Thumbnail

My Essential Touch-up Toolbox: Photo Filters

2009-08-24T13:22:00Z

I've always felt that my Nikon SLR's primary drawback had to do with white balance. I just don't think the camera is that good at setting white balance automatically. It imposes blue tones outdoors, and orange tones indoors. While I realize that outdoor light does tend toward blueness, and incandescent indoor lighting does tend toward warm yellows and oranges, the result I see in my photos is just too extreme. And even when I do set the camera's White Balance controls to a more specific setting -- Sunlight, or Cloudy, or Incandescent -- the results are inconsistent.

So that's when I turn to Photoshop's Photo Filters.

Before I apply any filters, I try to make sure my exposure is exactly where I want it. (If I need to tweak it, I can use the "Levels" control.) Then, I go ahead and select Image > Adjustments > Photo Filter. (You'd think the Photo Filters would live in the Filters menu, but nope!)

I can preview the effects of the different warming and cooling filters, and also adjust their intensity by adjusting the Density slider.

That's what I did with this photo. (Yep, the toothy toddler is back!) Although this shot wasn't incredibly blue, it turned out more blue-looking than had been the case when I was shooting. I wanted to add just a touch of warmth back in, to better convey the sunniness of the moment.

I ended up applying Warming Filter 81 with the default Density setting of 25%. That warming filter is a bit less intense than some other ones, with a hair more green to it. It gave me the most accurate result.

This example was pretty minor, but it should give you the idea of how easy it is to make small-but-important changes with the photo filters. I'm finding them pretty helpful!

My Essential Touch-Up Toolbox: Healing

2009-08-18T13:20:00Z

As I've said before, I am a Photoshop novice. (I work surrounded by skilled designers who would no doubt agree, as they spend their day doing crazy smart things with layers and Photoshop plug-ins.)

But I mainly use Photoshop to touch up digital photos. And as a result, there is only a handful of features I tend to use over and over again. So I'm going to cover the ones I can't do without.

Let's start with the Spot Healing Brush.

The Healing Brush in its most basic form lets you select an area of the picture to correct. I like to use it for lines or streaks that need remedying.

But what I use even more is the Spot Healing Brush. That's because I take a lot of pictures of kids. And photographs of kids tend to expose things you just didn't notice when you were taking the picture, like a flake of oatmeal dangling from an earlobe, or a cookie crumb juuust inside the right nostril. These inevitably show up only on your very favorite shot, and you only spot them hours after shooting.

Bring out the Spot Healing Brush! Like the regular Healing Brush, it's designed to intelligently compare surrounding pixels with the selected area, and fill in what it thinks should be there. But it's specially designed to handle things that occur as small spots.

Here's an example of an upside-down toddler with a lingering breakfast crumb on her cheek, circled in red.

I went ahead and made the Spot Healing Brush large enough for the crumb and a respectable border of skin around it. I hovered over the crumb, clicked once, and voila!

Generally it works pretty well. Sometimes, if the spot or blemish you're working on is really close to another mark or shadow, the Spot Healing tool will try to incorporate that mark into the change. I usually cope with that by making my brush size as small as possible while still able to handle the size of the mark I'm trying to remove.

I'd love suggestions on other tools that are either a mystery to you, or that you depend on heavily.

The Need for Speed

2009-05-07T18:19:00Z

I was involved in shooting a Crutchfield video today. We were checking out the Samsung BD-P1600 and Samsung BD-P3600 Blu-ray players. (I was pretty impressed by both of them, I have to say, and am angling to take one home and give it a more extended try.) But we got into a discussion about start-up speeds and I thought folks might find the results interesting.

You see, first-, second- and even third-generation disc players often have a well-deserved reputation for slow start-ups. That is, when the tray slides out, receives your disc, and slides back in, it's not uncommon for early versions of a player to take a long time to spin the disc up and play it. This was true with CD players, true with DVD players, and is now true of Blu-ray players.

