This is probably the most known and most used method out there to help you achieve the radiant skin tone. Once you know all the steps, it gets pretty easy to utilize this method. I will use the following image as an example:

If there are many blemishes to get rid of, use the spot healing brush to clean them out and you can use below smoothening method to even out the skin tone.

Note: This method will not get rid of major skin blemishes. It is intended to even out the skin tone and give the skin a smooth look while preserving the natural pores of the skin. In order for this method to work effectively, you will need to use the healing brush to remove bigger and visible blemishes. You can also use the clone tool and the patch tool to effectively remove the blemishes.

Once you open the image in Photoshop your first step should be taking care of the blemishes.

After you are done with the above step, create a background copy by right clicking on the Background and choosing Duplicate Layer.

Change blend mode to Overlay and Invert the layer by pressing Ctrl+I.

Go to Filter->Other->High Pass.

When the High Pass window opens up, start increasing the radius until most skin blemishes are gone. Soft edges are not a problem at this stage as we will reverse the effect in a little bit. For this particular image, I settled it to 11.1 pixels and hit the OK button.

Now go to Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur. This step will reveal how much of skin texture you are willing to preserve. Set a high radius this time, which will reverse the High Pass step. But by gradually going down on radius, visually you will be able to tell if you are comfortable with the combo of High Pass and Gaussian Blur; Smoothening and still preserving some skin texture.

For this particular image I ended up with 2.5 pixels. Visually I thought this was good enough for me to have a smooth, evenly toned skin with some skin texture I want to preserve without turning my model into a plastic doll. Next, hit the OK button.

The next step is to work with masks in order to blend all the previous steps. Make sure you are still on the Duplicate Layer, press Alt+Click on layer mask icon which will yield a black mask. You can see it on the Background Copy:

Choose a Soft Brush, set your foreground color to white and start painting over the blemishes and the skin. Remember that we want the skin to be soft and other parts of the body to be perfectly intact. While painting, be careful not to paint over the edges of the face, nostrils, lips, hair, eyes, eye brows and such.

Once you are satisfied with the result click Ctrl+E to merge the layers and Save the image. Here is our final result for this image:

I hope you will find this tutorial helpful. Once you get used to the entire process, it is going to be a breeze. Let me know if you have any questions!

1) Colors in Black and White Photography

As strange as it may sound, black and white photography is not about the tones of white, grey and black colors that we see in B&W images. Instead, it is all about the colors that are recorded by the camera and how those colors are converted to different shades of grey, whether in-camera or through post-processing. Back in the film days, photographers used color filters in front of their lenses while shooting B&W film, then would employ special darkroom processing techniques like dodging and burning on top of that to lighten or darken particular parts of a photograph (some landscape photographers still do it today with medium and large format film).

With modern digital cameras this cumbersome process is no longer necessary, since most of the effects, including the effects of color filters, can be simulated in post-processing software like Photoshop and Lightroom/Aperture. The nice thing about digital, is that you can non-destructively (meaning without damaging the original file) experiment with black and white as much as you want and get many different “looks” of B&W by playing with colors and adjusting some sliders. Before jumping to B&W techniques, let’s go over color filters and camera settings first.

2) Color Filters

When a specific color filter is used in front of a lens, it absorbs other colors and lets the same color as the filter pass through. For example, if you use a red color filter, it will let the red color through, while blocking green and blue colors. Since all colors are combinations of red, green and blue (RGB) colors, filters are capable of blocking certain colors from a color combination. For example, a green filter will make a yellow object (which is a combination of green and red) appear green, because the red portion of the color combination is blocked. Now that’s what would happen in a color photo. What if we are converting colors to black and white? One thing you need to remember, is that filters lighten their own color and darken the colors that get blocked. So if you were photographing a landscape with a blue sky using a blue filter, the sky would be very bright when converted to black and white. If you used a green or a red filter, on the other hand, the sky would appear much darker. Take a look at the following example with different filters:

Now pay attention to what happens here. When a blue filter is used, the sky looks very bright, but the green and the red colors are very dark because they are blocked. When a green filter is used, the green leaves on the tree appear lighter than the red and the blue colors. When a red filter is used, the red colors appear bright and green with blue are much darker. That’s how color filters affect images in B&W photography!

3) Camera Settings

Many of the current DSLR cameras allow you to switch from color to black and white/monochrome inside camera menu and some of the advanced DSLRs even allow you to pick different types of color filters for better black and white conversion (Nikon DSLRs have a “Monochrome” Picture Control to convert to B&W). While it is nice to be able to shoot in B&W from DSLRs directly, since you are stripping the colors from images, you are basically limiting your post-processing options if you shoot in JPEG format. Once colors are converted to B&W, there is no going back. On top of this, in-camera B&W processing is often poorly implemented and the camera gives you no control on how specific colors or regions of the image should be treated. Therefore, it is best to take pictures in color, then convert them to black and white in post-processing.

If you shoot in RAW, no matter what color profile you apply on your camera, the file will contain all information you possibly need from the camera for successful B&W conversion. If your intent is to shoot in B&W and see the effect on the camera, feel free to set the camera to B&W mode. During the import process, if you use software like Capture NX2, your images will be imported as black and white, although you can change them back to color any time later. If you use Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom, the images will be imported in color and the black and white settings you used on your camera will be lost. That’s because Adobe products do not have the capability to read the proprietary manufacturer information from RAW files. So shoot in RAW and you will be good to go.

Here is what I would use on my camera:

1. Image Quality/Format: RAW
2. RAW Bit Depth: 14-bit (if available)
3. ISO Sensitivity: Lowest ISO (base ISO)
4. White Balance: Auto

Similar to color photos, you want to shoot in RAW with the highest bit depth available in order to be able to pull as much data as possible for color filters, with a minimum amount of noise. As for White Balance, I personally set mine to “Auto”, since WB settings are not important when shooting in RAW. The only thing that you need to make sure, is that your White Balance is corrected after you import your photos to Lightroom/Photoshop – or you will have problems with colors during the B&W conversion process.

4) Methods to convert color images to B&W

When it comes to converting color photographs to black and white, there are many ways to skin the cat – from a very simple method of desaturating colors to rather complex methods of applying different shades of gray on particular colors. Let’s go through some of these methods in detail and see the type of results we can get from these different methods.

4.1) Simple Black and White Conversion

The simplest (and the worst) method to convert color photographs to black and white, is to simply desaturate or “discard” the colors. You can do this pretty much in any image editing software. If you use Lightroom, you can simply go to Develop Module, then click “Black & White” under the “Basic” tab. If you use Photoshop, you can achieve a similar result by going to “Image”->”Adjustments”->”Desaturate” or press Ctrl+Shift+U on the keyboard. Here is the color version of the first image on top of this page:

And here is how the image looks when I desaturate the colors:

The tree and the ground look fine, but the deep blue sky and the clouds are now mixed together and look very pale together. That’s what you get when you desaturate colors – you cannot control which colors you want to emphasize and how bright/dark they should come out in the final image. Let’s move on to better ways to convert color photographs to black and white.

4.2) Lightroom Black and White Mix

Lightroom has a much better method to convert color images to Black and White besides the method shown above. It is located in Develop Module, under the “Tone Curve” tab. You will find three different selections you can click on and one of them is “B & W”. Once you click on it, the information below will change to “Black & White Mix” with some color selections. Here is how it looks:

The initial look of the image will be similar to an image that was desaturated and you will have to play with the colors and tweak the image to get a better result. The above colors sliders (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Aqua, Blue, Purple and Magenta) allow you to control how dark or light each color will be in the final image. When I desaturated my sample image earlier, the sky and the clouds got mixed up in a very similar shade of gray. Let’s see what happens when I move the blue slider to the left to make it darker (-40 value):

Not bad, the sky is now darker than the clouds and I am getting a good separation between the two. I can do the same thing for other colors like orange and red and control how dark or light they will be in black and white.

One very powerful feature of Lightroom a lot of people do not know about, is the “Direct Adjust” functionality that can be found in some of the tabs, including B&W. Here is where it is:

What it allows you to do, is instead of moving the sliders on different colors, it allows you to click on any part of the image and change its brightness by moving the mouse up or down. Give it a try – once the little dot is clicked with your mouse and transformed to a dot with up/down arrows, left-click on any part of the image you want to brighten or darken and then move your mouse up and down to see what happens. Moving the mouse up will increase the brightness, while moving the mouse down will decrease it.

4.3) Photoshop Black and White

Photoshop has a very similar functionality as Lightroom that allows you to move sliders to control the different shades of gray in black and white images. You can access it through “Image”->”Adjustments”->”Black & White” or by pressing Alt+Shift+Ctrl+B shortcut on your keyboard. Here is how it looks:

The nice thing about this tool, is that it comes with different “Presets” to choose from. Before you move any sliders, I would start off with the presets and see if any of the particular presets looks good on your image. Once you pick a starting point, you can then adjust different colors to brighten/darken certain colors. I recommend experimenting with the tool to get the desired result.

