Focus On Photography

I am totally in love with Photoshop. It is an amazing program that gives todays photographer creative tools that wasn’t even imagined ten years ago.

One of my favored features is contact aware which can be used with a variety of tools. I use this to spot retouch my images, or to sometimes manipulate an image to create the look I wanted, but wasn’t able to capture. This was true of the example below. I had an assignment in Italy, and spent a very, very short time in Venice. I wanted to show the wonderful cancels in a classic way. Unfortunately a power boat sat in the middle of the image, but I took the shot anyway. When I got home I opened my digital darkroom and simply (well, with a bit of work) removed the offensive boat.

To accomplish this I used the lasso tool, the magic wand, and the patch tool. First I created a duplicate layer. Then working at 100% magnification I carefully made my selections, and then shift/deleted the selection I had made – each on a separate layer to give me an escape plan. Occasionally you have to redo the deletion. Each time you do it will be somewhat different until you get what you are looking for. Anyway this is the before and after images.

If you found this helpful (or just interesting) please [like] it, and share it with others.

With film your limited by the number of exposures a roll of film provides – in 35mm it’s 20 or 36 exposures – and then you have to rewind, and load a new roll of film into the camera to continue. This actually has an advantage – you tend to be more careful with what you shoot. Each frame is special.

With digital your limited by the size of the card your storing your images on, and the size of the image based on your camera – the larger the megapixels of your camera the larger the file it makes. Since cards now come in very large sizes some photographers use the camera as they would a machine gun. Not my kind of photography, but I’m not judging (too, much).

With Film your limited my the ASA of the film you’re using. ASA refers to the amount of light needed to render an image. The lower the ASA (25 ASA) the more light is required.

In the digital world you can adjust the sensitivity of each exposure via the ISO. Each time you double the ISO (100 to 200) you reduce the amount of light you need by half. This allows you to shoot in a variety of situations from bright sun to indoors without changing anything but the ISO. Of course, with a higher ISO (400+ ) you run the risk of increasing noise in the image (noise looks like grain in a film image), but this can be reduced in the digital darkroom.

This brings me to the biggest difference – the darkroom. In the world of film you have to work in literally a dark room, with only a red light to guide you when you make a print. Your limited to burning, dodging and toning in the darkroom, and retouching is done on the final print. you can adjust tonality by the way you develop the film, but it’s not an exact science, and requires a lot of practice,

The reason I have totally embraced the world of digital photography is the digital darkroom. I shoot only in RAW, and I recommend anyone shooting seriously to do the same. This gives me complete control of almost every aspect of the image. The only thing you have to remember is that while in film you should expose for the shadows, and develop for the highlights – in digital you expose for the highlights, and then make adjustments in the digital darkroom. specifically, you expose for the brightest area in an image where you still want to retain detail.

In my next post I’m going to talk about workflow so please stay tuned.