Kicking Your Digital Photography UP a notch by Lesa Snider King

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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