4.4) Photoshop Channel Mixer

Another popular method to convert color images to black and white is using Photoshop’s Channel Mixer. You can access the Channel Mixer by going to “Image”->”Adjustments”->”Channel Mixer”. Compared to the Black and White method above, the Channel Mixer works more like the traditional method, where a color filter is used on the camera lens. Here are the available color filter presets:

You can pick Infrared, Blue, Green, Orange, Red and Yellow color filters with the Channel Mixer tool. As I have pointed out under “Color Filters”, different color filters affect how light/dark certain colors will be. So if you have a scene with a blue sky and you want the sky to appear dark, pick any color filter except blue and see which filter works best for you. The only caveat with using this tool, is that whatever changes you make to each source channel, the total of the three (Red, Green and Blue) should be 100, or the image will be either brighter (if over 100) or darker (if under 100):

Once again, I would encourage you to play with the Channel Mixer and see what settings work best for each individual photograph.

5) Adding Contrast and Clarity/Structure to B&W Images

No matter which conversion method you use, once the images is black and white, it will most likely look rather flat. For those situations, adding more contrast and structure to your black and white images will make them look more “punchy”. Let’s go back to my earlier example with the tree. Here is how it looks like after I used the Channel Mixer with a Red Filter:

Indeed, looks rather flat. The clouds are mixing with the sky and there is definitely a lack of contrast here. The first thing to do in situations like this, is the obvious – increase contrast. You can do it by sliding the “Contrast” to the right in Lightroom and by going to “Image”->”Adjustments”->”Brightness/Contrast” in Photoshop (you can also use “Curves” in Photoshop to increase contrast). Don’t add too much contrast, as it will add too much black to the photo. I would start with +20 and try not to exceed +50 contrast. Once the contrast is added, go back and compare before and after to see how the image was affected. Now you should see a little more punch and structure in your B&W image.

Next, we work on the image details or “structure”. If you use Lightroom, you have something called “Clarity” under the Basic tab in Develop Module. Slide that Clarity to +50 or more and see what happens – you should see more separation and structure in the photo, giving a 3-dimensional look to your B&W photo. In Photoshop, the best way to do this is by using the “Unsharp Mask” tool. Go to “Filter”->”Sharpen”->”Unsharp Mask”, which will bring up a new window. Normally, when you sharpen your images, you would use a very small radius of 1-2 pixels to bring out the edges. In this case, our purpose is not to bring out the edges only, but to make the photo look very detailed. We achieve this by using a very large radius, which will not touch the detail edges, but rather will make everything look more detailed. All features, including the clouds, will look more separated from the sky and other plain areas. Let’s take a look at this effect in action:

Not bad, the B&W image now looks even better. Compare it to the previous image and you will notice a big difference in detail/structure. Here are the settings I used for the above photo:

The amount and radius values you should use varies by photograph. In some cases, a larger radius with a 50% or more amount will yield better results, in others a smaller radius is sufficient. The radius will also depend on the size of the image you are working with. If you are working on the original image with large dimensions, a bigger radius will work better. For smaller resolution images, use a smaller radius.

6) Sharpening

The final step is now to sharpen just the edges of the photograph, so that the whole image looks sharp. In Lightroom, go to “Sharpening” under “Detail” in Develop Module and increase the amount of sharpening from the default value of 25 to 50 or higher. I personally use the following values as as default for my images:

1. Amount: 50
2. Radius: 1.0
3. Detail: 50
4. Masking: 0

When I export my images in smaller sizes to be published on my blog, I typically set “Output Sharpening” to Screen and Amount: Standard in the Export window.

If you use Photoshop, use the same “Unsharp Mask” tool, but we will have to drop the radius back to 1.0 or so. I recommend applying sharpening after resizing your images, not before. The “Amount” of sharpening depends on how much sharpening you have already applied before, but I typically pick between 50 to 75.

7) Photoshop/Lightroom Plugin – Silver Efex Pro

All of the above methods and steps I have shown are great, but they are somewhat limited in their functionality and require multiple steps to get the desired look. If you do not have the time to experiment with each individual photo and you are looking for simpler ways to instantly transform your color photos to beautiful black and white images, then I would recommend using specialized plugins that do the B&W conversion. My favorite tool for the job is Nik Software’s “Silver Efex Pro”. I have tried several different Photoshop plugins and Silver Efex is by far the best one on the market. Its power is not only in providing lots of different presets to choose from and using color filters, but also in selective conversion – a unique, yet very useful feature that is common to Nik Software’s plugins. You can place a control point (or multiple control points) on a particular spot or color within the image and you can adjust its brightness, contrast and structure. You can change the radius of the control point, which allows you to limit the affected area. For example, if you have a blue sky and another blue object on the ground, using any of the above methods would result in both the sky and the blue object to be converted to a similar shade of gray. With Silver Efex Pro, you can make the blue sky dark and the blue object on the ground lighter by using the control points. Here is a screenshot of Silver Efex Pro in action:

In the above screenshot, I selected the “High Structure” preset (I use it more than any other) and then added a control point to the sky. Next, I moved the “Brightness” slider on the control point to the left, which dramatically darkened the middle portion of the sky. Contrast and Structure were already set to +30 and +55, respectively (through the selected preset).

Silver Efex Pro has lots of different options to convert color photos to black and white. It even has the ability to give a different tone such as sepia to images through the “Stylizing” menu and can do other cool stuff like burning/darkening edges and vignetting.

The first image in this article was converted to black and white using Silver Efex Pro. Here are some more B&W images that were also converted in Silver Efex Pro:

The high-resolution versions of the above images can be found in the Wallpapers section of the website.

The last thing I wanted to point out, is that when it comes to black and white photography, there is no “magic template” or workflow that works for every single picture. While you can have a standard set of settings for color photographs, you cannot apply the same B&W techniques to all photographs, due to different colors and shades of gray in images. In addition, converting color landscapes to B&W is also not the same thing as converting color portraits to B&W. When you work with portraiture, you have to employ different conversion techniques and be more careful with color filters, contrast and structure settings.

1) How large can you print?

One of the most frequently asked questions by photographers who do not have much experience with the printing process is how big they can print their photographs from their DSLR cameras. Traditionally, the rule has been to divide the width of the image in pixels by 300 to get the highest quality print size in inches. For example, if you are shooting with the Nikon D90 camera, the image resolution is 4,288 (width) x 2,848 (height). This literally means that there are 4,288 horizontal pixels and 2,848 vertical pixels on the image sensor. If you multiply these numbers together, you will get to 12,212,224 pixels or 12.2 megapixels – the total number of pixels available on the sensor. So in the above case with the D90, dividing 4,288 and 2,848 by 300 gives 14.3 x 9.5 inch size prints. Why divide by 300 and what does that number mean? This number represents “DPI” (dots per inch) or “PPI” (pixels per inch), which means how many dots/pixels per inch the printer will print on paper. The more the number of “dots” per square inch, the more dense and close to each other the printed dots will be, resulting in smooth transitions and less space between those dots and therefore less “grain”. 300 dots per inch gives magazine-quality prints, while lower numbers below 150 introduce more grain and fuzziness to the printed image.

Given the above information, how large could you print an image from the Nikon D90 camera? Now that you know what dots per inch means, the first question that needs to be asked, is how good of a quality the print should be. Take a look at the following chart:

1. Nikon D90 12.2Mp 300 DPI (Highest Quality) – 14.3″ x 9.5″
2. Nikon D90 12.2Mp 240 DPI (Good Quality) – 17.9″ x 11.9″
3. Nikon D90 12.2Mp 200 DPI (Average Quality) – 21.4″ x 14.2″
4. Nikon D90 12.2Mp 150 DPI (Poor Quality) – 28.6″ x 19″

If you wanted to make the highest quality print for publication in a magazine at 300 DPI, you could easily print a full standard 8″ x 10″ page and could even afford cropping the image to fully fit the page or print at non-standard sizes all the way to 14.3″ x 9.5″. Some professional photographers print at 240 DPI and find it pretty good for the work they sell, so you could go a little lower. Going below 240 DPI, however, is not acceptable by most photographers due to loss of quality and “fuzziness” or “blur” (if the image is not properly resized) in the images.

So, does it mean that you are limited to such small prints with your DSLR camera? What if you want to hang your beautiful picture on a 24″ x 36″ frame? This is where proper image resizing can help you achieve great results with your prints.

