Why Every Student and Adult Learner Needs an iPad

Jan 242012

iBooks Changes the Reading Experience

Let me get this out of the way from the start: if you haven’t figured it out by now, I love Apple gear. I’ve been using Macs for more than two decades and waited in a (relatively short) line the first day the iPad 2 was available, as my latest tribute to the platform. That said, I call Apple out for their mistakes; I’m no apologist or so-called “fan boy”. So I hope you won’t discount what I’m about to tell you as a case of me being an advertising shill for Apple (I have no affiliation with Apple at all – this is just something I feel strongly about).

You Need an iPad.

Clear enough for you? : ) There’s been a lot of talk lately about the iPad and Apple’s plans to revolutionize learning and academic text books, and I see no reason to doubt them. While the brand new iBooks Author application (used for authoring books of all kinds for the iPad) is a little rough around the edges — as an author who is actively developing for this platform I’d like to see better import/export for ePUB 3, as well as more WYSIWYG capability — iBooks 2 (the reader application) is a fantastic platform for readers of all types.

No Hassle Bookmarking

Every page you bookmark with a tap of your finger is automatically tagged with a small “red ribbon”, and is logged in a special section of the Table of Contents (which is one click away at all times). This section provides an organized list of the Chapter title or section names you marked, and their page number. All you have to do is tap a bookmarked item in the list and iBooks 2 zips you there in an instant. No flipping through pages, no dog-ears, just efficiency. There’s more… Continue reading »

Getting Familiar with Perfect Photo Suite 6

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Jan 172012

Got Perfect?

Recently, onOne Software announced a major upgrade to their collection of Photoshop plugins, called Perfect Photo Suite 6. Now at version 6.0.2, the suite includes major upgrades including Perfect Mask, Perfect Portrait, Perfect Layers (for Lightroom users), Focal Point 2, and more.

As I noted in an earlier post, onOne added major improvements including a brand new user interface for several of the plugins and brand new portrait retouching technology (we’ll talk about that in an upcoming post!). To share a few of the best features from my five favorite plugins, I teamed up with Peachpit.com to bring you some feature articles! Below you will find a summary for each article and link to each so that you can see if Perfect Photo Suite 6 is right for you.

Simulated Aperture Controls in Bokeh 2 (legacy UI)

Bokeh Power – Focal Point 2

Focal Point 2 works a bit like Photoshop’s Lens Blur effect except that it’s easier to control the depth of field and/or produce a nice looking bokeh effect for your backgrounds. It provides you with on-preview controls for managing the scope and angle of the blur effects, as well as a detailed group of simulated lens aperture controls to control the look of the bokeh (plus an aperture preview which is something that’s not been a part of Photoshop’s blur regimen). Creating Lens Blur Effects with Bokeh 2 will show you how easy and fun it is to get started with this plugin and the powerful Focus Bug technology.

Deep Forest Glow Options in Perfect Effects

Get Creative with Perfect Effects

Another cool plugin from onOne is Perfect Effects, which provides different ways of styling your digital photos using presets, and a powerful set of controls for making your own! One of the areas I find this plugin to be very useful is shots that were not taken under perfect lighting conditions. For the example shown in Creative Color Effects with Photoshop and Perfect Effects, we create a pleasing glow to the photograph and also realistic looking rain effect.

Perfect Mask Offers Serious Control

Background Swap!

One of the most common tasks in a Photoshop workflow is to swap out a background element from one photograph and use that of another. For example, you might take two or three shots of a landscape scene, and swap out the background that has a overly bright sky or maybe cars that are in the frame. Precise Background Swaps Using Perfect Mask shows you how easy and accurate onOne’s tools are for selecting the colors you want to keep and those you want to hide, when creating a mask.

Layer Ops in Lightroom? You bet!

Lightroom Layers? Yes.

If you’ve ever wished that you could use layers during your Lightroom edits, Perfect Layers from onOne will get you the next best thing: a true round-trip workflow where you can start in Lightroom, make your layered edits in Perfect Layers and then find your results right back inside Lightroom!

