Friday, February 11th, 2011

Lightroom – working with RAW and JPG

Lightroom how to handle raw and jpeg jpg images captured at the same time separately
When your camera is set to capture in RAW+ so it is recording not only the RAW image but also a JPG image to match you may find that Lightroom shows you only the RAW version of the file.

This is because Lightroom, by default, treats the RAW version and the JPG images as one.

However, if you want to deal with them separately, choose Edit > Preferences (Lightroom > Preferences on the Mac) and select the General tab and select the option: “Treat JPEG files next to raw files as separate photos”.

Now Lightroom will treat the RAW and the JPG images as being different images so you’ll see both images in your Grid, Loupe and Filmstrip views.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 10:30 am2 Comments links to this post

Friday, February 11th, 2011

Excel 2007 & 2010 – Hidden add-ins

Excel 2007 2010 analysis toolpak lookup wizard solver add-in

Excel 2007 & 2010 come with a number of add-ins that you can get to by choosing the Options button (File in Excel 2010) and choose Excel Options (Options in Excel 2010) and click Add-ins. From the Manage dropdown list choose Excel Add-ins and click Go.

Image explaining how to install the Excel 2007 2010 analysis toolpak lookup wizard solver add-in

A list of available Add-ins appears in the list. Any that don’t have their checkboxes checked aren’t enabled right now.

One you might want to enable is the Analysis Toolpak – this gives you access to functions like RANDBETWEEN and NETWORKDAYS. There’s also possibly a Lookup Wizard (in Excel 2007 only – it was discontinued in Excel 2010) and a Solver add-in in the list.

Click on any of the Add-ins to add them to Excel. Once you do, they’ll be available every time you launch Excel.

RANDBETWEEN is a handy function for filling cells with a random value. It’s syntax is RANDBETWEEN(startvalue, endvalue) so to fill a range with values between 100 and 200 use =RANDBETWEEN(100,200) then copy it to the range to fill. You can read more about the function here: Random numbers in Excel.

NETWORKDAYS  will calculate the number of working days between two dates. You can read more about this function here: Excel – calculating workdays with Networkdays.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 8:09 am3 Comments links to this post

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

Valentine’s Day photography – Capture the Essence of You

Whether you’re basking in the first throws of a new relationship, newly hitched or coming up to your silver anniversary, February is a time to focus on your relationship with your husband, partner, or significant other. It’s a time to bring the two of you to the forefront and what better way to do this than in your photos?

If you haven’t done this before, the ‘future you’ will appreciate the time you spend now in chronicling the little things in your relationship. Think how wonderful it will be, tucked up in your rocking chair one day, to look back on the early days of your relationship?

There are lots of ways you can make a photographic record of your lives together. While visiting a professional photographer for a custom portrait will give you a lasting showpiece, some of the best shots can be captured yourselves. These are photos of things that are meaningful to you both and that capture the things that are important to you and your relationship.

Look around at the day to day things in your life. Take photos of your shoes, side by side in the hallway, the favourite mugs that you use each morning or the magazines you each read. Capture the good and the bad – such as your hands clasped together, the favourite shirt he loves but you hate, and the assemble it yourself furniture that nearly caused you to divorce while putting it together!

Take the time to photograph each other too. It’s a fun way to spend some time together and to get some great photos to boot. Try to capture his goofy grin and get him to catch you with that dreamy look in your eyes he tells you that you get when you’re imagining yourself in a new pair of Jimmy Choo’s.

For “together” shots, use the camera’s delayed shooting mode. Have your partner sit or stand in place and set up the camera on a flat surface making sure it’s focused on them. Enable the delayed shooting mode (check your camera’s manual if you’re unsure how to do this) and join your partner for the shot. Repeat as often as desired to get that perfect shot.

You can also take “together” shots by standing really close and holding the camera up in the air in front of you facing towards you. Snap away as you pose or enjoy a joke. This is a more “hit or miss” approach but it’s possible to get some fun photos this way.

If you have one of those fairground photo booths nearby, spend a couple of pounds and take a strip of photos of the two of you – just the physical effort of jamming yourself into the booth is enough to guarantee ear to ear smiles and a sense of fun.

For a more romantic portrait of your lives, take a photo of your partner lit with candle light or soft lighting at home. You can do this by placing lighted candles where they will light his face and, if desired, use some other soft lighting such as a small lamp but keep it out of the photo. Turn off the camera’s flash or it will ruin the shot and set the camera to night shooting mode. If you can set film speed on your camera, opt for 400, 800 or higher so that the camera will be more sensitive to the light that is available (and the photo will have a wonderful grainy look too). Ask your partner to sit very still as the shot might take a second or more to be captured. Use a tripod to steady the camera because you won’t be able to hold it still this long. You will find that the candlelight will throw a lovely coloured light into the shot and give your partner’s features a soft look.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:45 amNo Comments links to this post

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

Straightening an image in Word 2010

While Word 2010 has no tool for straightening an image, you can create the same effect.

step 1

To do this, I’d suggest you start with a new drawing canvas which is Insert > Shapes > New Drawing Canvas to draw a canvas on the screen.

step 2

Adjust it to just larger than the image that you want in your document and then click inside the canvas and choose Insert Picture to select an image to insert.

