If you’ll recall, I challenged all of you to document and track your goals using your photos and video. That’s right, put your media to work for you in the business of keeping you accountable. Today we’ll look at a wonderful woman who is using her photos for a philanthropic goal.

Meet Wendy Warden, a photographer and author in Illinois. She has an absolute passion for Newfoundlands, the dogs, that is. Her goal is to photograph her Newfoundlands each month and create a funky calendar to be sold as a breed fundraiser.

Here’s her January pin-up girl:

Wendy says, “The story/motivation/inspiration behind the fundraising idea is:

1. I love the breed (Newfoundlands) I have been the keeper of at least one “Newfie” for the past 16 years.
2. Our first rescue came to us three years ago this month. She was a traumatized, food aggressive, twice almost starved to death mess. She has many physical ailments, the some of the worst arthritis our vet had ever seen on an xray and masses in her throat and lungs. We thought three years ago that she had only a few months to live.
3. Love of her humans (my husband, our neighbors, our groomer, our breeder, the doctors I work with in my coaching practice, my sister, and me), love of her Newfie “sister”, vet care, human whole food supplements, human homeopathic supplements, and a happy home has made the girl in the photo one of the best gifts and strongest affirmations in my life.
4. This is a perfect way to say thank you to the universe for bring me (us) our Corey Jean. AND to promote more Newfies finding their way to the homes they belong and lives where they will prosper.”

Thank you for sharing your goal and photo with us, Wendy. You can follow Wendy’s progress with her photos and fundraising on her blog.

Wendy is a great inspiration of how to track your goals through your photos and video. If you have a goal, story, and accompanying photo/video to share, send me an email at blog@my-photo-video.com.

It’s only one week after Halloween and I’m already editing the photos. Let’s take a few of those photos taken on the iPhone while trick-or-treating and give them some loving with PS Mobile and Photoshop CS4 Extended. We’ll explore why PS Mobile is better on the go, but why you should still touch up in Photoshop.

The first photo is of a young soldier.

pint size Marine at your service

My iPhone captured this soldier protecting the neighborhood on Halloween. It’s an ok shot. Let’s crop it a bit with PS Mobile. Then we’ll tint it to add some interest.

The monotone color scheme makes his expression stand out

Cropping out the fairy wings and making the photo monotone really makes his stoic glare stand out. This photo is certainly worthy to be emailed to the grandparents, but I can’t do much more to enhance it on the phone.

Now let’s look at what I did in Photoshop CS4.

This marine means business

Keep in mind, there are probably several ways to achieve this look but here’s what I did:

1. Use the quick selection tool to cut out our marine and copy him to a new layer.
2. Turn the bottom layer black & white, then add a hue/saturation layer with a hue of 45 and saturation of 60.
3. Turn the marine himself into a smart object. Use the quick selection tool to cut out his face and paste it to a new layer.
4. Add a hue/saturation layer to his body and hat, with a hue of  38, saturation of 25 and lightness of -18.
5. Lastly, blur the bottom layer of the composition with a slight gaussian blur.

The next photo is the kids’ horde of candy

don't worry, this was from more than one kid

Ok, that’s a lot of candy, but it’s also a kind of boring shot. I wanted to quickly send it to the grandparents, so they could see how gluttonous the kids were. The composition of the shot made cropping a bit of a challenge. The majority of the candy is stacked on the right side and there is too much of the room.

the best I could do with PS mobile

For the sake of speed and efficiency, I first played right in PS Mobile. I cropped it tight, to cut out the extraneous parts of the room. Although this cuts out much of the candy, you still get a feel for the mounds (excuse the pun) of sugar. I also used the vibrance filter to boost the color.

This candy needed some added sweetness from Photoshop

This was a really subtle difference. I still added the vibrance filter, but also added the spherize filter to make the candy seem a bit more mountainous. This is certainly a subjective change and many may not like the distortion of the Crunch bars. If you wanted to get super fancy, you could make a 3D map of the candy using Photoshop extended.

Now that looks yummy!

This image may not be to everyone’s taste, pun intended. It’s more an artistic 3D rendering of the mountain of candy. I used the tutorial from the Russell Brown show (3D mesh from grayscale) as my guideline for this photo.

