Book Review: Adobe Photoshop CS3 Studio Techniques By Ben Willmore
Posted on March 10, 2008 - Filed Under Culture, Photo | Leave a Comment
Adobe Photoshop CS3 Studio Techniques came to be when the author, while looking at all the Photoshop books at the local chain bookstore, realized that there were fundamentally two types of Photoshop books. First there are the "cookbooks" that taught you Photoshop in a step-by-step manner. These, which while showing how to do something, never seem to explain why you should do these steps in enough detail to make you feel you understood. Secondly, there are the technical books that are so technical that, unless you knew Photoshop, they were too hard to understand and left you frustrated.
Enter Adobe Photoshop CS3 Studio Techniques. The goal here is to explain, in everyday language, how to use Photoshop, taking everything from the simplest feature to the most advanced technique an distilling it down so that you can understand it. As an instructor, the author has used this approach for many years and hundreds of seminars and workshops. His goal with this book is to take you from "going through the motions" to "at last, I really understand." The book is 592 pages long and divided into 16 chapters (there are five bonus chapters on the CD which required no update for CS3 and so I will concentrate on the 16 printed chapters and list the bonus material below). It is also divided into three basic areas.
Working Foundations
Chapter 1, "Tools and Palette Primer," is all about effectively managing your workspace and finding your way around all of the features that has made Photoshop the industry standard that it is. Here you will learn about the palettes, tools, and panels that you will be working with in this book.
Chapter 2, "Selection Primer," will take you through what many consider to be one of the most central techniques to Photoshop success: the ability to make selections. This is because when you want to be able to edit a portion of an image you must first select it. Here you will work with the marquee tools, lasso tools, crop tools, selection tools, magic wand tool, and others.
Chapter 3, "Layers Primer," examines what is another fundamental Photoshop device – Layers. The Layers palette is what helps you keep everything organized. While on the surface it may appear to be complex, it really is very simple to learn. Throughout this chapter the author shows you how to use Layers while teaching you all sorts of tricks that will prove invaluable later in the book.
Production Essentials
Chapter 4, "Optimizing Grayscale," explains that when working with grayscale, your adjustments and corrections are tonal in nature and therefore you only have to deal with the brightness and contrast of the image. Here you will learn about all of Photoshop's tools for working with these tonal adjustments which will be of use as well later when you get into working with color.
Chapter 5, "Understanding Curves," will show you the power of Curves and how they are like the Swiss Army Knife of the Photoshop world. This is another really great chapter in that the author, by way of explanation, shows you how the curves dialog box works before you realize that you really do understand it.
Chapter 6, "Color Management," is another one of those areas that seems too complex to grasp, but by dissecting it down into non-technical jargon, it can be made much easier to understand. Here you will learn how color works, the problems with color, and how you can implement color management to make colors consistent among devices.
Chapter 7, "Color Correction," now shows you how to control the colors in your images. Here you will learn how to get rid of the color casts in your image by using gray to fix your colors. Don't worry, you will use color as well, it just won't be of a hit-or-miss nature.
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Book Review: Digital Nature Photography – The Art and the Science by John and Barbara Gerlach
Posted on March 5, 2008 - Filed Under Culture, Photo | Leave a Comment
John and Barbara Gerlach have been known for years as instructors in nature workshops that have trained over 50,000 students. John Gerlach is the associate editor of Nature Photographer and columnist of "Field Notes." His photos have been featured in magazines such as Natural Wildlife, Sierra, and others. Barbara Gerlach is a skilled nature photographer whose work has been featured in National Geographic, Outdoor Photographer, and many others, and has been running workshops with her husband since 1988.
Digital Nature Photography: The Art And The Science is the book that their workshop attendees have been asking for. The goal of this book is to help you take some of the best nature shots you have ever taken. They would like you to master those techniques to take consistently good images. This is not a fix-it later book, and as such, it stresses field techniques. Digital Nature Photography is 208 pages and is divided into 12 chapters.
Chapter 1, "The Excitement over Digital Photography," examines the point where digital photography overtook film technology and it became more practical to shoot digital. Along with reusable digital memory cards, the ability to switch ISO without changing film, and the instant feedback provided by the digital SLR's display, it is much more practicable to use digital in the field. Chapter 2, "Developing your Photographic Skills," shows you that it is necessary to acquire skills if you want to become a good photographer. Many of their former students have gone on to be good nature photographers, and some have become highly successful professionals in a tough field to succeed in, but all have had to learn and hone photographic skills.
Chapter 3, "Choosing your Digital Camera," will assist in choosing the right camera for you. The explosion of quality advances in digital technology has been nothing short of phenomenal. Here they explain the differences in cameras and other equipment that you will need to create outstanding photographs. Chapter 4, "Exposure Essentials," reminds you that proper exposure is critical to shooting quality images. With the new technologies this has become much easier with digital, but you still have to understand the fundamentals.
Chapter 5, "Using Lenses Effectively," will show you how lenses work, what focal length is, and what it means to you as well as what aperture and depth of field means to you. You will be shown different features that can come with a lens. Aspects are introduced, such as Image Stabilization, the difference between zoom and prime lenses are, as well as a whole host of topics relating to lenses and what are available. Chapter 6, "Shoot Sharp Images Consistently," is all about being successful and producing consistently sharp images that can be sold or entered into contests. This is something that many photographers find is hard to do. Here you will find the techniques to create sharp images over and over.
