The Hurbicide Guru

The article given here was written for Adobe Photoshop 5,6,7,CS, and Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 and 3.

Most photographers who are serious about improving their portrait taking skills have realized that a beautiful background can greatly enhance their photographs.

Muslins are a very popular choice among professionals. However, they can get very costly at several hundred dollars each. For the professional who is well established, this may not seem too much, but for the hobbyist, this may be a stretch.

A less costly alternative is a digital background. With a digital background, one can get the look and feel of a professional looking portrait without the additional cost of muslin.

Many Photography websites also sell digital backgrounds on cd. In some cases…as low as $15.00 dollars for an assorted collection. As with anything else…you usually get what you pay for. Some of these pre-made digital backgrounds are not worth the cd they’re printed on, but some of them are very beautifully made. Even so, you may be wondering how YOU can make your very own digital background. That being said, the following information will help guide you along the way.

Okay, let’s create a digital backdrop using Adobe Elements 2.0. We will create an 8×10 300dpi (dpi = dots per inch or ppi = pixels per inch) digital backdrop. For printing purposes, 300dpi is strongly recommended for a high quality print. This will also create a large file approximately 20.6megs.

Having a fast processor (Pentium 4 or Athlon XP) and at least 256megs of ram will definitely help. Also having your screen resolution on your monitor set to its highest setting 24 or 32bit will give the best results.

Okay let’s begin! If you haven’t already opened Photoshop Elements, do so now.

1. Click on File < New.
When the window opens up,make sure to set it to 8x10 inches at 300dpi.

2. Make a copy of the background layer you just created by pressing
Control-J on your keyboard. If you look at the bottom right corner of your
monitor, you should see an exact copy of your background layer named layer 1.

3. Select the “foreground” color for your background by clicking on the foreground square on your toolbar… the black one. (Bottom left)

4. The Color Picker window should now be open. Select a light red by clicking on the top right corner of the color palette. Click ok.

5. Now select the “background” color by clicking on the background square on your toolbar… the white one. (Bottom right)

6. The Color Picker window should open again. Select a darker red by clicking halfway below the lighter red you previously chose. Click ok.

7. Now comes the fun part! Let’s put some clouds in there. On the top of your screen, click on Filter Now because we are using a 300dpi image, the pattern doesn't really resemble clouds. On a 72 dpi image, it definitely would. We will fix that now.

8. First, make sure that layer 1 is not locked! Look at your layers palette on the bottom right of your screen. Do you see the little black “lock” icon? Make sure that the little white square to the left is NOT checked!

9. Okay, now press “m” on your keyboard. At the top left corner of your backdrop, click and drag your mouse to create a 2×3 inch square.
If you do not see the ruler along side your backdrop, press “control-r” on your keyboard.

10. Press “v” on your keyboard. Your selection should now have little handles on all sides that you can click on to pull to any size you want. If you do not see any handles, click on “Show Bounding Box” at the top.

11. Click on the lower right handle in the corner and drag and stretch it to the bottom right corner of your backdrop.

12. Double click anywhere on the red backdrop to apply the resizing. Now press “L” on your keyboard then “control-d”.

Okay, now you should have a beautiful looking backdrop ready to use, but wait, there is still more we can do to take it to another level.
You will be simply amazed at the results you will be getting in the next few steps. You may have noticed that many types of muslins on the market have painted on them what’s known, as a “hot spot”.

What is a hot spot? A hot spot is a circular area near the center of the backdrop that is lighter in color. Why is this there? It allows the subject to stand out and creates a vignette at the borders. This will greatly enhance your backdrop. Are you ready? Okay, let’s do it!

13.On the top, click on Filter-Render-Lighting Effects. Select “Omni” for your “Light Type” and move the slider for your intensity to 25. Now click on the middle handle in the circle and raise the circle just above the halfway point to where the person’s head will appear.Click ok.

Now you should have an amazing looking backdrop!

Fabian Barajas is author of several Photoshop ebook tutorials including “How to Create Your Very Own Professional Looking Digital Backdrop!” His website which includes samples of his work is http://www.digital-background.net/

Most digital cameras today boast of greater resolution and picture quality. What does that mean to the amateur or occasional photographer? You hear of cameras with 3 megapixals up to 6 or 7 megapixals. What is that? The book that comes with the camera explains all the buttons, bells and whistles, but does not explain megapixels. Most people do not like to work with numbers much, but it is necessary to understand pixels. So here’s my attempt to explain pixels. I’ll try not to involve too many numbers.

