Printing Your Photos for Fame and Fortune

I've become addicted with getting copies of my favorite photos printed out.  I recently bought the ColorVision Spyder2 Express monitor calibrator.  I must say, it's awesome.  My monitor has never looked better and the prints I get (when I print using the appropriate printer profiles) is just fantastic.

I do all my regular 8x12 printing at Costco, because they quality is great and the price is right!  On top of that, Costco has printer/paper ICC profiles available for nearly all of their in store photo labs.  Proof your shots in Photoshop, convert them to the appropriate printer profile, and then take them to the store on a thumb drive.  Go through the process as you normally would selecting your prints on the little kiosk.  When you go to pay for your order, tell them you have color corrected your own photos and that (if applicable) they should be printed out on a particular machine.  They'll do the rest!  (Note: Some Costcos have more than one printer, and quite often only one has a profile available for it.  Make sure they print on that machine!)

Given all the extra steps of using the correct printer profiles and a calibrated monitor, I've noticed that virtually all of my prints were a little dark.  I was perplexed as to what could be responsible for this.  Turns out, the genius of all things Photoshop, Scott Kelby, had this same problem.  In his book, Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers, he gave a tip out on how to compensate for this darkness.  This method works perfectly for me, so I highly suggest you try it if you have the same problem.

1. Starting with the image you want to print in Photoshop, make sure the image is flat.  That is to say, make sure it has only 1 layer.
2. Press Control-J on the PC or Command-J on the Mac to duplicate the single layer.
3. Change the blending mode for the new layer to screen.
4. Then adjust the opacity of this layer to somewhere between 20% and 30%.  Scott suggested 20%, I find 25% works well for me.

That's it!  Now flatten the image again, and go print!  The image will look bright on your computer monitor, but remember, when it get's printed, it's going to be darker, so it will balance out.  Make sure you don't brighten your originals!  When getting a photo ready to be printed, I always work off of a copy!  Be safe!

Hoover Dam

While in Las Vegas last week, Brandon, Cem, Andrea, and I made our way over to Hoover Dam.  We were about 3 minutes late for the dam tour, and they wouldn't let us in because the dam security folks had shut down the X-ray machines and metal detectors..  (Sorry, I'll try really hard not to make another dam joke.  Dam it!)

So we decided to walk along the top of the dam and salvage the trip.  The dam was impressive, though I feel strange that it didn't give me the same sense of awe that Niagara Falls or Yosemite Valley did.  I guess maybe because it was man made?  In fact after flagging the 1200 pics I took in Las Vegas as picks or rejects, I realized I only had a few pictures from Hoover Dam that I actually liked.  Furthremore, none where of the dam proper.  I had pictures of Lake Meade behind the dam, I had pictures of the river continuing at the base of the dam, but no pictures of the giant hunk of white concrete that is Hoover Dam itself.

The most interesting thing at Hoover Dam, in my opinion, is the amount of 1930's art deco signage and statues.  On the Nevada side of the dam is a memorial to those men and women who built the dam and to those who lost their lives during its' construction.  The ground is covered with a star chart so that future civilizations might know the significance of the location and be able to approximate when and why it was built.  The American flag is guarded by two giant art deco winged statues.  I found this memorial to be more inspiring than the dam itself.  It's of these statues that I want to share a photo.  Brandon says it's perhaps the best picture I've ever taken, and I might have to agree with him.

Portrait Professional

I've seen Portrait Professional being advertised in various publications for quite a long time.  I gave it a try the other day and was absolutely blown away.  Prior to using it I thought it was just a general, blur the skin plugin, but in reality, it's sooo much more.  It actually builds a wire frame over a person's face and adjusts their features (shape of eyes, the nose, double chin) to make them more symmetric and subtle where necessary.  (Yes, it smoothes out the skin, but it does so without making it look like a Barbie doll.)  These are all techniques professional retouchers do manually in Photoshop, but Portrait Professional makes them easy for non-Photoshop wizards to do in under 3 minutes!!  It's quite amazing how much better people look when their neck is just a little bit longer. :-)  Go ahead, try out their free demo, it's amazing!

As a special gift for our readers, anthropics, the folks behind Portrait Professional, have given us a 10% discount code to share with our readers.  When placing your order, use the code discd6 to take 10% off!

Vegas Baby! uhm Travel Photography

Yup, I was in Hawaii for 8 days, now I'm in Vegas for 7. Got here today and didn't get to do much shooting. It's too tempting to just pull the camera out on the strip and start clicking away. Not exactly going to get a lot of keepers like that, so I had to do some research first. :-)



Since I seem to travel to some random places for work fairly regularly, most of my trips are for 2-3 days with lots of work things scheduled. How do I find time for shooting? Well, thankfully, the best times to shoot are way before and way after work. However, how about location scouting? How do I find places to go take some shots without having much time to explore? Here are some of my tricks:

• If there is a local camera shop (Ritz or Wolf don't count), stop by and ask for advice. I've found local staff are all to happy to give an out of towner a tip or two.
• Check Flickr, Panoramio, or Photo.net. On Flickr and Photo.net there are groups with discussion forums where lots of people before you have asked the same questions. Go learn from their mistakes and/or failures. Panoramio's photos are accessible from Google Earth, but that deserves its own bullet.
• Google Earth is perhaps the coolest tool for photographers in unfamiliar territory! The newest version supports showing terrain maps in 3D so you can get a good idea of what you'll see from what locations. Also, it has a sunlight simulator!!! This is an absolutely amazing feature that will show you the intensity of sunlight in certain areas. Are you going to be in a valley? Want to know what areas will get the last bit of sunlight? Google Earth can do that for you. Google Earth also links to Panoramio to pull in travel photos and make them easy to view from Earth's 3D interface. Very cool!
• When you get to a new place, go hunt down a Borders or a Barnes & Noble. Virtually every bookstore I've ever been in has an entire section dedicated to local interest. Within this section you'll usually find several photography books full of great shots of the region. Skim these books, take notes on interesting locations, and go see what you can find. Can you make it better? Did you see the potential for an interesting composition that wasn't in the book. You may go to the same spot, but you can make the shot your own! (Having just gotten to Vegas today, this is how I now know that the roof level of the McCarran Internation Airport short term parking garage has an amazing night view of the strip.)

I hope some of these suggestions are helpful to you. I'm going to go wander around the casino with my camera. (Oh, one last bit of advice, check with local security people in advance if photography is ok, best not to end up in that very big desert out there.)

..mike