This black swallowtail was quite cooperative. He stayed in one area wile several people took turns photographing it. Like many butterflies this one was damaged—missing a portion of its right forewing. (The lower part of the forewing, where it comes over the hindwing. I was able to “repair” the damage in Photoshop. I copied the same area from the other side to a new layer and then rotated and transformed it until the veins and shape aligned. I then used a mask, painting with a large soft brush to blend the fixed area with what was already there.
Let’s just cut the chase–There’s no foolproof way to prevent people from taking your online images. So if you are the paranoid type, just don’t put you images on-line. Once a user of your web site down loads one of your web pages, there is a copy of all your content, including your images, in internet cache on that users computer. Any above average computer geek can get at them. And then there is Print Screen and W7’s Snipping Tool. 
Ok, enough of the doom and gloom. There are some things that you can do to keep everyone, except someone who really wants to steal you image, from doing so. And there are some things you can do to make it easier to find and prosecute offenders.
Read the rest of this entry »
I’m often asked about when is it better to use ACR or Photoshop to make edits to images. Since both can do similar things when is it better to use one or the other. (And of course the same question question applies to ACR’s twin, Lightroom’s Develop Module. What should be done in Develop and what should be left for Photoshop?) Read the rest of this entry »
Alternative Presentations
Here is another composition from my short trip to Ricketts Glen State Park. (The other composition.) And I want to take the opportunity to say a little about the possibility of showing more than one interpretation of a digital shot (capture).
A while back I did a post titled Digital Has Changed the Way We Shoot. In it are links to a few of Brooks Jensen’s audio podcasts. These particular podcasts were about the differences in how he used to shoot with film and how he now shoots with digital capture. In part, he talks about when he shot with film needing to capture the tonal values the way he wanted them to show in the final output (print). But with digital he wants to capture, not necessarily the best looking image, but rather a file that contains the most data for future post processing. Read the rest of this entry »
Making lists seems to be a popular way of blogging. (Maybe we are getting too much David Letterman.) Anyway, at least for this post, I’ve decided to follow the heard. Photoshop CS 5 (and Lightroom 3) have been out for a while and I’ve had a chance to revamp how I work on images because of the new features in them. In order to make the list the feature must have a significant impact on how I work on images. Here are my top five new features in Photoshop CS5.
- Updated Refine Edge
- ACR’s Process 2010
- ACR’s updated Lens Correction
- Enhanced Noise Reduction in ACR
- Content Aware Read the rest of this entry »
There are two types of contrast that can be used to make images more interesting: color contrast and tonal contrast. But for now I only want to talk about is tonal contrast. And specifically the two types of tonal contrast: overall contrast and midtone contrast, and how they can be modified during post processing. Read the rest of this entry »
For those readers that are “local” to the West Chester PA area, I’ve published the classes and workshops I’m offering this Fall and Winter. I have them listed on two interlinked web sites:
There are a couple of new entries: Advanced Raw Workflow with Lightroom and/or Adobe Camera Raw Workshop and a Digital Black and White class for the Chester County Night School. Both of these are relatively short, at three sessions.
And if you are not local. can’t fit a class or workshop in your schedule, or prefer learning on your own you can visit this blog’s Resource Page for book recommendations. If you buy a book , or anything for that matter, after clicking through to Amazon I get a few pennies and you get a warm felling all over because you helped keep this site going. Thanks!
In my post on how to Double Process a Single Raw File I showed the two different ways of creating a copy of a Smart Object (SO) layer. To summarize, if you simply duplicate the layer both SO layers are “linked” back to the same version of the raw file. And any changes you make to one will be reflected in the other. But if you choose New Smart Object via Copy then you create a second independent SO. The resulting 2 SO layers can be modified independently from one another.
On his Adobe Photoshop Killer Tips site Matt Kloskowski has a short video that shows the differences in these two ways of making a copy of a SO layer. If my explanation leaves you scratching your head, check out his 2 minute video.
