The Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers

Appendix A. About the Photos in this Book

Since this is the "photographer's" companion to Photoshop CS4, I want to provide some photographic information about many of the images you're seeing in the book. One of the important aspects of figuring out your postproduction workflow is knowing how much latitude you have to work with while composing your images in the field.

For example, almost every one of these shots was captured in raw mode. By doing so, I knew there was more image information available to me in post than I was seeing on the camera's LCD screen. The "slot canyon" photo is a good example. On the LCD, the image was flat and didn't have much color vibrancy. But I knew that if I worked carefully in raw while shooting, that I could achieve the look I wanted in post.

Capturing good imagery is as important to me as knowing what to do later on in Photoshop. I hope you find this section helpful.

Cover Images

Opening Ceremonies, Beijing Olympics

I was outside the Bird's Nest during the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics. As I was finishing up some portraits, fireworks suddenly lit up the sky. After I captured the first series with the 50mm lens I had mounted, I changed to the wider Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 L zoom lens (on a Canon 5D.) The fireworks were so bright that the shutter speed was 1/90 with an aperture of f/2.8 at ISO 1600. The shot was cropped to fit on the cover, but ...