Photoshop Launches Free Web Version.

This could be a new tool for you in your efforts at discovering digital photograph on the basic level.

Photoshop has gone free. Well not really. On Thursday March 27, 2008 Photoshop launched a free web-based version. However this is not the full Photoshop version.

This version is an entry-level hosted version. It is free and has many features for editing.

It is not a replacement for the more sophisticated tools currently in Photoshop’s inventory – like the full version of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

But Photoshop expects to capitalize on the revenue that will be coming from online advertising and boost its name recognition by entering the realm of those consumers who like to edit, store and share photos online.

Thus, Photoshop will enter a market where companies like Shutterfly Inc., Picnik, Photobucket Inc. and others have had a presence for years.

Unlike Photoshop which is designed for professionals an others who are willing to tackle the stiff learning curve, Photoshop Express is designed to be easier to learn.

Photoshop Express is launched as a beta test version. Upgrades will be made taking user comments into account to improve the application and make future upgrades.

This will be a totally web-based application. Consumers can use it by signing up at http://www.photoshop.com/express

Since web-based applications are becoming more and more popular, Adobe wants to get involved in this market. In doing so, they are entering the area several years after several other companies like the ones mentioned above.

Also, Google and Microsoft have been offering web-based services for several years. Are there going to be some big fights in the future as all of these and others battle for a prominent spot in the web-based service market.

Ron Glaz, a research analyst at IDC, says the move was necessary for Adobe to keep pace. Users are less likely to switch to software they aren’t familiar with, he said.

“They have a whole market that they are missing out on, and they need to make sure that the market is aware there is a Photoshop solution for them. As that market grows and becomes more sophisticated, hopefully it will generate money,” Glaz said.

“It’s one of those things, if you can’t beat them, join them,” Glaz said. “If they don’t join them, the long run could be really painful.”

Adobe says that part of its strategy is to get people to upgrade to Photoshop Elements, which sells for $99.

Another possible upgrade route could be to a future release of a Photoshop Express subscription-based version that Photoshop is working on.

There will be much more about this launch over the next several days and months. It will be interesting to see how well the photo editing capabilities of Photoshop Express meet the needs of consumers. However, it looks like a great free start at the editing of your own photographs.

You can check out Photoshop Express at: http://www.photoshop.com/express

5 Basic steps to Discovering Digital Photography. Thinking about getting involved in digital photography?

Obviously the starting point in Discovering Digital Photography is to research the type of digital camera that you want to purchase.

Let’s start with the fact that you have done that. You have purchased your digital camera and now you want to get about the task of using it.

Step 1.

Become familiar with your digital camera.

The very first place to start is with your manual. Next to your camera itself, this is your most important possession. You may think that it’s just a manual - I don’t need to read it. Well, the truth of the matter is that you do.

If you are out on a shooting trip and you don’t know how to do something with your camera, you need to read your manual. If you have already read through it, you will have a good idea where to look in the manual to solve your problem.

Here is some advice: You may not be able to get assistance from that photographer over there that looks like a professional that knows what he is doing.

He may be able to help you with information about how to take photographs, but your camera will likely be different from the one he is using. So expecting him to know how to use your camera is not a very realistic exception. He might be able to guess, but it’s your responsibility to know and understand your camera. Read your manual and practice so that its functions and capabilities are known to you.

Only you or someone else who has the same make and model of camera will know the details about how to use your camera.

Step 2.

Now that you know how to use your camera, you are ready to take pictures.

However, you need to plan the use of your photographs, before you start. Will you be taking them to put on the web and send to your family or to make quality prints? Your answer here will determine some of the settings that you make on your camera. You will need to know the functions or modes that need to be set to get the appropriate results.

Step 3.

In this step you need to know how to take photographs.

By this I mean, what makes up a good photograph. You will need to know things like composition, lighting, depth of field, zoom in or zoom out (or what lens to use). You will need to know about exposure and what controls on you camera can change it. These and many more make up the techniques of photography.

Your camera can do a lot automatically. But as far as I know, there is not a camera made with an auto-technique button. You will have to learn these yourself.

Step 4.

You now must learn how to use hardware and software to process your pictures.

If your only interest is snapshots, you could take the memory storage device out of your camera and take it to Wal-Mart, Walgreen’s, etc, and have them print your pictures for you.

If you want to send them to your family or friends, you will have to become familiar with computers, if you are not already.

You will have to transfer your pictures from your camera to your computer. Then your will have to know how to process them for attaching to your email.

Maybe you could upload them to some service that will allow your friends to log into the service and view your pictures and maybe even obtain prints for their own use.

You may have to obtain some sort of photo editing software and learn how to use it to process your images. If you go this route will you choose a low end product or a high end and expensive product?

You could also purchase a photo quality printer and print your own photographs. Again you will have to learn how to use your equipment.

