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ContentsColumnsFeatures

July/August 2007 www.photoshopuser.com

18 Down & Dirty TricksGive your text a chrome effect, create a stunning underwater scene, and make a wedding album template.—Scott Kelby, Felix Nelson, and Corey Barker

45 Photoshop MasteryBen shows how to use the Healing Brush to smooth out the grainy appearance of the transitioning twilight sky in your images.—Ben Willmore

46 Photoshop Speed ClinicUsing separate steps to convert your RAW files to JPEG, PSD, or TIFF formats? Use the Image Processor in Photo-shop and do them all at once!—Matt Kloskowski

50 The Fine Art of PrintingHave you tried every trick in the book to get noise out of your image? Learn what kind of noise you’re dealing with and when to use it or lose it.—John Paul Caponigro

52 Creative Point of View Learn about retouching skin and read on as Katrin shares her superb 2- and 4-minute makeover techniques.—Katrin Eismann

54 Deke Space Deke tells us about the much-improved Brightness/Contrast feature and takes off the gloves to describe legacy behavior.—Deke McClelland

56 Photoshop for EducatorsDid you know that in CS3 you can import Photoshop files—layers and all—into Flash? Jan shows us how to turn Photoshop layers into Flash layers.—Jan Kabili

58 Beginners’ WorkshopDid you know you can create a basic website with Photoshop? Well, you can! Read this edition of “Begin-ners’ Workshop” to learn more.—Dave Cross

60 Digital Camera WorkshopJim shows us how to get the best output by calibrating pre-shoot and then reveals which techniques ensure consistent excellence.—Jim DiVitale

32 Streamline Your Digital Photography Workflow It seems nobody likes the term “workflow,” but there’s no denying the importance of establishing a powerful, yet simple process for dealing with your digital photos. It’s all here: from importing and sort-ing to outputting and archiving (and everything in between).—Matt Kloskowski

But Wait—There’s More: Wherever you see the symbol at the end of an article, it means there’s additional material for NAPP members at www.photoshopuser.com.

DepartmentsColumns

Reviews

6 About Photoshop User Magazine

8 From the Editor

12 Contributing Writers

14 Photoshop News

15 NAPP Member News

72 From the Help Desk

103 Photoshop Book Reviews

104 Photoshop Q&A

106 Photoshop Design Showcase

95 DxO Optics Pro 4.2

96 Genuine Fractals Print Pro 5

97 Photo Safe

98 Nikon D40x

100 Noiseware 4.1

100 PearlyWhites and ShineOff

102 MP WRP PhotoPacks

62 The WOW! FactorLearn how to wow your audience with fi ve diff erent tint-ing techniques. Did you know you could use the Patch tool to tint?—Linnea Dayton and Cristen Gillespie

64 Production ClinicTaz shows us diff erent ways of controlling refl ected light with a polarized fi lter and how to use the Color Match feature in Photoshop for optimal results.—Taz Tally

66 Mastering Photoshop with Video It’s easier than ever to work with video in Photoshop. Read Glen’s article to give yourself a fi rm foundation to build your knowledge of video editing.—Glen Stephens

68 Digital Photographer’s Notebook Kevin explains what bit depth is all about, tackles the question of RAW vs. JPEG editing, and shows us what’s going on behind the scenes.—Kevin Ames

70 Classic Photoshop Eff ectsDave shows us how to save time and eff ort in Photoshop when making instant twins with a few key camera settings and some post-shoot techniques.—Dave Cross

108 Photoshop Quick TipsUse Refi ne Edge to create presets, move your presets, set the Global Light default, and more.—Sherry London

130 Photoshop Beginners’ TipsColin shares tips on creating font outlines, double layer masks, etc.—Colin Smith

Photoshop Lightroom Section

74 Total ControlDo you fi nd making tonal adjustments to your photo-graphs intimidating? The Target Adjustment tool gives you incredible control and it’s easy to use.—Kevin Ames

78 Working Creatively in LightroomYou can create a preset library from your saved Develop settings, then apply those presets to other photos for artistic eff ect.—Angela Drury

80 Under the LoupeRob shows us how to take control of the fi le renaming process in Lightroom by using the Filename Template Editor to create presets.—Rob Sylvan

81 Featured Photographer Martin Sundberg takes photos of people who are passionate about what they do, while they’re doing it.

84 Lightroom Beginners’ WorkshopThis issue, Dave shows us how to rank, color code, and put photos into collections.—Dave Cross

88 Quick Develop PanelThe surprisingly powerful Quick Develop panel is perfect for making quick adjustments to your images for client review.—Michael Tapes

92 Lightroom Q&A

93 Lightroom Tips & Tricks

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n at i o n a l ass o c i at i o n o f p h otos h o p p r o fess i o n a ls

The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) is a dynamic trade association and the world’s leading resource for Adobe® Photoshop® training, news, and education. Founded in 1998, NAPP has become the largest graphics and digital imaging association in the world with more than 60,000 members worldwide. NAPP is open to any individual using Photoshop in a casual or professional environment.

There’s no faster, easier, and more aff ordable way to get really good at Photoshop. Join today for only $99 U.S., $129 Canada, and $149 International. NAPP also off ers special educational memberships. Go to www.photoshopuser.com to get more info.

NAPP Membership Benefi ts:

Annual subscription to Photoshop User magazine (eight issues annually)Members-only website with time- and money-saving content, including:

Registration discount to Photoshop World Conference & Expo—the annual NAPP convention and the largest Photoshop event in the world

Monthly e-newsletter produced just for members

NAPP membership details at www.photoshopuser.com or call 800-738-8513

Monday–Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST.

a b o u t photosho p us e r

Photoshop User magazine is the offi cial publication of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). It is for members, by members, and is not available to the general public by subscription.

As a NAPP member, you automatically receive Photoshop User delivered right to your door eight times a year. Each issue features in-depth Photoshop tutorials written by the most talented designers, photographers, and leading authors in the industry.

Weekly Tips and Tutorials from world-class instructors

Vendor discounts on hardware, software, services, plug-ins, and travel

NAPP Perks for complimentary images, actions, shapes, and plug-ins

Help Desk to get your Photoshop questions answered fast

Advice Desk to get straight, unbiased advice on products

Bookstore of latest educational books and DVDs, plus huge discounts

National schedule of Adobe Photoshop training seminars

NAPP Gallery for creating your online portfolio

Cover by Felix Nelson

Cover images courtesy iStockphoto

From the EditorA few words from our E.I.C. …

Darkroom and Photoshop User UniteA new addition to the magazine and a new addition to the team

You may be wondering why this issue of Photoshop User feels much heavier than ever before and there’s a good reason. After a flood of feedback, ideas, and suggestions from our members around the world, we’ve rolled Darkroom (the how-to magazine for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom) into

Photoshop User magazine as its own separate section.At the time, we thought having Darkroom as a separate magazine would be a great benefit but so many

members asked, “Why can’t we have just one big magazine?” that we started asking ourselves, “Why can’t we give them just one big magazine?” and well…now it is one big magazine. We have the same great writ-ers and in-depth Lightroom step-by-step tutorial and articles, but now it will reach a much wider audience than before. Check out this new addition starting on page 74.

Our main feature article in this issue is from our own Matt Kloskowski who has written an incredibly helpful guide on one of the hottest topics of the year: the digital photographer’s workflow. If you’ve been struggling with your workflow, turn to page 32 and get on the right track.

Also, make sure you check out Kevin Ames’s column this month, as he has done a brilliant job of showing the advantages and disadvantages of working in 8-bit vs. 16-bit mode in Photoshop and the whole “RAW vs. JPEG” debate (on page 68). This is a topic that people stay up late at night arguing about in online forums, and Kevin has done a great job of clearing the confusion and laying it all out in a way that will let you get some sleep.

Another thing you’ll notice in this issue is that our “Photoshop Q&A” (on page 92) is now written by Rafael Concepcion (he goes by “RC”)—the latest addition to NAPP’s in-house team of Photoshop experts. We first met RC a couple of years ago at Photoshop World Miami during a special pre-conference workshop designed for Photoshop instructors called, “So You Think You Can Teach Photoshop?” (based on the TV show, “So You Think You Can Dance?”). As part of the workshop, each student gave a 10-minute presenta-tion to be critiqued by the instructors (Matt, Dave Cross, and myself), then the class would choose the best instructor, who would get to teach a 30-minute session in the NAPP theater on the Expo floor.

Well, RC won the competition by a unanimous vote, but it was his live Expo floor session that caught our attention when the moderator for his class started grabbing staffers off the floor to come and see this guy in action—he was that good! When it was time to add another Photoshop expert to our team, his abilities and his personality were a perfect fit, and we’re just tickled to have him on board (and writing in the magazine).

Lastly, I hope you’ll join me (and Dave, and Matt, and Corey Barker, and RC, and about 40 of the world’s top instructors) in Las Vegas for the Photoshop World Conference & Expo (NAPP’s annual convention and the largest Adobe Photoshop event in the world). It’s coming September 6–8, 2007, to the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino. If you’ve never been to a Photoshop World conference, why not go? It’s the learning experi-ence of a lifetime and if you sign up before August 3, you save $100. (With that early-bird discount and your NAPP member discount, you can attend the full three-day conference for only $499—an absolute steal!) I hope to see you there.

All my best,

Scott KelbyEditor and Publisher

“…so many members

asked, ‘Why can’t we have

just one big magazine?’”

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EDITORIAL:

Scott Kelby, Editor-in-Chief Issac Stolzenbach, Managing EditorBarbara Thompson, Senior Technical EditorChris Main, Technical EditorKim Gabriel, Traffic DirectorMike Mackenzie, Associate Editor Felix Nelson, Creative DirectorDave Damstra, Production ManagerTaffy Orlowski, Associate DesignerChristy Winter, Associate DesignerDave Korman, Production Designer

Contributing Writers

Web Team

Scott Kelby, Publisher Executive Publisher

Kalebra Kelby, Executive V.P. Business Manager

Larry Becker, Executive Director of the NAPP Chief Financial Officer

V.P., Sales 813-433-2370Advertising Director 916-929-8200

Jeanne Jilleba, Advertising Coordinator 800-738-8513 ext. 115Nicole Wolfe, Advertising Designers

(Ronni) O’Neil, Director of Circulation/Distribution800-738-8513 ext. 135

Fax: 813-433-5015

Membership Info:

Photoshop User

All contents ©COPYRIGHT 2007 National Association of Photoshop Professionals. All rights reserved. Any use of the contents of this publication without the written permis-sion of the publisher is strictly prohibited. Photoshop User is an independent journal, not affiliated in any way with Adobe Systems, Inc. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign are registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks mentioned belong to their respective owners. Some of the views expressed by contributors may not be the representative views of the publisher. ISSN 1535-4687

JULY/AUGUST 2007

The official publication of

user

This seal indicates the content provided is created, and produced solely by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). Additionally, it ensures the content maintains the stringent standards set by NAPP, the world’s leading resource for Adobe® Photoshop® training, education and news.

Photoshop

Contributing WritersPhotoshop’s most wanted

Deke McClelland is author of the full-color Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-on-One (Deke Press/O’Reilly Media) and he’s host of the online video series, Photoshop Channels & Masks and Photoshop CS3 One-on-One(www.lynda.com/deke).

Steve Baczewski is a freelance writer, professional photographer, graphic designer, and consultant. He also teaches classes in traditional and digital fine arts photography. His company, Sore Tooth Productions, is based in Albany, California. Steve can be reached at foxhole510@sbcglobal.net.

Jim DiVitale is an Atlanta-based photographer and instructor specializing in digital photography. His clients include IBM, Carter’s, Mizuno USA, Genuine Parts Company, Scientific-Atlanta, TEC America, and Coca-Cola. Check out his website at www.divitalephotography.com.

Jan Kabili, a best-selling Photoshop author and trainer, has written several books on Photoshop, ImageReady, and Photoshop Elements. You’ll find her latest tutorial-packed books, How to Wow: Photoshop CS2 for the Web and Photo-shop CS Complete Course, at major online and retail stores.

Dave Huss, with more than 25 years’ experience as a photographer, has authored more than 18 books on digital photography and photo editing. His latest book is Photoshop Elements 4: 50 Ways to Create Cool Pictures. Dave is a popular conference speaker in the U.S. and Europe.

Peter Bauer is the Director of the NAPP Help Desk and a featured columnist at Planet Photoshop. As an Adobe Certified Expert, Pete does computer graphics consulting for a select group of corporate clients. His latest book is Photoshop CS3 for Dummies.

John Paul Caponigro, an inductee to the Photoshop Hall of Fame and author of Adobe PhotoshopMaster Class, is an internationally renowned fine artist and authority on digital printing. Visit www.johnpaulcaponigro.com and receive a free subscription to his enews Insights.

Daniel East is an author, freelance writer, presenter/trainer, and consultant with more than 20 years’ experience in professional photography, pro-audio, and marketing. Dan is also founder and president of The Apple Groups Team support network for user groups.

Laurie Excell has 28 years of photography and photographic equipment sales experience. Her images have been showcased in galleries, Audubon calendars, Camping Life Magazine, Amtrak publications, and BT Journal. Check out her website at www.excellnaturephotography.com.

Sherry London is author of Photoshop CS2 Gone Wild and has written a number of other books on Photoshop, Illustrator, and Painter. Sherry also writes tips and product reviews for Photoshop User and Layers magazine, as well as tutorials for Planet Photoshop.

Colin Smith, an award-winning designer, lecturer, and writer, has authored or co-authored 12 books on Photoshop and has created a series of Photoshop training videos available from PhotoshopCD.com. Colin is also the founder of the online resource PhotoshopCAFE.com.

Katrin Eismann, author of Photoshop Restoration& Retouching and Photoshop Masking & Compositing, is an internationally recognized artist, author, and educator. She was inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame in 2005. Check out her websites at www.katrineismann.com.

Ben Willmore is the author of Adobe Photoshop CS3 Studio Techniques and Up to Speed: Photoshop CS3, as well as co-author of How to Wow: Photoshop for Photography. Currently, Ben is on tour with his hit seminar “Photoshop for Photographers.” Checkout the free tips and tutorials at his website, www.digitalmastery.com.

Glen Stephens, developer of the Tools for Television, Photoshop Toolbox (www.toolsfortelevision.com), has more than 10 years’ experience in the broadcast video industry. His com-pany, Pixel Post Studios, provides training and design services for the broadcast video industry.

Taz Tally, Ph.D., a nationally known electronic publishing consultant, is legendary for his entertaining teaching on a wide range of electronic publishing topics, including scanning, Photo-shop, prepress, and digital file preparation. He’s also author of Photoshop CS2 Before & After Makeovers.

Kevin Ames creates evocative photographs for clients such as Westin Hotels, AT&T, and Coca-Cola. His fourth book, The Digital Photographer’s Notebook: A Pro’s Guide to Photoshop CS3, Lightroom and Bridge, is coming this fall by Peachpit Press. He teaches the digital arts worldwide.

Jack Davis, lecturer, photographer, and writer, has authored more than 30 how-to books for photographers, designers, and illustrators who use computers, including the Photoshop WOW! Books (Peachpit Press). Jack is also an instructor at Photoshop World conferences.

Linnea Dayton has authored, co-authored, and edited many books, magazines, and newsletters for graphic designers, illustrators, and others who use computers in their art. Her most recent book with Cristen Gillespie is The Photoshop CS/CS2 Wow! Book, published by Peachpit Press.

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Photoshop NewsAll the latest on Photoshop-related gear and software

By Daniel M. East

Training is part of the reality for product upgrades. New staff and creative-field educational institutions—as well as individuals who want to make the most of their expe-rience and new products—need training to produce the best possible output.

SAP (Systems Applications and Products) and Adobe Systems Inc. recently announced their collaboration on a new product—SAP Enterprise Learning environment—designed to assist companies with ongoing employee training more economically than traditional classroom teaching. This will provide on-time training that allows employers to organize training while tracking their employees’ educational needs and progress.

According to a statement from Adobe, “SAP Enterprise Learning creates a unique learning environment through the combination of SAP Learning Solution with Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional—a scalable, highly customizable, extensible Web-conferencing solution.”

In addition to the SAP offering, students and educators have training options for Adobe products with the announcement of a Certiport partnership to develop and launch a new line of certifications. “Certification is a critical link between education and employment,” says David Saedi, President and CEO of Certiport. “These new Adobe credentials will prepare students for meaningful employment and help revitalize classroom curricula for the 21st century.”

The agreement states that Certiport is to create a new Adobe certification program (Adobe Certified Associate) for secondary and postsecondary institutions, starting with English-language qualification tests on Dreamweaver and Flash. The exams will test the candidate’s ability to create, manage, integrate, and communicate information using Adobe products, and will award a single, entry-level certification for each Adobe application examination the candidate passes.

Megan Stewart, Director of K–12 Education at Adobe, states that Adobe is committed to equipping students with the skills needed to compete in today’s workforce. She adds, “By partnering with Certiport, we can offer teachers and students the ability to not only learn to use Adobe’s industry-standard digital communication tools but to validate the skills and competen-cies that they have acquired.”

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Alien Skin Software releases Macintosh Universal plug-insIf you’ve finally received your Intel-based Mac and have a massive library of Adobe Photoshop plug-ins that now seem to crawl at a snail’s pace, you’ll be happy to know that Alien Skin Software’s Photoshop plug-ins are now Universal applications. Furthermore, the company reports that these updates are designed for Photoshop CS3 running on Intel-based Macs and they provide, “a significant performance increase….”

The plug-in updates cost $19.99 each for up to three; additional titles beyond three are free of charge (maximum cost $59.97). To receive the updated versions, you’re required to visit Alien Skin’s online store—have your registration codes handy to place your order.

The Alien Skin online support forum indicates that if you bought an Alien Skin plug-in on or after January 1, 2007, registered users are eligible for free updates to any of their plug-ins. Those who purchased directly from the company’s online store are automatically registered; otherwise, you’ll need to have registered manually or provide proof of purchase to receive the free updates.

SAP and Certiport offerings for Adobe TrainingEpson wins ITC rulingInk cartridges can be a messy business. More specifically, finding a cost-effective way to keep printer inks in stock has led some people to third-party vendors and the use of generic or off-brand replacements.

For some people, this option has created problems, such as costly repairs—or even replacement—of their printers, that outweigh the short-term savings. In a statement released by Epson America, the company reports that they were awarded a ruling that will now prevent third-party vendors from importing items that infringe upon their patents.

The Honorable Paul J. Luckern, in his Initial Determi-nation edict, recommended a General Exclusion Order barring companies from importing copyright-infring-ing cartridges. The judge also issued Cease and Desist Orders barring the defending and defaulting respondents from selling cartridges imported before the exclusion order becomes effective.

In February 2006, Epson filed a complaint with the U.S. Inter-national Trade Commission (ITC) that several companies were infringing upon one or more of their 11 patents that apply to cartridges for desktop inkjet printers. The judge upheld all Epson patents and found that more than 750 models of imported cartridges violated one or more of those patents.

Judge Luckern’s Initial Deter-mination was submitted to the ITC for review; a Final Determi-nation is expected by midsum-mer 2007.

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NAPP Member News All the latest on membership and benefi ts

By Bryce Smith

NAPP releases four new Adobe Photoshop CS3 Training Courses As the foremost authority on Adobe Photoshop, NAPP is proud to announce the launch of four new training courses for those who recently upgraded from Photoshop CS2, Photoshop CS, and even Photoshop 7. Created by NAPP Education and Curriculum Developers Corey Barker, Dave Cross, and Matt Kloskowski, these Adobe Photoshop CS3 courses are available in DVD format or as a 21-day online course at www.photoshoptraining.com. With multiple courses, NAPP members and other Photoshop users can customize their CS3 curriculum and they’ll have the freedom to choose the most convenient and eff ective method for mastering the newest Photo-shop. And, of course, NAPP members will receive a substantial discount on all training courses.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Beginnersis a perfect starting point for new and relatively inexperienced Photo-shop users. Dave Cross provides a full range of basic Photoshop func-tions and techniques in a step-by-step manner ideally suited to give novices the tools necessary to start working like a pro.

In Adobe Photoshop CS3 Power Session, Matt Kloskowski shows all of the secret shortcuts, enhanced

features, and cool eff ects that Photoshop CS3 off ers to new users. He also covers such topics as Bridge CS3, the new Camera

Raw, improved printing, industry insider tricks, Web tech niques, and an overview of Photo-shop CS3 Extended.

Corey Barker is your host for the new Adobe Photoshop CS3 Channels that teaches how to use channels in Photoshop CS3 to get professional results and a streamlined workfl ow. The course discusses such topics as making complex selections, black-and-white conversion, sharpening, repairing images, and much more.

Matt Kloskowski is your host once again as he introduces you to one of the most revolution-ary and important features in Photoshop: Layers. Adobe Photoshop CS3 Layer Essentials teaches the newest techniques for using layers to improve effi ciency and enhance creativity.

For more information, or to purchase any of these courses, call NAPP at 800-738-8513 or visit www.photoshoptraining.com.

Two new tracks off ered at Photoshop World, Las Vegas The Photoshop World Conference & Expo to be held at the fabulous Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas from September 6–8, 2007, will feature two brand-new learning tracks with industry experts who will cover the latest techniques and advances in technology. The tracks—Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended Special Interest and Adobe Web Tools—are geared toward professions that now have an interest in Photoshop because of the upgraded capabilities in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended. Check out www.photoshopworld.com for special rates on attendance, hotel rooms, and more for NAPP members.

Visit the NAPP member site (www.photoshopuser.com) for more info on any item on this page or any info concerning your membership.

If you have any suggestions or ideas for enhancing your NAPP membership, please send them to the NAPP Executive Director, Larry Becker, at lbecker@photoshopuser.com.

Recent NAPP Discounts

Adobe Systems Inc.—Adobe is offering an incredible 33% discount to NAPP members who purchase Adobe Photoshop Lightroom between May 1, 2007 and August 30, 2007.

Those looking to purchase Photoshop Lightroom and a Photoshop CS3 upgrade can get the two applications as a bundle for $368 (a $130 savings) or if you want to buy Photoshop Lightroom and Photoshop CS3 as a bundle, it’s only $751 (a $200 savings) at the Adobe online store with this discount.

To take advantage of these outstanding off ers, you’ll need to receive a unique off er code from the NAPP member website. Some rules and restrictions apply.

PC Mall—NAPP members get special pricing from PC Mall on more than 100,000 name-brand electronics allowing you to receive substantial savings on purchases of home computers, software, or accessories, and experience the ease of ordering over the Internet.

Tivity Software—Save $80 on your copy of Xtivity, a pro fes-sional Flash authoring software program by Tivity Software. Xtivity allows you to visually design interactive Flash Web projects in a layout style work-flow with no coding involved.

Load.com—Save 50% on Load.com’s Live Web Statistics service, the LoadStats 7.0, a professional-level Web analytics tool that enables Web designers and business owners to accurately track website traffic.

To take advantage of these discounts, NAPP members should go to the Discounts section of www.photoshopuser.com.

The following conferences and seminars are sponsored or produced by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals and provide special discounts to NAPP members.

Upcoming Seminars

Photoshop CS3 Power Tourfeaturing Dave Cross or Scott Kelby

Here’s your chance to learn the next level of skills that separates the average pixel jockey from industry leaders. Scott Kelby, best-selling author and Editor-in-Chief of Photoshop User, designed this seminar for people who are proficient in Photoshop and want to supercharge their skills with a day of power-packed, in-depth training.

Upcoming Dates:

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA July 20, 2007 Virginia Beach Convention Center

Registration Info:

Regular admission is $99. NAPP members pay $79.

