Did you know…?

Friday, June 25th, 2010

Know what’s © Right…

Usually, I don’t feature books on my blog, but for once, this one is a must read…

Photographer’s Survival Manual:
A Legal Guide for Artists in the Digital Age

For all you amateur and professional photographers out there, actually anyone who wants (or plans) to make money with a digital camera needs this guide.

Written by Jack Reznicki, president of the Professional Photographers of America, and Ed Greenberg, the leading New York copyright attorney, it provides photographers and visual artists with the most authoritative legal advice available.

Everything is covered, from contracts, subcontracts, releases, and permissions to the copyright laws and all the steps artists should take to register and protect their work. Find out how to use copyright to protect your work from infringement, insure you are properly paid for your work, and how to proceed if your rights are infringed upon.

You can get the book on Amazon [link]

Sunday, June 1st, 2008

Did you know… A bit of History

I thought it might be interesting to create a condensed overview of the most important steps in Photography History. To keep the list short, I’ll forget about technical/physical/chemical details for now and keep it simple. So here we go…

1724 – First photo-sensitive compound (Johann Heinrich Schultz)
1826 – First permanent image ”View from the Window at Le Gras” (Nicéphore Niépce)
1834 – First permanent negative image (Henry Fox Talbot)
1837 – Daguerreotype process (Louis Daguerre)
1853 – First known portrait studio opens in Paris (Nada, Felix Toumachon)
1854 – “Carte-de-visite” photography creates a worldwide boom in portrait studios (Adolphe Disderi, Paris)
1861 – First colour photography system (colour-separation method, James Clerk-Maxwell)
1861-65 – First photo journalistic work (coverage of the american civil war, Mathew Brady)
1968 – Further developement of colour photography (Ducas de Hauron)
1871 – First dry plate process (Richard Leach Maddox)
1878 – Dry plates are now being manufactured commercially
1880 – Eastman Dry Plate Company, future Kodak, is founded (George Eastman)
1881 – First half-tone photograph in a daily newspaper, (New York Graphic)
1888 – First “Kodak” camera (featuring 20-foot roll of paper for 100 circular pictures)
1889 – First camera to support film-rolls (Kodak)
1900 – First box camera with roll-film (Kodak Brownie)
1907 – First (commercial) colour film (Lumiere brothers, France)
1917 – Nippon Kogaku KK. (future Nikon) founded in Tokyo
1921 – “Rayographs” (Man Ray) create basic idea for future X-rays
1924 – First high-quality 35mm camera “Leica” (Leitz)
1928: Introduction of “Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex”, 6x6cm image on rollfilm (Rollei)
1931: First Strobe Photography (Harold Doc Edgerton at MIT)
1932: Introduction of Technicolor for movies
1932: Group f/62 formed (by Ansel Adams, Willard Van Dyke, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham)
1932: Founder of Kodak George Eastman writes: “My work is done. Why wait”, and commits suicide.
1934: Fuji Photo Film founded
1936: Introduction of Kodachrome, first colour film (developed by Exakta)
1947: Magnum picture agency founded (Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, and David Seymour)
1948: First medium format camera for commercial use (Hasselblad)
1948: First “Instant film” (black/white, by Polaroid)
1949: First SLR with un-reversed viewfinder image (Contax S by Zeiss)
1963: First colour instant film (Polaroid)
1972: 110-format camera introduced by Kodak
1973: C-41 colour negative process replaces C-22
1975: First working CCD-based digital still camera (Steve Sasson at Kodak)
1985: First auto-focus SLR (“Maxxum” by Minolta)
1987: EOS system introduced (Canon)
1990: Adobe Photoshop 1.0 released (Adobe)
1992: PhotoCD format introduced (Kodak)
1999: Nikon D1 SLR introduced, featuring 2.7 megapixel and RRP $6000 (Nikon)
2001: Polaroid bankrupt
2004: Kodak stops production of film cameras

Well, and the rest we all know from recent memory.

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

Did you know… Colour

If you’re a graphic designer, then this post will be cold coffee for you. If however you are one of the million happy-snappers out there, who just open the odd photo in photoshop to print (or play around), you probably never thought about colour modes, profiles, bit depth or colour gamuts. Am I right?

