Before telling you about some programs which can act as your “digital darkroom” and enable you to “fix up” you images, I’ll first lead you through some of the basics relating to colour as it applies to photography and to printing your photos.
RGB: stands for Red-Green-Blue and is the colour you see on your computer monitor. It is also the mix of colours used in your digital camera.
CMYK: stands for Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black and these are the four “process” colours used in full-colour offset printing offered by commercial printing houses. It is also used by colour laser computer printers as well as colour photocopiers, both of which feature four colour toner cartridges; one for each of the process colours. In essence, the print job is passed through the printer or copier in such a way that each of these CMYK colours can be applied one at a time to produce a “colour photograph-like” picture.
Often, it is a challenge to match the RGB colour you see on your camera viewfinder or computer monitor with the CMYK colour; so don’t be surprised if they look different. The good news is that Apple has filed a patent for a new kind of monitor that uses adjustable filters to display CMYK, but I have no idea when it will be available. Some of the more sophisticated programs such as Adobe Photoshop will let you do the full CMYK separations for full colour printing. This is a very powerful feature which makes the production of colour documents much easier than was the case in the past.
Indeed, many printing houses use this product for colour separation and to make the film that is used to create printing plates. For example, for a “full colour” job (CMYK), it will create the plates for the three basic colours plus black.
There are different types of printers you can use to print your photos. However, you must be aware that the quality of the paper you use can make a tremendous difference. When you are printing your photos, you will probably want to use a high gloss coated paper although on some occasions you may want to go with a mat finish.
Dye Sublimation: uses a heating process to mix the dyes onto a coated paper in such a way as to produce the effect of a continuous tone. They also have an added feature which prints a clear protective layer over your photos to prevent them from getting smudged or scuffed.
Ink Jets: dominate the consumer level photo printing market. They produce nice results but tend to be slow. Certainly they are not expensive. They are good for those on a tight budget but be warned that the ink cartridges tend to be expensive, so your average cost per page is likely to be quite high compared to laser printers.
Colour Laser: have been around for several years and the prices have dropped very fast recently. In my opinion, this is where the future for colour will lie....with the colour laser rather than the ink jet. Just watch out for the cost of replacement toner cartridges which can add significantly to your cost, especially when many of the cheaper “re-manufactured” cartridges leave a lot to be desired from the viewpoint of quality. Thus, I have found that some of the areas where solid colour is required come out very wishy washy. Also make sure that the model you select can print on high gloss paper.
Thermal Wax Colour Printers: put out some lovely images but “per page” output costs tend to be high and they are usually as slow as molasses!
Solid Ink Colour Printers: basically use large “colour crayons”. Xerox is a leader in this field, especially with its ColorQube 9200 series of printers which can print up to tabloid size (11 inch x 17 inch). They are fairly expensive but the consumables cost about one-third of those for colour laser printers. This can be important if you are printing photos or documents with 10% to 100% colour ink coverage.
Be alert to industry claims that you can have colour for the same price as black and white. What they infer is that the traditional 2.5% or 5% coverage on your printed page is about the same for both black laser printers and those using colour (whether laser or not). If you are like me, you will probably be using colour for 50% or even 100% coverage and you have to figure this out when calculating your costs. For example, I have calculated that it costs me roughly 2¢ a page in toner to print about a 5% coverage using my black laser printer but about 60¢ a page (thirty times as much) to print about 50% coverage using my colour laser printer. Don’t be fooled by all the sales talk!
Probably the best way to describe digital printing is by way of an illustration.
When I send a book to my commercial printer, I can create a high quality PDF file and he inserts it into his personal computer which then transmits it to a Cannon digital photocopier which prints the number of copies he has specified–all collated and double-sided (or as specified). The PDF file which I supply, could have been burned onto a CD-ROM, DVD or I can transmit is as an attachment to an e-mail over the Web.
Te same thing applies when I need a book cover. I send him a file and he can print in black and white, spot colours or in full colour (CMYK) on light card stock.