Printing photographs during the film days was pretty easy – photographers already knew the print size from 35mm or medium format films and it was easy to find out what sizes could be printed without losing much details and sharpness. With the invention of digital photography, everything is now different, at times more complicated with all the DPI/PPI language and image resizing options with different algorithms. The new advancements in digital image processing are now allowing much larger prints with minimum loss of quality and details. Let’s take a look at the two most frequently used methods to enlarge images by professionals.

2) Enlarging images using Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is the most popular graphic program used for enlarging images. The tool within Photoshop to enlarge images is called “Image Size” and it is available under Image->Image Size in the top navigation menu. Once you open an image and go to Image Size, you will see something like this:

The initial width and height indicate the size of the image you loaded into Photoshop. In the above example, I took an image that was 1024 x 768 and quadrupled its size by changing the width to 4096 (the height automatically changes since I have “Constrain Proportions” checked). As I increased the size, the middle section is pointing out that if I printed that photograph at 240 DPI, I would get a 17.067″ x 12.8″ print size. If I change the value from 240 to 300 DPI, the print size gets lowered to 13.653″ x 10.24″, while keeping the image size the same.

Let’s jump to a real example and see what we get by enlarging a photograph using Photoshop. Here is a bird image I picked that I shot earlier this year:

It has plenty of details and is very sharp, so it is a good sample to test. Here is how the image looks like when viewed at 400%:

Viewed at 400 Percent

As you can see, it is very “pixelated”, meaning that there are lots of squares in the image. This happens because the original image is comprised of pixels and when you increase the size of the image, the only thing the computer can do is increase the number of pixels that represent a single pixel. In the above case, approximately 4 pixels now represent a single pixel, because the image is viewed at 400%, hence the “pixelated” image. If you were to do the same for print, it would not look good at all with all those squares. To fight this problem, Adobe came up with several image interpolation algorithms that go through the image and convert the square pixels to smooth transitions for both increasing and decreasing image sizes. However, Adobe highly recommends not to increase the sizes of images, because the additional pixels are created by analyzing the neighboring pixels and then coming up with a neutral colored pixel in between to have a smooth transition, which ultimately results in blurry details. Take a look at the following image that was enlarged through Photoshop using the “Bicubic Smoother” image interpolation algorithm:

Photoshop Resize 4x Enlargement

As you can see, the pixelated areas are gone and replaced by smooth transitions. However, the edges are now too smooth and the image lost some of its sharpness that was there in the original image. This might not be very noticeable when the image is viewed from a distance, but when viewed very closely, the lack of sharpness will be quite obvious. Some additional sharpness could be added manually after resizing, but it has to be done carefully, as sharpening could introduce more artifacts and unnatural-looking details.

3) Enlarging images using Genuine Fractals 6

One tool that is quite popular among photographers for enlarging images is OnOne Software’s Genuine Fractals 6 Professional – an advanced resizing tool for professional photographers that is specifically designed for enlarging images for large and gigantic print sizes. Compared to Photoshop, it has a more complex algorithm that not only analyses the nearest neighbor, but also does a decent job at retaining the sharpness and details of images. Here is how it looks like:

Using Genuine Fractals 6 is very easy – all you have to do is type the new image dimensions or indicate the print size from the “Document Size” panel and the program will automatically enlarge the image and crop it to the selected print size. For more control over transitions, the program allows you to specify the type of image using the “Texture Control” panel:

As you can see, I picked “High Detail”, because I wanted to retain as much detail as possible for feathers and other parts of the bird. Here is how Genuine Fractals rendered the image after I clicked “Apply”:

GF6 Resize 4x High Detail

Now compare Photoshop’s Image Resize with Genuine Fractals 6 Pro:

Genuine Fractals vs Photoshop Comparison

Pay attention to the amount of blur from the Photoshop image (right) and relatively good retained details on the Genuine Fractals image (left). And that’s without applying any additional sharpening on the Genuine Fractals image!

4) Enlarging images using BenVista PhotoZoom Pro

Another software package that is very similar in its functionality to Genuine Fractals is Benvista PhotoZoom Pro. Here is how the product looks like:

BenVista PhotoZoom Pro 3.1

And here is the same image processed by PhotoZoom:

BenVista PhotoZoom 4x Photo Detailed

Compared with Genuine Fractals:

Genuine Fractals vs BenVista PhotoZoom

BenVista PhotoZoom seems to retain sharpness a little better than Genuine Fractals, especially in feathers. I used the “S-Spline Max” patented algorithm to get the above results and chose the “Photo – Detailed” preset.

5) Conclusion

If you are thinking about printing your images on large paper, you do not have to be limited by the number of megapixels on your sensor. As I have shown above, you can enlarge your images using the available tools and algorithms for proper image resizing from various manufacturers. I’m sure there are other products in the market that can achieve the same or similar results, so you can certainly give them a chance and see how you like them. If you want professional-looking prints, however, you should seriously consider investing in such great tools as Genuine Fractals 6 Pro or BenVista PhotoZoom that will give you large prints and still preserve as many details as possible.

Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments section below.

1) Data disaster types

Whether you are using a Compact Flash or SD/SDHC card, there are several types of disasters that can happen with it:

1. Formatted card (Chance of Recovery: High) – if you happened to format the memory card for whatever reason, either in-camera or on your PC. Chances of recovering all data are very high, as long as the card was not touched after the last format. This is due to the fact that the formatting process never actually deletes the images from the memory card – it simply labels the card as “free” and prepares it for writing.
2. Deleted images (Chance of Recovery: High) – if you manually deleted images from the card either on the camera or on your PC/Mac, the chances of recovering all data are very high, as long as more images or data were not written on the disk. Just like in formatting, deleting files simply marks certain area of the disk as free for writing. The actual files are never erased from the disk.
3. Non-physical damage/data failure (Chance of Recovery: Moderate to Low, depends on type of failure) – there could be different scenarios, but one of the more common ones is when a memory card fails during the process of writing images to the card (corrupted data). This is where your camera would give an error, indicating that the data could not be written to the card. The chances of data recovery are moderate to low, depending on how serious the damage is due to bad sectors, etc. Some unreadable cards can be recovered, again, depending on the damage.
4. Physical damage (Chance of Recovery: Low to None) – if your memory card has suffered from physical damage and is unreadable, the chances of recovery are very low. You could try one of the data recovery tools shown below to see if it can recover anything. If all programs fail and the drive cannot be recognized, it might be better to take it to data recovery experts, who can try to retrieve the data in a lab environment.

The chances of recovering data after formatting or deleting files are high, compared to any sort of damage that could lead to partial or complete data loss. Let’s talk about what you can do to prevent the above from happening.

2) Tips to prevent data loss

Again, there is never a guarantee that the memory cards you have today will always perform flawlessly. I have a few tips to share on what you can do to prevent data loss.

1. Invest in reliable memory cards – avoid buying cheap memory cards from unknown manufacturers. Do your research first and buy memory cards from such companies as Sandisk and Lexar that manufacture reliable cards. Get the professional series instead of regular ones. If price is an issue, get the older slower version.
2. Backup your memory cards – if you are shooting an important event, invest in a portable card reader or a portable hard drive that can backup your memory cards quickly on the job. Portable USB card readers are cheap and you can hook them up to your laptop and backup the files to your laptop’s hard drive, or you can backup all photos with a single button if you have a portable hard drive.
3. Backup all files to a separate drive while importing your photos to Lightroom – this one is easy, just check “Make a Second Copy To:” field in the Lightroom 3 Import dialog and make sure to point the folder to a different hard drive. What this will do, is create a duplicate copy of the file on a separate drive in case your primary drive fails.
4. Label cards – buy cheap sticky color labels from a local store for cards that have been used. Make it a habit to put labels to every card that comes out of your camera, to avoid situations where you might accidentally reuse the same card.
5. Dual memory slots – if your camera is equipped with two memory slots (such as Nikon D3s), put two identical cards and use them in backup mode, especially if your photo shoot is important.
6. Format cards in camera after each use – obviously, only after you have made several backups of your data. Do not format your memory cards on your computer and do it in camera instead. I have seen cases where the files could not be written to the card by the camera, just because the card was formatted elsewhere.
7. Memory card size issue – some photographers do not like purchasing large memory cards, because they do not want to lose too many images in case of a failure. I personally disagree with this view, because in my experience, having several cards has its own disadvantages such as extra storage problems, potential physical damage to both camera and cards due to frequency of card changes, etc. I used to shoot in no larger than 4 GB memory cards in the past and I have moved to 16 and 32 GB cards since then. I shoot in RAW format and swapping cards like crazy is not very practical.

3) Important things to remember

If you have a data disaster situation and need to retrieve the data, make sure that the card is no longer used. This means absolutely no further writing to it, whether on PC or in camera. I have had some readers ask me if they could retrieve images from a memory card that they have deleted images from and then filled the card with new images and the answer is no in all cases. You might be able to recover partial data from a memory card if you did not fully use it (for example you shot 2 GB worth of images on an 8 GB card), but not everything. New images write over deleted ones and the more new images you have, the less is the chance to retrieve old images from the card. So, once again, if you need to retrieve data from a card, make sure to stop any kind of writing activity to it.