Call 800-201-7323, or register online at www.photoshopseminars.com.

Photoshop CS3Creativity Tourfeaturing Bert Monroy

Spend a day with the photorealist genius of our times, Bert Monroy. It’s a perfect seminar for Photoshop users, photog-raphers, and illustrators alike! Bert will show you features that are underused and overlooked by most people but powerful enough to make any imagined effect a reality.

Upcoming Dates:

CALGARY, CANADA July 18, 2007 Calgary TELUS Convention Centre

TORONTO, CANADAJuly 20, 2007 Metro Toronto Convention Centre

MONTREAL, CANADAJuly 23, 2007 Palais des Congrès de Montréal

OTTAWA, CANADAJuly 25, 2007 Ottawa Congress Centre

Registration Info:Regular admission is U.S. $129 NAPP members pay U.S. $109Call 800-201-7323, or register online at www.photoshopseminars.com.

Photoshop CS3for Photographers featuring Ben Willmore

Author/trainer Ben Willmore reveals the power of digital image editing and the smartest Photoshop tips that will let you perfect any image in record time. You’ll learn his favorite photo-editing techniques for retouching, restoration, and color correction so you can produce incredible photographic results.

Upcoming Dates:

ISLINGTON, LONDON July 27, 2007 Business Design Centre

Registration Info:

Regular admission is £119 (in U.S. dollars).NAPP members pay £99 (in U.S. dollars).

Call 001-813-433-5000, or register online at www.photoshopseminars.com/uk.

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Live Tourfeaturing Scott KelbyScott Kelby starts with a live studio shoot and takes you step-by-step on how to organize, edit, present, and print your images using Lightroom. One session is devoted to using Lightroom with Photoshop: how the two integrate, when to jump to Photoshop, and what to do when you’re there.

For Upcoming Dates: Call 800-201-7323

Registration Info:

Regular admission is $99. NAPP members pay $79.

Call 800-201-7323, or register online at www.photoshopseminars.com.

Photoshop WorldConference & ExpoLAS VEGAS, NV September 6–8, 2007Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino

Advance Registration Before August 3, 2007

Advance admission is $599.NAPP members pay $499.

General Registration After August 3, 2007

General admission is $699. NAPP members pay $599.Students (with ID) pay $149.

Call 800-738-8513, or register online at www.photoshopworld.com.

NAPP-Sponsored Photoshop TrainingLearn the latest Photoshop techniques from the hottest Photoshop educators

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016Instructors subject to change without notice

This seal indicates the content provided is created, and produced solely by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). Additionally, it ensures the content maintains the stringent standards set by NAPP, the world’s leading resource for Adobe® Photoshop® training, education and news.

BY SCOT T KELBY AND FELIX NELSON

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In the April/May 2007 issue of Photoshop User, we showed you how to create the textured fl ag eff ect used for the 2007 Photoshop World theme logo. In this issue, we’ll show you how to re-create the chrome type treatment and surrounding metallic eff ects.

PSW Logo Chrome Text Eff ect

STEP ONE: Create a new 6x4" document (at 300 ppi). Press D to set the Foreground color to its default black, then press Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace ) to fill the entire back-ground with black.

Down & Dirty TricksThe hottest new Photoshop tricks and coolest special eff ects

STEP TWO: Click on the Fore-ground color swatch, choose 50% gray (C:0, M:0, Y:0, K:50) from the Color Picker, and click OK. Choose the Type tool (T), click in the center of the document and type the letters “PSW” (we used 26 pt, Eurostile Bold Extended 2 with 28 pt leading). Press Enter (PC: Return) to commit the type.

STEP THREE: With the textlayer active, click on the Add a Layer Style icon at the bottom of the Layers panel (the fx icon in CS3, or the black circle with the ƒ in it in CS2), and choose Bevel and Emboss. Make sure the Anti-Aliased checkbox is selected in the Layer Style dialog.

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STEP FOUR: Click on the down-facing arrow next to the Gloss Contour thumb-nail and choose Peaks. If Peaks isn’t in your list, then click on the right-facingarrow and choose Contours from the fl yout menu. A warning dialog will appear; simply click OK to continue. Now, choose Peaks from the Gloss Contours list.

STEP FIVE: Click on the word Contour (directly under Bevel and Emboss) from the Styles list on the left side of the Layer Style dialog. Click on the down-facing arrow next to the Contour thumbnail, and choose Rolling Slope – Descending.

STEP SIX: Now choose Gradient Overlay from the Styles list. Change theBlend Mode to Overlay, Opacity to 100%, turn onthe Reverse checkbox, enter 90º for Angle, and 97% for Scale. (Don’t clickOK just yet.)

Before selecting Contour

After selecting Contour

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STEP SEVEN: Choose Outer Glow from the Styles list. Change the Blend Mode to Normal and enter 23% for Opacity. Click on the pale yellow color swatch, choose a light blue, and click OK. Change the Size to 16 pixels.

STEP EIGHT: Next, choose Drop Shadow from the Styles list. Uncheck Use Global Light, enter 90º for Angle, and change the Size to 0. Now click OK to apply the layer style to your text layer. (The Drop Shadow eff ect is very subtle, but willbe more apparent when the surrounding elements are added.)

STEP NINE: Create a new layer(Layer 1) by clicking on the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) on the text layer thumbnail to load the layer as a selection.

STEP TEN: Next, choose the Gradient tool (G), click on the Gradient thumbnail in the Options Bar, select the Chrome gradient, and click OK. Click-and-drag a gradient from the top toward the bottom of your selection (“PSW”). Press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) to deselect.

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STEP ELEVEN: Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) on your text layer thumbnail again to make an active selection. Go under Select, under Modify, and choose Contract. Enter 5 pixels and click OK.Press Delete (PC: Backspace) to delete the gradient from thecenter of the text. Change the layer blend mode to Color and lower the layer Opacity to 40%. Press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D)to deselect.

STEP TWELVE: Create another new layer (Layer 2) above Layer 1. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) on your text layer thumbnail to make an active selection. Press X to switch the Foreground color to white. Choose the Brush tool (B) from the Toolbox. Using a large, soft-edged brush, paint in some highlights (as shown). Change the layer blend mode to Overlay to complete the eff ect and deselect.

You can add as many surrounding elements as you want (such as bars and triangle shapes), and give them the same metallic look by using the same techniques and layer styles (just make sure they’re on separate layers).

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It’s amazing what you can come up with when you just experiment with fi lters and blend modes. Here’s a quick technique for creating an underwater scene that I did recently on NAPP TV. It’s really simple and just might open your mind up to other ideas as you go. Give it try. We hope you can swim!

Under the Sea

STEP ONE: Start by creating a document size of 5.25x7" at 100 ppi. (The settings for all the following steps may diff er on larger fi les.) Next, select the color by double-clicking the Foreground color swatch (toward the bottom of the Toolbox),entering R:0, G:114, B:188 in the Color Picker dialog, and clicking OK. Press Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace) to fi ll the layer with color.

Down & Dirty TricksThe hottest new Photoshop tricks and coolest special eff ects

STEP THREE: Create another new layer. Set the foreground and background colors to their default settings by press-ing the D key. Then go under the Filter menu and select Render>Clouds.

STEP TWO: Click the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose the Gradient tool (G) from theToolbox. In the Options Bar, make sure that the gradient is going from the blue foreground color to transparent, and thenselect Refl ected Gradient.

Hold the Shift key down and drag the gradient from the middle of the document to the very top. The Refl ected Gradi-ent option will mirror the eff ect downward.

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STEP FOUR: Now go under the Filter menu again and go to Artistic and select Plasctic Wrap. Here you can see the settings I have applied. Then click-and-drag the bottom right-hand corner of the image window to resize it.

STEP FIVE: Press Command-T (PC: Ctrl-T) to activate Free Trans-form. Click the middle handle at the bottom and push it up to the middle of the image. Then Control-click (PC: Right-click) on the object and choose Distort. Grab the top corner handles and drag them away from each other beyond the boundaries of the document (as shown). Press Return (PC: Enter) to commit changes. Change the layer blend mode to Overlay.

STEP SIX: To soften that hardedge in the middle, apply a layer mask (Layer>Layer Mask>Reveal All) to this layerand choose the Gradient tool (be sure to select Linear Gradient from the Options Bar). With a black to traspar-ent gradient, start at the hard edge, hold Shift, and click-and-drag up to about midway of the object. Click-and-drag this layer to the Create New Layer icon to duplicate the layer and enhance the effect.

STEP SEVEN: Duplicate this layer again, click-and-drag the new layer to just above the fi rst gradient layer (as shown), and go to the Edit menu and select Transform>Flip Vertical. With the Move tool (V), drag the shimmering object down to the bottom of the document. Activate Free Transform again. Hold down the Option (PC: Alt) key, click the top- or bottom-middle handle, and scale the object inward. Press Return (PC: Enter) to commit changes. This will give the perspective of being low to the ground.

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STEP EIGHT: With this layer still active, change the blend mode back to Normal, go under the Image menu, and select Adjustments>Hue/Satu-ration. Click the Colorize checkbox, set Hue to 33, and Saturation to 35. This will give the ocean fl oor a sandy color.

After applying the Hue/Saturation adjust-ment, let’s give the ocean fl oor a little noise by going under the Filter menu to Noise>Add Noise.

STEP NINE: Next, to create the rays of light, create a new layer and fi ll it with 50% gray. Go under the Filter menu and choose Render>Fibers...just about any setting will do. Go under the Filter menu again, choose Blur>Gaussian Blur, and enter 4 for Radius. In the same menu choose Motion Blur, set the Angle to 90, and the Distance to 100.

STEP TEN: Change the layer blend mode to Overlay.

STEP ELEVEN: Go under the Edit menu and select Transform>Perpsective. Then grab either one of the bottom corner handles and drag out beyond the document boundaries. Press Enter.

Finally, just drop some sea life in the scene and there you have it, an ocean scene from scratch! C

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Here’s a trick from our own Matt Kloskowski, who shows us how to use Smart Objects to create a beautifulwedding album template that can be edited easily. Then we show you how to switch images while still maintaining the artful look, eff ects, and fi lters of the original template.

Wedding Album Template

STEP ONE: Open the photo or image of your choice to begin creating a wedding album template. Go to the Layer menu and under Smart Objects, choose Convert to Smart Object. Your original Background layer now becomes Layer 0 and has the Smart Object icon at the lower right of the layer thumbnail.

Down & Dirty TricksThe hottest new Photoshop tricks and coolest special eff ects

STEP TWO: Click-and-drag Layer 0 to the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel to duplicate Layer 0 (Layer 0 copy).

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STEP THREE: Next, press Command-T (PC: Ctrl-T) to bring up the Free Transform bounding box. Resize and reposition the image as you wish, remembering to hold the Shift key if you want to constrain proportions. Press Return (PC: Enter) to apply the transformation.

STEP FOUR: Click on the Add a Layer Style icon (fx ) at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Stroke. In the dialog, enter 3 for Size and choose Inside for Position. Click on the red Color swatch, choose black as the color, and click OK to close the Color Picker. Now, click on the words “Drop Shadow”in the Styles list, enter 40% for Opacity, 0 forDistance, and 20 for Size. Don’t click OK just yet.

STEP FIVE: Click on Inner Glow in the Styles list and in the dialog, change the Blend Mode to Multi-ply and lower the Opac-ity to 45%. Now click on the light yellow Color swatch, choose black as the color, and click OK to close the Color Picker. Lastly, enter 100 for Size and click OK to apply your styles and close the Layer Style dialog.

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STEP SIX: Next we’ll click on Layer 0 to make it active. Go to the Filter menu and choose Blur>Gaussian Blur. Enter 14 for Radius and click OK. Choose the Type tool (T) from the Toolbox and add some text to your document.

STEP SEVEN: At this point, your template is complete. But here’s the cool part. Let’s say you’d like to use an entirely diff erent image but want to maintain all the fi lter and style settings you’ve created. Simply click on either Layer 0 or Layer 0 copy. Go under the Layer menu, to Smart Objects, and choose Replace Contents. When the Place dialog appears, select the new image you want to use and click Place. The entire document will be updated with the new image and all the settings remain intact. Note: Be sure to use images of the same orientation and size for best results.

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OPTIONAL STEP:

Click on the layer with the Smart Filters Gaussian Blur applied to it (the fi rst layer at the bottom of the Layers panel). Now, click on the Create a New Fill or Adjustment Layer icon (the black and white circle at the bottom of the Lay-ers panel) and choose Levels. Move the Midtone input slider toward the left to lighten the image and click OK.

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and I absolutely love my 1-TB Mercury Elite-AL Pro FireWire hard drive (retails for around $419.99). It’s lightning-fast, sturdy, and set up as a RAID drive so it has maximum data-storage stability. Plus, it just looks really cool. The moral of the story here, however, is to make sure you have some kind of a backup system: Regardless of what it is, back up your photos and back them up early.

Take advantage of everything the Get Photos from Camera dialog has to off er: Import images to your computer; store them in a folder named after something you’ll remember (e.g., you might choose to organize your photos by the date they were taken: [Date_Shoot-Name] 04292007 for April 29, 2007); rename photos; etc. Once you click the Get Photos button, they’ll be copied to the location you specifi ed in the dialog.

Once your import is complete, there’s one more thing to do: Add keywords to your photos using the Keywords panel in Bridge. Keywords are essential when it comes to fi nding your photos later among large amounts of images, because you can do a search based on keywords.

Sorting Next, we need to separate the keepers from the rejects—known as sorting. A little bit of work here helps tremendously down the road. In Bridge, start by fi nding the photos you just imported—you can bump up the thumbnail size by using the thumbnail slider at the bottom of the window. Then click on the fi rst photo, evaluate it, and then press the Right Arrow key to move to the next one. ©

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The Million-Dollar Question: Bridge or Lightroom?There’s a lot of buzz about which program to use for man-aging your digital photos—Adobe Bridge or Photoshop Lightroom. Here’s the thing: You can do the same basic things in Bridge that you can do in Lightroom. Personally, I fi nd Lightroom easier to work with for my importing, sorting, and processing needs, but Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw work just fi ne too. If you’re reading this article, I can assume that you have Photoshop (and Bridge) but I can’t assume that you have Photoshop Lightroom. So, everything here is covered in the context of Photoshop and Bridge; but keep in mind that the same things mentioned here can be done (and probably easier) in Lightroom.

STEP ONE: IMPORT AND SORT

The fi rst step is to import your photos. If you have Photoshop CS3 (and Bridge CS3, which comes with Photoshop), then this process is easier than ever before.

Import: It’s more than just importingImporting your photos is the overall goal here but also doing some necessary steps from the workfl ow here helps a lot. If you were to break down what needs to be done, it would be: Import>Back Up>Rename>Add Copyright and Metadata>Keyword>Find the Keepers.

Many of those things can be done in one simple dialog: For example, if you fi re up Bridge CS3 and go to the File menu, you’ll see the Get Photos from Camera option. Here you can not only import the photos from your card reader but also add copyright information or metadata, rename your photos, back up your photos, and even convert them to DNG—all in one dialog. That’s taking care of at least four things at one time that used to be done separately in the import phase.

Aside from simply copying photos to your computer, the backup step is crucial: You need a backup of your photos that’s separate from your working copies. Heck, it’s not a bad idea to have at least two backups—one that’s kept onsite and one kept off site at home or at a relative’s house, in case of a catastrophe. I fi nd external storage devices work best for me—although DVDs are a great alternative—

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STEP TWO: PROCESS AND DEVELOP

Now that we’ve done the housekeeping in the Import and Sort step, it’s time to start working on the photos. Think of this step as your digital darkroom, where you adjust the exposure of your photos as well as the white balance, contrast, cropping, and overall color. I recommend shooting in RAW because you get more fl exibility when editing your photos and the Camera Raw dialog is just easier to use. Once you fi nd a photo you need to process, double-click on it to open it in Camera Raw.

By the way, in Bridge CS3, even if you don’t shoot in RAW format, you can always click on a JPEG photo and choose File>Open in Cam-era Raw to take advantage of the Camera Raw dialog.

Processing in Adobe Camera RawOnce you’re in the Camera Raw dialog, it’s time to start making your changes. One thing you’ll fi nd is that the dialog is laid out logi-cally in the order in which we make changes, and you’ll typically work here from top to bottom, as follows:

The Basics: Begin in the Basic tab by adjust-ing the White Balance, as that’s the single most important thing to get correct right from the start.

My personal preference is to go ahead and crop the photo here using the Crop tool in Camera Raw. Why? Because it’s nonde-structive and the following adjustments will involve looking at the histogram. (Why leave an area in the photo that may have a large

impact on the histogram if I’m going to crop it out anyway.) Next, move down to the Exposure slider and then to Recovery.

Fill Light is next but you’ll fi nd a lot of the pros like to jump right down to the Blacks slider fi rst. Set the black point of your photo and then jump back up to Fill Light to bring out any detail in the Shadows, if needed. You may even need another Blacks slider tweak afteradjusting the Fill Light. From there, move to the Brightness slider to add some overall brightening to the photo, if needed. I usually skip over the Contrast slider; you’ll see why in a moment. Finally, if any of the color in the photo needs a boost, adjust the Vibrance or Saturation slider. (I like Vibrance better because I get a much more realistic color boost compared to the Saturation slider, which tends to globally saturate everything.)

At this point, you just want to get rid of the absolute rejects—photos that are too poorly lit, totally out of focus, or just not what you want to save. Once you fi nd one that you don’t want to keep, label it as a reject by going to the Label menu and choosing Reject (or press Option-Delete [PC: Alt-Backspace]). After you’ve gone through all of the photos, delete the rejects.

Now, follow the same process and go through all of the photos again and label your absolute favorites with fi ve stars (ones that’ll go to the client, portfolio, or print). What happens to the rest of them? Well, nothing really. I just leave them. They’re not my favorites, but they’re not rejects either, and I’m really only concerned with keepers and rejects. If you’d like to sort them further, by all means use the other star ratings (1 through 4), and even the color labels (also found in the Label menu).

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Contrast and curve adjustments:

Once you’re done with the Basic adjustments, move on to the next tab—the Tone Curve. Here you can use the Parametric option and adjust the sliders to give your image that classic S curve to boost the contrast. You’ll fi nd that you get a lot more contrast control using the Tone Curve instead of the Contrast slider in the Basic tab.

Detail: I typically stay away from the Detail tab, the main purpose of which is for sharpening and noise reduction but I prefer to do them in the next step in Photoshop.

HSL/Grayscale: After your curve adjustment, click on the HSL/Gray-scale tab (CS3 only), which is great for making targeted color adjust-ments to the photo based on a specifi c color. (Note: If you don’t have CS3, you can just as easily do this in Photoshop but I like that it’s in the Camera Raw dialog.)

Split Toning and Lens Corrections: Depending on your photo, the next tabs, Split Toning and Lens Corrections, may require some work from you, but I typically skip over them.

If you’re happy with your photo at this point and don’t need to do anything in Photoshop, just click the Done button to apply the changes, and close the Camera Raw dialog. In the workfl ow scheme, however, if the photo needs to move to Photoshop, then this is the time to do it by clicking Open Image.

STEP THREE: ENHANCE IN PHOTOSHOP

Now it’s time for any enhancements or targeted adjustments in Photoshop—known as the fi nishing step. Camera Raw is great for quickly processing your photos but there are times when your photos need a little more pixel love than the Camera Raw dialog provides.

Targeted exposure adjustmentsSay you’d like to brighten an area in your photo, for example. You can’t tell Camera Raw to just brighten the face or part of the car (as in our example) and you can’t make a selection in the Camera Raw dialog. But you can in Photoshop.

Here, I can add a Curves adjustment layer and drag the curve upward to brighten the whole photo. Then go in and paint with black on the adjustment layer

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mask to bring back the darker photo underneath, except on the car, which is where I want to draw the viewer’s attention. When it comes to workfl ow, I’ll do any of my targeted exposure and shadow adjustments in Photoshop fi rst.

RetouchingNext, you’ll want to do any of your retouching work, such as removing blemishes from a person’s face, smooth-ing skin, or removing unwanted areas in a landscape photo or product shot. Again, these are things that usually require layers, selections, and masking, which make them better suited for editing in Photoshop.

Creative adjustments This is also where you make any cre-ative changes to your photos. Maybe you want to convert it to a black-and-white or sepia-toned photo; perhaps you’re compositing several photos together, adding text, or adding a border. Here’s where you’d do it.

SharpeningFinally, the last step in the enhancing process is usually sharpening. We do this last because sharpening can intro-duce some negative eff ects, such as noise and texture, into your photos. If you have lots of photos that just need to be sharpened, it’s a good idea to create an Action (Window>Actions) to do this quickly for you.

Save as PSDOnce you’ve com-pleted your tonal and creative adjustments, it’s time to save your image as a PSD fi le. I save my PSD fi les in a new folder named “Edited” located in the same place as the original RAW photos so I know all the photos from this shoot are stored together (see example folder layout).

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STEP FOUR: OUTPUT AND ARCHIVE

The fi nal step in our workfl ow deals with output, which can have several meanings and purposes because there are several options, and archiving.

OutputPrint: This one is pretty obvious. If you’re printing your photos, then the next logical step in the work-fl ow is the Photoshop Print dialog (File>Print or press Command-P [PC: Ctrl-P]). The Print dialog in CS3 is your one-stop shop for printing because it lets you preview and change settings all in one place.

Web: If your photos are bound for the Web and you don’t have a website yet, then you’ll want to check out the Photoshop Web Photo Gallery. The easiest way to use this feature is to navigate to the photos that you want in your Web gallery through Bridge, then under the Tools menu, choose Photoshop>Web Photo Gallery. The wizard walks you through creating the website and you’ll have a great way to show your photos on the Web in no time.

Onscreen: Sometimes your clients will be at your studio or offi ce and want to see the photos onscreen. No problem: Just navigate to the photos in Bridge, then choose View>Slide Show or press Command-L (PC: Ctrl-L). This brings up a slide show onscreen that you can view outside of Bridge and Photoshop.

Email: There are a few ways to output your photos for email; the obvious one being to simply make them smaller and attach them to an email. Presentation is everything; however, you can’t control the clutter of the email program and the placement of the photos reliably, so here’s a better way: In Bridge, select the photos you want to output for email, go to the Tools menu, and choose Photoshop>PDF Presentation. The wizard walks you through the steps to create a PDF slide show of your photos—don’t forget to click on the Filename checkbox in CS3 so your clients can tell you which photos they like best.

When it’s done, you’ll have a PDF that you can attach to an email. Now you can be sure your clients see the photos the way you intended, without any other windows around them.

ArchivingAs you can imagine, there’s a great deal of discussion about archiving. In the days of fi lm, you were limited by physical space; but hey, we’re all resourceful people and if you ran out of space in one room, you’d just look for some empty area in another room. It’s not so easy when it’s digital though. If your drive is full then it’s full—you have to go buy another drive. So it’s important to at least try to manage the amount of space you dedicate to your photos.

Here’s what I do: When I’m fi nished editing a shoot, I take the contents of the folder and copy them over the same folder on my backup device. Why do I do that? First, I’m shooting in RAW, so overwriting the original RAW photos is fi ne because all of your RAW edits are nondestructive—I’m only one click away from the original photo. Also, in this copying process, I’m backing up and copying the “Edited” folder over to the backup device because it was never there. Now I can delete the RAW photos from my main computer if I need to free up space.

NO MORE STEPS

Keep in mind that this process works for me but your needs may diff er. With a few tweaks, however, you’ll see that this is a fl exible workfl ow that you can change to suit your needs.