This is great technology and a quantum leap from the labourious task of setting lead type onto a plate, inking it and then pressing successive sheets of paper onto it to print the pages–a process which was widely used since the time of Gutenberg in the Fifteenth Century.
In this era, the photocopier and the computer printer have merged into one machine. And, that’s not all. Some of these machines will staple documents and I have even seen one which will perform bookbinding for you. The bad news is that such equipment will empty your cash piggy bank fairly quickly! They are not cheap, even on a leased basis.
Offset printing is a method of mass producing documents, books, pamphlets, etc. in which the images are transferred to paper through the use of metal or paper plates. The plates are attached to a rotating drum which is inked by rollers and this makes the printed impression on paper sheets which are fed into the press. If you are incorporating your photos into a brochure, book, newsletter, etc., you’ll need to know about the basics of offset printing.
In the case of printing in black (being provided by the ink) and white (being the paper) your commercial printer would use one plate. Now, your printer can achieve various shades of grey since these are created with black ink that is not applied so “thickly”. This is achieved by the density of dots of ink on the plate.
Full colour offset printing involves the application of all four CMYK colours (see previous section) to produce “photo-like” images. Basically, your commercial printer is using the colours Cyan (“C”), Magenta (“M”), Yellow (“Y”) and Black (“K”). By using various combinations of these colours, your commercial printer can achieve the appearance of a “colour photograph”. The downside, is that full colour offset presses can be quite expensive because of the technology and equipment involved.
New technology is starting to replace some of these mammoth CMYK printing presses; especially for shorter print runs.
The resolution for printing can best be expressed as dots per inch (dpi). The more dots of the different colours that you have, the finer the resolution of your final image.
For many years, the rule of thumb was that 300 dpi was the minimum acceptable level, however, it is difficult for the naked eye to distinguish between 250 dpi and 300, especially in a large print or poster. So, lower resolutions are now becoming acceptable; even down to 200 dpi for posters.
Adobe Photoshop has gained a reputation as being one of the best; if not the best photo and bitmap image editing tool on the market today. When I attended a course on this software, there were several professional photographers in the class. I was constantly amazed at how much you can do with this program and how you can use it to create some very professional looking graphics.
Essentially, Photoshop comes in five different flavours.
Photoshop Light: used for amateurs with digital cameras. I have not been able to find a more recent version than CS3.
Photoshop Express: a free online version of Photoshop which is a “stripped down” version of the real thing. I have always felt that it is a “teaser” which lets you take a test drive (limited to the parking lot); in the hope that you will drool at the mouth and reach for your pocketbook and purchase a full-blown version!
Photoshop Elements: is a basic version of Photoshop used by photographers. I’ll cover this in more detail in the next section.
Photoshop CS5: is the latest full-blown version of the program designed for professional photographers, serious amateurs as well as for graphic designers and Web designers.
Photoshop CS5 Extended: is Photoshop CS5 on steroids and incorporates a number of additional features for producers of film, video and multimedia. It will also appeal to Web and graphic designers who are involved with 3D images and motion. It is also targeted towards the medical profession for digital imaging. It should also be of interest to architects, engineers, manufacturing professionals, researchers and scientists.
If anything, the downside of Photoshop is a learning curve which can take quite a long time if you are going to get into using the product in a very serious way.
With Photoshop, you get a work area in which your photo or image is displayed. In addition, you get “toolboxes” which provide you with brushes, paint cans, text tools, pencils, erasers and tools to select certain areas of your images, etc. You also get a number of floating palettes which provide you with different sized brushes, colour palettes and control over different layers.
Indeed, the ability to be able to place layers on top of other layers is one of the tremendous strengths of this product, since you can create many masking and other effects by working on each layer, one at a time, and then combining them to produce a final “flattened” image. You can also import various elements, such as drawings or other photographs and place these on separate layers; each with different effects and combine them into one final image. I realize that this is difficult to explain in words without actually seeing it done, so let’s take a very simple example to illustrate what I mean.
Let’s say that you have a picture of a jogger participating in a marathon and if you want to create the impression of movement and time; you could apply a motion blur to the image of the jogger and on another layer, you could place a stopwatch in such a way that, when the two image layers are combined, you achieve “one picture” with a blurred jogger in motion with the stopwatch included at some appropriate place.
