February, 2009

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In This Chapter

Five professional-life reasons to go digital ^ Four personal-life reasons to go digital ^ One good-for-the-future-of-the-planet reason to go digital

P‘ickInG Just ten reasons to own and use a digital camera is hard. In an effort to play to heartstrings everywhere, I’ve included ideas about job-related shooting, uses in the home, travel considerations. . . the list goes on and on, but only up to ten. After that, you have to use your imagination.

The gap in capability between 35mm film and high-end digital cameras disappeared some time ago. The technology that allows digital cameras to match 35mm quality is now found in quite reasonably priced equipment. (Admittedly, only the most expensive digital camera backs for very expensive high-quality cameras can even think about competing with medium or large format film.) If you haven’t yet gone over to the digi­tal side, here are some convincing arguments to make the jump. If you already are digital in mind, body, and lens, read the list anyway — it might give you a few points for future discussions with traditionalists.

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Shooting Digital for YOUr Work

In the field, in the studio, and even in the home and on the road, digital offers a number of advantages over film.

W* No processing time (or cost): You don’t have to wait to start editing your images. Instead, you download to your computer and open the images in Photoshop. No longer do you have those pesky delays for processing/printing/scanning, nor those bothersome bills for film processing.

W* Instant feedback: You can evaluate the shot immediately on the camera’s LCD screen, which allows you to quickly delete any boo-boos before anyone else sees them. Oh, and that frees up storage space, too, of course! And don’t forget about LCD previews available on many cam­eras, which let you makes decisions even before you shoot.

W* Create libraries of textures and patterns: Shoot digital images of clouds and bark and grass and fabric and concrete and bricks and whatever to create libraries of textures to use in Photoshop. Use blending mode and the TextureOTexturizer filter with your library images to create wonder­ful backgrounds and artistic effects, such as the visually interesting background in Figure 20-1.

Figure 20-1: The Texturizer filter uses grayscale. psd files, such as tree branches and clouds, to add detail to an image.

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Chapter 20: Ten Reasons to Own a Digital Camera

I^ Remote control: Use your computer’s monitor (if your camera/software allows) to adjust and perfect the shot before shooting. The screen is a lot larger and more accurate than the camera’s LCD. This is often referred to as Tethered Shooting.

I^ Multiple exposures for one image: Bracket the exposure and then combine the images automatically in Photoshop with Merge to HDR. (See Chapter 10 for specific instructions on shooting for Merge to HDR.)

Shooting Digital for YOurself

Owning a digital camera comes in handy for your personal life, too.

W* Travel convenience: With a digital camera, you eliminate worries about X-ray machines, baggage scanning, and film storage. And don’t forget how much easier it is to carry a half-dozen Flash cards than dozens of rolls of film!

W* Home inventory: Do it. Really. Do it. Go around the house and take photos of the important stuff. (Don’t forget the jewelry!) If your camera has a date/time stamp, use it. You don’t even need to print these shots. Just drop that Flash card or whatever storage device your camera uses in the safe deposit box at the bank. Or mail it to your family attorney. Or put it in an envelope at the office. But have it safe, just in case Mother Nature (or Human Nature) requires you to file an insurance claim.

W* Family gatherings: Hey, aren’t you the Photoshop expert? Doesn’t that make you the perfect person to take this group photo? (Read about instant feedback in the preceding section.)

W* Explore your artistic boundaries: It really doesn’t cost anything (dollar-wise) to shoot digitally. Take the off-angle shot. Play with aper­ture and exposure. Have fun, play, and experiment. And see what you Really Have inside you.

Here are five techniques that make life easier and your work look snappier and more professional.

Changing product colors in a snap

Use the Replace Color feature (in the ImageOAdjustments menu) to quickly and easily make variations of a single image by changing color. Replace Color is especially handy in produc­tion environments, letting you shoot one shot and produce numerous color variations. (See Figure 18-5.)

