Pixology Magazine February 2013 Issue
Transcription
Pixology Magazine February 2013 Issue
Pixology The Magazine for Photographers February 2013 Photoshop Touch Aligned Cleanup A Smarter Cable Release Pixology The Magazine for Photographers CONTENTS 4 Photoshop Touch 11 Declaring Catalog Independence 4 17 A Smart Cable Release 22 To Delete or Not to Delete? 11 25 Aligned Cleanup 30 30 Exporting from Elements 35 Photographic Year in Review 35 From the Editor As I work on sorting out my schedule for the year, in the back of my mind I’m constantly thinking of photographic opportunities. For some trips the photographs will be easy because the location will be exciting and perhaps new to me. For locations I’ve visited many times before it may be more challenging to find new photographic opportunities. This also has me thinking about what a “photographic year in review” time-lapse video might look like at the end of the year. And in this issue I share the process I used to create just such a video for my photographs from last year. I hope this issue of Pixology proves informative and entertaining. As always, I welcome your thoughts via email at [email protected]. Thank you, Tim Grey Editor PIXOLOGY PIXOLOGY Now that the New Year has come and gone, it seems the focus turns increasingly to the year ahead. For me that mostly means reviewing the calendar as I try to figure out how I’m going to fit everything in that I’d like to accomplish. 3 Photoshop Touch Getting a Feel for Photoshop on Tablet Devices By Tim Grey PIXOLOGY 4 Surely you’ve had this experience, probably more than once. You’ve setup your digital SLR and a nice (and expensive) lens. You may be using a tripod. You’ve contemplated your exposure, carefully adjusted your framing, and are about to capture a photograph. And then you see someone nearby photographing the same scene with their mobile phone... For me the most memorable such situation occurred on safari in South Africa. Our vehicle was outfitted with some very serious photographers with some very serious equipment. The “short” lens in the group was 300mm. I was sure the glass onboard probably weighed more than the vehicle itself. And as we were poised near a lion, waiting for the classic “yawn shot”, another vehicle pulled up. There wasn’t a single removable lens to be found, with all of the occupants using compact cameras or—gasp!—mobile phones to photograph the majestic lion. As a result of experiences such as this, there seems to be a strong tendency to discount anything “mobile” when it comes to photography. And yet, I’ve quite enjoyed the time I’ve spent working with the mobile version of Photoshop. It’s called Photoshop Touch, and it is available for Apple’s line of iPad tablets, as well as tablets running the Android operating system. Photoshop Touch includes many of the adjustments you are probably already familiar with from the computer-based version of Photoshop, including Color Balance, Saturation, Levels, and Curves (shown here). PIXOLOGY 5 Priced at only $9.99, Photoshop Touch is a relative bargain. And the range of powerful features frankly came as a bit of a surprise considering that price. To be fair, Photoshop Touch is most certainly not going to replace the full “desktop” version of Photoshop in your digital workflow. And you’re not likely to use Photoshop Touch for your most important photos. But the feature set is powerful enough, and the experience of using it nice enough, that you just might find that Photoshop Touch fits into your overall workflow for certain images under certain circumstances. The first thing to keep in mind about Photoshop Touch is that it will only run on a tablet device. That naturally creates some limitations in terms of how you interact with the application, and what is possible in terms of the quality of your final result. But I still think many photographers would be surprised to see what is possible with Photoshop Touch. You might naturally be concerned that using your fingers on a tablet device won’t provide the best control over the various adjustments you’ll be applying. I’ve actually found that using just your fingertips works quite well. However, you can also use a variety of different stylus devices designed for touchscreens. These range from simple pen-like devices that provide nothing more than greater tactile control than a fingertip to stylus devices that support pressure-sensitivity. Photoshop Touch includes a full complement of tools for working with your images, including the Healing Brush tool shown here. PIXOLOGY 6 Getting Started with Photoshop Touch Because Photoshop Touch runs on tablet devices, you naturally need to have images on that device before you can work with them. In most cases that will probably mean synchronizing photos from your primary computer to the tablet, so they are available from within Photoshop Touch. However, you can also access images stored on the Adobe Creative Cloud if you have a Creative Cloud account, and you can capture new images with your tablet’s built-in camera directly via Photoshop Touch. Photoshop Touch also includes a variety of tutorials with their own images included, and I highly recommend that you explore those tutorials both to get a better sense of how to work with Photoshop Touch, as well as to learn about some of what is possible with this application. To get started working with an image, you create a new project. When you do so, you can select an image to include in that project, with that image becoming a layer in the document that is created in the process. When you’re finished working with a photo project you can save the result locally, or to the Creative Cloud if you have an account. A variety of effects are available for quickly adding a creative touch to your images within Photoshop Touch. PIXOLOGY 7 Overall Feature Set The feature set in Photoshop Touch is quite impressive, and photographers who make use of the desktop version of Photoshop might be surprised at how many of their most frequently used features are included. To begin with, there are a variety of tools available. For creating selections you can choose from the Marquee and Circle Marquee, the Lasso and Polygon Lasso, the Magic Wand, the Scribble Selection tool (where you paint over areas you want to include or exclude, and let Photoshop Touch figure out the rest), and the Brush Selection tool. For painting there is the Paint tool, the Effects Paint tool, and the Spray tool. As the names imply, the Paint tool is for painting pixels in a normal way, the Effects Paint tool allows you to paint creative effects into specific areas, and the Spray tool provides an airbrush effect. For image cleanup there are the Clone Stamp and Healing Brush tools. And then there are the Eraser tool, the Blur tool, and the Smudge tool. To make the most of any selections you create, you’ll find a variety of commands for modifying selections. These include commands for selecting all pixels, deselecting all pixels, selecting all actual pixels (as opposed to transparent areas), inverting a selection, feathering the edges of a selection, transforming a selection, and refining the edge of a selection. When working with a selection you can cut and copy pixels, paste pixels, clear pixels, or extract pixels. And of course, you can apply adjustments that only affect a selected area of the image. PIXOLOGY What would appear at first glance to be the equivalent of the Move tool actually provides many more options, including the ability to resize and move image layers, rotate an image layer to any angle, flip the image horizontally or vertically, and even skew the image. Adjustments you can apply to an image layer (or a selected portion of an image layer) include Invert, Black & White, Saturation, Auto Fix, Levels, Brightness/Contrast, Temperature, Replace Color, Curves, Shadows/Highlights, Color Balance, and Reduce Noise. There are also a modest number of effects that can be applied to your images, which are divided into categories of Basic, Stylize, Artistic, and Photo. An additional set of options allows you to crop, resize, rotate (in 90-degree increments), fill and stroke, add text, warp an image, add a gradient, fade one or more edges of the photo, add lens flare, and even fill all (or a selected area) of a photo with a new photo captured with your tablet’s camera. You can also work with multiple image layers (though adjustment layers aren’t an option). This allows you to make copies of a layer so you can work in a non-destructive way, duplicate a selected portion of an image, add other images to create a composite, and much more. You can adjust the Opacity and Blend Mode for all layers, delete layers, and of course move or resize individual layers. There’s also a full-screen view so you can focus on just the image for evaluation or for performing certain tasks. And there are also Undo and Redo buttons so you can navigate back and forth through the history of tasks you’ve performed while working with an image. 