Getting Buzzed with the Kitties

I took this photo on Easter Sunday, as my kitties slept together with dreams of catching a glimpse of the Easter Bunny (thankfully for the Bunny, she came and went while they slept). I found them curled up together as I came downstairs and had to quietly slip by, grab a camera, pop up the built-in flash and grab a few quick shots. The original is fine (though there's a bit of clutter behind them that I can paint out if I want), but I ran this through a Photoshop plug-in filter called Buzz-X that was made by a British company that no longer exists. It's too bad that the filter is no longer made (and I think the company has gone out of business completely) because it was a great simplification filter--easy to use, had great creative effects and was quite popular. I even tried to buy the rights to the software at one point, so that I could market it in the United States, but was unable to even locate the owner. A company called Topaz Labs makes a similar filter, but I haven't tried it yet (it requires a PC or an Intel Mac and I don't have either). If you've done any shots using their simplification filter, let me know and I'll post one (or a few) on the blog. Using Buzz is incredibly simple, you just adjust the inner, outer and middle portions of the image while watching the results more or less live and then when you see what you want, tell it to process. It takes just a few minutes. I'm sure the Topaz product is probably just as easy to use. (By the way, the orange thing in the front right is the pet fox that they often sleep with--your pets need pets, too.)

Photo notes: Shot with a Nikon D90 with a 70-300mm Nikkor zoom lens; ISO 200, in the night-portrait mode. Exposed for 1/60 sec., at f/5.6. Recorded in both RAW and JPEG simultaneously.

Fun Fixes for Faulty Fotos

While most of the work that I do in Photoshop is trying to make acceptable photos better, there are times when I like to see how much I can improve a really terrible photo. This usually happens around four in the morning when I've been writing and Photoshopping for 12 hours already and I'm totally fried and I just need to let my imagination play a bit. That's how this shot happened. I had been working on the update of my exposure book (Exposure Photo Workshop: Develop Your Digital Photography Talent) all day (and all night) and was looking at photos of the Statue of Liberty when I hit the reality wall. I just couldn't do one more curves tweak or reshuffle any more layers; I was toast.

But I was too wired to do what most people would do in that situation (i.e., go to bed), so I played for a few minutes to cool my brain instead. I had noticed this really crappy almost silhouette of the SOL (below) while I was choosing photos and decided to use that as my victim. I don't recall all of the steps that I went through (again, too burned out to write anything down), but essentially this is what I did:

1. I opened the RAW file without any changes.
2. I used curves to zap the contrast--making the sky white and the statue black.
3. I selected the sky area using the magic wand and then reversed it so that I would only be working on the statue and not touching the sky.
4. I took a paint brush and using black paint, I painted the statue to make sure she was black. I think I also then used curves again and set the black as the black point, just to be sure it was really black.
5. I then just reversed the selection again, and used a quick levels or contrast adjustment (I forget which) to make sure the sky was even and light.
6. I used the "fill" option (Edit>fill in with color> to fill the sky with magenta color.
7. I then went to the filters menu and chose Filter>Render>Lighting Effects to create that series of circles around her head. My memory is a bit foggy on how i got the repeat circles, but again, it's just playing and no one could duplicate that exactly anyway.
8. I think used hue/saturation to mess around with the colors

That's about it, I think. And I don't like the angle of the shot at all--another failure of the original shot. But it's fun to see just how much you can do when you're half asleep and not trying to get anywhere specific, but just playing. And the worse that can happen is that you'll learn something about Photoshop tools and then trash the photo if you don't like it. I spend so many hours doing critical work in Photoshop, I wish I had time just to play more--I'm sure I'd learn a lot of cool things. Here is the original shot:

Watching Pete Seeger Listen...

It's been kind of fun the past few weeks illustrating the update of my exposure book (Exposure Photo Workshop: Develop Your Digital Photography Talent) because I've had to go through a lot of older files looking for specific types of images--like concert shots. I found some great shots of Sonny Rollins (see previous posting) and a few other performers and the other night came across a folder full of shots of Pete Seeger in concert. The Seeger shots were taken at a concert during his "Pete Seeger at 89" concert tour about three years ago; the concert was produced by my friend Walter Wagoner as a benefit for the noncommercial FM station WPKN where I have done a show for more than 20 years.

Pete was joined that night by several guest performers, including his grandson Tao Rodriguez-Seeger and Guy Davis and I have a number of nice shots of Pete singing alone and with some of these other musicians. My favorite shots though are the ones where Pete is sitting at the back of the stage listening to the others perform. The look on his face--an expression of just utter enjoyment and total concentration--is wonderful. During the entire concert, more than two hours long, I don't think Pete ever took this expression off of his face. He was obviously having a great time. And as much as I tried to keep a photographic eye on the others when they were performing, I found my attention drifting back to this master singer and storyteller who, even at 89 years old, was still enjoying the stories and the songs and no doubt still learning new tricks from performers less than half his age. Perhaps that intense desire to learn and to enjoy life is what has placed him among the greatest folk singers in history. He could not have known it that night, but his enjoyment at being inspired entered my camera and gave me so much more than mere concert shots.

