Is Digital Photography Too Phony, Too Computer-centric?

David Policansky. November 20, 2023 at 10:44am:

I got the reference to the song, one of my favorites, immediately. Well done. Making photographic images is increasingly manipulating computers. I still like the physical, mechanical aspects of photography, and miss some of them. I tried to photograph Jupiter last night with my new Canon R7 but I couldn’t find it in the EVF, so I had to use my 7D2 with its beautiful bright OVF.

Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART. November 22, 2023 at 6:27am:

Hi David,

Thanks for enjoying my reference to “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.” Not sure about your problems finding Jupiter other than to say that the brightness of EVFs is controlled by the exposure settings.

re:

“Making photographic images is increasingly about {sic} manipulating computers.”

With digital, the photographer get to control how his or her images look. With film, that was the job of the lab. I far prefer the former, in fact, for me, processing images is one of the great joys of digital photography.

with love, artie

Furthermore …

I see the raw files that I create simply as digital negatives, to be developed and enhanced as I see fit. With the Turkey Vulture white sky image featured in the previous blog post, by properly exposing far to the right, the blue in the sky was in the raw file, waiting to be enhanced.

As for me, I wish that I had never heard the word “film.”

Your Call?

If you used film and switched to digital as many of us did, which do you prefer, and why?

What’s Up?

After checking the weather for Vero Beach on Monday evening, I got excited. The forecast was calling for 15-20mph winds from the southeast, perfect for Sebastian Inlet. Jim and I woke early and arrived at the State Park at 6:40am. The wind and sun were aligned perfectly. There were dozens of Ospreys in the air fishing. There were two problems. The only birds catching anything were south of the south jetty, backlit and flying away. Crossing the bridge, I found that the birds hunting above the Northwest Pool were fishing but not diving and thus not catching. Though almost everyone photographing at Sebastian has eyes only for Osprey, there are many other birds to photograph. I had a great morning doing flight and action (flapping after bathing) photography; subjects included Royal and Caspian Tern, an adult Lesser Black-backed Gull, juvenile Herring Gull, first winter Laughing Gull, Brown Pelican, Great Egret, Snowy Egret, Wood Stork, Willet, and Ruddy Turnstone. I considered returning on Wednesday morning but slept in once I saw the forecast for a strong SW wind. Winds from the east and/or the south have been rarer than hen’s teeth on both central Florida coasts this fall.

Today is Thursday 23 November 2023. Enjoy the football and the food and try not to eat too, too much. Though the forecast is calling for partly cloudy skies with a light NW breeze (far less than ideal), I will head down to the lake for a bit.

Wherever you are a whatever you are doing, I hope that you too have a great day.

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Image #1: Ring-billed Gull image by Dave Goldberg The Photo Mechanic screen capture for today’s featured image

The Raw File

I came across Dave Goldberg’s Ring-billed Gull image in the Avian Forum at Bird Photographers.Net.
You can see Dave’s original post, several excellent comments, and several reposts in the thread here.

Everyone agreed that the image was processed too dark and that that the white balance was off. I asked, and Dave kindly sent me the raw file. The Photo Mechanic histogram above shows significant underexposure. Evaluating the raw file in RawDigger, however, revealed that the exposure was perfect, only 1/3-stop from dead solid prefect.

The BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II). You can order your copy from the BAA Online Store here, by sending a PayPal for $40 here, or by calling Jim or Jennifer weekdays at 863-692-0906 with your credit card in hand. Be sure to specify Digital Basics II.

The BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II)

The techniques mentioned above and tons more great Photoshop tips and techniques — along with my complete digital workflow, Digital Eye Doctor Techniques, and all my personalized Keyboard Shortcuts — are covered in detail in the BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II), an instructional PDF that is sent via e-mail. Note: folks working on a PC and/or those who do not want to miss anything Photoshop may wish to purchase the original Digital Basics along with DB II while saving $15 by clicking here to buy the DB Bundle.

Please note: the Divide and Conquer technique was inadvertently omitted from DB II. It is detailed in a free excerpt in the blog post here.

Folks who learn well by following along rather than by reading can check out the complete collection of MP 4 Photoshop Tutorial Videos by clicking here. Note: most of the videos are now priced at an amazingly low $5.00 each.

You can learn how and why I converted all of my Canon digital RAW files in DPP 4 in the DPP 4 RAW Conversion Guide here. More recently, I became proficient at converting my Nikon RAW (NEF) files in Adobe Camera Raw. About three years ago I began converting my Nikon and Sony RAW files in Capture One and did that for two years. You can learn more about Capture One in the Capture One Pro 12 Simplified MP4 Video here. The next step would be to get a copy of Arash Hazeghi’s “The Nikon Photographers’ Guide to Phase One Capture One Pro e-Guide” in the blog post here. Today, I convert my Sony raw files in Photoshop with Adobe Camera Raw.

You can learn advanced Quick Masking and advanced Layer Masking techniques in APTATS I & II. You can save $15 by purchasing the pair.

Image #2: Ring-billed Gull on post. Image courtesy of and copyright 2023: Dave Goldberg. Image optimization by BIRDS AS ART

Optimizing the Image

I used click White Balance and went to work. I set the sliders in the Colors, Light, and Effect panels as per my DB III workflow. I used my recently developed two-step noise reduction technique and the new Remove Tool for a bit of image clean-up mainly on the wooden post and the bird’s bill. The Luminance Targeted Adjustment Tool (L-TAT) did a great job of brightening the background and the gull’s bill. The most difficult part of the image optimization for me was getting rid of the water. I used a series of Quick Masks refined by regular Layer Masks, the Patch Tool, and the Clone Stamp. The background was smoothed with a layer of Gaussian Blur refined by a Hide-All (Inverse or Black) Layer Mask.

Finally, I used Content-Aware crop to level the image and add room above and left.

The Digital Basics III Video Series

The Digital Basics III Video Series

I realized about a year ago that my digital workflow had changed significantly and was toying with the idea of writing a Digital Basics III. More recently, I have learned and begun working with two great new Photoshop Tools, the Remove Tool and the Luminance Targeted Adjustment Tool. The former is like a smarter Spot Healing Brush Tool on steroids and the latter is a huge step up from the fabulous Color Mixer Tool. During that same time frame, I came up with a new and improved 2-step noise reduction technique. I still use Divide and Conquer, Quick Masks, Layer Masks, an expanded array of personalized keyboard shortcuts, and tons of other stuff from both versions of Digital Basics.

As soon as I realized that I did not want to take on another large writing project, I realized that by creating a series of videos I could much more easily share all the details of my current digital workflow and much more easily incorporate additional new tips, techniques, and tools as I went. And so, The Digital Basics III Video Series was born. You can check out Volume I/#1 here.

You might opt to purchase single videos or to subscribe to Volume I and save $26 by ordering the first five videos in one fell swoop. You can purchase the five videos in Volume I by clicking here. The videos will be most valuable for folks using the latest version of Photoshop (2024) or Lightroom along with Topaz DeNoise AI and Topaz Sharpen AI.

Typos

With all blog posts, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors.