BetterPhoto Instructor Insights

Focus on Fundamentals: Recommendations for Photoshop Training

> I've been involved in photography for many years.
> I've been shooting digital, but it's time to learn
> Photoshop. Can you recommend a good training or tutoring
> program, CD, book or DVD?

That question leaves the door wide-open to plugging my own wares, but I think it would be more useful to step back and think about what you are really looking for as a serious beginner trying to learn Photoshop or even Elements.

As a beginner, you want to get to understanding what you are doing with Photoshop and get up to speed by the quickest path possible. The desire to get things done quickly and make leaps in progress is an attractive goal, and because it is what users think they want, it drives the market for learning materials that are created. That has led to an abundance of learning resources that promise to make it easy, yet a dearth of good information. Materials that want to win the reader as a friend and up painting a rosy picture, fill out the content with fluff and humor that are easy to read, trumpeting how easy it is to improve your images. Ultimately, these soft texts and programs offer very little but a handful of quick tips, a few sloppy tricks, deflated wow and the failed promise of learning it all fast.

Regretfully, you'll find that just about all of this advertising is a gimmick. Titles like "Learn Photoshop in a Day" lure in readers with a promise, reveal the 'gimmick' ("...using 24 one-hour lessons!"), and then fail to provide anything of real substance. On the other hand, titles like "Suffering for Photoshop" or "Difficult Methods for Pretty Pictures" won't tend to attract readers, and optimally the hope is that Photoshop should be easy to learn. But the whole premise of learning something as complex as Photoshop in such a small amount of time is absurd. If you are learning a lighter mood may make you comfortable in the new terrain, but what you don't need are materials that are entertaining (presentation without substance), materials that just repeat the Help menu, materials you can get for free if you poked around the internet, and materials that ultimately leave you with no sense of what to do with your images -- and fail to give you a good idea how to work with images intelligently and safely. "Just trust me" is a favored line, for example, of one well-know Photoshop author when it comes to color management suggestions, and the somewhat sour advice offered routinely causes more problems than it cures. It is quick and easy, but ultimately harmful and wrong.

From my perspective, the best place to start as a beginner is with solid fundamentals:

* An introduction to navigating the interface and setup (including some basics of color management)
* A plan for handling images once they come off the camera (proper ideas of file types, sizing, and storage)
* A background on the tools you need to work with day-to-day
* A plan for working with every image you encounter
* An idea of what you want to accomplish

This may not be the most exciting list if you need to experience learning like it is a carnival ride, but it is terribly practical and gives you a solid foundation to build on and expand from. Know where to find tools and navigate and you will have a sense of comfort. Handle images correctly and you can experiment and learn without causing your source images harm and store them safely and efficiently. Find out what tools to use every day will help you avoid those that can cause damage to your images while using those that are most efficient. Define an outline to follow and you take decided steps forward rather than ambling randomly from one technique to the next experimenting and wasting time hoping something fabulous happens during click-and-pray. Practical, refined methodology yields the best and most consistent results.

Resources for learning are numerous. Some people will learn best from books or DVDs or even online courses and tutorials. I would suggest that you take a wide approach and use a variety of resources. First, don't neglect Adobe's Help. It is a great free resource for learning about individual functions and features and how to apply them that comes with the program. Tutorials online are hit-or-miss depending on the source, and many of them contain information that is harmful to your images -- take them all with a grain of salt. You'll have to weed through them. But truth be told many of those same harmful techniques were duplicated from the all-too-common Books and DVDs that contain unfortunatate misunderstandings and misinformation, and were compiled by marketers or other opportunists who saw the huge market for Photoshop and image editing training. That is, many materials are compiled by professional trainers and professional writers rather than people with real day-to-day experience in image editing.

Online courses come in many types...from those that have lessons sent out without any ability to interact with the instructors to those that offer full access to industry experts (see betterphoto.com). Of course those range in price accordingly. The advantage of the latter is being able to actually interact with the expert teaching the course (rather than just having their picture on it) and get explanations and answers to your questions. In this day, even books and DVDs have the opportunity to offer online areas for Q&A, and very few do. I think readers should have access to authors (as I have offered for all my books since the first one), and those who don't offer that are essentially refusing to support their materials. (see my open forum for my new layers book: http://photoshopcs.com/forum)

Some disagree that you should ever need training, and that the best method for learning Photoshop is to simply get in and play. That is valiant, and if you have infinite time, this may be a viable option. If you can't afford books, DVDs or other training, then it certainly makes sense. But as the only resource of learning, unguided exploration of such a vast program is penny wise and pound foolish. Why learn about tools you won't ever need for image editing? Why waste time learning to apply features that harm your images? And how do you grow to understand the theory behind the tools by just the click-and-pray method of discovery? It will be hugely time consuming and very costly in its own right. Having been one who learned Photoshop when there were no books, and no experts, it took many times longer than it could have to get up to speed. These days there is the opportunity to ride on the experience of those who have spent time figuring out what is really important. There is something to be said of apprenticeship in learning any trade. Making an investment in formal materials should at least supplement any 'learn as the wind blows' mentality if images and image editing are important to you. I do think you will retain a lot more by jumping in and experiencing the pain of learning...but I also think base fundamentals can stop you from getting burned.

