Saturday, November 21, 2009

"Preparing Images for Presentation"

During this section we will learn how to display that "perfect" image. Have you ever wondered how some photographs have really vivant colors? Or how the shadows over the mountains look so dramatic? Well, within this section we will discover how to produce those same types of photographs.

The original photograph is called a "Raw" picture because it's the very first photograph that is taken. The picture isn't enhanced but, in the original mode. When you are a professional photographer you want to make sure that you save the original "Raw" photograph just in case you need to fix it or to have prof of the original. When changing your photograph from the camera to the computer you need to convert the picture to TIFF of PSD form. You however, do not want to convert your picture to JPEG on the computer because this setting tends to lose data.

Next of all, after converting the image you might want to fix up the color composition. There are three main ways to do this:
1) Use ProPhoto RGB: Allows you to use the largest color space which, is great for fine-art-printing.
2) Using Adobe RGB: This is mainly used for high- quality commercial printing like calender making or magazine articles.
3) Adobe sRGB IEC619662.1: This is the smallest color space that is used especially for web-posting.

This section is the one that I really like because you can change your photograph to make it line up properly. Basically, if you took a photograph of the ocean and the water didn't go straight across the image than you can remove or cut some of the image to make it look straight. It's kind of like using a ruler on the computer to fix your picture. To do this on your computer you need to use the Curve mode by going to, (Images>Adjustments>Curves). If you have a Windows than hold down the Control key and click on the part of the image you want to fix. However, if you have a Macintosh hold down the Command key. Once you have the line over your image you can move it by using the arrow keys to go up and down. By going down you may darken the certain area. By going up you can lighten the certain area.

After you are done fixing up the color and contrast of your image. You need to retouch up some parts of your image by using a healing brush or a clone stamp tool. Usually, this tools are needed when there is a dirt spot on the image or if you want to hide something in the image. A healing bush uses painted pixel samples from one part of the image to transfer to another part of the image. The clone stamp tool is copies of pixels from one area of the image to transfer to another part; like the healing brush. However, the clone stamp tool is used for bigger areas like cutting out a stop sign or a rock.

For more information on "Preparing Images for Presentation" I would highly recommend reading the book, "Nature Photography" written by, Tim Fitzharris.

No comments:

Post a Comment