Photo.net Newsletter: June 24, 2010

Hi %%First Name%%,

For some of us, summer is upon us in its full glory. Hot days filled with beach time if you’re near one, popsicles, watermelon seed spitting contests, boat races, picnics in the park, vacation time… Monday, June 21 was the longest/shortest day of the year depending on which hemisphere you reside in—it marks the beginning of summer for the northern hemisphere and the beginning of winter for the southern hemisphere. What did you do to celebrate? Post your thoughts here.

This mid-June newsletter focuses on software. With digital photography, just like with film, all images need processing for optimal viewing. There’s a world of possibilities out there! Theano reviews the brand new Photoshop CS5—what’s new and different in the latest version of Photoshop. She also takes a look at Nik Silver Efex Pro, a plug-in that’s a favorite for many pros because of its thorough black and white conversion process. Harold Davis reviewed Nik Color Efex Pro, which we featured in a previous newsletter, but this seemed to be an appropriate time to re-highlight the article. Don’t forget about Jay Kinghorn’s and Harold Davis’ in-depth advanced Photoshop tutorials for more ideas on getting creative with post-processing your images.

Also, as a heads-up for those of you reading this newsletter at work, the Photo of the Week feature is an artistic semi-nude image. It doesn’t show anything you couldn’t see in an issue of Vogue or Cosmo, but you may want to avoid the current Photo of the Week if you find images of this sort distasteful or inappropriate.

Don’t miss the deals and discounts from Adorama (scroll down) including a new FREE SHIPPING coupon for Photo.net members. Also, share your thoughts about editorial, community, photography, and anything in between on the Facebook Page, Photo.net Blog, and Twitter Feed.

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, please send them to us directly at contact@photo.net. Enjoy the newsletter!

Sincerely,

Hannah Thiem, Managing Editor, and Josh Root, Chief Admin, Director of Community, Mop & Bucket Man

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Editorial Highlights

We already featured a bunch of articles in the earlier newsletter this month. Mid-month, the focus is on software reviews and Photoshop tutorials.

Photoshop CS5 Review

Adobe Photoshop celebrates its 20th anniversary this year with an estimated 10 million users worldwide, exceeding the dreams of its founders who hoped it would sell 500 copies a month when it was first released. Now in its 12th iteration, Adobe Photoshop CS5 remains the go-to image editing application for photographers, graphic designers, and other creatives. The Photoshop Extended, in addition to 3D, offers special options for professionals such as architects, engineers and doctors.

The latest version of Photoshop offers a huge number of updates and new features—large and small—so Theano concentrated her review on the standard version of Photoshop CS5 and its photo-centric features. Adobe included more than two dozen of user inspired enhancements that individually, and collectively, improve workflow. Exciting! Read on…

Read Photoshop CS5 Review.

Nik Silver Efex Pro Review

Photographers who started shooting in the pre-digital era often got their start in the darkroom, processing and printing black and white images. Although computers and printers have taken the place of most wet darkrooms, the potential for great digital black and white photography was more fully realized as software companies created increasingly sophisticated tools to create monochrome images. Nik Software’s Silver Efex Pro is the perfect example of a highly effective black and white conversion tool. It also happens to be Theano’s favorite. She takes a look in an more in-depth review of this valuable yet simple-to-use plug-in, and includes a step-by-step tutorial on using a control point in Silver Efex.

Read the Nik Silver Efex Pro Review.

Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 Review

Software. Invaluable for the digital photographer. Nik makes a bunch of software plug-ins that work with Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture—for additional image enhancement. Harold Davis uses Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 on almost every image he edits. That’s saying a lot. Have you seen his portfolio? He walks us through the best ways on using some of his favorite filters: Cross Processing, Glamour Glow, and Tonal Contrast.

Read Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 Review

Special Editorial Feature of the Month

Advanced Photoshop Tutorials

My first and biggest “aha” revelation about digital photography took place the day I discovered multi-RAW processing—processing a single RAW photo file more than once. For me, the ability to process a RAW file multiple times—taking the best of each processing job for the final image—is the most important advantage that digital photography has over film photography. If you don’t multi-RAW process, you can take photos with immediacy—but you are losing out on a great part of the richness of digital photography… - Harold Davis

Read more: Multi-RAW Processing

Creativity in the Photoshop Darkroom by Harold Davis

• Multi-RAW Processing
• Creating HDR Images by Hand [Part I]
• Creating HDR Images by Hand [Part II]
• Sharpening in LAB Color
• Converting to Black and White
• Using LAB Color Adjustments
• Inverting Backgrounds with LAB
• Intro to Compositing

Advanced Photoshop Tutorials by Jay Kinghorn

• Layer Masks
• Smart Objects
• Advanced Masking
• Image Sharpening
• Burning and Dodging

Free shipping coupon from Adorama

Photo.net subscribers will now see an option in their “workspace” area to claim an Adorama coupon for free shipping on purchases over $150. To claim, simply click on the link and you’ll be sent to a page showing your coupon code. Also, the code will show up in your workspace in place of the link that you previously clicked on.

More info and rules, click here.

