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Imaging
Programs
Lightroom We highly recommend the use of the latest version of Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom, available in free, one-time, 30-day trial once you establish an account, in our workshops and work flow, as it is based on Adobe Photoshop, the standard for the industry. It also makes it easy for us to show you, the workshop participant, how easily you can tweak your photographs on your own computer. Lightroom 3 uses quite a bit of memory, so if you have an older computer with less than 4GB of memory, you may be safer to stick to Lightroom 2 or your own imaging program. That said, and as you can imagine, we cannot know all imaging programs out there, and we do demonstrations on different participant images in Lightroom on their own computers, so you can watch and apply those same techniques using your own imaging program. We will, however, look over your shoulder and make suggestions of what you might do to strengthen your photograph. We find Lightroom to be a really great, intuitive tool for editing, removing those dust motes that plague digital sensors, and for finer tweaks that can be made easily in this great program without actually changing the digital negative file. The new parameters and adjustments for the histograms and color and tone adjustments are terrific, and there are numerous other features that make imaging so much easier. It does not, however, contain layers options (which with the newer Lightroom, I find I rarely need anymore), etc. Its web gallery feature is outstanding. We highly recommend it. Photoshop was conceived and designed by techie-steroid engineers who developed the program for graphic artists. While photographers started using it, it was never particularly intuitive or easy to use, especially for beginners, in spite of vast improvements over the years. Lightroom, on the other hand, was actually designed by photographers for photographers, and while it still could use some more tweaks and features, most professionals and amateurs who use it agree that it is a dream come true. For an overview on Lightroom, check out our Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures' blog, specifically this series, and start at the bottom for the first (oldest) article in the series. Plug-Ins These are obviously not required, but plug-ins can make your life a lot easier and produce better results than using your straight imaging program. Many are available for a discount if you are a member of ASMP, NANPA, and NAPP, to name several organizations. Some of the plug-ins I have used for years and are for Lightroom (LR) and/or Photoshop (CS), including:
Sitching Programs for Panoramas
Programs for HDR (High Dynamic Range) Many of our workshop participants are intrigued by all the talk about HDR (high dynamic range). Today's cameras, sophisticated as they are, can only record a limited range of values (lights to darks). Photographers who worked in black-and-white film used masking along with dodging and burning to bring out the details in the highlights and shadows. Today, we can easily do it with HDR, basically doing several exposures of a scene (on a sturdy tripod for best results) then blending them together to bring out the details. We recommend Photomatix over Photoshop for this task, and they have a free trial for those who are interested. We see many examples of Photomatix and other programs being used to give images a far-out and/or photo-illustration look, but in our workshops, we encourage our students to use any program to enhance rather than overpower their images. We feel that just because one can do this or that with an image doesn't mean that one should! Below, you will see an example of a stitched, HDR photograph. You'll see that I have maintained lights and shadows for a more interesting photograph. The difference is that there is detail in those lights and shadows, something I could not have as effectively achieved in one shot.
Before every workshop, we send our participants a list of what they will need. Digital Asset Management Digital Asset Management, for those who don't know, is the hopefully-efficient process that takes your digital images from your camera to your computer, processes them, and catalogues them. There is a four-part series on this at the Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures' blog. Check out and start at the bottom for the first (oldest) article in the series. |
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photo workshops,imaging programs,lightroom,imaging,post production,photomatix,photo tours,photography school,travel,photography workshops,photo adventures,landscape photography,Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures,Barefoot Contessa photography workshops,Margo Pinkerton,Arnie Zann,Margo Taussig Pinkerton,Arnold Zann Page last modified:
October 1, 2012
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