You can import images from a variety of sources and in different image formats. This includes importing scanned images which are best imported at the same or slightly higher resolution that you want to achieve with your final output.
As mentioned above, a number of tools are available to help you select areas of your image. These include a “lasso tool” to grab certain areas or you could select an area based on its colour and use a “magic wand”. Once you have selected an area you can modify it by applying a number of geometric transformations or, you can apply special effects by using various filters. For example, you can incorporate shadows or other effects that will help to create a three-dimensional appearance to your image.
If you are working with a bitmap image, you can work at the pixel level. Thus, you can magnify areas of your image by up to 1600 percent. At this level of magnification, your image will appear as a series of small squares; called “pixels” each with its own colour. These pixels can be changed individually or in groups by using a paint can, brushes or erasers of various sizes. This will allow you to “touch up” in very fine detail, areas of your photograph or image. For example, if a line on an image that you have scanned is a little blurred along some of the edges, you can select a small paintbrush and by using “an eye dropper”, define the colour that you want to apply and fill in those pixels where the colour is missing or erase those which do not fall on where the line is supposed to be.
You can make colour corrections and change tones. Suppose some area of your photo appears to be too dark, you can adjust and correct it by using adjustment commands such as “levels and curves” together with colour balance, hue and saturation. As I discussed above, you can re-touch areas of your photographs and eliminate blemishes and other marks. You can also remove unwanted areas of your images. Thus, in the case of a marital breakup, the image of one spouse could be removed from a family photograph (....“ouch!”).
If you have an artistic bent, you can use the brushes that I referred to above, to create your own masterpieces. (Watch out Michelangelo!)
A number of drawing tools are also included in the more recent version of this software. These are vector-based and will allow you to draw curves and various shapes.
A text editing tool is available so that you can place text on top of your images. This is done by creating a text layer. You also have at your disposal a full range of text formatting possibilities (such as size, font style and colour), similar to those which you would obtain in most word processing programs. In fact, Photoshop offers you much more extensive control over your text than some of these programs, insofar as you can control the colour of each individual letter as well as the spacing between letters and between lines. You also have access to a number of special wrap effects which you can use to manipulate the shape of your text.
The old Photoshop CS2 version offered an improved ability to work with the raw data from most digital cameras, including the ability to correct overexposed or underexposed portions of an image. When dealing with different photos of the same image that have come out in different colours, Photoshop CS2 permits a colour correction to be made so that there is a consistency between one image and another. This could be of significant interest to those in the fashion business or if you are handling multiple photos of the same product. Text can also be placed on different paths or within shapes.
Photoshop CS2 includes a few tutorials so you can learn the basics. This overcomes one of the shortcomings of the earlier versions of this product and lets you quickly appreciate what the program can do for you. In turn, this makes using the program much more enjoyable.
A few of the new key features which caught my attention in the CS2 version were as follows.
The first is a red eye correction, which will be a delight if you are a photographer who used a flash when you took a photo.
The second feature which really impressed me, is referred to as “vanishing point” which enables you to adjust the visual perspective in a photograph. Thus, if you take a skyward photo of a tall building, the chances are that it may be “leaning too much to one side” and the perspective requires a correction. You can easily make this correction by using this new feature.
Another neat feature is the “image wrap” which lets you write your text around an object simply by dragging the control points in a “wrap grid”. The wonderful thing about this is that you can still edit the text even after the wrap has been made.
There are tools to correct any lens distortions and also to eliminate spots using a “Spot Healing Brush”.
One big advance is that it offers you the ability to create dynamic GIF animations using the animation palette. You can then use these in conjunction with the layers palette to achieve some quite remarkable effects.
As you can see from the above comments, this program has been re-oriented towards serving the photographic community; much more so than was the case in earlier versions. Basically, it offers you full darkroom editing capabilities if you are using a digital camera.
