One of the most powerful tools for photographers that has come about with digital photography is the histogram – that little graph you see on the LCD screen of your camera after you shoot an image. Yet many people don’t know anything about the histogram. This is a huge oversight, as a histogram can be massively helpful in enabling you to take better images in almost any shooting situation.

What is a Histogram?

A histogram is simply a visual representation in graph form of the tonal information that your camera records when shooting an image.

How Do I Read a Histogram?

Histograms are actually quite easy to read once you know what you are looking at. The left side of the histogram represents the shadows and the right side represents the highlights.

• Memory Tip: If you cannot remember that, just think “black and white” – black is first, therefore on the left and white is second, therefore on the right. Thanks to David duChemin for that memory tip.

The different colours in the images in this article represent the different tonal values. Therefore a high peak of one colour means you have a lot of that tonal value.

If a peak is jammed up hard against one side of the graph or the other then it means that the camera has rendered the shadows as pure black (left side) or highlights as pure white (right side) – this is sometimes known as clipping. This is to be avoided if possible as it means you are losing detail in those areas.

NOTE: The histogram on the back of your camera will be monochrome unlike the images below which are from post-processing software. Don’t let that confuse you, as it’s the shape we are trying to draw your attention to.

Terrible: Indicates Underexposure and Loss of Detail in Shadows

Terrible: Indicates Overexposure and Loss of Detail in Highlights

Note: Often, only a part of the histogram will be up against the edge while the rest is more centered. Any part of the graph up against the edge indicates that some of the detail has been lost.

When Are Histograms Important?

If you are planning on doing post-production on your images in a program like Photoshop or GIMP, then you want to capture as much information as possible. The histogram can tell you whether you have done this or not – oftentimes much better than the LCD image itself.

In general, it is better to “shoot to the right.” That means that you are ideally wanting to get a histogram that is predominantly on the right of the graph (without being pushed up against the edge). The image may even look overexposed on your camera LCD screen. The reason for this is that the highlights, which are represented on the right part of the histogram, capture a lot more information than shadows. If your histogram is to the right, then the image file is storing a much larger amount of information about that image than if the histogram is to the left. The right hand side of the histogram holds 90% of the raw data – the left side of the histogram only 10% – it is not an even spread.

That means, if you “shoot to the right,” you have more information to work with when you get to Photoshop. In turn that means you can do more work on the image before you start to get the negative effects of noise and other undesirable outcomes.

When are Histograms Less Important?

If you don’t plan on doing any post-production, then you are most often looking for a classic “bell curve” shape for you histogram. This generally indicates a good exposure with an even spread of highlights and shadows that will probably stand ok on its own.

Note the Relatively Even Bell Curve Shape

What Does This Mean for Shooting?

If you are “shooting to the right” then that means getting more light into the camera (assuming your histogram is too far left). The easy way to do this is to overexpose the image by a stop or two.

A Histogram to the Right Allows More Flexibility in Post Processing

This Histogram Would Make Post-Processing Slightly Less Flexible

You might have a few problems when doing this when shooting very bright subjects. Use your judgment there, but remember that it can be easy to blow out too many pixels in such a situation, in which case you need to reign it in a little. If the histogram is crammed up against the right side, you’re probably going too far.

All in all, using a histogram doesn’t need to be rocket science. Once you are comfortable with it, you will probably use a histogram far more than the image on your LCD screen to judge the exposure of your images.

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One of the largest problems many folks have with digital photography is the amount of noise that ends up in the final image. Noise basically presents itself as graininess or speckles, usually most recognizable across larger areas of uniform colour such as sky. While sometimes it is a desirable effect such as in some of the photos below, often you will want to minimise it. The bad news is that there is no perfect solution to noise problems, but the good news is that there are things you can do to reduce, and in many cases, eliminate noise in your photographs.

Photo by Stuck in Customs

What Causes Noise?

Truly knowing how to reduce or eliminate noise is better served by knowing what causes it. In photography there are several causes of noise.

