Back From My Cruise With Lots of Photos

Well, I just realized that it has been quite some time since I updated my blog. That is not how bogs are supposed to work. At any rate, I just returned from my Norwegian Cruise Lines Western Mediterranean Cruise. Everything went well and I came back with a load of pictures. Fortunately for my students there are a several that make great starting points for class exercises. They have real problems that Photoshop Elements (PSE) can fix. I have another guest lecture gig coming up in mid-December that I am looking forward to now.

For any of my students who happen to read this, I still do not know my fall schedule for either school. My web site still shows the spring schedule. Once I do, I will update the web site and also send out my usual email for those on my distribution list.

One of the reasons I have not added a new entry here is that my discussion of converting catalogs from older versions of PSE to PSE 6 attracted some comments that I tried address. Even with the number of excellent books available for PSE, none really discuss the details of working with the Organizer mode of the program. I really believe there is a market for such a book. What do you think?

Using the Gray Eyedropper in Levels to Correct Color - With a Twist

Those of you who have taken my photo editing classes know that I am a big user of the Levels command and its use on an Adjustment Layer. In the more advanced class we learn about how to use the gray eyedropper to help correct the color balance by clicking on something in the photo that should be a shade of gray. But what if there is nothing in the image that is neutral gray? How many of us shoot a test shot with a gray card in the scene?

I learned a new twist to this technique from the free e-magazines available from www.photographybb.com. I think it was in Issue No. 2. By the way, this web site has a wealth of information and is an excellent source for free actions that run on PSE. The article that I adapted my approach from discusses  several techniques to correct color.

I have been using the approach outline below that is based on the discussion in the above article to work with some of my problem photos from my cruise. Here are the basic steps.

1. Duplicate the Background.
2. On the Background Copy layer, click on Filter > Blur Average. That layer now takes on the color cast of the photo. Well balanced photos will be gray.
3. Select the Eyedropper Tool from the Tool Box and sample the Background Copy Layer, setting the Foreground Color Swatch to the sampled color.
4. Delete the Background Copy layer.
5. Open the Levels command on an Adjustment Layer.
6. Click on the Gray Eyedropper in the Levels dialog.
7. Click on the Foreground Color swatch - the top square at the bottom of the Tool Box. The color cast should be removed.
8. Click on the Auto button within the dialog box to set the white and black points for proper contrast.
9. If required you can use the middle sliders in the Levels command dialog box to fine tune the brightness, contrast, and color of the image. However, I have found that for a large number of my pictures, the Auto button is all I need.

I do not use the above steps for all of my photos, only those that have a definite color cast. When they do, I have been using it recently, instead of adjusting the sliders on the red, green, and blue color channels. Below is a before and after example. This photo was taken of the Italian countryside on the way to Florence through the tour bus widow.

 

Here is the original. A definite green color cast is evident.

 

 

Still not that great of a photo, but at least it is worth keeping now.

Try this technique and see what you think. It is working pretty well for me.

Until next time,

Don

More on Moving Photoshop Elements Catalogs

In my May 5th blog entry, I described one way to move your Photoshop Elements Catalog and photos to an external hard drive. In this entry, I’ll cover a related situation. Suppose you have an older version of Photoshop Elements on your Windows XP computer and you just bought a new computer running Vista. Only PSE 5 or PSE 6 will install and run properly under Vista, and for PSE 5 you will have to download a free patch from Adobe.

If you have PSE 3 or PSE 4, here is a way for you to copy your catalog and your images to your new Vista PC after you have installed PSE 6 on it.

The following are the general steps you can use to convert your Catalog from an earlier version of PSE to PSE 6 installed on a new and different computer.

In the older version of PSE, reconnect all missing files by clicking on File > Reconnect > All Missing Files.

• If some files are missing and you do not know where they are, delete them from the Catalog. Do this only if there are a very few files.
• If the list is extensive, the pictures are important, and/or you know where they have been moved to, it is far better to Reconnect them before doing the backup in the next step.
• If there are unconnected/missing files the, converted catalog may have problems.

