1) Polarizing Filter

A polarizing filter is a must-have tool for landscape photography. It is typically the first filter landscape photographers buy to instantly improve their pictures and and add vividness and contrast to them. A polarizer can reduce reflections from objects such as water and glass and can be used to darken the sky, bring out the clouds and even reduce atmospheric haze, making the scene look much more vivid. For all normal lenses that have a filter thread in the front, you can get a circular polarizing filter, also known as a “circular polarizer”. A circular polarizer is very easy to use and once you attach it on the front of your lens, all you need to do is rotate it clockwise or counter-clockwise to get a different amount of polarization. Polarizing filters work by blocking certain light waves from entering the lens. Rotating a polarizer allows certain types of light waves to pass through, while blocking other ranges of light waves. Thus, you could turn a sky from light blue to very dark blue or increase/decrease reflections by simply rotating the filter.

The effect of polarization cannot be reproduced or simulated in post-processing, especially when dealing with natural reflections. Take a look at the below image:

Move the mouse over to see images with and without a polarizer. Note how different the images are – the one without a polarizing filter has reflections and lighter colors, while the one with a polarizing filter has more saturated colors and no reflections. This is just one example of what a polarizing filter can do. See my article on “how to use a polarizing filter” to see more image samples.

I have been using B+W Circular Polarizing Filters (cheaper version) for many years now, but have been recently using Singh-Ray Warming Circular Polarizing Filter for my landscape work. I find both to perform very well, although I must say that I prefer the Singh-Ray version, because it transmits more light, which is an advantage when shooting hand-held.

2) Neutral Density Filter

You have probably already seen images of running water and waterfalls that look very smooth and dreamy/foggy. This look can only be accomplished when your camera is mounted on a tripod and the shutter speed is very slow. In daylight conditions, decreasing ISO and increasing the F-number does not typically lower the shutter speed enough. The only solution in those situations is to decrease the amount of light that enters the lens and that’s where a neutral density filter comes into play. Neutral density filters reduce the amount of light that enters the camera lens and thus decrease the shutter speed and increase exposure time. Just like a polarizing filter, the effect of a neutral density filter cannot be reproduced in post-processing. Here is a sample image of a waterfall that I captured with a neutral density filter:

There are many different types of neutral density filters. Some transmit less light than others, defined in F stops. I have used a number of different filters in the past and I find Singh-Ray’s Vari-ND Filter to work the best, because you can change the amount of light that passes through the lens by rotating the filter. It is not a cheap filter though. If you are looking for a lower-cost alternative, the B+W 77mm 1.8 ND MRC Filter is a great alternative that I have used in the past.

3) Graduated Neutral Density Filter

Graduated neutral density filters are necessary in those situations, where the sky is much brighter than the foreground/background. Because the size of the sky versus the foreground/background can change depending on the composition, most graduated neutral density filters are made in a rectangular shape. Therefore, these filters must be either used with a filter holder system, or must be held by hand in front of a lens. The advantage of using a filter holder is that you can stack multiple filters and you do not have to worry about alignment issues. The disadvantage of using a filter holder is that it can add vignetting, so you have to be careful when using wide-angle lenses with focal lengths below 35mm. Here is an image shot with a 2 stop (0.6) GND filter to darken the sky:

There are many different types of filter holders and I personally use Lee’s filter holder system – it works great on both full-frame and cropped-sensor bodies. As for filters, there are even more choices: soft-edge graduated neutral density filter, hard-edge graduated neutral density filter, reverse graduated neutral density filter, in various intensities from different manufacturers. If you are not sure which one to get, I would recommend to start off with a 3 stop (0.9) soft-edge graduated neutral density filter from Lee. I personally use that one a lot and it does a great job at reducing the light in a scene. A much cheaper filter holder system with filters is made by Cokin, which offers three different size systems: A, P and X-Pro/Z-Pro (from small to large). I would recommend to get at least the Cokin P filter holder, although I would never use anything less than Cokin X-Pro/Z-Pro on full-frame. Cokin makes great and affordable filter kits for both Cokin P and Cokin X-Pro/Z-Pro series.

Now here comes the big question – can the effect of a graduated neutral density filter be reproduced in post-processing. Yes and no, depending on the light intensity and whether you are employing any HDR/blending techniques. In situations where the sky is not completely blown out and you shot in RAW, you could use a neutral density filter in Lightroom and recover plenty of details – up to two full stops can be recovered in most cases. But what about situations where the sky is completely blown out? A lot of people claim that graduated neutral density filters are not needed even in those situations, because they can bracket their shots and get very good results with HDR and blending techniques. That’s true, but blending and HDR do not always work well, especially in windy conditions. And I personally try to stay away from HDR, because it is tough to get results that look very realistic. So my preference is to use filters rather than spend time in post-processing to try to recover blown out details. But everybody is different and I know that some photographers will disagree with me on this.

1) What is Photoshop?

Photoshop was originally created as a tool for simple image editing, which since 1990 has grown into a monster software suite with many functions and capabilities to accommodate graphic designers, architects, animators, publishers, photographers and even 3D artists. Think of it as a Cadillac of image editing with an unlimited potential that can grow not only with software updates and upgrades, but also with special plugins known as “filters” from Adobe and third party software companies. Want to stitch multiple photographs into a single panorama? Or create a High Dynamic Range photograph? Or get rid of skin blemishes? Or perhaps make a person look taller, shorter, thinner or fatter? Yup, Photoshop can do all that; and much much more. It would be pointless to try to list what Photoshop can do, because it would probably be a never-ending list. The term “Photoshopped” is now a part of our daily jargon, because we are constantly exposed to altered images that might look realistic while being fake – that’s the power of Photoshop.

2) What is Lightroom?

The full name for Lightroom is “Adobe Photoshop Lighroom”, which may sound confusing, because it contains the word “Photoshop”. In a way, it makes sense, because Lightroom can be considered a subset of Photoshop with specific functionality that Photoshop does not and probably will never have. It was created for the main purpose of managing a large number of images, keeping them organized in one place. Photoshop is a very advanced image editing tool, but when you edit hundreds of images, keeping them organized becomes a problem over time. Before I started using Lightroom, my photography workflow solely consisted of Adobe Camera RAW (which allows opening, manipulating and converting RAW files) and Photoshop (which I used to fine-tune images before saving them into my hard drive). It was a complex, cumbersome and inefficient process, even after I semi-automated it through a batch process in Photoshop. The biggest challenge was organizing edited images in my hard drive, sorting and cataloging them. I am not even going to talk about finding images, because it was an impossible task that required reviewing thousands of thumbnails and image metadata in order to find what I was looking for. As my file catalog grew, I realized that I had to find a better way to organize my photographs. And that’s when I discovered Lightroom.

Lightroom is a database-driven image management software that automatically reads image metadata (such as camera make and model, date/time captured, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance and more), known as EXIF and writes information about each photograph in a new database known as “catalog”. As images are imported, Lightroom has built-in functionality to add additional information to each image, allowing you to tag images with specific keywords, flags and star ratings. This makes it very easy to sort through hundreds of images and pick the best ones, edit them selectively or in batches, then export the best images directly into websites like Flickr and Facebook. This type of tagging and indexing is not available in Photoshop, because Photoshop does not keep a database with cataloged images.

In addition to media management capabilities, Lightroom contains a set of tools that allow photographers to manipulate images. In short, think of Photoshop as an image editing tool while Lightroom is an image management tool with some limited image editing capabilities.

3) Lightroom Image Editing Capabilities

Lightroom has a specific set of tools that make it easy to edit and manipulate images. Here is a list of tools available in Lightroom’s Develop Module (version 3.5):

1. Histogram Sub-Module: Histogram, Crop & Straighten, Spot Removal, Red Eye Corrections, Graduated Filter, Adjustment Brush
2. Basic Sub-Module: White Balance Temp and Tint; Exposure, Recovery, Fill Light, Blacks, Brightness, Contrast; Clarity, Vibrance, Saturation
3. Tone Curve Sub-Module: Highlights, Lights, Darks, Shadows, Point Curve
4. HSL / Color / B&W Sub-Module: Hue, Saturation, Luminance
5. Split Toning Sub-Module: Highlights Hue & Saturation, Balance, Shadows Hue and Saturation
6. Detail Sub-Module: Sharpening Amount, Radius, Detail, Masking; Noise Reduction Luminance, Detail, Contrast, Color, Detail
7. Lens Corrections Sub-Module: Lens Profile, Distortion, Chromatic Aberration, Vignetting
8. Effects Sub-Module: Post-Crop Vignetting Style, Amount, Midpoint, Roundness, Feather, Highlights; Grain Amount, Size, Roughness
9. Camera Calibration Sub-Module: Process, Profile, Shadows Tint, Red Primary Hue and Saturation, Green Primary Hue and Saturation, Blue Primary Hue and Saturation

As you can see, the list of tools is rather long – from cropping and changing basic exposure to fixing lens-specific problems. Here is a screenshot of the Histogram / Basic sub-modules:

Specific changes can be saved as Presets and applied to a group of images. As Adobe develops new versions of Lightroom, new sub-modules and other sub-module specific features become available.

In addition to the image editing capabilities highlighted above, Lightroom also has built-in modules for creating slideshows, printing images, exporting image galleries for the web and more.

