ScrappingTips

Perfect Prints

Boston and Cincinnati news stations have stories up on their websites with some interesting information on a digital photo printing study that was recently conducted by Consumer Reports.

According to WCPO in Cincinnati "Home photo printing --which was supposed to be cheap and easy -- is not cheap, and for most of us, not easy."

The answer to that quandary is obvious – get your photos printed professionally. But WCPO points out that when Consumer Reports compared more than two-thousand photos from leading stores and online photofinishing sites they found that not all photo developers delivered great results.

 "Most stores use either a Kodak or a Fujifilm minilab. In our test the Fujifilm minilabs provided the best quality prints," Consumer Reports reported, as quoted by WCPO reporter John Matarese.

CBS4 Boston noted that "Printing your digital snapshots at home can actually cost more than getting them printed online or in a store."

"Wal-Mart has Fujifilm minilabs and Consumer Reports says at 19 cents for a four-by-six print, digital photo processing at Wal-Mart is just about the best deal around," CBS4 reported. Costco or Sam's club also got kudos for their photo finishing services.

 I have to admit that I'm pretty blasé about many of the truly magical things I can do with my computer and an Internet connection. But I'm still amazed that I can upload my digital photos right from my computer and then pick them up at a local store within an hour of uploading them. Like science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke said "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

The study is printed in full in Consumer Reports' "Annual Photo Guide," which is in the July issue of the magazine.

 

Fab Filters for Photoshop

When I first started seriously using Photoshop I went filter crazy – plug-ins were my friend. And I wasn't the only one – back when Photoshop came on a few floppy disks (yes, really) it seemed like everyone was enraptured with the program's built in art filters.

But like a pop song that's in heavy rotation on the radio, filters soon got played out. Soon enough the easiest way to make a graphic designer sneer was to use a filter or two in your Photoshop work. That was right around the time when we all suddenly realized that no, the watercolor filter doesn't really make your photo look like a painting. (You can produce effects that mimic watercolors and other real world mediums, but not with a single pass of Photoshop's watercolor filter.)

Happily most people have eased off the rabid plug-in prejudice now, and most figure that filters are fine as long as they aren't used as an end in themselves – that is, special effect aren't ever a good substitute for your creativity. Think of the difference between a well-plotted and acted movie and one that relies solely on splashy special effects to grab your attention – which film are you likely to want to look at more than once?

My favorite filter now, one that I use on a daily basis and the workhorse and creative muse in my plug-in folder, is Alien Skin's Exposure filter. The advertising blurb promises that this set of filters brings "the look and feel of film to digital photography... allowing you to digitally simulate the dozens of film stocks, both color and black and white, and with the size, shape, and color of real world film grain." It does, it works like a charm, and it also has a slew of one-click effects that lets you simulate the look of old photos – from daguerreotypes to the first color films – as well as darkroom developing techniques like cross-processing and pushing. And it includes some terrific digital editing features, letting you correct color, soften a portrait, and boost contrast among other features. All of the effects can be applied with one click, or you can tweak the settings to suit your needs.

Exposure is $199 for the package, which includes dozens of effects for color and black and white prints (Exposure also does great color to black and white conversions). You get a discount on the price if you're a registered user of any other Alien Skin product.

Download a free 30 day demo and check it out – it works on Mac and Windows boxes (Windows users must have at least a 2 GHz Pentium 4 processor, 256 MB RAM and Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Macintosh users must have at least a 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 256 MB RAM and Mac OS X 10.3.8 or later) and you'll need a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS or later, Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 or later, Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004 or later, Corel® Paint Shop ProTM 9 or later to use the plug-in.

I also love OptikVerve lab's Virtual Photographer, which is free for the downloading and includes 50 one-click effects that you can use to apply interesting combinations of film grain, color modification, B/W, soft focus, high contrast and other effects. Every time I use it, and I use it a lot, I'm amazed that OptikVerve is giving Virtual Photographer away for free.

Three All-Purpose Photoshop Tips

Supersize it
This custom action will let you supersize a standard-size photo with very little loss of image quality. Open a photo. Choose "Actions" from the Windows menu. Click "Create New Action," on the Actions palette, and assign a function key (like F3). Click record. Then go to the "Image" menu, select "Image Size" and click "Resample Image." Switch the measurement unit from inches to percent. Type "110" in the height and width boxes. Click ok. Then click "Stop" in the Action palette. Now whenever you want to size up an image just keep whacking whatever function key you assigned until the image is as big as you want it to be. Photoshop's algorithms apparently prefer to upsize in 10% increments. (I picked up this tip at one of Scott Kelby's Photoshop Pro workshops.)

