Burning and dodging are terms used in the process of finishing digital images in Photoshop and similar image processing software.

In the context of film and print processing, where the terms originated, dodging means withholding light from an over-exposed part of an image projected onto on photo paper under an enlarger, and burning means just the opposite, i.e., to add more light to under-exposed areas. Thus, dodging makes part of an image lighter, while burning makes selected areas darker.

It is necessary to mention at the very outset that burning and dodging must not be used indiscriminately. They must be applied judiciously in a subtle manner so as to give little clue to the viewer that such processing has taken place.

For photographers who are at the stage where they see an image in their mind’s eye and then proceed to create it, these two tools invariably find a lot of usage.

That is because the reality of how an image is lit or positioned is usually far from the photographer’s concept of what the finished image should look like. This is where burning and dodging comes into play — to manipulate an image to make it conform to our inner vision.

Perhaps it would be better to demonstrate the before and after stages of a few pictures I shot to illustrate the point.

Let’s start with the first example shot.

This being an indoor shot taken in available light, is quite flat and lacking in contrast.

Moreover, the background is so cluttered and obtrusively bright that it distracts the viewer’s attention.

There is no emotion in the shot, no drama. But there is a potential to add finishing touches to the image to thus make an impression. With right tools and techniques at hand, it doesn’t take much time or effort to transform a flat, boring snapshot into an image worthy of enlargement.

For instance, in this example shot, the cluttered background was burned in gently and in progressive stages. Only some deep, near-impenetrable shadows remain. They may leave viewers guessing but will not distract the viewer’s attention.

As far as the range of the effect is concerned, it is better to tackle the highlights first, followed by mid-tones and finally the shadows. These options are available in Photoshop’s dodge and burn tool specific menu at the top.

Quick Tip: Use low levels of exposure (say, 3% to start off with) when burning or dodging so as to build up an effect gradually over several passes with the burning or dodging tools.

I would also like to mention that I intentionally chose (and shot) for this lesson a white object, so as to present a difficult lighting situation and demonstrate how to tackle it. Natural light streamed in from the left through an open window, colored by its passage through a multi-hued awning. Thus, burning can also be used to burn away irrelevant colored specks that detract from the final result.

Flash was not used; unless it is bounced off a white ceiling or wall, it usually leads to ‘green eye’ in dogs — an unpleasant effect hard to remedy, even in Photoshop. A white sheet draped over a clothed horse added some fill light from the right. Since household pets don’t stay at one place for very long, the entire sequence of B&W and color images was shot in a matter of minutes, using an inexpensive compact camera. A little tweaking of brightness and contrast in Photoshop and the image was ready!

Just to drive the lesson home, I took an extreme shot against the glare of an afternoon sun. The range of tones far exceeded the ability of the digital camera’s sensor to cope with this color shot. Check out the test shot below:

There was quite a bit of chroma noise in the shadows, so dodging was futile at this point. Moreover, the highlights on the fur were clipped… gone forever. What could I do?

Photoshop to the rescue! To bypass the chroma noise problem, I first desaturated the image to convert it into a black and white one.

The next step was to crop the image, to add modelling to the picture. This was followed by judicious dodging of the front portion of the subject to open up the shadows. Special attention was paid to adding catchlights (check out the tips for photographing the catchlights here) to the eyes by careful spot dodging. I also did some slight burning in of the highlights on the crown of the dog’s head, then a little use of the brightness and contrast sliders.

This is the end result and I must confess I’m rather pleased with it: so pleased, in fact, that I’ve printed it 10” x 14”, and it looks good at that magnification.

There is no substitute for practice. So utilize every opportunity to sharpen your dodging and burning skills. I can’t resist adding one more example of a contre-jour (back-lit) shot to demonstrate the effects possible with these indispensable and versatile tools…

The original shot first…

The original jpeg is nice, but it is dull and there are too many sundry details to let the eye settle on the subject.

The solution was to burn in the shadows by creating a  path of light, keeping in mind that light travels in a straight line (but can bounce off reflecting surfaces).

By using the know-how given above, I was able to suppress the visual clutter, dodging and burning wherever needed to completely transform the mood of the picture. Here is the end result, with the 3-D effect being a bonus.

Good luck with your dodging and burning!

Adobe Photoshop CS6 loads several new features for photographers and graphic designers. The very first thing you’ll notice is its dark grey interface; which gives the feel of Adobe Lightroom 4.

The crop functionality has been improved to enhance the cropping speed. Now moving the crop tool while cropping, moves the background image and not the cropping frame any more.

Despite new additions, one of the major drawbacks is that, some features like Lighting Effects Filter works only if your computer supports high speed graphics.

Here are some of the newest features in Adobe Photoshop CS6 which photographers may find handy while processing the images in the digital darkroom.

Here goes the first…

1. Mini Bridge [Browse The Images With A Difference]

• Browse: Mini Bridge lets you browse image files on your hard drive and allows to view the responsive preview of image files under the folders.
• Sort: In Adobe Photoshop CS6, you can sort images by file-name, type, date created and modified, size, label, rating, width, height.
• Filter: You can filter images by rejected items, unrated items, star rated items, labeled and unlabeled items.
• Search: You can also search image files within Mini Bridge on your entire computer or current folder.

2. Layers [Better Layer Management]

• Search: The search feature makes layer searching all the more quick and easy. You can search layers by kind, name, effect (layer style), mode, attribute & color.
• Filter: You can also apply search filters to find the layers. Adobe Photoshop CS6 enables you to filter the layers as pixel layer, adjustment layer, type layer, shape layer & smart object. You can also turn layer filtering ON/OFF.
• Lock: The layer lock now features the ability to lock transparent pixels, lock image pixels, lock position and of course lock all.

3. Color Lookup [Recolor Your Images In A Click]

Color Lookup is an interesting feature added to the Adjustments Panel in Photoshop CS6. The Color Lookup Adjustment Layer enables you to play around with different “looks” by shifting the colors. This feature remaps all the original colors of the image to the other specific colors from a lookup table or profiles. These profiles simply remap the original colors of image to other colors. You can learn more about this feature here.

4. Properties Panel — To Speed Up The Photographic Workflow

Adobe Photoshop CS6 features the properties panel which allows you to view the properties of certain types of layers. This panel presents a quick overview of the adjustments layer and the mask properties applied to a specific layers. And allows you to fine-tune the effects from the panel itself.

5. Adding Lighting Effects Can’t Get Simpler Than This

Adobe Photoshop CS6 comes with a new filter effect called the Lighting Effects. You can access it here: Filter > Render > Lighting Effects. This filter adds an oval shaped geometrical grid over the photograph which allows you to control the intensity and range of light. The central point on the grid allows you to control the intensity of the light source, the top pointer represents the light source, and left, right and bottom pointers allow you to increase or decrease the range of light. You can refer this video for giving this effect a try.