This is not for the faint of heart. I’ll paraphrase his tutorial here along with any tweaks I added. Make sure to watch his excellent video tutorials if you have Photoshop.

1. Duplicate your photo layer.
2. Go to the channels tab and select the channel with the greatest contrast.
3. Duplicate that channel and copy it back into your layers tab.
4. In this case, I then boosted the brightness and decreased the contrast to make for a lighter, smoother grayscale.
5. Blur the grayscale. I used a gaussian blur of 7 pixels. Omitting this steps will cause a jagged, jarring grayscale map.
6. Under the 3D menu (with your grayscale layer selected), click on new layer from grayscale.
7. Your new 3D layer will be a smart object. Double click the file under the diffuse heading of the object (in this case called Contrast 1). This will open the .psb file for editing.     
   

   Diffuse layer of 3D object

8. Paste your photo layer onto the top layer of the diffuse file (in this case, contrast 1.psb). This will force Photoshop to use the photo itself (instead of the grayscale image) as the surface for the 3D grayscale model.
9. Your 3D photo will still look dark. There are a couple of options here. You can change the render settings for the light (in the 3D scene palette) to unlit texture, as Russell Brown recommended. I found that this looked too flat. So I added a point light, which gave it a more artsy than realistic look.

This is certainly not for the casual or novice Photoshop user, but it is a lot of fun to explore the possibilities.

PS Mobile is an excellent on-the-go option to quickly tweak the photos from your iPhone prior to emailing them. However, when I want to include photos in my family’s year in review movie, I will always tweak them in Photoshop first.

Halloween video is all the rage on YouTube this week. From gory re-enactments to cute photos there are a million ways to invite people to your bash or create a memento of the holiday. Without getting into the gore, we’ll look at some ways to edit your photos for maximum impact. We’ll walk through cutting out your photo, adding a background, and adding music.

Cut out the junk

You can easily cut your subject out of the background in Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or other editing software. There’s two ways to look at this – quick and dirty or detailed and polished. 

For the quick and dirty, use your marquee tool to cut out the unnecessary background materials. Here’s a photo of Darth Maul and Padme. It looks a little cluttered.

Darth Maul is being crowded out by his busy background

So I used the elliptical marquee tool to do a quick and dirty elimination of the background.

Padme Amidala is ready for her meeting with the Senate

It’s not perfect, but it took just a few seconds. The extreme feathering allows the photo to better blend with whatever background you place it upon.

Another, more refined option, is to use the quick selection tool. Zoom in close and start the selection process. This is easiest when your subject and background have high contrast. Make sure you feather the tool by at least a couple of pixels so it looks more natural.

Here’s the Joker, looking a little tipsy at the bar.

The Joker looks a bit tipsy and unintimidating

To make him a bit more imposing, let’s darken the shot. To get a really polished selection, make sure to use the refine edge command.

Now the Joker looks imposing

Now that we have our photos cut out of their background, we can begin to play.

Add a background

You can find plenty of royalty-free still backgrounds on sites like iStockPhoto.com.

Animated backgrounds are awesome, just make sure you have enough RAM on your computer to create your movie over an animated background. You can download animations individually from animationfactory.com or get a whole disc of more professional looking backgrounds from digitaljuice.com. 

Here’s the quick movie produced using the elliptical marquee.

Pretty cool.

Now here’s the one using the quick selection tool.

With a little practice in Photoshop and video editing software, you can get these results rather quickly.

You need editing software which allows at least three tracks of video. One for the photos, one for the background, and one for the titles. You want the titles on top, next the photos, and at the bottom of the pile goes the background.

In the future, we’ll go through how to effectively add filters and wipes.

Keep your invitation short if you want people to watch the whole thing. We live in a 140 character universe now, who has time for a five minute video?

Add music

Now, if you’ve ever read this blog before, you know I’m going to tell you to use licensed music. The reasons are threefold. So you don’t get sued. So you don’t rip someone off. And so that your viewers actually pay attention to your movie. Popular music will bring them back to their own memories of the song. YouTube also limits your use of music on their site.

Ok, I’ll get off my soapbox. So where do you get licensed music that enhances your video rather than detracting from it? Well, Digital Juice is again a good start. They have StackTraxx CDs available for purchase.