8 Sharing and Managing Once you’re finished with a Photoshop Touch project featuring one or more of your images, you can share the result very easily in a variety of ways. That includes posting a photo to Facebook, sending the image via email, and much more. You can even synchronize photos back to your primary computer, and photo projects saved in the native Photoshop Touch file format can be opened in Photoshop CS5 or later with the Touch App Plugin installed. The process of sharing in general is quite simple. All you need to do is tap the Share button and then choose an appropriate option from the popup menu. For example, you can save the photo directly to the normal photo location for your device, or choose Share to save in a variety of other ways. After selecting a specific option, you can choose one or more photos to share, select the desired file format, and click OK. The images will then be processed and shared based on the settings you chose. In addition to sharing your images directly from Photoshop Touch, there are other options for managing your images. You can create folders and move projects into a specific folder, create a duplicate copy of existing projects, and delete projects. You can also have your images automatically synchronized with your Creative Cloud In addition to the basic tools and adjustments you would expect, Photoshop Touch also includes support for layered documents, enabling you to produce creative and complex images. PIXOLOGY 9 subscription, so those images will be available from any device or computer with access to your Creative Cloud account. No Free Trial, But Fun Perhaps the greatest drawback of Photoshop Touch is that you can’t get a free trial the way you can with so many computer software applications. In fairness, at a price of $9.95 the risk isn’t all that great. But it does mean you need to make a commitment to purchasing the app before you can try it out, unless you can find a photographer friend who already has the app on their tablet device. But I’ve found Photoshop Touch to be great fun to work with, and can certainly see myself using it in situations where I don’t have my computer, or when I just want a more casual and comfortable way to work with photos I’d like to share online. You can find Photoshop Touch in the Apple iTunes Store here: http://bit.ly/Pix-PSTouch Overall, I’m very impressed with Photoshop Touch. Sure, there are features that aren’t as good as they should be, such as the lack of a grid for reference when rotating an image. PIXOLOGY 10 Declaring Catalog Independence Avoiding the Perils of a Corrupted Catalog in Lightroom By Tim Grey Backing up your photos is certainly a critical task, and I feel that the topic of backing up photos receives a pretty good amount of attention. But what doesn’t seem to get quite as much attention is the notion of backing up the information about your photos. In the context of Lightroom (or other catalogbased image management software) this can be especially tricky, because by default the information about your photos is contained only within the catalog. Simply from the standpoint of being able to see the information about your photos that is stored in metadata when using other applications, it can be helpful to have the data you add to your photos stored outside the Lightroom catalog in addition to within the catalog. For example, if you add a keyword to a photo in Lightroom, and then browse that image with Adobe Bridge, by default the keyword you added will not be shown in Bridge. That’s because the information about your photos is only written to the Lightroom catalog unless you change a key setting. First, I should emphasize that a corrupt Lightroom catalog is not something that seems to be very likely. I have exposure to a reasonably large number of photographers, and so far I’ve only heard from one photographer with a clear case of a corrupted catalog. This obviously represents anecdotal PIXOLOGY To me there’s another even more important reason to avoid a dependence on the Lightroom catalog, which is the challenges you may face if your catalog ever becomes corrupted. 11 Backing up your Lightroom catalog might make you feel that you are safe from the effects of a corrupted catalog, but that’s not necessarily the case depending on how you utilize Lightroom. evidence that isn’t even remotely pretending to be based on a scientific study. But my sense is certainly that the Lightroom catalog doesn’t tend to get corrupted, at least not all that often. the last backup, and to try to reproduce all of those changes accurately, seems to me a rather daunting and frustrating task. So much so that I would rather avoid this situation altogether if at all possible. And it is possible. Even if the risk of your catalog becoming corrupted for any reason is relatively low, the problems such an occurrence would cause for you are significant enough that it makes sense to take steps to reduce the potential impact of a corrupted catalog. The solution is to avoid a dependence on the Lightroom catalog as much as possible. Don’t get me wrong. I’m incredibly happy that Lightroom is a catalog-based application, and I make extensive use of my catalog. But I use Lightroom in a way that a corrupted catalog would merely be an inconvenience, most likely with no loss of data that I’m actually concerned about. Your initial thought might be that you have nothing to worry about. After all, by default Lightroom reminds you once a week to backup your catalog. Perhaps you’ve even taken the additional precaution of changing the catalog backup frequency from the default of once a week to either once every day or every single time you close Lightroom. My preference, however, is to not depend upon a backup of the Lightroom catalog. After all, if my catalog were to ever become corrupted, the timing isn’t likely to be so fortuitous that there won’t have been any changes to the catalog since the last backup. The notion of trying to figure out which specific updates have been performed since PIXOLOGY Managing Your Metadata The first step to avoiding catalog dependence is to make sure the data you add to your images in Lightroom is also added to the images themselves. For RAW captures, that means enabling the option to write metadata updates to XMP sidecar files that can accompany each of your RAW captures. Those XMP files will have the same base filename as the RAW capture to which each corresponds, so that when you view your images in filename order through your 12 By turning on the option to automatically write metadata to XMP sidecar files you will preserve most—but not all—of the information that can also be stored in the Lightroom catalog. operating system, for example, you’ll see each XMP file right next to each RAW capture. To have Lightroom automatically write changes to XMP sidecar files every time you update any information in Lightroom, you’ll need to adjust the Catalog Settings. Keep in mind that the Catalog Settings options are specific to the current catalog in Lightroom, so if you utilize multiple catalogs for any reason you’ll need to adjust the setting for each catalog individually. To adjust the Catalog Settings, choose Lightroom > Catalog Settings on Macintosh or Edit > Catalog Settings on Windows. In the Catalog Settings dialog that appears, choose the Metadata tab. Then turn on the “Automatically write changes into XMP” checkbox and close the Catalog Settings dialog. PIXOLOGY It is worth considering that having this option turned on can cause a bit of a performance degradation in some cases. If you update a single metadata field for a single image, the update is virtually instantaneous, and you won’t even notice a difference between having the option to automatically write the updates to XMP turned on or off. If, on the other hand, you add a few keywords to 10,000 images, that means 10,000 XMP files need to be updated (or created). While each of those updates may be very small, and each XMP file is very small, the processing can still take considerable time. You will still be able to work in Lightroom while the XMP files are being updated, but performance can suffer. Therefore, if performance is a key concern, and you tend to apply metadata updates to a large number of images at one time, you may have second thoughts about turning on automatic XMP updates. 13 It is possible to manually apply metadata opposed to the ranking approach afforded updates, so you can have the work performed by star ratings. That said, I would rather when it is most convenient to you. The process utilize an approach of using five stars for involves selecting the images you want to images that would otherwise get a pick flag update (perhaps even selecting all of the and a one star rating for images that would photos in your catalog) and then choosing otherwise get a reject flag, rather than have a Metadata > Save Metadata to Files from the situation where I’m making use of metadata menu. The problem, of course, is that this that can’t be preserved in the XMP sidecar puts you in charge of when those updates are files for my photos. applied. If your catalog becomes corrupted at Collections can be a little bit trickier, because a time when you haven’t saved updates in a they are such a useful feature in Lightroom. while, you’ll be in a similar position in terms In effect, a collection provides a way for of lost data as though you to group images you hadn’t been writing together by something The information that those changes to the other than the folder XMP files at all and were in which the actual is not saved in XMP instead depending up on photos are contained. the catalog backup. For example, I might sidecar files includes photograph birds in a Missing Metadata pick flags, membership in wide variety of locations over the course of time. Perhaps the most collections, history, and With a collection I important thing to keep can group my favorite in mind is that writing virtual copies. bird images together metadata updates to regardless of which XMP sidecar files, trip a given photo was even automatically, captured on. When you add a photo to a doesn’t provide you with a complete lack of collection you aren’t creating another copy of dependence upon your Lightroom catalog. the image, but rather just creating a reference The reason is that certain information about to the original. your images is only written to the Lightroom catalog, not to the XMP sidecar files, because Of course, you could achieve much the same those values are not defined in existing result through the use of keywords. In this