PhotoWalkPro

JPEG has it’s place but if you really want to gain maximum tonal control over your images, you should be shooting with a RAW camera format. So what does this have to do with Ansel Adams, and how do I know he would be a RAW shooter? It’s simple really. Way back in 1939 Ansel Adams came up with something called The Zone System. The object of the system was to produce proper exposure and processing to capture as much of the tonality of a scene as was present when the photographer took the picture. That’s kind of a generalization of the system, especially since there are entire books to explain it. The general principle though was the assigning of luminance values to 11 different zones, with zone 0 being pure black and zone 10, pure white.

Generally speaking, Ansel didn’t care about these two zones because they held no information. It was his belief that the most important zones fell from zone 2, textured black, and zone 8, textured white. By concentrating on these zones, Adams was able to produce striking images with amazing tonal ranges.

How does this relate back to JPEGs? First off, they don’t contain the dynamic range of a RAW file. Once the image is processed in the camera there is no hope of bringing back any values that are black or white. The information is clipped and no amount of post-processing will bring back any texture in them. A RAW file however contains luminance information that can be pulled back in from areas that might at first look like they are clipped through image processing. Let’s take the image below for example.

This is the RAW image out of the camera with no processing applied. The camera meter tried it’s best to balance the bright sky with the shaded canyon. There is some detail but because this is a RAW file I am able to bring back even more.  The mountains at the center of the image are almost completely blown out but by using the Recovery slider in Lightroom I can bring them back into view.

By using the Fill Light Slider, I can bring back the dark, underexposed areas of the canyon, once again because there is detail in the RAW file that is not readily visible.

Some final contrast tweaking and other slight adjustments renders an image that is much different than the initial exposure that came out of the camera.

Had my original image been a JPEG I could have adjusted the exposure to make changes to the tonality but I wouldn’t not have been able to reveal any details that were lost to clipping in the darkest and lightest parts of the image.

If you would like to learn more about applying the Zone System to your photography, check out The Practical Zone System: For Film and Digital Photography by Chris Johnson. And remember, set your camera to capture in RAW, it’s what Ansel would do.

A few months ago my Windows box took a fatal nosedive and I have been doing without it ever since.  That is until about a week ago. Instead of just replacing the C drive, I decided to give the whole machine a makeover.  I know, some of you are wondering why I would bother since I am reportedly a Mac user.  Well, much like the fact that I have written books for both Canon and Nikon, I also don’t always play favorites when it comes to operating systems.  I like to stay current with both camps because it helps me help you with problems as well as the fact that I just like being versatile. It also gives me a chance to run beta software on more platforms to check for bugs and test new features.  I will say that I used my Windows machine very little in the past couple of years and much of that was attributable to having Vista as the operating system.  I was never a huge fan of Vista and found that most everything I wanted to do seemed slow and labored. That’s one of the reasons I took this opportunity to switch over to Windows 7 as part of my re-build and see if there was a huge difference.

The other reason I like playing with my PC is because it is my own creation.  I have been building my own computers for years and I love being able to pick the hardware that best suits my needs instead of something that is made for the masses.  Not that there aren’t some fine computers being commercially built out there but there’s nothing like building one from the ground up and then crossing your fingers when you hit the power switch for the first time.

*CAUTION* NERD ALERT AHEAD

So here’s a little nerdy, tech stuff on my new PC.  First off, I went with an Intel i7 Quad Core processor.  I figured that since I do a lot of imaging I wanted something that could crunch a lot of numbers and the i7 is pretty damn fast.  Of course this meant that I had to get a new motherboard so I went with one from Asus.  I have used their boards for about 10 years and they are always rock solid.  The i7 processor also meant that I could go with 6 GB of DDR-3 RAM.  I also have the ability to bump that up even higher since I am using a 64-bit operating system but I’m sticking with 6GB for now.  To help keep all of my data moving quickly I installed a 10,000 RPM, 300GB E-SATA drive as my main hard drive.  This was my fastest option unless I wanted to go to a Solid State Drive but the prices are insane for the small amount of storage that I wanted.

Of course none of those speed adjustments mean anything without a good video card to make it all come together so I installed an ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of memory.  This card screams and is just as adept at graphics work as it is at gaming. Plus it has two DVI connectors and an HDMI out.

