within a $100–$250 price range. They are simple to use. You’ll
be amazed the difference a properly calibrated and profi led monitor
will make.
However, if you cannot stretch your budget to buy proper profi ling
equipment, you can use Adobe Photoshop and Elements, which both
include a basic profi le-by-eye tool called Adobe Gamma. This is not
as good as using proper profi ling equipment, but it is better than
nothing. If you are really short of cash, there is a free-ware program
called Quick Gamma available from http://www.quickgamma.de/
indexen.html to set monitor gamma and a free profi ling tool,
QuickMonitorProfi le, at http://quickgamma.de/QuickMonitorProfi le/
infoen.html. This produces a workable profi le based on data stored by
modern monitors instead of using external measuring tools.
For corrective work and, indeed, for all my photo manipulation, I
use Photoshop CS3, and the screen shots and tips in this book are
based on that program. It may seem expensive, but most of the rele-
vant functions are also available in the much-less-expensive consumer-
level program, Photoshop Elements, which I recommend if Photoshop
CS3 is too costly for your tastes. A further alternative is Corel Paint
Shop Pro. As you will likely be spending quite some time editing your
images for microstock submission, it makes sense to buy the best
software tools you can afford.
There are trial versions of Photoshop and Elements available for
download from Adobe at http://www.adobe.com/downloads and for
Corel Paint Shop Pro from http://www.corel.com.
The Raw Deal
Data captured by digital cameras have to be stored in a fi le format
readable on your computer. There are many different fi le formats,
but the most common in photography are raw, JPEG, and TIFF. Not
all cameras output in raw fi le format. Compact cameras generally
do not. However, all digital cameras I am aware of output JPEG.
So, why on earth would you use raw fi le format if all cameras
support JPEG?
The reason to use raw is quality. If your camera allows you to do
so, I urge you to shoot in raw mode. It is called “raw” for a reason.
Raw mode retains virtually all the data seen by the sensor when the
shot is taken, and it has many advantages over shooting in the more
common JPEG format.
The biggest advantage is that raw fi les save the full 12-bit (or with
some professional cameras, 14- or 16-bit) data from the sensor, com-
pared with just 8 bits for a JPEG fi le. The 12-bit data from the raw fi le
THE RAW DEAL 79