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Book Review: Playboy Cover to Cover — the 50′s by Playboy and Bondi Digital Publishing
Posted on February 21, 2008 - Filed Under Culture, Photo | Leave a Comment
“When the first issue of Playboy hit the streets in 1953, the United States had no counterculture to speak of…the Beats were still a few years away, and Elvis was driving a truck in Memphis. Toting around a copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer could get you branded a degenerate, maybe even land you on a chain busting rocks.” – The Los Angeles Times
Since its founding in 1953, with a premiere issue left undated for fear that there wouldn’t be a second, Playboy Magazine has transitioned from an out-of-bounds affront to the supposedly “moral” America of the 1950s, to a veritable national treasure. The Playboy Cover to Cover — the 50′s package features every page of the magazine from its inaugural decade (an archive’s worth of interactive discs), a coffee table book detailing Playboy’s rise, and a facsimile of the first issue.
It is part history text, part nostalgic glance into the past, and a wholly worthwhile read.
The only complaint I’d lodge about the disc portion, and indeed about the entire Cover-to-Cover package, is that it centers around the 1950s. Subsequent decades, especially the 1980s, would have been just as interesting in showing the magazine’s transition from one that men bought and quickly shuffled into their briefcases, to an icon that has featured such interviews as Bob Dylan, and pieces by such notables as William F. Buckley Jr.
The coffee table book, and its 200 plus pages of high-quality, glossy photos, is the MVP here, with the facsimile first issue running a close second. While the discs are better for private enjoyment on one’s personal computer, the coffee table book not only looks good on your coffee table — big shock — it also provides a rare hint of the World Before Hef (that grim reality so aptly described in the L.A. Times passage above).
After a December 1952 alumni review at his high school, during which Hefner was forced to appraise his life in serious fashion for the first time, he stood on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue Bridge “with tears in my eyes, realizing I had to make a change in my life.”
“In Hefner’s case,” Leopold Froehlich writes in the introduction, “the fantasies he had pursued were not to be in vain. The magazine was built on a dream, but it was also the result of a gamble. It expressed the longing a young Hefner felt when he looked up into the brightly lit windows of Gold Coast high-rises, a longing to be liberated from the deadening constraints of domestic America.”
No one handed anything to Hefner. His dream was born largely of his own moxy and seed money from supportive family. They supported the man more than his enterprise, to be sure. Friends and investors who looked askance at the young man — wondering whether they’d ever see their money again — were moved by his unshakable faith that he was doing the right thing.
And that there was an audience dying for his product.
Hefner’s roots and resources may have been humble, but his confidence was king. “I didn’t really think about the possibility of failure,” Hefner told Froehlich. “This was my chance. If I had thought about failure, I wouldn’t have put out a magazine.” That belief paid considerable dividends. The first issue sold 54,000 copies; the last issue of the decade, 1.1 million.
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Book Review: Digital Astrophotography: A Guide To Capturing The Cosmos by Stefan Seip
Posted on February 16, 2008 - Filed Under Culture, Photo | Leave a Comment
The thought of trying to do digital astrophotography can appear to be a complex combination of expensive equipment and Herculean knowledge that goes beyond what most of us are ready or capable to undertake. Digital Astrophotography: A Guide To Capturing The Cosmos was written as a step-by-step guide to remove many of these barriers to entry.
Sure, there is some expense and some techniques you will need to work with, but by providing all the knowledge and information, it will now be easier to dip your feet in to the universal waters. Digital Astrophotography is 147 pages in length and is divided into five chapters.
Chapter 1, “Before you Start,” is provided to give you some background about what this book is all about and to provide a proper introduction to astrophotography. It is helpful for you to have some background about the celestial objects you want to photograph, as that is not the main focus of this book.
As with everything else, it is always best to start off small and work your way up. Because of the advances in technology, it is much easier to get good results even with small telescopes and inexpensive digital cameras. Here you will learn about the appropriate telescopes, interaction of camera and telescope, and how they work together.
Chapter 2, “The Digital Compact Camera,” goes into the characteristics of a digital compact camera. This chapter goes through the suitable motifs for this type of camera, how to work with and without a telescope, and what the advantages and disadvantages are to working with this type of camera. It also goes in to the kind of useful accessories for working with a digital compact camera and how to take longer exposures, as well as how to process your images.
Chapter 3, “The Webcam,” begins by describing what a webcam is; this is your standard web camera used for video conferencing and video phone calls. Ideal objects for use with a web cam are objects within our solar system. With a webcam you can quickly capture close-ups of details of the sun and moon. Please read the warnings. Chapter 3 describes how to set up the web cam, position it, and get it focused. Also discussed is how to process your images and the tools you will need.
Chapter 4, “The Digital Single Lens Reflex Camera,” discusses why the DSLR is considered one of the best types of cameras for astrophotography. It explains what can be done with and without a telescope, the advantages and disadvantages of using this type of camera, tips for buying a DSLR, and what the useful accessories are for a kind of camera.
This chapter goes into how to take astrophotos with the camera by beginning with mounting on a telescope, photographing through the telescope, focusing, and guiding the camera/telescope for longer exposures. Finally it ends with how to process your images once you collect them.
Chapter 5, “The Astronomical CCD Camera,” explains how the astronomical CDD camera is considered the Rolls-Royce of astrophotography cameras, especially with regard to deep space objects. As with the Rolls-Royce, the cost can be expensive. The camera starts at $700 and from there, pardon the pun, the sky is the limit. As with the other chapters, discussed are advantages and disadvantages, buying tips, and how to process your images.
While everyone admires the images that have been captured from space, especially deep space, most feel this is something beyond their ability no matter what their finances are able to provide. Digital Astrophotography shows that even on a modest budget, one can get into astrophotography. While there are costs involved, the results can be spectacular. Digital Astrophotography is concise, easily read, and very up to date. If you are contemplating astrophotography, this is probably the best primer on the subject.
