19th June 2007

Kicking Your Digital Photography UP a notch by Lesa Snider King

posted in digitalstorytelling, workshops |

THESE ARE MY NOTES FROM LESA’S PRESENTATION AT EDUCOMM ‘07. I AM RECORDING THIS SESSION AS AN AUDIO PODCAST AND WILL PUBLISH THAT HERE SUBSEQUENTLY.

Lesa is very published, and is David Pogue’s assistant (he’s the keynote tomorrow!)
- Lessa is the Chief Evangelist for iStockphoto
- no membership fees
- 31,870 images now with keyword “education”

Lots of free stuff!
- FotoMagico (great for image slideshows) and iStopmotion from Boinx Software

lots of free tutorials on her website: The Graphic Reporter

1st tip: LEARN the settings on your camera
- whatever type of camera you have
- they both have settings that can really help you take better pictures
- look for icons for Portraits, Landscapes, Close-Ups, Action
- Portrait mode will change fstop to blur background (soften the background)
- Landscape mode make sure everything is sharp, nothing is blurry
- macro-mode is for extreme closeups of things: flowers, bugs, etc.

you can still get great images with less expensive cameras if you use the right shooting mode
- I reviewed a camera recently that has 25 shooting modes

Tip 2: Better composition
- example of rule of thirds: focus on the image is to the side on one of the four intersections
- you will see this on closeups in video as well as still photography
- use own of the intersections, it doesn’t matter which one you use
- think about different perspectives: get lower, get higher, use a different view
- get closer, use the rule of thirds

Tip 3: Use image editing software
- does not mean you have to pay $800 for PhotoShop CS3
- PhotoShop Elements is designed for normal people!
- if you grab something from the web and want to print it, you HAVE to change the resolution if you want it to print smoothly

Tip 4: SHARE your photos
- on the web, Flickr and other sites/services
- shutterfly, kodak’s service, from iPhoto, etc.
- David Pogue’s article for the NYT: “Photo Sharing Even the Folks Can Handle”

example of applying a selective blur
- 1st step: make a duplicate layer to protect yourself (copy of your image to work on)
- command-J on a mac (control-J) - think you’re going to JUMP that image up to its own layer
- to make the background layer blurry, first make the entire image blurry: Filter - BLUR - GAUSSIAN BLUR
-

is a technique that lets you HIDE pixels: this is a LAYER MASK
- just a method of hiding pixels
- that is perfect for what we are doing here
- we need to create a layer mask: PhotoShop Elements DOES support this, but you have to trick it
- click to make an adustment layer, but don’t worry about making
- drag the adustment layer between the two photos you want to merge
- now tell Elements to clip the first layer to the layer mask: GROUP WITH PREVIOUS
- black hides, white reveals in a layer mask (you have to memorize that)
- so with my brush, I can paint black over the blurry layer
- press “x” when you are on the layer mask to flip flop between black and white
- command + will zoom in (- to zoom out)

brush size keyboard shortcut: use left and right brackets to increment brush size up and down

sepia is a brown cast to a photo that makes it look antique or old
- I always want to do it in a way that if I change my mind, I won’t have to go find that original image again
- use an adjustment layer to make a non-destructive change
- hue is another word for “color”
- make the hue black and white
- then use your layer mask to paint black over and show the color, on something that you want to emphasize
- adjust hue, saturation and lightness

save your original as a PS Elements document
- that way you can go back and make changes if desired

Elements has cookie cutters, lets you put any range of creative shapes around your images
- there are lots more edge choices than show now

Bringing a photo into text
- type text in white, but it in back
- whatever you want to bring through the text has to be ABOVE the text
- group with previous as before (hold down option as you hover between the layers)
- create a new background layer, if you do that it can be good to pick up colors that are already in the

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