There are several programs which will help you put the finishing touches to your photos. Some of them are plug-ins for programs which I discussed in the last chapter.
Photoshop Lightroom is designed for the professional photographer to enable the managing, adjusting and preserving of large quantities of images. Essentially, it helps manage your workflow and performs non-destructive editing of your original photos. In addition, it provides you with a full set of editing tools and ways to view, evaluate and make comparisons between images. It will keep track of the changes made to your images.
Photoshop Lightroom has a full set of tools for converting images to black and white.
Version 2, was improved so you could automatically organize photos using “Smart Collections” as well as preview high quality images from multiple libraries and drives. When it comes to editing, you can now target specific areas of your photos. Also, it finally overcomes one of the banes of Adobe’s products–it now allows you to expand your workspace over multiple monitors. There’s room to breathe at last!
Version 2 gave you access to a number of plug-ins. It also facilitated the up-load of your images to a number of popular photo sharing sites on the Internet.
Version 3 featured noise reduction technology which cleaned up the graininess in pictures. It can correct lens defects such as vignetting (cutting out at the corners when using a telephoto lens) as well as getting rid of geometric distortions and it can help you make corrections to perspectives (e.g., when you are taking pictures of tall buildings). You can place watermarks to help protect your copyrighted material when it is sent out for review. You can create libraries of pictures from digital single lens reflex cameras (DSLR) together with video footage.
One feature which I really like about the new version is “teathered capture” which works with certain models of DSLR cameras and enables you to immediately view your photos on a computer monitor so that you can make a detailed check of your shots on a larger screen than that featured on the small camera viewer.
You can also create slide shows and incorporate video footage and music. So, all-in-all this is a very interesting addition to Photoshop which will be of interest to professional photographers, as well as serious amateurs.
Version 4.1 was released in late April 2012 and features support for a number of additional cameras. It has been described as an asset management software and it can handle the conversion of files in Raw format. It will also assist you in getting rid of colour aberrations.
Adobe ImageReady was incorporated with Adobe Photoshop, commencing with Version 5.5. It was still a component of Photoshop CS3 Extended, however, it is no longer supported by Adobe but you may still find older stand-alone versions.
This program allows you to create multi-frame animations commencing with a single image, through the use of layers. The final output is saved as a GIF file which can be used to incorporate these animations on your Web pages.
In common with Photoshop, ImageReady will compress your images and photographs for the best possible quality with short upload times. This is a very powerful feature which I greatly appreciated when preparing images for my Web sites. I was able to select the quality and sizes of the images and see what they looked like before I exported them to the image folders on the Webs that I was creating.
ImageReady will also allow you to view your animations on your browser before you upload them to your Web server. This enables you to fine-tune your creations.
Mask Pro 4.1 is published by onOne Software. It permits you to mask out objects and place them on different backgrounds. It offers much more sophisticated tools than the masking tools offered in Photoshop. For example, you could cut out trees in a forest (including their leaves) and place them on a different sky background.
You could also use this program to cut out complex objects such as a person’s hair and face and place them against a different background. In practice, this means that you could take a studio portrait of a person and place that person against a different background. This could also be applied to complex products in order to place them against different backgrounds.
In essence, as Advanced Photoshop Magazine put it in its May 2007 edition, the program provides you with a very easy technique for improving the quality of isolated objects, making them more believable on any background.
The program works with 8 bit and 16 bit images and works in conjunction with Photoshop CS2, CS3 and CS4.
Perfect Resize 7 is the new name for Genuine Fractals and is published by onOne Software. It can either act alone or as a plug-in for Photoshop, Lightroom or Apple’s Aperture. It helps you get rid of pixelation, especially if photos or images have been enlarged. Thus, it will sharpen images that are enlarged by up to a phenomenal 1,000%. In this way, it will be a great help if you are creating posters of your products or for large signs or billboards.
Aside from letting you resize your photos, it will let you crop them and also give you some control over texture. It will assist you in getting rid of any grain, which could be a problem with photos taken through a telephoto lens.
The program supports layers. It will also assist you in the pre-press process of preparing the images in your work for commercial printing since files can be saved in CMYK format. It works with 6 bit and 16 bit images and can also be used to enhance any still frames taken with a digital video camera. The latest version works with Photoshop CS5.
