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6 Pro Photographers Share Their Most Guarded Digital Secrets

Michelle Delio — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:59:59 -0500

Great photos are made, not taken. Creating the perfect image requires a skill set that includes a deep understanding of one’s gear, the light, and the ability to think about what story you want the photo to tell and how to communicate that story through a captured moment in time. Tremendous patience, physical flexibility (a photographer spends a lot of time pretzeled into odd positions to capture the perfect angle), and an ability to think lucidly before dawn (can’t miss that golden light) are also essential.

Most photographers would now agree that proficiency with photo-editing software is also a critical skill. So we asked six photographers to tell us about their favorite image processing applications and add-ons as well as share their best tips for making and digitally refining images.

Lucas Gilman travels the world in search of untouched places and wild experiences, capturing images ranging from kayaking in India to backcountry skiing in South America. His work is often seen in National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, ESPN.com, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Adventure, Outside Magazine, Men’s Fitness, Maxim Germany, FHM Australia, USA TODAY and the New York Times. Lucas recently won the “2008 American Photo Emerging Photographer Award” sponsored by Apple Inc.

Preferred Post Processing Applications: The majority of my post processing work is done in Adobe Lightroom 2. I use Adobe Photoshop CS4 for small detail work and Nikon Capture NX for certain images.

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Favorite plug-in filters/scripts/actions/etc:

Nik Viveza: Amazing color and contrast control without the need for masks. It helps make even a day with the worst light look good with just a few sliders and a couple of clicks.

Nik Silver Efex Pro: The best black and white conversions in the industry, allowing total control and creativity without layers, masks and hours of tedious Photoshop work.

Nik Color Efex Pro: Amazing ability to enhance and correct colors without masks.

OnOne Software Genuine Fractals: Allows me to deliver perfect images that have been resized on demand to epic proportions.

Which filters do you use the most in the Nik collections? In Nik Color Efex I really like the "Brilliance and Warmth" filter. It allows me to add saturation and warmth in a natural way to produce really pleasing images. I also really like the "Tonal Contrast" filter, it allows me to accurately adjust contrast in many areas of the image without masking. In NIK Silver Efex Pro I like being able to click through all the film type options within the black and white conversion filter, being able to control grain and contrast to show every detail that I want is really cool!

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General Filter Tips: Take your time, play around and check out what each filter can do for you. You will be amazed at all the variations you have the ability to produce with some creative thinking.

Favorite Photography Tips: Find your background and then wait for your action to come into the frame. Shoot early and shoot late when the light is good. And take hand sanitizer to Third World Countries -- you will make better photos if you are not sick in bed.

Where do you print your work? Printroom.com

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Preferred Gear:

Photography: Nikon D3X, Nikon D3, Nikon D700, Nikon 14-24mm AFS f/2.8 G ED, Nikon 24-70/2.8G Autofocus-S, Nikon 70-200 mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Lens, NIKON 300mm AF-S VR f/2.8G IF-ED, Nikon AF-S Teleconverter TC-17E II, Nikon 400mm AF-S VR f/2.8 IF-ED, Nikon SB900 speedlights, Honl professional Light Modifiers (grids, snoots, gobos for Nikon SB900’s).

Backup and image storage: 16GB Lexar Professional UDMA 300x CompactFlash, Lexar Professional UDMA FireWire 800 Readers, DroboPro (Studio), Western Digital MyPassport Studio Edition 500 GB DRIVES (travel)

Computer: Mac Pro 8-core 3.0GHz Intel Xeon + 8GB Crucial RAM (Studio), MacBook Pro 2.4GHz 4GB Crucial RAM (travel).

To see more of Lucas’ work, visit his website.

David Schloss is the director of the Aperture Users Network and MacCreate.com. A photographer for more than two decades, David specializes in adventure sports, travel, lifestyle and hyper-macro photography. He is the author of two books on photography and teaches workshops internationally.

Preferred Post Processing Applications: I do about 95 percent of my work in Aperture, with occasional work in Photoshop CS4, Illustrator CS 4 and Painter.

Favorite plug-in filters/scripts/actions/etc:

NIK Silver Efex Pro: This is by far the best black and white conversion tool ever made.

Imagenomic Portraiture: After spending countless hours retouching portraits for commercial use Portraiture has been a godsend. It selectively retouches images without having to create complicated masks, it can tell the difference between facial texture and things like hair and makeup.

Picture Code’s Noise Ninja: The industry standard for noise reduction. Getting rid of noise from a high ISO or low light shot doesn’t get any easier--or better--than this.

Which filters do you use the most in the Nik Silver Efex collection?: I tend to be drawn to the filters that provide the grainy black-and-white experience I used to get from darkroom techniques. The film simulations for things classic 1600 ISO film stock are great. While it doesn’t feel exactly the same to me (there’s just a quality of black and white high-ISO film that’s hard to duplicate) it brings back much of that quality of playfulness and artistic expression of the darkroom.

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General Filter Tips: Digital filters are best used like a spice. A little bit can transform a creation from mundane to extraordinary, but used too heavily it will overwhelm the creation. And there’s no filter that’s going to save an out of focus image so work to get the image right in the camera first.

What tips can you share with us about working in Aperture: In the 90's there was almost a mandate that "artistic" photos had to be processed and highly-filtered. A lot of simulated cross processing work and bleach tones. For many photographers the image in-camera was simply a jumping-off point for a creative journey. That's fine and it produced a lot of great looking images, but it can only go so far.

With the advent of Apple's Aperture, and the focus (pardon the pun) on bringing out the best of an image, I've really rededicated myself to shooting the best possible image in the camera and just bringing it back to the way I saw it in my mind when I shot it. So filters for me are largely about bringing images back to reality, or at least the reality that I had envisioned.

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The really powerful adjustments in Aperture allow me to do a lot of things I used to do in filters -- adjust levels, saturation, vibrancy, sharpness. I take my images and round-trip to a plug-in when I need to make that final little creative tweak to make an image mine. Take the black-and-white conversions possible with Silver Efex Pro -- Aperture is not designed to simulate a film stock, but the ability to take an image and go right into a plug-in and still manage it in Aperture allows me to make a version that replicates the techniques I used to use, with today's tools.

Favorite Photography Tips: The best thing I’ve ever heard about photography came from photographer Jay Maisel. Taking the expletives out it boils down to "you can’t take a picture if you don’t have a camera." One thing I learned from my father, a commercial shooter, was to forget about the automatic settings and spend days walking around with camera in manual mode, changing the f/stop and shutter speed by feel. Meter once in the morning and see if you can tell how many stops lighter or darker your subjects move from there. As a result, I often think of things in terms of stops of light. I’ll turn on a bedside lamp and think of how many stops lighter the room got. It’s really a great way to become one with your camera.

Do you still shoot with film? I have not shot a piece of film since 2002. The convenience, speed and ecological benefits of working with digital have outstripped all the reasons I shot film.

Where do you print your work? At home, on my HP B9180 and a HP Z3100. I’ve also used the site ImageKind.com when I want to get output printed, framed and shipped. They do great work.

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Preferred Gear:

Photography: Canon 1Ds Mark III, 5D Mark II, Nikon D3x. A mix of lenses, favorites are the Canon 50mm 1.4, Canon 65 1x-5x macro, and the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8.