4) Photoshop Image Editing Capabilities

All of the above Lightroom image editing capabilities are automatically included in Adobe Camera RAW, which fires up when a RAW image is opened from Photoshop. While it looks a little different than Lightroom, every single function is mirrored in Camera RAW. When Adobe releases updates to Lightroom, it also releases updates to Camera RAW at the same time, so even small things like Lens Profiles get refreshed in both. Here is a screenshot of the Camera RAW panel:

And here is a comparison of the exposure sub-module:

As you can see, both have exactly the same functionality.

To sum it up, everything you can do in Lightroom can be done in Photoshop, plus much more. Some photographers use Adobe Bridge with Photoshop as part of their workflow without Lightroom. While bridge has some of the Lightroom functionality, it is not a database / catalog system. Think of it as a browser or file manager. Searching for an image requires going through all files, which could take a long time, whereas a similar search in Lightroom could be done in a matter of seconds – again, because Lightroom’s database is optimized for searching. If you have been using Adobe Bridge, try Lightroom and you will never go back to Bridge again.

5) What to buy – Lightroom or Photoshop?

The real question is what to buy – Lightroom or Photoshop? Since all of Lightroom’s image manipulation tools are already available in Photoshop, wouldn’t it make sense just to buy Photoshop? I always recommend to start off with Lightroom for the following reasons:

1. Lightroom is easier to learn than Photoshop
2. Lightroom already contains a big number of post-processing tools (as shown above) – good for 90%+ of editing tasks
3. Lightroom will help you in establishing a solid photography workflow process
4. Lightroom makes you more efficient, because you can go through and process many photos quickly, without having to deal with opening and closing files
5. Lightroom will keep you organized by cataloging all of your images in one place, making it easy to find and work with images
6. As a file and media management tool, Lightroom allows creating folders and sub-folders in your hard drive and can mass-rename files using templates.
7. Editing images in Lightroom is non-destructive, which means that the original file never gets permanently changed, whereas Photoshop is a mix of destructive and non-destructive editing
8. Unless separate layers are kept for every change, Photoshop does not keep historical changes. With Lightroom, you can go back and restore earlier settings after making changes
9. Lightroom can display image metadata as an overlay as you edit photos. Photoshop cannot do that once an image is opened
10. Lightroom is more than twice cheaper than Photoshop

I am sure there are many other advantages to using Lightroom, but these are the ones I personally find important.

Now remember when I said “I always recommend to start off with Lightroom”? This means that you will eventually have to get Photoshop. If you are planning to do any serious editing, you will have to get Photoshop to be able to do things you cannot do in Lightroom. It could be for something simple like removing an object from your image, to something more advanced like stitching panoramas.

6) Which version to buy

Buying Lightroom is easy – there are only two editions (besides education version) to choose from:

1. Lightroom 3 Upgrade Package for Mac and Windows
2. Lightroom 3 Retail Package for Mac and Windows

If you already own an older Lightroom license, then you buy the upgrade. If this is your first Lightroom purchase, then you buy the retail package.

Buying Photoshop, on the other hand, can be rather challenging. There are two different Photoshop editions – Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Adobe Photoshop CS5 Extended. The latter contains extra tools for 3D animation, video, web design and more. Do not waste your money on the Extended edition and buy the regular one. Another problem is that Adobe Photoshop is also shipped in different packages and there are all kinds of upgrade packages available as well. Don’t worry about any of those either, unless you need specific software like Illustrator in addition to Photoshop and you are looking for a packaged deal. Here are the two Photoshop editions for photographers:

1. Photoshop CS5 Upgrade Package for Mac and for Windows
2. Photoshop CS5 Retail Package for Mac and for Windows

Again, if you already own an older copy of Photoshop, get the upgrade package. If you are looking for a bundle package for photographers that includes Lightroom and Photoshop, here are the two packages:

1. Lightroom and Photoshop CS5 Bundle Upgrade Package for Mac and for Windows
2. Lightroom and Photoshop CS5 Bundle Retail Package for Windows

If you are just getting into photography, but want to explore an alternative image editing software without breaking the bank that can do many of the things Photoshop can, then you might want to check out Adobe Photoshop Elements. At a fraction of Photoshop’s cost, it has many of the features, tools and filters from Photoshop. Think of Photoshop Elements as a light version of Lightroom and a light version of Photoshop combined. While you can use Photoshop Elements to organize, edit, print and publish photographs, it can also nicely integrate with Lightroom if you choose to use Lightroom’s image organization features instead. If you just take pictures of your family and occasional landscapes & nature photos, then Photoshop Elements is a good choice.

The best photography workflow, in my opinion, involves both image editing and image management software working hand-in-hand like Lightroom and Photoshop do. When you come across an image in Lightroom that you need to edit in Photoshop, you simply right-click the image and click on “Edit in Adobe Photoshop”. The image opens up in Photoshop and once you are done with all the changes, saving the image imports that new image back into Lightroom and this kind of two-way communication is automatic. No need for imports or exports. The good news is that you can simultaneously work in both, which speeds up your workflow even more. The bad news is that owning both Lightroom and Photoshop is expensive. Another bad news is that once you get Photoshop, you will probably want to get good third party plugins as well, which means additional investment.

At the end of the day, good and reliable software is important for every photographer. Start off with Lightroom and once you learn its functionality and its limitations, get a copy of Photoshop to open up new doors in front of you. But be warned – Photoshop can be both a rewarding and a frustrating experience. It often takes years for professionals to truly master it.

Hello Nasim, 2 months ago I bought my first Nikon camera – D7000. I’ve read much about it and decided that this is best camera for me, but recently I am noticing that in certain lighting conditions colors are inadequate. There is an awfull yellow-green color, especially noticeable on people’s faces. Skin on pictures is also has strange color. Changing wb temperature is hardly helping. As an owner of the D7000 could you tell me if this is the problem of all D7000 cameras or is it malfunction of mine? What can i do to fix this?

And here is a sample image that was attached to the case study:

Our reader can relax – there is nothing wrong with his D7000. In fact, even the best camera in the world would not have produced an image with better skin tones and colors. Why? Because in this case, the ambient light around the subject is what is affecting the colors and skin tone. The picture was taken in the evening, after sunset, so the light is coming from what seems like a mix of incandescent and fluorescent lamps over and on the side of the subject. To understand how artificial light affects skin colors, one needs to fully understand “white balance and how it affects colors in images. The hardest and nastiest light that can make a photo impossible to fix is when multiple light sources are thrown into the mix – for example, when there is natural light on one side, bulb light on another and some flash on the front. You might have been in a situation when you want some of the ambient yellowish light in the room to be visible and yet want to throw some flash on your subject to brighten up the face. The end result – a very ugly picture with blues and yellows that is close to impossible to fix in post-processing. How do you go around those types of situations? The answer is not as simple, because it depends on the type of light around you, but you could use some very simple techniques like using gels on your flash to balance the light coming out of flash with the ambient light. These and other flash photography tips and tricks can be found in our “Flash Photography Tips” section of the website. We will be adding more content there very soon, perhaps in another “flash photography month”.

I asked my post-processing guru Lola to try to edit the above image and see if she can fix the skin tone and here is what she came up with:

She is currently working on a big project and once she is done with it, she promised to write a detailed article on working with skin colors and how to correct them in post-processing. The above image was sent in resized JPEG format (it is close to impossible to change white balance in JPEG), so she was limited in what she can do with it. It took her a couple of minutes to do this and I then resized and sharpened it a little for the web.

Another alternative is to convert an image to black and white, which should even out the skin tones. Here is her second version of the photo in B&W:

When photographing subjects, if you are not sure what White Balance (WB) setting to pick, you should shoot in RAW. When you open a RAW photograph in Lightroom or Photoshop, you will have the option to change WB to whatever you want. See my JPEG vs RAW article for more information on why you should be shooting in RAW. Recovering images with incorrect WB will also be much easier in post-processing:

The subject of skin colors can be rather complex, but once you employ good post-processing techniques, use proper lighting and have a solid knowledge of white balance, you can achieve great results when photographing people.

I have no idea what this streak is on my pictures could you give me an idea? I bought a new lens, because there was a small scratch on my old one. However, the same streak appears in the exact same place. It is a line about 1 inch on the top right of my pics. Usually seen when shooting skylines, clouds. etc.

Here is the attached image:

So, what are those spots and streaks that are clearly visible in the above image? First, the good news – the above spots and streaks have nothing to do with the lens. In fact, lens problems and even major scratches on the front lens element rarely ever show up in images. Unless the rear lens element is damaged/scratched, you should not see any lens defects show up in your images. Those of you who have seen my articles on cleaning DSLR sensors probably already know what these are. They are dust spots, along with a piece of hair that is sitting right in the middle of the camera sensor (the long dark line streak). Now the bad news – whenever you see something like this consistently show up in your images when shooting at small apertures, you will have to either clean the camera sensor yourself or send your camera for cleaning in order to get rid of all this dirt on the sensor. The latter is a safer method, but will cost you a lot of money to continue sending your camera every time you need it cleaned; plus, you won’t be able to take pictures while it is in service. The cheapest method is to clean your camera sensor yourself. As I have shown in the my cleaning DSLR sensor article, you can clean a sensor very quickly without any hassles, as long as you have the proper tools. Is it risky? Unless you do something stupid, the procedure is very safe (obviously, I take no responsibility for any potential damage to your camera). Just watch the video and then watch the more detailed videos on how to clean DSLR sensor and keep your camera gear clean for more info.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Whether you backup your photographs to an external hard drive or a storage device, you should regularly back up your photographs to an offsite location as well. There are many cases when photographers foolishly assume that their data is safe just because somebody told them it is. No matter how redundant your storage is, there is always a threat of theft, misuse, various accidents and natural disasters that might cause data loss. Imagine losing everything you have worked on so far – all of your clients photographs, your portfolio images and your photo libraries you spent countless numbers editing and organizing. Are you prepared to lose it all? If you are not, then you should be evaluating a good backup strategy. I frequently get questions from our readers about backing up large photo libraries without breaking the bank. Some are thinking about investing in locally attached storage solutions from companies like QNAP and Drobo, while others are wondering about online backup solutions that seem to be getting more and more affordable every day. “What should I invest in now?” seems to be the question. Large locally attached backup storage solutions can get rather expensive to buy and maintain overtime. Is online storage a good alternative to local storage? I will try to answer this question shortly, but first, let me talk about cloud computing and explain what cloud storage technology is all about.