4) How to recover deleted images with PhotoRescue Pro

I have used many different kinds of file recovery programs before and the one I like the most is PhotoRescue Pro from Essential Data Tools. Don’t confuse it with PhotoRescue 3 from DataRescue (which works equally well) – it is a completely different product. Both cost around $30 and make the process of image recovery a breeze.

The program is very simple and it is Wizard-based:

As you can see, it recognized all media on my machine, including the media card reader. All I do is select the media and click Next, after which I’m taken to a screen where I can choose what image formats to look for and restore:

The rest of the process is pretty straightforward – it automatically finds the missing files and lets you choose which ones to restore:

Either pick everything, or pick a particular file and click the “Recover…” button to recover the image.

If you have any questions or if you are using some other type of software for image data recovery and you like it, please let me know in the comments section below.

1) What is noise in digital images?

If you have a digital camera, whether you have an advanced top of the line DSLR or a simple point and shoot, you will at some point get images with small dots all over the image. Those small dots might not be very noticeable when you look at the image on the back of the camera, but when you zoom in and view the image at 100% on your PC, they all of a sudden become quite visible. Take a look at the following image:

While nothing seems to be wrong with the image, here is how it looks when viewed at 100%:

See those tiny dots in the image? That’s what noise is and how it looks!

2) Causes of noise

Image noise originates from either the camera sensor or the sensitivity of the camera sensor, or sometimes both. Let’s talk about the camera sensor first. Every digital camera is equipped with a sensor that collects light particles via very tiny buckets called “photosites”, which later become pixels in the final digital image. For example, if your digital camera is equipped with a 10 megapixel sensor, it means that there are 10 million photosites present on the camera sensor. The size of the photosites plays a big role on the amount of noise that is present in the image. Generally, the smaller the photosite, the noisier the image gets. This is where the size of the sensor comes into play. If you took a DSLR and a point and shoot camera and both have 10 megapixel sensors, the DSLR would yield a much cleaner image with a lot less noise when compared to the point and shoot image. This is because DSLR’s have much bigger sensors (full frame sensors can be 15+ times bigger in size than sensors in point and shoot cameras) and therefore can accommodate larger photosites compared to point and shoot. If you use a phone camera, you might see plenty of noise in images even during bright sunny days, which happens because too many pixels are crammed into a tiny sensor. Consequently, smaller sensors with a large number of pixels generally produce noisier images.

The second source of camera noise is the sensitivity level of the camera sensor, known as ISO in photography. If you do not know what ISO is, I highly recommend reading my “Understanding ISO” article that I wrote a while ago. Basically, as you increase camera ISO, the amount of noise automatically increases as well. For example, increasing ISO from 100 to 200 doubles the sensor sensitivity and could therefore result in more noise.

Now what happens when you couple a small sensor with high ISO sensitivity? That’s where you could get a trashed image, where you will not only see a lot of noise/grain, but also bad colors and all kinds of artifacts in the image.

3) How to reduce noise in camera

If you are getting noisy images out of your camera, it could mean two things – either the size of the camera sensor is too small (as pointed out above) or the ISO level in your camera is too high. While there is not much I can do to help with the former, you can certainly fix the latter by changing the ISO level or “maximum ISO level” on your camera. Bear in mind that by changing the ISO level in your camera, you are essentially decreasing the sensitivity of the sensor, which might result in slower shutter speed. In turn, slower shutter speed could introduce camera shake or blur to your images, so you have to understand this relationship first. Check out my “Understanding ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture” article to understand the relationship between camera ISO and shutter speed first. Decreasing ISO on digital cameras is very easy – check out your camera menu and if you don’t find it there, read the camera manual to find where it can be changed from.

Many modern DSLR cameras such as Nikon D90 have an “Auto ISO” feature in the camera. Auto ISO automatically increases and decreases the sensitivity of the sensor based on the amount of ambient light. If you have wrong Auto ISO settings in your camera, you could be adding unnecessary noise to your images. See “what ISO should I set my camera to” to modify your Auto ISO settings. If you have a DSLR camera with a DX (cropped) sensor, I recommend setting “Maximum Sensitivity” to 800 and if you have an FX (full-frame) sensor, you can bump it up to 1600 or even 3200.

Some people play with their camera settings and forget that they set their ISO to a really big number, which would obviously create a lot of noise even in daylight situations. Decreasing ISO to the base ISO level such as 100 or 200 would help in reducing and possibly eliminating noise in the images.

4) How to reduce noise in post-production

If you already have an image that has too much noise, there are several ways to reduce the noise in post-production software such as Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. In addition, there are many third party utilities and Photoshop plugins that do a terrific job in decreasing noise in images without affecting the image quality.

4.1) Reducing noise in Photoshop

Photoshop has a built-in “Reduce Noise” filter (Filter->Noise->Reduce Noise), but it is pretty weak in functionality compared to other solutions. To be honest, I never use it, because it does not do a good job and does not provide many options to effectively reduce noise. Here is a screenshot of the Reduce Noise filter:

Photoshop Reduce Noise Filter

You can try removing noise through “Per Channel” tab in Advanced mode, but it was not effective at all for the above image. If you want to give it a try, play with the settings and see what you can get. Let’s take a look at Lightroom’s noise handling solution instead.

4.2) Reducing noise in Lightroom

Lightroom comes with a better and a more advanced tool to deal with noise – the “Detail” panel that is available in the “Develop” module of Lightroom. Simply press “D” to go to Develop module, click the image to view it at 100%, then open up the right panel and scroll down until you get to “Detail”, where you will see settings for Sharpening and Noise Reduction. Why is sharpening included? Because applying heavy noise reduction could soften your image and combining noise reduction with some sharpening typically yields better results. Here is a screenshot of the detail panel and some settings that I have used for my duck image:

Lightroom Detail Panel

Lightroom has the following controls for Sharpening and Noise Reduction:
Sharpening: Amount, Radius, Detail and Masking
Noise Reduction: Luminance, Detail, Contrast, Color and Color Detail

Start off from Noise Reduction settings and first increase the Luminance level, which is the amount of noise reduction you want to apply. I used 100 for the above example. Next, go to Detail and experiment with it a little by moving it from left to right – it controls the amount of details you want to preserve in your image. If you move it all the way to the left, you will see that the whole image becomes very soft, including details that should not. If you move it all the way to the right, the image does not change much at all, because you are trying to preserve too many details. I find that values between 40 and 60 work best in most situations. When it comes to Contrast, which is a tool to remove contrast noise, I typically leave it at “0″. The same applies to Color and Color Detail – I rarely touch those settings, unless I have Color/Chroma noise that I need to remove from an image.

Once you are done with removing noise from the image, if you see that you have lost some of the sharpness in your image, play with the Sharpening settings above – you can achieve great results by using sharpening and noise reduction together.

Here is the extracted image with noise reduction applied in Lightroom – move the mouse over to see the original for comparison:

4.3) Reducing noise in Nik Software’s Dfine

If you are looking for the best solution to reduce noise in your images, you should try using third party tools such as Nik Software’s Dfine, Neat Image or Noise Ninja. The great thing about third party noise reduction tools, is that they allow you to apply noise reduction selectively, meaning to only certain parts of an image. Take a look at Nik Software’s Dfine in action:

Nik Software Dfine

The areas that are selected in dotted squares are the ones I want to apply noise reduction to. The software analyses the noise pattern and figures out what it needs to do to eliminate the noise. I can manually control the settings by telling the software the amount of noise I want to reduce and I can even specify which areas not to touch while applying noise reduction. Here is what I used for my image:

Nik Software Dfine Settings

As you can see, I’m applying some heavy contrast noise reduction at 150%, then I dropped an exception point on the duck’s head so that noise reduction does not affect it. The result is the following image:

Move your mouse over the image to compare it with the original version.

