Focus on Fundamentals: Recommendations for Photoshop Training

> I've been involved in photography for many years.
> I've been shooting digital, but it's time to learn
> Photoshop. Can you recommend a good training or tutoring
> program, CD, book or DVD?

That question leaves the door wide-open to plugging my own wares, but I think it would be more useful to step back and think about what you are really looking for as a serious beginner trying to learn Photoshop or even Elements.

As a beginner, you want to get to understanding what you are doing with Photoshop and get up to speed by the quickest path possible. The desire to get things done quickly and make leaps in progress is an attractive goal, and because it is what users think they want, it drives the market for learning materials that are created. That has led to an abundance of learning resources that promise to make it easy, yet a dearth of good information. Materials that want to win the reader as a friend and up painting a rosy picture, fill out the content with fluff and humor that are easy to read, trumpeting how easy it is to improve your images. Ultimately, these soft texts and programs offer very little but a handful of quick tips, a few sloppy tricks, deflated wow and the failed promise of learning it all fast.

Regretfully, you'll find that just about all of this advertising is a gimmick. Titles like "Learn Photoshop in a Day" lure in readers with a promise, reveal the 'gimmick' ("...using 24 one-hour lessons!"), and then fail to provide anything of real substance. On the other hand, titles like "Suffering for Photoshop" or "Difficult Methods for Pretty Pictures" won't tend to attract readers, and optimally the hope is that Photoshop should be easy to learn. But the whole premise of learning something as complex as Photoshop in such a small amount of time is absurd. If you are learning a lighter mood may make you comfortable in the new terrain, but what you don't need are materials that are entertaining (presentation without substance), materials that just repeat the Help menu, materials you can get for free if you poked around the internet, and materials that ultimately leave you with no sense of what to do with your images -- and fail to give you a good idea how to work with images intelligently and safely. "Just trust me" is a favored line, for example, of one well-know Photoshop author when it comes to color management suggestions, and the somewhat sour advice offered routinely causes more problems than it cures. It is quick and easy, but ultimately harmful and wrong.

From my perspective, the best place to start as a beginner is with solid fundamentals:

* An introduction to navigating the interface and setup (including some basics of color management)
* A plan for handling images once they come off the camera (proper ideas of file types, sizing, and storage)
* A background on the tools you need to work with day-to-day
* A plan for working with every image you encounter
* An idea of what you want to accomplish

This may not be the most exciting list if you need to experience learning like it is a carnival ride, but it is terribly practical and gives you a solid foundation to build on and expand from. Know where to find tools and navigate and you will have a sense of comfort. Handle images correctly and you can experiment and learn without causing your source images harm and store them safely and efficiently. Find out what tools to use every day will help you avoid those that can cause damage to your images while using those that are most efficient. Define an outline to follow and you take decided steps forward rather than ambling randomly from one technique to the next experimenting and wasting time hoping something fabulous happens during click-and-pray. Practical, refined methodology yields the best and most consistent results.

Resources for learning are numerous. Some people will learn best from books or DVDs or even online courses and tutorials. I would suggest that you take a wide approach and use a variety of resources. First, don't neglect Adobe's Help. It is a great free resource for learning about individual functions and features and how to apply them that comes with the program. Tutorials online are hit-or-miss depending on the source, and many of them contain information that is harmful to your images -- take them all with a grain of salt. You'll have to weed through them. But truth be told many of those same harmful techniques were duplicated from the all-too-common Books and DVDs that contain unfortunatate misunderstandings and misinformation, and were compiled by marketers or other opportunists who saw the huge market for Photoshop and image editing training. That is, many materials are compiled by professional trainers and professional writers rather than people with real day-to-day experience in image editing.

Online courses come in many types...from those that have lessons sent out without any ability to interact with the instructors to those that offer full access to industry experts (see betterphoto.com). Of course those range in price accordingly. The advantage of the latter is being able to actually interact with the expert teaching the course (rather than just having their picture on it) and get explanations and answers to your questions. In this day, even books and DVDs have the opportunity to offer online areas for Q&A, and very few do. I think readers should have access to authors (as I have offered for all my books since the first one), and those who don't offer that are essentially refusing to support their materials. (see my open forum for my new layers book: http://photoshopcs.com/forum)

Some disagree that you should ever need training, and that the best method for learning Photoshop is to simply get in and play. That is valiant, and if you have infinite time, this may be a viable option. If you can't afford books, DVDs or other training, then it certainly makes sense. But as the only resource of learning, unguided exploration of such a vast program is penny wise and pound foolish. Why learn about tools you won't ever need for image editing? Why waste time learning to apply features that harm your images? And how do you grow to understand the theory behind the tools by just the click-and-pray method of discovery? It will be hugely time consuming and very costly in its own right. Having been one who learned Photoshop when there were no books, and no experts, it took many times longer than it could have to get up to speed. These days there is the opportunity to ride on the experience of those who have spent time figuring out what is really important. There is something to be said of apprenticeship in learning any trade. Making an investment in formal materials should at least supplement any 'learn as the wind blows' mentality if images and image editing are important to you. I do think you will retain a lot more by jumping in and experiencing the pain of learning...but I also think base fundamentals can stop you from getting burned.

Focus on fundamentals from the outset rather than tips, tricks and 'wow' can form a net of safety for your experimentation. For example, I had a self-taught student that thought they knew a lot about Photoshop, and found out in my course that her routine for the past 3 years of image editing had been systematically ruining her images. She resized all images smaller and saved as JPEG to save space as soon as the images came off the camera, and resaved over the originals when she edited. That original source for her vacations, memories and other photography had been compromised, and potential detail permanently lost. It is not simply wasting time at that point, but obliteration of years of photographic work -- as sad as losing photos on a crashed drive, and with no options to even do it all over again. The student's predicament was a tragedy, but there was no way to reverse it...and she is not the only one. It could have been different had she learned her fundamentals first.

Puttering has its place and is very important to learning, exploring, and confidence...but it is a single avenue that can also lead to misconception and disaster. Certain practical, fundamental things are just not intuitive and learning to deal with them can save hundreds of hours of frustration, or even catastrophic loss. Whatever the source you use to get off on the right foot, exploring and experimentation is best done in concert with learning fundamentals.

I hope that helps!

