BetterPhoto Instructor Insights

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Digital Exposure: A Simplified Look at Histograms

By Rob Sheppard

Histograms are a valuable tool for digital photographers, yet they can seem a bit intimidating. There is all sorts of information about this or that regarding histograms that you must do or understand. While all of that might be correct, you really can learn to use a histogram rather simply. It can be a quick and easy way of checking exposure with a visual scale if you look for just a few things.

(c) Rob Sheppard

Histograms have gotten overly complex when they show RGB (red, green, blue) information. You really only need the main “luminance” histogram (this just shows a visual representation of brightness values in your photograph starting with black at the left and going to white at the right, and the amount of these values showing up as how high the hills are on the histogram). There is no ideal shape for a histogram as it will change depending on exactly what is bright and dark in your scene.

When you look at the histogram, a key place to check is the right side. This tells you what is happening to the bright parts of your photo, and as a consequence, to everything else. There should be no large gap there between the last histogram hill and the end of the graph. There also should be no “cliff” where the histogram is cut off at the right end of the graph either.

(c) Rob Sheppard

If there is a large gap, this means you have significantly underexposed your photo. That puts your bright areas into middle tones, which can be corrected, but that also means your middle tones get shoved into dark areas and dark areas lose detail altogether. So even if you correct the bright tones, you don’t have the normal range of middle and dark tones for the photo, so those areas can look harsh and have poor color.

This also is underusing the sensor, which was a big part of the price of your camera, because the sensor handles color and tonality best in the mid-range of exposure, so when colors and tonalities are shoved into the dark, the sensor does not capture them as well. Finally, underexposure can increase the appearance of noise as you brighten too dark parts of the photo.

(c) Rob Sheppard

If you have a cliff, a sharply cut off right edge to the histogram, you have overexposure. This means you have lost detail and color in the brightest parts of your photo. That can be a big problem if those areas are important to the scene because no amount of processing will get them back.

A qualification to all of this. If you are shooting in conditions that are foggy or hazy, you might not have bright tones. Then a gap at the right would be normal (otherwise, the photo might be too bright).

Sometimes you will hear that you don’t have to pay attention to the histogram if you shoot Raw. I can tell you from a lot of experience shooting many thousands of RAW photos and from working with thousands of students over the years that that is not true. It is true that the histogram is based on the JPEG (whether you shoot it or not) for the file - so it doesn’t match the Raw exactly. Implying you cannot then use the histogram is like saying you cannot use a thermometer because it only reads full degrees rather than tenths of a degree.

Editor's Note: Outdoor Photographer editor at large Rob Sheppard teaches many excellent courses at BetterPhoto's digital photography school online, including Creating Storytelling Photos and Composition Boot Camp.

HDR: Work with Photomatix to Create Dynamic Images!

By Deborah Sandidge

High Dynamic Range (HDR) offers the photographer unlimited possibilities when working with scenes that would be impossible for the camera to record in a single image. I liked this alley in Lucerne, Switzerland, with the repeating windows and bicycles that were parked along each doorway. The bicycles seemed to speak about how people get around in this area, and I felt it would make an interesting travel photograph.

photo by Deborah Sandidge

The dynamic range in this scene was too great for my camera to record in a single image. If I exposed for brightness in the alley, the rest of the image fell in darkness. If I exposed walls and windows, the alley detail was overexposed. Taking a series of different exposures allowed me to merge the images to HDR. This created a single well balanced photograph that shows all the wonderful detail in the highlight, mid-tone and shadow areas.

Shooting for HDR is easy, the more challenging, but fun part is deciding how to portray the image. As a photographer, you are much the artist here and have sway over creating an image that is more illustrative/artistic, photo realistic, or somewhere in between. I used Photomatix to merge the images to HDR, and used the Photomatix Tone Mapping filter to define how I wanted the image to look. My goal was to emphasize the texture, color and detail on the interesting stucco walls, and cobblestone road and enhance the many colorful bicycles in the scene.

In Photoshop, the image can be fine-tuned even more. Plug-ins and filters can give your HDR image the perfect finishing touch. I used a touch of Topaz Adjust Spicify, and added a slight vignette. Have fun shooting!

NOTE: Join Deb Sandidge for her online Photoshop courses Photoshop - Enhancing Digital Images and Creating Works of Art and Digital Infrared Photography.

Photoshop Tip: How to Straighten Angled Lines

By Jim Zuckerman

How many times have you photographed a building and not liked the way the vertical lines angle inward? I’m sure the answer is many. Sometimes angled lines add a dynamic quality to a picture, but much of the time they do the opposite — the photo ends up being disappointing.

The classic medieval architecture in the old town area of Prague, Czech Republic, is beautiful. The photo you see here was taken with a 50mm focal length. The "keystoning", or the angled vertical lines, comes from the fact that the back of the camera, i.e. the plane of the digital sensor, was not parallel with the facade of the building. Had I shot this from a tall ladder or an adjacent building such that I was positioned at the midpoint halfway up the height of the building, the vertical lines would look vertical.