Colour is not equal colour…

Colour is simply a specific wave length of light reflected from a surface. The question is: “Reflected from what“? A vibrating crystal of your brand-spanking-new LCD display, or a paper print, lustre or glossy? A canvas maybe, or a photo book? Have you ever wondered why the brilliant colours on the back of your camera look somewhere between “slightly” to “dramatically” different to the colours on your computer screen, and again different from the best quality print you can produce?

“Nope, they all look the same“… well, you must be one of the lucky few who run a colour-managed workflow (if you know it, or not).

Every device uses different processes to reproduce colours. The easiest ones to explain are pure “black” and ”white”: Your screen does nothing at all to show black, your printer however has to work hard. White however means “do nothing” for your printer, but most work for your computer screen. So we not only deal with completely different processes to produce “the same” colours, but in most cases also different basic colours. Your screen uses RGB, your printer CMYK.

What the?…

Your screen uses three colours (RGB / Red, Green, Blue) to simulate millions of colours. Being an additive and illuminated process, most screens can display a larger range of colours than most printers. Printers use 4 colours (CMYK / Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) to “mix” colours in a subtractive process.

“So what? My prints look good!”… You most probably use a printer driver which does a good job translating your RGB colours to your printers CMYK. Depending on the paper and printer driver settings, you’ll end up with a wide range of results – from good to dreadful.

To take the guesswork out of the equation, clever people use colour profiles, retouch in a wide colour gamut, understand the benefits of 16-bit and convert images for web & email to the right format.

Profile and Gamut…

A colour profile is a detailed description of the technical capabilities of a device. You should use a colour profile for your screen (hardware calibrated), your printer AND a print-and-media specific profile for the paper you are printing on.

Colour gamut defines the amount of colours addressable and their position within the specific colour space. sRGB has a limited amount of addressable colours, while a wider colour gamut like Adobe RGB or ProPhoto can work with more colours. Note: Working in a wide colour gamut does not mean, that your printer will be able to reproduce these colours, but it allows you to create more suddle changes without introducing artefacts during editing. Depending on your printer, the colours have to be converted/placed within a colour gamut that your printer can actually service. 

Get it right, every time…

Step 1: Calibrate your screens!

To guarantee that you get “in print” what you see “on screen”, calibrate your monitors with a hardware device like a Datacolor Spyder or a Pantone eye-one. They will create a specific colour profile for your screen (and work environment).

Step 2: Use a wide colour gamut + 16 bit

Different colour modes offer different amounts of addressable colours. If you retouch your images, use a wide colour gamut such as Adobe RGB. This will give you more “workable” tones than if you’d work in sRGB.

For most retouching jobs, 8 bit will work ok, however if you plan to do more dramatic changes, such as colour shifts, you’d get less colour artefacts if you retouch your images in 16-bit. Better still than open a jpg and converting to 16-bit would be to shoot your images in RAW and open them in 16-bit and Adobe RGB (or ProPhoto).

Step 3: Work non-destructively

Use layers to make your changes, especially if you use colour adjustments and curves. Instead of applying such changes directly to your image, use adjustment layers. This will allow you to tweak your image quickly if your print doesn’t meet your expectations (or you simply change your mind down the track).

Step 4: Stay compatible

If you edit your images in 16-bit Adobe RGB, remember to “down-convert” your image before sending it to clients or friends. They will most probably not have a colour-managed system and your best bet is to send them 8-bit jpg files in sRGB.

Step 5: Be aware of RGB to CMYK and your print media

As your printer will use CMYK to reproduce your colours, use the latest drivers for your printer. Printer manufacturers are constantly improving their drivers. Download the correct (printer-specific) colour profile for the paper you use and make sure, you set both printer + paper settings accordingly (in photoshop as well as in your printer driver).

Note: I might do a quick tutorial on this in the near future.
 

So, and what’s Lab?

Lab (as in L, a, b, not “Lab”) is the most powerful and most complex colour mode, the Über-gamut. While RGB and CMYK work on a base of 3 and 4 colour channels, Lab uses a L (Lightness) channel and 2 colour channels (a+b). This allows for independent adjustment of colours and luminosity. The way the a and b colour channels work creates a super wide colour gamut, and allows for colour manipulation outside of the reproducible spectrum of printers and most screens. Need a 100% white with 100% red? No chance in RGB or CMYK, but no problems in Lab.