Photoshop CS2 was designed with the Windows Vista operating system in mind together with 64-bit processor computers. Thus, it can handle up to 2 GB of RAM and this represents a huge improvement since, in my experience, earlier versions of Photoshop could become very sluggish and even crash when working with large files.
If you are involved with 3D material or serious amounts of animation, you would be advised to consider Photoshop CS3 Extended.
One of the very interesting features of the Extended version is that you can capture still images from a video clip. You can also create an animation by using a series of still images. This could be used for medical images or for family pictures and obviously has quite a large number of commercial applications for creating animated content.
The animation feature allows you to predetermine the frame rate which you wish to use, e.g., 5 frames per second. In your animations, you can apply filters, add text or shapes and incorporate other features such as video clips or outside images. You can create different types of transitions between frames. When you have completed your project, you can go to file, export, render your video and you can select the type of format which you want to use. For example, for presentation purposes, you would probably want to use an AVI file format. If you are exporting to the Web, then you would probably want to use QuickTime or alternatively Adobe Flash file format.
You can import video into Photoshop and you can edit individual frames as well as small sections of a video clip. You can also use smart filters and add black and white layers. In addition, you could use smart objects without causing any destruction of the original files.
There are a number of different plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop CS3 which can be used to create three-dimensional images. Three of these are published by Strata (www.strata.com). Also, you may be interested that Google maintains a warehouse of 3D images.
All in all, Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended are definite leaders in their class. They will be indispensable if you are seriously considering incorporating high-quality images and effects into your work; be it for the Web or for printing out on photographic quality paper. You can also use them for touching up individual frames in your digital movies. These programs are definitely winners!
Photoshop CS4 was a more recent version and it features a new interface. It should appeal to serious photographers. For example, it will allow them to edit a mask layer without destroying it. It works hand-in-hand with Lightroom (see next chapter).
At the time of writing the latest version of Photoshop was CS5, which features some new painting effects (using brushes) and ways to warp or stretch graphics. A “Content Aware Fill” will let you remove objects from your photo and fill in the background, as if the object had never been there. For example, if you’ve had a fight with your mother-in-law and want to remove her image from your wedding picture, here’s the way to do it!
In May 2012, Adobe released its final version of Camera Raw which is designed to work with Photoshop CS5. This will support pictures created by the latest top-of-the-line cameras such as Canon’s EOS 5D Mark 3 and the Nikon D800 which I covered in the last chapter.
As I mentioned above, Photoshop Elements is a “stripped down” version of Photoshop designed for editing photos from digital cameras. In this sense, it provides a quick way for you to edit your work. It is also a relatively inexpensive program, and even though you can work in layers, add text, crop, erase, use an eyedropper and paint bucket, the program still lacks the power of the full-blown versions of Photoshop.
For the quick fixes, Adobe Photoshop Elements will let you eliminate red eye effects; change the level of lighting; contrast and colour. It is also set up so you can easily create an online album; attach your photos to an e-mail; output to a printer or save to a CD-ROM or DVD disk. It also lets you organize your work and attach tags such as the names of people, places, events or others. This makes searching for items much easier at a later date.
One interesting feature is the “Photomerge Cleaner”where you can merge two photos of a similar view and eliminate certain elements, such as someone’s head that got in the way. A bluer skies brush will let you brighten up the sky, provided there is a view that is not obstructed by intricate objects, such as tree branches.
You can touch up your photos using some fairly sophisticated brushes, including a toothbrush to make teeth look whiter than they really are! (No–you don’t have to visit your dental hygienist to get your teeth whitened!)
The above comments were based on my review of Photoshop Elements 7.
Version 8 assists you in selecting the best exposure for your photos, e.g., correct dark areas after using a flash. You could “recompose” your image from portrait to landscape without distorting the images of people or buildings and you can even highlight certain people in your photo by using a feature called “people recognition”. In other words, if you’ve photographed a small number of people at a gathering and you want to draw attention to a certain person, instead of drawing a circle around their head, you can make them appear brighter than the images of the others. Version 8 also provides some artwork and templates to create fresh new looks. So, if your sales manager loses a major contract, you could put him in a doghouse! Only to be done jokingly, otherwise watch out for the lawyers!