1) What is Cloud Computing?

Here is an oversimplified explanation of cloud computing. Imagine a large company that employs many contractors, ready and available to work for you any time you want them to. You can hire only one contractor if you are not busy, or you could hire many contractors at once during your peak season, without having to employ them on a permanent basis. Just like your electricity bill, your costs stay low when your business is slow and increase on demand automatically when you get busy, so you only pay for the contractors you actually use. The contractor that you release from work goes to work for somebody else, so his time is not wasted doing nothing. A single contractor could work on several jobs for you and other companies simultaneously and his employer takes care of him, making sure that other contractors help him out if he is overloaded. The company is happy, because it uses their staff efficiently through resource sharing and you as a customer is also happy, because you only pay for what you actually use. You do not know or care about how those contractors are employed, what their shifts and schedules are and how much the company is paying them. All you know is that they are available for you any time you need them at a flat rate. If the demand for contractors grows, the company that employs them can get many more on their payroll to match the demand. So if you are successful and your business expands very rapidly, the company will be able to provide enough resources to match your growth.

Now think of this company with contractors as the “cloud” (the term “cloud” is actually a metaphor for the Internet, which is typically expressed as a cloud in network diagrams). The cloud can be located anywhere on the Internet, and could consist of multiple interconnected locations. The contractors can be thought as physical units (servers) that can be added or removed from the cloud. These units can serve different purposes – they could provide computing power, physical storage or host specific applications. Working together, these units/servers can be dynamically allocated to different customers based on their needs. You might not know this, but you have already seen and experienced cloud computing and might be using it on a daily basis today. Have an email account with Google, Microsoft or Yahoo? Those are hosted on large clouds. Watched a video over Youtube or chat with your friends on Facebook? Yup, those work off clouds as well.

1.1) Why is Cloud Computing becoming popular?

So why is cloud computing becoming so popular and what is driving the demand? In the past, companies spent large sums of money creating, maintaining and expanding data centers to host their online applications. While very large enterprises could afford having their own data centers, smaller companies had a hard time keeping up with their growth, because higher loads meant adding more computing and storage resources quickly. Overtime, the size and the capacity of small data centers were barriers to growth and companies were forced to migrate their data centers to larger space, which was a very costly operation. Back then, most companies could not keep up with occasional high loads from high-traffic sites. A viral video on Youtube today can get millions of hits just in a few hours, which is only possible because Youtube is hosted on a large cloud that can handle that kind of load. Companies that own large clouds have enough capacity to handle many customers, so they are now targeting smaller companies to increase their revenues and help those companies significantly cut down their data center costs. Let’s talk about cloud storage now.

1.2) Cloud Storage

As I pointed out in the beginning of this article, local backup storage comes with many potential problems. It is expensive to buy and maintain, requires your availability to take care of problems when they occur and is prone to misuse, theft, accidents and natural disasters. It also requires some technical know-how to set up, operate and automate it for backup purposes. Lastly, backup storage needs to be properly sized and should have enough capacity for growth. What if you had the ability to backup your data to an offsite location, had unlimited storage and never had to worry about backing up that storage or maintaining it when it fails? That’s when cloud storage comes into play – it can virtually provide unlimited storage with a very low risk of potential failure.

Remember when I said that physical units within the cloud can do different things like providing computing power and storage? Imagine thousands and thousands of interconnected hard disks in large boxes that form one huge and expandable storage array within the cloud. If it starts filling up, the company that maintains it ads even more storage, making it dynamic and virtually unlimited. The storage cloud is monitored 24/7 by automated systems and professional staff and any potential problems are taken care of immediately the moment they occur. You buy or rent your storage space, which is assigned to you dynamically from this expandable storage and you only pay for what you actually use, so there is no waste of resources both for the company and you as a customer. The same cloud storage technology is making it to us today, end users, at compelling price points.

2) Cloud Storage Types for Photographers

There are multiple types of cloud storage available today for photographers:

1. Public/community web-based cloud storage – you upload your files to the cloud via your browser or other external software and your files become instantly accessible through a web-based interface. This method is used by popular photo-sharing websites like Flickr and Smugmug. You can buy unlimited space and upload as many photographs and videos as you want. However, there are certain limitations that make it unpractical to use such sites for backup purposes. First, you cannot upload RAW files and second, you cannot easily download all photos back to your computer while keeping the folder structure organized. Price-wise, it is the cheapest cloud storage type.
2. Local/hybrid folder synchronization – a client is installed that monitors a specific folder on your computer for changes. As soon as a new file is created within that folder, it is automatically uploaded to the cloud through your Internet connection. You might have heard of services like Dropbox, Livedrive and Live Mesh that can do this. Pricing depends on the amount of storage you want to back up. Most of these services offer free packages to get started and you can pay on a monthly basis for additional storage. The advantage of this type of cloud storage is that your folder structure is always updated automatically and the system keeps old versions of your files. You can also easily share files between computers and family/friends. Lots of different tools to access data are provided for many different platforms. Prices are normally higher than public web-based cloud storage.
3. Dedicated/private cloud storage – you buy as much space as you need in a cloud and use it however you need. You can manually upload your files or you can install client software that automatically synchronizes specific folders on your computer. It is up to you whether you want to keep a local copy of your backup or not. The space you buy is yours only and is not shared with others like in Flickr. There are many different companies such as Amazon that provide cloud storage services. Lots of different ways to store and retrieve your data, but might require some technical skills to use it efficiently. Depending on the amount of storage you need, this type of cloud storage can get very expensive. There are some photographer-friendly sites like Mosaic Archive that allow uploading images through Lightroom directly.

There is also another breed of cloud storage that is specifically targeted at photographers. Photoshelter, for example, is a community web-based cloud storage that has a web-based interface for uploading and downloading files. You can access your account via FTP and you can use plugins for Aperture and Lightroom to export pictures directly into your account. RAW image upload is also supported. These services are gaining popularity very fast and they are a great alternative to mainstream sites like Flickr. If you have upload bandwidth issues, you can even send in your hard drive.

So, which type of cloud storage is right for your backup needs? Public/community web-based cloud storage is obviously the cheapest, but the least flexible. You can only store non-RAW images or video and it can get very cumbersome to retrieve and restore all of your data. Local/hybrid folder synchronization is a much better, more flexible and a relatively low-cost alternative, but has its own problems like storage limitations. Dedicated/private cloud storage is the best choice, but can get very expensive if you have terabytes of data. So there is no magic pill – you need to evaluate your priorities and decide what works best for you. Do you need to keep a backup copy of your RAW files online, or will JPEG format suffice? Do you need to keep backups of all of your images you have shot to date, or only the last several years? Do you have a strategy in place to archive your old data you no longer need? You should try to answer these questions and come up with a good methodology that works for your photography business. Below I will talk about my backup strategy/workflow and how I use cloud storage today for my needs.

3) Cloud Storage Problems and Limitations

Before I talk about my backup strategy and how I use cloud storage, let me first talk about cloud storage problems and limitations. First of all, forget about using cloud storage as your only storage – meaning cloud storage cannot replace your computer hard drive, at least not yet. If you are running out of space and need more storage for your photographs, your have two choices: either expand your hard drive space by buying larger internal hard drives, or buy expensive external storage solutions from companies like QNAP and Drobo that can be attached to your computer via network or USB/firewire cable. Cloud storage at this point should only be used for backup purposes, mainly due to speed limitations between you and the cloud. Unfortunately, many photographers do not understand the fact that their upload bandwidth is often capped below 1 Mbit by their ISP, which is very low for uploading massive amounts of data. I have seen cases where photographers moved large numbers of files into their Dropbox folder, then reformatted their computers without letting Dropbox fully synchronize the folder with the cloud. Obviously, the majority of their files were lost forever due to their own stupidity and ignorance. So here is a summary of problems and limitations of cloud storage:

1. Cloud storage cannot be used as primary storage for your photographs today, so it should only be used for backup purposes.
2. Cloud storage requires good upload bandwidth to back up a many large files. If you want to back up your RAW and TIFF files, consider upgrading your bandwidth to allow for larger uploads, or back up your data to an external drive and store it in a different location. The situation you do not want to be in, is synchronization not being able to complete before you dump more data into your working folder.
3. Restoring your files from cloud storage will also require good download bandwidth if you want to do it quick.
4. Although there is a very low risk of data loss on the cloud, I highly recommend against using it as primary backup. Hard drives are cheap, so you should back up your data locally first. There were cases where people lost their Flickr accounts due to operator error without the ability to restore their photographs.
5. Cloud storage is typically much more expensive than local storage for large amounts of data. If your photo library is over 500 GB, it will probably be cheaper to keep it offsite locally.
6. Some cloud storage providers limit the maximum size of files you can upload to their system. For example, Flickr limits image sizes to 20 MB for Pro accounts.
7. Access to files is sometimes restricted to a certain web page. If you use public/community cloud storage, you can only access your files through their website. Because of this, you will probably see ads and the company can change photo presentation format any time they want.