Creating Layers with Lightroom and Perfect Layers will show you how easy it is to do background swaps as an example. For this example we show how you can easily swap skies or ground-plane subject matter, all without going into Photoshop.

Lightroom 4 Beta: Improved Basic Controls

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Jan 122012

Today’s post is the first in a series of quick introductions to the new technology in Lightroom 4 Beta. More detailed tutorials will follow in the weeks ahead. We’ll start out by taking a look at the new Basic controls (part of Process 2012). When you ultimately upgrade your Lightroom 3 catalog in the final version of Lightroom 4, images that have never been edited in Lightroom will default to Process 2012, while those edited with earlier processes will give you the option of maintaining that status and using the old control methods, or upgrading.

NOTE: do not upgrade your catalog with a beta version of Lightroom. For now create new catalog, import some files as copies and experiment with those so that you don’t have to worry about your originals. The major improvements to Process 2012 are:

Process 2012 replaces Recovery and Fill Light with Highlights and Shadows.
Process 2012 controls map to the Histogram controller more intuitively.
All tone control settings start at 0 now.
More highlight recovery is possible with combo of Highlights and Whites.
Add fill to dark areas and maintain inky tones with combo of Shadows and Blacks.
More pronounced Clarity impact with positive slider value

Here’s a quick video (sans audio). Even with a tricky combination of tones / lighting situation, the values can be moved substantially without creating posterization or clipping issues. Any posterizing you might see here is a direct result of the video codec used not Lightroom 4 beta. Tried my best to remove it but Screenflow is not perfect in this regard. BTW no special effects: those cloud formations hanging over the ridges are the real deal.

Top New Features in Lightroom 4 (Beta)

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Jan 102012

[Updated 1-12-2012]
Some good news this week: Adobe released the public beta version of Lightroom 4! There’s a lot of ground to cover, and in the days ahead I will provide some detailed descriptions and free tutorials on Lightroom 4′s best features. The big question with each new release is: “What’s New?” Plenty! Below is the short list of the features in Lightroom 4 (there are several others I’ll be posting about that are really cool), which I believe will help photographers to streamline their workflow, and further improve the quality of photographs generated from their raw edits:

Enhanced Tone & Contrast Control

The Basic panel in Lightroom 4 has been improved in several ways. This new tone and contrast workflow (Called Process 2012), offers a more intuitive group of controls, an updated Histogram to go along with those, and more consistent behavior among the settings that define how bright or dark a photo is, and which tonal regions are accented as part of your overall contrast.

Instead of using Recovery and Fill Light, the controls have been re-organized into Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, and Blacks. The idea is to use these sliders in order, and then go back and tweak the individual settings. Things are now set up so that changes to the brightest and darkest tones at the far ends of the histogram, are better “isolated” from the remaining highlight and shadow data. You can also work directly with these settings in Histogram, and instead of having arbitrary non-zero values as starting points for some of the sliders, they all start at zero and all follow the behavior of move right = lighter, move left = darker. Simple!

Expanded Local Adjustments

Directly related to improvements in Lightroom 4′s Basic raw editing capabilities, are some nice additions that have been made to Local Adjustments, including not only the updated 2012 Process controls (Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows), but also settings to control noise locally and even moire patterns. Also it’s worth noting that the Clarity control in Lightroom 4 has been updated to create a more pronounced effect, without creating artifacts as things are “crisped up.”

This is another area where you can expect more details in the near future. I’ve really enjoyed using this feature as it has evolved.

The Map Module

Here’s a really big one: not to be outdone by Apple, Adobe has added a Places-like module to Lightroom 4 called the Map module, which can use either GPS data embedded in your photo’s metadata, or manually input information, to “Tag” your photos and display them on an interactive “Google Map” view! This was a feature that myself and others had requested after seeing Aperture 3, so it’s great to see how responsive Adobe has been in implementing this feature.