To be fair, when I say a long time, I'm not talking about very long at all. It's less time than it takes to start up most computers. But if you're used to popping a disc into your DVD player and enjoying those lovely FBI warnings within a few seconds, you'll certainly notice the lag when it takes two, three, four times as long with a Blu-ray player.

And that's why it's not unusual for new players to generate a certain amount of buzz around speedy start-up times.

The Samsungs have been generating this kind of buzz, so we took advantage of the fact that they were both open and set up to try out their start-up times. At first, it seemed to us that they were pretty comparable. We tried a Blu-ray Disc (Crash, 2004) in the BD-P1600 first, then switched it over to the BD-P3600, and got a respectably fast start-up out of each. Then it occurred to us to race them against each other. The BD-P3600 appeared to win that test with flying colors; it began to play while the '1600 still read "LOAD" and it was several seconds before the '1600 caught up.

But then we realized that the deck wasn't evenly stacked; they weren't loading the same disc. So we actually found two copies of the same disc, put them in, got the trays to close at about the same second, and ... they tied.

From this we concluded that the two machines have the same, or similar, drives, and they do seem to be reasonably fast. We also concluded that speed may be affected almost as much by the way the disc is designed, and the burdens it imposes on the player when it's being read, as by the player's drive itself. The bottom line? If your player seems unusually slow to load one day, take advantage of that time to stretch and relax. And remember to blame the disc.

Carnival

2009-04-28T12:34:00Z

Having so recently practiced slow shutter shooting, I just couldn't resist when the carnival came to town. No, I did NOT run away with the carnival. Instead, I spent an interesting hour hanging around after dark taking pictures.

The first was taken at f/14 with a shutter speed of 30 seconds and sensitivity set to 100 ISO. I love the deep blue of the sky and the motion of the lefthand ride compared to the stillness of the righthand ride.

The second shot was taken a little later, with an aperture of f/10 and a shutter speed of only 8 seconds (same ISO). I thought it was cool how many ghostly fairgoers turned up, because of the movement of the crowd past me. Doesn't it make you want funnel cake and a corn dog?

While I was taking these pictures, I was reminded of something. When I snapped shots, and checked them out afterward on my LCD viewscreen, I couldn't always tell if they were in focus. I would have been better able to tell with a bigger, more high-res LCD viewscreen. My D80's LCD viewscreen is quite good — noticeably better than my D70's was — but not as big and crisp as the one on that Nikon D700 I tried out. If you have the money to spare in your budget, consider a larger viewscreen a worthwhile step-up.

Why All Video Is Not Equal

2009-04-21T17:20:00Z

"When it comes down to it, video is video, right? I don't need to spend extra to get the exact same thing."

This topic comes up again and again, particularly when you're talking to folks who are (understandably) trying to save a buck. I first encountered it way back when my husband and I invested in a home theater projector. "Why?" people asked us. "Why spend extra just because it says it's for home theater? It does the same thing as my office projector!"

More recently, I've encountered a similar issue with folks who want to use their laptop as their primary source of video content. "It's all the same," they tell me. "Why should I spend extra to have yet another little box that can spin a disc around?"

The answer is that, though all of these pieces of equipment can do the same general things as each other, the ones optimized for watching video have certain hardware and software that makes them do a much better job.

Let's take the projector as an example. My home theater projector had a cousin, a very similar model by the same manufacturer that cost a good deal less. However, the reason it cost less was because it couldn't handle certain kinds of home theater connections (it relied on traditional PC monitor connections), it couldn't do widescreen viewing, it had a more limited contrast ratio, and it wasn't as responsive as my projector when it came to motion. Why would it be? It was designed to handle nothing more difficult than the occasional PowerPoint animation, not taxing sports action or video game motion.

The home theater version, on the other hand, had all that good stuff, meaning it was easier to connect, easier to see in varied lighting, and just plain looked better. (A friend actually had the lesser version and noted the difference in picture quality as well; in fact, he used much stronger terms than this, but I'm trying to be objective.)