In the end, there’s one thing to keep in mind: A workfl ow is there to help you manage your photos and work in an organized way. It’s meant to relieve you from thinking about the process of developing your photos and concentrate more on the creative aspect of making your good photos great. As you try to implement a workfl ow in your daily routine, don’t be shy about changing areas that may work bet-ter for you. The most important thing to remember is to pick some-thing and stick with it. Before you know it, it’ll be second nature.

Call 800-738-8513 or visit www.photoshopworld.com

P ®

Adobe and Photoshop are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems IncorporatedPhotographs courtesy of iStockPhoto, David Moser, Adam Daniels, Jim DiVitale, Robert Stolpe, Victor Hayes, Margie Rosenstein, and Classic Photography & Imaging

®

®

Join thousands of photographers, graphic designers, and digital artists in what promises to be the biggest and most amazing

Photoshop World ever. We’ve gathered everything you could ever possibly ask for – a dream team of instructors, classes on

the latest technologies and techniques, and a showcase of cutting-edge products and services – and bringing it all to

fabulous Las Vegas for three amazing days this September.

The Photoshop World Conference & Expo is your opportunity to learn from more than 40 of the most-respected professionals

in the world, all are here to share their knowledge and experience with you. You can customize your experience by choosing

from more than 80 classes in 12 different curriculum tracks designed to enhance your abilities and enrich your career.

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Microsoft, Corel, Wacom, Dell, Epson, Canon, and many more.

You also get to mingle with other Photoshop fanatics, network with your peers, and rub elbows with conference instructors

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we’re sure you’ll find it to be like nothing you’ve ever experienced.

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Bert Monroy

Moose Peterson

Joe McNally

Vincent Versace

Terry White

Rod Harlan

John Paul Caponigro

Lesa Snider-King

Dave Cross

Taz Tally

George Lepp

Rick Sammon

Jim DiVitale

Helene Glassman

Russell Brown

Matt Kloskowski

Eddie Tapp

David Ziser

Jack Reznicki

Rich Harrington

Jeff Schewe

Kevin Ames

Dan Margulis

Jay Maisel

Corey Barker

Chris Orwig

Tim Grey

Fay Sirkis

Peter Bauer

Laurie Excell

Joe Glyda

Jeff Greene

Jerry Courvoisier

Frank Cricchio

Rafael Concepcion

Andrew Rodney

Randy Hufford

Eric Wexler

Mark Maio

Robert Hurt

All classes, class materials, and instructors are subject to change without notice. For complete class description see www.photoshopworld.com.Adobe and Photoshop are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated.

®

Journey to Red Rock State Park with several renowned photographers to photograph two models in the beautiful desert scenery. Limited to 65 participants.

Experience a live photo shoot and learn the proper techniques to light, pose and photograph a model withrenowned industry experts.

Take a “road trip” to a beautiful Las Vegas church, where you’ll learn how to work with a bride and groom to produce gorgeous wedding pictures. Limited to 40 participants.

Come take part in any of 13 elective workshops held prior to the conference by industry superstars. A great way to kick-start your Photoshop World experience! Separate registry & fee is required.

Always entertaining, the keynote welcomes attendees, kicks-off the conference, and sets the mood for an exciting experience packed with learning and fun. Not to be missed!

Created to celebrate creativity and artistic talents of our attendees, the Guru Awards recognize outstanding skill and achievement in seven diff erent categories.

A select few who’ve pushed the art and technology of Photoshop to new levels will be inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame.

Get invaluable feedback from some of the most respected fi gures in photography at this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. See website for reservation details.

Don’t miss your chance to mix with fellow attendees and meet your instructors at ESPNZone Las Vegas for a night of food, fun, and music. Tickets are limited, $49 per-person (guests welcome).

For two days you can check out the newest plug-ins, digital cameras, scanners, printers, imaging software, hardware, storage devices, and more from some of the biggest names in the industry.

NAPP and CreativeHeads.net have teamed up to off er attendees an opportunity to talk to representatives from top companies, and even interview for a dream job on the spot. For more information, visit www.creativeheads.net.

Get your Photoshop-related questions answered on aone-on-one basis by NAPP’s resident tech guru, Peter Bauer. Located close to the classrooms, NAPP Help Desk Live is free to all conference attendees.

Gain inspiration and instruction from seven of the most elite artists of today. These outstanding photographers will reveal how and why they create their inspiring images at this interactive panel discussion

That’s right…time to kick back and cut loose. Join conference attendees, instructors, and the NAPP staff for a night of games, giveaways, and goofi ng-off !

Three teams, one project, total Photoshop warfare. Watch industry gurus and conference attendees compete in a design contest under the tightest of deadlines!

Part graduation, part farewell…Scott Kelbyand Larry Becker thank you for attending and give away cool prizes from Tech Expo exhibitors at this wrap-up of a truly fantastic conference.

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Tech Expo Hours 1:00pm to 6:00pm Bonus Classes 1:00 to 5:45pmTech Expo Portfolio Reviews 2:00pm to 5:30pmPhotoshop World Job Fair NEW! 1:00pm to 6:00pm

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THURSDAY, APRIL 5 CLASS SESSIONSYOU MAY ATTEND ANY SESSION IN ANY TRACK AND MOVE BETWEEN THEM AS OFTEN AS YOU LIKE.

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Tech Expo Hours Photoshop World Job Fair NEW! From 10:00am to 5:00pm

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Don’t miss your chance to mix with fellow attendees, meet your instructors in an informal environment, have a beer, eat some food, and listen to rockin’ tunes. The After-Hours party will be held at ESPNZone Las Vegas on the evening of Thursday, September 6th. Tickets are limited, $49 per-person (guests welcome).

Located right on the famous Las Vegas Strip, Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino and THEhotel at Mandalay Bay are the perfect places to stay while attending Photoshop World. You’ll enjoy the convenience of being within mere minutes walking distance of all the classes and events at the connected Convention Center.

When booking accommodations at either Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino or THEhotel at Mandalay Bay,identify yourself as a Photoshop World Conference attendee and use this special code –SPHOT7– to receive a special room rate. Reservations must be made by Friday, August 10, 2007.

We have arranged for discounts with Avis Car Rental and Alamo Car Rental. Special discounts codes can be found online at www.photoshopworld.com

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Photoshop MasteryTaking Photoshop to the next level

BY BEN WILLMORE

Skies usually contain a smooth transition from one color at the horizon to another in the upper sky. Shoot-ing and reproducing this transition isn’t easy. Digital cameras produce the most noise in the blue channel and problems in blue areas can become exaggerated when converting to CMYK.

Eliminating Posterization

Ben Willmore is the best-selling author of Adobe Photoshop CS3 Studio Techniques and Up to Speed: Photoshop CS3, as well as co-author of How to Wow: Photoshop for Photography. Ben spends many of his days as a “digital nomad” in his 40' motorcoach. Learn about his latest adventures at www.whereisben.com.

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Checking the channels

Once you think you have the entire sky smoothed out, double-check your work by opening the Channels panel and clicking through the individual channels. Subtle posterization is often easier to see when viewing the indi-vidual channels. If you notice areas with additional posterization, click on the topmost channel to get back to the full-color image, and then apply additional healing to those areas until you’re confi dent the entire sky is smooth.

The original bridge photograph in this example contained obvious posterization that was defi ned

by the grain structure in the image. Converting the image to CMYK mode exaggerated the problem even more and made the image unusable for its intended purpose as a full-page photo-graph in a book.

Smoothing out the sky

The Healing Brush proved useful in smoothing out the sky because it copies the texture from one area and applies it to another, while maintaining the brightness and color from the area surrounding the brushstroke that was applied.

Start by creating a new document that’s twice the width and twice the height of the image you plan to retouch. Leave this secondary image full of white to serve as the desired texture. With the Healing Brush active, turn off the Aligned checkbox in the Options Bar. Option-click (PC: Alt-click) in the middle of the newly created document to get a sample, switch to the image that contains the sky, and make horizontal brushstrokes across the width of the sky. Each brushstroke eliminates the grain in the image and blends the colors from above and below the area you paint across. This eff ectively blends the surrounding colors together while replacing the grain from the original image with the smooth appearance of the secondary document.

Single channel view of original image (left); result of smoothing the sky (right)

Original image (left); image after applying the Healing Brush (right)

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Photoshop Speed ClinicTwice the work in half the time

If you’re looking for a fast and easy way to convert all of your RAW fi les into JPEGs, then you’re going to go nuts over what you’re about to see. It’s called Image Processor and it’s the best thing for RAW fi les, well…since the RAW format.

From RAW to JPEG

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BY MAT T KLOSKOWSKI

continued on p. 48

There are two types of people who’ll love this tutorial: Those of you who shoot in the RAW format and want a quick and painless way to convert all your RAW fi les

to JPEGs for a website perhaps, or to email to someone; and those who shoot in the camera’s RAW+JPEG mode because you like to have JPEGs for various reasons and you don’t want to take the time to do it in Photoshop. Well I’m here to tell ya, forget about RAW+JPEG mode and forget about actions and batch processing. And say hello to the Image Processor in Photoshop.

STEP ONE: You can access the Image Processor from either Photoshop CS3 (it’s in CS2 as well) under the File>Scripts menu. Or you can access it from Bridge CS3 (or Bridge CS2). It works the same way but I prefer using it through Bridge, and you’ll see why in a moment. So go ahead and fi re up Bridge. Navigate to the folder that contains the RAW fi les you want to convert to JPEG.

STEP TWO: Once you fi nd the photos you need to convert, go ahead and select the ones you want to make JPEGs. You can either Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) on multiple images to select only certain ones or just press Command-A (PC: Ctrl-A) to select all of them. What I really like about doing this through

Bridge though is that you have the option to visually select your photos. (In Photoshop it’s harder to do this visually.) Con-verting from RAW to JPEG takes a bit of time because RAW fi les are so large. Why convert fi les that you don’t care about?

STEP THREE: With your fi les selected, go to the Tools menu, then choose Photoshop>Image Processor, and the Image Pro-cessor dialog opens. The best way to use this is to work from the top down. Start with section 1 and pick the fi les you want to convert. Because you launched this from Bridge, this step is already done. If you had launched this dialog from the File menu in Photoshop, then you could choose a folder of photos at this point.

STEP FOUR: The second section (2) is to instruct Photoshop where to save the new JPEGs. If you choose Save in Same Loca-tion, then Image Processor will save them into the same folder as the RAW fi les. Or you can click on the Select Folder button

NAPP is a truly amazing resource, both creatively and professionally.

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PHOTOSHOP SPEED CLINIC

HOMEWORK

With this column, I always like to leave you with a little something extra to think about, so here it is: When it comes to using the Image Processor, take it even further by creating an action in Photoshop. (For a basic tutorial on creating an action, see Photoshop User, June 2007, p. 46.) Then apply that action in section 4 in the Image Processor dialog. A few ideas might be a sharpening action, a black-and-white conversion, or even an action that automatically applies a Curves or Levels adjustment to your photos.

processing, this can take anywhere from just a minute to a lot longer if you’re processing say 50 or 100 RAW fi les. So consider doing it when you’re going to take a long break or just before you leave for lunch.

STEP EIGHT: Once it’s done, you’ll see a new folder pop up wherever you told Image Processor to store the new fi les back in Step 4. In our example where we saved JPEGs, the folder is named JPEG. If you chose the PSD or TIFF options, the folder would be named accordingly. In that folder you’ll see your new JPEGs ready to go—yep, just like that. If you click on one in Bridge you can even see (in the Metadata panel) that the photos have indeed been resized just as we instructed.

There you have it. Image Processor doesn’t totally eliminate the need for using your camera’s RAW+JPEG mode. I know a few photographers who have good reasons for still using it; how-ever, some folks don’t even know that Image Processor exists and they shoot in RAW+JPEG mode—and they have twice the amount of fi les to maintain that are taking up more disk space. So to those folks I say, give Image Processor a try.

and choose to save them into a folder anywhere on your computer or attached external hard drives. As you can see, we chose to save our images in the same location.

STEP FIVE: In the next section (3), you can choose the File Type in which you want to save your images. In our example, we’re converting them to JPEGs but you can also choose Save as PSD or TIFF fi les. Heck, if you’re carefree with your hard drive space, go ahead and choose all three—Image Processor will let you do that! We just want JPEGs, so we chose that option.

STEP SIX: You can also resize your photos in the Image Proces-sor dialog. Click on the Resize to Fit checkbox and enter the Width and Height settings you want. If you’re saving for the Web or to send as an email, then you’ll want to go with something like 640x480 or even smaller, if you want. In this section (3), you can also choose a Quality setting. Again, if you’re saving for the Web or to email, then I’ve found a quality setting of 8 strikes a good balance between small fi le size and good quality for a photo.

STEP SEVEN: The last step, the Preferences section (4), is where you can choose to run an action on each fi le as it’s being saved as a JPEG (the action will run after the conversion and resizing are done). But don’t forget that fi rst, you must cre-ate the action in Photoshop. You can also add any copyright information to your photos in the Copyright Info box.

After you’ve made all of your changes, click the Run but-ton to start processing. Depending on how many fi les you’re

If you have an idea for an action that you’d like to see in the “Speed Clinic,” please send it to letters@photoshopuser.com.

The Fine Art of PrintingTaking inkjet printing to the next level

It’s a fact of life: Noise happens. It’s often better not to have it but when you do, how do you deal with noise? First, adopt in-camera practices that reduce noise. Second, use software techniques to subdue noise. Third, use software to strategically introduce noise.

Noise—Lose It or Use It

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BY JOHN PAUL CAPONIGRO

The very best way to reduce noise, of course, is not to have it to begin with. You can reduce noise in-camera by using a low ISO setting and avoiding very long

exposure times. Additionally, you can reduce noise during the image-editing process by avoiding dramatic image adjustments—adding substantial amounts of contrast or saturation can make noise more pronounced.

Evaluate image noise onscreen as well as in print but don’t confuse noise with printer dot. Most inkjet printer dot structures are nearly invisible to the naked eye; they’re most visible in highlights and in very smooth textures. The printer dot structure is determined by the engineering of the print head and the printer driver software, and the only way you can modify the printer dot structure is by selecting a printer driver or RIP. The subtle diff erences each produces are also rarely visible to the naked eye. The printer dot structure can be seen as the minimum amount of noise you can achieve in a print. It’s also used to render the noise structure in a digital fi le.

Reduce color noise

While reducing luminance noise is very diffi cult, reducing color noise is comparatively easy. RAW converters, such as Adobe Camera Raw and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, do a

good job of this. Simply use the Luminance and Color sliders in the Noise Reduction section of the Detail menu. You may sharpen the image slightly afterward (consider sharpening selectively in Photoshop when images include smooth fi elds of texture).

You can also reduce color noise quickly in Photoshop. Here’s how:

1. Duplicate the Background layer (Command-J [PC: Ctrl-J]) and change the duplicate layer’s blend mode to Color.

2. Blur the layer (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur) and click OK.

Using these tools and techniques, only the color of an image will be blurred, not its luminance, and image sharpness won’t be compromised. In addition to reducing color noise, this technique is also useful for reducing pronounced multi-hued fi elds of color produced by demosaicing Bayer Patterns.

If color noise reduction is used too aggressively, fi elds of color will become progressively desaturated. Contours will display this eff ect most readily, so use them as guides to deter-mine a limit. In some circumstances, you can exceed this limit if you mask contours carefully. While they can do wonders, these tools and techniques are best used precisely.

[NAPP members may download a PDF of “Reduce Color Noise” at www.photoshopuser.com/members/magcenter/2007.php.]

Reduce luminance noise

It’s diffi cult, if not impossible, to reduce the luminance (light and dark) noise without compromising image sharp-ness. When it comes to smooth fi elds of color, where image sharpness isn’t a signifi cant concern, you’d think that simply blurring these areas would reduce noise. It does, but it also produces banding—even in 16-bit mode. It’s usually an unacceptable tradeoff .

If noise is contained in one channel and not others, you can blur it without blurring the other channels, thus reducing noise without signifi cantly compromising image sharpness. Both the Gaussian Blur and Despeckle (Filter>Noise>Despeckle) fi lters in Photoshop can be useful

Full image

Image with noise

THE FINE ART OF PRINTING

John Paul Caponigro, an inductee to the Photoshop Hall of Fame and author of Adobe Photoshop Master Class, is an internationally renowned fi ne artist and authority on digital printing. Check out his workshops and get free PDFs with a free subscription to his enews Insights at www.johnpaulcaponigro.com. ›

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for this. Simply target the channel and fi lter it. If you prefer to keep this eff ect on a separate layer, you can duplicate the Background layer, double-click the layer to activate Layer Styles, uncheck the channels you don’t wish to blur, and fi nally blur and/or despeckle the layer.

When noise is contained in all three channels, luminance noise is particularly diffi cult to reduce. Despite the most sophisticated masking, blurring, and sharpening routines, all existing methods soften images somewhat. Some soften images signifi cantly less than others. RAW converters, such as Adobe Camera Raw and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, pro-duce excellent results for high productivity workfl ows, where the benefi ts may outweigh the side eff ects.

The Reduce Noise fi lter (Filter>Noise>Reduce Noise) in Photoshop works quite well. Using its sliders is easy and intuitive: Strength controls the intensity of the eff ect; Preserve Details modifi es the eff ect, attempting to maintain image sharpness; Reduce Color Noise does exactly what it says; and Sharpen Details sharpens the image to compensate for the fi lter’s tendency to blur the image.

For many images, this fi lter will suffi ce but often the best solutions, producing the fewest side eff ects, are found in specialized software such as Noiseware (www.imagenomic.com), Noise Ninja (www.picturecode.com), and Grain Surgery (www.visinf.com).

Use Noise

Noise does have its uses: as a creative eff ect; to unify multiple image sources with varying noise structures; to restore a more

naturalistic appearance to highly retouched areas or synthetic elements; or use it to reduce banding.

When adding noise to digital fi les, keep noise on its own layer using the following steps:

1. Create a new layer (Layer>New>Layer) and in the dialog, set the blend Mode to Overlay and click on the Fill with Overlay-Neutral Color (50% Gray) checkbox.

2. Filter the layer with a small amount of noise, Filter>Noise>Add Noise, or Filter>Texture>Grain.

When noise is placed on its own layer, you can eliminate it, reduce its opacity, mask it, desaturate it, move it, change its scale, or target it into specifi c channels (using Layer Styles). And, you can modify the eff ect at any time in the future, with-out compromising the original image information. In other words, you have both control and fl exibility.

Noise is an essential quality of photographic images. With a little preparation and eff ort, you can virtually have as much or as little of it as you like.

Texture off ers several Grain settings

Creative Point of ViewBY K ATRIN EISMANN

Skin, our largest organ, has a surface of about 18 sq. ft., accounts for approximately 15% of our body weight, and protects us from dehydration, infection, and damage—all essential information if you’re preparing for a biology quiz; but even more important for the Photoshop portrait retoucher.

Skin Smarts

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Photoshop from the creative to the practical

The 2-minute makeover

This “2-minute” makeover adds an attractive, delicate glow to the skin without irradiating the important details that need to be sharp. Here’s how:

STEP ONE: Choose the Patch tool and circle the blemish(es), then click-and-drag the selection onto the source (unblemished) area (the Source option is set by default in the Options Bar) to quickly conceal them. Do this for only the largest blemishes.

STEP TWO: Dupli-cate the Background layer by pressing Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J), change the new layer’s blend mode to Multiply, and change this layer’s name to “makeup.”

We’ll add a Levels Adjustment layer in case the Multiply blend mode has increased the contrast and lightening. Click on the Create New Levels Adjustment Layer icon (at the bottom of the Layers panel), select Levels, and then use Output levels of 5–10 and 245–250 to reduce the image contrast. Click OK.

Portrait retouchers should accentuate the person’s natural features and maintain his/her individuality, while mini-mizing the distractions and blemishes that can detract

from a pleasing portrait. The greatest challenge for profes-sional retouchers is to make a person’s skin fl awless while concealing the imperfections, wrinkles, and sun damage. The primary approaches to attaining perfect skin in your image include:

Clone, Heal, and Patch—time-consuming and needs to be done carefully to maintain original skin texture Blur and Soften—fast and works best on younger people when a soft, gauzy look is appropriate (explained later in this article); not well received on older people or men.Balance Tones—lighten dark imperfections and darken light blemishes; doesn’t change skin texture. Used in high-end glamour and cosmetic retouching (see Photoshop User,December 2006, p. 56). Third-party programs and plug-ins—appropriate for high-volume studios or when staff and budget don’t make inten-sive one-on-one time with the retouch feasible.

What follows is a variety of quick and eff ective portrait skin-retouching techniques that were well received at Boston Photoshop World in April 2007.

Before After

CREATIVE POINT OF VIEW

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Katrin Eismann is the author of Photoshop Restoration & Retouching and Photoshop Masking & Compositing. In 2005, she was inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame and in 2006, she was named Chair of the MPS in Digital Photography department at the School of Visual Arts in NYC (www.sva.edu/digitalphoto).

ALL IMAGES BY PHIL POOL (www.omniphotobyphil.com)

STEP THREE: Click on the makeup layer then choose Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. In the dialog choose a Radius between 20 and 25 pixels and click OK. (Because of the Multiply blend mode, the blur won’t look as drastic.)

STEP FOUR: Click on the Background layer and duplicate it (Background copy). Now turn off the visibility of the Background layer by clicking on its Eye icon. Click on the makeup layer and choose Layer>Merge Visible, and then restore visibility of the Background layer.

Finally, click on the Add Layer Mask icon and using a soft-edged Brush (B), carefully paint with black to bring back the eyes and details. Ta-da!

The 4-minute makeover

This technique softens the skin and also creates appealing highlights that brighten the glow nicely.

STEP ONE: Duplicate the Background layer and click on the new layer. Select Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur, set a Radius of 10–25, and click OK.

Add a Levels Adjustment layer to improve image bright-ness, which may have been compromised (made a bit darker) with the high blur setting.

STEP TWO: In the Channels panel (Window>Channels), Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) on the top channel thumb-nail to load the image luminosity values and create a rather abstract selection.

STEP THREE: Now return to Layers panel with the Levels layer active and choose Edit>Copy Merged followed by Edit>Paste.Turn off the visibility of the duplicated blurred layer (Layer 1 in our example) and the Levels adjustment layer. Then change the blend mode of the pasted glow layer to Lighten and lower the Opacity (we used 80%).

STEP FOUR: Add a layer mask and paint back the eyes and important details. If needed, you could add a new layer to the top of the layer stack and use the Clone Stamp or Healing Brush to conceal any remaining blemishes or shadows to cre-ate your fi nal image.

Portrait retouching requires a careful eye, an empathetic heart, and a “patient” mouse. The best retouching is never done when you’re pressed for time, tired, or distracted—and, a little bit of careful retouching is always better than a lot of poor retouching. The best retouchers appreciate a person’s unique characteristics, carefully accentuating the positive and minimizing the less-than-fl attering facial characteristics.

Before After

Deke SpacePhotoshop à la Deke

BY DEKE McCLELLAND

Suddenly and entirely without warning in Adobe Photoshop CS3, the Brightness/Contrast adjustment feature is quite good. Mind you, it’s not as powerful as Levels or Curves; but its two straightforward slider bars, still named Brightness and Contrast, now produce benign, even benefi cial results.

News Flash: Improved Brightness/Contrast

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Along came Photoshop CS3

But that changes in Adobe Photoshop CS3. Brightness/Contrast no longer stinks; in fact, it’s quite good. With two straightforward slider bars, still named Brightness and Contrast, it’s as if a house fell on the Wicked Witch of the East and Glenda the Good Witch rose in her place. Bright-ness/Contrast is still a witch, but it’s a very good witch.

