Digital Photography Made Easy With Jim Battles Battles Photography

Digital Photography Made Easy …or so we think

Disclaimer: Although I use digital photography daily and am the one teaching this class…

Disclaimer: …I’m still learning too.

Digital vs. film lower costs after startup more efficient workflow no scan/sep costs instant gratification

Hardware Camera: professional vs. consumer controls MP rating

Hardware Camera: optical or digital zoom media

Hardware Computer: Lots of RAM Color calibration Data transfer interface

Software Image capture Image manipulation (Photoshop, etc.)

Image controls white balance color balance sharpen compression zoom (optical)

Image controls General rule of thumb: Don’t use most image control functions in-camera. Apply them afterward.

Remember: All rules of photography still apply!

Terms Capture: The act of taking a digital photograph

Terms CCD: Charge Couple Device, the image capture area in the camera

Terms Removable Media: Temporary storage of data in camera

Terms Formatting: The act of initializing or erasing images from removable media

Terms RGB: Red, Green, Blue The colors computers work with

Terms CMYK: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black, The colors printers work with

Terms Pixel: The basic building block of digital (bitmap) images

Terms Mega Pixel: Millions of pixels; total number of pixels captured by a camera

Terms File format: “Container” into which digital data is stored

Terms File formats: TIFF JPEG RAW (NEF, etc.)

Terms Resolution: Number or size of pixels in an image

You say you want a Resolution…

Did you know…. All digital photographs are actually black and white images

Example: 2 bit color

Term Bit: Binary digit; 0 or 1, Black or white

Example: greyscale

Term Greyscale: An image rendered in black, white and shades of grey

Example full color

2 bits, 4 bits, 8 bits, A dollar? No, a channel

Example another full color

Resolution Pixel depth/ bit depth: How many bits of information per pixel is captured

Resolution 2 bits x 2 bits x 2 bits = pixel depth of 8 bits

Greyscale An 8-bit greyscale image can render 256 different tones from black to white

Let’s do some math Red chanel=256 tones X Green chanel= 256 tones X Blue chanel= 256 tones =16,777,216 possible colors

Resolution Factors: pixel depth, image size and resolution (dpi) Affects file size

Resolution 8x ppi 1 bit (B&W)=3.6 MB 8 bits (greyscale)=28.8MB 24 bits (RGB)=86.4 MB 32 bits (CMYK)=115.2 MB

ATTENTION! The “powers that be” request that you pay specific attention to the following information

Resolution For commercial printing: dpi/lpi/ppi 300

300dpi: 1 MP = 3”x 3” 2 MP= 3”x 6” 3 MP= 5.6” x 5.6” 4 MP= 6” x 6” 5 MP= 7” x 7” 6 MP = 6” x 20” 16 MP= 13”x13”

Resolution Please note that screen resolution is 72 dpi

Image controls Many found in-camera are also found in image manipulation software

Image controls Save images unchanged: treat like negatives backup in case of error

Image controls White Balance: Camera setting to match the lighting conditions

Image controls Color balance: Image settings between cyan/red, magenta/green, yellow/blue

Image controls Sharpen vs USM (UnSharpMask)

Terms Artifacts: Nasty, little globs of high contrast goo from oversharpening

Terms Noise: Specks in image due to long exposure time or high ISO

Example noise

Terms Interpolation: Creating pixels from existing pixels lowers image quality

Image controls Histogram: Chart of greyscale values in an image

OK, lets do the rest in Photoshop Shut down this foul Microsoft application!