Another more exciting option is create your own music in Garageband. That is beyond the scope of this post though.

Upload

Last step is to upload your video. I recommend leaving the address out of your invitation if you’re putting it on YouTube. Do you really want 10 million people partaking of your free drinks and chips? You can use the privacy viewing settings on YouTube if you’re only inviting 25 people.

The three keys to a successful Halloween photo slideshow are: declutter your photos, add a background, and spice it up with some music.

This week and next we’ll be looking for you to direct the ship. We, at my-photo-video.com, want to make sure we’re addressing your needs as photo and video enthusiasts.

To that end we’ve come up with a brief survey this week to see how you use your camera and what you do with your photos.

Want to see posts about photography techniques? Let us know.

Want to see more about authoring a photo slideshow? Let us know in the survey.

This week we’re focusing on what you do with your photos, both digital and paper. Next week we’ll take a look at your home movies.

We’ll use your feedback to tailor the posts to your particular needs. Thanks again.

Let’s take a look at what the heck to do with your stacks of paper photos. We’ll examine how to display, share, and archive your paper photos. Here’s the secret, before doing anything else – have a duplicate of your photo.

Don’t feel bad, if you’re like the rest of us over the age of 25 or 30, you have at least one box of photos. It doesn’t have to be the monkey on your back.

Now, I’m not talking about your printouts of digital photos. I’m talking about good, old-fashioned photos. You know when you used to eagerly await that envelope from the film lab because you had no idea what the photos looked like?

It was like a beautiful (or horrible) surprise every time you opened that expensive envelope. We lost some of that mystery with the advent of the LCD screen, but to be honest, I don’t miss it that much.

It was a pretty expensive way to find out that your photos stunk.

Displaying Paper Photos

So we return to the question, how do you display those photos? The obvious display technique is to put it in a frame (preferably not in direct sunlight). I won’t touch on any more obvious techniques.

But, have you ever done any of these to photos?

• Tacked them to a corkboard
• Taped them to a wall
• Cut them out to put in a teeny tiny decorative frame
• Stuck them under plexiglass on a bartop
• Shellacked them to a piece of wood and gave it to Mom for Mother’s Day

Actually, I did that last one myself when I was 8. Those are all perfectly fine ways to display your photos. The problem comes in when you want a digital copy and realize that you cut/taped/tacked your only copy of that precious photo.

Having scanned thousands of photos, I’ve seen quite the array of poor storage and display techniques.

You can still scan the photos listed above (even the shellacked one), but you’ll either spend a whole lot of time in Photoshop to fix it, or pay big bucks for someone else to fix it.

Sharing printed photos

Ok, so the obvious one is pass around an album. If you’re really OCD, you can label each one and even put captions, but how many of us have the time?

Ever shared photos any of these ways?

• Pass the stack of photos
• Mail wallet size copies to the whole family
• Pass around the lab envelope, negatives included
• Stick them in a paper grocery bag and pass that around – no kidding

Yes, I’ve seen all of those. Passing the stack of photos gets some lovely finger prints on them. I highly recommend getting matte prints if you prefer to “pass the stack”. Matte manages to keep finger prints at bay. Although, big warning here, matte prints do not scan well at all.

Mailed the wallet photos exactly once. Too much work for me.

Passing the lab envelope seems to still be pretty popular. Ever try getting fingerprints off a negative? Better yet, did you get the envelope back with all the negatives still inside?

Archival and backups

The real key to displaying and sharing your printed photos is to have a backup copy stored safely. That way, if you ever need another copy, you can get it.

The copy can be a film negative, another print, or better yet, a .jpg file. Any of these can be easily duplicated. The .jpg file would, of course, be the easiest to store. It takes up the least amount of space and finding a specific photo is easy.

Storage systems for printed photos can be purchased at most office supply stores. The ones that worked best for me had little tabbed dividers upon which I could write the contents of each envelope.

Some times I didn’t have the funds for special boxes, so here’s my thrifty alternative. Turn your sticky notes upside down, so that the sticky side is on the bottom half. Write the contents of the envelope on the sticky note, stick it to the envelope and stick it in the box, in some order that makes sense to you.

