Editing your digital photos just got easier | Tutorials

By DanBrown
Total views: 1
Word Count: 1062

The Photoshop plug-ins which are available can help perform tasks much faster and more efficiently than performing these tasks by hand. The 3D plug-ins are used to create 3D images and type very quickly and elegantly. The color management Photoshop plug-ins can create new colors to correspond to the printer that you are using, or the monitor that you are using to create your graphics. The digital asset management plug-ins are used to organize all of the digital images that you have created so that finding the correct image is much easier than without it. The photographic ones give many different professional lens techniques that you can apply to any picture to create amazing effects.

In the camera world there are dozens of formats, each format has something unique and some are more common than others. DNG (Digital Negative) Camera companies have introduced many different, and frequently changing, raw file formats. For example, one source states that there are over 140 RAW formats with more coming-some of them specific to a single camera model. On top of this, manufacturers are often pointlessly secretive about their specifications so there are almost always RAW files your software can't read-at least until someone reverse engineers the formats so they can support them. This lag time and inconvenience can be laid at the doorstep of the camera companies. These proprietary RAW files are at risk over time since companies come and go and interest waxes and wanes. One solution to this growing problem is a new Adobe format called the Digital Negative (.DNG). This publicly defined and openly shared format for RAW files is an attempt to ensure that you will be able to access your image files in the future. If your camera doesn't capture RAW images in this format, you can convert them to DNG using a program such as Photoshop or Lightroom. When you do so, you can even choose to store the original RAW image inside its DNG file so you can extract it at some future date should you need it. The DNG format is supported by Photoshop and other Adobe products, some other software companies, and a number of camera companies. As with all things in computing, only time will tell if the format becomes widely accepted or gradually fades away.

When the image is then opened and displayed by any application, the compression process is reversed more or less depending on which form of compression was used lossless or lossy. Lossless compression compresses an image so when it is uncompressed, as it is when you open it, its image quality matches the original source nothing is lost. Although lossless compression sounds ideal, it doesn't provide much compression so files remain quite large. For this reason, lossless compression is only used by the highest quality image formats-namely TIFF and RAW.

RAW lets you decide on most camera settings after you've taken the picture, not before. For example, when you shoot a JPEG image under fluorescent lights, the camera adjusts the image to remove the yellow-green tint. Any changes you make later are on top of this initial change. If you shoot the image in RAW format, the camera just captures the images as is and you decide what white balance setting to use later. You can even create different versions of an image, each with its own white balance. RAW images can be processed again at a later date when new and improved applications become available. Your original image isn't permanently altered by today's generation of photo-editing applications even if they don't support non-destructive editing. You can generate alternate versions of the same RAW image. For example, many photographers will adjust highlight and shadow areas and save these versions separately. Using a photo-editing program, they then combine the two images as layers and by selectively erasing parts of the top image layer let areas of the lower image layer show through so all areas have a perfect exposure.

Folders are used to organize files on a drive. Imagine working in a photo stock agency where you're told to find a photo of "Yosemite" only to discover that all of the photos the agency ever acquired are stored in unorganized boxes. You have to pick through everything to gather together what you want. Contrast this with an agency that uses a well-organized file cabinet with labeled hanging folders grouping related images together. For example, there might be a hanging folder labeled California National Parks. If a further breakdown is needed, labeled manila folders are inserted into any of the hanging folders-basically, folders within folders. There might be one labelled Yosemite containing images of the park. With everything labelled and organized, it's easy to locate the images you need. The same is true of your memory cards and drives on your computer system. Both are equivalent to the empty file cabinet-plenty of storage space but no organization. The organization you need to find things on the camera's memory device (which we discuss here) is created by the camera, but on your computer, you have to create it yourself (as you will see later).

When an image is saved, the camera assigns it a filename and stores it in the current folder. Filenames have two parts, an 8-character filename and a 3-character extension. Think of them as first and last names. The name is unique to each file, and the extension, separated from the name by a period, identifies the file's format. For example, a JPG extension means it's a JPEG image file, TIF means it's a TIFF image file.

Exif (Exchangeable Image File Format) is a specification that spells out how information about a JPEG image is stored in the same file as the image. This information, including a thumbnail image, describes the camera settings at the time the picture was taken, and even the image's location if the camera supports GPS (Global Positioning System). Digital cameras record this information as metadata in an area of the image file called the header. This information isn't just for managing images, it can also be used by some printers to give you better results. Basically, any camera control set to auto at the time the image was taken can be manipulated by the printer or other device to improve results. Those set to one of the camera's manual choices is considered to be a deliberate choice and is not manipulated.

About the Author

Discover lots more about editing digital photos and software like photoshop Get loads more information about editing digital photos than anyplace else.

You are here Articles > Internet > Tools and Resources > Tutorials