Step 5.

Now you need to be concern about long-term storage of your images. Obviously, you cannot leave them on your camera’s storage media.

If you have downloaded them onto you computer, you can’t leave them on your hard drive forever. Someday it will up with images.

You could buy another hard drive, maybe a large external one. You could burn all your images onto CDs or DVDs. There is also the possibility of storing you images online.

There are online services that allow you to purchase storage space on their computers so that you can store your images there. Just make sure they are reliable and make frequent backups of their systems.

This has been just a short and incomplete list of what you will be facing. However, the route to discovering digital photography is worth your efforts. It is an exciting and un-ending journey. I hope you discover it and enjoy it.

How To Prepare Your Digital Images for Emailing.

The picture or image file that comes out of your digital camera will be too large to send by email or display on a web page. That is especially true if you used a high or large quality setting to record your picture.

In addition to being too large to send by email, it will take a long time to load in the recipient’s browser or email program. Patience may not be his or her virtue and they may not wait for your photograph to load.

So, you need to make the image’s pixel size smaller.

For example a picture that I took was stored at 3504 x 2336 pixels, that’s 8 megapixels. Your camera may store up to 4, 6, 8, or even more megapixel per image.

That’s a lot bigger than most people’s monitor. Many people have larger monitors these days, but probably not larger than 1280 x 1024. So, using that as a guide and desiring to keep some degree of quality in the final picture, we will reduce our 3502 x 2336 pixel image to 800 x ?.

You’ll see what the ? means shortly. The 800 pixels on the longest side will give the recipient a reasonably good quality picture and it will be large enough to display quite a bit of detail. If you don’t want to allow too much detail, you could use a smaller value.

Well, how do you make the image smaller? You will need some sort of photo image editing software. There are many programs that will accomplish the task, and many are free. I happen to use Photoshop CS and so, I will go over how you make the image email ready in that program.

The first step is to open the file that contains your image into your editing program. Follow the instructions for your image editing program.

In Photoshop you would select File, then Open. Then you would navigate to the directory on your computer that contains the image that you want to email. Once in that directory, left click on the file and select Open in the dialog box. The image will open into Photoshop.

Once the image is open in Photoshop, select Image and then Image Size. In the dialog box that pops up make sure that the “Resample Image” checkbox and the “Constrain Proportions” checkbox are both checked.

Now in the box called “Pixel Dimensions”, change the longest dimension to 800 pixels. In my case the shortest dimension automatically changed to 533. That’s the ?, I referred to above.

Now click on “OK” to accept the changes that you made. Photoshop will resize the image. It will now appear a lot smaller on you screen. If it is too small, you can use the magnify or zoom tool to enlarge it. This only changes what you are viewing not the actual image file.

If you zoom out until the top bar reaches 100%, that is the size that the image now is and how it will appear in the recipients monitor.

At this point. you want to save the file. Select File, Save for Web. At the top on the bar you will see: “Original”, “Optimized”, “2-Up” and “4-Up”. You can view the quality and file size for each of the various options.

Choose the one that gives you the quality and file size that gives you the compromise that you want. The general idea is to select a file size that will not degrade quality too much. Yet you want a small file size so that the image will load reasonably fast in the recipients email or browser.

Look for a file size of approximately 30K. In my case a file size of 33.1K with a load time of 13 seconds at 28.8 Kbps was available. So, I chose that one.

Select, left click, the image that you want to use and click the save button. In the dialog box that pops up, select the directory in which you want to store the new image file.

If you want to save the image into the same directory, make sure that you give the file a different name or you will overwrite your original image. You might not want to do that, if you have future uses for the image. Click the save button.

Also, when you get back to the Photoshop window and try to close the image file, you may get a dialog box that says “Save Changes to …”. Make sure that you click NO, if you do not want to overwrite your original image file.

Your image file is now ready to attach to your email and forward to your recipient.

Does Lens Focal Length Influence Depth Of Field? For some time now I have been reading reports about this and trying to figure out how it should influence my photography.

This has been taught to us in the textbooks and the photo magazines for a long time and it appears that you get more depth of field with a wide angle lens than you do with a telephoto lens.

If you search the Internet for “depth of field”, you will not look long until you come across many articles that say that using a wide angle lens does not increase depth of field.

Tests have been conducted by many, including some of the photography magazines that prove that depth of field is not dependent on the focal length of the lens being used.

This is a very technical issue and technically it is true. You can even conduct similar tests or experiments to verify it for yourself. However, from a practical standpoint what does this mean to me, the photographer?

All of the information that I have seen so far is based on the hypothesis that you keep the image size the same.

The test goes something like this: using a zoom lens, take a photograph of some subject using a telephoto or long focal length setting. Then zoon out to a wide angle or shorter focal length setting. You could also do this with interchangeable fixed focal length lenses, one telephoto lens and one wide angle lens.