6. Blur — Get More Creative With Blur Effects

There are three types of the blur effects that have been introduced in CS6 — Field Blur, Iris Blur and Tilt-Shift Blur.

• Field Blur: Field blur allows you to blur the image around any random point you select. You can increase and reduce the intensity of the blur. You can place as many points as you want on your image to blur different areas of the image with different values.
  
• Iris Blur: Keeping the center of the image sharp, you can blur the rest of the image in the circular fashion by employing Iris Blur.
  
• Tilt-Shift Blur: You can get creative with your images by applying the tilt shift blur. When you select Filter > Blur > Titl-Shift Blur, it places a rotatable horizontal grid on the photograph. The part of the image featuring in the middle grid remains sharp while the portion of the image on other planes is blurred to replicate the tilt-shift effect. This effect comes out nicely on landscape photographs.
  

7. Liquify [Creative After-Effect]

The Filter menu has yet another interesting tool to get your creativity rolling in. The Liquify tool as the name suggests allows you to replicate the effect of spilled water or a view through the water as in the image given below.

8. Content Aware Move Tool

Content aware fill in CS5 comes in quite handy to remove distracting elements off the composition and Photoshop CS6’s content aware move tool takes this functionality a step further. Now you can move and replace the elements to a better position in the photograph. Watch this tool in action here.

Which one is your favorite feature?

Lens correction is a tool in various photo editing software tools that majorly corrects lens induced distortions like vignetting, barrel distortion and chromatic aberration. Lets see what do these terms mean, why do these distortions occur and how we can fix or reduce them. Lens distortion occurs in every lens. There’s no lens which has no distortion. A clear understanding of the various distortions and how to correct or minimize them is key to getting realistic pictures. While we are at it, it must be noted that some lenses like the fish-eye lenses have geometric distortion that you cannot do away with. Even though you can work hard of correcting such geometrical aberrations, some people buy fish-eye lenses for the (geometric distortion) effect that they impart to the picture.

Lens Vignetting

Vignetting is the fall off in light intensity at the edges and corners of a photograph. It usually happens with wide angle, macro and long telephoto lenses. These lenses contain multiple lens elements. When light travels towards the sensor through multiple lens elements, each lens element refracts the light towards the center of the lens, hence making the light rays narrower as they reach the sensor. Eventually, more intense light rays reach around the center of the sensor, and less intense at the edges and corners. Vignetting is more pronounced at the longer length of the lens than at the wide range.

Optical vignetting can be corrected in Adobe Lightroom 4 by following the steps below:

1. Import the photo into the Adobe Lightroom 4.
2. Go to “Develop” module.
3. Open the “Lens Correction” panel.
4. In the “Lens Vignetting” section, slide the sliders for “Amount” and “Midpoint” to adjust vignetting. A positive value reduces the vignetting.

If you want to induce or exaggerate the vignette effect, you can go to the effects panel and change the Amount slider.

Geometric Distortion

It refers to the conversion of straight lines into curve lines near the edges, when camera is placed at extreme angle to the subject. Apart from this, with round glass elements in the lens, light bends inwards near the edges of the lens and hence it makes straight paths curved.

Barrel distortion can be corrected in Adobe Lightroom 4 by following the steps below:

1. Import the image into Adobe Lightroom.
2. Go to “Develop” module.
3. Open “Lens Corrections” tab.
4. Use the sliders to adjust “Distortion”, “Vertical”, “Horizontal”, “Rotate” and “Scale”. The literal values in the above figure may not work for you.

Chromatic Aberration

It is also known as achromatism or chromatic distortion. It refers to the presence of unusual colors at many high contrast places in the image. This happens due to the failure of lens to focus all colors (from the scene) at single convergence point. Thus, we see unexpected colors along the boundaries that separate dark and bright parts of the image. This happens because lens has a different refractive index (ability to bend light rays) for different wavelength of light (colors). The refractive index decreases with increasing wavelength, hence each color in spectrum cannot be focussed at a single point on sensor.

Adobe Lightroom 4 has one click method to reduce the color fringes in the image. It can be done by following the steps below:

1. Import the image into Adobe Lightroom.
2. Go to “Develop” module.
3. Open “Lens Corrections” tab.
4. Select “Highlight Edges” or “All Edges” under “Defringe” drop-down menu.

This can be better adjusted in Adobe Camera Raw 6.0, by following the steps below:

1. Open the image in Adobe Camera Raw 6.0.
2. On the right hand side, go to “Lens Correction” tab.
3. Under “Chromatic Aberration”, move the sliders to adjust the fringes.

There are other ways as well to adjust the above three effects. Many new cameras have this post processing tool built-in. However the above mentioned photo editing tools are the most widely used by photographers. How do you take care of such distortions?

Getting accurate and flattering skin tones is a challenge that every photographer faces; especially wedding & fashion photographers. It is quite tricky to control these subtle details while taking the shot, thus these finer details are better controlled during post-processing. Little bit of overexposure, blown out highlights and soft skin tones are some of the things you can do to create impressive portraits. You can try these neat tricks in Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture NX or any other image editor. Here I would like to share a quick and easy way to get the beautiful yet realistic skin tones in Capture NX 2.

1. Open the image in Capture NX 2. Capture NX 2 is an excellent tool for Nikon NEFs, i.e., Nikon’s proprietary RAW format. But you can process JPEGs & TIFFs as well.
   
2. Grab the Color Control Point from the toolbar palette. The color control point allows you to adjust brightness, contrast and saturation.
   
3. Position the color control point to the area you want to retouch. Drag the top slider to select the range of image that needs retouching.
   
4. The trick to get soft skin tones is to increase the brightness and reduce the saturation. Drag the Brightness slider to a positive value and set the Saturation slider equally but to a negative value. As a rule of thumb, reduce the saturation by same amount with which you increase the brightness. But again you can set the values as per your likings.

   Quick Tip: You can use Advanced panel under Color Control Point to enter brightness and saturation values manually.

   

5. Optionally change the Blending Mode to Screen. This brightens the effect just a little touch.
6. Next, you can play around with the opacity. I have reduced the opacity to 50% so that the image does not look washed out. You can set it according to your preference. Here is how the final image looks:
   

There are many advanced and complex ways to enhance skin tones. However, this just does the trick most of the times. How do you get beautiful skin tones?

Many a times we discard our photos just because they fail to impress us — might be because of colors, clarity or sharpness. Especially with landscape photographs, dull skies and flat tones completely break the aesthetics of an image. And we end up putting these images in the trash. But wait! How about adding some punch to these images in the digital darkroom? We can put in a little effort to enliven those images with minimal re-touching in Lightroom. We just need to add clarity, vibrance and saturation. Let’s see how each of these adjustments make the final image a keeper.