Community News

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Server space, programmer time, hours and hours of customer service all cost money. Photo.net is a business and we have to keep our head above water. How can you contribute to make sure that Photo.net keeps growing and improving? Here are four easy ways.

How to help support Photo.net

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What’s Happening In Our Forums

• Casual Photo Conversations (48 Responses) Getting Started with Underwater Photography: What Gear?

Last month’s community question: What gear would an advanced photographer bring on an underwater vacation if they wanted to get started with UW photography?

Gordon Bowbrick: The answer very much depends on your budget. Ikelite make the most common and least expensive cases for DSLR’s, but they are still around $1500 for a 5D or 50D. You will need separate lens ports for each lens you plan on diving with. Aluminum cases are stronger, last longer and are much more expensive than the Ikelite polycarbonate ones. Assuming that you are an experienced diver, you will be photographing at depths beyond the travel of at least some significant part of the light spectrum. Even in the bright clear waters of the tropics, colours begin to drop off significantly beyond about 15 – 20 feet. At 100 feet the world becomes close to B&W. You will need at least one underwater strobe to get back the natural colours. Two strobes are better but one is a good start. The strobes need to be mounted on flexible arms to adjust positioning to avoid backscatter from particulate matter suspended in the water and achieve even lighting. A strobe with an aiming/focus light is a good idea as achieving auto focus in dim light at depth can be challenging. TTL as well as manual settings are nice. The Sea & Sea YS-110 alpha is a good and reasonably priced UW strobe or at least I am happy with mine…

David Carroll: There’s an old saying that goes along the lines of “golf is a great way to ruin a nice walk”. In a similar fashion, “U/W photography is a great way to ruin a nice dive”. What I’m saying is, it’s pretty hard to come back from a dive with decent pics unless photography becomes the sole focus (pun unintended) of the dive. Starting off with lugging the gear – a camera/housing with a couple of strobes on booms is a monstrously awkward thing to maneuver in and out of the water. Trying to get a decent close up of a fish or other creature usually entails spending most of the dive lying on your belly waiting for the beast to become sufficiently accustomed to your presence that it shows itself. And when you surface and you’ve taken care of your diving gear – always a chore – you then have to start in on taking care of your camera. What I’m getting at (eventually) is don’t invest too much in your setup until you’ve tried it a few times and decided if you like it. You can pick up a used Nikonos and a strobe for a few hundred dollars – with the understanding that, absent some maintenance to make sure that the myriad seals and O-rings are OK - the thing could flood on your first dive.

I’m a fairly accomplished diver, but after I tried the camera/multiple strobe approach, I found I enjoyed the diving, rather than the photography. The one approach that I did enjoy, and which I will pursue again when/if I ever get back into the water, was available light photography using pushed (ISO 1600) B&W film, a Nikonos and a 15mm/2.8 wide angle. The quality of light in open water is beautiful. There’s a mysterious, alien vibe that reminds me of how I felt when I started diving, and which a sharp colorful strobe-lit pic just doesn’t capture (for me, at least).

Steve Levine: I learned quickly that a person that is a good scuba diver, and also a good photographer. Is not automatically a good underwater photographer. It takes practice to even obtain poor images. I know I’ve taken many undersea failures. Gordon is exactly correct regarding flash. Usually below 15 feet things start to go blue/green on you. A Nikonos with it’s companion flash is the best place to start if you want superior results. A small underwater film or digital camera with a built in flash , would be my last, but a workable choice.

Add your thoughts to the Underwater gear conversation thread here

What’s happening in some of the other forums?

• Nikon (22 Responses) 24-70 f2.8 or 17-55DX or ? for a D90
• Olympus and Four-Thirds (11 Responses) Panasonic GF1?
• Digital Darkroom (33 Responses) spyder 3 elite vs pro
• Canon EOS (35 Responses) Is it the right time to buy a Mark 5d II

Go To Photo.net Forums. »

Monthly Project: My Family (Our World #6)

This is the sixth of six months worth of themes that will attempt to give Photo.net members the opportunity to share the world around themselves with the rest of the Photo.net community. We are a worldwide community, but we really have a lot in common. We all sleep somewhere every night, we all have friends and family, we all have somewhere we call “home”. These themes will break those things down into simple statements that we can photograph: room, home, family, city, and so on. The idea is that the simplicity of the themes will be impressive when brought together by a group of people.

June’s theme is “My Family”. We’ve all got family. You, me, the pope, the lazy slacker smoking on the corner, the guy cooking your breakfast at the deli, all of us. Now, family can mean your blood relations, or it can simply mean those people who give you the love and support that makes life worth living. Nobody is going to be too specific on the definition. So please take this chance to finish out the “My World” series and share images of your family with the Photo.net community.

See all of the Monthly Projects (and submission instructions) on the Monthly Project Index page. Also, be sure to take a look at last month’s My Friends project page and see all the wonderful images that were uploaded. Here are a few that caught my eye:

Editors’ Picks

And this month’s editors’ picks is… Summer Photography.

Samples:

Also, take a look at what the Editors found visually interesting in the previous months—perhaps one of your images has been selected…

Also, take a look at some of the most popular Editors’ Picks from previous months:

• Flower Photography
• Baby Photography
• Wedding Photography

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