Richard Lynch

The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book for CS4 was just released in mid-March ('09)! Get it on Amazon: http://aps8.com/taplbcs4.html. The book has 60 new pages of material, including a section on making manual HDR conversion the layers way. All of the exercises and materials have been reviewed and updated. That said, techniques aim at being timeless and accessible for many versions of Photoshop and Elements as well. This is a book for the serious-minded.

For those looking to learn Photoshop fundamentals, I teach a Photoshop 101 course at betterphoto.com recently updated for CS4 and Elements 7 (Photoshop 101: the Photoshop Essentials Primer). The course covers my outline of fundamentals from the bulleted list above and helps get you started enjoying and experiencing the program without the frustration and potential disasters. Betterphoto courses allow interaction with the instructor as well as other classmates.

The Psychology of Color Management and Calibration

The cliche experience that many have had is watching a family member trying to master the color on the family TV set. The people-centric medium of TV makes us to look at images where the color being off becomes unbearable and unnatural because skin tones just look wrong. We all know what skin tones should look like so we are compelled to change the screen to make the skin tones look as we expect. It's natural to trust that the color being broadcast to your TV is correct, only changing the settings on the TV can make it right. Hopeful TV color experts twiddle the controls trying to achieve a vague balance that only they can, while everyone else sits idly looking on hoping thing would be alright soon, impatient with the technology, wondering why it can't just be right in the first place -- or if adjusting it is the thing that is screwing it up.

People are more apt to assume that what they see on their computer monitor is accurate when they pull it out of the box. Monitors are not constantly replete with skin tones that remind us that something may be off, as you spend considerable time using it for other activities like checking email or word-processing, which has nothing to do with skin tones at all. When a digital photographer sees a face, it might more often be in Photoshop, where they just change the color with tools in the program offered for that type of control. Regretfully, changing the color and trusting what you see in Photoshop and on your monitor can lead to martian prints and web postings of people in your images, and a quandary: why should color that looks correct in one place be off or plain wrong in another.

The answer is Color Management.

As they say, a little knowledge can be dangerous. Knowing enough to adjust the color in Photoshop doesn't turn out to be enough to make the color right. While some will come to the conclusion that the poor results have something to do with color management, just what they need to do to work with color management is less clear. They may revert to familiar territory and seek out the computer's brightness, contrast and color controls figuring this is how they have to make adjustments fiddling like you might do with a TV. They might get close and even get lucky with this method, but generally nothing could be worse. Adjustments made with the monitor controls as a means of color management end up being a best guess at what everything should look like on screen, and a compromise much like the TV expert's attempts at balancing RGB with the primitive TV controls. Guessing is not a good approach to color.

Some may go a little further and read a few web postings that have to do with adjusting color on their monitor, and these will range from the incorrect to the absurdly simple to the horribly technical ones that you are not quite sure are written in English. Naturally, the TV-color-minded inclination that "it is just color, how complicated could it be..." pushes people more toward accepting the absurdly simple and incorrect approaches. Some may take it a step further to seek out help from an expert (who may be anyone from a well-respected authority in Photoshop or color management to a neighbor who knows "a bunch about computers"). Regretfully the better answers (like the book Real World Color Management by Fraser, Murphy and Bunting, a 500+ page book) may be long and involved and daunting from the outset. On the other hand, getting the color right doesn't require getting a college degree in the subject, and such extensive study may be unnecessary for common folk, who, after all, just want the right color.

Those who want the right color without the doctorate end up taking suggestions from friends or people on forums, or look for the 'right' way to set up their color management. Truth be told, there is not one right way: more than one method will work. In fact, any method of color management that makes sense will work...but the other side of the coin is: the same color management scheme just doesn't work for everyone, and some will work better than others. The best way to get the color right and pick an applicable color management scheme, is, in my opinion, understanding the shorthand version of what you want to achieve and applying the simplest steps possible to get there.

The basics of color management requires:

• Calibrating your monitor
• Creating an ICC profile (usually part of step 1)
• Setting up color management in Photoshop or Elements (and perhaps other programs) correctly
• Setting up previews/screen proofing that make sense (Photoshop, not Elements)
• Applying appropriate color tagging to your images

If you neglect any one of these, you are gambling with your color results, plain and simple. If you do a few and not the others, you are not necessarily any better off than doing none at all. More frustrating, if you don't do them all, things may work sometimes, and not others, and you'll never be able to tell why. But attack each of these components with the intent to know why they are important, how they apply, and how to apply them, and you'll have the skeleton of color management, which is enough to hang your color on. You get skin on your skeleton when you define the purpose of what you are trying to achieve. Do you print to the same printer all the time? Do you print to many? Do you post images to the web exclusively? Do you print and post? Do images all come from the same camera? Do you have many sources of images (multiple cameras, images from friends, clients, etc.)? All these questions filter into your color management choice.

This is not the first time I've mentioned color management in my blog, and it won't be the last. Here are some other Color Management entries:

• What Color Space Do I Use? (Part 1)
• What Color Space Do I Use (Part 2)
• Calibrating My Home Printer

These additional resources should give you some background on making better color management choices.

For more info on approaching color management seriously, I have a 4 week primer course at betterphoto.com called From Monitor to Print that will work you through these 5 essentials, and test your results, making you color competent in a short amount of time with the least amount of work. You'll want to look into good calibration tools like the ColorVision Spyder (by the way, I posted an article on 9.11.08 about using the ColorVision Spyder Express to calibrate a dual monitor system -- which the manufacturer says is impossible). You can also simplify your color life by finding a system and sticking to it (don't change printers, papers, profiles, inks, or services without a plan).

Competent color handling is more than just calibration, but don't get psyched out. Make the effort to know what to do, and you can put it safely behind you.

The Photoshop Options You Should Never Use

Amongst the plethora of screens and functions and the thousands and thousands of options that you have in Photoshop and Elements for correcting, changing and composing your images, there are some options, features and functions you should never use. It might seem inconceivable that Adobe would put options you shouldn’t use in the program, but they are there, and some of them are named to sound downright savory. These features lurk in the user interface, and users make the same mistakes over and over by using them. The features and functions that you shouldn’t use span every nook and cranny of the program, from opening your images, to correcting, through saving/printing. Users apply them again and again until they learn what these features and functions are and to avoid them because of the damage they do to their images.

The list of features is tremendously long spanning all versions of Photoshop and Elements. Instead of listing all the features, let me simplify the list by making a few generalizations:

• Don’t ever apply features just because they appear on a dialog and you feel obligated to move a slider or click a button.
  
