Digital darkroom is a catch-all term that describes a wide range of software used for postproduction processing of digital photographs. The two major uses of digital darkroom software are

The organization of digital darkroom software roughly corresponds to these two purposes. Some software is primarily based around organizing albums of digital photographs while providing some tools for retouching these photographs. In contrast, the primary purpose of more hardcore (and expensive) image manipulation software is to provide mechanisms for creating any imagery that your imagination can visualize, as well as retouching tools.

Table 7.1 provides a high-level comparison of some of the leading digital darkroom software products.

Software such as Google's Picasa (shown in figure 7.1) and Nikon's PictureProject (shown in figure 7.2) work by organizing the pictures on your computer into albums. Within each album you can select a photograph and then apply tools to fix minor problems.

Figure 7.1. Picasa searches your computer and creates albums from the images it finds.

Figure 7.2. PictureProject downloads and organizes photos from your digital camera (bundled with many Nikon cameras).

After you've selected a photograph in Picasa, you can fix and adjust the photo with the simple tools shown in figure 7.3 that

Photographs cataloged in PictureProject can be adjusted (as shown in figure 7.4) for

In addition, PictureProject can also rotate and crop images as well as fix red eye. It also has an Auto Enhance mode.

Table 7.2 shows what software packages are most suitable for certain tasks involving digital photographs.

Figure 7.3. Picasa provides easy-to-use tools that allow you adjust images.

Figure 7.4. PictureProject provides facilities for adjusting the photographs it has cataloged.

Photoshop Elements, and the fabulous Photoshop, are probably the most popular digital manipulation programs.

Photoshop Elements provides a Photo Browser, also called the Organizer window, to help organize your photographs into collections. You can also open photographs in the Photoshop Elements Editor window, shown in figure 7.5, for the purpose of retouching and manipulating your images after you've cataloged them using the Organizer (or you can open an image directly by choosing Open from the File menu).

You can easily start Photoshop by opening a single image. Photoshop is focused on manipulating and retouching single images — although, of course, you can have multiple images open in Photoshop at one time. You can also use the Photoshop File Browser to organize photos.

To open an image in Photoshop, choose File

If you are already viewing images in the File Browser, you can open an image just by clicking on the desired image. The RAW converter allows most attributes of an image to be corrected or changed depending upon the software used. Photoshop has abbreviated settings as shown. However, Nikon Capture and applications such as Bibble can control many aspects of each RAW image.

Figure 7.5. You can use the Photoshop Elements Editor to manipulate and retouch photographs.

With the image open for editing in Photoshop, you'll have an immense set of powerful image manipulation tools at your beck and call (figure 7.7).

Figure 7.6. You can adjust white balance and other settings for the RAW photographs that you open in Photoshop.

Figure 7.7. The Photoshop image-editing environment.

There are almost an infinite variety of postproduction filters you can apply to digital photographs using Photoshop or a similar program.

Adobe Photoshop is the premier software used for postproduction manipulation of digital photographs, but it is a relatively expensive software product and not the only game in town. A less-expensive option is Adobe Photoshop Elements. It provides mostof the photographic filters available in Photoshop. And products such as Corel's PhotoPaint also provide comparable photographic filters, although the filters are often named differently than the ones in Photoshop.

Before applying a filter to a digital photograph using an image manipulation program such as Photoshop, you should make sure you are not working on the original photographic file. In Photoshop, you can create a copy for working purposes by selecting Duplicate from the Image menu.

You can also choose to save the file in another format. For example, photographers often save JPEG files, which are lossy, as TIFF files, which are not.

Every photographer should know about filters that can be applied to digital photographs as part of the postproduction process. Some of the most useful filters in Photoshop are

Photoshop also provides a huge range of filters that are primarily intended for artistic (as opposed to photographic) effects. Only postproduction filters meant to enhance photographs while leaving them still looking like photographs are included here. In other words, no watercolor filters.

Photo filter

The Photoshop Photo filter, which actually consists of some 20 different color effects that can be applied to an image, works like an optical colored filter and applies a single color of your choosing to an image (see figure 7.8 for the original image and figure 7.9 for the image with the Photo Filter applied).

Figure 7.8. This image before any digital filters have been applied...

Figure 7.9. The same image after the Photoshop Photo filter has been applied (notice the color shift).

To access the Photo Filter dialog box, choose Image

Shadow/Highlight filter

The Shadow/Highlight filter lets you bring out detail in shadow areas that are underexposed (too dark). At the other end of the spectrum, the Shadow/Highlight filter also brings out details in overexposed (washed-out) areas of a digital photograph.

For example, the photograph shown in figure 7.10 is too dark in its background areas.

When the Shadow/Highlight filter is applied, the photograph appears properly exposed. Detail is brought out in the dark areas, without the light areas becoming overexposed (figure 7.11).

