Graphic Design - Digital Photography Expert Techniques - Photoshop.pdf

O’REILLY DIGITAL STUDIOPhotoshopCovers CS
Professional Tips & Workflow Strategies for Using
Photoshop to Enhance Your Digital Photography Skills
Digital Photography
Expert Techniques
Ken Milburn
Bringing Out the
Best Picture 3
So you’ve taken the shot. Is that it? Certainly not. In the world of digital
photography, you can use a wide variety of techniques to “bring out” the best
picture possible from the shot you’ve taken. You might be wondering, “How
is that possible?” Well, in order to explain that, we should provide some back-
ground on how cameras differ from our own brains.
In this chapter
The human brain can process more color range at any given instant than a
computer monitor or a digital print can display. Our eyes don’t actually see Using the Photoshop File Browser
more range than film or digital sensors; rather, our brain instructs our eyes Using image management
posite different areas of the image into a single whole. The brain does programs
this “multiple-exposure” blending so quickly that we think we are looking at
only one image. Making accurate corrections
The camera, on the other hand, doesn’t have our brain inside. It records only Keeping original images intact
one instant in time, which is why we are often so disappointed when we look Using layers
at a base picture. (“That’s not how I remember the color and the details!”) Minimizing duplicate files
And it gets worse: cameras are notorious for losing all the little details in the
highlights and shadows of a shot. Thankfully, we can use the camera and Using special names
puter to minimize these deficiencies, and bring out a wider range of Maintaining file information
brightness and colors in each of our digital photographs.
Archiving
For example, compare the differences between Figures 3-1, 3-2, and 3-3.
Figure 3-1 shows a landscape shot using the color range that you would
expect from a camera that saves to JPEG. As we mentioned in the previous
chapter