Welcome to our Digital Photography Resource, a collection of articles designed to help you understand this new and exciting development in the world of photography.
Articles contained here are intended to present various digital photography concepts that you should be aware of. They are not intended to serve as answers to these often difficult topics but to present as many issues as possible. Concepts should be carefully considered as you build your overall understanding. Simple answers deny you this thought provoking process where real understanding and knowledge is the result. Therefore, they may even leave you with more questions than when you started. However, you will slowly add to your understanding in some small way and that is their intended purpose. If you understand the issues, you will then be in a position to find your own answers.
This month's Sony FD91 photos are of Cozumel, Mexico. The photo above shows the beauty of the western Caribbean waters as well as the utilitarian simplicity of the shoreline. No editing of the image was done. There is much beauty that every tourist will photograph, but there is much more of any place you visit that shows everyday life. Photographers can find challenge and the fun of the hobby of photography documenting the reality they find and that, in itself may be beauty.
At left, is a flower found near the site of the above picture. This cluster was at the edge of sunlight while the rest of the bush was in the shadow.
If you have any comments about them or would like to suggest a topic, please e-mail us at dtp@deluxacademy.com and we will include your comments and ideas in future revisions of this resource page.
The images contained on these pages were done with our Sony FD91 digital camera. In these articles we write about this camera using it as our own measure of digital camera technology. For good or bad, it's the one we have and is not meant as an endorsement of Sony's cameras or that you may conclude their cameras are better than other brands. All of the photographic illustrations used in this resource have been adjusted using Adobe Photoshop.
We hope that this resource will help you develop a concept of digital photography and, if you wish to pursue digital photography, we hope your decisions will be more productive with fewer financial or technical mistakes. You should be able to produce better digital pictures through an improved understanding of the process. After you have explored these articles, please visit the rest of our webzine, Virtual Graphic Artist.
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Depth of Field is the amount of distance (actually a range) that you subject is still in focus; it is expressed as a range from a certain minimum point close to the camera to a certain maximum point as distant from the camera. Everything in this range will be in focus and everything beyond or closer will be out of focus. In this article we explore the problems that are created with our poor range of focus, the result of a narrow depth of field. We will learn more about what it is, why we have it and what it means to our photography. Finally, we will explore some ideas of how to use it to our advantage to create interesting photographs. |
| Fine
Tuning Colors |
This is not a color correcting article for our objectives here is to explore some fun ideas and techniques for making changes to colors in your images without actually disrupting the overall balance as traditional color correcting tools like Curves would do. If you like, you may consider these techniques as pure fun where you can express your artistic creativity in a purely intuitive way. When working with this extremely versatile tool please use as much artistic discretion as possible! |
| Photoshop's Color Balance |
Color correcting is incredibly difficult to understand and do. The basic problem is that a combination of both technical expertise and scientific understanding of color is absolutely essential. But color correcting is also an art requiring you to critically evaluate the aesthetic results and determine when the picture is as perfect as possible. In this article we will concentrate more on the artistic rendering of colors. In this article we work with one of the less popular tools, Color Balance. |
| JPEG Compression |
One of the problems of digital photography is the ability to pack a lot of detail into our images. As a result, digital images have a tendency of being very big; so huge that they present a very serious problem with storing and managing them. JPEG is a compression method of making your files smaller but it does so by mathematically throwing away some of our image detail and introducing artifacts into our images. The trick to using JPEG is to determine just how much image loss you are willing to sacrifice to achieve smaller files. |
| Setting
Highlight & Shadow |
We look at procedures for controlling our tonal range, specifically setting the two ends of our scale, the Highlight and Shadow, of our picture using the Photoshop Levels dialog box. The objective of setting your highlight and shadow is to stretch out the density range as far as possible recalculating all midtone densities so that they will take advantage of as much of the entire density scale as possible. |
| Contrast Adjustment |
In this slow loading discussion on adjusting your digital pictures, we concentrate on contrast adjustment where we explore how to adjust the ratio of input to output densities to improve the look of the picture. How we make our adjustments affects the overall contrast of the picture. We can make it higher contrast or flatten the picture. It's all up to our objectives after deciding how we want the picture to look. |
| Buying
a Digital Camera |
This article is designed to help you understand some of the concepts of digital cameras and how they will influence your purchase. Please do not look for a recommendation, this article seeks to help you sort through the many issues that you must face when comparing and selecting a digital camera. Start with a list your digital photography objectives. |
| No longer do we have to be satisfied with what we see, suffering the disappointment knowing what we have for a print isn't that wonderful scene we saw in reality. In this article we explore the concepts of a number of useful and important computer adjustments. Since digital photographs are actually data files, our computer programs can manipulate this data in an infinite number of ways. Please be patient with this page, there's lots of illustrations. | |
| Retouching Oversharpened Edges |
On occasion, sharp contrast breaks within a picture are oversharpened showing a white line next to a black line. This is most noticeable when viewing the final picture. This article discusses the use of the rubber stamp tool to correct this type of flaw. |
| Your challenge as a digital photographer is to make a philosophical decision as to how you intend to adjust your digital pictures. How do you wish to represent colors? How do you plan to deal with the limitations of your camera and image capturing system? As technicians and artists we must be concerned about the accurate portrayal of colors for they are a part of the reality of the scene we are photographing. | |
| Histograms: Before & After Retouching |
In this article we look at before and after pictures relating their histograms to the actual images. The text contained between the two images describes some of the retouching done to the picture. We'll take a look at two pictures before and after retouching from the point of view of the histogram. |
| The purpose of this article is to share insight gained during the first 3 months of ownership and use of this camera. Pay attention to seemingly insignificant details that help define the experience of owning this digital camera. It is in this respect that your experience may be somewhat similar. Sharing this experience may help you understand life with a digital camera better. | |
| Components
of a Digital Photography System |
This article tells you what you might need for hardware and software to develop your very own digital photography system. Besides the camera, you may or may not need other hardware and software to support your camera. Much of the information can be used to help you select your camera. |
| The
Importance of the Histogram |
The Histogram is an entirely different way of viewing your digital picture. With it you can understand the technical aspects of your pictures. It is also possible to determine if the picture is usable or not. |
| What
Can You Do With the Pictures? |
Some practical uses for your digital photographs from collecting them in an album to printing them to web pages. |
| The
Concept of Continuous Tone |
Digital photographs are not continuous tone. But what constitutes continuous tone and do we really need it with digital? |
| Film
and Digital Cameras Compared |
Digital cameras are similar to traditional film cameras. And why not? Adapt the new technology to our existing lens and camera designs. But there are differences as well as similarities. |
| Comparing
Chemical and Digital Film |
They're both different yet they share the common function of holding the information that creates the image. Done in entirely different ways, there are advantages and disadvantages of each. |
| What
Are Photographic Images Made Of? |
Digital images are made of tiny particles called pixels. But conventional chemical images are also made of tiny particles called grain. The parallel is very close! |
| Throwing Resolution Away | Traditional chemical photography always had an excess of resolution. So much that we developed systems that intentionally threw excess resolution away. Not so with digital where low resolution has always been a serious problem. |
| How
Much Resolution Do We Really Need? |
Today, we seem to be obsessed with resolution. But you should first look at your intended output device to determine how much resolution you really need. |