I will explain the possibilities of Lab together with some real world examples in a later post.

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Did you know… Daguerreotype

I am fascinated by old photographs, and it doesn’t get much older than “Daguerreotype”. I often use them in photoshop classes to demonstrate restoration and colorisation techniques.

While Daguerreotype is an important part of Photography History, many have never heard of it.
So here’s the story in short…

The first permanent photograph (1826)

The development of chemical transfer in the 1820 made photography usable for the very first time. The French inventor Nicéphore Niépce developed a “heliography” using light-sensitive asphaltum (bitumen of judea). The black bitumen hardened when exposed to light, creating clear differences between light and dark. Niépce was able to produce the first permanent photograph in 1826 (known as ”View from the Window at Le Gras”, image above) and it took eight hours to expose.

Niépce’s process was ground breaking, however unreliable and too slow. Niépce joined forces with Louis Daguerre, to improve the process. Based on studies by German Johann Heinrich Schultz (who discovered around 1724 that silver and chalk mixtures darken when exposed to light), Daguerre and Niépce found ways to “develop” silver particles on the surface of a highly polished copper plates. The plates had to be prepared just before the exposure (not longer than 1 hour before). Such preparation created a layer of light-sensitive silver iodine. After an exposure, the image was “developed” by holding the exposed plates over medium heated mercury. The image now had to be “fixed” by going through a bath of warm salt water (later sodium sulphite).

When Niépce died in 1833, Daguerre claimed all the credits, and called the process “Daguerreotype“.

PS: Hercules Florence had created a similar process in 1832, he called it “Photographie”, and William Fox Talbot has found a solution to fix silver process exposures even before Daguerre, but kept it as a secret.

FIND & DOWNLOAD: Visit the website of the American Library of Congress, you’ll find a lot of daguerreotypes in the “Prints & Photographs” Division.

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

High-Pass Sharpening

This technique is nothing new, however I am surprised how many photographers and photoshop users still don’t use (or understand) it. While photoshop gives us many different ways to sharpen images, this technique is my personal favourite (depending on the photograph of course).

Let’s start with this portrait of beautiful Australian Model Katrina…

While the portrait seams fine, I would still like to get her eyes just a bit sharper, without touching her skin or hair. This is how I’d do it: In the Layers palette, duplicate your background (or active image) layer and apply the “High-Pass” filter (Filter > Other > High Pass)…

The radius setting depends on your image and image resolution. I usually stay quite low, around a 2 pixel radius for most images. The goal is to get a clear “outline drawing” type of grayscale image with good contrast in the areas you’d like to sharpen (the eyes in this case).

In the Layers palette, switch the blending mode to “Overlay” (softlight and hardlight work too, and create slighly different results)…

This step will sharpen the entire image, which will enhance the skin and hair as well. To limit the effect only to the eyes and lips, I have applied a black layer-mask (which hides the effect) and painted those areas back in that i want (using a white brush paining on the layer-mask).

That’s it. Quick and easy.

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008

Did you know… Camera

Camera (Italian) = Room.

The word we use for our “photograph producing machines” has its origin from “Camera Obscura” (Latin for “dark chamber” or “dark room”).

It is unsure who the first person was to find out, that a small little whole in a wall can project an mirrored image to the opposite wall in a “camera obscura”, but we do know that the arabian scientist Abu Ali Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haitham (965-1039 AD) was the first to build such a large “Pinhole” camera.

Some believe, the chinese philosopher Moza (470 BC to 390 BC) came up with the initial idea, some others believe, he only studied the natural phenomena of light and shade, and the logic behind it. Aristotle has also known the principles of the Pinhole camera, and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519 AD) has used it to study perspective, light & shadows, to enhance his painting techniques.

Long story short:
If you’re in Italy, and you’d like to buy a Nikon (or whatever brand you fancy), don’t ask for a “Camera”, as they will send you to the next hotel. Instead, ask for a “machina de fotografia” (a machine that produces photographs).

Note about the image above: This is a 100 year old “Stereo Hawk-Eye” Camera (Model 4, produced 1908 by Blair Camera Division of Eastman Kodak Company).