Printing

To take full advantage of PictBridge, both your printer and the digicam must sport the PictBridge logo. In the example here, we used an HP PhotoSmart R707 digital camera to print using a Kodak EasyShare Printer Dock.

Shoot First things first: grab that camera and go trigger-happy.

Connect Find your PictBridge cable. It is essentially a USB cable. Take the smaller end of the cable and plug it into your digital camera. The other end goes into your printer’s PictBridge port. Ensure that the devices are powered on and that the printer has sufficient paper. See to it that the battery of the digicam is sufficiently charged.

Choices - Once the HP camera is connected to a printer, it shows up directly on the printing menu. You can choose to print just one picture, a few selected ones, or the entire lot. The camera also lets you specify the exact size of the print. The default size is set at 4 x 6 inches. If your printer supports other sizes, you can choose them here.

Print - Click on the Print button on your camera and your printer gets to work. If you can’t find the Print button on the device model, simply refer to the manual. If you use a Kodak camera with this printer dock, all you have to do is to click on the Print button on the dock itself. For HP cameras, the Print button is on the digicam; three pixels per leaf. This means the picture will lose out on details. For best results, shoot subjects that are clearly defined with smooth and distinct outlines, i.e., subjects that stand out well from the background. Unfortunately, most natural objects do not have this characteristic. When photographing outdoors, the best subjects to shoot are cars, buildings, cityscapes and the like.

Black And White Colour contrast draws emphasis to subjects: Take a red apple against a green background, for instance. Use black and white when this emphasis is not important. However, in the apple example, if you shoot in colour and then convert to black and white in Photoshop, you find that green and red turn out almost identical. So, such photographs need to be shot in greyscale mode itself. Remember that when you take a black and white picture, aspects such as shape, lighting, texture, etc, become dominant. Do you want it to be so? Also, do you want to give an old-world, somewhat sentimental feel to the picture?

Also, note that lighting plays more of a role in black and white pictures than in colour pictures. For example, when capturing a sunset, the shadows that the sun throws on objects are of more interest than the Sun itself.

Photographers use the term ‘high-key’ and ‘low-key’ for predominantly light and dark tones respectively.

These determine the contrast level of the photograph. Now, note that high contrast steers the observer to look at particular subjects in the picture, and low contrast makes the observer look at the complete picture—its mood, subtle nature, etc.

Use filters to enhance your black and white pictures. A filter absorbs its complementary, or opposite, colour: for example, blue is the opposite of orange. Purchase an adapter ring for a filter. Perhaps your camera may already be equipped with a lens thread, in which case you will not need an adapter. Different colour filters have different effects.

Red filters tend to have a dramatic effect, and make a photo jump to life. Remember that red filters are not recommended for low-light conditions, or when you have an active subject—that is, one central object that is the whole idea of the photograph.

Yellow filters are the most popular for black-and-white photography. For example, they darken the blue sky, so white clouds come through with greater brilliance.

Orange filters darken blue even more. So you can create dramatic, magical effects. Try an orange filter for landscapes.

Green filters make greens lighter and reds darker. In landscapes or close-ups, leaves look brighter and red flowers darker.

Sky light or ultraviolet filters make for excellent lens protectors, and also act as a transparent-layer filter that absorbs ultraviolet light.

Close-ups And Macros (Extreme Close-ups) - One of the problems with macro-photography is lighting. If you are too close to the subject, you may block out light yourself. Most inbuilt flashes are not good enough to light up macros. One solution is to use an external flash with a remote control. Another, easier one is to use an ordinary table lamp. A good idea with the table lamp is to cover it with something like tissue paper, which diffuses light.

Use supplementary lenses - Learn about Depth of Field (DOF). DOF is essentially the range of distance that is acceptably sharp within a photo. It varies inversely with the aperture size. For example, a wide-open lens with an aperture of f1.8 has very little DOF. If it is squeezed to f16, the DOF increases, and more things come into focus.

In macros, the DOF is especially shallow. Here is an example on getting a good macro shot: if the subject is a fly on a flower, use a larger aperture—this will blur out everything but the fly. If you want the fly as well as the flower, you will need a larger DOF; so a small aperture—f11, or even f16—is required. This, however, makes longer exposure periods necessary, which in turn calls for steady hands. In other words, macros of small objects with the background blurred out are easy enough. However, if you want a macro of say, a flower, you need steady hands.

In the example about the flower, you can compensate for exposure time by using a higher ISO (or ASO) setting, but this brings in the possibility of extra image noise.

Correcting pictures - Remember to back up your images before you start to correct or play around with them to create different effects!

A colour cast means an imbalance of colour, such as too much red or too much green. There are two methods to correct this in Photoshop: in the first, simply go to Image > Adjust > Levels. Here, click ‘Auto’. In the second, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Balance. Then, click OK to create the adjustment layer and bring up the ‘Color Balance Layer’ dialog box. Here, you can experiment.

Underexposed pictures are a frequent problem: you need the correct level of light exposure to bring out detail. If an image turns out underexposed, here’s what you can do in Photoshop: If the whole image needs adjusting, go to Windows > Show Layers. In the Layer dialog box, locate the Layer thumbnail. Drag it to the ‘Create A New Layer’ icon to duplicate the image. To only fix certain underexposed areas, go to step 2, else skip to step 3. Select the affected areas using the Marquee tool. Go to Select > Feather, and type in, say, ‘5’ in the numerical field to soften this section by a few pixels. You can experiment with that value. Now, copy and paste to create a duplicate layer. In the drop-down menu of the Layer dialog box, select Screen. Adjust the density of this layer in the Opacity field until you get the required density.

Here’s how you selectively sharpen certain areas of a photograph in Photoshop: Select Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. In the dialog box that comes up, experiment with the three sliders—Amount, Radius and Threshold. View the results in the preview window. The Radius setting is the key here. It controls the width of the sharpening halo. The Amount controls the sharpening strength. A small Radius setting needs a higher Amount.

Finally, set the Threshold—this helps avoid over-sharpening light-textured areas such as skin tones. Start with an Amount of 200 to 300 per cent and a Threshold of 0, and experiment with the Radius setting until it matches the image contents. Then, adjust the Amount. Finally, increase the Threshold to smoothen out over-sharpened areas.