This shot is of The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, taken from the Kennedy Center in the late afternoon. If you slide all the way to the left, you’ll see the RAW file that the camera captured. To use it in the post, I had to save it as a JPEG in Lightroom, without processing. If you slide all the way to the right, you’ll see the JPEG that the camera created. You’ll notice that it is sharper and there is more contrast. However, the details in the darker parts of the image are too dark to appreciate. It’s a fine snapshot, but not a great image, in my opinion.
In parts one and two of this series, I’ve discussed photoshopping and compositing. Most photos don’t involve either of these treatments. It’s time to talk about the most important part of finishing a photo: processing.
All digital photos are processed. I bet that got your attention! Many people will argue that their photo is art because it is SOOC (straight-out-of-camera) and there is no processing involved. What they don’t realize is that those SOOC photos are processed by the camera. Let me explain… Read more →
If you follow photography on the web, you’ll find stories about photoshopping on a regular basis. Is it the same as processing, editing, or compositing? Or is there a difference? The answer, in a word, is yes… They are different. But, it’s not that simple!
This is the first of a four-part series about this complicated question.
Let’s start with the elephant in the room: photoshopping. According to Merriam-Webster, to photoshop is “to alter (a digital image) with Photoshop software or other image-editing software especially in a way that distorts reality (as for deliberately deceptive purposes)”. The important part to note is the intent to deceive. (By the way, the elephant in the photo is not photoshopped. He really was grazing in the wild in Sabi Sabi, South Africa. I don’t photoshop my photos.)
Examples of photoshopped images abound. For years, models have been photoshopped to appear extraordinarily thin. Read more →
The perigee super moon shown rising above the Dreampalace building in Seoul, South Korea on May 5th, 2012. Click to see a larger version.
This weekend of December 2-3, 2017, the moon will be full. Best of all, it’s a perigee or super moon, which means that it will appear larger in the sky. On top of that, in the northern hemisphere, it’s winter, so humidity levels may be lower in the air. All in all, it’s a great time to go out and practice shooting the moon!
If you’ve ever tried this before, only to come home with photos of a glowing white orb in the sky, this time will be different. Here are some hints for getting the detailed shot of the moon that you wish you’d taken before.
Click HERE to see a larger version of the finished photo.
There are some important photography software updates to report this week. And, since I like to turn things inside out, I’ll pass along some advice on how to rename your Lightroom catalog, so that the name will make sense to you after you do your updating!
This week, Adobe announced changes to some of their products. The oddest change is that they have renamed our good old Lightroom CC or Lightroom CC 2015 or however you remember it… to Lightroom Classic CC. Just to confuse you even more, they have also renamed Lightroom Mobile, the version of LR that used to work only on your smart phone or tablet. It’s now Lightroom CC, and it also works on your computer.
You’ll find the new changes when you update your apps.
If you’re still using Lightroom 6, nothing has changed for you. That’s less confusing, but it does say that they are pretty much finished supporting that software. It’s probably time to update to the subscription-based Creative Cloud version of Lightroom. 😩
Here’s how I’m proceeding with these developments. Read more →
In my last blog post, 7 Quick Tips for Keeping Your Camera Safe, I included a photo of some of my friends on a golf outing (tip #5). Unfortunately, my lens had condensation on it, so my friends looked like they were standing in a fog. It was definitely not a usable photo! I promised to show a quick solution that could save it.
Here are the two versions. The new one is definitely usable, as a reminder of an enjoyable day spent together.
Amazingly, the solution couldn’t be easier! In Lightroom CC, I simply bumped up the Dehaze filter (found in the Effects Panel in the Develop Module) to 100%. Otherwise, the processing is exactly the same!
Incheon Airport
My photos are out of order on my computer, because I forgot to change the date and time on my camera. (See last week’s post, Quick Camera Tip for Summer Travel, for the way to change it before your next trip.) I know better. But, on a recent trip, I was in three different time zones in one week. It was the third one that got me! Happily, there are ways to fix this. Here’s how to do it in iPhoto and Lightroom 4.
In iPhoto, select the photo you want to change. You can also select multiple photos, to save time. In the Photos menu, choose Adjust Date and Time. You can use your tab key to move to the number you want to change. The nice thing about this method is that iPhoto shows you the date and time originally captured by your camera. Often, it’s just a matter of changing the hour. Sometimes, you will also have to change the date. Read more →
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