The Digital Photo Guy

We have a busy schedule in April. Along with the Photoshop Elements webcast class that starts on March 25 and goes through April, we’ve also added a Wild Animal Park “Hands-On” Photoshoot on Saturday, April 4 and a Butterfly Macro Workshop on Thursday, April 16.

This is probably the last WAP “Hands-On” Photoshoot until October because it gets too warm and too crowded during the summer.

The Butterfly Jungle exhibit at WAP runs from April 4 through 26 and offers some of the best opportunities to get up-close-and-personal with these colorful flying flowers.

Check out these workshops on the Workshops page.

For the Summer 2009 session, Palomar is offering 3 classes taught by The Digital Photo Guy. On June 9th and 11th, you can register for Digital SLR for New dSLR Owners. This is a webcast class that runs from 7:30PM until 9:00PM each night. In those 3 hours, I will cover all the knobs, dials, switches and menus on your dSLR, explaing what, they do, how to adjust them and why you want to adjust them. All you need is a PC or Mac connected via high-speed Internet with a standard web browser (MS IE, FireFox, Safari) and speakers. The only thing you’ll miss are the drive to campus, parking challenges, ool white industrial restrooms and chairs designed for 19 year old butts. This class is a prerequisite for the next class.

On July 25th from 8AM until 11AM, we’ll put into action what we learned in the previous class with Digital SLR “Hands-On” Photoshoot. We’ll meet at a local park where we can photograph kids’ sports, critters, landscapes, statues and macros. This is where we practice using all the different knobs, dials, switches and menus so you can capture the correct exposure everytime. This is where we begin to understand composure. And, this is where we learn how to break the rules to make better photos.

We’ll wrap up the summer with Photo Editing for Digital Photographers on August 5th and 6th using Adobe Photoshop Elements to enhance and edit our photos. Half the fun, flexibility and power of digital photography is post-processing, using an editing program to improve photos. Webcast is particularly well suited to learning Photoshop Elements because you work on your own PC or Mac at home. You’re not using a strange computer at the school’s computer lab that’s set up differently from yours. This class runs from 7:30PM until 9:00PM each night and starts with basics that you can immediately apply to your photos and ends with more advanced techniques for photo repair and restoration. Photoshop Elements is the most widely used photo editing program for amateurs. At just $99 ($69 at Costco), it has about 80% of the capability of its big brother, Adobe Photoshop CS4 which retails for $650.

Palomar College is one of the premier community colleges in California. One characteristic that makes Palomar stand out is their willingness to be creative and innovative when other schools are still stuck in the 19th century. An example of this 21st century mindset is the webcast classes offered through Venture, a department of Palomar’s Workforce and Community Development program.

Palomar was the first San Diego county community college to offer The Digital Photo Guy webcasts as an alternative to 19th century classrooms. Using webcast technology, Lee Otsubo, The Digital Photo Guy, can teach literally anyone from anywhere a high-speed Internet connection is available. These are not your grandpa’s computer-based training sessions. These are live multimedia presentations with PowerPoint slides, video, audio and real-time interaction.

You do not have to live in or near San Diego County to register for a webcast class. All you need is a PC or Mac connected via high-speed Internet. Go to the Palomar Venture registration site today and sign up for a class with The Digital Photo Guy. (Summer 2009 classes not yet posted)

On Saturday, March 21, I presented a Photoshop Elements retouching presentation to the Computer Genealogy Society of San Diego via webcast. The group was meeting at UC San Diego while I was at Joshu Tree National Park leading a spring wildflower workshop.

I showed how the following photo from the 1950s or 60s can be quickly and easily restored with a few basic tips and tricks. Click the thumbnails to see the BEFORE and AFTER photos.

I then applied virtually the same techniques to another photo and demonstrated how these steps can be used to restore ALL faded, skewed, poorly taken photos.

The next photo was more challenging because of its age and damage. I didn’t fix the entire photo because, as I explained to the audience, much of this is just tedious and time-consuming. The only reasons one would have for spending time on restoring such a photo would be 1) it’s a labor of love involving a photo of a loved one or, 2) you’re getting paid gobs of money.

Here, I demonstrated making a copy of the right eye, flipping it over to match the left eye, moving the catchlight to the correct side and “nudging” the pupil to the right to match the right eye. I also used a gaussian blur to smooth and repair the skin on her left cheek.

You can see a recording of the presentation here. If the audio and video get out of sync (narrative and cursor don’t match), click on the progress bar along the top and drag it back back a few seconds.

I’ve seen lots of articles, columns, books, brochures, etc titled XYZ Tips & Tricks but never took the time to figure out what constitutes a tip and what is a trick. When I started to write this post, I nearly titled it White Balance Tip but quickly realized it was really a trick. How did I differentiate between a tip and a trick? I decided that tips are better, faster, easier ways to accomplish a task. So, Photoshop keyboard shortcuts are tips and setting white balance to AWB in RAW is a tip. Tricks, on the other hand, are ways to accomplish a task using some non-standard method or tool. I learned this trick last month at Bosque del Apache, NM in Artie Morris’ workshop.

Not every morning or evening results in spectacular light or soft warm glow. Many days are just plain while other days are just plain ugly. The photo below (left) is of a plain daybreak at Bosque. The middle photo is the same photo with white balance set to 7200 Kelvin in Adobe Camera RAW. The last photo shows a similar scene 5 minutes later with white balance set to 7200 Kelvin.

I realize they’re two different scenes but the shot on the right has a richer color than the photo in the middle even though both were adjusted for 7200 Kelvin white balance. I’m not sure why but I think it’s because the camera is working in 14 bit mode while the PS version is 8 bit.

The point is, it’s easy to dial in a higher or lower white balance to get the image you want. Even if you decide you don’t like it, if you shoot in RAW, you can dial it back in ACR and you won’t have lost anything except a moment of your time to readjust it.

To get a warmer (redder) image, dial in a higher Kelvin temperature (7000K or more) and to get a cooler (bluer) image dial it back to under 3000K. This is my favorite from that series. One bald eagle was calling the other and eventually both were sitting on this snag in the main impoundment as the sun rose to the east.

I’m back from Bosque del Apache and I have a pile of stuff on my desk so I thought I’d first goof off. Here’s a photo I took at BdA on Saturday, 2/21 before Artie Morris’ IPT started on Sunday. This is the quintessential BdA photo of a snow geese blast-off. Unfortunately, all those cars and people in the frame make it less than ideal.

Playing around a bit with Photoshop CS4, I created this photo.

Let me know what you think. BTW, this isn’t one of my masterpieces so I didn’t put a lot of effort into ehnancing the actual photo to remove all the reflected legs in the water. This is essentially a POC (proof of concept) as it were.