Let’s try an example. We’ll start with an image that’s a little bit washed-out (our image is courtesy of iStockphoto photog rapher David Politi). Notice how the face appears a bit fl at—presumably a function of straight-on lighting (as opposed to the fellow having, say, no depth whatsoever). Certainly, we could fi x this image using Levels or Curves, but the new and improved Brightness/Contrast feature in Photo shop CS3 is easier to use and it just so happens to work wonders.

STEP ONE: Open your image and copy the Background layer by pressing Command-J (PC: Ctrl-J). With this layer active, go to the Image menu and choose Adjustments>Brightness/Contrast. Or you can add a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer by clicking on the Create New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choosing Brightness/Contrast from the menu. Either way works.

Ask a group of Photoshop experts to name the worst function in all of Photoshop and you’ll probably get a variety of answers, such as: Defringe (doesn’t

work); Dust & Scratches (removes neither); Pattern Maker (doesn’t work); View>Print Size (works, but only on a Mac Plus); and my personal least-favorite, the Sharpen tool (takes a perfectly good image and makes it look like it was rendered in iron fi lings). But I think you’ll fi nd a fair amount of consensus about what has traditionally been the most notorious image destroyer in all of Photoshop: Brightness/Contrast.

It’s a classic case of bait-and-switch. Brightness/Contrast lures in new users by making them think that they can correct the brightness and contrast of an image using two straightforward slider bars that are cleverly named (get this) Brightness and Contrast. (Really, you have to admire the utter brilliance of the deception.) But here’s where the fun begins. As soon as you set about increasing the Contrast (when you’re new to Photoshop, it seems every image could use a bit more contrast), Photoshop slowly and subtly punishes you by clipping the highlights and shadows in your image. Once this becomes apparent, the unsuspecting user turns to the Brightness slider. As you attempt to recover, say, the highlights in your photo graph, the Brightness control sends even more of your shadows into the depths of out-of-gamut blackness. And so you return to Contrast for a slight adjustment, and back to Brightness, and then to Contrast, and on and on, until you discover the true mean ing of codependency. And all the while, your image suff ers—and the dark side of Photoshop laughs its sinister laugh.

And so it went for 16 years: Hundreds of thousands of new users turned to Brightness/Contrast, as overwhelmed teachers did their best to convince the masses that more complex commands, such as Levels and Curves, were actually the better, more logical solutions.

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DEKE SPACE

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Deke McClelland is author of the full-color Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One and Adobe InDesign CS2 One-on-One (Deke Press/O’Reilly Media) as well as hundreds of hours of video training for Total Training. Go to iTunes and check out Deke’s video podcast, dekePod.

Deke McClelland is author of the full-color Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-on-One (Deke Press/O’Reilly Media) and host of the online video series Photoshop Channels and Masks and Photoshop CS3 One-on-One (www.lynda.com/deke).

STEP TWO: Just so we’re clear on how bad the command used to be—and to help us better appreciate its more en light ened functionality—turn on the Use Legacy check box in the Brightness/Contrast dialog. This turns Brightness/Contrast into its bad old Wicked Witch self. Photoshop even owns up to its critics because if you hover your cursor over the checkbox, a hint comes up that reads, “Use legacy behavior (clips shadow/highlight detail).” Good for you, Photoshop. Confession is good for the soul.

Take the Contrast up to about +26 and notice in the preview (Preview is checked by default) how you’ve already managed to clip away highlights inside the guy’s face (meaning that details have gone absolutely white) and shadows inside his hair (details have gone black). Here’s the damaged result.

STEP THREE: To compensate for the blown highlights, reduce the Brightness value to –25. This restores some contours to his face, but now you’ve clipped the shadow detail to the point that the fellow’s hair and pupils are the pixel-based equivalents of black holes, throwing away all semblances of nuance and organic detail.

This isn’t color correction; it’s color destruction. If I had printed the image, scanned it back in, printed it again, and made a color photocopy, I couldn’t have achieved worse results.

But that was then, this is now. Turn off the Use Legacy checkbox and the sliders reset to zero. The nightmare that was the old Brightness/Contrast abruptly ends.

STEP FOUR: Again adjust the Contrast value, but this time, take it even higher, to +57. Clearly it’s over kill, but Brightness/Contrast resolutely refuses to blow a highlight.

To temper the hot spots, take the Brightness value down to –44. Again, we go too far. Even so, the image holds up okay (as shown). Click OK when you’re fi nished.

It’s a miracle

To what do we owe this miraculous transformation? The more subtle Contrast control compresses high-lights and shadows instead of spreading them beyond the math ematical boundaries of black and white. Mean-while, the Brightness setting aff ects the midtones rather than the entire brightness spectrum, much like the gamma control inside the Levels dialog. Both options are modeled after their counterparts in the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in.

Oh sure, Photoshop CS3 still off ers its share of wicked witches. There’s still the Pattern Maker saying,

“Come, children, come make patterns with me.” There’s Print Size saying, “Look, your image really will print this size.” And there’s the Sharpen tool saying, “Honest, sharply focused details really do look like products of an aggres sively shaken Etch A Sketch.” But Brightness/Contrast has switched axes; it’s with the good team now. If Brightness/Contrast still exudes a slight aura of wickedness, that’s because its ease-of-use is so wicked cool.

Photoshop for EducatorsReal lessons in Photoshop for teachers and students

BY JAN K ABILI

Interactive pieces are often designed in Photoshop and then brought into Flash to add motion and interactivity. Now, in CS3, it’s easier than ever to bring a native Photoshop document (PSD) into Flash with the Photoshop layers and layer groups preserved as Flash layers. Here’s how:

Photoshop and Flash CS3

Start with a layered Photoshop fi le: Just make a layered composition in Photoshop CS3 and save it in PSD format. Include various layer types and layer properties, such

as those in our sample fi le, which has text layers, shape layers, adjustment layers, layer styles, blend modes, layer groups, and layer comps.

[NAPP members may download this image and a PDF of the art icle at www.photoshopuser.com/members/magcenter/2007.php.]

Import to Flash

In Flash CS3, choose File>New>Flash File (ActionScript 3.0) and a new Flash comp osition opens with a blank stage and Timeline.

Choose File>Import>Import to Stage, navigate to the PSD fi le, and click Import. This opens the Import to Stage dialog (the Importer), where you’ll determine how this Photoshop fi le will be imported into Flash.

Choose which layers to import

The Photoshop layers, layer groups, and layer eff ects in the Photo shop fi le are listed on the left side of the Import dialog.

Layers that were visible in Photoshop are marked with a check-mark for import. Flash retains the Photoshop layer hierarchy, including the layer group in this fi le.

Choose which of the multiple Photoshop layer comps to im port. (Photoshop layer comps are snapshots of layer visibility, position, and appearance.) In the Flash Import to Stage dialog, choose No Box from the Select Photoshop Layer Comp menu and the checkmark is automatically removed from the Shape 1 box layer, because this layer wasn’t visible in the No Box layer comp in Photoshop.

A layer that has no checkmark will not be imported into the Flash composition, so scroll down to the Background layer and click its checkbox to remove the checkmark and prevent the Background layer from being imported.

Set import parameters

At the bottom of the Import to Stage dialog, choose Convert Layers to Flash Layers to import each Photoshop layer and group to a separate layer in the Flash Timeline. Note: If you choose Keyframes here instead, each Photoshop layer will appear as an object in a keyframe on a single Flash layer.

Now click on the Place Layers at Original Position checkbox so that the contents of each layer are imported to their original Photoshop positions. Then check Set Stage Size to Same Size

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Jan Kabili is a popular Photoshop author and educator. You can see her Photoshop video podcast at http://photoshoponline.tv or subscribe to Photoshop Online at www.itunes.com. View her online training videos at www.lynda.com.

PHOTOSHOP FOR EDUCATORS

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as Photoshop Canvas to automatically resize the Flash stage to fi t the content you’re importing from Photoshop. Don’t click OK yet; we still have lots to do in this dialog.

Import options for image layers

You can set import options for individual layers in the Im port er. Click on the Lamp layer on the left side of the dialog to select it and then click on the Flattened Bitmap Image button in the Import This Image Layer As section (on the right). This pro-duces a fl attened bitmap in Flash that preserves the appear-ance of the layer, but isn’t editable. Flattened Bitmap Image is the default choice for pixel-based image layers; however, you can change the default import options in Flash>Preferences>PSD File Importer.

The Publish Settings options control compression of the selected layer’s content. We’ll leave Compression set to the default—Lossy—to compress this photographic layer as JPEG. To view the size of the layer content with this compression quality, click on the Calculate Bitmap Size button. You can specify a diff erent compression quality by choosing Custom and entering a number between 1 and 100; however, you won’t see the results until you save the fi le as a SWF.

You can choose import options that aff ect multiple layers of the same type. Just Shift-click on the Handle and Stand layers to select them and choose the same options for those image layers as you did for the Lamp layer.

Notice that the Black & White adjustment layer isn’t dis played in the Flash Import to Stage dialog. In Photoshop, this layer was clipped to the Genie layer and was responsible for the blue tint on the smoke genie. To maintain the appear-ance of an adjustment layer, you must import the layers it aff ects—in this case the Genie layer—as fl attened bitmaps. Select the Genie layer in the Importer and choose Import This Image Layer As Flattened Bitmap Image.

You can create a movie clip that contains the content of an im ported layer. This produces a movie clip in the Library and an Instance of the movie clip on the stage. One advantage is that supported blend modes, alpha, and other parameters of the movie clip instance can be varied after import in the Properties panel. With the Genie layer still selected in the Importer, click

on the Create Movie Clip for This Layer checkbox to give the clip an Instance name.

Import options for type layers

Select the Trace Films type layer in the Importer, then choose the Editable Text button in the Import This Text Layer section. This will allow you to further edit this text in Flash.

Now select the Three Wishes Video type layer, which was given an Inner Shadow layer style and a text warp in Photo-shop. If a type layer contains Photoshop eff ects such as these, importing it as editable text will eliminate the eff ects—in this case, the inner shadow and the warp curve would disappear from the text in Flash. To maintain the appearance of the Photoshop eff ects, choose Import This Text Layer as either Flattened Bitmap Image or Vector Outlines. Flattened bitmap converts the layer to a bitmap, so that it’s no longer an edit-able type layer. Vector Outlines will allow you to modify sup-ported blend modes, alpha, brightness, and tint of the text, but not the text itself.

Import options for Shape layers

Shape layers, such as the Shape 2 layer that contains the fi lm logo, are vector-based in Photoshop. Select the Shape 2 logo layer in the Importer and choose Import This Shape Layer As Editable Paths and Layer Styles. This produces a vector shape with a bitmap clipped inside, which can be edited in Flash. Notice that this choice automatically enables the Create Movie Clip for this layer option. Enter a name for this movie clip in the Instance name fi eld.

Click the Calculate Bitmap Size button and you’ll notice that with the default Lossy compression setting, this layer is 2.5 KB. This object will compress to a smaller size if you change compression to Lossless, which compresses as PNG.

When you’re fi nished choosing all of your import options, click OK in the Importer dialog and the image appears on the Flash

stage. Each of the layers and groups is located on a separate layer in the Flash Timeline, making it easier than ever to add interactivity and motion to content created in Photoshop.

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First, a few disclaimers: Although you don’t need any knowledge of HTML to create a simple website, you should plan on learning the basics of HTML so that if

the need arises, you’ll understand at least how websites are structured. Second, Photoshop can create what truly is a basic, no-frills website, but with a bit of eff ort, you can make a site that has several linked pages. Lastly, if you’re looking to create a website that can include many differ-ent options and can easily be updated, Photoshop isn’t the tool for you; try Dreamweaver.

Without further ado, here are the steps to create a basic website in Photoshop:

STEP ONE: From the File menu, choose New. In the New dialog, choose Web from the Preset menu and pick your size—a good starting point is 800x600 pixels at 72 ppi Resolution. Click OK.

STEP TWO: Use typical Photoshop methods to create the look of your fi rst, main webpage. Add photos or graphics and the text that will serve as your navigation buttons.

STEP THREE: We’ll use Layer Comps (Window>Layer Comps) to help us create more than one page in the same document so, once you’ve fi nished your fi rst page, click on the Create New Layer Comp icon at the bottom of the Layer Comps panel,

Name the comp “main page,” turn on the Visibility, Position, and Appearance (Layer Style) checkboxes, and click OK.

STEP FOUR: Create a second page by adding or moving elements. For our example, we changed the photo, added a shaded box and some text, and moved the “about us” text layer to the top of the page. Then we created another new Layer Comp named “contact page.” (Eventually you’ll have one Layer Comp for each page in your website.)

STEP FIVE: Next, we need to divide the page into Slices, which allows a webpage to load more quickly, lets you update small

Beginners’ WorkshopLearning Adobe Photoshop from the ground up

BY DAVE CROSS

In the April/May 2007 issue we said, “Next time we’ll take a look at using Photoshop to create a simple website,” but then the “Opening JPEGs in Camera Raw” feature in Photoshop CS3 distracted us. So now, let’s return you to the originally scheduled tutorial.

Photoshop for (Basic) Websites

ALL IMAGES BY DAVE CROSS

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BEGINNERS’ WORKSHOP

graphics easily, and lets you create links to other pages. One simple way to create slices is to add a series of guides to the document. Press Command-R (PC: Ctrl-R) to show the Rulers, then click on the Ruler, drag onto the document each time you want a new guide. Add enough guides so that each of your text links are in a “box” created by guides.

Now, click on the Slice tool (K) and in the Options Bar, press the Slices From Guides button. Numbered slices will automati-cally be created.

STEP SIX: Use the Layer Comps panel to look at each of your “pages” and make sure the slices line up. In our example, it made sense to use the Slice tool to click-and-drag to create a slice the same size as our shade text box on the “about us” page.

STEP SEVEN: Now in the Layer Comps panel, return to the main page. With the Slice tool selected, hold down Command (PC: Ctrl) and double-click on the slice that contains your fi rst link (in our case, slice 11 about us). In the Slice Options dialog, go to the URL fi eld and enter the name of the page to which this slice will link—typically, it will be the name of your page with “.html” on the end. Click OK.

STEP EIGHT: To create your fi rst page, choose File>Save for Web & Devices. If only one slice is selected, press Command-A (PC: Ctrl-A) to select all the slices. Choose the compression

settings for the slices—we’ll use JPEG High quality because the slices are fairly small. If you want to make sure the page looks okay and the links are set up, use the Preview In Default Browser icon (circled).

Once the browser opens, hover over the links to make sure the hand icon appears.

STEP NINE: Back in Save for Web & Devices dialog, click Save and name this fi rst page index.html. At the bottom of the Save dialog, choose the following settings: Format—HTML and Images; Settings—Default Settings; Slices—All Slices. We rec-ommend creating a new folder to hold the HTML documents and the images subfolder that will be created by Save for Web.

Once the fi rst page is saved, use the Layer Comps panel to view your second page, and use Save for Web & Devices to create that page. Be sure to enter as the saved HTML fi le the same name that you used when you entered the URL links for each slice. You may get a warning message that some fi les already exist, which is fi ne because you’re reusing many of the same slices.

Eventually you’ll have a folder that contains an HTML fi le for each page (named using the same names you used for your links) and one subfolder that contains all the images (slices) for all your pages. Upload all of those fi les and you should (fi ngers crossed) have a simple website complete with several pages and links between your pages. Be prepared to work through this a couple of times to make sure everything is linked together and working.

Although it doesn’t have all the options off ered by full-fl edged Web design tools, you can take advantage of Photoshop to design, slice, and create a great-looking, basic website.

Digital Camera WorkshopCreative control with digital capture and Photoshop

BY J IM DiVITALE

In the days of shooting fi lm, color accuracy and consistency was always a concern. If you wanted the best quality from your photography, calibrating meters, testing fi lm emulsions, and running fi lm-processing test strips was part of the process. It’s no diff erent in the digital capture workfl ow.

Target Practice

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To take advantage of Photoshop’s ability to process your images with repeatable precision, you should stop shoot-ing on auto white balance. At fi rst glance, auto white bal-

ance seems to look pretty good but color can be infl uenced by all the surrounding color in the image. For example, when auto white balance is set, someone standing in front of a green wall will have a diff erent skin tone than someone standing in front of a red wall. That’s why so much time is spent fi xing images.

Calibrating

This article isn’t about fi xing things that should have been set properly to begin with. It’s about staying on top of your equipment’s best performance and that’s when a little “target practice” is the best use of your time.

Calibrating and custom profi ling your monitor and printer will give you a consis-tent workfl ow after the images are in the processing stage. Complete packages, such as the Eye-One system from X-Rite (www.xritephoto.com), do a great job of keeping all the parts of your system profi led. It’s like having a bunch of machines—all of which speak diff erent languages—start talking with each other using one common translation that really works.

Another system that works well for both camera and monitor custom profi les is the Color Eyes system. (www.integrated-color.com). Taking time to shoot the custom target under specifi c and controlled conditions can profi le

the specifi c camera sensor so it can then be used to capture color more precisely under any light source.

Custom profi ling

All this great calibration doesn’t help speed up the workfl ow production if you have to enhance your digital captures one at a time because of the diff erent settings needed to get the desired results. Digital images just don’t have to be worked on one at a time for global enhancements. Think about it: If all the images are shot under the same light-temperature conditions, all the enhancements are going to be the same if the fi les are consistent.

The fi rst way to deal with this is to create a custom color balance on the fi rst image of the session and then shoot all of the images using that setting to obtain the best possible constancy. The ExpoDisc (www.expodisc.com) reads the incident light falling on a subject and then custom balances it. Diff erent versions are made for photographers who want a little warmer balance—for portraiture, for instance.

Sometimes there isn’t time to do a balance test before the shoot. For those situations, another way would be to shoot all the images under one color balance set (Sunshine, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent—anything but auto white balance)

Color Eyes system

Eye-One Color solutions

DIGITAL CAMERA WORKSHOP

ALL IMAGES BY JIM DIVITALE

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Jim DiVitale is an Atlanta-based photographer and instructor specializing in digital photography. His clients include Mizuno USA, Carter’s, Genuine Parts Company, IBM, TEC America, Scientifi c-Atlanta, and Coca-Cola. Check out his new website at www.divitalephotography.com.

and shoot a color reference product. Although there’s always time at the end of the session to shoot the reference card, the problem is remembering to do it. It’s always best to do it fi rst (if you have the time).

Open all the RAW images at once from Adobe Bridge into Adobe Camera Raw. Click on the image with the reference card to bring it into the main window and then click on the Select All button to select all the open images. Clicking on the neutral reference patch with the Color Picker eyedropper will snap the color to the same three RGB numbers then all the selected fi les will snap into place as well.

Another reference product, WhiBal (www.whibal.com), is very easy to carry with you on a shoot. Just get it into one of the images and you’re set for one-button color balancing.

PhotoMasterTarget (www.photomastertarget.com), a product that I use a lot, does refl ective or incident custom white balance. In addition, it creates a unique signature histogram of the lighting’s dynamic range, which gives

WhiBal (bottom left), ExpoDisc (top right)

the photographer the scene’s critical information to create the proper rendering. This target has four patches that are specifi c measured numbers: a middle gray, a black with detail, a white with detail, and a second slightly darker patch of white.

The two separate white patches leave a two-peak signature in the highlight area of the histogram that lets you check for proper highlight exposure and contrast. The best exposure is created on a digital fi le when it can be exposed as bright as pos-sible and still retain proper highlight detail. If the two highlight peaks run together in the histogram, your highlight contrast is too great. A slight space between the two peaks and the bright-est peak just inside the far left of the histogram will yield an exposure that’s so perfect, it’s scary!

Here’s the procedure: First, set the custom white balance by shooting through the translucent material for an incident reading of the light source—or shoot the middle gray patch as a refl ective source—and set that as the custom white balance. Then shoot the PhotoMasterTarget, fi lling the entire frame with it.

The histogram will have four peaks, with both end peaks inside the histogram walls for proper highlight and shadow exposure. The middle gray will leave one peak in the center and the darker highlight peak just to the left of the brighter-white-with-detail peak. Once the exposure is set, all the images that follow can be shot under the same lighting conditions and each image will have proper color balance, exposure, and contrast from that point on.

For situations that don’t have as much setup time before the shoot to check everything, shoot an image at the end of the session at the exact exposure and balance of the earlier exposures. Open it in Adobe Camera Raw and process it as the fi rst shot. Putting a crop around the four patches will yield the same four-peak histogram that would be seen in the back of the camera.

Take time to shoot your targets on a slow workday while get-ting to know the capabilities of your equipment so that when you’re under the gun, you’ll be ready to take advantage of the incredible precision that Photoshop off ers the photographer when faced with large processing projects. Always expose for proper highlight detail and contrast, and process any add itional shadow enhancements in the processing stage. The least amount of steps taken to properly process a large group of similar fi les is the winning workfl ow. PhotoMasterTarget

Creative timesaving tips and techniques for the phenomenal Photoshop

LINNEA DAY TON AND CRISTEN GILLESPIE

There are dozens of ways to color an image in Photoshop, so how do you choose? The method you decide to use depends on what you want to accomplish. Here are a few simple tinting techniques that can unify several photos for print or for a webpage.

Quick Tinting Methods

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The WOW! Factor

To choose a specifi c color, enter its Hexadecimal number in the # box at the bottom of the Color Picker (we used 961e2e to choose the red in our example). If you’d like to be able to reproduce that color selection exactly, drag-select the code and copy it (Command-C [PC: Ctrl-C]). With this number stored in the Clipboard, you can recall the color by pasting (Command-V [PC: Ctrl-V]) whenever the Color Picker is open.

COLOR PRECISION Start by opening an RGB image—either color or black-and-white. Here’s our image.[NAPP members may download the image used in this tutorial at www

.photoshopuser.com/members/magcenter/2007.php]

Color mode

For the fi rst tint technique, hold down the Option (PC: Alt) key as you click the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose Solid Color from the menu. The Option (PC: Alt) key causes the New Layer dialog to pop up, where you can change the blend Mode to Color and then click OK. When the Color Picker opens, choose a specifi c color (see Color Precision on this page) or experiment by moving the vertical hue slider to a new hue and clicking somewhere in the large color square. Your tint will replace all colors and grays, leaving only black and white untinted. Click OK.

Hue mode

If you’d like a more restricted tint, in the Layers panel, change the blend mode of your solid color layer to Hue. The Hue mode doesn’t aff ect neutrals, so it leaves the grays untinted. (A color layer in Hue mode won’t have any eff ect on a black-and-white photo.)

Hue/Saturation adjustment layer

Adding a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to your original image gives you a “live” preview as you try out diff erent col-ors. Here’s how: Click the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer icon and choose Hue/Saturation. When the dialog opens, click the Colorize checkbox (see next page). Now adjust the three sliders until you see the result you want.

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Linnea Dayton and Cristen Gillespie are authors of The Photoshop CS/CS2 Wow! Book (Peachpit Press).

THE WOW! FACTOR

Black & White adjustment layer

For a color photo, the new Black & White adjustment layer in Photoshop CS3 gives you even more control of the tinting pro-cess. Not only is there a live preview, but you can also change a color’s brightness to determine how much tint it will pick up.

