Table of contents for Issue 7 2023 in Digital Camera User

Whilst the top wildlife photographers jet off to exotic locations to capture their photos, for those of us of more modest means, zoos and wildlife parks can provide many opportunities to photograph animals in more controlled and easily accessible locations. Most wildlife parks try to ensure that their animals are kept in surroundings that closely match their natural environment. Zoos and parks will usually actively encourage photography, and often build their enclosures to provide an unobstructed view of the animals, so by careful use of a telephoto lens it should be possible to exclude anything from the shot that might give away the fact that it was not shot in the wild. Since like most zoo animals the big cats are accustomed to visitors, they are quite happy to pose…

1 Before the big day A pre-wedding photoshoot is not a requirement for these situations but it may be a great chance to meet with the bride and groom and spend a little time with them. It helps you make a connection with them and discover their kind of humour and it means that on the day, you won’t be meeting complete strangers. That aside, it is definitely a good idea to meet them a couple of times in advance of the approaching big day. 2 Make a list A shot list is going to be an important part of your preparation. This is particularly true if you are recording the whole day. Once you are in the thick of it, it can be surprising how things can slip your mind. A…

Photoshop is nothing if not customisable. You can shape and adjust the user interface to suit your own needs and make it a very personalised, and customised, workspace. Not only can you choose what appears in the main toolbar, you can also arrange and group the various windows and features entirely to your preference. That accounts for the items you interact with on the screen, however there are also a number of options you can tweak to adjust various ‘under the hood’ settings, as it were, too. Photoshop has a listing of all its Preferences both general and specific, so we thought we’d share the salient points with you here. 01 Under Photoshop CC > Preferences > General (Cmd + K) you will see the list of preferences available. The…

You might think that opening or creating a new Photoshop document is a very simple task to achieve. In the days of older versions of Photoshop that was certainly true with its original start up sequence. You either opened a photo, or you made a new document and started work. These days, with the advent of Photoshop CC, it’s a slightly more involved affair and goes way beyond anything that has been seen in Photoshop before. The newest version of the program has a Home screen and a more interactive front end, offering a lot more choice from the very moment you open the program. Let’s start at the very beginning, dive in and have a quick look at what the Home Screen has on offer for the new user,…

01 We have a science fiction image of a sleek android in a futuristic setting. Although it has been well lit and rendered at high resolution, it could do with a few extra highlights to create some stronger visual cues and enhance the metallic look of the armour. 02 Create a new layer above your base image and name it ‘specular’. Choose a fairly soft white brush and place a brush mark where you would like a brighter specular highlight to appear. Choose a few to begin with. It is just a white daub at the moment, but we can enhance that. 03 If you double-click the ‘specular’ layer, you can open up the Layer Style panel. Under the main General Blending option, choose Linear Light as the blend mode.…

01 We have an image of an aircraft at an airshow display. We can use the Clone Stamp Tool to create more versions of the aircraft and place them in the shot, but more than that, we can have a measure of control about how the cloned copy is placed when you stamp it onto a layer. 02 It is always a great idea to place any cloned samples onto a new layer. Create a new layer called ‘clone’ and select the Clone Stamp Tool from the toolbar. In the Menu options panel, make sure that Sample is set to Current & Below. This will clone from the Background layer onto the new layer, without issue. 03 Set a size for your Clone Stamp Tool. Our example is a brush…

01 Normally, to add lens flare you would go up to the File menu and choose Filter > Render > Lens flare. This opens up the Lens Flare panel, from where you can choose the Brightness and Lens Type for your flare effect. The preview window allows you to drag the centre of the flare around. 02 Alternatively, create a new layer above your base image. In our example, we have named it ‘flare’. Go to Edit > Fill and fill the layer with 100% Black. Obviously, this will obscure your main image on the layer below. Now set the Blend Mode for the ‘flare’ layer to Screen and your main image will be visible again. 03 To call up the information panel go to: Window > Info. You will…

