Photography is so much more than just conceiving and shooting a frame. Post-production is now an integral part of photography. How you post process and in what software is a much heated debate -  along the lines of Canon vs. Nikon and Windows vs. Mac.  We'll take a look at the three most commonly used post-processing software programs so you can determine which is best for your needs.Adobe Photoshop.  Considered to be the tool for photographers to edit their photos, each version offers more tools that enable us to do just that, while the RAW processor built into it handles tweaks to RAW files.  Photoshop offers a lot, but is also the most expensive of the three we're looking at.  From a photography production standpoint, it's also a bit clunky unless you build in a lot of custom actions to run in batch.  Out of the box, no creative anything is included either - you'll have to source others' actions (free or for a fee) and everything is left up to you.Photoshop can also be somewhat intimidating if you've never used it before.  Who's best suited to use it?  Those who have experience in Photoshop, or for actual pixel editing.  ...

High Dynamic Range, or HDR, is a term that's thrown around pretty loosely now through the Internet among photographers, but few actually know what it is.  The truth is, there isn't much knew about the concept, it's just with digital photography progressing and software engineers developing new tools along with hardware to handle them, the option to create HDR pieces is easier than ever.Photo by Paulo Brandão HDR, in a nutshell, is exposing the same frame at different exposures and then layering them together to take the best parts of all frames and put it into one single image.  It allows photographers to show highlights and shadows together in a frame in a way they've never before been able to.  Here are 7 reasons HDR is not a fad and will be here to stay.1. HDR is an awesome tool.  Most have only seen HDR photos that are overly done though with an end result that looks more like a painting.  There is nothing wrong with HDR!2. HDR is often misunderstood.  Not every photo should have an HDR treatment done, and while it's possible to create the effect from one RAW file, done properly you should be bracket shooting your exposures.  ...

Black and white photography is often seen as some of the most pure forms of the art.  Removing the color and only dealing with the composition and contrast and how it relates to brightness in the shades of gray, black and white can often show an image in a whole new way.  Since digital photography has allowed us the luxury of shooting in color and converting to black and white we as photographers can always choose how we want to convert them.  A few digital cameras offer a black and white mode but the results are mediocre at best, and converting yourself can be the more rewarding while yielding the highest results.  There are however a few mistakes you can make while doing the conversion.Photo by gualtiero Don't use the Convert to greyscale option in Photoshop. This conversion strips so much data from your photos and yields some of the worst conversions available.  Avoid this at all costs.Poorly exposed photographs make poor looking black and whites.  Don't assume that because you over or under exposed your image that converting to black and white will fix the problem.Black is needed to make an attractive photograph, it says it right in ...

It's been said that to become an expert at something, 10,000 hours of time needs to be invested.  That's a lot of time, over a good number of years and I feel photography is something that is always evolving and there's always room to learn and improve.  That leads into how I improved my photography in one evening.I sat down and looked through some boxes of prints I had from my film days and then started looking at photos on my computer and external hard drives.  I noticed that, along with some editing issues (particularly with digital) that was kind of period-dating my work, for the most part I was shooting kind of loose.  By loose I mean, either not close enough or zoomed in enough, or not cropping enough in post production.Composition is a key element to a successful photograph and by simply re-cropping some of my photographs to eliminate wasteful space they looked new and fresh to me.  I posted a few up onto some message boards and the feedback was overwhelming.Since almost every camera I shoot is 2:3 proportion, that's how I've been cropping.  Missing my beloved medium format TLR that shoots square images, I set my ...

Photography is about so much more than just shooting.  Photographers are now required to be their own network administrator and IT people, managing growing storage, finding files, archiving and working on them all.  I will share with you the workflow that I've been using for a few years starting with everything after a shoot.I'm a pretty strong believer that when you are done with a shoot, no matter if it's a few snapshots at a friends birthday party or a wedding you've just been paid to shoot, each and every shoot should be copied off your memory card and put on your computer.  I try my best to never leave the card in the camera for weeks on end allowing multiple events to pile up on the card.  Memory cards are cheap and the size of them continues to grow making it that much easier.   Transferring the files to a computer after each shoot minimizes the possibility of camera card corruption and aids in better organization, which I'll discuss in a minute.  Having multiple memory cards also helps keep things somewhat separated.My computer is where I obviously work on all the photos, but I only keep the more recent sets ...