Now, enlarge some section of the photograph taken with the wide angle setting so that the image in that section is the same size as the image in the identical section of the photograph taken with the telephoto setting.

Upon examining the resulting photographs, you will find the depth of field is approximately the same in each of the photographs. There is basically no difference. So, you have proven that technically zooming out to a wide angle focal length did not increase your depth of field.

But, let me ask you a question. Why do you zoom out or switch to a wide angle fixed focal length lens in the first place?

Suppose that you are standing out before some great mountain scene that is beautifully lit with sunrise colors. You zoom in to a telephoto setting and take a picture. Then you zoom out and take a photograph using a small focal length setting.

You want and expect to see more depth of field in the second photograph - all the way from the flower in the foreground to the sunlit mountain peeks. And that’s what you appear to get.

Will it cross your mind that if you blow up a section of the second photograph that you will lose all that apparent depth of field? No, the greater depth of field still appears to be in the photograph taken with the wide angle focal length setting.

You zoomed out so that you could get a wider view and a larger depth of field or at least the perception of more depth of field. You also knew that the images would appear smaller.

Same for zooming in, you wanted to make the image appear larger and you also knew that there would be a perception of less depth of field.

From a practical point of view when you change focal lengths seldom, if ever, will you zoom in or out with the idea in mind of keeping objects the same size.

Using different focal lengths, zooming in or out, gives the perception that depth of field changes. What you get with the wide angle lens appears to have more depth of field than what you get with the telephoto lens.
Technically this may not be the case.

But, what is all of your photography about? The main answer is: what appears right to you. So, I say unless you are a stickler for technical correctness stick with the old time proven rule.

• If you want more depth of field, or you want it to appear that way, use a shorter focal length lens or zoom out.
• If you want less depth of field and a larger image of some part of the scene, zoom in to a longer focal length setting.

This will still give me the photographic results that I want. I have taken a beautiful photograph of a mountain scene and my zone of sharpness appears great.

To me this technical revelation does not change the way I take my photographs. What about you?

After all, this is your art that you are creating. Don’t let the pure technical explanation get in the way of you creating what you want to create.

Continue to pretend that a wide angle lens gives you greater depth of field than a telephoto lens. Your results will show it.

Take Better Pictures With Your Digital Camera. Here are a few tips to help you take better photographs.

Modern digital cameras automate the picture taking process. It you want it to do so, you can make everything automatic. This makes taking pictures a lot easier than it was with the cameras of the past.

If your camera only has automatic capability, then you should learn to use it to its fullest capabilities.

However, I would never recommend that you purchase a totally automatic digital camera. Well, one exception.

If you want a small carry in your pocket digital camera that you can have with you all the time, then you might choose a totally automatic compact digital camera. But do that only if you have no other reasonably choice. If one with at least some manual control is available in you price range, get it.

These tips will apply to all of your photography. But they are especially helpful, if you have little or no control over your camera’s settings.

If you have control you can change things like depth of field (by changing aperture settings), ISO, white balance, etc. to improve your photographs.

However, you need to always consider the following:

1. Take note of the background.

What is behind and to the side of you subject? Does it distract from your subject? Will you have something like a light pole or a tree growing out of your child’s head? Is there something that draws attention away from your subject? Move around a bit and see if you can eliminate the distractions.

2. What light is available?

In low light situations you may need to add light. However, if there is enough light, consider using the available light instead of your flash.

Some totally automatic digital cameras determine when the flash is required and automatically use the flash. If you have the capability to do so, turn the flash off; try to see if you can create a better photograph using the available light.

3. Notice the angle of your camera with respect to your subject.

If you are taking a picture of a person, try to aim down toward the person’s face. Or maybe upward, a side view, a partial view, etc. Consider alternatives to just a direct face on view.

4. Check your focus point or points.

If you camera selects the focus points and you cannot change where it will focus, try changing your position. Sometimes this will change where the camera chooses to focus.

Try to focus on the person’s eye. Get close to your subject. Leave no doubt as to what your subject is.

5. Consider the position of your subject in your view finder/LCD monitor.

Seldom will you find that dead center is the best position for your subject. If it is, then center your subject. Just be sure that you like that position the best. Most of the time you will find that an off center composition is better.

The problem is with totally automatic digital cameras, they tend to select a focus point at the center. If you cannot change that you may have trouble with off center subject selection and focus.

Hopefully, your camera will allow you to focus, meter, etc, and then lock in the settings. After locking in the settings you can recompose so that the subject is off center and then snap the picture.

These are just a few simple tips that you can implement and improve you photography.

I hope that you will learn and use these tips on a regular bases in your photography.

Lonnie Minton