Size the image once it’s placed inside the drawing canvas.

Step 3

Now with the canvas selected but not the image, choose Insert > Shapes and select a rectangle shape.

Draw the rectangle shape over the top of the image.

From the Drawing Tools> Format tab, set the Shape Fill to No Fill and the Shape Outline to White and set the Outline Weight to a large weight. To do this, you’ll probably need to select the format shape options so that you can set the shape outline to something like 40 points. You need something that will cover the edges of the shape that you are about to crop.

In this image, I’ve set the outline of the rectangle to a light grey so you can see what you’re aiming to achieve:

Step 4

Now with the image selected rather than the shape, rotate the image until it is straight. Select the image and click the Crop button crop away a little bit around the edges of the image. You don’t need to crop too much but you might need to crop a little bit.

Click outside the image and now adjust the shape itself the white border you created so that it covers the area of the image that you want to hide because you’ve rotated the image.

In some cases, you may still not have enough border so you can adjust it to make it wider or narrower as required not by selecting the rectangle and choose Drawing Tools > Format tab > Shape Outline > Weight> More Lines and now increase the size of the line until you have enough border to hide the outside of the image.

The border grows from the middle out so you need to add about half as much extra border than you think you need.

Once you’ve added the extra border, click on the border and drag it outwards until it covers the uneven edges of the image.

Essentially what you’re doing here is rotating an image then using a white frame with no fill placed over the top of the image to mask out the area of the image that is on an angle and that you don’t want to see.

When you’re done, you can resize the drawing canvas until it fits closely around your image. It should not extend over the image or you will distort the frame.

Placing the image and frame inside a drawing canvas means that you can just click and drag on the drawing canvas edge and it will move both the frame and the image in your document.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 1:11 pm3 Comments links to this post

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

Understand your camera’s settings – Part 3 – ISO

Image: ISO3200, f5.6, 1/80s – the high ISO gives good sensitivity to light allowing this image to be captured quite fast in a relatively dark NY subway station.

In part 3 of this series on understanding your camera’s manual settings I’ll explain how to combine a choice of ISO settings when varying Aperture and Shutter speed.

In addition to Aperture and Shutter speed you can also configure your camera’s ISO setting. You would do this to adjust for the situation where there is not enough light for a shot or where there is too much light.

ISO is the camera’s sensitivity to light and small ISO values such as 80 and 100 indicate low sensitivity so the camera needs more light to take the photo. High values like 400 and 800 (and even up to 6400 and beyond) increase the camera’s sensitivity to light and can be used when you need more light, for example, where the shutter speed or aperture you want to use can’t give the light you want.

Take care when using very large ISO values as these are susceptible to noise so, using a value of 1600 or more might give you a good exposure but the image may have a lot of digital noise as a result.

Small values like 100 and 200 should show little noise at all.

Image: ISO100 f/4.5 1/500s – in bright summer sunlight, the ISO 100 value reduces sensitivity to light still allowing for a fast shot.

Of course, even excessive amounts of noise are preferable to getting a blurred image because you couldn’t hold the camera steady long enough to take it.

While the Auto setting on your camera will ensure that you get a good photograph most of the time, for creative purposes being able to configure your camera to adjust either the aperture or the shutter speed will give you more and varied options for getting even better images.

Image: ISO 1600, f/5.6, 1/15s – At dusk in a NY street, the high ISO gives good light sensitivity and the slow shutter speed allows the cars in the background to be blurred nicely.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 10:51 amNo Comments links to this post

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

Lightroom Maximize, Minimize, Restore, Size, Move and Close buttons missing?

Lightroom maximize minimize close restore size title bar missing

One of the most frustrating things that you’ll encounter with Lightroom is when your entire title bar for the application disappears. You’ll see your menu but everything else including the Close, Minimize, Maximize and other buttons will be missing.

The problem is that you’ve pressed the F key to get to full screen mode.

The solution is to press the F key repeatedly until the screen returns to normal. Too easy? Maybe but it sure is frustrating when you don’t know what happened and how to fix it.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 7:19 am5 Comments links to this post

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

Understand your camera’s settings – Part 2 – Shutter Speed

Image: 1/320s, f7.1, ISO 1600

In part 2 of this series on understanding your camera’s settings I’ll explain working in Shutter Priority mode.

Shutter speed can be controlled manually by switching to Tv mode. You can then select the shutter speed yourself so you adjust the time the shutter is open for and the camera will adjust the aperture to give you a good exposure.

