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Question:
I am trying to learn Photoshop, what books can you recommend?
Answer:
Photoshop 5 Bible by Deke McClelland and Real World Photoshop 5 by David Blatner and Bruce Fraser are the two books that I use most of the time. I recommend you get familiar with the basic tools and concepts (layers, layer modes, layer masks, adjustment layers) and then start to work on a project, learning by doing what you need to do at that time. This is the time that you should refer to the books. Trying to read any Photoshop book (except maybe Artistry) from front to back is a painful process.
Question:
Hi Garry,
I want to get a number of my images scanned so that I can use them on the internet. I know very little about this and I thought you might be the best person to start with. Where do you get your images scanned and at what resolution? Do you have them put on a CD ROM or some other storage device? What kind of software do I need to access these images? I am not sure I want to get into a software as powerful as Photoshop (especially at a price tag these days of $1000) nor do I necessarily want to manipulate my images (but I will probably want to do that in the future). Also do you have any thoughts on a reasonably good color printer to print such images.
Hope you don't mind all the questions!
Answer:
I have the Nikon LS-2000 slide scanner, so I scan all of my own images now. Before I bought the scanner, I was getting my scans done at the Focus Centre, Ginn's also have this service. I was getting them put onto a 100mb Zip cartridge.
I also have a CD writer. When I scan my images now I save them on my hard drive and work on them right away. Once Masterfile has accepted them I send them via ftp to them and then write the images to the CD for my own storage. Sometimes I will save the image with all of the layers, if I think that some where down the road I might use part of that image with different elements.
If you are only going to be using them for the web you don't need a very large file size or a very high resolution scan. 900 DPI(2.5mb file size) should be large enough to do any corrections to the image. From any scan you get done, you will have to sharpen it (bring it back into focus). I scan my images at 2700 DPI, the file size is 27mb. The best format to save these images for the web is in JPG as you can open these in almost any basic graphics program. There is a cheaper Adobe Photoshop program "LE", I got a copy of it for free with my printer. It does quite a few functions.
I have a Epson Stylus 600 printer (3 years old) it is pretty good (not quite the quality of a photographic print), the newer models are even better. I haven't really looked at them seriously because I don't print that many pictures.
Question:
You remember that Photoshop 5 Bible book you recommended? I
bought the hard copy and I read it like a maniac in the streetcar, pushing
the stroller, sitting on the can--but I'm confused about one thing: the nikon
LS 2000 scanner can not apply "clean image" on black and white negs at its
high res settings (12 bit/16x multiscan) , so I decided to use the "dust and
scratches" filter. But the Bible says that the dust and scratches filter is
useless and that the author will use the "clone" tool instead? Problem is is
that I got a thousand little tini specs on my image (even after re washing
the negs) that's going to take me hours to clone. What do you recommend?
Answer:
To get rid of the dust and scratches here is what you have to do. Make a copy of the background layer, select this layer, go to FILTER > NOISE > DUST & SCRATCHES. Set the Threshold to 0 and increase the radius setting until most of the scratches and dust disappear. Add some noise to this layer so that it closely matches your original image. Use this layer to "paint" in the dust and scratches, to do this make sure this background copy is still selected, go to EDIT > TAKE SNAPSHOT. Then select the original background and turn off the background copy layer. Click on the cloning tool and in the options box choose FROM SNAPSHOT. If the dust or scratches are light use the DARKEN MODE for the cloning tool (this will only fill in the light areas and will not affect the other areas of the image). If the dust or scratches are dark use the LIGHTEN MODE for the cloning tool and go over these areas. For this technique you should use a small brush size, although it is tempting to rush through it using a large brush.
Have Fun doing this!
Question:
How do you label your slides, do you use a special program? Also how do you keep track of your slides? Do you use a numbering system?
Answer:
I use the Cradoc Caption Writer to label my slides. I use my own number system to keep track of them. The numbering system is fairly simple.
The first 2 digits are letters they identify the location (ON = Ontario; PQ = Quebec; PE = P.E.I.; ME = Maine; NH = New Hampshire and so on, for international destinations I usually use the first 2 letters of the country, GR = Greece; FR = France; DR = Dominican Republic. Exceptions are when the letters have been already used like for Mexico, ME has been used by Maine so Mexico is MX)
The next 2 digits represent the year in which the image was made (98, 99, 00). As I don't expect to be photographing in 2100, 2 digits work fine.
The last 4 digits represent the sequential number of the picture taken in that year.
So my Codes for last year look like:
ON990001 (this would be the 1st slide that I took last year in Ontario)
ON991373 (this would be the 1373rd slide that I took last year in Ontario, which is the last slide that I took in Ontario)
I store all of the slides in GEPE slide boxes, each box holds 125 slides (5 divisions of 25 slides each) Slide # ON000001 which is the 1st slide from this year in Ontario will go immediately after # ON991373 in the slide box. That way if I want to get a slide from Ontario I just go to the shelves that have the Ontario boxes.
I used to use a variation of this system which used 2 other letters after the date to further define the categories, but I found I was being overwhelmed by the number of categories that I had.
Hope this helps,
Question:
I am having problems with "banding" in Photoshop. Any suggestions?
Answer:
1. Start by making a new layer in Photoshop, select Overlay mode and check
the "fill with overlay neutral color" radio button in the dialog. You can also use Soft Light for a more subtle application of noise or Hard Light for heavier noise.
2. Apply noise to this neutral gray layer only. In RGB this will be a true 50% gray but in CMYK the channel values depend on the CMYK set-up.
3. Flatten before output
This method has the advantage of ramping the noise off in highlights and shadows with zero noise in black and white values thus preventing a dirty look. This also allows you to add more noise that you might be able to otherwise in the most troublesome areas of banding. You might also experiment with applying slightly different amounts of noise to individual channels (still only on your noise layer) with higher percentages in channels with the most banding.
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