Focus on fundamentals from the outset rather than tips, tricks and 'wow' can form a net of safety for your experimentation. For example, I had a self-taught student that thought they knew a lot about Photoshop, and found out in my course that her routine for the past 3 years of image editing had been systematically ruining her images. She resized all images smaller and saved as JPEG to save space as soon as the images came off the camera, and resaved over the originals when she edited. That original source for her vacations, memories and other photography had been compromised, and potential detail permanently lost. It is not simply wasting time at that point, but obliteration of years of photographic work -- as sad as losing photos on a crashed drive, and with no options to even do it all over again. The student's predicament was a tragedy, but there was no way to reverse it...and she is not the only one. It could have been different had she learned her fundamentals first.

Puttering has its place and is very important to learning, exploring, and confidence...but it is a single avenue that can also lead to misconception and disaster. Certain practical, fundamental things are just not intuitive and learning to deal with them can save hundreds of hours of frustration, or even catastrophic loss. Whatever the source you use to get off on the right foot, exploring and experimentation is best done in concert with learning fundamentals.

I hope that helps!

Richard Lynch

The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book for CS4 was just released in mid-March ('09)! Get it on Amazon: http://aps8.com/taplbcs4.html. The book has 60 new pages of material, including a section on making manual HDR conversion the layers way. All of the exercises and materials have been reviewed and updated. That said, techniques aim at being timeless and accessible for many versions of Photoshop and Elements as well. This is a book for the serious-minded.

For those looking to learn Photoshop fundamentals, I teach a Photoshop 101 course at betterphoto.com recently updated for CS4 and Elements 7 (Photoshop 101: the Photoshop Essentials Primer). The course covers my outline of fundamentals from the bulleted list above and helps get you started enjoying and experiencing the program without the frustration and potential disasters. Betterphoto courses allow interaction with the instructor as well as other classmates.

What You’ll Use in Photoshop CS4

If you are at all interested in upgrading to the newest version of Photoshop (Photoshop for PC, Photoshop for Mac), you’ve probably read any number of articles on “What’s New in Photoshop CS4.” What you’ve gotten is a list and theoretical notions of what these features could, potentially, do for you, probably driven a bit by the seeding of the excellent Adobe marketing team. What you probably haven’t heard is a listing of what you will really use every day in CS4 if you are someone interested in correcting and adjusting photographic images. The reason you don’t is no one has time to digest the features before they rush out their articles to be first to press. Honestly, it takes about a year for me to fluidly incorporate new features in my workflow. Including a period of exposure to the CS4 beta, I’m just about getting to the saturation point as to what I really use and feel is a benefit in CS4. In some versions of Photoshop releases, my workflow honestly hardly changed at all. For Photoshop CS4, two features have become part of what I do every day and changed the way I work with images. These new features are the Adjustments Palette, and the Masks palette. Neither are, thus far, available in Elements.

I talk about each of these in context in my new book (The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book for CS4 due out in March of 2009). This blog is all about why I think these features are bound to change your process of image editing if you choose to use CS4.

The Adjustments Palette

A bitter-sweet addition to CS4 is the Adjustments palette. The sweet part about the addition is that this palette takes the place of the many dialogs that appear for adjustment layers. The benefit is that the dialogs no longer have to be closed. You can create an adjustment layer or click on any existing adjustment layer in the layers palette, and the adjustment settings appear in the Adjustments palette – immediately. As you make any change, the changes are applied to the image and committed. Previously you had to accept the changes on the dialog by clicking [ok]. If you wanted to make additional changes, you would then have to double-click on the Adjustment layer thumbnail to open the palette back up to adjust the changes. Not any more. Every time the adjustment layer is active, the palette shows the settings you have stored and that are currently applied to the image. The Adjustments palette is ultimately convenient for accessing and making changes to adjustments, and it is a feature that can save many clicks in opening and addressing what used to be dialogs. The adjustments it offers are no different than in the dialogs. It is something that works very well, but for one small factor, the bitter part of the addition.

The bitter part of the Adjustment palette is that you need to have it in view all the time if you use adjustment layers to make any adjustments to your images. You don’t really have the opportunity to store the palette away and call it back, and if you did that would defeat the purpose of the palette’s advantage. The palette needs to be visible — not just in the palette bin, but in a prominent spot on screen, or you’ll have to go hunting for it when you need to make a change. And every time you make a new Adjustment layer, you need to use it, as what is an adjustment layer without adjustment?

Regretfully when an adjustment layer is not active, the palette only displays yet another, redundant means of creating adjustment layers. In fact none of the palette itself can boast ‘new’ features and utility. So it is ultimately useful for defining adjustment layer changes, and not so useful otherwise. If you are a user like myself that already needs Layers and History and Actions and Channels and Info, and maybe Paths and Brushes and Character and Paragraph…the ‘need’ to have the new Adjustments palette in view compounds the issues you may already be having with on screen landscape. Depending on your monitor size and the way you practice editing, this landscape may be more or less precious. While I find it is a bit inconvenient to make more space on my 17” laptop, when I work on my desktop and 30” Apple Cinema Display I do not miss the landscape and appreciate the simplicity. If Adobe offered an option to use the classic dialogs, it would probably have been best for the majority of users.

As it stands, there are advantages and convenience to the presence of the Adjustments palette, though it may be in contention with other features. But as you can’t get away from it, it will necessarily, to some extent, alter the way you work. It will certainly take some getting used to.