Computer: My main Mac is an 8-core Mac Pro with 16GB of RAM, connected to a Drobo Pro, HP B9180 printer, dual 30-inch Cinema Displays and a Wacom Intuos drawing tablet.

To see more of David’s work, visit his website.

Tony Sweet decided to redirect his creative energies towards nature photography after 20 years of working as a professional jazz artist. His images are published on calendars, post cards, posters, annual reports, greeting cards and catalogs. Tony conducts Visual Artistry photography location workshops and speaks to photography organizations and "Professional Photographers of America" schools throughout the continental United States and Canada. He is a staff writer for Nikon World magazine and has authored four books on the art of photography. Tony has been honored as a "Nikon Legend Behind the Lens" and is represented by The Getty Picture Agency.

Preferred Post-Processing Applications: Aperture for processing and cataloging, also Photoshop CS4.

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Favorite plug-in filters/scripts/actions/etc:

Nik Color Efex Pro: Particularly the “Darken/Lighten Center” filter to add depth to the image.

Nik Silver Efex Pro: For black and white conversions.

LucisPro: I use it on every HDR image to enhance detail and add depth.

AlienSkin Snap Art: To add watercolor, oil paint and other artistic effects.

Topaz Adjust: to affect exposure and region on specific images.

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What tips can you share with us about working with filters in general? Play often to learn the capabilities of the software. It’s impossible to pre-visualize a filter effect on an image if you are not familiar with the filter. And always place the filter effect on a separate layer and blend it with the original -- this works especially well when you are blending a black and white converted image with the color original. Work in layers, leaving the original untouched. Practice using your software. The more familiar you are with software usage, the more options you have to bring your creativity to fruition.

Favorite Photography Tip: Isolate and simplify the subject.

Do you still shoot with film? No more film for me. I have no need for it.

Where do you print your work? I use an Epson 7900.

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Preferred Gear:

Photography: Nikon D3X, 14-24mm, 24-70mm, 70-200mm, 105mm macro, Lensbaby.

Computer: MacBook Pro, 8G RAM, 320GB HD, 4TB external storage, Epson 7900 printer.

To see more of Tony’s work, visit his website.

Mike Sweeney started his visual career by drawing incessantly from the time he was old enough to be trusted with a box of crayons. By the time he was his early twenties he had bought a Canon 35mm camera and was learning the finer points of photography. Now Mike blends his photography skills with his extensive knowledge of technology to produce images that are both classic and state of the art. Mike is an active member is the "Strobist" and other social groups on Flickr, as well as the PPA (Professional Photographers of America), ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) and NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals). He specializes in wedding photography, portraiture and fine art photography.

Preferred post-processing applications: Adobe Suite CS3 (primarily Photoshop, InDesign) for advanced editing, Lightroom 2 for the majority of workflow management and light editing, PainterX for live media effects, LumaPIX to create albums, calendars, cards etc, VMwareFusion for running Windows XP and LumaPIX, and Fundy SOS album builder which is Photoshop application for creating wedding albums.

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Favorite plug-in filters/scripts/actions/etc:

Imagenomic Portraiture: The best and fastest tool I have found for smoothing and evening out skin surfaces and skin tones.

Imagenomic Noiseware: The best noise reduction software.

OnOne Pro Tools: The best overall photo editing tool box on the planet. I especially like the Photo Tools Bleach Bypass and High Pass Sharpening filters.

A Neutral Density Gradient: I use a gradient more than any other processing tool aside from sharpening to dial in localized exposures of sky, water, windows etc.

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What tips can you share with us about working with filters in general? Apply any filter effect at the level that you think it should be and then dial it down a notch. Educate yourself about sharpening your images. It's not as simple as you may think and it can make or break an image. Highpass sharpening is your friend. Learn about using sharpening masking in Lightroom, you will be amazed at the details it can bring out. When you’re sharpening don’t forget to zoom in to 100%. Invest 17 bucks in a monthly pass for kelbytraining.org, some of the best information I’ve seen for Lightroom comes from Matt Kloskowski on kelbytraining.

Favorite Photography Tip: Read the manual for your camera even if you have been shooting for years, you will certainly learn something from it. Be an active member of a few of the many, many photography related boards, there is always something new to see and learn and you never know when you will uncover a piece of priceless information or learn the one thing that will tip a gig your way.

Do you still shoot with film? Yes, Kodak Porta-160VC. I offer it as a custom option for portraits. Some clients like the look of film and will pay a premium for it. And I still shoot Polaroid sometimes because it's fun.

Where do you print your work? BayPhoto and MPIX

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Preferred Gear:

Photography: Nikon D70s, D90, D300, Nikon 17-55mm F/2.8, Nikon 11-24mm F4, Nikon 50mm F1.8, Nikon 17-55mm VR, 4 Nikon SB800 flashes, Nikon SU800, 5 Cybersyncs, Mountainsmith Parallax backpack Flashpoint carbon tripod/head, Westcott collapsible umbrellas, Photoflex Transpack, Z Raygun - a Dual Xenon battery powered light by Brinkmann.

Computer: MacBook Pro 6GB RAM, 250GB drive (Travel), Mac Pro dual quad 10GB RAM, 4TB disk (studio) with a Dell 24-inch Ultrasharp monitor, Canon MP950 all in one printer, Epson 4990 Scanner.

To see more of Mike’s work, visit his website.

Anthony Tortoriello is a Chicago commercial photographer who specializes in animal and pet photography, action/motorsports, food and people and anything else that comes his way. His work has been used in numerous publications worldwide. Anthony is an expert in color processing and regularly works as a digital technician for top shooters across the country. He has studied color theory with the best (notably Dan Margulis) and is also a professional retoucher.

Preferred Post-Processing Applications: I’ve dabbled with every photo related software at some point or another but now the vast majority of my time is spent working in Phase One’s Capture One Pro which is a RAW workflow application, Photoshop CS4 (which I live and breathe) and occasionally Lightroom.

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Favorite plug-in filters/scripts/actions/etc:

onOne’s Software Suite: Mainly for Genuine Fractals Pro and Photo Frame Pro which I find useful for certain images and jobs.

Photomatix Pro: For HDR and a handful of complex sharpening and color boost actions that I created and are specific to my style.

What tips can you share with us about working with filters in general? Less is more. Filters are to be used when needed not just because you can. Sure you can play and have fun, but if your job is to get an ordinary image to look like a breathtaking postcard then use filters with caution.

Also, you can use color effects software, noise reduction software, etc., but there is no substitute for knowing how to do this all yourself by having a solid understanding of Photoshop. Photoshop is our digital darkroom period and should not be taken lightly.

I would suggest people use Photoshop as if it is a video game and you are trying to win the game by getting the best possible looking images. Try every possibility like you would in a game, for example you could try running filters in different channels.

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Favorite Photography Tips: I am a firm believer at shooting as much as possible any time I can. This means always having a camera by your side and using it with NO worries about what others may be thinking. To paraphrase something photographer Jay Maisel has said, we have to do our visual push-ups everyday to keep our skills in shape.

Do you still shoot with film? I have not touched my film cameras in years. It just does not make sense on so many levels for me to still be using film.

