
years — depending on conditions. By and large, dye-based inks are
cheaper than solvent-based inks.
• Screen printing inks: Some wide-format printers utilize screen printing
inks instead of other solvent-based inks or vegetable dies. These inks are
developed for long-term use, and extremely resistant to weather and sun
exposure.
✦ Printer type: Printer technology roughly determines the use of the printed
page. Each type of printer produces a different result, but the end-use of the
prints is not cut and dried. A continuous tone print, laser print, inkjet print, or
dye-sub can all be the desired print, depending on budget, objective of the
project, and environmental concerns:
• Continuous tone printers: Continuous tone printers produce photo-
graphic prints similar to what you can get from a contemporary film-
based enlargement. You can expect the same life from a continuous tone
print as you would a traditional film-based enlargement under the same
environmental conditions.
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770 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

• Laser printers: These printers are much lower in price than continuous
tone printers. High-resolution color laser printers place 1,200 dots of
toner per inch or more. Higher resolutions produce output that is nearly
continuous tone quality. The toner dots lie on the surface of the paper
and are crisp and sharp.
• Inkjet printers: These printers are usually less expensive than lasers,
but their output belies their low cost. The ink is wet, and soaks into the
paper, causing a blending that makes individual dots of ink hard to see.
Special coatings are applied to inkjet papers to control the amount of
absorption and spread of the ink. Prints from high-end inkjet printers
look just like continuous tone photographic prints.
• Dye-sub printers: This type of printer works much like an inkjet printer.
The die is in solid form that is heated to convert it to a gas state. A coat-
ing on the substrate causes the gas to solidify on the substrate.

The term wide-format printers usually refers to a device that prints a sheet of paper
that can be described in terms of feet-wide instead of inches-wide. For the purpose
of this chapter, however, I will start the discussion at tabloid size, or 11” x 17” and
go up from there.

As touched on earlier, the prices of printers go up with the size of the output. But
within the tabloid-sized printer market, there are quite a few exceptions due to vari-
ances in technology. Each of the technologies produced by different printer manu-
facturers are covered later in this chapter.

Understanding the Print Process

All printers — laser, inkjet, continuous tone, dye-sub — must somehow transform
data from the computer source into data that can in turn be transmitted to a means
of causing the image to appear and remain on a substrate:

✦ Spooling: After you click the Print button, your image data is first sent to the
computer’s operating system’s built-in spooler, which usually uses virtual
memory. The data then gets transferred to the printer, or spooled. The trans-
fer begins at the I/O buffer, which may be from the parallel port, serial port,
USB port, or Ethernet port on your computer.
✦ Spool buffer: Next, the data passes to the printer in a temporary RAM or hard
drive storage area called the spool buffer, where it waits for the entire page to
be gathered. Some printers are capable of receiving files from multiple
sources at the same time, which keeps the file on a hard drive until it’s time to
print. Most printers, however, have hot-port interfacing, and can only deal
with one computer’s input at a time.
✦ Emulation: Data from the spool buffer is then examined by the printer’s soft-
ware to decide how the print job is going to be processed. The first part of a
print file contains specific emulation recognition codes for PostScript, PCL,
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 771

GL, and so on. The printer then searches its system for the correct printer
emulation. If this doesn’t happen automatically on a particular printer, then
the choice must be made at the printer’s console each time a job is printed.
✦ Display list: After the printer emulation is decided, the print data is inter-
preted and compressed so it can be stored in the display list on most printers.
The display list groups sections of the page in packages that stay in the dis-
play list until the job is completely printed. The purpose is that if the printer
jams, it can reprint the page or pages after the jam is cleared without making
you start the whole process over. Because the display list contains the entire
print job, you can print multiple copies of a collated job without resending the
print job.
✦ Rasterization: After data is stored in the display list, printing technologies
tend to veer off in their own directions, but the process is basically the same.
The image must be rasterized:
• The display list provides the compressed data packages for a given page,
and passes that data through the rasterizer.
• The rasterizer translates the data into a bitmap version of the image or
text on a page, and stores it in the frame buffer.
• Finally, the frame buffer sends the data to the print engine where the
image is turned into impulses that beam, blast, spray, splatter, or other-
wise pass the bitmap to the substrate. The differences are covered in the
printer-type sections coming up later in this chapter.

Laser printer mechanics

A black and white laser printer has an imaging process that’s fairly straightforward.
The laser printer contains a highly-polished aluminum cylinder coated with a pho-
tosensitive material and in order to receive a page for printing:

1. The cylinder/drum is cleaned with a rubber blade that wipes excess toner off
the drum, just like a windshield wiper on your car. Then the drum is “erased”
by a lamp or an electrostatic charge that removes any trace of a previous
image.
2. The drum is conditioned to receive the image by receiving a charge of –600
volts.

Note You’ve no doubt changed a corona wire during routine laser printer maintenance.
The primary corona does the charging in some printers; others have a charged
drum. Several other corona wires are also involved in a color laser printer.

The negative charge spreads evenly across the drum, and a laser begins hit-
ting the drum wherever parts of your image are to appear.
The laser gives certain areas a negative charge of around –100 volts. Wherever
the charge is reduced, or neutralized, toner adheres a few seconds later in the
process. Early laser printers had 100 dpi resolution, which means the laser
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772 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

made 100 passes per inch across the drum. The results were great for the
time, but today, a 300 dpi or 600 dpi is considered standard, and it’s not
uncommon to see laser printers with 1,200 dpi.
3. The drum turns around and charges in some places at –600 volts and less in
other places.
4. The laser stops beaming, and the paper starts its path from the paper tray at
the same time the toner cartridge comes into action.
The toner cartridge contains a rotating, magnetic cylinder; a toner reservoir;
and a mechanism that determines how much toner can be applied at a time.
Toner is made up of two components:
• Plastic resin particles: These particles will eventually melt into the
paper making the image.
• Iron oxide (magnetic) particles: These particles are acted upon by mag-
netic and electronic charges and cause the eventual transfer of the toner
to the drum.
5. The toner’s metal particles attract magnetically to the walls of the toner cylin-
der. As the cylinder charges to the same –600 volts as the drum, the toner
takes on the same charge.
6. The drum passes by the cylinder, and the toner attracts to the lesser-charged
areas on the drum — opposites attract, remember? The areas where the
charge is the same are left blank. The toner jumps off of the cylinder and onto
the drum.
7. The paper receives a positive charge of 600 volts as it makes contact with
the drum.
As the paper passes the drum, the same type of positive/negative process
occurs, but the toner jumps from the drum onto the paper.
8. The electric charge on the paper passes over a static charge eliminator and
becomes neutralized.
Now the toner is lying on the paper. A good breeze would blow it all away, but
the slight electrostatic charge keeps it in place.
9. The paper goes through the fusing process.
A fuser is a cylinder that heats paper up to between 330°F and 350°F.
10. The plastic toner particles melt and fuse with the fibers that make up the
paper.
11. A pressure roller presses the still-warm toner into the paper for better
adhesion.

Caution Be aware that you can’t run inkjet transparency film through a laser printer. The
fuser melts the film, causing you time and money, and the entire fuser assembly
must be replaced.
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 773

That’s the way a black and white laser printer works. Bringing color into the pic-
ture, changes things slightly. Single-pass printers have four toner cartridges lined
up closely together. A separate laser for each color beams light at rapidly spinning
mirrors that scan the photosensitive drums and change the charge on the drum to
positive, which causes it to attract the toner. As the drums turn, an intermediate
transfer belt passes in front of them to collect the charged cyan, magenta, yellow,
and black toner particles in turn. The belt then transfers the perfectly registered
toners to the paper. The paper and toner are then fused with heat and pressure.

LED color printer mechanics

Single-pass LED color printers work in a similar fashion to a color laser printer, but
there are two main differences:

✦ The manner of charging the photosensitive drums: Whereas a laser printer

scans the surface of the drum with tiny beams of light that zip from side to
side, the LED printer has an array of 7,500 light-emitting diodes in a single file
that spans the width of the drum. The LEDs are just slightly above the drum’s
surface, and the printer causes each LED to flash where a part of the image is
to appear. The voltage to the LED causes it to flash dimly or brightly creating
respectively smaller or larger dots on the charged drums. If a particular LED
doesn’t flash, then there will be no toner applied to that area on the paper.
✦ The placement of toner on the paper: The drum rotates past the LED
printbar, and then it receives the toner as in a laser printer. But instead of
the toner being passed to a charged belt, the paper itself travels beneath the
charged toner drums, and the toner jumps onto the paper. Again, the paper
and toner pass through a heat and pressure fusing process.

Inkjet color printer mechanics

Unlike laser and LED printers, an inkjet printer uses a completely different technol-
ogy to apply color to paper in a very photographic way. The concept of an inkjet
printer is to spray or squirt ink on the paper in measured amounts. Inkjets run the
gamut of prices these days. Some models are given away with new computer or
scanner purchases. Others require a small mortgage.

Inkjets from Epson use piezoelectric crystals that flex when an electric current is
applied to them. These crystals sit in the back of a printhead that contains a tiny
reservoir of ink. When the crystal flexes, it forces a commensurate amount of ink
out of a small nozzle onto the paper. The amount of voltage arriving at the crystal
determines how much the crystal will flex. Therefore how much ink transfers to
paper (the size of the dot) depends on the amount of voltage. Epson printheads are
classified as extremely accurate and reliable, and are used by many manufacturers
in very high-end printers.

Bubblejet printers are thermal inkjet printers that heat the ink to 572°F (300°C). At
this temperature, the ink boils and forms a bubble that expands under pressure and
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774 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

bursts. Then the heater switches off and more ink is drawn into the nozzle for the
next cycle. The popping bubble spatters ink droplets onto the paper through noz-
zles that are thinner than a human hair. Newer printheads on Canon printers con-
tain hundreds of nozzles that spray ink out at a rate of thousands of times per
second. These printheads utilize a pair of heater elements on each nozzle that can
create a larger variety of dot size. If both of the heaters are on, the droplets will be
larger than if only one heater is on. The ink in some bubblejet printers is a formula
of vegetable dyes and alcohol, other manufacturers use pigment-based inks.

Large-Format Laser Printers

A large-format laser printer usually creates prints not more than 11” x 17”, although
there are a few that will print 13” x 35”. Most of these printers are geared for busi-
ness use, with a tendency toward the advertising agency and design shop crowd.
Prices range from just under a thousand dollars to around $10,000.

Large-format laser printers are built with speed, not necessarily museum-quality
printing, in mind. As with any piece of equipment, quality varies, but some models
produce extremely high-quality output, nearing exhibit quality. Those prints are very
good, but wouldn’t demand the same price as a print from a high-end inkjet or con-
tinuous tone printer. Due to the manner in which the laser applies the image to the
stock, the substrate is usually restricted from thin paper to thick index card stock.

Xerox
Xerox has become the word for “copy.” Of course, a “Xerox copy” only applies to
copies printed by machines bearing the Xerox name. But it’s obvious that the com-
pany must have done something right to obtain such stature that its name has
become a verb. The company wasn’t content to rest on its laurels, though. Xerox
now produces some very fine printers that provide reliable high-quality output.
Xerox printers can be explored in more detail at www.xerox.com.

Xerox DocuColor 2006 printer/copier

The Xerox DocuColor 2006 prints up to 13” x 18” with a resolution of 600 x 600 dpi.
Its 8-bit color depth provides an image that is almost continuous tone in quality,
and supports ICC and ICM color press profiles. Xerox has created a new toner for-
mulation and fusing process to create a sharper image — the detail it reproduces is
absolutely stunning. Interestingly it can print in RGB, CMYK, Pantone(r) workflows,
and it can print PDF documents directly. Ad agencies love the fact that it also does
duplex printing (printing on both sides of the sheet) that are perfect for compre-
hensive layout presentations. The DocuColor 2006, which is shown in Figure 19-1
and retails for $14,999, has the following features:

✦ 1,400-sheet paper capacity

✦ Prints up to 99 copies per job
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 775

✦ A ten-bin sorter
✦ Prints 6 color pages a minute
✦ Prints 26 black and white pages a minute
✦ Network-ready with 10/100 Base-T Ethernet and parallel connectivity
✦ A 6GB hard drive
✦ 64MB RAM (expandable to 512MB)

Figure 19-1: A top-of-the-line Xerox DocuColor 2006 laser printer

Xerox Phaser 7700 color printer

The Xerox Phaser 7700, a single-pass laser printer, was built for the graphic arts
field. You can expect a retail price of $6,999 for the Phaser 7700, which is shown in
Figure 19-2 and has the following features:

✦ Network-ready
✦ Produces 1,200 dpi resolution color or black and white
✦ Prints at a rate of 22 pages a minute
✦ sRGB color matching
✦ ICC and ICM support
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776 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

✦ TekColor Dynamic Color Correction

✦ ColorSync
✦ Adobe PostScript Level 3
✦ Pantone-certified
✦ Accommodates paper sizes from 4” x 6” up to 12” x 18”
✦ Can print on both sides
✦ Handles paper stock from 16 lb. to 110 lb. index
✦ G4 500 MHz processor
✦ 10/100 Base-T Ethernet
✦ 128MB of RAM (expandable to 512MB)
✦ 5GB hard drive

Figure 19-2: The versatile Xerox Phaser 7700

color laser printer

Xerox Phaser 2135 color printer

The Phaser 2135, shown in Figure 19-3, is another fast mover. This single-pass
printer retails for $4,699 and has the following features:
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 777

✦ Prints 21 pages per minute in color and 26 pages per minute in black and
white
✦ Transfers a full color image to paper in a single pass using LEDs
✦ 500 MHz Intel processor that can produce a color first-page-out in 17 seconds
and a black and white first-page-out in 13 seconds
✦ 1,200 dpi resolution
✦ Prints both sides of the sheet, making it ideal for proofing and booklet printing
✦ Network ready with 10/100 Base-T Ethernet
✦ A 5GB hard drive
✦ 128MB of RAM (expandable to 512MB)

Figure 19-3: Xerox 2135 single-pass color laser printer

Inkjet and Dye-Sublimation Printers

When I saw my first inkjet prints at a friend’s shop a few years ago, I looked at them
with the same smug thoughts I had about early instant-print photos. The images
lacked sharpness, the colors were dull, and the paper was wimpy. Early inkjets
lacked sufficient resolution, and my friend was not using inkjet papers or properly
prepared his images for printing. But, times have changed, my friend and I have
changed our ways, and inkjets put out some very classy work these days. I can still
get garbage out of my printers, but I have to work hard to do it!
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778 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

The discussion of inkjets begins at the lower end of the price scale, and you can get
very acceptable, high quality images from a less expensive printer. Of course, as the
price goes up, so does the precision and reliability of the printer. However, there
will probably be a fairly hefty service or maintenance agreement with the higher
priced printers.

If you’re looking for true photo reproduction just shy of the photographic process,
dye sublimation (dye-sub) is what you’re looking for. It utilizes a technique that is
unique in the printing world. In the dye-sub process, ink is converted from a solid
form into a gas without going through a liquid phase. In order to accomplish that,
the substrate is usually coated with a chemical that bonds with the gas. The dye
then becomes part of that coating. A dye-sub printer has a ribbon or plastic sheet
that contain the various ink colors. As the sheet passes over the coated paper,
thousands of heating elements in the printheads superheat the inks, one color at a
time. The inks are instantly vaporized and bond with the coated paper. Then the
next color is vaporized and bonded. There are no dots or discernable patterns in
dye-sub printing, and the results are very close to photographic prints. Each heat-
ing element in the printhead can produce 256 temperatures — the hotter the tem-
perature, the more die gets vaporized, and thus the stronger or more intense the
color will be.

Giclée Fine Art Prints

Before getting into various printer specifications, I must discuss a type of printing that you
may not have heard about until now. It is called giclée (ghee-clay) and is the cream of the
inkjet crop. Just as you may refer to “Greenery Maintenance Professionals” instead of “the
guys mowing the lawn,” the term “Giclée” was introduced to describe (in French) the spray-
ing process of the inkjet Iris printer.
In the early 1990s, the Iris inkjet printer was the top-of-the-line digital proofing printer for
the graphic arts market. At about that time, rock star Graham Nash and his friend Mac
Holbert discovered a new use for the Iris — they started printing fine art on it. This was due
largely to the high-quality, super fidelity of the prints the Iris could produce.
Now, you may well ask, why would you want a giclée print? What could it possibly mean for
you? Well, consider that you have an image that is very wallable and saleable, too. You
could go to your favorite offset printer and have them print a few hundred 24” x 30” prints
at a cost of several hundred dollars out of pocket. Then you could keep those prints in a box
in a cool, dry storage area until you sell each print. Slowly but surely, you’d probably make
your money back and possibly turn a profit.
Then again, maybe you wouldn’t. Possibly that print that everyone seems to love just isn’t
something that anyone wants to pay for. Now you’re stuck with all those prints, and you
can’t afford to buy the latest Photoshop upgrade.
Instead of choosing this potentially risky route, you could show the prints on the Web, take
orders, and as the orders come in, you take your digital image to a giclée fine art printer
and have single prints run off at a very reasonable price. There’s no large up-front cost that
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 779

you would incur with offset printing, and each print looks as great as the last one. You also
don’t have any storage problems or have your capital tied up in merchandise that may or
may not be sold in a timely manner.
The nicest feature is that the quality is much better than traditional offset printing. Today’s
giclée printers have such high resolution that it’s virtually impossible to see any kind of dot
without a loupe. Most of the printer manufacturers use technology that allows you to
enlarge your image far beyond what you thought was possible, and you’ll still have a sharp
photo. The inks are usually solvent-based or pigment-based, so the life of the print is
around a hundred years or more.
Note: Don’t forget the old garbage-in, garbage-out process. Just printing a digital image
four feet square will not make that image any sharper or better than it was when you took
the photo. If there’s something objectionable in your image, those objections are only
going to be exaggerated when the photo is enlarged.
A few giclée groups each claim to do the best work, and there really aren’t any hard and fast
guidelines to the process. So, what can you expect from a giclée printer? For one, you’ll
probably find them on the Web, and that means you can transfer your file to them elec-
tronically via e-mail, but it is best to send a CD through the mail along with a print from
your system that you consider acceptable. The printer will create a pair of smaller prints for
you — say 8” x 10” — for you to approve. If you like the prints, you send one back with your
signature as approval. You keep the other print to compare with the final output.
A few days later, your enlargement will arrive, you hang it or sell it, and start looking for the
next image you want done. Some dealers will have a small “archival” fee; others will keep
your image on file for future orders. It’s a good idea to get that information straightened out
before committing to the dealer.
Some dealers will also offer to sell your work on their Internet site or in their gallery.
Commissions and fees vary from dealer to dealer. Your print can be produced on several
types of stock, including watercolor paper, canvas-textured board, hot-pressed boards, and
backlit films. Giclée printers are usually equipped to mount your print on various substrates,
too, if you want a rigid print.
For the crème de la crème of Giclée, you will want to go to www.trugiclee.org. This
group of professional fine art printers (the Giclée Printer Association, or GPA) has banded
together in the interest of providing the highest quality of short run printing possible. I don’t
think they have a secret handshake or anything, but they did arrive at what they call the “9
principles of GPA” that they live by, which you can examine on the site.

Epson
Epson manufactures printers to satisfy just about any price range or image quality
you desire. The printers described here are only a few of those available at press
time. The Epson Web site (www.epson.com) allows you to compare the latest
printers side-by-side.
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780 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Epson Stylus Photo 1280

The Epson Stylus Photo 1280 printer uses six colors with a Micro Piezo inkjet tech-
nology to produce very impressive prints. Its finest resolution is 2880 x 720 dpi, but
can be run in a “draft” mode of 180 x 180 dpi. The 1280, as seen in Figure 19-4, han-
dles a large array of paper stocks from plain bond through premium glossy photo
paper, glossy film, self-adhesive sheets, cards, iron-on transfer paper, and roll
papers. Stock size runs from 4” x 6” up to 11” x 17” and 13” x 19” (Super B). Epson
says this $499 printer will print a sheet 13” x 44”! The inks that run in the 1280 are
rated to be lightfast for about 25 years in normal indoor display conditions in a
glass frame and Epson Matte Heavyweight Paper. Using standard Epson Photo
Paper yields a 6 to 7 year lifespan. The black head and color head both contain
48 nozzles.

Figure 19-4: The extremely capable Epson

Stylus Photo 1280 desktop inkjet printer

Epson Stylus Photo 2000P

Just as in the Epson 1280, the 2000P (shown in Figure 19-5) uses six colors with the
Micro Piezo inkjet technology. Both printers have separate black ink cartridges. At
$899, this printer produces 1,440 x 720 dpi in color or black and white and uses
Epson Archival Ink. This type of ink is rated for lightfastness at 200 years or more
before noticeable fading occurs on Epson matte paper in normal indoor fluorescent
lighting under a glass frame. Epson Premium papers have a slightly shorter lifetime
of 140 years. The 2000P prints papers from letter size up to the same 13” x 44” maxi-
mum size of the 1280.
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 781

Figure 19-5: Archival inks in the Epson

Stylus Photo 2000P will last upwards of
200 years.

Epson Stylus Color 3000

The Epson Stylus Color 3000 is another Micro Piezo inkjet technology printer, but it
uses 4-color CMYK inks in a color cartridge and separate black cartridge. The main
difference between this $995 printer and the two others described previously is
that the 3000 comes with PostScript 2 installed. The 1280 and 2000P require you to
purchase Epson Stylus RIP (about $149) in order to print PostScript jobs. The 3000,
shown in Figure 19-6, has a live print area of 16.12” x 21.31” but can print anything
from 4” x 4” to 17” x 22”. The black head contains 128 nozzles, and the color head
has 64, to produce 1440 x 720 dpi.

Figure 19-6: You can print 17”

x 22” sheets on the Epson
Stylus Color 3000.

Epson Stylus Professional 10000

On the upper end of the scale, you find this 44”-wide printer (seen in Figure 19-7)
that has an output of 1,440 x 720 dpi at a maximum speed of 231 square feet per
hour. It utilizes Archival inks, and connects to the computer by Firewire, USB 1.1, or
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782 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Parallel (IEEEE-1284 ECP mode). Ethernet 10/100BaseT is available as an option.

You can choose from several types of papers available to match any needs you or
your customers may require. To give you an idea of what consumables cost for a
printer this big, a box of 20 sheets of smooth fine art paper at 24” x 30” costs
around $185 — that’s $9.25 a sheet. A box of 10 sheets of the same paper at 36” x 44”
costs $20 a sheet. A 44” x 65’ roll of glossy photo weight paper costs $240, which is
only a few cents more per square foot than the sheet stock. A roll of 44” x 100’ back-
light film costs $260. The Epson Stylus Professional 10000 costs, well $10,000, minus
about $5. If you want an extended warranty, one year costs $1,199, and two addi-
tional years runs $2,199.

Figure 19-7: The Epson Stylus

Professional 10000 is a true large-
format printer.

Roland
The high-end printers from Roland are the Hi-Fi Jet Pros. All three models feature a
dual-head variably droplet technology with 8-color printing. Eight different inks
mean several things for a Jet Pro owner. For one, you can have a set of CMYK pig-
mented inks and a set of dye-based CMYK inks on the printer at the same time. With
that setup, you can switch from one type of ink and substrate to another while the
customer is waiting in the lobby — very quick and versatile changeover. Pigmented
inks could be used to produce an outside poster, and the job could be run again
with dye-based inks for indoor display. The dual heads really shine when CMYK
inks are matched with orange, green, light cyan, and light magenta to transcend
normal 4 and 6-color printing to a new, higher, level of photorealism. The Roland Hi-
Fi Jet series is the world’s first and only 1,440 dpi large-format inkjet printer that’s
capable of outputting the Pantone(r) Hexachrome system.

Roland utilizes variable droplet control, with nine ultra-precise sizes of perfectly
round ink dots that provide silky-smooth, grain-free prints that rival continuous
tone. The printheads have 96 nozzles per color, and produce 1,440 x 1,440 dpi with
built-in ICC color profiles that are precise enough for digital proofing. All three
printers come with a RIP, and are PostScript 3 endowed. The smallest Hi-Fi Jet Pro
is the FJ-400, which sells for around $17,000 and prints a 44”-wide roll. The FJ-500
sells for $19,000 and uses a 54” roll. You can print a 64”-wide roll on the $21,000 FJ-
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 783

600, seen in Figure 19-8. All three can print to within a quarter-inch of each side of
the paper.

Figure 19-8: The Hi-Fi FJ-600 from Roland prints a

64”-wide roll up to 150’ long.

You can find Roland printers installed in “print for pay shops” where serious pho-
tographers and artists pay from $50 up for a four-foot square print. You can get
more information on Roland printers of various sizes and capabilities at
www.rolanddg.com.

Iris
The Iris printer, from Creo, has long been considered the top of the line when it
comes to digital proofing. These printers are installed in service bureaus and com-
mercial photo labs all around the world. A word of caution here: If you go looking to
get a fine art print produced at a service bureau or commercial printing plant, you
may be a little disappointed in the results. A printer or a proofing system is set up
specifically for offset printing, and probably a particular press setup. The results
will certainly not be bad, but you will probably be happier by going to one of the
fine arts printers and paying the price ($50 to $100 per print) to have them do the
job in an arty fashion. There are more than 200 fine art and photography printers in
the United States that have specific ink and media combinations, plus the profes-
sional attitude you’re looking for.

Iris iPROOF printer

This desktop printer — well, it’s gotta be a big desktop — is the most common digi-
tal proofer seen in service bureaus. Creative and prepress professionals know they
can count on predictable color throughput from one job to the next. Iris Graphics
has been around long enough in the graphic arts industry that it’s acquired the
color tools, imaging technology, and optimized ink/substrate combinations for opti-
mal image quality — it’s basically the industry standard. The iPROOF lives up to
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784 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

that standard, and uses IrisSCREEN technology that simulates the Iris continuous
inkjet technology used in the higher-end models. An Iris iPROOF, as shown in
Figure 19-9, costs about $4995, and includes Mac-based PS Level 3 RIP (raster
imaging processor).

Figure 19-9: The desktop Iris iPROOF next to an Apple iMac

Iris2PRINT and Iris4PRINT printers

Most inkjet printers utilize what is called a drop on demand (DOD) print process.
Iris chose another path for the Iris2PRINT and Iris4PRINT models. They developed
a continuous inkjet (CIJ) technology, and the difference in operation is awesome. A
DOD system applies dots of ink to the paper only as required. Most DOD printers
apply a fixed-size dot of ink measured in picoliters (pL). A picoliter is the volume of
one-trillionth of a liter. The average dot size on inkjet printers is between 5 and 7
pL. Some DOD printers are referred to as having variable dot resolution. That
means that there may be as many as nine sizes of dots or ink droplets that are
passed from the printhead to the substrate, depending on instructions from the
print spooler. If an area of the page doesn’t require a particular color from the print-
head, nothing is emitted, and the paper stays void of color in that spot. On the
other hand, a CIJ printer sprays ink from the time paper starts to pass through it
until the sheet is done. Sounds messy, right?

To make it sound even messier, Iris printheads apply one million drops of ink per
second per color, and the drops are scaled from one to 31 droplets in the space of a
300 dpi dot. So where does all this ink that’s splattering around go? Well, by giving a
charge to the ink droplets that are not needed on the paper, Iris places a deflection
structure close to the printhead. This element has the same charge as the ink,
therefore it deflects the ink so that it can be drained away. Ink drops that do not
have a charge are attracted to the paper. The paper is attached to a cylinder during
the printing process. By the way, these ink drops are only 3 pL in size — very small.
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As for the wasted ink, the price of ink is negligible, and the inks are biodegradable
vegetable-based dyes that can be discarded without endangering the ecosystem or
worrying if the sewer will explode.

The Iris2PRINT, as shown in Figure 19-10, takes a 13” x 19” sheet and sells for
$35,000. If you have an extra five thousand dollars ($40,000), you can get the
Iris4PRINT and print 24” x 30” sheets. Registration on both machines is such that
you can leave a printed sheet on the cylinder and reprint the job — dots of ink will
land in the exact same spot as in the first run through the printer. That’s my kind of
registration!

Figure 19-10: The Iris2PRINT and Iris4PRINT continuous

inkjet printers
Courtesy of Creo, Inc.

You can learn more about Iris printers at www.creo.com.

Hewlett-Packard
Hewlett-Packard probably can’t be beat for the number of different printers it manu-
factures for different markets and size of output. Products range from black and
white or color plotters to inkjet, laser, and dye-sublimation printers. Just like other
manufacturers, the people at HP have designed substrates and inks to meet every
need. Most of its large-format printers are built for high-volume shops with reliabil-
ity in mind — a high degree of unattended printing is expected.

HP Designjet 500 and HP Designjet 500ps

These two large-format printers come in 24” and 42” models shown in Figure 19-11.
The basic difference between them is that a PostScript 3 RIP and a lot of color man-
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786 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

agement support come with the 500ps. That model also is Pantone(r) certified.
What they share is CMYK thermal inkjet printing 1,200 x 600 dpi on a variety of
media. Designjet 500 printers are usually found in the offices of architects, advertis-
ing agencies, designers, and graphic artists. Prices range from $2,149 for the 24”
Designjet 500 up to $3,798 for the 42” Designjet 500ps. Both printers come with
16MB of RAM, and can print color images at a rate of 85 square feet per hour in the
fast mode. That speed isn’t the feature you’d want to use for a print you’re going to
sell as artwork, but it would serve you well for presentation graphics. Best quality
results print at 21 square feet per hour. Oh, you’ll need a 500ps model if you’re run-
ning a Mac — the 500 model is only good for Windows machines. But you can con-
nect the printer via Centronics parallel, IEEE 1284-compliant (ECP), and USB.

Figure 19-11: HP Designjet 500 printers can

produce images on 24” or 42” rolls.
Courtesy of Hewlett-Packard Company

HP Designjet 800 and HP Designjet 800ps

The 800 series printers, shown in Figure 19-12, differ slightly from the 500 series in
that they come with much more RAM. The non-PostScript version has 96MB, and
the 800ps has 160MB. The extra RAM helps the “virtual computer” in the box to
process files without tying up the source computer. They also support queuing,
nesting, and processing the next job while the first one is still printing. If you’re on a
network, you can choose from Centronics parallel, IEEE 1284-compliant (ECP), USB,
and 10/100BaseTX Ethernet. Print speed is the same for these printers as the 500
models. The price for a 24” Designjet 800 is $4,995, and a 42” Designjet 800ps runs
at $7,772.
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 787

Figure 19-12: The HP Designjet 800 series and

500 series differ in the amount of RAM and
their processing hardware.
Courtesy of Hewlett-Packard Company

The huge array of Hewlett-Packard printers can be explored at www.hp.com.

Canon S9000 Photo Printer

Canon also makes a wide variety of printers. The S9000 is billed by Canon as “the
professional photo lab for your desktop.” It’s one of the smaller large-format printers,
printing from 4” x 6” paper up to 13” x 19”. The S9000, seen in Figure 19-13, features
3,072 inkjet nozzles for faster printing with greater detail. With a combination of ink-
droplet size, accurate ink application, consistent droplet quality, and ink composi-
tion, you get 2,400 x 1,200 dpi print resolution with 49 gradation levels. All that
amounts to breathtaking detail, beautiful color reproduction, and reduced graininess.

The S9000 uses six individual ink tanks for the most accurate color matching possi-
ble. Low-ink sensors warn you with an on-screen message when an ink tank is low,
giving you plenty of time to replace the tank before you actually run out of ink —
and the prints are lightfast for 25 years. You can find dealer information at
www.canon.com.
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788 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Figure 19-13: The professional photo lab for your desktop —

the S9000 from Canon

Digital Continuous Tone Printers

If you are serious about your trade, sooner or later you’ll find yourself getting digi-
tal continuous tone prints. It sounds like a contradiction in terms — digital and con-
tinuous tone — but these printers use a traditional photographic substrate, such as
C-print papers, negative film, transparency film, or “Duratrans” backlight film.

Continuous tone images can be produced on a substrate in different ways, but the
process is similar in many ways to conventional photographic processing. In one
manner or another, the media is exposed to RGB light, just as you would require in
a C-print from a film negative. The media is then developed, dried, and comes out in
a single sheet, a take up roll (that collects the printed substrate in roll form), or is
cut from the roll. Due to the photographic process, most of the printers require a
darkroom for the loading of media, but once loaded, the machine sits in normal
room lighting. Some models have a computer front-end, and others can be con-
nected to a network of Mac and PC computer stations.

There is no ink involved in continuous tone prints; there is also no discernable dot
pattern. The detail that this type of printer can provide is so clear and sharp that
these machines are used for satellite imaging by government agencies — detail
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 789

down to 3-meter resolution! These printers are also appropriately expensive, cost-
ing anywhere from $120,000 to over $225,000.

Tip Images destined to be output on a continuous tone printer should not be sharp-
ened as you would usually do. All of the manufacturers utilize their own sharpen-
ing software. If you’ve sharpened the image, more than likely you’ll have some
pretty ugly effects and artifacts to deal with.

LightJet
Océ LightJet printers operate by having a set of lasers in a drum that beam light
through a prism and onto the media. The drum and prism travel the width of the
media, scanning the surface at an incredible 4,000 lines per inch. By having the print-
head traveling along the surface, the focus of the light is constant, and there is abso-
lutely no distortion from one edge to the other. There are no dots involved, only
changing colors. These printers are usually found in commercial photo labs and
offices that use geological surveys and other satellite imaging data, such as NASA.

LightJet 5000
The 5000 uses a 50” roll of photographic paper or Duratrans film and makes prints
up to 48” x 96”. This printer is basically a giant film recorder that uses 36-bit color
that generates 68 billion colors — but who’s counting? A quality 16” x 20” scan at
300 dpi can be enlarged to 32” x 40” without any loss of clarity at all. Due to the
printhead technology, there is no fall-off of exposure to the corners, as in traditional
enlarging. The LightJet 5000 (shown in Figure 19-14) uses sharpening modes that
allow you to work with low resolutions of 150 to 200 dpi and still get super results
and large photographs. It sells for around $180,000, but you may find one a little
cheaper on eBay. There are 500 to 600 of these printers installed worldwide — the
Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC uses one for its wall art.

Figure 19-14: This cutaway illustration gives you an idea of how the
LightJet works.
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790 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

LightJet 5500RS
The LightJet 5500RS can produce a 50” x 50” print from a digital file directly onto
photographic materials in seven and a half minutes. My coffee pot takes longer! A
higher-resolution image the same size will take nearly twelve minutes. The printer
can handle a roll of media that is 164 feet long, and operates unattended in a multi-
tasking computer environment. The 5000 and 5500RS (the LightJet 5500RS is shown
in Figure 19-15) both can use 30”, 40”, and 50” media. They both use proprietary
software to interface with networks and third-party RIPs. A monitor allows on-
screen color correction with user interface control over highlight, quarter-tone,
mid-tone, three-quarter-tone, and shadow areas.

Figure 19-15: The LightJet 5500RS is a real workhorse.

Courtesy of Océ Display Graphics Systems

You can learn more about LightJet printers at www.oce.com.

Durst
Durst is a German company that makes the Lambda brand of continuous tone print-
ers. Unlike the LightJet, laser beams are passed through a prism unit that is
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 791

mounted centrally. The prism rocks back and forth to spread the image across the
photographic surface. Durst printers also use 36-bit color at 4,000 passes per inch.

This family of printers uses a feature called autonesting, where images are stacked
across the substrate automatically to get the highest yield out of the media and pro-
cessing time. If you have a print that must be duplicated, the printer will gang the
prints up to save you time and money. Durst printers can print a single image the
full width and length of the roll of media. This line of printers is the most expensive
of the continuous tone technology. Durst has complete information on all its print-
ers, including some versatile inkjet models, at www.durst-online.com.

Lambda 76 Plus
Like other continuous tone printers, the Lambda 76 Plus has a 4,000 scan per inch
image. Images are extremely faithful to the original photographer or artist’s inten-
tions. The software has a Hot Folder that allows people on a network to place
images in, and the printer will fit the image into an economical space on the print
run. The Lambda 76 Plus uses Durst’s patented continuous roll to roll laser expos-
ing system for papers from 8” to 32” wide and has no size limitations — you can
print postage stamps and murals on the same run. Maximum roll size is 32” x 164’.

Lambda 130 Plus

With a roll width of 50”, the Lambda 130 Plus is the Lambda 76 Plus’s big brother. If
you have a project that exceeds the width of the roll, software will automatically
divide the image and expose it in sections. The operator can select how oversized
panels are tiled, including the overlap. Besides that, images can be rotated, mir-
rored, or cropped and corrected in sharpness, color, density, and contrast without
re-rasterizing the image.

The Lambda 130 Plus is fast — it can print 500 square feet per hour at the lower res-
olution. That’s a photo 50” wide by 120’ long — not bad for something done while
you’re eating lunch or working on another job. This printer has a 5-position paper
turret for unexposed media that is menu-selected by the computer when a different
type or size of substrate is necessary. An Auto Wind-up device automatically
threads and starts the new media onto the take-up roll.

Chromira
Images from a Chromira printer are superior to the image quality from a good inkjet
printer. Resolution in continuous tone printers is in pixels per inch (ppi), whereas
inkjets measure resolution by dots (of ink) per inch (dpi). Professionals agree that it
takes 5 to 6 times the dpi to match continuous tone resolution. That said, an inkjet
would need to produce 1,500 dpi to match Chromira’s 300 ppi. However, Chromira uses
a patent-pending optical system that sharpens each pixel and prints them at a higher
resolution of 425 ppi. Sounds like funny math to me, but the results are stunning!

The Chromira printing process uses LEDs passing light through fiber optics to place
an image on the substrate. An air compressor comprises part of the Chromira
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792 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

setup, although rumors that the air is used to blow the light from the LEDs onto the
paper are unfounded. Chromira printers use three LEDs to expose the media — red,
yellow, and blue. The idea of using a fourth black LED was abandoned.

These printers keep track of the paper on the roll and warn the operator when the
supply is low. That warning could take some time — the length of the roll can go up
to 275’. They also do automatic nesting and tiling of images. Interestingly, when
troubleshooting the printer, vocal commands are heard coming from the computer,
telling you what to do next. You can read more about this line at www.zbe.com.

Media for the RA4 Printer (30” or 50” models) can be loaded or unloaded in less
than a minute. Naturally, you’ll need darkroom conditions for that process, but nor-
mal operation is in room light. At a weight of 350 pounds, you’d better put it down
in the right place the first time. The operating system is Windows 2000, and is
embedded in the printer itself. The RA4 50 will print 150 8” x 10” prints from a 50”
wide roll in an hour. If you’re planning on doing a very large mural, it will print an
image 50” wide by 160’ long in a single eight-hour day.

The RA4 printer is networked, and each computer on the network can control every
phase of the printer’s operation, including the rearrangement of file order, number
of prints, color adjustments, scaling, rotation, and enlargement or reduction. No
operator is necessary to run the printer. A really great feature is that printing can
start before the entire image has been received by the RA4. If a network delay stops
transmission of the file, the printer will simply pause. No artifacts will be visible in
the finished print.

Printing without a Computer

Perhaps you are not that computer literate, you just don’t feel like getting involved
with learning software programs, or you don’t need to make refrigerator-sized
prints from your photos. What can you do? Fortunately, several alternatives are
available, and this is only the beginning — the advances in hardware, software, and
good old creativity expand every day. I will start with the assumption that you
either don’t have a computer, or at the least, you don’t want to use the computer to
process your photos. Possibly, you just want to use your digital camera just as you
did your old 35mm, and have 4” x 6” prints to pass around or place in an album.
You have your choice of inkjet or dye-sub technology.

Self-contained inkjet and dye-sublimation

snapshot printers
The self-contained type of printer costs a bit more than some nice, and much more
versatile, desktop inkjet printers, but using it is straightforward. You don’t have to
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 793

worry about drivers, cables, connections, variable paper sizes, or multiple dialog
boxes. You simply place your digital camera’s removable media card in one of the
slots on the printer and direct it to print. Within a couple minutes you’ll have shiny,
clear photos in your hands. The only drawback to the system is that you can’t do
any real retouching if it’s necessary. Some allow for contrast/brightness, and minor
color adjustments, but you won’t be able to get the glare off Uncle Bill’s glasses.

Dye-sub printing provides a continuous tone image that looks and feels just like tra-
ditional photographic prints. The output is powerful in terms of fine detail and
superb color. This type of printer is used successfully in a wide range of applica-
tions, which include the following:

✦ Photography: Test prints or final results for professional and amateur

photography
✦ Real estate: Listings and appraisals
✦ Graphic arts: Mockups, comprehensive layouts, and client approvals
✦ Travel and tourism: Share or bring home snapshots taken on vacation
✦ Medical: Documentation for surgery and following the course of disease and
treatment
✦ Science: Record laboratory tests
✦ Insurance: Accident claims
✦ Law enforcement: Crime and accident scenes

Sony DPP-SV77
This compact printer is less than a foot square, and about three and a half inches
tall. As you can see in Figure 19-16, the DPP-SV77 has a 3.2” DSTN color LCD moni-
tor that is a touch panel. The screen allows you to select and manipulate your
prints without a TV monitor or computer. The menu on the screen permits you to
print 1, 2, 4, or 9 frames per 4” x 6” sheet, or an index print. You can get two differ-
ent sized prints from this printer; a borderless 4” x 6” or an economical 3.5” x 4”
size. The resolution for the larger print is 2,466 x 1,664, and the printer uses a dye-
sub method of printing that provides continuous tone quality. A full-size print takes
about a minute and a half, while the economy print only takes a minute.

The DPP-SV77 has a suggested retail price of $599, and if you’re so inclined, it can be
connected to a Mac or PC via USB. With the computer connected, you can do all the
editing you want, and feed RGB files in JPEG, TIFF, BMP, and GIF format to the printer.
There’s also a Video Out port for connection to a TV set. The paper tray is automatic
feed, and holds 25 of the postcard size sheets, or 30 pieces of the smaller sheets.
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794 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Figure 19-16: Notice the touch panel screen on the DPP-SV77 (left); the
DPP-SV88 (right) boasts a CD-R/RW drive.
Courtesy of Sony Electronics, Inc.