Do a full backup by clicking on File > Backup

• It is best to backup up to an external hard drive or flash drive (if your catalog is not too large)
• Backing up to CDs or DVDs can also be done.

After you have installed PSE 6 on your new computer and before you add any pictures to its catalog, click on File > Restore

• Browse to where you put the full backup you made with the earlier version in the top part of the dialog box.
• Click on New Location in the lower part of the dialog box.
• Place a checkmark next to Restore Original Structure. See the figure below.

 

PSE 6 will first restore the backup folder to the structure that was compatible with the older version of PSE. It then converts the catalog to the new structure used by PSE 6. All of your images and tags will be converted and copied to your new PC. Depending upon what earlier version you are upgrading from, some of your creations may be lost. Later versions of PSE have made substantial changes to the various Creation formats.

It’s a good idea to quickly check to see that all of your pictures have been properly copied over along with your tag structure and picture assignments.

Until next time,

Don

More Student Photo Art

Here are some more examples of photo images transformed into works of art by one of my students, Judy Yao. They each start out as very nice photos. But then Judy uses a popular technique combining a watercolor and pen/ink drawing to transform them into something entirely different.

Here is a classic view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

In this conversion Judy wanted to maintain some of the cable details during the conversion to a drawing.

In this next example of the Aquatic Park in San Francisco, Judy simplified the the structure supporting the Ghiradelli sign in the final simulated painting.

In this final example, Judy starts with a nice photo of the King’s village in Waikiki that might be similar to that taken by many tourists.

But she adds a lot of interest to the shot by converting it to a combined pen/ink and watercolor drawing.

 

Well, there you have a few more examples of just how one relatively simple technique can be used to add new life to a photograph using Photoshop Elements. Given the number of filters, brushes and related tools that are provided in the program, there is no limit to what can be done when you add your own imagination and interpretation to a scene you have captured with your camera.

Until next time,

Don

Moving Photoshop Elements Images and Catalog to an External Drive

The other day I helped a client move all of her pictures, as well as her catalog from her C drive to a new external drive. The number of pictures in her catalog had grown to about 5,000, and she was concerned that she was running out of disk space. There are a number of ways this can be done, but I chose to do a backup/restore. The added advantage for her of doing it this way was it forced her to back up her catalog, which she had not done recently.

She has PSE 5, but these same steps can be used with any version. She bought two USB 2.0 external hard drives, one for her catalog and images and the second one for her backup files. Before starting, we checked to make sure that the new external drives were formatted using NTFS, and not FAT32. Often external drives come formatted as FAT32 drives to increase their compatibility across various platforms. The problem with this is a FAT32 drive cannot store a file greater than 4 Gb. PSE backup files are generally much larger than this. I believe her backup ended up being about 12-13 Gb.

Here are the steps we followed to move her catalog.

1. Reconnect or delete any missing files. Click on File > Reconnect > All Missing Files. If you delete missing files, delete them from the catalog but not the hard drive.
2. Click File > Backup. Select Full Backup and click Next.
3. Select the external drive where you intend to backup up your catalog and images, eg G:. The default name should be the same name as your catalog. For most people, this will be My Catalog.
4. Click on the Browse button and make a new folder. Here is how I name backup folders:
               FB My Catalog 5-4-08
   This tells me the name of the catalog, the fact that it is a full backup in contrast to an incremental backup, and the date it was created. This new folder should now be in the backup path field.
5. Click Done to begin the backup.
6. Once the backup is complete, click on File > Restore (The wording after Restore varies depending PSE version you are using).
7. In the Restore From section of the dialog box, select the drive containing the backup files (G: in our example), click on the Browse button and then navigate to and select the .tly file in the folder you used for your backup.
8. In the Restore Files and Catalog to section of the dialog box, select New Location.
9. Click on the Browse button and navigate to the External drive on which you are going house your catalog and images, eg F:. 
10. Make sure you select Restore Original Folder Structure. 
11. Click Restore.