How to use shutter speed

Setting shutter speed is a creative tool too. You might choose a fast shutter speed when photographing a moving object and where you want to freeze its motion. The image at the top of this post, for example, was captured at 1/320s.

On the other hand, where you want the water in a waterfall or fountain to appear as a silky stream you would use a long shutter speed. Shutter speeds such as 1/250 of a second will freeze motion and shutter speeds of 1/30 a second or slower are considered to be slow.

This second version of the same fountain was shot at 1/3s at f/25 and the water is much silkier:

When you select shutter speed, your camera will show the aperture so you can preview this – on some cameras you may have to press the shutter release mechanism down halfway to see this.

If the camera doesn’t have a large or small enough aperture for the speed you’ve chosen it will indicate this using some warning system allowing you to adjust your shutter speed setting.

Using a tripod

Take care when selecting slow shutter speeds. Anything slower than 1/60th of a second will make it hard for you to hand hold the camera and keep it steady. If you’re using long lenses on a digital SLR, for example, you may not be able to hand hold the camera successfully at even quite fast shutter speeds.

A good rule of thumb is to use a tripod for shots slower than 1/the focal length of the lens so a 70-200mm lens at full zoom would need a tripod for shutter speeds slower than 1/200th second.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 10:22 am1 Comment links to this post

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

Photoshop: High Pass Softening

You may already know that it is possible to sharpen an image using the High Pass Filter. But did you know it’s possible to use the filter to soften an image?

To see this at work, start with an image open on the screen.

Step 1

Duplicate the image background layer or if you have an image that has adjustments in it, create a flattened version of the image on a new layer at the top of the layer stack. To do this target the topmost layer and choose Layer > New > Layer.

Target this new layer and press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E (Command + Option + Shift + E on the Mac) to create a flattened version of the image on this new layer.

Step 2

You will apply the High Pass Filter to this layer.

To do this, you can convert the layer to a Smart Object by choosing Filter > Convert for Smart Filters.

If you’re working on a version of Photoshop earlier than CS4, you can still use this process without converting the layer to a Smart Object.

Choose Filter > Other > High Pass and set the High Pass filter Radius to a value that shows gray and white lines on the image. Stop short of the image showing too much color. The larger the radius value, the more the softening effect although too large a Radius will be counter-productive. Click Ok to apply the filter to the image.

Step 3

In the Layers palette, set the Blend Mode of the top layer to Soft Light.

To soften the image, select the High Pass filter layer and choose Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Invert. You’ll need to create a Clipping Group between the Adjustment Layer and the High Pass Filter layer by selecting the Adjustment Layer and choose Layer > Create Clipping Mask.

Step 4

Create a black filled mask on the High Pass Filter layer by Alt + Clicking on the Add a Layer Mask button at the foot of the Layer palette (Option + Click on the Mac).

Set the Foreground color to white and paint on the mask with a soft round brush in the areas that you want to soften the image such as the skin tones here. This image shows the masked area – you won’t see this as you work.

Step 5

If you created a Smart Object the High Pass Filter can be adjusted by double clicking on the filter in the Layers palette and adjust the Radius value.

You can use a different blending mode on the masked layer such as Overlay if that gives results you like better and you can also change the opacity of the layer to reduce the intensity of the effect.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 2:45 pm1 Comment links to this post

Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011

Section Breaks in Word 2007 & 2010

I love working with Microsoft apps and finding cool things to do with them. I hate it when Microsoft messes with my head.

While I love Microsoft Word 2010, Word 2007 was never my favorite application so I didn’t use it as my day to day tool preferring to stick with Word 2003 which really was a great program.

Now that Word 2010 is here, I have bitten the bullet and I’m turning all my production work over to Word 2010 – it is just such a wonderful program and a fitting successor to Word 2003.

But, wonderful as it is, it has some annoyances. One is when you come to insert a section break into a document. For years I’ve used the Insert menu in Word 2003 to add Breaks of all types to my documents. In Word 2007, 2010 – no go! You can insert a cover page, a blank page or a page break and any other number of smart document objects from the Insert tab – but you can’t insert a section break.

Instead the Breaks feature has been moved to the Page Layout tab – select it and then choose Breaks. Why it wasn’t placed on the Insert tab along with page breaks or why page breaks was added to the Insert tab and also duplicated in the Page Layout tab, I don’t know, but there it is.

So, when you need to add a section break to a Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 document use the Page Layout tab, select Breaks and then, for example, Next page to create a section break that immediately opens a new page in the document.

You may not like it, but if you’re using Word 2007 you have to accept it’s Microsoft’s world and we just get to live in it.

If you’re using Word 2010 – Yeah! life is good. Thanks to the new customizable ribbon you can add your own Group to the Insert tab, move it up so it’s alongside the built-in Pages group then add the Breaks command to it – it’s a great solution and quick and easy to do and it makes such good sense.

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 11:50 am3 Comments links to this post

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