The same kind of thing comes into play with a computer. The computer's graphics capability has a lot to do with the kind of picture quality you can count on. Many computers have only a basic graphics chip, because manufacturers know that most computers are only used to read emails and websites or let the user view and edit documents and databases.

Some computers, however, have a high-end video card. The result is crisper, more fluid video, whether it's the stuff you see on YouTube, video games, DVDs you pop in the drive, etc. (Incidentally, these kinds of improvements in technology are also why TVs, Blu-ray players, DVD players, and the like sometimes cost more than apparently similar models; they have much better processors in them, and those processors translate to a smoother, more detailed, more watchable picture.)

So what should you plan on doing? Just consider quality when you make investments or decide which piece of gear to use for what. If you're customizing a computer and planning to hook it up to your new HDTV so you can watch web videos, it's probably worth it to spring for a top-notch graphics card. If you're comparing Blu-ray players, take processing into account when comparing models (if they don't mention their processors or digital-to-analog converters at all, you can probably assume there's nothing too fancy about them).

That's why, when it comes to watching high-def videos from Hulu, my husband and I will do better using a Mac Mini with an updated NVIDIA graphics card than our elderly laptop. And when it comes to discs, well, that's what our disc player was designed to do — and it still does the best job in the house.

Better Effort

2009-04-01T14:07:00Z

Just following up on my last post, where I tried and failed to show a particular slow shutter technique. I got much closer with this later shot.

I think I'm getting there.

One More Stab at Slow Shutter

2009-04-01T12:27:00Z

I posted the results of three different slow shutter techniques previously (slow shutter in the dark, slow shutter to capture crowd motion, and slow shutter with a bright light). More recently, I tried a different approach: one that requires physical coordination and a generous helping of luck. (I suppose all photography involves some luck, actually.) The technique I tried here involves panning to follow a moving subject while using a slower shutter speed, so the subject is frozen but the background is blurred.

I have tried and tried to reproduce the really wonderful effects I have seen in other photographs, with limited success. I'd heard that this approach takes some practice, and boy oh boy is that right.

Below is the closest I've come to an effective shot.

I wasn't shooting with a tripod (Strike 1) and was shooting in bright daylight, meaning I couldn't slow down the shutter too much (Strike 2). And I wasn't using a neutral color filter to protect my lens and incidentally, knock my exposure down a stop or two (Strike 3, you're outta here!). Yet this photo was noticeably more effective than my other attempts. So what the heck, I'm going to post it. Maybe one day I'll come back and post a stupendous example of this technique. Wish me luck!

Slow Down, Part 3

2009-03-16T15:26:00Z

I've already looked at using slow shutter in the dark, and slow shutter to capture crowd motion. Last night, I took a stab at using bright light for effect.

The plan was to use a flame to create a glowing image, while the subject remained still. I had seen photos like this, where people used lighters or sparklers to make shapes. The light outside was quite dim, though not pitch black, and seemed about right. So I grabbed my D80, my D80 remote, and my tripod, and began to get set up.

First of all, I needed a source for the bright flame. I didn't have any sparklers lying about, but I did find an elderly lighter in with the matches.

Next, I decided it would be easiest to be my own subject, and got the camera focused on the spot where I would be sitting. Then I set the aperture to f/1.8 and the shutter speed to a quite long 13 seconds. I kept ISO (sensitivity) on 100.

In trying to capture the shot, I quickly realized two things. First of all, it's pretty hard to sit still and smile for 13 seconds, especially when waving a lighter around. Second, it's especially hard to sit still and smile and wave a lighter around and not set fire to your own hair. I needed some assistance.

My husband came outside and kindly acted as photographer's assistant. I hit the shutter release on the remote, and sometime during that 13 seconds, he leaned into the shot and waved the lit lighter in a circle around me.

Cool, huh? I can see that with a less reluctant lighter and more time with my trusty assistant, some pretty neat effects could be achieved. What surprised him afterward was that you really can't see any traces of him at all. (What surprised me was that I hadn't remembered to brush my hair after the preschooler played with it. Whoops.)

