Basic Tech: Get To Know Your Metadata

Every photo captured with a digital camera has metadata attached to it. Metadata literally is “data about data.”

By The Editors

Every photo captured with a digital camera has metadata attached to it. Metadata literally is “data about data.” Digital photo metadata includes information about the image file and camera settings used at the time of capture. THE BENEFIT Reviewing your metadata is a great way to learn from your images. What worked, and what didn’t? What aperture... Read more

HDR Is The Question

You’re reading this article because you want to learn more about high-dynamic-range photography. Cool. HDR photography rocks.

Text & Photography By Rick Sammon

You’re reading this article because you want to learn more about high-dynamic-range photography. Cool. HDR photography rocks. But here’s something else that’s important to know about HDR photography: There’s a time and place for it. For example, check out this image. It’s a sunrise photograph that I took of the Two Mittens in Monument Valley,... Read more

Haute Shot

Seven Steps to transform a favorite photo into painterly art

Text & Photography By Peter Smolens

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The French Impressionists should be very pleased because photographers have been borrowing from them for years. At the turn of the last century, a style of painting now called Fauvism came about in France that used bold colors along with stark outlines. Quite controversial in its time, this style... Read more

Digital Graduated Filters

Back in the age of film, I carried several graduated neutral-density filters.

Text & Photography By Michael Frye

Back in the age of film, I carried several graduated neutral-density filters. They were both hard to pronounce and hard to use. First, I had to decide which one to pull out: one, two or three stops? Hard edge or soft? Then, after mounting one on the lens, I struggled to adjust it. The transition—the “graduated” part of the filter—could be almost... Read more

Awaken The Artist Within

The Beatles were wonderfully talented musicians and songwriters, creating original music that seems to never go out of style.

Text & Photography By Rick Sammon

The Beatles were wonderfully talented musicians and songwriters, creating original music that seems to never go out of style. On occasion, however, the Fab Four got a little help from their friends—friends who included music icons such as Eric Clapton and Billy Preston. Who knows, those friends may have inspired the song “With a Little Help from... Read more

Practical HDR

Sooner or later, a photographer will run into the brick wall of the limitations of the digital camera sensor.

Text and Photography By Rob Sheppard

Sooner or later, a photographer will run into the brick wall of the limitations of the digital camera sensor. Sensors today are very good, but they’re incapable of capturing the full range of tonality—from extreme shadow to bright highlights—that our eyes can see. While RAW capture provides greater flexibility in adjusting what’s captured, it’s... Read more

Pro Tips: Demystifying Image Resizing

Depending on how we want to use an image, we often need to create new copies at different resolutions.

By Adam Crawford

Depending on how we want to use an image, we often need to create new copies at different resolutions. You might be making your image smaller for use on the web or increasing the resolution to make a larger print. The technical term for this is “resampling.” Resampling is an advanced mathematical equation (algorithm), applied when you’re upsampling... Read more

Keep The Noise Down In Your Digital Images

Noise, the digital equivalent of film grain, can be a challenge to overcome.

By Rob Sheppard

After The same image after reducing noise with Nik Software Dfine 2.0. Plug-ins like Dfine can help reduce the appearance of noise without a critical loss of sharpness. Noise, the digital equivalent of film grain, can be a challenge to overcome. It appears as an irregular, sand-like texture that, if small, is essentially invisible; if large, it can... Read more

Photoshop Actions And Batch Processing

I frequently hear photographers talk about maximizing their time behind a camera and minimizing their time at the computer.

By William Sawalich

I frequently hear photographers talk about maximizing their time behind a camera and minimizing their time at the computer. It’s not the creative postproduction that these photographers want to avoid—it’s the digital drudgery that can consume so much of a one’s time. Tasks like file management and basic processing aren’t nearly... Read more

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