Tag: image editing

Quick photo sharpening tip

By John Watson
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Just about every digital photo can use a little bit of sharpening. You should definitely experiment with the sharpening tool in your photo editor of choice (preferably, your editor has unsharp mask). But you don’t want to overdo it or you’ll see sharpening “halos” around objects in your photo: bright and dark lines near areas of high contrast. Here’s a quick and simple tip to reduce halos in photos that have a combination of low and high contrast areas:

  • When you are ready to sharpen your photo (sharpening should be your very last step), flatten all layers.
  • Duplicate the remaining layer.
  • Sharpen the top layer to get the best result possible.
  • Now grab the eraser and simply brush away any problem areas that have been over-sharpened. The bottom, unsharpened layer will show through in those spots. If your photo editor supports it, you can even erase those areas with partial opacity to customize the amount of sharpening.

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RAW vs. JPG: Correcting under/over-exposure

By John Watson
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I was reading a discussion the other day about how shooting in RAW mode saved some under-exposed shots. Accepted wisdom seems to be that correcting under and over exposure is much easier/better with RAW than JPG. Without making any judgments, I decided to try it out and see if it was true.

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Adobe Lightroom Beta 4

By John Watson
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So I’ve been using the Adobe Lightroom beta for a couple of weeks now and I really like it. It’s shaping up to be a very nice application and it’s clear that the designers have put a lot of thought into managing a workflow that involves a lot of photographs.

I was using Raw Shooter Premium (RSP) to process my RAW files but I’ve made the switch completely to Lightroom even though it is still in beta. For one, RSP isn’t being updated anymore. It was acquired by Adobe and they’ve promised RSP users a free upgrade to Lightroom 1.0 when it becomes available. Second, even now it provides a lot more fine-grained control over image adjustment than RSP does. The Develop panel looks like a 747 cockpit. But importantly, every one of those controls does something meaningful and there are no less than two basic adjustment panels you can use instead. Plus you can save as many presets as you like.

It’s certainly slower than RSP. You’ll need a semi-modern machine to run it properly. But if your computer has the horsepower, Lightroom is a lot of fun to use.

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Why is it called “unsharp mask” when it sharpens?

By John Watson
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A brief history lesson about an image sharpening method called “unsharp mask.” Photoshop and other image manipulation software all have a feature with this name that will sharpen an image. So, why is it called unsharp mask?

The name comes from the original photographic procedure used to increase the apparent sharpness of a photograph on film. First the original negative was copied and turned into a positive (In a negative, black is white and white is black. In a positive, it’s the other way around.). During the copy, the positive was intentionally blurred. This is where “unsharp” comes from. Then the positive and negative were put in contact and exposed to light again. The blurry portion of the positive cancelled out (masked) the blurry portion of the negative.

Despite working with bits instead of film, digital unsharp mask works similarly by comparing the source image to a slightly blurred version and subtracting one from the other.

Source: Wikipedia

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Anatomy of a photo edit: Ready in 3 minutes

By John Watson
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I really enjoy the process of editing a photo. Each one is different. And it can be a lot of fun playing with ideas, colors, highlighting this area, downplaying another. A single photo really does have a lot of possibilities depending on what you do with it. But I’ll often make a photograph knowing in advance the edits I’ll need to make to “develop” it. Ready in 3 minutes was such a photo.

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Converting color images to black and white

By John Watson
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But black and white images can be very powerful. By eliminating color, black and white forces us to concentrate on other aspects of the photo. Textures. Lines. Something as simple as a surface receding into shadow becomes positively sensuous when care is taken in the conversion process. There are many techniques for converting a color image to black and white. The only consensus seems to be that simply converting to grayscale is the wrong way to do it.

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Review: Nikon Capture NX, RAW processing software

By John Watson
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This is a review of the Windows trial version of Nikon’s newest RAW processing software: Nikon Capture NX. NX is a major update to their Capture line of software. One of the nicest new features is the innovative U Point technology, but I still find NX hampered by a number of serious flaws that prevent me from using it for any of my RAW conversion needs.

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RAW vs. JPG: Myths and misconceptions

By John Watson
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Most digital cameras record JPG images because the JPG format provides a very high degree of fidelity for photographs in a very small amount of space. JPGs are high quality, small, can be viewed quickly and easily on any computer, and look great when printed. But JPGs, like all image formats, also have some limitations. RAW is another image format that addresses some of JPGs problems. But no format is perfect and RAW images have problems of their own.

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