1. Clarity

   In the Basics adjustment panel in Lightroom, there is a nifty control slider called Clarity under the Presence. This tool comes in handy to enhance the overall appeal of the image, but the results may not be very obvious in all the cases. The Clarity control basically adds mid-tone contrast to the image. This helps in bringing out the textures and fine details, thus making the image look a bit sharper and crisp. The photographs that inherently have lot of details like landscapes and cityscape shots, can really benefit a lot from the Clarity between +20 and +25. Let’s look at an example to see how clarity adds a subtle pop to the images.

   Before Clarity: Look at the water ripples and the sands.

   

   At Zero Clarity

   After Clarity: The water ripples, sand grains and wood texture start getting subtle definition when the clarity is boosted.

   

   At Clarity +75

   While you can go all the way from -100 to +100, but as you boost the value above +50 it starts degrading the result just like the over-sharpening does. And remember there’s no magic value. You may as well get lucky at +80.

2. Saturation

   The next little trick that can make a lasting impression on your image is the color saturation. If the dull skies and flat green tones are breaking your image, it’s time to adjust the Saturation slider. The saturation slider essentially intensifies the  overall colors and tones of the image. Because of this very nature of saturation slider, it should be used only when the overall color saturation needs to boosted (as in this image), else it is better to adjust the vibrance.

   Before Saturation: Dull blues & flat green tones

   

   At Zero Saturation

   After Saturation: Lively blue and with varied tones of green start showing up with color saturation.

   

   With +50 Saturation

3. Vibrance

   The better option to pop up the colors of the images is to use the Vibrance slider. While the saturation increases the intensity of all the colors & tones equally, Vibrance results in a more balanced saturation of colors. It intensifies the dull colors more than the already saturated colors, thus revealing more realistic looking colors. This tool smartly intensifies the colors so as to maintain a more natural appeal to the images. It also prevents skin tones from getting overly saturated. Let’s check out the before and after effect below.

   Before Vibrance: Need to bring the dull sky to life. I choose to boost the vibrance.

   

   At Neutral Vibrance

   After Vibrance: The colors are intensified and yet do not loose the natural appeal.

   

   After Vibrance +75

   In this image, vibrance intensifies blue color more than the reds of the pyramid, whereas if we apply same amount of saturation, it will intensify reds as much as the blue. Check out below:

   

   After Saturation +75

There are endless options to fine tune the images in Lightroom but sometimes nifty controls like clarity, saturation and vibrance can make a big difference to the images. So before stepping in for a giant leap, tap into the power of the basic adjustments.

How often do you use these adjustments?

Black and white photography is classic. And toning and tinting the black and white images; sometimes for archival and other times for creative effects has been there right from traditional times. Just like Sepia, duotone has also gained a firm ground for itself among the classic photographers. But that’s not it. The twist to the story is that these effects add drama and new story to the images.

This is what I realized when took up to split toning for the first time. And after trying duotone, I was again amazed by the results. So I thought to share bits of knowledge and how to about Duotone here.

Duotone is quite similar to black and white. It is a picture in two tones or colors. Thus, it has two distinct tones other than the usual blacks and whites. It can have blue and black, blue and orange, and so on. Earlier blue, yellow, brown and red were used in duotones.

However this effect cannot be achieved in-camera. It needs some darkroom techniques to accomplish the task. Duotone images are yielded by adding one or two colors to the black and white images. So we will have to start with converting colored image to black & white. You can try one of these techniques to convert your images to black & white and then you can go about toning the images to achieve the duotone effect. So, without wasting much time, let’s get to steps for creating beautiful duotone images in Photoshop.

How To: Converting An Image To Duotone In Adobe Photoshop

Here is the step by step guide to create duotone images in Photoshop:

1. Open the image in Photoshop and go to Image > Mode > Grayscale. Make sure 8-bit/Channel is checked.
   
2. Go to Image > Mode > Duotone.
   
3. This will open up Duotone Options dialog box, where you will be making the choice of tones to transform your image. So make sure you select Preview to view the changes with each selection of tones.
4. In the Duotone Options window, select Duotone from the Type drop-down (as shown below).
   
5. By default, the first color may be black. You can change it to whatever you like; you can go in for one of the primaries R, G, B or any custom color. Click on the black box and pick the color from the ink color dialog.
   
6. Next, you need to choose the second tone. Click on the colored box next to Ink 2 to select the colors from Color Libraries. Select an ink from Book dropdown.
   [Note: To create highly saturated colors, select darkest inks at the top and lightest at the bottom].
7. Once you are satisfied with the tones, click on the Curve box located to the left of the colorbox in the Duotone options window itself. Adjust the duotone curve for each ink color to alter the way color is distributed in highlight and shadows. Set overprint colors, if required.
   
8. Click OK to see the final image — a beautiful duotone image.

Here is the before and after effect of duotoning.

Before: This is a grayscale image you can start with.

After: This is the final effect that is achieved through duotone.

How about trying it out? Choose one of your images, fire up Photoshop and delve yourself into this unusual style of coloring the images in two tones.

Most of us spend a lot of time reading & learning about fundamentals of lighting, exposure & composition to get that perfect image. Then there are others who spend hours on giving the final look and feel to the image in post production.

If you have ever being through the wedding photographers’ workflow, you will realize how important it is to retouch the final photographs to get the results you want. Cropping, color correction, spot healing and attention to fine details during the finishing stage contributes to making impressive images.

Post processing is thus an important part in delivering high quality photos. We’ve decided to put together top five post processing tools and their primary features. Each has its own USPs.

1. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Lightroom is a great post processing tool & remains the first choice of professional photographers. It’s various modules come in handy for smooth workflow. It lets you organize and manage the images prior to switching to Develop Module. And once you are in the develop module, you have to simply use the sliders for making the basic adjustments. You don’t need to hunt for the options. Everything is just there – basic adjustments, tone curves, lens correction, Lightroom presets and not to forget the social sharing options. You can instantly upload your photographs to Flickr with all copyrighting and watermarking stuff. Unlike ACR (Adobe Camera RAW), you don’t need a dedicated plugin for RAW files. RAW editing is a wink of an eye with Lightroom and recovering the original RAW parameters is just a click away. You just need RESET. We can go on and on – graduated filters & adjustment brushes, masking, chromatic aberration, noise reduction, luminance, split toning, vignetting, shadows tinting and a lot more. Lightroom is easier to learn as compared to Adobe Photoshop. Check out some beginner tutorials here.

2. Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is one of the largest selling software tools preferred by graphic designers as well as the photographers. It can do almost everything that Lightroom can and beyond. Other than that it can also be used to design new graphics. Cropping, slicing and manipulating artworks is possible with Photoshop. Photoshop has got all the tools to retouch the images, though it has a learning curve for using layers and masks to achieve the desired effects. The good news for photographers is that it has a dedicated workspace for photographers to play around with basic photo adjustments. Many still prefer to lean on the side of Lightroom’s ease of use and they have reasons for the same. Check them out here.

