Best monitor for photo editing: 10 top models tested and rated

One of our most popular posts has been about monitors and which is the best for photo editing. You may be aware that the monitor you use to look at your images can have a substantial effect on how they look. That is not that they look better or worse more that they are accurate. If your monitor is too bright and you edit your images based on what you see then when you send your images for printing they will come out darker. The same of course goes for colour balance. So if you want some sort of accuracy you should always use the operating system software that is designed for monitor calibration, if you don’t know how just google monitor calibration on a (mac) or (PC). However if you want much better image fidelity you have to get away from a general purpose monitor which is OK for everything and get one that is designed for graphic work. This article on Digital Camera World lists the top ten as at October 2014.

MOnitor

Good luck

Here are some more up to date recommendations but not from sites that I regularly use so cross check what they say

Best Monitor for Photo Editing and Photography 2016

Photo Editing Monitor Buyer’s Guide – May 2016

 

 

 

In the Future, We Will Photograph Everything and Look at Nothing & Free Nik Software

My good friend David Thomas alerted me to this article in The New Yorker

This is a really interesting and important article because it looks and addresses the issues that photography now faces. Yes I know that sounds heavy and overblown but there is no doubt that the way we make pictures, what we do with them and how they are consumed has changed, and changed for ever. Don’t worry I am not deaf to all those who tell me film is coming back, it’s just that I think it is doing so only to those who like the film process and mostly those are not the people who are interested in image making. They enjoy the craft based process and uncertainty that they introduce into the image production through lack of control that film can bring if you don’t know what you are doing with it.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JORDAN STRAUSS / INVISION / AP

“Today everything exists to end in a photograph,” Susan Sontag wrote in her seminal 1977 book “On Photography.” This was something I thought about when I recently read that Google was making its one-hundred-and-forty-nine-dollar photo-editing suite, the Google Nik Collection, free. This photo-editing software is as beloved among photographers as, say, Katz’s Deli is among those who dream of pastrami sandwiches.

Before Google bought it, in 2012, the collection cost five hundred dollars. It is made up of seven pieces of specialized software that, when used in combination with other photo-editing software, such as Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom, give photographers a level of control akin to that once found in the darkroom. They can mimic old film stock, add analog photo effects, or turn color shots into black-and-white photos. The suite can transform modestly good photos into magical ones. Collectively, Nik’s intellectual sophistication is that of a chess grand master. I don’t mind paying for the software, and neither do thousands of photographers and enthusiasts. So, like many, I wondered, why would Google make it free?

My guess is that it wants to kill the software, but it doesn’t want the P.R. nightmare that would follow. Remember the outcry over its decision to shut down its tool for R.S.S. feeds, Google Reader? Nik loyalists are even more rabid. By making the software free, the company can both ignore the product and avoid a backlash. But make no mistake: it is only a matter of time before Nik goes the way of the film camera—into the dustbin of technological history.”….

Google’s comments—disheartening as they might be—reflect the reality of our shifting technologies. Sure, we all like listening to music on vinyl, but that doesn’t mean streaming music on Spotify is bad. Streaming just fits today’s world better. I love my paper and ink, but I see the benefits of the iPad and Apple Pencil. Digital photography is going through a similar change, and Google is smart to refocus.

Read the rest of this article and here you can download the Google Nik Software for free

Photoshop Awards 2015

We start our next Photoshop and Elements course on Wednesday and still have places in case you are interested in entering next years awards.

It is 25 years since Photoshop first appeared and it has morphed into a verb, an idea and has it’s very own awards (no not really, well yes really but not this kind. I once saw a very unkind T-Shirt with the legend, “Photoshop, helping the ugly since 1990”

So from The Guardian we have this article about the PS Awards as seen over the last 25 years, and they are so much more interesting than the Oscars

The John Terry award for perfect attendance

John Terry joins Hollywood celebrities in one of the many Photoshop pastiches of his infamous Champions League final moment. Photograph: Massimo Marioni

If we were to hand it to anybody else, Terry would no doubt appear in the triumphant photograph anyway. Ever since the Chelsea captain gatecrashed hisclub’s Champions League victory celebrations, decked out in full kit and shinpads, as if trying to convince the world (and himself) that he had played in the final (rather than watching from the sidelines due to being banned), wags with rudimentary Photoshop ability have been inserting him into all kinds of jubilant scenes.

The least successful use of Photoshop for political ends Winner: the Conservative ‘road to recovery’ poster

Road to recovery? Check. Freshly tarmacked? Check. Green and pleasant vista? Golly, yes! Verges that look freshly trimmed by industrious eastern Europeans while we were still in our pyjamas? You’d better believe it. No wonder the Tories selected this photo for their first election poster, and that George Osborne claimed that it was “a British picture, a British road”. Only it isn’t: it’s a German road.

Winner and runner up in the  The most successful use of Photoshop for political ends

Photo Op by Phillips and Kennard. Photograph: Phillips & Kennard

 

So if you want to see the rest of the winners and runners up go here and if you want to find out how you can do such spectacular things and would like to join our course go here

 

Photography Courses For 2015

well we have done it again, created a new course to get you making better pictures. It has the most unwieldy title because we couldn’t think of anything better, sorry.

Basics of Landscape, Travel, Flower and Black and White Digital Photography

The course is based on our observations that these are the main subject areas along with portraiture, (which is covered in our separate Portrait Photography course), that interest our students. Each session we look at one of the four subject areas.

This course is aimed at students who already have a good understanding of how to use their cameras. There will be no instruction on camera use therefore it might be worthwhile taking our Understanding Your DSLR course first if you tend to use the fully auto mode when photographing. All areas of photography rely on technical and visual skills and although there will be references to camera use and composition there will be no in depth discussion of these areas and if you do not understand basic compositional methods our Composition In Photography course would be a great asset to you. Get full details here

We now have our course schedule sorted out for the next term, here are the dates

Understanding Your DSLR Camera Evening Class £85 Start Dates: 26.01.2015;  11.03.2015

Understanding Your DSLR Camera Saturday Morning Class £85 Start Date: 07.03.2015

1 Day Understanding Your DSLR Camera £95 Dates:  01.02.2015; 01.03.2015; 29.03.2015

Intermediate Photography £97 Start Date 26.02.2015

Flash Photography £85 Start date 05.02.2015

Understanding Lightroom £85 Start Date 03.02.2015

Introduction to Photoshop and PS Elements £97 Start Date 25.02.2015

Composition In Photography – Seeing Pictures £85 Start Date 03.02.2015

Portrait Photography £85 Start Date 10.03.2015

Basics of Landscape, Travel, Flower and B&W Photography Start Date 09.03.2015  £85

 

How to improve your pictures with Photoshop

You know you make good pictures but you also know they could be better, they don’t quite look as good as those you see on the web, we all suffer from this. There is an answer, post production or Photoshop to you and me.

Many people find PS confusing and difficult to use because they have never had the basics explained to them, once you understand the fundamentals of the program learning becomes so much easier. Sure you can buy a book but having a teacher show you exactly what you need to know in small packets of information, then giving you time to try it for yourself whilst having your teacher on hand to answer your questions and show you where you are going wrong is much easier than reading a book.

Our course details the most efficient way to learn, breaking down the various sections so at the end of 6 lessons you have control over how your pictures look. Have a look at this simple picture. The camera has underexposed the subject because of the bright rays of sunlight in the centre of the image, but by using a few simple PS tools we can bring back it’s sparkle and the magic of the original scene.

 

Which do you prefer? PS is not just about making a picture look better it can also be about removing or adding something to a picture to improve it. Have a look at these, can you spot the difference?

 

We have been teaching students how to improve their pictures using Photoshop for years, in fact all the way back to CS1 (that is a long time ago). Now we recommend most people get the Elements version it is really versatile, easy to use and we teach it on our Introduction to Photoshop course starting on the 22nd October. Come and join us and find out how much better your pictures can be.

We have a few places left on our Photoshop course starting on the 22nd October, it is 6 sessions, 2 hours each and the cost is £97. If you don’t have PS I would recommend the Elements versions 12 is still available and is only about £75, look here for details to buy

If you would like to join our course send us an email now and we will reserve you a place

52 Colorized Historical Photos That Give Us A New Look At the Past

I’m not sure there is any real justification for turning black and white images into colour, I mean what is wrong with black and white? Here are some from the site but go here to see all 52

People standing in line Louisville, Kentucky 1939

Marilyn Monroe

Winston Churchill 1941

Claude Monet in 1923

Samurai Training 1860

Charles Darwin

see more? 

It would seem there is quite an industry in turning black and white into colour, if you are interested here is another set of images

6 Practical Ways to Unlock the Real Power of Colors in Your Photography

From what looks like an updated Lightstalking site comes this very useful and practical guide to improving your colour photography. I agree with all of it so go and have a look.