The first scenario is that image sensor heat can increase enough to stimulate electrons (“Thermal Noise”). These superfluous electrons then get mixed in with the “true” photoelectrons that are the real target of our image sensor. The analog signal (which is converted to pixels by the sensor) is therefore contaminated before it even gets to that point.

In some situations the above scenario can cause each of the photosites on an image sensor to generate superfluous signals which can then contaminate the neighboring photosites. On smaller image sensors which cram more photosites into a smaller area, this effect can be magnified.

Another common cause of noise is shooting at higher ISO settings. As these settings basically magnify the light signal, they also magnify other unwanted signals such as background interference (eg. heat sources). When you are photographing an area of low light, the background signals can be strong enough to compete with the signals from the limited light of the area you are shooting.

Photo by GoldSardine

What Can a Photographer Do About Noise?

As with anything, photography presents us with a series of compromises when it comes to solving the problem of noise. Here are some of the more obvious things you can do to reduce noise in your images.

Shoot At a Low ISO – It’s a simple one, but if the situation will allow it, then turn down the ISO. Reducing the sensitivity of the sensor reduces the chance that it will pick up unwanted interference.

Reduce Shutter Speed – This simply reduces the chance that unwanted signals will get mixed in with the ones you really want to capture. Again, it’s really only a solution if the shooting conditions allow for you to reduce shutter speed.

Utilise the In-Camera Noise Reduction Feature – Most DSLRs come with an in-camera noise reduction feature. In many cases this does a fine job of reducing noise during image processing. The downsides to this are that the processing time of the image is often increased (sometimes by many seconds) and there can also be loss of finer detail in the shot.

Don’t be Afraid to Use Post Processing – There are several pieces of dedicated software available to digital photographers with the sole purpose of reducing noise in your images. Many people recommend noise reduction software as an integral part of any photographer’s arsenal. You can also utilise noise reduction techniques in other software such as Photoshop, GIMP or Lightroom. Some tutorials you might be interested in include:

• Turn Down the Noise in Photoshop
• Noise Removal with Selective Gaussian Blur in GIMP
• Noise Reduction in Lightroom 3 Video Tuorial

Keep Your Camera Cool – This one is often overlooked, but many people report that simply keeping your camera cool (or at least out of hot storage areas) immediately before a shoot can have a significant impact on improving noise in photos. The idea here is to minimise electrons that are stimulated by heat on your sensor therefor reducing contamination in the signal.

Photo by Centrifuga Teatrante

Noise is simply one of those challenges that photography throws at us from time to time that make it challenging to get that perfect shot. With a little forethought it’s easy enough to account for it and continue the chase!

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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.  Cloning, masking and advanced layered tasks along with several specific tools to help remove and add features make those who invest the time into it yield the best results.

Adobe Lightroom. Spawned nearly out of a complete need to beef up the somewhat watered down RAW processor in Photoshop, Lightroom brings a lot to the table.  It essentially operates as three pieces of software, in one product.

• Photo library, with tagging, notes and search-ability thanks to the built in database
• Photographic post-processing, with the same tool set and options available to JPG photos as RAW
• Print and web-ready gallery maker, for displaying your final product.

Lightroom’s post-processing piece, the core of the program, is extremely powerful and very fast, partly because it edits your photos in proxy.  The availability to use presets, similar to Photoshop plugins, is wonderful and lightning fast, again because you’re working on the photos in proxy.  Photoshop seems somewhat bogged down with complex actions because it’s editing the actual photo, so Lightroom wins this battle for sure.  The photo library is a great way to store and easily search all your photos and the galleries that Lightroom produces are visually appealing.

Apple Aperture. Only compatible on Mac computers, Apple’s post processing software relies on a beefed up database for library functions above and beyond what iPhoto can do.  Similar to Lightroom, it too processes but doesn’t pixel edit photographs, in proxy for blazing fast speed.