At the completion of the restore process, your images and tags should all be as you left them. You can quickly verify that they are now on the external drive by checking the properties for a selected image. To complete the relocation, you should change the preferences where images uploaded from your camera are stored, where scanned images will be stored, and where files automatically saved by PSE are saved. Do this by clicking on the following and entering the appropriate location:
     Edit > Preferences > Files
     Edit > Preferences > Camera or Card Reader
     Edit > Preferences > Scanner

Remember, from now on, the My Pictures folder on your C drive will not be where PSE is going to be saving images in the future. As you edit your pictures you will also want to navigate to an appropriate folder on your new external hard drive (again F: in our example) when you do your File Save As… command. Other programs that use the My Pictures folder will continue to look and store images there.

As of right now, your pictures are still located wherever they were on your C drive. Later when you are comfortable that everything got transferred correctly, these can be deleted.

The performance of PSE should not go down much or at all with having your images contained on an external drive. But if you are concerned about that, you could move your images and catalog to a second internal hard drive. The steps above would remain the same.

That’s all for now. Please comment if you have any questions, thoughts or experiences to share.

Until next time,

Don

Student Work - Photo Images To Art Work

Much of our class time is spent making good photo images significantly better or saving those that did not quite come out right when we took them. This week, I thought I would share some images from a student, Judy Yao, who converted some photos into artwork. The techniques she used were based on the general techniques she had learned in class.

I the first pair, Judy used Clone Stamp tool to remove the three people in photo taken at the Alamo. Then she applied pen-ink and watercolor combination effect technique without using any texture effect.

The Original

 

Final result:

 

For the picture of the grass, Judy started with a pen and ink rendering then adjusted the hue/saturation and then solarized the photo.

The Original:

Her final image.

 

For following image, Judy used pen and ink rendering and also applied a light fresco texture.

The Original

 

The Final Result.

 

This time, Judy started with a nice photo below of some daisies. This time she used the pen and ink technique but didn’t add any texture and then adjust the color and hue.

To end up in with the following image.

 

And for her final photo of a kettle shown below, Judy applied the basic pen-ink approach we learned in class.

The final image.

 

Starting with the basic techniques we learned in class, Judy has taken her already nice photographs to and entirely new level by converting them to works of art. The technique is relatively easy to apply, it just takes some creativity on the part of the photographer, as Judy’s images show to do this.

It’s Hard to Get Rid of Things

I am getting ready to participate in our neighborhood’s annual garage sale. It is a big event in the local area. It’s well publicized and people seem to come from everywhere. You have to be very careful coming and going to your home, because people and cars are everywhere on the neighborhood streets.

One of the items I was preparing to sell on eBay or include in my garage sale list was an old slide duplicator attachment made for a RCA video camera I had in the early 80s. I sold the camera many years ago in a previous garage sale. I had never really used the attachment, because the quality of the slides as recorded on the video tape was so poor it was not worth the effort. The technology was not ready for what I wanted to do. By the way, this attachment was for a video camera that recorded onto a standard VHS video tape, so you can imagine how bulky and heavy the camera was.

The attachment itself is an RCA Model FSA 036A Slide Adapter that originally cost $100. Mine looks brand new and is still in its original box with all of the packing material, included the plastic bags holding some of the accessories - some unopened. The kit includes the basic slide adapter itself, a filter, filter size adapters, and slide holders for 35 mm and at least 110 mm film strips as well as a slide holder.

In my garage sale preparation, I also ran across an unopened package of GAF Pana-Vue slides of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. Over the years they had deteriorated to the point where the image was almost pure red. At first I thought I would try to see what I could do with them in Photoshop Elements. But I quickly discovered they would not fit my 35 mm slide scanner. They were a bit too big, which probably explains why the package was never opened.