Slow Down, Part 2

2009-03-12T14:16:00Z

As I wrote before, I've started experimenting with slow shutter speeds and the effects they can produce. I always looked on these kinds of shots as beyond me, but it's exciting to realize that they are very very easy to achieve if you're planning them.

My first experiment involved nighttime slow-shutter shooting. Today, I tried a different approach. I took advantage of warm, sunny weather and crowds of sun-starved people outside a local gelato place to show what happens when you have both moving and stationary subjects.I wanted my main subject to be still and defined, and I wanted the motion of the crowds to be captured as streaming color.

The main issue I faced was the bright light. To get a shot that really captured the motion of the crowds, and the little girl sitting on the window sill, I needed the shutter to stay open for a reasonably long time, such as a quarter of a second. But that meant the camera's sensor might absorb too much light, resulting in an overexposed shot. I tried at a few faster shutter speeds, to avoid this problem, but I couldn't get that motion effect I was seeking.

In the end, I set shutter speed at 1/4, and evaded overexposure by stopping the aperture down to f/22, the smallest aperture on my lens. Then I lowered the sensitivity settings to ISO 100. (Back in film camera days, this was the kind of film sensitivity I always ended up trying to use indoors, with very poor, dim results.) These changes made my camera much less receptive to light, and meant I finally succeeded in getting the shots I was after. Below is my favorite — you can see the little girl clearly, even though about eight other people were walking across the frame while the camera was making the image.

The shot was a little overexposed, despite my precautions, and I went into Photoshop afterward and adjusted the Levels setting for the image. (I actually adjusted Levels separately for the little girl versus the rest of the image, because a person wearing white crossed in front of her during the camera's capture of the scene, making her look a bit more washed out.)

This is a good example of what you can do with no tripod and no willing models. Not bad, huh? But with more ability to set up your shot, and a subject who isn't a wiggly toddler :-), you can probably get a shot with much more impressive contrast between motion and stillness.

Slow Down, Part 1

2009-03-10T14:29:00Z

In my never-ending (although frequently on hold) quest to be a better, more knowledgeable photographer, I decided to take a look at what could be done with slow shutter speeds. Technically, I was aware that by slowing your shutter speed waaaaaay down and opening the aperture waaaaay up you could take pictures at night, with some very curious effects. The more extreme effects involve things like capturing the apparent motion of the stars, as the Earth wheels beneath them.

But realistically, I had never taken advantage of this capability. So I started smaller, with my front porch railing, a rather cloudy night, and a rubber giraffe. (The darn thing kept blowing off the railing, too. And it was about twenty degrees out. Brrrr.)

I used a tripod to keep the camera (the Nikon D700) steady for this shot, and clicked my 50mm f/1.8 lens onto the mount. Then I just set the shutter speed to "30"" which is equal to 30 seconds. At that setting, it stayed open for — you guessed it — thirty seconds. The ISO was at only 800 (I didn't want to use a lot of digital techniques to capture the shot, so I kept it low, by the standards of the D700). The aperture was at f/5.6; I tried having it wider open, on previous shots, and actually ended up with too much light hitting the sensor, so the resulting shots were overexposed. It's important to note that there was no additional light in the shot — no porch light, no flashlight. In fact, it was so dark outside that I couldn't see what I was doing at all, and kept having to flip on a porch light, gingerly lie down on the chilly cement to get the focus set and so forth, and then flip the light off again, and carefully, moving by touch alone, push the shutter button without shaking the camera. And of course, I had to do it before the giraffe blew off the railing (again)!

The results are not going to win a prize for breathtaking beauty, but they do give you a sense of what can be achieved with a slow shutter speed in extreme darkness. I am going to try a more demanding subject next, or else a slightly different technique. Stay tuned!

Feeling Centered

2009-03-06T15:24:00Z

When you work in an industry that's part of the retail world, you frequently feel that tug-of-war between prudent family finance, and wanting the latest cool thing that your company makes or sells. So, you know, clothing designers always have the coolest clothes, and Rolls-Royce salespeople are presumably always angling for the latest Phantom Drophead Coupe, and me, well, I occasionally get my fancy caught by some really neat gadget, or great-sounding speakers, or good-looking TV.