At a concert once in Tennessee, I told Pete that the area in front of the stage was too packed for me to shoot, and asked him if he minded if I sat on the backstage steps and shot from there. He said, "Why don't you just sit on the stage and shoot from there?" And so I did. That show was held in a tent and the tent was just a few feet (literally a few feet) away from some railroad tracks. During the show Pete sang "Freight Train" a song by the great songwriter Elizabeth Cotten who--amazingly enough--once worked as a housekeeper for Pete Seeger's parents (and who lived to the age of 102--so apparently there is something healthy about singing folks songs). I don't recall if it was during the show or just as it ended, but a freight train went by while the tent was still packed and it was almost as if it were on cue. The whistle blew, the wheels rumbled and Elizabeth Cotten's song came to life. When you hang around people with magic in their souls, magic things happen. Twice now that has happened when I was lucky enough to be around Pete Seeger.

Photo notes: I shot this photo with a Nikon D90 camera with a 70-300mm Nikkor zoom lens. Exposure was 1/50 second at f/5.6 and the white balance was set to tungsten, ISO 1600. I converted the photo to black and white in Photoshop CS3 and then toned it using the b&w conversion tool.

Happy Solstice...and a New Mark Borax Book!

What an unusual bunch of events on the winter solstice this year! Within 24 hours we had: the winter solstice, a full moon and a total lunar eclipse. My astrologer friend Mark Borax must be going nuts with the possibilities up in Vermont! And speaking of Mark, he has a brand new book out Cosmic Weather Report: Notes from the Edge of the Universe.  I've read some exceprts using Amazon's "Look Inside" feature and it appears to be another fascinating book from Mark. Mark co-authored the book with his mentor, legendary astrologer Ellias Lonsdale. If you (or any friends) are interested in what's happening--astrologically-speaking--in the Universe around us, I'm sure you'll get a lot of out this new book. Ellias and Mark provide a really in-depth and very readable look at current and future astronomical events.

Of course, I personally pay more attention to the particular alignment of my cats' whiskers as they sleep in the recliner, but that's just me. But seriously, I've known Mark almost as far as I can remember in life and I know that he is deeply connected to the Universe in ways that most people probably couldn't conceive until they have known him a while. If there is anyone I trust to deliver a weather report from the Cosmos, it's Mark.

Fine, but how about some photo talk Wignall! OK! This shot was taken at Peck's Mill Pond (where, one summer night long ago, Mark and I sat in my car on the way home from a night of cold beer and blues in Westport and watched the Raven Inn burn to the ground) in Stratford, Connecticut last year during a spring snowstorm. (I actually think I blogged about this shot once before because I had to remove a beer bottle floating in the water--but it was 40 years after the fire, so I don't think it was a beer bottle we left behind). But here's the tip for this photo: I really wanted the shapes of the trees to create a bold pattern and to stand out against the snow--and, in particular, to pop out of the reflection. So, I first used curves in Photoshop to set the dynamic range (contrast) to hold detail in the highlights, but I still wanted more bite in the shapes of the trees. The simplest way was to use the "selective color" tool (you'll find it buy clicking on the half-circle shape at the bottom of the layers palette) and select the "black" color channel. Then I increased the black by about 70% (sliding the slider to the right). That provided a lot more black in the dark shapes without affecting any other part of the image.

You see, I can still talk about photography when I have to! I  think Frank was beginning to doubt me! And jumping back to the Universe: Hey, we get a few more minutes of daylight each day for the next three months! My father used to say that by Lincoln's birthday there is light in the sky until 6 p.m. (which was the time he drove in the driveway from work every day). Thanks Pop! That little marker in the world of daylight gets me through the dark cold days of December and January!

Infinity Valley

Just having fun in Photoshop recently: took a shot of Monument Valley in Utah (on the Arizona border) and repeated it shrinking the size each time. The first thing I did was select an area of the scene, copy it, then I used the Edit>Tranform>Scale command to shrink it. After that I just used the Edit>Transform>Again command and shrank it a bit more. Very easy and fun to play with. But click the photo to see it full size and the effect is more fun. I'll explain the technique in more detail if anyone is interested.

