Hi Folks:
Every photograph has some significance to the person who made it; there’s a ‘story’ attached to every image. Those viewing the image may have their own associations or memories that lend significance to the image, but it’s often said that a great photograph can stand on its own, without explanation. Perhaps. As both a writer and a photographer I like to think the image and the story go hand in hand. Continue Reading →
Hi Folks:
This has been covered before on other sites (and to some extent on ours), but since I recently explained all of this to someone on Twitter I thought I’d take what I wrote then and massage it into some form of post for our blog.
To begin with we need to cover a few terms. One is that, as I mentioned in our Should I Get Lightroom or Photoshop or…? post, a digital image isn’t really an ‘image’ in the traditional sense. It starts as light, gets converted into electrical impulses by the camera’s sensor, and is then translated into binary code – 1s and 0s – as a digital file. Be that as it may, there are two aspects to each digital image. One is the image information itself – the code that is assembled to create the image on your computer screen or as a print, and the other is information about the image. This starts in the camera and can include the camera make/model/serial number, the exposure information, date and time of the image capture, the lens, focal length (for zoom lenses), GPS information and more. When the image is transferred to the computer one can add copyright information, keywords, owner contact information… All of this is collectively called ‘metadata’. This metadata is stored in one of two ways, depending on the type of digital image you’re working with. For .TIF, .PSD, .JPG and .DNG files, the metadata is stored within the image file itself. For raw images, a second file, often called a ‘sidecar’ file is generated. Sidecar files have an .XMP extension. Therefore, for a Canon raw file for example, one would have IMG0001.cr2 for the image data, and IMG0001.xmp for the metadata information.
Hi Folks:
A few years ago photographer Alain Briot did an article for the Luminous Landscape titled, “Just Say Yes” as a way of answering this question. The thing of it is, the answer is ‘yes’ for everyone, but a lot of people don’t seem to think so. Thought I’d write a short (for me) blog post about it. To begin with, we’d best get that word ‘manipulate‘ out of the way. From Dictionary.com:
ma·nip·u·late
[muh-nip-yuh-leyt]
verb (used with object), -lat·ed, -lat·ing.
- to manage or influence skillfully, especially in an unfair manner: to manipulate people’s feelings.
- to handle, manage, or use, especially with skill, in some process of treatment or performance: to manipulate a large tractor.
- to adapt or change (accounts, figures, etc.) to suit one’s purpose or advantage.
- Medicine/Medical . to examine or treat by skillful use of the hands, as in palpation, reduction of dislocations, or changing the position of a fetus.
See, that’s not so bad. If you asked the average photographer whether or not s/he is able to ‘handle, manage, or use‘ his or her camera, ‘especially with skill‘, I don’t think they’d take offense. Still, somewhere along the way the idea of manipulating one’s images has taken a wrong turn. There are a couple of reasons for this, I think. One is the general idea that photographs (unlike paintings or drawings) represent ‘reality’. If a photograph is seen not to represent some form of reality, people can take offense to this. The other is that programs like Photoshop allow those with the skill to create graphic manipulations that have no bearing on ‘reality’ at all. Continue Reading →
Hi Folks:
I received the following question this morning and provided some information that helped, but I thought I’d take the time to write a longer response as well. First, the problem:
Hi there Mike, Thanks for offering to help me! I just did a real stupid thing! Processed images in Lightroom (2.7). By accident I deleted the images in the orig. folder – AND emptied the bin (do not ask) but I am still seeing the images in my Lightroom Library tray! However it does not let me export them obviously – as it cannot find the original files. So I was wondering if I can retrieve the images from Lightroom? I hope you can help me!
Now then… If this happens to you, all is not (necessarily) lost but there are a few things to understand about Lightroom and about your computer’s hard drive. I’ll begin by saying that I work in Windows and my knowledge of Macs is somewhat limited, but they work in essentially the same way. Continue Reading →