Oh, and one more thing, I once saw a photographer give a suggestion to another photographer to use Dropbox for sharing a Lightroom catalog between computers. That’s a really bad idea for two reasons – Lightroom catalogs can get very big and Dropbox will not have a chance to synchronize quickly and changes written by different people will not be synchronized correctly when more than one person works on the same Lightroom catalog at the same time. I will write a separate article on sharing Lightroom catalogs later this week.

4) My backup strategy and how I use cloud storage

Here is my backup strategy and how I use cloud storage to back up my data:

1. For my Lightroom catalog and RAW images I use two 2TB 7200 RPM mirrored internal hard drives. So far my entire catalog fits in this local storage, but I am close to getting maxed out, so I will be archiving my old files to a different mirrored external hard drive next year. The data is mirrored automatically, so in case one hard drive fails, I should be able to recover data from the second one quickly.
2. I have an external Netgear ReadyNAS Pro network storage unit that automatically backs up my data from the mirrored drives on a daily basis at night
3. Once a month I backup my data to another external mirrored drive and store in a different location.
4. I periodically export all of my images from my Lightroom catalog in JPEG format (full size, 80% Quality) to a separate folder on my computer that automatically gets synchronized through Symform cloud storage client. I back up ALL of my images in JPEG format to the cloud. Uploads typically take a while with my 20Mbit download and 5Mbit upload bandwidth cap through CenturyLink, so I leave my PC on until the synchronization is 100% complete. I used Dropbox Pro 100 for this before, but now I get 200GB free storage with Symform and unlimited storage for just $10 per month, so I made the switch recently. In case I lose everything, I can at least recover full JPEG images from the cloud.

I can sleep well, because I know that my data is safe. I am sure the above might sound like an overkill for most photographers, but Lola and I run a business and we need to make sure that our data is safe and secure. At the minimum, you should be doing #1 and #3 from the above list.

5) The Future of Cloud Computing for Photographers

Without a doubt, cloud computing is the future. But is it the future for photographers? Will it ever replace your hard drives and become your primary storage with automated backups? Until bandwidth issues are eliminated (which will take many years), I do not see how it will. In a perfect world, I would love to have fast gigabit access to the Internet for downloads and uploads from home. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a cloud version of Lightroom or Aperture that you could launch directly from the Internet and all your files were stored on the cloud? The speed of your computer would not matter and you could work on your images from a device like the iPad, because you would not need local processing power or storage. Perhaps I am looking too much into the future, but the possibilities with cloud computing are endless.

For now, I am hoping to see two things for photographers in the near future: higher upload bandwidth limit from ISPs for backup purposes and more offers from cloud storage companies to store large chunks of data at reasonable prices.

Hope this helps, please let me know if you have any questions!

1) What are filters and why should you use them?

Why do you wear sunglasses? Because along with other benefits, they help you see better in intense light, protect your eyes from harmful UV rays/wind/dust and reduce glare. Filters also serve a similar purpose – they can help reduce reflections, protect your lenses from potential damage, fully or partially reduce the amount of light that enters the lens and even enhance colors. At the same time, filters can actually hurt photographs if they are not properly used. A good analogy would be wearing sunglasses in a dark room. Therefore, not only do you need to know what filters to use, but you also need to know how to use them and in which situations. There are many different kinds of filters out there – from cheap UV filters to very expensive filters worth several hundred dollars, which can make the process of choosing the right filter type rather challenging.

Let’s go through the different types of filters that are available today.

2) Overview of types of lens filters

Here is a list of typical lens filters you can purchase today, along with descriptions of their purposes:

3) Types of Lens Filters

Lens filters come in different shapes and forms, as shown below. The most popular lens filters are circular, screw-on filters. Those mount directly onto the filter thread in front of a lens. They come in different sizes, depending on the lens filter thread. The standard and the most common size of screw-on filters for professional lenses is 77mm.

Types of Lens Filters:

1. Circular screw-on filters – most common type that mounts directly on the lens filter thread. Examples of circular screw-on filters include UV/Clear/Haze filters, circular polarizers, neutral density and color filters. Circular filters also come in different thicknesses – some are thick that can potentially add vignetting, while others are ultra-thin to diminish vignetting, but make it impossible to put a lens cap.
2. Square filters – a popular choice for landscape and other photography. A filter holder directly attaches to the lens filter thread and can hold one or more filters. The most popular sizes are 3×3 and 4×4. Can be stacked together in certain situations, which can negatively impact image quality and add reflections.
3. Rectangular filters – another popular choice, primarily among landscape photographers. Mounted just like square filters via a filter holder system. Because it is impractical for graduated neutral density filters to be circular (due to different sizes of high-contrast areas and composition), rectangular filters are the primary choice for landscape photography. Unlike square filters, they have more room to move up and down. The most popular size is 4×6, although larger and smaller filter sizes are also available.
4. Drop-in filters – these filters are used inside long telephoto lenses, due to the large size of the front lens element. Only clear and polarizing filters are used for drop-in filters.

4) Lens Filters Explained in Detail

Let me go through each filter type in detail and show the effects they produce in pictures (where applicable). It is often too difficult to understand what each filter does and decide on whether you need it or not, so I hope the below information will make it easier for you to decide whether you want a particular type of filter or not.

4.1) UV/Clear/Haze Filter

The purpose of a UV / Clear / Haze filters today is to simply protect the front element of a lens. In the past, these filters were used to block UV from hitting the film. All digital camera sensors have a UV/IR filter in front of the sensor, so there is no more need to use UV filters on DSLRs. Many photographers use these types of filters for protection, because it is easier and cheaper to replace a filter than to try to repair a scratched or broken lens element. I personally prefer to keep a clear filter on my lenses at all times, because they are easier to clean.

One thing you have to make sure before you purchase a clear filter, is that you buy high quality glass with special multi-resistant coating (MRC). The worst thing you can do is mount a low quality filter in front of an expensive lens. Not only will it hurt image quality, but it will also add nasty reflections, ghosts and flares to your images. I personally prefer B+W F-Pro MRC filters (they are not cheap), but you can also purchase other great alternatives from Tiffen, Hoya and other manufacturers.

Should you use a clear filter permanently on your lenses? This question brings up heated debates between photographers. Many believe that adding a piece of glass in front of lenses only hurts images and does very little to protect them, while others like me keep them for piece of mind and easier cleaning. Some lenses with threaded front elements like the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G can be painful to clean, so a clear filter would make lens maintenance less cumbersome.

To avoid vignetting and other problems, UV filters should never be stacked with other filters.

4.2) Polarizing Filter

There are two types of polarizing filters – linear and circular. Linear polarizers should not be used on DSLR cameras, because they can result in metering errors. Circular polarizers, on the other hand, are perfect for DSLRs and do not cause any metering issues due to their construction. Circular polarizing filters are essentially linear polarizers, with a second glass element attached to their back that circularly polarizes the light, giving accurate exposure results when the light hits the light meter. When the two elements are aligned at the right handle and orientation from the sun, the captured image could have more saturated colors, bluer skies, less reflections and higher overall contrast. Polarizing filters can also reduce haze, which is very useful for landscape photographers.

I never leave my home without a polarizing filter. When photographing landscapes, I often use a polarizing filter to spice up the colors, darken the sky and reduce haze. Polarizing filters are a must when photographing waterfalls or other wet scenery with vegetation.

There are a couple of potential issues that you need to understand when using a polarizing filter:

1. There is a minimum and a maximum effect of polarization, depending on the filter alignment. You should rotate the filter every time you compose for best results. Take a look at this example of minimum and maximum effect of polarization:

   

2. The effect of polarization changes relative to the sun. The maximum effect of polarization is achieved when the lens is pointed 90 degrees from the sun (in any direction). A simple trick is to form a pistol with your index and thumb fingers, then point your index finger at the sun. Keep pointing at the sun and rotate your hand clockwise and counter-clockwise. The maximum effect of polarization will be where your thumb points in any direction.
3. Avoid using a polarizing filter on ultra wide-angle lenses. You might end up with a partially dark sky that will be tough to fix in post-processing. Here is an example of what happens when using a polarizer on a wide-angle lens:
   
4. In some cases the maximum effect of polarization can result in an unnatural-looking dark blue sky as shown below:
   

5. There is a loss of approximately 2 stops of light when using polarizing filters, so you should watch your shutter speed when shooting with a polarizer hand-held. Singh-Ray polarizing filters are better than others in this regard and only lose around 1 stop of light.
6. Polarizing filters are typically thicker than regular filters and therefore can result in unwanted vignetting.

To avoid vignetting, polarizing filters should not be stacked with other filters. Due to light loss, you should also use a polarizing filter only when needed. In some high-contrast situations it might be necessary to stack a polarizing filter with a neutral density filter (see below).