metadata specifications. example I might just add the keyword “BestBirds” to each of my bird images that I would The information that is not saved in XMP otherwise add to a collection. I can then filter sidecar files includes pick flags, membership based on that keyword anytime I want to view in collections (smart or standard), history, those images, and I’ve achieved what is in and virtual copies. effect the same result I would have otherwise Avoiding pick flags is relatively easy. You can achieved with a collection. utilize star ratings instead of pick flags, for Smart collections aren’t quite as easy to example. Of course, that’s not necessarily replace in and of themselves, but keep in an ideal solution if you prefer the “yes or mind that a smart collection is really just no” approach the pick flags are aimed at, as “ PIXOLOGY ” 14 a saved search query. You can very easily use the Library Filter to search for images meeting specific criteria at any time. As such, smart collections certainly serve as a bit of a time saver (and perhaps a memory aid for certain searches that can be helpful), but they aren’t impossible to replace through other means. The risk of losing the history for my images is something I’m really not worried about. Sure, reviewing the history for an image can be helpful. And from time-to-time I might actually take a step back in history. But that is pretty rare, and I can assure you it isn’t because I don’t make mistakes or change my mind when working in Lightroom. Rather, because everything you do in Lightroom is non-destructive, you’re never really taking any great risks with your images. If you decide you’re not happy with a particular adjustment, for example, instead of stepping back in history you can simply go back to that adjustment and change it or revert it to the original value. Virtual copies are certainly a helpful feature in Lightroom, though it happens that I don’t tend to use virtual copies all that often. When you create a virtual copy of a photo in your Lightroom catalog, you are effectively able to create two unique versions of the same image within the Develop module. For example, you might apply a variety of adjustments that serve as a basic optimization for a photo, then create a virtual copy and create a black and white version of the same photo. This isn’t something you can easily work around, at least in terms of retaining the same capabilities. You could create a new derivative image by sending your original to Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, for example, but that If you utilize virtual copies in Lightroom, it is important to keep in mind that those virtual copies are only stored within the Lightroom catalog, and therefore are not protected by writing metadata to XMP sidecar files. PIXOLOGY 15 doesn’t provide the same flexibility and it also consumes considerably more hard drive space. Therefore, if you utilize virtual copies you have a dependence on the Lightroom catalog for which there isn’t a workaround. Recovering Photo Info If your Lightroom catalog becomes corrupted, you have only a few basic options. You can simply start from scratch, accepting that all of the information about your photos, adjustments you’ve applied, and more, have been lost. This obviously is not even remotely acceptable for most photographers. The second option is to recover from a backup of your catalog. If you have a recent backup, you can simply restore from that backup and continue working in Lightroom. The problem is that you then need to figure out what information had been added since your last backup, and then go through the process of adding that information again. This, of course, can be a bit frustrating. But this approach does enable you to preserve the catalog-specific information that was included in your most recent backup. The third option involves virtually no work at all, although it can involve a bit of time while Lightroom rebuilds a catalog. All you need to do for this third option is create a new catalog in Lightroom, and then import all of your images directly from the hard drive they are stored on. All of the information contained in the XMP sidecar files for your RAW PIXOLOGY captures will thus be included in this new catalog. If you had taken the steps outlined above to minimize (or even eliminate) your dependence on the catalog, you will recover the information you care most about for your photos. Lightroom won’t take very long to import the images themselves, but there will be a fair amount of processing time to re-create the previews for your photos. You can still use Lightroom during that time, but performance will be quite slow until the processing is complete. Peace of Mind There’s no question that the features in Lightroom that depend upon the catalog can be very valuable. As a result, you may not be willing to bypass some of those features simply to maintain a lack of dependence on the catalog. However, if you take steps to minimize your exposure to information loss in the event of a catalog becoming corrupt, you’ll ensure that the impact of such corruption will be quite minimal. If you maintain catalog independence, if a catalog becomes corrupted you can simply create a new empty catalog and import all of your existing images to recover image metadata. 16 A Smart Cable Release By Tim Grey Turn Your Smartphone into a Very Smart Cable Release PIXOLOGY 17 I really enjoy when technology provides great value and isn’t just employed for the sake of technology. And I also enjoy surprises— at least when they’re the good kind. So I was extremely happy when I tested out the Triggertrap device that enables you to use a smartphone as a cable release. I was intrigued when I initially heard about the concept of using my phone as a cable release, though I frankly hadn’t done any research on the Triggertrap before receiving it. When the Triggertrap arrived in the mail, the only thing in the box was a cable for connecting my smartphone to the cable release plug on my camera. This didn’t leave the impression that I was going to have any great functionality at my disposal, and I wondered if I was simply going to have “yet another” cable release that didn’t offer any value. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The key to the Triggertrap setup is really the application for your smartphone. The app is free, and available for both Apple iOS and Google Android devices. Once the application is installed on your device, you can simply plug the phone to your camera using your Triggertrap dongle, launch the app, and get ready for some fun and creative photography. To be sure, the Triggertrap app can be used as a simple cable release. But it also enables you to capture a sequence of time-lapse images, The Triggertrap app for smartphones combines with a dongle connecting the phone to the camera, enabling some very powerful cable release features. PIXOLOGY 18 capture an image in response to a sound, use your smartphone as a motion detector for triggering capture, and much more. Once you’ve launched the Triggertrap app on your device and connected the device to your camera, you’ll want to be sure to establish the Camera Setup options. This is mostly a matter of choosing a preset based on your camera and setup. For example, I tested the Triggertrap with a Canon digital SLR, and wanted to utilize manual focus, so I chose the “Canon Manual Focus” preset. Timelapse — This is a basic time-lapse feature, enabling you specify how many images you would like to capture and what span of time you would like those photos captured in. I would prefer the option to simply specify the interval, rather than having to use these other parameters to establish that interval. But the options The DistanceLapse feature is one of the more creative cable release options for Triggertrap, allowing you to capture a series of time-lapse on the move with the interval between captures based on distance traveled. You can also choose specific settings for the shutter, focus, your device’s internal camera, and WiFi triggering so another device on the same network can be used to trigger your camera. For most users the default settings will work perfectly fine for these additional options. With the device configured, you’re ready to have some fun. On the home page of the app you’ll find a wide variety of capture options, which are as follows: Cable Release — This is the most basic option, although it includes some nice features as well. You can simply tap a button to take a photo with the connected camera, but you also have options to tap-and-hold for as long as you’d like to keep the shutter open (with the camera set to Bulb), tap once to start and once again to stop the exposure, and to specify a particular exposure duration and then tap to take the photo. Bang — This shooting mode uses the built-in microphone on your smartphone to trigger the shutter. At a very basic level you could simply clap to trigger the shutter. But you can also utilize this feature to capture a scene just as a loud event occurs. PIXOLOGY 19 provided do enable you to capture timelapse captures very easily. relatively slow shutter speeds to achieve longer exposures. TimeWarp — The TimeWarp option is a variation on the Timelapse option, with the added feature of being able to have the capture interval accelerate or decelerate to produce some interesting effects with the moving subjects in your scene. LE HDR Timelapse — This option combines the Timelapse feature with the LE HDR feature to enable you to capture a sequence of images to produce a high-dynamic range time-lapse video. DistanceLapse — This is an option I wish I had when I was capturing on-the-move time-lapse videos while driving crosscountry. With DistanceLapse you are capturing frames for a time-lapse