Figure 7.10. The background area of this photograph is underexposed.

To access the Shadow/Highlight filter in Photoshop, choose Image

In the Shadow/Highlight dialog box there are two sliders. One adjusts shadows and the other adjusts highlights. These sliders are very sensitive: Small increments and decrements make for big adjustments. So play with them to make sure you get what you want.

Ink Outlines filter

The Ink Outlines filter finds the edges of objects within the area you specify (the entire photograph or aselected area). In other words, the filter is looking for pixel differentiation between lights and darks. So the filter will work best with images that have high contrast (otherwise it has a hard time finding edges).

Figure 7.11. Applying the Shadow/Highlight filter brings out detail in the underexposed areas of this photo.

After the filter identifies the edges, it darkens the edge pixels, creating an outline effect.

Figure 7.12 shows a high-contrast image with the Ink Outlines filter applied to outline the edges in the image.

To apply the Ink Outlines filter in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, choose Filter

Figure 7.12. The Ink Outlines filter has been applied to emphasize the edges in this dried-up river bed.

Unsharp Mask filter

The peculiarly named Unsharp Mask filter is the best filter for sharpening digital photographs.

Note

In pre-digital darkroom terms, a mask is a copy of an original negative. To achieve the effect of apparentsharpening, the mask is sandwiched with the original negative. The pre-digital darkroom mask was called unsharp because it was slightly out of focus (or fuzzy). The benefit of applying an out-of-focus mask was thatit would build up the density, or apparent sharpness, of dark areas of the original image without showing up as an added element, and without impacting the light areas in the print.

The Unsharp Mask filter controls the amount of color difference between adjacent pixels, making digital photographs appear sharper.

To apply the Unsharp Mask filter, choose Filter

Note

In the Unsharp Mask dialog box, set the Radius to 1, the Threshold to 0, and play with the Amount percentage. I find that an Amount percentage setting between 130% and 200% usually works best.

Tip

You don't have to sharpen an entire photo. You can use the selection tools in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to select a specific area to sharpen.

As a general rule, avoid too much sharpening, as this will make your image look strange (unless, of course, this is what you're after).

Wind filter

The Wind filter helps make images dramatic by adding an amount of ersatz wind to the image. For example, figure 7.13 shows a beautiful flowering tree in the spring.

Using the Wind filter to apply motion to the background of the photo adds considerable drama (figure 7.14).

To apply Wind to a photograph, choose Filter

Liquify filter

The Liquify filter, as you'd probably suppose, is often used to add a watery effect — like that of waves in motion — to increase the drama of photographs of oceans, waterfalls, or lakes. But sometimes the Liquify filter is most fun when used to experiment on unlikely subjects, such as portraits or the fantastic jungle plant shown in figure 7.15.

To use the Liquify filter, choose Filter

Figure 7.13. A flowering tree on a fairly still day.

Figure 7.14. The flowering tree with the Wind filter selectively applied.

Figure 7.15. After the Liquify filter is applied, this jungle plant looks like something out of Little Shop of Horrors.

In the Photoshop Elements Editor and Photoshop CS2, select the Red Eye Removal tool from the Tools palette, and click on the eye; the red will be replaced.

In Photoshop CS, you can use the Color Replacement tool to correct red eye. Here's how:

In both Photoshop Elements and Photoshop, remove any dust and scratches by choosing Filter

In both programs, select the Healing Brush tool from the Tools palette and apply it to minor imperfections in your photographs such as discolorations.

Adjusting contrast, tone, and color

In the Photoshop Elements Editor, you can adjust contrast, tone, and color levels in one fell swoop by choosing Enhance

In Photoshop, you can make similar adjustments by choosing Image

Note

If you want to adjust tone by hand in Photoshop, choose Image

Working with shadows and highlights

With an image open in Photoshop Elements or Photoshop, you may want to adjust either the shadows or the highlights. Shadows are adjusted to bring out details that would otherwise be too dark, and highlights are adjusted if bright areas are too light for details to show up.

To adjust shadows and highlights in Photoshop Elements, choose Enhance

Use the sliders in the Shadows/Highlights dialog box to lighten shadows, darken highlights, and to adjust mid-tone contrast.

Tip

If the Preview box is checked, you can see the impact your changes make on your photo as you move the adjustment sliders.

Figure 7.16. Use the Shadow/Highlights filter to bring out details in shadows and highlights.

Composites

Photo collages and photo sandwiches, also called composites — putting together two or more images — have been possible since the very early days of chemical photography. These (and other) photo manipulation techniques have been notoriously used to rewrite history — for example, erasing purged soviet politicians from historical photos.