Sony has a cousin machine named the DPP-SV88 (suggested retail $899) that lacks
the LCD display and must be connected to a TV for viewing. This unit boasts an 8 x
4 x 24 CD-R/RW drive, however, so you can download your photos from the memory
cards directly to a CD. It is the same size as the DPP-SV77, but all the controls are in
the front and it is intended for mounting in an AV system rack. You can view, print,
or archive from CD Mavica CD-R/RW disks without finalizing. So, besides the conve-
nience of printing from your memory cards, you can print from CDs. Both printers
accept Memory Stick, PC Card Type I/II; with a PCMCIA adapter you can also take
Compact Flash Type I/II, SmartMedia, and SD/MMC. Another important feature of
both printers is that all the prints are laminated to seal the dye into the print to
resist color shift and fading.

Olympus P-400
The Olympus P-400, a $999 dye-sub printer, provides direct printing from
SmartMedia, PC Card, CompactFlash, or Memory Stick as well as connectivity to
Mac and PC through USB or Parallel ports. It cranks out an A4-sized (8.25” x 11.7”)
print in 90 seconds. A single print costs about $1.90, and you can place from 1 to 16
images on the page. In the card-printing mode, you can get 2 or 4 postcards per
page. There’s a photo album setting that prints from 1 to 6 images with a back-
ground image, and an index method that gives you from 45 to 260 images per page.
As with all the dye-subs, a protective clear laminate layer protects the image.

A nice touch is the possibility of printing in full color, black and white, and sepia.
The center of the control panel (see Figure 19-17) contains an LCD panel that allows
you to preview or select images. You can create a print selection of up to 50 copies
at a time. Images can be trimmed, framed, date stamped, and have a background
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 795

image applied. Olympus has a smaller, battery-operated printer called the P-200
that prints 3” x 5” color prints. It’s great for proofing your shots in the field, or if
you don’t need larger prints. The P-200 sells for $399. You can read more about
Olympus photo card printers at www.olympusamerica.com.

Figure 19-17: The Olympus P-400 prints an 8” x

10” print in a minute and a half.

Canon S820D Photo Printer

The Canon S820D is an inkjet printer that uses Canon’s unique Bubble Jet Direct
technology to output an 8.5” x 11” photo in two minutes or a 4” x 6” print in a
minute. The printer receives image information directly from the Canon PowerShot
S30 and S40 digital cameras via a Direct Interface cable. You can also input data
through CompactFlash, Smart Media, Memory Stick, IBM Microdrive, or SD Cards. A
CompactFlash PCMCIA adapter is included with this $399 printer. The S820D
(shown in Figure 19-18) uses a 6-color print technology with 1,536 nozzles — each of
the six colors has 256 nozzles. It features a 4 pL ink droplet for spectacular print
resolution and 49 gradation levels to reduce graininess. Many types of normal,
gloss, high gloss paper stock, and transparencies can be printed, including 4” x 6”
borderless cards. Banners can be printed by printing up to as many as six con-
nected sheets.

The printer can be connected to any Mac or PC, and comes bundled with
PhotoRecord, ZoomBrowser EX, and PhotoStitch for Windows machines;
ImageBrowser and PhotoStitch for Macs. Printing from a computer yields 2,400 x
1,200 dpi resolution, but the Direct Camera connection only allows for 1,200 x 1,200
dpi. An optional 1.5” Color TFT LCD display for viewing images before printing
costs $99.
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796 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

Figure 19-18: The Canon S820D photo printer provides a cable-to-cam

era connection with select Canon cameras.

Canon CP-10
The CP-10, a little gem from Canon, has a list price of $299 (look for better street
prices) and prints wallet sized prints (3.4” x 2.1”) in just under a minute. All new
Canon PowerShot cameras (A10, A20, and IXUS 300) connect via USB ports, and
older PowerShot cameras will be able to interact with a firmware update. The CP-
10, shown in Figure 19-19, is less than five inches square, and just under two inches
tall. After the RGB dye-sub printing is done, a clear protective layer is applied to the
print to protect it from fading and minor scratches. Currently it runs on a recharge-
able battery pack, or can be powered by an AC adapter, or an optional 12-volt car
battery connectivity kit. A media pack of 36 sheets of paper costs about $17.50.
Presently, it does not connect to computers, but a connectivity kit is expected in
the fall of 2002.
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 797

Figure 19-19: Wallet sized prints are available in a minute with the
battery-powered CP-10.

Canon CP-100
The CP-100 is a seven-inch square, two and a half-inch tall printer (shown in Figure
19-20) and has just about the same capabilities as the little CP-10. It can print the
smaller wallet-sized prints from the same media pack, but it can also print 4” x 6”
prints. The larger media packs hold 36 sheets of paper for $24. The printer has a list
price of $349.

Figure 19-20: Wallet sized and postcard sized prints can be printed from
the CP-100.
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798 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

HP Photosmart 100 Photo Printer

With the HP Photosmart 100 Photo Printer, you can either connect it to your computer,
or run it as a stand-alone printer. As a stand-alone printer, you can place your memory
cards in the appropriate slots and start handing your prints around in about two min-
utes. The Photosmart 100 (shown in Figure 19-21) lists for $179, and uses thermal inkjet
technology to produce 2,400 x 1,200 dpi, 4” x 6” color prints. It’s small enough to carry
in a lunchbox — less than nine inches long, and about four and a half inches square.
One drawback for Mac users — it doesn’t connect to a Mac, only to PCs.

Figure 19-21: The RGB HP Photosmart

100 Photo Printer only prints 4” x 6”
sheets, but does it well.
Courtesy of Hewlett-Packard Company

HP Photosmart 1115 Photo Printer

For only $199.99 (suggested retail price), you can own the Photosmart 1115, shown
in Figure 19-22. This printer connects to Macs and PCs via USB, and accepts mem-
ory cards from your digital camera. On premium photo papers you can get 2,400 x
1,200 dpi resolution from its RGB thermal inkjet technology. Paper sizes range from
4” x 6” to letter-size, and you have the option of printing envelopes, iron-on trans-
fers, transparencies, and labels if you wish. Black and tri-color inks come in two
separate cartridges. The Photosmart 1115 comes with HP Image Editing software,
and ArcSoft PhotoImpressions.

Figure 19-22: The 4-color HP

Photosmart 1115 doubles as a
desktop publishing printer.
Courtesy of Hewlett-Packard Company
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 799

Printing via the Internet

Maybe you’re just plain lazy or you don’t want to mess with printers, supplies,
envelopes, and stamps to send your photos around to friends and family. What’s a
guy or gal to do? How about putting your images on the Web for everyone to see?
Using this method of “printing,” you upload your photos to the site of your choice,
and then just notify everyone via an e-mailed link that they can see your latest mas-
terpieces whenever they wish.

All the sites described here provide an online album for free, and most let you place
an unlimited amount of images on their server. The differences between the sites
are the length of time your album remains online, the variety of things you or your
friends and relatives can do with the images, and how you get your images to their
server. Many sites provide this type of service, but these are the most visible and
they’ve been around long enough to be deemed reliable. All of the services allow
access from any Mac or PC.

iPhoto
The iPhoto site is a part of iTools, which became available with Macintosh OS X.
You don’t have to be working with OS X to use iPhoto, but you do have to be on a
Mac with at least Mac OS 9 and the latest Internet Explorer or Netscape
Communicator. If you are running a PC, you won’t be able to open an iTools
account, but you will be able to view a Mac user’s albums if you’re invited to them.

So go online with your Mac, to www.apple.com, click on the iTools tab, and set up
your free account. You receive a free 20MB space on an Apple server that you can
fill with anything you like, from photos to movies, documents, or files you wish to
have viewed by parties you send to the site. If the 20MB is not enough, you can pur-
chase larger chunks of disk space — from 50MB for $50 a year, up to a gigabyte for
$1,000 a year. This disk space is called iDisk, and when you sign onto the site, you
just have to click a button to bring the iDisk onto your desktop. Then you can begin
to add or remove files from it in various folders.

The process for setting up an album is pretty straightforward. Simply place your
JPEG images in the Photos folder on the iDisk. From there, it’s an easy process to
move the photos onto your Home Page, title them, and invite people to view them.

Cross- See Chapter 9 for more on iPhoto.

Reference

Club Photo
Club Photo is found at www.clubphoto.com, and is the only site featured here that
has different levels of membership.

✦ Basic: The basic membership is free and gives you an unlimited number of
albums that last 90 days each.
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800 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

✦ Gold: If you want what Club Photo calls “permanent” albums, you can upgrade
to a Gold Member for $24.95 a year. At that level, you can have 15 “permanent”
albums, hi-res downloads, 5 percent off all purchases, guest book notification,
login alias, preferential gallery listing, and be eligible for the “photo of the day.”
You will also get a special Gold Member logo by your name.
✦ Platinum: A Platinum Member receives the same benefits as a Gold Member,
with minor additions: a 10 percent discount, 30 permanent albums, and album
backgrounds for $34.95 a year. By Club Photo definition, “permanent” lasts the
length of your yearlong subscription. Both Gold and Platinum also retain
unlimited numbers of 90-day albums, however.

Sign up and create your first album. All you need to do is create an album title, type
in a brief description, and password-protect it if you wish. PC users can download
the free Living Album Software whereby you create an album on your PC’s desktop
and upload the entire album in one shot. Both PC and Mac users can download
Photo DropSoftware, which uploads JPEG files from your computer. If you don’t
want to download any software, you can upload photos one at a time by typing in a
location or by using the Browse button to search for the file on your computer,
CD-ROM, floppy, or memory card.

After uploading the photo, you can view, edit, upload more, or share the images.
You’re also given the opportunity to purchase prints, gifts, or upgrade your
account. Prints from your images range from $0.45 for a 3” x 5” to $3.99 for an 8” x
10”. The standard 4” x 6” costs $0.45 — same as the smaller prints.

What sets Club Photo apart from the other sites is the wide selection of items that
you can purchase with your image:

✦ Coasters: You can get a set of four long-lasting chipboard drink coasters with
your image on it for $13.95. A set of eight sells for $24.95. If you don’t have a
digital image, but have a photographic print, you can send the print via regu-
lar mail and Club Photo scans the print and reproduces it on the coasters. Be
sure to include a self-addressed, stamped envelope in order to get the print
back, or Club Photo destroys the print.
✦ Photo albums: You can purchase 4” x 6” or 5” x 7” photo books that are spiral
bound albums of your photos.
• If you have 1 to 6 images (4” x 6”, one per page) in the book you pay
$5.95 per book.
• If you have 11 to 20 photos, the charge is $17.95 per book
• If you have 51 to 60 photos, the charge is $32.95 per book.
• The 5” x 7” books are slightly more expensive, ranging from
$7.95 to $37.95.
There is a charge of a couple more dollars each for shipping, depending on the
number of pages and the size of the book. It takes about three days to ship.
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 801

✦ Jewelry: You can have an image enameled in color onto a 14K gold circle,
oval, or heart pendant for $85.
✦ Magnets: Photo magnets are available for $4.95.
✦ Coffee mugs: Mugs are available in two sizes:
• 11-oz. for $12.95
• 15-oz. for $14.95
✦ Goodies: Best and most creative of all, you can get a dozen shortbread cook-
ies with your image on the icing. They come in a tin along with a half-pound of
jelly beans for $39.95 or two dozen cookies for $46.95.

They also sell a large selection of frames, aprons, t-shirts, and they’ll even turn your
image into a pencil sketch, watercolor, or oil painting. This is a very versatile outfit!

Ofoto
Kodak sponsors this site (www.ofotot.com). Like the others, membership is free,
and you can either send in film to be processed and put online or burned to a
CD-ROM, or you can upload your own images into albums. To upload your digital
images, first download its free software for either a PC or Mac computer. Then you
only need to browse your hard drive, floppy, CD-ROM, or camera’s memory card to
select images. Use the slideshow and magnifying glass to view the images. Then you
can edit your images with OfotoNow software before you upload them.

You can have Ofoto print photos for you:

✦ 4” x 6” prints: $0.49 each

✦ 8” x 10” prints: $3.99 each
✦ 20” x 30” prints: $19.99each
✦ A sheet of four wallet-sized prints: $1.79 per sheet

Note Keep in mind that your image must fit certain qualifications before being printed
at any size. If the image has too little information to be enlarged, you will be
warned of that fact. If you still wish to print it at the desired enlargement, you must
sign an acknowledgement that you’ve been told it’s not going to look very good.

You can have 18 different styles of 5” x 7” folded greeting cards printed on premium
card stock by Ofoto. If you wish, it will print and mail the cards for you, or send the
completed prints to you with envelopes to address and mail yourself. The price for 1
to 9 cards are $2.99 each; the price per card decreases as you order more, with 101
cards or more costing only $1.49 each. Naturally, postage is extra. You can design
the format of these cards, or you can choose standard styles including the following:

✦ party invitation
✦ sharing love
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802 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

✦ thank you
✦ new address
✦ children’s party

Photo cards are 5” x 7”, and printed either vertical or horizontal, depending on your
image. Your photo occupies just over half of the sheet, and your message goes on
the remainder. You can choose from the same styles as the greeting cards. Prices
start at $14.95 for a set of 20, including the print and envelopes. Mix and match the
designs you want, each additional set is only $10.00.

Folded insert cards are also available. These items have a card stock frame that the
photo is inserted into. You have many border schemes to choose from. One to two
sets cost $15.00 each, over ten sets are $11.00 each.

Being owned by Kodak, it’s not surprising that Ofoto processes film. A 36-exposure
roll of 35mm film costs $23.08 to be processed and printed on 4” x 6” Kodak paper.
Storage space is free on its site, and you are given an unlimited amount of space, at
that. Ofoto also sells a nice variety of frames and of course you can have your
images produced on a CD-ROM.

Imagestation
Sony has a lot to show you at www.imagestation.com. After all, it makes a lot of
products, and your membership is free. After you register, you receive an e-mail
confirmation. You must open this e-mail and click on the link in order to activate
your membership. Then you can create your album. Imagestation allows you to title
the album, give it a description, and then rate it:

✦ G for General
✦ PG for Parental Guidance
✦ R for Restricted

You can also password protect an album if you want, and you have the option of let-
ting other people contribute to the album — after you approve each picture. There’s a
button that you can check to keep uninvited guests from ordering prints or gifts from
the album. You can also list your album in a gallery for the public to see. Choose a
category and then a subcategory — there are literally hundreds to choose from.

In order to get your images online, you need to download the Upload Plug-in. It only
takes a few minutes to download the file. Then you quit your browser, run the installer,
and fire up the browser again. When you sign in at Imagestation, you have a target on
the upload page that you simply drag and drop images onto. You don’t have to wait for
each one to completely upload, either. Just drag the images onto the icon as you wish.
A progress bar lets you know how you’re doing and how long it will take to finish.

You can order prints at what seems to be the going rate:

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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 803

✦ 4” x 6” prints: $0.49 each

✦ 8” x 10” prints: $3.99 each
✦ 20” x 30” prints: $19.99 each

You can order a variety of other products:

✦ Eleven-ounce coffee mugs with two 270 x 234 pixel images for $16.95
✦ A dozen and a half picture cookies for $29.95
✦ Mouse pads for $9.95 each
✦ Ten-packs of two- and three-panel cards from Hallmark that sell at $25.00 and
$32.50 respectively

Frames are available that range in price from around $15 to $50. You must choose
an image to display in the frame before you get to see the frame selections. Your
photo is then shown inside the frame to help you decide on the correct look for your
photo/frame combination. Warnings abound if your image will not reproduce at the
size you have chosen. If you need that image to work at a particular size, you’ll have
to resize the original image on your computer and upload the new, larger file.

Shutterfly
Registration on Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com) is just as easy as the other sites.
Just provide your name, e-mail address, and your selected password. You upload
photo files to the site by typing in their location or using the Browse button to find
the image on your system. The image is automatically uploaded, but a window
appears, warning you not to close the window or the upload will quit.

Photo print prices are the same as most other sites:

✦ 4” x 6” prints: $0.49 each

✦ 5” x 7” prints: $0.99 each
✦ 8” x 10” prints: $3.99 each
✦ A sheet of four wallet-sized prints: $1.79 per sheet

Shutterfly gives you a break when you order multiples of the same print. For instance,
order 50 to 74 4” x 6” prints, and the cost drops to $0.47 each, 20 to 49 8” x 10” prints
cost $3.79 each, and wallets drop to $1.54 if you order more than 100 sheets. The back
of the print can be imprinted with your message if you wish, and a mailing list that you
provide can be used to select which recipients you wish to receive the prints. This
could be a valuable tool if you want to use these prints for self-promotion.

Shutterfly offers a variety of other services and products:

✦ Processing: When you have a roll of 35mm or APS film that needs processing,
Shutterfly processes and prints them at 4” x 6” size for a total of $9.99 (20 prints),
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804 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

or $13.99 (30 prints), including shipping and handling and up to 50MB storage
online. The film is processed, scanned, and put online. Your account is credited
with the appropriate number of prints. You select the images and number of
prints you wish to be printed. Naturally, you can order more prints.
✦ Frames: If you want a frame for your photo, Shutterfly has quite a range of
them from $10 to $15 for most 4” x 6” frames to under $20 for most of the
larger sizes. A few in the 8” x 10” size cost over $20. Your image is displayed in
the frame while you make your choice, and size/quality warnings are given if
your image is too small to reproduce at your selected size.
✦ Real time photo adjustments: Shutterfly allows you to adjust the photo in real
time. You can make the print black and white, change the color tone to a sepia
or other type of monochrome, adjust the saturation, and add soft focus. All
are adjustable with sliders (with the exception of the black and white mode).
You can see the results of your adjustments within the frame of your choice,
and even rotate the image.
✦ Cards: You can upload addresses from Outlook or your Palm, and Shutterfly
will mail printed cards for you. You can also have them send you the printed
cards and envelopes so you can mail them when you wish. Ten to twenty
cards cost $2.49 each, with price breaks up to 100 ($1.49 each).
✦ Snapbooks: Snapbooks are available as well. A one- to six-page Snapbook in
4” x 6” size costs $6.99, and a 5” x 7” sells for $8.99. A 20-page 4” x 6” book
costs $14.95, and would be a great way to display and share a wedding or
birthday celebration.
✦ Holiday cards: If you’re interested in those kinds of cards you see during the
holidays that have a photo on one half, and a season’s greetings type message
on the other, you can get 4” x 8” cards at a price of $0.99 each for 25. One hun-
dred of them are only $0.82 each.
✦ CD-ROMs: You can have your photos placed on a CD-ROM for archival pur-
poses or sharing with friends around the world. Up to 50 images costs $9.99,
200 images costs $19.99, and you’ll spend $39.99 for 1,000. Obviously you may
not get 1,000 images on a CD-ROM, depending on the size of each image.

Snapfish
Snapfish (www.snapfish.com) starts with the same type of easy registration and is
free as well. It also accepts film for processing, and during the registration process,
you can input your credit card information for future needs. Then you choose an
album type and upload the images via typing their addresses, or using the easy
Browse button to navigate your system. The day I registered, a promotion entitled
me to 10 free prints. Most of these sites have one promotion or another for free
prints or film.

The prices for prints are just a bit higher on Snapfish, but not much:

✦ 4” x 6” prints: $0.59 each

✦ 8” x 10” prints: $3.99 each
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Chapter 19 ✦ Specialty Output Options 805

If you’d like to create greeting cards, a link takes you to cardstore.com, where you
can choose from 5” x 7” folded cards and envelopes, 4.25” x 6” postcards, and 5” x
7” postcards. Then you can select your choice of colors and fonts to create a per-
sonal greeting. The cards can be sent to you for your own mailing schedule, or
Snapfish will mail them directly. By simple calculations, the site tells you whether
you will have white space on the sides or top and bottom of the image due to the
photo’s aspect ratio. You can also select a personal border. There’s even a choice of
U.S. postage stamps!

When you’re through with all your choices, you can view the results in Adobe
Acrobat before committing to print. On-site software allows you to crop, adjust
color, and remove red-eye before you buy:

✦ 1 to 10 prints:
• 4” x 6” prints: $1.09 each
• 5” x 7” prints: $1.49 each
✦ 20 to 99 prints:
• 4” x 6” prints: $0.88 each
• 5” x 7” prints: $1.09 each

5” x 7” folded cards are also available:

✦ 1 to 9 cards: $2.99 each

✦ 20 cards: $1.79 each.

Film processing is Snapfish’s strongest selling point. It develops and gives you a sin-
gle set of 4” x 6” prints from a 36-exposure roll for a total of $4.98, including ship-
ping and handling and storage space (up to 60MB). That’s a pretty good deal. Ofoto
and Shutterfly both charge over $20. Snapfish’s film processing is even cheaper
than Costco or Wal-mart.

To share an album, you enter your friend’s e-mail addresses in a list. You can select
individuals from this group each time you have a different album. Snapfish sends
out the invitation to view the album, but e-mail addresses are not seen by anyone
other than the recipient. Your friend gets the message that you have an online
album, and they’re invited to view and order prints. You have the option to let peo-
ple copy the photos to their own accounts, download hi-res versions, make a CD, or
re-share the album. Or, you can be selfish and restrict them to viewing and ordering
prints only: They won’t be able to re-share the album. You can have as many photos
you want per album; none are visible to the public. Your friends must join Snapfish
in order to view your photos, however. They will receive a message confirming their
membership, and when they sign in on the site, they’re able to see your photos.
Your album is saved in their account, and stays there until you or they remove it.
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806 Part VI ✦ Producing the Best Output

PhotoWorks
For more than 24 years, PhotoWorks (www.photoworks.com) was known as Seattle
FilmWorks. During that time, its main business was 35mm film processing. Now it
has modified operations to provide more service for the digital photography mar-
ket. PhotoWorks still processes film, but now instead of just prints and a replace-
ment roll of film, you can receive your images on a CD or on its Web site.

The process is straightforward — simply send in your roll of exposed conventional

35mm or APS color film, a single-use camera, your photo CD from another source
(even your own), or the memory card from your digital camera. PhotoWorks pro-
cesses the film if necessary and then creates color prints using traditional Kodak
photographic solutions and paper. Then it places your images online and sends you
an e-mail saying that your pictures are ready. Set up an address book on its site, and
you can select people to share your pictures with — you don’t have to upload the
pictures! You also have a free option to create an album of your favorite photos that
you can share, create a family calendar, make greeting cards, or gifts.

How about a DVD or VHS tape of your pictures? No problem at PhotoWorks. With
its proprietary software (available as a free download from PhotoWorks), you can
create a multi-media presentation complete with themes and music. Depending on
the number of photos involved, a DVD or VHS tape costs from $24.95 to $39.95.

Send PhotoWorks your film (in its postage-paid envelope) along with a check for
$14.45, and you’ll get back two sets of 4” x 6” prints. PhotoWorks uses hi-resolution
scanning to provide e-sharing and archiving. You’ll also receive Pictures On
Disk(tm) (your images on a CD) with MGI PhotoSuite(r) image editing software,
your negatives, an index print, and a roll of new color film. For around $20, you can
have a spiral-bound desk calendar (8.5” x 6”) or wall calendar (8.5” x 11”). Photo
cards, brag books, frames, musical jewelry boxes, mugs, mouse pads, puzzles, and
leather bound albums are also available.

Summary
Wow, a lot of territory has been covered in this chapter. You learned how laser,
inkjet, dye-sublimation, and continuous tone printers worked, and why you would
want to use or purchase one or another. Then you found out about various models
of printers from several printer manufacturers, where you could find more informa-
tion about them, and where the larger models could be found. From there I took a
look at the small-scale photo card printers for people who want to print directly
from their cameras with or without computer intervention. Finally, you found out
that you can share images with the entire world at a really great price — free. Then
you can order prints, coffee mugs, t-shirts, frames, and more from the same place
your albums are stored. What a great way to show off your creativity or the events
that make your life special!

✦ ✦ ✦
27549510 PP07.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 807

P A R T

Appendixes VII
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

T he appendixes are informational resources that are

intended to help you find even more information on
digital photography and show you where to shop and where
In This Part

to find similar commands across a variety of image editors. Appendix A

The final appendix describes the contents of the CD-ROM Performing Equivalent
that accompanies this book. Tasks with Various
Image Editors

Appendix B
What’s on the
CD-ROM?

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
27549510 PP07.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 808
28549510 AppA.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 809

Performing
Equivalent Tasks
A
A P P E N D I X

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

with Various In This Appendix

Photoshop 7

Image Editors Photoshop Elements

PHOTO-PAINT 10

Paint Shop Pro 7

A lthough the purpose of this book is to inform the reader

about the basics — and hopefully more — of digital pho-
tography, it is more than likely that a photographer will want
✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

to do more than just take the photo. In other words, image

editing may be in order, either to correct or create something.
To that end, this appendix is an attempt to give the reader a
comparison of the features available in the most visible digital
editing programs on the market: Photoshop, Photoshop
Elements, PHOTO-PAINT, and Paint Shop Pro.

Without a doubt, Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard.

If you are at all serious about your images and want to be able
to have complete control over your work, you’ll most likely
end up using Photoshop. However, I don’t mean to suggest
that Photoshop is the only program worth owning. Adobe
Photoshop Elements seems — at first glance, anyway — to be
a very watered-down version of Photoshop, but in fact, it has
many of the major features that are important in most image-
editing projects. The strongest feature of Photoshop Elements
is the Hints and Recipes that guide the novice through even
the toughest tasks. Jasc’s Paint Shop Pro began as a share-
ware program, and even though it only runs on the Windows
platform, it has a very large user base of very satisfied cus-
tomers. Paint Shop Pro has a very good range of tools and
effects that enable you to complete your work. Corel PHOTO-
PAINT has a well-developed toolset and contains many impor-
tant features.

Each of these programs has features that the others don’t, but
it is safe to say that Photoshop has the lion’s share of tools,
filters, effects, features, and controls. However, it also costs
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810 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

six times as much as the other programs. Adobe has spent considerably more time
and money than the other makers on programming and development. I guess that’s
why they get the big bucks!

With the exception of Photoshop, the other three programs are sold at prices under
$100, and are quite often given away or bundled with digital cameras, scanners, or
computer systems. Casual users can get by in style with these three programs.
Photoshop Elements doesn’t support CMYK printing; therefore, it is excluded from
commercial printing of any kind. Well, that’s not totally correct. You can certainly
send an RGB file to a service bureau or printer, and they can convert it to CMYK
and provide printed copies, but you won’t have the control over the image that the
other three programs have. Photoshop Element also lacks Channels, which prevent
the user from making a whole host of corrections or creative actions.

All these programs enable you to get files efficiently and economically Web-ready
to a certain degree. Photoshop comes bundled with Adobe ImageReady so you can
optimize your images for the Web more efficiently. Paint Shop Pro has an Animation
Shop interface for the creation of Web animations. PHOTO-PAINT and Photoshop
Elements don’t have bundled Web applications, however. For this reason, most Web-
based activities that are handled with the add-on programs have not been addressed
in this appendix. After all, this is a book about digital photography, not the Web.

Paint Shop Pro and PHOTO-PAINT have many of the same features as Photoshop,
but use different names for those features. In this appendix, the difference in names
is indicated where applicable.

Dozens of actions can be carried out with one-button clicks in one program but take
more steps in another program. In these cases, I only deal with the single-click ver-
sion. Quite often another program can do the same function, but not in a single step.

The information in the tables that comprise this appendix is divided in loose
groups of similar functionality:

✦ Adjustments: In this section, I discuss the overall tonality of an image and the
tools and programs that can help to correct or modify images.
✦ Drawing: In this section, I cover creative tools that allow you to actually
“draw” or “paint” something.
✦ Features: In this section, you find the bells and whistles that make programs
more comprehensive, easier to use, or more fun.
✦ Tools: In this section, I compare selection tools, cropping tools, and blending,
darkening, and modifying tools.
✦ Type: In this section, you can shop for the means to work with headline and
body text in a digital image.
✦ Web and Animation: In this section, I explore the built-in Web attributes of
some programs (others have separate programs for this purpose).
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 811

Naturally, you will see a crossover in terms and functions. If you need specifics, you
can contact the manufacturers through the Web addresses listed at the end of the
appendix.

Although this appendix is designed to be a comparison of program features, you

may also find that it serves as a minor glossary of terms. I hope you find it as useful
as I did in compiling it.

Note In the following charts, base color refers to the color of the original image, blend
color is color being applied by editing or painting, and the result color is the com-
bination of base and blend colors.

I compare four image-editing programs in this appendix. In the interest of readabil-

ity, I abbreviate them as follows:

✦ PS7: Adobe Photoshop 7

✦ PE: Adobe Photoshop Elements
✦ PP10: Corel PHOTO-PAINT 10
✦ PSP7: Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7

Table A-1
Adjustments
Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Add mode Values of blend color and base color No No Yes No

are added.
Behind mode Affects transparent parts of a layer only. Yes No Yes No
Black merge In a CMYK image, blend color replaces No No Yes No
mode black channel.
Blue merge In an RGB image, blend color replaces No No Yes No
mode blue channel.
Burn mode Lightness values of blend colors darken No No No Yes
colors of lower layers, darkening the
image.
Clear mode Changes pixels to transparent; must be Yes No No No
in Line, Paint Bucket, Brush, or Pencil
tool; or Fill or Stroke command.
Color Burn Darkens the image’s base color by Yes Yes Yes No
mode combining with blend color.
Color Dodge Brightens base color to reflect blend Yes Yes Yes No
mode color through a decrease in contrast.

Continued
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812 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-1 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Color mode Luminance of base color and hue and Yes Yes Yes Yes
saturation of blend color pre- serves gray
levels. Good for tinting color images.
Cyan Merge In a CMYK image, blend color replaces No No Yes No
mode cyan channel.
Darken mode Selects darker of base or blend color as Yes Yes Yes Yes
result color. Lighter colors are changed
to result color; darker colors are
unchanged. (PP10 calls it “If Lighter.”)
Defringe Fringe pixels that have a color other than Yes No No No
command the background color are changed to the
color of adjacent pixels.
Difference Depending on the greater brightness Yes Yes Yes Yes
mode value, the blend color is subtracted from
the base color, or the base color is sub-
tracted from the blend color.
Dissolve mode A random replacement of each pixel to Yes Yes No Yes
base or blend color, depending on opac-
ity of individual pixels.
Dodge mode Lightness values of blend colors lighten No No No Yes
colors of lower layers, thus lightening
the image.
Exclusion mode Lower in contrast than Difference mode, Yes Yes No Yes
and a softer effect. Blending with white
inverts the base color values; no change
with black.
Green merge In an RGB image, blend color replaces No No Yes No
mode green channel.
Hard Light When blend color is lighter than 50% Yes Yes Yes Yes
mode gray, image is screened lighter; if blend
color is darker than 50% gray, image is
multiplied darker. Used to add highlights
or shadows.
Hue mode Luminance and saturation of base color Yes Yes Yes Yes
are added to the hue of the blend color.
Invert mode Inverts the value of the blend color and No No Yes No
adds that value to the base color.
Lighten mode Selects lighter of base or blend color as Yes Yes Yes Yes
result color. Darker colors are changed to
result colors; lighter colors are unchanged.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 813

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Linear Burn Decreases the brightness of the base Yes No No No

mode color to reflect the blend color.
Linear Dodge Increases the brightness of the base Yes No No No
mode color to reflect the blend color.
Linear Light When blend color is lighter than 50% Yes No No No
mode gray, image is made lighter by increasing
brightness; if blend color is darker than
50% gray, image is made darker by
decreasing brightness.
Logical OR Converts blend and base color values to No No Yes No
Merge mode binary numbers and applies Boolean
algebraic OR formula to them.
Logical XOR Converts blend and base color values to No No Yes No
Merge mode binary numbers and applies Boolean
algebraic XOR formula to them.
Luminosity Hue and saturation of base color added Yes Yes No Yes
mode to the luminance of the blend color.
Creates inverse effect of Color mode.
Magenta Merge In a CMYK image, blend color replaces No No Yes No
mode magenta channel.
Multiply mode Multiplies base color by blend color, Yes Yes Yes Yes
resulting in darker color.
Normal mode Replaces base color with blend color. Yes Yes Yes Yes
Overlay mode Depending on the base color, multiplies Yes Yes Yes Yes
or screens the colors, preserving the high-
lights and shadows of the base color.
Base and blend colors are mixed,
reflecting the lightness or darkness
of original colors.
Pin Light mode When blend color is lighter than 50% Yes No No No
gray, pixels darker than blend color are
replaced while pixels lighter than the
blend color are not changed; if blend
color is darker than 50% gray, pixels
lighter than blend color are replaced
and pixels darker than the blend color
don’t change.
Red Merge In an RGB image, blend color replaces No No Yes No
mode red channel.

Continued
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814 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-1 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Remove Black Object removed from black background Yes No Yes Yes
Matte command has dark pixels surrounding it; this com-
mand blends those pixels to the color of
adjacent pixels.
Remove White Object removed from white background Yes No Yes Yes
Matte command has light pixels surrounding it; this com-
mand blends those pixels to the color of
adjacent pixels.
Saturation Luminance and hue of base color added Yes Yes Yes Yes
mode to the saturation of the blend color.
Screen mode Multiplies inverse of blend and base Yes Yes Yes Yes
colors, resulting in lighter color.
Soft light mode When blend color is lighter than 50% Yes Yes Yes Yes
gray, image is made lighter by dodging;
if blend color is darker than 50% gray,
image is made darker by burning.
Subtract mode Values of blend and base colors are No No Yes No
added, then 255 is subtracted from the
result, ending in a darker color.
Texturize mode Blend color is converted to grayscale No No Yes No
and multiplied by base color value.
Vivid Light When blend color is lighter than 50% Yes No No No
mode gray, image is made lighter by decreasing
contrast; if blend color is darker than
50% gray, image is made darker by
increasing contrast.
Yellow Merge In a CMYK image, blend color replaces . No No Yes No
mode yellow channel

Table A-2
Drawing
Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Arrowhead Add arrowheads to the ends of Yes No No Yes

options vector paths.
Define Brush Create size, shape, and other features Yes Yes Yes Yes
command of custom brushes.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 815

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Define Pattern An image that is repeated or tiled. Yes Yes Yes Yes
command
Erase to History Erase current image to a saved state Yes Yes No No
mode, or a snapshot.
Eraser tool
Finger Painting Smears foreground color at the beginning Yes Yes Yes No
option of each stroke.
Gradients Color graduates from center outward to Yes Yes Yes Yes
another color.
Jitter Specify randomness of changing elements Yes No No No
on brush tips.
Preset brushes Various brush shapes, textures, . Yes Yes Yes Yes
and themes
Spacing option, Change the distance between brush Yes Yes Yes Step
Brush marks in a stroke.
Texture Add a texture to brush strokes. Yes No Yes Yes
Wet edges Edge of stroke builds up with paint, Yes Yes No No
as in watercolor.

Table A-3
Features
Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Actions, Recorded sequence of events that can be Yes No Yes No

Recordings replayed on other documents, incorporated
in other Actions, and edited.
Adaptive color A custom color table consisting of colors Yes Yes No No
table that comprise the image.
Adjustment Allows for color edits or filters to be run Yes Yes Yes Yes
layers on an image without changing the image
itself. The layer can be discarded without
changing the image. (Called Lenses in PP10.)
Allow Non-Linear Alter previous states of work on an image Yes No No Yes
History option without changing later modifications
(see History palette).
Alpha Channels 8-bit grayscale images used to mask, Yes No Yes Yes
manipulate, or protect certain areas of
an image.
Continued
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816 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-3 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Anti-aliasing Produces a smooth edge on a selection by Yes Yes Yes Yes

partially filling in edge pixels and making
them semi-transparent. Solves the jaggies.
AppleScript Limited external automation for Macintosh Yes No No No
OS allowing scriptable events, such as
starting the program and carrying out
various commands.
Apply Image Blend layer and channel from a source Yes No No Yes
command image into a different (active) destination
image.
Auto Erase Used with the Pencil tool to erase Yes Yes Yes No
option foreground color to background color.
Auto Screens Allow the program to create optimal Yes No Yes Yes
screen angles and frequency based on
user input about resolution and output
device.
Automatically Snapshot of image is taken as document Yes No No No
Create First opens. Snapshot can be returned while
Snapshot working and used as image reference or
option new starting point.
Automating An Action converted to a small applet Yes No No No
using Droplets that can be installed on the desktop. The
main program doesn’t have to be running
to operate a droplet.
Background Variable brush that erases the back- Yes Yes Yes No
Eraser tool ground of an image to transparent, but
ignores foreground objects, based on
color differences.
Batch Applies recorded script or set of actions Yes No Yes No
command to a batch or folder of documents.
Batch Rename Renames all files in a batch, including Yes No Yes Yes
command change of file type.
Bevel and Adds variable amounts of light and Yes Yes Yes Yes
Emboss effect shadow to layers to give appearance of
a raised or lowered surface.
Bicubic Allows user to choose smooth quality Yes No No No
interpolation method to assign color values to pixels
created through resampling.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 817

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Bilinear Allows user to choose medium quality Yes No No No

interpolation method to assign color values to pixels
created by resampling.
Blend Clipped Base layer acts as mask to the whole Yes Yes Yes No
Layers as Group group. This option treats the clipped
option layers as a group.
Blend If option Used to specify which pixels from the Yes Yes No Yes
for layers active layer, and which pixels from the
underlying layers will appear in the image.
Blend Interior Applies blending mode of the layer to Yes Yes No No
Effects as Group other layer effects that modify non-
option transparent pixels.
Borders Prints a user-defined stroke around Yes Yes Yes Yes
an image.
Bring Forward Moves selected layer forward one layer Yes Yes Yes No
command in stacking order.
Bring to Front Moves selected layer to the front of the Yes Yes Yes No
command layer stacking order.
Browse Allows user to view thumbnails and Yes Yes No Yes
command navigate through folders to sort, file,
rename, and open documents.
Button Mode Views and operates Action palette with Yes No No No
command single buttons instead of hierarchical listing.
Calculations Combines channel data from two Yes No Yes No
command channelsand applies the result to a
destination image.
Calibration bars Printer scales applied to the sides of Yes No Yes No
color separations.
Canvas, resizing Changes the size and shape of the area Yes Yes Yes Yes
surrounding the image. Known as Paper
size in PHOTO-PAINT.
Captions, Prints caption information entered in File Yes Yes No No
printing Info dialog box.
Change Layer Used to change settings of an adjustment Yes Yes Yes No
Content layer instead of creating a new adjustment
command layer. (Use Edit Lens in PP10.)
Channel Mixer Modifies color channels by using a combi- Yes No Yes Yes
command nation of other channels.

Continued
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818 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-3 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Clipping groups, A knockout punches holes through Yes No No No

knockout underlying layers. Clipping groups used
as knockouts punch holes to user defined
layers.
Clipping paths A vector path outlining an object to isolate Yes No Yes No
it, making the background transparent for
printing or placing in another application.
CMYK color Subtractive color mode uses cyan, magenta, Yes No Yes Yes
model yellow, and black for commercial printing;
32-bit color depth creates more than
4 billion colors; also called process color.
Color corrections Modify colors by using a combination of Yes No Yes Yes
by mixing other channels.
channels
Color gamut A color gamut is the range of colors a given Yes No Yes No
awareness device can generate. Some programs warn
if a color is out of gamut and will be
adjusted.
Color Picker Dialog box for color choice from Adobe. Yes Yes No No
dialog box,
Adobe
Color Picker Dialog box for color choice from Apple. Yes Yes Yes No
dialog box,
Apple
Color Picker Dialog box for color choice from Windows. Yes Yes Yes Yes
dialog box,
Windows
Color Range Selects specific color or range of colors Yes No Yes Yes
command within an image or selection. (Use Magic
Wand in PP10 and PSP7.)
Color Generally produce cyan, magenta, yellow, Yes No Yes Yes
separations and black film negatives used in
commercial printing.
Color tables Tables made up of colors contained in an Yes Yes Yes No
image. Limited to 256 colors for file opti-
mization in Web images.
Color traps Used in CMYK printing; colors overlap by Yes No Yes Yes
choking or spreading in order to negate
press misregistration, resulting in white
gaps around objects.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 819

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Composite This channel is visible when all the color Yes No Yes No
channel channels in an image are visible: RGB or
CMYK; the full color image.
CompuServe A lossless compression means for line art Yes Yes Yes Yes
GIF format and images with solid colors, limited to
256 colors. Recognized by most browsers.
Conditional An Automate command that changes the Yes No Yes No
Mode Change color mode of an image to another color
command mode in an Action.
Contact Sheet II Creates a contact sheet similar to that Yes Yes No Yes
command provided by a film lab for a roll of film.
Contiguous Selects pixels that touch each other; Yes Yes Yes Yes
option used for selections or erasing.
Contours Modify the way an effect looks; used on Yes No No No
inner and outer shadows, glows, bevels,
and embossing.
Convert to Changes text to a vector mask; text Yes No No Yes
Shapes becomes un-editable.
command
Copy Layer Copies attributes of one layer and pastes Yes No No Yes
Style command them into another layer in the same
image or a different document.
Copyright Embeds copyright information (metadata) Yes No No No
information, in file using XMP; supported by NAA
adding to files and IPTC.
Correcting Revert command allows user to work in Yes Yes Yes Yes
mistakes, revert last-saved version of document; all changes
to saved image since that state will be deleted.
Correcting Undo command; number of undos per Yes Yes Yes Yes
mistakes, program depends on availability of
undoing last RAM on computer.
action
Create Layers Adds layer for placement of additional Yes Yes Yes Yes
command parts of image, filters, effects, masks, text,
and paths.
Crop command Changes the dimension of an image by Yes Yes Yes Yes
cutting off marginal edges.
Crop marks Printer marks that show the printing Yes No Yes Yes
company where to trim the page.