video, but with the interval based on distance traveled rather than time. The internal GPS receiver is used to determine the distance traveled for purposes of triggering the camera’s shutter. The Star Trail option for Triggertrap allows you automate the process of capturing a series of nighttime photos that can be blended together to create a star trail image. Seismic — With the Seismic trigger option, bumps or vibrations detected by the accelerometer in your smartphone will trigger the shutter. This can obviously be used in a variety of different scenarios where, for example, a moving subject causes movement that will be “felt” by your smartphone. Peekaboo — This option makes me think about setting up an automated photo booth at a party. The internal camera in your smartphone is used to determine when there are a specified number of faces in the frame, and the connected camera’s shutter is then triggered. Star Trail — The Star Trail option allows you to capture a series of individual exposures of the night sky that can later be assembled into a single seamless image that features long star trails with minimal noise. LE HDR — This option enables you to capture a sequence of exposures at different exposure values, in order to create a highdynamic range (HDR) result, but utilizing PIXOLOGY 20 Tesla — The Tesla option is quite unique, and takes advantage of the sensor in your smartphone that measures changes in magnetic field. Thus, moving a magnet toward or away from your smartphone will cause the shutter to be triggered. Motion — This option literally turns your smartphone into a motion detector for purposes of capturing a photo. You need to mount your smartphone securely, and then capture a reference photo of the scene. You can specify a percentage of change in the scene required to trigger the shutter. In other words, when something within the scene moves or enters the frame, a photograph is captured. Bramping — With the Bramping option you can capture a sequence of time-lapse images with the exposure adjusted via the shutter speed slowly over time. For example, if you are capturing a time-lapse at sunset, you can anticipate how the light will change, and therefore what the starting and ending exposure values might be. You can then have Triggertrap automatically adjust the exposure time slowly over the duration of your timelapse capture so you end up with a smooth transition of exposure settings. Wi-Fi Slave — This option allows you to utilize another device on the same Wi-Fi network to trigger your camera’s shutter. In effect, you are simply extending your reach so you can trigger from a location other than beside your camera, as long as you are in range of the Wi-Fi signal. PIXOLOGY Triggertrap Impressions The Triggertrap dongle and cable kit is specific to the camera you will be triggering, with most kits selling in the $24.99 to $29.99 price range. The accompanying application for your smartphone is free. A wide range of cameras are supported, including most models from Canon, Nikon, Sony, and others. A full list of supported cameras can be found on the Triggertrap website, which you can find at http://www.triggertrap.com. The dongle is very straightforward and easy to connect. I do wish the cable were a bit longer so the smartphone wouldn’t need to be quite so close to the camera. This would allow me to put my smartphone into a backpack hanging from the center column of my tripod during capture, for example. The application is quite easy to use, and offers a wide variety of useful and creative capture options. There are a few features I would like to see modified slightly, but overall I was happy with the available options and basic operation of the software. In short, this is a relatively inexpensive tool that makes it possible to trigger your camera based on a variety of inputs. The result is a lot of utility representing great value for the price. Perhaps even better, the various options are bound to provide some inspiration as you figure out unique ways to put the various trigger options to use. 21 To Delete Delete? or Not to A Question Worth Contemplating... By Tim Grey I think it is fair to say that all photographers who ever photographed with film tend to capture more images with digital than they did with film, simply because the incremental cost per capture is effectively zero with digital. That’s not to say digital photography is necessarily cheaper than film photography was. We can still most certainly spend plenty of money when it comes to digital photography. But the point is there seems to PIXOLOGY be a tendency to capture more images when there isn’t a sense that each image captured costs you more money. Your results will certainly vary, but the fact of the matter is that all photographers will—at least from time to time—end up with images they don’t really have any use for. These are the outtakes, the discards, or the rejects. So, do you delete those images? 22 I suspect most photographers have a quick answer to that question. They either fall into the “yes” camp or the “no” camp, and there probably isn’t much (if any) hesitation in answering whether the outtakes get deleted. This may very well be a simple matter of your personality. I often talk about my good friend, the exceptional bird photographer Arthur Morris (an interview with Arthur Morris appeared in the December 2012 issue of Pixology magazine). On a variety of occasions I’ve found myself looking over Artie’s shoulder as he sorted through his images. And many times I’ve seen him delete images that are better than the best bird photos I’ve ever captured. This is what we call “tight editing”, and there is certainly value in this approach. When I would ask Artie why he was deleting such great images, he explained in a matter-offact tone that he already had better images of that particular species. That makes perfect sense, and yet I don’t feel entirely comfortable with that approach. The key benefit of tight editing is that you don’t have as many images to deal with. You’ll require less storage space for your images, you’ll have an easier time finding a particular image, and you’ll have the confidence that all of the images in your catalog are worthy of putting to use. But I’m not a tight editor. In fact, it is pretty rare that I delete any photos. I can provide you with some reasons for this approach, but it is probably best to understand up front that the reasons are at least to some extent just rationalizations for my preferred approach. That’s not to say the reasons formulated after the fact aren’t valid, but I’d be the first to admit that some perspective is warranted. PIXOLOGY The real reason I rarely delete images has a lot to do with the reason I got into photography in the first place. To me photography is first and foremost about preserving memories. That can mean many different things. A photograph can capture a sentimental moment, a person who is important to you, a scene you enjoyed viewing, a place you enjoyed visiting, or many other things that are considered important. One of the things I’ve often worried about in the context of digital photography is the loss of the memories that have been recorded in photographs. With film there was a tendency to store all of your images in one place, and to provide at least some degree of protection from the elements for those images. With digital, there are more opportunities to protect our valuable memories, such as by backing up our images multiple times, storing a backup in a different physical location, and more. But it also seems there are more opportunities to lose our memories. Files can become corrupted and hard drives can fail, among other potential calamities. And sometimes that calamity is simple oversight. Perhaps you replace a computer with a new one, and forget about a few “extra” locations on the old computer’s hard drive where digital photos had been stored. I worry that photographic memories might get lost. And in my own life I’ve had situations where an image that surely {{ … a storage cost of less than a tenth of a penny per image. }} 23 deserved to be thrown away based on technical merit represented a tremendously important memory on an emotional level. In those situations I was very grateful I hadn’t deleted images. process of deleting the images doesn’t feel worth the effort considering all I need to do in order to view only the images I might actually use is to filter the images within a given folder based on star rating. So, that’s the real reason I tend not to delete images. I’m worried that at some point later the images will have value to me that I can’t anticipate today. Very typically I’ll filter images so that I can only see those with a one star or greater rating. That way I don’t waste any time reviewing images I am not likely to use. But that leads to another benefit of this approach. On more than one occasion I have felt that the images I had assigned star ratings to didn’t represent all of the images I might want to use. In other words, some of the outtakes were worth using after all. What about some of the rationalizations for this behavior then? Well, there are a few. To begin with, hard drive storage space is pretty inexpensive. I currently have about a quarter million images on my primary external hard drive, consuming the better part of a three terabyte hard drive. There are a variety of external hard drives at this capacity available for around $150. Even if you factor in an additional backup drive with the same capacity, that still takes the total cost for all that storage to only about $300. That represents a storage cost of about a tenth of a penny per image. I consider that to be pretty cheap. One of the other reasons I don’t delete bad images is that I just don’t feel it is worth