3. Apple Aperture

Aperture is an image processing tool developed by Apple and targeted to Intel based Mac OS. Despite running only on Mac OS, it is highly popular among photography enthusiasts. It supports the reduced size RAW from many Canon DSLRs. If you shoot through your iPhone, this tool can be a real help as it can pick the GPS metadata of the image. Some of the special features that would be an added advantage are: chromatic aberration filter, halo reduction and support for video file formatting.

4. Picasa

Picasa is an image organizer & viewer for organizing and editing digital photos. It can be downloaded from here. It also features Picasa Web Albums which allows you to share photos online. If you accidentally copied same photos twice on your hard disk, Picasa will find the duplicates for you even if they don’t have same file name. Picasa can match people (images) by their faces, you simply have to tag the face and search with the tag. Moreover, you can search images by colors, so if you are looking for a naturally green landscape, search by green, all green (maximum content) photos will come up. Though not a robust application for editing the images, it has some basic retouching tools to get you going. Picasa is simple, easy and a no-nonse photo management software by Google.

5. GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program)

The GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is free and open-source image editing software. It also happens to be the default image editor on Linux. GIMP has all the features one can find in Photoshop. It is in fact a good alternative to the costly image editors. GIMP has approximately 150 standard effects and filters, including drop shadow, blur, motion blur and noise. GIMP operations can also be automated with scripting languages. GIMP is a bit complicated for a first time user and is usually preferred by advanced computer users. You can download GIMP here.

What is your primary photo-editor?

Post processing adds the magical dust to your images. Simple sliders, easy to use interface and great image effects make the Lightroom standout for us photographers. Of late, I have become the fan of Split Toning.

Split Toning is an amazing image effect used to re-create the mood of the photograph. While most of you might have already experienced the artistic appeal of split toning, here is a simple guide to begin with using this creative effect.

What Is Split Toning?

Toning refers to the traditional darkroom technique wherein black and white prints were dipped into chemicals to change its color. Back then, different combination of chemicals were used to give artistic effects to the prints. This specialized treatment helped in creating multi toned images which involved tinting the highlights in one color and shadows in other color. And the result was — Split Toning.

Nowadays, this effect can easily be replicated in digital darkroom, that is, various image editors. Be it GIMP, Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom; the professional image editing solutions offer the ease of split toning the images. While Photoshop’s Duotone helps in achieving the similar result, Lightroom’s dedicated Split Toning panel is the easiest way to split tone black and white as well as colored images.

Split Toning Transforms The Mood Of An Image

Split Toning In Lightroom

Split toning with Lightroom is wink of an eye. It’s just the matter of playing around with the sliders and your creative vision for the final result.

Here’s a simple guide for adding cool, retro, lomo effect to your photographs. Fire-up Lightroom and play around with split toning settings. Check out the steps below:

1. Step One: Choose An Image

   Traditionally, toning was applied to black and white photographs. The most popular ones being the selenium toning for red-brown or purple-brown tone and sepia toning for a brownish-grey tint. These tones were a great add-on for changing the mood of the image. Toning transforms the classic appeal black and white to add emotions and nostalgic feel to the images. But with digital photography and digital darkroom you can apply toning to color photographs as well. Toning works well for most of the subjects; be it landscapes or simple portraits it completely changes the mood and atmosphere of the photograph. Check out for yourself.

   Before Split Toning

   

   Creative Commons Image: Before Split Toning

   After Split Toning

   

   Rejuvenation: Split Toning Effect

2. Step Two: Make Subtle Adjustments

   Tweak the exposure, correct the contrast and play around with sharpening and all. Once you’re done with all the other adjustments, get on to split-toning panel to add creative colors to your images. You can however skip this step and directly jump on to trying the artistic appeal of split toning.

3. Step Three: Over To Split Toning Panel

   

   Split Toning Panel

   In the develop module, expand the Split Toning module by clicking on the triangle to the right. It consists of three settings: Highlights (for setting the highlight tone), Shadows (for setting the tone for shadows) and Balance (to adjust the ratio of highlights to shadows).

   • Pick A Highlight Tone: The highlight tone adds the selected color effect to the brighter areas of the image.
   • Pick A Shadow Tone: The shadow tone washes the dark / shadow areas in the histogram with selected color.
   • Balance The Highlight / Shadow Tones: The balance slider allows you to fine-tune the toning effect. By default the balance is set to zero. Moving the slider to the right, outweighs the highlight tone and sliding it to the left, overpowers the shadow tone. Play around with the slider to achieve the desired effect.

4. Step Four: Save The Settings

   Now that you are content with the effect, you can save the settings and apply it to multiple images without actually playing around with the sliders for individual images. In the develop module go to Settings > Copy Settings or simply press Ctrl+Shift+C to open up the Copy Settingsdialog box as below. Uncheck all the settings except for Split Toning and click on Copy to copy the settings.

   

   Copy Settings Dialog

   Now switch to Library Module, select the images to which you want to apply split toning. Go to Photo > Develop Settings > Paste Settings or press Ctrl+Shift+V to instantly apply sepia toning to multiple images. This will add beautiful vintage effect to all your images.

   Or better yet, you can create your own split toning preset and apply it any image over time. In the Develop module, click on the + next to Presets to open New Develop Preset dialog. Select the settings you want to preserve, provide the name of the Preset and click Create. Here you have your own preset for applying split-toning.

How about giving it a try? Don’t forget to share your results with us.

Realistic HDRs! Sounds like a marketing gimmick for an image editor. Right! Hey wait a minute, go through these examples of natural looking HDRs. Now, it makes sense! Even HDRs can be created in such a way that they replicate the effect of a single exposure; i.e. no evidence of merging like false colors and dramatic effects. Well, it needs a lot of practice, hard work and time to invest on various HDR techniques like tone-mapping, exposure blending and so on. And for all this, it requires you to be calculative and artistic in your approach.

Getting those natural colors, exact details and realistic appeal in HDRs comes with mastering the art of HDRs. Over time, the masters of HDRs have adopted various techniques to make the magic happen; to turn their bracketed shots into real HDRs or HDR masterpieces. Amongst other HDR photographers like Rob Hanson, Chris Robinson, Malcolm MacGregor and so on, Trey Ratcliff, the Stuck in Customs fame finds a special mention. Check out Stuck in Customs’s photostream to have an idea about what I am saying. Also check out his HDR tutorial to begin smart with HDR photography.

Natural Looking HDR By Stuck In Customs

And for now let’s check out two simple steps for creating natural looking HDRs.