The Book Module

Another huge feature that has been the private domain of Aperture users, is the ability to quickly layout and publish a high quality print book (via 3rd party printing service), directly from the application. Now Lightroom 4 users can enjoy this same capability! Working with Blurb Books, Adobe has put together a collection of template pages that block off image and copy regions, as well as a series of detailed controls (for customizing those pages), so that you can quickly create your own professional quality photo book, with a range of sizes, cover types and paper types to choose from. You can also output your work as a PDF.

If you have specific questions or requests about how these modules (or other aspects of Lightroom 4 Beta) work, please follow me on Google+ or Twitter (Subscription Links at top of sidebar), and let me know what you’d like to see.

Why SOPA is More Bad than Good for Photographers

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Jan 052012

The Stop Online Piracy Act –more commonly known as “SOPA“– is a piece of legislation recently introduced by the U.S. House of Representatives which has as its stated goal, protecting copyright holders and their livelihoods.

Unfortunately, in its current form this law is a good example of how the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. It is also a good example of how lobbyists from the RIAA and MPAA can sway Congress (a group that does not have the tech savvy to counter industry spin and half-true arguments), into taking a heavy-handed approach.

I am a staunch supporter of artist’s rights and holding to account those who make unauthorized sales from the work of others, but this bill could ruin the online experience so many creatives count on to make their living. It will stifle this “forum” we’ve created, for responsibly sharing, promoting and discussing our work. It will completely change the vibe of sharing sites like Google+ and Youtube, and may literally torpedo sites like Vimeo.com. That is, it could put Vimeo out of business. That’s to say nothing of sites owned by thousands of creative pros, who count on Vimeo’s affordable, high quality streaming service to get their products out to the world.

If you run a web site like mine, where you occasionally share the copyrighted (but freely available) works of others as a point of inspiration, and without ever making a cent from it…. even if as I do, you always credit the artist up front and link to their sites… you could wake up the day after this law is passed and find your web site has been replaced by a government placeholder page. Gone. And the ISP or host who removed it, they have no responsibility in this process; they are given immunity by the government in the quest to “end piracy”.

This law is heavy-handed, is not likely to stop pirates and actual copyright infringers from operating (they’ll simply hop from site to site just as the television scammers do, changing their URL every two weeks). At the same time, SOPA time will likely hurt legitimate businesses in the creative space (how many lost sites are “acceptable” in this fight? 100? 1000? 5,000?), who are doing things the right way, but nonetheless are fair game under the rules of this law.

The Bottom Line:

Like the Senate’s “Protect IP” law, SOPA is a case of lawmakers having inadequate knowledge of the mediums and technology we use, resulting in shortsighted language that can do legitimate businesses harm, while not actually fixing the problem they hope to fix. Please write to your congressional reps and senators today, and explain why these laws stand to hurt legitimate creative businesses, who respect copyright and who count on sharing and collaboration (with attribution) as a way to improve their own work.

Working with Aperture 3 and Viveza

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Jan 032012

These days it’s common knowledge that you can extend the capabilities of Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom, by using 3rd party products called plugins. Plugins can serve many useful purposes, including the enhancement of black and white photographs, the inclusion of special effects like fog or tilt-shift focus, and powerful portrait retouching options.

Several of my recent articles and tips focus on the plugins made by Nik Software, onOneSoftware, and Topaz Labs, and how they are used to enhance Photoshop and Lightroom workflows. What you might not realize is, many of these same plugins are also compatible with Apple’s Aperture 3 software!

Aperture supports many plugin workflows

While Aperture 3 is a powerful tool for photographers, one of the minor drawbacks is that it has a limited set of localized adjustments. The good news is, you can add plugins like Viveza from Nik Software, to rapidly expand Aperture’s capabilities. You can apply your global raw edits in Aperture and then open a file (with those changes included) directly into Viveza, where you can apply localized edits using Nik’s U-Point masking technology. For example, you might want to touch up small areas of the sky, without impacting other parts of the scene that also contain blue pixels.