The chief complaint about Aperture is that the learning curve is somewhat high, unusual for an Apple product.  We think this is partly due to the different interface then that of Adobe products, which most photographers are used to editing in.  If you’ve never used Adobe products, Aperture will probably make total sense, but again, it will only work on Macs.

What’s really the best?  There is no clear answer, but a combination of any two will get you great results.  Just like camera debates, it’s not what you use to capture the photograph, it’s how good it looks in the end.  For adjusting exposure, highlights, shadow detail and everything else in a true darkroom sense of editing, Lightroom and Aperture are a coin toss.  With that said, the market for 3rd party additions strongly favors Lightroom, so keep that in mind when shopping. For advanced pixel editing or for the most creative control nothing on the market beats Photoshop.  It can take months, or even years to master Photoshop but for nearly every photographer, it’s the gold standard.

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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.  HDR is not a fix-all, end-all for poor photography.

3. We’re just now starting to see the true potential of HDR.  Remember folks, this layering thing is kind of new in the 120+ year old art of photography.  It’s going to take a while to get it right.

4. HDR allows scenes to be photographed that were simply impossible before – that in itself is amazing!  Picture yourself standing in a large room with one window.  Most landscape shots, to some extent, create some sort of problem for exposures.  Photographers have battled to meter for the sky or the ground, and compensated one or the other with creative filters on the end of their lenses.  Take a sunset at a beach for example when the sky is fire red, the ocean is dark blue and the sun’s reflection off the water is almost pure white.  There is no best way to meter for that, but with HDR you’d be able to expose properly for the sky, foreground, water, etc. etc.

Photo by AF-Photography

5. HDR on it’s own is an art form. Trey Ratcliff, known best by his site stuckincustoms.com, has amassed one of the best art travel photography blogs on the Internet, has more then 21 million views on Flickr and had the first HDR photo hung in the Smithsonian.  His technique is above and beyond the sunset photo above, his work is unique and has a very loyal following.  This form of art, over-the-top conversions, continues to grow too.

Photo by Stuck in Customs

6. Software manufactures are embracing the technology.  Adobe started to build tools into Photoshop starting with CS2 and continues to improve them with the current version, CS5.  Clearly they’ve seen the request from users and deem it worthy to implement.  Likewise, other smaller software companies continue to develop plug-ins for Photoshop and stand alone applications for HDR.

7. It’s only a matter of time before in-camera HDR technology is with us.  Processors are getting faster, smaller and run cooler, so the thought of in-camera HDR based on a series of bracked photos shouldn’t be far off.

If you haven’t tried HDR, we urge you to.  Yes, it’s trendy right now and some are saying it’s only a fad, but done right, or even wrong, the results can help further your photography experience.  Too few people understand what bracket shooting even means anymore (shooting multiple frames at different exposures of the same subject) since post-processing allows us to fake it so easily.  By bracketing to build the 6-12 shots for an HDR photo, you should hopefully get a better grasp on metering and exposures too!

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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 the name, black and white.  If you’ve grown into the habit of using the histogram in Photoshop or Lightroom to show you the black and white highlighted areas don’t adjust the exposure or increase the fill light to the eliminate all the flashing area.  Solid black in some portion of the image is not only acceptable, it’s needed.

White is needed in the same way black is.  Again, don’t over-use the recovery tool in post processing if some areas appear to be over exposed, it’s OK to have some pure white in your image.

Grey tonality is what will make your black and white conversions truly magical.  There are hundreds of Photoshop actions and Lightroom, each slightly different then the other.  In addition to the actions, you can further tweak the levels and curves of your converted black and white file, but in the end, you’ll have to do them one by one.  I have yet to find one way of converting a file, or one specific action that works on every single type of photo, so try a few on each and choose which one best fits specific photo.