4.4) Reducing noise in Neat Image Pro

Another great tool to remove noise from images is Neat Image Pro. I have used Neat Image Pro in the past and I really enjoyed it before seeing Dfine and Noise Ninja. It has many more options than Lightroom and Dfine, but lacks Dfine’s ability to exclude certain areas of the image from getting touched (will probably be added in future versions). Here is how the user interface looks like:

Neat Image Auto Profile

It has camera profiles for many digital cameras, and as you can see from the above screenshot, my D300 was quickly identified and it automatically selected a noisy area to work with after I clicked the “Auto profile” button. Next, I went to Noise Filter Settings and I slightly increased Noise Reduction “Luminance channel” amount, then increased the sharpness of the image under “Sharpening Amount” to 40% and finally pressed the “Preview” button to see what my changes would look like:

Neat Image Settings Preview

After I was done, I clicked the “Apply” button to get the image processed using the above settings. Here is how the final image looks like (move the mouse over to see the original):

4.5) Reducing noise in Noise Ninja

The last tool I want to show you is Noise Ninja, perhaps the most popular tool among photographers today. It is certainly more powerful than both Neat Image and Nik Software Dfine and offers many ways to fine-tune noise reduction. The biggest benefit of Noise Ninja, is its ability to selectively apply or reduce noise reduction through a special “Noise Brush” tool. It is somewhat similar to Dfine, but is much more precise, since the brush can be applied to any area, just like a masking tool in Photoshop. You can paint over individual parts of your subject with either a soft-edge or a hard-edge brush and it is possible to isolate areas that need or do not need noise reduction applied. Here is what I used for the filter settings:

Noise Ninja Filter

And here is the Noise Brush tab, where you can brush over areas that you want to include or exclude in/from noise reduction:

Noise Ninja Noise Brush

Here is how the final image looks like (move the mouse over to see the original):

5) Conclusion

If you want to get serious about your photography, you need to learn how to post-process your images and make them look good to present them to your potential clients, to show them on your web portfolio or print on paper. While having noise in your images can make them look interesting and film-like, not all types of noise look good and not on every picture. Most professional photographers shoot clean images and then add noise to them as an effect later, if necessary, rather than intentionally shooting with noise. In many cases, noise degrades overall image quality and the above tools serve to help fix problematic photographs by removing noise from them. As you can see, most third party tools are very similar in their core functionality and certainly allow the granularity that neither Photoshop nor Lightroom can offer. If you do not already own noise reduction software, I highly recommend to try out the demo/trial versions of the above software and see what works best for you.

I hope you found this article useful. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to drop a comment in the comments section below.

DNG support in Windows XP

Interestingly, Windows XP (32-bit) comes with full DNG support, but it needs to be activated from the Windows registry. If you are running Windows XP, here is what you need to do:

1. Download this registry file and save it on your desktop
2. Double-click the file, which will ask you to confirm if you want to add entries to your registry. Click “Yes”, which then will modify the registry as needed.
3. Reboot the computer.
4. Go to a folder with DNG files and switch to thumbnail view. Verify that you can see the thumbnails, as you can see with JPEG files.
5. Delete the downloaded registry file from your desktop.

DNG support in Windows Vista and Windows 7

If you are running the 32-bit version of Windows Vista, you can certainly try the 32-bit version of Adobe DNG codec, which can be downloaded from Adobe Labs. However, I personally recommend using the third party FastPictureViewer WIC RAW Codec Pack, which is 100% free (as of 06/17/2010, the product is no longer free, as explained here. The codec pack is now $9.99. If you want to get the older version that is still free, either Google for “Fastpictureviewer codec 1.70″ or download the file from CNET – not sure how long CNET will keep the file), includes full DNG support for both 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows Vista/Windows 7 and covers over 20 RAW image formats from 300 different camera models (all current Nikon cameras, including D3s are supported). Once you download and install the codec, the program will ask you to reboot your PC.

After the machine is rebooted, go to a folder with DNG files in it and you will see that the image thumbnails are now visible:

Screenshot #1

You can also open the DNG files in Windows Photo Viewer:

Screenshot #2

Now you don’t need to open each DNG file in Lightroom or Photoshop just to see its contents, thanks to the FastPictureViewer codec pack!

Dead Horse Point Panorama at Sunrise

Have you had a situation before, where you stood on top of a mountain or some sort of outlook and enjoyed a beautiful view that seemed to span from far left to far right, making you move your head just to see everything? If you have had one of those moments, I am sure you really wished that you could capture the beauty with your digital camera. While some of the modern cameras have video recording capabilities and you could certainly capture the whole scene through video, what if you wanted to print it out? The good news is that the technology today allows us to capture such scenes through a panoramic photography technique.

1) What is Panoramic Photography?

Panoramic photography, also known as wide format photography, is a special technique that stitches multiple images from the same camera together to form a single, wide photograph (vertical or horizontal). The term “panorama” literally means “all sight” in Greek and it first originated from painters that wanted to capture a wide view of a landscape, not just a certain part of it. The first panoramic photographs were made by simply aligning printed versions of film, which did not turn out very well, because it was close to impossible to perfectly align photographs. With the invention of personal computing, advancements in computer software and digital photography, it is now much easier to stitch digital images together using specialized software. In fact, using a proper photography technique and panoramic equipment, it is now possible to create near-perfect panoramas at extremely high resolutions. Some photographers even stitch hundreds of high resolution images to create gargantuan “gigapixel” panoramas. Today, digital panoramic photography is quite popular and common not only among landscape photographers, but also among architectural and cityscape photographers.

Panoramic Photography can get quite complex and expensive, depending on what you are trying to do. For example, creating panoramic images in architectural photography requires camera and lens to be properly calibrated on special panoramic equipment to prevent curved lines, distortions and improper stitches of close objects. At the same time, you can successfully take great landscape panoramic images without investing on any camera equipment, as long as you know how to do it right. In this article, I will primarily focus on taking panoramic images either hand-held or with a tripod, without spending on any other equipment.

2) Types of Panoramas

While the word “panorama” automatically assumes that it will be a wide horizontal or vertical image, in my opinion, it does not necessarily have to be. If I stitch several images together and it turns out to be a square image, I still consider it to be a high resolution panoramic image. Here is how I define panoramic images:

1) Wide angle panoramas – anything that looks like a wide angle photograph, which covers less than 180 degrees, whether horizontal or vertical. Wide angle panoramas can even look like regular images, except they are stitched from several photographs and therefore would have more resolution.

Yosemite, wide angle panorama

2) 180 degree panoramas – panoramas that cover 180 degrees from left to right. These types of panoramas look very wide, covering a large area.

Zabriskie Point, 180 degree panorama

3) 360 degree panoramas – panoramas that cover up to 360 degrees. These panoramas look extremely wide and they cover the whole scene in a single, super wide image.

360 Degree Panorama

4) Spherical panoramas – also known as “planets”. These are 360 degree panoramas that are converted to a square spherical image using a special post-processing technique.

Spherical Panorama

All of the above panoramas can either be photographed in a single row (meaning one row of vertical or horizontal images) or multiple rows (higher focal length is often used to yield much higher resolutions. Multi-row panoramas often require special panoramic equipment).

3) How to Photograph Panoramas

Let’s now get to the meat – how do you capture panoramic images that will be used to create a panorama? There are two ways to capture panoramic images:

1. Taking horizontal shots – an easy method for quick panoramas, where resolution is not important. Here are two sample horizontal shots:
   

   And here is the final stitched panorama (click here for larger version):
   

2. Taking vertical shots – a preferred way to capture panoramas. Vertical images capture more of the sky and ground and yield higher resolution panoramas compared to horizontal ones. Here are four vertical shots:
   

   And here is the final stitched panorama:

   

I personally try to avoid shooting horizontally, because I lose too much resolution due to some cropping that is required after the panorama is stitched by software. Vertical panoramas are much better in that regard and they always yield more resolution than horizontal panoramas.

As you can see from the above sample images, the shots I took overlap each other by approximately 50%. In order for any program to be able stitch multiple images together, the images have to overlap each other by a certain margin, so that alignment points are properly identified. The alignment points serve as flags for the stitching algorithm that seamlessly merges the images and cuts out the rest of the image. The overlap margin is a subject of opinion and while some people recommend 20-30% overlap, I personally do it by about 50% (see why below).

3.1) Camera Equipment

1. Digital Camera – as far as the camera itself, any camera should work, as long as the exposure (aperture, shutter speed and ISO) can be locked. Ideally, you want a digital camera that can shoot in full Manual mode (preferably a DSLR).
2. Lens – I find zoom lenses to be the most useful for panoramic photography. You can certainly photograph panoramas with fixed/prime lenses, but being able to zoom in and out will give you more options and versatility, especially in difficult conditions where your movements are limited. If you have a DSLR, any wide zoom lens such as Nikon 18-55mm or Nikon 18-200mm should work perfectly fine. I personally use the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G lens for most of my panoramas and I have been very happy with the results.
3. Lens Filters – I recommend taking filters off your lens while shooting panoramas. It is OK to keep a clear filter on, as long as it is not introducing any vignetting to your images on the wide end. Definitely remove a circular polarizer if you have one mounted on your lens, because it will screw up your sky. Here is how bad it can get:
   

   Circular Polarizer Mess

4. Tripod – a tripod is optional, but highly recommended for best results. Any sturdy tripod should work, but make sure that the head is flexible enough for you to be able to pan from left to right with ease. See my “how to choose and buy a tripod” article if you want to buy a tripod for your DSLR.
5. Cable Release – optional, but recommended for capturing shake-free images.
6. Panoramic Setup – a full panoramic setup is ideal for best results, but it is very expensive ($500+). Not recommended for beginners due to complexity of use, but a must-have for professionals that want to sell their images.