At the time of writing, the latest was Version 9. It lets you repair photos and “unclutter” them. It also lets you match the style of a photo which you like. New features include portrait and other effects; the ability to create reflections and also to create pop art. Probably one of the features that attracted me most is that it gives you the ability to create layered photos by using layered masks. In my opinion this is one of the greatest strengths of the full blown Photoshop software. It’s nice to see that it is now incorporated into Elements.
Version 9 makes it easy for you to share photos and videos on Facebook. Plus, you can now use your computer printer to create calendars, cards and photobooks. Certainly the calendar feature could be of interest to small business owners in promoting their business to customers or clients. It’s a neat addition.
Adobe has also introduced a “Plus” version which features a larger online backup capacity of 200 Gb compared to 2 Gb for the plain vanilla version. It also gives you “exclusive” access to libraries of extras plus automatic online delivery of seasonal artwork and templates. Also automatically delivered, are a series of hints on how to get the best out of the program.
This software is bundled with CorelDRAW as part of CorelDRAW Graphics Suite. It has a common look and feel, thus the start page lets you open a blank document, or copy from an image from your clipboard, or acquire an image which you have scanned.
When you open a file you are provided with a list of hints. When you click on a topic, you will get instructions on how to draw shapes and lines, rotate and shape objects, fill them and add text, etc. This is a great way to get started and learn how to use the tools in the toolbar.
This program will help you control your workflow and it recognises the following file types: RIFF (Painter 10), PDF (Adobe Acrobat) and PSD (Adobe CS3 and more recent versions). It also lets you work in RAW file formats. The RAW file format also contains details of your aperture and shutter speed settings, etc., and is equivalent to a “digital negative” with no compression compared to JPEG images which are compressed and therefor loose some of the quality.
Corel Photo-Paint X4 was closely integrated with Windows Vista so you can view thumbnails of your photos in the form of large icons. Version X5 is Windows 7 compatible and its main feature is a new Colour Management Engine (including support for new profiles from PANTONE).
This is an impressive program which will appeal to both amateur and professional photographers alike. It will enable you to correct images by fixing or straightening them using a superimposed grid. You can perform colour corrections using histograms and work with red, green and blue (RGB) separately by adjusting them on a colour curve. You can later convert your work to CMYK for full-colour process printing. Using a split screen, you can compare your changes to the original image.
The program will let you correct dust and scratch marks on a scanned image or photo. As with most other photo editing programs, you can remove red eye. You can also use a “cut out lab” to replace the background.
At each stage, you can take “snapshots” of the fixes that you have made and compare them with the original. In the end, you are obviously going to select the best snapshot of your photo.
You can work with “objects” which, in essence permits you to work on different layers. Before you send your work out for commercial printing, you may wish to supply the fonts which you are using with your work or convert them to avoid having to do this.
You can convert to black and white images and can add a tint if you wish.
The support tools with this program are excellent. The instructional DVD will help you to appreciate the true power of the program and help you get up and running. In fact, it is a joy to view these videos by a very professional instructor and I congratulate Corel for including them.
This is a very serious photo editing, finishing and touch-up program and I would certainly recommend it for any small business which is involved in preparing its own advertising materials, product catalogues, banners, signs, etc.
Corel CAPTURE is included in the CorelDRAW Graphics Suite and it allows you to capture images on your computer monitor, either in whole or in part. For example you can select a rectangle, ellipse or select your area by freehand. Use the use the F7 “hot key” on your computer keyboard to select the area for capture. Once you have completed the capture, you can open up the image in Corel PhotoPaint.
This is a neat little program which could be useful in tutorials for the use of computer software, capturing Web pages to show to an audience, etc.
Corel PaintShop Photo Pro is the subtle new name for an overhauled earlier version called Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2.
Since I have not had the opportunity to review the new version, I’ll confine my comments to the X2 Version. It is designed to provide a digital darkroom for photographers. It lets you retouch and crop your images and even provides you with a selection of digital picture frames! It will also let you convert images to black and white; change the brightness and sharpness.