Digital Astrophotography, unlike many books on the subject, does not overwhelm you with too much information that it becomes incomprehensible. Rather, it sticks to the basics while providing a large amount of information. If you have any interest in astrophotography, then Digital Astrophotography: A Guide To Capturing The Cosmos is highly recommended.
Video Training Review – Photoshop CS3 Prepress Essentials With Taz Tally From Lynda.com.
Posted on February 7, 2008 - Filed Under Culture, Photo | Leave a Comment
If you are trying to prepare your color or black-and-white images for print use, it can be a nightmare what with what you see on screen being represented in the RGB color set and what your printer uses is based on CMYK color set. Unless you take the time to learn what you see is definitely not what you get. In this video, Taz Tally, Ph.D will show how to use Photoshop CS3's prepress features by guiding you through concrete, practical exercises in image editing, correction, and adjustment to get real-world professional results. Photoshop CS3 Prepress Essentials runs 7.5 hours and is divided out into 13 lessons.
Lesson 1, "Concepts and Setting Up" begins by letting you know in no uncertain terms that the author likes to get things done and to get them done fast. So he begins with an overview of the Photoshop CS3 interface. Then you will learn about RGB and CMYK Setup. Finally you will set up preferences for working efficiently in the Photoshop environment. The operative word here is efficiency.
Lesson 2, "Integrating Bridge with the Prepress Workflow" then takes you in to the world of Adobe's workflow companion; Adobe Bridge. Here the instructor shows you how this product fits in to your prepress workflow. You will customize preferences and learn how to navigate files as well as work with Metadata.
Lesson 3, "Workflow Enhancements" shows you how to create and work with duplicate images so that you can work on copies and not harm your original images. Next you will learn how to setting up your workspace which will allow you to change workspaces depending on your output needs. You will also learn how to easily navigate through your images and the various tools via the keyboard.
Lesson 4, "Image Fundamentals" delves into the world of pixels and vectors. Here you will begin to understand image channels, bit depth, and RGB/CMYK images. You will also get into AM and FM halftone Screening and Ripping; Raster Image Processing.
Lesson 5, "Working with Input Devices" briefly examines the concepts of calibration and the calibration of devices. While you concentrate on input devices, the concepts apply to both input and output devices. You will also learn about the cleaning of scanners and images.
Lesson 6, "Dimensional Adjustments" begins with a discussion of how the resolution requirements for specific screening outputs will affect the resolution of your images. This is followed up by making linear and dimensional adjustments, cropping and re-sampling images and working with vectors as Smart Objects.
Lesson 7, "Assigning and Creating Colors" shows you that to get accurate color in prepress, you will need to get in to Pantone swatch books. Here you will learn all about Pantone, the process of assigning and building process colors, assigning spot colors, and matching colors from Photoshop to other applications.
Lesson 8, "Correcting and Adjusting Grayscale Images" begins by evaluating an image to find out where the important parts of the image are. Here you will examine tonal regions, work with histograms, curves, and the info palette. Then you will work with an image adjustment layer to set highlights, shadows, adjust brightness and contrast, as well as make adjustments for newsprint and dot gain.
Lesson 9, "Correcting and Adjusting Color Images" now applies some of the same techniques learned with black-and-white to your color images. Whereas the last lesson worked with one channel, now you will apply your knowledge to multiple channels.
Lesson 10, "Image Editing" focuses on what needs to be adjusted for prepress output. The topics here include JPEG posterization, the removal of dust and scratches, image sharpening, creating silhouettes, and adding type to images.
Lesson 11, "Mode Conversions and Color Separations" asks the question: if you want to print in grayscale, should you capture in grayscale or capture in color? Here the instructor shows you how to convert between modes such as RGB to grayscale, RGB to CMYK as well as creating custom CMYK profiles.
Lesson 12, "Output" is all about putting your image into some other format. To output to other formats reliably you should know about these target formats (TIFF, EPS, PDF, DCS) and the programs that will use them.
Lesson 13, "Automation" will show you how to streamline your efforts by creating actions within Photoshop. As was said at the beginning, this is all about efficiency and how to get things done without being bogged down. By using actions you can automate many of the routine tasks and get back out to doing what you would rather be doing; shooting pictures.
Photoshop CS3 Prepress Essentials can be a technical topic for those who have not worked with it before. It can also be confusing because you are dealing with different color spaces to generate output that looks correct. What looks good on the screen, most likely will not look good in print unless you get it done right.
In Photoshop CS3 Prepress Essentials, Taz Tally takes his time and guides you through the pitfalls of learning how to work with prepress techniques. If you are finding problems getting the output that you want or need, then this video will clear up a lot of problems and get you well on your way to getting that correct output.
You can get Photoshop CS3 Prepress Essentials two ways. One is as a DVD training package Photoshop CS3 Prepress Essentials and the other is part of the online training experience at Lynda.com. The DVD Training Package is $99 USD and contains everything you need.
The online training Photoshop CS3 Prepress Essentials comes in three flavors. Monthly at $25 USD/month gets you all of the videos that are available online (approximately 21,811 videos on 318 topics at this time). Annually at $250 USD per year or Premium at $375 USD per year which get all the videos as well as all of the exercise files. Take note that the exercise files are not included with the monthly or annual subscriptions. They are included on the DVD and Premium subscriptions.
You can use Photoshop CS3 Prepress Essentials as a training program for the individual student, as well as the college or vocational teacher looking to supplement their educational materials. It is of benefit to anyone who needs help understanding the prepress output generation. You can also try out the the first and part of the second lesson for free at Lynda.com.
Video Training Review – Photoshop CS3 Channels And Masks: Advanced Techniques With Deke McClelland From Lynda.com.
