Proud Photography Blog

The Neutral Density filter is still one of the most useful pieces of equipment for the landscape photographer, regardless of whether they shoot in film or digital. The ND filter, or ND Grad filter helps retain detail in the sky, holding back and blocking out the light so that the camera works harder at picking out the detail.

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Even the best photographs need to be edited sometimes.  At some point you will probably need to crop and/or straighten your images in Photoshop.  Cropping your images is great if you want to cut out distractions in the background or keep the emphasis on one small area of the photograph.  Beware of over cropping though – you can lose a lot of quality.  Straightening is useful if you have an image which is crooked – this is more obvious in photographs of things like landscapes and horizons (a big no no!).  Learning how to use crop and straighten effectively will mean you can salvage your shots.

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Every time you use Adobe Photoshop you are using a workspace.  This refers to the screen you see when you have opened the program and are about to start work.  It includes the menu bar, the tool bar, the tool box, the document window, and the palettes.  Imagine it as your virtual desk – therefore your ‘workspace’.

The first time you use Photoshop; all the settings will be a default.  You can make life easier in the long run by tailoring and customizing your workspace so that things automatically run the way you like it.  Every person that uses Photoshop has different needs; a photographer, an artist, a graphic designer and a web designer may use completely different tools.  Therefore your need to think about what functions you use the most and how to streamline the entire process to save you effort and time.
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When you first start using Photoshop, its fun to see how the affects can be applied to a whole image.  Once you start working in more detail you may need to be able to edit your photograph intricately.  One of the most useful things you can do in Photoshop is edit specific areas as you please. To do this, we need to know what tools to use to choose a certain area, and how to make sure it is only this selection that is affected.

There are three tools that are useful for making selections.  These are marquee, Lasso and Magic Wand.
When you open Photoshop, open the toolbox.  The Marquee tool looks like a box made up of small lines, ‘running ants’.  When you investigate further and click on the Marquee tool, you will see that there are different shapes available – rectangular and elliptical.  Select either one and place your mouse over your image and the area you want to highlight.  Hold down the shift key and drag the tool over the area.  Zoom in closer if you need to see it clearly. Read the rest of this entry »

In the last post we talked about the various functions that are important when it comes to adjusting color in Photoshop. Now, let’s look at various techniques that you can use when changing colors in your photographs. Let’s look at removing a color cast occurs when there is too much of a certain color apparent. This can be because of the situation at the time of shooting, or it can be the camera or the other variables. Common color casts are green and red.

To correct this go to IMAGE>ADJUSTMENTS>MATCH COLOR. Tick the neutralize box in image options and this will remove any over shadowing color casts. Alternatively you can go to IMAGE>ADJUSTMENTS>AUTO COLOR – this is not necessarily the most accurate way to correct a color cast but it is quick and it will remove any obvious abundance of one particular color.

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Every photographer will eventually encounter a problem with color casts. It could be that you’ve noticed your latest photographer is overly red, green or blue. It could be a subtle color casts – not obvious but nevertheless something doesn’t quite seem right. This is where color adjustment comes in. Color correcting or adjustment can be done to correct odd color casts or for adding effects. Don’t forget that when you are taking the photograph on a digital camera, you can adjust the white balance to deal with different environments. Nevertheless, problems will occur, so here is how to deal with color in Photoshop.

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When using Photoshop or any kind of digital imaging software, it pays to know a little about the background of imaging.  Two of main types of images are Bitmap and Vector.  You may have heard of these two kind of images before but not understand the difference; in fact they are very different and have different uses.
Photoshop deals with bitmap images, which includes all types of photographs.  Therefore GIF, TIF, PSD, JPEF, PNG and more are all Bitmap images.  Bitmap images are made up of pixels in a grid and the quality of them will vary depending on the resolution and quality of the file.

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If you own or use Adobe Photoshop, then you may have come across a piece of software called Adobe Bridge.  This program is designed to help you gain control of all your files and get them organized.  Sooner or later, most photographers are inundated with many folders full of images and Adobe Bridge, as file browsing software, can keep things streamlined.
Adobe Bridge comes along with CS3 or CS4 as a free piece of software.  It can be used independently or in conjunction with Photoshop.  When you open up the program, you will have a number of options on the left hand side of the screen.  Here, you can browse all of your images by choosing the location where they are saved.  Therefore, Bridge allows you to view images from multiple locations without the hassle of having to find all of your folders and having them open at the same time.  Don’t forget – the more folders you have open, the slower your computer will run.
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It’s important to know what shadows, midtones and highlights are in photographic terms when it comes to using Photoshop.  These three elements are present in every photograph, color or black and white, so it’s important to understand how to improve and adjust these settings.   Even if it sounds daunting, read on to find out more about these factors.

Highlights are the lightest areas of an image, therefore the parts that have the most light hitting it.  If something has too many highlights, we may say that it is overexposed and the area is lacking in detail.   Midtones show the middle tones of an image – the colours that are in-between.  For example, if we had a black and white image, the midtone would be grey – somewhere between the two.  You want a good amount of midtone in a balanced image but at the same time, you don’t want everything to be ‘grey’ or flat.  Shadows are the darkest areas of a photograph.  A shadow is also devoid of color; it could be the black in a photograph or just the areas that carry little light.  An image with too many shadows may be underexposed, and will not show much detail, although this can normally be adjusted.

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