See how simple it can be to use plugins and localized edits within Aperture!

3 Recommended eBooks from Craft & Vision

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Dec 292011

It’s been a while since I’ve recommended some good books, and with eBooks taking off on platforms like the iPad and Kindle Fire, I thought it would be a great idea to share three of my favorite creative photography e-books, published by the folks over at Craft & Vision.

A Deeper Frame

The reason I find A Deeper Frame to be so valuable is that it focuses on one critical area of photography: creating a sense of depth and enhancing the viewer’s experience and sense of place using same. While there are familiar themes here covered in some of David DuChemin’s other books (such as artistic expression and emotional depth), everything is presented in a way that is on-point and immediately helpful to any photographer who has thought about this topic and experimented with it.

Topics like perspective, framing, color, and light (all as they relate to depth) are covered in detail and illustrated with compelling photographic examples. Some of them also provide some illustrative elements so that you can visualize the written concept even better. In short, there is no reason not to own this e-book, especially if you’re a landscape or cityscape photographer.

Beyond Thirds

Written and photographed by Andrew S. Gibson, Beyond Thirds is a detailed discussion of photographic composition, starting with the Rule of Thirds, and evolving to cover related topics in detail, including: the Golden Section, photographic balance, filling the frame, creative use of focal points, and several other useful topics.

This book is also succinct and well-illustrated to drive home the points being made in the text. There is of course a lot that can be written on the subject of composition, but this is a great primer if you’re getting started in photography on a limited budget! Another thing I like about this eBook (and frankly many other Craft & Vision eBooks) is the very well designed layout of information, graphics and text.

Microstock: From Passion to Paycheck

Stock photography is a contentious subject these days, with arguments abounding for and against. But the reality is, it’s here and it’s an important part of the photographic business landscape. Microstock: From Passion to Paycheck, written by Nicole S. Young, provides a lot of good background on what microstock photography really is, and provides tips and case-studies from real-world photographers, showing you what you need to think about in terms of your own photography to be a success. A lot of attention is paid to process, quality and generating your own niche (which is a necessity if you want to succeed). For anyone looking to make a few extra bucks from their photography via stock workflows, you’d be missing out (given the cost) not to purchase this book.

Tutorial: Selenium Toning with Topaz BW Effects

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Dec 272011

Attention to details: Topaz BW Effects

Here’s another great way to use Topaz Labs plugins to enhance your digital pictures. You may not realize it, but even for purists, there are traditional darkroom processes that can be simulated in the digital realm, and with powerful impact. BW Effects (a plugin for Lightroom and Photoshop) provides many options for creating and customizing black and white photos. For this example we look at how shots with a lot of detail and soft backgrounds can be enhanced using Selenium toning and other effects.

Tutorial: Creative Focus with Topaz Lens Effects 1.2

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Dec 202011

Topaz Labs Lens Effects

Here’s another technique that you can apply, using the newly updated Photoshop and Lightroom plugin from Topaz Labs, Lens Effects 2.1. This update contains new filters like Fog Effects, Reflection Effects, and more. Like Topaz Adjust 5, you can purchase this plugin separately or as part of the Topaz Plugin Bundle. To remind myself of more appealing climates and destinations than the midwestern U.S. in December, I recently wrote a tutorial for Lightroom Secrets that shows you how to draw the viewer’s eye to your subject using creative focus effects. You’ll see just how easy it is to create a round-trip workflow from Lightroom to Lens Effects and back, and quickly produce creative variations on your favorite shots!

Tutorial: Scene Interpretation with Topaz Adjust 5

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Nov 292011

Working with Exposure Regions in Topaz Adjust 5

Recently Topaz Labs released a major update for their popular Adjust plugin for Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture. Topaz Adjust 5 offers several useful improvements over the prior version, including: many new presets; the ability to apply adjustments locally with new brush technology; a new transparency control; improved performance, and a new Finishing Touches tab to add vignettes and similar effects at the end of the creative process.