Liberty Glows

Spent the entire night playing in Photoshop to create some photos for the revision of my book The Joy of Digital Photography. I knew from the start of the book that Lady Liberty would be a part of it. Last fall Lynne and I spent three days in New Jersey shooting the statue and visiting the area. I have never been more moved by a single photographic subject in my life. Something about seeing that face in person (it was my first time on Liberty Island, though of course I'd see her from Manhattan hundreds of times) really shook me to my core. The idea that she was the first vision of America that millions of immigrants (including my grandfather) saw hit me profoundly when the ferry first brought us close to her. I had an extraordinary first day there--it was baking hot and then we were hit by a rollicking thunderstorm. And as much as I tried to concentrate on photographing her, I could not shake this feeling that I was meant to step on that island, meant to look her in the face and meant to be there with a camera. When you go there, you are surrounded by thousands of people, most of whom, I think, are having the exact same experience: awe that such an amazing country exists and that such a fabulous work of art welcomes everyone. If you have never been there, go this summer. Take your kids, or take your parents--or both. You will never be the same.

By the way, I created this using a combination of color tools (including the channel mixer) and created the lighting effect using the--what else?--the lighting effects filter. Just playing and having fun. Also, today's Black Star Rising blog features two of my Liberty collages. Black Star is the greatest photojournalism agency in history and they have a really great and interesting blog.

Keep Working the Montage: Another Liberty

 

After writing about montage work yesterday, I kept working with a few different images of the Statue of Liberty. I find that the more I concentrate on just a small group of images the more ideas that pop up--it limits your picture choices and forces you to find new ideas with a limited palette. This is a montage of the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline (both shot the same weekend) and it's totally just an experiment to try a few things. Essentially I used the method described yesterday--dragging one image (the skyline) onto the background image (the statue). I then made hue/saturation and selective color adjustments (to the overall montage and to each image) and then played with the blending modes until I found one that I liked (I ended up using linear light). But at this point the statue wasn't coming through strong enough, so I duped the background layer (Command J on a Mac) and again played with blending modes until Liberty's face come through more powerfully. Just by coincidence it was the same blending mode--linear light. 

I don't know if this is a finished product or not (I kept one version with the layers open so I could go back and play more--a good idea if you're not positive you're done) but it has a kind of poster/graphic quality that I like. The skyline background is pretty abstract and you might not really know what it is, but I still think it has a bit of an urban/modern look. The fun thing about doing this is that you learn more about the tools you're working with and you create some fun colorful images along the way. And there's no right or wrong, so it's all just fun. We had a great weekend photographing the Statue of Liberty and exploring and I'm having a lot of fun going back and pulling more out of the images. In fact, I shot nearly 1,000 photos in three days, I think, so I'll be playing with them for a long time!

Super Quick Trick for Making a Montage

 

One of the first things almost everyone does when they start to play with Photoshop is to make a montage from two or more images. It's easy and it's really fun to see what kinds of images work well together and which don't. Back in the film days we used to make montages like this using a slide duplicator to copy multiple images onto one frame of film and it worked pretty well (even color masters like Pete Turner were creating images this way) but, of course, you don't have a millionth of the control that you have in Photoshop. In Photoshop (or any other editing program really) you can combine as many images as you like and adjust the brightness and colors of each frame individually before you combine them.

One really fast way for combing images is to just open two different images and then use the move tool to drag one image onto the other. If you just click on the move tool and then click on one of the two (or more) images, you can simply drag it on top of the other and Photoshop will automatically open a new layer with the second image (whichever image is the bottom image becomes the background image in your new montage). You can then adjust the opacity (using the opacity slider in the upper right-hand corner of the layers palette) of the second image to alter how it interacts tonally with the image below it (which, again, is the background layer if you're only using two images). 

Once you have the basic opacity set (and you can always readjust it later), you can then tweak the colors, saturation, density, etc. of the montage. To create this image of the Statue of Liberty, for example, I first opened two images: one of the Statue and one of a sunset (both shot on the same day, coincidentally, which makes me like the image even more). I then did a quick curves adjustment on each one and then dragged the sunset onto the Statue shot (again, making the Statue the background image--but I could have dragged the Statue onto the sunset and made the sunset the background layer instead). Once they were combined I used the hue/saturation tool to pump the color a small amount and then used the selective color tool to darken the statue (by selecting the black channel and then adding more black to it--that just darkened the statue's silhouette a bit).

By the way, be sure that all of the images that you are combining are the same resolution and roughly the same size or you'll run into all sorts of sizing issues. And always work at high res (300 dpi) because it would be a shame to create a great image this way and then not be able to make a large print because you created your montage in a low-res version. I've done it a hundred times!

