Picasa - How to reduce brightness

There is no general brilliance control provided in Picasa. You can increase highlights and/or add fill-in light to increase brilliance, You can also make the dark areas darker by adjusting the shadow slider, but this does not effect the bright and mid tones.

However you can achieve overall darkening by using the graduated filter. This is generally used to decrease the brightness of the sky and enhance blue colour or cloud definition. In this effect you set where the graduation is to end which is indicated by a cross which is set at the centre of the photo, the amount of shade and feathering.

If you drag down the cross to the bottom of the photo and set the feather to 0, then the whole image is darkened uniformly and the amount can be controlled by the shade slider.

You can also change the colour of the shade, but being colour blind I keep away from this feature.

Photoshop Elements 6 - Camera RAW Profile

The RAW processing in my PSE did not have any camera profile.

I discovered that as well as replacing Camera Raw.8bi you need to execute the program CameraProfiles.exe Both these are downloaded from Adobe, and I used the ZIP for PSE v6 file found at http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=4582&fileID=4238

Note Camera_RAW_5_5.zip is the latest version supported on PSE 6. Itried v5.6 and 5.7 and confirmed these did not work

Nikon D90 First Thoughts

At the recent Focus of Imaging I upgraded my Nikon D80 to a D90. I chose the FoI as deals were available and I purchased D90 with Sigma 18-55 f2.8-4 AF OS lens. I sold lens on eBay immediately and offset some of the cost.

The first thing I noticed was how good images were at higher ISO settings, even up to 1600 ASA. Other things I noticed quickly were

Faster continuous shutter operation.
Easier menus.
Brilliant screen.

PhotoShop Elements Curves Plugin

V 2.1

Screen Shot Operation Download

Curves Adjustment for Photoshop Elements

(Test entry for Scribefire)

Photoshop Elements offers in opposite to its professional version no curves command. That's a pity, because curves are a valuable tool for image editing.

To remedy this shortcoming this site offers the plugin SmartCurve to upgrade this ability. Of course this plugin can be used from all programs which can integrate Photoshop plugins.

Features:

• Curves adjustment of RGB and gray images.
• Full support of 8 and 16 bits color depth.
• Use of the more common gamma correction.
• Smart-display of the live histogram.
• Auto level correction by setting of shadows and highlights.
• Remove of color casts by setting of multiple midtones.
• Highlighting of clipped colors.
• Different color spaces like RGB, CMK, Lab and others.
• Channel masks to limit curve effects.
• Works as smart filter in PhotoShop CS3.
• Pixel and percentage curve editing and view.
• Batch Mode for applying a curve on multiple images.

Please read the help provided by the program to learn all features and functions of SmartCurve.

This plugin is useful not only for Photoshop Element user, since it offers solid curve adjustment beyond the ability of many other programs.

Picasa Renaming multiple files

Ror years now I have been irritated by two aspects of Picasa when renaming multiple files.

1. If the the name ends with a number it increments this number and does not just add an incremental suffix
   
   Example if there are 3 photos that end with, say nikon_d80, it makes the files name end with d80, d81, d82 whereas what I wanted was d80-0, d8-1, d80-2
   
   
   
   
2. If the name ends with a none-number letter then it adds nothing to the first, and then increases by one thereafter.
   
   Example if 3 files end with tree, it will be named tree, tree-1, tree-2 and to ensure they are displayed in the correct sequence I have to rename the first file as tree-0 after the bulk rename as a separate step.

By chance I realised that you can combine the two deficiencies to acheive what I want. In the d80 example just make sure the name ends with d80-0, and then Picasa will rename the files as d80-0, d80-1 and d80-2

Picasa - effects of rename outside of Picasa

I reckon that if you change the name of a photo which you had previously edited with Picasa, then the edits which I believe are recorded in Picasa.ini for that folder, are lost, i.e. not applied to the new named photo.

However today I noticed this was not the case. I renamed some files both in Windows File Explorer and in another program (FastStone Image Viewer) and Picasa still recognised the and applied the edits to the newly named photo.

Picasas needs to be open when the files are renamed I believe oherwise it does not reconnect the new name to its original edits.

Processing and cataloguing sequence

It's been some time since I made an entry on this blog, mainly because I have been investigating other resources, namely my own web site and Google Docs.

Method

Like many other people I generate a lot of digital images, so I am always looking for ways to reduce time in processing them. Currently I 

1. Take photos in Nikon D90 and Canon G9
2. I set both to record RAW and JPG
3. After downloading to PC I review JPGs through Picasa, using Picasa to make quick improvements. (Note Picasa does not change original)
4. I grade them by adding star onto better ones
5. Star photos I load equivalent RAW into Photo Shop Elements 6 and edit, saving final JPG at maximum quality.
6.  I merge these "RAW" JPGS with original JPG from step(3) and export to a work folder,
   because I want to review them in FastStone Image Viewer which will not process Picasa edits. Exporting them applies the edits before exporting but again does not change original jpg.
7. Use excellent caparison features in FastStone Image Viewer to select best photo (not always the RAW based one) and to choose between similar photos, deleting ones not required
8. Use FastStone Image Viewer rename facility to create names, keeping original camera sequence number and building up name and finally adding date-time stamp to name.
9. Return to Picasa which I use to add keyword tags.