Posted on January 28, 2008 - Filed Under Culture, Photo | Leave a Comment
Photoshop CS3 Channels And Masks: Advanced Techniques is the final part of a two part series that covers the use of channels and mask under Photoshop CS3. Part one, the essentials, showed that Alpha channels are collections of luminance data that control the transparency of images, and they influence just about everything in Photoshop.
Your trainer for this library is Deke McClelland. Deke McClelland is a well-known expert and lecturer on Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and the broader realm of computer graphics and design. To date, he has written 85 books that have been translated into 24 languages, with more than 4 million copies in print. This library is divided into 9 lessons and runs 20.5 hours. This is the second part in Photoshop CS3 Channels And Masks. Part one is called Photoshop CS3 Channels And Masks: The Essentials and is also available from Lynda.com
Lesson 10, "Advanced Blending" continues the subject of blending by discussing topics such as luminance blending, fill opacity, color matching, and ways to blend a masked image with a new background to create a credible effect. Here you will learn to make a custom contrast mode, luminance blend, you will work with blending smart filters, matching colors, as well as restoring normal colors.
Lesson 11, "Layer-Specific Masks" shows how masking goes to the heart of a more common function in Photoshop, which is of layers. Every layer carries a transparency mask that defines the boundaries of the layers. Here you will learn how to use these layers to control adjustments. In this lesson you will learn how to use adjustment layers, layer masks, and clipping masks to achieve the effects that you want. By using layer based masks you always have access to your original pixels.
Lesson 12, "Specialty Masks" clarify techniques that will allow you to change colors in one portion of an image while preserving them in another. Perhaps you want to adjust the focus of just the edges in an image or even blur away just the background. The maskings described in this lesson are really ones that can be applied to day-to-day image adjustment. You are shown how to deal with hair, fabric, work with archival photographs, as well as working with the edge mask.
Lesson 13, "Channel Mixing and Other Tricks" illustrate how to work with the Channel mixer and how it can be used to work with Black and White images, Sepia tone images, and creating an infrared effect. You can bolster contrasts with the green channel, learn three ways to gray, and get a lesson in expert red-eye correction.
Lesson 14, "Calculations (aka Channel Operations)" examines how you can use the Calculation command to blend two Channels to create a base Alpha Channel; this makes it a great tool for distilling masks. In the old days people use Channel Operations or Chops for short to accomplish the same thing with many more steps. These now would be called MaskOps. Here you will work with blue screen blending, add/subtract blends, dodging/burning, and nondestructive layer painting.
Lesson 15, "The Pen Tool and the Paths Palette" will show you how to draw a meticulous selection outline one point and control handle at a time. Because the pen tool does not see or modify pixels, it lets you create and edit vector outlines that, in turn, allow you to trace outlines that no other tool in Photoshop can see. This lets you draw outlines in a super sharp manner and place them exactly where they need to be. Then you can convert the path to a selection outline with the best anti-aliasing available in Photoshop.
Lesson 16, "Masking the Tough Stuff" explores how to mask difficult images. Objects that say are casting a shadow that you want to bring the shadow with. Or how about translucent subjects, subjects that contain the same colors as the background, or perhaps contains lots of colors? Maybe they have lots of ruffles or fringes and are set against a colorful background. While all of these situations are not covered here; hey this video is already over 20 hours long, you will learn some techniques to get you started on these hard to mask items.
Lesson 17, "16-Bit/Channel and HDR" begins by describing bit-depth and what it means to your images. While the 16.8 million colors that are available in an 8-bit image may seem like a lot, when you edit your images you may experience clipping and banding. The other issue is if you have a camera or scanner that captures 10-bits or 16-bit images, should you throw all of those other colors away? Photoshop can handle 16-bit images and if you want to work with High Dynamic Range images (HDR), they can handle 32-bit images. Here you will learn some pretty fantastic methods for working with these types of images.
Lesson 18, "DMaps and Lighting Effects" look at two highly specialized functions that employ independent channels to create 3D quality effects. The first is the Displace filter uses a Displacement map to move pixels to wrap one image around another. The second, Lighting Effects lets you light the edges which create a 3D embossing effect. You will learn such techniques as creating custom waves, moonlight reflecting off water, and wrapping stone around a face.
As in the first set " Photoshop CS3 Channels And Masks: The Essentials," I really like Deke McClelland's presentation in this video. He describes to you a very complicated topic and brings it down to earth in an easy to understand dialog. Again, I really like the fact that the introductions to each chapter are films of the instructor explaining what the lesson is all about. I think that it makes the instructor more real than just hearing them talk in the voice over. Yes it makes for some large segments, but it sooo worth it.
You can get Photoshop CS3 Channels And Masks: Advanced Techniques two ways. One is as a DVD training package Photoshop CS3 Channels And Masks: Advanced Techniques and the other is part of the online training experience at Lynda.com. The DVD Training Package is $149 USD and includes Photoshop CS3 Channels And Masks: The Essentials as well as containing everything you need.
The online training Photoshop CS3 Channels And Masks: Advanced Techniques comes in three flavors. Monthly at $25 USD/month gets you all of the videos that are available online (approximately 21,811 videos on 318 topics at this time). Annually at $250 USD per year or Premium at $375 USD per year which get all the videos as well as all of the exercise files. Take note that the exercise files are not included with the monthly or annual subscriptions. They are included on the DVD and Premium subscriptions.
You can use Photoshop CS3 Channels And Masks: Advanced Techniques as a training program for the individual student, as well as the college or vocational teacher looking to supplement their educational materials. It is of benefit to anyone who needs help understanding Channels And Masks. You can also try out most of the first lesson for free at Lynda.com.