Everything that touches your photos, be it a pen, a box, anything, should be acid-free to reduce fading.

If you want to get real fancy (or save space), you can purge the photos that were less than stellar. I never actually bothered. I have all my paper photos stored in boxes, in the order in which they were taken.

Next key. Even though it’s convenient, never ever store those boxes in the basement or attic. You may actually wind up with mold on the photos. Yuck.

As for the negatives, I’ve always kept them with the prints. Probably not the best method, but it’s the cheapest and easiest for me to find. Yes, I know they’ve probably faded, but that’s why I have Photoshop.

Make sure whatever your system for paper photos, you know where your photos are located. If someone asks you for a particular photo, and you can find it within 15 minutes, then your system is a success. Even if it’s messy and imperfect, it simply has to work for you.

You just got back from a two week vacation, what do you do with your 400 photos? Overwhelmed? Just print them all out, stick them in an album, and get to it later… wrong!

Take a lot of photos on your trip?

Flash back twenty years. You took 16 rolls of film with you on your once-in-a-lifetime vacation. You made sure they were each 36 exposure rolls. 16×36=576 photos!

Back then it was a whole lot more expensive to process your film. So, you probably spent about $12 per roll for processing. You spent at least $4 per roll for the film as well. This brought you to a grand total of  $240 for those precious prints.

Now the big question is… what did you do with them? At best, you meticulously labelled each photo and stuck it in an album or scrapbook. At worst, they are still sitting in the shoebox with fingerprints all over them.

There those photos sit, taking up room on your ginormous I’ll-get-to-it-before-I-die list.

We've got to show everyone these photos from Pike's Peak

Flash forward to the present. You joined the digital age. So why, oh why, are you still printing out all those photos???? Fine, it’s cheap now. But are you really going to undertake the onerous task of labeling them and sticking them in albums?

And how are you going to show the photos to friends and family, pass them around at a barbeque and get fingerprints all over them?

Not to mention the lack of environmental love it must take. Can’t you hear those trees crying now? Kidding, just kidding.

But seriously, there is a much easier way to organize your digital photos. It’s called the computer. If you’re worried about losing the photos, order a backup disc of your photo card if you decide to send it in for printing. Or back them up yourself.

Let’s say you took at least 400 photos on your vacation. When you get home, download the photos to your computer using either a dedicated photo software for your computer or the software that came with your camera.

Personally I recommend either Apple iPhoto (comes installed on the Mac) or Adobe Photoshop Elements, around $75.

Both software packages allow you to retouch your photos, although Photoshop does a far better job. For purely organization purposes, I prefer iPhoto. You can sort your photos by GPS metadata and face recognition, which is pretty cool.

Whatever program you use, USE IT! Download the photos right into the software, and put them right into albums on the computer. You can then sort the photos, tag them, label them, whatever you want.

Most programs allow you to create smart albums. You set the criteria. It’s easiest to set the date range of your trip. Then, using the metadata on the .jpg files themselves, your program will automatically create an album with photos within that date range.

You can group all your beautiful landscape photos in one folder

If you want to get more pedantic, you can create a folder for albums from your trip. Then create smart albums from each section of your trip. For instance, each day of the trip in its own smart album. Then, simply select the best photos from each album and have those printed.

You can order prints of the 10 (or 50) photos you actually want to frame. You can upload your photos to Kodak, Snapfish, wherever, and order a book to show your photos to friends and family.

That’s right, a real book. It is printed on magazine-quality glossy paper. You don’t have to worry about finger prints. And you can add captions to every photo, free of additional charge.

A photo book can be ordered for less than $15, including over 50 photos! That’s a far cry from what it would cost to print out 400 photos.

It’s also a lot more interesting to your relatives. Believe me, they are being polite when they feign interest in all 400 of your photos.

A book can be shown to a few people at a time, but a great way to share your vacation memories with a group, is to set the photos to music and make a movie.

Just break out the popcorn, the flat screen, and a bunch of couches. 20 of your closest friends can watch a movie of your vacation, captions and all.

Most software programs are set up to create movies. Just be careful with your music selection and where you plan to show the movie.

