Nature Photography Section 6

Now we finally get to the digital equipment itself, starting with compact flash cards. Apparently, and 1-2 gigabyte card is enough for half a day’s worth of shooting. Carrying multiple smaller-capacity cards guards against card malfunction or loss, a sensible tip. If you are working without a laptop, you can offload photos onto an image storage tank to clear your cards.

This is where we start talking about photo imaging software, the best being (surprise) Adobe Photoshop. I was surprised that the author said there was very little difference between Apple, Dell, HP and other computer brands. Somehow I expected him to be an Apple guy, along with every other professional photographer. He does say to get the fastest processor you can afford. For additional security, you should have photos on an external hard drive and on DVD’s or another external hard drive at a different location.

Now for preparing images. Photos should be taken in RAW format. Once on the computer, they should be converted to either TIFF or PSD. A JPEG format will lose data in compression. Before editing, you should set the color space, either ProPhoto RGB, Adobe RGB, or Adobe sRGB. Once the color space is set, you cannot go back or retrieve the data.

When you first open the RAW picture, it will not look very sharp, but Photoshop’s many controls will change that. Changes should be made using adjustment layers. The first adjustment is usually brightness, followed by adjusting the levels curve. After that, it is color saturation.

Now you look at the overall color balance, before adjusting the contrast. Contrast can be done in three different ways, either in standard overall adjustment, shadows and highlights, or midtone contrast. The first way can lose data, and before and after images should be checked on the histogram to see how much was lost. There are also dodge and burn tools, and selective contrast adjustment, where you isolate one region that needs adjusting, without doing anything to the rest. Retouching the image can be done with a healing brush or a clone stamp tool. The healing brush is used more for blending, and the clone stamp is used for larger jobs.

File formats are different for websites, art prints, and books or magazines. Websites require only 90 pixels per inch, whereas art prints require 225, and books and magazines require 300. Once the format is done, we enter the final stage of editing, which is sharpening. Analyzing the effects at 100% is important to be sure it is not overdone. The whole thing should be examined for noise, but once you are happy you can are done. These are obviously only a few of the things you can do in Photoshop.

The only annoying part about this section is that the process the author outlines is his. Everyone does it differently, and everyone should figure out their own way. I would have preferred more of an overview of what can be done with Photoshop, rather than what his process is. He did, however, explain all of the steps that go into it very well.

Overall I liked this book. The first time reading it I found everything that was even a little bit confusing. The second time I noticed all of the obvious or useless information. I may have to read it a third time to find and actually absorb all of the important information. It is a good book, and has a lot of good information and pictures. Although I still hate the blurry pictures of animals moving.