Updated 10/15/10

See also video making advice.

Photography

Photo Editing Tools

Photoshop family:

• Photoshop Express Online Tools – free online editor, organizer, and slideshows.  I don’t much like their online editor — it’s not flexible enough. But definitely easy.
• Photoshop Express for iPhone and iPad
• Adobe Photoshop Elements (Windows and Mac) Handles uploading, organizing, editing, and sharing  ($80 or so)
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3: Absolutely the best all arounbd resource for digital resource management and most development/editing, if you know what you’re doing. ($99 academic pricing; Mac and Windows; 30-day trial available. ASUC computer store carries it.)   LR3 can handle video from dSLRs.
• Photoshop.  The most complex and most powerful.  Not easy, not cheap, but academic pricing is available.

Mac Preview function: to my surprise, has pretty good editing tools.

iPhoto, of course

Windows Live Photo Gallery

With Flickr.com, Facebook, Picasa, or from your own computer: Piknik

Photographic Rules of Thumb

Image resolution needed: 300 dpi for printing, 72 dpi for computer screen

Handholding the camera: most people can handhold no slower than 1/60th second. Some can go down to 1/30th.  Safest is 1/125th or above.  (If the shutter speed is too slow, camerashake will make the picture blurry.)

Rule of thirds: composition is more attractive if key elements are not centered, but 1/3 of the way from an edge.

When there are people in the picture, focus on their eyes.  That’s the part of the picture that people most care about.

When there are people in the picture, expose for their faces.  Ditto.

Size of image: despite the current discussion about how megapixels don’t matter, that’s only when you get to large numbers.  Larger image files = more pixels = you can  crop  and still have a good image.

Never ever ever use digital zoom, only optical.  Digital zoom just makes the pixels bigger.  (Most p&s cameras will do optical zoom up to a point, then zoom further with digital. Turn off the digital.)

Photographic Resources

(last updated 4/15/10 — needs to be verified and updated.  Let me know if you find broken links.)

Advice for point-and-shoot camera users:

• http://photo.net/learn/point-and-shoot-tips
• http://lifehacker.com/323605/master-your-dslr-camera-part-1-program-mode
• Exposure triangle
• http://digital-photography-school.com/10-questions (lots of good info on this site)
• Using presets
• White balance (easy and important for accurate color)
• Exposure
• Aperture and shutter priority More control than just auto mode
• Shutter speed
• Backgrounds
• Troubleshooting and some basic info

Editing (adjusting the image):

• Basics
• And another intro to basics

Cameraphones

• How-to
• Another how-to – short video tutorials
• iPhone

The latest list comes from photography superstore, Adorama, which announced the winners of its first annual APPOS – iPhone App Awards for Photography today. What stands out about this top photo app list is that the winners were chosen from apps that avid iPhone photographers actually use. You see, Adorama also ran an iPhone photography contest that drew over 17,000 image submissions. A panel of judges then selected the top 10 iPhone apps from among the apps that were most frequently used to create the 17,000 images. The six judges included acclaimed photographers, journalists, photojournalists, and oddly, sports radio show hosts.