the effort. My general approach to selecting favorite images is to apply star ratings. I sort through all of the photos from a given shoot, and assign star ratings where a one-star rating represents an image I like or otherwise think I might put to use at some point. Two or three stars mean the image is even better, and a four or five star rating is reserved for my favorite images. Because I tend not to delete any images, at any time I can turn off my filter and see all the photos in a given folder. And if I’ve selected a particular image and want to see similar images, those will most likely “magically” appear right next to the selected image, since the same subject is often captured multiple times in a single session. I’m not suggesting that my approach is the right approach for all photographers. I am remarkably confident that I will never convince Arthur Morris to stop deleting photos that I wish he’d just pass along to me instead. And I’ll bet Artie will never convince me to start deleting images. However, I think it is worth giving some thought to both sides of the equation here, even if that thought leads you to be even more resolute in your existing opinion. In theory I could certainly delete all of the images that don’t have a star rating once I’m finished with that process. But if I were to do so, I would want to review all of the images again to be sure I really wanted to delete them. Even if I skipped that review step, the PIXOLOGY 24 al i gned Cleanup A Feature in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements Helps Keep Pixels Aligned During Image Cleanup By Tim Grey I’ve become a big fan of the Spot Healing Brush tool in Photoshop, in large part because it enables me to work fast since the tool will automatically select which pixels within the photo should be used to perform the cleanup work. However, in some cases that automatic selection of source pixels actually causes the cleanup work to be less effective. In fact, when the cleanup work needs to be performed in areas where there are straight lines or other clearly defined shapes, alignment can be critical to your work. In situations where the alignment of source and destination pixels for image-cleanup is critical, you’ll want to use one of the “manual” cleanup tools. Those include the Clone Stamp and Healing Brush tools. PIXOLOGY Basic Operation The basic use of the Clone Stamp and Healing Brush tools is rather straightforward. I recommend working on a separate empty image layer so you can work non-destructively. The first step then is to click on the thumbnail for the top-most image layer on the Layers panel (which may very well be the Background image layer) and then click the Create New Layer button (the blank sheet of paper icon) on the Layers panel. You can double-click on the name of the new layer to type a new name if you’d like to rename the new layer. Next, select the desired image cleanup tool from the toolbox. In the case of being able to control the alignment of pixels that means you need to select either the Clone Stamp tool or the Healing Brush tool, since those 25 are the cleanup tools that allow you to choose a source area of the image for the pixels you will use to paint your corrections. Once you’ve selected one of these cleanup tools, set the Sample popup on the Options bar to All Layers, and turn on the option button to the right of the popup so the effect of adjustment layers will be ignored for purposes of the image cleanup. At this point you’re ready to perform your actual cleanup work. In general concept this is very easy. Simply configure the brush settings for the tool as desired, hold the Alt/ Option key and click on a source area of the image, then paint in the area of the image that needs to be cleaned up. This can be a bit of a challenge, however, when perfect alignment between source and destination pixels is necessary. Aligning Pixels If you are performing image-cleanup work in an area of a photo that requires accurate alignment, it can quickly become very frustrating using the basic method of choosing a source and then painting in the destination area where the cleanup is needed. You can certainly work very carefully to ensure that the source and destination areas remain aligned as you move the mouse, but there is a much easier solution. The key is to make use of the Clone Source panel, and specifically a single checkbox on that panel. To access the Clone Source panel in Photoshop, choose Window > Clone Source from the menu, and the Clone Source panel will appear. In Photoshop Elements after choosing the Clone Stamp tool click the Clone Overlay button on the PIXOLOGY The Show Overlay checkbox in the Clone Source panel makes it easy to align pixels when working with the Clone Stamp and Healing Brush tools. Options bar at the bottom of the Elements Editor window. You can then turn on the Show Overlay checkbox. It should be noted that there are also a variety of other options available to you on the Clone Source panel, especially in Photoshop. Frankly, I don’t find most of these options to be all that helpful, and I rarely put them to use. The Show Overlay feature, however, can be incredibly helpful. With the Clone Stamp or Healing Brush tool active, when you hold the Alt key on Windows or the Option key on Macintosh and click on a specific area of an image you are defining the area that should be used as the source for cleanup. For example, if you need to clean a 26 With the Show Overlay checkbox turned on in the Clone Source panel, you can see an overlay of the source pixels as you position your mouse when working with the Clone Stamp or Healing Brush tools, helping ensure perfectly aligned cleanup. dust spot from the sky you could hold the Alt/ Option key and click on a clean portion of the sky, then release the Alt/Option key and paint in the area of the blemish. When you have the Show Overlay checkbox turned on, instead of the normal brush shape icon for your mouse, you will see the source pixels reflected within the brush circle. As a result, you can very easily align the source pixels before you start painting in the destination area, enabling you to work very precisely and efficiently. In addition to the basic capability of the Show Overlay option, at times you may find you need to paint in a straight line when performing image-cleanup work. If so, you can take advantage of an option for automatically painting in a straight line when working with the Clone Stamp or Healing Brush tools (or virtually any other brush tool in Photoshop). PIXOLOGY To paint in a perfectly straight line, rather than clicking and dragging from one point to another, start off by simply clicking at the point where you want the stroke to begin. Then move the mouse pointer to the end of the line you want to paint, hold the Shift key, and click again. The two points you clicked will be connected with a brush stroke, which in the context of the Clone Stamp or Healing Brush tools means the area along that brush stroke will be cleaned up. As much as I find the Show Overlay option to be incredibly helpful when accurate alignment is necessary for image cleanup, I find the overlay display incredibly distracting when I don’t actually need it. Therefore, my preference is to turn off the Show Overlay checkbox as soon as I’m finished with the portion of my cleanup work that requires precise alignment. 27 Manual Patching In some cases you may find that working with the Clone Stamp or Healing Brush tool in conjunction with the Show Overlay option still doesn’t provide quite the level of control needed to properly align pixels when cleaning up an image. In those cases I utilize a process I refer to as manual patching. To get started, create a selection that covers the area you want to use as the source of cleanup, but make sure that selection extends a little beyond the area you’ll actually be repairing, in order to provide some flexibility. Then, with the selection tool set to the New Selection option (not the Add to, Subtract from, or Intersect with option), point the mouse inside the selection and drag it to the area you’d like to use as the source of pixels for cleanup. Make sure the appropriate layer that contains the source pixels is active on the Layers panel. Next, choose Layer > New > Layer Via Copy from the menu. You can also press Ctrl+J on Windows or Command+J on Macintosh to access the Layer Via Copy command. The result will be a new layer containing only the pixels you had selected. At this point you can reduce the Opacity setting for this duplicate layer using the control on the Layers panel. I generally work with a value of about 50%, so that I can see the underlying pixels as well as the duplicated pixels for purposes of evaluating alignment. I then use the Move tool to drag the duplicate pixels into position. If needed, you can use the Free Transform command (Edit > Transform on Photoshop, or Image > Transform > Free Transform on Elements) The “manual patching” technique allows you to copy pixels from one area of an image to another with considerable control as you work to correct blemishes and distractions from your photos. PIXOLOGY 28 to adjust the overall size and shape of the duplicate pixel layer, pressing Enter/Return on the keyboard to apply the change. When you’re happy with the size and position of the duplicate pixel layer, you can return the Opacity back to a value of 100%. At this point the pixels should align well, but since you included more pixels than necessary and the edges likely won’t align perfectly, you’ll want to blend the edges. This involves adding a layer mask to the layer containing the duplicate pixels, so click the Add Layer Mask button (the circle inside of a square icon) on the Layers panel. You can then use the Brush tool with the