Believe it or not, legally, if you are showing the movie at an outdoor venue (think barbeque) or public venue (think wedding reception) and are syncing photos to music, you need a sync license. Even with your own music!

You “should” get some royalty-free music in those cases.

What can I do to prevent red eye in digital photos?

Well, the light hits the pupil from the flash and, because the flash is so near the lens, it gets reflected right back into the camera. So, the first step would be to maximize the angle between the flash and camera lens.

Professional photographers use what is called a bounce flash. It’s that funny looking two part flash which mounts to the top of a camera. It bends in the middle so that the flash can be angled up at the ceiling and “bounce” back onto the subject.

This diffuses the light so it’s not so harsh and provides a much greater angle between the light source and where it gets reflected.

Many consumer cameras do not have the option of a bounce flash. You would need what’s called a hot shoe upon which to attach it. This is generally only available in an SLR or DSLR camera.

The other option is a diffuser. Most professionals diffuse the light from the flash by using some sort of diffuser, like a screen or umbrella. Want a quick and dirty trick for when an umbrella isn’t handy? Use a coffee filter.

An umbrella makes a great diffuser, but a coffee filter is even easier

Just tape a small piece of coffee filter over the flash to diffuse it. This will greatly diminish the light emitted by the flash, so you will probably need to compensate with additional ambient light, but it should take care of a lot of the red eye.

You can also turn on lights in the room. Ambient light will help shrink the pupil of your subjects eye before the flash is even used.

Increased ambient light decreases the size of the pupil

Another option is to use the red eye reduction setting on your camera. This setting forces the flash in bursts prior to the actual photo being taken. Your pupils naturally contract in bright light.

Forcing the flash prior to taking the photo means there is less pupil upon which the red eye will be seen. It also has the hidden effect of supremely annoying everyone whom you’re trying to photograph.

Lastly, provided you’re not taking candid photos you can suggest your subjects look slightly to the side of your camera. Then the light will not be reflected right back into the lens.

Having processed upwards of 30,000 photos, I can say with confidence that blue eyed people tend to get red-eye way more than brown-eyed subjects. But why?

Most of us know by now that red-eye effect is caused by light reflecting off the back of the eye when the pupils are dilated. The eye shows as red because the blood at the back of the eyeball is visible.

Going back to science class, this light travels in waves whose speed is dependent on the amount of melanin in the eye. Red waves get cut off at a certain wavelength.

The more melanin in the eye, the more the red waves get absorbed before reflecting back out of the eye. Here’s the kicker, although brown eyes have more melanin than blue eyes, the color of the iris is not what determines the absorption of red light waves.

It’s that brown eyed people tend to have more melanin overall – including the melanin levels in their eyeballs.

So, although all the subjects in your photo actually get red-eye, the red waveforms tend to get absorbed within the eyeball of the brown-eyed subjects.

The red is reflected back out of the blue-eyed subjects because generally there isn’t enough melanin to absorb it.

Image correction applied

The red eye effect in a blue-eyed subject is easily corrected with photo processing software. In a future post we will examine how to correct red eye for all eye colored subjects, because it does differ depending on eye color.

Will my digital photos fade?  Well, yes, no, and maybe.

Your digital photos won’t fade from sunlight or acidic paper. That much is true. But if you keep tweaking and saving them, they will deteriorate.

Most consumer level digital cameras save photos as JPEGs, or .jpg.  This file format enables the camera to take a huge amount of data and compress it into a small(ish) file.

JPEG is a lossy compression format. This means that compressing the file necessitates losing some of the original detail every time it’s saved.  These details are frequently things like color range and edge sharpness.

So let’s say your photo is 500Kb when you download it to the computer. When you save it at “high” quality, it will re-compress it to approximately 80% of it’s quality and file size.

Two options to preserve your precious photo; use a non-destructive editing and organizing software or save the file in another format.

Apple iPhoto (as an example) saves 2 copies of your photo. The data file is a thumbnail version for viewing purposes. The original jpeg is always stored in the originals folder. Modified photos are saved in the modified folder. In this way, the originals aren’t touched for viewing or modifications.