Masks Palette

The Masks palette in Photoshop CS4 is not the obligation that the Adjustments palette is. Masks is, instead, a distinct difference in function from the way users could previously work with layer masks. Although you can still work with masks the way you did prior to CS4, the Masks palette extends layer mask functionality by offering options such as virtual adjustment. That is, you can make slider-based adjustment to masks for such things as Density, Feathering/Blur, Refine (which opens a separate dialog) and Inversion. The palette itself will indeed take up more landscape on the screen, like the Adjustments palette, but it is not quite as intrusive as Adjustments as it is a palette that can be brought into view when needed, and stored in a grouping with other palettes.

The benefit to the Masks palette is that it actually adds to the functionality offered in Photoshop. Where changes to masks directly in previous versions of the program were permanent, changes using the slider in the Masks palette are more like adjustments themselves: the positions of the sliders can be changed at any time and the result on the mask itself changed or even removed. In this way the changes are virtual, and ultimately flexible, as you are not committed to a change as you make it. The ability to adjust masks as you go can come in handy for compositing, and I have found it very useful in working with manual HDR and Depth-of-Field compositing.

If you find yourself blurring and feathering masks, and otherwise refining mask edges, you’ll find a place for the Masks palette on your screen. Once the palette is there on screen and you adopt going to the Masks palette for mask adjustment (instead of seeking out permanent alterations like Gaussian Blur), you will find the feature is a new one that you need, and don’t want to be without.

To Sum Up

The two features do bring something new to the table for Photoshop CS4, and they will certainly alter the way you work somewhat by enforcement and somewhat by choice — of that you can be assured. For me the Masks palette is a giant step forward in handling mask content, and it is a much welcome addition. However, whether it is one so important as to ‘require’ an upgrade will depend on the way you work in the program, and your need for masks or the space you have for more palettes.

Richard’s newest book, The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book for CS4, will be available in stores this month! The book adds some 80 pages of new material including a section on manually producing HDR images. Get your copy as soon as it hits the shelves by pre-ordering on Amazon: Preorder your copy now

The Psychology of Color Management and Calibration

The cliche experience that many have had is watching a family member trying to master the color on the family TV set. The people-centric medium of TV makes us to look at images where the color being off becomes unbearable and unnatural because skin tones just look wrong. We all know what skin tones should look like so we are compelled to change the screen to make the skin tones look as we expect. It's natural to trust that the color being broadcast to your TV is correct, only changing the settings on the TV can make it right. Hopeful TV color experts twiddle the controls trying to achieve a vague balance that only they can, while everyone else sits idly looking on hoping thing would be alright soon, impatient with the technology, wondering why it can't just be right in the first place - or if adjusting it is the thing that is screwing it up.

People are more apt to assume that what they see on their computer monitor is accurate when they pull it out of the box. Monitors are not constantly replete with skin tones that remind us that something may be off, as you spend considerable time using it for other activities like checking email or word-processing, which has nothing to do with skin tones at all. When a digital photographer sees a face, it might more often be in Photoshop, where they just change the color with tools in the program offered for that type of control. Regretfully, changing the color and trusting what you see in Photoshop and on your monitor can lead to martian prints and web postings of people in your images, and a quandary: why should color that looks correct in one place be off or plain wrong in another.

The answer is Color Management.

As they say, a little knowledge can be dangerous. Knowing enough to adjust the color in Photoshop doesn't turn out to be enough to make the color right. While some will come to the conclusion that the poor results have something to do with color management, just what they need to do to work with color management is less clear. They may revert to familiar territory and seek out the computer's brightness, contrast and color controls figuring this is how they have to make adjustments fiddling like you might do with a TV. They might get close and even get lucky with this method, but generally nothing could be worse. Adjustments made with the monitor controls as a means of color management end up being a best guess at what everything should look like on screen, and a compromise much like the TV expert's attempts at balancing RGB with the primitive TV controls. Guessing is not a good approach to color.

Some may go a little further and read a few web postings that have to do with adjusting color on their monitor, and these will range from the incorrect to the absurdly simple to the horribly technical ones that you are not quite sure are written in English. Naturally, the TV-color-minded inclination that "it is just color, how complicated could it be..." pushes people more toward accepting the absurdly simple and incorrect approaches. Some may take it a step further to seek out help from an expert (who may be anyone from a well-respected authority in Photoshop or color management to a neighbor who knows "a bunch about computers"). Regretfully the better answers (like the book Real World Color Management by Fraser, Murphy and Bunting, a 500+ page book) may be long and involved and daunting from the outset. On the other hand, getting the color right doesn't require getting a college degree in the subject, and such extensive study may be unnecessary for common folk, who, after all, just want the right color.

Those who want the right color without the doctorate end up taking suggestions from friends or people on forums, or look for the 'right' way to set up their color management. Truth be told, there is not one right way: more than one method will work. In fact, any method of color management that makes sense will work...but the other side of the coin is: the same color management scheme just doesn't work for everyone, and some will work better than others. The best way to get the color right and pick an applicable color management scheme, is, in my opinion, understanding the shorthand version of what you want to achieve and applying the simplest steps possible to get there.