The HSL panel in Lightroom is perhaps more powerful that you might at first think. It can enable you to take greater creative control over your images and allow you to selectively adjust the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance of the unique colours in an image. Our example is a simple application of this. The sky is very bright and the blue sea is quite murky. By adjusting the Luminance and Saturation of just the blues and aquas in the image, you can bring more depth and colour back into them.…

Ever since digital cameras first became popular in the early 1990s, photographers have sought ways to adjust and improve digital images and replicate the darkroom tricks and techniques that film photographers have used for decades to get the most out of their pictures. There are dozens of digital image editing programs available and almost everyone who’s ever taken a digital photo, whether they use a top-end digital SLR or just the camera on their mobile phone, has used some sort of editing software to adjust and enhance the image. Most smartphones come with some sort of image editing app as a standard feature. Adobe Photoshop For more than two decades the industry standard for image editing software has been Adobe Photoshop and ever since it was first introduced in 1990…

Now you’re familiar with how your camera works and how to use its many features, you’re ready to start learning the creative techniques that professional photographers use to achieve great results time after time. By learning and using a few simple techniques you can turn your photographs from well taken snapshots into works of art of which you can be proud. Professional photographers use some very simple tricks and rules-of-thumb that have been developed over many years, including rules of composition that are inspired by classical art. Combined with technical skill and a thorough understanding of the principles of photography that we laid out in the previous section, these artistic methods produce well balanced, attractive photographs that will really stand out. However the true artistic inspiration that differentiates a talented…

“It’s important to choose the right lens for the job, but top quality DSLR lenses are very expensive.” Digital SLR systems offer the greatest versatility of any photographic system, and represent the best compromise between quality and portability. The best CSC systems are still some way behind, but are catching up fast. There are lenses and other accessories available to suit every type of photography, both amateur and professional. It is worth being aware that top quality DSLR lenses command top prices. This photographer is using a very specialist lens to get this low angle bridge at sunset. The extreme nature of the distortion this lens gives you is apparent in the visible curvature of the horizon and makes the structure of the bridge very imposing. The kind of lens…

“Landscape photography is an amazing and rewarding experience for both novice and seasoned professional.” For many people new to the world of photography, one of the easiest and most accessible areas first explored is the great outdoors and why not? You don’t need a studio or masses of expensive equipment. There is plenty of available light, unless you’re feeling adventurous and want to try night photography and beautiful seaside or countryside scenes are usually not too far away by car or a brisk walk. Landscape photography is an amazing and rewarding experience for both novice and seasoned professional. Whether it’s just a record of a day trip you’ve made to a new location with the family or a more serious professional endeavour, landscapes when taken well, are able to instil…

“It’s best to take this sort of photo on a day that’s bright, but not too sunny, because it’s easy to burn out highlights on a longer exposure.” This mist-like waterfall effect is very popular and looks great when it’s done right. It looks challenging, but in fact it’s very easy to set up. All you need is a tripod and any camera with manual shutter speed control. The hardest part is finding a stream or river that has a nice photogenic waterfall or some rapids. Use your common sense and always exercise caution around fast-moving water; it may be deeper than it looks, with strong currents. It’s best to take this sort of photo on a day that’s bright, but not too sunny, because it’s easy to burn out…

“You can compose your shot, take an average meter reading and capture your image knowing that the filter has balanced the tonal value of the scene.” You are out and about happily taking photographs, with gorgeous sunshine to brighten the experience. It’s your last day before venturing off home and you happen upon a scene that you want to capture. The sun is rising and its position is creating a dramatic lighting effect. What can you do to get the most from the opportunity? The problem is that the dynamic range of the scene before you is very extreme because the sun itself is part of the shot. You have options, of course. If you had the time you could wait until the next day when the sun is in…

We want to share with you our knowledge of Photoshop and all it has to offer as a photo manipulation tool and creative outlet. We will also dip our collective toes into image processing with programs like Lightroom and Camera Raw so you can take your favourite photos and make them look amazing. It doesn’t stop there, we’ll also give you a chance to experience Photoshop Elements too. We thought it only fair that it gets its moment in the sun too. Let’s not hang about then. Read on and start learning.…