Any tips on getting prints that match what we see on the screen? Make sure your displays are calibrated correctly with a calibration device such as an i1 Display 2 from X-Rite, which will help ensure that the color and luminosity of what you are seeing is accurate. Familiarize yourself with the proper settings for your software and output device -- for example, if you are printing out of Photoshop make certain you are not double color managing your files -- turn off color manage in the print dialog box. And select the correct paper profile. Obviously there is much more to it than that, but those things are a big step in the right direction.

Where do you print your work? At home I print with an Epson 4880 and an Epson 3880 for my more manageable sized prints. And for the larger prints I work with an amazing printing boutique in Chicago; JS Graphics.

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Preferred Gear:

Photography: Nikon D3x, Nikon D3, and Canon 5D Mark II. Lenses include “fast glass” Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8, 24-70mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8, 200-400mm f/4, 105mm f/2.8 micro, 16mm f/2.8 fisheye, & 50mm f/1.4G and similar for the Canon. Tony also loves his Canon G10 and G11 professional point and shoot cameras for everyday fun.

Computer: (Studio) Mac Pro 8-Core Two 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" Processors with 16GB 1066MHz DDR3 RAM with 4TB Internal Storage and 20TB external RAID Storage. 30-inch Apple Cinema Display and a 22-inch CRT for proofing. Wacom Intuos4 graphics tablet “I could not work without it.” (Travel) Apple 17-inch MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM

To see more of Anthony's work, visit his website.

Michele Wortman has been taking pictures professionally for over a decade. Her specialty is “macro photography with a deep emphasis on observing beauty.” Her work also includes shooting studio portraits of her tattoo clients. Her photography has been featured in several publications and in a book, “Moments of Epiphany” by Proton Press.

Preferred Post-Processing Applications: Adobe Photoshop CS3. And I particularly enjoy shooting my portrait work directly into my computer using Aperture and completely bypassing the memory card in the camera by tethering the camera to the computer. You can really see your shot and be able to make adjustments a lot better than the film days.

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Favorite plug-in filters/scripts/actions/etc: I don't use a lot of filters, and all of my favorites are included with Photoshop. I try not to alter the image too far beyond the original shot as I like to preserve the natural magic from the first impression. Typically I adjust the levels first, then I use the selective color menu to create better color balance adjustments. If the image needs some enhanced focus I select the area to sharpen with the lasso on a wide feather and sharpen as needed. I often use the path select tool to create cut outs for my portrait photography. I am a firm believer when it comes to digital manipulation that less is more. A subtle enhancement can make an image look extra dreamy, but take it just a bit too far and the piece will probably look artificial and overworked.

Favorite Photography Tips: Follow your bliss and where the light lands. Shoot what interests you and whatever your passion is. It will show in your work.

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Do you still shoot with film? No, digital photography meets all of my needs plus I never have to deal with the hassle of scanning negatives with dust specs!

Where do you print your work? For portfolio purposes I print on the Epson Stylus Photo r1800. I also sometimes print on high quality transparency film which I backlight when I’m exhibiting my work.

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Preferred Gear:

Photography: Canon EOS 5D with Canon EF 24-70MM, Canon MP-E 65MM, Canon EF 100 MM lenses. Lights: Calumet travelite 750 set, Nova 32 softbox, Canon 540 EZ Speedlite

Computer: MacBook Pro with 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo and 4GB RAM and an iMac with Intel Core Duo 2GHz and 2GB RAM. MyBook Essential edition 1TB external drive and a Burly 4 Bay Firewire Enclosure with four Seagate 7200.10 500GB drives.

To see more of Michele’s work, visit her website.

Adobe Launches Photoshop.com Mobile for the iPhone

Roberto Baldwin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:30:43 -0500

Adobe announced the release of Photoshop.com Mobile for the iPhone today. The new app is free and gives you access to your Photoshop.com gallery and gives you the ability to edit photos on your iPhone and upload them to Photoshop.com.

Photoshop.com users get 2GB of storage. Adobe states the storage equals over 1,500 photos. That's a lot of cat pictures.

The new app allows user to crop, rotate, flip and adjust the color of photos on your iPhone, including the ability to transform the image to black and white.Most of these controls are utilized via gestures. Slide your finger to the left or right to adjust the exposure for example.

Adobe Announces Creative Suite Compatibility for Snow Leopard

Cory Bohon — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:48:13 -0500

This week Adobe, the developer of Photoshop and Creative Suite, told us about the compatibility of their products with Snow Leopard, making some Mac users angry.

Adobe posted a two-page PDF document on one of their blogs (PDF link here) to answer a few questions that users might have about the software compatibility of the Creative Suite. According to this document, CS4 (and the apps contained inside the package) is the only version of the CS family that will be fully supported in Snow Leopard.

As for CS2/3, Adobe didn't test that software to see if it was fully compatible. Adobe also squashes any dream of them miraculously releasing updates for CS3 by letting us know that;

"Older versions of our creative software will not be updated to support Mac OS X Snow Leopard (v10.6)."

Furthermore, if you are a user of Version Cue CS4 Server, it will NOT run on Snow Leopard due to the 64-bit nature of new OS. Adobe is urging customers who rely on Version Cue to wait before upgrading to Snow Leopard.

If you run into problems with CS4 on Snow Leopard, Adobe is offering technical support for the software running on the new OS. You can read the full PDF document with all the Q&As on the Adobe website (direct link here).

Screencast Video: Create 3D Photo Effects in Final Cut Pro

Michael DeLano — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:53:28 -0500

Tired of the same old boring Ken Burns effect? Try out our tutorial for dynamic photo montages.

The video player requires Flash 8 Player or later. Please download the latest Flash Player.

Take Your Photos RAW

Stephan Somogyi — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:00:58 -0500

The PowerShot G9 is about as much camera as you need in a small-ish form factor.

Mention “digital photography” and no two people will think of exactly the same thing. For many, it may be an idea as simple as using a point-and-shoot camera to run around taking endless snaps until space on the flash memory card runs out. A quick trip to the computer to offload and they’re back in the game. While some are content with this state of affairs, others are ready to take the next step to greater photographic enlightenment, which isn’t a huge leap. And because experimentation costs you nothing—you can learn about digital photography without the expense of burning through endless rolls of film—today‘s digital cameras make the critical, and highly educational, trial-and-error process much more accessible and enjoyable.

The obvious place to start your photographic journey is with a point-and-shoot camera, and once you dive in and start experimenting with your camera and the myriad image editors available for the Mac, you’ll soon discover that there’s a lot more to digital images than JPEG files. RAW is the mode preferred by pros for the range of options it provides. Most of the cameras that can create RAW image files are DSLRs, however, and they present a whole new set of considerations: a bulkier body, a higher price point, and an often overwhelming universe of add-ons (lenses, flashes, filters, and much more). So, we set out to find compact digicams that can shoot RAW—because the camera you use the most is the one you always carry with you, and shooting RAW is the obvious next step on the path to becoming a better digital photographer.

The RAW and the Cooked
What is RAW format anyway? Why is RAW better than JPEG? It all comes down to the amount of visual info that’s captured—and retained—in the file. When a digital camera takes a picture, its image sensor captures color values for each pixel that it can sense. This raw data is then sent to another chip in the camera that does some image processing, after which a fast hardware JPEG compressor creates the file that lands on the flash card. (In case you were wondering, RAW is not an acronym like JPEG, and there is no standard accepted spelling; for the sake of consistency, we use the all-caps variant.)