As I've said before in talking about editing, it's tougher to write out the instructions than it is to actually do it--there is a lot of playing and experimenting involved and if you were sitting right here, I could have you doing this in five minutes. The key thing is to pick one dominant image (like the Statue) that is almost a silhouette and then one more airy image to add color and sparkle. Also, once you have the two images combined, try playing with the layer blending modes and see if any of them creates an effect that you like. Layer blending modes are found in a drop-down menu at the top of the layers palette and they are just different ways for the layers to combine--experimenting is the only way to figure out what they do. 

Montages like this are a lot of fun to create and, as my high school art teacher told me a thousand times, there are no mistakes in art, it's all just playing until you like it!

On the Threshold of the Past: Easy Ultra High-Contrast Imaging in Photoshop

 

I seem to be on a 1960's techniques kick lately. Last week I wrote about photographing things under black light and here's another technique that kind of resembles one I used way back when: high contrast black and white photography. My father worked in a photographic research lab back then and used to bring home odd bits of film and darkroom materials for me to experiment with. One of the most fun things he brought home were boxes of what is called "litho" or lithographers' film. The film was primarily used for making the separations from which offset printing plates were made, but it had another fun dimension: you could expose negatives on it to create ultra-high-contrast black and white images. There was actually a subculture among some of my photographer friends that got absolutely addicted to making high contrast images and were affectionately known (I think) as "those high contrast guys" at the camera store where we all hung out. Litho film was very expensive, but since I got it for free, I went through tons of it in my basement darkroom. 

Fortunately there is a quick and free way to create very similar images in Photoshop and it's called the threshold tool. You'll find the tool at the bottom of the layers palette (if you're new to the layers palette, just click on the little half-circle icon at the bottom and a group of tool options will pop out) and it's extremely simple to use. Once you open the tool the image you have open will convert to high-contrast black and white and you then use the slider to decide which parts go black, which go white. It's very simple. The only real problem with this tool is that it's not all that easy to find an image that looks interesting in ultra high contrast; some images just fizzle completely regardless of how you adjust the slider. I played with a dozen or so different pictures before I settled on this shot of a relief carving on the front of Notre Dame in Paris. The images that work best are those that have a limited range of tones to start, good surface texture and strong shape features. I shot this image late in the afternoon in bright sun that was creating dark shadows in the background and portrait-like facial shadows. 

Once you have the image in high contrast, of course, you can always use others tools (like the gradient map) to add color in very striking patterns. Again, finding just the right image is the key and it does take some experimenting to know which images will work. But just think of all the time and money you'll save by not having to go find litho film--and I have no idea where you'd even find it these days!

Now You See It, Now You Don't: The Magic of the Clone Stamp

If I was stranded on a desert island and had to choose just a few Photoshop tools to bring along with me (assuming this desert island had laptop computers and digital cameras), the cloning stamp tool would definitely be on the short list. As mystical and magical as I find almost everything about digital-image editing, I am most enchanted by the ability to "clone" pixels from one part of an image (or an entirely different image) to another. Essentially what the clone stamp does is replicate, exactly, the pixels you tell it to copy and then places them wherever you want them. Just how cool is that?

There are a lot of practical applications for using a clone stamp and the more you use the tool, the more uses you'll find and the more your admiration of this profoundly helpful tool will grow. One of the most common uses for cloning is to "erase" things that you don't want in a shot. If, for example, you've taken a great and very pristine-looking shot of a saguaro cactus in Tucson only to find on closer examination that you've inadvertently included someone's discarded coffee cup, you can literally erase it from the photograph and no one will ever know it was there (and don't you wish we could clean up the planet as easily).

You can also use the clone to erase larger things that you no longer want in your photos--like taking dear old Auntie Maude, who wrote you out of the big will at the last minute, out of your holiday photos. She never smiled anyway, the old hag, banish her. In the photo here, for instance, I was able to completely eliminate the treasure hunter from this Florida beach. Not that I have anything against my fellow treasure hunters, but it makes a good demonstration point. And just so you don't think that I waited until he left the scene and shot a second picture, when I cloned him out, I carefully left his shadow. I repeat: How cool is that?

Using the clone stamp is a lot easier (and even more fun) than you might think. If you were sitting here next to me, I could have you erasing select relatives in a matter of moments. Basically what you do is decide which part of the image you want to hide and what you want to hide it with. You then "sample" the replacement material (again, you're just copying pixels from one area to another) by clicking on that area (Option-click on a Mac, Alt-click on a PC) and then use the cursor to paint those pixels over the area that you're covering.

The only real choices you'll have to make are what size brush to use when cloning and what level of hardness to use. It takes some experience to know which size brushes work best with certain subjects and what level of hardness makes the cloned areas most invisible, but you will quickly see what works and what doesn't. I suggest always working with the image at around 100% enlargement so that you can work in greater detail but with a larger image, that way when you shrink it back to it's printing size you are far less likely to spot any minor flaws. Also, work slowly and with a smaller brush; this takes more patience and makes the work go more slowly, but the results are usually more precise.