4.3) Neutral Density (ND) Filter

The purpose of neutral density filters is to reduce the amount of light that gets to the camera and thus decrease the shutter speed and increase exposure time. These types of filters are particularly useful in daytime, because of the abundance of light that cannot be significantly reduced by stopping down the lens aperture and decreasing ISO. For example, if you are photographing a waterfall and your starting point is ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/2000 that results in good exposure, stopping down the lens to f/22 will only slow down the shutter speed to 1/30 of a second. This would be too fast to create a “foggy” look for the falling water. By using an 8 stop neutral density filter, you could slow down the shutter speed all the way to 2 seconds while keeping lens aperture at f/11 instead of f/22 (using apertures beyond f/11-f/16 in normal lenses decreases image quality due to diffraction).

Neutral density filters are also useful for flash photography. If you were photographing a model at 1/250 of a second at f/2.8 on a bright sunny day with flash to create a dramatic effect, you would most likely end up with an overexposed subject. You cannot increase the shutter speed because flash sync speed limits you to 1/250 max, so your only option is to stop down the lens aperture to a larger number. Let’s say that number is f/11. But then what if you want to isolate your subject from the background and still have nice bokeh? Without using high speed sync, your only option is to use a neutral density filter to reduce the amount of light that makes it to the camera.

Neutral density filters can be both circular and rectangular. There are no benefits to having a rectangular neutral density filter, so it is best to buy a circular ND filter for size and portability benefits.

It is sometimes necessary to stack neutral density filters to decrease the shutter speed even more. Try not to stack ND filters with wide-angle lenses to avoid vignetting.

4.4) Neutral Density (ND) vs Graduated Neutral Density (GND) Filter

The difference between neutral density and graduated neutral density filters is that the latter is half clear. Because the size of sky versus the foreground can change depending on the composition, most GND filters are made in a rectangular shape. Therefore, these filters must be either used with a filter holder system, or must be held by hand in front of a lens. The advantage of using a filter holder is that you can stack multiple filters and you do not have to worry about alignment issues. The disadvantage of using a filter holder is that it can add vignetting, so you have to be careful when using wide-angle lenses with focal lengths below 35mm.

The image above is Lee’s filter holder that can stack up to four filters at a time. I personally use this filter system for my landscape photography work and I take it with me everywhere I go. When using the filter holder on a full-frame body with my Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G, I try to use focal lengths of 28mm and above to avoid vignetting. If you mount this filter holder on a polarizing filter, you might end up with vignetting even at 35mm and above.

4.5) Hard-Edge Graduated Neutral Density (GND) Filter

Hard-edge graduated neutral density filters can be very useful in high-contrast situations, where the sky is very bright compared to the foreground and the horizon is flat (due to hard transition from dark to clear). While photographing, the hard edge in the center is aligned with the horizon. The sky is then darkened depending on the intensity of the filter. A two or three stop hard-edge GND filter is often sufficient to balance the shot. Here is a shot taken with a 2 stop hard-edge GND to darken the sky:

Note that the horizon is straight and therefore the filter edge and transition are not visible in the image.

The problem with hard-edge GND filters is that the horizon is rarely flat (especially where I live), so soft-edge GND filters are often more useful. Be careful when stacking hard-edge GND filters in high contrast situations – both filters should be properly aligned to avoid nasty transitions.

4.6) Soft-Edge Graduated Neutral Density (GND) Filter

Compared to hard-edge GND filters, soft-edge graduated neutral density filters gradually transition from dark to clear, allowing photographers to use these filters when photographing a non-flat horizon. While mountains, hills and other objects above the horizon can be problematic for hard-edge GND filters, soft-edge GND filters work much better in those situations instead, due to the gradual transition. I use soft-edge GND filters for my landscape photography work a lot and find them more useful than hard-edge GND filters.

Stacking soft-edge GND filters is sometimes necessary in high-contrast and other rare situations.

4.7) Reverse Graduated Neutral Density (GND) Filter

Reverse graduated neutral density filters are relatively new. When compared to regular hard/soft-edge GND filters, they are dark at the horizon (hard-edge) and gradually soften towards the top. Reverse GND filters are very useful for sunset shots when you shoot against the sun and it is near the horizon. A common problem with such sunsets, is that the sun is much brighter than the sky. If you use a hard-edge GND filter, the sky might get too dark and if you use a soft-edge GND filter, the sun will be overexposed. The solution is to use a reverse GND filter, which balances the sun and the sky in the frame, resulting in a more balanced exposure.

Stacking reverse GND filters is sometimes necessary in high-contrast and other rare situations.

4.8) Color/Warming/Cooling Filter

Color / Warming / Cooling filters are generally used to alter camera white balance. There are two types of color filters – color correction and color subtraction. The former is used for correcting white balance, while the latter is used for absorbing one color while letting other colors through. These filters were quite popular for film, but are rarely used for digital photography, since color effects and white balance changes can be easily accomplished in post-processing software like Lightroom and Photoshop. I personally do not use any color filters. Stacking color filters is also acceptable.

4.9) Close-Up Filter

Close-up filters are generally called close-up lenses, because they are more lenses than filters. They attach to lenses just like filters, which is why I am listing them as filters. Close-up lenses are primarily used for macro photography to be able to get closer to the subject, decreasing minimum focus distance of the lens. Close-up lenses are a cheap way to convert your normal lens to a macro lens, although they do negatively affect image quality. For best results, it is recommended to use a macro lens instead. Stacking close-up filters is acceptable, although image quality is hurt even more.

4.10) Special Effects Filter

Special effects filters can produce some cool effects, but since most effects can be easily produced in Photoshop, these filters pretty much lost their popularity. Digital photographers rarely carry these filters and I personally do not use them either. The star filter can be easily created in Photoshop through a couple of steps using the “Motion Blur” filter, softening glow can also be easily done through a couple of steps with the “Gaussian Blur” filter and most other filters can also be done in Photoshop. The only filter that cannot be reproduced in Photoshop is a bokeh filter, because the highlights cannot be easily changed through post-processing techniques.

Here is a 2 minute “star effect” that I created in Photoshop using very simple technique with the Motion Blur filter:

5) Filter Material – Glass vs Resin Filters

Filters can be made from glass, plastic, resin, polyester and polycarbonate material. Glass filters are typically of highest quality, but are very expensive and tend to easily break, especially of square or rectangular type. Plastic and resin filters are much cheaper than glass and do not easily break – they are the top choice for graduated neutral density filters. Polyester filters are much thinner than glass or resin and are of very high quality, but are prone to scratches and hence not very practical on the field. Polycarbonate filters are very tough, scratch-resistant and are a good alternative to plastic/resin filters.

6) Step-Up / Step-Down Rings

Because filters can be expensive, it is much cheaper to buy a single standard filter (for example 77mm) and buy step-up rings for lenses that have smaller filter threads. Step-down rings can cause vignetting and other problems, so always try to use step-up rings instead. You can buy step-up rings for both circular and square filter holder systems in various sizes.

I use a Nikon 300mm f/4 paired with a Nikon D200 for my bird photography. While shooting, I notice that I do not get a clean background, which I would expect from a prime lens. I have got such a background in one image of mine, however, the subject is a little too soft for my liking (the picture is attached). Is there any way to get a clean background so as to help the viewers’ focus remain on the subject (the bird in this case)? Could you share a tutorial with us? I’m attaching sample images for this case study in JPEG format with full EXIF info.

And here are the two images Gaurav attached:

The first image above is cropped, showing a pleasant out of focus background (bokeh) with a slightly blurry bird.

The bird on the second image is sharp, but the background is busy.

So Gaurav’s question is why does the first image have a nice-looking background, but a blurry bird, while the second image has a sharp bird, but busy background?

Before I talk about the background blur, let’s first see why the first image is sharp and the second is not. Looking at the first image, the exposure is 1/350, f/4, ISO 100, while the second image is shot at 1/250, f/4, ISO 200. Both are shot in Aperture Priority Mode using Spot Metering. I am assuming that Gaurav was using a tripod or a monopod to get the above shots, because the shutter speeds are a little low to be hand-held for this lens and camera combo. As I explain in my “how to photograph birds” article, if you want to get sharp photographs when shooting hand-held, your shutter speed should be at least the total focal length of your lens multiplied by the sensor crop factor. So in this case, Gaurav would approximately need a shutter speed of 1/450 and above to get good results if he hand-held the camera + lens. But this is an approximate “suggested” value – with a good hand-holding technique, one could certainly get sharp results even at lower shutter speeds.

Why did I think that Gaurav used a monopod or a tripod to take the above images? Because the bird on the second photo, as well as the branches on the first photo appear sharp. The source of the problem on the first photo is focus – it is not on the bird, but a couple of inches off on the branch. Therefore, the only thing Gaurav could have done better, is reacquire focus and try taking another picture. If the lens he was shooting with has no front/back focus issues, he could have gotten good focus on the bird after several tries.