In Photoshop, I corrected this problem using Select > all and then Edit > transform > distort. A box forms around the photograph and then you can grab any of the corners and drag them until the vertical lines are perfectly parallel with the top and bottom edges of the frame. Click return or enter, or if you want to get out of what you just did because you’ve made a mess and want to start over, click escape. That will remove the box around the picture.

BEFORE

AFTER - photo (c) Jim Zuckerman

Editor's Note: Jim Zuckerman teaches for BetterPhoto.com's digital photography school, including these online Photoshop courses: Creative Techniques in Photoshop , Advanced Creative Techniques in Photoshop and Photoshop: Thinking Outside the Box.

Online Marketing Course: Get More Traffic to Your Website!

Hi Everyone,

Jim Miotke has an awesome Online Marketing Mega-Course. In it, Jim shares his secrets on how to drive new visitors to your website, and how to convert those visitors into dedicated clients.

Read how to give your website a marketing jump-start...

Thanks,
Kerry

Buyers Guide: Aftermarket Inks for Your Photo Printer

Hi All,

Peter K. Burian, pro photographer and BetterPhoto online instructor, has written an excellent article. Check it out:

Buyers Guide: Aftermarket Inks for Your Photo Printer

It's subtitled the "pros and cons of inexpensive inks".

Enjoy!

Thanks,
Kerry

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Learn how to go from "Internet invisible" to Irresistible! Customer Charisma will be available for just 4 days this coming week! (beginning Oct. 18, 2010)!

Get Better Photos: Revisit Favorite Locations!

By Deborah Sandidge

(c)Deborah Sandidge

I like to revisit old locations, and see how I can interpret a familiar subject in a new way.

The Indian River Lagoon is one of my favorite locations. I first photographed it in infrared, and it later became the cover of my first book, Digital Infrared Photography, published by Wiley. This stand of palms overlook the Indian River Lagoon on the east coast of Florida where I grew up.

Time of day made the big difference here. I shot well after sunset while there was still an orange glow along the horizon, and just before twilight took over the sky. I used a tripod, and remote cord for the long exposure, and set my white balance to Cloudy to accentuate the warm colors. Nik Color Efex Pro Graduated filters added a touch more blue to the sky.

Make great pictures!

Note: Join Deb Sandidge for her online digital photography classes at BetterPhoto's digital photography school online: Photoshop - Enhancing Digital Images and Creating Works of Art and Digital Infrared Photography.

Photoshop Elements 9 - Review

By Rob Sheppard

Adobe just announced Photoshop Elements 9, and this is a very significant upgrade that does affect digital photographers, including nature photographers. It now allows us to do some things that make work easier for certain techniques, such as double-processing RAW (really an important technique for nature photographers - more below). I have been working with the beta for a few months as I worked on a book about it, Top Tips Simplified, Photoshop Elements 9.

I believe that most photographers using Lightroom and Photoshop Elements work on images more effectively and more quickly than any but the most proficient users of Photoshop. And they can do it at much less cost. Being able to work quickly and efficiently is important for most nature photographers, including me, because the joy of photographing nature is from photographing nature, not spending more time than needed in front of the computer.

Having a Photoshop program gives you access to layers. Layers are extremely helpful for adjustment layers, for doing cloning to fix problems with an image (such as flare), and to combine images for panoramics or double-processing of RAW. I discuss how to work with double-processing of RAW on my website at www.robsheppardphoto.com. This is really easy to do with Lightroom - simply make a virtual copy of the original file, then process one of the images to optimize bright areas, one to optimize dark areas, then send them to Photoshop or Photoshop Elements for combining into one final file.

In the past, this was not so easy in Photoshop Elements because you had no access to layer masks for layers with pixels (though you did get layer masks with adjustment layers). Photoshop Elements 9 changes that. Layer masks can now be used with any and all layers. That is a huge change and really opens up possibilities for things like double processing of raw, two-exposure images, panoramics and more.

While Elements 9 did not get the fill part of content-aware technology, it does have it for the spot-healing brush. You can now brush over a problem and have the program fill that problem area with detail that matches the surroundings (to be honest, this does not always work 100% of the time, but it works enough to make it very worthwhile - if you try it and find it is not working, change the size of your brush and try again).

There is now very little that Photoshop Elements 9 cannot do compared to Photoshop, at least for photographers, and it is in a more photographer-friendly interface (including such things as Guided Edit that actually guides you through certain processing steps). And at a price of under $100, it is a terrific value (especially compared to Photoshop!).

The fall color in the Photoshop Elements 9 interface above is a photograph of red maple near Cascade Falls State Park on the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota. The North Shore is one of my favorite places to visit as it has great memories - my family used to go camping up there when I was a kid, and when I lived in Minnesota, I would try to get up there regularly to photograph and hike (or snowshoe in the winter). Near Lake Superior, the winter is actually milder (though that is a very relative term) than back down in Minneapolis/St. Paul (and a whole lot prettier!).

Note: Outdoor Photographer editor at large Rob Sheppard teaches many online photography courses at BetterPhoto's digital photography school, including Creating Storytelling Photos and Composition Boot Camp.