"Front Image" (Crop Tool): Don't touch it!

When you choose your Crop Tool in Photoshop (I don't think this applies to Elements), one of the features of the Options Bar is the "Front Image" button:

When you click this button, it populates the three fields with the Width, Height and Resolution of the image you're working on.

There is only ONE reason to use this button, and it is a very rare one.  You use it if you want to crop another image to the exact same size as the one you're presently viewing.  You press that button to get the specs of the current image, then switch to the other image, and crop it.  Both images will then be exactly the same height, width and resolution.

That hardly seems worthy of a blog post?  You're dead right. It's such an obscure function that it's barely worth mentioning.  The reason I'm writing this post is because an alarming number of people misuse the Front Image button.

Faulty Camera Raw plug-in

Last night I did a fresh install of Photoshop CS5 on my PC.  After the install, I immediately chose "Updates" from the Help menu, and it installed all of the latest plug-ins, patches, etc.  All pretty straightforward - the kind of thing we've all done a few times.

But this morning when I came to do some work, I found that there were a couple of CR2 files from one particular client which I couldn't view in Bridge, nor open in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw).  I could see everybody else's raw files ok, it was just this one set.

I was totally perplexed, because I knew I'd viewed these files only a couple of days earlier, before the re-install.  And what was more, I found I could open them just fine in Elements 9, so I knew the files themselves were ok.  It was a problem with CS5.

But what was the problem?  Like I said, I could open other raw files without any trouble.  So I thought, well, maybe I didn't do the Updates properly?  So I went to Help>Updates again, but it told me everything was up to date.  I tried the same thing via Bridge - same result.

I'm happy to report I found the solution, and I'm posting it here on the remote chance that somebody else has this same problem, and finds my blog ...

I went to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Plug-Ins\CS5\File Formats and found the file called Camera Raw.8bi.  I deleted it, then went to the Adobe site and manually downloaded that file again.  I put the newly-downloaded file into the folder, and launched Bridge - voila!  I could see and edit all of my raw files again.  Huzzah!

So I guess it means that the Camera Raw plugin file must have been faulty somehow. I don't know how it happened, but I'm very glad that my tale had a happy ending.

(I assume this problem and solution could apply to any version of Photoshop.  If you're on a Mac, I believe the path to find your plug-in is /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Plug-Ins/CS5/File Formats.)

Blanket fade examples

In my last post I demonstrated my technique for blanket fade.  I hope you liked it.  (If you haven't read it, please do so, or this post won't make much sense!)

Here, I'll show you two more examples using the same method.

Many thanks to Amanda Miley for this image:

Blanket fade tutorial

By popular demand, I finally got around to writing this tute.  Let's take a look at what we're aiming to achieve:

It's the classic blanket-blurring-off-into-the-distance.  In most cases, it's really easy to do, as I'm about to demonstrate.

Before I start, I must express my gratitude to Amy Cope Photography for the use of this gorgeous image. Thanks Amy!  Also, I've recorded this tutorial in Photoshop Elements 9.  I never pass up an opportunity to show Elements users how seriously their software ROCKS.  CS5-CSschmive, I say ;)

Making a Before-and-After

Lately a whole bunch of people have asked me how I prepare my side-by-side before-and-after comparisons, such as the ones I post on my Facebook page.  Eg:

etc.  It's really easy, so here it is.

There are two stages to the process - firstly, getting the before and after on top of each other, and secondly, rearranging them side by side.

Cropping Tutorial

At face value, cropping a photo seems such a simple task that it shouldn't require a tutorial at all, let alone a two-part one.  Yet I'm asked more questions related to cropping than any other single issue.  It can be genuinely confusing for people.

PART ONE: HOW IT WORKS

We all know what cropping does.  It removes part of a photo.  If we had a physical photographic print in our hands, we'd crop it by cutting it with scissors or a scalpel, and throwing part of it away.  In digital terms, we remove some excess pixels from one or more sides of the file.

In all programs, the Crop Tool looks something like this:

Let's discuss cropping in various software ...

Cropping raw files

In Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom (and probably all the other raw programs too), it's really simple.  You have two options - crop to a specific rectangular ratio; or "freeform" crop to any rectangular shape you wish.

Must I calibrate?

I'm frequently asked "My prints already match my monitor.  Do I really need to calibrate?"

The answer is "No you don't, but yes you should."

Obviously, at this point in time, if your prints are turning out exactly as you expect, then there's no immediate problem.  Ultimately, the whole goal of colour-management is to get no nasty surprises when you open your packet of prints from the lab.

But one of the purposes of calibration is to standardise your screen's output from now to the end of its useful life.  This is the key issue here - screens change.  Let's face it, any electrical or electronic device changes over time.  Your toaster won't toast your bread as evenly after a couple of years as it did when you first bought it.  So it is with screens.

The important thing I want to make clear is this:  If your screen is already very good, calibrating it won't make much, if any, visible difference.  A large part of the process we call "calibration" is simply to record a description of the characteristics of your screen.

So we come back to the first point.  If calibrating your screen tomorrow won't change it, why bother?  Because calibrating will ensure that your screen looks the same in three years as it does tomorrow.  And that is peace of mind.

Don't double your editing!

A brief post today, but a very important one.  I need to make something VERY clear:

If you shoot  in Raw format, and edit in ACR or LR, you should never need to do any overall adjustments in Photoshop.  Your overall editing (the whole photo, I mean) can and should be done completely in your Raw program.  If you do any global adjustment in PS (even a small thing like a soft light layer, or a little curves bump), then you haven't used your Raw program efficiently, and you've wasted some of your valuable time.

Photoshop is for selective work - ie layers and masks.  Lightening somebody's face, or greening up some grass, or whatever.  Also, the pixel editing such as cloning, healing, skin smoothing.

If you find yourself having to make overall adjustments in PS, stop and slap yourself, and re-visit your Raw processing.  Time is money, and you should be working as quickly and efficiently as you can.  And that means harnessing the amazing batch-processing power of Raw programs.

There is, of course, one reason to make overall adjustments to your photos in Photoshop, and that's for artistic effects.  Only apply your creative stuff right at the end of your workflow, once the clean processing has been done.

Photoshop vignette methods

Vignettes can add a touch of emphasis and "punch" to a photo if used well. In this tutorial, I'll discuss a few simple vignette methods in Photoshop and Elements.

Before I get into the nuts and bolts, I want to start with a couple of important points:

• Be gentle. To my mind, a vignette shouldn't be a prominent feature of a photo - in fact, the casual observer shouldn't be consciously aware that a vignette has been added at all. Its purpose is to subtly draw the viewer's eye to the important features of the photograph.
  
  I think the majority of established photographers would admit, if pressed, that they went through a strong vignette phase which they now regret. It might have been trendy at one stage, and who knows? - it might come back. But right now, I think less is more.
  
  (Disclaimer: I'll be applying stronger-than-usual vignettes in this tutorial, for the sake of emphasis.)
  
  
• Always keep it on its own layer. I know I bang on about layers a lot, and I know that not everyone saves their layered files as fastidiously as I do. But vignettes are awfully dependent on the chosen output size - if you apply your neat vignette to a 2:3 full frame image, then your client orders a 4:5 print (eg 8x10), your vignette might end up looking unbalanced. In that case, you need to be able to modify the vignette layer to suit the new crop.
  
  Plus, of course, you can easily reduce the strength of the vignette layer at a later date, if you find you were a bit too enthusiastic :)

Buying a wide-gamut screen

You might be considering a wide-gamut option for your next monitor purchase.  There are more and more of them around, at better and better prices.

While it's wonderful to be able to display most of the Adobe RGB colour space (ie more than sRGB), there are three small factors you need to be aware of:

1. You need a calibration device which can handle wide-gamut.  When you're budgeting for your monitor purchase, check to see if your current calibrator is wide-gamut-capable.  If it isn't, you'll need to find some room in your budget for a new device.

2. Once you have a wide-gamut screen, EVERYTHING needs to be colour-managed, because no colours will look right in non-colour-managed apps.  If you're not already a Firefox or Safari web browser, you'll need to make the switch.

3. A wide-gamut screen is capable of showing much more vivid colour than your lab can possibly print.  So you'll need to include soft-proofing in your workflow at times when you have bright colours (clothing/flowers/etc) in your images.

None of these things are big "problems", per se.  I'm certainly not discouraging you from buying wide-gamut.  They're just considerations, that's all.