Let’s now talk about the background blur – the bokeh on both photographs. Why does the first image have a nice, clean bokeh, while the second photo has a busy bokeh? The explanation here is very simple – there was nothing close behind the bird on the first photo, while you can see leaves and branches of a tree behind the second bird. So the problem here is proximity of objects behind the birds. If you want to have a beautiful, creamy bokeh, you should pay attention to four things: focal length of the lens, aperture/depth of field, camera to subject distance and subject to background object distance. The longer the focal length of your lens, the larger the aperture, the closer you are to your subject and the further away your subject is from the background objects, the creamier your bokeh will be. Phew…that sounds too darn complex and too long! Basically, try to stay close to your subjects and move them away from the busy background. How could Gaurav have accomplished this on the second photograph? Aside from moving closer towards the bird and filling the frame (which would have probably spooked it), he could have changed the angle. If I see a busy background behind birds, I will move around the bird and try to find a spot that will have the least busy background. It is obviously not always practical, since the bird might not tolerate you walking around it, plus the environment you are in might not be suitable for circling like that. But you hopefully get the point.

The only other thing you can do, is try to fix the image in post-processing. Now this would require some advanced Photoshop skills, but if you have the time and patience in your hands, you can do it with pretty good results.

Here is my quick attempt to clear up the background on the second photo (took me 5 minutes):

And here is what I did in Photoshop:

1. Create a duplicate layer
2. Select the second duplicated layer
3. Select Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur
4. Radius: 125 pixels, Click OK
5. Select the second layer and set it to “Overlay” in the Layers panel
6. Pick the eraser and start erasing the bird
7. Work on the edges with the eraser tool and get rid of extra branches
8. Set the second layer back to “Normal”
9. Merge both layers
10. Sharpen the image
11. Crop the image
12. Resize the image
13. Save for Web

I did it very quickly and obviously did not do a good job with feathers, but I hope this shows what you can do with the background in situations like this.

Hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any questions!

1) Why Watermark Your Images?

The first question you might ask yourself is – should you or should you not watermark your images? There are many opinions on this matter. Some photographers argue that watermarks prevent theft (which I and many others disagree with), allow self-promotion and help build brand recognition, while others argue that adding watermarks spoils the viewing experience and does more harm than good. Let me quickly point out what I think about watermarks and when they should and should not be used.

1. Unless your watermark visibly takes up the entire photo like in the image below, it can often be easily removed in Photoshop using standard tools. So if you are worried about theft and copyright infringement too much, either do not post your images online or post them in a small size with a gigantic watermark all over it. You will fend off all potential thieves for sure. I immediately close sites that show icon-sized images with huge watermarks. And I know that I am not the only one out there…
   
2. On a more serious note, if your objective is self-promotion and building brand recognition (which should be your primary goal when adding your watermarks), then come up with a good strategy to add watermarks without spoiling the viewing experience (see tips below). This means making your watermarks small, but recognizable and placing them in a good, open corner spot in photographs close to image borders.
3. Well-known photographers rarely put copyright information on their photographs, because they want to deliver the best (and unobtrusive) viewing experience. They also often post large images that occupy the whole screen. Why aren’t they worried about copyright? Because they are known and their images are recognized. If such photographs or “works of art” are stolen or reproduced elsewhere, the offenders would most likely be reported and caught quickly. Am I saying that unless you are a well-known photographer you should be adding watermarks to your photos? Of course not. I believe you should stop worrying about theft and focus more on creating better photographs.
4. If watermarks are used properly, they can help promote your work instead of doing harm. You are not a stock photo agency, so stay away from large watermarks that span across your photos.
5. And for all those right-click disabling folks out there – you are only spoiling the browsing experience of your visitors. I hate not being able to right-click and open links/images in new pages on websites and blogs. It is about time for you to understand, that if someone really needs to steal your image, they can just press the “Print Screen” button on their keyboards, then paste the screenshot in Photoshop and crop it to their liking. The same goes to all photographers that waste their quality time converting their JPEG images to Adobe Flash, just because they foolishly think their photographs will stay safer that way. Oh and what are you going to do with them iPhone/iPad users that can’t see your work?

Before I move on to specific instructions, I would like to provide some watermarking tips and best practices:

1. Try to use a graphic logo instead of plain text for watermarks. If you do not have a logo yet, use short text with your name and Copyright © symbol.
2. When using text watermarks, try not to add the word “photography” at the end of your name. If your name is not unique (just search Google), then either come up with a nickname or use your URL (below).
3. If you have a short URL, you can post your website address instead of your name.
4. When using text watermarks, use a standard and recognizable font rather than some gothic/italic/handwriting font that is hard to read.
5. Do not use multiple lines of text for watermarks.
6. Semi-transparent watermarks always look better and more professional than bold copyright imprints. If you decide to use a watermark, make it 50% or less transparent.
7. Another good watermarking method is to add some space underneath each photo and then put your copyright information there. But you would have to use Photoshop and record actions in order to do that.
8. Put your logo/text watermark in the corners of your photos. Top-left, top-right, bottom-left and bottom-right locations typically work the best.
9. If you do not feel like sharing your camera settings, remove your EXIF data from images, but only keep your copyright and contact information. This would just be additional copyright protection for you in case your image is posted elsewhere.

2) The Watermark Position Dilemma

Because of the nature of photographs and their colors and patterns, finding a good placement for your watermark can be a problem. Where should it be placed and how? As I have pointed out above, the best locations for standard watermarks are near the top and bottom corners of your photos (unless you chose to add extra space to the bottom or the side of your photographs in Photoshop or other third party software). So which corner should you use for watermarks? I would say all of them! Why? Because every photo will be different and while one corner might work for one photo, that same corner might not for another. A gray watermark will not be visible on a photo with a grey corner where the watermark is placed. So you have two options – either to use a different shade of color that is visible in the same corner, or move the watermark to a different location. I prefer the latter for consistency, but it is totally your choice.

Now moving your watermark in photos would be extremely inefficient if you had to change your watermark every time you need to move it. That’s why the best method is to create multiple watermarks in Lightroom 3 and put them in multiple locations. For example, I have 4 different Lightroom watermarks that I called “Top-Left Mansurovs Logo”, “Top-Right Mansurovs Logo”, “Bottom-Left Mansurovs Logo” and “Bottom-Right Mansurovs Logo”. All watermarks are the same (our graphic logo) – they are just positioned differently.

3) Creating a text watermark in Lightroom 3

Let’s go through the process of creating a text watermark in Lightroom 3. To access the watermark function in Lightroom, you can go to “Edit->Edit Watermarks…” (Lightroom->Edit Watermarks on Macs) or you can also access it from Lightroom’s Export window. I normally access it via the export window, which can be found in File->Export or pressing CTRL+SHIFT+E:

Once it comes up, scroll down and find “Watermarking”. Next, check the box in front of “Watermark:” and then select “Edit Watermarks…” from the drop-down menu. The “Watermark Editor” will come up that looks like this:

The watermark editor is very easy and intuitive to use. The left bottom section is where you type the text and you can change the layout on the right side of the window. Let’s get started with typing the text. Put the copyright symbol (copy-paste it from here – © or press ALT + 0169 on PC / OPT + G on Mac) first, then put your name afterwards. On the right side of the screen, choose your desired font under “Text Options”. I personally like the “Myriad Web Pro” font, but you can use whichever font you want, as long as it is legible. Choose the style and alignment, then pick the color of the text. I would recommend to keep the color white, since colors rarely look good in text watermarks. The default Shadow settings should work fine, so skip over that. Now scroll down till you see “Watermark Effects”:

As I have pointed out before, you do not want the copyright watermark to be 100% visible, so it is best to make it semi-transparent. I typically use 50% opacity, but you can play between 30-80% to see what works for you. Keep “Proportional” size instead of “Fit” or “Fill”, and 10% typically works great. If your copyright text looks too small, increase the value to a bigger number.

The next task is to pick an “Anchor” point, meaning where your copyright will be located. As I have pointed out above, it is best to keep it in the top left/right and bottom left/right corners. Start with the top-left corner. Remember, our objective is to create 4 watermarks with different locations. Next, click “Save” and the “New Preset” window will pop up:

Give it a meaningful name that will be make it easy to understand the location of the type of watermark. I called mine “Top-Left Nasim Mansurov”, as shown above. Click “Create” and you will be returned to the Export screen.

Now repeat the task three more times and create 3 other watermarks for “Top-Right”, “Bottom-Left” and “Bottom-Right”. At the end, your “Watermarking” drop-down should look something like this:

Now that you have the text watermarks created, how do you use them? Just select a bunch of photos in Lightroom, bring up the export window, then select one of the watermarks and click “Export”. That’s all!

Here is how I normally do it:

1. Select all photos to be extracted in Lightroom
2. Bring up the Lightroom Export window (CTRL+SHIFT+E)
3. Select the “Bottom-Right” watermark (works best for most images)
4. Click “Export”
5. Once images are extracted, go through each one and identify the ones where logo does not look good or is invisible
6. Select the images that need to have a different watermark placement, then bring up the export window once again and pick a watermark for a different location
7. Click “Export” again and then overwrite the existing photo

You might need to repeat the steps 5-7 multiple times until you get the watermarks placed well. That’s all there is to it. Now let’s talk about graphic watermarks with logos.