Not having a properly calibrated monitor will cause you nothing but headaches.  Nearly every computer monitor and laptop comes with the brightness level set to 100% and the contrast all the way up.  This makes everything pop and look bright and amazing, but the reality is that the color representation to the real world is drastically off.  If you edit your photos with the default monitor settings when you make prints or look at them on someone else s computer you could be extremely disappointed.  That’s because with the brightness set to 100% you’ll be more likely to add contrast to the photo and the shadow area of the black and white will be edited incorrectly.  It’s like trying to edit with a blindfold.

Avoid in-camera black and white mode. As mentioned in the opening, some digital cameras offer a black and white mode, it’s not great, it’s not even that good.  The processor in your camera is but a spec of dust compared to how big the processor in a computer is.  Shooting in color actually gives you more range in the photo for the conversion process.

Bad composition is not fixed with a black and white conversion.  Black and white photos are often seen as more artistic and pure a form of photography, but having a badly composed photograph does not mean it’s instantly artistic by making it black and white.

The digital world means we can change the output of our photographs after we shoot, unlike film when we had to shoot with the intended purpose of whatever roll was in the camera.  As beautiful as black and white can be, it can often be frustrating to achieve the perfect photo.  Hopefully these tips will help eliminate your mistakes.

Photo by marfis75

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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 crop box for square and again started to re-edit my work.  Again, I found new life in old photographs by simply editing them with a simple crop!

To illustrate just how different the same, exceptionally well photograph looks different through only cropping, I’ve edited this stunning image:

Photo by paul (dex)

On it’s own, it’s breathtaking.

Technically, the only things I’d like to edit of Paul’s photo is the horizon, which is off 1 or 2 degrees.  A simple slight rotation and crop to bring the horizon to the lower third of the frame shows the same photo slightly different with more emphasis on the dramatic sky.

Taking on my love for the square format, this next edit shows just that, again slightly moving the horizon down to keep the focus on the sky.

And lastly, panoramic photographs are truly stunning and yield themselves very well as prints hung above a couch or mantle in the home.  Sadly, most people shy away from them because they assume they need a complicated tripod setup and special software to stitch multiple photos together.  I simply changed the crop box in Photoshop again and turned an already amazing photograph into a wonderful panoramic.

The same photo, cropped three different ways for very different results in each of them.  There is no right or wrong in any of them, it’s personal taste, but I found a new way to improve my photography by simply exploring different ways to post process them through simple cropping.

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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 on there.  More will be explained why later.  When I started to shoot Windows 2000 was my operating system, I’ve since moved to Mac but the structure in which I store my photos hasn’t changed.  I know Lightroom, Aperture and iPhoto will all store and catalog my photos, I have never found them to be that good at it though.  Here’s my process.

I keep one main directory for my photo shoots.  Because a laptop is my main computer, I usually only keep the most recent shoots on here.  Within that folder are the shoots, shown in the above illustration is one done on April 18th, 2010, who I shot and where.  Within that folder are three more folders.

• The RAW folder holds either RAW files or the unedited JPG files if I didn’t shoot in RAW.
• The edited folder contains everything that’s been post processed and outputted as JPG, ready for print.
• The web folder contains the photos from the Edited folder resized for the web, watermarked and ready to be displayed on my website or for e-mail and social media purposes.

There isn’t much automation in this, but it’s simple and has worked for me for 10+ years now.

Previously mentioned was transferring files to your computer for each shoot or occasion, not when the card is full.  Doing a transfer after each event helps keep this organized.

I also mentioned that my primary and currently only computer is a laptop, so I try not to keep too much on here at any given time.  I utilize external hard drives to store shoots for long periods of time.  I was previously burning each shoot to a DVD, but with file sizes growing, sometimes it would take two or three DVDs for one shoot and storing them was a paint unto itself.

The external hard drives are structured the same way my Photo Shoots directory is on my laptop in regards to folders.  Nothing changes. Also, prior to deleting anything from my laptop I’ll verify it is indeed on the external hard drive and randomly select files and open them to ensure the integrity of the file.