The basics of color management requires:

• Calibrating your monitor
• Creating an ICC profile (usually part of step 1)
• Setting up color management in Photoshop or Elements (and perhaps other programs) correctly
• Setting up previews/screen proofing that make sense (Photoshop, not Elements)
• Applying appropriate color tagging to your images

If you neglect any one of these, you are gambling with your color results, plain and simple. If you do a few and not the others, you are not necessarily any better off than doing none at all. More frustrating, if you don't do them all, things may work sometimes, and not others, and you'll never be able to tell why. But attack each of these components with the intent to know why they are important, how they apply, and how to apply them, and you'll have the skeleton of color management, which is enough to hang your color on. You get skin on your skeleton when you define the purpose of what you are trying to achieve. Do you print to the same printer all the time? Do you print to many? Do you post images to the web exclusively? Do you print and post? Do images all come from the same camera? Do you have many sources of images (multiple cameras, images from friends, clients, etc.)? All these questions filter into your color management choice.

This is not the first time I've mentioned color management in my blog, and it won't be the last. Here are some other Color Management entries:

• What Color Space Do I Use? (Part 1)
• What Color Space Do I Use (Part 2)
• Calibrating My Home Printer

These additional resources should give you some background on making better color management choices.

For more info on approaching color management seriously, I have a 4 week primer course at betterphoto.com called From Monitor to Print that will work you through these 5 essentials, and test your results, making you color competent in a short amount of time with the least amount of work. You'll want to look into good calibration tools like the ColorVision Spyder (by the way, I posted an article on 9.11.08 about using the ColorVision Spyder Express to calibrate a dual monitor system -- which the manufacturer says is impossible). You can also simplify your color life by finding a system and sticking to it (don't change printers, papers, profiles, inks, or services without a plan).

Competent color handling is more than just calibration, but don't get psyched out. Make the effort to know what to do, and you can put it safely behind you.

The Joy of Making Mistakes

The Brief Anatomy of a Mistake
It seems to be human nature to be dismayed at having made mistakes. Botching a capture in a fleeting moment is a missed opportunity, and certainly we are right to be a little mad at ourselves for not being properly prepared. Ruining a print because you set up a file incorrectly is costly, but curable.

While it may be disappointing not to make the perfect image, no one ever learned a thing by being perfect. The reality is: every mistake is an opportunity...an opportunity to learn and to enhance your skills. In fact, it could almost be argued that if you don’t make mistakes, you’ll never learn, expand your horizons, and improve.

All mistakes aren't good (for example, dropping your digital camera in the ocean while out at sea), but all come with a lesson. There are mistakes you will be able to learn more and less from. There are times when the risk of mistakes will ‘cost’ more. The best mistakes are those that come with the least dreadful impact.

Looked at in the right way, the opportunity created by making a mistake is potential for learning and the true joy of pure accomplishment.

What to Do When You Make a Mistake
When you make a mistake -- whatever it is -- it isn't time to sit back and lament; it is time to sit up and take notice. It may also be a moment to congratulate yourself for trying new things and not being afraid of confronting what you don't already know.

When a mistake happens:

1. Acknowledge that something went wrong, and don’t assume it is a reflection on you (or anyone around you).
   
2. Study the consequences and understand why things went wrong.
   
3. Plan a counter action or means of avoiding the same mistake in the future.

The first is both the easiest and hardest of these steps. People like to blame themselves or someone else and distract from the sense that something merely happened. Forgo the blame as there’s nothing positive there. The next two steps are where it counts. Look at the event and what went wrong, research or ask questions about the things you don’t understand, and make a plan for avoiding the same thing happening again. You can write down your answers, and keep a notebook to keep track if it helps. All you want to do is plan to avoid making that same mistake again. The plans can be trivial or complex.

Often you’ll be tempted to lean on the advice of others that they gained from experience, and that can be a good thing by helping you avoid making terrible blunders. As long as you digest the suggestions and lessons it helps; it helps less so if you take anyone’s word for granted. Practice what you read in tutorials, lessons and books before you assume you really understand it. And when you practice allow yourself to explore at the fringes where things might just go wrong and that’s where you’ll learn.

Summarizing Mistakes?
Mistakes can come in shooting, in choosing a lens, in working with or against the light, in shooting too few frames, choosing the wrong exposure. You'll see them in bad choices for tools you use in Adobe Photoshop or Photoshop Elements). Don’t be afraid of making the mistakes, of posting them to your gallery, of showing them to people who might help let you know what went wrong or offer opinions. That is research. Opinions will vary as will solutions, and your preferences and techniques for avoiding the mistakes will expand as your experience grows. As your list of mistakes grows it is something you can wear like a scarf or badge of courage and show off in the experience you've gained. Mistakes accumulate with hard work, and experience. You make more of them as you challenge yourself with new styles, ideas and techniques. The more of them you make, the better they will make your images.

If your goal is to be a better photographer, don’t make mistakes, revel in them.

Making Your Own Holiday Card

With the holidays approaching it is still not too late to take on a project and do your own holiday card. All you really need is an image for the cover, some paper to print on (or a service to send to), Photoshop (or Elements), and a plan for the layout. The plan mostly has to do with printing to the edge, and getting the image on the front of the card.

Printing to the Edge
A layout problem that may confound those making their first cards is printing to the edge of the paper. Though some home printers have a print-to-the-edge feature, there is an edge area of the sheets you are printing that the printer will not print on -- commonly called a grip edge. It is often a quarter to a half an inch broad, and may vary from edge to edge depending on how paper was designed to go through the printer.

