How to Whiten Teeth in Photoshop
Who wouldn't want pearly white teeth gleaming through a beautiful smile! This is a quick and one of the most effective ways of whitening teeth in Photoshop. I've tried many different ways before, but once I adopted this particular method, I never went back to my old ways again.
Here is how I do it:
- Open the image in Photoshop. If you are in Lightroom, simply right-click the image and click "Edit In"->"Edit in Adobe Photoshop".
- Zoom in enough to make it easy to work with teeth by pressing CTRL +.
- We are going to be using the 'Magnetic Lasso' tool to achieve this task. It is located in the upper left corner, under the 'Crop' button.
How to Organize Pictures in Lightroom
This Lightroom guide is for beginner-photographers who are getting started in Lightroom and are looking for a good way to organize their photos and photo catalogs. If you are looking for a generic guide on how to organize pictures without any third party photo software like Lightroom, then please read my "how to organize pictures" guide instead. If you do not currently own a copy of Lightroom, I highly recommend purchasing one from B&H or other resellers.
Lightroom has certainly become a very essential part of a photographer's workflow. I personally cannot imagine managing my photo catalog without Lightroom and I use it every day for my Photography needs. In fact, 95-98% of my post-processing work is done in Lightroom today and I rarely use Adobe Photoshop for photo editing, which not only simplifies my workflow, but also decreases the amount of time I spend on post-processing. The below process of folder structures and organization within Lightroom is my personal way of storing pictures and working with them for my home and professional use.
1) Where do you store your pictures and how?
The first question is, where and how do you currently store your pictures? I used to store all of my photographs in various subfolders of my hard drive (commonly in "My Pictures" or "My Documents"), but after I got into photography, I decided that it is best to keep all of my photographs in the root folder of my PC's hard drive that I use solely for storing photos and small family videos. Hard drives are dirt cheap nowadays and you can snatch an external 1-1.5 Terabyte drive for under $100. I highly recommend getting a fault-redundant external drive though (usually two hard drives in RAID 1 Mirror configuration). There are also other fault-tolerant external drive array solutions such as "Drobo" that some photographers rave about, but I personally do not use them, since they are expensive and take too much space. As long as you have a good backup strategy, which I talk about below, you do not have to worry about losing data.
So, I highly recommend dedicating one external storage volume to your photographs for easier management and backup.
Understanding Digital Camera Modes
Having a good understanding of the digital camera modes is essential to control the exposure in photography. Whether you are a beginner or an advanced amateur, you should know what each camera mode does and when it should be used, under what circumstances.
1) What are Digital Camera Modes?
Digital Camera Modes allow photographers to control the parameters of an exposure, specifically, Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO. While certain modes can fully automate the camera exposure, there are other modes that let the photographer manually control some or all parameters of the exposure.
Back in the old days, there was no such thing as a camera mode - everything was manual. Photographers had to manually set the aperture, shutter speed and choose the right type of film for their cameras. To evaluate the intensity and the amount of light, they used to carry special light metering devices that measured the light and provided the exposure information, which they would then use in their cameras. In 1938, Kodak introduced a film camera with an integrated light meter and in 1962, a Japanese company called "Topcon" introduced the first SLR camera that measured the light coming through the lens into the camera. What this meant, was that photographers no longer needed to carry special light meters with them - the camera would do it for them. New "Automatic" camera modes started appearing on cameras, which would evaluate the amount of light that passed through the lens and would automatically pick the right exposure parameters to produce a properly-exposed picture.
How to photograph children
Photographing children can sometimes be a challenging task, since children typically do not like posing for the camera (especially when they are too busy doing something they like). Everything happens way too fast, making it extremely difficult for the photographer to capture the moment. Because of that, many of us end up with blurry and out-of-focus photographs and wonder how we can improve our photography skills to get better results. After learning much about child photography, taking pictures of my two boys and doing some work on the field, I decided to write an article and provide tips and pointers on how you can successfully photograph children.
Powerful child portraits are much different than "look at the camera and smile" pictures. A true portrait will reflect a child's personality, energy and uniqueness that every one of the bundle of joys have.
How to remove EXIF Data
Now that I explained you what EXIF Data is and showed you how you can view EXIF on JPEG files, I will now show you how to remove EXIF Data completely or partially from JPEG files.
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.
How to Change Aperture on Nikon D80 and D90
This is a very quick tip on how to change aperture on Nikon D80 and D90 DSLR cameras.
How to change aperture on Nikon D80 and Nikon D90 cameras
- Make sure that your lens aperture can be changed through the camera. If you are using an older lens with an aperture ring, make sure to set the aperture on the lens to the largest number. There should be a lock on the lens to keep it at that number. If you are getting an error on the top screen of the camera with the lens mounted, you should go back and make sure that the aperture ring is set correctly. This is not an issue on most new lenses and the latest generation of the Nikon lenses labeled with a "G" do not have this ring at all. For example, neither the Nikon 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G VR nor the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens have the aperture ring.
- Set your camera on "Aperture Priority" mode by rotating the dial on the top of the camera to "A" position. In Aperture Priority mode, you set the lens aperture manually, while the camera picks the right Shutter Speed for you.
- Rotate the front dial of the camera located under the camera shutter release to change aperture. Rotating to the left will decrease the aperture, while rotating to the right will increase the aperture.
When you decrease the aperture, the aperture setting will stop at the maximum aperture the lens allows. For example, on the Nikon 35mm f/1.8G lens, aperture will stop at f/1.8. There is also a limit on minimum aperture on each lens and you cannot go higher than that limit as well. Typical minimum lens apertures are f/16, f/22 and f/36.