I will be providing a detailed look at Adjust 5 as well as other plugins from Topaz Labs (and other developers) in the near future. To give you a taste, here is a quick tutorial I contributed to Dan Bailey’s photo blog recently, showing how simple it is to create new interpretations of a photograph using Adjust 5. Techniques like this are especially helpful with shots taken under low contrast lighting.

Artist Interview: Astrophotographer Brad Goldpaint

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Nov 102011

One of the most powerful forms of photography that can encourage us to consider our perspective on the world and humanity, is astrophotography. If you’re not familiar with the term, it refers (generally) to photographers who head out at night (away from urban light pollution) to photograph the night sky, including stars, meteors, planets and even parts of our own Milky Way Galaxy. It can also refer to capturing images of the cosmos from scientific observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope and others.

In light of this inspiring form of photography, I thought it would be great to do another interview. California native Brad Goldpaint (currently residing in Mt. Shasta) seemed like the perfect choice. I recently discovered his web site and images via Google+ and was instantly floored by many of them. I think you’ll agree as you examine some of his photos of the night sky, Brad’s insights are worth paying attention to for any aspiring astrophotographer.

The Mask & The Mirror © Brad Goldpaint

Q: Brad thanks for taking the time to discuss your photography. What made you decide to go into astrophotography? Do you have any background in astronomy? Any photographers in particular have an influence on your decision?

Absolutely, Dan. Thank you for having me! My passion for the night sky began during my early adolescence, when my father took me out into the California desert, far away from the city lights of our suburban home in Southern California. I fondly remember looking up to the dark skies as my dad pointed out the Hale-Bopp comet. The anomaly at the time looked like a “fuzzy star” to my young eyes and set in motion a desire to clearly capture special moments within the night sky, in relation to our natural surroundings. The specialness of father/son time and experiencing a new and different viewpoint of my world motivated me to begin self-studying the art of astro-photography… .

Mini-Review: 3 New Photoshop Plugins for 2012

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Nov 012011

[UPDATED 12-2-2011 - added changes to item 3, added article links]

I recently started this post and was held up a bit by the release date of some new products, but today I’m happy to provide a look at three new plugins that I think you’ll most likely want to have in your workflow. Developers onOne Software and Nik Software have been busy lately! The new onOne Photo Suite 6 has been released, with some really nice UI enhancements and brand new plugins, and Nik has released Color Efex Pro 4 Complete, also with some great UI tweaks and many new looks to apply. So here are the three I think you should try out and take a look at first.

1. Color Efex Pro 4 Complete – This is a great upgrade for existing users of Color Efex Pro. The user interface has been completely rebuilt and upgraded to be consistent with newer Nik plugins like HDR Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro 2, so once you start using it, things will be very familiar. They have also improved the way presets and preset previews are handled, making it easier to see all variations on a preset.

Another nice benefit to this upgrade, is they’ve brought the U-Point workflow up to speed with newer plugins as well making it much easier to use. But probably the most compelling reason to use this plugin is the wide array of professional stylings or “looks” you can apply, ranging from Infrared Black and White (Ironically), to the ability to create HDR-like effects using combinations of presets, and even old-fashioned looks like sepia and cyanotype.

[Addition: If you'd like to learn more about this plugin, check out my latest Nik Software article / turorial from Peachpit.com]

Why Steve Jobs Mattered So Much

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Oct 052011

Steve Jobs with One of His (and Jonathan Ives') Finest Products

I know there will be 10,001 other blog posts like this before the week is over but I want to pay respect to a man who almost single-handedly rescued and reinvented my favorite tech company about a decade ago. Without the return of Steve Jobs, not only would there be no company worth ~ $400/share right now, there probably would be no Apple at all. He gave the company something few people can do with such focus and passion — he gave it direction. And it was a direction that more than anything, was for our benefit. Steve and his team wanted to make our technology and our world, better, more fun, more interesting. While his record wasn’t perfect, he succeeded far more often than not, and his legacy will live on a long time in OS X, Apple’s mobile devices and several other products.

