Adobe Photoshop CS3 includes a black & white feature that transforms the colored picture into pretty realistic infrared black and white image.
From the Menu Image -> Adjustments -> Black & White (or Alt+Ctrl+Shift+B). In the Black & White Tab select Infrared. Now you can decrease the RED channel even more (and increase the GREEN channel) if you want the greens to be closer to white. The image after this step does not yet look like a perfect infrared, but by adding more contrast to it (until the green becomes white), you get it right. The result is grainy due to the high contrast. You can uniform the grain by adding Filter -> Texture -> Grain, and then desaturate the image. Or, you can choose to remove the grain with Neat Image plug-in.

Original and final images:

Please digg this and stumble it.

Tags: infrared photography, photoshop infrared, photoshop black and white, infrared pictures

The Tips: Use a tripod, use the higher resolution and pay attention at the lighting in order to make this trick as real as possible.
Even if this video is about cloning a person, the clone tool (combined with the healing tool) is very useful to photographers for more down-to-earth problems such as removing unwanted objects that interfere with the composition and subject of the photo. About this, some other time. Enjoy the movie.

Tags: photoshop tutorial, clone tool, photography tricks

PicMe service (created by Raizlabs Corporation) is another way of sharing up to 200 photos free or 5000 photos at a prize of 9.95/year or 15000 for 29.95USD/Year.
Besides of working with Flickr, Facebook and more, PicMe is the first of its kind to integrate photo sharing with a rich and interactive 3-D desktop experience.

Tags: picme, photo sharing, free photo sharing

If you want to show your pictures to the world, you could update them into photography community such as deviantart.com or flickr.com. But, if what you want is a stronger personality and the chance to customize your on-line photo gallery, read forward about the VisualServer for Artists (an on-line, fee-based website hosting and content management service).

VisualServer allows you to create your own website, in your style (color scheme and decorations, picture borders, text format, links style): you can choose from the templates without paying a designer (however, a new custom design can be created if you wish) and you won’t need a programmer either. A fact is that VisualServer is thought to keep the viewer’s attention on the work instead of an elaborate design. The Image Manager will allow you to create multiple categories, subcategories, and portfolios, drag portfolios from category to category, change the order of, portfolios within categories, drag images within a portfolio or between portfolios, edit image information and labels, put images into a recycle bin.

The site structure will contain a portfolio page (divided into categories if you want: macro, portraits, landscape, visited places… and anything else you want) with your uploaded photos (which you can change any time). This page will have thumbs of the photos and the current viewed image at a size of around 800×600 (this is important to the usability of the site: the user must see the entire image on the screen without scrooling).

Other pages suggested to build with this service are: a homepage (entrance), biography, and contact. Extend the number of pages to your needs with no difficulty (for example: a page containing a list of exhibitions, a page with links to other artists).
For existing websites, VisualServer service may be integrated as your website content manager.

As examples of the use of VisualServer, check the following websites:
http://www.jowhaley.com
http://brianedwards.visualserver.com/
http://williamscharf.com/

To purchese VisualServer Standard Package (150 images – Image/Portfolio Hit Stats $30 monthly or $300 annually), or see other Packages and prices, go to their homepage.

Tags: online portfolio, visualserver, photographers portfolio, photography portfolio, personal image gallery, professional image gallery

There are many programs that stitch together more photos to obtain a panoramic picture, but from all those, I use Photostitch that came with my Canon digicam.
The Photostitch Launcher offers the possibility to merge the images or to view and print merged images. The Viewer program impressed me with the 360 panoramas: it goes round and round with no break between the beginning and the end.

Step 1: Selection and Arrangement
After opening the images with the merging software, the next thing to be done is to arrange: horizontal, vertical, matrix or 360 degrees. This is critical to the way the software will treat the images in the merging process. You can also switch the position of the images (normally the number given by the camera is considered), rotate and clear one or more images.

Step 2: The Merging Process
If you made the panorama with or without tripod, the merging program has 3 methods of binding from which you can choose: Panning (the most used one – landscape scenery), Parallel Camera Movement (use this if you arranged in matrix at the previous step) or Images Scanned in Sections (I use this with my scanner more than with the camera).
If none of the above satisfies you enough, press on “Display Seams” and then click on the merging are you want to change. Now you can manually put one image above the other and set the blending points.