Photos that Pop

For a perfect finishing touch, when you're finished editing an image in Photoshop duplicate the final image (Layers/Duplicate Layer) and change the new layer's blend mode to "Overlay" then reduce the opacity to 20% or 30% percent. This technique makes many images really pop, but doesn't look harsh or overdone.

Looking Sharp

This Photoshop sharpening technique works with almost every image: choose "Unsharp Mask," from Filters/Sharpen, enter "Amount: 85" "Radius: 1" "Threshold: 4," hit ok. Immediately after the image is sharpened, go to "Edit" choose "Fade Unsharp Mask" set the fade to 100% and mode to "Luminosity." This sharpens only the contrasting data in your image and leaves the colors alone, resulting in a crisper image with no pixilation or weird artifacts. You can repeat the entire process again if your image needs more sharpening.

These tips were originally published in Scrapbook Answers' "Tips From The Pros" feature. I was totally stoked when they asked me to contribute tips to the feature. Me? A Scrapbooking Pro? Cool!

Really RAW

Most of us are perfectly happy to let our digital cameras do the work of processing our "negatives." But there are those who want complete control over the process, and the only way to do that is to shoot in RAW format.

Processing photos shot in RAW -- which are the digital equivalent of film negatives -- can be a challenge, but a new guide from geeky publishers No Starch Press makes it easier. "The Art of RAW Conversion," written by Uwe Steinmueller, editor of web magazine "Digital Outback Photo" and an expert in RAW photography, is both a practical and beautifully illustrated guide that details the advantages of working with RAW files, and then how to use RAW converters to create the best digital image from each shot.

Highlights of the book include:
• Techniques for calibrating a digital camera to work with RAW files
• How to get the best results from the leading RAW converters and when to use each
• Tips for color to black-and-white conversion
• Coverage of basic color management and batch processing
• Sections on Apple’s Aperture and Adobe’s Lightroom

The book's blurbs promise that "whether you’re an amateur or a professional, The Art of RAW Conversion will take you beyond mere point-and-shoot photography, and show you how to achieve art-quality results with your digital camera." I don't shoot RAW often, only when I really want total control over how the image will turn out or I'm in the mood to experiment. Steinmueller's book looks to be a great guide that can help make my RAW adventures less time consuming and more productive. You can check out a sample chapter here. (note: it's a PDF file.)

 

The Care And Feeding of Flash Cards

Your digital camera isn't just a camera; it's also a sophisticated computer. But unlike most computers it has only two jobs to do: capture light and record it onto your flash memory card.

 Flash memory cards – the cards your camera stores digital images on -- are more complex than their tiny size might lead you to believe, a slew of miniature circuits and chips is packed into each card. Since advanced technology can be cranky you might expect flash memory cards to be fussy divas, refusing to work in less than perfect conditions. But memory cards are pretty resilient. They aren't overly sensitive to temperature fluctuations, and chances are you'll never want to shoot pictures in their lowest or highest ranges of acceptable temperature use; typically between -13 degrees Fahrenheit to 167 degrees. The cards can easily handle quick changes in temperature as well.

They can also survive a fall of about ten feet without any problems, and data stored on a good-quality card shouldn't deteriorate for about a century or so. The cards do have a limit to their lifespan, you can't buy one and use it forever but you won't need to replace them all that often. The New York School of Photography figures that you should be able to rewrite a card between 200,000 to 300,000 times. (Note that none of the above applies to cheap, counterfeit and/or off-brand flash memory cards. These are notoriously prone to failure, assuming you can even get them to work in your camera.)

Printing Direct From Your XP Desktop

You can send your digital images off to be printed directly from your Microsoft Windows XP desktop. First open any folder that contains photos and click on "Order Prints Online" (on the left hand side of your screen, third option from the top.)

Protecting Your Pictures – The Fine Art of Back-Ups

The first thing to do after moving pictures from camera's flash memory card to your computer is make a copy of each image. One set will be your digital negatives; you'll store them in a safe place and leave them alone. The other set are your working image files, and you can have fun with this batch – alter them in an image editing program, shrink them down to post on your blog, blow them up and use them as a desktop image, and whatever else your heart desires. If you ever want to rework an image or use it for some other purpose you can go back to your digital negative, make another copy of it, and start anew.

If you're going to do things to your images, crop them, tweak their colors, sharpen them – anything that involves changing the image's content – you should save your working copies in any format but JPEG. Each time you change and then save a JPEG image you do a tiny bit of damage to the image. After four or five saves, the image will look absolutely awful. So choose "Save As" in your image editing program and save as a TIFF or in Photoshop/Elements as a PSD file.