1. Bracket The Shots

   Let’s start with a brief primer for HDR. HDR (High Dynamic Range) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than current standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. It requires merging of three shots taken at different exposures — one normal, one underexposed and one overexposed, for midtones, highlights and shadows respectively. The Auto Exposure Bracketing feature of your DSLR is good at producing images with varying exposures. Just turn it on and take three (or more) successive shots of the same scene. Depending on the camera’s settings, one of the shots will be shot at normal exposure and the other two with +2 EV and -2 EV respectively. You can however change the bracketing settings to take more than three shots in bracketing mode and also specify the exposure compensation for sucessive shots. This is known as bracketing.

2. Merge The Photographs

   Once you have loaded the bracketed shots to your PC, you are all set to roll in action. You can use Photoshop CS5 or Photomatix Pro to get started with merging the bracketed shots to result in a single image representing the range of intensity levels found in real scenes. We will be using Photoshop CS5 for creating the composite HDR image through Photoshop’s command Merge to HDR pro.

   1. Go to File > Automate > Merge to HDR Pro. Choose the bracketed shots — normal, overexposed and underexposed. You can get the sample images here — normal, overexposed and underexposed. Click OK to merge the exposure of the three shots.
   2. Photoshop will smartly create an HDR image by merge the loaded photographs. However, this intelligent automation gives a surreal looking image with fake and dull colors.
   3. Merge to HDR pro however gives you several options to fine-tune the resulting image. Just play around with the various options to arrive at the desired result. You can either use the presets or customize the settings to saturate the colors and thus simulate the real-life colors. The settings however vary for different images. For instance, the images used for this tutorial can be fine-tuned by applying Photorealistic preset. You can manually fine-tune tones, details, edge glow, colors and curves as well.
      

      Merge To HDR Pro - Photorealistic Preset

Creating natural looking high dynamic range images is nothing but an art — the art of adding realistic appeal to surreal looking HDR images. There are number of ways and techniques to create realistic HDRs. Watch this space for more realsitic HDR techniques. Meanwhile you can share your HDR techniques and beautiful HDR images in comments.

Post-processing is the digital bliss for adding professional touch to the images. Just like traditional photographers enhanced the photographs in darkroom, digital photographers have an option to use Lightroom for rendering finshing touches to their captures. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom offers comprehensive options for developing the digital negatives (and images) to add the professional finish. If you’re just beginning, here are 10 killer tutorials to help you get going with the preferable option of professional photographers — Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

1. How To Get Started With Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3

   Starting with the basics first, this video turorial by Terry White acts as the primer for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3. The tutorial walks you through the basic steps sequentially; beginning with creating new catalog, moving on to import & add photos, adding metadata, introducing various view modes and finally touching the develop module for applying some crucial post-processing adjustments.
   

2. Select, Rate and Prioritize your Images

   Time to utilize the power of Lightroom to manage and organize your photograph. This video tutorial presents the professional photographer’s workflow for filtering the images, i.e how to select the keepers (with either P for picked or CTRL + Up arrow key for promoting the image) or simply discarding the bad ones by pressing X and then finally creating smart collections for grouping the images.
   

3. Create Stunning Images In Lightroom

   In this 17.22 minutes video tutorial Julieanne Kost shows how to transform the images to add a WOW factor by increasing the dynamic range, employing the graduted filter, applying selective adjustments, spot edit, tonal corrections and noise reduction. Along the way, she shares some bits of information about synchronization settings to apply changes to multiple images at the same time.
   

4. How to Publish Photos from Lightroom Directly to Google+

   While Lightroom already provides publish services for directly uploading the images to Flickr, facebook and smugmug, including Google+ in the list is fairly simple. All you need is Export to PicasaWeb Lightroom plugin. It allows you to export images to your picasaweb account directly and from there this video guides you how to upload the images to Google+.
   

5. 5 Tips That Will Save You Time in Lightroom 3

   Lightroom presets, keyboard shortcuts, copy-pasting settings, synchronization settings and preserving changes are some of the awesome features that save you a lot of time in post-processing the images in Lightroom. Check out this tutorial for making the most of these time-savers.

6. Lightroom — Converting Images to Black and White

   How about turning your color pictures to black and white? While in the earlier post we had covered 9 techniques for converting color photos to black and white in Photoshop, here’s the video tutorial for convert images to black and white in Lightroom. The tutorial also adds some quick tips and tricks for adding tonal overlays and film grain textures to revive mood with classic effects.
   

7. Mastering Lightroom Slideshows and Web Galleries

   Lightroom is an efficient tool for editing, managing and sharing the photographs. After adding the professional finishing touches to your images, you may either be interested in showing off the photographs to clients, family and friends through slideshows or web galleries. Here in this tutorial Josh Johnson presents the basics for setting up custom slideshows and web galleries in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.
   

8. Using Color to Add Emotional Impact to a Photograph

   In this video tutorial Julieanne Kost show how the addition of color and a supporting imagery can help reinforce the mood and message of a composite image that a single photograph may fail to do on it’s own.
   

9. Enhancing Light In Lightroom

   Getting great photographs in-camera takes a lot of time, practice and effort. And even then you can sometimes miss the shot or not get the shot as anticipated. You can however enhance the photographs using color and tonality and thus enliven the mood and atmosphere of an image. Check out this video for some professional tips for enhancing the photographs in Lightroom.
   

10. How To Add A Photo Border In Lightroom

    You may simply want to add decorative borders to your images for web display or otherwise. Here in this tutorial Helen Bradley presents a step by step guide to walk you through creating beautiful border that seamlessly matches up with the image.
    

Last but not the least, with Lightroom 4 (Public Beta) already knocking the doors, its wise to check out what’s new in this version.  Here’s the video unleashing the new features designed to roll on with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.

The lightroom tutorials enlisted here act as the primer for getting started with Lightroom. Now it’s your turn to explore your creative possiblities and make a difference to your not-so-good photographs with post dust magic in Lightroom.

And don’t forget to share your quick tips, tricks and lightroom techniques here on apnphotographyschool.com.

Photography is an art of making the images; either in-camera or off-camera. While playing around with in-camera settings is a good excercise to get great results, going off-camera is equally rewarding. In fact, post processing the images expands your creative horizons. Putting it other way round, adding a little bit of “post” dust goes a long way in turning your photographs to great pieces of artwork. This is what Photoshop masters bet all the time. Dave Cross, the Photoshop trainer at Kelby Training for instance puts forth his commentary for using Photoshop for adding finishing touches:

Take your photography from “Whoa!” to “WOW!” Learn today’s hottest techniques used by top creative pros to add jaw-dropping finishing touches to your photographs. Learn to create stylistic edge effects, HDR effects, vignette effects, editable templates, and many other creative finishing touches that will take your photography to a whole new level!

Post processing techniques are a great way to make your pictures pop! Here are 5 such techniques which pros use for creating mood and drawing the viewer’s attention to the point-of-interest.