Start with your original image and add an adjustment layer but this time, choose Black & White. Click the Tint check-box near the bottom of the Black & White dialog and change the tint by moving the Hue and Saturation sliders (you can also change the tint by clicking the swatch to open the Color Picker). The real magic here is that you can click in the image on any color where you want to change the degree of tinting (we clicked on the sky), then click-and-drag the scrubby slider to the right to lighten or the left to darken. In addition, you can move the individual color sliders to smooth transitions; for example, we moved the Cyan slide to the left to improve

the antialiasing between the sky and the fi gures. Click OK when you’re satisfi ed with your tinting.

Use the tint again

For these fi rst four tinting methods, once you’ve established a tint in one photo, you can use it again simply by dragging and dropping the tinting layer from the Layers panel of the tinted image into the working window of another photo. (The Black & White Adjustment layer carries over the tint to match the fi rst image and you can reopen the dialog if you need to modify the settings for the best conversion.)

Patch tool tinting

For something a little diff erent, try this: Make a pattern from your entire original image (whether color or black-and-white) by choosing Edit>Defi ne Pattern, give it a name, and click OK. Now click on the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and fi ll this layer with color (one way is to choose Edit>Fill, then in the Contents section of the Fill dialog, choose Color from the menu, choose a color from the Color Picker, and click OK).

Next choose the Patch tool (it’s under the Healing Brush tool in the Toolbox). This tool requires an active selec-tion, but it doesn’t have to be made with the Patch tool, so simply select all (Command-A [PC: Ctrl-A]). In the Patch tool’s Options Bar, click the pattern swatch and choose your newly defi ned pattern at the bottom of the panel. Then just click the Use Pattern button and have a cup of tea while Photoshop tints by “healing.” Press Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D) to deselect.

The result can be a bit of a surprise. But subtle glows often develop at high-contrast edges, and in a color image, the grays will take on more of the tint than intense colors will—the opposite of a Solid Color layer in Hue mode.

Tip: For all fi ve of these tinting methods, you can tweak the color by changing the tinting layer’s Opacity in the Layers panel. And for the fi rst four methods, you can adjust the tint by double-clicking the tinting layer’s thumbnail in the Layers panel to reopen the appropriate dialog or the Color Picker.

Production ClinicGain expertise on digital capture, Photoshop, and digital fi le prep

BY TAZ TALLY

In photography, polarizing fi lters are useful for enhancing the overall color saturation and contrast of skies and clouds. But you can also use a polarizing fi lter to control the amount of refl ected light in your images when shooting a scene that has highly refl ective components, such as water or chrome.

Refl ections on Refl ections

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experiment with a polarizing fi lter and refl ected light. In the fi rst example, the polarizer was set to allow all the refl ected light to pass through the fi lter. Note the large areas of bright white refl ections.

For the second shot, the polarizing fi lter was turned 90° to allow about half the refl ected light through. This dramati-cally reduced the refl ected light from the waves.

Normally, unpolarized light vibrates in all directions or planes; polarized light refers to light that is vibrating in only one plane. Light refl ecting off a surface, such

as water, is by its very nature polarized. And polarized light, because it’s concentrated in one plane, is typically bright and intense (that’s why you can get a heck of a sunburn standing on a glacier).

A polarizing filter will only allow light that’s vibrating in one plane to pass through. If you align the plane of the polarizing fi lter with the plane of the vibrating light, all of the polarized light will be allowed to pass, and you’ll capture a maximum amount of refl ection in your image. As you rotate the plane of your polarizing filter out of alignment with the plane of the polarized light, you’ll gradually reduce the amount of polarized light that’s allowed to pass through the fi lter, and therefore the amount of refl ected light that enters your image.

With this knowledge and a polarizing filter mounted on the front of your lens, you can control the amount of bright, refl ected light that’s captured in your image. In addi-tion, adjusting your polarizing fi lter to alter the amount of refl ected light will also adjust the way other portions of your image looks, such as the overall brightness and contrast as well as some of the details in your image.

Adjusting capture of polarized light

For the best comparison results, set your camera on a tripod so you can capture multiple exposures of the same composi-tion frame. In the following examples, a polarizing fi lter was used to control the amount of refl ected light in the images. The camera was set to perform auto-exposure adjustments so we could see the impact of changing the amount of reflected light.

I shot these images on the Sunshine Coast of Australia on a recent diving and surfing…er, I mean, business trip. As it was the fall in the southern hemisphere, there was plenty of low-angle sunlight, which is conducive to creating refl ections. Ocean surf provides excellent opportunities to

TAZ

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PRODUCTION CLINIC

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Taz Tally, Ph.D., a nationally known electronic publishing consultant, provides training on a wide range of electronic publishing topics, including scanning, Photoshop, prepress, and digital fi le preparation. He’s also author of Photoshop CS2 Before & After Makeovers.

(Select>Save Selection) as alpha channels so you can recall (Select>Load Selection) and edit them at any time.

STEP TWO: Make your duplicated image the active foreground image. Choose Image>Adjustments>Match Color. In the Match Color dialog, your Destination Image should be your duplicated image. From the Source pop-up menu, choose the image that contains the sky you want. In the Image Statistics section, make sure that both Use Selection options are checked. This will limit the color source sampling and destination application to the sky areas in both images, leav-ing the rest of the desti-nation image unaff ected. If you’ve created an adjusted layer in the source image, you can also designate that particular layer as your source by selecting it from the Layer pop-up menu.

STEP THREE: Turn on the Preview checkbox and fi ne-tune the Luminance, Color Intensity, and Fade values until you’re satis-fi ed with the results. Click OK when you’re done.

As you can see, a polarizing fi lter is a handy tool to use in shooting conditions other than enhancing skies and clouds. So be on the lookout for scenes containing abundant refl ec-tions and then slap on the polarizer and use your fi lter posi-tion as one of your camera adjustments.

For the fi nal image, the polarizing fi lter was turned 180° from its original position. Nearly all the reflected light is now removed.

As the position of the polarizing fi lter is changed for each shot, notice how it not only aff ects the amount of refl ected light in the image but also alters the blue hue and saturation. It also aff ects the overall contrast of the image, especially that of the clouds and sky.

You can, of course, adjust exposure manually to achieve diff erent results, but these auto exposures also show how altering the amount of polarized refl ected light that’s allowed to pass into your image also aff ects the exposure.

The best of both scenes

After taking several shots of the same scene with a polarizing fi lter, you may fi nd that you’re delighted with the water refl ec-tions in a partially polarized shot, but you prefer the sky color in a completely polarized shot. Well, fret not—Color Match to the rescue! To swap the partially polarized sky with the fully polarized sky, follow these steps in Photoshop:

STEP ONE: Make a copy (Image>Duplicate) of the image that has the water refl ections that you like. This will be the image to which you apply Match Color. Using your favorite selection tool and the new CS3 Refi ne Edge feature (Select>Refi ne Edge), create smoothed and feathered selections of the skies in both images. Save these selections

Mastering Photoshop with Video Using Photoshop to create professional-looking videos

BY GLEN STEPHENS

A milestone has been set with the new video features available in Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended. This release is hands-down the most video-savvy version of Photoshop to date. Because there’s so much new stuff for video users, we’ll take a few issues to cover it.

Video in Photoshop CS3 Extended: An Introduction

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For the next few columns, we’ll take a look at what Adobe has done, how to harness the new features, and do some cool new techniques with video in Photoshop.

To create a foundation for the more advanced material coming later, this article will be more of an introductory approach to get everyone comfortable with how the video features work and where everything is located. In future articles we’ll delve deeper into specifi c techniques.

Getting video into Photoshop

To open video in Photoshop, use the Open command in the File menu. Once you open a video clip, it becomes a layer in Photo-shop that’s designated by a fi lmstrip icon.

Not only can you import QuickTime movies, you can also import image sequences. Check out “Video Formats in Photo-shop” for a list of video formats that Photoshop supports.

The Timeline

Once you open the video in Photoshop and you’re work-ing with it as a video fi le, you need to have the Animation panel (Window>Animation) open. The Animation panel has been in Photoshop for a while but it has been given a serious overhaul: notice the diff erent representation of the Timeline. The old Animation panel used something called “frame animation” but now you have the ability to view your animation as a Timeline or a frame animation—the main diff erence is that video will only play in a Timeline

animation. If you want to get back to a frame animation, click the icon in the lower-right corner of the Animation panel, which toggles you back and forth between the two modes.

A Timeline animation is basically what you have in any NLE (nonlinear editor) and looks exactly like what you’d see in Adobe Premiere or Adobe After Eff ects. Every layer that you have in Photoshop is represented in the Timeline. You have all of the same Timeline functionality in Photoshop that you’d have in other video applications, such as setting in and out points, slip editing, and keyframing for a few parameters. Of course, these are available for any layer, not just video.

VIDEO FORMATS IN PHOTOSHOP

The following QuickTime video and image sequence formats are supported in Photoshop CS3 Extended:

QuickTime video formatsMPEG-1MPEG 4MOVAVI FLV (Flash video) from QuickTime is supported if you have Flash 8 (or higher) installed. MPEG 2 is supported if you have an MPEG 2 encoder installed on your computer.

Image sequence formatsBMPDICOMJPEGOpenEXRPNGPSDTargaTIFF Cineon and JPEG 2000 are supported if the associ-ated plug ins are installed.

MASTERING PHOTOSHOP WITH VIDEO

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Glen Stephens, developer of the Tools for Television, Photoshop Toolbox (www.toolsfortelevision.com), has more than 10 years’ experience in the broadcast video industry. His company, Pixel Post Studios, provides training and design services for the industry.

can fi nd it by Ctrl-clicking (PC: Right-clicking) on keyframes in the Timeline. (Here are a few of my shortcuts.)

Getting video out of Photoshop

Once you’ve created your animation or manipulated your video (which we’ll cover in the future), you need to get your work back out to a video format by going under the File menu and choosing Export>Render Video.

There’s nothing under the Save menu that’ll get you a video fi le. When saving a Photoshop fi le with video in it, Photoshop simply references back to the original movie fi le so it helps if you keep your Photoshop fi les fairly small. You can export movie fi les or image sequences with all of your standard video options for exporting movies.

One confusing thing I found is that when your original movie has audio, you don’t have access to it in Photoshop and if you modify your QuickTime export settings, it appears that audio will be omitted from the exported fi le—however, this isn’t true. You cannot manipulate the audio in any way or change its compression settings, but your exported movie will contain the original audio that was in the original fi le.

That’s it for our introduction to video in Photoshop CS3 Extended. We’ll get into techniques in future articles.

By clicking the disclosure arrow next to a layer, you can see all of the keyframe properties—Position, Opacity, and Style—and this is the same for all layers whether they’re video layers or not. Two other properties that you can animate, Layer Mask Position and Layer Mask Enable, appear when you add a layer mask to a layer. In addition, you can globally animate a Global Lighting property for each fi le, which is applied to layer styles. The cool thing is that video layers are essentially the same as any other layer in Photoshop except they contain multiple frames over time.

Animating in the Timeline

Animating the Timeline properties functions exactly as in After Eff ects: Click on the Time-Vary Stopwatch icon to add keyframes to the Timeline and change any parameters after an initial keyframe is set to produce a new keyframe. Position and Opacity are pretty self-explanatory basic parameters that you can animate. Note: Position means that the only time position is changeable for keyframing is when you’re using the Move tool (V). One big drawback is that the Free Trans-form tool is completely ignored by keyframes. If you move, rotate, scale, or do anything else with the Free Transform tool, it doesn’t register as a change with a keyframe.

Style is the most powerful option that can be keyframed, because Photoshop remembers and tweens your layer styles for any changes that take place in the layer style from one keyframe to another. This can be used to bring styles in and out, change attributes of styles, colors…you name it. And it changes over time with a single keyframe. This is powerful. But remember, everything changes in your layer style from keyframe to keyframe, which can be used to create some very interesting results (as we’ll investigate in a future article).

Manipulate the Timeline

One thing that you may fi nd frustrating is that there are no keyboard shortcuts for virtually anything in the Timeline. Everything is accessed either from contextual (Ctrl-click [PC: Right-click]) menus or from the panel menus. You cannot delete keyframes, move the play head in the Timeline, trim layers, or anything without clicking on something. You can however modify the Keyboard Shortcuts (PC: Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts) and add your own set of shortcuts by selecting Palette Menus from the Shortcuts For menu, and accessing the Animation (Timeline) section.

A couple of essential shortcuts you might set up are for moving forward and backward one frame and setting layer in and out points. Everything you need is in this menu or you

Digital Photographer’s NotebookPractical tips for professional photographers

BY KE VIN AMES

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Sensors in modern digital SLRs capture at least 4,096 steps per pixel, which is seven times more information per pixel than a JPEG (8-bit) can store. A RAW capture records all of the data that the sensor “sees” as unprocessed, grayscale data. Additionally, there’s a record in the RAW fi le’s metadata containing the location and color of each pixel on the sensor. The RAW converter uses that information to process the fi le into an editable 16-bit fi le. Consider 16 bits as your editingbit depth. Although today’s printers are limited to thousands of colors of reproduction, it’s likely that they’re going to get better. I want the best and most pixels available to output as progress marches on.

RAW vs. JPEG

A JPEG is downsampled from the RAW data by a converter within the camera. The conversion includes the white balance information and an elevated contrast curve so that the result-ing photograph looks like a color transparency (slide fi lm). The camera then discards image information not included in the compressed JPEG.

Image captures in RAW format aren’t aff ected by the white balance setting of the camera, and they also carry a lot more data than their 8-bit counterparts. The image information is diff erent as well: Half of the information in a RAW capture is contained in the brightest f-stop of exposure, so a 12-bit (4,096-step) image has 2,048 tones in that fi rst f-stop; there-after, the amount of data is reduced by one-half for every f-stop reduction. The fourth brightest f-stop in a RAW fi le captured by a 12-bit sensor contains the equivalent number of steps as an entire JPEG.

Digital negatives are the original fi les captured by the camera—be they RAW or JPEG. The beauty of shoot-ing in RAW format is that it records all of the data

the camera’s sensor views; JPEG, not so much, as you’ll see.

Bit depth

Bit depth is the amount of informa-tion each pixel captures. A bit depth of 1 has only two choices: black or white. When you consider 2 bits, you’re dealing with double the data: black, white, and two shades of gray. For each increase in bit depth, the number of steps/tones doubles (the chart shows the progression). Important bit depths for photogra-phers are 8, 12, 14, and 16 bits.

Think of 8 bits as the output bit depth. There are 256 tones for each of the red, green, and blue chan-nels, which gives us a total of 16,777,212 color combinations including black and white. (Note: Multiplying 256x256x256 is really 16,777,216; however, there’s only 1 true black and 1 true white so we need to subtract 4. Why 4? Because there are three channels [Red, Green, and Blue], a total of 3 blacks and 3 whites per channel. Black is the absence of color, while white is all colors at their brightest value of 255. When calculating the actual number of colors an 8-bit RGB fi le can potentially render, it can only have one black and one white not three of each.) The highest quality printers today can output thou-sands of colors from the 16-million-plus combinations avail-able from an 8-bit fi le. So there’s plenty to choose from.

Think of 12, 14, and 16 bits as capture bit depths. Today, almost all digital SLRs capture images in 12 bits. One digital SLR (Canon’s EOS-1D Mark III) records 14 bits but the 16-bit capture is currently the purview of medium-format camera backs, such as those by Hasselblad and Mamiya.

The latest version of Adobe Camera Raw works with TIFFs and JPEGs. Does this mean that shoot-ing JPEG is just as good as RAW? What’s the diff erence between the formats, and do we care? Let’s take a look behind the scenes to reveal the truth about digital negatives.

TIFFs and JPEGs and RAW…Oh My!

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHER’S NOTEBOOK

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ALL IMAGES BY KEVIN AMES

Kevin Ames creates evocative photographs for clients such as Westin Hotels, AT&T, and Coca-Cola. His fourth book, The Digital Photographer’s Notebook: A Pro’s Guide to Photoshop CS3, Lightroom and Bridge, is coming this fall by Peachpit Press. He teaches the digital arts worldwide.

The linear data in RAW fi les has several advantages, the greatest of which is that they can be edited nondestructively—unlimited undos forever. Any value can be changed after the photograph is taken: White balance, exposure, highlight recovery, fi ll light, blacks (shadows), brightness, contrast, and many other controls are available to adjust the way a RAW fi le will be converted into a 16-bit fi le for fi nishing in Photoshop.

Nothing exists without comparison so let’s do some side-by-side evaluations. First, what’s the real diff erence between a 16-bit and 8-bit fi le. By the numbers, it’s 65,536 minus 256 or 65,024 more tones in the higher bit-depth fi le. On the practical side—depending on how much the pixels of an 8-bit fi le get hammered in Photoshop—the diff erence can be, but most likely won’t be, signifi cant enough to show in print. This exercise reveals what happens to pixels in both 16- and 8-bit fi les when edited.

[NAPP members may follow along with this tutorial by down-loading the lighthouse image from www.photoshopuser.com/members/magcenter/2007.php.]

STEP ONE: Open the Great Point Lighthouse.tif image, a 16-bit fi le made without adjustments from the original RAW digital negative. Make a duplicate of the fi le (Image>Duplicate) and name the new fi le Great Point Lighthouse 8-bit.tif. Click OK. With this new fi le active, choose Image>Mode>8 Bits/Channel to convert it to an 8-bit fi le.

STEP TWO: Now click on the 12-bit Great Point Lighthouse image to make it active. Add a Levels adjustment layer by click-ing on the Create New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel and selecting Levels. Drag the Highlight slider to the left until it touches the base of the right edge of the his-togram (the Highlight Input should read 212). Drag the center, Gamma slider left to brighten the image until the middle entry window reads 1.21. Click OK to accept the changes.

STEP THREE: Choose the Move tool (V) and drag the Levels adjustment layer onto the 8-bit lighthouse fi le. The adjustment layer will automatically copy to the Layers panel of the 8-bit image and the new settings will show in the image Preview. Position the two documents side by side (you can tell which is which by the number displayed to the left of the close paren-theses in the document header).

STEP FOUR: Select the 8-bit image and click the Histogram tab or choose Window>Histogram. Click the warning triangle in the upper-right corner to refresh the view. See the gaps in the graph? That’s where pixels were destroyed by the Levels adjustment. Click the Eye icon next to the Levels adjustment layer to hide it and refresh the Histogram. The graph’s solid now; the 8-bit fi le has returned to its original state. Show the adjustment, refresh, and the gaps (called combing) reappear.

Now make the 16-bit lighthouse image active and refresh its Histogram. There’s no combing in the 16-bit fi le even though the Levels adjustment is identical for both. The extra tones in the higher bit-depth fi le make the adjustment work without placing gaps in the Histogram.

An easy way to think of this is that RAW fi les contain no actual pixels; rather, they contain data about what the pixels will become. RAW converters, such as Adobe Camera Raw, create editable copies from the data the camera captures. Their controls set the parameters of the copy being created. Adobe Camera Raw 4 has the added ability to work with TIFF, JPEG, and PSD fi les.

Next time, we’ll compares adjustments made in Adobe Camera Raw 4.1 to RAW fi les, 16-bit TIFFs, and 8-bit JPEGs and answer the question: “Can you really get something from nothing?” Until then, keep shooting!

12-bit fi le

8-bit fi le

B Y D AV E C R O S S

With a bit of planning—and a few key camera settings—it’s pretty simple to create a classic image combining two photos of the same person. An important aspect of this technique is how to take the photos so that the Photoshop portion is relatively quick and painless.

Classic Photoshop Effects The oldies but goodies that never seem to go out of style

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Instant Twins

Before you start shooting, plan it out and envision how you want it to look in Photoshop. Do you want the person to be standing behind, off to the side, looking at him- or herself…? In some cases, you may need tape, string, or something to help the model know where to look or where to stand in relation to the fi rst photo.

BEFORE PHOTOSHOP

There are a couple of steps to follow for the photo shoot before we get into Photoshop:

STEP ONE: Use a tripod. Although you could hold the camera in your hands, in the long run you’ll save so much Photoshop time and eff ort with a stabilized camera. In theory, using a tripod should mean that the only diff erence between the two (or more) photos is the position of the person. (Of course, if you shoot out-side as we did for our example, a breezy day means a few other things might shift slightly.)

STEP TWO: Set up your camera for the correct exposure, white balance, etc., and then turn off all the auto settings. Again, our goal is to shoot several images where everything is the same, except the position of the model. Shoot a few images of your subject in each of the diff erent positions/poses.

PHOTOSHOP POSTPRODUCTION

Once you’ve taken the images, let’s move on to working with them in Photoshop. [NAPP members may download the images used in this technique at www.photoshopuser.com/members/magcenter/2007.php.]

STEP ONE: Open the images that you want to combine. If you’re using Adobe Camera Raw, open the fi les at the same time and then Synchronize the settings so the images are adjusted in the same way.

Here are our two documents.

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STEP TWO: With the Move tool (V), hold down the Shift key and drag one photo onto the other. If there’s any overlap of the person, it’s probably easiest to drag the photo of the person who will appear in the background onto the “foreground” photo.

STEP THREE: Although the two images should match up “exactly” (except for leaves blowing in the breeze as in our example), you can get Photoshop CS3 to help ensure the photos are aligned. First, double-click on the Background Layer, rename it Layer 0, and click OK. Now with Layer 0 active, Shift-click on Layer 1 to select both photos in the Layers panel and from the Edit menu, choose Auto-Align Layers. With Auto selected in the Auto-Align Layers dialog, click OK.

STEP FOUR: Hide the top layer by clicking on its Eye icon and make a selection of the person who’ll be in front. You only really need to worry about accuracy in the areas where the two people will overlap—if there’s no overlap at all, you can make a very basic selection. Show the top layer and click on it to activate it.

STEP FIVE: Hold down Option (PC: Alt) and click on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. If necessary, you can tweak the edge of the layer mask by painting with a black Brush (B) to show more of the person in front, or with white to show more of the person behind.

And here’s our fi nal composition (at right).

EXPERIMENT A LITTLE

Because we used layers and masks, we have some interesting options for further experimentation. In this example, we low-ered the opacity of the top layer to make her more “ghostly.”

To show the model “looking at herself,” after taking the fi rst photo of her standing, we placed a small piece of tape on the wall at her eye level. Then, when we took the second shot, she knew just where to look. In this example, the selection was very easy to make because there was no overlap between the “twins.”

It can be great fun experimenting with compositing multiple photos of the same person, so much so that you may never sleep. But it’s worth it for this classic look. Check out the NAPP website for yet another example.

ALL IMAGES BY DAVE CROSS

To: NAPP Help Desk

From: Abby

What does the Apply Image command actually do, and when would I use it?

To: Abby

From: NAPP Help Desk

Found under the Image menu in Photo-shop, the Apply Image command copies an image, channel, or layer from one image to another. Sure, you can simply copy/paste from one image to another, but Apply Image off ers a couple of advan-tages, including the Add and Subtract blend modes and maintaining fi le size.

A popular use for Apply Image is developing a creative blend of two or more diff erent pictures; but keep in mind that the images must have exactly the same pixel dimensions and the same color depth (8-bit or 16-bit). Open the image to which you want to add addi-tional artwork—your target image—and add a new layer or duplicate an existing layer, if desired. Open the fi rst image that you want to add—your source

image. If necessary, use Image>Image Size or the Crop tool to match pixel dimensions. Switch back to your target image, make a selection if desired, and open Apply Image. Once you’re in the Apply Image dialog, select the source image and the appropriate layer and channel from the respective menus. Choose a Blend mode, Opacity, and any existing Mask that you want to apply, and then elect to preserve (or not) any transparency on the target layer by clicking the Preserve Transpar-ency checkbox.