There’s a bunch of other little things in the computer and some stuff that I carried over from my previous machine but the bottom line is that this machine was really built to handle anything that Adobe could throw at it.  As I already mentioned, I installed the 64-bit version of Windows 7 and I am happy to report that it is so much faster and cleaner than Vista that it really is a pleasure to use.  Also, having the 64-bit version meant that I could install 64-bit versions of Lightroom 3 Beta 2 and Photoshop CS5 so I am getting even more speed than before.

I have to tell you that I was amazed at how fast these programs ran on my new machine.  Everything just seems more lively and is absolutely faster than working on my Mac. This isn’t a dig on my Mac, it’s just an older MacBook Pro so it really doesn’t have the horses to keep up with my Windows machine.  I have also been doing some HDR processing using HDR PhotoStudio (the 64-bit version) and it cranks through 5 exposure HDR images in half the time that it takes on my Mac.  Once again, not really a fair comparison but this is the reason that I built it the way I did.  I haven’t tried Photomatix Pro but I don’t feel like buying a new version right now so any speed reports will just have to wait.  I might download the trial just to play a bit and see how it performs.

For now though I will stick with Photoshop, Lightroom, and HDR PhotoStudio and keep pushing the boundaries to see just how much I can squeeze out of my new toy workstation.

Okay, it’s not really a secret but you might think it is because so few people seem to use it when processing RAW files.  In fact I was talking to someone the other day and I asked if they use Camera Calibration and they said their camera didn’t need calibrating.  I don’t really blame them for this because it really is a stupid name for such a great feature.  What Adobe really needs to do is change the name from Camera Calibration to something like Camera Profiles or Better Looking Photos.  I’m sure if you saw a tab or panel with that name, it would probably be the first thing that you turned to when processing your files.

The reality is that Camera Calibration is a quick way to apply the camera profiles that are built into your camera and are used when you shoot JPEGs.  First, let me preface this by saying that the camera profiles only apply to RAW images shot with a Nikon or Canon camera.  I’m not sure why they don’t support other manufacturers but that’s just the reality for now. But if you do own a Canon and Nikon, you have probably noticed that the images that you see on your camera LCD screen look so much better than they do when they are imported in Lightroom or opened in Camera Raw.  That’s in large part because the RAW image file has very little processing applied to it.  I say little because Lightroom and Camera Raw always apply some adjustments as a default as soon as your image is pulled into the program.

The problem is that the default profile that Adobe uses is something called Adobe Standard.  How often have you seen anything worthwhile come from something called “standard”?  Yeah, not very often.  So here’s where you can make a huge improvement to your images by changing one little drop-down setting.  Just change Adobe Standard to any one of the other choices in the Camera Calibration section and see how your image becomes instantly better.

Now here’s the trick, you don’t want to necessarily use the same camera profile for every image.  Each profile is different and will have a different impact on your image.  If you are shooting landscapes with bright colors and lots of greens and blues, you might want to start with the Landscape profile.  If you have some lackluster colors you can instantly bump the color saturation and contrast by selecting the Vivid profile.  The thing is that you just have to click each one and pick the one that gives you the best result.  By the way, Canon and Nikon profiles have different names.  Canon uses the Faithful, Landscape Neutral, Portrait, and Camera Standard profiles.  Nikon has the D2X Mode 1, D2X Mode 2, D2X Mode 3, Landscape, Neutral, Portrait, Camera Standard, and Vivid profiles.

Now if you are a JPEG shooter, don’t bother looking for these different profiles because when you click the drop-down, you will find that the only choice you have is Embedded.  That’s because the camera profile was already embedded into your JPEG file by your camera.  If you want to change the look of your image, you can do so by changing the Camera Style in your camera menu. I actually talk a lot about this in my books.  But if you are a RAW shooter, you will definitely want to give the camera calibration panel/tab a look to see how much better your images can be with very little effort on your part.  To get started in Lightroom, go to the Develop Module and the click on the Camera Calibration panel at the bottom of the stack.

If you are using Camera Raw, open your image and then click the Camera Calibration tab, which is the third one over from the right.

Here’s a look at how you can get different results from the same image by just changing the Camera Calibration profile. Click on the first thumbnail to get a larger view of the image and then notice how the color, contrast, and even shadow detail changes as the camera calibration profile changes.