3.2) Camera Settings

Before you start taking panoramic images, you have to change some of the settings on your camera. Here is what I recommend to set in your camera:

• Shoot in “Manual” mode – the most important thing in panoramas is consistency of exposures. It is imperative that no matter how bright or dark parts of the scene might be, your images must have the same exposure. If your camera allows locking exposure, you can certainly shoot in other modes, but I suggest to shoot in Manual mode to prevent possible accidents. I have screwed up many panoramas, assuming that I properly locked my exposure, after which I started shooting exclusively in Manual mode for panoramas.
• Set your lens to Manual Focus – if you have a DSLR, focus your lens on a distant object (infinity or near infinity), then switch to manual focus. You do not want your camera to change focus every time you take a picture.
• ISO – make sure that “Auto ISO” is turned off and set your ISO to the camera base ISO (either 100 or 200).
• Aperture and Shutter Speed – for panoramic images, you want to have everything in focus. Therefore, make sure that your aperture is set to a good number that will put everything, including any foreground elements, into perfect focus. Depending on your lens focal length, you should set your aperture to at least f/8, preferably f/10 and higher (depending on how close the nearest foreground object is). Once you set the right aperture, set your shutter speed based on the meter reading as explained below.
• Metering – in terms of metering, do not meter off the brightest or darkest areas of the scene, but rather try to find a “sweet middle” and set your shutter speed based on that area for the entire panorama. Take a couple of pictures and make sure that the images are not too overexposed or underexposed for the brightest and darkest parts of the scene.
• Lens Focal Length – ultra wide and wide-angle lenses below 24-28mm on FX sensors and 16-18mm on DX sensors typically have heavy distortion and vignetting issues that can make it difficult to properly align and stitch images. For example, when I mount my Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G lens on an FX body such as Nikon D700, I get visible distortion and vignetting at 24mm. Gladly, both distortion and vignetting are very easy to deal with in Lightroom 3 Lens Correction, but if I did not use Lightroom or some other tool to automatically correct these lens problems, I would probably skip the 24mm focal length for shooting panoramic images. Typically, the focal lengths I use the most for panoramas are between 28mm to 50mm on full-frame FX bodies and 18mm to 35mm on DX, depending on the lens.
• Shoot in RAW – I always recommend shooting in RAW for best results. See my RAW vs JPEG article to see why you should be shooting RAW.
• White Balance – set your White Balance to “Auto” when shooting in RAW and change later, if necessary.

3.3) Shooting Technique

Let’s proceed to the fun part – shooting panoramas. Once you have the equipment setup and ready to go, follow these instructions:

1. Identify the area you want to photograph. The first thing you need to do, is identify what you want to capture. The best candidates for panoramic images are overlooks, i.e. standing on the top of a mountain or hill, or looking down from an elevated area with no near objects. Avoid shooting panoramas with trees, bushes and other objects in the foreground, unless you have special calibrated panoramic equipment. If you are shooting a scene that is far away from you, the panorama will stitch perfectly, because the software will not have to deal with parallax errors.
2. Watch for wind and other moving objects. Wind can move tree leaves, grass, water and sand in different directions, which will spoil your panorama. Only shoot in windy conditions when the wind strongly moves everything in one direction. Avoid taking pictures of moving water waves.
3. If you will be using a tripod, set the tripod on a firm surface and level it. Once it is leveled, mount your camera on the tripod horizontally or vertically and firmly tighten it. Make sure that you can freely pan the camera from one side to another without letting it change any angles. Try to watch for alignment errors by matching the lines in your viewfinder with the horizon.
4. If shooting hand-held, keep the camera close to your eye and look through the viewfinder instead of the back LCD. Pan from left to right and see whether you can keep the camera straight and aligned against the horizon.
5. Set your camera settings as shown above and make sure that the exposure is fully locked.
6. Check camera focus and make sure that autofocus is disabled.
7. Note the starting point and ending point you will be photographing and visually remember both.
8. Take a single picture and see if the image looks good on the back LCD. If the image looks good, you are ready to shoot. If it doesn’t, check your exposure settings and make changes, if necessary.
9. Point your camera at your starting point on the left and take the first picture. Before you move the camera, remember where your center focus point inside your viewfinder is pointing, then start moving the camera to the right, until that point is at the center edge of the frame. This basically means that you will be overlapping your new image with the first one by approximately 50%. Take a picture and repeat this process until you get to the end point. Remembering where the center focus point is at relative to the scene is the easiest and safest way for me to make sure that the images overlap enough for post-processing software to be able to stitch them later. You can certainly overlap them by a smaller margin and decrease the total number of images, so it is totally up to you on how you want to do this. Just make sure that the images overlap by at least 20% and there are visible stationary objects that will allow the stitching program to identify them and connect them later.
10. If shooting hand-held, stand in one spot, keep your elbows close to your body and rotate only the upper part of your body, keeping the camera close to your head at all times. Imagine that your legs are a tripod and your upper body is a tripod head. This will minimize the effect of parallax on your images. If you have any nearby objects and you want to try to minimize parallax errors, try the following technique: using your left thumb and index fingers, hold the middle of the lens and try to take pictures while not moving your arm (your body needs to remain still). This is difficult to do because you will not be able to look through the viewfinder, but not impossible :) I have taken a few panoramic images this way and they stitched perfectly! Each lens is different and the entrance pupil (which is the point where close and distant objects keep their relative positions when the lens is rotated) location also varies depending on mechanical and optical characteristics of the lens. Your two fingers need to hold the bottom of the lens where the entrance pupil is (not the nodal point like many incorrectly assume) and the camera needs to rotate around it.
11. Once you are done taking the pictures, visually inspect all images on the LCD at least once to make sure that you do not have any problems with your setup.

Black Canyon, captured hand-held

The easiest and quickest panoramas can be done by hand-holding your camera. Believe it or not, but most of my panoramas are done hand-held! They might not be as perfect as I want them to be in some cases, but they are still darn good – good enough to print on large paper. Try out the above and see how it works out for you.

3.4) Using a Panoramic Head

If you want to get serious with panoramas, you should invest in a good panoramic setup, which will allow you to take pictures without worrying about parallax issues. There are plenty of different solutions out there and the most popular ones are by Nodal Ninja, Manfrotto and RRS, the latter being the number one choice for professionals. With a good panoramic head, you can have the camera setup rotate around the entrance pupil of the lens and take perfect single-row or multi-row panoramas that will stitch without any problems.

4) Stitching Panoramas in Software

Once you are done taking the pictures, you then need to stitch them using specialized software that is capable of handling panoramas. I will only show how to use Photoshop and PTGui, but you are more than welcome to try other panoramic tools.

4.1) Using Adobe Photoshop

Stitching panoramas in Photoshop is super easy. If you use Lightroom, simply select the images and then right click, “Edit In”->”Merge to Panorama in Photoshop…”. If you do not use Lightroom, simply open up Photoshop and then go to “File”->”Automate”->Photomerge…”. A dialog box will come up that looks like this:

The images will automatically show up if you use Lightroom. If you do it from Photoshop, simply click “Browse” and select the images to be merged into a panorama. Make sure that “Blend Images Together” and “Geometric Distortion Correction” are checked, then click OK. This will start the stitching process, which can sometimes take a long time, depending on the number of images and their size. Once the process is completed, all you have to do is crop the image and you are all set!

4.2) Using PTGui

Besides Photoshop, there are plenty of different panoramic tools out there and PTGui is certainly the most popular one. I have been using it for years and I really like it, although I must admit that Photoshop does a better job at stitching problematic panoramas. Once you open PTGui, click on the “Load images…” button, select the images you want to stitch then click “Open” to open the images within PtGui. Once the images are fully loaded, click the “Align images…” button and let PTGui calculate the connecting points. Once the process is complete, you will see a new window that looks like this:

Select the right projection for your panorama then return to the main screen and click the “Create Panorama…” button, which will take you to a separate tab. Set the right size and format of the image and click the “Create Panorama” button to start the stitching process.

PTGui has a lot more stitching options than Photoshop and you can customize pretty much anything, even manually set control points and select various stitching algorithms.

5) Challenges with Panoramic Photography

The biggest challenge with panoramic photography is stitching problems due to parallax errors. I highly recommend reading the Wikipedia article on parallax to fully understand why it presents such a big problem for photography. Once you learn the right ways to take images and minimize parallax, you can start taking great panoramic images!

Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments section below.