There is more to the cloning technique, but most of it you will learn through trial and error. For example, when I erased the treasure hunter I continually resampled my source area and took that source material from immediately to his left or right. By doing this you keep the same level of sharpness in the replacement material as you had there before. If your sourced material from a different lateral area you might be in a different sharpness zone (in terms of depth of field, for example), so you'd be cloning material that was more or less sharp than the area you were replacing and that would show. Once I had the man erased, I then looked carefully at where he'd been and cloned in some bicycle tire marks, stones and footprints to make the beach where he "had been" look like the remainder of the beach around him. I know, it's magic, it really is--but it relies on your skills too.

By the way, yes, you can clone from one photo to another! (Need I say a third time: How cool is that?) Just have both images open, sample from one and deposit in the other. I've taken flowers from one garden scene and placed them in another and it takes just seconds. You could, quite easily (and gleefully), place old Auntie Maude's head on the body of a wild goat.

OK, one last time, all together now: How cool is that?

Photoshop Tip: Create an Old Fashioned Postcard Look in Just a Few Clicks

I love the look of old travel photos and especially those old sepia postcards that you find at flea markets and yard sales. It's amazing how those images bring back the feeling of another era in time and a more adventurous vision of travel. But you don't have to visit antique sales to find those kinds of images, you can create them in Photoshop from "new" photos with only a few quick clicks. I shot the photo here a few winters ago in Florida and you can see that just adding a slight sepia tint gave it that antique postcard look.

Creating the effect only took a few minutes and here's how I did it:

• First, choose a photo that has a sort of old-fashioned look to it. In this case by selecting a scene of a dirt road and palm trees, the picture really captures the feeling of "old" Florida.
• Next, do a quick curves (or levels) adjustment just to get the exposure right, but keep the contrast somewhat flat. I didn't do any other editing to this image--it's not even cropped. In particular, I didn't sharpen the image because I wanted it to have that soft, aged look.
  
• In either the adjustments menu (Image>Adjustments) or at the bottom of the layers palette (I always choose the latter because you can turn off adjustments made as a layer) select the photo filter option. Then select a warming filter and crank up the warmth and use a high density. In this case I chose a #85 warming filter and ran the density up to 97. The higher the density number, the more filtering you get.
• Finally, I opened the hue/saturation tool (also in the layers palette) and, using the "master" setting, I desaturated the image until the setting was about -67.
  

That's it. There are probably a few dozen other ways to create a good sepia tone from a color image, but this one was really quick and easy. If you know how to use the photo filter and hue/saturation tools, you can make these adjustments in about 20 seconds. If you're new to editing, don't let the instructions make it sound complex, it's really not. Once you get used to poking around the menus a bit and learn to always use the layers palette for editing your images, you'll find adjustments like this are a breeze. If you'd like to see other Photoshop tips, or have questions about this one, just leave a comment or send me an email and I'll post more of them.

Create a Blue Flamingo

Imagine--a blue flamingo! Everyone loves fantasy, I think, and nothing conjures more romance or imagination than the idea of a totally new species of animal. Unfortunately, this bird is pure fantasy and I created it (from a shot of a pink flamingo, of course) in Photoshop. The first time I put a version of this shot on Flickr, however, two interesting things happened: For one, it got the highest number of views of any image I had on the site. But also, the photo got ripped off faster than you can possibly believe--I found it on blogs, websites, ezines and even on the cover of an online menu for a restaurant. (I didn't have to sue anyone, by the way, but I did go after every single abuse.)

Creating this wonderful bird was a lot easier than you might think and it was all done with the hue/saturation tool in Photoshop (Elements has the same tool). Here's how to do it:

• First, choose a subject with a bold overall color. The flamingo worked well because it was just various shades of pink (even the legs are pink) and white.
• At the top of the hue/saturation window, look for the pull down menu that says "Master." Under that you'll find a list of all the colors. Choose the color that matches your subject (in this case, I selected red). If you were doing this with a lemon, for example, you would choose yellow.
  
• At the bottom of the hue/saturation window you'll notice there is an eyedropper tool with three boxes: the eyedroper, the eyedropper with a "+" symbol and the eyedropper with a "-" symbol.
  
• Select just the eyedropper and click anywhere in your subject. That tells the tool what color you want to change. Now select the eyedropper+ box and then click as many times as you like to pick up more shades of your chosen color (I probably made about 12 different clicks within the flamingo to pick up various shades of red and pink).
• Now adjust the hue slider and watch what happens. The color of your main subject (a flamingo, a lemon, etc.) will begin to shift colors radically. Interestingly, because you chose a specific color from the drop down menu, only that color will shift. The remaining portions of your photo will remain the same. So if you were doing a lemon on a blue background and had selected yellow and sampled just yellow areas, only the yellow would change hue. The blue background would remain exactly as it was.