The solutions to the problem of printing to the edge (and this holds for when you send a job to a shop to have it printed), is to design a little larger and then and crop the paper to the size you want the finished piece. So, for your holiday card, you wouldn’t start with paper that was exactly the right size and then use your printer to print the image exactly to the edge; you’d start with a larger sheet, print the layout, and then trim the paper down.

To make your layout work, you'd lay out the graphic part of the card to print a bit beyond the crop edge—say, by an eighth of an inch (which is a printing standard). This is known as a bleed. The bleed provides a margin of error for the cropping. If the cut doesn’t fall precisely on the crop mark, the image will still come all the way to the edge of the cropped area.
The Basic Layout

Image on the Front
In laying out the card, be sure to think of how you want it to present! When you use a folded card, you have to put the front of the card on the right side of the layout so that when it folds the front of the card is in the right place. It may not be natural to think of the right side of the layout as the front, but that is where it is! The back of the card is on the left.
Outside

On the inside, the left and right facing sides are more intuitive. You usually want to have the saying on the right.
Inside

As far as the back of the card, you can put several things there for information purposes. Sometimes it is fun to put in your real or even an imaginary business name, copyright and date, website (if appropriate), and maybe some information about the photo (subject, title, separate copyright -- if applicable). Usually this is all in small type so as not to detract from the card.

Homemade cards seem to always be the ones that stand out from the others.

For More Information...
For better ways to process your images and get the most out of them for your cards and other uses, be sure to check out Richard Lynch's Photoshop courses and his latest book: The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book

Holiday Gift Ideas
If you are looking for a good gift for that budding photographer or photoshop professional, try giving a betterphoto.com gift card. Good for courses, books and apparel!

Magic Tools in Photoshop and Elements

The Entertainer and the Entertained
Magicians in their magic acts are entertainers. They perform mystical feats designed specifically to cleverly trick us -- those being entertained -- into believing something miraculous is happening when they waive their wand or perform an incantation. Deep down, we know it is somehow explainable, but we want to be entertained, suspend our disbelief, and enjoy the show. We may half-heartedly try to figure out what really happened behind the scenes, but in a way, perhaps, we almost don't want to know: it might ruin the illusion and we'd no longer be entertained. The entertainer practices his craft building the clever and believable deception, and the entertained soak it in without thinking all too hard. That is the difference between the entertainer and the entertained.

The Juggler

Photoshop and Magic
People beginning to edit images with Photoshop and Elements often scour the menus looking for the tool that will do something spectacular to their images believing great images are just a few clicks away. It is almost as if they want the program to entertain them with an element of magic or a fantasic feat of mind reading. Photoshop and Elements have lots of tools whose behavior may seem mysterious and unexplainable at first, at least one named specifically 'Magic Wand', but regretfully there are no 'magic' tools that read your mind. No matter how clever the implementation of a function or how well it seems to work there is never anything 'magic' about a tool itself. There is a calculation -- however complex -- that drives any tool application. The behavior can be described and predicted, no matter how we might resist knowing.

To Be the Magician
A true magician doesn't waive a wand and hope magic will happen -- imagine what would happen to a magician doing that on stage. The magician knows the secrets of the tricks and what goes on behind the scenes, utilizing props and tools with purpose to craft the perfect deception. Likewise, the imaging magician, must be a master of the tools and craft of post-processing. Just clicking a filter or auto function and being elated or disappointed by the result isn't mastering Photoshop and Elements, it is being entertained. Being entertained can be pleasing at times, but generally it is not how you make a magical image. The tools themselves have no way to see and evaluate the images they work on except as a calculation. They are lifeless props and props never make magic either.

Magicians practice their craft and develop their art, and you will want to do the same to achieve desired results with your post-processing in Photoshop. Changes do not have to be mystical, spectacular or flamboyant to get the most from your images, and post-processing is only a portion of the photographic craft. There is a place for being both the entertainer and the entertained, the magician and the audience. Learn and be awed by other people's craft, but strive to understand the magic of their images like a magician in the audience watching the craft of the magician on stage.

To Learn More
My courses teach the timeless fundamentals for Photoshop and Elements that you'll use as the core of your craft. I talk about magic tools in my Photoshop 101 class...namely the "read my mind" and "do it for me" tools: mythical tools designed in the minds of users hoping there is an easier way. But it is the only mention of magic tools in my courses. You get practical methodology for Correcting and Enhancing Your Images, solid techniques for matching your images on your Monitor and In Print, and advanced exploration of
Layers: Photoshop's Most Powerful Tool. Each is a facet of the tools you have to master to perfect your image editing craft. My latest book, The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book, is the perfect companion to these courses.

Breaking Photography's Rules

Coming from a writing background (I have an MFA in Fiction Writing), I find it is interesting to note the overlap and comparison of thinking about composition of images and composition of prose. The common quote "a picture is worth a thousand words" comes to mind. Interestingly it is said one of the 'rules' of photography is that images should tell a story. If it is true, who should be more likely to have an interest in photography than someone who has studied fiction writing...I find my experiences with writing help me see my progress through photography more clearly.

Writing At College
Taking writing courses was a confounding joy. I might be handed an assignment to write a story, and might be inspired immediately to write a poem. With the suggestion that I write a poem, I might be at no short hand to write prose. Other students I know would claim to get the much-romanced 'writer's block', often meaning they couldn't come up with anything interesting to fulfill an assignment. While my reaction to assignments may just have been some perverse part of my nature, the imposed task would fill with obligation, rigidity and expectation...and I could find respite in doing almost anything but the task at hand. I enjoyed discovery and creativity; it was simply more fun to explore writing to whatever end than to perform a task.

