Digital Focus
September 7th, 2004
proudly presented by
PC World
Technology Advice You Can Trust
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/213857/21421679/1/0/
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Photography expert Dave Johnson's tips will enhance your digital
camera, printer, and image editing expertise with recommendations on
digital challenges from shooting techniques to digital publishing,
answers to reader questions, and a photo contest.
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September 7th, 2004
In This Issue:
- Feature Story: Reveal Hidden Details in Your Photos
- Dave's Favorites: Turn Your Pictures Into Real Postage Stamps
- Q&A: What's the Difference Between JPEG and JPEG 2000?
- Contest: Submit Your Best Photo, Become Famous, and Win a Prize
- Newsletter Trivia: Reading Back Issues, Helping Friends Subscribe
* Feature: Reveal Hidden Details in Your Photos *
What's hiding in your shadows? That's kind of a creepy question, but
one you might occasionally ask yourself--especially when you look at
your digital photos. Often, in order to properly expose one part of
your picture, your camera throws another part of the scene into deep
shadow. There might be a lot of detail hiding in those shadows, if
only you knew how to unlock it.
Take this picture, for instance::
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/213857/21421679/754888/0/
Taking an external shot of a window in daylight is always a problem,
especially if you're trying to show what your eye can naturally see
through the window. In our photo example, we see a small detail from a
picture of the back of my house. Since the inside of the house is a
lot darker than the outside (in the middle of the day, at least), I
ended up with dark, shadowy window panes that reveal almost nothing
about what's inside.
Using the Histogram Adjustment tool in Jasc Paint Shop Pro, though, I
was able to unmask the details and see a lot more. You can too, and
find out what's hiding my picture.
Select the Window Panes
If you want to play along with our sample picture, save it to your PC
and load it into an image editor. I'll use Paint Shop Pro.
Our first order of business is to select the window panes, because we
want to brighten just the windows, not the rest of the door frame. For
this task, choose the Magic Wand tool, which resides in the fifth
cubby from the top in the toolbar on the left side of the screen.
The Magic Wand lets us select part of the picture not by searching for
edges, but instead by grabbing pixels of similar color. The wand uses
a setting called Tolerance to know how similar the colors need to be
to get selected: a low tolerance requires colors to be very similar,
while a high tolerance selects a lot of dissimilar colors at once. For
this picture, I found a tolerance level of 55 to be almost perfect.
You can adjust the Tolerance setting in the Tool Options palette which
is usually docked to the top of the screen. (If you don't see it,
choose View, Palettes, Tool Options to toggle it on.)
Next, while holding down the Shift key, click in each window pane. The
Shift key lets you make multiple selections; after 20 clicks, you
should have all the panes in the door selected. (Note that our
approach leaves the lamp shades unselected--a handy turn of events, as
we don't need to lighten them.)
Bring Out the Details
Finally, we're ready to see what's hiding indoors. Choose Adjust,
Brightness and Contrast, Histogram Adjustment from the menu. This tool
displays a histogram, which represents the brightness of the pixels in
the selected part of the image:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/213857/21421679/754889/0/
(You may need to zoom in or out a little using the zoom controls on
the left to get a similar view in this dialog box.)
Notice how the graph is pressed against the left side of the screen?
That means these pixels are dark, or underexposed. To fix that, we'll
drag the white point arrow (the white triangle labeled "High") to the
left. This redistributes the brightness in the picture, brightening
it. As you do so, Paint Shop Pro displays a new graph that represents
the adjusted pixel brightness. When that graph just starts to meet the
right side, that's about right:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/213857/21421679/754890/0/
When you click OK to accept these changes, you should see all sorts of
things that were previously invisible. There are reflections from the
backyard, someone at a table, and even a cat looking out:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/213857/21421679/754891/0/
You can apply this technique to all sorts of situations. Now you'll
always be able to see what lurks in the shadows--of your photos, that
is.