While I was driving through Rocky Mountains last year, I saw a beautiful sunset. It was so beautiful, that I stood there in awe for a moment, before taking out my camera and attempting to take a picture. I took one quick shot of the sunset and quickly realized that there was too much contrast between the sky and the mountains for my camera. The image came out horrible – the sky looked somewhat fine, but the mountains were pitch black. I only had my camera and my trusty tripod with me, so I knew that I did not have many options. I decided to try out a photography technique known as “HDR” or “High Dynamic Range” and I ended up with the following image:

While some people really like the above image, others just hate it. That’s how it goes with HDR in general – the surreal look of HDR photographs is not for everyone to love and enjoy, although, there are cases when it is done extremely well. But let’s save this discussion for later and first try to understand what HDR photography is all about.

One thing that you should always keep in mind while taking pictures, is that your camera does not have the same capabilities as your eyes when it comes to seeing both bright and dark tones in a scene. Our eyes are equipped with the most advanced technology, allowing us to see and perceive colors and tones no human-made electronic device can even come close to. This range of tones and colors is known as “dynamic range” in photography, which has become a key performance metric on modern digital camera sensors – the more dynamic range, the better the sensor.

If you have been using a digital camera for a while, you most likely ran into a similar situation as the one I described above, where you would take a picture and parts of it would either be too bright or too dark. No matter what settings you tweaked on your camera, nothing would seem to help, despite the fact that your eyes were seeing everything just right. If you switched your camera to manual control, you could brighten up one area, which would darken another and vice-versa, but no settings would correctly expose both, all due to the large dynamic range of the scene.

I tried to do the same with the above image and ended up with the following two photographs:

The left image shows that while I was able to correctly expose the sky, the ground turned out too dark for me to be able to recover any details from it. In the second image, I tried to correctly expose the ground, but ended up completely blowing out the sky. It was clear that my camera, despite having an advanced full-frame sensor, was unable to capture such a large dynamic range.

But what if I captured an underexposed, normal and over-exposed images of the same exact spot and then combined them together into one image, where everything is properly exposed? That’s exactly how HDR works.

1) What is HDR?

HDR or High Dynamic Range Photography is a post-processing technique that uses multiple images of the same scene shot at different shutter speeds to combine them all into a single photograph. The result is an image with the most amount of detail in both shadow and bright areas of the image, close to what the human eye would see. Although it is ideal to use multiple images of the same scene, you could also create an HDR image from a single image, as long as it is shot in RAW format. Hence, there are two methods of creating an HDR image: a) from a single image and b) from multiple images. In this article, I will show you how to do both.

2) HDR Requirements

In order to generate an HDR image, you need to have the following tools:

1. Digital camera (preferably a DSLR)
2. Tripod (for multiple exposures)
3. Adobe Photoshop or some other image-editing tool
4. Photomatix Pro or other HDR software (optional)
5. Noise Reduction software like Nik’s Dfine or Noise Ninja (optional)

Although you could get away without a tripod by shooting hand-held in brackets and let HDR software automatically align the images, I still recommend shooting with a tripod to get the best results. Aligning images works most of the time, but you would lose a portion of the image.

In terms of HDR software, you can use Photoshop’s built-in HDR functionality or third party applications like Photomatix Pro. I personally prefer to work with Photomatix Pro, because it offers much more functionality than Photoshop and is very easy to use, once you understand how to work with it. There are some other tools out there (including free & open source), but they are nowhere close to what Photomatix Pro can offer.

3) Camera Settings

For best results, I highly recommend to do the following:

1. Shoot in RAW. See my RAW vs JPEG article to see why you should be shooting in RAW.
2. Always keep the aperture the same between the shots, so I recommend shooting in Aperture Priority mode. You do not want to have images with different depths of field.
3. Set your camera metering to Matrix (Nikon) or Evaluative (Canon) to let the camera pick the best exposure for the whole scene. This will be your middle exposure.
4. Use the bracketing function of your camera and shoot in 2 EV steps if you are doing three brackets or 1 EV step if you are doing five brackets. For example: -2, -1, 0, +1, +2 works great for most situations.
5. Watch out for wind – too much of it will move bushes/grass/trees, which will screw up your final image.
6. Shoot frames quickly in bursts, especially if you have clouds in the frame.
7. Watch out for other moving objects. Although Photomatix Pro has a built-in function to reduce ghosting artifacts, it is still best if movements are minimal – motion is difficult to fix in software.

4.1) HDR Photography Using a Single Image

You can create HDR images from a single image, as long as both the brightest and the darkest parts of the image are somewhat recoverable. What this means, is that your brightest part of the image should not be completely blown out, while the darkest part of the image should not be pitch black. Therefore, you can only use images that are properly exposed with as many details preserved as possible. Keep in mind that RAW images (especially 14-bit+ RAW images) contain lots of data that you are not going to see when the image is viewed from Photoshop or Lightroom. In order to see this data, you would need to increase and decrease the exposure within Photoshop/Lightroom.

Take a look at the following image that I took at the Sand Dunes National Park:

Single shot with preserved details

While the exposure seems to be way off, the RAW image actually contains plenty of data of the sky and the dunes. I can get more details out of the sky by decreasing the exposure to -1 and at the same time I can get plenty of details from the sand by increasing the exposure by +3:

By decreasing and increasing exposure, I can extract a total of 5 images from the above RAW file: -1, 0, +1, +2 and +3. I can then use all five images to create a single HDR image in Photoshop or other third party HDR tools. Here is what I got after running the 5 images in Photomatix Pro:

HDR from 5 different exposures

The process is simple – decrease and increase exposure by one full stop (-1 or +1) and extract each as a separate 16-bit TIFF file. Next, open Photomatix Pro and do the following:

1. Click “Generate HDR image”
2. Click “Browse…” and select the extracted TIFF files. Click OK.
3. Since the exposure data within the files is identical (shutter speed, aperture, ISO), Photomatix does not know which exposures you chose in your files. Therefore, you will be presented with a separate screen that will ask what exposure steps there are between the files. Look at the files and make sure that your normally exposed shot stays at 0, while the other files have the exposure values properly defined as seen below:

   

   If any of the numbers are wrong, change them manually for each file.

4. Click OK
5. Now you will be presented with a new window. Set the settings as show below:

   

   Since we are merging different exposures from the same image, there is no need to check “Align source images” and “Attempt to reduce ghosting artifacts”.

6. Click OK
7. Once all images are analyzed, an HDR image will be generated with the default settings. The first image will look very crappy, but it is OK, because you have not done any tone mapping on it yet. Click the “Tone Mapping” button on the left side of the image to open a new window.
8. The default HDR image will look very average. That’s because you need to modify some settings for each individual HDR image. Here is how my Sand Dunes shot came out with default settings:

   

   Looks OK, but not the result I want yet. Let’s modify the settings a little bit.

9. Here is what I used for the HDR version of Sand Dunes:

   

   Aha! Looks much better. Obviously, each image is different and you might need to change the settings to suit your taste.

10. Click the “Process” button for Photomatix to generate the HDR image.
11. Now let’s save the HDR file. Go to “File->Save As” or press CTRL+S to save the file.
12. Open the image in Photoshop, remove the extra noise via noise reduction software, sharpen it up a little and you are good to go! You can also play with colors and curves, if needed.

Done!

Some people might argue that doing the above is silly, because we can recover a similar amount of data from a single RAW within Lightroom. While I certainly prefer to do the latter, HDR gives a totally different look and feel to a picture. Take a look at the below two images and compare:

The image on the left is an HDR image, while the image on the right is fixed in Lightroom with a Graduated Filter (-1 on the sky and +2 on the sand, +10 fill light). As you can see, the HDR version has a different feel to it when compared to a regular image. Let’s move on to HDR with multiple images – the way HDR images should be created.

4.2) HDR Photography Using Multiple Images

I personally create HDR from a single image just for fun – I almost never use the above technique for my work that I publish on our website. The reason is simple – I do not like HDR that much. Read why I say that below.

Let’s now talk about using multiple images to generate an HDR – the right way to do HDR. If we were able to get so much detail from a single image, think of how much detail we could recover from multiple images! Just three images shot at 2 EV (-2, 0 and +2) will work great for most cases, so if your camera can only support three brackets, set the exposure difference to two full stops. If your camera supports 5 brackets, set EV to a single stop, which will let you shoot -2, -1, 0, +1 and +2.

Let’s now generate an HDR image from these files.

1. Once you have your images ready, load them into Photomatix Pro by clicking the “Generate HDR Image”. It is best to use the original RAW files, so either use those (CR2 for Canon and NEF for Nikon) or extract the DNG/TIFF files out of Lightroom in 16-bit mode. Photomatix can work with pretty much any image format, so you can feed those images directly into the application without the need to convert them.
2. Loading RAW files brings up some more options – white balance and color profiles:

   

   Choose the right WB and use ProPhoto RGB to preserve the most amount of colors. I recommend putting a check-mark in front of “Align source images” this time, because you are using multiple images and some of the images might not be perfectly aligned. If you have anything that is moving between your shots, also put a check-mark in front of “Attempt to reduce ghosting artifacts”.

