What is most outstanding in the ongoing progress in digital photographic technology is that it enables everybody capture special moments of his or her lives with extra detail and precision more so now than ever. Enhancements in picture resolution and shutter velocity makes it uncomplicated for proficient photographers and novices to equally capture splendid pictures. And though a picture may not be perfect at the time it was shot, highly sophisticated photo-editing application packages (i.e. software) is capable of transforming the picture into a masterpiece of art in no time flat!

Guess What? One of the enormous rewards of digital photography is that it allows you to rapidly and without difficulty distribute your pictures and snapshots with acquaintances and relatives wherever they may be on earth via electronic mail (e-mail). Do you care to remember the hassle that you would have gone through if you tried using your old your film camera to do that?

Veteran digital or film photographers affirm that timing is, for the most part, a major important issue for shooting a first-class picture. There is only a small, fraction of time available to capture a grand shot. Be it a shot of a splendid sunset or a snapshot of athletes as they cross the finish line, your timing must be razor-sharp?this is the intuition that lets you know precisely when to depress that shutter knob. This is the reason why digital photography is an art form. To a large extent, majority of photographers never really actualize their dream of shooting that ?perfect? shot. For instance, their picture may be framed well, but the lighting is not exactly right. Or maybe they?ve got the lighting accurately, but they forget to use the flash or red-eye decreasing option. Instances like these give digital photography an obvious edge because it offers a brilliant method to getting the precise look you intended to capture in a picture.

Guess what? A second tremendous advantage of digital photography is its capability to print out your snapshots almost instantly. Whereas with film cameras you would have had to take the film to be processed before going back to pick them up, digital photography gives you an instant alternative!

All shots taken via a digital camera can be altered digitally via photo-enhancing software to attain its full potential ? color improvement, zoomed or cropped to their finest size, red-eye reduction etc., etc. All of these editing options occur within minutes, giving you the opportunity and advantage of having the most outstanding photos ever shot.

The tag-team of a high-quality digital camera and a good photo-editing software package can achieve great things. Your camera has built-in capabilities that represent only the start of the editing potential expected of the digital photographic era.

Guess what? Another gigantic advantage of digital photography is the ability for you to tweak and change your pictures and images in any way that you please. Due to the fact that your photos are in digital files, they can be worked on in photo-editing software packages that enables you adjust the images in a variety of ways thereby enhancing its final output.

Editing software can be utilized to tweak images in any way you wish. Retailers locally and online can furnish you with the gear, photo-enhancing software, and information you require to capture splendid digital photographs. Before settling on a choice of digital camera, you ought to verify that it has all the features and options that you require for your work. Go for models having not only the capability to deliver those great pictures you so require but that also boasts simple docking methods for transferring these pictures from the camera to your printer or PC. High-quality photo-enhancing software that enables you modify your digital images include: Adobe Photoshop, Corel Photo Album and Kodak Picture.

So, now you know all about the advantages that digital photography has over your basic film camera technology. Bottom line? Your choice of camera/technology, should ultimately be informed by what you intend to achieve at the end of the day! Have fun.

[techtags: San Antonio Photography, San Antonio Photographers, Senior Portraits, Family Portraits]

ENHANCE YOUR LANDSCAPE PHOTOS

If you see a landscape photograph taken by a professional photographer, you will usually notice that the sky is quite dramatic. This is an effect that’s easy to reproduce in a digital image.

Software: Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0. Time: 10 minutes. Suitable for: any landscape photo with a band of uninterrupted sky.

Open the image. Click Enhance>Auto Levels. This removes the dullness from the photo. Now click Enhance>Adjust Colour>Hue & Saturation and move the Saturation slider up to +15, to brighten the colour slightly, if required (this will depend upon your original photo).

CREATE AN ADJUSTMENT LAYER

First make sure that the Layers palette is visible on screen. If it isn’t, click Window>Layers. Now click on the circular Create an Adjustment Layer button in the Layers palette. Click Levels. The Levels dialogue box will open, showing Input and Output levels. It’s the Input Levels that you’ll be adjusting in this case. If you look at the sliders under the Input Levels histogram, you’ll see there are three sliders, the one on the left adjusts the dark areas of the image, the one in the middle the midtones, and the one on the right the bright areas. Move the middle slider to the right until the sky is considerably darker (ignore what the change does to the rest of the photo). Click OK.

Adjust the image so that only the sky is darker Click on the Gradient Tool in the toolbox on the left of the screen. In the Tool Settings bar near the top of the screen, an example of the gradient will appear. It should be graduated from white to black. If it isn’t, click on the tiny drop-down arrow next to the example and choose the gradient in the top left-hand corner. If you look at the Levels adjustment layer that you created in the layers palette, you will see a Layer Mask (the all-white rectangle). Click on the Layer Mask, then put your mouse back over the picture. Click at the very top of the picture, hold down the mouse button and drag vertically from the top to the bottom of the sky. The Layer Mask should now be black with a small white area at the top. This will reveal the darkened sky, but the rest of the photo will now be unaffected by the change in Levels. If you’re not entirely happy with the result, you can double click on the Layer Thumbnail in the adjustment layer and readjust the sliders until you achieve the desired effect.

About the Author

Jan uses Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter for image editing and digital, see Jan’s portraits website for more details.. She has been running popular digital photography training courses for four years. See Jan’s digital photography website.

Digimarc Corporation (NASDAQ:DMRC), based in Beaverton, Oregon, is a leading supplier of secure identity and media management solutions. Digimarc provides products and services that enable the annual production of more than 60 million personal digital images

MIKE DUFFY wanted to be ready to switch from over-the-air analog TV broadcasts to an all-digital signal that will occur across the country next February. His Chattanooga, Tenn., hilltop home was nearly in the line of sight to a nearby TV station digital images

A scanner passes over a book at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, part of a program in which librarians the world over are helping Google’s Book Search create digital versions of 50 million to 100 million books in the world. CARLOS OSORIO / AP digital images

[techtags: San Antonio Photography, San Antonio Photographers, Senior Portraits, Family Portraits]