Your best bet, if you are really worried about it, is to save the photo as a non-lossy (lossless) file format, such as PSD (Photoshop document), TIFF (Tagged Image File Format), or PNG (Portable Network Graphics) file. These are larger files, but will never deteriorate.

PSDs are native Adobe Photoshop files. Saving to this format is not an option in most other photo software programs. Photoshop enables you to separate your photo into layers to add all kinds of cool effects. The consumer level of Photoshop is called Photoshop Elements. It’s simple to use, affordable, with gobs of options taken from the pro level.

The example photo used above is a 556KB TIFF file. The PNG version is 256KB. The JPEG version is 172KB. There was no noticeable difference in quality to the photos. At least none that the human eye could detect. If you were to zoom in to get a tiny detail, you see pixellation in all versions.

TIFF files are tremendously large, but preserve most of the detail from the original. Many scanning companies offer this format as an option, but it will cost you.

PNGs are a file export option in most photo software programs. A PNG file  is larger than a jpeg but smaller than a TIFF.

When you want to email the photos or use them on a website, save them as jpeg again. Many people can’t open PSD, TIFF or PNG files.

Remember, the most surefire way for your photo to deteriorate is for it to disappear completely, i.e. hard drive failure. Make certain to have a backup plan for all your photos.

The days of unlimited free online photo sharing are coming to an end. This is not surprising considering server space costs money. If you aren’t bringing any money in to their site, why should they store your photos for free?

AOL ended their service on January 8th. You have until June 30th to register with American Greetings Photoworks and migrate your photos from AOL to their site. 

Yahoo Photos closed September 20th 2007 as part of their takeover of Flickr.

Shutterfly seems to be the last game in town. They allow unlimited free photo storage with no possibility of your photos being deleted. There is no file size limit although they only accept jpeg files. There is no minimum purchase requirement.

Here are your remaining options for “free” photo storage. Some really don’t cost anything but have limitations on how much you can store on their server, while others have a minor minimum purchase.

Photoworks allows you unlimited free storage. In order for your account to remain active, though, you must order at least one product per year. The most affordable thing they sell is a photo print for $.15 plus $1.79 shipping, for a grand total of $1.94. Photoworks limits your file size to 10MB and file type to jpegs only.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Kodak revised their terms of service on March 13th. In order to store less than 2GB, you must purchase $5 worth of products per year. Upwards of 2GB, you must purchase $20 worth of product per year.  Photos uploaded to Kodak Gallery must be jpeg files. 

You get $5 worth of product for your $5 payment, and the shipping is free. So you are, in effect, getting 2GB of photo storage for free.

Photobucket allows up to 1GB of storage for free. Photos must be less than 1MB and are limited in resolution to 1024×768. 

For a $40 annual fee, you receive 10GB of storage. Photos can be 5MB and may be a resolution of 2240×1680.

DotPhoto allows you to upload jpeg, tif, png, and a bunch of others so long as they are under 8MB and 3200×4800. They don’t seem to have a limitation as to how much you can store, but you must log in at least every 90 days or risk having your account deactivated.

DotPhoto offers you a free personal website on which to showcase your photos. For a $25 annual fee, you can also get super cheap, high quality prints, and you no longer have to worry about the 90 day inactivity rule.

Flickr allows you to upload a maximum of 100MB/month for free. They will only display your 200 most recent photos with a free account. If your account is inactive for 90 days it will be deleted.  

Flickr offers a Pro account for an annual fee of $25. With that you receive unlimited high-resolution photo storage and unlimited viewing.

Google offers Picasa. They allow you 1GB of free online storage and software to edit your photos. The photos you upload can be as large as 20MB, even RAW images. If you want additional storage, it starts at $20/year for an additional 10GB.

Snapfish allows unlimited storage with the requirement that you make at least one purchase per year. You can purchase a $.09 print and have it shipped for $.99, bringing your total to $1.08 for unlimited storage per year. Photos must be jpeg files.

Winkflash allows free unlimited photo storage. Really free. You don’t have to buy a thing. They have 3 levels of image hosting; friends, group, and public. Friends and group can only go to other Winkflash members. The public sharing option gives you a unique URL, which you can password protect.

There is no limit as to file size, type or resolution. Best of all, you can download your high-resolution images for free. They even have accessible phone customer service!