In addition, I have one more way to backup my files and keep my workflow going.  Apple’s built in system called Time Machine.  Probably the best peace of mind I have.  Run this once a day, sometimes twice to a separate hard.  In the event my laptop fails, breaks, gets stolen or I drop it, all my data is on an the external drive.  Luckily, I haven’t had to use the Time Machine backup yet, but it’s one more reason I’m glad to be a Mac user.

This is my basic primer to the photographic workflow that’s working best for me, and has for the last decade.  It might not be the best, or most efficient, which is why I’m always looking for suggestions and ideas.

What’s your workflow like? Share it in the comments!

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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 size) to a dimension larger then it was originally shot in, usually for printing.  Some printers set a minimum suggested size for larger prints, one that exceeds that of most digital cameras.  What I mean is, a Printer might be looking for a preferred digital photo that is 6000×9000 @ 300 DPI for what it would consider an amazing print.  By the math, that’s a 54MP camera would be needed!  The reality is, most DSLRs on the market 10mp and higher are more than capable of producing stunning 20×30″ prints provided the exposure was done well and the ISO isnt’ too high.  Don’t ever upsize your photos, all you’ll get is a monstrous file that has no more real data in it, but looks more pixelated.

HDR‘ing photos to death.  High Dynamic Range is a wonderful thing, however it’s often over-done and leaves less than pleasing results.  If you totally lose the highlight and / or shadow detail, have a glowing effect around any part of the image or it starts to look more like a painting, you are probably abusing the HDR functionality in Photoshop.  There is a time and place for HDR, but the over-kill that is showing up on the Internet is not the best use of it.

Photo by Toni_V

Using the erase tool instead of masking is one of the biggest mistakes photographers make while editing.  Most photographers have learned to manipulate Photoshop, originally a graphic design tool, and learned on their own how it works.  The erase tool makes sense, it simply erases.  Utilizing masks takes a bit of understanding but is far more flexible and does far less damage.

Not utilizing smart filters leaves your original file in tact, and editable.  Utilizing them in your work-flow is simple and easy to do.  Select the layer you want to apply to and go to Filters > Smart Filters and it will convert the layer into a smart object.

Shortcuts in Photoshop are huge time savers and learning them, even the most basic ones, will drastically speed up your work-flow.  Most all menu systems in Photoshop tell you the shortcut when you select it with the cursor, but a complete list of all versions of Photoshop (excluding the newly released CS5) can be found here.

Photo by Andrew*

Grayscale is not the best B&W conversion tool available in Photoshop.  Many new users of Photoshop convert color photos to black and white via the Image > Mode > Grayscale option.  This result is muddy and has no real tonal quality to it.  There are far better ways, actions and plugins to help convert your color photos to black and white that will create stunning photos, not muddy, dull and boring black and whites.

Photoshop is an intense program that I honestly don’t think anyone ever masters.  That’s not to say you can’t use it to the best of your ability, learn a few things and avoid damaging your images or outputting poor quality work.  For me, Photoshop is an ongoing learning process and I’m guilty of making most of these mistakes at least once over the last 12 years or so.  Learn, progress, improve and move on.

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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 the fact fast. Starting in Photoshop CS2 and getting better with each more current version, a red eye tool has been included.  Simply select this tool and click on the effected red eye and Photoshop will fix it for you.  For particularly bad cases, draw a box around the effected area.  Photoshop does an absolutely stunning job fixing this.  Don’t own a copy of Photoshop? Not to worry, Gimp is free and also has a red eye removal tool built in that can be accessed by going to Filters -> Enhance -> Red Eye Removal.

Don’t let red eye ruin your next photo and easily remove it from older images you’ve already taken!

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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, tick the Progressive box, and then tick the 2-up tab, which shows the original on the left and optimized on the right.  Adjust the quality on the slider scale to somewhere between 60-80.

Your goal is to get the file size to be 100kb or under with no loss in quality.  Doing so will ensure the photos will load fast on your website and reduce bandwidth, but they will also attach to emails faster and lessen the chances that someone can print an acceptable quality piece from your image.  I use 700 pixels on the long side because that’s what fits in my website and most color images are between 55 and 100kb.