Photoshop has a great interface, with a dark slate grey work area, slightly lighter menu and palette bars and sharp white text. It looks great and really makes photos stand out from the background. Let’s see what it has to offer. USEFUL TIP You can set up your own workspaces to reflect the way you work and save them so that you can quickly switch from one to another.…

A true Photoshop masterpiece has to start somewhere right? In order to create that masterpiece you have to be able to open and navigate to your various image assets, and then fire them up in Photoshop in order to begin working on them. Photoshop is no different to many other programs in that it allows you to bring up a browser window in order to find the files you require. It also has its own methods for both managing and locating your images in the form of Adobe Bridge, which lets you search for images as well as keyword them making future searches much easier. This is all useful stuff, so get ready to try it out. 01 Since we’ve covered how to create a new document, it seems worthwhile…

01 Let us say, for the sake of argument, that we are preparing an image that requires a coloured background. The subject of the image has been removed from its original background and you need to place a colour behind it to complete the document. 02 If you go to the bottom of the Layer Palette and click on the Create New Fill Or Adjustment Layer icon, you can choose from a number of layer adjustments. In this case, choose Solid Color. When you do, the Color Picker (Solid Color) will open. 03 The default colour for Solid Colour is usually black, unless you have a colour chosen which is the active foreground colour. The new ‘Colour Fill 1’ layer will be placed above your cut out subject. Click and…

01 We have here two example images. The first is of a forest scene comprised of warm colours, which give it an overall orange colour cast. The second image is of a young girl’s portrait taken in a studio. The tones in this image are much cooler with more of a blue cast by comparison. 02 The image of the girl has been cut out and placed on a layer above the forest scene. Now you can appreciate the difference in the two images and how much the warm image of the forest stands out against the cool tones of the girl. We need to alter her colours to match her environment. 03 With the girl’s layer active, click on the Create New Fill Or Adjustment Layer button and choose…

Careful control of depth of field by adjusting aperture and focal length is one of the most striking creative techniques available to the photographer, and you don’t need any special equipment to do it, just your camera and a zoom lens. For this butterfly image, the photographer has used a 100mm, fast macro lens with a large maximum aperture of f2.8. This has resulted in a narrow depth of field but by carefully focusing on the creature’s body the effect of this narrow plane of focus is to isolate the insect against what could otherwise be a distracting background of the clothing of the person holding the butterfly in their hand. One consideration to bear in mind is that when working with very shallow depth of field, precise focusing is…

The technique of creating an image with very shallow depth of field as well as a wide angle of view is referred to as a Bokeh Panorama, Bokehrama or the Brenizer Method. The latter is taken from the photographer Ryan Brenizer who is cited as popularising the method. It is essentially a series of shots taken with a lens 50mm or longer at its maximum aperture of around f/1.4. They are taken in such a way as to facilitate image stitching later in the post work process to create a large, shallow depth of field panorama. You could, for instance, create a stitched Bokeh Panorama that has a wide angle of view similar to a 20mm wide angle lens but with a depth of field that has the appearance of…

Photographers have a phrase, the “golden hour”, which refers to the first and last hours of light in the day, but particularly the special light one only sees at dawn. To capture a shot like the one on this page requires not only precise control of exposure, but also the dedication and patience to wake up while it’s still dark and get set up to take the photo before the sun rises. Since that beautiful morning mist depends on the weather conditions, you might have to try several mornings in a row to get a shot this good. You have to be really committed to your art to go above and beyond! As for the technical aspects of the shot, the photographer has used a medium wide focal length of…

We’ll say right at the outset, wedding photography is a skill in its own right. Photographers spend years honing these skills to create a style that is all their own. They can command large fees for their work and they are busy! An amateur photographer who has never shot a wedding before is going to struggle if they are dropped into the middle of a large scale wedding and deliver results that are deemed acceptable. It takes time, skill, creativity and confidence to become a top flight wedding photographer. Would-be photographers usually spend time as an apprentice or assistant to an already established wedding photographer, learning all the basics and technicalities before even getting a chance at shooting any part of the wedding. So you might imagine that there is…