The upshot of structured courses was that while I was compelled to complete the necessary work to conform to the expectations, I wrote probably twice as much unstructured work in addition to the formal assignments. To stave off verbal constipation, I made a habit of keeping a scratch book (and still do) where I was free to experiment and explore words. In the abstract paths, scraps, and unfinished pieces may not be my best work and material, and much I've never shared or published, but some inevitably filtered back into other finished work, and it is still where I do my most intense learning.

And After College...
Later, continuing down a lawless path, I taught college English for several years, and tested ideas from my own learning, using my students like guinea pigs. I tried to abandon rules entirely as part of the curriculum -- rules, I reasoned, were something no one really cared for, and college students should have had their fill by the time they met me -- so I had my students exploring writing itself rather than tethering them to the rule book. They wrote a lot, improved tremendously by following their interests, and seemed to allow themselves to enjoy the experience of writing which, in turn, helped them learn from it, often coming in a back-handed way to the rules -- whether they recognized them or not.

Choosing Your Rules
The best of rules, when you know them, become simple, helpful guidelines built on common sense: suggestions as to what will achieve success with relative consistency. While anyone can resist rules, the essence of rules can't totally be ignored. Rules of writing attach meaning to words and without that reference writing would never convey an intended meaning; likewise, you can't take a picture without light in the absolute dark. Rules may not fit your perspective as you hear them, but they may have other meanings, and more fitting, creative, and personally meaningful interpretations. For example, the rule of thirds really says to me: "don't be boring", which can lead to a lot more than 4 suggested options.

There are all sorts of writings, just like there are all sorts of photos. Some photos might tell a story, and might seem more like a poem, a story, or even a novel -- and some may only be meant to be snippets, scraps, experiments, and vehicles for learning. If you following the rule that each shot needs to be a story as an imperative, you may hold yourself back from capturing some less structured frames, experimenting and exploring possibilities, and learning from and enjoying your time taking pictures. In other words, you will do well to follow the rule of trying to tell stories with your images -- so long as it doesn't oblige you to try and squeeze impossible imagery from an inappropriate scene when you might, instead, happily snap the shutter to learn some nuance about light, shadow, shutter speed, or color that may later help you 'tell a story' in better conditions.

Pear Stems. Shot when I found my camera in hand and some interesting light after dinner.

Practicing Lawless Photography
At times, when you are frozen, looking for the ultimate shot in a dramatic scene that is being elusive, it may help to put the rules out of your head a moment and just look through the viewfinder. Snap off some frames without expectations, move in and away, tilt the camera, shoot portrait and landscape, change your lens...Think of as many rules as you can while doing it, and break every one -- for a reason if you can think of one, or just because. After you shoot a series, view the results to see if anything you shot suggests a direction, and then use that suggestion and refine the result. You can always use rules first if you feel naked -- or you may find you follow them more naturally as you shoot view and refine.

When to Upgrade Photoshop

By Richard Lynch

Are You A Photoshop Junkie?
Photoshop junkies are people who religiously upgrade from one version to the next without thinking as if a new release were some type of signal that the current version of the program would soon expire and stop working. Others upgrading without a second thought may believe that owning the newest version of Photoshop automatically makes their images better. Regretfully, "cool" new features may sound enticing, but in the long run these enhancements may be something you rarely use -- or use once in a lifetime -- that isn't a reason to upgrade. The boring reality is that sometimes what you have is really what you need. While it does not carry the social status of owning Photoshop, it is easily possible that Photoshop Elements may serve every need you have even if you are a demanding digital technician (and at a savings of 90% (!) of the cost of Photoshop). Upgrading out of habit, obligation or anything other than a clearly defined need makes you a junkie.

The Truth About Upgrades
It is Adobe's job to make their product compelling enough so that you want to upgrade. In the early years of Photoshop, every version had a significant new feature. Digital imaging had a lot of maturing to do from the first release in 1988, so the room for improvement seemed endless. Now, as Photoshop has matured, the list of enhancements for any version may be as long as your arm, but it may be less clear if you really need to upgrade because features are not always something every user will benefit from.

Richard's Philosophy of Upgrades

1. Don't automatically upgrade to a new release of Photoshop. You don't owe it to Adobe, and your version of the program will still work months and years from now.
2. It is not a social embarassment to skip an upgrade version of Photoshop. For example, if you are on CS2 already, you can probably wait for CS4. People may point and wisper under their breath, but how long can they do that for? Just ask them for a compelling reason to upgrade.
3. Know the Photoshop upgrade cycles. You can count on a new version every 18 months or so. Don't get the last version after it's been out 17 months when it suddenly goes 'on sale' or you'll be looking and yearing to get the next version in a month all over again.
4. Don't be swept away by the hype of the 'cool' factor of new Photoshop tools. Advertising can make features look more promising than they are. Find out what tools and functions actually do by reading reviews before you upgrade, and weigh how much you think you'll actually use them.
5. Find at least two actual must-have features in any new Photoshop upgrade that will save you time, effort or improve image quality on a daily basis before considering an upgrade.
6. Don't upgrade if there are a significant number of tools and features that you already don't know how to use. Learn the tools you have. New features will take weeks, months and perhaps years to incorporate into your workflow. Give them time to sink in before looking for more features you won't use.
7. Find out about system requirements and compatabilities BEFORE you purchase a Photoshop upgrade. If you purchase a version that requires a new operating system, it may trigger a reaction where you'll have to buy a whole new system at many times the cost of the upgrade just to run it.
8. Just because it costs more doesn't mean it does more for you. Know what you are buying. For example, don't get the extended version of Photoshop CS3 instead of the vanilla version if you have no interest in medical imaging, 3D modeling and video editing.