Hardness value reduced at least a little to paint with black to block areas of the duplicate pixel layer. At the very least you will want to paint with a moderately soft-edged brush around the entire perimeter of this cleanup layer, so that those edges will blend in to the surrounding photo. However, you may also need to paint further into some areas to achieve better blending. At any time you can switch the foreground color to white and then paint with the Brush tool to reveal previously hidden areas of this cleanup layer. It can be tremendously satisfying when image cleanup requires a simple click with the Spot Healing Brush. But when you need a bit more precision, I think you’ll find that taking advantage of the Show Overlay option for the Clone Stamp or Healing Brush tools, or utilizing a manual patching technique, will help you achieve a blemish-free image of the highest quality. To learn more about cleaning up blemishes and distractions in your digital photos using Photoshop, take a look at “Photoshop CS6 Image Cleanup Workshop”. This video training course features over two hours of high-definition video to help you make the most of your image-cleanup efforts. You can view sample lessons, get more information, or purchase this course through the Tim Grey video2brain online store here: http://bit.ly/PSCleanup PIXOLOGY 29 Exporting from Elements Creating Copies of Photos for Sharing Outside the Elements Organizer By Tim Grey One of the key advantages of using Photoshop Elements to manage your images is that the Organizer makes it remarkably easy to share your images in a variety of ways. You can very easily share photos and videos via Facebook, send a photo as an email attachment, post to Flickr or SmugMug, and much more. But what about situations where you need to share via a method that isn’t included among the options provided with the Elements Organizer? In those cases, you’ll want to take advantage of the option to export your images from the Organizer in a variety of formats. In other words, to make a new PIXOLOGY copy of your image, possibly in a different file format, ready to share any way you’d like. For example, if you’re going to have a lab make a print of one of your favorite photos, you might export a high-quality TIFF image. If you’re going to provide low-resolution copies of a large number of photos to a friend, it may be more convenient to copy those photos to a flash drive rather than send them via email. The first thing to keep in mind when exporting images is that you are creating additional copies of your photos. You will not be removing the original photos from the Organizer, and the new copies of the photos 30 The first step to exporting images from the Elements Organizer is to select the images you would like to export. you create in the export process will not be added to your Organizer catalog. Instead, you are creating new images based on the originals you select, and those copies will reflect any changes you’ve applied to the photos via, for example, the Elements Editor. The basic process of exporting images from the Elements Organizer is very simple. The first step is to select the images you want to export, or make sure that no images are selected if you want all photos in the current location to be exported. If you have a photo selected and want to deselect all photos, you can click on an empty space surrounding one of the photo thumbnails, or simply choose Edit > Deselect from the menu. To initiate the export process, choose File > Export as New File(s) from the menu. If you don’t have any photos selected in the current view you’ll be asked if you are sure you want to export all of the images currently visible PIXOLOGY in the Organizer. That can include all images in your entire catalog, or all images in the currently selected folder, for example. You can simply click Yes to confirm you do want to export all of the current images. You’ll then be presented with the Export New Files dialog. Most of the dialog will be taken up by a thumbnail display of the images currently selected for export. If you change your mind about which photos should be exported, you don’t need to cancel the export process at this point. Instead you can simply select one or more images you’d like to exclude from the export process and then click the Remove button at the bottom-left of the Export New Files dialog. If you’d like to add additional images to list of those to be exported, click the Add button at the bottom-left of the dialog, which will bring up the Add Media dialog. 31 In the Add Media dialog you can specify whether you want to choose from all media in your Organizer catalog, or only the images that are currently visible within the Organizer (for example, images in a specific folder you’ve selected). You can also filter the images in a variety of ways. You can click the Advanced header to expand the list of available filter options, and then choose to filter images based on a specific Album, Keyword Tag, and tags for People, Places, or Events. There are also checkboxes that allow you to further filter the images to only show those with a star rating applied or to display hidden media. Once you’ve established which images will actually be available within the Add Media dialog, you can select one or more images you’d like to include among those to be exported. Besides selecting individual images you can also click the Select All button at the bottom-left of the Add Media dialog. Once you’ve selected the images to include for export, click the Add Selected Media and they will be included among those to be exported. You can continue this process of filtering, selecting, and adding images until all images you want to export have been added. Once you’ve added the desired images to the export, you can click Done to close the Add Media dialog. The Add Media dialog allows you to search for images from your Elements Organizer catalog to be exported that you hadn’t selected when you first initiated the export process. PIXOLOGY 32 The Export New Files dialog allows you to establish the settings for the new image files you will create as part of the export process from the Elements Organizer. The next step is to specify the settings for the actual export. At the top-right of the Export New Files dialog you can choose the file type you’d like to use for the exported images. The first option is Use Original Format, which will create copies of the images in their original file format. For example, if you took advantage of your camera’s RAW capture capability for the selected images, the exported files will also be RAW files. In most cases you will likely want to use something other than the original file format for exported images, simply because the intended use for those exported photos will dictate the file format that makes the most sense. For example, if you want to keep the image files as small as possible you might use PIXOLOGY the JPEG file format. For images that will be printed and for which you want to maintain maximum quality, you would likely use the TIFF file format. After selecting the desired file format, you can establish Size and Quality settings as appropriate to the file format you are using for export. If you select the option to Use Original Format, you won’t be able to adjust these settings at all. If you specify the TIFF file format, you can adjust the size, but there is no option for Quality. And for JPEG images, you can adjust both the Photo Size and Quality settings. The Photo Size option is a popup, where you can select from some typical output sizes, such as 800x600 pixels or 1024x768 pixels. You 33 can also choose Original if you don’t want the images to be resized at all, or Custom if you want to specify dimensions not available from the list. When you choose Custom from the popup the Custom Size dialog will appear, where you can enter values for Width and Height in pixels. That means you’ll need to calculate the number of pixels you need if, for example, you’ll be sending the exported images to a lab for printing. In this case you’ll need to know the desired output size as well as the output resolution to be used. For example, at a typical 300 pixel per inch (ppi) resolution, if the images are being printed at about an 8x10inch size, you’ll need the images to be sized to about 2400x3000 pixels. After entering the appropriate values in the Custom Size dialog, click the OK button. The Quality slider is only available if you have selected to export your photos as JPEG images. My general approach is to use the maximum value of 12 if the images will be printed or I am otherwise prioritizing image quality over file size. For situations where I want to keep the files as small as possible, such as for online display, I set the Quality value to 8, which represents a good compromise between quality and file size. With your basic output settings established, you can choose where you want the exported images copied. To specify a location, click the Browse button and use the Specify Export Directory dialog to navigate to the desired location. You can also click the New Folder button if you’d like to create a new folder to contain the exported images. In most cases I will export to a folder on my Desktop, making it easy to find the folder (and thus the images) so the exported images can be copied to another device or otherwise put to use. Once you’ve specified the export location, click the OK button in the Specify Export Directory dialog. PIXOLOGY The final option relates to the filenames for the exported images. If you will be sharing the images with others and they may need to communicate with you about a specific photo, I recommend using the Original Names option so that the filename of the exported image will match the filename of the image in your catalog (with the possible exception of the filename extension, of course). In that case it can be a good idea to make sure you’re using meaningful filenames within the Organizer before initiating the export process. In cases where you want to use unique filenames for the images, you can choose the Common Base Name option, and then type a basic filename in the text box below this option. When the images are actually exported a sequence number will be added to this base filename for each image, so that each exported file has a unique name. With all of the settings established, you’re ready to begin the export process. Simply click the Export button at the bottom-right of the Export New Files dialog, and Elements will get to work processing the selected images. When the process is complete, you’ll receive a confirmation message letting you know how many images were exported. You can then navigate to the location you specified for the export, and the exported images will be there, ready for you to put to use. Once the export process is complete a dialog will indicate how many images were successfully exported. 