A New Camera? Get the Most Out of It

A feeling that many new camera owners frequently experience is that the pictures they take 'do not look as good as I had anticipated... '

The simple solution to this problem is to get to know your camera properly. Modern digital cameras are technological marvels - even the lowest priced 'point & shoot' and they can help you to take delightful images that you really enjoy. But...

Most people go straight to the "Quick Start" leaflet, make sure they know some of the crucial buttons to press, ignore the instruction manual and begin taking pictures. 'Real women and real men do not read instruction manuals!'

This is all well and good but you will never get to appreciate the technological wonder that you now possess and you will absolutely not get full value from your purchase. Your instruction manual is the most important accessory possible for your camera and it's free!

The key point is that your instruction manual is not a book to be read from cover to cover - that way lies confusion - 'there is just so much to learn!' It is a reference manual! For ease of reference download it as a PDF file - both to your desktop and to your smart phone. This gives you easy and fast access to both the menu and to whatever subject you need. You would normally use your desktop but the smart phone as a reference can be really useful in the field.

An old proverb:
'I hear and I forget'

'I see and I remember'

'I do and I understand!'

There are any number of courses that you can take to help you get to know your camera. The major brands offer them as a free service if you buy a camera above a certain level. The courses are given by people who really know the camera and they take you through everything it will do in a relatively short time. Many owners come out of the course slightly bewildered thinking 'what a complex camera - I will never understand or be able to do all of that!'

'I do and I understand!'

This is the key phrase. Anything that you teach yourself is far more likely to be remembered than anything you have been shown.

So, using your manual, you gradually build up your knowledge of your camera. Learning functions and techniques as you need to use them rather than trying to learn everything at once. Everything will gradually become second nature to you - remembering that practice does make perfect!

By using the PDF format everything is full screen and easy to read and follow. You also have two hands to hold your camera and experiment with the various buttons.

The various diagrams in the manual refer you to different sections for extra detail. Every lever and button on your camera is explained in clear, easy to follow language.

Use your manual and teach yourself all about your camera as you progress along your photographic journey and you will reap full benefit from your technological wonder.

This will cover all the practical aspects of using your camera - along the way you will have to develop your own approach to the challenging fun of composition etc!

Enjoy your Camera!

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Tips For Editing Camera Raw Files In Adobe Lightroom

Using raw image files

Raw images carry unprocessed details that can be further developed into a great photograph. The regular jpeg images that you click using a camera is automatically enhanced depending on the maker of the camera. The raw images are untouched by the automated settings of a camera.

The camera raw file format changes with the brand and model number of the camera. The commonly used camera raw format is the Digital Negative or DNG format.

Lightroom supports import of different types of raw files. The iOS version of Lightroom also offers editing of certain raw images which can be opened in the desktop version for further enhancements.

12 Tips to develop your raw images beautifully

Import your raw image in the Lightroom workspace and follow these tips as per the required results:

1. Adding white balance

When you click on white balance option, there is a pop-up list of white balance options such as daylight, cloudy, tungsten and more. You can use one of the options to fix the white balance of your raw image or try better options from the list.

2. Color and Tone Correction

Adjust the color balance in photographs. Clarity, vibrance, hue, saturation, tone curve etc. are some of the Lightroom options to correct the color and tone of the images. The vibrance slider is used to control saturation but it does not oversaturate skin colors.

3. Correct the exposure

The raw image may be overexposed or underexposed. Use the exposure slider to increase or decrease the exposure values.

4. Enhance the details

Use the fill tool to bring back the missing detail in the image which is present in the raw file.

The amount of brightness captured by the raw image is much more than a regular jpeg image. Adjust the values in the highlights slider to recover the details from a raw image in Lightroom.

5. Vignette effect

Lightroom has a post crop vignetting feature which can be used to add effects to a cropped image.

If you have a lot of highlights in your image then choose the Highlight Priority effect. Choose the Color Priority effect to preserve color hues in your raw image. Select the Paint Overlay option to blend black and white colors with original colors of your raw image.

6. Grain effect

Add a film grain style to your raw images to create grain effect. For revealing a part of the image, add the grain effect to rest of the image area with a higher value as grain amount. You can control the size, amount, and roughness of the grain. For a blurred image, increase the size of the grain particle to more than 25%.

7. Dehaze effect

There are times when weather conditions can lead to a hazy image with smoke or fog. To fix the haziness or adjust it, use the dehaze effect. Once you have made the required changes to the photograph by adjusting the color, brightness etc., go and select the "Dehaze" options in the effects panel.

8. Radial Filter

To focus on people or objects in an image, you can use the radial filter. After you select the radial filter from the toolbar, you need to select an area of focus. The filter gives you the choice to apply the modification inside or outside the circle drawn by you.

While working on projects for photo retouching services, you can add more radial filters on the images to bring multiple objects into focus.

9. Paint with the Adjustment brush

Lightroom gives you the freedom to paint the local adjustments such as brightness, tint, saturation, clarity and more. This alternative lets you paint adjustments in parts of the images as per your choice.

Similar results can be achieved with the Graduated Filter tool.

10. Retouching

Professionals widely use the retouching features of Lightroom to deliver high-quality photo retouching. You can remove blemishes, adjust brightness and make a lot of adjustments to retouch photos.

Here is one quick tip; before starting to retouch portraits, tick "Profile corrections" and "Remove chromatic aberration" in the basic tab under the lens corrections tab to fix distortions captured by the camera lens.

11. Save presets

You can save the changes that you make using the Adjustment Brush tool or the Graduated Filter tool as a preset. Use the "New Local Correction Setting" to save the adjustment presets and use it again while working with raw images. These presets can be useful while working on color correction of similar images.

12. Add Camera Raw

You can use the Camera Raw plugin with Lightroom to correct distorted perspectives and do more. Camera Raw is another raw image processor from Adobe and has similar photo editing functions.

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