Outdoor Photography 101

I dug this article from our friend Adam out of the archives from 5 or 6 years ago…enjoy! Composition: Outdoor photography is traditionally considered more of a “fine art” than other types of photography. This means that an outdoor photo is evaluated more like a painting than a snapshot. Here are some rules to keep in mind for composing an outdoor photo: 1. Start with a foreground - While the background may...

Great digital photography debate topics

Technology is no different than politics in that there are a variety of topics that people have opinions on. While you may not know much about these topics now, what you know about them can have a great impact on knowing who to listen to when it comes to learning more about digital photography and related topics. PC vs. Mac: The Mac people will tell you that Macs are better for graphics, easier to use more stable. PC...

Understanding exposure

Theory and Practice of Photography Aperture: Aperture is the setting of the iris of the camera lens. Just as your pupils in your eyes expand and contract to let in more or less light, you can do the same with your camera by setting the Aperture. The Aperture measurement is called F-stop. The higher the F-stop number, the smaller the iris is set in your camera. The trade-off: Each concept of photography seems to have a...

Managing your digital photos

Organizing your digital photos is so important. Too often I see people who have major computer problems and think that everything is backed up only to find that their digital photos were so spread out on their computer that the only had a portion of them backed up. Many people simply copy their digital photos onto their computer wherever a given piece of software puts them and they have no idea where that is. These notes...

Tips for better people pictures

Tips for taking better people pictures Here is a list of links that will help you with your pictures of people whether they be candid, portrait or group shots. 10 Tips for better portraits  5 tips for photographing couples 6 tips for perfect portrait composition 11 tips for better candid photos  Personally, I think that getting great people shots has more to do with the approach you take to getting the shots...

Photoshop Restoration in Elements

Tips and tricks for restoring old photos and removing blemishes digitally Meeting notes from 02-26-08 Tools needed: A good scanner For prints, almost any scanner will do pretty well, but if you are doing small photos, slides or negatives, you will probably want to go with a nicer Epson scanner such as the  Epson Perfection 4490. These scanners offer transparancy scanning for slides and negatives as well as very high...

Online Photo Editors

Basic photo editing no longer takes special software. You can now do some wonderful things with photos from any computer on almost any browser from anywhere in the world. Online photo editors allow you to edit photos simply by going to a special website. Once fully loaded, these sites let you resize, adjust brightness and contrast, tweak color and even work with layers. While none of these editors are as robust as Photoshop...

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Scannin...

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Scanning* *but weren’t sure who to ask. Every scanner works a little differently, but these terms and tips should help you through the process. TERMS YOU SHOULD KNOW Image Editor – This is any program that allows you to manipulate an image. Some titles include Adobe Photoshop and Elements, Jasc Paint Shop Pro, Microsoft ...

Shutterfly Studio – Online photo services

What good are digital photos if you can’t share them?  Shutterfly.com is a great website for sharing your digital photos online, but where Shutterfly really shines is what you can do with them offline. To get started with Shutterfly, you will need to setup a free account. It’s easy and takes less than five minutes. Once you have setup a free account, you can begin uploading your pictures into online albums....

10 Things you should know how to do with your digi...

Here is what we will discuss at tonight's digital photo user group:  1. How to find information in the Manual If your camera didn't come with a manual, it is likely on the disk that came with the camera. You may also download it from the manufacturer's website. 2. How to insert and remove the camera memory 3. How to set your camera on full auto mode – this is the setting that lets the camera do all of the...

Photoshop Elements 5

Adobe Photoshop Elements is the standard photo editing software for consumers and many professionals. The latest edition offers many new features, but are those features worth upgrading from previous versions of the program? First, there is no upgrade version but since the program can easily be found online for under $70, it won't hurt too bad if you do want to upgrade. Photoshop Elements has been a solid program since...

Getting Better Prints from Digital Photos

One of the disadvantages to digital photography (if you can call it that) is that you don't get prints as often. Photos tend to sit on disk or on your computer's hard drive and never get shared. The photo album is sadly becoming extinct. If you would like to start printing out some of those digital photos, here are some pointers. Install Picasa: We talk about it a lot, but not often enough. Picasa will make selecting,...

Getting familiar with your digital camera

Although we recently had a class on getting to know your digital camera, many in the group have brand new cameras this time. Since our meeting this month will focus a lot on the individual cameras that people bring to the meeting most of our notes will be posted after the meeting. Here are a few items I expect to touch on. You have a camera, now what? Once you have the digital camera, you will need a few extras. A 1...

Free Digital Photography Programs and Tools

MediaChance.com has some great free digital photo programs. They are very specialized tools, but they work great. IrFanview is a great program for viewing images of almost any format. It reads most camera RAW files as well as proprietary and universal image formats. Paint.NET is a free program that is designed to compete with Photoshop and CorelDraw. It works well, but is not the most intuitive. Gimp is another free...

Amazing Photoshop Elements: Layers

Everyone always seems mystified by Photoshop's layers features. While layers are very complex, I believe that they are often viewed as being more complicated than they actually are. A layer is simply a picture or transparent layer placed on top of another picture. Think of it as placing clear plastic wrap on top of a photo. By creating a layer, you prevent any damage or change to the base photo. Here is a quick list of...