After I changed the flamingo from pink to blue, I did some touching up (darkening selected areas of the background, healing some tiny flaws in the water, etc.) and then did an overall curves adjustment. You'll notice there is still a tinge of pink in the flamingo and I could have gotten rid of that by going more extreme with the hue shift, but I kind of liked the pinkish color coming through a bit. This is a really simple Photoshop trick and in the next tip I'll show you another application of it--turning a sunset into a moonset. Stay tuned!

Photoshop Tip: Go Wild with Color Controls

Learning to use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, or any other photo-editing program for that matter, takes time--there is a relatively long learning curve, especially if you're new to editing. Many photographers who have worked in traditional darkrooms in the past pick up editing skills faster that those who have never worked in a darkroom, but still, there is a lot to learn. But that doesn't mean that you can't have some great creative fun along the learning path--you can.

One fun way to get to know what things do in an editing program and to get some cool illustration effects as you learn is to just experiment--let your imagination run wild. You really can't hurt your computer (or yourself!) by playing with editing controls and all programs have a "reset" button that lets you go instantly back to all default settings. So no matter what sticky corner you back yourself into, you can undo it very quickly. Remember too, in Photoshop you can always get rid of the last step just by going to Edit>Undo or unravel many steps by using the Edit>Step Backward command. If you are going to experiment with an important image, however, you should "duplicate" (in Photoshop it's just Image>duplicate) the image first and work on a copy. That way no matter what creative rabbit hole you plunge down, your original image is safe.

Among the most fun (and easy) controls to play with in Photoshop (and other programs have these or similar tools) are the color control tools. With just a quick push on a slider or a click on a palette option, you can transform the most mundane of images into very colorful and imaginative new images. Sometimes what you'll create will be wild 1960's Peter Max-looking "art" and other times it will be utter garbage, but no matter what the end result, you'll begin to understand just what each different tool does--and you'll begin to see how, in specific situations, those tools that you're using in your creative sandbox can also be very useful to correct and enhance photographs. You can manipulate the hue/saturation control, for example, to turn any photo into a total abstraction in seconds, but in time you will find yourself using it to fine-tune colors and hues on almost all of your images.

To create the blue version of Saint Denis (from the facade of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris), I used just three simple tools: First I used the "Posterize" tool to reduce the image to just five distinct tones (you can choose the number of tones or colors that you want); then I used the "Gradient Mapping" tool to shift the entire image into a blue palette (in that tool you simply click on a color swatch to see the effect instantly on your image); and then finally I used the "Hue/Saturation" control to saturate the blues even more. That's it. Three clicks to take it from the straight image below to the colorful one above.

Don't be afraid to experiment with any controls in your editing program. The sooner you get past the fear that you might "ruin" something, the more fun you'll start to have. And if you love color like I do, you're going to have a great time surprising yourself by just clicking and dragging and sliding those color controls.

Get Closer to Butterflies

Photographing butterflies is always a challenge because they seem to be very capricious in their movement. You'd think that once the found one good blossom with nectar, they'd settle in for a nice long drink, but that's rarely the case. Usually they flit from blossom to blossom and often even plant to plant in one feeding session. It can be really frustrating to try and get just one good close-up shot.

There are, however, some things you can do to improve your odds. The first, of course, is to plant a butterfly-friendly garden with plants like tithonia (shown here), butterfly weed, bee balm, etc. Once you've got them in your garden though, try these tips to get more good close-ups:

• Shoot early in the morning. All insects feed heavily early in the day, so there will be more of them to shoot. Also, their metabolism is slower when it's cool out or when the air is heavy with morning dew, so they'll be moving slower. The hotter the day is the more buoyant they become.
• Don't chase--wait. Set up your tripod near a nice blossom with a plain background and wait. You'll have a far better chance of getting a good shot if you sit-and-wait rather than chase. If you move around your motion will scare them off more than anything, but if you stay in one place, they will get used to your presence and they'll often land inches from your lens and ignore you.
• Use a longer focal-length macro or macro zoom. I shot this photo with 105mm Micro Nikkor lensn and had about 18-inches between the lens and the butterfly. I've shot with a 55mm Micro Nikkor, as well, but I was less than 10-inches away and it was much harder to get them to sit still. Also, with a long lens you're less likely to block the sunlight.
• Use flash if you need to stop their motion. I actually don't mind a bit of motion in a butterfly photo because that's what butterflies do--they flutter. But I also like nice crisp shots and if the light is a bit low you can either rasie the ISO or flip on the built-in flash. If your camera allows you to compensate or adjust flash power, try using minus-one-stop of compensation (on the flash output, not the camera's exposure) and you'll get a nice natural balance of flash to daylight. Read your camera or flash manual.
• Work on calm days. Easy to say, I know, but if you can work or calm days the butterflies will be more still and also less likely to drift around on the breeze.
• Put a flower in a vase. OK, yes, this is manipulating nature a bit, but so what? Clip an attractive blossom and place it in a water bottle on your picnic table and you can lure the butterflies to your set. It works, I've done it many times.
  