1. Draw Viewer’s Eye With Vignetting Effect

   Sometimes lens defects make up for amazing image effects. One can easily count on these surprise effects like lens flare, distortions and vignetting for amazing photographs. Especially vignetting is very appealing. Some people just fall in love with it and re-create the vignetting effect in post-processing phase. Intentionally darkening or blurring the edges of the image acts as a frame to draw the viewer’s eye to the center of interest. It adds atmosphere and depth to the image. Just like edge burning, vignetting is also an effective technique for strengthening the composition of the photograph. Here’s the tutorial elaborating the technique of reproducing vignetting effect in Lightroom and Photoshop.

   

   Vignetting draws viewer’s attention to the subject

2. Introduce Tonal Congruence With Dodging & Burning

   Dodging and burning is a darkroom technique used for manipulating the exposure of selected areas in a photograph. While dodging increases the exposure for areas of the image that the photographer wishes to be lighter, burning darkens the specific areas within a photograph. Dodging and burning affects the local contrast of the image and thus enble you to creatively add depth and dimension to your images. It adds life and vibrancy to the images. Play around with Photoshop dodge and burn tool for lightening and darkening the specific areas respectively.

   

   Selective lightening and darkening with Dodging & Burning

3. Add Noise & Grain For Nostalgic Feel

   Post-processing opens up a plethora of opportunities to play with various effects and create mood. Adding grain is one such effect. It adds classic appeal and nostalgic feel to the photographs. While you can add grainy effect to your pictures by shooting them at high ISO, inducing the grainy effect in post-processing allows you finer control over the levels, quality and feel of the effect. Check out this easy to follow tutorial for adding natural film grain in Photoshop.

   

   Creative use of grain, vignette and glow

4. Create Mood With Diffuse glow

   Diffuse glow is a smart option to paint your subject with light. Photoshop filter diffuse glow adds smooth, soft and dreamy look, especially suitable for making flawlessly beautiful portrait photographs. But that’s not it! You can creatively apply diffuse glow in Photoshop as a combination of blurs, layer blend modes, and blending techniques. Check out this tutorial on Luminous landscape for adding a diffuse glow to your images.

   

   Create Mood With Diffuse Glow

5. Use Gaussian Blur Overlay For Dreamy Effect

   As the name suggests, Gaussian Blur Overlay is the post-processing technique used for smoothly blurring the image to get sharp yet soft focus. The Gaussian Blur Overlay technique darkens the shadow areas and softens the highlights to smoothly boost the contrast of the image; to give it a hazy dream like effect. On the other hand you can also use this technique for intensifying and saturating the colors.

   

   Smooth, Soft, Hazy look

   Here are three simple steps to apply this technique in your post-processing workflow.

   1. Open the image in Photoshop and duplicate the layer by pressing Ctrl+J.
   2. Apply Guassian Blur filter. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Adjust the Radius while previewing the result to arrive at the sweet spot.
   3. Change the layer blending mode from Normal to Overlay and reduce the opacity of the layer to bring in desired tone and effect.

How do you sprinkle the post-dust magic to your photographs? Share your techniques in comments.

One of the best black and white photography tips you can ever get from a professional photographer is to shoot in color. Shooting in color gives you the flexibility of utilizing the power of colors. And with digital post-processing creativity is the limit. Digital post-processing opens up a wide array of choices and options for adding creative and artistic effects to your photographs. Check out for yourself! Here are 9 post-processing techniques for creating classic black and white in Photoshop.

1. Create A Black & White Adjustment Layer

   Black and white conversion with Photoshop is simple, quick and intutive. Let’s start with creating a black and white adjustment layer which retains the color information and also allows full control over how individual colors are converted.

   Open the selected image with Photoshop and go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer >Black & White. This creates a new layer and provides a color palette for fine-tuning the shades of particular colors existing in previous image. Click Auto or fine-tune the colors. You can also give a sepia tone to your image by enabling tinting and choosing subtle warm shade of yellow. Check out the tutorial here.

2. Use Hue / Saturation Tool For B&W Conversion

   Quite similar to the first technique, here you can convert the image to black & white by creating a new adjustment layer for Hue/Saturation. Desaturate the colors by shifting the Saturation slider all the way left. Hue slider however doesn’t make any difference and you can play around with Lightness slider a bit to adjust the exposure. Here are three quick steps for black & white conversion with Hue/Saturation tool:

   1. Open the image in photoshop and go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation.
   2. Slide the Saturation slider all the way left.
   3. Play around with the Lightness slider to overexpose or underexpose the scene.

   Additionally, you can always tweak the exposure with the help of levels and curves.

3. Channel Mixing

   All the images are composed of three basic colors — red, blue and green. When you edit the images in the RGB mode, you have access to these channels and the ability to manipulate them. This gives you the digital ability equivalent to using color filters for shooting black and white. Here is the detailed step-by-step procedure for black & white conversion with Channel Mixer in photoshop:

   1. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Channel Mixer.
   2. Tick the Monochrome box.
      
   3. Move the Red, Green and Blue sliders to left and right to lighten and darken the different tones of the photograph. Make sure that the total of the three sliders is always 100%.

4. Desaturation

   Other than desaturating the colors with Hue/saturation tool, Photoshop also provides a desaturate command which converts a color image to grayscale values while leaving the image in the same color mode. You can just press Shift+Ctrl+U or go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate to convert a color image to black & white in one simple step.

5. Use A Gradient Map

   The gradient map is yet another useful tool for black and white conversion. The gradient map tool maps black and white gradient according to the brightness values of the photo. The shadows in the image for instance are mapped to black or dark grey, highlights are mapped to white and the midtones are mapped to the gradations in between.

   1. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map.
   2. Choose black & white gradient from the list of gradient fills (or set the default foreground and background colors as dark grey and white & choose Foreground to background from the list of gradient fills).

   The gradient map simply maps the dark areas to black or dark grey and highlights to white or light grey. This technique however doesn’t allow much control over fine-tuning the image.

6. Convert To Grayscale Mode

   The grayscale image mode (Image > Mode > Grayscale) offered by Photoshop converts the colors in the image to black, white and shades of gray. However, this technique is destructive as it discards the color information and also you have no control over the conversion.

7. Lab Color Method

   Lab color method is yet another quick and simple technique. The black and white conversion with lab color technique results in a better tonal range. Try out for yourself! Here are the steps to convert the image to black and white with lab color method.

   1. Convert To Lab Color Mode: Go to Image > Mode > Lab Color. Select the Lightness channel from the Channels window (Window > Channels). Now select all with Ctrl+A and copy (Ctrl+C) the selection.
   2. Switch Back To RGB Color Mode: Switch back to RGB color mode (Image > Mode > RGB Color). Now go to the channels window and paste the selection to the individual channels; i.e. paste the selection to Red, Green and Blue channels individually.
   3. Preview The Results: Reselect the top channel and preview the results. If you are not impressed by the results go ahead and add Levels Adjustment layer to lighten or darken the photo.