A neat feature enables you to merge two photos of the same scene but taken with different exposures. Thus, if part of your first photo contains areas of deep shadow, you can combine it with a second photo taken with a longer exposure time in which the area hidden in the deep shadows is revealed.
Another feature is the “Graphite Workspace” which basically provides you with a dark background on your monitor so that your photos stand out.
Probably one of the most interesting features of this program is the “Express Lab” which lets you edit, crop, rotate, straighten or remove red-eye from a whole batch of photos at the same time, without having to go through each one individually. This can be a real time-saver!
If you intend to display your photos online, you can use a watermark feature to insert a visible watermark indicating the name of the photographer or to display copyright information e.g., the watermark symbol in front of Productive Publications 2012.
Corel PhotoImpact X3 offers most of the features available in Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 combined with those of Corel Painter X (both of which were reviewed above). It also contains a number of additional bells and whistles. Thus, it will support Raw file format which was discussed earlier. It permits you to seamlessly combine a number of photos to achieve a panoramic composite. As if that’s not enough, you can create slide shows, prepare greeting cards and prepare partially transparent overlays for videos (e.g., you could have your logo appear on part of the screen while it plays).
Corel Photo Album 6 and Version 7 has morphed themselves into a “new” software package called Corel PaintShop Photo Express 2010, which will operate under the Windows 7 operating system.
Again, I have not had the opportunity to review this re-incarnated version so I will confine my comments to Corel Photo Album which featured a downloader that automatically downloads pictures when you plug in your camera or insert the memory card into the card reader on your computer.
The program lets you organize your photos; regardless of whether they are from a camera, scanner, picture CD-ROM, DVD disc or a cell phone. It will organize them by date when they were taken or imported. It will certainly be a useful product for businesses with large photo collections for product catalogues, Web marketing, etc. You can also place photos into trays for e-mailing; those that still require editing; uploading or still need to be printed.
You can assemble your photos into collages using some of the templates which are supplied in the program.
This program also includes a back-up system to burn your photos onto a CD-ROM or DVD, so that you don’t lose your work if something goes wrong with your computer, or you suffer a hard drive failure.
It features make-over tools, artistic embellishments and templates to create greeting cards, calendars, collages and magazine covers. It also lets you create slide shows into which you can incorporate video clips. It features a “project launcher” which is designed to make basic tasks a lot easier to perform. These could include importing photos, enhancing them or simply browsing to find a photo in your collection.
Serif PhotoPlus will help with editing images from digital cameras or scanners. It allows you to create photo effects or use it as a tool for digital painting. It features:
1. Instant effects gallery, including 3D lighting and surface effects.
2. 3D painting using depth maps.
3. A range of photo correction tools.
4. An export optimizer.
5. Advanced alignment and smart resize.
6. Freehand and bezier curve and shape drawing.
7. Eitable quickshapes.
8. Web animation tools.
9. Deform and warp tools.
10. A MDI interface.
At the time of writing, the latest version was PhotoPlus X4. This now includes PanoramaPlus X4, which as its name suggests, helps you stitch photos together so as to create a panoramic view. This could be very useful if you are taking pictures of landscapes as a real estate sales person, developer, environmentalist, etc.
PhotoPlus X4 features an image cutout studio to remove objects from a photo. It features a number of filters to achieve different blends. These filters can also be combined. Another new feature is a “pixel grid” which lets you accurately edit individual pixels. The program has also been improved to streamline photo editing and to help keep your pictures organized.
This program is relatively inexpensive with a sticker price of under $90. It is definitely something to consider if you are incorporating photos or scanned images into a sales presentation, for product shots in brochures, advertising material, sales training, etc.
Microsoft PhotoDraw was included in the Microsoft Office 2000 Premium Suite. It has since been discontinued but you may find it on surplus shelves.
It was a very powerful software package which allowed you to re-touch photographs so that they could be imported into word processing documents; for slide presentations or as graphics to be used in Web pages. The software was also an excellent product for designing fliers or logos.