Continued
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820 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-3 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Cropping images, While cropping, allows squaring-up of Yes No No No

changing images that have a keystone effect due to
perspective foreshortening or point of view.
Curves Adjust the brightness of channels; 256 . Yes No Yes Yes
shades of gray are represented by a curve
starting at white on the bottom left, going
to black at the top right
Custom color Tables made up of user-defined colors. Yes Yes Yes No
table Limited to 256 colors for file optimization
in Web images.
Custom Spot Use PostScript commands to create new Yes No No No
Function halftone dot shapes.
Cut command Removes selection from document and Yes Yes Yes Yes
places it in the Clipboard. May use Paste
to reapply the selection to the same or a
different document.
DCS format Desktop Color Separations is a version of Yes No No No
EPS that is used to save spot color
channels for printing.
Delete Color Removes a color from a color table; Yes No Yes No
command affected pixels will assume closest color
from palette.
Deselect Releases selected objects. Yes Yes Yes Yes
command
Digimark Detect A watermark can be embedded in an Yes Yes No Yes
Watermark image, showing copyright, author,
plug-in restrictions on use, etc. Programs show
copyright symbol in title bar.
Distortions, Image can be distorted as if it were on a Yes Yes No No
Liquify sheet of putty.
command
Drop Shadow Adds a shadow with a variety of densities, Yes Yes Yes Yes
effect distances, and softness to create the effect
that an object or text is floating above the
image.
Droplets An Action converted to a small applet that Yes No No No
can be installed on the desktop. The main
program doesn’t have to be running to
operate a droplet.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 821

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

DSC format Document Structuring Convention is used No No Yes No

to have a service bureau trap or impose a
PostScript file.
Duotone mode A color mode utilizing two colors of ink; Yes No Yes Yes
one is usually black.
Duplicate Creates an exact replica of a channel for Yes No No No
Channel use as a mask or other effects.
command
Duplicate Creates an exact copy of the active Yes Yes Yes No
command document for experimentation; doesn’t
save to hard drive, but keeps it in RAM.
User must save it to keep modifications.
Duplicate Allows some layers in the image to be Yes Yes Yes No
Merged Layers duplicated and others ignored.
Only option
EPS files, Encapsulated PostScript files can be Yes Yes Yes Yes
opening bitmapped, made into vector art, or a
combination. Upon opening, image is
rastered into bitmap; vectors are lost.
EPS files, saving Encapsulated PostScript files can be Yes Yes Yes Yes
placed in most DTP programs for
printing; requires a PostScript printer
for good output without jaggies.
Erase to History Eraser tool deletes image, replacing it Yes No No No
option with previous state of the image.
Export Clipboard Allows copied or cut data on Clipboard Yes Yes Yes Yes
option to be pasted into another application.
Extract Separates foreground object from Yes No No No
command background and makes background
transparent; useful for complex edges
and fine subjects such as hair and trees.
Fade command A slider to reduce the effects of a just-run Yes No Yes No
filter or effect.
Feathering Soften the edge of a mask or selection by Yes Yes Yes Yes
selections user-input number of pixels.
Field of View Used in 3-D manipulation to adjust the Yes Yes Yes No
option image frame to fit the 3-D object.

Continued
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822 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-3 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

File Browser Allows user to view thumbnails and Yes Yes No Yes
navigate through folders to sort, file,
rename, and open documents.
Fill command Floods a selection with a solid color. Yes Yes Yes Yes
Fill layers Layers that can be filled with a solid color, Yes Yes No No
gradient, or pattern; becomes layer mask.
Fill opacity Changes pixels on layer or shapes Yes Yes No No
without affecting layer effects.
Fill with Neutral Used when a filter needs pixels in the Yes Yes No No
Color option layer in order to work; neutral color is
invisible, and is affected by blending mode.
Find and Replace Searches document for characters or Yes No No No
command words and changes them.
Fit Image Part of Automate command; constrains Yes No No No
command document within user-input dimensions;
reduced or enlarged to the smaller of the
dimensions.
Fit on Screen Enlarges or reduces full image to fit Yes Yes Yes Yes
command on screen.
Fixed Size Sets dimensions for marquee selection; Yes Yes No No
option single mouse click creates selection at
correct size.
Flatten Image Combines all visible layers into one single Yes Yes Yes Yes
command layer for file-size economy and easier
printing.
Flipping images Mirror the image along a horizontal Yes Yes Yes Yes
or vertical axis.
Flipping layers Mirror a layer or selection along a hori- Yes Yes Yes Yes
and selections zontal or vertical axis.
FOCOLTONE Brand of CMYK inks with 763 colors. Yes No Yes No
colors
Free Transform Uses modifier key to do multiple transfor- Yes No No Yes
command mations: scale, rotate, skew, distort,
and perspective.
Fuzziness option Part of Color Range; adds or subtracts Yes No No No
colors from selection based on how close
colors are to selected color.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 823

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Gamut A color gamut is the range of colors a Yes No Yes No

given device can generate. Some programs
warn if a color is out of gamut and will
be adjusted.
GIF Format A lossless compression means for line art Yes Yes Yes Yes
and images with solid colors; limited to
256 colors. Recognized by most browsers.
Global lighting Gives the image the appearance of a Yes No No No
single light source.
Glowing Edges Finds edges and creates a neon Yes Yes No Yes
effect glow effect.
Gradient Editor Changes colors and types of gradients. Yes Yes Yes Yes
Grayscale mode A color mode utilizing 256 shades of gray; Yes Yes Yes Yes
0 is black, 256 is white.
Grid and guides Preset grids and user-definable guides Yes Yes Yes Yes
used for alignment within image.
Halftone screens Ability to dictate the size, angle, shape, Yes No Yes No
and resolution of dots used in
commercial printing.
Hardness option Adjusts the softness or hardness of Yes Yes Yes Yes
brush edges.
Hexadecimal Color naming convention for Yes Yes Yes Yes
color values Web-safe colors.
History palette A record of image modifications allowing Yes No No Yes
user to revert to a previous image state.
Changes made to a previous state nullify
later changes (see Non-Linear History).
HSB color mode In this additive color mode, Hue, Saturation, Yes Yes Yes No
and Brilliance are three fundamental char-
acteristics of the human perception of color.
HSL color mode Hue, Saturation, and Lightness are three No No No Yes
fundamental characteristics of the human
perception of color; Paint Shop Pro uses
HSL additive color mode instead of HSB.
Image Size Used to change the image size and reso- Yes Yes Yes Yes
command lution of an image; aspect ratio can be
constrained or not; resolution and image
size can be changed independently or in
tandem.

Continued
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824 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-3 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Import Brings an image into a separate document Yes Yes Yes Yes
command without opening that image or using copy/
cut and paste functions.
Importing PDF Import images in Portable Document Yes Yes No No
images Format (PDF) that can contain both vector
and bitmap artwork.
Indexed Color Color mode limited to 256 colors existing Yes Yes No No
mode in the image.
Indexed Color Color mode consisting of colors contained Yes Yes Yes Yes
mode in an image.
Info palette Information about color values at the Yes Yes Yes Yes
cursor’s site; depending on tools and
other measurements such as angles,
length, height.
Inner Glow Creates a glow around the inside edges Yes Yes No No
effect of a layer’s contents.
Inner Shadow Creates a shadow within the inside edges Yes Yes No No
effect of a layer’s contents.
Intersect with A command to create a single channel Yes No Yes No
Channel option from the overlapping areas of two
separate channels.
Inverse Reverses selection; unselected areas Yes Yes Yes Yes
command become selected; good for selecting
object against solid color background.
Invert option Reverses the colors in an image; inverting Yes Yes Yes Yes
all channels in a normal (positive) image
creates an image similar to a film negative.
JPEG Lossy compression method created by Yes Yes Yes Yes
compression Joint Photographic Experts Group; best for
continuous tone images; may not separate
into individual color plates for printing.
Keystone Perspective correction when cropping. Yes No No No
distortion,
correcting
Lab color model A color model comprised of Luminance Yes No Yes No
(the grayscale image) in one channel, a
channel containing green-red, and a b
channel containing blue-yellow.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 825

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Layer mask A selection created as a mask is converted Yes No Yes Yes

channel to an alpha channel and linked to a layer
or layer set; layer can be designated to
reveal or hide masked area.
Layer Mask A layer blending option to only allow layer Yes No No No
Hides Effects effects to be active in specific areas.
option
Layer masks, Allow for color edits or filters to be run Yes Yes No Yes
adjustment on an image without changing the image
layers itself. The layer can be discarded without
changing the image.
Layer Set from A means of grouping layers for moving, Yes No Yes No
Linked command blending, or applying effects as a whole.
Layer styles Dialog box to apply effects such as Yes Yes No No
shadows, glows, bevel, emboss, colors,
strokes, and patterns; sets options and
specifics for each effect.
Layer Via Cut A selection Cut to the Clipboard is Yes Yes Yes Yes
command converted into a new layer.
Layers Various elements of an image can be Yes Yes Yes Yes
placed on separate levels or layers in
order to create modifications or effects
without changing remainder of image.
Layers palette A palette that allows reordering, visibility, Yes Yes Yes Yes
addition and deletion of layers.
Lemple-Zif- A lossless compression for images with Yes Yes Yes Yes
Welch (LZW) large areas of solid color.
compression
Lighting effects Create various groupings of light with the Yes No No No
addition of color and texture to be cast
over the image.
Liquify Distorts and deforms parts of an image Yes Yes Yes No
command as if it were a malleable sheet of rubber.
Load Actions Installs a group of pre-defined Actions. Yes No No No
command
Load Selection Used to load a previously saved channel Yes No Yes Yes
command into the image; choices to invert selection,
browse for channel, determine blending
mode.

Continued
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826 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-3 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Loading color Load color tables saved from Yes Yes Yes Yes
tables other documents.
Loading Load previously saved contours used on Yes No No No
contours inner and outer shadows, glows, bevels,
and embossing.
Loading duotone After saving a duotone curve and color Yes No Yes No
curves arrangement, load the information into
a new document.
Loading output Optimized output settings can be saved Yes No No No
settings for loading into other documents.
Loading pattern Load pattern libraries saved in Yes Yes No No
libraries previous documents.
Lock When selected, deleted object is replaced Yes Yes Yes Yes
Transparency with background color; when deselected,
option deleted object is replaced with layer
transparency.
Lock/Unlock Used in color tables to prevent colors Yes No No Yes
Selected Colors from being dumped as numbers of
command colors in the image are reduced.
Locking layers Prevent modifications of anything but Yes Yes No No
visibility and arrangement to layer.
Lossless Compression methods that don’t lose Yes Yes Yes Yes
compression image data; CCITT, LZW, RLE, and ZIP
are examples.
Mask option, Combine channel data from two channels Yes No Yes No
calculations and apply the result to a destination image.
Masks Masks allow the protection and isolation Yes Yes Yes Yes
of parts of an image; the non-selected
area will be protected from modification,
changes will occur on the selected area.
Merge Channels are grayscale images that Yes No Yes Yes
Channels comprise the document; channels from
command same color mode (RGB to RGB, CMYK to
CMYK, etc.) documents can be merged
into a single channel for masking or
manipulation.
Merge Down Merges a layer mask and the layer it Yes Yes Yes Yes
command masks into one layer; mask is no longer
editable.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 827

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Merge Spot Spot colors are converted to color Yes No No No

Channel option channels and are deleted.
Merged for When using the Calculations command, Yes No No No
Layer option Merged for Layer allows multiple channels
to be combined into a single channel for
Calculations.
Merged Layers Combines all layers of the image at that Yes No No No
option state into one single layer for a snapshot.
Modal controls Allows the user to enter text or numerical Yes No Yes No
in actions values at the appropriate time as an
Action is running.
Mode Change from one color mode to another: Yes Yes Yes Yes
commands RGB to Lab to CMYK, etc.
Multichannel Color mode with 256 levels of gray in Yes Yes Yes No
mode each channel; deleting any channel in an
RGB, CMYK, or Lab image will change it to
Multichannel mode; doesn’t support layers.
Navigator Small window with thumbnail view of Yes No No Yes
palette entire image; highlights window view.
New Channel Creates a new blank channel. Yes No Yes Yes
command
New Color Adds colors to Color Table by selecting Yes Yes Yes Yes
command from image or color pickers.
New Layer Adds an empty layer or creates a Yes Yes Yes Yes
button duplicate layer for the image.
New Snapshot Creates an interim image of the Yes No No No
button document at its present state.
New View Creates alternate view at different size Yes Yes No No
command and level of zoom of same image in
new window.
Noise gradients Using a user-set color range, randomly Yes Yes No No
distributes colors in a gradient.
Noise in Creates a random pattern in soft-edge Yes No No No
brushes brushes with gray values.
OLE Limited external automation for Windows Yes No Yes No
Automation OS allowing scriptable events such as
starting the program and carrying out
various commands.

Continued
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828 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-3 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Open As Choose and apply file type of Yes Yes No No

command document as it is opened.
Open paths A vector-drawn path that has a beginning Yes No Yes Yes
and an end point; the path can be as
simple as a straight line, or complicated
as a wavy line.
Open Recent Lists the last few documents that have Yes Yes No No
command been saved within the program.
Out-of gamut A color gamut is the range of colors a Yes No Yes No
colors given device can generate. Some
programs warn if a color is out of gamut
and will be adjusted.
Outer Glow Creates a glowing effect around the Yes Yes No No
effect selection or objects on a layer.
Overprint colors In the Duotone mode, gives on-screen Yes No Yes No
approximation of one solid color printed
another solid color.
Page marks Printer marks printed outside the image Yes No Yes Yes
area show the printing company color
bars, registration marks, and where to
trim the page.
Page Setup Dialog box that allows user to select Yes Yes No Yes
command page size, scale, and orientation.
Paste Into Contents of Clipboard are pasted into a Yes Yes Yes Yes
command live selection area; creates new layer, and
selection area becomes layer mask.
Paste Layer Copies attributes of one layer and pastes Yes No No Yes
Style command them into another layer in the same
image or a different document.
Paths palette Lists current paths, allows activation, Yes No Yes No
exporting, importing, naming, and
reordering in list.
Paths, clipping Selections saved as paths and used to Yes Yes Yes Yes
create a transparent background.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 829

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Paths, defining Any closed path or border can be used Yes No Yes No
as selection to create a selection.
border
Paths, recorded A vector-drawn path can be placed in an Yes No Yes No
in actions image during an Action with the Insert
Path command.
Pattern Maker Creates tiled patterns to fill selections Yes Yes Yes No
and layers.
Picture Package Creates multiple copies of the same Yes Yes No No
command source image on a single page, similar
to that done by photo studios with
package deals.
Print One Copy Prints one copy of the image without Yes Yes No No
command opening dialog boxes; uses currently
selected print options.
Print Selected Prints just a selected portion of the Yes Yes No No
Area option image, ignoring the remainder.
Printing marks Marks printed outside the image area Yes No Yes Yes
show the printing company color bars,
registration marks, and where to trim
the page.
Profiles, Embed color management information Yes Yes Yes Yes
embedding in the document to synchronize output
in documents across different platforms and applications.
Proof Colors On-screen view of individual color Yes No No No
command plates used in printing.
Proof Setup Choose proofing space that you would Yes No No No
commands like to view on-screen.
Protect Background eraser option prevents Yes No No No
Foreground foreground-colored (in the toolbox)
Color option pixels from being erased.
Purge Cache Thumbnail and file information from the Yes No No No
command File Browser is stored in RAM; purging
the cache deletes this information and
speeds loading times.
Purge command Undo, History, and Clipboard contents Yes Yes No No
are stored in RAM; Purge command
deletes these files and speeds program
operations.

Continued
28549510 AppA.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 830

830 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-3 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Quadtones A grayscale image printed in four colors; Yes No No No

each grayscale has a different range of
tone and contrast.
Quick Mask A selection is converted to a Rubylith-type Yes No No No
mode mask that can be painted with black to
add to the mask, or white to subtract from
the mask; painting with gray adds levels
of transparency.
Randomize Used when creating a noise gradient; Yes Yes No No
option each click of Randomize rearranges the
alignment of colors within the gradient.
Rasterize Converts vector art and text into bitmap Yes Yes Yes Yes
command artwork that can be edited with painting
tools or filtered; creates a flattened
raster image.
Raw format Cross-platform, cross-application file Yes Yes No Yes
format describing each pixel as 0=black,
256=white; RGB or CMYK channels
sent sequentially.
Recordings, Recorded sequence of events that can Yes No Yes No
Actions be replayed on other documents,
incorporated in other Actions, and edited.
Redo Undoes an Undo; number of Redo Yes Yes Yes Yes
command commands dependent on user setting
and available RAM.
Remove Layer Removes a Layer Mask with the option of Yes Yes No No
Mask command applying the changes or discarding them.
Replace With a selection and an existing channel Yes No No No
Channel open, user can choose to Replace contents
option of existing channel with the selection.
Resample Used to change the image size and Yes Yes Yes Yes
resolution of an image; aspect ratio can
be constrained or not; resolution and
image size can be changed indepen-
dently or in tandem.
Reselect To reselect the most recently selected Yes No No No
command area, choose Select ➪ Reselect.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 831

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Resize Used to change the image size and Yes Yes Yes Yes
resolution of an image; aspect ratio can
be constrained or not; resolution and
image size can be changed
independently or in tandem.
Resize Image In Image menu, changes resolution, pixel Yes Yes Yes Yes
command dimensions, and print size of image.
Resize Window Window fills screen, image is zoomed Yes Yes No Yes
to Fit command to fill window.
Reveal Location Choose a file in File Browser, view file Yes No No No
command in Finder window.
Revert Returns to last-saved version; all changes Yes Yes Yes Yes
command and modifications since that point will
be lost.
RGB color An additive color mode consisting of Yes Yes Yes Yes
model Red, Green, and Blue values with a bit
depth of 24 bits; able to produce
16.7 million colors.
Rotate Canvas Rotates image (canvas) in 90-degree Yes Yes Yes Yes
command steps, by user-input angle, or by flipping
horizontally or vertically.
Roundness Ratio of height and width of brush Yes Yes Yes No
option tip shape.
Rulers Rulers along top and left edge of the Yes Yes Yes Yes
window; user-changeable units of
measurement.
Run Length A lossless compression method; reduces Yes Yes Yes Yes
Encoding (RLE) files to approximately 75% of original
compression size; works best with images containing
large areas of the same color.
Save Palette Palettes will remain in same position Yes Yes No No
Locations option from one session to the next unless
this option is deselected.
Save Path Any open or closed path can be saved Yes No Yes No
command in the Paths palette for use later.
Save Selection A selection can be saved as an alpha Yes No Yes Yes
command channel or as an addition to an
existing channel.
Scale Effects Rescale layer effects for a repurposed/ Yes No No No
command resized image.
Continued
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832 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-3 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Scaling layer Rescale layer effects for a repurposed/ Yes No No No

styles resized image.
Selective color A color table that favors the preservation Yes Yes Yes No
table of Web colors; good color integrity.
Send Backward Moves a layer down one level in the Yes Yes Yes Yes
command stacking order.
Send to Back Moves a layer to the bottom of the Yes Yes Yes Yes
command stacking order (above Background layer).
Sepia-tone Use Channel Mixer to combine Yes No No Yes
images two channels.
Settings menu Used to save and recall Optimization Yes No No No
settings for Web images.
Shape layers Using a Shape tool or Pen tool, a closed Yes Yes No Yes
shape is filled with foreground color;
shape’s outline is saved as vector mask
linked to layer.
Snap command Used to snap edges of selections, text Yes No Yes Yes
blocks, marquees, slices and shapes to
guides or grid for precise alignment.
Snapshot Creates an interim image of the document Yes No No No
command at its present state that can be used as a
backup, or in conjunction with History
Brush or Art History Brush.
Soft proofs An on-screen approximation of how the Yes No No No
image will appear under specific printing
conditions.
Sort by Hue Sorts the colors in a color table by hue. Yes No No Yes
command
Sort by Sorts the colors in a color table by the Yes No No Yes
Luminance lightness or brightness of a color.
command
Sort by Sorts the colors in a color table by the Yes No No Yes
Popularity color’s frequency of use in the image.
command
Split Channels A flattened file can be split into separate Yes No Yes Yes
command channels for each color that become
separate grayscale documents; used when
converting to file format that does not
preserve channels.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 833

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Spot channels A channel used to print a spot color. Yes No Yes Yes
Spot colors Spot colors are solid ink colors instead Yes No Yes Yes
of process colors made up of a
combination of inks.
Stroke Specifies width and color of border Yes Yes Yes Yes
command for selection or layer.
Stylus tablet Program compatibility with pressure- Yes Yes Yes Yes
sensitive digital tablet.
Subtract from In saving a selection to an existing Yes No No No
Channel option channel, this option removes the
selection from the existing channel.
Subtract option A channel blending mode where pixel Yes No No No
values from source channel are sub-
tracted from the target channel’s pixels,
then divided by Scale factor and added
to Offset value.
Swatches A library of colors in a floating palette. Yes Yes Yes Yes
TIFF format Tagged Information File Format, a bitmap Yes Yes Yes Yes
image format supported by most appli-
cations; preferred for images destined
for commercial printing.
Tonal range A means to experiment with tonal Yes Yes Yes Yes
adjustment changes in an image on a layer that can
layers be deleted instead of on the image itself.
Tool tips Verbal tabs naming the tool and providing Yes Yes Yes Yes
keyboard shortcut, if any.
TOYO colors A library of more than 1,000 colors used Yes No Yes Yes
in Japanese commercial printing.
Trap command Used in CMYK printing; colors overlap by Yes No Yes Yes
choking or spreading in order to negate
press misregistration resulting in white
gaps around objects.
Tritones Similar to Duotones or Quadtones; three Yes No Yes Yes
colors of ink are used to create a special
colored effect.
Undo command Allows user to correct a mistake; takes Yes Yes Yes Yes
image back one step.

Continued
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834 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-3 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Ungroup Releases objects that have been grouped Yes Yes Yes Yes
command together for manipulation.
Unsharp Mask A method of sharpening the appearance Yes Yes Yes Yes
filter of an image by changing edge pixel colors
to increase edge contrast.
Unshift All When colors have been shifted to Web- Yes No No No
Colors safe colors, this command shifts the colors
command back to their original values.
Use Accurate Allows program to select halftone screen Yes No No No
Screens option angles and frequencies for PostScript
Level 2 and higher printers.
Use All Layers Allows Magic Wand to select pixels from Yes Yes No No
option visible image instead of just the selected
layer.
Use Pixel To speed up display (screen redraw), this Yes No No No
Doubling option temporarily doubles the size of
pixels as the image is being drawn; no
effect on image pixels.
Varnish An entry of 0% in the Solidity field simu- Yes No No No
lates a transparent ink such as a varnish;
allows on-screen approximation of spot
varnish.
Vector artwork Resolution-independent artwork defined Yes Yes Yes Yes
by mathematical objects called vectors;
must be rasterized before editing in these
programs.
Watermarks Digital code created as noise is added to Yes Yes Yes Yes
the image for copyright information.
Windows Color An alternative color picker to the ones Yes Yes Yes Yes
Picker provided by the programs.
Workspaces, Personalized layout and arrangement of Yes No Yes Yes
customizing palettes and panels.
XOR mode Allows selection of multiple areas in an Yes No Yes No
image; overlapping areas combine.
Zero origin Move the Zero Point of the image from Yes No Yes No
top right to different location.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 835

Table A-4
Tools
Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Airbrush tool Applies gradual tones of color, simulating Yes Yes Yes Yes
traditional airbrush effects.
Art History Paint previous state of image into new Yes No No No
Brush options layer using custom brushes.
Blur tool A brush for softening particular areas Yes Yes No No
while leaving rest of image sharp.
Brush tool By default, a soft-edged tool that applies Yes Yes Yes Yes
the foreground color.
Brushes, color Control how the color changes as the Yes No No No
dynamics stroke continues.
Brushes, dual Allow mixing of two brush styles for Yes No No No
unique brush strokes.
Brushes, noise Add random noise to brush strokes. Yes No No No
Brushes, Allow control over the number and Yes No No No
scattering placement of marks in a stroke.
Brushes, shape Allow changing elements to preset Yes No No No
dynamics and custom brushes.
Brushes, texture Allow addition of texture to brush stroke. Yes No No No
Brushes, Add paint build-up appearance to edge Yes No No No
wet edges of brush stroke.
Burn tool Darkens specific areas of the image Yes Yes Yes No
with a brush.
Clone Stamp Paints from a sampled selection, known Yes Yes Yes Yes
tool as Rubber Stamp tool.
Custom Shape Automatically draws vector objects that Yes Yes No Yes
tool can be resized and modified independent
of resolution; may be used as selection
outlines.
Detection width, Adjustable diameter for Magnetic Yes Yes No No
Lasso tool Lasso tool.
Dodge tool Lightens specific areas of the Yes Yes Yes No
image with a brush.
Dolly Camera A 3-D tool used to zoom in or Yes Yes No No
option out on an image.

Continued
28549510 AppA.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 836

836 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-4 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Edge sensitivity, Adjustable sensitivity for Magnetic Yes Yes No No

Lasso tool Lasso tool.
Eraser tool Deletes pixels from layer, allowing lower Yes Yes Yes Yes
layers or background to show.
Eyedropper tool Allows selection of color sample; makes Yes Yes Yes Yes
that the foreground color.
Fill tool Fills selected area with foreground color; Yes Yes Yes Yes
known as Paint Bucket tool.
Freeform Pen Draws freehand lines, usually with hard Yes Yes Yes Yes
tool edges; known as Pencil tool.
Gradient tools Creates a blend of color from insertion Yes Yes Yes Yes
point to end of mouse drag.
Hand tool Allows user to move entire contents of Yes Yes Yes Yes
window around screen.
Healing Brush Used for small area touch-up; repairs Yes No No No
tool image, leaving texture and color intact.
History Brush Paints previous state of image into Yes No No No
tool new layer.
Line tool Draws straight lines, usually hard-edged. Yes Yes Yes Yes
Magic Eraser Selects pixels like Clone Stamp, erasing Yes Yes No No
tool them to background or transparency;
can select contiguous pixels, or
similar pixels.
Magic Wand tool Selects all contiguous pixels within color Yes Yes Yes Yes
tolerance level.
Magnetic Lasso Creates selection based on edge contrast. Yes Yes No No
tool
Magnetic Pen Creates vector path based on edge Yes No No No
tool contrast.
Marquee tools Rectangular and elliptical selection tools. Yes Yes Yes Yes
Measuring tool Tool that measures length, height, or angle. Yes No No No
Paint Bucket Fills selected area with foreground color; Yes Yes Yes Yes
tool known as Fill tool.
Paintbrush tool By default, a soft-edged tool that applies Yes Yes Yes Yes
the foreground color.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 837

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Pan camera A 3-D tool used to move objects within Yes Yes No No
tool the page view.
Patch tool Used for large area touch-up; repairs Yes No No No
image, leaving texture and color intact.
Pattern stamp Paints a custom or library pattern using Yes Yes No No
tool a brush shape.
Pencil tool Draws freehand lines, usually with hard Yes Yes Yes Yes
edges; known as Pencil tool.
Polygon Lasso Creates straight edged selection with Yes Yes No Yes
tool rubber band action.
Polygon tool Draws multiple-sided vector objects that Yes Yes Yes Yes
can be filled, stroked, or used as selections.
Rectangle tool Draws rectangular-shaped vector objects Yes Yes Yes Yes
that can be filled, stroked, or used as
selections.
Reflected Symmetric linear gradient on both sides Yes Yes No Yes
gradient tool of the insertion point.
Rounded Draws rectangular-shaped vector objects Yes No No No
Rectangle tool with round corners that can be filled,
stroked, or used as selections.
Shape tools Automatically draw vector objects Yes Yes No Yes
that can be resized and modified
independent of resolution; may be
used as selection outlines.
Sharpen tool A brush for sharpening particular areas Yes Yes No No
while leaving rest of image soft.
Single Column Selects vertical single-pixel marquee. Yes No No No
Marquee tool
Single Row Selects horizontal single-pixel marquee. Yes No No No
Marquee tool
Smudge tool Smears foreground color as if a finger Yes Yes Yes No
were smeared through wet paint.
Sponge tool Desaturates particular areas of the image Yes Yes No No
while leaving rest of image alone.
Zoom tool Enlarges or reduces view of image Yes Yes Yes Yes
in window.
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838 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-5
Type
Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

All Caps Button-click changes selected text to Yes No No No

command upper case letters.
Asian type Options are available for working with Yes Yes No No
Asian double-byte font characters.
Baseline Shift Shift characters vertically within line of text. Yes No No No
Character Palette containing options for Yes No No No
palette font characters.
Check Spelling Spell-checks text after it is entered into Yes No No No
command the document.
Chinese type Options are available for working with Yes No No No
Asian double-byte font characters.
CJK type Options are available for working with Yes No No No
(Chinese, Asian double-byte font characters.
Japanese,
Korean)
Convert to Converts input text to a text block that Yes No No No
Paragraph allows text flow adjustment.
Text command
Convert to Point Converts paragraphs of text to Yes No No No
Text command separate lines of text.
Create Work Converts text into vector path selections Yes No No No
Path command that can be modified, but not edited
for type as text.
Hanging Allows punctuation marks to be outside Yes No No No
punctuation left or right margins.
Horizontal Allows text to be compressed or Yes No No No
scaling of type expanded horizontally.
Hyphenating Automatically breaks words at syllables. Yes No No No
type
Indenting Indent first line of text for greater Yes No No No
paragraphs readability or design function.
Japanese type Options are available for working with Yes No No No
Asian double-byte font characters.
Justifying type Text is flush on right and left margins. Yes No No No
Kerning type Adjusts space between individual Yes No Yes Yes
characters.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 839

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Korean Type Options are available for working with Yes No No No

Asian double-byte font characters.
Leading Adjusts space between lines of text. Yes No Yes Yes
Rotating type Vertical type can be rotated 90 degrees. Yes No No No
characters Rotated characters are upright; non-
rotated characters are sideways.
Subscript type Type reduced in size and lowered Yes No No No
below the baseline.
Superscript type Type reduced in size and raised Yes No No No
above the baseline.
Text Selection Text tool that creates vector selections in Yes No No No
command shape of font characters that can be
edited, blended, or otherwise modified.
Vertical scaling Allows text to be compressed or Yes No No No
of type expanded vertically.
Warp Text Distorts all characters on a type layer into Yes Yes No No
command a variety of warp styles.

Table A-6
Web and Animation
Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Animated GIFs A sequence of still frames in GIF format Yes Yes No Yes
shown successively to create animation.
Auto Slices Rectangular slices created by the program Yes No No Yes
that account for areas not sliced by the user.
Bring Forward Used to move image map one level Yes No No No
option for higher in the stacking order for easier
image maps manipulation.
Bring Forward Used to move user slice to the top of the Yes No No No
option for slices stacking order for easier manipulation.
Bring to Front Moves image map to top of stacking Yes No No No
option for order for easier manipulation.
image maps
Bring to Front Moves slice to top of stacking order for Yes No No No
option for slices easier manipulation.

Continued
28549510 AppA.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 840

840 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-6 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Browsers, adding Allows user to add various Web browser Yes No No Yes
to Preview formats for previewing images.
In menu
Browsers, Allows user to view images in various Yes No No Yes
previewing in Web browser formats.
Client-side Image maps interpreted by the browser Yes No No No
image maps without the need to contact the server.
Color palette, Palette of 216 colors that will appear the Yes Yes No Yes
selecting Web- same on all browsers.
safe colors
Color tables, Color tables contain all the colors in an Yes No No No
shifting to Web- image. This command changes color table
safe colors to reflect 216 Web-safe colors.
Copy State Copies a rollover state to paste into Yes No No No
command another state in same or different rollover.
Diffusion dither A random dithering pattern that extends Yes Yes No Yes
across adjacent pixels.
Dithering Allows dither pattern to melt seamlessly Yes No No No
transparency into background.
Dithering, To prevent dithering, colors can be Yes Yes No Yes
Shifting to Web- shifted to Web-safe colors instead.
safe colors
Dithering, Allows specific channels or masks to be Yes No No No
weighted dithered at different levels of optimization.
optimization
HTML, URLs in Add links from image maps to HTML Yes No No No
image maps and URLs.
HTML, URLs Add links from slices to HTML and URLs. Yes No No No
in slices
Image Map Allows user to see image map setup Yes No No No
Visibility button on original image.
Import Folder Files in a folder are converted into . Yes No No No
as Frames animation frames in alphabetical
command file name order
Interlace option A non-interlaced image downloads one Yes Yes Yes Yes
for GIFs and line at a time, starting at the top; an
PNG-8 interlaced image is loaded in steps, with
more detail added at each step.
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Appendix A ✦ Performing Equivalent Tasks with Various Image Editors 841

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Make Frames Converts layers into animation frames Yes No No No

From Layers in stacking order of layers.
command
Matte option Allows user to choose a background Yes No Yes Yes
(matte) color for GIF images.
Matting Deletes fringe colors resulting from image Yes No Yes Yes
command removed from background.
Modify Lossiness Adjusts the amount of detail lost due to Yes Yes Yes No
setting file size reduction.
Modify Quality Adjusts the quality of JPEG files. Yes Yes Yes No
setting
Optimize palette Allows user to set up several options Yes No No Yes
for image optimization.
Optimize to File Options to select file size as criteria Yes No No Yes
Size option for optimizations.
Promote Layer Layer-based image maps are tied to the Yes No No No
Based Image pixel content of the layer. To edit the image
Map Area map, it must be converted to a tool-based
command image map through this command.
Promote to Converts auto-slice to user slice for Yes No No No
User-Slice adjustment or optimization.
command
QuickTime Open and edit QuickTime movies in Yes No No No
movies, opening MOV, AVI, and FLIC formats.
animations
QuickTime Save animations that can be viewed in Yes No No No
movies, saving as QuickTime and opened in other
applications that support QuickTime.
Reverse Frames Inverts order of frames in an animation. Yes No No Yes
command
Rollover Preview Preview action of rollover button. Yes No No No
button
Rollovers palette Palette of rollover options. Yes No No No
Save for Opens panel to optimize images Yes Yes No No
Web command for the Web.
Send Backward Used to move image map one level Yes No No No
option, image lower in the stacking order for easier
maps/slices manipulation.

Continued
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842 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Table A-6 (continued)

Task/Tool Description PS7 PE PP10 PSP7

Send to Back Used to move user slice to the bottom Yes No No No

option, image level of the stacking order for easier
maps/slices manipulation.
Size/download Compare file size to download times Yes No No Yes
Time option at various modem speeds.
Transparency, Dither partially transparent pixels. Yes No No No
dithering
Transparency, Masks painted with gray create semi- Yes No No No
from mask transparent to transparent areas.
Transparency, Masks with gradients apply full effect Yes No No No
gradients when dark, lowest effect when light
(by default).
Transparency, Allows user several options for making a Yes No No No
optimizing seamless fit of an image into a
background.
URLs, assigned Add links from image maps and slices Yes No No No
to image to HTML and URLs.
maps/slices
WBMP format Standard format for wireless devices Yes No No No
such as cell phones.
Web Shift/ Changes normal colors to Web-safe Yes No No No
Unshift Selected palette, or Web-safe colors to normal
Colors command color table.
Web, creating Automatically create code and images for Yes No No No
photo galleries Web-based photo gallery.

✦ ✦ ✦
29549510 AppB.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 843

What’s on
the CD-ROM?
B
A P P E N D I X

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Appendix

T his appendix provides you with information on the

contents of the CD that accompanies this book. For the
latest and greatest information, please refer to the ReadMe file
System requirements

Using the CD with

Windows
located at the root of the CD. Here is what you will find:

✦ System Requirements Using the CD with the

Mac OS
✦ Using the CD with Windows and Macintosh
✦ What’s on the CD What’s on the CD

✦ Troubleshooting Troubleshooting

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
System Requirements
Make sure that your computer meets the minimum system
requirements listed in this section. If your computer doesn’t
match up to most of these requirements, you may have a
problem using the contents of the CD.

For Windows 9x, Windows 2000, Windows NT4 (with SP 4 or

later), Windows Me, or Windows XP:

✦ PC with a Pentium processor running at 120 Mhz or

faster
✦ At least 32MB of total RAM installed on your computer;
for best performance, at least 64MB is recommend
✦ Ethernet network interface card (NIC) or modem with a
speed of at least 28,800 bps
✦ A CD-ROM drive
✦ A computer capable of running image-editing software,
such as Adobe Photoshop, is highly recommended,
although you can use the CD without it
29549510 AppB.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 844

844 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

✦ A true-color capable monitor is helpful if you want to see all the information
on screen.
✦ At least 32MB of total RAM installed on your computer; for best performance
in photo editing, 512MB or more is recommended.

For Macintosh:

✦ Mac OS computer with a 68040 or faster processor running OS 7.6 or later,

though System 9.1 or later is highly recommended for running the included
versions of Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements and some of the other
example software available on the CD.
✦ At least 32MB of total RAM installed on your computer; for best performance
in photo editing, 512MB or more is recommended.

Using the CD with Windows

To install the items from the CD to your hard drive, follow these steps:

1. Insert the CD into your computer’s CD-ROM drive.

2. A window appears with the following options: Install, Explore, eBook,
Links, and Exit.
Examples: Open these as you would any standard image file on any disk drive
attached to your computer.
Explore: Allows you to view the contents of the CD-ROM in its directory
structure.
eBook: Allows you to view an electronic version of the book.
Links: Opens a hyperlinked page of Web sites.
Exit: Closes the autorun window.
Examples:

If you do not have autorun enabled or if the autorun window does not appear,
follow the steps below to access the CD:

1. Click Start ➪ Run.

2. In the dialog box that appears, type d:\setup.exe, where d is the letter of
your CD-ROM drive.
This will bring up the autorun window.
3. Choose the Examples, Explore, eBook, Links, or Exit option from the menu.
See Step 2 in the preceding list for a description of these options.
29549510 AppB.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 845

Appendix B ✦ What’s on the CD-ROM? 845

Using the CD with the Mac OS

To install the items from the CD to your hard drive, follow these steps:

1. Insert the CD into your CD-ROM drive.

2. Double-click the icon for the CD after it appears on the desktop.
3. Most programs come with installers; for those, simply open the program’s
folder on the CD and double-click the Install or Installer icon.
Note: To install some programs, just drag the program’s folder from the CD
window and drop it on your hard drive icon.

If you need to open an image file for reference or to use in an exercise, simply
navigate to the folder called Author.

What’s on the CD
The following sections provide a summary of the software and other materials
you’ll find on the CD.

Author-created materials
All author-created material from the book, including code listings and samples, are
on the CD in the folder named Author.

You will know when the book references one of these files because I’ve simply said,
“from the book’s CD, open whatever.tif.”

Applications
The following applications are on the CD:

ACDSee 4.0 from ACDSee Systems (www.acdsystems.com)

This image-management software is similar to the Browser feature in the latest ver-
sions of the Adobe Photoshop products. Files are shown as large thumbnails and
you can acquire, view, organize, enhance, print, and share your images on the
Internet quickly. This version of the program is a free trial, limited time, full-fea-
tured, Windows-only version.

Adobe Photoshop 7 from Adobe Systems (www.adobe.com)

29549510 AppB.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 846

846 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Photoshop is the defacto standard in professional-level image editing software. This

program includes such advanced features as scripting, Actions macros, the new
and miraculous Healing Brush, a CMYK color mode for pre-press work, and so many
advanced features that one can almost always find multiple ways of meeting just
about any image editing requirement. The tryout software included on the CD lets
you experiment with the interface and commands, but you can’t save or print files.
This program can be used with Macintosh and Windows.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 from Adobe Systems (www.adobe.com)

This is a very affordable version of the classic image editor aimed especially at
those who must complete serious image editing tasks that are capable of meeting
most business requirements but who do not intend to do their own pre-press work
and who do not have heavy production demands. Photoshop Elements is a nearly
perfect training ground for those who might want to move up to Photoshop. At the
same time, many of the most often-needed tasks have been either minimized to a
single button-click or the dragging of an icon onto the image. Numerous “recipes”
coach you through every step of more complicated processes. The tryout software
included on the CD lets you experiment with the interface and commands, but you
can’t save or print files. This program can be used with Macintosh and Windows.

Paint Shop Pro 7, from JASC Software Inc. (www.jasc.com)

This image editor is popular, functional, and also happens to be very affordable.
Paint Shop Pro is compatible with Adobe Photoshop plug-ins. The trial version runs
for 30 days, is fully functional, but is a Windows only application.

Quantum Mechanics Pro from Camera Bits (www.camerabits.com)

This highly sophisticated Photoshop-compatible plug-in is used to reduce digital

camera noise. The trial demo works for 20 uses before you must register. This
program can be used with Macintosh and Windows.

S-Spline Image Enlargement from Shortcut (www.s-spline.com)

This plug-in specializes in the ability to enlarge images while maintaining edge
sharpness. S-Spline Image Enlargement is in hot competition with PrintShop Pro
and is less dependent on having at least two megabytes of data in the original
image. The trial version on this CD lasts for 20 uses or two weeks, whichever comes
first. This plug-in can be used with Macintosh and Windows.

Andromeda Photographic effects sample filters from Andromeda Software, Inc.

(www.andromeda.com)

Andromeda makes several filters that are especially useful for curing lens aberrations
as well as re-created some of the effects from special effects filters. The following
filters are included:
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Appendix B ✦ What’s on the CD-ROM? 847

✦ Scatter Light: A set of four different highlight scattering effects for creating
“glamour” effects. Filters of this type are the most versatile and effective that
I’ve seen yet. If you’re a wedding, portrait, or fashion photographer, you’d
best look into this one. Fully functional time-limited trial version. (These
filters can be used with Macintosh and Windows.)
✦ VariFocus: Especially made to focus interest on the subject by blurring the
foreground and background. Imitates the effect of using a larger format cam-
era at wide apertures to force shallow depth-of-field. (These filters can be
used with Macintosh and Windows.)
✦ LensDoc: A fully functional demo of the best way available for correcting vari-
ous types of lens distortion that are especially prevalent when using under-
$1,000 zoom-lens equipped digital cameras. Corrects barreling, pincushioning,
perspective, and rotational distortions. (These filters can be used with
Macintosh and Windows.)
✦ Perspective: You can correct or change perspective of either images or type
as though the image were being rotated in 3D space.
✦ Velociraptor: This amazing set of motion blurs from Andromeda, Inc. (www.
andromeda.com) can be made to follow the subject, comic-book style. Various
styles arc, bounce, cascade, converge, curve, decline, diminish, jolt, jitter,
loop, spiral, spring, streak, trail, or wave. This is a fully functional, time-
limited trial version. This program can be used with Macintosh and Windows.