8. Split Toning Black And White Photos

   You can get creative with classic black and whites by applying tones and tints. While Sepia tone is an all time favorite, you can always try something new; like split-toning. Split toning is the darkroom technique where the highlights are tinted in one color and shadows are toned in other color. If done creatively, split-toning renders cool retro effect to the image. Here are two quick steps for split toning the image in Photoshop:

   1. Black & White Conversion: Convert the image to black and white either by creating a black and white layer or desaturating the colors by dragging the Saturation slider all the way left (or by any other technique).
   2. Apply Split Toning: Add a Color Balance adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Balance). Now adjust the color sliders for Shadows and Highlights respectively. Play around with the sliders till you achieve the desired effect in the image.

9. Selective Colorization / Partial Black And White

   The appeal of classic black and white images is unbeatable. However you can always apply some creative techniques to enhance the beauty of monochromes. Selective colorization for instance infuses the tenderness of colors in the nostalgic world of black and whites. Here’s the step by step guide on selective colorization — the post-processing technique for creating partial black and white photographs.

   1. Create New Adjustment Layer: Create a new adjustment layer as in the picture below and select Hue/Saturation from the flyout menu. [Click on half black / half white circle at the bottom of the Layers pallete].
      

      Select Hue/Saturation From Flyout Menu

   2. Convert To Black & White: In the resulting Hue/Saturation panel, select the Colorize checkbox and drag the Saturation slider all the way left (to set its value to zero).
      

      Select Colorize and set Saturation to zero

   3. Selectively Color the image: Now create a new layer and grab the History Brush Tool from the toolbar.  Make sure that the default foreground and background color are set to black and white respectively. With the history brush tool in hand you are all set to retain the colors in your black and white image. Start painting with the brush and see the colors coming back. Apply the brush to selective areas to result in selective colorization as in the following image:
      

      Tulips – Selective Coloring

   Looking for some inspiration? Check out the Flickr group Selective Colorization for some creative ideas and get going with your mission of creating partial black and white photographs.

Something missing in the list? Feel free to add your style, technique or useful tips for converting color photos to black and white in Photoshop.

There is no doubt about the fact that Lightroom is the preferable option for professional photographs. It has already out-shined other photo-management and editing tools on the fronts of ease of cataloging, organizing and managing the photographs — the primary requirement of the professional photographers. With Lightroom 3 Adobe has introduced some cool features which makes it irresistible solution for the photographers. Let’s check out what Lightroom 3 has in store for you.

1. Tethered Capture

   Tethered capture allows you to shoot the photographs through Lightroom. You can connect your camera to the computer via the usb cable and control the camera right from Lightroom 3. Currently however you will need to set the camera settings like shutter speed, aperture and ISO in-camera while you can release the shutter from Lightroom’s interface. The photos will be downloaded right into Lightroom 3. Are you ready for this one? Get started with connecting your camera to your system, configuring the tethered capture settings and a trial shot! But there is a caveat to it — it presently provides support for Nikon and Canon DSLRs only. You can check the list of supported cameras here.

2. Export Slideshows As HD Video

   While Lightroom 2 already allowed you to export JPEG and PDF slideshows, with Lightroom 3 you can also export video slideshows. Select the folder, choose the playback music, play around with slideshow settings and push Export Video (at the bottom of left panel) are here it is — your slideshow video playing your favorite track. [Don’t forget to push Fit To Music in playback section.]

3. Instantly Publish Your Photos

   
   The Library Module of Lightroom 3 features the publish services which enable you to instantly publish the photos on Facebook, Flickr and SmugMug. You need to configure the settings and provide your account credentials to get started with uploading the photos directly from the Lightroom’s interface. The coolest thing about this feature is that it provides you the flexibility to connect to your photostream and view the comments & ratings to gain an insight into popularity of your photographs in Lightroom itself. The configuration options allow you to watermark and embed IPTC tagging as well as keywords to make your photographs search friendly. What could be better?

4. Enhanced Watermark Editor

   Lightroom 3 features the watermark editor which is fully-capable of watermarking the images with a difference. You can choose from text and graphic effects. Watermark effects and applying shadow adds to the creative opportunities to employ with watermarking editor. Once saved the watermarks can be applied from within Slideshow, Print, Web, Export and Publish modules. Watermark helps you protect your photographs from unauthorized use (at least to some extent by making it obvious who the photo belongs to). Get your hands on creatively copyrighting your images with Lightroom 3.

5. Lens Corrections

   
   Lens correction is viewed as the major advancement in Lightroom 3. Prior to this you had to open the files with Photoshop to correct the lens distortions. You can now correct the optical aberrations like distortions, chromatic aberration and vignetting effect. You can correct the lens distortion either by using the lens profile or make the adjustments manually and come up with some creative effects (like rotating the images or transforming them horizontally / vertically).

Still using Lightroom 2? Time to switch!

When it comes to post-processing the images, often a debate arises in the photographic world— which software is best suited for the job— Photoshop or Lightroom. While opinions may vary, the answer mostly depends on your shooting preferences— the format you are shooting in (JPEG or RAW), the number of photographs you need to view and edit and if you need a basic editing for your image or an advanced one. Both Lightroom and Photoshop have their own specifications. Here is a comparison between the two to help you decide your priority.

1. Different Approaches

   The basic difference between the two — Lightroom and Photoshop lies in the purpose and objective of the products itself. While Photoshop is engineered to service graphic designers, Lightroom is primarily designed for the photographers. Lightroom is designed to assist the photographers in developing the photographs in the same way as they used to do in the non-digital world. Right from featuring image cataloging system to providing handy presets, Lightroom can be rightly referred to as the digital darkroom where as per your visualization you can fine-tune and develop the images with ease and simplicity.

2. Image Editing Features

   Developed as a graphics editing program, Photoshop provides pixel level advanced editing features like photo merging, high end retouching, creating artistic special effects and layer wise editing. Lightroom on the other hand lacks layers and many advanced graphics editing features like inserting text to the image, using the pen tool, path and quick mask are missing. However, general photo editing tasks like correcting the contrast by using levels and curves, red eye reduction and portrait touch ups, cropping, lens correction, fine-tuning saturation, luminance and vibrance and tweaking the white balance can be easily performed in Lightroom (owing to its user friendly interface).

   

   Fun With PS By RavenB

3. Retaining The Original Image

   Unlike Photoshop Lightroom is a non-destructive RAW photo editor. This means you can delete any of your previous editing during your work and gain back your original image. This is like film photographers who could anytime return to their negatives. Photoshop on the other hand, requires a RAW plug-in (Camera RAW) for editing RAW files and is lossy. With every change you make to the image, the image’s pixels are also changing, rendering a destructive output.