• Don’t ever apply features that don’t improve your image or your vision for it.
  
• Don’t ever apply the features you have not experimented with enough to know how to apply with predictable results.

The crust of this biscuit is simply: don’t feel obligated to use features just because they appear on screen and in the program or ‘sound good’. What you should use are the features and functions (and buttons) that make sense, fit your workflow, and improve your images. Features that ‘make sense’ means that you know what the features do before you apply them to finish images, and not that you ‘click-and-pray’.

For example say you open the Levels dialog — which is an imperative tool for image correction. Once the dialog opens, you could click the Auto button. You could also click the White Point, Black Point and Gray balance eyedroppers and apply those — some tutorials may even suggest it. But, even if your image seems to improve on your screen, you may not be doing the image integrity any favors. The fact is that even brilliant features used incorrectly can run counter to what you really want to do for an image or even ruin it. It may be easy to go the fast way and click an Auto button, and it may produce pleasing results at a glance, but it can also compromise your images. And what is the biggest objection to applying things the right way? People want it quicker, and they will ultimately accept speed while sacrificing quality…For my images, it is unacceptable to sacrifice quality to save a few moments. It doesn’t make sense to spend lots of time to learn how to take the best pictures, lots of money to get good equipment, and toss away the quality of the images you captured because you can’t be bothered to spend time getting the corrections right.

Tools you shouldn’t use include those that might damage your images, as well as those you simply don’t know well enough to apply. That is, the list of tools you shouldn’t use is virtually different for every Photoshop user based on their level of experience and what they know. The list will change as you learn and gain experience with the program.

Regretfully learning the tools takes time. However, you can use your time learning more efficiently and cut time from experimentation and exploration. The first thing to do: make a short list of tools you know you should explore. Just start listing those you think you should know better. Don’t list more than 30. Make them tools that you think are important (you may find out otherwise). Next set aside a time — 15 or 20 minutes a day — to explore those features/functions. Plan to explore just one tool a day for as many days as there are tools on the list. To begin your exploration, learn the basics of any feature using the Help materials provided by Adobe. The information there will tell you the way the function was designed to perform and how to apply it. This is a useful starting point: you’ll find out how a feature is applied. Help will tell you little or nothing about the best way to use a feature. Reading up shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes.

Next try applying the feature/function on an image according to the instructions to see how it behaves in practice. Try to give it a workout using all the possibilities you can think of. Apply it to several different images. Spend between 10 and 15 minutes ‘playing’ with the tool. That should serve as your introduction, and you will probably learn a few things you didn’t know before. However, you’ve probably learned just enough to be dangerous…you may be able to apply the tool, but that may not tell you what it really does and why it works, and that can affect how you use it productively.

To learn proven techniques for the best way to apply features, may take a lot more effort, and sometimes weeks, months or even years of study, depending on the complexity of what you are trying to accomplish. It is the kind of time that not everyone can dedicate to learning. Sampling tutorials found on the web may be helpful, but choosing the right tutorials can be tricky and may not be cohesive with a holistic approach to image editing. Some tutorials may actually contradict one another, and it will be hard to sort the good tutorials from the bad, and the harmful. Beware of tricks and tips that you can’t get to work on images other than those used in the tutorial. Even some books that promise quick results or that are a series of effects may never do much to improve your process with image editing. A scattered approach that does not rely on solid process may prove more confusing than helpful. Many tutorials may be well-meaning, written by people who are excited about sharing their new-found successes. However, good intent doesn’t make for a good tutorial — and it may be that what you apply can harm your images…and it may be difficult to tell the difference.

Consulting books and courses by experts in the field, designed to get you up to speed, can save you time and effort. An expert’s years of experience can go to work for you by helping you steer toward the best features and how to use them — saving time in exploring the program. Just as you would invest in your camera or additional equipment like lenses, invest in yourself to gain the skills you need to make the best images…don’t expect the equipment or the program to do-it-for-you (you may want to read my blog about “magic tools”).

So, do yourself a favor and start a list of tools you shouldn’t use today, before you damage another image. Stop oogling at tools that sound like the solution to all your problems, and learn about yourself and what you really need to know. Focus on those that you know and that you can use productively to make your images better. I’d be glad to hear which tools are on your lists, and happy to help you answer your questions about them!

PS — There have been some changes and updates on the hiddenelements.com and photoshopcs.com layers websites that you may want to check out…with more to come. I added some elements 6 materials to hiddenelements.com and a switch to php page building so the site will be easier for me to maintain. I also added some materials to fill out the ‘under construction’ pages on the photoshopcs.com site. I look forward to hearing from visitors about the changes.

Magic Tools in Photoshop and Elements

The Entertainer and the Entertained

Magicians in their magic acts are entertainers. They perform mystical feats designed specifically to cleverly trick us -- those being entertained -- into believing something miraculous is happening when they waive their wand or perform an incantation. Deep down, we know it is somehow explainable, but we want to be entertained, suspend our disbelief, and enjoy the show. We may half-heartedly try to figure out what really happened behind the scenes, but in a way, perhaps, we almost don't want to know: it might ruin the illusion and we'd no longer be entertained. The entertainer practices his craft building the clever and believable deception, and the entertained soak it in without thinking all too hard. That is the difference between the entertainer and the entertained.

The Juggler

Photoshop and Magic
People beginning to edit images with Photoshop and Elements often scour the menus looking for the tool that will do something spectacular to their images believing great images are just a few clicks away. It is almost as if they want the program to entertain them with an element of magic or a fantasic feat of mind reading. Photoshop and Elements have lots of tools whose behavior may seem mysterious and unexplainable at first, at least one named specifically 'Magic Wand', but regretfully there are no 'magic' tools that read your mind. No matter how clever the implementation of a function or how well it seems to work there is never anything 'magic' about a tool itself. There is a calculation -- however complex -- that drives any tool application. The behavior can be described and predicted, no matter how we might resist knowing.

To Be the Magician
A true magician doesn't waive a wand and hope magic will happen -- imagine what would happen to a magician doing that on stage. The magician knows the secrets of the tricks and what goes on behind the scenes, utilizing props and tools with purpose to craft the perfect deception. Likewise, the imaging magician, must be a master of the tools and craft of post-processing. Just clicking a filter or auto function and being elated or disappointed by the result isn't mastering Photoshop and Elements, it is being entertained. Being entertained can be pleasing at times, but generally it is not how you make a magical image. The tools themselves have no way to see and evaluate the images they work on except as a calculation. They are lifeless props and props never make magic either.

