1. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I x Lab Work: Photoshop (filter) processing Basic processing, spotting, & retouching – 39 slides Copyright 2003 Kenji Tachibana

2. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Photoshop processing Photoshop: ‘Dry’ Lab Photoshop is the digital age ‘darkroom’ where deficiencies of the medium is massaged to yield the photographer’s desired story and snap (presence).

3. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Photoshop processing Photoshop: Bad thinking Bad attitudes and bad habits are ‘Self’ killers and very difficult boulders to move out of your way. So, don’t even go there… Avoid the bad habit thinking ‘I’ll fix it in Photoshop’.

4. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Photoshop processing Lab Work: Very time consuming No way to get around it, image processing is a very time consuming process. Even in the digital darkroom, it’s still not about ‘just’ pushing buttons. You still need to know what you want to say at the end of the lab work process. Then, you use the lab work process to make it happen.

5. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Photoshop processing Lab Work: Not about right or wrong way Because Photoshop is a powerful computer software, there are always many ways to get-to-the-same solution. Remember the mantra of ‘keeping it simple’. Limit your step 2 basic processing to: 1.Levels adjustment 2.Brightness/Contrast adjustment 3.Color adjustment

6. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Photoshop processing Lab Work: Starting point – cropping Assignment image shape is 4:3 ratio. Cropping might be for shape or ‘fine-tune-framing’. Since I encourage shooting with a 10% ‘safety margin’, I also allow for lab work cropping up to 10%. Cropping any more than 10% on a compact digital image would be considered a framing-error. After paying extra to get the most mega pixels, why throw away pixels by excessive cropping.

7. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Photoshop processing Cropping: Fill the frame It’s very important to ‘fill-the-frame’ with the subject. Trying to capture any part of the real-world on to a tiny sensor chip the size of your thumbnail is asking a lot. Even with the best technique, it doesn’t take that much magnification or enlargement with the compact digital image to start falling apart into grain, noise, poor saturation, and bad color.

8. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Photoshop processing Three Sins: Sin 1 – Thinking that ‘I’ll fix it in Photoshop’. Sin 2 – Thinking that ‘I’ll crop it right in Photoshop’. Sin 3 – Thinking that I don’t care if people understand my art.

9. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Photoshop processing Back to Processing: Overview Some amazing tricks were devised in the ‘wet’ dark room days to help make the image pop-off-the-page. Most of the tricks had to do with controlling dynamic range, contrast, and separation. These kind of controls were applied to the whole and to localized parts of an image. Image manipulation features built into the current version of Photoshop makes darkroom work dry, easier, and faster. But, as always, you need to know both what you want and what is possible.

10. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Photoshop processing Processing: Photoshop’s special digital powers 1.Layers – non-destructive ‘filter’ controls Layers control – 100 to 0% transparencyLayers control – 100 to 0% transparency Layer control – whole and partial maskLayer control – whole and partial mask Layer mask control - 100 to 0% effectLayer mask control - 100 to 0% effect 2.Selection Fee hand, polygon point selection, marquee, and magic wandFee hand, polygon point selection, marquee, and magic wand Selection feathering (edge softness)Selection feathering (edge softness) Use the Tool Option to customize the Selection tool.Use the Tool Option to customize the Selection tool.

11. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Photoshop processing Basic Lab Work: Only 3 adjustments Step 1 – Apply Levels adjustment first. Step 2 – Apply Brightness/Contrast adjustment next. Step 3 – Apply Color Balance adjustment usually last If the color is weird, do the Color Balance correction first. Then do the Levels and …

12. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Photoshop processing All Under One: Menu choice 1. Menu choice… 2. Next select… Step 1 - Step 2 - Step 3 - Fly out

13. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Photoshop processing Step 1: Levels adjustment dialogue box  Start with the simplest solution, press the Auto button. It works well for most images.  Make sure that the Preview is Checked.  If the ‘improvement’ goes overboard, press OK anyway. And lower the Opacity to a desired percentage from 100 down to 0%.  Finally, don’t try to make it perfect with only this step 1 adjustment. This will take practice to fully appreciate…

14. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Photoshop processing Step 2: Brightness/Contrast dialogue box  Brighten dark image by making a +3 to +12 adjustment. I just use the slider but you can also Type in exact number as shown…  Darken light image by making a -3 to -12 adjustment.  Again, make sure that the Preview is checked. And you may need to make adjustments beyond 12 but consider that move going beyond the usual change.  With this adjustment, both the brightness and contrast should be exactly what you need to tell your story.

15. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Photoshop processing Step 3: Color balance dialogue box  Colors are as labeled. If you move the slider towards Red, the image becomes redder.  Be sure to reference white, gray, or skin tone when making color changes. And color changes are easiest to see in a true gray. Usually Auto-Levels takes care of the color issue. But you might want the skin tone to be warmer or the natural scene to be cooler…

16. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example My Camera Original: This is a Pentax Optio MX4 camera original which was shot in Kyoto Japan. It’s a close representation of what I saw but it’s not what I experienced… I only shoot images which strikes me as having a special visual energy and what you see now is not it yet...

17. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example Auto Levels: Closer I used the simplest adjust- ment which was Auto. Compare this Auto adjusted image with the previous ‘camera original’ by using the keyboard Up and Down arrow keys. Notice that it gains in Contrast and becomes cooler in color, which reflect more of the original overcast lighting.

18. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example Brightness/Contrast: Brightness was decreased (made darker) for mood. And the Contrast was increased for ‘presence’. This change is more dramatic. Flip-compare this image with the previous 2 images using the keyboard Up and Down arrow keys to see the ‘evolution’…

19. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example Color Correction: I actually like the warmer shift on the camera original. I used the Color adjustment to shift the color slightly back to warm. The cooler image is more accurate but the warmer image fits my story.

20. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example Digital Processing Magic: Filter adjustment All the changes that you saw were ‘filter’ affects. The camera original is still unchanged. All the image correction were made as ‘filter’ changes. This is the amazing magical power behind digital image processing.

21. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example Digital Magic: Non-destructive adjustment A very important aspect of filter adjustment is that they are non-destructive. It means that the original image remains ‘untouched’. This capability was unavailable before Photoshop version 7. It’s now at version 10 with the product name CS3, which stands for Creative Suite 3. It’s also the result of having much more powerful computers and operating systems.

22. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example Beyond the Basics: Introduction 1.Spotting – eliminate light and dark spots in an image. 2.Dodging – lighten local area(s) for detail. 3.Burning – darken local area(s) for depth. 4.Retouching – image alteration as needed.

23. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example Localized Changes: The top and right corner was burned-down (darken) to increase the illusion of depth. Darken here... here… and Darken here... here… and here too. You may need to squint-view in order to see the difference between the left and right advance retouched image.

24. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example This is my “Lotus” story (a visual poem)

25. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example Advanced Retouching: This image is suffering from an extremely high dynamic range (HDR). And the horizon is also bowed due to the use of a wide angle lens. Barrel distortion is common to wide angle setting on the zoom lens for most digital cameras zoom lenses.

26. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example Facts and Decisions: Metadata Shutter:1/1000 sec – extremely fast shutter speed was needed to counteract my body which shivering due to the cold and wind. I wasn’t prepared for below freezing temperature and gusting high winds. Aperture:f/4.0 – Smaller f/5.6 would have been better for achieving deeper DOF but I opened-up by 1/stop to increase the shutter speed from 1/500 to 1/1000. Lens:6mm – I accepted the distorted horizon line to get the field-of-view to capture the story.

27. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example Facts and Decisions: Metadata WB:Daylight – set to match the lighting condition. Bias:“0” – my usual practice would have been to under expose to retain high- light detail. I allowed the highlight to get blown out because I wanted to capture the green glow in the wave. Contrast:Hard – I used this counter intuitive special on-camera adjustment based on bringing out the wave-green detail.

28. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example Before: Optical barrel distortion blown out highlight

29. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example After:

30. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example High Dynamic Range: HDR HDR issues commonly afflict images lit by direct sunlight. The extreme contrast (dynamic) range causes the image to lose both highlight and shadow detail. I skewed the exposure to lose more highlight detail. The usual technique of dealing with HDR is to under expose to retain the highlight detail and bring up the shadow detail in Photoshop. Demo ‘Image > Adjustment > Shadow/Highlight…’.

31. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Lab Work: Processing example HD: In camera solutions Many current DSLR and compact digitals often have built-in camera hardware or software solutions to deal with high contrast range lighting situations. Usually, the in-camera solution is better than fixing it afterward in Photoshop. Although some compact digital HDR solutions sounds great in theory. But, many may prove impractical or hard to use in practice.

32. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Change Inevitable: Change I started my digital photography career using Nikon Coolpix prosumer compact digitals. Their ED (better) glass lens offered amazing resolution. And the zoom lens had an excellent 4X range covering the 28 to 118mm 35mm equivalent range. It also offered magical RAW image file option.

33. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Change Living Process: I happily went through several generations of Coolpix cameras. Until I finally got tricked into moving up to the 5400, that turned out not to have the RAW capability. I along with many other photographers were surprised and angry. We complained and Nikon responded with ‘3 months’ for a firmware upgrade. It actually took 12 months and, by then, the 5400 was out-of-production. Good digitals offer the ability to upgrade software (firmware).

34. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Change Marketing Facts: Canon and Nikon both made a marketing decision to drop the RAW capability from their prosumer compact digitals to avoid competing with their DSLR cameras. DSLR cameras offer them higher profit margins than the compact digitals. And the prosumer compact digital with the RAW capability offered too much image quality competition. Especially for their low-end DSLR with their marginal image quality kit lenses. Facing those facts, I started looking for other compact digital solutions.

35. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Change Beyond Brand Loyalty: As a pro, I developed brand loyalty to Nikon for practical reasons. Once retired, I no longer had the same requirements. I accidentally found the Pentax Optio MX3 with a real 10x zoom lens at Bartell. I actually bought the 4 mega pixel MX4 which is the camera I used to take the ‘Lotus’ picture in Japan. I found the 4 mega pixel image to be less than my image quality needs. So I moved on to the 5 mega pixel Sony H1, which had a 12X zoom. The image quality was good but I still missed having the RAW capability.

36. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Change Finally RAW: Off brand Panasonic My latest super-zoom is the Panasonic’s DMC-FZ18. It covers an amazing 18x optical zoom range from 28 – 504mm (35mm equivalent). Superior Leica lens design keeps the wide aperture range at f/2.8 to f/4.2. This amazing camera with the RAW capability is available because they are the new guys to digital camera market place. It’s there way of competing and it worked with me…

37. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Change Panasonic: Brand reservation The current flock of compact digital pixel count is over the top. The over crowded sensor chip produces images that are too noisy (grainy). Combating that noise is a huge challenge to all the camera makers. Unfortunately, Panasonic’s firmware processing is too aggressive. It eliminates digital noise by electronic image smoothing, which results in the loss of fine image detail. So, except for the FZ-18 with the RAW capability, I don’t recommend Panasonics.

38. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Change Panasonic FZ-18: Superior features The RAW, 18X zoom range, contrast control, and superior white balance control and fine tuning makes Panasonic DMC-FZ18 far superior to the Canon S5is as a still digital camera. Although S5’s video capability is far superior to the FZ18. So, your needs will determine which digital works better for your needs.

39. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Change Your Needs: Sports or action pictures Casio is another new kid on the block. Even in watches, they aren’t known for being superior. But they have strong reputation as being reliable and affordable. According to my reading, their new super-zoon Exlim Pro EX-F1 is a serious contender for photographers interested in shooting fast action. Their secret ingredient is their sensor chip size. They wisely kept it to a low 6 MP. This allows the camera to shoot an amazing 60 frames per second!

40. Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I x End