| digital photography software | >about-krc |
| Keith R. Carver, 10-17-2004 | |
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With film photography and processing at the corner drug store, what you shot is what you got. And usually, most of the prints that come back aren't quite what you really wanted. The image isn't framed right, the color balance may be out of whack, the subject is over- or under-exposed, etc. So you accept a few keepers and maybe a few so-so photos, and throw away the rest. Or worse yet, don't throw away the rest. One of the great advantages of digital photography is that what you shoot is only a starting point for what you finally get, and that with image processing you can produce a spectacular final photo image, make a beautiful color print or share with others by publishing a gallery of your very best on the world wide web. The gold standard of professional image editing software is Adobe Photoshop, which allows you to quickly browse through your images, select images for processing (cropping, exposure and tonal corrections, color balancing, etc.) and manipulation (filtering out unwanted image artifacts, red-eye correction, erasing the lamp post that sticks out of your wife's head, etc.). Photoshop can do much more than that and is a very powerful tool for enhancing your images. It is available for both Mac and Windows platforms. In its current Photoshop CS professional version, it retails for about $570 street. If that price takes your breath away, Adobe Photoshop Elements offers most of the great features of the full professional version, certainly enough for most digital photographers. Version 3 retails for about $50 (after rebate) and is available for both Mac and Windows. There are many other image editing software packages out there for both Mac and Windows OS, some for free. One that I particularly like for the Mac (OS 10) is the shareware program GraphicConverter X , which has plenty of useful features including some not included in Photoshop. If you buy a Mac, Graphic Converter comes bundled with the software. Popular alternative image editing software programs for Windows machines include Ulead PhotoImpact and JASC Paint Shop Pro.
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After you've stored thousands or tens of thousands of digital photos on your hard disk, with interesting names like IMG_4378.jpg, how do you find that great picture you took of your visiting French friends Pierre and Mimi out in the kayak? You need an image management and cataloguing program, something like iPhoto or iView Media Pro (both for the Mac) or for Windows, ACDSee or Extensis Portfolio 7. You can also use the Photoshop Browser, but it has more limited capabilities when compared to these specialized image cataloguing programs. I use both iPhoto and the more powerful iView program. Apple's iPhoto has much limited capability for adding keywords and subject place/date, but it has some powerful advantages: you can easily email your photo(s), publish a website of a photo set (e.g. Pierre and Mimi's visit), backup to CD-ROM, make a slide show, etc. But when it comes to searching through thousands of photos, iView has no peer. You do have to invest some time adding keywords etc. to your photo images, but iView makes that easy, and when you're finished you have a catalog list that makes it a snap to locate just the image file you want. In fact, all these programs allow you to easily rename your files, attach keywords, places, dates, etc. that make it much easier to search for Pierre and Mimi, especially using the thumbnail images attached catalogued file lists. They are only as good as the information you provide, so you do have to spend some time renaming your files (e.g. IMG_4378.jpg might become Pierre_Mimi_IMG_4378.jpg) which are searchable by keyword or original image date.
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For most digital cameras, the standard digital photo image is stored in JPEG format. This is a compressed version of the original digital image that allows a smaller file size with only modest compromises in image quality. The camera will allow you to set the quality of the image you want (e.g. SuperFine, Fine, Good, or Basic), but the higher quality images will have a larger file size. Better quality digital cameras, especially the higher-end SLR models, also provide a RAW image format, which has no compression at all. A RAW-format image file has all the original information recorded by the CCD sensor with no interpolation (you do that later in your computer) so the file size might be something like 7 MB. This is quite a bit smaller than a full interpolated TIFF image, typically 50 MB per image or greater. So if you want the very best quality image, shoot in RAW format. You can use your computer to later convert to an uncompressed interpolated image in TIFF format, or to a compressed JPEG format in a size that can easily sent by email or published on the web. The disadvantage of RAW-format images is that you'll be spending more time on the computer processing the RAW images in a process known as workflow. The workflow process starts with the original RAW image and ends with a processed image (TIFF or JPEG) that has been adjusted for color temperature, tonal range, digital noise, and sharpening. While it takes more time, the resulting images can be quite stunning, well worth the effort. Most cameras with RAW image capability come bundled with RAW processing software. Also, Photoshop CS includes a Camera RAW image processing capability, and it will provide reasonably good results. However, I have found that the best control of RAW image workflow is obtained when you use a specialized RAW workflow software program such as C1-SE or C1-Pro from Phase One. This program transfers your original RAW image files into a Capture Folder and places your post-processed files (either TIFF or JPEG or both) into a Process Folder. You can then move your processed images into a folder by topic, e.g. Birds_Loons_2004. For more information about RAW processing with C1 software, check out the article at the Luminous Landscape website link from rawworkflow.com.
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