I think as creative pros, many of us owe a sort of debt to Steve Jobs, for giving our community a choice. Something other than Windows 97 or Windows XP to work with, something other than a Dell or an Acer… or a ZUNE for chrissakes! And he gave us someone to watch and be inspired by. In short, he gave the market that would produce so many useful products for us, real competition. That always benefits consumers… both directly and by inspiring competitors to do better themselves. And they did, from Windows 7, to the HTC Incredible (and every other full screen smart phone ever made), to Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. All of these products were direct responses to Apple innovation IMHO.

Steve Jobs was well known for his keynote speeches and the patented “RDF” or “Reality Distortion Field,” that accompanied some of his announcements. Like them or hate them, there was always something interesting to talk about with Steve’s public appearances. He even made technical foul-ups on stage look interesting sometimes! After a while we all knew Apple was starting to consistently design kick-ass products… so some of the excitement was just to see how Steve would introduce Apple’s next “magic act”. It was always amusing to catch a bit of his hyperbole. He had a way of selling ideas and concepts that unlike most salesmen (Jobs was certainly more than just an engaging pitch-man for Apple), did not make you resent him for it. Even though you knew occasionally there was some “spin” going on there, it was just Steve, and it was OK. It was part of the experience.

During his tenure, Apple products made the 9-5 lives of creative pros and small business owners and many others, easier. More enjoyable. Here’s to hoping Tim Cooke, Mr. Ives and the gang can continue his legacy. But there will never be another RDF.

Thank you, Steve. Rest in Peace.

Inspired Art from the Web (2011-09-15)

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Sep 152011

I haven’t done one of these posts in a while, but this week I stumbled across some incredible work by Norwegian photographer Terje Sorgjerd. This movie (and there are a couple others like it on his Vimeo page) is worth sharing and speaks for itself. Enjoy.

Tutorial: Using Lightroom and HDR Efex Pro

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Sep 062011

[Updated for 2012!]

Introduction

High Dynamic Range (or HDR) photography has been a hot topic in photography circles the last year or two. There is a very real debate about whether it’s “good” or “bad” (as with most heated debates, I believe the answer is: “it depends”). For my part, I think HDR photography can and will play a significant role in the evolution of digital photography.

The usefulness of any software technique is usually predicated on staying true to the scene and the artistic intent of your picture. If you can manage that with HDR, you’ll be in good shape! No software tool –HDR options included– can fix a poorly executed photo, but they can make a good photograph better.

The most important part of HDR photography is capturing the series of bracketed exposures, the data from which can be merged together to make a single photograph. The reason for the bracketing is so you can capture all the tonal details in the scene, from brightest to darkest and everything between.

A good rule of thumb is to vary the exposures by one stop and take additional shots on either side of a 0EV exposure. For example you might want to capture the following exposure values for your scene if it has a wide range of tones: -2EV -1EV 0EV +1EV and +2EV. A more extreme example are scenes like a downtown street at sunset or dusk, where most of the light from the sky is gone but the street lights are on, creating a mix of dark shadow details and brightly lit specular details that come from the cars and storefronts in the scene.

Capturing that entire scene would be impossible with a single exposure, even using the best cameras available. The difference between the lightest and darkest tones is simply too great. That’s where HDR Efex Pro comes in!

Tutorial: 32-bit HDR Toning in Photoshop CS5

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Aug 172011

Introduction

: The Merge to HDR Pro UI

A quick reminder: here is an example of the kind of tips you can get from Adobe Digital Imaging How-Tos…

HDR Toning is the process in Photoshop CS5 where you can create a 32-bit image from a series of exposures, and then use the new HDR Toning image adjustment to follow an HDR-like workflow. Normally if you tone map inside Merge to HDR Pro, the output must be 8 or 16-bit. This process offers a 32-bit alternative.