Adobe has consistently put out an enticing product that gives users a real reason to upgrade. Adobe does work hard at it, they have a fabulous, well-tested product, and have generally productive reasons for upgrading. However, there is no reason to feel pressured, rushed or obligated. The new version will be there when you are ready for it, and your old, tried and tested techniques for image editing will not soon be worn out and displaced by the latest tool if you learn the right techniques. The real task is to learn the right techniques and theory to make your image editing efforts less tool-centric.

A Short List of Photoshop Enhancements by Version This is an extremely abbreviated list of enhancements for Photoshop versions. Versions 2 through 7 list the major enhancements only. CS versions are listed in greater detail so it will be evident what was added in the newer versions and what you may gain by upgrading from prior versions. Photoshop 2 (no, not CS2, Photoshop 2.0 released in 1991) added Paths Photoshop 2.5 added a Windows version Photoshop 3 added Layers (which makes my Leveraging Layers course possible) Photoshop 4 added recordable Actions Photoshop 5 added editable type, the History palette, and the dreaded Color Management Photoshop 5.5 added Image Ready for web development Phtooshop 6 enhanced the user interface, added layer styles and Blending Options dialog, and 16-bit editing Photoshop 7 introduced the Healing brush, paint engine enhancements, and introduced RAW image handling Note: At this point Photoshop broke into the CS versions, the first of which was released on October of 2003. As more users still own these versions I'll use more comprehensive (but still partial) lists... Photoshop CS (8) added: — Camera RAW 2.x — Highly modified "Slice Tool" — Shadow/Highlight command — Match Color command — Lens Blur filter — Smart Guides — Real-Time Histogram — Detection and refusal to print scanned images of various banknotes[2] — Macrovision copy protection based on Safecast DRM technology Photoshop CS2 (9) added: — Camera RAW 3.x — Smart Objects — Image Warp — Spot healing brush — Red-Eye tool — Lens Correction filter — Smart Sharpen — Smart Guides — Vanishing Point — Better memory management on 64-bit PowerPC G5 Macintosh machines running Mac OS X 10.4 — High dynamic range imaging (HDRI) support (32 bit per channel floating point) — Scripting support for JavaScript and other languages — More smudging options, such as "Scattering" — Modified layer selection, such as ability to select more than one layer. Photoshop CS3 (10) added: — Smart Filters — Quick Selection and Refine Edge tools — Advanced compositing — Streamlined interface — Better raw image processing — Improved Adobe Bridge — Enhanced Vanishing Point — Enhanced 32-bit HDR support — Peak performance — Black-and-white conversion Note: The waters get further muddied here by a release of more than one version of CS3; CS3 and CS3 Extended.

Building the Ultimate Image Editing Computer

As a Photoshop professional and author of Photoshop and Elements books, people looking to buy a computer to use for image editing often ask my opinion about what I recommend. I use Mac as my main work station, and have a PC laptop. Though Mac is a preference for me, I think the platform isn't as critical a decision for image editing as it once was. However the peripherals and accessories I put into my 'ultimate system' whether on mac or PC can be fairly extensive. To me, the additional expense is not only unavoidable, but essential to handling images safely and getting the best results. All the items I choose are not necessary for every system and all level of user, and some of your personal preferences may differ. But some core elements should be considered beyond just the platform to enhance your image editing experience.

The following are all part of my main work station:

*Dual, matching monitors

*Spyder monitor calibrator

*2+ GB of RAM

*4 matching hard drives

*dual core processor

*Kensington Turbomouse

*DVD Writer

*External backup drive

*Card reader

*Power backup system

Keep in mind that for my work with professional photographers I need a lot of processing oomph. If you are a more casual user you may not really need all this stuff, and some of that is personal preference. But here is a breakdown of what advantages each of these provides:

Dual, Matching Monitors
Dual monitors provide a lot of visible landscape, generally at a fraction of the cost of a larger monitor. Another option may be a very large screen, like the 30" Mac Cinema Display, but that is not in the price range of many users. Two monitors may require an additional video card depending on your setup, but really a large monitor may demand a video card upgrade as well. The goal of increased viewing area is to allow for room to open multiple palettes while viewing your images large on screen.

Spyder Monitor Calibrator
Monitor calibration is essential for getting good results with your images consistently, in print and on the web. If you don't calibrate, your monitor color may be off, and you can't possibly trust what you see on screen. Dark monitors will find you overcorrecting images and the results will be light in print; monitors with a color shift will find you compensating toward the shift's complement color -- a monitor with too much red may find your prints consistently leaning toward a cyan hue. Hardware calibration can measure the color on your screen with great accuracy and will be the cornerstone of good color practice and workflow.