As I was getting the slide adapter ready for sale, I thought I would see if could be attached to my Canon XTi Rebel. Not only did it fit, I did not even have to use any of the filter size adapters that were part of the slide adapter kit. I also found that its slide holder was able to accommodate a slide slightly larger than the standard 35 mm size. With now preparation whatsoever, I attached the slide adapter to the Rebel, put in a tramway slide and, pointed the camera out the window, and took the picture. Some cropping/vignetting occurred. But it worked.

I now had a reasonable good copy of a badly damaged non-standard slide. I uploaded the picture to Photoshop Elements 6.0, and quickly found that not only was color gone, there were a lot of spots etc presumably caused by some sort of fungus, I guess. At any rate, I used Levels to bring back the color, the Healing Brush and Spot Healing Brush to fix the worst stains, and sharpened it a bit.

The result is shown below. This by no means is a good picture, but the improvement was dramatic.

Here is the XTi original.

 

It now looks like this.

 

There are four more pictures of the tram. Based on these results, I will try to salvage each of them. I have some old odd sized negatives that I might be able to do something similar to using the slide adapter. Needless to say, it will not be part of my garage sale items. In fact the slide adapters position in life has been raised from being stored on the shelf in the garage to now residing inside the house.

Until next time,

Don

PS Don’t hesitate to leave a comment. It seems that is the only way that I can tell if anyone has read the article.

Another Student Photo

One of the key features of Photoshop Elements has been its assortment of selection tools. With each version, these tools have been expanded and improved. My favorite selection tool is the Selection Brush. Regardless of what tool I make my initial selection with I almost always fine tune it with the Selection Brush. The student picture below was actually a team effort being photographed by Judy Raffel and refined in Photoshop Elements 6 by Len Lipman. I’ll let Len explain how the final image came about.

Judy took this photo because she liked the pattern of the tea leaves in the glass, but the background of the shirts was very distracting. I used the Quick Select Tool of PSE 6, plus fine tuning with the Selection Brush to select out the background, which I then blurred with Gaussian blur. Note that I first tried to do this with PSE 4 on my Mac (PSE 6 for Mac will be released this weekend) and it was just about impossible to do a good selection because of the strongly curved cup handle and fingers. But Quick Select Tool was almost a miracle, making an almost perfect selection. This tool alone makes PSE 6 worthwhile. For Mac users like myself PSE 6 will have another huge advantage. PSE 4 is not stable with the new Mac Leopard Operating System and can abruptly fail, but PSE 6 (Mac) is written for Leopard.

Here is the original photo.

The final result.

Blurring the background really draws your eye to the glass and its leaf pattern.

Until next time,

Don

Converting .MOV Files to .AVI - One Way

Many digital cameras can take movies also. They often save the video in a .mov file format, which is the Apple Quicktime format. Although Photoshop Elements can accept these files into the Organize and generally play them back through the Quicktime viewer, they can not be included in a slide show. Video files for slide shows must be either .wmv or .avi files. Also, Microsoft’s Movie Maker 2 can not accept .mov files either.

A workaround for the above situation is to convert the .mov files to a format that Elements and Movie Maker can accept. Being able to convert one video file format to another is a common need. Many file converters exist and some are free. The following free file converter is one such program that is pretty easy to use, at least for converting files. There may be some loss of quality, but it does get the job done.

The program is called RAD Video Tools. It can be downloaded from the following web site.

www.radgametools.com

The name of the file is RadTools.exe. To download the file, click on the appropriate link. Your browser will ask whether you want to Run or Save it. Choose Save and proceed to download it to your computer. Run the install program from your computer.

The program is pretty easy to use, especially if you just simply want to convert a file. Here is a short video tutorial on how to do it.

Click on the following link to see the video.   http://www.donstouder.com/Photos-Videos/RAD%20Tools%20Take%202.wmv

 Until next time,

Don

Student Photos Take 2

Well, I decided it was time to post a few more examples of work my students have done using a few of the techniques we cover in class. They all are examples that made use of the Clone Stamp Tool, Layers, and/or Selections. All of these students have attended classes at the Torrance Griffith Adult Center.

The first two are from Bill Clarkson.