Magicians practice their craft and develop their art, and you will want to do the same to achieve desired results with your post-processing in Photoshop. Changes do not have to be mystical, spectacular or flamboyant to get the most from your images, and post-processing is only a portion of the photographic craft. There is a place for being both the entertainer and the entertained, the magician and the audience. Learn and be awed by other people's craft, but strive to understand the magic of their images like a magician in the audience watching the craft of the magician on stage.

To Learn More
My courses teach the timeless fundamentals for Photoshop and Elements that you'll use as the core of your craft. I talk about magic tools in my Photoshop 101 class...namely the "read my mind" and "do it for me" tools: mythical tools designed in the minds of users hoping there is an easier way. But it is the only mention of magic tools in my courses. You get practical methodology for Correcting and Enhancing Your Images, solid techniques for matching your images on your Monitor and In Print, and advanced exploration of
Layers: Photoshop's Most Powerful Tool. Each is a facet of the tools you have to master to perfect your image editing craft. My latest book, The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book, is the perfect companion to these courses.

Choosing an Image Editing Program

Question:
Where can I find in-depth, unbiased reviews of software for photographers? I have looked on the net but what I mostly find are pretty abbreviated descriptions. No real in depth analysis and suggestion of what works well together.

Short Answer:
All reviews are biased; you are your own best reviewer.

Long Answer:
Any review of software is necessarily biased. Asking this question of me you will likely find my preference for Photoshop and Elements, but I'll do what I can to make sense first.

Reviewers need to be familiar with software to do a good, in-depth review. This usually means reviewers have to be users of what they review, which forms a bias. There are many packages on the market, some more and less obscure. Popular packages like Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom, Aperture, Paint Shop Pro, Corel Draw, and GIMP all have their supporters. But even somewhat more obscure packages like Microsoft's Digital Image Editing Suite, PhotoImpact and Photoline32, can be substantially powerful options for image editing and show pockets of advocates. It has been my experience that many of these programs can function reliably at a high level. There are likely other programs as well.

What really makes an image editing software package "the best" is what makes it the best for you and your needs. If you are looking for full-featured image editing, many of the packages will provide what you need with a variety of different abilities and tools--some of these options may have been packaged with your camera (Photoshop Elements is popular as software bundled with digital cameras and scanners). If you are looking for a robust package that will handle web graphics, animation, video editing, vector graphics/type and multiple file formats, you may have no other choice than Photoshop. If you are looking for ease-of-use and quality results, then you may want to consider looking at newer programs specifically designed to provide easier image-editing solutions, like Lightroom or Aperture.

Ultimately, if you are looking for an opinion that will absolutely tell you which is best, it won't happen. Your choice should be based on your needs and interests, with a nod to the popularity of the package. Package popularity becomes important when it comes to finding help, tutorials, courses and additional support. Where there are lots of users, there are lots of tutorials and help.

I prefer Photoshop and Elements because I use them, and have for a very long time. I have an aging comparison page that looks at Photoshop vs. Elements vs. Paintshop Pro:
http://www.graphic-design.com/Photoshop/vs_elements.html
These are three programs that I have used and have written about. A lot of the information still holds true.

As far as 'what works well together', I like to keep it simple, and stick to one program that covers it all. To me that is Photoshop OR Photoshop Elements. Using either of those, I can steer away from plugins and add-ons by using a full featured program that doesn't require integration. I do have exceptions for add-ons that I have made myself that extend the functionality/ease-of-use of Elements and Photoshop. Other hardware would include an additional monitor and video card, trackball, and calibration device. You really shouldn't need several software packages to get your image editing done, unless you like the added complexity. For every software package and plugin you add, you increase the learning curve. If you are having trouble doing a particular task, it may not be the image editing program that has to be changed, and you may not really do any better adding a plug-in that promises to 'do it for you' : it may be that you will need to change your approach to tasks, and changing your approach to tasks may be facilitated by learning more about the program (through the Help feature, tutorials, and possibly books and courses). Learning from others can save tremendous amounts of time.

Postscripts:
* Richard now teaches 4 courses on betterphoto.com

1. A beginner-level introduction to Photoshop: Photoshop 101
   
   
2. An intermediate-level course for mastering color management Color Management for Digital Photographers
   
   
3. A second intermediate-level course dedicated to core imaging techniques Correct and Enhance Your Images
   
   
4. And an advanced-level, specialized focus on using layers Leveraging Layers: Photoshop's Most Powerful Tool

* Richard's new book The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book will be out at the end of July!

* Listen to Richard talk about image editing in a recent two-part interview with Jim Miotke on BetterPhoto Radio: Part 1, Part 2

What Color Space Do I Use (Part 2)

[Continued from Part 1]
In the previous entry in this blog, I discussed some of the theory involved in choosing a color space. Let's look at my current workflow as an example.

My Choices
I choose to use an AdobeRGB (camera)>sRGB (convert to sRGB in Photoshop)>sRGB (add an sRGB profile to send to print) workflow for what I believe are sensible reasons based on my long experience in digital imaging.

I capture in AdobeRGB for a few reasons:

*I have a high-bit digital image sensor that captures at least 12-bits -- or 16 times the number of colors captured in 8-bit images. With 16 times the number of colors as 8-bit, most or all of the 8-bit sRGB colors will be captured If a few are not, I’ll never know.
*The added range may come in handy at some point when technology becomes enhanced and if not, conversion to 8-bit RGB for output should not create much unusable color.

On the other hand, I work in sRGB as a working space for several reasons:

*I like the concept of working with color in ranges that can be properly displayed on my monitor.
*I seldom output to CMYK, but instead use light-process (LED/color laser) printing.
*The process and service I use all the time requests sRGB files, and tests with AdobeRGB have proven the service’s request to be right--for this closed system.
*sRGB is a broadly-used 'default' color standard, that even in systems where profiling fails to make a good translation, the results are within a predictable range. AdobeRGB images where the profile is dropped will usually desaturate drastically. I don't want that problem for the small potential benefit.
*I am not sure that I can define it as a benefit when "better images" would mean NOT matching what I see on screen...I'd have to define it as luck.

I print to light process as it is more efficient than using ink, and the results are closer to what I see on my monitor, as well as more durable.