2+ GB of RAM
One of many complaints I hear from users as they upgrade to new versions of Photoshop and Elements has to do with the program running slower. Often running slower can be attributed to keeping an old system and trying to run a more demanding program with the same equipment. Current system requirements for Photoshop suggest a minimum of 512 MB of RAM, this is in addition to what you need for your operating system (Windows Vista requires 1GB of RAM), and really the size of your images. There is almost never too much RAM and you may want 4GB to stay ahead of the curve.

4 Matching Hard Drives
It might seem like overkill, but I use 4 hard drives on my system: 1 for system/programs, 2 for images/work in a RAID array, 1 more for a dedicated scratch disk. Drives should all be fast, and it is handy to have them in matching size and manufacture so you can swap them out in emergencies (e.g., for example if one drive in your RAID goes out, you can sub in the scratch disk while waiting for a replacement). Keeping work separate from your programs allows you to run a RAID array to make instantaneous backup of your work to protect you from losing anything. A dedicated scratch disk allows photoshop plenty of room to scale its memory needs without conflicting with image saves and program activity. A RAID can easily be set up on a Mac; PCs will require additional software.

Dual Core Processor
Photoshop is a processing and memory hog, and having a fast processor at the core is essential for peak performance. Photoshop has been built for a long time to handle dual core processing, and that capability leads to less wait and more productivity.

Kensington Turbomouse
There are various input devices to choose from, and my input of choice is a Kensington Turbomouse, and has been for many years. Mice require a lot of wrist movement and potential strain, and Wacom tablets while interesting and unique, do not provide the kind of accuracy and control I can get with a trackball (try stopping in the middle of a stroke with a graphics pen, for example). The trackball is really a huge inverted mouse with the advantage that it never needs to be moved, takes up little desk space and offers the ultimate in control of your cursor. Don't get a flimsy trackball with a small controller...it just isn't the same.

DVD Writer
As images mount on your drives you will eventually need to back them up to make room for new ones. One of your best long-term options for high capacity storage/archive are DVDs, which offer about 6 times the space of a CD. They are also quite durable, and likely your best option currently for image archive and storage.

External Backup Drive
For daily or weekly backup, to keep your current work safe should you experience some type of computer meltdown, you can make use of an external drive with at least the same storage capacity as your work drives. Doubling the capacity will allow you to retain the original backups while making the new, and considering the low cost of hard drive space these days, a single large backup drive will save you infinite worry and offer the capability to restore work easily.

Card Reader
A device that I have found to have ultimate utility on the road as well as for daily download of images is my portable Wolvarine drive. It sports additional slots for a variety of card types, and an 80GB capacity which allows me to take approximately 12,000 photos before having to touch base with my main desktop. It has an internal power pack so it can operate anywhere, and attachments for car lighter plugs. Great for backing up cards on the road, and reading them into the computer as well. If you keep two cards on hand, you never need to waste time downloading before you geet to the next shot; download one while you keep shooting.

Power Backup System
Power backup allows you to stave off the ultimate, unpredictable catastrophe: power loss. Power can go out at any time, and some types of power/surge protectors offer surge protection and full switched power that automatically stores and kicks in during a power outage -- and can save your work. A must if you live in an area where unpredictable power outages occur.

Of course, my image editing program of choice is Photoshop, but Photoshop Elements is often just as good for most users who will never need the additional non-photo-editing features (CMYK generation, Actions/Scripting, Web development tools). Some of this list is equipment you can accumulate and reuse between systems as you upgrade.

You may notice the glaring omission of a home printer. I am not big on printing at home, and send everything to a service. To get the equipment I’d want for that I figure I am saving about $80,000 in a printer cost which I assume is worth it ;-). You can also save yourself the headaches associated with maintaining supplies and printer maintenance/calibration/profiling. I discuss this in a lot more detail in my From Monitor to Print: Photoshop Color Workflow course.

If you are looking for the ultimate system for editing images, or even to begin upgrading as you begin to take image editing more seriously, this list of key components should prove helpful in your consideration of building the ultimate system. I'd be glad to answer additional questions on the subject (Contact Richard: richard@betterphoto.com)

Monitor Matching Prints

In my travels about the Internet and its forums for Photoshop and Elements users, one of the most common complaints I hear is that prints do not match what people see on their monitors. This complaint can range anywhere from prints seeming desaturated, to seeming a little tinted (green, red, blue), to seeming too light or dark, or just being flat out awful as a combination of these problems.

It looks like this on screen...

...but it ends up looking like this in print

There could be nothing more disappointing than these results to a photographer. In every case, the solution is found in how these photographers manage (or mismanage) color.

Managing color sounds scary, but if you know what to do, it becomes fairly simple in practice. You need to consider 4 things:

1. You need to calibrate your monitor so you see things correctly on screen and create an ICC profile (all easier than it sounds). I use a ColorVision Spyder.

   

2. You need to set up Photoshop / Elements color management to handle color display and profiling.
3. You need to test your process to be sure your workflow performs as you expect, and make corrections if it doesn't.
4. You should also consider how your camera is handling color. Such options as choosing white-balance, color space, and even file type can affect your color options.

For almost anyone it is best to get some help with your color setup, because you can literially spend weeks, months and years figuring color management out...meanwhile losing opportunities to shoot and print more images with the kind of predictable results you want. Once you have the idea inder your belt, you can move on knowing what to expect leaving your color worries behind.