To understand pixels, one must first remember the good old days when you took pictures on film and let the development labs worry about pixels. But, they didn’t really have to, because the exposed negative just captured the image that was reflected through the lens. It was all there and the only thing that affected quality was the size of the negative. The bigger the negative was, the larger the picture that could be produced. When the world went digital, the pixel was invented. So what is a pixel? If you divided a picture in hundreds of horizontal and vertical lines, you would actually have a large number of little squares that when put together, created the picture. Each square is a pixel. So, when a digital camera says it has 1-megapixel capabilities, it means that the total number of horizontal and vertical squares produced when a picture is taken equals 1 megapixel (1,000,000 pixels).

A 3 megapixel camera produces a picture that has 3 million pixels in its makeup. If all the pictures were the same size in each camera, it would be easy to understand why a camera that produces more pixels would be a better quality camera. Here is where the camera makers are not forthcoming with information. What they don’t tell you is that as far as I can tell, every digital camera produces pictures that have 72 pixels per inch per picture both horizontal and vertical. The only difference is that a 3 megapixel camera produces a larger picture than a 1 megapixel camera and a 5 megapixel camera produces an even larger picture yet. The reason I say “as far as I can tell” is that I have not tried all cameras or studied the information on all cameras. There may be some out there different, but they probably are not in the amateur photographer’s price range.

Conclusion: For video uses only, your camera purchase decision should be based on features other than the number of pixels.

Wayne Rockwell is a professional videographer at Legacy Pictures to Video and specializes in Video Montage creation and Photo Retouching.

Having an efficient work flow is essential for photographers. In the days of film, many of the tasks in the film work flow were handled by the lab. Now, more and more photographers are switching to digital and have to handle many of these tasks themselves. The purpose of this document is to provide a basic digital work flow for working with RAW images that is camera and system independent.

Most modern digital SLR cameras, and some point and shoot models, have the ability to record the RAW data from an exposure, allowing the photographer to process the images as they see fit. This can be a daunting task, especially for those who don’t have a work flow in place to handle the images from the camera. The following steps will take you through the process of setting up your own RAW digital work flow.

Work flow Step 1: Compose and Expose

Your digital work flow begins before you ever sit down at your
computer. One of the best things you can do to make your work flow more efficient is to get as much of your image perfect in the camera as possible. Many digital photographers have fallen into the “I can fix it on the computer” trap. This costs you time and money. The more time you spend “fixing” a photo after you’ve tripped the shutter, the less time you are spending with clients.

Here are a few tips to help reduce your workload from the time you make your exposure:

• Set your white-balance to match your scene. If you get the proper white-balance in the camera, you won’t have to adjust it later on the computer. See your camera documentation for how to set a custom white-balance. Remember to set your white balance whenever you change lenses, or the quality of light. If you change modifiers, or lenses, change your white-balance as well.
• Expose for the highlights. Since digital acts similar to slide film, its easy to accidentally blow your highlights. By exposing for the hot parts of the image, you’ll save yourself some time in the long run.
• Scan your frame. Get in the habit of doing a top-to-bottom scan of your frame before you trip the shutter. This will help you avoid stray hairs, lights in your frame, reflectors being visible, and anything that you might have to clone out of the image later.

Work flow Step 2: Importing and Backing Up Your Images

There are many ways to get your images from your camera to your
computer. Some people use a card reader that will read the images off the memory card from the camera. Others connect the camera directly to the computer and import the images directly. No matter how you get the images to the computer, your first step is to setup an organizational structure for the images and create a backup copy of the RAW files for safety.

First, create a folder to store your image files. In our studio, we use the folder name to organize our images. For instance, let’s say we are importing images from a portrait session with Jane Doe that took place on January 1st, 2005. Our folder name for this session would be P_2005_DoeJane_0101. If we also did a portrait session with John Doe on the same date, our folder would be named P_2005_DoeJohn_0101. This allows us to keep our images organized in a way that we are familiar with. Use whatever folder structure you like, as long as it helps you keep things organized.

Next, we will create the folders under our P_2005_DoeJane_0101 folder that we will use during the course of processing the images. We create the following folders: RAW, WORK, and JPEG. The final file structure looks like this:

-+P_2005_DoeJane_0101
-|-RAW
-|-WORK
-|-JPEG

The RAW folder holds our RAW image files, the WORK directory holds the processed TIFF files where we will do all of our editing, and the JPEG folder holds the completed files, ready to be uploaded to the lab.