Step 3: Adjusting final Image
Before actually saving the image, the software indicates you the right cropping that fit the resulting photo. You must have noticed by now that, in the process, the images have been distorted differently. However, it that cropping does not please you, you can easily change it by resizing the green frame. In the adjust image submenu, there is an option called wide. Try it if your original panorama looks distorted (for example if you shot a long building from a side – one end of it is close to you, the other is far).
Finally, save the image and you will be prompted for the viewer to see it fitting in the screen or at full size.

Tags: Photostitch, panoramic pictures, panorama, merging images, canon photostitch, panoramic view

Most of the photo editing Software have a function called “Invert” or “Invert Colors”. This function, sometimes combined with the chage of “Hue”, gives the image irrealistic colors. By inversion of colors, all dark colors become lighten and all light colors become darker; warm colors become cold colors and vice-versa. The green usualy becomes magenta. The so called “alien environment” is also based on the greens and blues.

Tags: psychedelic art, alien colors, invert colors

Sometimes it’s really amazing how a bad picture can turn into an “ok picture” by following the steps bellow. But don’t really expect miracles, because what really makes a picture outstanding is the subject and the creative idea it transmits. First let’s look at some examples and after that I will show you the steps.

For the first one I used all steps except 2, 7 and 10.

The second one uses all steps except 2 and 3.

The last one uses all of them except 3 and 10.

Step 1: Cropping and Rotating
This corrects the composition. Concentrate on the subject by “getting” it closer and take some rules under consideration. In my opinion rotating is rarely used if you keep the camera in the right position. However, sometimes my camera fails to rotate the vertical images after shooting so I have to do it manually.
Step 2: Eliminating Objects
Some undesired little objects that could not be avoided during shooting can be erased by using clone and healing tools in Photoshop. The classic situation is represented by electricity and phone wires.
Step 3: Lighten the shadows
This will reveal details. To do so, in Photoshop you will need a different layer, or, in newer Lightroom version, there is a function that will do so for you. Picasa comes with “Fill Light” feature. If you got a Nikon camera, then you probably also have the Capture NX software which also helps improve the already in-camera D-Lighting.
Step 4: Curves
This will mainly adjust the contrast and brightness. The “S” shape is good for improvements; details with example here.
Step 5: Levels
Levels and Curves most likely go hand-in-hand, sometimes just one of them is enough. However, levels also affect color tones and therefore very useful in many situations.
Step 6: Hue/Saturation
Most pictures won’t need this. Note that aesthetic pictures are those with natural colors, so don’t just pull the saturation over the limits. I rather recommend color control via Selective Color.
Step 7: Black and White Conversion
This is definitely optionally; some details here. Usually, the pictures that look good in BW are classic portraits, pictures of old stuff, pictures that concentrate more on a powerful concept and shapes rather than colorful nature, but I really think there are no rules for this.
Step 8: Sharpness
Sharper pictures usually look better than very smooth ones, revealing more details of the shapes forms. For this I usually use “unsharp mask” in Photoshop, and, if the picture is way too soft, overall sharpness.
Step 9: Noise Reduction
Not just after shooting at high ISO, but also after the sharpness adjustment, the picture will likely become noisy. NeatImage is the freeware software I recommend for this job. Some people just simply like grainy pictures, but then I recommend adding some uniform grain not the sharpness noise which is not uniform.
Step 10: Blurring the Background
Compact digital cameras, even if they do have manual settings or shutter priority, still don’t handle DOF very good. In this case you can pop up the main subject by blurring the background. You can just blur just a few areas with the brush, or, create a different layer to handle things more accurate around the subject. However, it’s not (and never will be) the same thing as real DOF from dSLR’s.
Step 11: Adding a Border
Usually a simple one (white or black) is the best choice, but for details about this check part1 and part2 of the borders tutorial.
Step 12: Adding a Signature
It’s not a must, but picture fraud over the internet is very high our days, so why not having your name on your work?
Step 13: Resizing
Unless you were preparing a picture for printing, smaller images are better for the web because they load faster. I recommend doing this as a last step, otherwise too many details (pixels) will be lost. More than that, try these settings at the resizing in Photoshop: to maintain original sharpness when scaling down, click on Resample Image and choose Bicubic and 70% JPEG quality.