PhotoTools is published by onOne Software. It features plug-ins and special effects filters for Adobe Photoshop and includes over 250 photographic effects by two well known photographers. Basically, it offers you a wide range of camera, filter and darkroom techniques. You can pre-view any effects in full-screen mode before you apply them. It will also allow you to batch process the effects you select and apply them to multiple photographs.
This product will be helpful to portrait and wedding photographers as well as those involved with product photography for catalogues, brochures etc.
PhotoTune is published by onOne Software. It is a Photoshop plug-in which lets you make colour corrections to your photos. One neat feature is that you can make side-by-side comparisons with your original.
It will be particularly useful if you need to correct skin tones; something which is difficult to achieve in most other digital photography software packages. It will also be helpful if you are using live models when photographing your line of products. Obviously, it will also assist portrait and wedding photographers.
A “Color Wizard” leads you through a 6-step process and you don’t have to understand colour theory to work with this plug-in. You can work in 8 bit or Raw files with 16 bit images.
Perfect Layers is published by onOne Software. It can either act alone or as a plug-in for Lightroom or Apple’s Aperture.
The program allows you to combine multiple images so as to create a single-layered file. You can use masks and masking tools to blend layers together. You can use colour fill-in layers and you can adjust their size, position and blending mode.
FocalPoint 2 is published by onOne Software. The program lets you create the blur in the background so as to add a “realistic” depth of field to your photos. It can either act alone or as a plug-in for Photoshop, Lightroom or Apple’s Aperture.
PhotoFrame is also published by onOne Software. It lets you add frames, borders and edges to your photos. It offers a selection of over 1,100 edge effects, backgrounds and adornments. It lets you apply them as a layer mask in Photoshop.
Version 4 lets you resize and reposition your image layer within a matted frame. It features new rulers and guides and will allow you to do batch processing. Another neat trick, is that you can have each frame rendered to its own layer and you can apply the frame as a layer mask. Version 4.5 works in conjunction with Photoshop CS4 on 64 bit Vista and Windows 7 operating systems.
Harvard Designer is designed for non-professionals to enable them to create professional looking illustrations, special effects and animations that can be printed on paper or uploaded to your Web site. It is now offered by BrotherSoft.com as a shareware program which can be downloaded from the Web.
This program features a number of designer wizards which will assist you in getting started. It also features a number of tools that will enable you to create a variety of lines and shapes from scratch. Alternatively, you could use one of the “QuickShapes” that come with the program. These can be adapted and edited according to your needs. Also, a number of different effects can be added such as fills or transparency effects. A series of tools also allow these (or other) shapes to be tracked, rotated or stretched.
One powerful feature of this program is the “snapping grid” which permits you to size your shape or drawing according to a grid of dots which appear on your work area. This gives you control over the resizing and alignment of objects.
Objects can also be layered one on top of the other and a “Layer Manager” will assist you in working with each layer individually.
Harvard Designer also permits you to design “envelopes” in which you can place your text and manipulate it so that it forms different shapes, such as a wedge. An “Envelope Wizard” will help you with this task. Alternatively, you can use the “Curve Text Wizard” to curve the lines of text on your page. You can also incorporate pictures or graphics into the individual characters.
A “Shape Art Wizard” will assist you in changing the shapes of objects.
You can also use this program to create borders, backdrops and watermarks for your documents. In this connection, a “Border Wizard” will assist you in selecting and designing these items.
Another wizard, called the “Replica Wizard”, enables you to make multiple copies of items that you have selected and to adjust the spaces between them. A blending feature permits these shapes to be “morphed” from one shape to another and also from one colour pattern to another.
It is possible to join objects; to add them to one another. You can also subtract shapes so that the area that they occupied would now appear blank– a little bit like taking a bite out of a cookie–the area that you bit has “disappeared”!
Harvard Designer can also be used for importing pictures from Photo CDs, scanners or from picture files. Photos and graphics can be imported in JPEG, TIFF, GIF, together with a number of other formats.
The program will also permit you to create animations. For this, you should use the animation toolbar which helps you to create new animations; preview them and then export them as animated GIFs for use in Web pages. This is a great feature for adding some “life” to otherwise static Web pages.
Output can be saved in PNG format.