1. Shoot Raw

Setting your camera to shoot in raw format is perhaps the first and easiest thing you can do to set yourself on a path toward shooting vibrant colors. Just consider this raw vs. jpeg comparison: The 8-bit jpeg format can contain a maximum of 16 million colors (256 shades each of red, green, and blue), but 12-bit raw files can reproduce 68 billion colors and 14-bit raw files are capable of a staggering 4.3 trillion colors. Hence, it’s only logical to capture as much color data as possible; you will have far more success bringing those colors to life in post processing when working with raw files.

 

3. Avoid Harsh Light

Harsh lighting, whether natural or artificial, will wash out the vibrance already present in any scene and you won’t be able to do much to restore it in post processing. If you are working outdoors in natural light, try to keep the sun at your back or find some shade. If you are working with flash be sure to diffuse it; there are a variety of ways to accomplish this (reflector, soft box, bounce card, etc.) and it will provide the added benefit of preventing blown-out spots on your subject.

 

4. Expose for the Situation

Getting a correct exposure doesn’t, in this instance, necessarily mean settling for whatever you camera deems to be a proper exposure. In some cases, such as when shooting the color red, underexposing by a stop or two can actually be a good thing. Blown-out reds are ubiquitous in digital photography; this is not simply a matter of an overall luminance issue, it is a problem specific to one color channel — red. The problem is due, in part, to the fact that the range of red that a digital camera sensor responds to is wider than that perceived by the human eye.

5. Calibrate Your Monitor

Every monitor differs in on how it displays colors. Furthermore, the factory settings are not optimized for the monitor to look its best. Monitor calibration is something that tends to scare people off, but it surely needs to be addressed if color reproduction is important to you. In short, a properly calibrated monitor ensures that the colors you see on the screen are accurately matched to the colors in the image file. In order to get a color-managed workflow up and running, you should invest in a colorimeter. A colorimeter will quickly perform color and brightness calibration.

all images ©Keith Barnes

 

 

For the full article go here

 

Photoshop Effects: recreate the look of a medium format portrait

From Digital Camera World comes this comprehensive tutorial

Colour, or the absence of it, plays a crucial role in portraiture. By manipulating colour and tone to create different Photoshop effects you can create striking portraits that really stand out from the crowd. Here, we’ll show you how to give your portraits an edgy, stylish, ultra-detailed finish often seen in modern portrait photography. We’ll use subtle variations in saturation, brightness and contrast to achieve similar results. What you’ll need is Photoshop CS4 or higher.

While some tonal tweaks will be applied universally, the emphasis here is on selective adjustments. We’ll start by working on our raw image in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) with the Adjustment Brush. This is one of the most powerful tools that ACR, or indeed Photoshop, has to offer, allowing you to paint an area that can be edited with various sliders. It’s quick and easy to boost contrast, lower colour saturation, add a touch 
of clarity or darken highlights.

Once we’re in the main Photoshop interface, we’ll mimic the effects of a shallow depth of field by adding blur to parts of the image that are behind the point of focus. This helps to give the portrait a softer feel and draws attention to the eyes – we’ll give them special attention with the Dodge and Burn 
tools to make them really pop.

We’ll also make use of Photoshop’s HDR toning command and shift the colours in Curves to give the image a final polish. Here’s how it’s done…

Layer mask techniques anyone can do: master this vital Photoshop effect

I am not sure this will transforms anyone into a PS genius but layer masks are an essential part of using layers so read this article from Digital Camera World

Knowing how to use a Photoshop layer mask is at the heart of any type of creative image work. In this tutorial we explain the different ways in which you can master them.

What is a layer mask?

Layers and masks set Photoshop apart from many of the alternative image-editing software packages available.

Layers can be explained in simple terms as a stack of images, with the top layer the one that’s visible.

If the opacity of that top image is reduced, or sections of it are erased, the layer beneath will be revealed.

This concept enables us to do a variety of things, such as create composite pictures from several images, or merge shots taken at different exposures to create images with greater dynamic range. READ MORE HERE

 

Visualize for Black and White While You Shoot

The very best black and white results are achieved by shooting RAW and converting to monochrome in Photoshop but to see your bw image on your camera monitor you have to set the camera up to show bw but record in RAW. This short tutorial explains how…

Paul Fowler, Black & White Digital photography course OSP

Jay Tomasso Black and White Digital course OSP