Two additional blend modes that are available when work-ing with Apply Image (or Calculations) are Add and Subtract. Add simply adds together the RGB values for the source and target, which will lighten the image. Subtract deducts the RGB values of the source layer (or channel) from the target, darkening the image. When working with the Add or Subtract blend modes, you can adjust the amount of lighten-ing or darkening using Scale and Off set. Scale, ranging from 1.000–2.000, is a value by which the combined RGB values are divided: Using 2 simply averages the target and source RGB values, while 1 leaves the total undivided. Off set is a value that ranges from –255 to +255 that’s subtracted from or added to each after the source and target RGB values are combined.

Because Apply Image uses fi les with identical pixel dimensions, this results in the source image (or its selected layers/

BY PE TER BAUER

Pete Bauer is Director of the NAPP Help Desk and a featured columnist at PlanetPhotoshop.com. His latest book is Photoshop CS3 for Dummies.

channels) being overlaid on the target image. If you want specifi c elements of the source images placed in predeter-mined areas of the target image, you can prepare the source images ahead of time, for example; open a copy of an image, adjust the tonality and color, and perhaps crop or even add canvas to reposition an element within the required pixel dimensions. And consider using purpose-shot photos where the elements with which you want to work are already positioned where you need them.

Whether you edit-to-fi t or compose-to-fit, keep in mind that you can use blank layers in the target image to increase your post-Apply Image fl exi-bility. Making a selection prior to using Apply Image will restrict the change to a specifi ed area of the target image.[For more tricks using Apply Image visit the NAPP member website.]

From the Help DeskAn in-depth look at common Help Desk questions

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ightroom takes a fresh look at all of the underpinnings of Photoshop. It questions everything about how working

with digital images—particularly digital negatives, whether RAW or JPEG—can be streamlined and ultimately made more

intuitive to photographers who have never shot fi lm. Written by pho-tographer Thomas Knoll, Photoshop has fi lm as its model. Lightroom, however, embodies the best of a generation of advances in digital photography and improves them. Tone control is one example.

Enter LightroomLightroom has a powerful set of controls including Tone Curve, Hue, Saturation, Luminance, Color, Grayscale for amazing black and white, and Histogram (yes, the Histogram is a control tool, as you’ll see in a minute). All of the tools are photographer friendly; in other words, they work the way we intuitively think they should, rather than back-ward in inverse “photo-think.” Let’s see…the little number, f/2, is the big aperture and the big number, f/22, is the little aperture…right? Lightroom is straightforward and also has really great can’t-mess-this-up-too-much limits built right in.

Let’s begin by opening your photograph in Lightroom and fol-lowing along. To give the Preview area more room, our photograph in the Develop module (shown) has the left Panels area (containing the Navigator, Presets, Snapshots, and History panels) hidden. To hide yours, click on the solid disclosure triangle in the middle of the left-hand side of the workspace. We did the same thing for the Film-strip at the bottom of the screen and also clicked the side-by-side comparison icon in the Toolbar to set up the Before view on the left and the After view on the right.

Controlling histogramsControl-click (PC: Right-click) the Histogram and choose Show Clip-ping (or press J on the keyboard). White borders appear around the Shadow and Highlight clipping indicators in the histogram, showing that the feature is active. The histogram shows that this is a full tonal range image with minimal blown-out highlights (indicated by the red area of sky midway up on the left-hand edge) and no blocked shadows. Hover the cursor over the right side of the histogram and the area is highlighted with a lighter gray. As you drag to the left, the whole histogram compresses in that direction and, at the same time, the words “Highlight Recovery” appear under the graph. This tells

me that the Recovery slider (Highlight Recovery in Adobe Camera Raw 4) will handle this section of the histogram and that it will be set to 33. When the red disappears, the highlight has been recovered without reducing the overall exposure.

Next, click on the pixels in the shadows at the left of the histo-gram and this area is now light gray. Dragging darkens the shadows and underneath the histogram, the word “Blacks” appears, which indicates that as you drag, the Blacks slider in the Basic panel (Shad-ows in Camera Raw 4) will move to the right. The Blue shadow clip-ping warning appears when the Blacks are at 15. Let’s go back in the other direction until it goes away: 7 is as dark as I want the shadows and leaves a bit of detail there.

Moving the cursor to the right from the Blacks in the Histogram shows the Fill Light area. For our image, we drag to the right to 18, revealing detail in the areas brighter than the shadows. The next sec-tion to the right is Exposure and we left that alone.

There’s a lot of control in the Histogram. As a matter of fact, expo-sure, highlight, shadows, and fi ll light can be done here without ever opening the Basic panel. Click, drag, done!

Now, toggle the Basic panel closed by pressing Command-1 (PC: Ctrl-1). The Histogram stays open because it updates with changes made in other panels. Nice!

In the beginning there were Curves…In Photoshop, the Curves adjustment is a powerful tone and color manipulator. With Curves open (Command-M) [PC: Ctrl-M]), when you click-and-drag over a photograph, the tone of the pixels under the cur-sor is shown as a hollow circle on the curve in the Curves histogram. Com-mand-click (PC: Ctrl-click) and the circle becomes a point. Press the Up Arrow key to make that part of the image brighter

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and the Down Arrow key to make it darker. Note: The grayscale on the left side of the Curves graph shows highlights at the top and shadows at the bottom to remind which way is which.

Working with Curves also requires knowing what not to do. For instance, if the curve has a fl at spot, the result will be desaturated. Should the curve turn in on itself, major color weirdness occurs. These eff ects are interesting and even useful in editing images for creative eff ect in Photoshop. They really aren’t so hot for enhancing digital negatives.

Tone CurveThe implementation of curves in Lightroom diff ers from its Photo-shop counterpart because it only changes tonality—the underlying black, white, and gray values of the image. The Lightroom version retains the tone curve while making it close to foolproof.

The fi rst diff erence you’ll notice is that when you drag the cursor over an image in the Preview area, nothing happens—there’s no dancing circle as in Photoshop. Take control by clicking the Target Adjustment tool (bull’s-eye) in the upper left of the Tone Curve panel. Now drag the mouse over the photograph; the dancing circle grace-fully glides along the curve! There’s something new, however. Notice that as the cursor moves over an area, a shaded area appears around it on the curve. This shows the limits that the curve can shift for these tones, and there’s no way for a curve in Lightroom to turn in on itself. It’s also harder to make fl at areas of desaturation. If the preview looks bad after you’ve moved the curve, so will the print. Little curve tweaks are usually all it takes.

In our image, we want the reddish cinderblocks at the bottom darker, as well as the sky. Now for the good part: Hover your cursor over one of the red cinderblocks, click, then drag down. The blocks get darker and the curve refl ects the change. We darken the sky by clicking in it and dragging down with the Target Adjustment tool (it stays on until you click on it again in the Tone Curve panel). Check

the eff ect by clicking the switch in the topmost-left corner of the panel. Click it back on.

Finally, we want to brighten the highlights just a bit, so let’s click on the Highlights in the Histogram and drag back to the edge of the recovery zone. And once again, done.

Hue, Saturation, Luminance, and Color (oh my!)The next panel down contains the HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminance), Color, and Grayscale tools. The choices across the top of the panel highlight which tool is active and, of course, All opens all of them for a plethora of tweaking choices.

We’ll continue to work on our image of the abandoned car wash. Now, we want the cinderblocks to be redder (rather than reddish), so let’s click on the Target Adjustment tool in this panel (top left). A click on the second cinderblock followed by a downward drag does the trick: The Red and Orange hue sliders change. The fi rst result has too much orange in the white brick, so click, drag down, and it’s done.

The sky could use some deepening, too. Click on Saturation (to the right of Hue at the top of the panel), then click in the sky with the Target Adjustment tool, and drag upward to do the job. Notice that as the cursor moves over an area, the corresponding slider highlights in the HSL panel.

In our image, the grass looks anemic. To fi x that, we’ll choose the Color panel, click on the green swatch, then click on the grass, and drag down. Woo-hoo! Instant turf builder.

Note: If you’re not sure which color swatch to pick, click All instead, then move the mouse pointer over the color you want to change. As it passes over diff erent colors they highlight in the Color panel. Click when you see the one to change.

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One more thingGreat black and white has to be the holy grail of photography. The handling of this quest in Lightroom is nothing short of incredible. As we want to keep all of the work on the color version of our washed-up car wash, we fi rst need a copy of the color photo to convert to black and white. The old way would be to duplicate the image in Photoshop, save it with a diff erent name, and wind up with two or more full-sized copies.

Not so in Lightroom. Press the G key, which takes you to the Library module in Grid view. Now it’s menu time: Choose Photo>Create Virtual Copy and a new thumbnail appears highlighted in the Grid and in the Filmstrip. The page curl in the bottom-left corner tells you that it’s a virtual copy. Virtual copies aren’t pixels at all. They’re tiny metadata text fi les in the Lightroom database that hold all of the adjustment settings. They’re applied to a copy of the origi-nal when exported.

Press D to return to the Develop module and click on Grayscale in the HSL/Color/Grayscale panel to turn the colorful car wash into a drab vision of its abandoned self. We have a list of changes here: deeper sky, darker grass, brighter walls, and more legible graffi ti. And we’ll do it all without touching a single slider!

Exposure is the starting point, so click in the center of the Histogram and drag to the right. The red highlight clipping warning appears so at least there will be white-white in the fi nal print. (Some say that’s important.)

Because we want deeper midtones in this black-and-white image, we click on the Tone Curve panel and using the Target Adjustment tool, click in the more distant dark set of rafters and drag down. Then, for bolder midtones, click on the lighter rafters in the front and drag down.

The Grayscale panel is next. Choosing its Target Adjustment tool, click in the sky and drag down. Alright! It’s really dark, producing nearly the same eff ect as a #25 red fi lter on the lens when shooting B&W fi lm. Next, a click and downward drag in the grass lowers the yellow and green values: The grass becomes lush and full of contrast. The green graffi ti pops out, too. The blue shadow clipping warnings are fi ne with me. They mean that some of the areas in the print will be as black as the printer can make them, which adds depth and richness. Press the J key to turn off the warning.

My work here is done without ever touching a slider or Photo-shop. Does this sound too easy? Unbelievable? Or even a bit magical? I have to admit it’s almost as much fun as seeing your fi rst black-and-white print appear in a tray of developer.

Kevin Ames creates evocative photographs for clients such as Westin Hotels, AT&T, and Coca-Cola. His fourth book, The Digital Photographer’s Notebook: A Pro’s Guide to Photoshop CS3, Lightroom and Bridge, is coming this fall by Peachpit Press. He teaches the digital arts worldwide. ALL IMAGES BY KEVIN AMES

Results

The Target Adjustment tool just makes sense. Using it on an image you’re getting paid for means it makes cents too, if not dollars, and lots of ’em. Tone Curve, HSL, and Color adjustments are as easy as click, drag, done. Best of all, this is totally nondestructive editing: Not a single pixel has been harmed in this article. Could anything be simpler or more intuitive? Maybe in Lightroom version 2.

Total Control

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Lightroom is an effi cient photo-management program, but it’s also an artistic tool that can open a world of creative image processing. By saving Develop settings as presets and building a preset library of visual “treatments,” you can create artistic photographs that go beyond the typical well-balanced image.

Angela Drury

Introduction to the Preset Library

The concept of using Develop presets in Lightroom to build a library of treatments will not only enhance your creative workfl ow but also allow for speedier

image processing. I fi rst began experimenting with presets using Adobe

Camera Raw in Photoshop, making use of the Camera Cali-bration controls to create more interesting visual interpre-tations of my images. Using presets enhanced my digital workfl ow and it also helped me focus on a whole new way of thinking about how I work with RAW images. After several years of experimenting, I have an extensive library of unique presets that can be easily applied to any image. Some are subtle color changes and others are dramatic eff ects that completely alter the look of an image with a single mouse click.

WORKING CREATIVELY IN LIGHTROOM

What exactly is a preset?

In short, it’s a saved series of adjustments or set-tings from the Develop module image controls. Typically, they’re used to make calibration adjustments for specifi c cameras or certain shoot-ing scenes but they’re gaining popularity for creative image process-ing. The settings are actually a set of instruc-tions that are applied to the image that don’t change the image itself at all, which means any changes are nondestruc-tive. (Note: You’ve probably already noticed that Lightroom comes with a few presets and this may be a good place to start if you’re new to working with presets.)

The settings are saved to a fi le with an .lrtemplate extension that can be opened and viewed using a text-editor applica-tion. Preset template fi les are stored on a Mac in Username:Library:Application Support:Adobe:Lightroom:Develop Pre-sets and on a PC in C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Adobe\Lightroom\Develop Presets. Preset fi les are portable and can be shared by copying the fi les into the correct directory on any computer.

Saving a preset

To save a series of image adjustments as a preset, go to the Develop module and open the Preset panel by clicking the arrow in the Preset panel title bar or use the keyboard shortcut Control-Command-1 (PC: Ctrl-Shift-1). Next, click the plus sign (+) in the title bar to open the New Develop Preset dialog. Selecting the desired settings in this dialog saves all settings or a combination of settings. Uncheck any settings that shouldn’t be saved as part of the preset, type in a Preset Name, and click Create. I usually save all the settings and then make adjust-ments as I apply the preset to new images. ›

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Tip: You can open any panel in the Develop module using a keyboard shortcut: For panels on the left-hand side, use Control-Command-1,-2, -3, etc. (PC: Ctrl-Shift-1, -2, -3, etc.); and for panels on the right-hand side, use Command-1, -2, -3, etc. (PC: Ctrl-1, -2, -3, etc.).

As far as naming conventions go, the sky’s the limit. It can be a logical description of the treatment or it can be more intuitive. Because the Preset panel doesn’t allow for a hierarchical group-ing like the Keyword Tags panel, a naming scheme that groups similar treatments might be a smart way to go. You might begin black-and-white preset names with “bw” so they appear together in the library list and name sepia treatments accordingly so they also appear together, for example: bw medium contrast and bw dark contrast or sepia rgb and sepia grayscale. You can always change a Preset Name—just double-click on its name in the panel list—so don’t worry about locking down a naming con-vention before you begin building the library.

If you have presets saved in Adobe Camera Raw that you’d like to move over to Lightroom, there’s no automated import process but it can be done. When I fi rst started working with the

Angela Drury is an award-winning photographer with 18 years’ experience shooting fi lm and digital. She has received numerous awards and has been featured in several group and solo shows. Angela lives in San Francisco and works at Adobe Systems Inc. To see her photography, visit www.angeladrury.com.

beta version, I transferred them…one slider at a time—a lengthy process. When I became more familiar with the pro-gram, I found an easier way: Open the images with applied Camera Raw presets in the Develop module and save the settings into the Lightroom preset library using the steps listed above.

Experiment and push the boundaries

When you have a few presets in the library, you can begin creating. The fun and creativity really begins when you randomly apply the presets to the images and interest-ing eff ects result from the new settings. Run through the list of presets quickly, applying them to your images with a single click and, in just a few seconds, you can stream through the list and view in the Navigator panel how images will be aff ected—without actually apply-ing the settings. If you apply a preset or make a setting adjustment that just doesn’t work, go back by pressing Command-Z (PC: Ctrl-Z). Remember: The changes are nondestructive and you can always click the Reset button to start over, so have fun and go wild!

Although using presets as a creative tool is fun, it takes a lot of persistence. Be willing to experiment and push the boundaries a bit. Presets can give undesirable results when the settings aren’t right for a particular image but sometimes, when the settings work, the image will be transformed in a way that wasn’t expected and the result will be dazzling. It’s amazing how a mun-dane image can be instantly transformed into a really interesting photograph.

By saving interesting Develop module setting combi-nations, you make discoveries along the way and, building upon them as you go, a preset library that refl ects your distinctive style will begin to take shape. In upcoming issues, we’ll go deeper into what makes a successful preset and how to work with them to develop creative eff ects. We’ll also dis-sect a few of my favor-ite presets to see how they were developed and how they aff ect various images.

ALL IMAGES BY ANGELA DRURY

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Use the Filename Template Editor to build custom renaming presets. It uses tokens to represent various text strings—such as image name data, image numbering options, date formats, information pulled from metadata, and custom text—that you can assemble into any confi guration. The assembled tokens can then be saved as reusable presets.

Rob Sylvan

File Renaming: Create Your Own Custom Filename PresetsUNDER THE LOUPE

Opening the Editor

Although accessible during import and export, I prefer to open the Editor from the Library module by selecting an image and pressing F2 (Library>Rename Photo). This will launch the Rename Photo dialog. You’ll see that there are already a number of default presets, and any presets you create will be found here as well. Select any preset to see an example of how it will display as a fi lename.

To use a preset, click the File Naming drop-down arrow, click the desired preset, and click OK to rename all the fi les that were selected when you pressed F2. To create a new preset, click the drop-down arrow and choose Edit to launch the Filename Template Editor.

Creating

a Preset

When the File-name Template Editor opens, it will display the tokens of the selected preset in the window below the Pre-set menu. You can use these as a starting point or delete them and start fresh. We selected the Date – Filename preset, which contains two tokens: Date and Filename.

Let’s go through the steps to create a preset that con sists of the date and time and a three-digit sequence number, with each element separated by an underscore. Here’s how our filename will look: YYYY_MM_DD_H_M_S_001.

First, remove the existing tokens from the editor by clicking to select them and pressing Delete. Next, in the Sequence and Date section, click the Date drop-down

arrow, select the four-digit year token Date (YYYY), and the selected token will appear in the window. Now click in the window and type an underscore after the year token. Return to the Date menu and choose Date (MM), then follow this with an underscore. Repeat this process for the remaining date and time tokens, each followed by an underscore, until complete. Lastly, add the sequence number by clicking the Sequence number drop-down arrow and choosing Sequence # (001).

To save this as a preset, click the Preset drop-down arrow and choose Save as New Preset. I prefer descriptive names, such as YYYY_MM_DD_H_M_S_001, but you can name it as you wish. Click Create then click Done to return to the Rename dialog and begin the fi le-renaming process. Note: If you want to rename fi les without saving the preset for future use, click Done after you’ve assembled your tokens to return to the Rename dialog.

To remove unwanted presets, return to the Filename Template Editor, click the Preset drop-down arrow, and select a preset. Click the Preset drop-down arrow again and choose Delete Preset “[preset name].”

To modify an existing preset, return to the Filename Template Editor, click the Preset menu, and select the preset to be updated. To add, remove, or arrange tokens as desired, click the Preset drop-down arrow and choose Update Preset “[preset name].” Alternatively, you could choose Save as New Preset and give the modifi ed version a new name.

Tip: I recommend creating a preset using the name token that’s called Original fi lename—it can come in handy for changing fi le names back to their original state.

Import and Export renaming

The Editor is the same whether accessed through the Import or Export dialogs, but there’s a diff erence via Import. Upon import, fi le naming is only possible when copying or moving fi les. In both dialogs, once you’ve chosen a Template with a sequence number, you can confi gure the starting sequence number in the Start Number fi eld that appears.

Rob Sylvan is a trainer, instructional designer, writer, Web developer, and photographer. In addition to being a NAPP Help Desk Specialist, he’s a Senior Image Inspector for iStock-photo. Check out his Lightroom tips, tutorials, and presets at www.sylvanworks.com.

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FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER

Martin Sundberg Q: Can you give us a short list of the equipment you use? Canon EOS-1D Mark II and EOS 5D cameras; Canon 16–35mm,

24–70mm, and 70–200mm zoom lenses; Apple G5 tower and PowerBooks, plus several LaCie hard drives; Lowepro bags and cases; and California Sunbounce refl ectors.

Q: When did you decide you wanted to be a photographer? Who infl uenced you?

I’ve always been drawn to and inspired by photographs. Early on, I couldn’t get enough of the National Geographic Society’s pub-lications and learning about its contributors. It was this image inundation that initially led me to pursue studies in biology and the sciences. Eventually, I realized photography was the vehicle through which I could explore both the creative and adventurous sides of life.

Q: When did you switch to digital photography? And was it an easy transition?

I switched to digital completely about fi ve years ago. It was actually very easy because I found some good digital mentors early on. I really enjoy all aspects of collaboration in producing photographs, and that defi nitely extends to including the exchange of information.

Q: What’s your favorite feature in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom? I’ve really enjoyed learning and using the HSL (Hue, Saturation,

and Luminance) panel; specifi cally the Target Adjustment tool within this panel. It allows for quickly targeting an area you’d like to adjust and tweaking it like never before.

Q: You have a lot of great location shots. Where’s your favorite place to photograph?

Simple…on, in, or near the water. I’ve had the opportunity to photograph in many amazing parts of the world, but ultimately it’s those wet locations that I fi nd most exhilarating.

Q: In many of your photos, the sun is behind your subject. What’s your technique for maintaining detail?

It seems to be a balance of several things. Positioning the lens relative to the sun produces fl ares and highlights that react diff erently, which can produce various eff ects—quality and aesthetic—in the fi nal image. The Sunbounce is also an invaluable tool to capture detail when backlighting. In postproduction, Lightroom has easier ways to preserve detail, including the Recovery slider and a more intuitive Tone Curve.

Q: Many of your photos are action portraits. How do you decide when to freeze action and when to blur it?

It depends on the intention for the photograph. Choosing whether to freeze action or to allow for motion blur depends entirely on the mood or feeling I’m working to convey. Experimentation becomes an absolute necessity in learning what you like and in what situations you’re able to repeat it.

Contact Martin Sundberg at www.martinsundberg.com

Canon EOS-1D Mark II, Canon 16–35mm, 1/500 at f/4, 35mm, Canon CR2

Canon EOS-1D Mark II, Canon 24–70mm, 1/320 at f/5.6, 24mm, Canon CR2

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FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER

Martin Sundberg

Canon EOS-1D Mark II, Canon 24–70mm, 1/160 at f/5.6, 42mm, Canon CR2

Canon EOS 5D, Canon 24–70mm, 1/1000 at f/2.8, 59mm, Canon CR2 Canon EOS-1D Mark II, Canon 24–70mm, 1/640 at f/5.6, 24mm, Canon C

MARTIN SUNDBERG/UPPERCUT IMAGES

Canon EOS-1D Mark II, Canon 70–200mm, 1/1600 at f/2.8, 135mm, Cano

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Martin Sundberg loves making photographs. If by land or if by sea, he embraces every opportunity to make pictures that move and inspire. Martin specializes in capturing imagery of people who are passionate about what they do, while they’re doing it. Based out of San Francisco, he’s able to take full advantage of a vibrant urban community colliding with myriad spectacular landscapes. Martin shoots both editorial and commercial projects. He enjoys the collaborative process and has worked with creative teams from Men’s Journal, National Geographic Adventure, and Outside.

Canon EOS-1D Mark II, Canon 24–70mm, 1/800 at f/2.8, 70mm, Canon CR2 CR2

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Last time (in Darkroom), we looked at sorting images in Photoshop Lightroom by fl agging them as keepers or rejects. While the “yea or nea” approach is a great place to start, you may also want to rank images, color-code them, and put them into collections.

Dave Cross

Sorting Your Photos, Part TwoLIGHTROOM BEGINNERS’ WORKSHOP

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continued on p. 86

Like so many things in Lightroom, there are several ways to assign a 1- to 5-star ranking to your image. The simplest method is to click on the thumbnail

and press the number you want, from 1 to 5 (0 removes the ranking), and the star ranking will appear below the thumbnail when in Grid view.

You can also click on the dots below the thumbnail to indicate the star ranking you want, or Control-click (PC: Right-click) on the thumbnail and choose Set Rating from the pop-up menu.

If you want to change an image’s rank, press the right bracket (]) to increase the ranking, or the left bracket ([) to decrease it.

