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Today, MakeUseOf.com published my, Essential Guide to Digital Photography.
It’s jammed packed full of useful information for all type of photographers – from beginners photographers to advance photographers.
Inside, you will find information about:
But wait, there’s more. There are also 5 beginner exercises for you to complete to help you become a professional photographer, and helpful instructions and information about editing your photo’s to make them even more magical.
The iPad is a great device photographers. Here’s my tips for using its slide show and other features. The article is published on MakeUseOf.com, a site write for on a weekly basis.
This is part 1 for showing a few of the 200 new features in Aperture 3.0.
You will get a better view of this video on YouTube in HD mode.
As always, let me know if my blog posts are useful to you.
If you’re an avid user of Apple’s Aperture, you no doubt know about the recent release of Aperture 3.0. One of the most desired features for the program was universal presets, of the type used in Adobe’s Lightroom image adjustment application. Well, advance presets are now available in Aperture 3.0. The application comes installed with over three dozen very useful presets that you can use right out of the download or box. In addition, any presets that you created in the previous version of Aperture will show up automatically in 3.0.
Most users will probably want to access Presets and Adjustments in the Adjustments panel of Aperture. The presets can also be accessed in the floating Adjustment HUD, as well from the Aperture menu bar: Photos>Add Adjustment, and right below it, Add Adjustment Presets.
In the Adjustment Panel, the Presets on the left consist of exposure correction and enhancement presets; and the set on the right consist of mainly preset brushes.
When you select a preset, you get a preview of how the adjustments will look before you apply them. If you hold down the option key, the currently selected adjustment will replace any previous adjustments you make.
Note: this and other screen shots were captured from Aperture’s menu bar. They are the exact same adjustments in the Adjustment Panel.
The Quick Brushes Presets are a mixture of settings that that can be selectively applied to selected areas of an image or the entire image.
Every Adjustment Tool includes the option to brush in or brush away the effects of that tool. This process almost works like using Layers and Brushes in Photoshop. Working with Brushes in Aperture are not always easy as using them in Photoshop, but they are convenient for image adjustments in Aperture.
Similar to using brushes in Photoshop, you select a tool and paint the effect. If you select Detect Edges, Aperture will try not apply effects outside selected edegs of an area you’re working in. Sometimes zooming in on a image can help in more effectively applying effects.
Also notice that each brush comes with a feather tool for blending or softening effects, and an eraser tool for removing applied effects.
Starting with Aperture 2.0, users could customize and assign shortcut keys to individual tools and other commands. Thankfully this can also be done with all the Presets in Aperture. Simply click on Aperture>Command>Customize in Aperture‘s menu bar to pull up the editor. Aperture will save the default command settings for you. From there you can assign shortcut keys to frequently used presets. For your top, top favorite presets, use Control+Option+Command modifiers, plus a selected key. For example, so far I really like the Toy Camera preset, so I assigned Control+Option+Command+T so that easily remember and apply that effect to photos.
Quick Fix adjustments and presets seem very useful because they are combine several adjustments for each “fix.” Once the effects are applied to an iamge, you can tweak the individual adjustments in the Adjustment panel.
You can easily save your own custom presets and edit the exsiting ones. Clicking on Edit Presets brings up a window where you can re-arrange the order of presets. You can also organize presets into folder sets. Presets can be exported and imported, to be used by other Aperture 3.0 users.
Because Aperture 3.0 comes with so many default presets, I took screen shots of them all so as to become more familiar with the numerous offerings. The screenshots also include some custom presets and shortcut keys that I created, so of course they won’t be a part of your sets.
There are are severl dozens of ways to do black and white conversions in various image editing programs. Entire books are devoted to the subject. But when I’m working in a Aperture 2.0, I start with the two basic settings described below.
I like adding a touch of Sepia to my monochrome version in order to get rid of the stark grayscale conversion of my images. This particularly works well for portraits. Sometimes, when I’m not satisfied with the results, I use options in Photoshop.
My monochrome version combines a mix of monochrome and a mix of sepia. See the presets I use for for both below.
These are set of tips for new users of Aperture 2.0.
In Aperture’s Menu, Click Window >I to show or hide the Inpector. You can always use the floating Inspector (see Tip 4) so that you have more room for viewing a photo(s) in the interface of Aperture.
Click on View>Customize Toolbar and drag the blue Inspector button to the menu bar. Clicking on the button will hide or show the Inspector.
Without the Inspector, you have more room in the interface to view images.
Using the floating Inspector Hud is especially useful if you have a dual monitor setup or a large monitor of 21-27 inches. Click Window>Show Inspector Hud The floating HUD can be placed outside the main interface of Aperture. It’s the only panel that can be separated from the interface of the program itself.
If you you rather use the Inspector, you can swap the position of the Inspector by simply going to View>Inspector>Swap Position. This will enable you to put the Inspector on the left or right of the interface.
I used Aperture for quite some time before I realized I could add an adjustment tool to the Inspector that would appear by default. For example, the Vignette tool does not appear in the Adjustment Inspector by default. You have to manually add it each time you want to use it with a new selected image. But if you click on the little arrorow on the upper right of the Vingnette tool (or “brick”), you will get a drop down menu. From there, you select “Add to Default Set.” So now each time you open the Adjustments panel, the Vignette tool will be present. Likewise, you can also have a tool removed from the default set.
For each of the Adjustment tools you use in Aperture, you can save your favorite settings for each particular tool. For example, when I use the Levels tool, I have a set of adjustments saved as a preset that I typicall apply to nearly all images. Those settings won’t be perfect for every photo, but they provide me a starting place when using the Levels/Luminance adjustment tool.
Some tools like the Vignette tool don’t come with a shortcut keystroke by default. But you can create or change the shortcut keys for nearly all tools in Aperture. Simply click on Aperture>Commands>Customize and you will be presented with the Command Editor where you can make changes.
Customizing the Toolbar is a great way to access tools that you use a regular basis, especially if you’re a heavy mouse user. Simply go to View>Customize toolbar… and drag your favorite items to the toolbar. You can select to show the items as Icon+Text, Icon Only, or Tex Only.
Aperture 2.0 comes with a few dafault export plug-ins, but there are quite a few more from 3rd party developers that enable you to, for example, export photos to Fickr.com, Facebook, and SmugMug: Plug-ins, workflows, and other extras.
If you’re just starting out with Aperture 2.0, you owe it to yourself to check out the over three dozen professionally produced video tutorials for nearly all aspects of Aperture 2.0. Aperture Tutorials.
Note: I write for other websites, and when appropriate I will link those articles to my blog.
If you’re a serious shutterbug, there are few places on the Internet better than Flickr for sharing photos and discussing all aspects of digital photography.
Flickr offers both free and paid subscriptions, and after you open your account and start building your own photostream, you’ll want to sign up for several of the tens of thousands of groups on the popular photo sharing site.
The following is a suggested list of the various types of Flickr discussion groups you might consider joining.