Photoshop CS3 Channels And Masks: Advanced Techniques Lesson Listing:
- Advanced Blending
- Layer-Specific Masks
- Specialty Masks
- Channel Mixing and Other Tricks
- Calculations (aka Channel Operations)
- The Pen Tool and the Paths Palette
- Masking the Tough Stuff
- 16-Bit/Channel and HDR
- DMaps and Lighting Effects
Book Review – Real World Camera Raw: with Adobe Photoshop CS3 By Bruce Frasier and Jeff Schewe
Posted on January 7, 2008 - Filed Under Culture, Photo | Leave a Comment
If you want to be a serious digital photographer then Real World Camera Raw: with Adobe Photoshop CS3 is one of the books that you will need to study, learn, and live by. Camera Raw, the Photoshop plug-in, gives you precise control over image qualities like white balance, tones, color space, contrast, and saturation.
Real World Camera Raw: with Adobe Photoshop CS3 is the latest version of the book that was begun by Photoshop expert Bruce Frasier and is now carried on by his friend and business partner Jeff Schewe. It is contained in 365 pages divided into nine chapters.
Chapter 1, "Digital Camera Raw," focuses on Raw capture, its fundamental nature, advantages, and limitations. You will begin by learning what Raw Capture is, why you should use it, and just what is a digital negative? Chapter 2, "How Camera Raw Works," examines what "lies under the hood" of the Camera Raw plug-in. To use Camera Raw effectively, you must first understand what it offers and where its limitations are, as well as how you can overcome the limitations.
Chapter 3, "Raw System Overview," provides the 30,000 foot view of the whole digital raw system. Here the individual components are discussed in much more detail; not as much as in future chapters, but for now, this provides an overview of the workflow in general. The components are Adobe Bridge, Camera Raw, Adobe Photoshop CS3, and Digital Negatives.
Chapter 4, "Camera Raw Controls," examines the Camera Raw controls in detail. Here you will start by learning how to handle Camera Raw images one at a time and you will delve in-depth into what each control does and how best to work with them. They include the basic panel, the Tone Curve Panel, the Detail Panel, the HSL/Grayscale Panel, the Split Tone Panel, the Lens Correction Panel, the Calibrate Panel, and the Presets Panel. You will also examine the Camera Raw Flyout menu, the main Raw buttons, the Camera Raw toolbar, as well as other Camera Raw tools.
Chapter 5, "Hands-on Camera Raw," shows that knowing what each control does is only half the battle, the other half is knowing how the tools interact, and when and in which order to use them. Here you will learn about Camera Raw by getting in and working with it.
Chapter 6, "Adobe Bridge," explores briefly the history of file browser and its progression into Adobe Bridge and how Bridge under CS3 has become rather complex. Here Bridge is talked about in relation to the features that apply to digital photography and the Raw workflow. Topics include working with Bridge, Metadata, Keywords, and other tools such as Batch Rename, Cache, Collections, and Slideshow.
Chapter 7, "It's All About the Workflow," describes, that now, even though you understand many of the tools, you now need to learn how to perform the actual work of Raw processing. This can be described into five basic strategies; Image Ingestion, Image Verification, Preproduction, Production, and Post Production. This will put the Raw workflow into the big picture.
Chapter 8, "Mastering Metadata," examines the "data about data"; that is the information contained within the raw file. This EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) standard is the information that is provided by the camera manufacturers when you take a picture. Also examined is XMP which is Adobe's initiative to promote a standard for Metadata. It, like DNG, is an open standard to try to make digital become manufacture independent.
Chapter 9, "Exploiting Automation," shows that although, up till now, everything has been done on a one off basis, to be truly effective, you need to be able to automate as many of these processes as possible. Here you will learn how to "work smarter, not harder" by using automation.
Bottom line, if you are serious about digital imaging, you will work with Raw files from your Camera; usually DSLR, but many higher end point and shoot cameras are offering Raw capture abilities as well. If you want to learn how to work effectively with Raw files then you will need to study Real World Camera Raw: with Adobe Photoshop CS3. It is the standard on the topic.
Unfortunately to the world at large and certainly to the digital world Bruce Frasier lost his battle with lung cancer on December 16, 2006. Fortunately for us, his friend and business partner Jeff Schewe has taken up the reigns, and updated his classic book and made sure that his legacy lives on.
If you are not familiar with Jeff Schewe's work you can find him as a regular on many of the videos from the Luminous-Landscape, from his website, and as the Editor in Chief for PhotoshopNews. As an award winning advertising photographer and pioneer in the digital imaging field, I can think of no one more qualified or more respected to take up the banner for Bruce Frasier and keep his legacy alive.
If you are serious about digital imaging and working with Raw files, if you find that you want to be in control of your images, or if you want to squeeze every last pixel of quality from your image capture, then Real World Camera Raw: with Adobe Photoshop CS3 is an absolutely, positively, must-own.
Museum and Gallery Listings
Posted on January 4, 2008 - Filed Under Art, Culture, News | Leave a Comment
ART
Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art.
JOEL SHAPIRO: NEW SCULPTURE Joel Shapiro's latest show is exquisite: a focused, perfect arrangement of just under a dozen sculptures filling Pace Wildenstein in Chelsea. This may well be the artist's best effort in years. The work may look old-fashioned to some, with its attention to relationships between abstraction and representation, its choice of weighty materials (wood and bronze) and its heroic scale. The pieces may even be reminiscent of David Smith's, specifically his final Cubi series of monumental geometric sculptures made of stainless-steel cubes and prisms. Certainly Mr. Smith opened up a space for abstract sculpture in which Mr. Shapiro works.
