For more on digitAl photogrAphy, visit http://www.shortCourses.Com 73
http://www.photocourse.com/itext/editreality/
http://www.photocourse.com/itext/editimprove/
Photo-editing—Global Editing...
In 1932 a group of young photographers including Ansel Adams and Edward
Weston started a group they called f/64 that championed straight photog-
raphy over the heavily manipulated pictorial photographs so in vogue at the
time. The movement grew and when Edward Steiglitz published the work of
another straight photographer, Paul Strand, in his magazine Camera Work he
wrote “... The work is brutally direct. Devoid of flim-flam; devoid of trickery
and any ‘ism’; devoid of any attempt to mystify an ignorant public, includ-
ing the photographers themselves. These photographs are the direct expres-
sion of today...” This movement became known as “straight photography”
and there are still echoes of the arguments it generated. The pictorialists of
today are those who use Photoshop to heavily manipulate their images so
they fall out of the field of photography and into the realm of the graphic
arts. There is an entire industry of these people offering newsletters, Web
sites, workshops, conventions, videos, books, and magazines, all devoted to
proselytizing obscure techniques. For many of these gurus an image’s con-
tent is less important than its manipulation and they spend so much time on
manipulating the images they already have that they almost stop taking new
ones. It’s helpful to understand these arguments because Apple’s Aperture
and Adobe’s Lightroom are really tools for straight photography and straight
photographers and it helps you to put them in a historic context.
Straight photography doesn’t mean you don’t try to improve an image, in fact
it’s the rare image direct from a digital camera that doesn’t need some tweak-
ing. However Photoshop has become so complex, and has so many graphic
arts features, that there was an opening for a program that was both simpler
and more photographic in philosophy. Serious amateurs needed one that was
more intuitive and easier to learn. Professionals needed one that would allow
them to work faster and more efficiently—especially when dealing with a
large number of images. Thus were born Aperture and Lightroom, programs
that emphasize global procedures that affect the entire image.
One interesting aspect of Lightroom and Aperture is that any changes you
make don’t alter the original pixels in your image so you can undo any edit
at any time. This non-destructive editing is accomplished by storing a list
of your edits in the database along with the image itself. When you open the
image in Lightroom, it uses that stored list to reapply the edits so they are
used when you display, print, or export the image. In essence these programs
treat your images as digital negatives or masters and preserves them as such.
If you ever want to return the image to its original form, you just click the
Zero’d choice on Lightroom’s Presets panel.
Lightroom and Aperture are designed to make working with RAW images as
easy as working with JPEGs. You can display, zoom, adjust, add keywords,
print, and create Web page layouts using both formats without intermediate
format conversions. Both programs also let you work in the same way with
other image formats including TIFF and Photoshop’s native PSD.the AnAtomy oF lightroom
When you first start Lightroom, you’ll notice it’s divided into sections.- The menu at the top of the screen offers access to commands. The com-
mands change as you change modules. - The module picker in the top right of the screen is where you select
Library so you can import, organize and select photos for editing, Develop so
The Lightroom History
Panel in the Develop
module.
ThE GOOD OlD
DAys?
In the days of film,
control over prints
in the darkroom was
limited. You could
control contrast by
your choice of paper
and with filters. You
could make local
changes by dodging
to lighten areas or
burning to darken
them. When mak-
ing color prints you
could adjust color
balance using filters.
Before getting too
carried away with
the things you can
now do, keep in mind
that almost all of
the greatest pho-
tos in the history of
photography were
made with these few
adjustments.Click for a movie on
improving a photo.
Click for a movie on
changing a photo
into something quite
different.
photo-editing—globAl editing