Crop to specific size. Most all DSLR cameras shoot in the 2:3′s standard, same as 35mm film cameras, however some follow the 4:3rds standards.  Not a big deal until you need to make prints.  Making an 8×10 from any Canon or Nikon DSLR mean losing 2″ of the image, or 20%.  If your lab doesn’t make 8×12′s (the proper proportion for a 2:3rds camera) you are far better off preparing the image instead of them choosing what gets cut off.  Same principal applies if you are simply cropping out unwanted content from the photo.  Select the crop tool and then in the top menu set your height and width in inches if you’re making prints.  Leave the DPI box empty.  When you draw a box around your image it will stay at the proper proportion.

Create an adjustment layer. One of the most common mistakes new Photoshop users make is adjusting the original.  Creating an adjustment layer makes going back to the original or comparing the changes made painless.  A simple right click in the layers panel can create the adjustment layer for you.

Remove red-eye. Starting with CS2 of Photoshop they included a red-eye tool and it’s only become better with newer versions.  Choose the tool from the tools panel and either click the affected eye or draw a small box around the red section and watch the red instantly disappear.

Remove skin blemishes. There are easily a dozen different ways to remove skin blemishes and zits, but the healing brush is one of the fastest and most effective.  There are two versions, spot healing and healing.  Spot healing requires you to simply click and drag over the affected area and it uses surrounding pixels to define and clone the area.  The spot healing tool isn’t foolproof though and often gets confused towards the edge of an image or around the hair line.  If you get undesirable results, use the healing tool, which requires you to select the area you want to clone.

Note that the clone tool itself is a totally different tool which does 100% exact cloning from one point to another point on a photo, the healing brushes blend and usually have a much more natural look.

Sharpen an image. No matter if you are a RAW shooter or JPG shooter, almost all digital files will benefit from some amount of sharpening.  One of the easiest ways is to utilize the Unsharp Mask tool from the filters (Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask).  There are three sliders that give you control and explaining how they work and why is a whole article on it’s own, however there is a pretty good baseline I’ve been using for years.

• Amount: 500%
• Radius: 0.2
• Threshold: 0

There are also some great plugins and actions like the Nik Smarter Sharpner and the OnOne suite of tools for Photoshop that take some of the guess work out of sharpening.

Create an action. Sure, there are thousands of ready made actions, free and premium paid ones, but creating your own can help boost your post processing power measurably.  An action is simply a set of commands in Photoshop that you have recorded to do repetitive tasks.  Creating them is as simple as clicking the record button and then the stop button when you’re done.

One of the biggest time savers for me is a simple action that does a File > Save, which may seem like a pretty basic task, but when I open up 10-20 images to do blemish removal on, I don’t want to be bothered to go to File > Save for each and every one.  Actions can be run two different ways, one by one utilizing the Play button on the actions pallet or in a batch, which is how I run the File > Save command.  Running a batch will allow you to run the same action on every file you have open in Photoshop or by selecting a source directory and a destination directory, helpful so you don’t over-write your originals.  To run an action in Batch mode, click File > Automate > Batch and select the action you want to run and the parameters needed.

Learn to love shortcuts! Being efficient in Photoshop means keeping your hands moving at all times.  The mouse, or track pad for laptop users can be the biggest time waster when post processing.  Everyone uses shortcuts differently so it’s tough to say which are the best for any one person, so take a look at what you commonly do and in the menu system is the shortcut for you.  To become a Photoshop keyboard shortcut ninja, download Trevor Morris’s Keyboard Shortcuts, available for every version of Photoshop back to v5 and Bridge.

Photo by misocrazy

Photoshop, like your camera and other gear is a tool at the end of the day, a tool which has many uses.  Becoming efficient with Photoshop means spending less time in front of a computer and more time shooting!

Note: All screen shots are taken showing Photoshop CS4 on Windows, depending on your operating system and version of Photoshop your menus may vary in appearance slightly.

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