But Mr. Shapiro is very much his own artist, with his own style and set of aesthetic concerns, chief among them the striving for a sense of compositional balance between opposites. His sculptures are compact yet fluidly elegant; rapturously open yet contained; full of life yet inert; majestic yet humble. Several seem to defy gravity, with the arrangements of the cubes, prisms and rectangles surging into the air. The works can also be brightly colored or lovingly hand-finished, the surface of the bronze sculptures made to resemble wood. They are like scaffolding crossed with a bouquet of flowers. (Through Jan. 19, Pace Wildenstein, 545 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, 212-989-4258, pacewildenstein.com.) BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO
Museums
AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM: GILDED LIONS AND JEWELED HORSES: THE SYNAGOGUE TO THE CAROUSEL, through March 23. Skills and motifs used in sacred art resurface in a surprisingly secular place: the carousel. In this exhibition, models of elaborate wooden synagogues and photographs of Jewish cemeteries with intricately carved gravestones in Eastern Europe are alongside paper cuts, which look like giant, precision-cut snowflakes mounted on colored paper. The lineage from synagogue to carousel is made explicit in a display that juxtaposes carved Torah arks with carousel horses fashioned in the baroque Coney Island Style. The show reveals a vibrant Jewish visual culture, where Judaism is often seen as text-oriented. It is also a great immigrant story in which skills learned in the shtetls of Europe made their way to the New World and, for a brief moment, flourished. 45 West 53rd Street, (212) 265-1040, folkartmuseum.org. (Martha Schwendener)
★ ASIA SOCIETY: THE ARTS OF KASHMIR,, through Jan. 6. Set in the Himalayas amid Afghanistan, China and India, Kashmir underwent constant cultural fermentation, taking influences in, sending them out. Sacred to Hinduism, home to early Buddhism and a favored retreat of Muslim rulers, it was forever either struggling to sustain social balance or heading into conflict. This perpetual play of opposites produced, through molding and friction, some of the most beautiful art in the world. 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, (212) 288-6400, asiasociety.org. (Holland Cotter)
ASIA SOCIETY: ZHANG HUAN: ALTERED STATES, through Jan. 20. The Chinese artist Zhang Huan, the subject of this small, midcareer survey, is best known for the early, often poetic, sometimes sensationally masochistic performance work he did in the 1990s, which can only be seen in videos and photographs now. The objects in this show, which include giant fragments of Buddhist sculptures made from copper sheets and incense ash, are products of his new workshop-style studio in Shanghai. 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, (212) 288-6400, asiasociety.org. (Cotter)
BRONX MUSEUM OF THE ARTS: THE WORLD OUTSIDE: A SURVEY EXHIBITION 1991-2007, through Jan. 27. A product of the Cuban avant-garde of the late 80s and now a resident of Santo Domingo, Quisqueya Henríquez has exhibited extensively in solo and group shows in North and South America. In her clever, ideologically pointed sculptures, installations, collages and videos, she aims to deconstruct prejudicial stereotypes about the arts and cultures of Latin America. 1040 Grand Concourse, at 165th Street, Morrisania, (718) 681-6000, bronxmuseum.org. (Ken Johnson)
★ BROOKLYN MUSEUM: INFINITE ISLAND: CONTEMPORARY CARIBBEAN ART, through Jan. 27. This large show, with 45 artists and a collective of designers, photographers and architects from the Dominican Republic adding to the count, fills two floors of temporary exhibition space, and care has been given to the selection. Organized by Tumelo Moshaka, associate curator of exhibitions at Brooklyn, it's an in-house job, a labor of love, though an uneven one. Too much work treads ground already covered by other art over the years. But what's good is really good, and the very existence of a show about identity politics, out of mainstream fashion in 2007, is cause for serious reflection. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, (718) 638-5000, brooklynmuseum.org. (Cotter)
★ FRICK COLLECTION: GABRIEL DE SAINT-AUBIN, through Jan. 27. One of 18th-century France's greatest draftsmen, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin drew all the time and everywhere he went. He usually worked small, and in many cases you need one of the magnifying glasses provided at the museum to fully appreciate the subtlety and detail. Nevertheless, he had tremendous range. Whether conjuring epic visions of Ancient Roman history or recording intimate views of domestic quietude, he produced works of nonstop graphic liveliness, extraordinary sensuousness and hypersensitive alertness to perceptual reality. 1 East 70th Street, (212) 288-0700, frick.org. (Johnson)
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: FOTO: MODERNITY IN CENTRAL EUROPE, 1918-1945, through Jan. 13. This exhibition is the art historical equivalent of the ultimate real estate dream: You open an unfamiliar door in your apartment and voilà there's an extra room you never knew about. In this case the room is full of the work of scores of mostly unfamiliar photographers who put the medium through its paces in interwar Central Europe. Learning about them gives modern photography up to and including the experiments of the early 1980s a whole new layout. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, (212) 423-3500, guggenheim.org. (Roberta Smith)
★ GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: RICHARD PRINCE: SPIRITUAL AMERICA, through Jan. 9. This retrospective of one of contemporary art's inveterate bad boys looks more beautiful in the museum's rotunda than it probably should. Covering nearly 30 years, it includes photographs of photographs; joke paintings; car hoods; and parodies of de Kooning's Women paintings that have undergone a sex change. It shows a body of work in which the supposed end-game of appropriation has fueled a constantly changing and developing aesthetic that exposes and wryly celebrates the dark and tawdry side of this country's inner life. (See above.) (Smith)
INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY: GERDA TARO AND THIS IS WAR! ROBERT CAPA AT WORK, through Jan. 6. There are a number of narratives running through these shows, from the story of two young people who fled Nazi Germany to the rediscovery of Taro's career and the development of Capa as the greatest war photographer in the world (in the view of Picture Post magazine). Accompanied by a book written by Richard Whelan, the show delves into questions about Capa's famous photograph Death of a Loyalist Militiaman and the tricky relationship between truth and fiction in war photography. The show also examines how technological developments in warfare, photography and magazine printing led to a new era of photojournalism during the 1930s and 40s. 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at West 43rd Street, (212) 857-0000, icp.org. (Martha Schwendener)
JAPAN SOCIETY: MAKING A HOME: JAPANESE CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS IN NEW YORK, through Jan. 13. This is the first significant group show at Japan Society since Takashi Murakami's 2005 Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture. While it includes emerging artists like Misaki Kawai and Hiroshi Sunairi, the show carves out room for midcareer and long-established artists. Yayoi Kusama is not in the show, but her influence is especially palpable in a series of connected installations that make the most of Japan Society's dark, airless galleries, transforming them into hypnotically introspective environments. 333 East 47th Street, (212) 832-1155, japansociety.org. (Karen Rosenberg)
THE JEWISH MUSEUM: CAMILLE PISSARRO: IMPRESSIONS OF CITY AND COUNTRY, through Feb. 3. This exhibition contains few out-and-out masterpieces, but it does give us a rare look at the radical philosophies behind paintings that to a modern eye appear harmlessly bourgeois. For Pissarro, an anarchist and a Jew (albeit a secular one) in 19th-century France, Impressionism was about much more than the fleeting effects of light. It was about labor, the elimination of hierarchies and an idealized balance between urban and rural life. Pissarro emerges from this exhibition as an artist who never quite resolved the conflict between labor and sensation, but whose subtly anti-authoritarian stance propelled painting into the next century. 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92nd Street, (212) 423-3200, jewishmuseum.org. (Rosenberg)
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM AND OTHER MODERN WORKS: THE MURIEL KALLIS STEINBERG NEWMAN COLLECTION, through Feb. 3. One of the Met's most significant gifts of midcentury art, promised in 1980 and finalized last year, is taut and rich, reflective of a passionately discerning eye. Nearly everything is a standout, not just the rare de Kooning and the substantial Pollock, or works by Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Claes Oldenburg and Jules Olitski. Max Ernst's portrait of Gala Eluard; sculptures by Giacometti and Jacques Lipchitz; paintings by Alfred Leslie and Mark Tobey; and a collage by Anne Ryan radiate an almost brazen self-sufficiency. (212) 535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Smith)
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: THE AGE OF REMBRANDT: DUTCH PAINTING IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, through Jan. 6. The Met has long advertised itself as a grand art multiplex, a cluster of several separate world-class museums under a single roof. And we get a demonstration in this display of its entire 17th-century Dutch painting collection: 228 pictures, of which roughly a third are usually on view at any time, and some never. In addition to the Rembrandts, there are five Vermeers, nearly a dozen Frans Halses, and the list goes on in an inventory of breathtaking scope and depth. How to package it? The Met has come up with a theme, and a perfect one for our time: money. The work has been sorted not by artists names or dates, but by the names and dates of the collectors who bought and gave the paintings to the museum. This is the history of the Dutch Golden Age according to the American Gilded Age. (See above.) (Cotter)
★ METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: BRIDGING EAST AND WEST: THE CHINESE DIASPORA AND LIN YUTANG, through Feb. 10. Focused on a single modern family art collection, this show weaves like a DNA strand through the Met's Chinese painting galleries. The 40 examples of painting and calligraphy belonged to the writer and scholar Lin Yutang (1895-1976) and his descendants, who have divided their time between China and the West. Accumulated over years, the collection has the casual logic of a household photo album, with evidence of shared habits, tastes and temperaments, and of personal interchange between generations. (212) 535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Cotter)
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: DEPTH OF FIELD, through March 23. The Met's recently acquired large-scale photographs finally have some room to breathe in the new Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography, a high-ceilinged, gray-carpeted sanctuary on the second floor. Curators at MoMA need not worry: The inaugural installation (a sampler rather than a thematic slice) is dominated by white, mostly male Europeans and heavily weighted with references to history and landscape painting. Despite its limitations, Depth of Field is not a bad debut. We can also expect more from future installations, which will explore themes like photography about photography. (See above.) (Rosenberg)
★ THE MET: ETERNAL ANCESTORS: THE ART OF THE CENTRAL AFRICAN RELIQUARY, through March 2. Sure to be one of the sleepers of the fall art season, this beautiful show has a universal theme: life as a cosmic journey homeward, with parental spirits, embodied in charismatic materials and images, counseling and chiding us every step of the way. European, Asian and African reliquaries sit side by side in the first gallery; then some of the world's greatest Fang and Kota sculptures take over and sweep through to the end. (See above.) (Cotter)
Source: www.nytimes.com
Scientist Presents Case Against Possible Pollocks
Posted on December 29, 2007 - Filed Under Art, Culture, News | Leave a Comment
A forensic scientist said yesterday that a large group of paintings discovered several years ago and thought by some to be by Jackson Pollock included many containing paints and materials that were not available until after the artist's death in 1956.
At least one was painted on a board that was not produced earlier than the late 1970s or early 80s, said the scientist, James Martin, in a lecture last night sponsored by the International Foundation for Art Research in Manhattan.
Mr. Martin was commissioned to examine the paintings in 2005 by their owner, Alex Matter, the son of Herbert and Mercedes Matter, artists who were friends of Pollock's. Mr. Matter has said he found the paintings, made in Pollock's signature drip style, in 2002 or 2003 in a Long Island storage container that had belonged to his father.