Tags: tips, photo tricks, photo tutorial, photoshop

Before Easter I promised I’ll show you how to easily make a photo slideshow with music and effects.
Flash Slide Show Maker has very intuitive (and large) buttons; therefore, you can create a slideshow like the one above in very easy and fast way.
Here’s a sample slideshow you should first see. All pictures are done in the same day on rocky cliffs. As you may observe, the names of the pictures are given by the color of the plants, so the slideshow’s name is “Macro Colors”.

On a new project, you first add the photos: these will be shown in the slideshow in the same order you add them. If you want them in a different order, you just drag and drop the pictures. If you decide later that you want one (or more) pictures added, you can do so and then place them at the right place by drag and dropping. There is also a rotate option available, but no brightness, contrast, sharpness or other effects, so the images you use in the slideshow should be finalized in other photo adjustment software.

The next thing the program shows is a window with the slideshow options: here you determine the size and frame rate of the movie, on one side, and on the other side, the picture translation and the time the picture stays on the screen, as well as a background color. The interesting part is choosing a theme (57 choices available, including holidays scenes) and a dynamic “decoration” that will be played over the photos during the show. These are: camera, circle, hearts, line, jumping line, snow dropping, arrow bar, dropping leaves, gifts. Last, but not the last, add a piece of music from your hard drive or cd.

On the bottom, at the left, there is an “Advanced” button that I recommend pressing before going on. I do so because here I can set up that the slideshow will only start at the users click and will stop playing after one loop. I believe it is better so.

The last 3 steps are the simplest ones: just some saving options which for me work well as default. Then, once you press Exit, the program will ask you to save your work as a project file in case you will want to change some options about the slideshow later on.
That’s all folks!

Tags: photo slideshow, Flash Slide Show Maker, flash, slideshow maker, slideshow

In Black & White Photography, the shapes, the structures and the contrast gain importance.
You can shoot directly in BW on most of the digital cameras, and some of them (Canon EOS) even come with some software filters to control the contrast (red, orange, yellow). The disadvantage of shooting BW is that you can not have that picture in colors if you change your mind and in most cases you can’t apply color filters before BW conversion.
By shooting in RAW mode you will obtain a lively BW Photography. Why? Because raw format offers more detailed grey tonalities. Some RAW converters have the BW option incorporated.

For TIFF and JPEG there are many possibilities to convert in BW. The chosen method depends on the desire to influence the grey tonalities during the conversion.

Method 1 – Desaturate !

The simplest solution is the “Desaturate” option in Photoshop, in the “Image”->”Adjustments” menu. This way, there is a high probability that some information of the image will be lost.

Method 2 – Saturate to -100 !

The second choice in Photoshop is to reduce the saturation to -100 (same Image -> Adjustments menu).

Method 3 – Change Image Mode !

The third method in Photoshop is to transform the RGB mode to Grayscale (or Duotone in case you want some color tint). By confirming “Discard Color Information”, the image is reduced to BW. Same thing would be this: the mode “Multichannel” with Grayscale activated contains all the BW information.

The “Secret Method” – Use this BW Conversion Plugin !

A more complicated but far more flexible and with better results, it’s the conversion using a Photoshop Plug-in. There are many out there on the internet, but I like B/W Conversion from Photo-Plugins because it provides all kind of filters in different tonalities. More than that, it offers full control over each color channel and gamma, as well as some preset configurations: Linear, Photoshop, Agfa, Kodak. It even provides a very good grain function (some photographers enjoy BW with some grain). After the conversion and before applying the changes, the plug-in offers a tone option. This will give sepia, bluish or whatever color tone you wish to the picture, more or less visible.
Note: All your Photoshop plug-ins are under the Filter Menu.

The following example shows how I first applied a red filter, and after the conversion, with some contrast/brightness adjustment, the initial red color will appear as white.