JPEG is a lossy image format, which means that it throws away some data during the compression process—and every time you save the image during editing, if you don’t use another format like PSD (Photoshop’s format) or TIFF. This is one count against using JPEG. And each camera also processes the image data before compressing it—as you become more experienced with digital photography, you may not like precisely how the camera performs this processing. In fact, you may prefer do it yourself, which is only possible if your starting point is an unadulterated RAW image. Next, as computers become more powerful and new image-processing options become available, you want the maximum flexibility to reprocess your photos. Finally, for those of us who want maximum fidelity for archived photos, storing RAW files means that you are guaranteed to have the maximum amount of image data that the camera was able to capture and that you lost nothing along the way.

But there are several gotchas with RAW files that aren’t obvious to the uninitiated: RAW images tend to be large—substantially larger than JPEGs—for example, a RAW image taken with the Canon PowerShot SD870 IS after we installed CHDK weighed in at 9.9MB RAW, compared to 2.9MB as a JPEG, a 71 percent size increase. What’s more, the actual format of RAW files differs from camera to camera. Every camera—not just every camera manufacturer—has a different RAW format. And each format requires explicit software support before it can be read and used. (One exception to this is Adobe’s DNG format, see “DNG! It’s a Digital Negative.”) As it happens, the three cameras we reviewed generate RAW images that can be read directly by the imaging infrastructure built into OS X, meaning that you can view them in Preview without specialized software (for a full list of cameras whose RAW files are directly viewable in Mac OS 10.5, see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1475).

There’s another gotcha with RAW files, but it’s a little more complicated. The technology used by the vast majority of image sensors in today’s digital cameras is called a Bayer array. This type of sensor has red, green, and blue pixel sensors spread all over its surface, with the individual pixels right next to each other. But because of this proximity, and the shrinking size of the individual pixels, RAW shots taken at high ISO (generally low light conditions) often have a lot of visual noise (static) in them. JPEG images generated by the cameras usually have the camera’s particular noise-reduction applied, and this may not result in a final image that is to your liking. The good news is that there are plenty of tools out there to help reduce the noise after the fact, such as PictureCode’s Noise Ninja ($35–$80 depending on options chosen, www.picturecode.com) or Akvis Noise Buster ($49, akvis.com). Most image-processing apps like Photoshop and GraphicConverter also offer tools that help you reduce noise. If you shoot RAW, you can try out as many of these as you want until you find the solution that gives you the results you’re looking for.

The Hardware

Since our goal was to introduce readers to to RAW, we set out to find compact cameras that feature a RAW shooting mode to review. Our specs were straightforward, but we only found three cameras that met them: the Canon PowerShot G9 ($500, www.canonusa.com), the Leica D-LUX 3 ($600, us.leica-camera.com), and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2 ($450, www.panasonic.com).

Canon PowerShot G9

Canon’s PowerShot G9 is the big fish in the tiny sea of compact RAW shooters.

We reviewed the the G9 a few months ago (4 out of 5 stars, Jun/08, p56) and stand by our positive evaluation. It sports a 12-megapixel image sensor and has a full range of high-end camera features without the bulk of a DSLR. Canon and several third-party manufacturers also produce add-on lenses for the G9, but if you’re serious about spending that much money, you might as well go the DSLR route. The G9 shines brightly when you’re using it on its own, without additional lenses.

When compared to both the D-LUX 3 and the Lumix LX2, the G9 comes off as a bit chunky, however. It’s both taller and wider, but the Leica and Lumix are deeper because their lenses stick out a bit more. The PowerShot G9 is undeniably the heaviest of the three, weighing in at 12.9 ounces (including battery), which isn’t apparent until you try to put it in your pocket. The Leica and Lumix both weigh 7.8 ounces with the battery inside.

While the megapixel wars are effectively over (see “Beyond Megapixels,” May/08, p20), there is something slightly reassuring about having higher resolution to start with, since in most cases you’ll be downsizing images for use on the Web or for printing. The G9’s 12 megapixels give you that peace of mind and produce great-looking pictures. With its range of in-camera settings, the  G9 is likely more camera than most mortals will need.

Leica D-LUX 3 and Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2

The Leica D-LUX 3 and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2 are almost identical.

Panasonic manufactures both units and they differ only subtly: The Leica features custom firmware that processes images differently prior to JPEG compression (more on that later), and it has a better warranty—two years vs. 90 days—than the Lumix. The Leica also comes with a 64MB SD card in the box and ships with Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 (the version shipping currently is 6.0).

If you shoot RAW with either camera, you should see little, if any, difference in the image quality between the two. Image quality in general was good, but higher ISO settings showed a not-unexpected increase in noise. In addition to their 10-megapixel resolution, both the D-LUX 3 and the LX2 have a unique 16:9 image mode, which, compared to using the conventional 4:3, comes down to personal preference, but it’s definitely useful to have.

The Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2 is pleasingly compact.

What’s initially surprising about both of these cameras is their amazingly small size. The Canon is noticeably heavier and bulkier than the Leica and Lumix. If it were possible to defy the laws of physics, we’d love to have the overall performance of the G9 in a D-LUX 3/LX2-–size package.

The bottom line. While all three cameras we tested offer compelling advantages, if forced to pick just one, we’d go with the PowerShot G9.

What does “more control” mean?

So you have a camera that shoots RAW, but you don’t necessarily want to manually post-process every picture to make it absolutely perfect. While using Adobe’s Lightroom (4 out of 5 stars, June/07, p60) and Apple Aperture (5 out of 5 stars, Jul/08, p62) let you automate some of the process—especially if you like to apply the same changes to all your pictures—you shouldn’t assume you have to post-process every RAW image. You don’t. Most of the RAW pictures you take will display and print just fine without a lot of additional fiddling, assuming the software you use to print can understand the RAW format your camera produces. This is an area where having built-in OS X support for your camera’s RAW format really makes a difference in ease of use. However, if you do want to spend the time to fine-tune a photo, you absolutely want to start with a RAW image rather than a preprocessed JPEG.

So why is this useful? Because it lets you determine how your pictures turn out. Back in the heyday of film, experienced photographers knew what their cameras were capable of and what work needed to be done in the darkroom when developing the film and processing prints. These days, there’s a similar division between what you can do in-camera and what you can do “in post,” but the latter doesn’t require toxic chemicals or blackening out a room anymore. The first component of this additional control is what you can do when you first open the image in your editor of choice. Before you even start the process of editing the image by cropping or resizing it, for example, you can fundamentally affect how the image looks overall: change its white balance, increase or decrease color saturation, or change the dynamic range of the entire image. All of this put together gives you the ability to create pictures that aren’t even possible with a film camera and traditional photo-processing methods.

Ultimately, the answer to why RAW is better is entirely subjective and entirely dependent on what you do with your photos. But it’s precisely the fact that RAW delivers not just one but a range of benefits compared to JPEG that makes it compelling. Even if you don’t think you need RAW today, if you switch now and don’t really get into image editing until later, you can always go back and apply all that you learn to your archived images. In a time of ever-evolving technology, shooting RAW is the best way we’ve found to future-proof our digital photos.

Some Apps Taste Better RAW

When opening a RAW image in Apple’s Aperture 2, this format’s flexibility really shines. While the variety of editing options is undeniably daunting, this same breadth of choice allows you to fine-tune the image until it’s just right.