The Original

Using layers, selections and a linear gradient makes for a more pleasing photo that is now ready for eBay.

Bill also submitted the following two pictures of his dog, Gus.

The original is shown above.

Again, Bill has used selection and a color fill to eliminate the distracting background.

The Clone Stamp is one of the most useful tools in Photoshop Elements. Although new versions have added additional semi-automatic selection tools like the Magic Selection Brush, the basic Clone Stamp tool is still quite useful as shown in Mary White’s work below.

 

Mary’s Original

Here Mary used the Clone Stamp Tool to remove the unsightly drain pipe.

Here are two more examples from Laurel Woodley. In the first she uses a combination of selection tools, including the Selection Brush to make a good selection around the bird’s feathers before placing it on a less distracting background.

Even with the tools provided by Photoshop Elements, it takes patience and some practice to select more difficult subjects.

In this final example, Laurel changes pace a bit by turning a photographic image into a colored pencil sketch. This transformation was done using a combination of layer blending modes.

 

The Original Photo

The Resulting Pencil Sketch

Well, that’s all for this installment. Don’t forget, if you are a current or former student of one of my classes, you are more than welcome to email me before and after examples of your pictures. I will periodically post them here. It’s a good way to let others see what you have done and what you have learned.

Until next time,

Don 

Edit JPEG Images as Camera RAW Files

What is a RAW File?

Many digital cameras today can take RAW images instead of or in addition to JPEG images. When you set your camera to take RAW images, whatever camera settings like, white balance etc, that are set, are embedded in the file, but not applied to the image. Also,when  the image is stored on your memory card, it is not compressed as it is when storing it as a JPEG image. However, the resulting RAW file is much larger; thus you cannot store nearly as many images on your card as you can if you save the image in the usual JPEG format. In addition, it takes longer for your camera to write the data to the memory card, so it is not ready to take the next shot as quickly.

That’s the downside. The advantage of shooting RAW instead of JPEG images is that it avoids the JPEG compression that lowers the quality of the image as it is being saved to your memory card. Plus, since no manipulation has been done to the recorded pixels, you have a lot more flexibility when editing the image in Photoshop Elements. Generally speaking, you can make larger corrections without losing quality. In addition, there are are a additional sliders available in the Photoshop Elements’ Camera Raw editor that are not available from within the Full Editor.

That being said, most of us do not shoot RAW with our cameras. We leave that to the professionals, preferring to stay with our JPEG images. Well, what if we could open and adjust our normal JPEG images in the Camera Raw Editor of Photoshop Elements? Well we can. You don’t get all of the advantages you get from starting with a RAW image, but at least you can use the same techniques and sliders. You may find that the results you get are not only better, but also easier and quicker to apply. Try it and see for yourself.

Using the Camera RAW Editor 

Here’s how you do it.

1. Open the Full Editor in Photoshop Elements
2. On the Menu, click on File > Open As…
3. In the Open As.. dialog box, select Camera RAW on the Open As line. Navigate to and select your JPEG image and click on Open.

Your JPEG image opens in the Camera Raw Editor as if it were a RAW image.

The image above is the original JPEG as it opened in the Camera RAW Editor.

The original was taken on a bright sunny day with my camera set for incandescent light, so it’s way too blue. After a couple of quick adjustments, mostly with the Temperature slider, the image below resulted.

 

Now all need to do is click on Open to open the image in the Full Editor of Elements for any additional cropping etc I want to do. I have used this example a lot in my classes to remove the color cast using Levels. The results I obtained with the Camera RAW Editor are every bit as good and, I am able to do it much quicker.

There is a lot more to using the Camera Raw Editor than what I’ve shown here. The important thing is you do not have to start with a RAW image to make excellent use of it.

The screen shots were from PSE 5, but the steps are the same in both PSE 4 and PSE 6. Just make sure you have the latest version of Adobe’s Camera RAW 4.3.1, which you can download for from Adobe by clicking here.

Try it out and let me know what you think by leaving a comment.