To see the results of your rankings, use the Filters options above the Filmstrip: Click on the star ranking and choose from “and higher,” “and lower,” or “only.”

Color-coding

It’s also possible to assign a color label to an image (again one of several diff erent ways). You can press 6 for red, 7 for yellow, 8 for green, or 9 for blue. There’s also a purple color label, but it doesn’t have a shortcut, so Control-click (PC: Right-click), choose Set Color Label from the pop-up menu, and choose the color you want. Whichever method you choose to assign the label, the thumbnail will display with a colored border to indicate the label. As with ranking, you can use the Filters options to display only certain color labels.

Needless to say, labeling a photo as “red” may not be specifi c enough, so you can edit the labels and create your own presets. From the Metadata menu, choose Color Label Set>Edit and in the dialog, enter the names you want to use as labels.

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. . . .

ALL IMAGES BY DAVE CROSS

To save your custom labels as a preset that you can use on an ongoing basis, choose Save as New Preset from the Preset menu, give it a name, and click the Change button. Here’s an example of a built-in preset called Review Status.

Collections

One slight disadvantage of these ranking systems is the need to use the Filters options every time you want to view sets of images. Here’s where collections come in. Regardless of their ranking or label, images can be put into collections that can be viewed at any time. Using one or more sorting methods, show the images you want to include in a collection, then go to the Collections panel on the left, and click the plus sign (or press Command-N [PC: Ctrl-N]). Name the collection and make sure that the Include Selected Photos box is checked.

From then on, if you want to view that collection, simply click on the name of the collection.

You can even create a subset of a collection, known as a “child.” While you’re viewing a collection, choose some images within the displayed thumbnail and once again, click on the plus sign or use the keyboard shortcut. This time the dialog will include the checkbox Create As Child of “[your collection name].”

As just one example of using collections, we created a child of our “jeremy shoot” collection called “white background.” Now when we want to print a quick layout with four images, we just have to click on the white back-ground collection, switch to the Print module, and choose our layout from the Template Browser panel (4 Wide in our example).

Quick Collection

Collections are a great way to create a “permanent” group of images, but what if you want to temporarily view only a few images? In these situations, the Quick Collection is the way to go. Simply highlight an image and press B, the shortcut for Add to Quick Collection. Continue adding images to the Quick Collection and then click on Quick Collection (in the Library panel) to view just those images.

The beauty of sorting images in Lightroom is that there are so many diff erent approaches you can take, from fl ag-ging to ranking, to color labels, to collections. It’s easy to come up with your own system that takes advantage of these sorting options.

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One of the mantras in the development of Lightroom was that, unlike Photoshop, there wouldn’t be many ways to accomplish the same task. They didn’t succeed in this desire, but they did create an entire photographic workfl ow, with some tools and functionalities overlapping, to easily accommodate photographers’ preferences.

Michael Tapes

Quick Develop Panel

A perfect example of this “more-than-one-way-to-fry-an-egg” paradigm is the Quick Develop panel in the Library module of Lightroom. As you know,

there’s an entire module dedicated to the single task of developing your images, aptly named the Develop module, so why would we need another develop panel in the Library module? Let’s take a look and see if we can’t fi nd some hidden logic.

The Develop module is devoted to setting image parameters (developing your images) and is opti-mized for adjusting, fine-tuning, and finessing your files using all the controls available in Lightroom. In addition to the more common tools that are found in the Basic panel, such as Exposure, Blacks, Brightness, and Contrast, we also find several additional panels including Presets, Snapshots, History, Tone Curve, HSL (Hue/Saturation/Luminance)/Color/Grayscale, Split Toning, Detail, Lens Corrections, and Camera Calibra-tion. That’s quite a list and speaks to the power of the Develop module.

On the other hand, the Quick Develop panel in the Library module is limited to a subset of the controls found in the Basic panel, as well as the ability to select Presets from the Develop module.

LIGHTROOM FEATURE

The Quick Develop panel has every control that the Basic panel has, except for Saturation and the White Bal-ance Selector, and although the control sets are virtually identical, there’s one critical diff erence: The Basic panel has sliders and numeric readouts associated with each control and the Quick Develop panel doesn’t. This is because the Basic panel is designed to precisely set abso-lute adjustment values, while the Quick Develop panel is designed to make relative adjustments. As we’ll see, the Lightroom engineers carefully fi ne-tuned this distinction to serve us well for the intended purposes of the two development locations.

The main purpose of the Develop module is to fi nely adjust our photographs to the fullest extent that Light-room can. With features such as Dust Spotting, we can do a lot more before having to wrangle the pixels in Photo-shop. One of the primary purposes of the Library module is to allow us to cull or edit our selections so that we can present only the Selects to the Develop module—there’s no need to fi ne-tune our rejects. Let’s see how the Quick Develop panel can make picking our Selects and present-ing Candidates to our client easier.

Choosing your images

The Library module has many modes to help us choose images: There’s Loupe view to look closely at a single image; Compare to place two images side by side and zoom in to examine them; Grid to present an overview; and Survey to group potential picks for viewing, as on a light box.

To make proper objective judgments about which pic-tures to reject and which to select, you should look at them not as fi nely tuned fi nal images, but as images that are in the ballpark in terms of exposure, white balance, and tonality. This is especially important when comparing several images, where some are defi cient in one of those areas, but one might be the winner of the group. You’ll most likely discard some quickly because of poor focus, composition, or other criterion. The point is that you don’t need to bring all images into line, but any contenders should get their turn at bat.

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Basic panel of the Develop module

Quick Develop panel of the Library module

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And remember: An image that doesn’t work as a color image might be great as a grayscale, so it’s a real plus to be able to quickly make adjustments in the Quick Develop panel without moving to the Develop module and losing the rhythm of the workfl ow. This is indeed the primary purpose of the Quick Develop panel.

Put Quick Develop to work

Recently, we had a scouting shoot at the world-famous Ron Jon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach, Florida, to determine if using a specifi c shooting technique at this location would work for some future projects. The technique: Shoot from dusk until after dark and let the colorful buildings, signs, and shop lights serve as out-of-focus backdrops for a fl ash-lit model (Elisa). I used a Canon 70–200mm f/2.8L lens wide open on a Canon 5D to achieve the desired eff ect. Although the backgrounds required slow shutter speeds to overcome the fl ash-lit model, I specifi cally didn’t bring a tripod so as not to distract the visitors (a wrong decision, but the night was instructive). Let’s use these photos to see how the Quick Develop panel can help us to select and present photos.

The fi rst thing we did after deleting the obvious rejects was to group the pictures into lighting setups, represented by a change in location, lighting, or technique. We used the Color Label system in Lightroom to set up these groupings. These color labels won’t remain, but during the Quick Development and selection phase, they can be quite use-ful, even though the colors may mean something diff erent in each photographer’s overall workfl ow. For example, you

might use blue to indicate that an image needs to be printed or purple for photographs that have already been printed, and so on. Because we have all our images of interest in a col-lection, we can use these color labels and the Filmstrip fi lters to serve our grouping purpose temporarily. At this level, the colors have no signifi cance. [For information on ranking photos and using fi lters, see Dave Cross’s “Lightroom Beginners’ Workshop” on p. 84.—Ed.]

Let’s work with our green group to show how to use the Quick Develop panel. First, we need to set a proper white bal-ance. Navigate to the photo with the white balance reference in it, then press W to load the image in the Develop module’s

Photo collection using the green label

Clicking on the reference card in the Basic panel sets the proper white balance for

this series of photos.

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Lights Out mode makes image evaluation easier.

. . . .Basic panel and activate the White Balance Selector tool. For our example, we clicked on the Light Gray WhiBal card to set the white balance for Elisa’s skin tone (instead of the camera’s Auto setting).

Instead of going back to the Quick Develop panel to sync this white balance to the other pictures, let’s save this white balance as a temporary preset: Simply click on the + (plus sign) in the Preset panel to Create New Preset. In the New Develop Preset dialog, type in your Preset Name (ours is _Temp White Balance), make sure that only White Balance is checked, and click Create to apply this setting only to images.

Now press the G key to return to Grid view in the Library module and then press Command-A (PC: Ctrl-A) to select all of the photos in the group. In the Quick Develop panel, click the Preset drop-down menu and choose your new preset. All of the selected photos will now refl ect your selected white balance.

More Quick Develop panel adjustments

With all of the fi les still selected, click the double arrow (<<, >>) to the right of Exposure in the Quick Develop panel to increase the Exposure by one f-stop (the single arrow [<, >] increases Expo-sure by .33 stop). This brings Elisa’s face into proper exposure but

it washes out the background a little, so let’s click twice on the Vibrance double arrow to bring back the rich colors of the background without oversaturating her skin tones.

Tip: To evaluate the adjustments we’ve made without seeing the user interface, press the L key twice to enter Lights Out mode.

To give the images a little more pop, select an image to make it the active (most-selected) image (leaving the others selected as well). Press E to enter Loupe view and click on Elisa’s face to zoom in. Now, click twice on the Contrast double arrows, and then click one time on the Blacks single arrow to increase contrast and black levels a little.

Press G to return to Grid view and click Sync Settings at the bottom of the Panels area. In the dialog, we could choose only Contrast and Black Point, but there’s no harm in clicking on Check All for our example. Then click the Syn-chronize button to propagate the changes to all of the other images in your group.

Making multiple adjustments

Although we made only global adjustments to all of the images, we could have made changes to a subset of the images by changing which images were selected when we made the adjustments. Note: You can only make adjustments to more than one image at a time in the Quick Develop panel when you’re in Grid view. Although Filmstrip shows when multiple images are selected, it’s only in Grid view that these changes are propagated to the other selected images—as opposed to only aff ecting the active (most-selected) image. Of course, using Sync Settings in the Library module or Copy/Paste in the Develop module will allow you to copy existing settings from one image to oth-ers. (The obscure Auto Sync mode in the Develop module is an exception by design, and will allow you to move sliders and aff ect more than one image.)

So how did we do?

Let’s take a diff erent approach and then compare the results. With all of the images selected in the Library module, click

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An expert in RAW process technology, education, and design, Michael Tapes has been a part of the development of YarcPlus, Capture One, RawShooter, and Lightroom. In addition, he has conceived Archive Creator and the WhiBal WB Ref Card, and just released the Shoot Raw without Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt training DVD. Check out his website at www.RAWWorkfl ow.com.

Survey view in Lights Out mode after clicking the Auto Tone button in the Quick Develop panel

Undo Auto Tone changes to get back to original Quick Develop panel adjustments

Final set of images with all adjustments made in the Quick Develop panel

ALL IMAGES BY MICHAEL TAPES

the Auto Tone but-ton and Lightroom analyzes each image individually and makes adjustments. This overrides all of the changes we made earlier, except for white balance.

Now let’s select only four photo-graphs to compare. Choose the Survey view in Lights Out mode for viewing. First up is the Auto Tone series. It looks good except that the top-right image is too dark with not enough contrast, and all the images

could use an exposure bump as well. Let’s take a look at our previous work. Oh…it’s not there…now how are we going to re-create all of that? Under the Edit menu, choose Undo, which will “undo” the Auto Tone set-tings (as we hadn’t done anything else in the interim, it was only one step away). So, let’s take a look.

Let’s adjust the top-right photo with Exposure < and Contrast >> twice—much better! We could have continued to make adjustments to the Auto Tone group using the Quick Develop panel; for example, for the top-right image we could have clicked Exposure > twice, and Contrast >> once. So after you set the white balance for your group, you may want to try the Auto Tone feature fi rst, and if you like the results, you could then work in the Quick Develop panel to make further adjustments. In the examples shown here, both sets are relevant: The Auto Tone version is more natural and a bit subdued, compared to the fi rst adjusted photographs, which are more contrasty and pop more with the sacrifi ce of details in the lights and darks. Which would your client like? With Virtual Copies in Lightroom, you could have both, but that’s a topic for another article.

We might have gone a little too far in adjusting these fi les for selection or presentation purposes, but it was a great excuse to learn about some of the many ways that useful fi le development can occur from within the Library’s own Quick (and powerful) Develop panel.

. . . .

Corey BarkerCorey Barker

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X YX Y

LIGHTROOM Q& A

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If you have a Lightroom question you’d like to see published in this column, please send it to letters@photoshopuser.com. If,

however, you’d like your question answered immediately, go to the Help Desk at www.photoshopuser.com.

Q: How can I quickly bring my images into Photoshop?

You can Control-click (PC: Right-click) on the image in the Preview area or on the thumbnail preview, then choose Edit in Adobe Photoshop [version]. Another method is to select an image and press Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E). This will open a dialog where you can choose to Edit Original without visible Lightroom adjustments, Edit a Copy of the original with no visible Lightroom adjustments, or Edit a Copy with Light-room Adjustments included.

Q: How do I change which library opens when Light-

room launches?

The library that opens is determined by the settings in your Lightroom Preferences (go under Lightroom [PC: Edit menu] and select Preferences). In the General tab, you’ll see a section called Default Library. There’s a drop-down menu where you can choose the default library as defi ned by Lightroom, load the most recent library, or have Lightroom prompt you when it launches so that you can locate the desired library. If you choose either Default or Most Recent Library, you can hold down the Option key (PC: Alt key) when launching Light-room and select a library manually in the dialog that appears. If you choose to have Lightroom prompt you, then holding down the Option (PC: Alt) key will open the most recent library. You can also choose a library by clicking the Choose button in the dialog and browsing to the desired folder.

Q: Can Lightroom show me the folder on my computer

where an image is located?

Yes. When you have many folders in your system containing hundreds of photos, it can be frustrating trying to locate a particular image on your system. All you need to do is Control-click (PC: Right-click) on an image thumbnail and choose Show in Finder (PC: Show in Explorer) from the con-textual menu, and this will open the folder on your system where that photo is located.

Q: In the thumbnail previews of my images there are

small black-and-white icons. What are they?

Lightroom, like Camera Raw, doesn’t aff ect your original data. It remembers what you’ve done to a photo and saves that information in an XMP fi le that’s paired with your origi-nal fi le. Changes made to the fi le in Lightroom are indicated in the thumbnail preview by these small icons in the bottom-right corner. Clicking on any of these icons will bring up the panels or functions used to edit the image, allowing you to modify them on the fl y. This is helpful in quickly identifying which images have been processed.

Q: Can I change that frilly art at the bottom of the

Panels areas?

Yes, you can change the art or remove it altogether. Control-click (PC: Right-click) anywhere in the dark gray background at the bottom of the Panels area, choose Panel End Mark, and select any of the preset artwork (or None). (You can also change the art in the Lightroom Preferences in the Interface tab.)

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LIGHTROOM Tips & Tricks

Disappearing act

When you’re working on an image, you can hide the Panels areas, Filmstrip, and Module Picker when you’re not using them so you can see your image without the distraction of the interface. What I mean is that the interface (any interface) can take your focus away from the image you’re working on.

In any module, you’ll notice on the far-left and -right sides, and at the top and bottom, there are small triangles. When the triangles are solid, it means that the corresponding interface is visible. If you click on the triangle, the panel will collapse—notice that the triangle has fl ipped and is now dotted and no longer solid, indicating that the panel is set to Auto Hide & Show. Now all you need to do is drag your mouse over the triangle and the panel will appear. You can make your changes and when you move away from the panel, it will collapse again automatically.

To turn off the Auto Hide & Show feature, simply click the triangle again and the panel will appear and remain onscreen.

Reset

Let’s say you’re editing an image in the Develop module and you like some changes you’ve made, while other settings have been modifi ed so much that you’re worse off than when you began and it’s best to simply start over. Well, instead of going all the way back to the beginning, all you need to do is hold down the Option key (PC: Alt key) and you’ll see the name of each right-side panel’s section header temporarily change to Reset. Simply click Reset and only the sliders in that section of the panel will revert to their original settings.

Slide show, to go

There are times when you’ll want to play a slide show quickly so you can show off what you just shot, without having to jump into the Slideshow module. Simply go under the Window menu and

choose Impromptu Slideshow, or press Command-Return (PC: Ctrl-Enter). Here’s the rub: It will run the slide show based on the last settings you applied in the Slideshow module.

Virtual Copy

So you’re happy with the changes you’ve made to an image, but you’re curious about trying some diff erent settings and you don’t want to alter the work you’ve already done. Well, while you’re in the Library or Develop modules you can go under the Photo menu and choose Create Virtual Copy. This will duplicate your currently active image so you can modify the settings on the virtual copy without changing the original. You can add as many virtual copies as you want; it simply creates a new XMP data fi le for each copy.

Applying Identity Plate in Print module

If you want to apply your Identity Plate to multiple images in a multicell layout in the Print module, select the template you want to use from the Template Browser panel. In the Overlays panel, turn on the Identity Plate and select the one you want to use. By default, the Identity Plate is applied once. To apply it to every image, check the box next to Render on Every Image. This will repeat the Identity Plate on every photo in your layout.

Export to email

When you want to email images directly from Lightroom, you have to tell Lightroom how to send the email (this only needs to be done once). Go under the File menu and choose Export. In the Preset menu, select For E-Mail. Then at the bottom of the dialog there’s a section called After Export. Choose Go To Export Actions Folder Now from the pop-up menu. In the dia-log that appears, locate the Export Actions folder. Place an Alias (PC: Shortcut) to your mail program here. Then go back into the Export dialog and in the After Export section, choose the mail program alias you just made. Lastly, in the Preset menu at the top, select Update Preset “For E-Mail.” Now when you choose File>Export with Preset>Export for E-Mail, it will launch your mail program. Note: As of this writing, this function does not work with Outlook Express or Vista’s Windows Mail.

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reviewsGet the inside scoop on all the latest Photoshop gear

DxO Optics Pro 4.2 Automatic RAW image-enhancement program

requiring respectively increas-ing user involvement. You can trust turning over your images to their automatic mode—the results are quite impressive. The Select stage lets you add images to your DxO “project,” then the Organize stage lets you compare, prioritize, and rank your images for processing.

The Enhance stage is where DxO Optics shines. The soft-ware provides an elaborate set of quality tools that match any other RAW processor plus it has unique lens-correction features. Here are some examples: The new color SmartVibrancy feature impressively cuts through atmospheric haze and enhances muted colors of distant objects in landscapes. The multipoint color-balance tool lets you simultaneously target and change up to four colors in your image. Using lens data, DxO eff ectively cor-rects for inherent lens-edge softness. The volume feature corrects for the inherent distor-tions involved when capturing and reproducing a 3D object into a 2D space, such as when returning a stretched circu-lar object back to its correct spherical shape. You can view your image before and after your adjustments side by side; however, rendering changes is slow. The time involved is a function of your image’s size and on the specifi c enhance-ment algorithm. (Having a

dual-quad Intel probably would liven things up.) Accord-ing to DxO, they’re working on optimization to decrease the processing times.

In the Process stage, DxO Optics lets you designate a folder for your images and gives you the useful option to save your images simultane-ously as a DNG, JPEG, and a TIFF. Images are saved without aff ecting the original. After processing, the View stage lets you see the before and after of the corrected image.

DxO Optics Pro 4.2 improved upon the quality of all the lenses I tested; however, the benefi ts of DxO capabilities are especially apparent when using medio-cre vs. high-quality lenses, because the latter have better optics to begin with. Benefi ts are also more apparent when DxO is used to correct for wide-angle, focal-length distortions, such as those found when shooting with a fi sheye lens.

The program has many tools and features, and learn-ing Optics isn’t always intui-tive, so reading the manual is essential for a good under-standing and best results. There are also several helpful movies on their website, and tool tips spring up when you hover your mouse around the interface. A fully functional trial version is available at their website. DxO Optics Pro 4.2 is worth checking out.

DxO Optics Pro version 4.2 is an intelligently designed RAW processor (it also supports TIFFs and JPEGS), which has a unique feature that incorporates the measured characteristics of your specifi c camera body and lens(es) to create profi les that are used within the software to automatically correct images with those specifi c lens defects. The program knows which lens and camera body you’re using by accessing your RAW fi le’s EXIF data—smart! It corrects for perspective problems, such as barrel distortion, chromatic aberrations (fringing), and light fall-off (vignetting).

There are three download-able versions of the software: Starter $79, Pro $149, and Elite $299. The difference in the versions is in which cameras and lenses are supported and you download and install the modules customized for your equipment. (You can check to see if your camera and lenses are listed at www.dxo.com.) For this review, I used the Elite version, and downloaded the module for a Canon 30D and three Canon lenses. Third-party lenses aren’t as well supported.

The interface is designed to process your images through an integrated sequential workfl ow consisting of fi ve stages: Select, Organize, Enhance, Process, and View. The workfl ow has three levels of sophistication—auto-matic, guided, and expert—

$299 (Elite)

Mac and Windows

DxO Labs

www.dxo.com

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reviewsGet the inside scoop on all the latest Photoshop gear

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Genuine Fractals Print Pro 5 Image-resizing Photoshop plug-in

$299.95 (Upgrade $69.95)

Mac and Windows

onOne Software

888-968-1468

www.ononesoftware.com

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fi les with multiple layers, paths, and alpha channels. Additionally, it’s no longer necessary to save a fi le in the proprietary STN format before you can scale it.

The interface design is elegant in its simplicity: a large preview window, a navigational window, and sections for enter-ing the new width, height, or resolution. It has a crop tool that lets you select a portion of the fi le, a sharpening tool, and a slider to simulate fi lm grain.

I compared Genuine Fractals to the Bicubic Smoother function in Adobe Photoshop CS3. In both programs I scaled a 20.3-MB fi le to 324-MB going from an image size of 6.4x8.5" to 25.6x34.1" at

The quality of a scaled-up fi le is dependent on the inherent inge-nuity of the algorithm to sample existing pixels and create new ones that provide a smooth con-tinuity with the original pixels. The worthiness of the algorithm is refl ected in letting us make large prints without introducing edge artifacts or blurriness, or los-ing highlight and shadow detail. Genuine Fractals Print Pro5 has a new scaling technology that’s optimized for multiple proces-sors and now supports 8- and 16-bit images in RGB, CMYK, and grayscale. (There’s also a stan-dard version that doesn’t support CMYK and retails for $159.95.) This Photoshop plug-in also supports

360 ppi. The same fi le was sharp-ened with Photoshop Unsharp Mask and the new sharpening tool in Genuine Fractals using the same radius and percentage settings. Sections of the fi les were printed and it was quite apparent that Genuine Fractals had cleaner, smoother, more dis-tinct edges, and retained more shadow and highlight detail. While Photoshop processed the fi le instantaneously, Genuine Fractals took slightly more than two minutes to analyze and accurately reproduce colors and edge detail without haloing. To take full advantage of Genuine Fractals, use the built-in sharpener.

Photo Safe Portable image storage with card reader

Starting at $149

Mac and Windows

Digital Foci Inc.

310-763-9100

www.digitalfoci.com

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reviewsGet the inside scoop on all the latest Photoshop gear

1.800.930.3989Use Promotional Code PSU50 and save $50 off your first order

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“dump” their memory cards in the fi eld. One of these vendors, Digital Foci Inc., recently intro-duced their latest solution—the Photo Safe.

This pocket-sized device comes in 40-GB, 80-GB, and 120-GB versions and it has built-in card slots for CF, MD, MMC, SD/HC, MS, and xD mem-ory. The LCD screen doesn’t letyou view your pictures but it does provide basic information, such as informing you about image-transfer progress, how many images have been cop-ied, and battery life remaining. While the ability to view your pictures after transfer, as on other models, would be nice,

the Photo Safe delivers a nice price/performance balance.