If you’re looking for software to work with your RAW images, you will find powerful tools in Apple’s Aperture 2, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and CS3. But there are also some lesser-known tools out there, many of which are quite inexpensive, that are worth a look.

Adobe Camera Raw and DNG Converter Adobe Camera Raw (part of Adobe’s image-editing suite, www.adobe.com) is the gold standard in software that imports RAW images for editing. DNG Converter lets you individually or batch convert your RAW files into DNG format, without any editing involved.

CHDK If you already own a Canon point-and-shoot, CHDK (free, chdk.wikia.com) can make it capable of shooting RAW. Installing CHDK requires determination and a willingness to embrace the command line in Mac OS X, but it beats buying a new camera. We tried it with the Canon PowerShot SD870 IS ($299.99, www.usa.canon.com). For full details, see www .maclife.com/chdk.

Lemkesoft GraphicConverter A veteran Mac graphics app that continues to improve, GraphicConverter is a steal at $35 (www.lemkesoft.com). Over the years it’s added broad RAW support, as well as features specifically aimed at those producing Web graphics.

dng4ps For processing the RAW files produced by CHDK on the PowerShot SD870 IS, we found dng4ps (free, spebbe.googlepages.com) to be the most convenient solution, since it created a DNG file that all the other apps we tried could also open.

DNG! It’s a Digital Negative

Among the downsides of shooting RAW is the grim reality that there are almost as many RAW formats as there  are RAW-shooting cameras. This is annoying for purchasers of new cameras, who often have to wait a while until their software of choice adds support for their camera’s RAW format. It’s also tough for software developers, who have to spend a lot of  time and effort constantly adding new  RAW formats.

Adobe, one of the companies most affected by the never-ending stream of new RAW formats, decided to do something about this and, in late 2004, announced the DNG format, which is short for digital negative. Adobe’s idea was to have a single  RAW format that all cameras could generate and that would therefore be compatible with any software that supported DNG.

Since then, however, the number of cameras that shoot DNG natively has remained quite small, and none of them are from big players like Canon or Nikon. As a result, the number of cameras supported by Adobe’s own Camera Raw software is upwards of 175 and growing. Leopard has built-in support for DNG, so in most cases you should be able view a DNG file in Preview without incident.

One of the benefits of converting a camera-specific RAW image to DNG is that the typical file size decreases significantly—10 to 40 percent according to Adobe, a figure that we were able to corroborate converting RAW images to DNG using dng4ps—due to DNG’s lossless compression. According to Adobe’s Lightroom blog, 40 percent of Lightroom users who import non-DNG images have set the preference to auto-convert to DNG on import. While we don’t know precisely why these users make this choice, it shows that DNG is a useful format for those using Adobe apps. The good news is that all  the apps we tried that had RAW support had no difficulty with our DNG test  images.

Adobe is determined to make DNG a standard, despite the thus-far-underwhelming support from the heaviest-hitting camera makers. Adobe updated the specification to version 1.2 in May, and has submitted DNG as a vendor-neutral standard to ISO, the International Standards Organization, in the hopes that DNG will be viewed less as an Adobe format and more as a solution to the problem of the ballooning number of cameras that shoot RAW. For more technical information about the DNG format, see www.adobe .com/products/dng.

Fix the Tone in JPEGs with Adobe Camera Raw

Jason Whong — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:21:34 -0600

This image was slightly underexposed and shot with an incorrect white-balance setting. We're going to fix it up.

Digital cameras are smarter and more capable than film cameras, but underneath, they still work the same: light hits an image sensor, and the camera’s interpretation of that light is the image you see. Sometimes the camera (or the photographer) gets it wrong, and the picture suffers. But once you’ve mastered a few tools found in Adobe Creative Suite 3, you can make adjustments to exposure and contrast. You can also do it nondestructively, making things easier to fix in the future if you change your mind.

This workflow depends on Adobe Bridge CS3, which comes with Photoshop, and Adobe Camera Raw 4.2, which you can use even if you didn’t shoot your image in RAW format. You can optionally use Photoshop CS3 later to tweak parts of the image.

WHAT YOU NEED

> Adobe Photoshop CS3 ($649 à la carte, or as part of one of the Creative Suite 3 bundles)

> A photo in JPEG format (download the image we used here)

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1 - Set Up Adobe Bridge. Open Adobe Bridge and select Bridge CS3 > Preferences. Under the Behavior tab, check the “When a camera is connected, launch Adobe Photo Downloader” checkbox. Also check “Double-click edits Camera Raw settings in Bridge” if you prefer to automatically launch the Camera Raw plug-in when you double-click any RAW file in Bridge. If you don’t want Adobe Photo Downloader to launch automatically, you can still get it to launch from within Bridge. Select File > Get Photos From Camera to bring up the dialog. You can change the import settings to help you organize your photos, perhaps with more human-readable folder names. The “Convert to DNG” checkbox won’t do anything to JPEG files.

Using Bridge means that newly imported photos won’t be added to your iPhoto library. And if you already have a lot of photos in iPhoto ’08, you’ll need to make them available to Bridge in order to use them. To do so, find your iPhoto library (which is usually in your /Pictures folder), right-click it, and select Show Package Contents. Then make an alias of the Originals folder and put the alias somewhere outside the package. (Don’t make an alias of the Modified folder unless you want to open files that were modified by iPhoto.)

Bridge can see into folders, but it can’t see into the iPhoto library, since that’s a package. Luckily, it can follow an alias into the library.

More...

2 - Bridge to Camera Raw. In Bridge, locate and double-click the photo (JPEG or RAW) that you want to work on using Camera Raw. (If you didn’t set double-click behavior in Bridge in the previous step, you can right-click the image and select Open In Camera Raw.) You can work on the image any way you want, but it might help to think, “top to bottom, left to right.” In most every tab, start at the top and work your way down, then proceed to the next tab to the right.

At the top right is the histogram, which shows how much of the picture is dark and how much is light. On the left are shadows, in the middle are midtones, and on the right are highlights. The example image of the cat is pretty dark, so the histogram shows a high mountain on the left side (since the cat’s fur is mostly black). There’s also no white in the image, because the histogram doesn’t go all the way to the right. The histogram changes as you make changes to the image; watching what it does can give you an understanding of how various tools work.

Above the histogram are Shadow and Highlight Clipping Warning checkboxes. Clipping happens when you make a change that would discard information, because that information becomes lighter than the white, or darker than the black, in the intended color space. With the warnings on, Camera Raw will draw blue pixels for the shadows that clip and red pixels for the highlights that clip. Keep clipping to a minimum for most of your work.

Along the top are various tools that can adjust the image. New Camera Raw tools include the Retouch tool, which works as a Cloning Stamp or Healing Brush tool, and a Red-Eye Removal tool. On the bottom is some underlined information about your workflow: the color space, bit depth per color channel, and the dimensions and resolution of the resulting image. Click on this information to make changes in the Workflow Options dialog. If you’re editing a JPEG, you may want to switch to 16 bits per channel to give Photoshop more latitude for adjustments you may make outside of Camera Raw. Just remember that whatever you set here has no effect on what’s going on in Camera Raw.

The histogram in the top right of the window indicates that most of the image is dark. There’s also too much blue in this image, since the white point is way off.

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3 - The Basic Tab. First up in the Basic tab is White Balance. You can set this by dragging the Temperature and Tint sliders until you’re happy with the white point. Alternatively, you can use the White Balance tool to click somewhere that you think should be white or gray.