Lens apertures work a little differently on zoom lenses and the minimum/maximum aperture depends on what focal length you are using on the lens. For example, if you are using the Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5 lens and you are zoomed out at 18mm, the smallest aperture number you can use is f/3.5. However, if you zoom in to 55mm, the aperture will be limited to f/5.6 and you will not be able to go lower than that. The same principle works on all other variable aperture zoom lenses.
By the way, you can also change the camera to "Manual" or "M" mode on the camera dial to change the lens aperture. However, you will then have to manually choose the camera shutter speed and you will need to have a good understanding on how to photograph in manual mode and how to use the built-in light meter of the camera.
How to Change Aperture on Nikon D40, D40x and D60
This is a very quick tip on how to change aperture on Nikon D40, Nikon D40x and D60 DSLR cameras.
How to change aperture on Nikon D40/D40x/D60 cameras
- Make sure that your lens aperture can be changed through the camera. If you are using an older lens with an aperture ring, make sure to set the aperture on the lens to the largest number. There should be a lock on the lens to keep it at that number. If you are getting an error on the back LCD of the camera when you press the "Info" button, you should go back and make sure that the aperture ring is set correctly. This is not an issue on most new lenses and the latest generation of the Nikon lenses labeled with a "G" do not have this ring at all. For example, neither the Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR nor the Nikon 35mm f/1.8G DX lens have the aperture ring.
- Set your camera on "Aperture Priority" mode by rotating the dial on the top of the camera to "A" position. In Aperture Priority mode, you set the lens aperture manually, while the camera picks the right Shutter Speed for you.
- Press and hold the +/- button located right below the camera shutter, then rotate the rear command dial to change aperture. Rotating to the left will decrease the aperture, while rotating to the right will increase the aperture.
When you decrease the aperture, the aperture setting will stop at the maximum aperture the lens allows. For example, on the Nikon 35mm f/1.8G lens, aperture will stop at f/1.8. There is also a limit on minimum aperture on each lens and you cannot go higher than that limit as well. Typical minimum lens apertures are f/16, f/22 and f/36.
Lens apertures work a little differently on zoom lenses and the minimum/maximum aperture depends on what focal length you are using on the lens. For example, if you are using the Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5 lens and you are zoomed out at 18mm, the smallest aperture number you can use is f/3.5. However, if you zoom in to 55mm, the aperture will be limited to f/5.6 and you will not be able to go lower than that. The same principle works on all other variable aperture zoom lenses.
By the way, you can also change the camera to "Manual" or "M" mode on the camera dial to change the lens aperture. However, you will then have to manually choose the camera shutter speed and you will need to have a good understanding on how to photograph in manual mode and how to use the built-in light meter of the camera.
How to add frames to photos in Photoshop
I have been experimenting with frames in Photoshop lately and decided to post a quick tutorial or howto on adding frames to your photos very quickly. Although there are many ways to frame images, this method works for me and is very simple and straightforward. Here is how I create a photo frame:
1) Open your image in Photoshop. Make sure that the image contains no layers. If you have any layers, simply go to Layer->Flatten Image to get rid of all layers. Next, go to Image->Canvas Size. We will first create the outer frame of the picture, which will be 1 pixel wide all around the picture and in solid white color. Take the initial size of your picture and add 2 to both width and height - in this case, the original image dimensions were 1200x492. On the bottom of the screen where it says "Canvas extension color:", select "White" from the drop-down, then click "OK":
Nikon RAW (NEF) Codec for 64 bit Vista or Windows 7
If you are running a 64 bit version of Windows Vista or Windows 7, you cannot use Nikon's NEF codec, because it is only compatible with 32 bit operating systems. It is unfortunate that Nikon has not yet released a 64 bit version yet and it seems like it will stay that way - Nikon basically said that they do not have any plans to develop a 64 bit version of the NEF codec.
For those who do not know what a "RAW codec" is, when you import a RAW image from your camera into your machine, if your PC has no support for that RAW file, it will not display the image thumbnail. In addition, none of the Windows image applications and viewers will be able to open the RAW files. Not that the latter is critically important, especially for those who always process RAW images in Adobe Photoshop or Lightroom, but it is still helpful to be able to see the image thumbnails of files when opening RAW images for editing directly in Windows or when browsing through the archived RAW files.
So, with no support from Nikon for NEF files in 64 bit operating systems, the only other option is to use third party codecs. As of today, there are multiple types of third party codecs, but I will only write about the one that works very well and is 100% free.
FastPictureViewer WIC RAW Codec Pack
The FastPictureViewer RAW codec pack is a free product from fastpictureviewer.com, which includes support for both 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 and covers over 20 RAW image formats and about 300 camera models (all current Nikon cameras, including D3s are supported). I installed it on my 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate and the installation went smoothly without any problems (requires reboot after install).
Continue reading 'Nikon RAW (NEF) Codec for 64 bit Vista or Windows 7'
How to take good pictures
One of the questions that I continuously get from some of my friends and blog readers that just got into photography is "How can I take good pictures with what I have, without spending too much money on new cameras and lenses?". Ever since DSLRs became more affordable and people started buying entry-level DSLRs, there has been a great interest in photography from the general public. One big obstacle everybody runs against at one point or another, is the fact that when most professional photographers show the equipment they used to make great-looking images, it creates an impression that only expensive gear can produce great photographs. What happens from there, really boils down to the wallet and how serious a person wants to get into photography - some start buying expensive gear and thinking it will help them to take good pictures and improve their photography, while others hold off and just keep their DSLRs as "point and shoots", realizing that they can't do any better with what they have.
If you do not have a DSLR camera yet and need some help on purchasing it, I recommend reading my article on how to buy a DSLR camera.