But working at Crutchfield, I didn't expect to fall in love with, and subsequently purchase, a piece of furniture. That's what happened, though. I helped organize a video on BDI's Novia line of furniture, and by the time we wrapped up the shoot, I had decided that I simply had to buy the cherry BDI Novia 8428.

Part of the reason was because my home components were spilling out of our current stand. Part was because my TV was overhanging the edges of the stand (it looked as appropriate balanced up there as I look on my four-year-old's bicycle). And part of it was because the 8428 was solidly made and thoughtfully designed and a great match for my existing living room furniture. (An eerily great match, actually. As if it was meant to be.)

But the main reason was because getting the 8428 meant that I would be able to resume using my center channel speaker, which hadn't fit on top of or below my big-screen TV, and which had been left out of my system for a year as a result.

Without getting into the details (I could accidentally turn this blog entry into an ad for my new TV stand, but that's not my intention) I'll explain that the 8428 has this upper compartment designed for center channel speakers, with speaker-grille-type cloth on the front and everything. So I no longer needed to find a flat surface deep enough to hold both my TV's base and my center channel; I could just tuck the center out of the way while still hearing it clearly. Problem solved.

The real question, though, was whether the sound was going to be meaningfully different. You see, if you're not using a stand-alone center channel, there are things you can do to make up for that, and we had done them. We had told our home theater receiver what speakers we did have, and it had gone ahead and tried to make up the difference by sharing dialogue between our front left and right speakers and generally trying to fill out that center soundstage. I'll give my trusty Onkyo receiver an A for effort, but ....

Wow. Getting the center plugged back in was a revelation of what we've been missing. I can't believe we put up with so-so sound for so long, when we had the ability to have stupendous sound. Movies have amazing presence now, I can actually hear dialogue, and the soundtrack info in the front left and right speakers never obscures the sound of on-screen actions. It's as if we bought a new home theater system.

I think the moral of the story is this: Set up your home theater system the way it's supposed to be set up, and you'll get the real impact that everyone's always talking about. (If it's been years since you've had your home theater speakers set up just right, by the way, take a peek at Tara and Malcolm's video on home theater speaker placement. It's a good summary of the basics, plus it uses transparencies! Just like high school!)

Nikon's D700, or Why I've Been Too Busy Taking Pictures to Write

2009-02-23T13:15:00Z

My guilty confession: I haven't posted a new entry in some time, mainly because I've been too busy using the Nikon D700 SLR. I've been planning to review it, but it's been hard to put down the camera and pick up the virtual pen.

There are a lot of people out there writing excellent and detailed reviews of this powerhouse of a camera, and I don't think I can add a ton to that approach. But what I can talk about is what it felt like to use the D700.

You see, like many non-professional digital SLR users today, I use my camera mainly to take pictures of my kids, with the occasional friend, family member, landscape or wildlife shot thrown in. And if you're taking pictures of kids, only two things really matter. One, it needs to be easy to grab your camera and take a picture. And two, it needs to be easy to take a great picture — because some moments you only get one chance at.

So I'm only going to rate the D700 on how it fared with these two factors, as those are the real-world considerations many camera users will be considering.

First, though, let me give the shortest possible summary of the D700. It's Nikon's top consumer-oriented digital SLR (they actually describe it as having "professional image quality" and it's packed with features, though it lacks some of the goodies on the premier D3X). Unlike its cousins, the D80, D90, and D300, the D700 camera has a full-frame sensor. This should, technically, provide improved images compared to those from a smaller sensor, while eliminating that crop factor equation so many digital SLR users do in their heads when switching out lenses. It's less oriented toward automatic shooting than models like the D80 and D90. It's bigger and heavier than those models. And in pricing terms, it's naturally going to be more expensive than its less complex relatives.

So, how did the D700 stack up?