After that, you can tone the image. The Exposure slider adjusts brightness, with most of its effects seen on the brighter parts of the image. The numeric value of the exposure adjustment corresponds roughly to an f-stop on a camera, so increasing exposure to +1.00 is almost like letting about twice as much light into the camera. Usually, you’ll want to adjust exposure so that the histogram stretches to both the left and right sides, giving the image some white and some black. You can make sure you’re not discarding any information by watching for clipping warnings. Not every image should have white in it, so use your judgment with this slider.

The Recovery slider helps resurrect details from the highlights, or bright areas, of the image. Play with it a bit and watch what it does to the histogram. It keeps the highlights bright, but pushes the detail back from the darker highlights. Skip over Fill Light for a second. The Blacks slider pushes the darker parts of the image into black. Use this one carefully, too, because not every image needs black. The Fill Light slider gets some details back from the lighter shadows, without brightening the blacks.

The Brightness slider makes the image brighter or darker, but doesn’t usually cause the image to clip. Rather, it compresses one end and stretches the other end of the histogram, depending on which way you slide it. This behavior is why it’s located so far down in the Basic tab - it works best after you’ve already set exposure, recovery, and blacks. Contrast pushes dark midtones darker and light midtones lighter. It works best after you use the Brightness slider.

The last three controls affect color saturation. The Clarity slider is a bit like sharpening the image, but we don’t use it because we’ll sharpen with a different tool in the next step. The Vibrance slider adjusts saturation to reduce clipping, and can help with skin tones. Saturation affects each color’s saturation equally. Drag it to the left to get closer to monochrome, or to the right to add some saturation.

Now that the histogram goes further toward the right, the blues aren’t much brighter than the rest of the image like they used to be, and the Recovery slider brought back some of the highlights that would’ve been clipped.

More...

4 - Detail Tab. For all work in the Detail tab, use a 100 percent view or larger. Start with the Noise Reduction tools, which can help eliminate the grainy appearance of photos taken at a high ISO setting by blurring some of the detail. Careful use of these tools makes the difference between enhancement and obliteration of detail. The Luminance slider smooths the details, and the Color slider reduces color splotches.

If you plan to do more work in Photoshop, skip ahead to step 5, because ideally, sharpening should be done last, and shouldn’t be done to an image that is already sharpened. (If your camera auto-sharpens, you may want to turn that feature off so you can sharpen in Camera Raw or Photoshop.)

The Sharpening controls in Camera Raw are a bit like the Unsharp Mask filter in Photoshop. The Amount slider determines how sharply edges get defined. Oversharpened images tend to get noisy, so play with the slider until you find the right setting for the image. Keep the Radius setting lower for images with fine detail, but feel free to experiment with higher settings for other images. The Detail slider adjusts how much information gets sharpened. Lower settings can sharpen edges, while higher settings can make some textures pop out, which is great for some images, but not always the best for your human subject’s skin.

Masking determines how much of the image gets sharpened. Higher settings keep sharpening away from more of the image, and you can hold down the Option key while dragging the slider to see the areas where sharpening will be applied. Sharpened areas will appear in white, while masked out areas will appear in black.

Working in 100 percent view lets us determine how sharpening affects the cat’s whiskers. Luminance noise reduction made the eyes a bit more natural looking, and Color noise reduction got rid of some of the weird splotches.

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5 - When You're Done. The Done button at the bottom of the window saves all of your changes without creating a new image file. Your changes will be reflected in Bridge. The Save Image button creates a new image. If you don’t change the image’s name, Camera Raw will change it for you to prevent overwriting your original image. You can choose to save the image as a Digital Negative, a TIFF, a JPEG, or a Photoshop file. After you click the Save button, you’ll return to Bridge.

The Open Image button sends the image to Photoshop. You can also hold down the Shift key and watch the Open Image button become the Open Object button, which sends the adjusted image to Photoshop as a Smart Object.

This image of the cat was salvaged from the other file, after fixing exposure and the white point.

Jaggy Adobe JPEGs in Leopard's Cover Flow

Roman Loyola — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 14:00:00 -0500

Cover Flow is a major new feature of the Finder in Leopard. It works similar to the way Cover Flow on the iPod works. It's especially handy when you're perusing a folder of pictures.

For the most part, the picture previews in Cover Flow look crisp, but there seems to be an exception with Adobe JPEG files. In my experience, when you look at JPEGs saved in Adobe JPEG format, the image preview in Cover Flow is quite jaggy.

This JPEG file came straight from an Olympus camera. It looks great in Cover Flow, a new way to preview files in the Finder. Click on the picture to see the full image in a new browser window.

I took the same image, opened it in Adobe Photoshop CS3, and saved it as a JPEG with the compression level set to 12 (I didn't do any image modifications in Photoshop). Here's how it looks in Cover Flow — a jaggy mess. Click on the picture to see the full image in a new browser window.

I was able to repeat this with other Adobe JPEG photos. I also found that if I open the Adobe JPEG file in Preview and save as a JPEG, the newly saved file looks sharp in Cover Flow. I suspect that Adobe does something to the preview that causes the jaggies. If you look at the Adobe JPEG image in Quick Look (hit the spacebar afer you select the file in the Finder), the image looks fine.

A reader on Digg asked if Photoshop CS3 was set up for Full Size Image Previews (Photoshop > Preferences > File Handling). It wasn't initially, but I turned it on and retested. It didn't fix the jaggy images.

The fix. According to Apple, if a file already has a preview, "Leopard respects the preview." If there's no preview, "Cover Flow will provide a large size preview." The fix involves removing the preview from Adobe JPEG files.

In Photoshop CS3, go to Preferences (Photoshop > Preferences > File Handling). Under the Image Preview pulldown menu, select Never Save. Then open the Adobe JPEG file and save it as a JPEG. The file will save without a preview, and Cover Flow will create a crisp and clean one. See below.

It seems as though the preview that Adobe creates is of a lower quality than what Cover Flow creates. Click on the picture to see the full image.

By the way, Leopard adds a white border to preview icons. When you save a file in Photoshop CS3 as a JPEG, the border isn't on the icon preview (see below).

Top: The JPEG file straight from the camera has a white border. Below: The Adobe JPEG file sans border.

First Look: Inside Photoshop CS3

David Biedny — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 15:43:37 -0500

Photoshop's interface has been updated, but the biggest improvements are under the hood and nestling in tool palettes.

The people on the product team for Photoshop haven't been getting much sleep. We can only imagine how much Red Bull and coffee they consumed in the process of taking Photoshop CS2 to CS3, which Adobe released as a downloadable public beta back in December. The biggest cause for celebration - at least for creatives who bought new Macs in the last year or so - is that Photoshop CS3 runs natively on Intel-based Macs. And, of course, it won't come as a surprise to anyone if, once Photoshop CS3 ships, Apple sees a spike in sales of Mac Pros and MacBook Pros.

Whether or not you've downloaded and started working with the CS3 beta, there are likely some features you haven't had the time to try - or simply didn't know existed. To help you merge into the fast track, we offer a guided tour of CS3's most compelling new features: how they work, what they're good for, and in some cases, why we wish Adobe had taken them just a little further. We give you what you need to put CS3 through a more rigorous battery of tests, so you can decide if you want to step up for keeps - or not.