Image manipulation to rewrite history, for artistic effect, to improve photographs, or simply for fun is so much easier with digital photography and digital darkroom software.

For example, take the picture of rubber ducks in a bathtub shown in figure 7.17.

Figure 7.17. These rubber ducks are floating in a bathtub.

This photograph might really be fun if the ducks appeared to be sailing under a real cloudy sky. If you have a photograph of the sky in your library of digital images, it's easy to put it into the duck photograph in Photoshop using these steps:

1. With your image open, open the Layers palette and make sure the image is on a regular layer, not the Background layer. If the layer is contained in the Background layer, convert it by selecting Layer

   

2. Select the Magic Wand tool and select the background area. The Tolerance setting in the Options bar should be set pretty high; try a setting of 50 in order to select more of the background area. If you need to, use the other selection tools such as the Lasso or Rectangular Marquee tool, to finish selecting the background.

3. Press Delete on the keyboard or select Edit

   
   Clear to remove the selected background area. The area will now be transparent (shown in Photoshop by a checked background).

4. Open the image containing the sky.

5. Copy the sky image and paste it into the duck document. Using the Layers palette, drag the layer containing the sky image onto the image window containing the ducks. You will now have two layers in the duck document: the duck layer and the sky layer.

6. Make sure the duck layer is listed above the sky layer in the Layers palette. This puts the sky layer behind the duck layer in the stacking order. If the layers are not in the correct order, you can simply drag the duck layer up to position it above the sky layer.

7. With the sky layer selected in the Layers palette, use the Move tool to position the sky behind the ducks by clicking and dragging the area into position with the tool.

The result: a fun image of ducks on an ocean under a variable sky, shown in figure 7.18.

Figure 7.18. Now the ducks are adrift on a Photoshop sea.

Interview with a Photoshop Guru

Phyllis Davis is the coauthor ofPhotoshop CS For Dummies, and the author of Photoshop CS Timesaving Tips and Techniques For Dummies and many other fine books about image manipulation. She's a highly experienced and creative hand with Photoshop. (She also happens to be my spouse, an arrangement I recommend to every digital field photographer!)

Q: What are your favorite Photoshop tools for working with photographs?

PD: Just off the top of my head, the Healing Brush tool and the History Brush are Photoshop tools I use everyday with photographs. The Healing Brush is great for cleaning up dust and scratches and quickly getting rid of imperfections in a photograph. The History Brush is used in conjunction with the History palette. After manipulating a photo, you can use the History Brush to subtly (or not so subtly!) paint in an earlier version of itself.

Q: How can a photographer best learn Photoshop?

PD: It's best to learn by doing specific tasks. Photographers should develop a checklist of routines that they put every image through. To start with, these routines should include cleaning up any flaws in the image, adjusting levels, and finally sharpening it.

Once you've mastered these basics, you can go on to experiment and have fun. Remember: If you work on a duplicate, you don't ever have to worry about ruining an original photo.

Q:Is there a special way you should prepare your digital photographs if you know they will be post-processed in Photoshop?

PD: Photographers should shoot their digital images using RAW instead of (or in addition to) JPEG. You simply lose too much information with JPEG. You should pay very close attention to the details of your photograph, particularly the background in close-ups. It's much easier to clean up a background if it isn't full of extraneous details.

Digital photographs are graphics files. Two kinds of graphics files, JPEGs and GIFs, are widely viewable on the Web. The JPEG format is more suitable for photographs. JPEG files are normally saved with a .jpg file extension.

When you are preparing photographs for use on the Web — or for distribution as e-mail attachments — you should bear in mind that the larger the file size, the longer it will take for the photo to load in a browser or e-mail program. The actual load time depends on the speed of the Internet connection of the person loading your photograph. But you don't want to make anyone wait too long, so you need to keep your file sizes small, usually to 50K or less.

This process is the opposite of making a fine print from your photograph. Generally, the larger the file size, the better the print. But you simply can't have files that are too big downloading from the Web because they take time to load into a Web page.

To save a photograph for the Web, open the image in Photoshop Elements Editor or Photoshop and choose File

In the Save For Web dialog box, choose JPEG as the file type. Make sure the Constrain Proportions box is checked, and enter a width dimension in pixels appropriate in size for display on a Web page — say, 300 pixels wide. The constrain proportions option means that the height dimension automatically adjusts to the corresponding width without changing the ratio of the dimensions.

Figure 7.19. Use the Save For Web dialog box in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements to prepare photographs for display on the Web.

The size of the image and its approximate download time on a dial-up connection will now be displayed in the right-hand pane of the Save For Web dialog box, so that you can verify that the resulting file is small enough.

You can now move the Quality slider to change the resolution of the image. The higher the quality, the larger the file. As you move the slider, you can compare the original image (in the left-hand pane) with the image prepared for the Web (the right-hand pane).

