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If you are new to photography, figuring out what zoom power you need and differentiating between the different types of zoom can be quite overwhelming. A number of new terms referring to zooming have been introduced lately in the marketing language of camera manufacturers, which only increases confusion. This article is aimed to bring a little more light into the problem and help you take a good decision when making the purchase.

Most mid-priced digital cameras have an incorporated 3x/4x lens. These numbers refer to optical and digital zoom. Most cameras have both optical and digital zoom, with the exception of a few low-priced ones, which tend to make dull and fuzzy photos. A digital camera’s zoom function is quite similar to the one of a film camera and does the same thing, namely bringing the subject closer. Anyway, in digital cameras here are two types of zoom, an optical and a digital one. Optical zoom is the one similar to the zoom of a traditional camera.

Digital zoom, on the other hand, simulates zooming by blowing up a selected part of the picture. It shouldn’t be mistaken with photo editing, which refers to applications used to modify the image after it’s been produced. Another common misconception about this type of zoom is that it is particularly useful for long distance photos. This cannot be farther from the truth. Optical zoom is much more important in a digital camera and it should be the one used as a criterion when comparing different models instead of digital or total zoom.

The quality of a digital camera is more dependent on optical zoom. To create even more confusion, manufacturers have begun to use the term of ‘total zoom’. In fact, there is no such thing. At most it can refer to the fact that a camera has both types of zoom functions, digital and optical. Traditional cameras like 35 mm or APS only had optical zoom. Optical zoom uses an incorporated lens to bring the image closer to the photographer.

Professionals associate digital zoom with digital video cameras. They don’t think of it as a real zoom for digital cameras because it just enlarges a part of the picture. In other words, it crops part of the image and enlarges the rest, resulting in a loss of quality. It works in the same way as the cropping and resizing options of photo editing applications. Another new term in digital photography is that of ’smart zoom’. This type of zoom avoids interpolation and thus maintains the quality of the image.

People sometimes compare optical zoom to resolution when they purchase a digital camera. This doesn’t make any sense. The power of digital zoom and the resolution are two different things with no connection to one another. The resolution expresses the number of pixels in the picture, while optical zoom refers to the power of the lens. It has nothing to do with resolution and can neither increase it nor decrease it. Another tendency is to disable the camera’s digital zoom. Many photographers don’t trust this feature and would rather crop and resize the photo themselves on the computer. This is not a very goo practice as it decreases the camera’s effectiveness.

Resources: Alex is an expert on photography methods with http://reshade.com . The company targets online picture resizing and provides a free to use online photo resizing tool. It’s also possible to buy a photo enlargement software for Windows. Try it now!

You’ve taken the photos and installed an image editing application on your computer… no it’s time to get to work. This article is aimed to get you through the basic functions of a photo editing application. There are a lot of such applications available on the market, from basic programs which include features like removing dust, scratches and red eye or adjusting brightness and color, to more sophisticated ones that let you use special effects, combine several images etc. Some companies offer you a free trial to make sure the software responds to your needs.

Viewing pictures
You can work on a single photo at once or bring in several photos.Working on two or more photos at once is particularly useful if you want to combine them in the end. Most applications include a browser which lets you see the pictures as thumbnails and double-click to open. You can also do this from the file menu, which opens a dialog box and lets you search for the file through your computer.

Resizing the image
Resizing may be needed for printing pictures or uploading them on the web. In case you want to print a photo, bare in mind to take it at a higher resolution. In case you are scanning it, make sure it is at least 150 dpi. This way you can enlarge it with your photo editing software. Images you want to upload on the internet have to be resized at a smaller size and resolution, like 72 or 96 ppi.

Rotating or flipping the picture
This is a very easy to use feature which allows you to rotate the image if, for example, you scanned it upside down. With a couple of mouse clicks you save all the work of rescanning the photo again.

Retouching
There are functions that enable you to make small corrections to the image, such as removing dust, scratches or red eye or unwanted background objects, improving color balance or making the picture brighter.

Color and contrast
Playing with color and contrast can be very entertaining. You can create interesting changes, such as turning a color photo in black and white or adding some color to a black and white photo. There are also more subtle changes you can make to improve the image.

Basic tools
Just getting used to your software is a good start. Don’t let yourself overwhelmed by the high number of features available. Take baby steps instead, learning a little bit at a time.

Hand a zoom
The hand feature lets you move the image around the screen while keeping the same zoom level. Zoom allows you you to zoom in a lot, which is good for working at small details, such as making corrections with a small brush. Then you just zoom out to see the whole picture.

Selection tools
There are several types of selection tools you can use, allowing you to make adjustments on just a section of the picture. For example, if you have a photo you like but a portion of it is to dark, you can select that portion and increase its brightness. This way you avoid brightening the whole picture when there’s no need to. You can also use selection tools to cut something out of the photo.

Rubber stamp (clone)
This is a very useful tool which you are likely to be using a lot. It allows you to pick color and attributes from one part of the image and paste them somewhere else. For example, if you want to take an object out, you can pick the attributes from the area next to it and gradually stamp them over it. You will need to zoom in and zoom out to see how the picture turns out like and use different brush sizes. Check if the area you are cloning is solid or gradient color. You may need to work on the transparency level of the clone tool so that the area you covered doesn’t look patchy.