4) Creating a graphic/logo watermark in Lightroom 3

Now let’s move on to the cool stuff, which is adding a graphic watermark with your logo to your images in Lightroom. No matter how good you make the text watermark look, it will never match a good-looking graphic logo. But to accomplish this, you will need your company logo in a transparent format like PNG or GIF. Your logo cannot be in JPEG format, since JPEG has no support for transparency. If you had your logo developed professionally, you should have the original logo in vector/EPS format. You might also find a transparent PNG/GIF file in the same folder. If you cannot locate one, it is very easy to export your logo in a PNG format, as long as you have the source file. A transparent logo should look like this when opened in Photoshop:

Since we will be making your watermark semi-transparent, it is best to have the image in white rather than black. Actually, you can use black for images that might be very bright, but for now change it to be completely white, as shown in my example below:

Now export the image from Photoshop by going to “File->Save for Web & Devices” and then pick “PNG-8″ on the top drop-down. Make sure that “Transparency” is checked, as seen below:

Once you have the file ready, you are now ready to use it in Lightroom. Oh and by the way, make sure that you are using a large version of your logo (at least 250 pixels wide). If you make it too small, your watermark will not look good when exported out of Lightroom, since Lightroom will have to up-size it for large photographs.

Let’s now pick some photos and bring up the Export dialog box in Lightroom by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+E:

Make sure to check the box in front of “Watermark:” under “Watermarking”, then select “Edit Watermarks…” in the drop-down menu. A new window called “Watermark Editor” will come up:

Now select “Graphic” on the top right corner of the window. Under “Image Options”, click “Choose” and find the logo you exported earlier. Once the file is chosen, you will see the logo show up right away on your photo preview on the left. You will also notice that the “Text Options” are now grayed out. Scroll down till you get to “Watermark Effects”:

Just like with the text watermark, you have to pick the right opacity – I normally leave mine at 50%. The size should stay “Proportional” and 10-15% size works great for most situations. If your logo is too close to the border, you can move it up/down and left/right by changing the “Inset” values in “Horizontal” and “Vertical”. Pick one of the Anchor points again (start with Bottom-Right) and then save the Preset with a new name. I called mine “Bottom-Right Mansurovs Logo”.

Now open up the Watermark Editor again, change the Anchor to bottom-left, click Save again and give it a name like “Bottom-Left Mansurovs Logo”. Do the same for top-left and top-right. Once you are done, you should have four watermarks for different watermark locations.

Now try to export a couple of photos and see how you like the result. If any watermark is not visible, follow my steps shown above:

1. Select all photos to be extracted in Lightroom
2. Bring up the Lightroom Export window (CTRL+SHIFT+E)
3. Select the “Bottom-Right” graph watermark (works best for most images)
4. Click “Export”
5. Once images are extracted, go through each one and identify the ones where logo does not look good or is invisible
6. Select the images that need to have a different watermark placement, then bring up the export window once again and pick a watermark for a different location
7. Click “Export” again and then overwrite the existing photo

Here is how my image looks like with our “Mansurovs” logo watermark:

The good news, is that you can use the above method for both vertical and horizontal images, so you do not have to extract your verticals separately. If all four corners are very bright and the white logo does not work, make another transparent logo in black and create additional watermarks. When watermarking very bright photos, use the black logo with 50% transparency and it will work great.

That’s it! Let me know if you have any questions and I would love to see how your logo comes out!

Losing images from a long-planned and expensive trip can be very painful. After it happens, you realize that it is not the financial aspect of it, but the effort you put into creating those images instead that hurts the most. We as photographers have to work with the best light during the day, which happens at sunrise and sunset times, no matter where you are located. In Glacier National Park, the sunset times in summer can be as late as 10 PM and as early as 5 AM in the morning. Northern Canada and Alaska are even worse, with sunset times close to midnight in July and sunrise in less than 5 hours. Add +1 hour after sunset and -1 hour for sunrise to get back and to the location, and we are talking about less than 3 hours of sleep at night. In addition, those late hours are also the peak and active time for wildlife, making it dangerous to hike to get to a good spot. And I am not even talking about the weather, which can go against you in those twilight hours. In addition, you carry the heavy weight with you and spent a lot of time tweaking your equipment and composing your shots using different spots and angles. So with so much effort put into making those images, the last thing you want is to lose them. What’s worse is, if you have been shooting for a while, you know if you got a great photo right at the time you take it. You take a look at the camera LCD and you know it is a keeper, a potential for your showcase portfolio. Once you lose photographs, you start to remember those keepers and deep regret hurts even more. So, why even take the chance? Take all the steps you can to protect your photographs when traveling and working on the field.

1) Back Up Your Data

Whether you are a professional photographer or a photo enthusiast, it is critical to not only back up your existing data, but also the new data that has not hit your permanent storage yet. I always take my laptop with me and back up photos from memory cards on a daily basis. I did not take my laptop with me just once when space and weight were an issue, and of course, it was the time when I lost many “keepers” on a 16 GB compact flash card. It was painful to lose so many great images, but maybe it happened for the better – going forward, I will remember to always take a backup device with me. Now when I say “back up”, I do not mean back up photos and then delete them from memory cards. You should never keep data in a single location, because any data medium can fail. With hard drives, it is just a matter of time. So when I back up my photos, I keep the originals on memory cards, until I safely get back home. Only after copying all images to my home storage and backing them up, I then format the memory cards for my next assignments.

Backing up your data on the field can be done in several different ways. If your camera is equipped with dual memory card slots (like Nikon D7000, D300s, D3, D3S, D3X), you can configure your DLSR to write to both cards simultaneously. While this means wasting one card, it is a good idea, because two cards will contain the same images. If data is corrupted on one card or one of the cards is lost, you still have a backup on the second one. Memory cards are cheap, so if you do not need the speed for video or fast action photography, get multiple slower cards that you can use in parallel.

If your camera is not equipped with a dual memory card slot or if you want to still back up your data to a different location, another option is to use an external memory card reader with a hard drive. There are many different options available on the market with devices of different hard drives sizes and obviously the price also varies depending on size and features. Something like Sanho Hyperdrive, although expensive, would work great for this purpose. Backing up your photos to an external storage device is a good idea – what if you were to lose your camera, or if you dropped it somewhere you cannot recover from? And lastly, if you travel with a laptop, just backup your photos to your laptop’s hard drive. That way you do not need to worry about getting an external storage device.

2) Label Your Memory Cards

I typically label my memory cards and provide my contact information on the back of them. If your memory card does not have space to write on, just put some white tape on it (make sure to use thin tape and do not tape over contacts) and provide at least your phone number. If anybody finds your memory card, they will at least have your contact information to contact you.

3) Properly Store Your Memory Cards

Keep your memory cards organized and store them properly in your camera bag. There are many different memory card holders out there, but the one I personally like and use is the Pelican 0940 CF Memory Card Case that securely holds 4 Compact Flash Cards. If you shoot with SD cards, you will want the Pelican 0910 SD Memory Card Case that can hold up to 8 SD and 16 Mini SD memory cards. Both card cases are water-resistant and well-protected against occasional abuse. If you have been storing your memory cards in camera bag pockets, I highly recommend getting one of these. I have four 16 GB SanDisk Extreme Pro cards stored in the 0940 Pelican. When I lost one of my memory cards, it was because I temporarily put it into my pocket in rush. Storing memory cards in pockets or in camera bag pockets is not a good idea, since dirt, moisture and other factors could damage them. Dust can get into the holes in CF cards.

If you only have one or two cards and do not want to purchase a card case, at least store the memory cards in plastic cases that came with the cards. When you are home and you are done using the memory cards, store them in dry, cool space (room temperature).

4) Label Used Cards

I once formatted a used card with photos I needed, because I did not label it after it was used. While you can recover photos from formatted cards, if you happen to write anything over the formatted card, the images you had before will not be recoverable, especially if you fill up the card with new images. You can purchase small color labels from any local store (for example green labels for formatted and red labels for used cards) or you can just come up with a method to identify used cards. If you use a memory card case like above, you can come up with a storage method for formatted and used cards without having to use labels. For example, I always put the formatted cards that are ready to use with their front up, while used memory cards are stored with their backs up.

5) Format Cards on Your Camera

If you have a habit of moving your images from your memory cards and forgetting to format the cards afterwards, I highly recommend to stop doing that and get in the habit of formatting memory cards in your camera instead. I have seen people with corrupt images and all kinds of other problems, just because their memory cards were not formatted properly. Always remember to format memory cards in your camera and not in your PC. It takes several seconds to do it in camera and if you shoot Nikon, you do not even need to get into the camera menu to format memory cards – you can just push two buttons with red labels and hold them for two seconds and once you push them together again, the memory card will be formatted.

6) Don’t Delete Images From Your Camera

If you do not like an image, or if it comes out blurry, don’t rush and delete images from your camera. This is another mistake I made during my last trip – every night I deleted plenty of images from my first memory card when it got full and many images from my second week ended up in my first memory card instead of the second on my Nikon D3s. If I had not done that, I would not have lost so many good images and my images would have been sorted better. If you run out of storage periodically, just buy more memory cards – they are cheap.

The moment I found out about his purchasing fiasco (which was on a Friday, approximately after two weeks since he placed the order), I picked up the phone and started calling AjRichard. I wanted to cancel the order as soon as possible and hoped to be able to recover his money. It was around 4 PM Mountain Time, which was 6 PM Eastern Time – the phone rang and then an automated message said that the store was closed. Unfortunately, it was the Memorial day weekend, so the store was closed for an extended period of time. On Tuesday morning before calling AjRichard, we checked the order status and the item was marked as “shipped”. A tracking number from UPS was provided, which indicated arrival on the third of June, two weeks after the order was placed – and that’s with the item being “in stock” with a free three day shipping. I called AjRichard and asked if it was possible to cancel the order. I was told that cancelling the order was not possible since the item was already shipped. Bummer. Now we had to wait till the package arrived. Meanwhile, my friend called his credit card company only to get disappointing news, that he would have to resolve the dispute with the merchant first. The whole dispute process could take several months.