The user-replaceable li-ion battery provides approxi-mately 1.5 hours of use on a full charge. The Photo Safe connects to your computer via high-speed USB 2, and using it is as simple as pressing the One-Touch copy button. The Photo Safe can also function as an external card reader and its Auto Shut-Off feature can help extend battery life.

If you’re looking for a portable storage device that’s easy to use and won’t break the bank, the Digital Foci Photo Safe may be just what the doc-tor ordered.

With the advent of digital photography, photographers are taking more pictures than ever. And with ever increas-ing camera resolutions and fi le sizes, storage space for all of these images becomes an issue. Certainly you can buy bigger and bigger memory cards and wallets to carry them in but if you’re shoot-ing a lot, carrying a pocket full of memory cards can be clumsy. To answer this stor-age need, several companies have introduced portable storage devices with built-in memory-card slots for a variety of memory-card types that allow photographers to

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reviewsGet the inside scoop on all the latest Photoshop gear

Nikon D40x Entry-level, 10-megapixel digital SLR Camera

Portrait, and of course P/S/A/M (Programmed Auto, Shutter Priority, Aperture Priority, and Manual) modes to give you the unlimited flexibility you’d expect from a digital SLR. For those rare occasions when you can’t be the shooter (e.g., in your own wedding where the reverend wants you to partici-pate rather than take pictures), just flip the Mode dial to Auto, find the closest person, and hand it over. In fact, recently at my wedding, my mom (who shoots strictly film from those old-school, flat 110 cameras) took some amazing shots. The next person to shoot the D40x was one of the ushers whose photography experience was only as extensive as the built-in camera on his cell phone; again, perfect images even in low-light conditions.

Ultra-compact and light-weight (just more than 16 oz.), the D40x takes more than 500 pictures on a single charge, and has a lightning-fast power up and shutter release—it makes the Sony Alpha 100 (a comparable 10-megapixel digital SLR) seem to move like pond water. The small design is great for excursions where the camera will be around your neck all day; but if you have big sausage fingers like your reviewer, you’ll find your pinky finger has nowhere to go, so you might be mistaken as sipping a cup of tea rather than shooting with a camera.

The fix for this is simple enough: Just leave your tripod quick-release plate screwed in and that will provide a good resting place for your home-less pinky.

Drawbacks include the finger-dance of button pushing and command dial twirling when you want to make adjustments in various modes—for example, in Man-ual mode, the command dial controls shutter speed, but you have to combine it with the exposure compensation button to control Aperture (there’s only one command dial). But after you get used to the small form factor, witha little practice, it’s doable.

The D40x has just enough of the professional controls to keep the RAW novice push-ing to learn more. But if the point-and-shoot owner wants to keep things simple, there are always the auto modes. Plus, the D40x’s 3D Color Matrix Metering II system has a built-in database of 30,000 different scenes as points of reference for calculating correct exposure. That’s right: The camera contains a built-in database of the 30,000 most common lighting scenarios. The brochure accompanying the equipment states, “It’s like having a seasoned profes-sional at your fingertips.” And with the images this camera produces, that’s not far from the truth.

Nikon’s new D40x looks and functions exactly like its older sibling, the D40. The only major differences include a wider ISO range (now 100 is the base sensitivity vs. the D40’s 200) and a larger image sensor (10.2 megapixels vs. the D40’s 6.1 megapixels).

The D40x is a great camera all around but what really makes it special is that it’s a great confluence between point-and-shooters, film shooters, and RAW format. This camera will quell almost any reservation you may have about entering the RAW-for-mat-shooting arena.

The D40x comes with a wealth of information and learning opportunities: When you’re in the field, unable to access Nikon’s Digitutor web-site (www.nikondigitutor.com/index_eng.html), the D40x has a supportive Help menu at the push of a button, which provides a block of instruction for everything in the camera’s menu. This feature is probably the top reason for using this model as a bridge between point-and-shoot photography and getting with the “bigs.” Plus, as you scroll through the menu options, most of the fea-tures have an example picture to coach you through certain shooting conditions.

The Mode dial has 12 options: Auto, Auto (Flash Off), Portrait, Landscape, Child, Sports, Close Up, Night

$729 (body only); $799 (w/kit lens)

Nikon Inc.

800-645-6689

www.nikondigital.com

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Review byIssac Stolzenbach

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$49.95 each

Windows

Image Trends, Inc.

888-553-4448

www.imagetrendsinc.com

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Noiseware 4.1 Plug-in removes unsightly noise from digital images

learning capability fi ne-tunes its ability to detect noise. There’s also a series of presets, such as Landscape (which looks for noise in blue skies) and Night scene. The presets are usually more than enough to retouch digital images. For the user who eschews auto-matic solutions and requires fi ner control, there’s a wide array of adjustment sliders. I experimented with manually adjusting some of the settings but almost always went back to the default values.

Operation of the plug-in couldn’t be simpler. When launched, a well thought-out dialog appears from which you can preview the eff ect of

the fi lter, make adjustments, or apply built-in or custom presets. Click OK and it applies the fi lter to the image. Best of all, it can be included in a batch process. If you shoot weddings or portraits, this plug-in is as good as it gets and will save you a lot of time and eff ort on the very fi rst job.

Noiseware 4.1 comes with an excellent user guide and online tutorials. It’s available as either a plug-in or as a standalone appli-cation for Mac and Windows in both Standard and Professional versions. (Standalone versions are $29.95 [Standard] and $49.95 [Professional]; plug-in prices are listed at left; free trial versions are also available.)

Whether it’s a bright blue sky or a candlelit scene, the presence of digital noise is a distraction. Most digital noise fi lters that I’ve worked with in the past have required lots of time tweaking adjustment sliders to achieve the desired eff ect. When work-ing on several hundred images from a wedding (shot at a high ISO without fl ash), I need an automatic solution, and that’s exactly what Noiseware 4.1 from Imagenomic provides.

At the core of Noiseware’s operation is the IntelliProfi le automatic noise profi ler, which automatically analyzes the image and determines which parts are noise. As it analyzes more and more images, its self-

Review byDave Huss

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Imagenomic

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PearlyWhites and ShineOff Photo perfection in a fl ash

accomplished using the tools in Photoshop, manually correct-ing several hundred photos can soon become drudgery.

Both fi lters operate auto-matically. You launch the one you want to use, wait while it performs its calculations, and voilà. How well does it work? On the images that I tested, it appeared that both fi lters pro-duced subtle changes—which is desirable. In almost every case, the PearlyWhites fi lter correctly identifi ed the teeth in a photo and improved their appear-ance without turning them into something akin to headlights. The only exception I experi-enced was an image that was too dark. Once I punched the

image up to normal brightness, the plug-in worked fl awlessly. The ShineOff fi lter also did an excellent job of toning down fl ash glare on a face. While in many cases it didn’t remove the glare completely, it de-empha-sized it enough to make the subject look more like a person and less like a mirrored disco ball.

Both are excellent fi lters and should be considered an essen-tial tool for the wedding/portrait photographer. PearlyWhites and ShineOff are available for Windows for $49.95 each (download only). You can also download demos of the fi lters to try them out. The company says that a Mac version is planned .

Everyone is talking about workfl ow these days, but when it comes to wedding photog-raphy, it seems the work never fl ows fast enough to keep clients happy. The Photoshop plug-ins reviewed here—PearlyWhites and ShineOff —have one thing in common: they’re designed to speed up workfl ow by automati-cally retouching and signifi cantly improving the appearance of people in a photo.

These two new plug-ins from the creative minds at Image Trends, Inc. do exactly what their names imply: Pearly-Whites automatically brightens teeth and ShineOff removes fl ash glare from faces. While each of these tasks is easily

Review byDave Huss

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reviewsGet the inside scoop on all the latest Photoshop gear

MP WRP PhotoPacks Camera backpack holds all your gear and fi ts in the overhead

Review byLaurie Excell

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From $271–$395

Wildlife Research Photography

760-924-8632

www.moosepeterson.com

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into remote locations. After searching for that perfect travel camera backpack and coming up short, he designed his own line of bags. I’ve used these MP PhotoPacks for several years and have never had to check my bag on any plane, which gives me confi dence in knowing that my gear will arrive safely at my fi nal destination.

The MP PhotoPacks come in three sizes: The smallest is the MP-5, which can hold a camera body, 3–5 lenses, a fl ash, spare batteries, and assorted acces-sories—and it converts into a fanny pack; the MP-3 holds all that and an extra camera body

and up to a 500mm lens—it comes in a standard version and one with a computer sleeve; and the MP-1 holds a 600mm lens along with all the equipment listed above. And they all fi t in the overhead of even the small-est of commuter planes.

What about in the fi eld? The shoulder straps are comfort-able, the compartments easy to access, and the divider system allows you to customize the bag to fi t your needs. Constructed of 1000 Cordura, the MP PhotoPacks are rugged as well as weatherproof. I feel confi dent that if I can handle the weather, so can my MP PhotoPack.

As a photographer who logs thousands of miles a year

on small commuter planes, I need a photo backpack that holds all the gear I need for

the job and has protection to keep

my cameras safe. Enter the MP WRP series of PhotoPacks designed by Wildlife Research Photography’s Moose Peterson.

Moose had been constantly faced with having to gate-check his camera equipment because his backpack was too large for the overhead compartments of the small regional jets he fl ies

Adobe Photoshop CS3: Up to Speed

Here’s what I said about this book pre-publication: “You’ve worked with Adobe Photoshop for years. You already know the program. You don’t need a refresher course. You just need to know what’s new. This book’s for you!” If you’ve been working with Photoshop for some time, you don’t need page after page of mate-rial describing the Move tool, the Layers panel, and how to Open/Save/Close. You need to cut right to the chase and see what’s new, what’s changed, and what’s diff erent in this version of Photoshop. And that’s what this book does. If you’re a beginner, however, start elsewhere.

by Ben Willmore

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Classroom in a Book

Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-on-One

by Adobe Creative Team by Deke McClelland

The venerable Classroom in a Book series takes a baby step backward with this release. A reorganization eliminates the important “Using Adobe Bridge” lesson (Lesson 2 in the previous edition). Instead, working with Bridge is relegated to men-tions here and there and a few pages in the “Working with Scientifi c Images” sec-tion, a lesson likely to be skipped by those without Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended. In addition, the author of Lesson 12 seems to want to disguise the lack of rollover capability in Photoshop CS3 with a little fancy footwork. But if you’re a Photoshop beginner, this isn’t a bad place to start.

Available as a single DVD or as three sepa-rate titles in the Online Training Library at Lynda.com, award-winning author Deke McClelland walks you through Adobe Photoshop CS3 as if you’re looking over his shoulder. If you’re new to Photoshop, start with Essential Skills (8.75 hours), then move on to Advanced Techniques (9.5 hours), and Beyond the Basics (10.75 hours). All three titles are included in the DVD pack-age, although each is listed separately in the Online Training Library ($25/month or$250/year for access to hundreds of titles on dozens of subjects). A solid investment in learning Photoshop CS3!

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Peachpit Press

168 pages

www.peachpit.com

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$149.95

Lynda.com

29 hours

www.lynda.com

booksGet the inside scoop on all the latest Photoshop books

Reviews by Peter Bauer

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$54.99

Adobe Press

496 pages with CD

www.adobepress.com

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Q. There are a bunch of keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop, some of which are almost impossible to get your hands around! Are all of these really necessary?A. Absolutely! Some of the most time-consuming, yet rewarding, things to work with in Photoshop are shortcuts—it will pay off ten times in effi ciency. Generally, when we start using Photoshop, we approach the keyboard from a typing perspective; for example, we use the left hand on the left side of the keyboard and, natu-rally, the right hand on the right. Instead, consider the keyboard in Photoshop as an extension of your mouse—allowing you to access specifi c commands quickly. We still attempt to put what we know into the mix and bad results follow (as shown).

One way to help reach those impossible shortcut key combina-tions is to position the keyboard to one side so that one hand can access the entire width of the keyboard with a small gesture. For instance, the dreaded Command-0 (PC: Ctrl-0) Fit on Screen shortcut is a lot easier if you just move your left hand to the right side of the keyboard. This lets you focus on keeping your hand on the mouse (or stylus) and working on the image.

Tip: To make key-board shortcuts stick in your memory, go to the Photoshop menu and look at the command that you want. See the shortcut beside it? Now repeat the keyboard shortcut to yourself, but don’t click on it. Instead, go back to the image and try out the keyboard shortcut, using the technique suggested above. After three or four times, the shortcut will be yours, and your productiv-ity will shoot right up!

Q. I've heard that you can use the Crop tool to add space to an image. How do you do that?A. Great question! This is a terrifi c example of how one Photoshop tool can take care of two diff erent things.

Normally, when you access the Crop tool, it’s because you want to isolate a specifi c portion of the image and get rid of the excess. With your image open in Photoshop, just press the C key to select the Crop tool from the Toolbox. Drag out the area that you’d like

to work with. To complete the crop, you’d normally drag the resize handles to hone the selection that you want to keep and then click the Commit checkbox in the Options Bar.

If you want to add canvas space to an image, however, here’s what to do. First, when you open your image in Photoshop, you should see a pasteboard surrounding the image. If you don’t see it, zoom out a few percentages and it will appear. When the pasteboard appears, select the Crop tool and drag your mouse over the entire image.

Now, place your cursor over one of the directional handles and drag away from the image and into the pasteboard area. Repeat, using the other directional handles, until you’ve extended the entire image into the pasteboard area. Tip: If you’d like to constrain or resize the image in the center, press Shift-Option (PC: Shift-Alt) as you drag the handles. When you’re satisfi ed with the result, press Return (PC: Enter) to commit the crop. Now, extend your canvas by the same amount (as shown on next page).

Photoshop Q & AAnswers to some of the most commonly asked Photoshop questions

BY RAFAEL “RC” CONCEPCION

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Q. What is a droplet and why would I need to use one?A. A droplet is an action, or series of actions, wrapped up in a nice bow for you to use. First, let’s talk for a second about the action process. In Photoshop, the Actions panel (Windows>Actions) allows you to record a series of steps and replay them, as necessary. These steps are saved in your panel where you can access them but you could also create a droplet from an action (File>Automate>Create Droplet).

In the Create Droplet dialog, you can specify where you’d like the droplet saved, which action you’d like to run, and where you want to save the resulting fi les. The dialog also lets you change the File Naming convention of the resulting images, should you need to.

This is where your process gets easier! After you’ve completed the respective fi elds, click OK, and a fi le (with the droplet name

you chose) will appear on your desktop. Now, if you need to perform that action on a fi le, a series of fi les, or a folder, all you have to do is select the fi le(s) or folder(s) and drag

them on top of the droplet. The droplet will work with Photoshop to process the fi les, and place the results where you specifi ed in the Create Droplet dialog.

Droplets are great when you need to perform small actions on images that happen repeatedly. Rather than going through the process of automating steps and setting up batch jobs, you can just drag-and-drop, and you’re done. What’s even better, you can

take all of these droplets and send them to someone with whom you collaborate, to make the process more effi cient. And isn’t that what this is all about?

Q. Sometimes I try to select portions of the image that are at the very edges. How can I make sure that the selection I make goes to the edge?A. The pasteboard comes to the rescue again! If you’re working on a selection that needs to go to the very edge, all you have to do is drag the selection tool you’re using into the paste-board area. You’ll see that the selection snaps to the edge of the document.

Tip: Many of the tools that you use in Photoshop will follow the same principle.

Q. How do I use the Pen tool to make selections?A. When you select the Pen tool (P) in Photoshop, you’ll notice in the Options Bar that the tool defaults to the creation of Shape Layers.

First, change the options for the Pen to Paths. Now you can create a Work Path using the Pen tool. To make it a selection, click on the Paths panel tab and you can either highlight the Work Path to make it active and click on the Load Path As a Selection icon at the bottom of the Path panel or Command-click (PC: Control-click) the Work Path layer.

Tip: If you Com-mand-Shift-click (PC: Control-Shift-click), you can add the path to an already exist-ing selection or Command-Option-click (PC: Control-Alt-click) to subtract the path selection from an existing selection.

Photoshop Quick TipsSome quick tips to make your Photoshop life easier

BY SHERRY LONDON

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QUICK KEYSTROKES

Here are some über controls using the Shift plus the Command (PC: Ctrl) keys. Most of these are easy to guess (but one isn’t):1. Command-C (PC: Ctrl-C) copies

a selection but add Shift and it becomes Copy Merged, which cop-ies the pixels of all the visible layers in the image inside the selection.

2. Command-V (PC: Ctrl-V) pastes a copied selection. Add Shift and the shortcut becomes Paste Into, which pastes into a selection and creates a layer mask from that selection.

3. Command-K (PC: Ctrl-K) brings up the General Preferences dialog. Add Shift to the shortcut and you’ll get the Color Settings dialog.

4. Command-G (PC: Ctrl-G) creates a Group folder that contains the targeted layers. Adding Shift removes that folder and “ungroups” the layers.

5. Command-X (PC: Ctrl-X) cuts a selection from the image. But…the shortcut, Shift-Command-X (PC: Shift-Ctrl-X), opens the Liquify fi lter.

Save a preset with an action

How many times have you made a selec-tion, feathered it, expanded it, fi lled it, and then said, “forget it” because the settings weren’t quite right? Photoshop CS3 solves this problem with the amaz-ing Refi ne Edge panel, which lets you adjust all the settings in one location and preview it. Currently, I’m working on watercolor illustrations where I need to add skin tones to outlined characters. The optimal settings that I use in Refi ne

Edge are identical for each char-acter that I need to fi ll.

Since Refi ne Edge doesn’t have a save preset feature, I created an Action that brings up the Refi ne Edge dialog and creates the desired settings with one click.

You can do this for any command whose settings you want as a preset. Open the Actions panel (Window> Actions), press the Create New Action icon, name the preset, and click Record. Execute the command you want, then press the Stop Recording icon. And if you Save your Action, your commands will always be there.

Speaking of presets…

As many of you start to upgrade to CS3, your custom presets will either stay in the CS2 version or be gone forever (if you wipe CS2 from your machine). You can use the same presets for brushes, custom shapes, gradients, etc. with CS3 as you did with CS2. Before you upgrade, you could copy the entire Presets folder to another location on your hard drive but I prefer to copy just my own custom presets and those that didn’t ship with Photoshop CS3. On the Mac, these presets are typically located in your Hard Drive:Applications:Adobe Photoshop CS2:Presets folder. On the PC, they’re in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Presets. Just copy what you want to add to the CS3 presets to a location on your hard drive (other than the Adobe folder) and it will always be there if you need it.

Changing the light

Many artists alter the Global Light default setting in the Layer Styles dialog to a setting of their choice but there doesn’t seem to be a way to set a permanent default in the dialog. This tip comes to us from Enzo Borri (www.borri.org), an Italian digital artist and Photoshop expert. (While not uniquely his tip, it’s how I learned about it.)

With no document open in Photo-shop, go under the Layer menu and choose Layer Style>Global Light (it’s the only active item). In the dialog, set the angle to 135º (or whatever you prefer)

and click OK. Now this becomes your

Global Light default setting for any image you open.

Sampling from images with

diff erent color profi les

Did you know that when you use the Eyedropper to select a color from an image, it will look totally diff erent when you use the color in another image, if the two documents don’t use the same color space? This was an unwelcome dis-covery for me, as I had assumed Photo-shop would make a conversion, but here’s how you can do it. Make a copy of the image that has the color you want and then choose Edit>Convert to Profi le. In the dialog, assign the same Profi le as the one in which you want to use the color, and then sample the color again.

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A collection of products, services, and the hottest Photoshop gear

I N D E X O F A D V E R T I S E R S

PhotoshopuserJuly/August 2007

For advertising information, please contact Melinda Gotelli, Advertising Director, at 916-929-8200.

email: mgotelli@photoshopuser.com

While every attempt has been made to make this listing as complete as possible, its accuracy cannot be guaranteed.

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Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tours. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 www.photoshopseminars.com

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Photoshop Beginners’ TipsSome quick tips to get you started in Photoshop

BY COLIN SMITH

Tips, Tips, and More Tips

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BY COLIN SMITH

Place. The contents will now be added to the smart object and you have two docu-ments in one.

Double layer mask

When you create a layer mask and apply a black-to-white gradient, your layer will fade with the layers underneath. Sometimes you’ll want to apply a second gradient to your mask while retaining your settings. As soon as you apply a dif-ferent gradient, it will replace the original. So how can you stack masks?

You can’t add more than one layer mask to a layer, or can you? The trick is to place your layer into a layer group (choose New Group from Layers from the Layer panel’s fl yout menu). Now you can apply a layer mask to the new Layer Group.

Flatten styles

What if you want to apply fi lters to a layer including its eff ects? Perhaps you assume (rightly…sort of) that you’ve rasterized the layer. You Ctrl-click (PC: Right-click) on the Layers panel, looking for an option that says “Rasterize layer styles,” and I bet you can’t fi nd it (because it doesn’t exist).

Here’s how you do it. Create a blank layer above or beneath your layer with the styles on it. Shift-click the blank layer and the layer that contains the styles to select them both then press Command-E (PC: Ctrl-E) to merge the layers together.

Release styles to layers

When working with layer styles and eff ects, there are times when you want to make a separate layer out of the eff ects—especially useful if you have a drop shadow and you want to clip it to a shape. You could create your eff ects the old-fashioned way on a separate layer, or you could do it the fast way. Create your layer style as you always do. Ctrl-click (PC: Right-click) on the word “Eff ects” in the Layers panel and choose Create Layer, and a new layer will appear with just the styles and eff ects.

Stars and triangles

Apart from the obvious (using a custom shape), do you know how to create tri-angles and stars in Photoshop? Choose the Polygon shape tool and then, for the triangle, change Sides in the Options Bar to 3. For the star, choose 5 Sides. You’ll see a little downward triangle at the end of the options (just before Sides)—Geometry Options drop-down menu. Once inside the Polygon Options dialog, click on the Star checkbox. The shapes will now be created concave instead of convex.

Colin Smith, an award-winning designer, lec-turer, and writer, has authored or co-authored several books on Photoshop, and has created a series of Photoshop training videos available from PhotoshopCD.com. Colin is also the founder of PhotoshopCAFE.com.

If you’ve already upgraded and received the entire Adobe CS3 suite, then you’re now the proud owner of Photoshop CS3 so I’ll throw in a CS3 tip, but keep the other tips for users of earlier versions of Photoshop.

Create font outlines

Have you seen a dialog that says, “This font is missing…?” This means that the font used in the document doesn’t exist on your computer. You could rasterize the font before sharing it with another computer, but you’ll lose quality if you decide to change its size later. In pro-grams such as Illustrator and InDesign, people often outline their fonts before sending fi les. They’re still vectors but won’t substitute for weird fonts.

You can do this in Photoshop too. Just Control-click (PC: Right-click) on the text layer in the Layers panel and choose Convert to Shape.

Merging two Photoshop documents

Did you know that you could combine two Photoshop documents? This is really useful if you have repeating items, are working from a template, or even work-ing with multiple languages. If you’re using Photoshop CS or earlier, you’ll need to open both documents. In the “donor” document, group everything together into a Layer Set (they’re called Groups in CS2 and CS3) and drag the set from the Layers panel into the window of the second document.

But If you’re using CS2 or 3, here’s a better way: Open your working document. Create a new layer (Shift-Command-N [PC: Shift-Ctrl-N]) and convert it to a smart object (Ctrl-click [PC: Right-click] on the layer’s name and choose Convert to Smart Object). Now, Ctrl-click (PC: Right-click) on the smart object’s name in the Layers panel and choose Replace Contents. Select your second Photoshop document and click

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