34 Photographic Ye a r i n R e v i e w The making of a time-lapse video featuring every photograph from 2012 By Tim Grey I guess it was the combination of enjoying time-lapse photography and also having a tendency to look back on the prior year whenever New Year’s Day rolls around that led me to create a video recently. The video is a little under five minutes in length, and features essentially all of my “real” photographs from 2012. That was a total of 15,993 images, and I assembled them at 60 frames per second in order to ensure the final video wouldn’t be too long. To be sure, the video flies by very quickly (and 2012 seemed to do the same). Plenty of viewers pointed out that the video can be a bit difficult on the eyes. I think the trick is to not try too hard to identify each subject, since the photos go by so quickly, but rather just take in the overall sense of the video. PIXOLOGY I have a variety of ideas for making the video better. For example, I’ve contemplated only including the horizontal shots, so that there isn’t the sense of additional flicker caused by the switch between horizontals and verticals. That would obviously result in fewer images, enabling me to assemble the time-lapse at perhaps 30 frames per second (or even slower) so that the images don’t fly by so fast. I’ve also contemplated taking the editing a bit further, so that for example I could have some of my favorite images of the year linger a bit longer while the not-so-great photos continue to fly by very quickly. While I continue to ponder what other fun I might have with this little project, I thought I would respond to some of the requests for 35 a “how-to” guide by presenting the process I used to create the video in the first place. Here’s the process I used to create the 2012 year-in-review time-lapse video: I utilized a variety of software tools to create the final video. I employed Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to identify the images to include as well as to create JPEG versions of the photos at a smaller size, Adobe Photoshop to perform some additional batch processing for those images, Apple QuickTime Pro 7 to assemble the basic time-lapse video, and Adobe Premiere Pro to add some finishing touches, including music and title slides. The final rendered video was then shared via YouTube (http://youtu.be/b9sZjuwKRwY). Step 1: Access All Photographs The first step was to ensure I had access to all of my photographs, so I’d be sure to find every image from 2012 that I wanted to include in the time-lapse video. So, with my master Lightroom catalog open, I clicked All Photographs in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Library module. That meant I was browsing all 247,179 photos currently in my catalog. The first step in creating my year-in-review time-lapse video was to access all of my photographs in Lightroom. PIXOLOGY 36 The Library Filter enabled me to very easily filter my images to include only my RAW captures photographed during 2012. Step 2: Filter the Images With all of my images displayed in Lightroom, I obviously needed to narrow the field a bit. This is where the Library Filter proved incredibly valuable. You can display the filter bar by pressing the backslash key (\) or by choosing View > Show Filter Bar from the menu. In this case I wanted to use metadata values to filter my images, so I clicked the Metadata option on the filter bar. I then clicked on the popup at the header of the first column, and chose Date. I selected 2012 from the list of years that appeared in that column, based on the dates of all photographs in my catalog. This narrowed the field to 25,604 images. I then set the second column to File Type. I only wanted to include RAW captures in this project, in part because those are what I PIXOLOGY consider my “real” photographs. For example, when I capture a time-lapse sequence I set the camera to capture in JPEG mode. Choosing to view only my RAW captures narrowed the list of images to 16,775. In theory these two filter options would have provided me with all of the images I wanted to include in my time-lapse project. However, at times when I’m leading a workshop or speaking at an event, attendees will capture photographs of me and send them along. Sometimes those include RAW captures, and I add them in a sub-folder below the folder containing my photographs from that particular trip. So, to filter out images I didn’t capture with my own camera, I set the third column to Camera Serial Number and selected my camera’s serial number from the list. This brought the number of images down to 16,668. 37 Step 3: Export the Photos With the images filtered in Lightroom based on the criteria I had specified, I was ready to export those images. I made sure the sort order was set to Capture Time by choosing View > Sort > Capture Time from the menu, so that the images would all be listed in the order I captured them. Next, I selected all of the images, which can be done by pressing Command+A on Macintosh or Ctrl+A on Windows, or by choosing Edit > Select All from the menu. I then clicked the Export button at the bottom of the left panel in the Library module to bring up the Export Files dialog. In most cases when I am exporting images from Lightroom I will have them saved into a folder on the desktop, so that they are readily accessible. So, I chose the Specific Folder option from the Export To popup, and then clicked the Choose button and chose the desktop as the destination. I then turned on the Put in Subfolder checkbox and typed a descriptive name for that folder. I used the “Custom Name – Sequence” preset in the File Renaming section of the Export Files dialog, though I modified that preset so that it would use a five-digit sequence number to allow for the large number of images I was exporting. I then entered descriptive text in the Custom Text field for the base filename for each image, making sure the Start Number was set to 1. Under File Settings I set the Image Format to JPEG, the Quality to 100, and the Color Space to sRGB. These settings would ensure relatively small file sizes while retaining good image quality and vibrant colors. The Export settings were established based on the intentions for the final time-lapse video. PIXOLOGY 38 In the Image Sizing section I turned on the checkbox and set the popup to Width & Height. I then set the W (Width) value to 720 and the H (Height) value to 480, with the popup following those values set to pixels. This would produce images that fit within the standard DVD Video dimensions. I certainly could have created images at larger pixel dimensions to produce a high-definition video, but in this case I was just having a bit of fun and planning to post the video to YouTube, so DVD Video dimensions worked well. With the settings for my images established I clicked the Export button, and Lightroom began processing my images. I then headed out for dinner and otherwise kept myself distracted, since the process of converting 16,668 RAW captures into lower-resolution JPEG images requires a bit of time. Step 4: Create an Action At this point my images were theoretically ready to assemble into a time-lapse video. However, because the set of images consisted of both horizontal and vertical photos, I needed to process them further. That is based in part on the software I was using— Apple QuickTime Pro 7—to assemble my time-lapse video. With this software (and a variety of other time-lapse tools) images that don’t fit the frame will be resized to fit, causing the vertical images in this case to be stretched and distorted. I needed to process the vertical images so they would have the same pixel dimensions as the horizontal The key element of the action created to batch-process the images was the Canvas Size command in Photoshop. PIXOLOGY 39 images, with black filling in the added space. To perform this task, I created an action in Photoshop and batch-processed the photos with that action. When I create an action I prefer to work with an extra copy of one of the images I plan to process with the action. This is simply to ensure I don’t inadvertently alter one of the images in an unintended way while creating and testing the action. So, I copied one of the images I had exported from Lightroom into a test folder, and used that as the basis of my action. To get started creating the action I went to the Actions panel (Window > Actions), where I could select or create an action set to contain the action I was going to create. I created a new action set by clicking the folder button at the bottom of the Actions panel, giving it the name “TL”. I then clicked the blank sheet