Although Mr. Martin, who is based in Williamstown, Mass., completed the analysis last fall, he has said he did not release it earlier because Mr. Matter's lawyer told him he would face a lawsuit if he did so. It is unclear why he chose to go public now.
Mr. Matter's lawyer, Jeremy Epstein, has denied threatening Mr. Martin, but he has said that he did tell Mr. Martin he was not authorized to release the report because Mr. Matter, who has sold some of the paintings, did not feel it was complete.
The findings add to a growing body of evidence that the paintings 32 in all, including some ephemera and works on paper were made by someone other than Pollock or at least that many were substantially altered after the artist's death. Mr. Martin also examined materials in Pollock's studio on Long Island for evidence of paints similar to the suspect samples on the Matter paintings but found none.
Three of the 24 paintings that Mr. Martin examined were analyzed around the same time last year by the Harvard University Art Museums, which reported similar findings. Richard Newman, the head of scientific research at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has also examined the paintings and found that two of the nine he looked at contained a pigment first known to have been patented by Ciba-Geigy in 1983, a result also found by Mr. Martin.
Since their discovery was reported in 2005, the paintings have been the subject of an intense scientific and scholarly debate that has drawn attention to the growing role of technology in questions that were once the sole province of connoisseurs.
Ellen G. Landau, a professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and one of the world's most respected Pollock scholars, said in 2005 that she believed the works were authentic. She agreed to conduct scholarly research for an exhibition of the paintings that opened on Sept. 1 and continues through Dec. 9 at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College. (The show focuses largely on the personal and artistic relationship between Pollock and Herbert Matter, who was a photographer and graphic designer.)
But after Dr. Landau's role in supporting the works was announced in 2005, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, which had declined to enter into authentication disputes for almost a decade, became involved. It enlisted Eugene V. Thaw, a veteran art dealer, and Francis V. OConnor, an art historian and author of the four-volume catalogue raisonné, or complete listing, of Pollock's work.
Both scholars disagreed strongly with Dr. Landau, with whom they had previously served on a board that examined paintings to determine whether they were genuine Pollocks.
Dr. Landau said recently that she was no longer involved in research or debate regarding the paintings.
As the dispute was heating up, Mr. Matter quietly sold some of the works, although he had generally maintained in interviews that he was not interested in profiting from their discovery.
Some of the paintings are believed to have been sold to the SoHo gallery owner Ronald Feldman, who has declined to comment on the issue.
Source: www.nytimes.com
Book Review – The HDRI Handbook by Christian Bloch
Posted on December 26, 2007 - Filed Under Culture, Photo | Leave a Comment
High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of exposures; that is, the range of values between light and dark areas, than normal digital techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.
HDRI has been practiced for centuries by artists when rendering paintings that look realistic. Now digital artists are using HDRI to create virtual worlds that are just as compelling as the real world since the physics of light can be simulated in their full glory. Simply put, HDRI is a method to digitally capture, store, and edit the full luminosity range of a scene.
The HDRI Handbook is 344 pages long and is divided into seven chapters. There is a companion DVD that contains software, HDR Images, and bracketed exposures for you to work along with, tutorial files and other tools for working with HDRI.
Chapter 1, "The Background Story," begins with an in-depth discussion of the ideas and concepts behind HDRI. Here the author questions the basic concepts of digital and analog photography. You will learn about how little progress has been made in digital imaging until now, and how HDRI has the potential to push those boundaries further than ever before.
Chapter 2, "New Tools," presents the tools that are needed for producing HDR images. Here a comparison of the image formats and programs are discussed as well as how to put them together in a usable workflow.
Chapter 3, "Capturing HDR Images," gets in to the meat of HDRI. It is all about the capturing of the images. In this chapter you will learn both about the scientific as well as the easy way. You will also learn about some research labs and about the future of HDRI. According to the author, it is only a mater of time before HDRI is the standard and not the exception.
Chapter 4, "Tone Mapping," will introduce to you the automatic, as well as the creative method used to reduce the tonal range of an HDR image while preserving all of the details. It is here that you will learn to create superior prints from HDR. Adding their expertise in this chapter are authors Uwe Steinmüller and Dieter Bethke showing their personal workflow in practical tutorials.
Chapter 5, "HDR Image Processing," examines the new opportunities for image editing and compositing. There are a wide variety of workshops that can be recreated via the materials on the DVD. Here you will see how the pros work with HDRI to create more lifelike composites for film and television.
Chapter 6, "Shooting Panoramic HDR Images," shows techniques for creating panoramas. According to the author, this is the cornerstone of this book because this where the worlds of photography and computer graphics really come together. Both Bloch and Bernhard Vogal; noted as one of Vienna's finest panorama photographers, contribute to this chapter. They show several different ways of shooting panoramic HDR images.
Chapter 7, "Application in CGI," finishes up by describing how HDR images can be used in 3D rendering. The author breaks down how the algorithms work and how you can make them work for you. In step-by-step fashion you will learn how to create the ideal lighting setup. Then the author takes it further and presents a brand new lighting tool-kit that automates the most common HDRI setup.
The HDRI Handbook is truly an amazing source of information on creating HDR images. There is something for photographers, graphic designers, and artists of all types. It does a great job of describing the current state of HDRI as well as the potential for the future of the art.
The author, in detail, covers both the history and the science behind High Dynamic Range Imaging and does it in a methodical and detailed manner. He covers the software, shooting techniques and about everything else that is needed to make you more proficient at creating HDR images. If you are serious about photography, serious about creating a new vision in imaging then The HDRI Handbook is a must own.
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