Copy the images from your camera to the RAW folder using whichever method you prefer. As soon as this initial copy is complete, make a backup copy of these images. Some photographers backup to writable CD-ROM or DVD discs. Other photographers backup to a separate backup hard drive. No matter what method you choose for your backups, they are CRITICAL. Make sure you can recover your images if something should happen to your memory card.

Work flow Step 3: Verify Your Backup

Your backup copy of the RAW images files is important. Take a moment to verify that you can read the images you copied to your backup medium. Once you have verified your backup medium, you may proceed with the work flow.

Work flow Step 4: Culling the Herd

Converting the images you never want the client to see wastes time and money. Use your preferred image browser to go through the RAW images and delete any that you know you won’t use. Don’t worry about deleting the wrong file, that is why we made a backup. If you delete a file you wanted, just bring it back from your backup.

Once you have selected your “keepers” from the RAW images, it is time to move on to the next step.

Work flow Step 5: File Conversion

Most cameras come with software specifically designed to convert the RAW image data from its native format into TIFF files, JPEG files, or some other format that is compatible with the popular image editing software.

At our studio, we convert the RAW images into 16-bit TIFF files,
because we like to have the maximum amount of data available for
editing and processing. Your needs may vary. There are many articles on the Internet that deal with the different file formats and the pros and cons of each. For the purpose of this tutorial, we are going to assume that the files are being converted to 16-bit TIFF files.

We now open the software that came with our camera and set it to
convert our RAW image data to 16-bit TIFF files, and save them in the TIFF folder we created in Work flow Step 2. This step can be time consuming, so we often go out to eat while the images from a session are converting.

Once the conversion is finished, you will have a folder of 16-bit TIFF files to do editing and retouching on. We use TIFF at our studio because it is a loss less format. That is, we can save the file as many times as we like without degrading the image quality. JPEG is a lossy format, every time you save a JPEG file, you lose a little more data to compression.

Work flow Step 6: Editing and Retouching

This step of our work flow is where the real work is done. You will open each TIFF file in the image editor of your choice and make sure your colors and exposure are correct, the crop is the way you want it, and the image is ready for printing. At this point you will make any edits to the image, such as changing the crop, converting it to black and white, or doing any needed retouching.

If you use the TIFF file format, you can save as many times as you need to during this process without having to worry about losing image quality.

Once editing and retouching is done, save your work file and move on to the next step.

Work flow Step 7: Saving the Production File

One of the cons to working with 16-bit TIFF files is that they take up an incredible amount of disk space. Once we have reviewed the images with the client and ensured that no further edits/retouching need to be made, we convert the TIFF file to a JPEG production file for archive purposes and sending to the lab.

Open the TIFF file in your preferred image editor and save your file as a Baseline Level 10 JPEG in the JPEG folder we created earlier. Why not save as a Level 12 JPEG, you might ask. When printing your image, there is no discernible difference between a level 10 JPEG and a level 12 JPEG. Try it for yourself and see.

Once your files are saved as JPEGs, move on the the next step.

Work flow Step 8: Backup Your Production Files

This is a good time to make a backup (either to CD/DVD, or to another hard disk) of your JPEG production files. This ensures that you have a copy of all your hard work and if something should happen to the original files, you know you have a good backup.

Work flow Step 9: Cleaning Up the RAW and Work Files

Once we know we have a good backup of our production JPEGs, we delete the entire WORK folder and the entire RAW. This frees up the large amount of space that TIFF files require and leaves us with a manageable set of files from the job. However, we have already made backup copies of the RAW files and the JPEG files, so if we ever need to re-edit an image, we have the materials to do so.

Work flow Step 10: Final Touches

At this point our production JPEG images are ready to print or send to the lab. Make any final adjustments to the image size and print or upload your images.

Final Thoughts

With an efficient digital work flow, handling large amounts of digital images is easy and relatively stress free. I hope this tutorial has given you some ideas on how to best setup your own RAW digital work flow.

Martin F. Hengst has been a professional photographer for more than a decade. He and his wife Barbara run Captured Radiance Photography, a studio dedicated to glamour, boudoir, and intimate portraiture. His online portfolio can be found at: http://www.capturedradiance.com