Next: The Face of Photoshop

The Face of Photoshop

Once you realize that you're cooking with a hotter flame, you'll immediately notice that the overall look of Photoshop CS3 has gone through some changes. Less is more, and in this case, there's less on the surface and more under the hood.

The Tools palette has gone through a major surgical reduction, slimming down from its familiar two-column girth to a single vertical strip of icons. Accompanying pop-up menus reveal the multiple modes for specific tools, such as the polygonal and magnetic modes for the Lasso tool. This frees up a little room on the screen. Fear not, old dogs, a single mouse click restores the classic two-column format. Then there's the addition of a slim iconic palette that appears next to the floating palettes for Layers, Channels, Info, the Navigator, Swatches, or any of the 21 main entries found in the Windows menu. These can be linked together with the main Tools palette to create an überpalette of all of Photoshop's tools.

Adobe has refined the tabbed windows interface now found in most of its applications. While overall we like the interface addition, some users might find it gratuitous, especially those who have already set up custom actions to open their most often used windows. A more useful change might have been adding the ability to customize the main Tools palette to remove unused features. How many people have ever used the Single Row and Column Marquee tools?

Photoshop CS3's updated interface is a lot more flexible than before. The idea is to allow you to customize it as needed and give more screen real estate to your images.

Next: The Latest Intel-igence

The Latest Intel-igence

Previous versions of Photoshop have worked reasonably well under Rosetta translation. But the fact is that anyone working with images consisting of more than a few layers - especially layers of several megabytes each - has likely experienced performance hits. With Intel-native CS3, the speed increases are significant. For our benchmarks, we used a 17-inch 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM and compared it with a dual 2GHz G5 tower with 2GB of RAM. Our 39MB test image fit completely into RAM on both systems, taking the hard disk access speed out of the equation.

Taking into consideration that this is a beta version of CS3, we saw some awesome speed bumps on some operations, while others offered only nominal increases. Your own results may vary.

Radial Blur set to zoom effect at Best quality, amount = 30
> PowerPC Mac: 120 seconds
> Intel Mac: 47 seconds
> Speed Increase: 155%

Change image size by 500%
> PowerPC Mac: 127 seconds
> Intel Mac: 27 seconds
> Speed Increase: 371%

Smart Blur, radius = 10, threshold = 15, quality = High, mode = Normal
> PowerPC Mac: 83 seconds
> Intel Mac: 61 seconds
> Speed Increase: 37%

Next: More to Love About Curves

More to Love About Curves

Advanced Photoshoppers are well aware of the importance of the Curves control. While there are lots of ways to change image density in Photoshop, none really comes close to the numerical precision of Curves. Even so, many artists rely more on Levels because its dialog features a built-in histogram - a statistical analysis of the brightness levels of all of the pixels in an image or a selection area. Photoshop CS3 adds the histogram to the Curves dialog. We applaud this move, but we wish Adobe had gone one step further and allowed the histogram to update itself on the fly.

Color overlays for individual channels and an integrated histogram are welcome additions to the Curves dialog. In this case, we isolated and modified the red channel.

Next: More to Love About Curves (continued)

More to Love About Curves (continued)

Another Levels capability that has found its way into Curves is a direct way to set the shadow and highlight breakpoints - the absolute darkest and lightest values in the image - by clicking the respective sliders at the bottom of the Curves controls. Also new to Curves is the ability to overlay the individual color channel curves together on the same readout (displayed in their respective channel colors), which is useful when you're doing precision color correction.

The shadow and highlight controls (and Command-Option) highlight the locations of clipped areas in the image.

As in Levels, you can also see exactly where these shadow and highlight regions fall on the image by pressing the Command and Option keys while clicking either of these controls. This is exactly what you need to determine where you're likely to run into problems when sending a photo to a printer or creating color separations for professional print reproduction.

Next: More to Love About Curves (continued)

More to Love About Curves (continued)

If you find that you're constantly using a certain set of Curve presets for your work, you'll be thrilled by the addition of a pop-up menu for multiple custom-named presets. Before, all you could do was load and apply one curve setting at a time. This new feature can also be found in the Channel Mixer, but surprisingly, that's the only other spot you'll find it. In a future version, we hope to see Adobe add presets in Levels, Color Balance, and Hue/Saturation.

Curves' new presets deliver one-click color correction. Here we used the Cross Process preset.

Next: Power Cloning

Power Cloning

Retouchers live and die by the ability to clone, and CS3 delivers some cool new tricks. It now has controls for changing the scale, rotation, and offset of the cloned target, and you can create up to five presets for cloning options. Instead of working on your image sight unseen, the clone source can be overlaid on top of your image as you paint, so you can predict exactly what will be applied at any given moment. If the overlay gets in the way, set it to vanish when you're actively painting.

Say good-bye to cloning in the dark with Show Overlay.

Next: Filters with Brains

Filters with Brains

One of Photoshop CS3's show-stopping new features is also the one that will most directly impact daily production and creative chores. The new Smart Filter implementation addresses one of the longest-standing requests of Photoshop users over the years: the ability to use filters nondestructively, leaving the underlying pixels of an image unaffected by experimentation. Anyone who has used Adjustment Layers in the last few versions of Photoshop is likely familiar with the flexibility of applying color corrections that can be changed at any time without subjecting the pixels to the major stress of reprocessing the color values over and over. The Smart Filters feature extends this notion to the Filter menu, with the notable exceptions of the Liquefy, Extract, Pattern Maker, and Vanishing Point commands (which have never really been treated as standard Photoshop filters in the traditional sense).

Get smart. Smart Filters work on a specific selected layer, unlike Adjustment Layers, which apply their color-correction setting to all underlying layers. The layer must first be converted to a Smart Object (a feature introduced in Photoshop CS2), allowing layers to be scaled, rotated, and stretched in a nondestructive fashion. Once you convert the layer, applying a specific filter creates a new entry in the Layers palette. Underneath the processed layer, a white box (representing the layer mask for the filter operations) appears, and the applied filter appears immediately below. You can stack the filters up, and even reorder them by clicking and dragging them to new positions in the stack. A button lets you toggle the filter effect on and off, and an editing button to the right brings up the dialog for that filter when you double-click it. Filter settings can be modified at any time, as long as the image is saved as a Photoshop file.

The order of filters in the stack is important - the processing happens bottom to top, with the topmost filter being the last to affect the image. For example, if you plan on sharpening a layer with Unsharp Mask, it should be placed at the top of the filter stack, and always on top of any Blur filter. The area of the layer that is affected by the filters can be controlled via a layer mask, which is displayed in the white box to the left of the Smart Filters label.

Five different filters have been applied nondestructively to this image, using Smart Filters.

Next: Filters with Brains (continued)

Filters with Brains (continued)

Add a layer mask. Holding down the Option key, click the thumbnail for the Smart Filter mask, and you'll see the active document display change - instead of the image, you'll see solid white. Select all (Command-A) and invert the mask (Command-I). Now it's all black. Make a selection with any of the selection tools and, making sure the current foreground color is white, fill the selection with white by pressing Option-Delete. Now Option-click the thumbnail of the Smart Filter layer mask in the Layers palette, and you'll see the combination of filter effects only appear in the part of the image that falls inside of the white region of the layer mask. Only the portion of the image under the white part of the layer mask is now processed.