Now that Photoshop and a host of other Adobe products have moved to the subscription model, you have an application that can be continually updated, over time, without needing to buy a new version. This is in contrast to older versions of Photoshop where you bought a box containing a disk, installed it and called it done. If a new version was released, you had to purchase it or upgrade to the new version. That has been superseded; your computer now maintains an online link with Adobe so each program you have downloaded and installed can be incrementally updated. Photoshop is a good example, since you can have an update appear that adds new features and fixes bugs in the current version. To make sure you are keeping your versions…

The main interface of Photoshop has no fewer than twelve menus and a Help option, each with many options and with many additional nested sub-menus. It’s vital to become familiar with the contents of the most important ones, because once you know where to look for everything you’ll be able to work more quickly, efficiently and confidently. Let’s take a look at some of the key menu listings. File The most important options here are New… to create a new document, Open… to open an existing document, Save to save your current project in its default file format and location and Save As… which gives you the option to save in a different format or location and to change the file name. Also in the File menu are the important…

In the good old days of Photoshop CS, you had a product that you opened up and simply started using with nothing else getting in the way. These days that is no longer the case. The Adobe Creative Cloud series of apps now offer user interactive front-end environments that are more than just a list of recently opened files. Now you can browse and sort those files and display them in thumbnail or list form. That’s not all, you also have access to Adobe’s online web tutorials covering every topic you can think of. From basic videos on getting started with layers and cutting out images, to more advanced topics, you have a library of knowledge at your beck and call. Even creating a new document has a huge wealth…

The concept of Layers was first introduced with Photoshop 3.0 in 1994 and has become the very core of Photoshop image editing, as well as being imitated by every other image editing program on the market. Layers are exactly what they sound like; the elements of the image are stacked up and displayed in descending order. Since layers can include transparency, lower layers can be visible through higher layers. Effects, adjustments and operations can be applied to individual layers, or to all the layers at once. You can move layers around relative to one another, change the order of layers in the stack, turn layers on or off and delete layers without affecting the others. Some people seem to have a hard time getting their head around the concept of…

01 A colourful portrait image provides a perfect example for this case in point. There are a number of strong reds, blues, yellows and greens, with which we can work. As mentioned already, this is a useful non-destructive method, so your base image remains unaffected. 02 Go to the bottom of your layer palette and click on the Create New Fill Or Adjustment Layer icon. A dropdown menu will appear with a list of adjustment choices, click on Black & White. An adjustment layer, called Black & White 1, will be added to the layer stack above your main image. 03 As you would expect, the image will be converted to black and white, but, bear in mind this is a non-destructive adjustment. Keep the ‘Black & White 1’ layer…

01 With your base image active, go to the bottom of the layers palette and click on the Create New Fill Or Adjustment Layer button. From the dropdown menu that appears, you can start choosing various adjustments to alter the tone and colour of the original image. 02 This example used four adjustment layers to get the final look that we liked. Now, if you wanted to transfer that same look to a separate image, it would normally mean having to replicate all the adjustment layers you’ve used for the original image and apply them to the new one. 03 However, we can actually combine all four adjustments and turn it into a single effect that can be applied to any other image without the need for multiple adjustment layers.…

If you’ve bought this book, we can safely assume that you know something about digital photography, so you’re probably already aware that the vast majority of digital images are stored in a file format known as JPEG. Nearly all digital cameras and mobile phones record their images as JPEG files. You can spot a JPEG file because it will usually have the filename extension. jpg or. jpeg. The JPEG format has been around since 1992, when the standard was first specified by the Joint Photographic Experts Group (after which it takes its name), a standing committee of imaging and software industry experts. There have been various attempts to update or replace the JPEG format over the years but it is now so entrenched in the digital world that it will…