4. Cataloging Files

   Lightroom can be viewed as an expert image management software which allows you to view, edit and manage digital photos. It sorts, tracks and filters a large number of images, including the huge RAW files. It acts as an ultimate destination for most of the image processing needs. It allows you to import your files through SD card, compare similar images, discard the useless ones, store and organize the good ones in the library (stored in the form of thumbnails for easy access), set initial RAW file conversion and export the output for web and printing. Photoshop however misses on cataloging front.

   

   Before/ After By Severin Sadjina

5. Speed And Efficiency

   The batch processing of images in Photoshop take much more time than in Lightroom. In fact, all the features of Lightroom are super speedy and very easy to use. Likewise you can also edit multiple images at the same time in Lightroom and also use pre-defined settings offered as Presets for the images. Lightroom presets are image settings which can be applied in to the image with a single click and thereafter you can fine-tune the settings simply by moving the sliders.

   

   The Sharpening Project By Gezelle

6. Other Differences

   While Photoshop has a complex interface, the interface of Lightroom is simple and easy to use even for the first time user. It aligns and arranges all the essential tools alongside the opened file making it easier to apply the required settings with a single click. Also features like HDR, content aware scaling actions, selection, photo stitching and masking are absent in Lightroom which allows the photographers to concentrate on improving the core competencies as a photographer than spend time on manipulating the images.

   

   HDR By Paulo Brockmann

Whatever be the differences, Lightroom and Photoshop have been designed to assist each other and not compete with each other. Sometimes, you might need both of them to obtain optimized output from your post processing workflow. Regardless of the software you choose for post-processing the most important thing is to try to capture an accurate image which will reduce your time and effort in the post-processing phase.

Which software do you use?

In our previous article 7 Steps To Preparing Your Photographs For Professional Lab Printing of this series, we went through the steps required for commercial printing. In this article we will focus on printing lab quality photographs at home. While relying on the printing labs and ordering the prints online is a viable option for bulk-printing (and enlargements), printing at home is convenient and feasible option most of the times. After all you don’t need to wait for the final prints, you get the flexibility of fine-tuning your results too. It’s just the matter of tweaking the print settings and a push of the Print button which can get you lab quality prints at home. Here’s a step-by-step guide to make it easier for you to print high quality images at home.

Choosing The Right Printer

In the printing workflow, choosing the right equipment and material goes a long way in getting the right quality of prints. Inkjet printers are commonly used for home printing. Canon, Epson, HP have lined up a series of inkjet printers to offer high quality color as well as black and white prints. Canon’s Pixma, HP’s Photosmart and Epson’s WorkForce are a few to name. The inkjet printers use multiple cartridges which release ink onto the paper through little jets to achieve smooth and photo-realistic tonal gradations. The inkjet printers are affordable and an appropriate solution for printing images at home. You need to consider the following points when planning to buy a printer for printing fine quality images at home.

Inkjet Printer

• Resolution: Printer resolution is measured in terms of dpi (dots per inch). And just like a higher pixel density enhances the quality of the photograph, the printer with higher dpi settings can produce more detailed photographic prints.
• Ink Cartridges: A printer with separate cartridges for each color produces better color prints. If you are an avid photographer and love to print at home, investing in a photo-printer with 6 colors is a good idea.
• Connectivity And Compatibility: Check if the printer is compatible with your operating system and have a look at the connectivity options offered by the printer. Some printers allow you to directly connect the camera to the printer, some offer wireless connectivity while some of them even come with the memory card slot which allows editing and printing directly from the camera’s memory card.
• Stationary: Excellent quality prints depend a lot on the paper and the ink used by the printer. The printer manufacturers generally offer the paper and ink that are developed specifically to work well together.
• Multiple Functions: Multifunctional inkjet printers are common in market these days. You can easily find a printer which feature color printing with scanning and copying abilities.

Choosing The Printing Paper

Choosing the right type of printing paper greatly helps in obtaining the lab quality prints at home. Different types of printing papers are suitable for different types of photographs. For instance, Matte finish paper is recommended for black and white photos while glossy paper is good to go for color prints. The paper finish is one of the most important factors that contribute to the quality of a print. Check out our article on printing paper types for an overview and utility of various printing papers. Apart from the type of paper, the size of the photo-paper should also be considered. The size of the paper that you choose to print your photographs entirely depend on the image size and the printer’s capability. While 4*6 is the traditional size for most prints, the printers may support 5*7 (for albums) and 8*10 (for framing and display) paper sizes as well. Prefer approaching the color labs for enlarging the photos.

Color Prints On Glossy paper

Processing The Photographs For Print

This is the first step in the printing workflow. Choose the image you want to print and add professional touches to the image. Make subtle changes like adjusting the contrast and saturation, correcting the color cast and fine-tuning the sharpness. With respect to sharpening, note that sharpening for web is different from sharpening for prints. As a general perception, sharpen the image for web and then double the amount of sharpness to retain the sharpness in the final print. Refer to the article post processing for printing for more information on the crucial adjustments required for preparing the image for print. After fine-tuning the image, re-size the image and set the resolution manually, else the printer will either crop the image or enlarge the photograph to map it with the printer resolution settings.

Soft Proofing Your Photographs

The next step is to proof the colors. Photoshop makes provision for soft-proofing the colors. For this, you will need to download the printer / paper profile for simulating the accurate colors (you can download it from the supplier’s website) and set the proof profile to the printer profile. To set the proof profile,

• Go to View > Proof Setup > Custom.
• Select the downloaded profile from the Device to Simulate drop-down.
• Choose Perceptual from Rendering Intent drop-down. A rendering intent determines how Color Management Module of Photoshop handles the color conversion or color mapping from one color space to another. Perpetual Rendering Intent is suitable for photographic images owing to its ability to preserve the visual relationship between colors.
• Click OK to set the proof profile.

Customizing Proof Settings

This sets the proof profile to the destination device. Now go to View > Proof Colors or press Ctrl+Y to view the colors as will appear in the final print. Use levels, color balance, hue / saturation and other tools until the image looks as you want in the final print.

Print Settings For Great Photographs

This is the final and most critical stage in printing the photographs at home. After you have made the necessary adjustments, to go File > Print or press Ctrl+P to open the print dialog and choose the options — Photoshop print dialog box allows you to preview the print, select the printer, set paper orientation, position and scale image, specify the output options and specify color management and proofing options.

After specifying the basic print settings, select color management from the pop-up menu in the upper right corner and choose Document. This will set the printer profile to the profile set for proof. The color handling drop-down provides two options. You can either set Photoshop to manage the colors or select “Printer Manages Color”. I simply leave it to the printer to manage the colors. It is important to note that

• When you select Photoshop Manages Color, disable printer’s color management
• When you select Printer Manages Color, don’t forget to enable printer’s color management and disable print-color-management in the application.

Ensure that only one of them manages the color; either Photoshop or the printer. If the color management is enabled on both, the final result will be messed up. The last thing to do is to print and wait for a breathtaking output.