Opinion: Understanding paper-size ratios, perfecting the art of retouching photographs of women and a look inside Photoshop User magazine.Welcome back to another edition of Photo Reviews. You know the format—nutshell reviews of some items that caught my eye, and always a freebie or two to download and try for yourself.
Today, for all you geeks out there, I have a link explaining paper formats. I review a black-and-white converter which is part of a huge bundle of Photoshop plug-ins; a beautiful Photoshop book dedicated to imaging women; and, I'll do my bit to push a worthy magazine, Photoshop User.
Let's start with the geek special. In Europe, we have an ISO standard letter format called A4. Put two of them together and you get the larger A3 sheet, or fold one in half and get the smaller A5. Interestingly enough, all of these have exactly the same height to width aspect ratio.
Now, I've finally located a Web page, authored by Mr. Markus Kuhn of Cambridge University in England, that lucidly explains the geometry behind this folding trick. Having read the explanation by Markus, I've discovered how to use a photocopier to reduce and enlarge pages to the precise dimensions of most European and U.S. paper formats.
That was today's geek special. By the way, the aspect ratio defining the ISO page sizes is called the Lichtenberg Ratio. It's actually the square root of 2, and yes, I did graduate work at Cambridge. Now let's move on to our next featured item, the Power Retouche suite of Photoshop plug-ins.
I prefer to be up front here, I found the Power Retouche Photoshop plug-ins while staring at the Publish.com Web page—it would seem that advertising works. I chased down the link, and there are zillions of filters there (one is free). But one component in the set caught my eye: the black-and-white conversion plug-in.
As a kid, I shot a lot of black-and-white film because back then the film could be bought in bulk for next to nothing, and it was cheap to process. Back then, color was seriously expensive. Nowadays, digital film is free, digital processing is free and color is easy. But monochrome conversion and printing are now really hard.
So in comes the black-and-white conversion plug-in from Power Retouche and suddenly you have a time machine: You can select a virtual film type, like Ilford's venerable HP5, and the plug-in will emulate the spectral sensitivity of the corresponding product. But wait, there's more! The plug-in also allows you to mount a virtual filter in front of your virtual film! Older readers will recall the fun to be had with green, orange and red filters.
OnOne Software acquires popular Photoshop plug-in. Click here to read more.
To try out the plug-ins, I let some of the filters loose on a portrait shot taken at high ISO with my excellent but noisy Canon 1Ds. The color image looks nice, but the desaturated version is blocked up and noisy.
By first applying the separate dynamic range compression filter to the color image, and then mounting a virtual red filter in front of a virtual B&W Ilford HP5 emulsion, I managed to even out the tones, clean up the shot and get rid of channel noise in a few minutes.
In fact the end result has much of the soft gradation that I would have expected from a high-ISO black and white film. A convincing success. While much the same effect could doubtless be created with Photoshop alone, I never quite got there before. The Power Retouche Photoshop plug-ins provide an intuitive road to good results.
Photoshop CS2's sharpening tools rock. Click here to read more.
If readers have had good experiences with other products for black-and-white conversion with film-like "looks," I'd like to hear from you —in the meantime, I think this plug-in set, such as NeatImage, is a keeper. I just wish some other piece of software supplied a convincing collection of color film "looks" from bygone days. By the way, the author of these plug-ins, Jan Esmann, is also a painter, and his gallery is worth visiting.
Next Page: Pin-up women need Photoshop love, too.
Now, let's move on to a very nice Wiley book by Kevin Ames, it's called "The Art of Photographing Women." There are good books which you are obligated to buy, required reading like last week's Photoshop Raw by Fraser. But Mr. Ames' book is one you really want to buy.
The title of the book is somewhat misleading. Although Ames gives some hints about lighting and setting up shots, the bulk of the text covers digital postproduction. In other words, this is really a Photoshop CS retouching text, catering specifically to an advanced audience of pros who need to make women shine in the best light. If you need to do portrait, beauty or fashion retouching, or just need to make the bride look good, then you've come to the right place.
This text is clear and readable, written by an expert fashion photographer. Anyway, who can resist chapter headings such as "Pinups: Modern Girls in a Digital World", "Lingerie: A Day Being a Girl", or "On the Beach: Swimwear"? I don't need to add much to the above description; advanced retouching tutorials are so rare that if you're at all interested in the topic you're probably already clicking the order button.
Canon releases new prosumer cameras. Click here to read more.
Suffice to say, the book offers links to hi-rez downloads on Mr. Ames' site; it's shipped in a soft-bound textbook size with glossy paper; the layout is colorful and easy on the eyes; there are plenty of good-quality screen captures. Finally, at $35, "The Art of Photographing Women" is a steal.
One last note: Although Mr. Ames talks about Photoshop CS as he went to press in 2004, his target audience knows that for all relevant purposes just about everything written here also applies to CS2.
Now let's move on to Photoshop User magazine. This is the monthly journal sent to members of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. It's edited by Scott Kelby, who incidentally wrote the foreword to the Ames book I just reviewed. Scott himself has written zillions of Photoshop titles, including the classic "Photoshop 7 Down and Dirty Tricks."
The editorial content of the magazine is basically a set of How-to columns and tutorials with a few product and book reviews thrown in.
The tutorials and help columns are excellent. The writers are an all-star cast, and the subject matter of their tutorials nicely chosen as can be expected given Mr. Kelby's expertise. It also helps that the magazine itself is beautifully produced, showcasing the competence of the contributors. This is one of the rare cases where a Photoshop tutorial shows the printed final product as it is meant to be displayed!
Photoshop User is targeted mostly at graphic trade professionals, illustrators or web site designers. Scanning the magazine provides a good introduction to recently added features in the software, and shows where the Photoshop community is heading.
Epson's P-2000 simplifies travel photography. Click here to read more.
While the reviews are lucid, I find them disappointing in number and subject matter. However there are numerous advertisements, which publicize conferences, courses, educational materials and books, printing houses, and various pieces of software and hardware. These ads are definitely worth perusing occasionally.
On balance, Photoshop User is a resource well worth getting for a design company, but I'm not quite convinced that it's worth the $99 it costs to subscribe for an individual. But then, it seems that joining the NAPP mothership opens the door to some substantial benefits (Web gallery space, Photoshop tech support by e-mail, discounts) which may suffice to justify the admission cost.