Ease of use, or what I call "grabbability" — To be honest, this is not the D700's strong suit. That's because the D700 has massive photographic capabilities, and a side effect is that it has had to cram multiple features into a relatively small space. So you have to learn not just what those features are, but how to access them in a hurry. And stopping to read the in-depth manual isn't really compatible with grabbing it to snap a shot of the baby and the dog both trying to eat the same cookie.

Because I had prior experience with my Nikon D80, and other digital SLRs, I didn't suffer too much from the relatively steep learning curve. In fact, within a few days, I found it simple to do the things I do most often. But I think it would be tough, for example, to make the transition from a point-and-shoot model to this camera.

Another factor affecting grabbability is mass. The larger size of SLRs is always a consideration when you're upgrading from a pocket model. But at nearly 2 pounds without a lens or a battery, the D700 is larger and heavier than many SLRs, too.

However, the D700 did so well when it came to taking beautiful photographs that I think many people are not going to worry about whether it's a good grab-and-go camera.

Picture quality — The D700 did a great job in this regard, and I chalk that up to three main things. First, there's the larger sensor. Second, there's the improved ISO, or sensitivity, options. And third, there's what I call "magic": the sophisticated processing that goes on inside the camera and can make or break your photos.

A larger sensor, as I mentioned, eliminates the problem of crop factor. But it also means that the individual photosites on the chip — the little receptors that absorb light and each equate to a single pixel — are larger than the photosites on a similar-megapixel chip that is physically smaller. When the sensor can pick up more light, that means it can absorb and reproduce more information about any image it captures. And the result is better detail and more dynamic range. I was immediately surprised by the effects of shooting in a familiar room, under familiar lighting. It gave my photos more dimensionality in low-light indoor shots, and a luminous quality in sunlight. And when I zoomed in, there was a noticeable improvement in shadow detail, in highlights, etc., that could not be attributed merely to a difference in megapixels.

Better sensitivity gave me more options for shooting without a flash. I'm not great at shooting with a flash, so that was a big plus for me. There are plenty of times when I was willing to get a slightly grainier photo (grain is a common side effect of shooting with a high ISO) in order to be able to capture my four-year-old superhero "flying" off the ottoman. If I'd had to go get an add-on flash and set it up, that's a shot I would have just plain missed. And the D700 handles high ISO shooting so well that you don't get very noticeable grain until you get into some pretty high ISO numbers.

Last of all, the magic. I don't know exactly what the processing is doing, from a technical point of view. I do know that shooting in JPEG mode, I got great-looking pictures. I particularly noticed a better handling of auto white balance than I get with my older D80. So there's something good going on there.

Bottom line? If you're not put off by a bit of physical heft, and you're willing to learn your way around a sophisticated device, you are likely to be impressed by — even enamored of — the Nikon D700. I am.

Photoshop Help for Photos, Part 3

2008-12-24T14:45:00Z

A few days ago, I wrote about my difficulties getting a baby picture to look good. That photo started as a way to show my friend that my baby was enjoying her quilt, but it ended with an exploration of some Photoshop functions that are useful when it comes to rescuing a photo that you're not too impressed by.

So, I started by adjusting Levels, and went on to convert to black-and-white.

My last and trickiest step (I say tricky because this is a new world for someone who doesn't work with Photoshop regularly; I think for Photoshop experts this stuff is old hat) was to use something called the Magnetic Lasso tool.

The Magnetic Lasso tool helps you select an object or area within an image by detecting edges. You select it, then bring the pointer to the edge of what you're planning to select, and click once to set a start point. As you drag your mouse around the object, the tool guesses at the edges and selects them. You can adjust it if it gets it wrong, but if you're encircling an object with really clearly defined edges, it tends to do a good job.

So why did I want to use this tool? Well, I wanted to change the settings in part of the picture -- basically, I wanted to tone down the colors in the quilt. So I used the Magnetic Lasso tool to select the baby, then I went up to the Select menu and chose "Inverse." That way, Photoshop switched from selecting the baby to selecting everything else in the image. Then I reduced the Saturation (the intensity of color) of the quilt, until it looked like it had been washed several times and faded a bit. Suddenly, the photo of my daughter "popped" off the background a whole lot more!