Ever have one of those photos that needs a little help.  It’s not bad, it just doesn’t seem to have any “snap” to it.  We here’s a quick fix to punch up your image using a little-used slider in the Shadow and Highlight adjustment tool.

To begin, open your image in Photoshop.  Then go to the Image menu and select Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights…

The first thing you need to do when the dialog box comes up is to click on the Show More Options checkbox.  This will expand the box and let you access additional sliders, including the one that we are going to need, Midtone Contrast.

The second thing you need to do is move the Amount slider in the Shadows section back to zero from its default position of 50%, which is usually way too much.  The next step is to move the Midtone Contrast slider to the right until your image looks better. That’s pretty much all there is to it. The midtone adjustment does tend to darken the shadows a bit so just move the Shadow slider back up to lighten the shadows and keep the darker areas of the image from looking muddy.

Now click the preview checkbox on and off to see how much of a difference a little midtone contrast can make.

Here’s a before and after using the slider positions you see above.  As you can see, adding some midtone contrast really helps add some snap to the image while removing the kind of washed out look that the original had.  Next time you have an image that is looking a little flat try punching it up with some midtone contrast and see if it doesn’t make a huge difference.

Click the images for a larger view.

If you have children over the age of 10 you’ve probably heard the exclamation “Oh Snap!” more than once.  It’s kind of like the kid version of “Holy Crap!” but in a good way.  As a parent, I have come to adopt my children’s slang terms if for no other reason than to be able to communicate on some base level.  Well yesterday evening I found myself playing with a newly installed version of Aperture 3 and I believe I heard myself saying “Oh Snap!”as I was checking out all the cool new features.

If you have been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that I am a long-time Adobe Lightroom user.  I gave Aperture a spin when it first came out but it just never really did it for me.  I’m not sure why, but I just felt that I could be more productive in Lightroom.  Then yesterday on the way home I was talking to a buddy about Lightroom and then he mentioned some new features in Aperture that were pretty slick.  I was intrigued so I downloaded the trial version when I got home and then imported some images so I could investigate further.

Now I can’t tell you that I am going to throw my copy of Lightroom in the recycle bin because it just isn’t true.  On the other hand, there are some features in Aperture that are just crazy-good and I am wondering what Adobe is waiting for.  Case in point, the Aperture books feature just downright rocks!  Of course Lightroom doesn’t even have a book feature but I ask the question, why not?  Apple’s book creation in Aperture is smooth as butter and completely customizable.  It’s as easy as selecting Book from the New drop-down menu and then selecting a style.  From there, you can go to one of your image collections called Projects and simply drag the images you want onto the newly created book icon.  By the way, this was my first time really using the software so please forgive me if there are other ways of doing this (which I am sure there are) but my point is that it was easy enough to do without even reading a help file.

After adding the files, I chose the page layouts from a variety of choices and then dragged images from the thumbnails at the bottom of the screen into the empty image placeholders.  I could resize the images by double-clicking them and then using the sizing slider and dragging the image around in the frame until it was positioned just the way I like.

By the way, you can even backscreen your pages.  I found this out by accident as I was dropping an image into a frame and missed.  I let go on the page instead of the frame and it automatically snapped my image into the background.  I then located the wash filter and I had a beautifully washed out backscreen for my page.  Just too cool.  You can also customize just about anything else on your pages as well.  You can resize the picture frames and drag them all around he page until you have it just the way you want it.  If your image doesn’t look right, you can double-click it to take it back into the adjustment portion of Aperture and when you’re done, just double-click it again and you are right back into the book building section.

Here’s another cool feature.  When I was done, I could have selected to send my book off to the printers but instead I turned it into a PDF document.  You can’t tell me that isn’t slick.  Can you imagine creating a wedding album and then sending a PDF proof off to the client for final approval before sending it to the printers.

I could go on and on about some of the very cool features in Aperture but I’m still learning my way around and frankly, that’s have the fun of it.  So if you are a Mac owner and you haven’t tried Aperture 3 yet, head over to Apple’s Aperture page, read up on the “What’s New” section (there’s over 200 new features, which is why I’m not going to even try and list them), and then download a free 30-day trial version and have some fun.