Open Replace Color and Shift+drag

The Eyedropper tool through the

Color you want to change. Adjust

©1998 PhotoSpin, PhotoSpin image #0070004

Figure 18-5: The Replace Color adjustment makes quick work of color changes.

The Fuzziness slider to fine-tune the

Selection; then adjust the Hue/Saturation and Lightness sliders to change

The color.

If the target color appears in more than one part of the image, perhaps a red blouse and red lipstick, make a loose selection around the area you want to change (excluding the other areas) before opening Replace Color.

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DelEting a plain white background

Lots of stock photographs come as a subject shot against a plain white back­ground. Clip art also generally comes on a plain white background. Most of these images have clipping paths or alpha channels that you can use to extract the subject from the background to add it to another image. And when there is no path or channel? Open both images in Photoshop and drag the stock photo’s Background Layer from the Layers palette to the window of the destination image. Make sure that the upper layer is active in the Layers palette and then open the Blending Options panel of the Layer Style dialog box. In the Blend If area at the bottom, drag the upper-right slider handle to the left until the upper layer’s white background is completely gone. (See Figure 18-6.)

Both images ©1998 PhotoSpin, PhotoSpin image #0010032 (background) and image #0120013 (foreground)

Figure 18-6: Use the Blend If sliders to hide a white background.

Making dashed and dotted lines

Changing a couple of settings in the Brushes palette enables you to create dashed and dotted lines with ease. In the Brush Tip Shape pane, increase Spacing to a value higher than 100% to separate the individual imprints of the brush tip (the Brush tip instances). Switch to the Shape Dynamics pane and select Direction from the Angle Jitter pop-up menu. For best results, make a selection and choose EditOStroke to apply your dotted or dashed brush along the selection border.

Quick and easy edge effects

Need some way to make your images stand out? Try this:

1. Add a new layer to your image by clicking the New Layer button in the Layers palette.

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Chapter 18: Pete’s Top Ten Favorite Photoshop Tips and Tricks

To avoid making any permanent change to your image (primarily so you can change your mind about the border later), work on a new layer.

2.  Select a border area around the image.

Choose SelectOAll and then choose SelectOModifyOBorder. Enter a value twice the width that you want for your edge effect.

3.  Fill the selection with black, gray, or white.

•  Black: Makes your image look brighter and more saturated

•  Gray: Minimizes any perceived color shift

•  White: Mutes the image somewhat but allows it to stand on its own Alternatively, use any color from the image (or its inverse).

4.  Apply filters to the layer.

Open the Filter Gallery and apply one or more filters to the border to create an interesting edge effect (such as the samples in Figure 18-7). Remember, too, that you can convert this layer to a Smart Object before applying filters so that you can later change your settings.

Not that This Counts as an additional tip in this chapter, but remember that you can open this image, open another image of the same size, and drag the frame layer from the Layers palette of the first image to the window of the second image to duplicate it. Reusable frames!

Professional-looking contact sheets

You can use this trick to produce a more traditional-looking contact sheet with a black background and white type:

1.  Set up Contact Sheet II.

Choose FileOAutomateOContact Sheet II to open the dialog box. Select your source folder, make decisions on page size and layout, pick a font for the filenames, and so on.

2.  Clear the Flatten All Layers check box.

Before running Contact Sheet II, make sure you clear this check box to ensure that your contact sheet retains its layers.

3.  Generate the contact sheets.

Select your page size, source folder, and other settings as I describe in Chapter 16. Click OK.

4.  Fill the Background Layer with black.

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In the Layers palette, select the layer named Background, Press D to set your foreground color to black, and then press Option+Delete/Alt+ Backspace to fill the layer with black.

5. Change the type to white.

Figure 18-7: Filtering a border area creates interesting edge effects for your images.

In the Layers palette, 86/Ctrl+click each of the type layers to select them all, click the Link Layers button at the bottom of the Layers palette, and then Shift+click the color swatch in the Character palette to open the Color Picker. Set the color to white (or bright yellow or whatever color suits your fancy) and then click OK. You can now flatten the image (if desired).