If you’re working in Photoshop right out of the gate, choose File > Automate > Merge to HDR Pro. If you’re working from Lightroom, select the bracketed exposures you want to use from the Grid view or Filmstrip, right-click, and choose Edit in > Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop. If you go with the first option, this will open a dialog box for browsing and selecting your files, and for automatically aligning them. Typically I find that if I’ve photographed my scene using a tripod and trigger release, I can get a good alignment result.

Once the merge has begun, Photoshop may take a couple minutes—depending on the size of your original files, how many you are attempting to merge, and the speed of your system—to bring all the shots together into the Merge to HDR Pro interface (right). Most of the controls you see above are also included in the HDR Toning adjustment, which we will be covering shortly. They include:

Remove Ghosts: Uses the image (thumbnail) you choose as the basis for eliminating any blur caused by moving objects (for example, a tree branch moving in the wind).
Mode pop-ups: Allows you to decide if your output will be 8, 16, or 32-bit, and which tone mapping method to use. In all cases, I prefer either 16- or 32-bit Local Adaptation, as it provides the most flexibility.
Edge Glow: These sliders control the HDR “glow” and halo effects you may be familiar with from HDR web sites and galleries, by manipulating local contrast. These are most often the “culprit” when an HDR image looks “fake” or “illustrated”, rather than captured with a camera.
Tone and Detail: these sliders allow you to set the look of the overall exposure, tone down blown out highlights, open up shadows, and add detail or perceived sharpness.
Color: These two controls allow you to modify the global color saturation and presence.
Curve: Allows you to fine-tune the contrast beyond what the Tone and Detail controls can do.

The thumbnails at the bottom left of the window represent your HDR exposures. When using Remove Ghosts they can be selected individually to eliminate blur or unwanted movement. Continue reading »

The Semantics of “Pro Photography”

Posted by Dan Moughamian

Aug 102011

What does this signify to you?

Earlier today the good people over at Focus for Humanity tweeted a link to an article about what it means to be a professional photographer. I won’t link to the article or belabor the points made because they are consistent with other articles and discussions we’ve all seen before.

How do you define “pro”, how does money and education figure into the equation, etc. It’s easy to get pulled into the vortex (I’ve written about the topic once or twice myself and tried to “answer the question”). The realization I’ve come to is that there’s very little substance to this debate and we should all put it to bed. Seriously. The root of the discussion is not grounded in anything that actually matters.

Just for fun, do this: go to Google and search “serious photographer”, then in the results click on the Image section. There are some pretty amusing results as you scroll down. (Fair Warning: if your Google filter is off, there are some nude photographs, if you’re bothered by same or are in a NSFW zone). Anyway, back to the big debate… .

Older Entries

Colortrails

Why Every Student and Adult Learner Needs an iPad

You Need an iPad.

No Hassle Bookmarking

Getting Familiar with Perfect Photo Suite 6

Got Perfect?

Bokeh Power – Focal Point 2

Get Creative with Perfect Effects

Background Swap!

Lightroom Layers? Yes.

Lightroom 4 Beta: Improved Basic Controls

Top New Features in Lightroom 4 (Beta)

Enhanced Tone & Contrast Control

Expanded Local Adjustments

The Map Module

The Book Module

Why SOPA is More Bad than Good for Photographers

Working with Aperture 3 and Viveza

3 Recommended eBooks from Craft & Vision

A Deeper Frame

Beyond Thirds

Microstock: From Passion to Paycheck

Tutorial: Selenium Toning with Topaz BW Effects

Tutorial: Creative Focus with Topaz Lens Effects 1.2

Tutorial: Scene Interpretation with Topaz Adjust 5

Artist Interview: Astrophotographer Brad Goldpaint

Mini-Review: 3 New Photoshop Plugins for 2012

Why Steve Jobs Mattered So Much

Inspired Art from the Web (2011-09-15)

Tutorial: Using Lightroom and HDR Efex Pro

Introduction

Tutorial: 32-bit HDR Toning in Photoshop CS5

Introduction

The Semantics of “Pro Photography”

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