I then decided to give a call to AjRichard and explore the purchasing process myself to see what I would get sold on on a $2,500 5D Mark II (as it was listed as of that day on their website). Here is an audio of the last part of the conversation, after I gave a fake name, address, email and credit card info:

Recorded Conversation with Mark @ AjRichard – click to listen/download.

And the above audio in text:

Me: Is this a new camera?
Mark: Brand new, factory sealed. OK, sold you the camera, we’ll do the warranty, then what else do you need?
Me: That’s it.
Mark: And the battery, you want to get the battery as well?
Me: Uh, doesn’t it come with a battery?
Mark: It comes with one battery, which is only 35-40 minutes, so I would definitely recommend getting one of the extended life batteries.
Me: What do you mean by 30-40 minutes?
Mark: It is a short battery, it is not a long-life battery. You need to buy the extra one, the long one.
Me: So when you say 30-40 minutes, it is for taking pictures or video?
Mark: Both of them. When the screen is on or anything, it cuts down very short (yawns).
Me: Oh, so the one that comes with the camera only lasts for 30 minutes?
Mark: Yeah. Then you have the two hour which is $129 and a four hour which is $169.
Me: Wow, so if I take this camera and take pictures, it is only going to last for 4 hours?
Mark: If you do the bigger battery, yeah.
Me: Let’s go with a bigger battery then.
Mark: OK, I will put the charger as well.
Me: Wait, wait, what is a charger?
Mark: No, you get the charger as well I am saying.
Me: Oh, so the battery comes with a charger?
Mark: Correct.
Me: Doesn’t the camera come with a charger though?
Mark: That’s what I am saying, you get the charger with that! The camera comes already with a charger in the bag with the battery.
Me: OK, so the only thing I am buying then is the battery, no charger right?
Mark: Correct. If you want, there is a separate charger, which is faster, if you want the “rapid” charger. It charges the battery within an hour, instead of waiting for 8 hours, it charges your battery in an hour.
Me: Oh, well, I guess I travel a lot, so let’s add that too.
Mark: And do you want to get a memory card?
Me: No, I already have a compact flash memory card.
Mark: Now they have a special memory card if you are doing like video and stuff. They have a special card which is for high definition.
Me: Yeah, I just got the one from Best Buy the other day and they told me that it can record video.
Mark: I mean if you want, because we have the new ones which are “error free” and “ultra high speed”. They are the ones that when you take a picture you are not going to have a 3-5 second delay time, and they actually say on the packaging “1080p high definition video”.
Me: Uh…I think that’s what my packaging says – it says “for recording 1080p video”. It is the “Sandisk Ultra” or something like that.
Mark: Hmm yeah, those aren’t error free, but they’ll work, they’ll take pictures and stuff.
Me: So when you say “error free”, what does it mean?
Mark: Error free means you are not going to get any glitches if you do action shots and someone running, you are not going to get any blur in the picture or anything like that. And you are not going to lose any pictures.
Me: Ohh.
Mark: You know, I’ll do this deal for you. I have a kit you might be better off doing, like right now if you are doing the camera with the battery, charger and the warranty and your total price was $3149.88, I have a kit I could do for you. It is a little more like $3399 as a whole bundle, but you would actually first get instead of the 4 hour battery I would give you two of the 6 hour batteries, so you get two batteries and it would be the six hour ones. You get also the charger now, which is the the charger that charges your batteries within one hour and it works in the house and in the car, so it is both AC/DC and it charges your batteries within one hour. Also, if you ever travel overseas, it is going to work overseas as well. You’ll get the 5 year warranty and I will give you the “platinum” warranty, it is the warranty you could take to any local service center. It will cover the screen, cover everything on that full parts and labor and it also covers professional cleaning as well.
Me: And the warranty we are talking about is US warranty right?
Mark: Yes, this will give you 5 years that you could take local, so you don’t have to ship to them or anything. And also covers the screen and everything. You are going to get the 32GB memory card, the ultra high speed “error free”, which is the bigger card.
Me: What brand is it?
Mark: That’s “Digital Film”, that has the full 5 year warranty, it is made for high definition video 1080p and also when you take the stills you are not going to have the delay time or the errors or anything. It is ultra high speed and error free.
Me: What was the company name again? Digital Film?
Mark: Digital Film, uhum.
Me: I have never heard of them.
Mark: Oh they are very good. The make the special ones for video and stills as well. Also if you do that kit you will get the car reader, so you get the ultra high speed card reader and you get everything for $3,399, which is worth it, because it is like $200 more, but you are getting the memory card, which is usually like $300 by itself, you are getting an extra battery, and you are getting the 6 hour one, so you are getting 3 batteries total.
Me: Oh wow, that sounds like an overkill for me though.
Mark: Yeah, so I will do that for you.
Me: OK.
Mark: So everything together comes out to…let me give you the order number as well, do you have a pen and paper?
Me: Sure.
Mark: The order number will be 1152214 and the total with everything will be $3549.98. And that’s with shipping, insurance, everything in that.
Me: What kind of shipping do you guys have?
Mark: You will get that probably within 3 to 5 days.
Me: So on the website it says “free shipping”.
Mark: Yeah, that is free shipping I did for you. The insurance is extra, usually it is like 8 percent, I gave you a break on that as well, so this way it comes to you insured and everything.
Me: So insurance is 8 percent of the total dollar amount on top of that?
Mark: It usually is, but I gave you a break on that, I did not charge you the 8 percent.
Me: Got it, OK, sounds good. How much did you say it was for shipping?
Mark: Everything together was $3549, with insurance and everything.
Me: So that includes the shipping.
Mark: Yeah and everything. I put the express shipping and everything for you.
Me: When you said “express” shipping, is that like through Federal Express?
Mark: No, UPS. Instead of like 10 days, you will get it in like 5 days, so you will get it quicker.
Me: Oh, OK. Can I change that to 3 day shipping?
Mark: Yeah, you want to do that? I can do that for you.
Me: How much is that going to cost?
Mark: I will do it for the same price.
Me: So instead of 5 days I will get it in 3 business days then?
Mark: Yeah, you will get it by Friday.
Me: OK, that sounds good.
Mark: All right, so I will do that for you and I will process it right away.
Me: Sounds good, thank you very much. What was your name again?
Mark: My name is Mark, my extension here is 218.
Me: Thank you very much Mark.
Mark: Thank you Nick.
Me: Bye.

The camera that was $2,499 is now $3,549, thanks to Mark’s sales efforts. Wow. I can’t imagine what they are selling to other people that don’t know what they are doing. Everything was going so wrong, I don’t know how I did not just explode in laughter (which we did, as soon as I hung up). The best part is when he says “Error free means you are not going to get any glitches if you do action shots and someone running, you are not going to get any blur in the picture or anything like that”. A lesson for beginners – now you know where all that blur is coming from! Just buy the right card and your images will be sharp and you will catch all the action shots in the world. LOL. Did you notice how smooth he went from $3399 to $3549? And that was apparently for “insurance” that he gave me a break on. That’s $150 that I got screwed on for shipping on a $2,500 camera.

Wondering what happened to my friend’s order? He received an opened half-empty 5D Mark II + 24-120mm kit box with what looked like a new 5D Mark II, with no lens or warranty card. Everything else was in the box, including manuals and battery + charger. The second battery and charger he got were from some unknown brand. He also received a worthless $3 cleaning kit and some other junk he did not need. He called AjRichard and this time it was supposedly a different guy, but with the same voice as Mark. The sales person said that he shipped a brand new 5D Mark II and that the box was not open. When my friend told him that he wanted to return the order and get his money back, Mr. Mark said that he would have to charge a 15% restocking fee for the entire order. Plus, he would be responsible for shipping and insurance as well. My friend decided to keep the camera.

Lessons learned:

1. Never buy photography equipment from an unauthorized seller/dealer.
2. Never fully trust third party sites like Nextag.com for vendor ratings and trustworthiness.
3. Know that if anybody lists prices significantly lower than top sellers like B&H and Adorama, most likely they are scammers.
4. Do not assume that your credit card company will help you when you make stupid decisions.
5. Do not engage in phone conversations about your order with sales people, unless the company is calling to verify your payment/address information.
6. Do not believe in 8% insurance fees, there is no such thing.
7. Buy from reliable online and local sellers with a long history.
8. Always check your gear after buying it. Check for camera shutter actuations and check all lenses you receive.
9. Always be extra careful when buying from online merchants. Read seller reviews from multiple sources and Google for information on the seller.

These guys should be shut down for what they are doing. The good news is, they are probably not going to stay in business much longer. The bad news is, they will probably reopen another company under a different name and continue to rob people. If we as consumers do not learn how to differentiate good guys from bad guys, companies like AjRichard will thrive on new, often “not-so-knowledgeable” customers. Please spread this message to your friends and family and do not let it happen!

Let me know if you have experienced anything like this before – our community should know who to stay away from. I will soon create a list of sellers I fully trust in a separate post and provide some tips on purchasing camera gear.