Now, the Magnetic Lasso tool can be used to do more than adjust Saturation. Any of the things I've talked about (converting to black-and-white or setting Levels) can be applied to a selected portion of your photo, as can a whole lot of other adjustments and filters. It's also a way to select a portion of a picture that you might want to copy out of one photo and paste into another. Basically, it's a very helpful option for intelligent selection of specific objects or areas.

And the finished product? Well, it's still not my favorite photo, but I sure like it a lot better with these adjustments. And the whole experience was great practice for me (as well as a reminder to take my photos more carefully in the first place).

Photoshop Help for Photos, Part 2

2008-12-22T15:34:00Z

A day or two ago, I wrote about how I had taken a baby photo and lightened it using the "Levels" adjustment in Photoshop, in order to make it good enough to send in a thank-you note.

I noted that it still wasn't a photo that I liked well enough on its own. Part of that was simply that the brightly colored quilt made by my friend, though it was fantastic in real life, was too distracting a background for this photo. If my daughter had been wearing something equally bright, and had been in light that helped her pop out of the background a little better, it might have been different -- but as it was, the quilt's squares overpowered her.

Fortunately, I have two sneaky tricks for solving that kind of problem. One is just to convert the photo to a black-and-white image.

Converting to black and white is very helpful when you have a bright or distracting background that is drawing attention away from your subject. Both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements will let you do this, either by pulling the slider for Saturation all the way to the left (which strips all color out of the photo), or by using their black-and-white mode. In Elements, that option will turn a photo black-and-white, and give you a choice of some types of black-and-white style -- portrait, newspaper, urban landscape. Below, you can see how this photo looked in Portrait mode (top) and Landscape mode (bottom).

(In regular Photoshop, it simply converts the photo to black-and-white but offers a range of different sliders for lots of colors, so you can impart your own emphases or even tints.)

A word of warning, though. If your subject is not particularly distinct -- that is, if he, she, or it has the same basic tones as the background (picture a light brown dog against mid-gray tree trunks) then the subject may still not pop sufficiently, even converted to black-and-white. So even though I've found this solution useful in other cases, such as when my daughter was eating a toy giraffe, below,

I didn't like the results for the quilt photo.

In the end, I turned to my other sneaky trick. Check back tomorrow for the scoop.

Photoshop Help for Photos, Part 1

2008-12-19T14:57:00Z

This blog entry is a little tough for me to write, because I'm going to be using a photo that I think is below average to demonstrate a few things. Ouch, that hurts! But it's in a good cause. And it was other people's willingness to blog about their missteps that helped me learn how to take better photos, and how to use Photoshop to improve things. So here goes.

A few months back, my baby daughter was cavorting on a baby quilt that a family friend had made for her. I decided this was my perfect opportunity to get a photo of her to send to that family friend, so she could see that the quilt was being put to good use.

However, given the lighting in the room and the limitations of my photographic skills, none of my photos turned out quite the way I imagined them. Even shooting on full manual [note: originally, I wrote "auto" by accident], I didn't get very impressive shots. Here's a representative shot of what I'm talking about:

The baby's face is dark, the bright colors of the quilt (and of a red sofa outside the shot) are coloring her face and blue romper oddly -- it's just not what I was going for.

So my first stop in Photoshop was adjusting "Levels." When I adjust Levels, I take a look at a histogram view of the picture, and I drag the midpoint for the histogram to the left (if I want the picture more exposed than it is) or right (if I want it less exposed).

In this case, I wanted the picture a bit more exposed, so I dragged the slider to the left, until the measurement read 1.20 instead of 1.00, and ended up with a brighter photo. That gave me something I was comfy sending to the family friend, along with a very grateful note.

But it still wasn't a photo that, on its own, was worthy of display in a picture frame. Check back for the next step in salvaging a photo.