Smart Filters applied through a layer mask put the effects right where you want them. Here we masked and applied filters to a small area of the bee’s eye. The white dot in the black rectangle next to “Smart Filters,” above, indicates which part of the image has been modified.

Next: Filters with Brains (continued)

Filters with Brains (continued)

Better blending. If you've ever used the blending modes for layers, you're familiar with the degree of creativity that's possible when you combine images using these modes to produce effects that could never be achieved with any number of layer masks or alpha channels. The Smart Filters feature implements a longtime ‚Äúsecret‚Äù trick known to savvy Photoshoppers: allowing blend modes to be used for filtering operations. In order to access this hidden capability, press the Control key while clicking a specific filter in the filter stack, and you can see what happens, for example, when Gaussian Blur is applied to a layer in Color Dodge mode, a striking effect.

Any of the blending modes can be applied to the currently active layer, and you'll find both stunning (and frightening) results, depending on the combinations.

Even though Smart Filters might seem like the bee's knees, there are some limitations that might annoy advanced users. Regardless of the number of filters applied to a single layer, only one layer mask can be applied to the filter stack, hampering the common practice of applying different amounts of filtering to multiple regions of an image. That's yet another item to add to our wish list for Photoshop CS4.

Gaussian Blur filter with Color Dodge blend mode delivers glowing results.

BONUS TIP: Smarter Smart Filters

If you've been frustrated by not being able use the Shadow/Highlight tool in a nondestructive Adjustment Layer, you'll be totally stoked to find that in CS3, it can be applied to a layer as a Smart Filter.

Next: It's All Black & White

It's All Black & White

The fastest way to convert color images to black-and-white in Photoshop has long been a simple matter of choosing the Grayscale mode from the Image > Mode submenu and allowing Photoshop to blend most of the green components of the image with a healthy dollop of red and almost no blue. Of course, that rarely results in a rich-looking image. Power users have tried a variety of other methods, including selecting a single channel from the Channels palette before invoking the Grayscale conversion, which forces Photoshop to utilize just that channel in the conversion process. Other techniques call up the mystical Calculations dialog in order to mix custom ratios of the main color components. The Channel Mixer delivered an expanded set of options.

CS3 offers a new Black and White mode that streamlines the process without leaving you with a flat-looking black-and-white image and allows you to choose exact percentages of any and all of the primary color components. There’s even an integrated tinting command, which essentially provides the Colorize portion of the Hue/Saturation color controls, for creating tinted versions of your grayscale images.

Custom-mix any color component to create rich-looking black-and-white images.

Next: A Better Way to Be Selective

A Better Way to Be Selective

Isolating portions of an image is key to a multitude of different editing operations, especially for creative projects and detailed photo retouching and compositing. The art of making good selections is often honed over many years, and it can sometimes seem overwhelming. Luckily for Photoshop users of all experience levels, CS3 brings some new mojo to the task. The Quick Selection tool delivers an entirely new way to make selections, by simply painting over the general area you want to isolate.

As you paint over the desired area, the selection builds itself automatically, and of course, you can save the selection to its own alpha channel for further refinement. While some might find the Quick Selection tool useful, there’s no way to adjust the sensitivity, something we got into the habit
of doing with the Magic Wand.

The Refine Selections dialog is an extremely welcome addition that significantly streamlines the process of choking (contracting) and spreading (expanding) the outer edges of a selection, and controls the softness of the edges of a mask, all in an interactive fashion that matches manual techniques.

There’s a lot of control to be explored in the Refine Selections dialog. The best way to understand the dynamics of it is to experiment with making a selection around something and opening the Refine Edges dialog, which features a contextual preview à la Quick Mask mode, showing the selected area against white, black, the actual background, or the mask channel displayed by itself. Refine Edges is our pick for the most useful new tool for compositing professionals

Refine Selections delivers seriously fine control for making precision masks.

BONUS TIP: Intolerent Tolerance

Changing the Magic Wand’s Tolerance setting has no effect on the Quick Selection tool. While it seems odd that we would try this, we did discover that this Tolerance setting does indeed control the sensitivity of the otherwise-unrelated Grow command (found in the Select menu).

Next: Camera Raw Talent

Camera Raw Talent

The RAW format has become the standard for digital photographers who take their craft seriously, and Adobe has added some truly useful new tweaks to the Camera Raw screen. If you’ve ever had to adjust the overall exposure of an image to bring out dark shadow detail, you already know what happens to the light regions of the image—they tend to wash out, losing significant detail. The Fill Light slider does wonders in brightening up the overall picture, while Recovery restores the detail to the bright areas that lose their fine detailing when Fill Light is used a bit too eagerly. Vibrance does a lovely job of pumping up overall color values without pushing the image too much into clipsville, and is a good way to add life to a flat photograph.

An integrated red-eye removal tool and basic retouching brush have been added to the Camera Raw dialog, though it’s hard to justify not simply doing these tasks inside of Photoshop itself.

Recovery, Fill Light, and Vibrance work together to make our subject look, er, lovely.

Next: Bridge Over Troubled Water?

Bridge Over Troubled Water?

Adobe’s Bridge application has become the launch pad for all media, and the update of Bridge, included with Photoshop CS3, includes some slick tricks. Anyone who’s been using the public beta of Adobe’s Lightroom program will immediately notice that Bridge now looks like a Lightroom Lite, with a dark visual motif that’s easy on the eyes. We love the fact that you can Command-click on multiple images and compare them side by side. And there’s even a handy new magnifying loupe that can be positioned anywhere in the main viewing panel.

Side-by-side comparisons and an integrated loupe tool improve Bridge’s usefulness.

The new "Stacks" metaphor is a helpful way to visually group related images together, to make the most efficient use of interface space—it’s also a feature that Apple Aperture users will be familiar with. The number in the upper-left corner of a stack indicates how many images are in it; clicking on the number displays the stack.

Stacks are a slick way to quickly organize related images.

Though it’s no Keynote, Bridge has a much-improved slideshow function, with a slew of transition effects, expanded timing options, and other little touches that make it quite nice for on-the-fly presentations of your Photoshop handiwork.

Next: Is It Worth the Upgrade?

Is It Worth the Upgrade?

There are scads of additional features, changes, and additions that we simply don’t have room to cover here, including expanded video-output support to statistical analysis tools, auto alignment and blending of multiple layers, support for live 3D object layers, and more. Creatives who work with large images and need to share them with colleagues over the Web can export full-resolution images to CS3’s Zoomify format. The images load quickly in Adobe Flash Player, and recipients can zoom in on specific areas of an image by using the arrow keys, plus (+), and minus (-). Meanwhile, Device Central can help designers format images for display on mobile devices. We highlighted the updates that seem to have the widest application or that address frustrations we’ve long had with the app.

At press time, Photoshop CS3 was still in public beta, so it’s likely that Adobe will fix a host of bugs large and small for the shipping version due out this spring (look for our review in an upcoming issue of Mac|Life magazine and here on MacLife.com). What’s clear from the many hours we’ve spent with the beta version is that Photoshop CS3 packs significant improvements over CS2. If you have an Intel Mac, upgrading is a no-brainer. And if you never stepped up to CS2, you might as well skip ahead to CS3 - unless, of course, your hardware is too outdated to run Mac OS 10.4.8, which CS3 requires.