Digital Art & Photography

Photography is usually a compulsory topic in many a design school. Black and white photography is one of the main photography type learnt.

Black and white photography involves creating images without colours. Black and white photos often exude a nostalgic or historic feel. Interestingly, when using lower-end compact cameras, Black and white mode often creates a more pleasing range of tones than when using the color modes.

For better control, it is ideal to shoot the image in colour mode first. We can always do the conversion to greyscale or black and white later. With digital photography, one can now easily convert a colour photo to black and white. However, it is not as simple as just using the desaturation tool on the image editing program.

It is always a good idea to use low ISO setting for the camera. This is to prevent the result from being overly grainy.

If possible, shoot using RAW format. This will allow better control over the black and white manipulation. Not all image editor can process RAW format though. Photoshop  and photoshop alternative such as  Photoplus can.

Panoramas or Panoramic photography is a type of photography that purposefully creates images with exceptionally wide fields of view. It can be created by specialized equipment or software program.

The followings are some tips for shooting panoramas:

1. Turn off auto white balance. This is to prevent the white balance setting from changing.

2. Turn off auto exposure. This is to prevent the exposure from being automatically adjusted.

3. Use only one exposure setting. Determine an aperture-shutter speed combination and stick to it for all the shots.

4. Use only one focal length. Use just one focal length for all the shots.

5. Use a tripod. A tripod allows for a more stable and sturdy panning of the camera when taking the shot. It also aligns the shots horizontally with one another.

6. Overlap the shots. An ideal range for overlapping is between 25 to 50 percent.

7. Do not use flash. Flash will affect the exposures.

That’s all for the photography tips. Thanks for reading.

You have taken the photos using the digital camera. You will like to post it up on the web.

If you want to put the digital photos on the web, they must ideally be properly optimized. This is to make sure that they load in the least time possible.  You will want the file size to be as small as possible.

The three most common file format for displaying images are JPEG, PNG and GIF. Generally, texts and words on websites will be loaded rather speedily. The cause of slow site loading is usually large image file sizes

To prevent the slow loading, we must remove unnecessary information on the images, and thereby effectively reducing the file size of your image without affecting its appearance.

You can use Photoshop to do these image editing work.  However, photoshop is not the only solution. There are other low cost Photoshop alternatives.

If you want a free image editor that can do the task, you can use the Gimp. The Gimp can be downloaded for free from www.gimp.org.

To reduce file size, 2 things must be done:

1. Resize the image to the exact displaying size. Using the images as it is intended to be displayed. For example if the display dimension is 600 X 400, make sure the image is also 600 X 400 in pixel size.

2. Use the optimimum compression rate. The screenshot is taken from Gimp image editor.

If you have Photoshop, when you save an image as a JPEG file, a dialog box will appears and lets you choose the “quality” of the JPEG image. Typically a setting of 7 to 10 is sufficient to retain the quality of your image and at the same time keep the file size relatively small.

Well, these are the tips for optimizing image file sizes. Thank you for reading

Landscape Photography is one of the most popular type of photography. Landscape photos can be awesome imageries to behold. Having such photos on canvas can be quite awe-inspiring.

There are some tips for taking landscape photography:

1. Keep the details in focus. For this, use a small aperture size. This will maximize the DOF (Depth of Field).

2. Use a tripod. This will enhance the sharpness of details.

3.  People and animals are usually not the main focus in a landscape photo. If they do, keep them relatively small in terms of scale on the photo.

4. Use a wide angle lense. This will capture more of the scenes.

5. Use leading lines. The using of leading lines will draw attentions to specific area of the composition. An example of leading line is road.

There are three main styles of landscape photography. These styles are known as:

1. representational,
2. impressionistic and
3. abstract landscape photography.

In a previous, I said that my Sony Cybershot S700 digital compact camera broke down again.

A few days ago, I sent it to the Sony Service Centre in Orchard Road, Singapore. By the way, I live in Singapore.

Yesterday, a staff from the service centre called me. He said that my camera is going to be send to Hong Kong to be repaired. He said that the repair will take a couple of weeks. I told him I am fine with the arrangement.

Man, I have not been to Hong Kong for a long time. The camera travels more than me. LOL.