Camera Bits Quantum Mechanics Lite from Camera Bits (www.camerabits.com)

This application removes noise and artifacts from digital camera images and scans.
It also includes such features as sharpening and auto-contrast controls, a large and
enhanced preview, and 48-bit support for Photoshop 5+.

Fireworks MX from Macromedia, Inc. (www.macromedia.com/software/

fireworks/)

This is a very advanced Web graphics optimizer and editor (both bitmap and vec-
tor) that allows you to interactively create JavaScript Web navigation and interac-
tive graphics through built-in XML language generators. If you are working with
Flash or Dreamweaver, the interface will feel quite compatible and familiar.

Acrobat Reader 5.0 from Adobe, Inc. (www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/)

Acrobat Reader is a freeware browser plug-in and utility that enables you to read
any typeset and layout-formatted document that has been saved in Adobe’s PDF
(portable document file) format. It is especially interesting to digital camera users
because, in conjunction with Adobe’s Photoshop Elements, you can automatically
create slideshows that can be shown on any platform, including Palm and Pocket
PC handhelds.
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848 Part VII ✦ Appendixes

Xenofex 1, Splat! 1.0, and Eye Candy 4000 from Alien Skin Software (www.
alienskin.com)

All three of these are advanced Photoshop-compatible filter sets with very versatile
user interfaces:

✦ Eye Candy consists of 23 different filters such as Chrome, Fire, Smoke,

and Wood.
✦ Splat uses the same interface, but the filters are more utilitarian (for example,
frames, textures, edges, borders, mosaics).
✦ Xenofex consists of 16 filters that imitate natural phenomena and create
strange distortions.

Flaming Pear Sample filters from Flaming Pear Software (www.flamingpear.com)

Flaming Pear makes more than a dozen sets of filters, including SuperBlade Pro —
one of the most highly respected filters for creating text effects, which also creates
all sorts of surface textures.

GraphicConverter 4.2.1 from Lemke Software (lemkesoft.com/us)

This is a Macintosh shareware program that works on all versions of the Mac OS
prior to OS X. At this writing, the OS X version is promised “any day now.” This is a
very capable low-cost image editor for the Mac. As you’d guess by the name, its
forte is the ability to convert graphics from one file format to another. It imports
about 160 graphics formats and exports to about 45. This program also supports
AppleScript, so you can automate batch conversion of files.

Shareware programs are fully functional, trial versions of copyrighted programs. If

you like particular programs, register with the authors for a nominal fee and receive
licenses, enhanced versions, and technical support. Freeware programs are copy-
righted games, applications, and utilities that are free for personal use. Unlike
shareware, these programs do not require a fee or provide technical support. GNU
software is governed by its own license, which is included inside the folder of the
GNU product. See the GNU license for more details.

Trial, demo, or evaluation versions are usually limited either by time or functionality
(such as being unable to save projects). Some trial versions are very sensitive to
system date changes. If you alter your computer’s date, the programs will “time
out” and will no longer be functional.
29549510 AppB.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 849

Appendix B ✦ What’s on the CD-ROM? 849

eBook version of Digital Photography

Bible, 2nd Edition
The complete text of this book is on the CD in Adobe’s Portable Document Format
(PDF). You can read and search through the file with the Adobe Acrobat Reader
(also included on the CD). If you don’t have Acrobat Reader installed, double-click
its icon on the CD and follow the brief and easy instructions that follow. After the
reader is installed, you see the Acrobat PDF icon on the CD’s directory. Double-click
the icon for this book, appropriately called Digital Photography Bible, and the book
will open. You can then reference any page right on your computer or laptop.

Troubleshooting
If you have difficulty installing or using any of the materials on the companion CD,
try the following solutions:

✦ Turn off any antivirus software that you may have running. Installers some-
times mimic virus activity and can make your computer incorrectly believe
that it is being infected by a virus. (Be sure to turn the antivirus software back
on later.)
✦ Close all running programs. The more programs you’re running, the less
memory is available to other programs. Installers also typically update files
and programs; if you keep other programs running, installation may not work
properly.
✦ Reference the ReadMe. Please refer to the ReadMe file located at the root of
the CD-ROM for the latest product information at the time of publication.

If you still have trouble with the CD, please call the Customer Care phone number:
(800) 762-2974. Outside the United States, call 1 (317) 572-3994. You can also con-
tact Customer Service by e-mail at [email protected]. Wiley Publishing will
provide technical support only for installation and other general quality control
items; for technical support on the applications themselves, consult the program’s
vendor or author.

✦ ✦ ✦
29549510 AppB.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 850
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 851

Index
NUMERICS Andromeda image edit filters (on the CD), 458–460, 846
Angel Island files (on the CD), 359, 373, 636
3-D modeling software, 682–690
animal photography, 123
10-foot f8 rule, 106
animation. See also movies; video
18% gray card, 103, 179, 194, 231, 266–267
creating using ImageReady, 614, 650–651
24-bit color, 22
creating using Photoshop, 648–650, 839, 841
89A filter, 700
file size, 647
GIF, animated, 621, 622, 648–651, 660, 839
A layers, frame distribution to, 621, 622, 649, 650, 841
ACDSee (on the CD), 11, 845 panorama, Java applet, 675
AceFTP, 290–291 panorama, QuickTime, 653, 674
ACL Staticide (firm), 732 Web graphic, 614, 621, 622, 647–651
Acrobat Reader (on the CD), 847 annotating image. See information added to image
action photography, 109–112. See also motion, anti-aliasing, 816
photographing aperture. See also exposure
Adams, Ansel (photographer) automatic mode, 42
sharpness, 12 depth-of-field, relation to, 42–43, 86
stillness, 123 film camera, digital compared, 126, 127
Yosemite Half Dome work, 90 infrared photography, 702
zone system, 124, 342 lighting level considerations, 32
Add Anchor Point tool (Photoshop), 490 macrophotography, 127
Add Grain dialog box (Grain Surgery), 673 maximum, 31, 32
Add Noise dialog box (Photoshop), 383–384 priority, 42–43, 127
Add Printer Wizard (Windows XP), 717 reading, 43
Adobe Canoma, 684–687 remote control, 156
Adobe Gamma, 225, 234–235, 266, 742–745 shutter speed, relation to, 43
Adobe Illustrator, 663–664 10-foot f8 rule, 106
Adobe PhotoDeluxe, 603 Apple ColorSync, 230, 313
Adobe Photoshop. See Photoshop AppleScript support, Photoshop, 816
Adobe Photoshop Elements. See Photoshop Elements architecture photography, 115–121, 185
Adobe Streamline, 666–667 archiving
Adorama products CD-ROM, on, 248, 301–302
Pod camera stabilizer, 162 disc storage, 303
Podmatic monopod, 164–165 duplicating file to be altered, 249, 254
Q-top camera mount, 206 DVD, on, 301–302
aerial remote-controlled photography, 701 file management, 302–303
airbrushing image original, 248, 254
described, 310 ink, archival, 780–781
gradient, creating via, 601 print, archival, 17, 713
Photoshop, 383, 384, 391, 601 print longevity, atmosphere effect on, 240
Alameda Beach-Winter file (on the CD), 341 print longevity, ink quality effect on, 240, 714, 769, 780
album, photo print longevity, lightfastness effect on, 240, 714,
creating using Photoshop, 475–478, 653–656 769, 780
Web hosting, Club Photo, 799–800 print longevity, paper quality effect on, 240, 780
Web hosting, Imagestation, 802 thumbnails, 303
Web hosting, iPhoto, 799 ArcSoft software
Web hosting, Ofoto, 801 Panorama Maker, 679–680
Web hosting, PhotoWorks, 706 PhotoImpression, 333
Web hosting, Snapfish, 805 PhotoStudio, 603
Alien Skin software (on the CD) artifact
Eye Candy, 848 creating using Photoshop, 346, 424, 499, 533
Splat!, 848 reducing using Photoshop, 464, 593
Xenofex, 848 sensor cross talk, origin in, 12, 33
Alt tag, 624 ASA (American Standards Association) rating, 49
Amberlith mask, 494 Assign Profile dialog box (Photoshop), 750
American Standards Association rating. See ASA rating assistant, working with, 107–108, 150
analog image, taking digital picture of, 257 audio annotation, 12, 546
anchor point, 490
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 852

852 Index ✦ A–B

Auto Color Correction Options dialog box bitmap

(Photoshop), 467 file size, 25, 618
Autofocus tool (Photoshop), 393 pixel representation in, 20, 24
Automatic Color Balance dialog box (Paint Shop Pro), 320 printer rasterization process, 771
automatic mode, 41–42 resolution, 25
automating command sequence, 249–251, 308–309, 323, sizing, 25, 618
541–548 vector graphic, rasterizing, 309
vector graphic compared, 20–21, 24, 25
B Web graphic, 618–619
Back Gamin file (on the CD), 387 black-and-white
backdrop, 146–147 lens filter, 185–186
background Photoshop conversion, 350–351, 433, 526–530
blurring using image edit, 84, 427 Bloat tool (Photoshop), 406
blurring while taking photograph, 46, 87, 93 blooming, 70–71
composing, 32, 46, 93 blur
erasing using Photoshop, 390, 402, 404 background using image edit, 84, 427
knockout, 398–404, 521–525 background while taking photograph, 46, 87, 93
pattern, 641–642 creating using KPT5 Blurrr tool, 454–455
photopainting, 553, 578–579, 581–583, 589–590, 598–602 creating using Photoshop Blur brush, 373
portrait, 46, 98, 102, 598–602 creating using Photoshop Gaussian Blur filter, 373, 383,
studio backdrop, 146–147 427–431, 434–435, 513
texture, 641 creating using Photoshop L channel, 533
3-D modeling using Bryce, 689 creating using Photoshop Motion Blur filter, 436
wallpaper, desktop, 304–306 creating using Photoshop Radial Blur filter, 436, 437
Web page, 617, 628, 635–643 creating using Photoshop Smart Blur filter, 425–427, 590
Background Eraser tool (Photoshop), 390, 402, 404 motion, caused by, 87, 88–89
backlight, 46, 80–81, 349 Bogen accessory side arm, 162–163
Bar Tattoos file (on the CD), 367 Bowen, Robert (photographer), 389
Barco (firm), 238 bracketing, 15, 37–38, 47
barn door, 141 brightness
batch processing adjusting using Photoshop Blend mode, 371, 411, 413,
brightness adjustment using DeBabelizer, 662 415, 417
color adjustment using DeBabelizer, 662 adjusting using Photoshop Brightness/Contrast dialog
contrast adjustment using DeBabelizer, 662 box, 531, 638
file format conversion using DeBabelizer, 659–660 adjusting using Photoshop Glowing Edge filter, 592
PhotoImpact, in, 326 adjusting using Photoshop Hue/Saturation dialog
PhotoImpression, in, 333 box, 344
PHOTO-PAINT, in, 816 adjusting using Photoshop Lens Flare filter, 443–444
Photoshop, in, 251 adjusting using Photoshop Levels feature, 362–366
Picture Publisher, in, 325 batch processing adjustment using DeBabelizer, 662
print preparation, 660 changing ambient brightness, photographing in, 43
rotating image using DeBabelizer, 662 monitor, 225
sizing image using DeBabelizer, 662 RGB brightness steps, 737
Web graphic, 614, 660 Web graphic, 638
battery Brightness/Contrast dialog box (Photoshop), 371, 435,
ampere per hour rating, 132 531, 638
charger, 60, 98, 132 brushes, software
floppy disk adapter, 63 Deep Paint, 605
life expectancy, 60 natural media, 556
MAH rating, 60 Painter, 561–564
NiCad, 59, 193 Painter Auto Van Gogh, 561, 579–580
NiMH, 59, 193 Painter Brush Palette, 570
pack, external, 60, 132 Painter Camel Hair, 563, 584–585
proprietary, 59 Painter Dry Media, 576
rechargeable, 59, 193 Painter Impressionist, 584
spare, 97, 107, 148 Painter pattern, 559–560
transferring image over cable, considerations when, 282 Painter Watercolor, 563–564, 574, 576
Best-Shot Selector. See BSS PHOTO-PAINT, 322, 324
bevel effect photopainting, in, 556, 559–560
PHOTO-PAINT, 816 Photoshop Airbrush, 383, 384, 391, 601
Photoshop, 634 Photoshop Art History, 539–541, 586–587
B&H Photo, 190, 194 Photoshop Blur, 373
bicubic interpolation, 362, 672 Photoshop brush angle, 468
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 853

Index ✦ B–C 853

Photoshop brush opacity, 348, 468 manual mode, 43–44, 676, 681
Photoshop Brush palette, 348 megapixel, 22
Photoshop brush size, 348, 375, 468 mount, 147–148, 205–206
Photoshop brushes, new, 587–588 neck strap, 97
Photoshop Healing, 376–377, 443, 464–465 panorama mode, 48–49, 674
Photoshop History, 538–539, 586–587, 595 parallax distortion, 51–52, 116–117
Photoshop Paintbrush, 348, 381 portability, 56
Photoshop pattern, 559–560 printing directly from, 708, 792–799
Bryce, 684, 689–690 remote control, 38, 145, 156–157, 695, 701
BSS (Best-Shot Selector), 47 scanner, using as, 278–280
Burn tool (Photoshop), 370, 379, 382, 385 self-timer feature, 38, 155
burst mode, 47–48, 111–112 settings, pre-programmed, 46
buZZ software, 603–604 shutter click, 94
Bybee, Gerald (photographer), 389 shutter lag, 17, 40, 94, 102, 105
shutter priority, 43
C shutter speed, 42, 43, 87–89, 109, 110
cable release, 38, 155–156 size, physical, 56
calibration, camera, 230–231 software bundled with, 308
calibration, monitor stand, rollable, 148
Colorific, using, 235–236 startup, time needed for, 59
colorimeter, using, 237–238, 268 transferring image from, 12, 62–68, 113, 281–286, 330
estimating, 231–232, 734, 741 viewfinder, 51, 156
frequency, 741 waterproofing, 205
Gamma, using, 225, 234–235, 266, 742–745 Camera Aperture dialog box (Picture Publisher), 325
LCD monitor, 223, 745–748 Camera Bits Quantum Mechanics demo (on the CD),
Mac OS, on, 220, 266, 745 846, 847
MonacoEZcolor, using, 236–237 Candela ColorSynergy, 237
preparing for, 233, 741 candid photography, 104–107
scanner calibration, preparatory to, 266, 268–269 Canoma, 684–687
sensor, using, 745–748 Canon cameras
spectrometer, using, 237–238 A70, 188
test chart, using, 231–232 D60, 71
calibration, printer, 708, 731–732, 751 D30, 55, 71
calibration, scanner G2, 105
camera target, 267–268 S-300, 56, 59
estimating, 266–268 S-200, 59
monitor calibration, preparatory to, 266, 268–269 Canon printers, 787–788, 795–797
portrait, using, 266, 276 caption printing using Photoshop, 817
print target, 266–267 card reader, 64, 190–192, 283–284
profile, 262, 312, 342, 738, 748–751 catalog photography, 124
slide scanner, 267 cataloging images, 292–300
test chart, using, 231–232, 266–267 Cats Eye file (on the CD), 649
camera. See also specific cameras and features CCD (charge coupled device), 54–55
automatic mode, 41–42, 106 CD and DVD Recording For Dummies (Chambers), 302
backup, 113 CD-ROM with this book
bag, 151–153 ACDSee, 845
bracket, 150 Acrobat Reader, 847
cable release, 38, 155–156 Alameda Beach-Winter file, 341
calibrating, 230–231 Andromeda filter demos, 846–847
center, optical, 675 Angel Island files, 359, 373, 636
compactness, 56 Back Gamin file, 387
connection, FireWire, 66–67, 283 Bar Tattoos file, 367
connection, parallel port, 65 Cats Eye file, 649
connection, PCMCIA, 62, 65 Cliff Houses file, 632
connection, SCSI (small computer system interface), 62 Clouds file, 370
connection, serial, 68, 282 contents overview, 845–849
connection, USB, 62, 65–66, 67, 282–283 Deborah Backlight file, 385
delay between shots, 41 Deborah Shaded file, 350, 387
erasing image from, 6 Digital Photography Bible eBook version, 849
ergonomics, 55–56 Dog.tif file, 512
file format saved by, 34–36 Donna file, 572
information added to image, 12–13, 286 Donna Profile file, 371
ISO rating, 36, 49 Continued
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 854

854 Index ✦ C

CD-ROM with this book (continued) creating channel, 440, 502–503, 504
Dusty file, 377 Curves channel adjustment, 517–521, 534
Eden file, 599 Elements, channel accessibility using, 379
Eye Candy, 848 extraction channel, 523, 525
Fireworks MX demo version, 847 grayscale image as channel, 502
Flaming Pear sample filters, 848 histogram representation in Levels dialog box, 514
Florencia Smile file, 376 intersection, 503
Fuzzy Pepper file, 393 L channel, 531, 533
GraphicConverter, 848 Lab mode, 531–534
installing on Mac OS, 845 mask, 424, 432–433, 440, 504–512
installing on Windows, 844 Mixer, 528–529
Jane 2.tif file, 400 pasting to channel, 440
Jane’s Window file, 346 RAW data file, 35
Kensportrait file, 383, 405 RGB channel, Lab mode conversion to, 527–528
LensDoc filter demo, 847 RGB channel, noise reduction in blue portion, 535
Lilies file, 594 saving channel, 503
Lilypond file, 565 selecting channel, 483
Marigold file, 389 selection, changing to channel, 502–503, 505
model release form, 105 selection, Magic Wand, 485
Modern Metal Tabletop file, 357 selection, subtracting from channel, 503
Paint Shop Pro trial version, 846 selection blending using, 502–512
pebbles file, 449 trashing channel, 504
Photoshop trial version, 846–847 channel control, DeBabelizer, 662
Pigttoo file, 432 charge coupled device. See CCD
Quantum Mechanics demo, 846, 847 Chimera lightbox, 177
Red Ivy file, 389 chromaticity chart, 743
Rose file, 577 Chromira printers, 791–792
Scatter Light filter demo, 847 Cleanup tool (Photoshop), 524
Splat!, 848 Cliff Houses file (on the CD), 632
S-Spline trial version, 846 clipping path, 489, 818, 828
Statue of Liberty.tif file, 504 cloning
Summer files, 581 Deep Paint, using, 605
Sunflower1 file, 589 described, 310
system requirement, 843–844 Painter, using, 570, 585
Tia-Eye Colored file, 381 PHOTO-PAINT, using, 322
Tia Eye Gray file, 379 photopainting, in, 558, 560–561, 570, 572, 575–576
Tia’s Closest Eye file, 428 Photoshop, using, 373–375, 450, 584
Tree and Sea file, 351 Clouds file (on the CD), 370
troubleshooting, 849 Club Photo Web site, 799–801
VariFocus filter demo, 847 CMM (Color Matching Module), 736
Velociraptor filter demo, 847 CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor),
Waves file, 632 54–55, 71
West Marin Hills file, 352 CMS (Color Management System), 736–740, 751–753
Chambers, Mark L. (CD and DVD Recording CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black)
For Dummies), 302 conversion, 232–233
channel, working with in Kai’s Power Tools, 458 file size, 22
channel, working with in Paint Shop Pro, 319, 815 model, 818
channel, working with in PHOTO-PAINT printing, 735, 737, 810
alpha channel, 815 scanning in, 232–233
Duplicate Channel command, 821 Coken lens filters, 183
Mixer feature, 322, 817, 818 color. See also calibration; channel
channel, working with in Photoshop auto-correcting using Photoshop, 250, 467
a channel, 531, 534 background/foreground, photopainting, 578–579,
active channel, 503 589–590, 601
alpha channel, 432 balance, white, 44–45, 71–72
alpha channel, altering using Curves, 517 balancing, photopainting, 599
alpha channel, creating, 504 balancing using Paint Shop Pro, 320
alpha channel, software considerations, 504 balancing using Photoshop, 341, 366–367, 369
alpha channel, trashing, 209 batch processing adjustment using DeBabelizer, 662
alpha channel map, creating texture using, 557, 588 black and white, converting to, 350–351, 433, 526–530
Auto Leveling, 467 brightness, adjusting using Photoshop Blend mode,
b channel, 531, 533, 534 371, 411, 413, 415, 417
balancing, 342
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 855

Index ✦ C 855

brightness, adjusting using Photoshop Hue/Saturation nature photography, 124

dialog box, 344 N8/Grey, 131
brightness, adjusting using Photoshop Levels feature, noise, colored, 455–456
362–366 number of, reducing using Photoshop, 352–353, 615,
Camel Hair brush (Painter), 584–585 626–627
chromaticity chart, 743 palette, 624, 626, 660
cloning using Painter, 570, 575–576 paper considerations, 738
CMM, 736 perceptual intent, 739, 752
CMS, 736–740, 751–753 in PhotoImpact, 326
CMYK, file size, 22 PHOTO-PAINT color management, 323, 738–739
CMYK, scanning in, 232–233 pixel, 24
CMYK conversion, 232–233 pixels, selecting contiguous within tonal range,
CMYK model, 818 484–486
CMYK printing, 735, 737, 810 PostScript color management, Photoshop, 753
colorimetric intent, 740, 752 print versus digital media, 229–230
compositing, in, 389 printer color interpretation, 735
contrast, adjusting using Photoshop, 409, 467 printing using color management in Photoshop,
contrast, camera-level control, 50, 181 751–753
correction, 185, 248–253 profile, 737–738
Curves adjustment, Photoshop, 517–521, 534 profile, assigning in Photoshop, 749–750, 752
darkening using Photoshop, 409, 415, 519 profile, device, 735–736
depth, 23–24, 34, 260, 623 profile, embedding in document, 737, 829
display card setup, 219, 220–221 profile, ICC, 231, 312, 736
duotone, 821, 826 profile, monitor, 744, 748
enhancing filters, 185 profile, scanner, 262, 312, 342, 738, 748–751
environment, editing in neutral, 220 profile, source, 738
file size calculation, in, 22 profile, target, 738
filter software, 195–204 profile mismatch warning, Photoshop, 547, 737, 749
flattening using Photoshop, 417 quadtone, 830
foreground/background adjustment using Photoshop, reflectance, 60%, 131
348, 380–381 rendering intent, 738–740, 752
gamma correction using Photoshop, 364 retouch matching using Photoshop, 376, 465–466
gamut, 736, 818, 823, 828 RGB, scanning in, 232–233
GIF format, 620, 621, 622 RGB brightness steps, 737
gradient, 310 RGB number, 737
gradient, applying to mask, 497–498 saturation, 34, 50
gradient, creating using Kai’s Power Tools, 455 saturation, adjusting using Painter, 569, 576–577
gradient, creating using Paint Shop Pro, 321 saturation, adjusting using Photoshop, 344, 415, 419
gradient, creating using Picture Publisher, 329 saturation, intent, 739, 752
gradient, creating via airbrushing, 601 saturation, photopainting, 569, 576–577
grayscale conversion using Photoshop, 350, 379, scanner color interpretation, 734–735
526–529, 531 scanner profile, 262, 312, 342, 738, 748–751
hand-tinting effect using Photoshop, 379–381 selecting within range using Photoshop, 484–486,
hexadecimal, 823 498–502, 512
HSB (hue, saturation, brightness), 34 separation, 240, 818
hue, 34, 343–344, 419 sepia tone effect using Photoshop, 379–381
indexed, 621, 623–624 shape, 421
inverting using Photoshop, 417 spectrometer, 237–238
JPEG format, 622 studio, of, 131
Kelvin degree, 71 tables, 815, 818, 820, 831
Kodak Color Management system, 324 temperature, 71, 134–135, 184, 233, 320
Lab mode conversion to RGB channel using test print, 230
Photoshop, 527–528 tinting using Photoshop, 369
layer adjustment, 815 tone range expansion using Photoshop, 362–366
light source, coloring, 138 TOYO, 833
lightening using Photoshop, 411, 413, 415, 519 trap, 818
lighting color, correcting using lens filter, 45 tritone, 833
luminosity, 421 true color, 22
management engine, 736 24-bit, 22
mode, 623–624, 737–738 Web graphic, 615, 623–624, 626–627, 655, 737
monitor considerations, 223–224, 225, 229 Web Photo Gallery, Photoshop, 655
multiplying using Photoshop, 409, 411 white point, 741, 744
Munsell books of color, 131 Color Balance dialog box (Photoshop), 253
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 856

856 Index ✦ C

Color Efex Pro, 195–204 transferring image between computers, 286–291

Color It!, 604 transferring image from camera, 12, 62–68, 113,
Color Management System. See CMS 281–286, 330
Color Matching Module. See CMM contact sheet, 259, 270, 819
Color Picker dialog box Contract Selection dialog box (Photoshop), 633
Paint Shop Pro, 818 contrast. See also color; lighting
PHOTO-PAINT, 818 adjusting using Genuine Fractals PrintPro, 764–765
Photoshop, 348, 818 adjusting using Photoshop Auto Contrast, 341–342, 467
Color Settings dialog box (Photoshop), 749 adjusting using Photoshop auto-sharpening filter,
Color Variations dialog box (Photoshop), 367 422–423
Color.com, 236 adjusting using Photoshop Blend Mode, 409, 413, 415
Colorific, 235–236 adjusting using Photoshop Brightness/Contrast dialog
colorimeter, 237–238, 268 box, 371, 435, 531, 638
ColorSync, 230, 313 adjusting using Photoshop High Pass filter, 437, 440
Colortron II, 237 adjusting using Photoshop Unsharp Mask filter, 424
CompactFlash card batch processing adjustment using DeBabelizer, 662
capacity, 57, 189 camera-level control, 50, 181
ruggedness, 189 correction, 250
SmartMedia compared, 189 edge of image element, needed to find, 390, 423,
Type I, 57 484, 488
Type II, 57 lighting, 76, 93, 143
complementary metal oxide semiconductor. See CMOS photopainting, 568, 590
compositing using Photoshop, 313, 389–392, 581–584, 587 ratio, 143
composition Web graphic, 638
background, 32, 93 Convert Point tool (Photoshop), 490
center of interest, 91 Convert to Profile window (Photoshop), 750
cliché, 89–90 Coolpix 5000 camera
clutter, 93 compression, 34
defined, 89 ergonomics, 56
framing subject, 92–94 information added to image, 12–13
image edit, adjusting via, 357 LCD, 52, 105
lighting, strengthening using, 93 macrophotography, 124
perspective, 91, 93 noise reduction mode, 36
photopainting, 554 shutter lag, 40
POV, 90 telephoto lens, 107
shape, 91–92 Coolpix 950 camera, 160, 169, 181
shutter lag, anticipating, 94 Coolpix 990 camera, 160, 181
3-D modeling using Poser, 689 Coolpix 995 camera, 181
two-thirds rule, 90–91 Coolpix 2500 camera, 188
vignette, 91–92 copyright, 298, 655, 819
compression Corel Bryce, 684, 689–690
DeBabelizer, using, 660–661 Corel KnockOut, 398–399
Genuine Fractals STN format, 668 Corel Painter. See Painter
GIF format, 620 Corel PHOTO-PAINT. See PHOTO-PAINT
JPEG format, 34, 620, 622 Corel Picture Publisher, 324–326, 329
lossless, 39, 250, 254 CorelDRAW, 321, 664
LZW (Lemple-Zif-Welch), 825 cost
Nikon Coolpix, 34 battery charger, 60, 193
RLE (Run Length Encoding), 831 Bryce, 684
computer Canoma, 687
CD-RW drive, 218–219 Canon D60 camera, 71
color, display card setup, 219, 220–221 Canon snapshot printers, 795, 796, 797
cost, 214–215 card reader, 191, 192
defragmenting, 720–722 Club Photo membership, 799–800
display card, 219–223, 693 color calibrator software, 235, 236, 237, 266
firewall, 289 Color Efex Pro, 196
hard drive, 218, 720–722 computer, 214–215
Mac OS versus Windows, 213–215, 217–218 Durst-Lambda printers, 245
media, removable, 289 EPSON printers, 780, 781, 782
memory, 217–219, 723 Ethernet kit, 288
networking, 286–289, 710, 724–725 Extensis Portfolio, 296
print server, 724–725 EZ Color calibrator, 268
resolution settings, 219, 221–222 film photography compared, 6, 8, 9, 16
speed, 215–217, 219 film recorder, 246, 247
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 857

Index ✦ C–D 857

filter, lens, 184 minimal, 253

Fireworks, 621 panorama using Photoshop, 678–679
Genuine Fractals, 265 PHOTO-PAINT, using, 819
gray card, 194 Photoshop, using, 357, 358–361, 678–679
HP printers, 786, 798 Curious Labs Poser, 684, 687–689
ImageReady, 621 Curves dialog box (Photoshop), 518
Imagestation print, 803 cyan, magenta, yellow, black. See CMYK
iPhoto server space, 799 Cymbolic Sciences products
Iris printers, 784, 785 Fire 1000 film recorder, 247
IT8 color target, 268 LightJet printers, 245, 789–790
Jobo Color Card, 267
KnockOut, 398 D
LCD hood, 193, 194 DCS (Desktop Color Separation), 820
LightJet printers, 245, 789 DeBabelizer, 614, 660–663
Macbeth Color Checker, 267 Deborah Backlight file (on the CD), 385
Media Center Pro, 296 Deborah Shaded file (on the CD), 350, 387
memory, 190 Deep Paint, 605
Memory Stick, 58 delay between shots, 41
NIC (network interface card), 288 Delete Anchor Point tool (Photoshop), 490
Ofoto print, 801 Deneba Canvas, 661
Olympus P printers, 794, 795 depth, color, 23–24, 34, 260, 623
outsourcing image digitization, 247, 270 depth-of-field
outsourcing printing, 768 aperture relation to, 42–43, 86
Paint Shop Pro, 319 described, 42, 82
PCMCIA card, 288 excessive, 83
pen, digital, 208 film photography compared, 42, 82
Photo CD, 272, 273 focal length of lens, relation to, 82–83
PhotoImpact, 326 image edit, simulating using, 83, 84, 324–325
Photoshop Elements, 603 macrophotography, 127
Photovista Virtual Tour, 680 portrait photography, 102
PhotoWorks print, 806 Desktop Color Separation. See DCS
Picture CD, 271 Desktop window (Mac OS), 305
Picture Publisher, 324, 329 Detect Watermark plug-in, 820
Poser, 684 digicam, 6
printer, dye-sublimation, 244, 710 Digimark Detect Watermark plug-in, 820
printer, inkjet, 242, 243, 706 DigiSlave flashes, 136
printer, large-format, 768, 774 digital film. See memory, camera
printer, laser, 710, 711 Digital Ice software, 263, 265
printer, photographic process, 245 Digital Photography Bible eBook version (on the CD), 849
printer, snapshot-size, 244 Digital Wallet, 113, 285
ProveIt! calibrator, 268 digitized images. See scanning images
Q-top camera mount, 206 Dimage X camera, 59
RayDream Studio, 683 display card, 219–223, 693
Roland printers, 782 Display Properties dialog box (Windows XP), 304
scanner, 258, 259, 260, 262, 263–265 distortion
Sharpener Inkjet/Internet, 754 barrel, 228, 327, 458
SharpenerPro, 754 corner pincushion, 229
Shutterfly print, 803 image edit, correcting via, 117, 326–327, 357
Snapfish print, 804–805 keystone, 227
software cost/functionality relation, 308, 309 parallax, 51–52, 116–117
Sony DPP-SV printers, 793, 794 pincushion, 227
storage key, 285 dithering
strobe lighting, 177–178 diffusion dithering, 626
Studio Artist, 607 Photoshop, using, 480–482, 615
TrueSpace, 683 transparency/opacity, 480–482
WyziWIG Deluxe calibrator, 268 Web graphic, 615, 626–627
Xerox printers, 774, 775, 776 Document Structuring Convention. See DSC
Creature House Expression 2, 605–606 DOD (drop on demand) printer, 784
Creo Iris printers, 243, 244, 783–785 Dodge tool (Photoshop), 379, 382, 385
cropping Dog.tif file (on the CD), 512
batch processing using DeBabelizer, 662 dome, hemispheric, 140–141
Genuine Fractals, using, 669, 763, 764 Donna file (on the CD), 572
iPhoto, using, 293 Donna Profile file (on the CD), 371
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 858

858 Index ✦ D–E

downloading image from camera, 12, 62–68, 113, Edit ➪ Fill (Photoshop), 346
281–286, 330 editing, proxy, 313
drawing 18% gray card, 103, 179, 194, 231, 266–267
digital drawing, 21 Ellipse tool (Photoshop), 493
Illustrator, using, 663–664 Elliptical Marquee tool (Photoshop), 491, 493, 505, 646
Paint Shop Pro, using, 814–815 e-mail attachment, sending image as, 291, 328, 331
photograph, converting to, 433, 437–440, 665–667 emboss effect
PHOTO-PAINT, using, 814–815 PHOTO-PAINT, 816
Photoshop, using, 663–665, 814–815 Photoshop, 634
technical drawing, 625 Enhance ➪ Auto Contrast (Photoshop), 342
tracing, 573–575, 665–667 Enhance ➪ Brightness/Contrast ➪ Brightness/Contrast
Web graphic, 618 (Photoshop), 371
drop on demand printer. See DOD Enhance ➪ Color Variations (Photoshop), 367
drop shadow effect, 820 Enhance ➪ Quick Fix (Photoshop), 342
Droplets, Photoshop, 546–548 EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) format support, 821
DSC (Document Structuring Convention), 821 EPSON printers
Durst-Lambda printers, 245, 790–791 Stylus Color 3000, 243, 706, 780
dust, removing via image edit, 326, 331, 377–379, 441–443 Stylus Photo 1280, 749, 780
Dust & Scratches dialog box (Photoshop), 377–378, 442 Stylus Photo 1270, 243
Dusty file (on the CD), 377 Stylus Photo 785EPX, 242
dye-sublimation printer Stylus Photo 2000P, 780–781
cost, 244, 710 Stylus Professional 10000, 781–782
dye-transfer process, 244, 709, 770, 778 wide format inkjet, 244
paper used, 244, 245, 712, 713 EPSON scanners, 260, 278
print size, 710 EPSON Web site, 779
quality of print produced, 244, 709 Equilibrium DeBabelizer, 614, 660–663
snapshot-size, 244, 793, 794–795, 796 Eraser tool (Photoshop), 351, 390
speed, 244, 710 ergonomics, 55–56
tone, continuous, 709 Ethernet, 287–288
event photography, 107–109
E exhibition print quality, 243, 769–770
EagleEye WING tripod accessory, 160–161 EXIF files, 12–13, 298
Easy CD Creator Platinum, 301 exposure. See also aperture; shutter speed
eBook version of Digital Photography Bible (on the CD), 849 architecture photography, 119–120
E-Color Colorific, 235–236 blooming, 70–71
ECU (extreme close-up), 125 bracketing, 37–38, 119–120
Eden file (on the CD), 599 correction, 248–253
edge of frame, creating using Picture Publisher Edge highlight, for, 69–72
Wizard, 325–326 image edit, adjusting via, 248–253, 320, 325, 326, 340
edge of image element infrared photography, 702
brightness, adjusting using Photoshop Glowing Edge layering bracketed shots, 119–120
filter, 592 locking on automatic camera, 69
cleaning up using Photoshop, 535–536 long, 72
complex, 397 metering, 44, 73, 145, 178–182
composite image, selecting for, 389 noise, relation to, 36
erasing, 391 panorama photography, 119, 676, 681
feathering using Photoshop, 375, 428–431, 442, 496, 497 presetting, 40
finding, contrast needed, 390, 423, 484, 488 stereo photography, 695
finding using KnockOut, 398 still-life photography, 120
finding using Photoshop, 400–404, 431–433, 484–486, test shot, 36
488, 521–522 Expression 2, 605–606
finding using Picture It!, 331 Extensible Metadata Platform. See XMP
halo, 393, 479 Extensis Portfolio, 12, 296–298
outlining using digital tablet, 522 Extract dialog box (Photoshop), 401
outlining using Photoshop, 521–522 Extract tool (Photoshop), 400–404, 521–525, 599
painting, 391 Extraction ➪ Smooth field (Photoshop), 522
sharpness, adjusting using Photoshop, 423–426, 754 extreme close-up. See ECU
stairstepping, 362, 393 Eye Candy (on the CD), 848
transitional, 398 eyedropper tool
trimming using Marquee tools, 494 ImageReady, 480
Edge Wizard (Picture Publisher), 325 Photoshop, 364, 366, 500, 515–516
Edit ➪ Color Settings (Photoshop), 737 EZ Color calibrator, 236–237, 268–269
Edit ➪ Define Pattern (Photoshop), 448
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 859

Index ✦ F 859

F versatility, 17
Web, ease of posting image to, 8
feathering using Photoshop, 375, 428–431, 442, 496, 497
film plane, 118
field of view, 821
film recorder, 246–247
File ➪ Automate (Photoshop), 474
filter, lens
File ➪ Automate ➪ Batch (Photoshop), 251
adapter, 149
File ➪ Automate ➪ Create Droplet (Photoshop), 546
architecture photography, 185
File ➪ Automate ➪ Web Photo Gallery (Photoshop), 476
black and white photography, 185–186
File ➪ File Info (Photoshop), 478
color temperature converter, 184
file format. See also specific formats
color-correcting, 185
camera, saved by, 34–36
color-enhancing, 185
choosing appropriate, 627
cost, 184
converting using automated converters, 628–630
described, 184
converting using batch processing, 659–660
diffusion filter, 103
software support, 309
glare, reducing using, 123
File Format menu (Photoshop), 35
green, 185
file management, 302–303, 462–464
honeycomb grid, 141
file naming, 12, 302, 463, 548
image edit versus, 184
File ➪ Open in Photoshop (Genuine Fractals), 669
infrared photography, 700–702
File ➪ Open or File ➪ Open As (Photoshop), 35
lighting color, correcting using, 45
File ➪ Photomerge (Photoshop), 677
location photography, 97, 98
File ➪ Print Options (Photoshop), 751
nature photography, 186
File ➪ Save As (Photoshop), 250
polarizing, 123, 184
File ➪ Save As ➪ GF Print Pro (Photoshop), 668
portrait photography, 103, 186
File ➪ Save for Web (Photoshop), 614
red, 185
file size
sky photography, 123, 185
animation, 647
snow photography, 186
bitmap, 25, 618
special effect filters, 184
calculating, 22
UV (ultraviolet), 97, 184
CMYK color, 22
warming filter, 103
computer hardware considerations, 215, 219
yellow, 185
optimizing using Genuine Fractals, 760–765
Filter ➪ Blur ➪ Gaussian Blur (Photoshop), 373
optimizing using ImageReady, 479
Filter ➪ Blur ➪ Smart Blur (Photoshop), 425
optimizing using Photoshop, 482–484, 616
Filter ➪ Extract (Photoshop), 401
resolution expression in, 22–23, 29
Filter ➪ Liquify (Photoshop), 387
vector graphic, 619
Filter ➪ Noise (Photoshop), 440
Web graphic, 618, 624–625, 647
Filter ➪ Noise ➪ Despeckle (Photoshop), 441
File Transfer Protocol. See FTP
Filter ➪ Noise ➪ Dust & Scratches (Photoshop), 377
Fill dialog box (Photoshop), 346–347
Filter ➪ Other ➪ High Pass (Photoshop), 437
Fill tool (Photoshop), 522
Filter ➪ Other ➪ Offset (Photoshop), 450
film, digital. See memory, camera
Filter ➪ Pattern Maker (Photoshop), 470
film photography, digital compared
Filter ➪ Render ➪ Lens Flare (Photoshop), 444
acceptability as medium, 17
Filter ➪ Sharpen ➪ Unsharp Mask (Photoshop), 393
aperture, 126, 127
Filter ➪ Sketch ➪ Charcoal (Photoshop), 497
camera accessibility, 5–6
Filter ➪ Stylize ➪ Find Edges (Photoshop), 433
consumer confidence, 17
Filter ➪ Texture ➪ Texturize (Photoshop), 446
copying image, 13–14
finger painting effect, 815
cost, 6, 8, 9, 16
Fire 1000 film recorder, 247
darkroom, 8
firewall, 289
depth-of-field, 42, 82
Fireworks (MX version on the CD), 621, 847
exposure, long, 72
Flaming Pear sample filters (on the CD), 848
film handling, 8
flash. See also lighting; strobe lighting
image presentation, 9–11
architecture photography, 120–121
image proofing, 9–11
automatic, 42, 169
image quality, 4, 11–12, 16
built-in, 42, 73
information added to image, 12–13
candid photography, 105
lens, 127
connection, 60–62, 137, 169
light capture process, 21–22
diffusing, 73, 74, 120, 138
print quality, 4, 11, 17
distance from subject, 73
sensor, 35mm still frame compared, 82
duration, 73
sequence imaging, 15
event photography, 108
shutter lag, 17
fill, 46, 73–74
speed, image delivery, 7
speed, image viewing, 6–7 Continued
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 860