My closed process (closed, meaning I just about always do the same thing) ending with a need for RGB dictates most of the rest of the workflow, and my decided preference for seeing all the color I work on, solidifies the outline. One of the keys to any successful workflow is testing, which means taking an image and trying to process it both ways, and seeing if the result is better either way. "Better" to me can only be defined by the ability to match the screen...and that really eliminates AdobeRGB as a benefit, as if I can't see the colors that Adobe RGB can produce, any benefit of additional color – beyond what I see on screen -- would naturally not match.

All that said, if you are more adventurous than me and don't mind working on color that you will not see on your monitor, an AdobeRGB workflow may be adopted and used with success mostly in a closed workflow where results go to a CMYK printer. However, should the AdobeRGB workflow be adopted, you will need to be diligent about following the process and being sure the profiles are not dropped, or the result will be a sometimes serious desaturation and compression of dynamic range. This happens because when a profile is dropped (or if it is not included on save), devices will likely assume an sRGB profile, or something very close, and remap the colors in the image: the 'broader' range of colors is mashed down into the 'smaller' space and the result is less impressive than just starting with sRGB and sticking with it. Also, images with AdobeRGB profiles posted to the web either using browsers that do not recognize profiles, or which drop profiles as part of processing will result in the same desaturation and loss of dynamic range.

Why Do I choose This?
My conclusion to this point is that I can certainly get an AdobeRGB workflow to produce results, but I am not convinced that these are 'better' – and I am not convinced that the added risk of color trouble is worth the potential gain. AdobeRGB images may be brighter in print, and in some cases may show a difference, but that surprise may not be accurate in the sense that what you see on your monitor is NOT what you get in print. Things may change in the future, but now, with the broad popularity of the RGB workflow (having shifted with the advent of digital cameras and inkjet printing conversions), sRGB seems a more stable and reliable flow. That may change at some time in the future.

Your Choices
If you have read all the way through this entry and the last, hopefully the sense of this comes through. You can get results with either color space –- or other color spaces not mentioned. But what you choose to use needs to make sense to you, to where your images originate, the processes you choose, and those choices need to blend with your workflow rather than being considered as independent. My considered opinion is that my workflow is best –- for ME. Yours may be different, but hopefully you have made your choices for good reason. If you have not calibrated your monitor, have no real concept of how to make the best corrections to your images, and don’t make other sensible choices in your digital imaging, don’t be quick to blame your color space. There is more to making good images than choosing a color space.

Those are all considerations for a latter blog entry.

Postscript
If you have enjoyed this entry or found it useful, you might like my new book The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book. It will be out in July of 2007!

What Color Space Do I Use? (Part 1)

Question:
I've been trying to come to terms with color management and working color space. What color space do you use, and which is best?

Answer:
Short Answer: I use sRGB. There is not really a 'best' color space, though I find sRGB best and most consistent for what I do.

Color spaces are confusing to most people, and become a heady topic for debate. It is good to know at least the basics before making a choice between which to use. I have my preferences after 15 years of working with digital color, and they have changed with the technology...but let's look at some concepts. In part two of this entry, I'll add in a discussion of why I choose the color management settings that I do.

The "Best" Way...
Working color spaces have trade-offs and advantages, or there wouldn't be choices. If there were a 'best way' to handle color it would likely be handled automatically (e.g., Adobe would put best practices in place programmatically). I consider sRGB as a "realist" color space. It is based on standard monitor display--you deal with colors that can be safely seen on screen (16 million of them in 8-bit). AdobeRGB portends to make color that is better apt for printing--it extends beyond the model of colors you can safely see on your monitor to map colors available in print that are not 'seen' on a monitor (also 16-million in 8-bit). The fallback of sRGB is that it doesn't have a representation of a broader color set. AdobeRGB is said to have a 'broader' color model, but most people don't know what that means: to me it means the set number of colors is mapped differently--not that there are more or even necessarily 'better' colors. People do a LOT of arguing about the potential advantages of using either sRGB or AdobeRGB as a working color space.

In a perfectly theoretical arena, you'd want to work with images in optimal conditions: colors that you would be able to see on screen would readily translate into print. There-in lies the rub. RGB and CMYK reproduce different color sets. RGB is color theory based on light where red, green and blue make up all the potential colors on your monitor; CMYK is color theory based on ABSORPTION of light, as inks of cyan, magenta, yellow and black that represent all colors in print. While slightly over-simplifying here, RGB favors reds, greens and blues to the slight failing in representation of cyan, magenta and yellow. CMYK favors cyan, magenta and yellow with a failure in being able to represent the brightest reds, greens and blues. Though CMYK has an additional 'color' (black), it does not add representation to the theoretical space: black is added to compensate for the inability of ink to be perfectly efficient in absorption...black helps compensate the CMY model so that it will have a full dynamic range. Such things as the physical properties of the ink, paper, and available light will contribute to the lack of perfect performance in ink absorption. All this really means is: the colors represented by CMYK and RGB are different, and what you see on your monitor is not the same as what printing in CMYK can represent.

Making Compensation
There are all sorts of ways that technology tries to compensate for the difference, such as providing printers with additional colors, or allowing translation using color mappings and embedded profiles. Adobe claims that AdobeRGB is a better model in representing the potential of CMYK, because it maps to more CMYK colors than sRGB. It is generally argued that AdobeRGB is more geared to printing images because of its mapping to print colors and that sRGB is better on screen based on its mapping for colors associated with monitor display. The idea is intreguing, in that the color sets promise to allow you to do more direct correction of assoviated colors optimized for a particular use. Yet the reality is, just like RGB and CMYK have different colors, you can't see AdobeRGB color with reliability on an RGB screen...it becomes a conundrum. One solution used to lie in converting to CMYK and that works for those doing certain types of printing, but is really not as helpful for most people who just send images to a service, or run them out on a home inkjet.

There are practice of using color profiles (and embedding them in your images) helps describe the color in an image to different devices, acting like a type of translator. If you work in a color space and place a profile in your image, the THEORY is that you will be able to send that file to other devices (printers, monitors) that will recognize the color mapping and interpret it correctly. Once the device can interpret the color, in theory it shouldn't matter what color space it is in: If the colors can be translated and interpreted, the results should have a reasonable chance of matching.