3. Click OK once done to start the process. Performance-wise, using multiple RAW images will take more resources and the process will be significantly longer, so be patient.
4. When the first image comes up, click the “Tone Mapping” button to start working on the HDR image.
5. Play with the settings and see what looks best to your taste. Here are my settings for the Sand Dunes shot:

   

   While the above settings are fine for this particular shot, they might not work for your image, so experiment a little.

6. Once done, click the “Process” button to let Photomatix Pro generate the HDR image.
7. Now let’s save the HDR file. Go to “File->Save As” or press CTRL+S to save the file.
8. Although the amount of noise on the HDR image should be much less than what you would get from a single image, there still might be some noise present in the image. Open the image in Photoshop, remove the extra noise via noise reduction software, sharpen it up a little and you are good to go! You can also play with colors and curves, if needed.
9. Here is how the final image came out:

   

   Note that the shadows look a lot more natural now and there is no noise visible in the image. This is all due to the fact that we pulled plenty of detail from all images and we did not have to increase or decrease exposure, which is essentially what causes noise.

Done! Now you have a full HDR image with plenty of details throughout the frame.

5) HDR Use and Abuse

Thanks to photographers like Trey Ratcliff and various Flickr HDR groups, HDR Photography has been gaining more and more popularity on the Internet. While the majority of the people that use HDR are beginners and amateurs, there is an impressive number of pros out there that are now using HDR for their commercial landscape and architectural photography work. Using a DSLR is cheaper and more convenient than using a medium/large format system and when used properly, HDR can deliver outstanding results that rival the quality and dynamic range of expensive camera systems.

At the same time, HDR opened up new avenues for “HDR Surrealism”, where so many pictures are converted to ugly, cartoon-like images. At times, it almost feels like the Internet is being taken over by ugly HDR photographs. So, is HDR evil? Where is the fine line?

I personally stay in the middle – I think that HDR is a good technology, as long as it is used moderately and properly. HDR opens up new opportunities for photographers and lets us capture and see things differently. I really like HDR photographs that are done so well, that you would not be able to tell if it is an HDR image or not. I call it “realistic HDR” (which is a separate subject to discuss on its own) and I believe that every photographer should learn how to create realistic HDR images.

As for myself, I only use HDR when it is impossible to capture a scene otherwise – for sunrise and sunset shots and other difficult lighting conditions.

Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments section below.

1) EXIF Data and XMP Data explained

There are multiple reasons why you might want to remove EXIF fully or partially from files:
a) You are posting an image to a low-bandwidth site and need to keep the file sizes to a minimum
b) You want to protect your work and photographic style
c) You want to remove unnecessary junk from JPEG files to keep the file smaller, yet need to retain important EXIF Data such as shutter speed, aperture and ISO.

I personally use the last reason to keep my files a little smaller and to make sure that unnecessary junk does not get written into my JPEG files.

Let me first explain what EXIF Data is written into a file. If you use Adobe products such as Photoshop or Lightroom for manipulating your images, EXIF Data typically consists of three parts: the normal EXIF Data that contains your camera settings, the XMP Data that contains post-processing steps you took before the image was exported and a thumbnail of the image. Here is a short excerpt from the above URL:

XMP also defines particular schemas for basic properties useful for recording the history of a resource as it passes through multiple processing steps, from being photographed, scanned, or authored as text, through photo editing steps (such as cropping or color adjustment), to assembly into a final image. XMP allows each software program or device along the way to add its own information to a digital resource, which can then be retained in the final digital file.

Is this good or bad? Having XMP in your original image files is definitely good, since it retains your settings. However, why would you want to keep all of it in exported images?

Let’s look at a sample image that contains XMP Data:

I opened an image using an ASCII text editor and look at what’s in that file – that’s in addition to the EXIF Data that is already stored in the file header. Scrolling down, I could see everything from White Balance to Saturation and Hue adjustments I used in Lightroom before exporting the image. Worst of all, the file even included ALL of the image history, including what I did in Photoshop and how many times the image was saved!

Take a look at the yellow area highlighted in this screenshot:

I applied Tone Curve to my image and as you can see, the history is right there. Imagine how large your files can grow if you work on them multiple times! In addition, why would you want to preserve the thumbnail of an image that is being exported for the web?

2) Removing unnecessary EXIF and XMP Data

Let’s now talk about how you can either completely or partially remove both EXIF and XMP Data from an image. There are multiple ways to remove EXIF and XMP data from JPEG files – you can either remove EXIF data completely, or you can choose what to keep, while deleting specifically what you want.

2.1) How to remove EXIF Data from an image file completely

The easiest way to remove EXIF and XMP Data from an image without involving third party software is to either do it in Photoshop or in Lightroom. In Photoshop, simply go to File->Save for Web & Devices and make sure that “Metadata” is set to “None”:

Once you save the file, all EXIF and XMP Data will be gone!

You can achieve a similar result in Lightroom by checking “Minimize Embedded Metadata” while exporting an image:

However, this only does what it says – it minimizes EXIF metadata and does not completely remove it. Most of the EXIF Data such as Shutter Speed, Aperture, ISO and XMP Data will be gone, but some of it such as copyright info, your image dimensions and image thumbnail will be kept. I’m not sure why Adobe chose to do this, as I find this feature useless. It would have been much better if there was an option to completely remove metadata rather than to “minimize” it.

There is one more way to remove EXIF Data from files completely, but you would need to get Phil Harvey’s “ExifTool“. Download the executable file, then use the following command prompt:

exiftool -all= SourceFile.jpg

Obviously, replace SourceFile.jpg with the name of the JPEG file you want EXIF Data deleted from. All metadata, including the image thumbnail will be stripped from the file.

2.2) How to selectively delete EXIF Data from images

This part is for those like me, who like to keep important EXIF Data in their images, but want to get rid of all other junk such as XMP Data and image thumbnails from their images. There are two ways of doing this – from Lightroom directly, or from a command prompt. I personally like to do it directly from Lightroom, because it saves me a lot of time. If you already have a bunch of exported files, it might be easier to just run the tool from the command prompt.

First, download ExifTool, if you haven’t done it already. Create a folder called “ExifTool” inside “C:Program Files (x86)” on 64 bit systems and “C:Program Files” on 32 bit systems and put the executable “exiftool.exe” into that folder. On my 64 bit Windows 7 system, the full path to the executable file is “C:Program Files (x86)ExifToolexiftool.exe”. You can save it elsewhere, if you want to – I just personally prefer to keep it in program files folder. Then, go ahead and create a text file in notepad and copy-paste the following into it:

exiftool -overwrite_original ^
-XMP:All= ^
-IPTC:Keywords= ^
-ThumbnailImage= ^
%*

Now save the file as “RemoveJunkEXIF.bat” in the same folder where you saved the exiftool executable. You should now have two files in that folder. So, what does the above batch file do? It basically calls exiftool, removes all XMP Data, IPTC Keywords and image thumbnail from your file, while keeping the rest of the EXIF Data intact. The option “-overwrite_original” makes the tool overwrite the file, rather than creating a separate file and renaming the original.

Once you save the file, go to Lightroom and open the export dialog box. On the very bottom of the page, expand “Post-Processing”, then select “Open in Other Application…” from the “After Export” drop-down. Then click on “Choose…” button, browse to “C:Program Files (x86)ExifTool” folder and double click on RemoveJunkEXIF.bat file. The export screen should look like this:

Now click “Export” and make sure that you are not getting any errors. If the export succeeded and you did not receive any errors, you are all set! Next time when you export your images, this setting will be preserved and your EXIF Data will be correctly removed from your files!

If you have a bunch of image files that you need to remove EXIF Data from, then I recommend executing exiftool directly from a command prompt. Just copy all your image files to the “C:Program Files (x86)ExifTool” directory, then open up command prompt and do the following:

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\ExifTool"
RemoveJunkEXIF.bat *.jpg

Obviously, if you are on a different platform or placed exiftool in a different folder, just change the folder path above and everything should work perfectly!

P.S. One more thing. If you are wondering why I couldn’t just use Jeffrey Friedl’s “Metadata Wrangler“, then you should know that I actually did use it for a while. But his plugin continuously crashed my Lightroom after 10-15 exports and there was a time limit, which needed a paypal donation to fix. I wouldn’t mind making a contribution to his plugin, but I was getting tired of it crashing and needed a different, permanently working solution.

Please let me know how this worked out for you by leaving a comment below :)