860 Index ✦ F–I

flash (continued) Giclée print, 753, 778–779

fill effect, Photoshop, 105, 345–348 GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), 620–622, 628–629,
hot shoe, 61–62, 137, 169, 173 648–651, 660, 819
macrophotography, 125–126, 136 glare, reducing using polarizing filter, 123
motion photography, 110 gobo lighting accessory, 130, 141, 204
Nikon Coolpix 950 camera, 169 Gossen light meters, 180, 181
PC connection, proprietary, 60–61, 137, 169 GPA (Giclée Printer Association), 779
powerpack, 170, 178 GPS (global positioning system), 12
red-eye reduction via flash placement, 136, 168 gradient
red-eye reduction via image edit, 271, 316, 319, 326, 331 airbrushed, 601
reflector, using with, 139–141 creating, 310
remote control, 137, 171 creating using Kai’s Power Tools, 455
ring, 136 creating using Paint Shop Pro, 321
sensor, infrared, 108, 171 creating using Picture Publisher, 329
shutter lag, reducing through shutting off, 40 mask, applying to, 497–498
slave unit, 108, 113, 120–121, 136, 170–171 grain. See noise
snoot cover, 141 Grain Surgery, 37, 672–674
sport photography, 110 GraphicConverter (on the CD), 848
stand, 171–173 Graphire2 digital tablet, 206, 207
supplementary, 108 gray card, 103, 179, 194, 231, 266–267
transporting, 153 grayscale
FlashBox (software), 265 color, converting to, 350, 379, 526–529, 531
FlashGO! card reader, 192 low-source image, using as, 630
flattening mask, 503, 525
color using Photoshop, 417 printing, 710
image using Photoshop, 354, 371 quadtone, 830
Florencia Smile file (on the CD), 376 grid, Photoshop, 406
FOCOLTONE color, 822
focus H
automatic, 84–85, 86 hair light, 81, 82
infrared photography, 702 halftone screen, 823
locking, 85 Harrison and Harrison lens filters, 701–702
macrophotography, 126 Healing brush tool (Photoshop), 376–377, 443, 464–465
manual, 85–86 High Pass dialog box (Photoshop), 437–438
prefocus, 40 highlight
sharpness, adjusting using Photoshop, 393–395, adjusting via image edit, 370, 413, 460, 582
422–424, 427–431, 753–754 exposing for, 69–72
sharpness, adjusting using SharpenerPro, 395, 754–760 specular, 515
stereo photography, 695 Highlighter tool (Photoshop), 582
10-foot f8 rule, 106 History Options dialog box (Photoshop), 536–537
forensic photography, 124 Hoodman LCD hoods, 53, 126, 193
Fractal Designs Painter. See Painter HP (Hewlett-Packard) printers, 726–727, 728, 731,
frame edge, creating using Picture Publisher Edge Wizard, 785–787, 798
325–326 Hue/Saturation dialog box (Photoshop), 343–344
framing via image edit, 320, 331 hybrid digital photography, 18–19. See also scanning
Freeform Pen tool (Photoshop), 489–490 images
FreeHand, 664
Freehand Lasso tool (Photoshop), 442 I
Freeze tool (Photoshop), 470 ICC (International Color Consortium) profile, 231, 312, 736
f-stop. See aperture ICM color calibrator, 313
FTP (File Transfer Protocol), 290–291 iGIF (interlaced GIF), 622
Fujifilm Pictography printer, 245 illustration, Web page, 617, 634–635
Fuzzy Pepper file (on the CD), 393 Illustrator, 663–664
Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Auto (Photoshop), 248
G Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Auto Color (Photoshop), 250
Gamma color calibrator, 225, 234–235, 266, 742–745 Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Auto Contrast (Photoshop), 342
Gaussian blur Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Auto Levels (Photoshop), 250
KPT5 Blurrr tool, using, 455 Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Color Balance (Photoshop), 253
mask, applying to, 513 Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Desaturate (Photoshop), 350
Photoshop, using, 373, 383, 427–431, 434–435, 513 Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Hue/Saturation (Photoshop), 344
Gaussian Blur dialog box (Photoshop), 429 Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Levels (Photoshop), 251
Genuine Fractals, 36, 265, 668–670, 760–765 Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Threshold (Photoshop), 433
Genuine Fractals Print Pro dialog box (Photoshop), 668 Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Variations (Photoshop), 367
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 861

Index ✦ I–K 861

Image Adjustment dialog boxes (PHOTO-PAINT), 322 sharpening image for, 755
Image ➪ Adjustments (Photoshop), 512 6-color, 242, 243
Image ➪ Adjustments ➪ Brightness/Contrast smudging, 707
(Photoshop), 435 snapshot-sized, 795–796, 798
Image ➪ Adjustments ➪ Invert (Photoshop), 434 speed, 242, 708
Image ➪ Adjustments ➪ Posterize (Photoshop), 352 text printing, 706
Image ➪ Adjustments ➪ Threshold (Photoshop), 351 tone printing, continuous, 707
Image ➪ Auto Color (Photoshop), 467 wide-format, 242, 244, 706
Image ➪ Crop (Photoshop), 358 interlaced GIF. See iGIF
Image ➪ Duplicate (Photoshop), 249 interlacing, 621, 624, 629, 630
Image ➪ Enhance ➪ Brightness/Contrast (Photoshop), 638 International Color Consortium profile. See ICC
Image ➪ Enhance ➪ Brightness/Contrast ➪ Levels interpolation, bicubic, 362, 672
(Photoshop), 364 Intuos2 digital tablet, 206, 207
Image ➪ Image Size (Photoshop), 449 iPhoto, 292–294, 799
Image ➪ Mode ➪ Grayscale (Photoshop), 350 IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council), 461
Image ➪ Mode Image ➪ Assign Profile (Photoshop), 749 Iris printers, 243, 244, 783–785
Image ➪ Mode Image ➪ Convert to Profile ISO (International Standards Organization)
(Photoshop), 749 camera rating, 36, 49
Image ➪ Mode ➪ Indexed Color (Photoshop), 621 lighting standards, 131
Image ➪ Mode ➪ RGB (Photoshop), 350 IT8 color target, 268
Image ➪ Re-size ➪ Image Size (Photoshop), 636 iTools, 799
Image Size dialog box (Photoshop), 449, 636
ImageReady, 479–480, 603, 613–614, 621, 650–651 J
Imagestation Web site, 802–803 Jane 2.tif file (on the CD), 400
Imation FlashGO! card reader, 192 Jane’s Window file (on the CD), 346
information added to image Jasc Media Center Plus, 294–296
audio annotation, 12, 546 Jasc Paint Shop Pro. See Paint Shop Pro
metadata, 461–462, 464, 478 Jasper Engineering (firm), 696
Nikon Coolpix 5000 camera, 12–13 jitter, 588
transfer software choice, factor in, 286 Jobo Color Card, 267
infrared photography, 699–702 JPEG format
ink, printing archiving image in, 248
archival, 780–781 color, 622
cartridge ink level, checking, 708, 727–728 compression, 34, 620, 622
cartridge refill ink, quality considerations, 725 interlacing, 629
dye-based, 714 pJPEG, 622
dye-sublimation, 244, 709, 770, 778 quality loss when re-saving, 38–39, 248
Japanese ink, 749, 833 rotating, 39
lightfastness, 240, 714, 769, 780 saving image in, 34
longevity, 240, 714, 769, 780 transparency, 628
pigment-based, 240 Web graphic, 482–484, 620, 622–623
screen printing, 769 .jpg files, 34
smudging, 707
solvent-based, 769
vegetable dye, 769
K
Kaidan panorama accessories, 118, 167, 677
water-based, 769 Kai’s Power Tools, 453–458, 647
inkjet printer Kelvin degree, 71
banding, 707 Kenko 6X telephoto lens, 107
calibrating, 708, 731–732 Kensportrait file (on the CD), 383, 405
CIJ (continuous inkjet), 784 keyboard shortcuts, PHOTO-PAINT, 323
cleaning, 706, 728–730 keystone distortion, 227
cost, 242, 243, 706 Kite Aerial Photography Web site, 701
dot pattern, 242, 708 knockout
dot size, 243, 708 KnockOut, using, 398–399
exhibition-quality print, using for, 770 Photoshop, using, 400–404, 521–525
Giclée, 753, 778–779 Kodak products
paper handling, 706, 708–709, 725–726 Color Management system, 324
paper type considerations, 712, 726–727 89A filter, 700
portfolio, 243 IT8 color target, 268
PostScript interpreter, 243 LVT film recorder, 247
printing process described, 773–774 Photo CD, 272–274, 661
quality of print produced, 242, 243, 706, 707, 708 Picture CD, 271–272
resolution, 706, 708, 780 KPT5 Blurrr tool, 454–455
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 862

862 Index ✦ L

L panorama grid, 167

parallax, 51–52
landscape 3-D modeling using Bryce, 689–690
resolution, 52
laser printer
shading, 193
cleaning, 730–731, 732
shutter lag, reducing through shutting off, 40
corona wire component, 771
swiveling, 52, 105
cost, 710, 711
LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) monitor, 223, 745–748
drum component, 771, 772
LED (Light-Emitting Diode) printer, 773
exhibition-quality print, using for, 770
Lemke GraphicConverter (on the CD), 848
fuser component, 772
lens, camera
large-format, 774–777
adapter ring, 149, 183
longevity of print, 710
aperture, maximum, 31, 32
PostScript interpreter, 710
barrel, retractable, 182
pressure roller component, 772
cap keeper, 188
printing process described, 771–773
fast, 31
quality of print produced, 241, 710
film camera, digital compared, 127
resolution, 756, 771–772
film camera, interchangeable with, 55
sharpening image for, 755
flare, 75–76
toner cartridge component, 730, 772, 773
flare effect via image edit, 443–444, 457–458
transparency printing, 710, 772
focal length, film camera equivalent, 88
Lasergraphics Personal LFR Plus film recorder, 246
focal length, relation to depth-of-field, 82–83
Lasso tool
focal length adapter, 187–188
described, 312
hood, 186
Painter, 577
macrophotography, 33, 124, 187–188
Photoshop, 376, 386, 429, 442, 487–488
quality, 29–33
Layer ➪ Flatten Image (Photoshop), 354
remote control, 156
Layer ➪ Layer Style ➪ Bevel and Emboss
shade, 76, 97
(Photoshop), 634
SLR, 51–53
Layer ➪ New Adjustment Layer ➪ Levels
supplementary, 113
(Photoshop), 371
telephoto, 107, 123, 187
Layer Styles dialog box (Photoshop), 634
testing before purchase, 29–31
layers, working with
threading, 33
animation frame layering, 621, 622, 649, 650, 841
tripod lens support accessory, 160–161
archiving, layer preservation when, 254
wide-angle, 33, 76, 124, 188
blend adjustment, 407, 817
zoom, resolution considerations, 33
color adjustment, 815
zoom, shading, 76
composite image creation using Photoshop, 389–390
zoom, sport photography, 109
duplicating using Photoshop, 369
zoom, stabilizing mechanism, 33, 109
erasing layer area using Photoshop, 351
Lens Flare dialog box (Photoshop), 444
exposure bracketing into layers, 37–38, 119–120
LensDoc filter demo (on the CD), 847
fill-flash, applying to using Photoshop, 346–347
level, tripod, 148, 167–168, 681
Levels adjustment, Photoshop, 371–372
Levels dialog box (Photoshop), 251–252, 362, 514–517
locking/unlocking using Photoshop, 496
lightbox, 176–177, 178
merging using DeBabelizer, 660
Light-Emitting Diode printer. See LED
Paint Shop Pro, in, 319, 817
lightfastness, 240, 714, 769, 780
photopainting layer manipulation using Painter, 563,
lighting. See also flash; reflector; strobe lighting
566–568, 574
ambient, measuring, 180–182
photopainting layer manipulation using Photoshop,
angle, 77
539–541, 590, 594, 600
aperture when photographing in low, 32
Photoshop Effect, applying to, 353–354
architecture photography, 119–121
stacking order, 309, 817, 832, 841–842
backlight, 46, 80–81
style, applying to using Photoshop, 317, 318, 634
backlight, editing in Photoshop, 349
transparency, 309
balancing, 120–121
transparency/opacity, adjusting using Photoshop,
bouncing, 79
369, 407–408
broad setup, 144
Layers ➪ Matting (Photoshop), 535
butterfly setup, 144
LCD (Liquid Crystal Display), camera
catch light, 143
Canon G2, 105
cloud, 75, 81
frame overlap marking, 119, 167
coloring, 138
hood, 52, 53, 126–127, 193–194
composite image, in, 389
macrophotography, 126
composition, strengthening using, 93
magnifier, 194
configuration, 137, 141–145
matrix photography, 682
contrast, 76, 93, 143
Nikon Coolpix 5000, 52, 105
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 863

Index ✦ L–M 863

diffusing, 73, 74, 120, 138, 140–141 Live Picture, 215, 313, 404–405
drama, increasing using, 76–77 LizardTech Genuine Fractals, 36, 265, 668–670, 760–765
female subject, for, 77 locking image area during edit, 470
fill light, 143 LOWSRC tag, 624, 630
filtering, 138 Lund, John (photographer), 389
fluorescent, 131, 134–135 LVT film recorder, 247
global, 823
gobo, blocking using, 130, 141, 204 M
hair light, 81, 82 Mac OS
halogen, 135 AppleScript, Photoshop support, 816
hard, 76–78 display card setup, 220
honeycomb grid filter, 141 firewall, 289
hot, 134 image presentation, 10
image edit, adjusting via, 325, 345–349, 385–387, monitor, calibrating, 220, 266, 745
444–445 monitor resolution, 734
ISO standards, 131 Photoshop, running on, 218
key light, 143 printer installation, 717–718
lens filter, correcting using, 45 wallpaper, 305–306
lens flare, 75–76 Windows versus, 213–215, 217–218
loop setup, 144 Macbeth Color Checker, 267–268
macrophotography, 125–126 Macromedia software
main light, 143 Fireworks (MX version on the CD), 621, 847
male subject, for, 77, 101 FreeHand, 664
metering, 44, 73, 145, 178–182 macrophotography
natural versus artificial, 72–73 aperture, 127
nature photography, 122 defined, 124
panorama photography, 119 depth-of-field, 127
Paramount setup, 144 flash, 125–126, 136
ping-pong ball, reading using, 179 focus, 126
pixel depth considerations, 23–24 LCD display, 126
portrait photography, 77, 100, 101, 103, 142–145 lens, 33, 124, 187–188
portrait photography, adjusting via image edit, lighting, 125–126
385–387 Nikon Coolpix 5000 camera, 124
power supply, 132, 170 Magic Wand tool (Photoshop), 312, 352, 484–486, 497, 633
range, dynamic, 133 MAH (milliamp hours) battery rating, 60
reflected light, 79 Marigold file (on the CD), 389
Rembrandt setup, 144 Marquee tool
ring light, 125, 136 described, 312
shade, photographing subject in, 75, 78 Photoshop Elliptical Marquee, 491, 493, 505, 646
short, 144 Photoshop Marquee, 357–358, 450
soft, 78–80 Photoshop Rectangular Marquee, 491–492
split, 144 Photoshop Single Column Marquee, 491, 494
spotlight, 140, 141 Photoshop Single Row Marquee, 491, 494
stand, 171–173 masking using Photoshop
stencil effect, 130 channel mask, 424, 432–433, 440, 504–512
sunlight, 73–74 color, adjusting, 495
sunrise/sunset, 81 Color Range feature, using in, 499
tabletop photography, 142 covering mask area, 497
temperature, 71, 134–135 edge, role of contrast in finding, 484
tent, lighting, 125 edge quality, adjusting, 496, 508, 514
time of day considerations, 114 filter, applying, 497
tungsten, 45, 120 Gaussian Blur, applying, 513
window, 131 gradient, applying, 497–498
Lighting Effects dialog box (Photoshop), 444–445 grayscale, 503, 525
LightJet printers, 245, 789–790 layer, unlocking, 496
Lilies file (on the CD), 594 opacity, 495, 503
Lilypond file (on the CD), 565 Quick Mask, 494–498, 502, 513
line drawing, creating from image, 433, 437–440 selecting mask, 497
line tool, 310 shape, changing, 503
Linhof monopod, 164 vector path, using, 489
Liquid Crystal Display, camera. See LCD, camera Match Grain dialog box (Grain Surgery), 673–674
Liquid Crystal Display monitor. See LCD monitor matrix photography, 681–682. See also mosaic, photo
Liquify dialog box (Photoshop), 387–388 matting, Photoshop, 535–536
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 864

864 Index ✦ M–N

Mavica cameras, 58, 794 color depth setup, 220

Media Center Plus, 294–296 color profile, 744, 748
medical photography, 124 contrast, adjusting, 225
megapixel camera, 22 corner pincushion distortion, 229
memory, camera. See also specific types and brand names CRT (cathode ray tube), 223, 734
bracketing considerations, 47 degaussing, 233
card reader, 64, 190–192, 283–284 display quality, aging effect on, 740
cost, 190 display quality, ambient light effect on, 734, 740–741
disk, removable, 58–59 dot pitch, 223
extra, carrying, 97, 107, 113, 149, 283 dual, 224
hard drive, 62, 188 flat, 223, 224
multimedia, 58 hood, 229, 740–741
printing directly from, 708, 792–799 keystoning, 227
size, effect on delay between shots, 41 LCD (liquid crystal display), 223
speed, 41 pincushion distortion, 227
travel photography, 113 position adjustment (horizontal/vertical), 225–226
memory, computer, 217–219, 723 reflection, 741
memory, external storage device, 113, 284–285 refresh rate, 223
memory, printer, 719, 723–724, 770 resolution, 220, 223, 667, 734
Memory Stick, 58 single-gun aperture grill tube, 224
MetaCreations (firm), 454 size, 223
metadata, 461–462, 464, 478 size adjustment (horizontal/vertical), 225
MGI products white point, 741, 744
Opal film recorder, 247 monolight, 136–137, 170, 178
PhotoSuite, 333–335, 606, 691 monopod, 115, 164–165. See also tripod
PhotoVista, 680 Montage Graphics FR2E film recorder, 246
MicroFrontier Color It!, 604 mosaic, photo, 334, 691. See also matrix photography
Micrografx Picture Publisher, 324–326, 329, 606 motion, photographing, 87–89, 93, 94, 106, 110–112. See
Microsoft Picture It!, 329–331, 606, 652 also action photography
Microtech products movies, 324, 692. See also animation; video
CompactFlash card, 189 Mulkey, Roger (photographer), 698, 699
ZiO! card reader, 191–192 Munsell books of color, 131
milliamp hours battery rating. See MAH
Minds@Work products N
Digital Wallet, 113, 285 NAA (Newspaper Association of America), 461
MindStor card reader, 192 nature photography, 121–124, 186
Minolta Dimage X camera, 59 neck strap, 97, 165–166
mirodisplays.com, 238 N8/Grey color, 131
model, working with, 99, 105, 106, 149 New Action dialog box (Photoshop), 542
Modern Metal Tabletop file (on the CD), 357 New Set dialog box (Photoshop), 249–250
Modify Quality Setting dialog box (Photoshop), 483 New Snapshot dialog box (Photoshop), 537
Monaco EZ Color calibrator, 236–237, 268–269 NiCad (nickel-cadmium) battery, 59, 193
MonacoSENSOR colorimeter, 236 nik products
monitor Color Efex Pro, 195–204
barrel distortion, 228, 327 penPalette digital pen, 208–211
brightness, adjusting, 225 Sharpener Inkjet/Internet, 754
calibrating, frequency of, 741 Nikon Coolpix 5000 camera
calibrating, preparing for, 233, 741 compression, 34
calibrating LCD monitor, 223, 745–748 ergonomics, 56
calibrating on Mac OS, 220, 266, 745 information added to image, 12–13
calibrating preparatory to scanner calibration, LCD, 52, 105
266, 268–269 macrophotography, 124
calibrating using Colorific, 235–236 noise reduction mode, 36
calibrating using colorimeter, 237–238, 268 shutter lag, 40
calibrating using Gamma, 225, 234–235, 266, 742–745 telephoto lens, 107
calibrating using MonacoEZcolor, 236–237 Nikon Coolpix 950 camera, 160, 169, 181
calibrating using sensor, 745–748 Nikon Coolpix 990 camera, 160, 181
calibrating using spectrometer, 237–238 Nikon Coolpix 995 camera, 181
calibrating using test chart, 231–232 Nikon Coolpix 2500 camera, 188
calibrating without specialized software, 231–232, Nikon Coolscan scanners, 263, 265
734, 741 Nikon View software, 39
choosing, 223–224 NiMH (nickel metal-hydride) battery, 59, 193
cleaning, 233
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 865

Index ✦ N–P 865

noise drop shadow effect, 820

adding using Grain Surgery, 673 emboss effect, 816
adding using Kai’s Power Tools, 455–456 EPS support, 821
adding using PHOTO-PAINT, 324 GIF, creating animated, 839
adding using Photoshop, 383–384, 389, 440, 595 gradient, creating, 321
color balancing, relation to, 45 history, 815
coloring, 455–456 image adjustment features, 811–814
exposure length, relation to, 36 layers, 319, 817
matching using Grain Surgery, 673–674 photopainting software choice, as, 606
pure, 72 text formatting features, 838–839
randomizing using Photoshop, 830 tool listing, 835–837
reducing using Grain Surgery, 672 trial version (on the CD), 846
reducing using Photoshop, 372–373, 424–427, 440–441, Web image manipulation features, 839–842
532–535 Paintbrush tool
reducing via camera mode, 36, 49 described, 310
reducing via ISO increase, 36, 49 Photoshop, 348, 381
sensor, origin in, 12, 33, 36 Painter
Norton Personal Firewall, 289 Adjust Color control panel, 569
Auto Van Gogh brush, 561, 579–580
O Brush Palette, 570
Océ LightJet printers, 245, 789–790 brush tools overview, 561–564
OCR (optical character recognition), 278 Camel Hair brushes, 563, 584–585
office supplies, 149 Canvas menu, 573
Offset dialog box (Photoshop), 450 cloning, 570, 585
Ofoto Web site, 801–802 color, cloning, 570, 575–576
Olympus cameras color saturation, adjusting, 569, 576–577
C3030, 156, 182, 697 Dry Media brush, 576
C2000, 156, 182 Effects Menu, 570
C2050, 156 gravity feature, 563
C2500, 188 history, 551
C2100, 111 impasto, simulating, 562, 585
C2020, 156, 182 Impressionist brush, 584
D620L, 187 industry standard, 551, 561
E10, 34, 36 Lasso tool, 577
E20, 34, 40, 59 layer, working with, 563, 566–568, 574
Olympus P printers, 794–795 Material/Colors Palette, 570
Olympus panorama software, 167 Materials Palette, 571
Olympus SmartMedia Wallet, 190 Object Palette, 567
opacity/transparency outline effect, 566–567
dithering, 480–482 pattern brushes, 559–560
GIF format, 621, 628–629 Pen tool, 573
ImageReady, 479–480 photopainting software choice, as, 551, 555
JPEG format, 628 selection, inverting, 578
Painter, 568 shine, adjusting, 585
Photoshop, 369, 407–408, 479, 480–482 texture, 564–565, 571, 575
Web graphic, 479–480, 621, 628–629 tracing, 573–575
Opal film recorder, 247 transparency/opacity, 568
optical character recognition. See OCR watercolor effect, 563–564, 571, 574, 576
Optio 430 camera, 56 Wet layer, 563
overpainting print using traditional medium, 608 Woodcut filter, 566–567
painting over print using traditional medium, 608
P PaintShop Pro, 652
panorama
Paint Alchemy, 558, 607–608
Paint bucket tool (Photoshop), 402, 582 architecture, 117–119
Paint Shop Pro camera, using hand-held, 119
anti-aliasing, 816 camera manual control, importance in, 44, 676, 681
auto screen, 816 camera pre-programmed mode, using, 48–49, 674
Automatic Color Balance dialog box, 320 cropping using Photoshop, 678–679
bevel effect, 816 exposure, 119, 676, 681
channels, 319, 815 focal point, 118
clipping path, 818, 828 frame overlap, 119, 167, 674, 675
Color Picker dialog box, 818 Java applet, running as, 675
drawing features, 814–815 Continued
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 866

866 Index ✦ P

panorama (continued) perspective

LCD grid, 167 composition, 91, 93
lighting, 119 image edit, correcting via, 117, 360
perspective, 678 panorama, 678
photographing for, 44, 48–49, 117–119, 674, 675–677 photopainting, 585
QuickTime, 653, 674 Photo CD, 272–274, 661
stitching, 118, 167, 674–675 Photo Express, 326, 331–332, 607
stitching using Panorama Maker, 679–680 PhotoCAL Spyder color calibrator, 745–748
stitching using Photo Express, 332 PhotoDeluxe, 603
stitching using Photoshop, 677–679 photographer vest, 153–154
stitching using PhotoSuite, 334–335 photographic process printer, 244–245, 788–792
stitching using Photovista Virtual Tour, 680–681 PhotoImpact, 326–328, 607
stitching using Picture Publisher, 325 PhotoImpression, 333
stitching using QuickStitch, 679, 684 Photomerge dialog box (Photoshop), 677
tripod, 118, 159, 160–161, 167, 676–677 photo-mosaic, 334, 691
Panorama Maker, 679–680 photomultiplier tube. See PMT
paparazzi, 104 PHOTO-PAINT
paper alpha channel, 815
acid-free, 240 anti-aliasing, 816
bond, 712 auto screen, 816
canvas, 713 batch processing, 816
dye-sublimation printer, 244, 245, 712, 713 bevel effect, 816
EPSON paper, 780 Brush Tools palette, 322
fine-art paper, 713 Channel Mixer feature, 322, 817
glossy, 242, 712–713 clipping path, 818, 828
heat-transfer paper, 710 cloning, 322
linen, 713 color management, 323, 738–739
longevity, 240, 780 Color Picker dialog box, 818
parchment, 713 cropping, 819
photographic process printer, 244 drawing features, 814–815
rag, 713 drop shadow effect, 820
type, specifying when printing, 726–727, 756 emboss effect, 816
UV-coated, 240 EPS support, 821
watercolor, 713 finger painting, 815
parallax distortion, 51–52, 116–117 History brush, 324
particle effect via image edit, 325 Image Adjustment dialog boxes, 322
Patch tool (Photoshop), 465–466 image adjustment features, 811–814
pattern image map, creating, 324
creating using Painter pattern brush, 559–560 interface, 321
creating using Photoshop pattern brush, 559–560 keyboard shortcut capability, 323
creating using Photoshop Pattern Maker filter, lens feature, 322
470–471 macro capability, 323, 815
creating using Photoshop Texturizer filter, 446–447 movie, creating, 324
tiling using Photoshop Offset filter, 448–453 Noise lens, 324
Web page background, 641–642 Object nozzle tool, 324
Pattern Name dialog box (Photoshop), 451–452 Objects docker palette, 322
PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Pen tool, 323
Association) card, 62–63, 65, 149, 191, 284 special effect features, 323
PDF (Personal Document Format), 472–473 text formatting features, 838–839
pebbles file (on the CD), 449 tool listing, 835–837
pen, digital, 208–211, 239 Web image manipulation features, 324, 839–842
Pen tool photopainting
Painter, 573 background, 553, 578–579, 581–583, 589–590, 598–602
PHOTO-PAINT, 323 brush, 556, 559–560
Photoshop, 315, 488–490, 505, 600 cloning, using, 558, 560–561, 570, 572, 575–576
Pencil tool color, background/foreground adjustment, 578–579,
described, 310 589–590, 601
Photoshop, 520 color, balancing, 599
penPalette digital pen, 208–211 color, camel hair brush application, 584–585
Pentax Optio 430 camera, 56 color, cloning, 570, 575–576
Personal Firewall, 289 color, saturation, 569, 576–577
Personal LFR Plus film recorder, 246 compositing, 580–584, 587
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 867

Index ✦ P 867

composition, 554 Art History brush, 539–541, 586–587

contrast, 568, 590 artifact, creating, 346, 424, 499, 533
described, 549–552 artifact, reducing, 464, 593
detail, 554 Assign Profile dialog box, 750
digital painting, natural media, 549–550 audio annotation, 546
digital tablet, using in, 551 Auto Color feature, 250, 467, 599
edge of image element, 391 Auto Contrast feature, 250, 341–342, 467
filter, natural media, 558–559 Auto Levels feature, 250, 342–343, 467
grain, simulating, 557 auto screen, 816
gravity feature, Painter, 563 Autofocus tool, 393
highlight, 557 b channel, 531, 533, 534
history brushing, Photoshop, 539–541, 586–587, background, replacing, 400–404
594–598 Background Eraser tool, 390, 402, 404
impasto, 556 batch processing, 251
impasto, simulating using Deep Paint, 605 Behind Blend Mode, 421
impasto, simulating using Painter, 562, 585 bevel effect, 816
layer manipulation using Painter, 563, 566–568, 574 black and white conversion, 350–351, 433, 526–530
layer manipulation using Photoshop, 539–541, 590, Bloat tool, 406
594, 600 blurring using Blur brush, 373
light source, virtual, 557 blurring using Gaussian Blur filter, 373, 383, 427–431,
outline effect, creating in Painter, 566–567 434–435
overpainting print using traditional medium, 608 blurring using Motion Blur filter, 436
pattern, 559–560 blurring using Radial Blur filter, 436, 437
perspective, 585 blurring using Smart Blur filter, 425–427, 590
photographing for, 14, 552–554 brightness, adjusting using Blend modes, 371, 411, 413,
photographs, combining, 553 415, 417
portrait, 572–577, 598–602 brightness, adjusting using Brightness/Contrast dialog
printing, 557 box, 531, 638
quality of image needed, 553–554 brightness, adjusting using Hue/Saturation dialog
resolution, 553 box, 344
shadow, 557 brightness, adjusting using Lens Flare filter, 443–444
shine, adjusting using Painter, 585 brightness, adjusting using Levels feature, 362–366
size of image needed, 553–554 brush angle, 468
skill needed, 555 brush opacity, 348, 468
software choice, 551, 555, 587, 602–608 Brush palette, 348
texture, 556–558 brush size, 348, 375, 468
texture using Painter, 564–565, 571, 575, 591 brushes, new, 587–588
texture using Photoshop, 557, 591, 600 Burn tool, 370, 379, 382, 385
tracing, 573–575, 665–667 cache, purging, 829
transparency/opacity, adjusting in Painter, 568 caption printing, 817
water ripple effect using Photoshop, 594–596 cataloging features, 298
watercolor effect using Painter, 563–564, 571, 574, 576 channel, accessibility from Elements, 379
watercolor effect using Photoshop, 588–594 channel, active, 503
Web site logo, 577–580 channel, Auto Leveling, 467
woodcut effect using Painter, 566–567 channel, balancing, 342
Photoshop. See also Photoshop Elements channel, creating, 440, 502–503, 504
a channel, 531, 534 channel, grayscale image as, 502
actions, 249–251, 309, 541–548 channel, histogram representation in Levels dialog
Add Anchor Point tool, 490 box, 514
Add Noise filter, 383–384, 440, 441 channel, intersection, 503
Airbrush tool, 383, 384, 391, 601 channel, Magic Wand selection in, 485
alpha channel, 432 channel, mask, 424, 432–433, 440, 504–512
alpha channel, altering using Curves, 517 channel, pasting to, 440
alpha channel, creating, 504 channel, RAW data file, 35
alpha channel, software considerations, 504 channel, saving, 503
alpha channel, trashing, 209 channel, selecting, 483
alpha channel map, creating texture using, 557, 588 channel, trashing, 504
anchor point, 490 Channel Mixer feature, 528–529
animation, creating, 648–650, 839, 841 Channels palette, 432
anti-aliasing, 816 Cleanup tool, 524
AppleScript support, 816 Clear Blend Mode, 421
Arc style, 633 Continued
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 868

868 Index ✦ P

Photoshop (continued) Despeckle filter, 440–441

clipping path, 489, 818, 828 Difference Blend Mode, 417, 418
cloning, 373–375, 450, 584 Diffuse filter, 595
CMYK conversion, 232–233 Diffuse Glow filter, 460
CMYK printing, 810 Dissolve Blend Mode, 407–409
color, auto-correcting, 250, 467 distortion, correcting, 357
color, balancing, 341, 366–367, 369 dithering, 480–482, 615
color, contrast adjustment, 409, 467 Dodge tool, 379, 382, 385
color, Curves adjustment, 517–521, 534 drawing, 663–665, 814–815
color, darkening, 409, 415, 519 drop shadow effect, 820
color, flattening, 417 Droplets, 546–548
color, foreground/background adjustment, duplicating image, 249, 254
348, 380–381 Dust & Scratches filter, 278, 377–379, 441–443
color, grayscale conversion, 350, 379, 526–529, 531 edge of image element, adjusting brightness, 592
color, hand-tinting effect, 379–381 edge of image element, adjusting sharpness,
color, hue adjustment, 344, 419 423–426, 754
color, inverting, 417 edge of image element, cleaning up, 535–536
color, Lab mode conversion to RGB channel, 527–528 edge of image element, finding, 400–404, 431–433,
color, lightening, 411, 413, 415, 519 484–486, 488, 521–522
color, luminosity adjustment, 421 edge of image element, outlining, 521–522
color, matching during retouch, 376, 465–466 effects, 353–356
color, multiplying, 409, 411 Ellipse tool, 493
color, PostScript management, 753 Elliptical Marquee tool, 491, 493, 505, 646
color, profile assignment, 749–750, 752 emboss effect, 816
color, profile embedding in document, 737 EPS support, 821
color, profile mismatch warning, 547, 737, 749 Eraser tool, 351, 390
color, reducing number of, 352–353, 615, 626–627 Exclusion Blend Mode, 419
color, rendering intent, 738–740, 752 EXIF tag support, 298
color, saturation adjustment, 344, 415, 419 exposure correction, 248–253
color, selecting within range, 484–486, 498–502, 512 Extract dialog box, 401
color, shape, 421 Extract filter, 599
color, tinting, 369 Extract tool, 400–404, 521–525, 599
color, tone range expansion, 362–366 extraction channel, 523, 525
color, Web Photo Gallery, 655 Eyedropper tools, 364, 366, 500, 515–516
Color Balance dialog box, 253 feathering, 375, 428–431, 442, 496, 497
Color Blend Mode, 373, 381, 391, 421 feature overview, 315, 318
Color Burn Blend Mode, 409, 410 File Browser, 298, 316, 462–464
Color Dodge Blend Mode, 413 Fill dialog box, 346–347
Color mode, Indexed, 621 Fill Flash feature, 105, 345–348
Color Picker dialog box, 348, 818 Fill tool, 522
Color Range feature, 499–500 Find Edges filter, 431–433
Color Settings dialog box, 749 finger painting, 815
Color Swatches palette, 381 flattening image, 354, 371
Color Variations dialog box, 367 Freeform Pen tool, 489–490
composite image, creating, 389–392 Freeze tool, 470
compositing, 313, 389–392, 581–584, 587 gamma correction, 364
Contract Selection dialog box, 633 Gaussian Blur dialog box, 429
contrast, adjusting using Auto Contrast, 341–342, 467 Genuine Fractals Pro file, saving as, 668
contrast, adjusting using auto-sharpening filter, Glowing Edge filter, 592
422–423 gradient, creating, 497–498, 601
contrast, adjusting using Blend Modes, 409, 413, 415 grayscale conversion, 350, 379, 526–529, 531
contrast, adjusting using Brightness/Contrast dialog grayscale mask, 503, 525
box, 371, 435, 531, 638 grid, 406
contrast, adjusting using High Pass filter, 437, 440 Hand cursor, 375
contrast, adjusting using Unsharp Mask filter, 424 Hard Light Blend Mode, 415, 416
control, modal, 545 Healing brush tool, 376–377, 443, 464–465
Convert Point tool, 490 High Pass filter, 437–440
Convert to Profile window, 750 Highlighter tool, 582
cropping, 357, 358–361, 678–679 highlighting, 370, 413, 582
Curves channel adjustment, 517–521, 534 history, non-linear, 815
Curves dialog box, 518 History brush, 538–539, 586–587, 595
Darken Blend Mode, 409 History Options dialog box, 536–537
Delete Anchor Point tool, 490 History palette, 350, 378, 536–538
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 869

Index ✦ P 869

Photoshop (continued) Paint bucket tool, 402, 582

Hue Blend Mode, 419, 420 Paintbrush tool, 348, 381
Hue/Saturation dialog box, 343–344 painting using, 466, 539–540
image adjustment features, 811–814 panorama stitching, 677–679
Image Compression button, 250 Patch tool, 465–466
Image Size dialog box, 449, 636 Paths panel, 489
Image view, 501 pattern, creating using Texturizer filter, 446–447
industry standard, 307, 313 pattern, tiling using Offset filter, 448–453
Info palette, 357–358 pattern brushes, 559–560
interface, 314 Pattern Maker filter, 470–471
interpolation, bicubic, 362, 672 Pattern Name dialog box, 451–452
jitter, 588 PDF file, saving document as, 472–473
knockout, 400–404, 521–525 Pen tool, 315, 488–490, 505, 600
L channel, 531, 533 Pencil tool, 520
Lab mode, 526–528, 531–534 perspective correction, 117, 360
Lasso tools, 376, 386, 429, 442, 487–488 Photomerge dialog box, 677
layer, applying blend adjustment to, 407, 817 photopainting software, as, 466, 555, 587–588
layer, applying Effect to, 353–354 Picture Package feature, 474–475
layer, applying Levels adjustment to, 371–372 Pin Light Blend Mode, 417, 418
layer, composite image creation using, 389–390 pixel doubling, 834
layer, duplicating, 369 plug-ins, 309, 321, 421–422, 453–460, 603–604
layer, erasing portions of, 351 Posterize feature, 352–353
layer, fill-flash, 346–347 preview, 464, 502, 524
layer, locking/unlocking, 496 printing, 474–475, 751–753
layer, photopainting using, 539–541, 590, 594, 600 professional series, 314
layer, style application to, 317, 318, 634 Pucker tool, 388, 406
layer, transparency/opacity adjustment, 369, 407–408 Quick Fix feature, 316, 339–340, 341, 342
Layer Styles dialog box, 634 Quick Mask feature, 494–498, 502, 513
Layers palette, 346 Radial Blur dialog box, 437
Lens Flare filter, 443–444 Recipes, 317
Levels adjustment, 251–252, 362–366, 371–372, 512–517 Reconstruct tool, 470
Lighten Burn Blend Mode, 411, 412 Rectangular Marquee tool, 491–492
lighting, adjusting, 345–349, 444–445 red-eye correction, 316
Lighting Effects filter, 444–445 retouch, 373, 376–377, 381–388, 464–465
line drawing, creating from image, 433, 437–440 RGB channel, Lab mode conversion to, 527–528
Linear Burn Blend Mode, 411 RGB channel, noise reduction in blue portion, 535
Linear Dodge Blend Mode, 413, 414 Ripple filter, 594–595
Linear Light Blend Mode, 417 rotating image, 320, 358–359, 463
Liquify feature, 387–388, 405–407, 468–469 Rough Pastels filter, 541
locking image area during edit, 470 routine, pre-programmed, 317
Luminosity Blend Mode, 421 rubber band, 487
Macintosh, running on, 218 Saturation Blend Mode, 419, 420
macros, 249–251, 309, 541–548, 816 Save As dialog box, 250
Magic Wand tool, 312, 352, 484–486, 497, 633 Save For Web feature, 482–484, 614–616
Marquee tool, 357–358, 450 Save Selection dialog box, 503
masking, 484, 489, 494–498, 499, 504–513 scratch, removing, 278, 377–379, 441–443
matting, 535–536 Screen Blend Mode, 371, 411, 412
merging images, 677–679 Screen mode, 371–372
mesh, 470 scripting support, 298, 816
metadata, 464, 478 selecting geometric shape, 491–494
Modify Quality Setting dialog box, 483 selecting mask, 497
Multiply Blend Mode, 409, 410 selecting using Lasso tools, 376, 386, 429, 442, 487–488
negative image, creating, 417 selecting using Magic Wand, 312, 352, 484–486, 497
New Action dialog box, 542 selecting using Marquee tools, 357–358, 450, 491–494
New Set dialog box, 249–250 selecting using multiple clicks, 500–501
New Snapshot dialog box, 537 selecting within color range, 484–486, 498–502, 512
noise, adding, 383–384, 389, 440, 595 selection, blending using channel, 502–512
noise, randomizing, 830 selection, changing to channel, 502–503, 505
noise, reducing, 372–373, 424–427, 440–441, 532–535 selection, Contract, 633
Offset filter, 448–453 selection, inverting, 428, 434, 486
opening file, 35 selection, loading, 435, 502
operating system, 461 selection, overlapping, 492–493
Overlay Blend Mode, 413, 414 Continued
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 870

870 Index ✦ P

Photoshop (continued) Photoshop Elements. See also Photoshop

selection, Quick Mask versus, 497 channel accessibility from, 379
selection, saving, 503 Correct Backlighting command, 349
selection, subtracting from channel, 503 cost, 603
selection arrow, converting Pen tool to, 490 drawing features, 814–815
selection Fuzziness setting, 500–501 effects, 353–356
selection marquee, hiding, 435 Fill Flash command, 345
selection preview, 502 History palette, 350
Selection view, 501 image adjustment features, 811–814
selections, blending, 502–512 introduced, 314
sepia tone effect, 379–381 Levels command, 362
shape, changing, 387–388, 405–407, 445–446, 468–469 optimizing image using, 614–616
Sharpen Edges filter, 423, 754 overview, 316–318
Sharpen filter, 423, 754 Palette Well, 353
Sharpen More filter, 423, 754 panorama composing using, 677–679
Sharpen tool, 382 Photomerge feature, 677–679
Single Column Marquee tool, 491, 494 Quick Fix feature, 316, 339–340, 341, 342
Single Row Marquee tool, 491, 494 Recipes, 317
sizing image, 361–362, 449, 474–475, 541–544, 636–637 text formatting features, 838–839
Smart Blur dialog box, 425 tool listing, 835–837
snapshot, 525, 537–538, 539, 586, 595 Web image manipulation features, 839–842
Soft Light Blend Mode, 105, 415 PhotoSmart printers, 726–727, 728, 731, 798
sort ranking, 298 Photosolve Web site, 160
spell checking, 472 Photosolve Xtend-A-View LCD hood, 194, 195
Spin filter, 436 PhotoStudio, 603
Stamp tool, 466 PhotoSuite, 333–335, 606, 691
Test Image file, 230 PhotoTapestry, 691
text, working with, 353, 355, 472, 631–634, 838–839 Photovista Virtual Tour, 680–681
Text tool, 632–633, 638 PhotoWorks Web site, 806
texture, adding, 446–447, 557, 588, 591, 600 PICT format, 623
texture, reducing, 424–427 Pictography printer, 245
Texturizer filter, 446–447, 591 Pictorgraphic Candela ColorSynergy, 237
Thaw tool, 470 Picture CD, 271–272
3D Transform filter, 445–446 Picture Disk, 272
Threshold dialog box, 351 Picture It!, 329–331, 606, 652
thumbnails, 298, 317–318, 463–464, 476, 478 Picture Publisher, 324–326, 329, 606
Tiff Options dialog box, 250 Pigttoo file (on the CD), 432
tiling, 448–453, 470–471 pixels
tool listing, 835–837 bitmap, representation in, 20, 24
Tool Options bar, 468 code representation, 20
Touchup tool, 524 color, 24
transformations, 387–388, 405–407, 468–469 contiguous, 484
transparency/opacity, 369, 407–408, 479, 480–482 depth, 23–24, 34
trial version (on the CD), 846–847 dimensions, 22
Turbulence tool, 469–470 doubling feature, Photoshop, 834
undoing change, 350, 470, 471 file size calculation, in, 22
Unsharp Mask filter, 382, 393, 423–424, 435, 754 grid, 24
Variations feature, 366–369 resolution expression in, 22, 28, 29, 734
vector file, rasterizing, 309 selecting contiguous within tonal range, 484–486
vector path, creating, 310, 488–490 shape, 24
Vivid Light Blend Mode, 415, 416 square pixel effect, 361
Warp tool, 406 pJPEG (progressive JPEG) format, 622
water ripple effect, 594–596 PMT (photomultiplier tube), 735
watercolor effect, 588–594 PNG (Portable Network Graphics) format, 620, 623
Web button graphic, creating, 645–647 Pod camera steadying accessory, 161–162
Web graphic, optimizing, 357, 482–484, 614–616 point of view. See POV
Web image manipulation features, 839–842 point (speck of physical photographic material), 20
Web Photo Gallery feature, 475–478, 653–656 Polaroid 6000 film recorder, 247
Web text graphic, 631–634, 638–639 Polygon tool (Illustrator), 663–664
workspace, customizing, 471–472 Portfolio utility, 12
Zoom filter, 436
Zoom tool, 372
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 871

Index ✦ P 871

portrait photography draft mode, 708

background, 46, 98, 102, 598–602 driver, 715, 717, 719, 723
blemish, removing using image edit, 373, 376–377, dye-sublimation, continuous-tone capability, 709
464–465 dye-sublimation, cost, 244, 710
camera pre-programmed settings, 46 dye-sublimation, dye-transfer process, 244, 709,
candid, 104–107 770, 778
character, portraying, 100 dye-sublimation, paper used, 244, 245, 712, 713
chin position, 101 dye-sublimation, print size, 710
clothing, 100 dye-sublimation, quality of print produced, 244, 709
color saturation intent, 739 dye-sublimation, snapshot-size, 244, 793, 794–795, 796
depth-of-field, 102 dye-sublimation, speed, 244, 710
expression, 99 emulation, 770–771
eyes, 100, 101, 103, 382 film recorder, 246–247
female subject, 77, 101, 102 ICC profile, 231, 312
filters, 103, 186 inkjet, banding, 707
interviewing subject, 99 inkjet, calibrating, 708, 731–732
lighting, 77, 100, 101, 103, 142–145 inkjet, CIJ (continuous inkjet), 784
lighting, adjusting via image edit, 385–387 inkjet, cleaning, 706, 728–730
makeup, 102 inkjet, continuous tone printing, 707
male subject, 77, 101 inkjet, cost, 242, 243, 706
mirror, 104 inkjet, dot pattern, 242, 708
model, working with, 99, 105, 106, 149 inkjet, dot size, 243, 708
photopainting, 572–577, 598–602 inkjet, exhibition-quality print using, 770
posing stool, 150 inkjet, Giclée, 753, 778–779
retouch using Photoshop, 373, 376–377, 381–388, inkjet, paper handling, 706, 708–709, 725–726
464–465 inkjet, paper type considerations, 712, 726–727
shoulder position, 100 inkjet, portfolio, 243
shutter lag, minimizing, 102 inkjet, PostScript interpreter, 243
studio, 142–145 inkjet, printing process described, 773–774
tripod, 104 inkjet, quality of print produced, 242, 243, 706, 707, 708
vignette, 91–92 inkjet, resolution, 706, 708, 780
Poser, 684, 687–689 inkjet, sharpening image for, 755
Posterize dialog box (Photoshop), 352–353 inkjet, 6-color, 242, 243
posterizing, 352–353 inkjet, smudging, 707
PostScript printing, 240–241, 243, 710, 753 inkjet, snapshot-sized, 795–796, 798
POV (point of view), 90 inkjet, speed, 242, 708
prepress preparation, 312–313, 516 inkjet, text printing using, 706
presentation, 9–11. See also slide show inkjet, wide-format, 242, 244, 706
PressView XL, 237–238 installing, 714–718
Preview ➪ Display (Photoshop), 524 large-format, 767–768, 774–777
Pricewatch, 723 laser, cleaning, 730–731, 732
primitive (shape), 686 laser, corona wire component, 771
printer. See also prints; specific printers laser, cost, 710, 711
background printing, 719 laser, drum component, 771, 772
bubblejet, 773–774 laser, fuser component, 772
buffer, 723–724, 770 laser, large-format, 774–777
cable, 716, 717, 724 laser, longevity of print, 710
calibrating, 708, 731–732, 751 laser, PostScript interpreter, 710
cartridge, 707 laser, pressure roller component, 772
cartridge, cleaning, 708, 731 laser, printing process described, 771–773
cartridge, head, 243 laser, quality of print produced, 241, 710
cartridge, high-capacity, 708 laser, resolution, 756, 771–772
cartridge, ink level checking, 708, 727–728 laser, sharpening image for, 755
cartridge, refilling, 714, 725 laser, toner cartridge component, 730, 772, 773
cartridge, replacing, 706 laser, transparency printing using, 710, 772
choosing, 705–706 laser, using for exhibition-quality print, 770
cleaning, 706, 728–732 LED, 773
color interpretation, 735 maintenance, 706, 727–732
direct-to-print, 10 memory, 719, 723–724, 770
display list, 771 multifunction, 711
DOD, 784 networking, 287, 710, 724–725
dot size, 243 Continued
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 872

872 Index ✦ P–R

printer (continued) prepress preparation, 312–313, 516

office printer, 241 quality, paper considerations, 712, 713
offset, sharpening image for, 755, 756 quality for exhibition, 243, 769–770
parallel port connection, 715–717, 723–724 quality for informal publication, 241
performance, optimizing, 719–725 quality for portfolio, 243
photographic process, 244–245, 788–792 quality of dye-sublimation-printed, 244, 709
Plug and Play, 717 quality of inkjet-printed, 242, 243, 706, 707, 708
PostScript, 240–241, 243, 710, 753 quality of laser-printed, 241, 710
rasterization, 771 quality of photographic process-printed, 244–245
re-selling, 715 quality of wax thermal-printed, 246
server, print, 724–725 resolution, 11, 245, 699, 756
snapshot, 244, 792–799 screen printing, 769
speed, 242, 244, 708, 710 sharpening image for printing, 753–760
spooling, 719, 770 sizing image for, 667
testing before purchase, 706 slide, outputting to, 246–247
thermal, 709 smudging, 707
tone, continuous, 707, 769, 788–792 snapshot, 244, 792–799
USB connection, 717–718 stereo photograph, 696, 699
warranty, 715, 725 substrate, 711, 768
wax thermal, 246 text, printing, 710
wide-format, 241, 243–244, 245, 706, 770 tone, continuous, 707, 769, 788–792
PrintPro (Genuine Fractals), 761–764 transparency, printing, 710, 772
prints. See also printer wallet snapshot, 474–475, 797
archival, 17, 713 procreate Painter. See Painter
banding, 707 progressive JPEG. See pJPEG
batch processing, 660 proofing, 9–11, 829
camera, direct printing from, 708, 792–799 Provelt! color calibrator, 236, 268
caption, 817 proxy editing, 313
CMYK printing, 735, 737, 810 Pucker tool (Photoshop), 388, 406
color, print versus digital media, 229–230
color separation, 240, 818 Q
draft mode, 708 Q-top camera mount, 205–206
edition, limited, 14 Quantum Mechanics demo (on the CD), 846, 847
exhibition-quality, 243, 769–770 Quest batteries, 193
film, outputting to, 246–247 Quick Fix dialog box (Photoshop), 341
film print quality compared, 4, 11, 17 Quick Mask Options dialog box (Photoshop), 495
Giclée, 753, 778–779 QuickStitch, 679, 684
gloss, 712–713 QuickTime panorama, 653, 674
grayscale, 710
ink, archival, 780–781 R
ink, cartridge refill quality, 725 Radial Blur dialog box (Photoshop), 437
ink, dye-based, 714 Radius PressView XL, 237–238
ink, Japanese, 749, 833 rapid sequence mode, 15, 40
ink, longevity, 240, 714, 769, 780 raster image processor. See RIP
ink, pigment-based, 240 rasterization. See also bitmap
ink, screen printing, 769 Photoshop, using, 309
ink, smudging, 707 printer, by, 771
ink, solvent-based, 769 RAW format, 35
ink, vegetable dye, 769 RayDream Studio, 683
ink, water-based, 769 Reconstruct tool (Photoshop), 470
Internet, via, 799–806 Rectangular Marquee tool (Photoshop), 491–492
longevity, atmosphere effect on, 240 Red Ivy file (on the CD), 389
longevity, ink quality effect on, 240, 714, 769, 780 red-eye reduction
longevity, lightfastness effect on, 240, 714, 769, 780 flash setup, via proper, 136, 168
longevity, paper quality effect on, 240, 780 image edit, via, 271, 316, 319, 326, 331
mounting on rigid surface, 768 reflector
optimizing image for, 753 barn door, 141
outsourcing, 240, 768, 783 ceiling, 139
overpainting using traditional medium, 608 color, 174
page mark, 828 dome, hemispheric, 140–141
paper, 240, 242, 706, 711–714, 725–727 fill lighting using, 73, 80
photopainting, 557 flash, using with, 139–141
Photoshop, printing from, 474–475, 751–753 foamcore, 80, 174, 175
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 873

Index ✦ R–S 873

foldaway, 139 rotating image

placement, 137 batch processing using DeBabelizer, 662
snoot, 81, 141 JPEG image, quality loss if resampled, 39
soft box, 140, 176 Photoshop, using, 320, 358–359, 463
umbrella, 140, 174, 176, 178 Roxio Easy CD Creator Platinum, 301
windshield, 80, 103, 174 Roxio Photovista Virtual Tour, 680–681
remote control RTS photo waterproof housings, 205
aerial photography, 701 rubber band (Photoshop), 487
aperture, 156 Rubylith mask, 406, 494–495
flash, 137, 171 rule of thirds, 90–91
lens, 156
shutter, 38, 145, 156, 695 S
stereo photography, 695 Save As dialog box (Photoshop), 250
resampling, 361–362 Save For Web dialog box (Photoshop), 482
resolution Save Selection dialog box (Photoshop), 503
array, expression as, 29 saving images
batch processing using DeBabelizer, 662 file format, 35–36
bitmap, 25 floppy disk, on, 58
composite image, in, 389 Genuine Fractals Pro file, as, 668
computer settings, 219, 221–222 JPEG format, in, 34, 38–39
desktop publishing, 221 RAW format, in, 35
dust removal via image edit, in, 378 re-save, quality loss in, 38–39
file size, expression in, 22–23, 29 TIFF format, in, 35, 39
flexibility offered by high, 33 scanner. See also scanning images; specific scanners
graphic design, 221 bit depth, 260
image edit, adjusting via, 357 calibrating, monitor calibration preparatory to,
interpolated, 258, 261 266, 268–269
LCD display, 52 calibrating slide scanner, 267
megapixel, 22 calibrating using camera target, 267–268
monitor, 220, 223, 667, 734 calibrating using portrait, 266, 276
mosaic, photo, 691 calibrating using print target, 266–267
output resolution, image resolution relation to, 29 calibrating using test chart, 231–232, 266–267
Photo CD, 272, 273 calibrating without specialized software, 266–268
photopainting, 553 camera, using as, 278–280
Picture CD, 271 color interpretation, 734–735
pixels, expression in, 22, 28, 29, 734 color profile, 262, 312, 342, 738, 748–751
print, 11, 245, 699, 756 connection, 257
printer, continuous tone, 791 cost, 258, 259, 260, 262, 263–265
printer, inkjet, 706, 708, 780 drum scanner, 257, 263, 735
printer, laser, 756, 771–772 fax machine, using as, 259
scanner, 23, 258, 260, 261, 264 flatbed, 257, 258–261, 264
scratch removal considerations, 378 ICC profile, 312
sensor considerations, 55 one-pass, 734, 735
size of image relation to, 23 PMT, 735
sizing image, considerations when, 25, 361, 760–762 resolution/cost relation, 264
SuperVGA, 22 scratch removal feature, 278
vector graphic, 619 sheet-fed, 257
VGA, 22 software bundled with, 261, 262, 264–265, 277–278, 308
video, 15, 692 three-pass, 734
Wacom tablet, 239 transparency scanner, 257, 261–263, 264–265, 267
Web graphic, 622, 625–626 warm up, 276
zoom considerations, 33 scanning images. See also scanner
retouch using Photoshop, 373, 376–377, 381–388, 464–465 advantages over digital photography, 18–19
RGB (red, green, blue) bitmap, 20
brightness steps, 737 cleanliness, 275–276
color number, 737 CMYK, in, 232–233
Photoshop channel, converting Lab mode to, 527–528 contact sheet, 259, 270
scanning in, 232–233 film choice, 275
Right Hemisphere Deep Paint, 605 moiré pattern, removing, 277
RIP (raster image processor), 240–241 OCR, 278
Roland printers, 782–783 orientation of image, 276
Rose file (on the CD), 577 Continued
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 874

874 Index ✦ S

scanning images (continued) SharpenerPro, 395, 754–760, 761–762

outsourcing, 247, 269–274 sharpness
resolution, archival, 277 adjusting using Genuine Fractals PrintPro, 761–762
resolution, film scanner, 23 adjusting using Photoshop, 393–395, 422–424, 427–431,
resolution, flatbed scanner, 260, 261 753–754
resolution, image size relation to, 23 adjusting using SharpenerPro, 395, 754–760, 761–762
resolution, optical versus interpolated, 258, 261 continuous tone printer, image destined for, 789
RGB, in, 232–233 image size, changing after adjusting, 761
screen removal, 277 Shortcut S-Spline, 36, 846
SharpenerPro!, using, 755–760 shot list, 107
transparency, 257, 259–260, 261–263, 264–265, 267 shutter click, 94
workflow, 19–20, 748–749 shutter lag
Scatter Light filter demo (on the CD), 847 anticipating when composing photograph, 94
Scitex (firm), 238 candid photography, 105
scratch film camera compared, 17
removing using Digital Ice, 263, 265 flash, reducing through shutting off, 40
removing using FlashBox, 265 LCD display, reducing through shutting off, 40
removing using Paint Shop Pro, 320 Nikon Coolpix 5000 camera, 40
removing using Photoshop, 278, 377–379, 441–443 Olympus E20 camera, 40
removing using Picture It!, 331 portrait photography, 102
resolution considerations when removing, 378 shutter priority, 43
scanner scratch removal feature, 278 shutter speed. See also exposure
screen printing, 769 aperture relation to, 43
Segmentis buZZ software, 603–604 automatic mode, 42
Sekonic light meters, 180, 182 movement, adjusting for, 87–89, 110
Select ➪ Inverse (Photoshop), 486 sport photography, 109
Select ➪ Load Selection (Photoshop), 435, 502 Shutterfly Web site, 803–804
Select ➪ Modify ➪ Border (Photoshop), 523 Single Column Marquee tool (Photoshop), 491, 494
Select ➪ Modify ➪ Contract (Photoshop), 633 Single Row Marquee tool (Photoshop), 491, 494
Select ➪ Select All (Photoshop), 448 single-lens reflex camera. See SLR
Select ➪ Similar (Photoshop), 186 sizing image
Selection ➪ Feather (Photoshop), 386 batch processing using DeBabelizer, 662
selection tools, 311–312, 331, 357–358 bitmap, 25, 618
self-timer feature, camera, 38, 155 canvas size, 817
sensor, camera delay between shots, size effect on, 41
blooming, 70–71 garbage-in, garbage-out rule, 779
CCD, 54–55 Genuine Fractals, using, 668–670, 760–762
choosing, 54–55 noise reduction mode size restriction, 36, 50
CMOS, 54–55, 71 Photoshop, using, 361–362, 449, 474–475, 541–544,
described, 21–22 636–637
noise, origin in, 12, 33, 36 print, for, 667
Olympus E cameras, 34 resolution, 25, 361, 760–762
plane, 118 SharpenerPro, using, 756
resolution considerations, 55 sharpness adjustment, changing image size after, 761
size, 11–12, 33–34, 54 S-Spline, using, 36, 846
35mm still frame compared, 82 Web graphic, 625, 627–628, 630, 636
sepia tone effect using Photoshop, 379–381 sky photography
sequence imaging cloud, 81, 370
bracketing, automatic, 15, 37–38 image editing, 345, 349, 370, 456–457
BSS, 47 lens filter, 123, 185
burst mode, 47–48, 111–112 sunrise, 81
film camera compared, 15 sunset, 81
panorama, 15, 44 slide show. See also presentation
rapid, 15, 40 iPhoto, 293
sport photography, 111–112 Media Center Pro, 296
time-lapse, 15 Ofoto, 801
video, creating using, 15 Picture Disk, 272
shade, photographing subject in, 75, 78 Windows XP feature, 10
shape, changing using Photoshop, 387–388, 405–407, slides. See transparencies
445–446, 468–469 SLR (single-lens reflex) camera, 51–53
Sharpen tool (Photoshop), 382 Smart Blur dialog box (Photoshop), 425
Sharpener Inkjet/Internet, 754
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 875

Index ✦ S–T 875

SmartMedia card studio setup, 129–131, 148–150. See also specific equipment
capacity, 63, 189 and topics
CompactFlash compared, 189 substrate, 711, 768
durability, 57 Summer files (on the CD), 581
floppy disk adapter, 63 Sunflower1 file (on the CD), 589
Olympus SmartMedia Wallet, 190 SuperVGA resolution, 22
size, physical, 57 Symantec Personal Firewall, 289
SmartMedia Wallet, 190 Synthetik Studio Artist, 607
Snapfish Web site, 804–805
snapshot printers, 244, 792–799 T
snoot, 81, 141 tablet, digital, 206–208, 238–239, 312, 522, 551
snow photography, 46, 186 tabletop photography, 142, 159–160
soft box, 140, 176 telephoto lens, 107, 123, 187
software features to look for, 307–313 text, working with
SOHO (Small Office, Home Office) image processor, 308 Paint Shop Pro tools, 838–839
Sony DPP-SV printers, 793–794 PHOTO-PAINT tools, 838–839
Sony Mavica cameras, 58, 794 Photoshop/Photoshop Elements tools, 355, 472,
speed ring, 140 631–634, 638–639, 838–839
spell checking, 472 printing, 710
Splat! (on the CD), 848 spell checking, 472
sport photography, 109–112 Web graphic, 631–634, 638–639
sprayer effect via image edit, 321 Text tool (Photoshop), 632–633, 638
Spyder color calibrator, 745–748 texture
S-Spline, 670–672 adding using Painter, 564–565, 571, 575
stabilizing mechanism, camera, 33, 109 adding using Photoshop, 446–447, 557, 588, 591, 600
Stamp tool (Photoshop), 466 photographing, 124, 449
stand, rollable, 148 in photopainting, 556–558
Star tool (Illustrator), 663–664 in photopainting using Painter, 564–565, 571, 575, 591
Start ➪ All Programs ➪ Accessories ➪ System Tools ➪ in photopainting using Photoshop, 557, 591, 600
Disk Defragmenter (Windows XP), 721 reducing using Photoshop, 424–427
Statue of Liberty.tif file (on the CD), 504 Web page background, 641
stereo photography, 694–699 Texturizer filter dialog box (Photoshop), 446–447
Stereoscopy Web site, 699 Thaw tool (Photoshop), 470
still-life photography, 120 thirds, rule of, 90–91
stitching photographs 3-D modeling software, 682–690
described, 118, 167, 674–675 Threshold dialog box (Photoshop), 351
matrix, 681–682 thumbnails
Panorama Maker, using, 679–680 archive organization, using in, 303
Photo Express, using, 332 DeBabelizer, 660
Photoshop, using, 677–679 iPhoto, 293
PhotoSuite, using, 334–335 Media Center Plus, 294–296
Photovista Virtual Tour, using, 680–681 Photo CD, 273
Picture Publisher, using, 325 Photoshop, 298, 317–318, 463–464, 476, 478
QuickStitch, using, 679, 684 Picture CD, 272
STN format, 668 Picture It!, 331
storing images. See saving images variable, 286, 293
Streamline, 666–667 Web page, 476, 478, 654–655
strobe lighting Windows XP, 299–300
cost, 177–178 Tia-Eye Colored file (on the CD), 381
event strobe, 168–169 Tia Eye Gray file (on the CD), 379
meter reading, 44, 180–182 Tia’s Closest Eye file (on the CD), 428
monolight, 136–137, 170, 178 TIFF format
placement, 121 layer preservation, 254
power pack, 136, 170 saving image in, 35, 39, 250
radio-controlled, 171 Tiff Options dialog box (Photoshop), 250
safe synch adapter, 62 Tiffen products
sensor, 108, 171 lens filters, 183
slave unit, 169, 170–171 telephoto adapters, 187
stand, 171–173 tiling, 448–453, 470–471, 628
studio strobes, 170 time-lapse photography, 15, 48
Studio Artist, 607 Touchup tool (Photoshop), 524
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 876

876 Index ✦ T–W

TOYO color, 833 USB (Universal Serial Bus)

tracing, 573–575, 665–667 camera connection, 62, 65–66, 67, 282–283
transferring image from camera, 12, 62–68, 113, printer connection, 717–718
281–286, 330 USB.org, 66
transformations using Photoshop, 387–388, 405–407,
468–469 V
transparencies Variations dialog box (Photoshop), 368
film recorder, outputting to using, 246–247 VariFocus filter demo (on the CD), 847
outsourcing, 247 vector graphic
printing, 710, 772 bitmap compared, 20–21, 24, 25
scanning, 257, 259–260, 261–263, 264–265, 267 clipping path, 489, 818, 828
transparency/opacity file size, 619
dithering, 480–482 object (formula), 619
GIF format, 621, 628–629 path, 310, 311, 321, 328, 488–490
ImageReady, 479–480 rasterizing using Photoshop, 309
JPEG format, 628 resolution, 619
Painter, 568 tracing vector, 665–666
Photoshop, 369, 407–408, 479, 480–482 Web page, using on, 619
Web graphic, 479–480, 621, 628–629 Velociraptor filter demo (on the CD), 847
travel photography, 112–115 vest, photographer, 153–154
Tree and Sea file (on the CD), 351 VGA resolution, 22
tripod. See also monopod video. See also animation
architecture photography, 117, 119 creating using PHOTO-PAINT, 324
boom arm, 162–163 creating using sequence imaging, 15
dolly, 163 creating using still camera, 48
exposure, in long, 72 movie, 324, 692
full-size, 162–163 QuickTime panorama, 653, 674
hand-held camera versus, 38 resolution, 15, 692
head, 147–148, 157–158, 666–667 size, 15
infrared photography, 702 still, capturing from, 692–693
lens support accessory, 160–161 TV-quality, 15
level, 148, 167–168, 681 Web site, using on, 647
location photography, packing for, 98 viewfinder. See also LCD (Liquid Crystal Display), camera
matrix photography, 681–682 through-the-lens, 51
miniature, 159–160 TV, using as, 156
mount, 147–148, 205–206 vignette, 91–92
panorama photography, 118, 159, 160–161, 167, voice annotation, 12
676–677
plate, quick-release, 148
portrait photography, 104
W
Wacom tablet, 206–208, 238–239, 312, 551. See also tablet,
reflection from, 162 digital
rotation, 157 wallpaper, desktop, 304–306
slave flash, mounting on, 113 Warp tool (Photoshop), 406
stereo photography, 694–695 watermark, 298, 655, 820, 834
tilt, 157 Waves file (on the CD), 632
time lapse photography, 48 wax thermal printer, 246
weighting, 159 Web graphic
TrueSpace, 683 album, creating using Photoshop, 475–478, 653–656
tungsten light, 45, 120 album hosting, Club Photo, 799–800
Turbulence tool (Photoshop), 469–470 album hosting, Imagestation, 802
two-thirds rule, 90–91 album hosting, iPhoto, 799
album hosting, Ofoto, 801
U album hosting, PhotoWorks, 706
Ulead software album hosting, Snapfish, 805
Photo Express, 326, 331–332, 607 Alt imaging, 624
PhotoImpact, 326–328, 607 animation, 614, 621, 622, 647–651
Ultimatte KnockOut, 398 background, 617, 628, 635–643
umbrella reflector, 140, 174, 176, 178 bandwidth considerations, 631, 647
undoing change, 350, 470, 471, 819 banner, 647
Unsharp Mask dialog box (Photoshop), 393–394 batch processing using DeBabelizer, 614, 660
30549510 Index.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 877

Index ✦ W–Z 877

bitmap, 618–619 Wein safe synch adapter, 62

brightness, 638 West Marin Hills file (on the CD), 352
bullet, 644 white point, 741, 744
burst mode, photographing in, 112 Wilhelm Imaging Research, 713
button, 645–647 Window ➪ Actions (Photoshop), 249
clip art versus photograph, 618 Window ➪ Channels (Photoshop), 432
color, 615, 623–624, 626–627, 655, 737 Window ➪ Color Swatches (Photoshop), 381
content divider, 652 Window ➪ Palette ➪ Show Info (Photoshop), 646
contrast, 638 Window ➪ Palette ➪ Show Layers (Photoshop), 646
dithering, 615, 626–627 Window ➪ Show Layers (Photoshop), 346
drawing versus photograph, 618 Windows
file format, 618–623, 627 display card setup, 220
file format, converting, 628 Mac OS versus, 213–215, 217–218
file size, 618, 624–625, 647 Windows XP
film versus digital photography, 8 cataloging features, 299
GIF format, 620–622, 628–629, 648–651 Disk Defragmenter feature, 721–722
icon, 643–645 firewall, 289
illustration, 617, 634–635 image presentation, 10
image map, 321, 324 print spooling, enabling, 719
interlacing, 621, 624, 629, 630 printer installation, 715–718
JPEG format, 482–484, 620, 622–623 slide show, 10
low-sourcing, 630 transferring image from camera, 64
LOWSRC imaging, 624, 630 wallpaper, 304–305
map, 625 windshield reflector, 80, 103, 174
optimizing using Photoshop, 357, 482–484, 614–616 WING tripod accessory, 160–161
page design, 617–618 WMF (Windows Media File) format, 692
Paint Shop Pro using, 321, 839–842 workflow
panorama, Java applet, 675 editing, 247–254
panorama, QuickTime, 653 scanning, 19–20, 748–749
Photo Express, using, 332 Wratten lens filters, 701
PhotoImpact, using, 328 WyziWIG Deluxe color calibrator, 268
PHOTO-PAINT using, 324, 839–842
photopainting Web site logo, 577–580 X
Photoshop/Photoshop Elements features, 839–842 Xaos software
PICT, 623 FlashBox, 265
Picture CD, posting from, 272 Paint Alchemy, 558, 607–608
PNG format, 620, 623 Xenofex (on the CD), 848
resolution, 622, 625–626 Xerox large-format laser printers, 774–777
re-using, 628 XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform), 461
rule, horizontal/vertical, 652 X-Rite Colortron II, 237
Save For Web feature, ImageReady, 479 Xtend-A-View LCD hood, 194, 195
Save For Web feature, Photoshop, 482–484, 614–616
shape, irregular, 643–644
sizing, 625, 627–628, 630, 636
Z
ZiO! card reader, 191–192
sport, 112 zone system, 124, 342
technical drawing, 625 zoom lens
text graphic using Photoshop, 631–634, 638–639 resolution considerations, 33
3-D, 685 shading, 76
thumbnails, 476, 478, 654–655 sport photography, 109
transparency, 479–480, 621, 628–629 stabilizing mechanism, 33, 109
vector-based, 619 Zoom tool (Photoshop), 372
Web Photo Gallery dialog box (Photoshop), 476
31549510 EULA.F 8/22/02 2:53 PM Page 878

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Information
on the Web
1 B O N U S
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

In This Chapter

Web resources by
category

Books Books
The following are Web resources for books about digital
photography and related sources. Web bookstores can be Education
especially good for finding books on specialized and esoteric
topics. Exhibitions, shows,
and contests

Amazon.com Reference

P.O. Box 81226 Galleries and photo

Seattle, Washington 98108-1226 sharing
800-201-7575
Organizations
www.amazon.com
Publications
Amazon.com is recognized as the leader in online booksellers.
They have an extensive list of books relating to digital photog-
raphy, computer graphics, and other related subjects. Its Services
service is excellent, and often offers used books that are
significantly cheaper than new books, so if you don’t care ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
about pristine quality, save some money.

Barnes & Noble

800-843-2665
www.barnesandnoble.com

This is the other leading online bookstore. It’s always a good

idea to check the major online services for the same titles
because prices can sometimes vary quite a bit. Barnes &
Noble is currently allied with Amazon.
2 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Digital Camera Depot

www.digitalcameradepot.com
[email protected]

This is a good general-purpose hardware site, offering reviews, comparisons, dis-

cussion forums, and — because it’s associated with Amazon.com — a decent book
section. In fact, Amazon handles the orders, so you can depend on the reliability.

Megabyte Books
18-19 Aldgate Barrs Shopping Centre
London
E1 7PJ
+44 (0)1392 420945
www.megabytebooks.com

This online bookshop claims in big letters to be cheaper than everyone. It has a
decent selection of books on digital photography.

PhotoSecrets
PhotoSecrets Publishing
9582 Vista Tercera
San Diego CA 92129-2737
858-780-9726
www.photosecrets.com
[email protected]

This site offers hundreds of photo guides and a nice book section and is a must-see
for the photographer that likes to travel.

The Designers’ Bookshelf

15 SouthGate
Harrisonburg, VA 22801
540-433-8402
www.design-bookshelf.com/Photography/
[email protected]
The Designers’ Bookshelf is an affiliate of The Graphic Design Network and has
been referred to as “the Yahoo for books on design and visual communications.”
The focus is a book listing for designers, photographers, and graphic artists, which
beats having to search through the big sites for the right book. This site also fea-
tures a separate section on digital photography.
 Bonus Chapter 1 ✦ Information on the Web 3

Short Courses Publishing

Dennis P. Curtin
16 Preston Beach Road
Marblehead, MA 01945
781-631-1178
www.shortcourses.com
[email protected]

This site is an absolute treasure trove of information and useful guides. Dennis
Curtin has put together a collection of books and guides that can inform you about
every aspect of digital photography from general topics to camera-specific courses.
This is a must-have on your bookmark list.

Education
The following sites specialize in teaching photography or digital photography — or
at least do some teaching on the side. Some even give full online courses for credit.

Digital Studio
www.digitalstudio.ucr.edu
[email protected]

This site showcases young people and adults participating in computer-based

creative expression through hands-on access to new imaging technologies.

FunPhoto.com
www.funphoto.com
[email protected]

This site features a photography and digital painting gallery, resources, and tutorials.

Graphic Intelligence Agency, Inc.

4040 Embassy Parkway, Suite 370
Akron, OH 44333
888-439-4403
www.graphintel.com
4 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

The Graphic Intelligence Agency is attempting to make graphic output easier for the
corporate world. The agency hosts seminars on everything from printing technology
to Photoshop and scanning. The agency was founded to lessen the information gap
for the graphic professional.

Jasc Software
www.jasc.com/digitalphoto.asp

Jasc, a leading developer of image-editing software like Paintshop Pro, offers up a

bunch of good tutorials on digital techniques. The tutorials cover a wide variety of
digital subjects, are well illustrated, and are easy to follow.

Kodak Digital Learning Center

800-235-6325
www.kodak.com/US/en/digital/dlc

Kodak has always been a leader and an innovator in photographic technology. The
Digital Learning Center is no exception and comes with Kodak’s consistent high
quality. It covers a broad range of subject matter designed to enlighten anyone
about digital imaging. This site features how-tos, technical explanations, courses,
reference, and projects — all of which are nicely laid out and illustrated.

New York Institute of Photography

211 East 43rd Street, Dept. WWW
New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
212-867-8260
Fax: 212-867-8122
www.nyip.com
[email protected]

This site is sponsored by the New York Institute of Photography, a school founded
in 1910. The free site provides tips, articles, and contests designed to enhance pho-
tographic capabilities. They regularly feature a section on digital photography.

Oklahoma School of Photography

(405) 799-1411
www.photocareers.com
[email protected]
 Bonus Chapter 1 ✦ Information on the Web 5

This vocational photography school is recognized by the Department of Education

as a nationally accredited school offering training in professional photography and
graphic/digital imaging. The school has been in operation since 1972, and in 1997,
the school diversified its training even more by opening a course in Digital Imaging.
This course trains people in the many arts of digital imaging, including advertising,
layout and design, desktop publishing, graphic design, computerized fine art, image
manipulation, photographic restoration, and much more.

Olympus Digital Photoschool

800-622-6372 ext. 6161
www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_photoschool.asp
[email protected]

Olympus, the leader in digital cameras, has recently launched the Olympus School
of Digital Photography, a one-day workshop covering the entire digital process from
image acquisition to final output.

Photographic Society of America

Electronic Imaging Division
psa-eid.org
[email protected]

The Photographic Society of America is a nonprofit organization with more than

6,000 members. The organization was established to be a medium for cooperative
action in promoting the arts and sciences of photography and for furthering public
education therein. PSA provides members with an opportunity to participate in a
multitude of services and activities. The site also includes a member exhibition
gallery of digital images.

Photoshop for Photographers

www.bbdigital.co.uk
[email protected]

This site, produced by Barry Beckham (digital photographer and founder of IDIG —
Internet Digital Imaging Group), contains a lot of useful information. It includes
some good tutorials on image editing — both online and on CD, articles, and a ques-
tion and answer section, just to name a few. The site also features some interesting
digital galleries as well.
6 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Short Courses Publishing

Dennis P. Curtin
16 Preston Beach Road
Marblehead, MA 01945
781-631-1178
www.shortcourses.com
[email protected]

This site is an absolute treasure trove of information and useful guides. Dennis
Curtin has put together a collection of books and guides that can inform you about
every aspect of digital photography from general topics to camera-specific courses.
This is a must-have on your bookmark list.

TutorialFind
www.tutorialfind.com/tutorials/artscrafts/photography/
[email protected]

This site specializes in tutorials of all sorts, including a few tutorials on digital
imaging.

World Wide Learn Company

Suite 4, 2521 - 17th Avenue SW
Calgary, Alberta, Canada T3E 0A2
403-686-6162 Direct MST
Fax: 775-239-7197
www.worldwidelearn.com/photography-courses.htm
[email protected]

This site has a wide range of general descriptions and references for online courses,
including many for general and digital photography and image editing. You can
learn how to take better pictures and use your digital camera with these online
photography courses, workshops, and tutorials.

Exhibitions, Shows, and Contests

This section is a bit of a mish-mosh, showcasing a little of this and a little of that. In
fact, maybe I should have called it “places to network.” These are places where peo-
ple meet to eat, drink, and sleep digital photography. Some are digital photography
exhibitions; many are trade shows that also feature exhibitions of digital artwork.
 Bonus Chapter 1 ✦ Information on the Web 7

Bradley University Annual Digital

Photography Exhibition
Bradley University
1501 W. Bradley Avenue
Peoria, IL 61625
309-677-3332
www.bradley.edu/exhibit95
[email protected]

This site features galleries displaying digital photographers from their annual
exhibitions from 1994. Each year has its own theme and the photos are nicely
displayed; a visual feast.

Consumer Electronics Show

703-907-7600
www.cesweb.org

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has become one of the two leading
trade shows for introductions relating to digital photography. The show takes place
in Las Vegas in the week of January 6-9. This Web site is an excellent resource for
learning about the latest announcements, contacting manufacturers, and reading
keynote addresses. This is also a great resource for finding contact information for
companies in the electronics industry.

Macworld Expo
www.macworldexpo.com

This Web site is dedicated to the largest Macintosh-oriented trade show; it is an

excellent resource for locating manufacturers of products related to digital photog-
raphy and the Macintosh, though not all participating manufacturers link to their
Web sites. This is also the place to look for upcoming show dates in San Francisco
and New York. You can register online for upcoming shows and read descriptions
of conferences and workshops. Although this is a Mac-centric event, you can also
find a heavy focus on graphics and publication at this show. The great majority of
products are cross-platform, so Windows users can find a great deal of information
here, too.
8 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Seybold Seminars
303 Vintage Park Drive
Foster City, CA 94404-1138
800-472-3976
650-578-6900
www.seyboldseminars.com

The Seybold Seminars are trade shows that occur principally in San Francisco and
New York. This Web site is a valuable source of late-breaking news concerning many
phases of the digital imaging industry — especially developments concerning
prepress and publishing.

Galleries and Photo Sharing

These sites are mostly personal online galleries. Go to these and you’ll probably
find links to several hundred others. If you’re really interested in learning to make
great photos, you can’t go wrong looking at the work of others.

A Different View Photography and Collage

dustylens.com
[email protected]

This site is a personal photographic portfolio of Steve and Bobbie Bingham, which
also includes links and tips.

Black and White Digital Photos by Richard Saylor

members.aol.com/norcimmus/digital.htm
[email protected]

This site is a small gallery of black and white digital photography.

Carol Beckham — Digital Photographer

www.btinternet.com/~bbdigital/carols/
[email protected]

This Web site is a showcase of this accomplished digital photographer’s works.

 Bonus Chapter 1 ✦ Information on the Web 9

Club Photo, Inc.

650 Saratoga Avenue
San Jose, CA 95129
408-557-6845
clubphoto.com

This site features online image sharing.

Computer Creative Network — Freeimages.com

www.freeimages.co.uk
[email protected]

This site has a large database of free digital images; it’s very user friendly and it
really is free.

Danny Steyn — Photographer

2573 NE 26th Ave.
Ft Lauderdale, FL 33305
954-816-7272
Fax: 954-630-2657
www.dannysteyn.com/professional-photography-links.htm
[email protected]

Danny Steyn is not a digital photographer, though he does do digital video produc-
tion. I include his site because of its incredible links page.

Davro Digital Imaging

www.btinternet.com/%7Edavrodigital
[email protected]

This is the personal site of David Rowley, an amateur photographer who uses image
editing to enhance his photographs. He also has put together some nice tutorials
on his techniques.

Digital Photographs by Steve Foote

www.stevefoote.net/index.htm
[email protected]
10 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

A virtual gallery of decorative and surreal fine art photography by a master photog-
rapher. Visitors to the site can download free computer wallpaper or order signed
original prints direct from the artist.

Eugenio Eoller — Photographer

www.eoller.com
[email protected]

This site is a personal photographic portfolio with a focus on surrealism and digital
manipulation.

Francine Chism Schwieder — Digital Photographer

www.tstonramp.com/~francine
francine×tonramp.com

This site features some interesting before and after photographs that this photogra-
pher has digitally manipulated.

IDIG Internet Digital Imaging Group

www.dabbles.co.uk/
[email protected]

This is an online club for digital photographers. The members have a database of
over 2,000 photographs, and they are constantly contributing new images and tech-
niques to share online and with others in the group.

Kleptography
www.kleptography.com
[email protected]

This site a very nice digital photo gallery featuring digital photography by Don Ellis.
The photographer also provides nice insights with good notes on all the shots.

PhotoServe — Visual Database

646-654-5789
www.pdnonline.com/photosource/portal
[email protected]

This site is a database of photographers showing examples of their work; also

includes an impressive array of digital photographers.
 Bonus Chapter 1 ✦ Information on the Web 11

Robert Taylor — Digital Photographer

www.robtaylor.net
[email protected]

This personal Web site features extensive galleries of photographs in various

degrees of digital manipulation.

Tam’s Digital Imaging — Digital Photographer

home.aeneas.net/~tamsdigital/Default.htm
[email protected]

This site showcases the photographer’s experiments with various image-editing

techniques and extensive gallery covering many subjects.

The Digital Arts Group

608 East J Street
Benicia, CA 94510
707-748-4396
www.digitalartsgroup.com
[email protected]

This site features an in-depth gallery of over 50 of the world’s best digital fine
artists. It also has provocative articles on the state of digital art today.

ZoneZero
1333 Beverly Glen
Los Angeles, CA 90024
www.zonezero.com

This is an outstanding Web site for digital photography with excellent articles,
provocative thoughts from leading digital photographers, and a definite Latin-
American slant. The Webmaster is Pedro Mayer, an internationally recognized
professional photographer.

Reference
These sites provide a wealth of information about various aspects of digital photog-
raphy, with emphasis on techie and esoteric processes (for the most part).
12 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

All Digital Camera

www.alldigitalcamera.net
[email protected]

Just as the name implies, this site is all about digital cameras. The site also has an
abundance of information in the form of reviews, news, how-to’s, buyer guides, and
where to shop guides. This site also features a forum.

Beyond Red
home.twcny.rr.com/scho/newpics/intro.html
[email protected]

This is a concise Web site devoted to infrared digital photography. The site features
a gallery and a nice technical section that goes in-depth about the equipment and
techniques used. The site also features a comparison gallery, which shows normal
color versus infrared side-by-side, and many links to other Web resources on
infrared photography.

Charles Daney’s Photographic Pages

www.mbay.net/~cgd/photo/pholinks.htm
[email protected]

This site has many pages of useful links on regular and digital photography.

Charles Poynton
416-413-1377
Fax: 416-413-1378
www.inforamp.net/~poynton/notes/colour_and_gamma/ColorFAQ.html
www.inforamp.net/~poynton
[email protected]

This is an in-depth question and answer site that goes into great detail about digital
color and other technical issues involved with digital imaging.

CNET Networks, Inc.

235 Second Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
www.cnet.com
 Bonus Chapter 1 ✦ Information on the Web 13

This is one of the Web’s largest information portals covering just about every sub-
ject, including digital photography. CNET boasts nice shopping guides with compar-
ative pricing among the major brands. You will also find good reviews, advice, and
current news. Another nice feature of CNET is the download section where you can
find all sorts of free software, including camera drivers.

CoCam
www.cocam.co.uk/CoCamWS/Infrared/INFRARED.HTM
[email protected]

This page has the title “Everything you wanted to know about infrared photography
and were afraid to ask.” Need I say more?

Digital Camera Buyers Guide

www.digital-camerastore.com

This site is strictly focused on digital cameras. It provides a quick and easy search
system to locate a camera with your general feature requirements, a short educa-
tion section, and a gallery where you can post some of your photographs.