For most photographers, Photoshop is one of, if not the primary tool used to make adjustments to digital photos.  It's their darkroom, allowing creativity and correction for mistakes made in, or uncontrollable situations while shooting.  Additionally, it can be used to black and white, sepia and other color conversions, selective color, blemish removal and removing red eye. With every release of Photoshop, more tools are available, making the toolbox grow and the editing abilities near endless.  That's not to say every filter and every option should always be used, there are some things that are just a crime in Photoshop.Saving over your originals is one of the things I've always been conscious of not doing, but in talking with other photographers, they apparently do it on a regular basis.  Perhaps it comes from a bad habit formed from writing long papers in school and always hitting cmd (ctrl for you Windows folks) + S while writing that translated over to Photoshop for saving while in progress.  No matter what, you should never save over your original files!Upsizing your files is never a good idea, no matter what!  Upsizing is a term used when you resize an photo (Image > Image ...

I think everyone has seen the dreaded red-eye in photos, mostly effecting those with light eyes and animals.  The red eye effect is caused when the camera's flash is very close to the camera lens, most commonly seen with point and shoot cameras, this effect is purely a photographic one and never occurs under normal lighting conditions in nature.  While point and shoot cameras are the most common culpret, DSLR shooters who use the pop-up flash often see similar results.  There are two easy ways to get rid of red eye that all photographers should know how to do.Photo by ribena_wrath Prevent it before it even happens. By using a hot-shoe mounted flash on your DSLR or better, a flash bracket, you physically move the flash further away from the lens, thus eliminating red-eye from happening.  For you point and shoot users out there, take your camera off auto-flash mode and put it  into anti-red eye mode.  When you do this, tell the people who you are taking photos of that there will be two flashes and the second one is what counts.  Emitting a pre-flash during this mode in the camera drastically helps reduce red eye from occurring.Fix it after ...

Despite the name, Photoshop was created more for graphic designers, not photographers, but photographers looking to airbrush their digital files quickly adopted it as their go-to piece of software.  By the time v7 came out, specific tools, plugins and actions were being created for photographers and Photoshop could handle the RAW, or unprocessed files from digital cameras.Anyone who's opened up Photoshop knows it's not exactly a straight forward application - it does take some knowledge to be proficient in it and productive.  All that aside, here's a few tips that all photographers should know how to do in Photoshop.Properly prepare images to display on the web. Showing off your work is half the fun of shooting and the Internet is a great way to let millions see it.  Properly preparing the images to load fast and show the optimal quality is something most photographers never bothered to learn though.  After all edits are done and you've saved the edited version (not over-written the unedited version), change the DPI to 72 and the long side of the image to nothing over 1000 pixels.  Then select File > Save for Web & Devices... that will bring up an applet window.  Select JPG, ...

Last year we covered photography mistakes, but what about post processing blunders that can leave you forever embarrassed?  Here is a collection of common post production mistakes that can turn you rosy red and how to avoid them.Shooting RAW when you shouldn't be.  For some reason digital photographers feel the need to always shoot in RAW because it provides the most flexibility and highest quality end product. I couldn't agree more!  But, it's not always the right choice, the need to shoot RAW needs to be determined before you start shooting.  Furthermore, a firm understanding of how to properly post produce an image is needed.  Most great photographers I know are just that - great photographers, but not amazing post production people!  There's a reason professionals utilize a team of digital artists to provide their end result - they'd rather be shooting, which is what they're good at.  JPG isn't always the answer, but neither is RAW, there must be a balance.Color correcting on an uncalibrated monitor. I can't emphasize or bold this enough!  Regardless if you shoot RAW or JPG, you can't do any color correcting or adjustment with regards to highlight and shadow detail or hue and saturation ...

Digital photography has changed all of our lives and given us the ability to sit behind a computer monitor and be our own Ansel Adams with the post production.  But it's not that simple, there are several pieces of software to edit your photos with after you take them, the most well known being Photoshop.  There is a clear cut rival to Photoshop called GIMP, an open source software that is very similar to Photoshop, and some say better.Image by Rore 1. Starting with the most obvious and possibly most important, GIMP is free.  Yes free, no charge, nada, zip, zero.  Photoshop costs upwards of $700 for a single license!  The old saying stays true, if it's free it's for me.2. GIMP is a much smaller install, about 20x smaller then Photoshop.  Not only does the install go much quicker, but it takes up far less hard drive making it the perfect image editing software for laptops and netbooks where hard drive space may be at a premium.3. Photoshop is extremely resource intensive, it will run on older hardware but it's not optimized to and will be sluggish and slow.  GIMP on the other hand is amazingly fast and stable.  It ...