Text tool
You can use this tool to insert a text box into the picture. You can choose from the true type fonts available or insert artistic text, which in turn has a range of different fonts, but also lets you apply filters, stretch or manipulate the text the way you want.

Montaging and overlaying
Some photo editing applications allow you to combine several images to make a collage or overlay two or several images (similar to multiple exposure in film camera). From now on your creativity can go wild.

Hope this were some useful tips that will help you getting used to your photo editing software. Good luck!

Resources: Alex Don has been writing about photography techniques for http://reshade.com . Reshade.com targets online picture resizing applications and makes available a free online image resizer service. It’s also possible to order a picture resizer software program . Try it out now!

What’s the difference between a common snapshot and a portrait? What does it take to transform a portrait into fine art? Some say that a portrait has to be oriented vertical. Others believe that the subject must look straight to the viewer or that the photo must be black and white. All these are far from being reliable criteria for judging the artistic value of a portrait.

Snapshots are candid photos taken randomly without any intent of making art. There is no or very little planning, no attention to lighting and composition. Snapshots are good for capturing everyday moments and sometimes a portrait make come out by accident. But this happens very seldom and is rather an exception. Portraits generally have a lot of creative work behind. For the artist, this work begins at the first contact with his customer. This can happen over the phone, e-mail or face-to-face. Meeting the customer in person if possible is the best way to go.

This allows you to study his/behavior, gestures, posture, learn about his/her personality, likes and dislikes etc. All this information will help you in planning the photo so that it says something about the subject. It is also important to have some sort of chemistry or at least be able to work together. However, it is very common that the first face-to-face meeting takes place at the moment of the photo. While this is not optimal, it can be done. After all, not all portraits have to be works of art. Picturing the person realistically in his/her best pose is a portrait.

Good portraits are achieved by paying attention to every element including camera technique, lighting and posing. It is also important that it reflects the personality of the person being photographed. This is not typically achieved in chain store photo studios. It is much better to schedule a couple of interviews to find out more about the person. Then you can build on the conceptions for the portrait, evoking personality traits. You should portray the person in such a way as to allow the viewer to feel something about what that person is like just by looking at the photo. If you’re including more people, like families or group, it is important that the photo reflects the relationships between them.

Good portraying also require post-production or finishing work. Before digital photography, retouching used to be made on the negatives and prints and there were limited changes you could make. Complicated chemical processes were used to improve the photos. Nowadays, everything from dodging to burning, blurring and highlighting is done on the PC using photo editing software. While it is certainly much easier than it used to, it still requires artistic vision, planning and expertise, as well as work. A photographer spends about 15-30 minutes on a photo featuring one or two persons before it is ready for print. The time is longer if you have more people in the photograph or you need to make a collage of several images.

All in all, the ingredients of a great portrait include getting to know the subject (usually through pre-interviews), thorough planning, mixing the information you have on the subject with your own artistic vision, good lighting and camera technique and guiding the subject into poses to portray his/her personality. You also need cooperation from the subject.

Resources: Alex D. is an expert on photography techniques with http://reshade.com . The company is specialized in online photo enlargement offering a free online image resizing web-tool. It’s also possible to order an image resizer program . Give it a try !

Anyone who intends to purchase a digital camera may fall for the myth of high resolution. The resolution is the number of mega pixels the camera can produce and it is said that the higher the resolution, the better your photos will turn out like. This is indeed true for certain situations, such as when pictures are printed out on larger size paper. The truth is that for plenty of camera users the advantages of a high resolution camera are close to zero.

Let’s start by understanding what a mega pixel means. Literally, it means one million pixels. A pixel is the tiniest part of a digital picture. If you have an application that you can use to zoom into an image you can really see those pixels - they look like the ‘pixellated’ effect you’ve seen on TV which hides people’s faces. Each digital image, including your PC screen, is a rectangular made of pixels: the larger it is, the more pixels it has. You can find out how many pixels your monitor has in the display settings. For example, a 1024 (horizontal) x 768 (vertical) screen has 1024×768 pixels, meaning 786,432. This means a little less than 0.8 mega pixels.

So if you look at an image with a higher resolution, the rest of the pixels just don’t fit your screen and they are lost. You have to remember that you can never see more pixels than the screen can display. A 10 mega pixel image would be much resized to fit the computer screen and the remaining pixels would be lost. If your computer didn’t do that, you could only see a small section of the picture and would have to scroll up and down to see the rest. When an image is zoomed out, the number of pixels is decreased. Viewed on the computer screen, an image which only has 0.8MP and needs no zooming out has the exact same level of detail with one of 12MP which has been zoomed out. To see for yourself, open two images of small and high resolution on your computer screen and see how they look like.

