The Digital Photo Guy

Catching Up on Post Processing

Between classes and workshops, I haven’t had time to work on photos from Cibola NWR so I decided to roll both this week’s MMT and post-processing Cibola photos into one task.

I saw the green and red navigation lights on the bridge when I parked my RV along the bank of the river. It was originally in landscape mode but I thought it looked better as a vertical. Other that cropping and slight levels adjustment, this is pretty much SOOC (straight out of camera). Click to read more

Monday Morning Tip – 01/11/10

Did anyone notice today is another palindrome? It’s not as rare as 01/02/2010 but 01/11/10 is, technically, a palindrome. What’s that got to do with digital photography? Not a whole lot except that observation is a large part of good photography. Below is a photo I made over Christmas.

We hadn’t made any plans for Christmas so, when we took off in our RV at the last minute, we didn’t have reservations. Readers who own RVs know that usually means boondocking, parking overnight wherever it’s permitted and moving on the next day in search of new adventures. So, Christmas eve found us parked at the San Manuel Indian Casino in Highland, CA. We had boondocked there in the past on our way north and liked the quiet, isolated parking lot with a million-dollar view.
Click to keep reading

The Digital Photo Guy Blog Gets a Facelift

This is the 6th year for this site. During the first 4 years, it was a static site that was rarely updated because making changes was excruciatingly slow, complex and costly. In 2008, I resolved to fix the problem and commissioned a web developer to develop a new site that I could easily and quickly update myself. He recommended WordPress and the initial implementation took just 6 weeks. As soon as he was done, I started making changes and quickly learned how to do just about everything by myself. I’m no rocket scientist but WordPress makes everything simple and straightforward.

Now, a year after the initial launch, a new static home page has replaced the previous dynamic home page. A dynamic home page was fine in the beginning but, now, with so many articles and posts, it was quickly becoming unwieldly. Readers couldn’t easily find the information they sought. A static home page can act as ”street signs” to help point readers in the right direction. As you can see, some of the signs are still not working. That’s because all the MMTs, posts and articles weren’t always correctly or fully tagged.

Tagging the material at this time would be counter productive because each update would generate an e-mail notification of an update and readers wuld be innundated with e-mails.

Starting in 2010, I’ll be more careful about tagging each MMT, post and article so readers can quickly find all material pertaining to Cameras/Lenses/Gear, Photo Editing and Photography.

In the meantime, the existing tags (right side of main blog) can help you find specific articles or MMTs. You can also use the Seach box along the right side of the main blog.

A website is a never-ending process. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment here. Good light, good memories and good luck in 2010.

Monday Morning Tip – 12/07/09

If you’ve ever tried to cut a person or pet out of a photo and found it to be an exercise in frustration, you need to watch today’s Video MMT. Topaz Labs has released ReMask2 and it is an order of magnitude improved over the first version. Here’s a quick example of what ReMask2 can do for you.

The initial pass took about 3 minutes and I spent another 3 minutes cleaning up the edges. It’s still not perfect but much, much better and faster than previous manual methods. Click here to read the rest of this MMT

Time Flies When You’re Having Fun

I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since I wrote my last full MMT. (A full MMT is a separate article that’s archived as a PDF or video in the password protected MMT area.) The closest was my Depth of Field Calculator video back on Sep 23. Speaking of which, I’m going to renew my FREE DoF Calculator offer but I need some feedback regarding what lens focal lengths you need/want. Tell me via the poll to the right.

This week’s MMT is a review of a boring but necessary device for photographers, a monitor calibration system. It’s called a system because you need both the hardware (colorimeter) and software to calibrate your monitor. The reason you need to calibrate your monitor is because different monitors display the same color differently. In other words, you want the fire engine to look the same color red on all monitors. More importantly, if your monitor is off, how can you identify the problem point? When that fire engine print comes out looking like an orange, how do you know you sent the correct info?

It used to be that monitor calibration was expensive and tedious. Today, there are several choices well below US$100 that are a snap to use. Read my review of the Pantone Huey Pro monitor calibration system.

If, after reading the MMT, you decide you want to calibrate your monitor, check the Tips & News page for a screaming deal on colorimeters. Since I only bought these as tests and don’t need them for daily use, I have the original Huey and the new Huey Pro for sale along with a bunch of Canon gear I need to cull from my inventory. I recently sold my Canon 100-400 so now I’m motivated to thin my excess equipment even more.

As always, MMTs are here. You’ll need to register to get into the password protected areas where about 100 MMTs are archived.

Quick Tip

In Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Elements 7 (may apply to earlier versions but not tested), in the past if you wanted to unlock the Background layer, you double-clicked the lock icon and dismissed the dialog box that appeared with a suggested new name Layer 0. It wasn’t a big deal but a minor annoyance. It turns out you can simply click the lock icon and drag it to the trashcan. Whoulda thunk? It’s a lot quicker and more efficient.

More Eastern Sierras Photos

This is a hokey way to display photos but I just haven’t had time to figure out how the gallery software works. Like most anything in WordPress, I have a choice of about 10 gazillion photo gallery modules and they all seem to be written by Martians so bear with me.

In case you missed them the first set, here are some of my favorites in an earlier post.