The problem becomes defining what is supposed to be matched. If you are in sRGB, and you match what it looks like on screen, that may make sense, but using Adobe RGB if you match what is on screen you aren't taking advantage of the broader color space; if you match what is not on screen, you can't ever see what you are adjusting. But the problems just start there whether you use sRGB or AdobeRGB. Add to the problem the fact that not everything prints as CMYK. If AdobeRGB gives you better CMYK and you print to a light process or display images on the web, it may not really offer an advantage. Another issue is the reality that color management theory doesn't always work in the real world: profiles can get dropped (intentionally or not) or remain unused by devices. When you consider the world might not be perfect, you have a better picture of the real mess and why color management becomes such an issue for debate. One person swears by how they achieved success in their workflow and another opposes as they achieved success a completely different way. The fact is that they may both be right, either for the right or wrong reasons.

And the Answer Is?
So the answer to the question of whether you should use one working space or another is: either sRGB or AdobeRGB can work...but you need to accept the advantages and disadvantages of either workflow. Which will work better for you may be answered by taking a look at your workflow as an entire process. That is, based on how you work with images, your choices for what is best in adopting a workflow should be based on what you do with images, rather than what someone else does--whether or not they do it with success. In the next entry we'll look at the workflow I use and why I've made the choices I have to give you a peek into a considered workflow.

POSTSCRIPT
I've just finished writing my new book The Adobe Photoshop Layers Book. It will be out in July of 2007.

Learning Photoshop

Question:
What is the best way to learn Photoshop?

Answer:
Short answer: There is not one 'best way'.

Many people are daunted by trying to learn Photoshop. There are hundreds of tools and infinite possibilities. Infinite. You can pick an image and do anything with it...even create an entirely different scene. But the point of working with images would seem to be to improve what you have taken, and not to turn a picture of a cat into an elephant (by applying the "turn this into an Elephant" filter, of course!). Most people will not expect to accomplish such transmogrification, and what would be the point when you could make the result simpler with a visit to the local zoo?

One of the reasons users find Photoshop daunting is that they try to learn too much—or even all of it—at once. A better approach for most people will be to learn a-tool-at-a-time. Pick a tool, read about the tool in Photoshop or Elements Help (press Command+/ or Ctrl+/ [mac/pc]), then open an image and explore the tool by applying it. Don’t look so much for expert results as the opportunity to learn how the tool behaves. That experience will go a long way toward incorporating it into your workflow. 15 or 20 minutes a day puts a new tool into your belt.

Further, and following this line of logic, you can limit the tools you look at to only those that are more practical for what you want to do. If you will be working with digital photographs for the sake of editing and improving them, you can virtually ignore whole sets of tools, and in the case of Photoshop, an entire application (Image Ready). in my courses and books I have a list of 30 or so core functions and tools that you can pretty much expect to incorporate into your work with any image. Some of these are terribly obvious, like Open and Save, but you quickly get into the heart of a tool set that helps you stay focused on correction and the task at hand. People hem and haw about Curves and how important they are to correction, and honestly I think they are a bit of a hack the way it is often described to use them, and at this point in my editing I rarely use them at all. Levels are a far more accurate and useful tool, except in specific circumstances. But the point is that with a significantly limited set of tools, you can accomplish what you need to in editing almost any image...as long as you know which to use.

That said, some people will find books most helpful, some DVDs, some online courses, some live seminars, a rare few personalized instruction, and others just poking about in the program. Having learned Photoshop at a time where there were no books or tutorials, I would suggest that poking around can be effective, but it is likely to be the slowest method of learning unless you already have a lot of digital imaging experience with another program. Any one of the products that help you learn Photoshop will likely cut months and years off learning. Here are a few things that will help:

1. Get acquainted with the interface. Learn about palettes and menus and where the tools are stored. ( See my Photoshop 101 course on betterphoto.com for an outline).

2. Have a goal in mind when opening Photoshop rather than just hoping it will do something for you or that you will suddenly feel inspired. Do you want to improve images from a recent shoot? Learn color correction? create a new logo? The answer to the question "what do I want to do?" will give you direction and save time.

3. Take a note from your own learning history and follow the path that has been most successful for you in other endeavors. If you have been successful learning in a classroom, take a course; if you learn from books, take a look at the books in a local store and see what looks most interesting to you.

4. Don't expect to be an expert overnight. Personally I have been using Photoshop daily for about 15 years. I learn something new every day. It could be about the program, about my images, about seeing, composition, settings, whatever...but there is always something new in thee program as long as I allow myself to see it. Becoming an expert will likely take months or years.

5. Establish a base workflow, including a solid color management setup, good step-by-step correction practices, and test your output. You will be following a similar set of steps for most images unless you will be doing a lot of work to them. Outline your process or borrow someone elses (see my Workflow course on betterphoto.com).

6. Experiment with limitations. Don't give your self open-ended amounts of time to try and achieve an effect by applying filters willy-nilly. Again, have an idea of what you want to achieve, and allow yourself 10-15 minutes to experiment with a result rather than running all over with it. At the end of the time, post the image to a Photoshop forum somewhere and ask for help in what you want to achieve. Try my forums found through http://hiddenelements.com

I hope that helps people get on track toward learning Photoshop in their own way. If you have questions feel free to send them for future editions of the blog. Send to Richard Lynch thebookdoc@aol.com

Input Devices: Wacom Tablet, Mouse or Trackball for Image Editing

Question:
I am considering a Wacom tablet. Do you use one? If so, do you recommend it for image editing?

Answer:
Short Answer: I use a trackball by choice for all image editing.

I was once allowed by a former employer to sample about every device known on the market for input. The range included cordless, optical mice, tablets/pens and trackballs of all shape and size. I ended up the beneficiary of some experience that is hard to get otherwise, and my image editing likely improved because of it. By the end, I'd selected the Kensington Turbo Mouse (http://aps8.com/kensington.html) as my input of choice above tablets and any mega-mouse you could find. I still use the device for digital photo-editing work to this day, though in a newer and even better model. I don't know that a trackball is the solution for everyone, but for my skills and experience, this item is better.

Just to review the benefits of a trackball as I see them:

1) They don't require lift-and-move motions like a mouse, so they are easy on the wrist, and likely help keep you from getting carpal tunnel or other computer stress syndromes.

2) They have a small footprint on your work desk, don't need to move, and don't require a mouse pad, so they take up little desk space, and can always be found where you last left them (even in the dark). You don't ever fuss with wires, so being wireless is redundant.