Digital Camera Info

International Parkway
Plano, Texas 75093
www.digital-cameras-info.com
[email protected]

This site has reviews, ratings, price comparisons, and expert reviews.

Digital Camera Resources

www.dcresource.com
[email protected]

This online reference site is dedicated to providing non-biased information about

all brands of digital cameras. Their focus is mainly on consumer level cameras and
not high-end professional models. They provide news, reviews, message boards,
and a very good buyer’s guide and search engine.
14 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Digital Camera Reviews

Supreme Software Ltd.
PO Box 373
Walton on Thames, KT12 4BR, England
www.digital-camera-reviews.info/index.html
[email protected]

The name says it all — this is a site that can help you to choose just the right camera.

WEB INFO Digital Photography NOW

www.dp-now.com
[email protected]

This site, sponsored by Olympus, features news, reviews, and advice about all
aspects of consumer digital cameras, scanners, printers, software, and associated
services.

Digital Photography Reference

[email protected]
members.shaw.ca/jonespm2/PJDigPhot.htm

This site, developed by Peter Jones, is dedicated to providing information on how

to select and understand digital cameras and accessories. This site features a lot of
information, but you have to sort through many links to get to it all.

Digital Photography Reference Links

703-780-9033
www.pimall.com/nais/news/n.dv-links.html
[email protected]

This site is an extensive list of reference links related to digital photography. Pimall
also has the most complete collection of miniature digital cameras I have ever seen.

Digital Photography Review

www.dpreview.com
[email protected]
 Bonus Chapter 1 ✦ Information on the Web 15

This excellent site contains digital photography and imaging news, reviews of the
latest digital cameras and accessories, the most active discussion forums, a large
selection of sample images, a digital camera buyer’s guide, side-by-side compar-
isons, a comprehensive database of digital camera features and specifications,
and a very detailed glossary.

Digital Vision Network

dvnetwork.net
[email protected]

Online magazines focused on digital photojournalism and digital filmmaking.

Member sites include: The Digital Journalist & The Digital Filmmaker.

DigitalZA Digital Imaging

www.geocities.com/digitza
[email protected]

This is a good general digital information site that is well organized. It has tons of
information on hardware and software, news, tutorials; also features some very nice
galleries.

DP–FWIW
www.cliffshade.com/dpfwiw

This acronym stands for Digital Photography–For What It’s Worth. This site is a
collection of informative articles about digital photography.

Emtech.net
15163 Burnt Pines Road
Northport, AL 35475
205-333-9185
Fax: 205-333-8288
www.emtech.net/cameralinks.htm
[email protected]

This site is another digital camera links page.

16 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

EPI — Electronic Photo Imaging

www.epi-centre.com

This site has a vast library of useful information about almost every aspect of
digital imaging, from basics to pretty advanced technical data. The site provides
independent information about all aspects of digital imaging — including digital
cameras, scanners, and printers. They also offer a wide array of courses and
seminars.

Extreme Tech
www.extremetech.com
[email protected]

This is a high-end information service developed by media giant Ziff Davis and is
focused on the bleeding edge of technology. This site includes an abundance of
information on digital technology because Ziff Davis is at the forefront of all things
technical these days. Choose from a variety of articles and forums.

FAQS.org
www.faqs.org/faqs/jpeg-faq

This site features extensive questions and answers about JPEG compression.

FLAAR Network
Technology Bldg. 126 B
Bowling Green State University of Ohio
Bowling Green, OH 43403
www.large-format-printers.org
www.fineartgicleeprinters.org/index.html
www.flatbed-scanner-review.org
www.cameras-scanners-flaar.org
www.wide-format-printers.org
[email protected]

The FLAAR network is a privately funded organization dedicated to research into

digital printing, scanning, and photography. It has two major research centers: one
in Ohio and another in Guatemala. The research is extensive, actually comprising
several Web sites crammed with information from its many tests of all sorts of
equipment.
 Bonus Chapter 1 ✦ Information on the Web 17

Focus on Photography
www.azuswebworks.com/photography/index.html
[email protected]

This photographic reference site is free and fairly extensive.

FRCN Digital Imaging

www.quiknet.com/~frcn/Camera.html
[email protected]

One of the most impressive lists of links for reference on all aspects of digital hard-
ware and software, this site has a very straightforward approach that gives direct
access to the information.

Hewlett-Packard Home and Office Site

www.homeandoffice.hp.com/hho/us/eng/digital_photography.html

A really comprehensive guide to taking better pictures, this site is a subset of the
Hewlett-Packard site and has a subsection on digital photography that is very good.
You will find many tutorials and troubleshooting guides that cover a wide range of
topics relevant to digital imaging, such as printing, scanning, Internet and multime-
dia, memory storage, and computers.

Imaging Resource Center

www.imaging-resource.com
[email protected]

The Imaging Resource Center is a very useful site if you are in the market for a cam-
era and don’t know which one you want or need. They have a selection of very use-
ful tools and a very complete and current database. The site features comparison
charts, a camera finder, and comparometer, which allows you to compare identical
scenes shot with almost every digital camera on the market.

Infrared Digital Photography page

Chris Maher
PO Box 5
Lambertville, MI 48144
734-856-8882
infrareddreams.com
[email protected]
18 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

This site features lots of useful information and resources for anyone interested in
infrared digital photography. They also have a mailing list.

Marscuba.com
www.marscuba.com/uwdigital.html
[email protected]

This site features information that deals specifically with underwater housings for
digital cameras.

Nerd World — Digital Photography section

Nerdworld, 8 New England Executive Park
Burlington, MA 01803
781-272-6599
Fax:781-852-5375
www.nerdworld.com/nw9411o1o0.html
[email protected]

This site has an extensive list of interesting links on digital photography.

Panoguide.com
www.panoguide.com

A good guide to panoramic photography and object movies, this site covers many
areas of panoramic photography, including general information on how to make a
panorama, choosing the right stitching software, and a nice gallery of motion
panoramas. The site even goes over how to publish your work on the Internet.
This information is for both beginners and advanced photographers.

PC — Photo Review
Consumer Review, Inc.
205 Town and Country Village
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
800-306-3375
408-738-7300
Fax: 408-737-2803
www.pcphotoreview.com
[email protected]
 Bonus Chapter 1 ✦ Information on the Web 19

This site claims to be the most comprehensive resource for digital cameras on the
Web. It features consumer product reviews of more than 150 digital cameras and a
classified section where you can advertise outmoded equipment. The site also has
an online printing service, a tips and tricks section, and announcements of breaking
developments in digital photography.

Photo.net
80 Prospect St.
Cambridge MA 02139
617.386.4298
Fax: 617.354.8581
www.photo.net/learn/reviews-digital-camera
[email protected]

This online member community for photographers provides support in the form of
member reviews, forums, store, member galleries, an extensive learning center, and
more. This community is among the larger of its sort.

PIE-Photo Electronic Imaging

www.peimag.com
[email protected]

This publication is dedicated exclusively to electronic imaging, photography, and

computer graphics. This site presents articles on imaging technology, step-by-step
downloadable tutorials, Internet publishing, hardware and software reviews, fea-
tures, and images from today’s digital artists.

PhotoLinks
www.photolinks.net

PhotoLinks is a free directory and portal service dedicated to providing easy

access to as many photographic resources as possible. You can search links by cat-
egory (one for nearly every facet of photography — digital or otherwise). You can
place your own site on PhotoLinks at no charge, simply by promising to provide a
link on your site back to PhotoLinks.

PhotoPoint Corp.
200 W. Evelyn Avenue, Suite 200
Mountain View, CA 94043
www.photopoint.com
20 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

PhotoPoint is the largest and most critically acclaimed photographic community on

the Internet, offering free online photo albums, news, reviews, how-tos, discussion
boards, e-commerce, Digital Camera Magazine online, and access to shopping via
State Street Direct.

Poynter.org
www.poynter.org

This site is designed to guide you to useful information about photojournalism.

Photojournalism is becoming almost completely digital because of the economics
and time frames. This site has a whole section on links related to digital photogra-
phy and journalism.

Profotos.com
1250 W. Dorothy Lane, Suite. #124
Kettering, OH 45409
937-396-0587
Fax: 937-396-0587
www.profotos.com/education/referencedesk/digital/index.shtml
[email protected]

This extensive photographic resources site was set up by a small group and is
totally free. The site is well worth a visit and with membership, you get a newsletter,
gallery space, and listings.

robgalbraith.com
www.robgalbraith.com
[email protected]

This site is dedicated to news and articles targeted for digital photojournalists in
order to help them better understand how to master the field.

The Darkroom
www.got.net/~pino
[email protected]

This site is simple and straightforward in its approach and message. It shows pho-
tos before and after a number of special effects done in PhotoShop. The artist also
includes an explanation of what was done to achieve the effect.
 Bonus Chapter 1 ✦ Information on the Web 21

The Digital Artist

www.thedigitalartist.com
[email protected]

This site is the motherload of digital artists of all types. In addition, this site has a
newsletter, chat room, bookstore, bulletin board, and resource center.

The Digital Camera Guide

www.digitalcamera-guide.com
[email protected]

This is an online store with a lot of useful information on understanding digital cam-
eras and accessories and advice on how to buy them. This site even has a whole
section on spy cameras!

sRGB
www.srgb.com
[email protected]

This site is an in-depth look at the sRGB color space from Hewlett-Packard, and
includes technical information and ICC profiles. The site also includes a very com-
prehensive list of links to professional organizations associated with color and
lighting standards.

Top Digital Camera Reviews

www.top-digital-camera-reviews.com

This small site compiles weekly information on the current cameras on the market
and chooses the top five in three categories: budget, midrange, and professional.

Wetpixel
www.wetpixel.com
[email protected]

A site dedicated to underwater digital photography and features news, forums,

reviews, and galleries.
22 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Organizations
Digital photography societies, most of which are sub-divisions of long-standing
photographic societies, are good places to look for information, contacts, and even
some pretty good parties.

Photographic Society of America

Electronic Imaging Division
psa-eid.org
[email protected]

The Photographic Society of America is a nonprofit organization with more than

6,000 members. The organization is established as a medium for cooperative action
in promoting the arts and sciences of photography and for furthering public educa-
tion therein. PSA provides members with an opportunity to participate in a multi-
tude of services and activities. The site also includes a member exhibition gallery
of digital images.

Photo Marketing Association International

3000 Picture Place
Jackson, MI 49201
517-788-8100
www.pmai.org

This is the official organization of manufacturers, distributors, and retailers engaged

in the marketing of photographic products. Its annual show in Las Vegas is the pho-
tography equivalent of Comdex to the computer industry. This Web site is a rich
source of information on photography — especially on the digital level. The site
includes breaking industry news, links to all the member associations (such as
DIMA, the Digital Imaging Marketing Association), PMA Sections and Societies,
Imaging Industry Links, and PMA publications (such as Digital Imager), to name
only a few.

Professional Photographers of America, Inc.

229 Peachtree St. NE, Suite 2200
Atlanta, GA 30303
404-522-8600
www.ppa.com
[email protected]
 Bonus Chapter 1 ✦ Information on the Web 23

PPA is a non-profit membership organization aimed at professional photographers

that provides a wide array of services to it members. It currently boosts over 14,000
members. The site has numerous features, including a calendar of events and com-
petitions, an imaging professional locator, a store, and much more.

Publications
When it comes to digital photography publications, this section has a little bit of
everything: book publishers, conventional magazines with online presences, and
some pretty amazing e-zines.

Amherst Media, Inc.

155 Rano Street, Suite 300
Buffalo, NY 14207
800-622-3278
www.amherstmedia.com

A photographic book company with books on basic 35mm, black-and-white photog-

raphy, techniques, portraiture, camera repair, and weddings. It only carries a cou-
ple of books specifically about digital photography, but because many of the
principles of photography are the same, regardless of digital or film, this book
source is important to you as a photographer.

Digital Output
13000 Sawgrass Village Center, Suite 18
Ponte Vedra Beach, FL 32082
904-285-6020
www.digitalout.com

Digital Output is a monthly digital industry publication distributed mostly to ser-

vice bureaus, prepress and reprographic houses, designers, printers, and ad agen-
cies. This online store specializes in digital photography solutions: digital cameras,
CompactFlash, SmartMedia, card readers, printers, and NiMH batteries. One of the
solutions offered by this store is the Unity Pro power pack, which triples the length
of time your camera can go without changing batteries.
24 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Digital Sauces
Post Office Box 142
East Schodack, NY, 12063-0142
518.331.3232
www.digitalsauces.com
[email protected]

Digital Sauces is an online publication that focuses on digital cameras and

accessories.

digitalphotography.com
www.digitalphotography.tv
[email protected]

This is a nice online magazine with good presentation, offering galleries with a
feature called “Lessons Learned,” where photographers can discuss things they
learned in taking the photographs. The site is rounded out with shopping, a
newsletter, and a resource section.

eDIGITALPHOTO.com
5211 S. Washington Ave.
Titusville, FL 32780
321-269-3212
Fax: 321-269-2025
www.edigitalphoto.com
[email protected]

This is a very professional and comprehensive online magazine dedicated to digital

photography.

ePHOTOzine
+44 (0) 1909 488 305
www.ephotozine.com
[email protected]

This is an online magazine for photography that also features digital photography.
It is loaded with news and articles with photos, how-tos, and reviews. This is a slick
professional production and well worth a look.
 Bonus Chapter 1 ✦ Information on the Web 25

Megapixel
www.megapixel.net

This is a monthly digital still camera Web magazine, published in both French and
English. Another source of reviews of digital cameras and excellent articles on
various aspects of digital still camera technology.

PCPhoto Magazine
PO BOX 56381
Boulder, CO 80322-6381
www.pcphotomag.com
[email protected]

This magazine site is focused on digital imaging so you get concentrated informa-
tion on the subject of your choice. It is filled with great articles on digital imaging,
new product reviews, and other current news; the magazine is very colorful and
features lots of pictures.

Photo Imaging Entrepreneur

www.photoprofits.com

This magazine is aimed for the digital printer who wants to make a living from
his or her photography and digital printing. PIE has a nice layout and is a good
resource for finding the newest photo-digital gadgetry and accessories.

Popular Photography
1633 Broadway
New York, NY 10019
212-767-6000
Fax: 212-333-2434
www.popphoto.com/index.asp
[email protected]

This Web site for Popular Photography Magazine includes a wide range of articles
on all aspects of photography.
26 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Shutterbug Magazine
5211 S. Washington Ave.
Titusville, FL USA 32780
321-269-3212
Fax: 321-269-2025
www.shutterbug.net

Photography’s if-you’re-looking-for-it, this-is-the-place-to-start magazine. This maga-

zine has ads from virtually all the large camera makers and sellers in the United
States. The magazine’s ad prices are used as a benchmark for buying, selling, and
trading cameras and camera equipment worldwide.

Services
For the most part, you can hire these organizations to do work for you that require
equipment, a higher budget, or more expertise than you can really afford for the
occasional job.

ACTion Imaging Solutions

Kings Hall, St. Ives Business Park
St. Ives, Huntingdon,
Cambridgeshire, PE174WY U.K.
+44 (0) 1480 464618
www.action-imaging.com

This is the Web site of a British firm offering large-scale printing and scanning
devices. Its products seem to be mostly used by engineering and large graphics
firms and architects. It manufactures the ANAtech, Colortrac, and Tangent lines
of printers and scanners.

Cone Editions Press

17 Powder Spring Road
East Topsham, VT 05076
(802) 439-5751
www.cone-editions.com
[email protected]
 Bonus Chapter 1 ✦ Information on the Web 27

One of the original studios to start producing digital prints. Cone Editions is a
leader in giclée printing technology and is a leader in developing new techniques
and products and providing expert consulting to many other service bureaus. Cone
Editions Gallery is in New York City at 560 Broadway.

Digimarc
Digimarc Corporation
19801 SW 72nd Ave. Suite 100
Tualatin, OR 97062
800-DIGIMARC
www.digimarc.com

Digimarc is recognized as the leader in digital watermarking for the copyright

protection with electronic media.

Digital Pond
88 Arkansas Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
415-216-8200
Fax: 415-216-0929
[email protected]
www.dpond.com/indexf.ssi

This high quality service bureau was founded in the early 1990s. They specialize in
producing museum-quality scans, film, and Iris prints for fine artists, designers, and
photographers. Digital Pond has been one of the pioneer groups in developing
better printing techniques for digital imaging.

EZ Prints
888-584-7040
www.ezprints.com

EZ Prints offers archival prints from your digital files: 4 x 6-inch prints for $0.49,
8 x 10-inch prints for $2.95, and 11 x 14-inch prints for $5.25.
28 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Frame, Inc.
181 Westchester Avenue
Port Chester, NY 10573
914-937-0318
www.digi-frame.com

Totally digital Digi-Frame offers different sizes of small tabletop screens. You plug in
a SmartMedia or CompactFlash card from your digital camera into the back. Your
images appear instantly as a slide show.

Harvest Productions
8050 East Crystal Drive
Anaheim Hills, CA 92807
714-279-2300
Fax: 714-279-2301
www.harvestproductions.com
[email protected]

This is one of the largest giclée print houses in the world. They are affiliated with
Digital Pulse, which allows them to benefit from the latest in technological advance-
ments. This is a state-of-the-art production. If you have a question about fine art
giclée printing, then these are the people to talk to.

Imagers Digital Production Center

Atlanta Technology Center
Building 400, Suite 490
1575 Northside Drive
N.W. Atlanta, GA 30318
800-398-5821
404-351-5800
www.imagers.com

A service bureau for all sorts of digital imaging, including making film slides from
your digital images. Other services include digital offset printing, Kodak Photo CD,
digital color posters, color laser printing, and digital photo prints, Web develop-
ment, and video services. The Imagers site is useful even if you don’t use this
company’s services because it contains considerable online advice about how to
prepare your files for the various processes. For some services, such as digital off-
set printing, a price-calculating form is available that takes into account such vari-
ables as the number of colors, paper size, and so forth. You can use this site to give
yourself a rough guide of the competitive pricing for printing your image files.
 Bonus Chapter 1 ✦ Information on the Web 29

Nash Editions
2317 North Sepulveda Boulevard
Manhattan Beach
CA 90266 USA.
310-545-4352
Fax +1 310-796-1418
www.nasheditions.com
[email protected]

This is a high-end giclée print service bureau that uses primarily Iris printers. They
focus on color and black and white photography and fine art. The company was
founded by rock star Graham Nash who is also a very accomplished photographer.

Ofoto
A Kodak Company
5900 Hollis Street, Suite S
Emeryville, CA 94608
510-229-1200
www.ofoto.com/Welcome.jsp
[email protected]

This site is an online photography studio that provides silver halide prints for digi-
tal and film camera users. You can use the free online tools on this site to do your
own image-editing and creation of cropped borders and special effects. Customers
can order prints, enlargements, photo cards, frames, albums, and other photo-
related merchandise and have it delivered to their homes.

PhotoTrust
1500 114th Avenue SE, Suite 130
Bellevue, WA 98004
425-468-9041
www.phototrust.com

PhotoTrust hosts and manages a password-protected Web site that archives pho-
tographs created in any film-based or digital format. It uses XML technology to give
users a way to collect, protect, retrieve, record, share, and enhance photos. One of
the two largest manufacturers of digital film supplies and card readers. The com-
pany also manufacturers these products under the brand names of many major
companies. You can find FAQs on all the products and download the latest drives
from the company’s Web site.
30 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Skylark Imaging
365B Tesconi Circle
Santa Rosa, CA 95401
707-528-9192
www.skylarkimages.com
[email protected]

Skylark is one of the premium digital print service bureaus on the west coast. They
specialize in fine art giclées and digital photo printing. They also offer excellent
color matching and correction and retouching services. Darren Briggs, the founder,
is extremely knowledgeable about color calibration and will consult on setting up
print systems.

Worldwide Direct-Digital Imaging Specialist

203 Route 22
Dunellen, NJ 08812
800-617-4686
www.buydig.com

Worldwide Direct will deliver to your home and business the latest technology of digi-
tal cameras, printers, scanners, memory, and accessories at the lowest legitimate
price with excellent service.

Zing Network, Inc.

550 Fifteenth Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
www.z1ng.com

Zing is an online digital image community offering unlimited free storage, picture-
upload and album-creation processes, and ZingCard photo-greeting cards. The
company markets its site to the basic family consumer. From one-step digital
camera-to-Web uploading to high-quality photo printing, Zing is building the
infrastructure to advance and simplify digital photography.

✦ ✦ ✦
Hardware
and Software
2 B O N U S
C H A P T E R

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

Resources In This Chapter

Hardware and
software resources

T
General accessories
he following list of resources is intended to provide you
with a wealth of information relating to both the hard- Optical accessories
ware and software necessary for digital photography. In most
cases, I have tried to provide an address, a phone number, a Lighting accessories
web site, and a short explanation of what the services and/or
products you can obtain through the given resource. Ink and paper

Power sources

General Accessories Digital camera

The companies listed in this section sell too wide a variety of manufacturers
supplies to tuck them neatly into one category. Mostly, I chose
them for their respected names, huge inventories, better-than- Computers
average prices, and reputation for expertise.
Digital backs

AC Adorama Storage and memory

systems
Adorama Camera, Inc.
42 West 18th Street Display
New York, NY 10011
800-815-0702 Printers
212-741-0466
Scanners
www.adorama.com
[email protected] General retail Outlets

Adorama offers a beanbag camera platform and a fantastic Software

Podmatic monopod ($90). This is a full-featured online photo-
graphic supply store with a nice lineup of accessories. ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
32 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

B&H Photo
420 Ninth Avenue
New York, NY 10001
800-606-6969
www.02.bhphotovideo.com

B&H Photo (no relation to Bell & Howell) offers an outstanding selection of
professional format and digital photography supplies. This is also a brick-and-
mortar superstore filled with hands-on demos. You can even download PDFs listing
used equipment. The company’s print catalogs can be ordered online and are
virtual encyclopedias of photo and video accessories.

Beseler Photo
1600 Lower Road
Linden, NJ 07036
908-862-7999
www.beseler-photo.com

Known as a maker of photographic enlargers, Beseler also markets its own line of
lighting equipment, chemistry, slide duplicators, copystands, camera and video
carry bags, and various darkroom accessories.

Bogen Photo Corp.

565 East Crescent Avenue
Ramsey, NJ 07446-0506
201-818-9500
www.bogenphoto.com

Bogen Photo is an exclusive U.S. distributor of a large number of photo and digital
photo products and accessories. This is an especially good resource for light
stands, tripods, strobes, and other studio accessories. Product lines are Manfrotto,
Gitzo, Metz, LPA, Gossen, Bogen, Avenger, Aurasoft, Reflecta, Elinchrom, as well as
a large number of smaller manufacturers of such items as camera and darkroom
accessories.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 33

Casio, Inc.
570 Mt. Pleasant Avenue
Dover, NJ 07801
800-962-2746
201-361-5400
www.casio.com

This large Japanese company manufactures watches, digital cameras, digital color
printers, and handheld computers. Casio is one of the most innovative gadget com-
panies in the world. If you think something hasn’t been built yet, check out Casio
before you give up. Casio also makes many other products not related to digital
photography. One of the most interesting new developments in digital photography
is Casio’s wrist camera. You can record name, address, and phone information
along with a grayscale photo and then transmit the photos directly to your PC
wirelessly via an infrared port.

Colex Imaging, Inc.

347 Evelyn Street
Paramus, NJ 07652
201-265-5670
www.colex.com

Colex is a distributor, manufacturer, and leasing agent of large photo-processing

equipment and digital-processing equipment for image laboratories.

Daylab-Pfaff Products
400 E. Main Street
Ontario, CA 917619
800-235-3233
www.daylab.com

Daylab manufactures and sells contained Polaroid transfer and emulsion transfer
process machines. No digital applications or transfers are available at this time, but
the transfer process is an interesting alternative to normal film processing and
printing.
34 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

d-store
650 West Ave.
Norwalk, CT
203-866-2362
888-313-1587
www.d-store.com
[email protected]

The d-store is an online store that specializes in accessories for digital cameras. It
has a lot of information on rebate and clearances if you are looking for bargains. It
even has specialty areas for dental and real estate digital imaging. If you’re in the
market for memory cards, this is one good place to look.

Ferrania USA, Inc.

Manufacturing and Administrative Services
2700 East Frontage Road
Weatherford, OK 73096
580-772-5515
www.ferraniait.com/Worldwide/usa_dx.htm

Ferrania has acquired the photo products division of Imation and manufactures
35mm color print and slide film, single-use cameras, and photo-quality inkjet paper
for the consumer photographic market.

Filmguard Corporation
2110 Enterprise Street
Escondido, CA 92029
800-777-7744
www.filmguard.com

This commercial sleeving company offers many styles and varieties of professional
roll and sheet sleeves for different film sizes and formats.

Gadgeteer.com
www.the-gadgeteer.com
[email protected]

This site is dedicated to all that can be classified as electronic gadgets, which
includes digital cameras and accessories. The site is run by two self-confessed
gadgeteers, or people who can’t have enough of these devices to play with.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 35

Gagne, Inc.
41 Commercial Drive
Johnson City, NY 13790
607-729-3366
www.gagneinc.com

Gagne manufactures and distributes lightboxes, frame boxes, projectors, light

tables, and certain types of bellows.

Gamla Enterprises
16 West 36th Street
New York, NY 10018
800-442-6526
www.gamlaphoto.com

Gamla is a distributor of 35mm, APS, digital and disposable cameras, lenses,

flashes, batteries, cases, binoculars, telescopes, and transceivers.

Gammacolor Image Technologies

3496 NW 7th Street
Miami, FL 33125
800-330-3312
www.gammacolor.com

Check out this exporter and retailer if you’re looking for new or used photo-lab
equipment and minilab supplies. Its products include photo processors, chemicals,
and papers.

GEPE, Inc.
Geimuplast Partenkirchner Strasse
50 D-82490
Farchant
Germany
+49 (0) 8821-685-0
www.geimuplast.de

Geimuplast is an experienced manufacturer of plastic slide mounts and mounters.

36 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Global Imaging, Inc.

248 Centennial Parkway, Suite 160
Louisville, CO 80027
303-673-9773
www.globalimaginginc.com

Global Imaging, Inc. is a seller and leaser of high-end hardware for digital color
graphics. It offers cameras, printers, RIP scanners, and monitors for the
professional digital imager.

Gretag Imaging Holding

AG 2070 Westover Road
Chicopee, MA 01022
413-593-6900
www.gretagimaging.com

Gretag is a Switzerland-based supplier to the global photo finishing and imaging

technology markets. Its products and services range from minilabs, central labs,
and Internet applications to hardware and software for professional photography
and the advertising industry. Gretag owns Rastergraphic supplies — products for
inkjet printers.

GTI Graphic Technology, Inc.

211 Dupont Avenue
Newburgh, NY 12550
888-562-7066
www.gtilite.com

GTI is an industry supplier of overhead luminaries, transparency viewers, and large-

format viewing stations.

Hewlett-Packard, Inc.
3000 Hanover Street
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1185
650-857-1501
www.hp.com
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 37

This well-known U.S. company used to be known mainly for its handheld calcula-
tors but now has become a leader in the world computer market. H-P and Kodak
have announced the formation of a joint venture for retail photo-finishing solutions,
which offers retail customers a wide range of digital-imaging capabilities for both
film and digital files. H-P also makes digital cameras and the best-established range
of desktop printers.

Hoodman
P.O. Box 816
Hermosa Beach, CA 90254
800-818-3946
www.hoodmanusa.com

Hoodman makes glare-reduction hoods for just about any kind of a screen you might
have to look at. You can get hoods to shade your computer or laptop monitor to aid
in more accurate color calibration. The company also makes hoods for digital-still
and video-camera LCD viewfinders in a variety of sizes, so it’s a good bet that you
can find a hood that will fit your camera. All the Hoodman hoods attach by means of
Velcro strips, so you can easily and quickly remove them. The hoods fold flat when
not in use. LCD hoods mostly retail for a mere $19.95 and can be bought directly
from the company.

Kaidan, Inc.
703 East Pennsylvania Boulevard
Feasterville Business Campus
Feasterville, PA 19053
215-364-1778
www.kaidan.com

Kaidan makes products to help in making QuickTime VR stitched panoramas and

object movies. For panoramas, the company makes numerous pan heads for
tripods that center the optical axis of the camera over the control point and that
are marked for specific degrees of rotation between shots. The resulting photos
match very closely from edge to edge when rotated, which makes smooth stitching
possible. The company also makes rigs for QTVR object movies. Object movies
enable the viewer to rotate a product photo to any angle.
38 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

LaCie, Inc.
22985 NW Evergreen Parkway
Hillsboro, OR 97124
503-844-4500
www.lacie.com

LaCie is in the business of making FireWire and USB drives, calibrated monitors,
CD-R/RW drives.

Logistic Locations
5-1 ITaunton Road
Greeford,
Middlesex UB6 8UQ
England
U.K.
+44 181-575-6601
www.logisticlocations.com
www.logistic-locations.com/Homex.html

The Dubois Sun Position Compass can tell you the height and position of the sun at
any time of the day and year anywhere in the entire world. So if you need to plan a
location shot in accordance with the best sun angle, this little jewel can save you a
lot of time and money. The cost in U.S. dollars is $39. Americans also pay about $10
shipping and handling from the U.K.

Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, Inc.

9351 Jeronimo Road
Irvine, CA 92618
888-307-0312
Fax: 949-465-6338
www.mitsubishi-imaging.com

Here, you can find digital printers, time lapses VCRs, photographic materials, and
miscellaneous other digital-imaging equipment. Mitsubishi Imaging also markets
photographic and digital printing paper and manufactures and sells analog and
digital plate-making equipment.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 39

Mitsubishi Electric & Electronics USA, Inc.

Americas Corporate Office, 5665 Plaza Drive
P.O. Box 6007
Cypress, CA 90630-5023
714-220-2500
www.mitsubishi-display.com

This is a huge Japanese conglomerate that also owns Nikon. Mitsubishi has three
divisions that deal in digital display, imaging, and presentation products.

Photosolve
Phil Williams
21272 Chiquita Way
Saratoga, CA 95070
www.photosolve.com
[email protected]

Photosolve makes solution-providing attachments for digital cameras, such as the

Xtend-a-View detachable hood for LCD screens, extenders for attaching supplemen-
tary lenses and accessories to such retractable lens cameras as the Kodak DC-
series of zoom cameras, and flash extension brackets. The company’s prices are
very reasonable.

Silicon Film Technologies, Inc.

16265 Laguna Canyon Road
Irvine, CA 92618
949-417-2260
www.siliconfilm.com

Silicon Film technologies has developed a digital camera insert for a few 35mm film
cameras, mostly certain Nikons and Canons. This insert turns your SLR into a digital
camera. Although the capacity for images is small, a downloader is also available.
40 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Sima Products Corporation

140 Pennsylvania Avenue, Building #5
Oakmont, PA 15139
800-345-7462
www.simacorp.com

Sima produces unique products to meet the demands of different electronic inter-
ests. As for photography, the company produces a film shield to protect film from
airport X-ray devices. Sima also makes a portable 5.7-inch digital screen to view
digital photographs. An additional hard drive enables storage of more than 10,000
pictures. Also in its line of products are a portable emergency power source and a
power inverter that may be of interest to digital photographers.

SterlingTEK
877-742-1700
www.sterlingtek.com

This shopping site has a wide variety of accessories for your digital camera,
including AC adapters, memory, USB readers, camera bags, and more.

The Denny Manufacturing Company, Inc.

P.O. Box 7200
Mobile, AL 36670
800-844-5616
www.dennymfg.com

An innovative photography backdrop sales and manufacturing company with a

sweet Web site. Denny also has an interesting retail Web site at www.dennyelectra.
com for digital photography equipment. Denny seems to sell mainly Fuji desktop
products.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 41

Optical Accessories
The following companies make accessories that fit over or onto your camera’s lens.

Hoya Corporation
7-5, Naka-Ochiai 2-chome Shinjuku-ku,
Tokyo 161-8525
Japan
800-421-1141
www.hoya.co.jp

Hoya is one of the most renowned optical lens and filter companies in the world,
boasting a 40-percent share of the world production of optical glasses.

Kenko-Tokina Company
Represented in the United States by

THK Photo Products, Inc.

2360 Mira Mar Avenue
Long Beach, CA 90815
800-421-1141 (customer service)
www.Ckcpower.com

Kenko makes an 8 x 32 monocular that can adapt to the lenses of many digital
cameras — in particular the Nikon Coolpix 800, 900, and 950 series. In the U.S.,
the monocular retails for about $140.

Sigma Corporation
Sigma Corporation of America 15 Fleetwood Court
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779
631-585-1144
www.sigmaphoto.com

This manufacturer of lenses for 35mm cameras now also has its own cameras,
including a brand-new digital camera that is the world’s first to use separate over-
laying sensors for red, green, and blue — just like film. Each sensor records just
over 3 megapixels, but Sigma calls this a 6 megapixel camera, since some of the
information overlaps. Sigma was one of the first manufacturers to successfully
introduce interchangeable lenses for famous brand cameras, such as Nikon and
Canon.
42 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

The Tiffen Company, LLC

90 Oser Avenue
Hauppauge, NY 11788-3886, USA
631-273-2500
www.tiffen.com
[email protected]

Tiffen offers a wide (perhaps the widest) variety of precise filters and color gels.

THK Photo Products, Inc.

2360 Mira Mar Ave.
Long Beach, CA 90815
(800) 421-114
562-494-9575
www.thkphoto.com

THK offers high-quality optics from a leading manufactures, including a large line of
Hoya all-glass filters. THK also represents Kenko, which makes an 8 x 32 monocular
that can adapt to the lenses of many digital cameras — in particular the Nikon
Coolpix 800, 900, 950, and 5000 series. In the U.S., the monocular retails for about
$140, though a $99 street price is fairly commonplace. Don’t even think about using
it without a tripod (or at least, a monopod).

Vivitar
1280 Rancho Conejo Boulevard
Newbury Park, CA 91320 USA
805 498-7008
Fax: 805 498-5086
www.vivitar.com

Originally known for its flashes and lenses, Vivitar has developed a comprehensive
line of point-and-shoot digital cameras. The company has also developed a line
of video-monitoring and video-conferencing products for both business and
residential use.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 43

Lighting Accessories
The companies included in this section make all sorts of lighting equipment, from
external portable strobe units to traditional incandescent bulb and reflector setups.

AlienBees, Inc.
530 E. Iris Drive
Melrose, TN 37204
877-714-338
www.alienbees.com

This company makes very affordable lighting that has lower-than-average watt-per-
second ratings that make their equipment especially well suited for use with digital
cameras. That is because digital cameras seldom have minimum apertures smaller
than f11. The studio strobes made for traditional equipment are often so bright that
you can’t stop down your digital camera far enough to compensate without using a
neutral-density filter. You can buy Digital Monolights from $200 for 160ws to $339.95
for 640ws. Slave units are built in.

Britek
12704 Marguardt Ave.
Santa Fe Spring, CA 90670
888-879-9628
www.briteklight.com
[email protected]

Britek has a whole range of very inexpensive screw-in strobes that would be ideal
for tents and backlights. It also has light stands for reasonable prices and a light kit
with snoots and carrying case for $389.

LumiQuest
28540 Durango Drive
New Braunfels, TX 78132
830-438-4646
[email protected]
www.lumiquest.com

LumiQuest has a wide range of lighting accessories.

44 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Photoflex, Inc.
333 Encinal Street Santa
Cruz, CA 95060
800-486-2674
www.photoflex.com

Photoflex offers a full array of flash strobe accessories from lightboxes to reflectors.
Photoflex also has a photography school that has classes in digital photography.

STO-FEN
P.O. Box 7609
Santa Cruz, CA 95061
(800) 538-0730 831-427-0235
www.stofen.com
[email protected]

STO-FEN sells an all-direction bounce diffuser for swivel head flashes.

Wein Products
www.saundersphoto.com/html/body_wein.htm

Wein produces the industry standard for off-camera flash slave triggers. Flash slave
triggers are one way to synchronize studio strobes with prosumer and consumer
digital cameras that lack a hot-shoe or PC connection for an external flash. Wein
also makes another accessory that’s invaluable for owners of digital cameras that
have hot shoe attachments for digital flash called the Wein Safe-synch. It protects
the digital camera’s circuitry from shorting out when used with powerful studio
strobes or proprietary flashguns. A Safe-synch is excellent insurance against costly
repair bills.

Ink and Paper

The following companies make or sell inks and papers especially suited for printing
digital photographs.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 45

Epson America, Inc.

3840 Kilroy Airport Way
Long Beach, CA 90806
562-276-1300
www.epson.com

Here you will find announcements of the latest developments in Epson cameras,
printers, and papers. Excellent articles (that change from time to time) also cover
such subjects as how to choose the right colors for use in a graphic design or how
to share information between MS PowerPoint and other Office programs. Epson
also has an extensive line of inkjet specialty papers and continues to make its photo
papers more and more fade-resistant.

Gatorform
P.O. Box 1839
Statesville, NC 28687-1839
800-438-1701
www.gatorfoam.com

A subsidiary of International Paper, Gatorfoam is a supplier of foam core products

on which you can mount photographs and other artwork. It is offering JetMount, a
graphic arts board designed to survive the rigors of digital imaging. The foam is
reinforced to resist dents and provide good durability.

Inkjetmall.com, Ltd.
PO Box 335
Bradford, VT 05033
888-426-6323
www.inkjetmall.com
[email protected]

Inkjetmall.com is a distributor of replacement inks for many name-brand inkjet

printers. It markets a bulk ink system, which can be adapted to many printers. In
addition, it handles specialty papers, color management products, and ICC profiling
services. It also provides an abundance of expert technical information online and
by request.
46 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Legion Paper
Legion Paper West
6333 Chalet Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90040
800-727-3716
Fax: 562-927-6100
www.legionpaper.com
[email protected],

Legion Paper is a premier source for fine art paper, digital fine art paper, handmade
paper, and decorative paper. Legion is the exclusive distributor of Somerset and
Concorde digital fine art papers, which are the most widely used by professional
service bureaus.

PICTORICO
AGA Chemicals, Inc.
Pictorico Ink Jet Media Division
2201 Water Ridge Parkway, Suite 400
Charlotte, NC 28217
www.pictorico.com
[email protected],

Pictorico produces a wide variety of films, papers, and canvases material for inkjet
printing.

Power Sources
These companies make batteries, power supplies, battery packs and other equip-
ment that can be used to power your cameras and lighting equipment.

Eveready Battery Co, Energizer Division

800 Chouteau Avenue
St. Louis, MO 63164
800-383-7323
www.energizer.com
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 47

Eveready Battery Company is the world’s largest manufacturer of dry cell batteries
and flashlights and a global leader in the dynamic business of providing portable
power. The Web site is a very rich resource for information on battery technologies
and offers wizard-type guides to help you find the right battery. There is also a
guide to finding stores that sell batteries. Did you know that you would have to buy
$2,500 worth of alkaline batteries to take the same number of pictures as one $22
set of NiMH batteries?

Maha Energy
545-C W. Lambert Rd.
Brea, CA 92821, USA
800-376-9992
www.powerexusa.com

Here you can find PowerEX brand batteries and chargers for consumers and
professionals.

Sunn Battery Company (Powertron Batteries)

1316 West Adams St.
Jacksonville, FL 32204
904-354-4508
Fax: 904-358-7753
www.sunnbattery.com
[email protected]

This is a one-stop shop for all kinds of batteries for every kind of device you can
imagine.

Digital Camera Manufacturers

New makers of digital cameras are popping up at every blink of the eye these days,
so this list is not comprehensive; however, it does include the most established and
best-known makers of digital cameras.
48 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Agfa
200 Ballardvale Street
Wilmington, MA 01887
800-685-4271
www.agfahome.com

Agfa is a huge multinational company that specializes in imaging and prepress

products. The company makes a line of digital cameras and is overdue for an
announcement of a higher-resolution and more fully featured digital camera. The
company also makes an extensive line of desktop flatbed scanners (ten distinct
models at last count), including the DuoScan series that is also capable of scanning
film without pressing it against glass, thus eliminating the risk of reflections and
Newton rings. This series comes in a variety of sizes, capabilities, and prices to suit
a range of buyers from the serious graphics hobbyist to the professional design
shop. Speaking of scanners, the DuoScan HiD is one of the most advanced flatbed
scanners available, with an optical resolution of 1,000 x 2,000, D-max of 3.7, and
42-bit color depth. The scanner also comes with color-matching software.

Finally, Agfa is a source for inkjet photo-quality papers. Navigate to this area of the
site, and you will find a wizard that shows you the proper settings for any of these
papers when used with almost any of the popular printers. When I checked these
settings for my two Epson printers, I found that the recommended settings would
have worked well for most papers of similar quality from other manufacturers. For
that reason, you may find this site useful whether or not you are actually printing
on Agfa papers.

Canon USA, Inc.

One Canon Plaza
New Hyde Park, NY 11042
800-672-2666
516-598-3350
www.usa.canon.com

Canon is an industry leader in professional and consumer imaging equipment and

information systems. Canon’s extensive product line enables businesses and con-
sumers worldwide to capture, store, and distribute visual information. The Web site
can be seen in Flash 4, and if you have a high-bandwidth connection, the experience
is even better. Unfortunately, there’s more show than go here. You can see animated
spinning movies of the products, but it’s tough to get to the specifications. Canon
does feature some of the most advanced developments in digital cameras, such as
the 3 megapixel PowerShot S20 camera. The S20 is compatible with both Type I and II
CompactFlash memory cards, so it can read and write to the IBM 340MB Microdrive.
Also, the ISO rating is selectable at 100, 200, or 400. The camera also has a USB port.
Canon also manufactures three professional 35mm SLR digital cameras that make use
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 49

of the company’s extensive line of EOS camera lenses and accessories, as well as co-
manufacturing several of the Kodak professional 35mm SLR cameras. The new Canon
D-60 is a 6 megapixel CMOS sensor camera that has been getting rave reviews for
image quality. Canon is also a major manufacturer of scanners and has an extensive
line of flatbed scanners. Especially noteworthy is the under-$700 CanoScan FS2710
Film Scanner, which features 36-bit input and output at 2,720 dpi (film resolution) and
can scan as fast as 13 seconds per frame (even faster than the Nikon scanners).

