Digital Photography Guide

The sun is out and shining bright. The sky is blue and the grass is green. Summers here and it seems everyone is wanting a new family portrait on the beach, at the park, or in downtown.

Here are some things to keep in mind when creating family portraits:

1. Think in “mini-groups”. A family portrait is simply multiple “mini groups” within one large group. Use groups of two’s and three’s to compose your family shot.
2. Remember “levels”. One of the most important elements of a group shot is to vary the levels of your subjects. Placing some faces higher than others will allow you to make the shot more intimate in spacing.
3. Consider “color”. While color coordination is by no means necessary for group shots, it can help the overall flow. Have your subjects go by types of color, such as “vibrant”, “bold”, “pastels”, etc.
4. Watching even lighting, but don’t stress about it. So long as all the eyes are visible, and faces are lit relatively the same, your good to go.
5. Pick shade: As the sun doesn’t set until late in the evening, you’ll have to wait for good sidelight until about 5 pm. If your stuck shooting before this time, find awnings, the shaded back side of buildings, or tree cover to diffuse the harsh sunlight.
6. Move quickly: It’s very helpful to try story-boarding your group shots ahead of time according to the number of people you have. The more people you have in a shot, the less time you have to create it. Story-boarding is more about knowing what you want, than it is about formal posing.
7. Be fun and spontaneous! Plan to take shots of the families walking, striking a dance pose, linking arms, or jumping in the air. These shots capture genuine expressions among the entire group and help to keep your subjects happy and interested.
8. Background work: The larger the party, the less control you have with eliminating your background. Simplify as much as you can by changing the angle you take your shot. Taking the shot from the ground or directly down on your subjects may eliminate enough background to feature the group without distraction.

Most of all, spend some time asking questions of what the family wants. Make a general determination if they are looking for more casual shots, or formal arrangements. So long as you know the general direction of what the family is looking for, you can score big in the capture.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

8 Family Portaits Tips

For a change in recent weeks, we turn to the world of macor photography with a superb image for you to enjoy in the Digital Photography Now Picture of the Day. You, too, could be featured on the DPNow.com POTD, simply register on our discussion forum, netting free gallery space, and the rest is up to you!

Personal printing of images is getting tougher: as multi function devices that can scan, fax, copy — even print! Are proliferating, so the number of fully capable photo quality printers is decreasing. Today it’s a tough task to find a top quality photo printer at a reasonable price. And an A3 printer? Forget it!

I guess it’s called dumbing down. But there are still those of us who still pursue the challenge of making high quality prints and demand the technology and techniques to make it happen. Which is where Tim Daly’s book, Printing for Digital Photographers, comes in.

Early help in the book pivots around the setting up of a digital dark room: choice of software; the benefits of pigmented inks … Daly’s recommendation; getting the best out of a printer; data storage; card readers, etc.

Then the real meat hits the plate: managing multiple image files with the help of software like Adobe Bridge and iView Media Pro.

The discussion then moves onto inks and printing papers. Daly stresses “Print sharpness, colour saturation and contrast are all dictated by your printing media …” and then faces the real world where people continue to use copying paper for their printing needs, concluding that “these materials work much better if you sue low-resolution images and low quality printer settings.”

Useful chapters cover image editing software and useful plug-ins, followed by a scant two pages on calibration of monitors and papers.

A straightforward step-by-step series of chapters cover image cropping, contrast control, using Levels, eradicating dust and scratches, dealing with HDR, toning etc.

There’s a heap more in the book and all of it is of enormous help.

Author: T Daly. Publisher: PIP. Distributor: Capricorn Link. ISBN 13 978 1 86108 528 3. 176 pages.

Grab a copy of Printing for Digital Photographers at Amazon.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Printing for Digital Photographers [BOOK REVIEW]

One of the hardest things for a new Lightroom user to work out how to perform is a simple image resizing. Look as hard as you like and there simply isn’t a resize menu command.

There is, of course, a way to resize images and it is done as you Export them from Lightroom which makes sense when you know how Lightroom works but if you’re a new user it’s just plain confusing.

So, here’s how to batch resize in Lightroom:

Step 1

Select the Library module and select the images to export. Choose File > Export.

Step 2

The Export dialog gives you a series of choices for the exported images. Start by selecting where the exported images should be stored. Choose either a specific folder or the same folder that the originals are stored in.

To place the images in a subfolder of your chosen folder, select Put in Subfolder and type the name of a new subfolder to create. If you want the exported images to be available in Lightroom, select the Add to This Catalog checkbox. From the Existing Files dropdown list, choose what to do if files of the same name appear already in the selected folder.

Step 3

From the File Naming options select what you want your files to be named.

For example, selecting Filename will give the files the same name as the original images. Custom name - Sequence lets you give the files a custom name and Lightroom will add a sequential number to each file. Type the Custom Name in the Custom Text box.

You can also select Edit from the dropdown list and create your own file naming template.

Step 4

In the File Settings area, select the export format such as JPEG for the web and the Quality - the higher the quality, the larger the file size.

In the Color Space area choose sRGB for the web.

Step 5

In the Image Sizing area set the file size and resolution. So you can, for example set the Resolution to 72 pixels per inch for the Web or 300 ppi for printing.

To size the images, enable the Resize to Fit checkbox. By selecting Dimensions you can set the final dimensions for each image such as 800 x 1200 and the images will be sized as close to this as they can be given their current aspect ratio. They won’t be larger than this and one measurement at least will be 800 or 1200. Lightroom does this regardless of whether the images are in Portrait or Landscape orientation so portrait and landscape images will end up the same sizes.

If you select Width & Height you can set the longest dimensions of each image in each direction. All images will be sized so their Width is no larger than the value you set and their Height is no larger than the value you set - the same width and height values are applied to portrait and landscape images so a Width of 400 and Height of 600 will give a larger portrait image than it will a landscape one because the landscape image can’t be wider than 400, forcing its height to much less than this.

The Long Edge and Short Edge options let you set the maximum length of the long or short edge of a photo - so Portrait and Landscape images are treated alike here.

If you enable the Don’t Enlarge checkbox you could have images much smaller than your selected dimensions if the originals are already under the selected size.

Step 6

You can apply sharpening by selecting the Sharpen For checkbox from the Output Sharpening options and select to sharpen for Screen, for example, and set a Low, Standard or High Value of sharpening.

In the Metadata area, select to add metadata if desired and from the Post-Processing options select what to do with the images afterwards, for example you could open the images direct in Photoshop or in an alternate editor or another application or show them in Windows Explorer.

When you’re done with the selections, click Export and the selected images will be exported.

Step 7

If you’ll use these settings again, save them to use next time by clicking the Add button at the foot of the Preset list, type a name for the preset, select the folder to add the preset to or just leave it set to User Presets and click Create.

In future, you can return to the Export dialog and select these options by clicking the Preset name. You can still make changes to the settings, if desired, and export a new set of images.

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

How to Resize Images in Lightroom 2

Mirage by Bart Aldrich