3) The large ball on the Kensington device offers stability and control that you will not get in devices that have smaller controllers. The software has a very neat variable speed option which lets you slow the cursor movement as the ball speed slows. A big, slow ball means pixel by pixel pinpoint accuracy--and you can rest between or during moves (unlike with a pen).

4) Maintenance/cleaning requirements are near nill. Tip it over to get the ball out, and blow. Replace the ball and you are ready to go.

5) The replacement and service for Kensington products is excellent (the one time I had a problem after 5 years of service, the item was completely replaced with a new device).

6) I am not drawing oriented. If I were I would likely draw more often. I take pictures because I don't draw as well as I'd like, and likely that is because I am not so good with a pen/pencil. Pens seem unstable and difficult to control to me.

7) There are four programmable buttons and chords (combinations of buttons) that allow you to assign custom commands and menu calls for customization.

Don't be fooled by cheap immitations. I was. I'd used bad trackballs before my testing and thought they were completely useless devices. Regretfully the ones I used were stiff, small and inaccurate. With the Kensington I have great control and comfort. When my daughter was 3, I had both the mouse and trackball hooked to the machine, and once she knew how to use both, she always used the trackball...It isn't a great study, but I think it says something. The only thing a tablet can really do that my trackball can't is pressure control, and while I see that it could be useful to those with artistic skills in drawing, it isn't, again, for me.

I have been using a Kensington since 1995, and I have sampled new devices and even other Kensington products, but nothing has swayed me from the Turbo Mouse. I highly recommend it!

PS -- My courses are signing up for the Spring semester at betterphoto.com. I'll be teaching From Monitor to Print, Leveraging Layers, and Photoshop 101. New additions from my good friends include: Right-brain Photoshop, by Al Ward and Photographing Fast-Action Sports, by Greg Georges

Spot Application of Photoshop / Elements Filters

Question:
Is there a way to spot apply filters?

Answer:
Short Answer: Certainly, several ways -- and the best one.

There are many reasons that you might want to apply spot filtering. For example you might want to sharpen only a portion of your image, or add special effects (glows or color enhancement) in spots to more creative ends. You can apply filters as spot correction just by making a selection and applying the filter, but almost always I want a little more control, and the ability to adjust the changes I made later in the image editing process. As long as you use the right techniques, any filter or filter combination can be applied to spots in the image rather than the entire thing, and you can make adjustments whenever you want.

Filters are mostly mathematical calculations that have to be applied to content in the image. They look at content, and make a change based on how the calculations are set up behind the scenes, sometimes dependent on user input (the filter controls). When you apply filters, you have to apply them directly to content, or nothing will happen. That is, if you just create a layer and apply the filter, the layer is blank, so the filter has nothing to calculate. In that case you won't see any change. On the other hand if you have an image with a lot of layers, you can't apply the filter to one layer and have it necessarily effect every part of the image.

What you have to do to apply the filter correctly is create what I call a layer snapshot...collect all the image information you see in a layer and then apply the filter to that. Once the filter application is in its own layer, you can mask it however you want to spot apply the filter changes.

To use filters on a layer you have to do something like the following:
1. create a new layer, and name it Layer Snapshot 1
2. stamp visible to the new layer (ctrl+shift+alt+E)
3. apply the filter and re-name the layer as appropriate

Step 3, stamping visible, collects all the currently visible parts of the image into the target layer. You need to do this type of collection every time you have several layers producing a result and you need to work on ALL of the content of the image. While the visible image does not change, the change in the image is an important one: everything you saw in the image is collected into one source layer. Once the content is collected, you can apply a filter directly to all of it -- even if before it was scattered on different layers (with different modes, styles etc.).

You can use these layers to spot apply filters if you combine them with masking. For example, after the filter is applied to all of the content, you can mask the layer (either using layer clipping or Hidden Power tools for those with Elements [ http://hiddenelements.com ], or layer masks for those with Photoshop) to limit where the filter is applied.

I would apply different filters to different snapshot layers so that you have separate control over each. Using the layer snapshot and masking techniques should give you ultimate control over the result.

PS - My Photoshop 101 course on betterphoto.com is starting in a few days:
http://www.betterphoto.com/photocourses/RIC03.asp

Al Ward, master of the special effect in Photoshop, will be starting a brand-new course on betterphoto: Right-Brain Photoshop. It starts in just a few days!
http://www.betterphoto.com/courseOverview.asp?cspID=155

Calibrating My Home Printer

Question:
I am struggling a lot with thee idea of color management and how it is best to approach it. I am not completely happy with my home printing results. I think I need printer profiling. I can have a printer profile made for $40 each, but I've also considered packages like X-Rite that cost about $1,000. What is the best route to take?

Answer:
Short Answer: I wouldn't do either.

One of the strangest things occurred to me several years ago when I was asked about how I process my images. At the time I was working on my fourth book, after years of doing digital processing and even working pre-press. I had a calibration device, gave people advice, made prints for shows...and my main workstation didn't even have a printer connected to it. In fact, I had a printer or two still in boxs that I never bothered to open. It may seem downright unnatural, but to me there is no need for a printer.

Now, that may seem strange at first, but there is a good reason why I don't have any printing equipment running. I am in the habit, and I think it is a good one, of sending my work out to be printed at a service. To me this has many advantages, not the least of which are cost, convenience, and consistency. These three C's may be a little different than the way most people look at them who are considering working with printers at home, but hear me out.

I use a service for image output and forgo the color profiling for the printer, printer cost, paper expense and maintenance entirely. I save time conceptually and actually not having to worry about issues of profiling for specific paper types, calibrating the monitor, and maintaining the additional software/hardware. I get to print on the most expensive equipment around (these are machines you would never buy for the home) for virtual pennies, and I lose all of the headache that goes with having my own printer, buying and maintaining supplies, potential for maintenance and repair, and finding a place to put it in my office. As long as I go with a good service (that calibrates regularly and uses top-notch equipment, processes, materials, and is responsible for mistakes), my result should be better than I could ever achieve at home.

If you look at cost alone in the proposed scenario, I save $1000 on the X-Rite, another $500 on a top notch home printer, more on paper and inks...and with a few inexpensive tests I can upload images to my service via ftp with confidence in the results, and have far more flexibility for sizing and format than I would at home. In other words, the $1500+ budget for my printer and supplies is something I spend directly on prints instead, without the hassles and headaches, and responsibility for keeping the equipment at peak performance. I am also not fussing with shopping for paper sales, and keeping a stock on hand. I don't have to have a paper cutter...and I am not limited to a smaller size print.