• Be patient. Don't give up too soon. Many times just when I've packed up the tripod because the butterflies weren't landing anywhere near the plant that was in the best light, they suddenly get interested. They're not mocking you, they're just being themselves. Be patient, wait, you can get some good flower close-ups while you wait.
• Read about butterflies. There is a lot about them on the web and there are some nice field guides at your library--the more you know, the more shots you'll get.
  

Butterfly photos look terrific on homemade greeting cards and they will absolutely draw attention to your Flickr Photostream (don't forget to tag them with the kind of butterfly), so it's worth spending a few hours a week trying to get a great shot. By the way, yes, I blurred the background of this shot in Photoshop with the Gaussian blur tool. Simple to do: I just used the magic wand selection tool to isolate the background (and then reversed the selection to protect the butterfly and flower) and then applied a Gaussian blur to the unprotected areas. It takes some practice to get good at selections, but like any other skill the more you do it the better you'll get.

Fade Photoshop Filters for Artistic Control

Here's a really quick and easy tip that provides a simple way to control the intensity of Photoshop filters. Any time that you apply a Photoshop filter to an image and you think it's too strong (or just want to see how it would look if you had use less of the filter), simply go to the edit menu and you'll see an option to fade that filter (it will say "Fade...." with the name of the filter next to it). If you click on that option you'll get a slider that lets you adjust the strength of the filter from 100% (maximum) to 0% (no effect). The option is only available immediately after you apply the filter, however, so you must go immediately to the edit menu after you apply the filter. If you do anything else after you apply the filter, the fade option won't appear.

This technique is a great way to tweak filter strength without having to start over again. In photo here, for example, I used a diffuse glow filter (to be honest I'm not really sure what the point of that filter is, but it's worth trying them all, so I do) and then reduced the strenth to about 70%. I use the fade filter option all the time and it's a great time saver.

Turn a Sunset into a Moonlit Night

A few postings ago (the peacock shot) I talked about using the hue and saturation tool to create striking abstract colors. Last night I was trying to keep myself awake at the computer (that happens a lot at the end of a book project) and I started playing with a sunset image that I shot in Connecticut over Long Island Sound. I decided to see how the scene would look as a moonlit night and so I slid the hue slider all the way to the right which shifts the hues to blue. That's all I did to turn the sunset into a moonscape. I had already made some very minor corrections to brightness in Photoshop, but to create the moonlight look, it just took one quick push of the hue slider. Try it sometime with a sunset if you have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements (and probably any other editing program). I don't think it will fool too many photographers into thinking it was really shot by moonlight, but it still looks kind of cool. I'll post the sunset next so you can see what the original looked like.

By the way, the new book I'm writing is almost done and it's on how to win photo contests, so stay tuned and I'll tell you more about it. I'm hoping it will hit the bookstores by September. It's being published by Lark Books.

Alter Colors and Leave Reality Behind

I have a friend that is a DJ at the FM station where I do a monthly music and interview show (WPKN 89.5 FM) who is always quick to remind me that, in art at least (and lots of other things), reality is far overrated. And when it comes to playing around in Photoshop, he's certainly right. While I use image editing largely to enhance reality and make my images appear more like they appeared to me in person (but even that is a bit of an abstraction since the way your eyes/brain see a scene and the way the camera sees them are two different things), but sometimes leaving reality far behind is a lot more fun.

The simplest way to alter reality in a photograph is just to turn the colors inside out. Changing the colors of familiar objects is fun because while people recognize what your subject used to be, they have to view it in a brand new light. And in Photoshop (and most editing programs) altering color is a piece of cake. In fact, I only used two tools to turn this normally blue and green peacock in a shocking mix of red and blue. The first thing that I did was to simply play wiht the "hue" slider in the hue-saturation tool. As you move that slider left or right all of the color relationships change. Once I had a color combination I liked, I used the "saturation" slider in that tool to really intensify the colors. Next I used the curves tool to heighten the contrast (by making the darks darker and the bright areas brighter) and further saturate the colors.