After the conversion, it’s a good idea to give the picture more contrast, but be careful not to burn the image. Keep a good balance between the details and the contrast: the bigger the contrast, the less details in the image; and if there is too little contrast, the less impressive the image.

Other photo editing software have similar solutions (another good example is Picasa where the BW conversion is extremely simple: just press a button that offers a BW preview).

Tags: black and white, black and white photography, B&W, B&W photography, BW, BW photography, black&white photography, BW conversion, B&W conversion, black and white conversion, photoshop tips

Shooting against the light has always been a tricky thing in photography: if you choose to set a longer exposure or just to increase the exposure compensation in order to have plenty of light over the near subject, the background will appear burned (overexposed). The other way around, if you choose the right exposure for the background (the usual auto or program mode will do that), then your subject will appear too dark (underexposed).

The solutions I will present depends on the situation in which you will find yourself. Let’s look at them.

Solution 1 – Use Flash Even in a Sunny Day

If you are close enough to your subject, like for instance in portrait photography, using the flash even if it is a very sunny day will fix the problem in a very simple and effective way.

Solution 2 – D-light Function

But what if your subject is too far away (like far buildings) and you can’t or just don’t want to try a different angle with the sun behind you? Or what if it is night and a lamp illuminates the place? Will you be pleased with the overexposed lamp due to the long exposure needed in night conditions? Some new cameras (HP Photosmart R727, R827, R927, Nikon D80, Nikon Coolpix S50 and S50c, S200, S500, P5000, the Nikon L series, ) come with a function called D-Lighting (or adaptive lighting). This function will solve the problem automatically.

Solution 3 – Photoshop Manipulation

But what if your camera does not have this function? The salvation in this case is a Photoshop manipulation.
When shooting, make several frames with different exposures. In my example (with Canon PowerShot A520), the dark photo was made with: aperture F 3.2, exposure time 0.100 sec; and the light one with: aperture F 3.2, exposure time 0.400 sec. It’s much recommended to have a tripod and take the pictures using it because of 2 reasons: a brighter picture may require a longer exposure time (if you don’t want to deal with a lot of noise you will prefer a longer time instead of higher ISO and aperture) so you need to avoid camera shake (no matter how steady your hands are, night condition will always require a tripod), and the second reason: the frames should be taken from the same angle and viewpoint. Unfortunately, at the time I shot the images in this example, I did not have a tripod so the bright image is blured due to camera shake, but I somehow managed to take quite similar frames.
In a Photoshop document, place the 2 frames as different layers in such way that the darker one will be under the lighter one.
Choose the eraser with a size bigger than the lamp (or whatever your overexposed object is), low hardness and low opacity as shown in the figure. This will softly erase the area around the lamp in the lighter frame revealing the darker frame behind in such way that the 2 images will come together graduated, not suddenly. But the inner portion of the lamp from the darker image is not yet fully revealed. Change the eraser option like this: smaller size to fit only the interior of the lamp, full 100% opacity and 100% hardness.

Once you erase the red marked area, you will notice that even if the pictures come together softly, the colors are not the same. You can adjust the gradient by moving onto the dark image layer, in the menu “Image” -> “Adjustments” select Selective Color. Play around with the “neutrals” until you are satisfied with the color gradient around the lamp. When all this is done, go to the menu “Layer” and select “Merge Visible” (or press Shift + Ctrl+E). This step will merge the 2 images and now, if you are still not satisfied with this result, you can play around with blur tool and healing brush before saving the final image.

If you are interested in digital cameras with D-light function check them on Amazon. They are quite amazing and useful.

- HP PhotoSmart R727
– HP Photosmart R827
– HP Photosmart R927
– Nikon D80 Kit
– Nikon Coolpix with Vibration Reduction Zoom
– Nikon Coolpix S50c 7 is Wifi Capable
– Nikon Coolpix S200
– Nikon Coolpix S500, Vibration Reduction Zoom
– Nikon Coolpix P5000, Vibration Reduction Zoom
– Nikon Coolpix from 74$

When you go out shooting, be sure to take one of your Izod shirts, my favorite brand.

Tags: D-Lighting, Adaptative Lighting, Photoshop, Exposure Correction, Shooting Against the Light