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The Idiot’s way round Photoshop |
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Page 1 of 4 The Idiot’s way round Photoshop :
So, you have taken your first digital picture and now you would like to
prepare it for printing. For the purpose of this article I am using
Photoshop 7 but for most the general principles will apply. I have also
assumed that the reader knows how to load software into his P.C. (Mac
users will find things a bit different but again the general principles
will apply.)
The first thing to do is to make sure that your monitor is set up
correctly. You just are wasting your time and money if it isn’t. Now,
there are loads of fairly expensive gadgets that you can hang on the
screen which will help you calibrate it. If you read through the web
sites you will also find countless essays and tips but the plain fact
is you don’t need any of them, remember, keep it simple.
Find a nice image on a site. Vincent Oliver
for instance has a downloadable colour chart at full resolution which
he has posted to help people. Anyway get his image up on screen then
with the aid of the monitor controls get it to look as perfect as you
can. What you are seeing is what Oliver saw on his screen, a screen
which I can guarantee is calibrated to within an inch of its life.
So now hopefully we have a monitor which we can trust, do this exercise every few weeks because they do ‘drift’ off.
Right, next we need a picture. There are two ways of getting the
picture from the camera to the screen. First is the direct method. A
connection cable came with your camera, just attach one end to the
camera and the other to a USB port, (they are the long narrow ones with
half the plug blanked off with a bit of plastic, there I told you this
would be simple.) Ensure that the camera is switched on and if
appropriate the selector switch has been turned to download. Hopefully
you will already have loaded your photo editing software and created a
short cut to your desk top.
Click on the P.S (Photoshop) icon on your desk top. This will bring the
software into play. Now select ‘Browse’. A whole heap of things will
have appeared on the top left hand side in a menu. You will note that
the main items have a little box with a + sign against them. Look for
“My Computer”, click on the + sign and it will open another long list.
You are looking for “removable drive H”, click on it, and another
folder will appear. Again another click and all your pictures will
appear in thumbnail form, as if by magic. I still actually believe that
it is magic. After you have selected your picture you might get a menu
entitled “Embedded Profile Mismatch”, just select “Use the Embedded
profile” and all will be well.
If you now double click, (by the way, so far each click of the mouse is
a left finger one) the picture will be automatically transferred into
the Photoshop page.
The other method is the so called card reader. A quite inexpensive
device; one end you connect to a USB port and the other end takes your
card. I don’t like them, they never seem to work reliably, the only the
advantage is that they are not draining the camera battery in the same
way as the ‘camera plug-in method’
You have now got the file onto the screen and can get down to some
serious work (or playing about.) Actually seeing that we have got this
far perhaps I should explain a little about my philosophy regarding
digital. I have nothing against the guys and gals who want to have fun
and create the most way out images. However, I tend to limit myself to
carrying out in the digital workplace only that which I could have done
in the old wet darkroom. There are a couple of exceptions but basically
this is how I work.
The first thing is to get the picture straight and cropping if it
needs it, exactly as you would have done in the darkroom by adjusting
the enlarger head and the orientation of the baseboard. With this image
let’s pretend that the picture was taken out of true horizontally. So
the first thing is to correct this little problem.
Across the top of your screen can be seen about half a dozen
headings, from “File” to “Help”, click on “Select” then from the drop
down file select “All”. From the top headings select “Image”, find
“Rotate”. A click on that will bring up a neat little menu asking you
how you want to rotate the image. With this example it’s only a few
degrees so select “Arbitrary” then type in a value, here 5’ should
straighten it, click O.K...
It’s a funny thing but it is a fact that sloping horizontals and
digital cameras seem to go hand in hand. Using a R/F (rangefinder)
Leica or an SLR (single lens reflex) it is not a problem I suffer from.
But with a point and shoot many snaps are slightly “off”. The slope
also always seems to be towards the shutter release. Perhaps it’s
because most of these cameras have a very imprecise release action or
it’s the shutter lag element. You press down, nothing happens, you
press harder and the shutter operates and the end of the camera goes
down in sympathy.
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