* Dave's Favorites: Turn Your Pictures Into Real Postage Stamps *
Unfortunately, there are all sorts of annoying rules in place about
who can appear on a U.S. postage stamp and when they're eligible for
stamphood. Even then, there are all sorts of committees, selection
teams, and official brouhaha associated with designing stamps. If only
there was an easier way!
Okay, I know that few of you sit up late at night dreaming of getting
on a stamp. But now that I mention it, you've got to admit that it
sounds pretty neat, right? A new service called PhotoStamps can make
it all happen.
To get started, visit the PhotoStamps site and upload your favorite
digital image:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/213857/21421679/754892/0/
After a few moments, you see your picture embedded in a stamp on
screen, where you can reposition the image in the stamp, rotate it,
flip it, and change the border color. When you're happy with the
results, select the kind of stamp you want (first-class letter or
postcard, for instance) and finish your order. A sheet of 20 stamps
costs $17.
So, the big questions: Are they really stamps? Can you use them to
mail packages? Yes and yes. They're perfectly legal postage stamps.
They make great gifts--I'm thinking baby birthdays and high-school
graduations, for instance. Or put your pet on a stamp to make it
famous. PhotoStamps are some of the most unusual photo gifts you'll
ever find.
* Q&A: What's the Difference Between JPEG and JPEG 2000? *
What's the difference between JPEG and JPEG 2000? Can JPEG 2000 files
be opened by anyone as easily as JPEGs, or do they require special
software?
--Tom Rathburn, Las Vegas
Although JPEG 2000 has been around for a number of years, it's still
considered the new kid on the block, Tom. It's an alternative file
format that claims to generate more-accurate, less-lossy images than
the traditional JPEG file format. And in reality, JPEG 2000 is
somewhat better than JPEG.
However, use of the JPEG 2000 format is not without issues. Despite
its similar name, JPEG 2000 is a completely different file format.
That means your software needs to be JPEG 2000 "aware" to display such
files. Although many common image editing programs do have JPEG 2000
support, you won't find support for JPEG 2000 in Windows. You can't
make a JPEG 2000 image your desktop wallpaper, for instance. And most
slide show apps, image viewers, and business programs (such as Word
and PowerPoint) don't recognize JPEG 2000, either.
Worst of all, no digital camera that I know of uses the JPEG 2000 file
format, so your pictures must start out as JPEGs or TIFFs and get
converted to JPEG 2000 somewhere along the way. Bottom line? It's one
file format that's far too much trouble for me to mess with.
* Hot Pics *
Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite
reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality, and
technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize
valued at between $10 and $100.
A gentle reminder, folks: We disqualify some really wonderful pictures
every week because the submissions don't follow the rules. Be sure to
include everything we ask for in your e-mail message, including a
description of your picture and your complete contact information, or
your entry is wasted!
Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format at a
resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Our e-mail address is:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If
necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of
your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo
along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't
forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before
entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and
regs at:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/213857/21421679/95/0/
This Week's Hot Pic: "Early Fourth," by Ross Heeren, Juniata, Nebraska
It's not early anymore, but this picture was snapped on a spring
evening before the Fourth of July, according to Ross. He says that he
captured this image with a Canon A40 set to a long exposure and with a
few sparklers "we keep for special occasions."
To view the photo, go to:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/213857/21421679/754893/0/
Hot Pic of the Month: Each month we choose one of our weekly winners
to be the Hot Pic of the Month. For our August winner, we chose
"Weathered Outhouse Door," by Sandy Kronberger, from Carlton,
Minnesota.
To view the photo, go to:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/213857/21421679/722253/0/
Congratulations to Sandy and to everyone else who won a Hot Pic of the
Week last month. Keep those entries coming!
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* See Dave Johnson's previous Digital Focus Features at:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/213857/21421679/237289/0/
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Top News From PC World
* Apps to Organize Your Digital Photos
Here's an overview of three new programs that promise easier image
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