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March 6, 2014

Ballroom Dance, Event, Photography, Technology | 0 comment

Adobe InDesign Intro – Tech Thursday

Arthur Murray - Chevy Chase, MD - ©TimeLine Media

The Adobe InDesign software is becoming a larger part of my photography as I learn more about the power of this program. The first time I used the program was with the CS5 suite as it was included with a package of programs from Adobe that included Photoshop, Illustrator and Lightroom. I did not think I would have any use for InDesign, but many photographers started to show videos on how they use InDesign for making album templates. It was then that it clicked!

Page Layout Design

If keeping things perfectly centered, perfectly aligned with other elements, or perfectly aligned on a page, then this program is for you. It is amazingly useful for making album layouts. I use them for Ballroom Brag Books or wedding albums. Additionally it is really easy to make collages like I did recently for the TimeLine Media Facebook photo contest:

InDesign working layout - ©TimeLine Media — InDesign working layout – ©TimeLine Media

Frames are the basis for working in InDesign. You create the frame where you would like to place your element. These can be photos, text, illustration, or any other digital object. When adding text, you need to draw out the size of the box that you would like, then type. Afterwards, the text box acts like a text box in any other application. The powerful part of InDesign is that the frame can be moved anywhere on the image. Also, there are live guides (colored green) that will pop up when the text box is centered to another frame, or when the bottom of the frame will align with others. This has helped to lay elements out perfectly straight. Concurrently it will save you a lot of time if you are mixing images and text.

Speaking of which, I have a friendly photo contest going on at the TimeLine Media Facebook page. To help us decide which of the professional shows to feature at the upcoming Spring Freestyles, I have made posters from all the shows at the last Showcase. The 2 posters that received the most votes will be printed and displayed at the event. Please visit the page to vote for your favorites with a click of the “Like” button. Thank you!

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

February 20, 2014

Photography, Technology, Travel | 0 comment

Tech Thursday – Snow Melting!

Melting snow with +1 stop exposure - ©TimeLine Media

We are starting a thaw out from last week’s wintry weather! It has taken a week, but finally we are starting to see some grass peeking out from under the snow. While it was falling heavily, I did not have the urge to take many photos. I am sure that there were some spectacular opportunities to do so. However, it just did not happen for me this time. Perhaps it was the preparation for the big ballroom dance event that stopped me from getting out. I have all the cameras and lenses to make something out there but I missed an opportunity.

Adjusting Exposure

Melting Snow - ©TimeLine Media — Melting Snow – ©TimeLine Media

With the shooting of the event now completed, and the warmer air outside, I wanted to get some photos before ALL the snow had melted. Going out there with the Fuji X100s made it easy to illustrate the first lesson that everyone learns when photographing in the snow. You need to “overexpose” or add more light to the scene than you normally would when taking photos.

The meter built into your camera is designed to measure the light coming in through the lens. It will tell you what settings will make for a balanced exposure. Technical photographers will call this calculating the exposure for “middle gray”. In other words, the brightest areas will not be too bright that they lose detail. Concurrently the darkest areas will not be too dark to lose detail. Unfortunately, these settings will make your snow look like “middle gray” as in the example here:

Melting snow with metered exposure - ©TimeLine Media — Melting snow with metered exposure – ©TimeLine Media

Adjusting Defaults

To restore the snow to its pretty white brightness, I had to add 1 stop of exposure, or overexpose the meter reading by one stop to get a nice white from the snow. Either the shutter speed is slowed down by one stop, or your can close down the aperture by one stop. Because I do not care to see any detail in the snow as it does not add to the photo, go ahead and let it be too bright. It is only a base or background for the frame, and does not need to be as detailed as the branches of the tree.

This technique not only works for snow, but works for window light, backlighting, or any other elements that are in your frame, but are not the main subject. They can be blown out, or overexposed without affecting the portrayal of your subject – the one thing you do want to see.

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-846-8208

February 13, 2014

Photography, Technology | 0 comment

Photoshop – the Best Jig Saw Puzzle Solver

I am working on a personal project to preserve as much of my photo history before everything fades away. My memory will not hold for very long either, I suspect! In some cases, there are some publications where my photos are used, and these larger formats are difficult to preserve digitally. Due to the size of some of these publications, it is not possible to capture the entire spread with one pass of the scanner which is only letter sized. To do this before was a very complicated puzzle-building process. I would have to scan as much of the newspaper-sized pages on the scanner in sections making many different parts that overlapped each other in content. Sometimes, I would have up to 8 different images depending on the size of the print. In this example, I only have 2 separate images:

Photo Merging

As can be seen in this example all the overlap between the text and the images on the page. In older versions of Photoshop, I would bring in both source images, and lay one on top of the other on a large empty background. Then I would reduce the opacity of the top layer, and maneuver it until the overlapping parts were right over each other on the layer below. It was time consuming, but it was possible. In the newer Photoshop versions, there is a nice automated way of doing this. First, open both images in Photoshop, then click on “File > Automate > Photomerge” which bring up this dialog box:

Click the Add Open Files button to add the open images to the process box. Make sure the box – Blend Images Together is selected, then click ‘OK’. Now Photoshop will quickly merge these two images using the overlapping information from each piece to create one large, merged document! This couldn’t be easier. I now only have to make sure that I have lots of overlapping areas from the large print. Knowing that the computer will do all of the aligning, you can scan in as many images as you would like. I have done this with up to 10 different images with no problem.

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Posts Tagged ‘tech’

Page Layout Design

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Adjusting Exposure

Adjusting Defaults

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Photo Merging

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