Many people never print their digital photos. They share them with friends and then store them on the computer to view them later. Most cameras found on the market nowadays are over 4MP, which is more than enough for your computer screen. If you buy a 12MP camera and only view the photos on the computer, the extra pixels are just lost. Moreover, higher resolution images take up more space on the memory card so you can hold fewer pictures. Not to mention the hassle to resize them when posting them on a website or sending them by e-mail. However, if you have a high resolution camera, you can adjust its resolution settings to take most of the pictures at lower resolution.The settings are either numbers or high, medium or low levels. If you choose a low resolution, you will be able to view your photos easier and upload them faster.

Resources: Alex D. has been writing about photography methods for http://reshade.com . The company is specialized in image processing applications providing a free to use online picture resizing service. It’s also possible to download a photo resizer software application for Windows. Try it for yourself!

One of the most appealing areas of photography is travel photography. When visiting a new place, every photographer wants to find a way to catch its feel, its uniqueness and bring it home with him. Travel photography can a very appealing and rewarding, yet very complex task. Just walking around and getting random shots is not the way to do it. You need to spend some time thinking about what you want to express and how.

When you think of a particular place, all the different elements that cross your mind are melt together to form its unique character or personality, that je-ne-sais-quoi that makes it different from any other place in the world. Whether it’s an old village or an exotic travel destination, a good photographer can capture its uniqueness and present it to the audience. This article is aimed to share some ideas on how to capture the character of a place through photography.

Basic Elements
A location has certain specifics that make it what it is. In most cases, these can be broken down into landscape, culture and people. Let’s take each of them separately to go into more details.

Landscape. Every little town, mountain or city looks different from any other place in the world. The architecture may be exclusive to that specific region or the natural surroundings may be unique. Think of the Gaudi area in Barcelona or the steep cliffs and rough seas of the coasts of Ireland and Scotland. Think of how the place looks like at night or early in the morning. A location takes on different personalities throughout a day and it’s important to capture each of them.

Culture. An important aspect of a destination’s character is its culture. A photographer can capture elements of culture in foods, drinks, local festivals and other things that are specific to that place. Local dishes, an yearly parade with traditional costumes or a street party are good examples.

People. People from different parts of the world look, dress and behave differently. Try to take as many photos as you can, both posed and candid, and catch people in activities the place is known for. If they are famous for being happy and lively you should take photos at parties to express this lifestyle. If they are hard working, photograph them while at work.

Creating the whole picture. To put all these elements together, zoom in on the subject. You can start with the landscape, photographing surroundings, interesting buildings and anything else to help the audience recognize the location. Then you can zoom in to people, capturing their attitudes and lifestyle. Finally you can start exploring culture. Apart from local food and festivals, photograph shop signs that can show the languages spoken there, as well as products that are a tradition for the area.

Travel photography is a very complex job because you need to be good at portrait photography, still life photography, nature photography and still life photography. Learning all these will put you on the right track of becoming a good photographer.

Resources: Alex D. is an expert on photography techniques with http://reshade.com . The company is specialized in online photo enlargement programs providing a free online image resizing web-tool. It’s also possible to download a picture enlargement software application for Windows. Try it now!

I became acquainted to photography only a little while ago. My friends had recently taken up this new hobby and went on and on about how great it is asking me to give it a try. I was a bit reluctant at first because the truth is I had never given it any thought.

To my surprise, my friends did not own the type of basic digital camera you are used to seeing everywhere. They had very large, high-tech devices with long noses, equipped with high resolution lenses which had a such a high zooming capability that one may have mistaken them to some paparazzi. One of them had taken up photography lessons and had influenced all of the others to buying this sort of cameras. When he first came holding that huge camera around his neck we were all very curios to discover all the features it had.

This was the first step to discovering the beauty of photography. We had no idea then that mere curiosity will take us ti a totally new world that we would have never discover otherwise. Then we started to practice, taking a few pictures every now and then and learning how to use the various features of the camera. We began to practice on how to focus effectively without cutting out on balance and then moved to zooming. My first shots were not all that great, but after a few days of practicing and more practicing | started to see some progress. For one week I used the SLR of one of my friends.

When I started to really enjoy it, I decided to buy my own camera. My friends told me that was their plan all along. If I knew it back then I would have probably been mad, but now I was thankful for making me discover photography. After practicing for a week or so, we decided we could start our journey to becoming real photographers. We began with portrait photography and then decided to move on to landscape pictures. We went out on a trip just to improve our skills. The destination we chose was supposed to be a great target for photography as it featured beautiful forests, a great atmosphere and plenty of wildlife. When we got there we were more than impressed - it was really breathtaking. We couldn’t have asked for a more suitable place for taking photos.

Then I really felt something different for the first time in my life. Something that cannot be explained in words. It just felt and it was amazing. Photography can teach you to appreciate things in a totally different way, regardless of how small or big they are. You see the beauty in every detail an then how all of these little things complete each other to make a whole - and this offers you a completely new vision. I now think everyone should try photography at least once. Even if only because it gives you the opportunity to see more beauty in the world - and the feeling is incredible.

Resources: Alex D. is an expert on photography techniques with http://reshade.com . The company focuses on online image resizing making available a free to use online picture resizing tool. It’s also possible to download an image resizer software application for Windows. Try it now!