When you are satisfied with your image's quality and size, click OK. You will next be prompted to provide a filename and location on your computer for the photograph you are saving for the Web.

There are many different issues involved in publishing photographs on the Web. If you are using a program like Dreamweaver or FrontPage to design and publish your Web pages, most of the details will be taken care of for you.

If you are managing your own Web site, then your Web host will likely provide a program for you to use to upload files to the Web server. If you prefer (and are using a Windows PC), you can use an FTP program such as WS_FTP from Ipswitch Software, shown in figure 7.20, to manage uploading your photographs to your Web server.

If you are manually coding the addition of a photograph to a Web page, such as a blog entry that you create yourself, you will need to use an HTML <img> tag to include the photograph. The src attribute of the <img> tag provides the location of the photograph.

For example, the HTML tag

<img src="http://www.digitalfieldguide.
com/images/boats.jpg" alt="Pt. Reyes tug
 boat">

includes the referenced photograph in the Movable Type blog shown in figure 7.21.

Figure 7.20. You can use an FTP program like WS_FTP to upload photographs to your Web server.

Figure 7.21. You can use HTML tags to include photographs in Web pages, such as the one shown by this blog.

Quite a few hosted blogging services provide an easy mechanism for including photographs in your blogs. You don't need to know any HTML to use them, and these services mostly are free (for basic service).

For example, Google's Blogger service allows easy posting of photographs to the blogs created by members. You can even post your digital photographs directly from Picasa: with a photograph selected in the tray, click the Blogger button. Besides Google's Blogger, you may want to check out these hosted blogging services that allow you to easily publish your digital photos:

Services that allow you to easily post and share photographs include

Tip

You can upload a photo directly to Kodak Gallery from Photoshop Elements on your Windows computer by choosing Share

Assuming you've saved your photograph for the Web, sending the photograph by attaching the JPEG file to an e-mail message is easy.

For example, in Outlook or Outlook Express, click Create Mail to compose a new e-mail message. In the New Message window, choose Insert

Next, from the Insert Attachment dialog box, locate and select the photographic file you want to attach to the e-mail. Click Attach to attach the file.

When you are through composing your new e-mail message, click Send. The photograph will be sent as an attachment. Depending upon how your recipient's e-mail program reads the e-mail, your photograph will either appear in the body of the e-mail, or will be marked as an attachment to be separately opened by the recipient.

Note

You can e-mail photographs directly out of Photoshop Elements by choosing Share

Arguably, it's less important to print photos than it used to be. Instead, they are attached to e-mail, published on the Web as part of a blog, or shared via a service such as Flickr.

That said, there's nothing like a photo print for immediacy. Somehow, having a picture of my beautiful wife in her wedding gown in a photo blog doesn't remind me of that special day — and my special wife — in the same way that a framed print does.

One fun way to share your digital photos is by creating a slide show. If you are used to creating business presentations in PowerPoint, you can easily create a slide show using PowerPoint software with your digital photographs. You can display this slide show the same way you would any other PowerPoint presentation.

Perhaps you are not interested in creating formal presentations based on your digital photographs. Windows XP provides a screen saver that automatically makes a show out of your digital photographs. You and your friends can sit in front of your computer monitor watching the slide show of your photographs — it's a lot more fun than working!

PowerPoint

To create a slide show using PowerPoint, follow these steps:

1. Open a new presentation.

2. Choose a blank content layout (this will be a blank page that a slide goes on).

3. Choose Insert

   
   Picture
   
   From File to add a digital picture that is saved on your hard drive to the slide show.

   Tip

   You can add effects — such as dissolves and fades — between slides in the show.

4. Choose Slide Show

   
   View Show once your show is created to view your creation.

You can also use PowerPoint's Photo Album feature to better organize the digital images that will go into your slide show. To create a Photo Album in PowerPoint and use the Photo Album to create a slide show of digital photos, choose Insert

Figure 7.22. You can use Photo Albums in PowerPoint to organize digital photographs into slide shows.

Windows XP

It's easy to set up Windows XP to display a screen saver using your digital photos. Follow these steps:

1. Right-click anywhere on your Windows XP desktop and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. The Display Properties dialog box appears.

2. Click the Screen Saver tab. The Screen Saver tab of the Display Properties window appears (shown in figure 7.23).

3. In the Screen Saver drop-down list, choose My Pictures Slideshow.

4. Click Settings. The Settings dialog box opens.

5. In the Settings dialog box, provide a folder location for the digital photos you want included in the slide show. The image files in the folder are used for the slide show.

6. Click OK. The dialog will close. The next time your computer is idle and the screen saver activates, your slide show will start.

Figure 7.23. You can use the Screen Saver tab to display a slide show as a screen saver.