of paper icon at the bottom of the Actions panel, typed a name for the action I was creating, and clicked the Record button. I then opened my test image and chose Image > Canvas Size from the menu. I started off by setting the Canvas Extension Color popup to Black, so that the new space created around my images would be black. I then set the popup to the right of the values for Width and Height to Pixels, and set the Width value to 720 and the Height value to 480. These DVD Video pixel dimensions represent an aspect ratio of 3:2, which is the same aspect ratio as the native captures from my digital SLR. As a result, uncropped horizontal images are not affected by this Canvas Size command, while vertical images would have their canvas size enlarged to match the pixel dimensions of the horizontal images, with black pixels added to the left and right. PIXOLOGY The completed action would enable the individual images to be processed for final assembly into a time-lapse video. Next, I chose File > Save As from the menu, and saved the image as a JPEG with a Quality setting of 12, which is the maximum value. The purpose of this Save As step was not to define the location and filename where the action would actually save all of the processed images, but rather to define the file format and settings for each of the saved images. Finally, I chose File > Close from the menu to close the image, so that each processed image would not remain open during batch processing. I then clicked the “stop recording” button (the black square icon) at the bottom of the Actions panel, in order to stop recording the action. 40 Step 5: Batch Process Images then clicked the Choose button to close the “Choose a batch folder” dialog. With my action created, I was ready to use that action to process all of my images. So I chose File > Automate > Batch from the menu to bring up the Batch dialog in Photoshop. I made sure the Set and Action popups were set to the action I had created for this purpose, and then adjusted the rest of the settings in the Batch dialog. I then turned on the “Override Action ‘Open’ Commands” checkbox. Without this checkbox turned on, the test image I had opened as part of the action recording would be opened as part of the batch processing. In the Source section I chose Folder from the popup, and then clicked the Choose button and navigated to and selected the folder that contained the images for processing, I also turned on the “Suppress Color Profile Warnings” checkbox. In this case I had converted the JPEG images to the sRGB color space when they were exported from Lightroom, and my working space in Photoshop was set to ProPhoto RGB. Having this checkbox turned on ensured I would not be warned about this mismatch. The Batch dialog allows an action to be used to process a large number of images quickly and easily. PIXOLOGY 41 In the Destination section I chose Folder from the popup, and then clicked the Choose button. I navigated to the desktop and created a new folder to be used as the destination of the processed images. I also turned on the “Override Action ‘Save As’ Commands so the batch processing would determine the location and filename for each image, and the action “save as” step would only be used to specify the file format and settings for each image. Under File Naming I left the default values of Document Name and Extension, so that the filenames for the processed images would be the same as the JPEG images that were being processed. With these options established, I clicked the OK button, and Photoshop set about the task of processing all of my images. When the batch processing was complete, I was ready to assemble my initial time-lapse video. Step 6: Assembling the Time-Lapse Video To create the basic time-lapse video, I utilized the Pro version of QuickTime. However, you need to use version 7 (not the latest version) for this processing, because the time-lapse feature was removed from later versions of QuickTime Pro. I utilized a frame rate of 60 frames per second in large part to keep the final video from being too long. Normally a rate of 30 or even 15 frames per second would be preferred. 60 frames per second option. With the frame rate selected, you can click the OK button and the video will be assembled. When the processing is complete you can immediately play the video, but of course you’ll want to save the video as well. So, choose File > Save As from the menu, and in the Save As dialog navigate to the location where you want to save the video and provide a filename. Choose the “Save as a self-contained movie” option, and click Save. The time-lapse video will then be saved, ready to share with others. When saving the initial time-lapse video from QuickTime Pro, it is important to use the option to save a self-contained movie. The process of assembling a time-lapse is incredibly simple with QuickTime Pro 7. Simply choose File > Open Image Sequence from the menu, and then navigate to the location of the images to assemble, select the first image in that folder, and click the Open button. The Image Sequence Settings dialog will appear, where you can choose the frame rate for the video. The standard for video is 29.97 frames per second, but since I was assembling a time-lapse video with a relatively large number of images I chose the PIXOLOGY 42 Step 7: Customize the Video At this point you could certainly call the project “finished”, but I wanted to customize the video a bit more. I created a new project with Adobe Premiere Pro, and imported the time-lapse video I had assembled. I also created some title and credit slides in Photoshop and imported those into the project. For a soundtrack I made use of the royalty-free (but donations accepted and encouraged) music from the talented Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com/). There are all sorts of great things I could have done in Premiere Pro, but I chose to keep it simple. And of course, I could have also used a variety of other software to customize the video. Premiere Pro just happens to be my tool of choice for video editing. Step 8: Share the Video The final step, of course, was to share the video with the world. So I uploaded the video to my channel on YouTube (http://www. youtube.com/timgreyvideos), wrote a blog post about it that included an embedded version of the video (http://timgrey.com/ blog/2013/my-photographic-year-inreview/), and shared the link to the blog post on Facebook and elsewhere. I enjoyed reading the comments and emails I received about the video, and started thinking about how to make the video even better. When I was finished tinkering with the video in Premiere Pro, I exported the video to render the final result. Once I had created my year-in-review time-lapse video, I posted the video to my YouTube channel and included it in a blog post, so others could view and comment on the result. PIXOLOGY 43 Upcoming Events Optimizing Photos in Lightroom February 6, 2013, 5:30pm to 7:30pm In this informative presentation hosted by Adorama in New York City, you’ll learn to truly understand Lightroom’s Develop module, so you can master the use of this powerful software to truly optimize your photos. http://www.adorama.com/workshops/ws-optimizing-photos-lightroom-2013-02-06 Olympic National Park Workshop - FULL May 5-11, 2013 Experience the remarkable forests, rugged coasts, and quaint towns of the Olympic Peninsula with this week-long workshop led by Tim Grey and Wolfgang Kaehler. http://timgreystore.com/index.php?app=ecom&ns=prodshow&ref=OLYMPIC2013 Palouse Photo Workshop June 15-21, 2013 Experience the incredible landscape of the Palouse region of eastern Washington state with this week-long workshop led by Tim Grey and Wolfgang Kaehler. http://timgreystore.com/index.php?app=ecom&ns=prodshow&ref=PALOUSE2013 Lightroom Photo Project Workshop August 4-10, 2013 With this workshop at Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, Maine, you will not only learn from Tim Grey as you follow along, but will enhance that learning with a real-world hands-on project. http://bit.ly/tim-grey-maine PIXOLOGY 44 Pixology The Magazine for Photographers Pixology magazine is published electronically on a monthly basis. For more information, visit www.pixologymag.com Copyright © 2013 by Tim Grey. All Rights Reserved. To contact the publisher: Tim Grey 328 8th Avenue #132 New York, NY 10001 www.timgrey.com [email protected] About Tim Grey Tim Grey is regarded as one of the top educators in digital photography and imaging, offering clear guidance on complex subjects through his writing and speaking. Tim has authored more than a dozen books and hundreds of magazine articles on digital imaging for photographers, and has produced over a dozen video training titles on a wide variety of subjects. He publishes the Ask Tim Grey email newsletter in addition to Pixology magazine. Tim teaches through workshops, seminars, and appearances at major events around the world. For more information: www.timgrey.com Every attempt has been made throughout this magazine to distinguish proprietary trademarks from descriptive terms by following the capitalization style used by the manufacturer and marking those marks as either a trademark or registered trademark. All trademarks and registered trademarks included in this book are the property of their respective owners. The publisher has made best efforts to prepare this magazine, but makes no representation or warranties of any kind with regard to the completeness or accuracy of the contents herein and accept no liability of any kind including but not limited to performance, merchantability, fitness for any particular purpose, or any losses or damages of any kind caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly from this magazine.. Parting Shot