While I played with the image for 20 mintues or so, the actual work only took about five minutes. Remember that there is no right or wrong when it comes to mixing up colors in an image--whatever looks good to you works.

By the way, the friend I mentioned is Terry Hopper and his program (1st and 3rd Thursdays, 2-6 p.m. ET) is The Quest. You can listen live via WPKN.org.

Pump up the Colors with Hue and Saturation

One of the first tools that people gravitate toward when they first use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements is the Hue and Saturation tool. It's a very simple tool to use (you just play with sliders to adjust both hue and color saturation) and you can create some dazzling effects. The availability of a saturation tool has created a world of over-saturated photos in online galleries and photo-sharing sites and while they're fun to look at you should be aware those colors don't always print quite so vividly.

Still, there are times when you might want to oversaturate colors just for the heck of it--especially for online use--and that's exactly what I did with this shot of an oil slick (photographed in a motel parking lot on a rainy day). The image came out of the camera far more dull than I had hoped (or than it looked in real life) so I started to pump up the saturation--a little at first and then a lot! The version here is actually only a moderately saturated version, I also have what I call a Peter Max version that is even more intense.

Most image-editing programs have a saturation control and, as I said, all that you have to do is call up the image, open the tool and then start saturating. You can also saturate invidual colors (or parts of an image) and I'll talk about doing both of those things in future postings. For now, call up and image that you think is too dull and pump up the volume!

Rename Files Before Saving New Versions

Unless you're really a whiz at Photoshop, chances are that you'll go through several edited versions of a photograph before you arrive at just the version you're after. I often spend hours (even days) on a really important image and create a dozen or more different interpretations.

One thing you have to be careful of though is not saving the new versions with the same file name as the old one; if you do, of course, you erase the previous version. While that might not seem to matter if you like the new version more, the fact is that in the cold light of day, you may actually prefer earlier versions. All it takes is a little bit of organization (and some hard drive space) to save each different version until you're sure you have the one you want.

I've played with this shot of the Camden, Maine harbor many times (the shot is simply too crowded, but I keep playing with exposure and color balance to try and improve it--silly, I know) and each time I do I change the file name slightly: "Camden_Harbor 1" "Camden_Harbor 2," etc. That way I can always go back and look at earlier takes. I also keep the layers open when I save "working" images because that way I can trace exactly what I did and also turn various layers on or off at will. Finally, when I'm sure I have a file I like, I flatten the image, choose a final name and save it to a "finals" folder.

One other reason to change file names slightly is that if you open and re-save jpeg files (and only jpegs--it's OK to save TIFF or PSD files with the same name--though you will, of course, still delete the earlier version if you do) using the same exact file name, you degrade the file! Yes, you are actually harming the file each time you open and resave it under the same name--so don't do it!

Organization is an important thing in image editing, especially when, as I do, you have tens of thousands of digital files. So come up with a good naming scheme early and stick with it--you'll be glad you did.

Warm Things Up with Photoshop Photo Filters

Back in the film days I used to load my camera bag with expensive (and heavy) glass filters for various photo effects: cooling, warming, soft focus, etc. It was just a normal part of my shooting routine to decide which filter to use for a given scene. These days, while I still carry a polarizing filter and a few neutral density filters, I do most of my warming and cooling in Photoshop.

The fastest way to add warmth (or cooling) to a file in Photoshop is using the "photo filter" option that you'll find in the pop-up menu at the bottom of the layers palette. Once the toolbox opens you'll find 20 preset filters (warm, cooling, blue, yellow, emerald green, etc.) and a second box that you can click to create a custom filter from virtually any color that you want. Using the presets is simple: just pull down the menu, highlight the filter you want to try and select it. If you don't like the look, just slide the menu back down and try again with another filter. In the photo of the gardens at Chateau de Chenonceau (in the Loire Valley of France), for example, I used the #85b warming filter option. To use the custom-color filters, just click that box and then double click the color patch and the entire spectrum opens up. Select the color you want and you'll see the changes immediately in the image.

There is also a "density" slider so that you can adjust the intensity of the color you're adding. I tend to work at about 20-25% density when I'm adding warmth of cooling, but it really depends on the image and the effect I'm after. It's all very simple and fast and while I generally prefer to create balances using more controllable tools (like the selective color tool), the photo filters are great for a quick fix. Remember that, as with most Photoshop filters, you can also make a selection first and just add the filtering to the selected area--very useful for warming up a red barn, for example, or cooling a blue sky.

I have to admit that while I have romantic memories of choosing just the right color filter when I was out in the field shooting, and took some sort of silly pride in my collection of expensive glass filters, I really don't miss them. Those lens filters are expensive, delicate and heavy--and they also degraded sharpness. Viva la Photoshop!