Each print may cost a little more if you look at it as materials alone (paper and ink--though the machines I print on don't use ink). The actual difference is pretty slight. But let's not forget the difference in equipment costs between using a service and printing at home in this scenario: $0 and $1500. It would take me a while to spend that $1500+ dollars in prints, and meanwhile it is earning extra money in interest, or I can invest it in other equipment. At the same time, I might never match the quality of the prints I get at the service, where I get beautiful, digital LED photographic prints on quality photographic paper. I am never longing to upgrade to the next better printer that comes down the pike, I don't have to read articles about home printer technologies, and I can rely on the service to absorb those periodic equipment upgrade expenses.

So, while I am probably fully qualified to run a printer at home and coulkd probably get good results, working without a printer, I can focus on what I do best -- working with my images and focusing on the capture and editing process.

Selling My Prints

Question:
I'm looking for a Gallery with a sales function that will take care of the orders, collection, printing, and shipping to get started selling my images. There just does not seem to be a photo site that has "everything" for a reasonable price/commission.

Answer:
The short answer: You may have to take matters in your own hands.

I don't know of a site that will provide everything from genuine sales opportunities to printing and drop shipping. It is an interesting idea, but I don't know if it is entirely practical from a business standpoint. First, you are asking the business owner to specialize in a lot of things, spanning web commerce, understanding of the market for arts, and knowledge of printing. Second, there is an awful lot of risk in taking on that challenge. Risk comes with a price, and that is why as you get closer to your ideal the services cost more.

A photo gallery site might have a technical web expertise and that might not correspond to having much knowledge of print at all. The site would expose themselves a risk to offer print services for redistribution, unless they were already a service or partnered with one. If you submit files that are not correct and haven't been tested and the service prints them, you will blame the service...and the service will either have to wrangle with disputes, or publish an almost irrational disclaimer. It may be a risk no portfolio-type site is currently willing to take for minimal profits that they'd make on the prints if they job them out, or the investment they'd need to make in printing equipment to provide the necessary services.

On the other hand, if you post your images for sale on a commission-free site ( see http://thefineartoriginals.com for example ), you'd be able to post your images for sale, collect your fees through any service like paypal ( http://www.paypal.com ), and choose any printing service you like to fulfil the job ( I use http://www.color-tech.com which will drop ship ). I send in images via FTP and have tested the prints on their equipment so there is no question that those making a purchase will be satisfied.

My suggestion may be one or two more steps than you'd prefer to take on your own, but you can get started for almost nothing, and you will have better control and understanding of the process -- and ultimately YOU reap more rewards from your sales. As distasteful as it is, artists may have to assume some responsibility for sales and marketing, or pay the premium for those services.

Making Conversions to Infrared

QUESTION:
I have been trying to follow a tutorial for converting my color images to Infrared using Channel Mixer. After moving my Blue slider to said position (-200), the image becomes VERY pixelated and low-res, while the original looked crisp and clean. The magazine mentions nothing about possible pixelation. How can I prevent this ugly pixelation?

ANSWER:
Short answer: You can't. At least not using that exact method with this particular image.

What is probably happening (and this is a PURE GUESS based on looking at the channel information in about 50,000 images and not having seen this image) is that the blue component of the RGB image has some voluminous JPEG artifacts and/or noise present, as sometimes happens, and that is introduced to the result by mixing in the blue component. By going -200 on Blue in the Channel Mixer, it doesn't mean you are removing the influence of the blue component, but you are INVERTING the influence -- and quite strongly. The result will be that any ugliness/damage/compression/artifacts in the blue component will be enhanced in the result.

[ For Elements users, you will need to use at least a component separation to extract RGB or the Hidden Power Channel Mixing tools found on the Hidden Power website http://hiddenelements.com ]

SO, the first thing I would do is check the RGB components and have a good look at the Blue component, and I think you'll see why this technique makes for a bad IR conversion -- at least with that particular image. I have seen images before where the blue component had more compression artifacts than the rest of the components before. You can likely tone it down. For example, you could potentially use a Luminosity and Color (or LAB) conversion to isolate the tone and then perhaps blur the color a little (perhaps not at all). This will lower image color noise.

[ Again, Elements users will probably want to seek the help of Hidden Power tools in making Luminosity and Color separations ]

There are MANY different ways to make an IR conversion, and I have pioneered one myself in my B&W and IR Custom Conversion tool for color images ( see http://hiddenelements.com/elements5_tools.html ). The tool was built for Elements users, but can be used in Photoshop just as well by extracting the files and loading the actions into the Photoshop Actions palette. The places where I think Channel Mixing conversions fail to imitate real infrared is that they don't address standard qualities in IR photos, like black skys, film grain, glowing skin. The conversions may work on one image type and not another, and any conversion that works that was is, more-or-less, an accident that just makes things look a little different than you are used to. Even with compensations, all you get is a mock result: an imitation of infrared and never the equivalent of the real thing.

The only real way to make IR images is to shoot IR exposures, because IR wavelengths are not just a calculation of other image components, they are a completely separate set of qualities that are part-and-parcel of the infrared spectrum. Many digital cameras filter out the IR wavelengths so they don't taint exposure results. Some digital cameras can be modified to remove filters and capture IR light in a more traditional fashion, and/or when used with proper lens filters (e.g., infrared filters that block visible light or key to favor orange or red wavelengths), you may get passible IR results.The results, however, will depend on your camera's ability to capture IR light, as well as the filter you use (more opaque IR filters limit the exposures more to infrared light qualities).

Your end result can only be as good at imitating infrared as your initial capture...or rather it can be better in the end (because you can make heroic adjustments), but you need to have the right info in the initial capture to give you the image information you need to make fabulous infrared images. The choice to filter or not, or modify or not will lead to you needing to use different techniques in adjustment to achieve your desired results. But images with inherent damage (such as a highly compressed blue channel) will likely lead to bad results using any process without further processing to correct the image.

The new Hidden Power Infrared and Custom B&W tool will help you make customized B&W conversions and mock IR. See some sample images with conversions made with the tools here:

http://www.hiddenelements.com/infrared5_tool_samples.htm