Casio, Inc.
570 Mt. Pleasant Avenue
Dover, NJ 07801
800-962-2746
201-361-5400
www.casio.com

Casio is a large Japanese manufacturer of watches, digital cameras, digital color

printers, and handheld computers. Casio is one of the most innovative gadget com-
panies in the world. If you think they haven’t built it yet, check out Casio before you
give up. Casio also makes many other products not related to digital photography.
One of the most interesting new developments in digital photography is Casio’s
wrist camera. You can record name, address, and phone information along with the
grayscale photo and transmit the photos directly to your PC wirelessly via an
infrared port.

Eastman Kodak Company

343 State Street
Rochester, NY 14650
800-235-6325
www.kodak.com

Kodak manufactures both traditional and digital cameras, photographic plates and
chemicals, processing and audiovisual equipment, as well as document manage-
ment products, applications software, printers, and other business equipment. This
was one of the first major companies to put its faith into digital photography, and it
still often leads the pack in new developments, innovation, and quality. The Kodak
Web site is also full of helpful information and tips for photographers at all levels of
expertise. The site also plays host to magnificent displays of professional photogra-
phy, complete with stories of how the photography was done. This is also the place
to learn about Kodak’s Photo CD, Picture CD, and Picture Disk services, the com-
pany’s full line of digital cameras and accessories, online photo print-making ser-
vices, printers and printing supplies, and breaking news on new developments in
conventional and digital photography. Kodak is also one of the leading manufactur-
ers of digital image sensors for sale to other camera makers.
50 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Epson America, Inc.

3840 Kilroy Airport Way
Long Beach, CA 90806
562-276-1300
www.epson.com

Here you will find announcements of the latest developments in Epson cameras,
printers, and papers. Excellent articles (that change from time to time) also cover
such subjects as how to choose the right colors for use in a graphic design or how
to share information between MS PowerPoint and other Office programs. Epson
also has an extensive line of inkjet specialty papers and continues to make its photo
papers more and more fade-resistant.

Fuji Film
Fuji Photo Film U.S.A., Inc.
555 Taxter Road
Elmsford, NY 10523
800-755-3854
www.fujifilm.com

Fuji is a large Japanese corporation that produces products for standard and digital
photographic imaging across the board. They have a wide selection of digital cam-
eras, scanners, and other peripherals for the consumer and professional. Some of
their best model digital cameras are in the FinePix series, including FinePix S1 and
S2 Pro, FinePix 6900, and FinePix 30i (which also plays MP3s).

Konica
500 Day Hill Road
Windsor, CT 06095
800-456-6422
www.konica.com

Konica is a digital and a photographic industry leader in providing digital solutions

for document creation, production, and distribution as well as cameras, scanners,
and more. At this time, Konica seem to be highly involved in the race for a faster
megapixel digital camera.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 51

Kyocera Corp., Yashica Division

8611 Balboa Avenue
San Diego, CA 92123-1580
800-526-0266
858-576-2600
www.yashica.com

This is the site for the Yashica camera division of Kyocera. Yashica’s Samurai digital
cameras include a 2.1 megapixel model with a 4:1 zoom lens. Too bad there’s no
provision for external flash synch. Yashica also makes bargain-priced 35mm SLR
film cameras either fully automatic or fully manual. Kyocera also manufactures
Contax cameras and Carl Zeiss lenses.

Largan Lmini
2432 W. Peoria Avenue Building 9
Suites 1165 and 1166
Phoenix, AZ 85029
877-4LARGAN
877-452-7426
www.largan.com

Largan is a Taiwanese manufacturer of entry-level digital cameras. The first two

offerings in the line are VGA-resolution, fixed-lens cameras at $180. There are
announcements on the site of higher-resolution models to come (up to 1.5
megapixel), but no time frame or pricing is given.

Mamiya America Corporation

www.mamiya.com

This Japanese camera manufacturer specializes in medium-format cameras.

Mamiya’s cameras are among the most popular for adapting to professional digital
camera backs.

Minolta Corporation
101 Williams Drive
Ramsey, NJ 07446
201-825-4000
201-818-3512
www.minoltausa.com
52 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Minolta makes an extremely affordable line of high-quality film scanners, as well as

consumer digital cameras with removable lens units that can be placed for pho-
tographing subjects at unusual angles or swapped with special-purpose lens units.
Minolta is also a large manufacturer of film-based 35mm SLR and point-and-shoot
cameras and lenses as well as a manufacturer of office and prepress equipment.
The company’s Dimage and QuickScan 35 film scanners are some of the best buys
around. Unfortunately, you will have a very tough time getting replacements if you
lose or misplace any of the parts, such as a film holder.

Nikon Corporation
1300 Walt Whitman Road
Melville, NY 11747-3064
800-526-4566
631-547-4200
www.nikonusa.com

This site features cutting-edge products from a company that is famous for its tradi-
tional film cameras and (particularly) lenses. Nikon is one of those most heavily
focused on digital photography. The Nikon Dl digital camera made a significant
price-performance breakthrough, and the Coolpix 950 was the top-selling prosumer
digital camera in 1999 and one of my personal favorites. This is also a company to
look to for digital film scanners, which have recently undergone a price reduction.
The Nikon Coolscan III is a thoroughly professional 35mm/APS film scanner for less
than $800. Also, Nikon’s Digital Ice technology is available on this scanner and can
be a lifesaver in production scanning for removing surface dirt and scratches.

Olympus Optical Co., Ltd.

Two Corporate Center Drive
Melville, NY 11747-3157
800-347-4027
631-844-5000
www.olympus.com
www.olympusamerica.com

Olympus has consistently been among the most popular suppliers of digital
cameras and has a particularly outstanding selection of prosumer digital cameras.
Olympus also sells a healthy range of cases, straps, auxiliary lenses, and other
accessories for its digital cameras.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 53

Panasonic
2 Research Way
Floor 3
Princeton, NJ 07094
800-211-PANA (7262)
609-734-0800
www.panasonic.com

Panasonic’s latest digital camera development is a 1.3 megapixel digital camera with
a 3x optical zoom that stores its images on an Imation SuperDisk and has a USB con-
nection to the computer. Because SuperDisks hold 120MB, you can store up to 1,500
images on a single disk. This is promising technology for those who would like to
take digital cameras on long trips away from home. The camera can be used as an
external SuperDisk drive and can also use and store images on ordinary 3.5-inch HD
floppy disks. The built-in SuperDisk drive does mean that the camera has to be as
large as a Sony Mavica, but you do get a 2.5-inch LCD for previewing images. This
camera will also record QuickTime movies up to 100 frames and will do burst record-
ing of up to 16 images at half-second intervals. Panasonic also makes a 1.3 megapixel
3x zoom camera that has dual CF card slots and that comes with a modem in the CF
card form factor. You can put the CF card into one of the slots and directly e-mail
images from the camera without having to rely on a computer.

Pentax Corporation
35 Inverness Drive East
P. 0. Box 6509
Englewood, CO 80155-6509
800-877-0155
www.pentax.com

Pentax has been a leader and prominent contributor to the world’s 35mm SLR, its
lenses, and in the 35mm compact zoom market.

Sanyo USA
2055 Sanyo Avenue
San Diego, CA 92154
619-661-1134
619-661-6066
www.sanyodigital.com
54 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Sanyo, in conjunction with Olympus and Maxell, has developed a new digital film
storage medium — a 50mm re-recordable optical disk called the iD Photo. The disk
has a 730MB capacity. iD Photo’s capacity makes it possible to store large amounts
of image data on the camera for moving pictures, high-resolution still images, and
still images with voices added. Sanyo says it expects that other exciting applica-
tions, such as digital album disks with electronic photo album functions, will also
be possible. Sanyo expects the digital still camera market to reach more than ten
million units by 2002. Another extremely interesting product from Sanyo is a CD-R
CD writer with built-in slots for SmartMedia and CompactFlash I and II cards
(including the IBM Microdrive) so that you can record the contents of the cards
directly to the CD-R without ever having to store them on your hard drive. The
drive can also be used in conjunction with a computer for normal CD-R recording
tasks as well. There are also video outputs (including S-VHS) so that the recorder
can be connected to any TV set for previewing images, movies, and sound without
having to connect the unit to a computer.

Sea & Sea Underwater Photography USA

1938 Kellogg Avenue
Carlsbad, CA 92008
760-929-1909
www.seaandsea.com

This is an industry leader in the manufacture of underwater cameras and under-

water housing to contain both still and video photography. I saw nothing specific
on its Web site about housing for digital cameras, but perhaps it’s only a matter
of time.

Sony Electronics, Inc.

3300 Zanker Road
San Jose, CA 95134
800-222-SONY
408-432-1600
www.sony.com

Sony’s line of Digital Mavica cameras means no hassles with cables, interfaces, or
drivers. The Digital Mavica uses standard 3.5-inch floppy disks and has an e-mail
mode, and some models can even record video clips. The limitations are the
amount of storage space available on a floppy disk and the slow speed at which a
floppy disk writes. The amount of storage space limits these cameras to XGA reso-
lution or less.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 55

Sony’s other line of digital cameras, the CyberShot series, uses the company’s new
Memory Stick as its digital film format. Sony’s latest 2 megapixel digital camera, the
CyberShot DSC F-505, was a breakthrough in zoom capability because it features a
Carl Zeiss (super reputation for very high quality) 5x zoom lens (nearly twice the
zoom range of other digital cameras). The other truly notable features are the cam-
era’s small size and swiveling lens (so you can shoot with the camera overhead or
between your legs). Its weaknesses are lack of standard external flash sync and use
of the Sony Memory Stick for on-camera storage.

Sony also makes the DSC-D700 and DSC-D770. They are nearly identical true SLR
digicams with 1.5 megapixel resolutions and 5x optical zooms. These cameras have
a hot-shoe connection for external flash. One particularly notable feature of the D700
series is its ability to display a histogram of the brightness values in an image and
then give the photographer the ability to adjust exposure to accommodate the dis-
played distribution of brightness values. Imagine being able to use the Photoshop
Levels command before you take the picture. The Nikon Dl has adopted this feature,
and I’d love to see it appear on more affordable cameras. The DSC-D700 series
cameras cost more than the 505, probably due to their SLR design. They’d seem
to be ideal candidates for upgrading to 3 megapixel, but I haven’t seen such an
announcement yet.

Vivitar
1280 Rancho Conejo Boulevard
Newbury Park, CA 91320 USA
805-498-7008
Fax: 805-498-5086
www.vivitar.com

Originally known for its flashes and lenses, Vivitar has developed a comprehensive
line of point-and-shoot digital cameras. The company has also developed a line of
video monitoring and video conferencing products for both business and residen-
tial use.

Computers
The following companies are some of the best known for making portable and
desktop computers.
56 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Apple Computer, Inc.

1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
408-996-1010
www.apple.com

People who are the most serious about digital photography tend to use Apple comput-
ers. The company’s Web site carries a wealth of constantly changing information about
graphics hardware and applications, tips and tricks, and late-breaking developments.

Conexant Corporation
4311 Jamboree Road
P.O. Box C
Newport Beach, CA 92658-8902
800-854-8099
www.conexant.com

Conexant, a worldwide semiconductor engineering and manufacturing firm, was an

early developer of the image sensors that use CMOS process technology in digital
cameras, instead of the earlier charge-coupled device (CCD).

Digital Now, Inc.

8401 Old Courthouse Road,
Suite 130
Vienna, VA 22182-3820
800-329-9678
www.digitalnow.com

Digital Now is a supplier of packaged computer hardware and software systems. It

supplies systems for photo retailers that take images from roll film to digital, print,
or online formats. Digital Now also has the Digital Photo Factory Web site for view-
ing and downloading uploaded images.

Handspring, Inc.
189 Bernardo Avenue
Mountain View, CA
650-230-5000
888-565-9393
www.handspring.com
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 57

Handspring produces a number of handheld computing devices with powerful

imaging-handling capabilities. The most notable is the Visor model. With the addi-
tion of the Blaaer software, you can display photos and Web pages. There are also
modules that you can add in order to convert it into a camera, phone, or mp3
player. The wave of the future, I think.

Hewlett-Packard, Inc.
3000 Hanover Street
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1185
650-857-1501
www.hp.com

This well-known U.S. company used to be known mainly for its handheld calcula-
tors, but now it has become a leader in the world computer market. H-P and Kodak
have announced the formation of a joint venture for retail photo-finishing solutions
that offers retail customers a wide range of digital-imaging capabilities for both film
and digital files. H-P also makes digital cameras and the best established range of
desktop printers.

Intergraph
Corporate Headquarters
Hunstville, AL 35894-0001
800-763-0242
256-730-2000
www.intergraph.com

This Windows-compatible computer maker specializes in high-performance worksta-

tions for visual production and publishing prepress applications. These systems are
tweaked to the max for speed and capacity, and many have dual processors. Some of
the computers are capable of using up to 8MB of RAM. If you are curious to see how
much performance can be crammed into a Windows machine, this is the site to visit.

Zoran Corporation
3112 Scott Boulevard
Santa Clara, CA 95054
408-919-4111
www.zoran.com

Zoran markets integrated circuits, embedded software, and 1C intellectual property

cores for digital video and audio applications. Zoran’s products include JPEG
codecs, digital audio processors, and MPEG and DVD decoders.
58 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Digital Backs
The following companies make digital photo-recording instruments that fit the
backs of medium and large format cameras in place of their standard film backs.
These backs are typically quite costly and have resolution that is better than film.

Better Light, Inc.

1200 Industrial Road, Studio #17
San Carlos, CA 94070-4129
650-631-3680
www.betterlight.com

Better Light offers a line of digital backs for 4 x 5 cameras. The digital scanner type
backs software, and the full setup starts at under $9,000. The company also offers a
digital back for the RB/RZ 67. You can find Better Light products for sale and rent at
Calumet Photography locations and online at www.calumetdigital.com.

MegaVision, Inc.
P.O. Box 60158
Santa Barbara, CA 93160
888-324-2580
www.mega-vision.com

MegaVision offers an award-winning list of high-quality digital camera backs for

medium- and large-format cameras. The company also offers a battery-operated
mobile hard disk pack for downloading images to and from a digital camera back.
You can wear this pack on your belt for location shooting.

Phase One US, Inc.

24 Woodbine Avenue
Northport, NY 11768
888-PHASEONE
888-742-7366
www.phaseone.com

Phase One offers digital backs for medium- and large-format cameras. The digital
backs enable you to get quality, one-shot, digital, high-resolution images.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 59

Storage and Memory Systems

These products make it possible to store large quantities of archived images. Some
are portable and can be battery-powered.

Addonics Technologies
48434 Milmont Drive
Fremont, CA 94538
510-438-6530
Fax: 510-438-5236 or 443-628-0314
[email protected]
www.addonics.com

This technology company specializes in innovative and compact external storage

devices for all types of electronic devices, including the Pocket Digidrive digital
card reader, which reads all six memory card formats.

Antec
47900 Fremont Boulevard
Fremont, CA 94538
510-770-7200
510-770-1200
www.antec-inc.com

Antec makes digital film card readers and an adapter so that PCMCIA cards can be
used on a desktop computer, making it possible to exchange PCMCIA card devices
and memory between laptops and desktops. One model ($99) of the digital film
card readers will read from CompactFlash, SmartMedia, and PCMCIA cards — all in
the same unit.

APS Tech
6131 Deramus
Kansas City, MO 64120
816-483-1600
www.apstech.com

APS is a manufacturer of competitively priced hard drives, removable storage, and

other computer peripherals. The company also distributes and has an online store
for many third-party products related to digital photography.
60 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

CompactFlash Association
P.O. Box 51537
Palo Alto, CA 94303
650-843-1220
www.compactflash.org

This is the industry association for CompactFlash. Here’s where to find anything
you want to know about the inner secrets of CompactFlash flash memory technol-
ogy. You will also find a listing of the 99 digital cameras, 64 handheld computers,
Palm devices, and 43 other electronic platforms that supported the CF+ specifica-
tion at the start of the millennium.

Delkin Devices, Inc.

7950 Dunbrook Road
San Diego, CA 92126
858-586-0123
www.delkin.com

Delkin makes a 244MB CF card and many other digital camera memory devices. It is
also the manufacturer of the FlashPath SmartMedia floppy disk adapter. The com-
pany claims to manufacturer the highest-capacity flash memory cards in all types.
Delkin also manufactures an external battery pack for digital cameras that connects
through the AC adapter and offers as much power as 40,000 standard AA batteries.
SmartMedia, CompactFlash, FlashPath, and adapters are available.

Imation Enterprises Corp.

1 Imation Place
Oakdale, MN 55128-3414
888-466-3456
www.imation.com

This offshoot of 3M Corporation specializes in data storage, digital imaging, and

color correction. Imation is the maker of the SuperDisk, a 120MB removable storage
solution that is backwards-compatible with the ubiquitous HD floppy disk. At least
one manufacturer has already announced a digital camera that uses a SuperDisk as
its storage medium: The Panasonic PV-3D4090 digital camera features SuperDisk
technology, which enables users to save images directly onto a 120MB SuperDisk
disk or a 1.44MB floppy disk. SuperDisks have become popular with owners of
iMacs because their mechanism allows them to serve as either a floppy drive or
higher capacity removable storage device. Imation is also a source for CD-R and
CD-RW discs.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 61

Kingston Technology Company

17600 Newhope Street
Fountain Valley, CA 92708
800-337-8470
877-KINGSTON (546-4786)
714-435-2600
www.kingston.com

Kingston is a major resource for all kinds of memory upgrades, including flash
memory for digital film cards in a variety of formats.

Lexar Media, Inc.

47421 Bayside Parkway
Fremont, CA 94538
510-413-1200
www.lexarmedia.com
[email protected]

Lexar is a developer and distributor of digital film.

Maxtor Corporation
500 McCarthy Boulevard
Milpitas, CA 95035
408-894-5000
Fax: 408-952-3600
www.maxtor.com

Maxtor is a manufacturer of hard disk storage devices. They have recently released
the Personal Storage 3000xt, an external 160GB Firewire drive for less than $400.
This provides mass storage with mobility and the flexibility of easy interface.

Microtech International, Inc.

Corporate Headquarters
242 Branford Road North
Branford, CT 06471-1303
800-626-4276
203-483-9402
www.microtechint.com
62 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Microtech manufactures digital photography, middleware products, and memory

solutions. These include CompactFlash, SmartMedia, and Type I/II/III PC Card media
and PC Card readers for all systems. The company makes the only digital film card
reader that will read both CompactFlash and SmartMedia cards at the same time —
seeing each as a separate drive. The CompactFlash slot is Type II-compatible and
can read the new IBM 340MB Microdrive (which you can also order from
Microtech).

Minds@Work, LLC
15550 Rockfield Blvd. Suite C
Irvine, CA 92618
949-707-0600
www.mindsatwork.net
[email protected]

The Digital Wallet is a small pocket device designed to store photos and other data.
The Digital Wallet capacities range from 5 to 20GB, depending on the model. Such a
device is a great addition to your digital camera because it enables you to offload
enough photos to record a long trip.

PhotoTrust
1500 114th Avenue SE, Suite 130
Bellevue, WA 98004
425-468-9041
www.phototrust.com

PhotoTrust hosts and manages a password-protected Web site that archives pho-
tographs created in any film-based or digital format. It uses XML technology to
give users a way to collect, protect, retrieve, record, share, and enhance photos.
PhotoTrust is also one of the two largest manufacturers of digital film supplies and
card readers. The company manufacturers these products under the brand names
of many major companies. You can find FAQs on all the products and download the
latest drives from the company’s Web site.

SCM Microsystems, Inc.

47211 Bayside Parkway
Fremont, CA 94538
510-360-2300
www.scmmicro.com
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 63

SCM Microsystems has introduced a card reader called Dazzle 6 in 1 card reader.
It reads all six digital film formats. SCM specializes in a wide range of products to
support all aspects of digital image storage, editing, and transmission.

Display
The following are resources for displaying your digital photographs at meetings and
events, as well as for editing your photos.

MON Mitsubishi Electronics Presentation Products

9351 Jeronimo Road
Irvine, CA 92618
888-307-0312
www.mitsubishi-presentations.com

This company offers LCD projectors and Megawall advanced display monitors.

NEC Computers, Inc.

15 Business Park Way
Sacramento, CA 95828
888-863-2669
www.nec-computers.com

Under both the NEC and Packard-Bell nameplates, this company makes an exten-
sive line of Windows-compatible PCs that includes laptops, handheld computers,
and monitors. Some of the handheld computers can use CompactFlash memory, so
you can use these cards for multiple purposes.

NEC-Mitsubishi Electronics Display of America, Inc.

1250 North Arlington Heights Road, Suite 500
Itasca, IL 60143-1248
www.necmitsubishi.com

This company makes flat-screen and single-gun monitors (similar in principle to the
Sony Trinitron) in a variety of sizes.
64 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Printers
These companies make all sorts of devices for printing digital photos.

Akica Phototech
Corp. 2F, 16, Sec 2, Chung Yang S. Road
Peitou, Taipei
Taiwan
+886-2-28915155
www.akica.com

Akica offers an interesting thermal dye diffusion printer direct from a CompactFlash
card or SmartMedia card. It has 300 x 300 dpi and uses 4 x 6-inch paper or label
pages. You can print out an index of the images stored on your card and then
choose one to print.

Digital Pulse, Inc.

8050 East Crystal Drive
Anaheim Hills, CA 92807
714-279-2370
Fax: 714-279-2371
www.digitalpulseinc.com
[email protected]

Digital Pulse has been a pioneer in the testing and development of advance color
printing technology aimed at the fine art market. Digital Pulse works with some of
the largest inkjet printer manufacturers to fine tune new technology. In addition, it
offers products to support professional giclée service bureaus.

Durst Dice America

16 Sterling Lake Road
Tuxedo, NY 10987
914-351-2677
www.Diceamerica.com

DDA manufactures equipment for recording images on many types of media. Both
individuals and large companies use its products. DDA products include Cheetah
RIP/Servers, Durst Lambda and Epsilon imagers, LVT film recorders, and Vista
lenticular materials.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 65

Epson America, Inc.

3840 Kilroy Airport Way
Long Beach, CA 90806
562-276-1300
www.epson.com

Epson pioneered the development of long-lasting methods and materials for print-
ing digital photographs. Today, if you want your prints to last, your best bet is
Epson. However, don’t expect this to be the case forever. Other companies are
already beginning to test the archival printing waters.

Epson Professional Graphics Division

800-463-7766
www.prographics.epson.com

This is the Epson division that specializes in wide-format printers and is the
resource for checking up on the latest about proofing printers and printers for dis-
play and fine-art printing. You’ll find an informative article on the workflow for digi-
tal proofing using an inkjet printer. There’s also an article on how Nash Editions
(one of the most highly regarded service bureaus for fine-arts printing) uses the
Epson 5000 proof printer.

Hewlett-Packard, Inc.
3000 Hanover Street
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1185
650-857-1501
www.hp.com

This well-known U.S. company used to be known mainly for its handheld calcula-
tors, but now it has become a leader in the world computer market. H-P and Kodak
have announced the formation of a joint venture for retail photo-finishing solutions
that offers retail customers a wide range of digital-imaging capabilities for both film
and digital files. H-P also makes digital cameras and the best-established range of
desktop printers.

Jackson Digital Imaging Corporation

3595 S. Highland Drive, Suite 3
Las Vegas, NV 89103
800-584-8181
www.jacksondigital.com
66 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

This company offers digital printing system packages, which include the hardware,
software, and training for printing on cups, T-shirts, and so on. The company sells
its products online.

Scitex
3 Azrieli Center
Triangle Building 45th Floor
Tel Aviv 67023
Israel
+972 3 607 5755
www.scitex.com

Scitex specializes in manufacturing digital imaging solutions for graphics communica-

tion. It designs, develops, manufactures, markets, and supports products, systems,
and devices for the digital preprint and digital printing markets. The product it is best
known for in the digital imaging community is the Iris Printer series of large-format
proofing printers. These printers are being used with high-longevity printing papers
and archival inks to create collectible fine-art prints from digital files. The company’s
Graphic Arts Group includes Leaf digital cameras, smart scanners, data management
solutions (including Ripro servers/archivers), Brisque digital front ends, Dolev image-
setters and platesetters, and Iris proofers.

The breakthrough news from Scitex is the development of the Leaf C-MOST 6.6
Megapixel CMOS image sensor. According to Scitex, this is the first full-size, 35mm
CMOS sensor to be commercially developed. It is said to be thin enough to replace
film in a standard 35mm camera. The result is that full-size, high-resolution images
can be captured using standard 35mm lenses. Moreover, Scitex says that the sen-
sors can be made price-competitive with standard CCD image sensors. No concrete
announcement has yet been made as to when this sensor will appear in specific
cameras or camera backs.

Seiko Instruments USA, Inc.

Seiko Instruments Austin, Inc.
1309 Rutherford, Suite 120
Austin, TX 78753
800-888-0817
512-349-6000
Fax: 512-349-6001
www.seiko.com

The Digital Imaging division of Seiko currently is recognized for its dye-sublimation
and thermal-wax printing and color-management technologies. The color printers
are for medical, scientific, graphics, and prepress purposes. Seiko is also the parent
company of Epson.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 67

Scanners
This section includes resources for scanners of all types (flatbed, film, drum) and in
all price ranges.

Aztek, Inc.
23 Spectrum Pointe #209
Lake Forest, CA 92630
800-GRAPH-55
800-472-7455
Fax: 949-770-4986
www.aztek.com

Aztek is an industry supplier and consultant of digital software and hardware sys-
tems. Aztek claims to have sold more than 300 digital major production facilities/
systems to a variety of Fortune 500 companies.

Heidelberg
1000 Gutenberg Drive
Kennesaw, GA 30144
888-546-6265
800-437-7388
www.heidelbergusa.com

Heidelberg is one of the largest and most influential companies in the digital print-
ing industry. It makes both flatbed and drum scanners for serious users. These are
the only drum scanners (according to Heidelberg) that natively work in CIE Lab
color, which is also the native Photoshop color mode. Flatbed scanners are made
by the company’s Linocolor division at www.linocolor.com.

Microtek USA
16941 Keegan Ave.
Carson, CA 90746
310-687-5800
www.microtekusa.com

This company is most noted for manufacturing low, midrange, and high-end
scanners with a price range from under $200 to over $4,000. It was one of the first
companies to come out with a really affordable scanner.
68 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

ZBE Incorporated
7220 Hollister Avenue
Santa Barbara, CA 93117
805-685-2348
www.zbe.com

ZBE has developed a line of photographic laboratory enlargers and equipment con-
trols. ZBE recently released its Satellite 3-D Digital Scanning System. The Satellite is
the first auto-focusing scanning system that can scan all types of images, from small
films to large three-dimensional objects. ZBE also has introduced a 50-inch wide
high-quality digital printer.

General Retail Outlets

The following are both brick and mortar and exclusively online retailers of all sorts
of photographic equipment.

Abe’s of Maine
710-640-0402
www.abesofmaine.com

This is a camera store that does considerable mail-order advertising in photogra-

phy and digital photography magazines and also has an online presence. Its catalog
features only the most popular cameras and accessories. This is not the place to
look for esoteric stuff. Shopper’s reviews have been mixed, but most comment on
excellent prices.

Adorama
42 West 18th Street
New York, NY 10011
800-803-0720
www.adoramacamera.com

A brick-and-mortar, full-spectrum camera store that advertises heavily in magazines

and that has a comprehensive online presence. You can find most everything here,
including point-and-shoot cameras, camera bags, view cameras, and studio equip-
ment and accessories for professional photographers. Online reviews of this store
and its policies are heavily mixed.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 69

Best Stop Digital

12 Warren Street
New York, NY 10007
800-339-8357
www.beststopdigital.com

Although this online store also carries 35mm film cameras, it also carries one of the
widest ranges of digital cameras. As a result, it’s a good place to look for current
pricing. According to Best Stop, “Our prices are so low, you’ll want to take a picture
of them.” (Or maybe a screenshot?) This store is also a comprehensive resource for
digital video and photo printers.

Calumet Digital Solutions

890 Supreme Drive
Bensenville, IL 60106
888-237-2022
www.calumetdigital.com

CDS sells and leases a wide range of digital cameras, computer systems, lighting
equipment, output devices, printers, proofers, and scanners, plus hundreds of
other digital products. Some of its lines include MegaVision, Better Light, Kodak,
Fuji, Nikon, Agfa, and Apple. It has locations in many major cities and is a real
source for digital equipment with a very helpful and knowledgeable staff.

Camera World of Oregon

700 NE 55th Avenue
Portland, OR 97213
800-226-3721
www.cameraworld.com

This is yet another online and brick-and-mortar camera store that sells a fairly good
selection of digital cameras and camcorders. Camera World also sells a variety of
digital film cards, scanners, and printers.
70 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Ckcpower.com
Graywood Drive
Orangeburg, NY 10962
845-627-1055
www.Ckcpower.com
[email protected]

This is a full-featured shopping site for digital cameras and accessories.

Darkroom
1944 Atlantic Boulevard, Suite 300
Jacksonville, FL 32207
904-398-9934
www.desktopdarkroom.com

Desktop Darkroom offers all you need in a digital store, from complete, digital
systems to the training and support needed to operate them. The company offers
products such as cameras and printers for amateurs or professionals.

Digital Camera Depot

www.digitalcameradepot.com
[email protected]

This is a good, general-purpose hardware site. It has reviews, comparisons, and

discussion forums. Also, because it’s associated with Amazon.com, it also has a
decent book section. Orders are handled through Amazon, so you have a lot of
reliability here.

Digital Etc.
800-774-7282
Fax: 800-943-5000
www.digitaletc.comDefault.asp
[email protected]

This online store is dedicated to digital gadgets of every size, shape, and variety,
from digital cameras to GPS watches. There are lots of home appliances, film and
film cameras, batteries and battery chargers as well.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 71

Filmart
4111 Glenwood Road
Brooklyn, NY 11210
718-421-6517
www.filmart.com

This online photographic store claims to have a large temperature-perfect ware-

house. This is another in a long line of New York retailers offering a full range of
camera equipment cheaper than your hometown store can.

Focus Camera
888-221-0828
718-436-6262
www.focuscamera.com

This company offers a large selection of digital cameras and some of the lowest
prices I’ve seen. The same online store also sells equipment and accessories for
conventional photography and a large selection of hobbyist underwater gear. Focus
also has a good assortment of accessory lenses and filters in sizes that will fit many
of the most popular digital cameras.

Gross-Medick-Barrows (G-M-B)
1345 Export Place
El Paso, TX 79912
800-777-1565
www.g-m-b.com

Gross-Medick-Barrows is a long-time supplier for the professional photographer.

Some of its product line includes folders, easels, folios, proof books, and wedding
albums. G-M-B seems to go to some length to accommodate the changes in photog-
raphers’ needs.

Norman Camera and Video

3602 S. Westnedge Avenue
Kalamazoo, MI 49008
800-900-6676
www.normancamera.com
72 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

This online photography store carries an extensive array of both film and digital
camera equipment, including scanners and printers. You’ll also find a nice selection
of tips and hints for beginning photographers.

shopnow.com
Corporate Headquarters Network Commerce Inc.
411 First Avenue South
Suite 200 N
Seattle, WA 98104
206-223-1996
Fax: 206-223-2324
www.shopnow.com

This online service helps consumers find and compare the lowest prices online.
According to the site, prices are updated daily. You’ll also find ratings by con-
sumers of the various sources that sell products online, so you can also choose
according to the reliability and service of the vendor. You can also check consumer
ratings of the online stores before you buy.

Steve’s Digicam
www.steves-digicams.com

This site has gained quite a reputation for being a really great resource for informa-
tion and reviews on anything digital in photography. It covers just about everything
you can imagine. This is a good one for your bookmark list.

Z Reiss & Associates, Inc.

800-943-2000
www.zreiss.com

Z Reiss, a film retailer, has an interesting new product called The Wallet. It is a
CompactFlash card with a full-color pocketsize screen for presenting digital images
right out of the camera or downloaded from your computer.

Software
All of the companies in this section make software that’s related to digital photogra-
phy, much of which serves a specific purpose. Several of these companies also
make Photoshop-compatible plug-ins to expand the capabilities of Photoshop and
Photoshop Elements.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 73

Adobe Systems, Inc.

345 Park Avenue
San Jose, CA 95110-2704
408-536-6000
www.adobe.com

Adobe is a leading manufacturer of design and graphics software and makes

Photoshop, the king of photo-editing software. The site is valuable as a resource
for breaking news, for downloading Adobe Acrobat Reader so that you can read
the many online documents and lessons given in that format, and for some of the
industry’s best professional graphics tips. Adobe manufactures the following soft-
ware related to digital photography: Photoshop 5.5, Photoshop Limited Edition,
PhotoDeluxe Business Edition and Home Edition, and Press Ready (which can turn
your inkjet printer into a proofing tool for prepress work). The Adobe site is also
an excellent resource for finding third-party Photoshop-compatible plug-ins. Many
valuable Photoshop tips and tricks also appear on the company’s site.

Altamira Group
818-556-6099
www.atlimira-group.com

Altamira Group is now part of Lizardtech. Genuine Fractals compression software

can create a virtually lossless compressed file much smaller than the original file. It
can also create files much larger than the original without losing the sharpness of
edges. This is an especially worthwhile product for making poster-size images from
publication-quality photos.

Arcsoft, Inc.
46601 Fremont Blvd.
Fremont, CA 94538U.S.A.
510-440-1270
www.arcsoft.com
[email protected]

Many of this company’s software applications are designed for image editing and
Web production. The products include PhotoStudio, PhotoPrinter Pro (multi-image
printouts), Photo Fantasy, Photo Montage, Panorama Maker, and Photo Impression.
74 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Aztek, Inc.
23 Spectrum Pointe #209
Lake Forest, CA 92630
800-GRAPH-55
800-472-7455
www.aztek.com

Aztek is an industry supplier and consultant of digital software and hardware sys-
tems. Aztek claims to have sold more than 300 digital major production facilities/
systems to a variety of Fortune 500 companies.

Corel Corporation
1600 Carling Avenue
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
www.corel.com
[email protected].

Corel is one of the leading software companies in the areas of imaging and graphics.
They have a very impressive lineup of applications to handle vector illustration,
layout, bitmap creation, image editing, painting, and animation. Some of the appli-
cations Corel offers include:

✦ Corel Draw10 and Corel Photo-Paint 10 for image editing and creation. These
are Corel’s most well-known products.
✦ Ventura 8 and WordPerfect 2002 for publishing.
✦ Bryce 5 for power 3-D landscape and animation application.
✦ KPT tools suite Photoshop-compatible plug-ins for special effects.

Procreate, a new division of Corel, is distributing its newly acquired Painter 7 (the
best known paint program) and Knockout, a powerful utility for image extraction.

Deneba Software
7400 SW 87 Avenue
Miami, FL 33173
www.deneba.com

Deneba manufactures Canvas 7, a program that does both vector illustration and
bitmapped image editing. The program has matured to a high level of sophistica-
tion. It is available for both Mac and Windows. The latest features in the program
enable it to run photographic plug-in effects on both vector illustration and photos,
and these can be combined into a single image.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 75

Font Shop
74 Tehama Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
888-FF-FONTS
888-333-6687
415-512-2093
www.fontshop.com

You can find thousands of different fonts on this site.

Graphx, Inc.
400 West Cummings Park
Woburn, MA 01801
781-932-0430
www.graphx.com

Graphx, Inc. designs computer software products to enhance the performance

of color printers and film recorders. RasterPlus is software designed to meet the
needs of a wide range of clients, such as service bureaus, corporate imaging
centers, desktop presenters, and the professional photo retouching industry.
Some of its other products are designed to ease production flow, including
WinSlide/MacFilm and PackagePlus.

Informal Software
2060 Walsh Avenue, Suite 192
Santa Clara, CA 95050
408-845-9490
www.informal.com

Informal makes Enotate software, which enables you to use a PDA as a direct PC
input/output device alongside the traditional keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Unlike
pen tablets, drawing/sketching software packages, or other pen-based computing
solutions, Informal Software’s unique “Informal Interface” enables PDAs to interact
naturally with a personal computer in a manner analogous to the comfortable “pen
and paper” model. Enotate enables traditional pen-and-paper tasks to be completed
digitally, including freehand sketching and real-time annotation of existing files,
such as digital photographs.
76 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

Internet Pictures Corporation

1009 Commerce Park Drive
Oak Ridge, TN 37830
888-425-0098
865-482-3000
www.ipix.com

Internet Pictures Corporation makes iPIX Panorama software, which works with a
fish-eye lens and makes the entire 360-degree panorama in two shots. For the tripod
rotator and software, the cost is $149.95; if you add the fish-eye lens, then the cost
is $349.95. Quality is only good enough for the Web. $69 + 6.99 for each processed
photo.

IXLA USA, Inc.

126 Bonifacio Place
Monterey, CA 93940
203-730-8805
www.ixla.com

IXLA manufactures easy-to-use imaging software specifically for digital cameras.

Some of the software packages it offers are: Web Easy, Explorer, Photo Easy, Media
Easy, and Preferred Web Hosting. Most are under $50. For a mere $29.95, IXLA also
makes very powerful cataloging software that lets you batch-process image files,
convert file formats, e-mail photos, and create picture Web pages.

Lemke Software
Erich-Heckel-Ring 8a
31228 Peine
Germany
[email protected]
www.lemkesoft.de/us.gcabout.html

Lemke produces a very powerful graphics file conversion tool that has just about
every graphics file format known. It’s called the Graphic Converter 4.0 Mac OS X,
and it costs $35. Graphic Converter is also a very competent image-editing program
and a good choice for Mac users who aren’t ready to invest in a more professional
program such as Photoshop.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 77

Mediafour Productions
1854 Fuller Road, Suite 1
West Des Moines, IA 50265-5526
515-225-7409
www.mediafour.com

Mediafour makes software for Windows that enables you to open and read the con-
tent on Macintosh formatted disks. The program works on virtually all types of disk
drives, including removable media. The software costs less than $60 and can be
downloaded online.

MGI Software
www.mgisoft.com

This company’s focus is on imaging software for the mass market and for e-commerce
Web sites. Most of its products are for Windows only. MGI recently purchased
LivePicture, Inc., and sells the program for $149.95 on clearance. It once sold for sev-
eral thousand dollars. If you’re into compositing images for high-end use, this is the
product to have. However, the company seems to have no plans to continue the
program’s publication into newer versions. Most of MGI’s applications are priced at
under $100 and are intended for a novice audience — though some have quite power-
ful features. Products include Video Wave video editing, PhotoSuite image editing
and Internet optimization, Digital Makeover Magic for checking out how you’d look
in different hairstyles and clothing, Live Picture PhotoVista for 360-degree image
panoramas, and Looney Tunes Photo Fun for helping kids to build party favors,
greeting cards, and so forth.

Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-6399
425-882-8080
www.microsoft.com

Now here’s a company that needs little introduction. It may surprise you, however,
to discover that it publishes two image-editing programs that are especially useful
for “quick and dirty” manipulations in making digital photographs look profes-
sional: PhotoDraw 2000 and Picture It! 2000. PhotoDraw 2000 is now in version 2.0
and features tools for optimizing Web graphics and for creating animated GIFs,
78 Digital Photography Bible, 2nd Edition

image maps, and rollover events. Image editing includes such quick fixes as dust
and scratch removal, one-click color balancing, and over 20,000 clip-art stock
images. The program also includes templates for designing various types of docu-
ments. In addition to bitmap image editing, you can incorporate vector drawings
(there’s a healthy set of drawing tools) and do some natural media painting. Picture
It! is aimed at beginning and occasional users of digital cameras and is similar in
functionality to Adobe PhotoDeluxe or other under-$100 digital camera editing soft-
ware. Functions in this program also make it especially attractive to a wider range
of users, including professionals. One of these is the ability to apply certain manip-
ulations to make corrections to multiple images at the same time: crop, rotate, cor-
rect brightness, contrast, and tint. The program also includes image thumbnail
cataloging. Picture It! sells for under $55.

PanaVue
616 boul. Rene-Levesque Quest
Quebec G1S 1S8
Canada
+418-688-4720
www.panavue.com

PanaVue offers software for the digital stitching or assembling of two or more
images into a panorama. Its software is for Windows only.

Right Hemisphere
2740 West Magnolia Blvd, Suite 305
Burbank, CA 91505
877-309-3204
www.us.righthemisphere.com
[email protected]

Right Hemisphere sells a Photoshop plug-in called Deep Paint ($249.00), which pro-
vides very advanced paint capabilities similar to Corel Painter. It is definitely worth
a look to see what this power program can do. Right Hemisphere also makes a num-
ber of other products that are aimed at 3-D modeling and rendering.

SeeAllAround.com
www.seeallaround.comservices.htm

This Web site offers a 360-degree virtual tour photography for the Web as well as
a service that enables people with digital cameras to create their own affordable
panoramas. The site is featuring a software product called Stitchpress. Check out
the demos and galleries.
 Bonus Chapter 2 ✦ Hardware and Software Resources 79

Ulead Software
Ulead Systems
20000 Mariner Ave
Suite #200
Torrance, CA 90503
310-896-6388
Fax: 310-896-6389
www.ulead.com
www.ulead.comlearning/photography.htm

Ulead is a leading software developer for digital imaging. It makes an impressive

suite of applications that function as development, editing, and utility tools. You
will also find a collection of informative articles that will help you understand how
digital photography works and make you become a better digital photographer.

Vivid Details
8228 Sulphur Mtn. Rd.
Ojai, CA 93023
805-646-0217
[email protected]
www.vividdetails.com

Test Strip 3.0 is a Photoshop plug-in for producing print tests.

VR Toolbox
P.O. Box 111419
Pittsburgh, PA 15238
877-878-6657
412-767-4947
www.vrtoolbox.com

VR Worx is cross-platform (Mac and Windows) QuickTime VR software that will do

object, scene, and panoramic stitching. Programs for objects, scenes, and panora-
mas are available individually as well, or you can buy the whole thing for $299, a
savings of about $90. VR Worx works as a Photoshop plug-in. You can download a
free demo version from the company’s site. VR Worx differs from Apple’s software
in that it has more features and is cross-platform.

✦ ✦ ✦
549510 cover 8/19/02 2:26 PM Page 1

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