The Studio Gallery which accompanies this program, offers over 200 bitmapped fills which can be used when you’re creating images. These can be used to create backgrounds or surface texture effects.
The program features a ten-page introduction, together with several quick tours which will help you learn the basic features. In addition, a series of wizards will assist you in creating special effects. These wizards can be turned off in the event that you do not want to use them. I must say that I was very impressed with this support material which makes it relatively easy to learn the program.
Harvard 3D is a truly remarkable little package for creating three-dimensional effects, either in text or standard shapes. It is also extremely simple to use; having been equipped with easy-to-use wizards that will walk you through the different features which this program provides, as well as helping you with the actual creation of your project.
This is a great tool for creating logos, effects that you can use in your Web pages, in videos or for brochures, book covers, etc. These 3-D effects can also be added to photos or other illustrations.
A number of tabs enable you to select the colours that you require and to edit them. For instance, colours can be selected for the background, the face of the text and the extruded area of the text.
A “Photo Studio” will change the direction of lighting (and hence the shadow effect) on your three-dimensional images and you can even select the camera lens for viewing the object that you have created.
Another tab enables you to change the bevel on your text (i.e., the edges of the three-dimensional letters of the alphabet) and you are given a choice of bevel styles to choose from.
When you open the program, you are presented with a “Setup Wizard” which asks you what you would like to do today. It gives you four choices: to create text in 3-D, to create instant scenes, to start from scratch or to open a saved scene.
Let’s say that you have selected a 3-D text effect, you are then given the choice of having the text presented in a standard format, as a perspective or in various distortions. In each of these categories, you’re given the number of choices by way of the prepared templates and the program also lets you see what the effect will look like. Then it’s just a question of entering your text and bingo.... you’ve got a three-dimensional text image which can be exported (i.e., simply “copy” and “paste”) into your word processing program in a bitmap image form!
You can also select from a number of fonts and make your text bold or italic. In addition, you can position your text on the page: left, right or centre.
The program comes with a variety of images in various shapes that can be imported into a blank document page and manipulated in the same manner as I discussed above. There are also a number of graphic files containing some common objects, such as aeroplanes, which can be imported into your document.
The colour tab enables you to select and edit the colour that you want for the object. It will also allow you to select the type of material and even the amount of reflective shine that comes off the surface from the “studio floodlight”!
This is a great little program and is very easy to use! At the time of writing, no new versions were available and, to the best of my knowledge, it will not work under the 64 bit versions of Vista or Windows 7. It could be useful if you are using an older operating system such as Windows 98, ME, NT or 2000 and it can still be obtained from 5star-shareware.com.
CaptureXT Screen Capture is a neat little software package published by Belltech Systems. It lets you capture the entire image on your monitor or just a part of it. You can then cut, copy and paste such images to other applications. You can also crop such images or flip them. In addition, you can annotate captured images and add effects.
You can add time stamps, text, arrows, shapes, etc., and then save your work in JPEG, GIF, BMP or PNG formats. Once in these formats, you can incorporate them into printed material, for use in presentations, Web pages or attach them to e-mail messages.
The latest version is Windows 7 compatible.
Knockout is another product produced by Corel. As its name suggests, it is capable of taking an object that is in the foreground of a photograph and deleting the background. In other words, if a person is photographed against a background of trees in a forest, this program lets you “cut” the image of the person out from the background and eliminate the trees and forest. The image of the person can then be “pasted” against another background, such as a sandy beach. Those with naughty minds will appreciate that this program could be used to put people into compromising situations!
It includes a “Loupe Zoom” which can be used to more precisely mask the lines between the foreground image and the background image. Equally, this zoom can be employed when a foreground image is placed against a new background.
A “syringe tool” lets you pick up a colour from an image and apply that same colour to other areas. A similar tool is available in Adobe’s products where it is called an “eye dropper”. Obviously, such tools allow you much more precise control over the colours in your image than might otherwise have been possible.
So, this is a great little product for those who are seriously involved in editing digital images. In fairness, however, I should point out that Adobe Photoshop will also allow you to “cut out” images from their backgrounds; so this concept is not unique to this Corel product.
This product is now in its second version and can be used as a plug-in for Corel PhotoPaint, Corel Painter or Adobe Photoshop.