Calling all Digital Chicks!!

Digital Chicks on the River - A Special Photographic Retreat Just for Women

Ladies, feel like you're a world away from the stresses in your life when you meet me at Dr. Snyder's Drugless Health Sanitarium for a special photography retreat designed just for women. 

Dr. Snyder is long gone, and the Drugless Health Sanitarium is now the historically elegant Inn on the River in Glenn Rose Texas.  But, it's still a wonderful place to meet for an unsurpassed weekend of photography and fun. 

There are only a few rooms left so you need to register today.  Visit my website for more details and to register for this very special event.   
  

Fall Class Registration Now Open

All Fall classes are now open for registration.  This semester's lineup of classes is one of the best ever with two new classes. 

• Discovering the Secrets of GreatPhotography

• Pixel Pixs: Introduction to Digital Photography

• Point, Shoot, WOW!   (NEW)

• Studio Lighting Basics

• Digital Workflow  (NEW)

• 7th Annual Digital Revolution

• Photoshop CS - Class 1  (Updated)

• Photoshop CS - Class 2  (Updated)

• Photoshop Elements - Class 1  (Updated)

• Photoshop Elements - Class 2  (Updated)

• Creating Greeting Cards with Photoshop

For details and to register for any class, visit my website.
  

New Classes

Point, Shoot, Wow! - If you're a beginner or amateur photographers who wants to know how to add that professional look to your photography and make your friends and family jealous when you produce photos that make everyone go WOW!!!  You don’t need fancy cameras or lots of expensive digital editing software.  You just need to know the GreatPhotography Point, Shoot and WOW Tips.

Unraveling The Digital Workflow - This class is intended for the more serious photographer that faces the challenges of organizing and managing an ever growing inventory of digital images.

There are now versions of GreatPhotography's Greeting Card Designer for Adobe Photoshop Elements 4, Elements 5, 7.0, CS, CS2 and CS3.

The latest version, Greeting Card Designer for CS3, represents a significant enhancement from the earlier CS2 Version.  Changes include...

• It is no longer necessary to crop your image prior to running the actions.
• Actions can easily be run from Button Mode for those that are uncomfortable with running actions in Photoshop.
• There are several additional actions for enhancing the border of your image.
• Added "specialty" actions are included to give you additional card designs. 
• Easier installation

For more information and support for the Greeting Card Designer products, visit my website.

Lindsey's Story

Lindsey Meglio, 24, was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma cancer at the age of 11.  The cancer was throughout her body and she was forced to have a bone marrow transplant.  After the transplant her platelet count was so low that she needed a platelet transfusion.

Because of volunteer donors Lindsey received life giving platelets and was able to survive her battle with the disease.  "I wasn’t going to let cancer hold me back" said Lindsey in a recent interview. 

Lindsey's story played out again and again in families that find themselves battling terrible diseases.  And the need for life giving blood and platelets seems unquenchable. 

For years I've donated blood platelets through a process called apheresis and each time I visit the Red Cross I'm struck by the number of empty beds.  The shortage of blood and platelets is becoming a national epidemic.

I'd like to ask that you consider taking the time to donate blood or platelets at your local Red Cross or the blood service of your choice.  Donations can often be made where you work.  In Dallas, I go to the Red Cross Blood Service Center at RHD Medical Center  for my platelet donations.  Yes, they do take longer but consider this...

A single apheresis donation of platelets can provide as many platelets as 5 whole blood donations. In addition, a platelet transfusion from a single donor greatly reduces the chances of an immune system reaction to the transfusion. Bone marrow transplant, cancer and leukemia patients whose immune systems are already compromised, benefit particularly from single donor platelet transfusions.

I've never met Lindsey.  I've never met anyone that's received my donations.  I just hope that there is someone donating when I'm in need of a life giving transfusion.  As Lindsey said, "without the Red Cross, without the platelet donations, I wouldn't be here today."

Use one of the links below for more information...

- See Lindsey's Story

- Find a Red Cross Blood Drive or office near you.

- Learn more about Apheresis 

Considering Apheresis but have questions.  Contact Shannon Story at the American Red Cross SW Region Blood Services office.  If you're not from the North Texas area Shannon can help you find the office nearest you.  Call Shannon at 800-908-8056 or email to storys@usa.redcross.org. 

The latest version of Adobe Camera Raw has introduced some new controls that may confuse some users.  In the image above I've slightly under exposed the girl.  Prior to this new Camera Raw, the solution would be to tweak the Exposure slider to +0.35.  By doing this I would lose some detail in the background. 

With the new Camera RAW I now have the Fill Light slider.  With this tool I'm able to lighten some of the shadow areas without affecting the entire image.  If you watch the histogram while you move the slider you'll notice that the shadows and mid tones are adjusted while the highlights are not changed.  The Exposure slider would adjust shadows, mid-tones and highlights. 

Recovery Slider:  This tool helps recover lost detail in the highlights without affecting the entire image. 

Fill Light Slider:  This tool helps recover lost detail in the shadows without affecting the entire image. 

Clarity:  Adds depth to an image by increasing local contrast. This setting is similar to a large-radius unsharp mask. When using this setting, it is best to zoom in to 100% or greater. To maximize the effect, increase the setting until you see halos near the edge details of the image and then reduce the setting slightly.

Where are Camera RAW Changes?

While we're on the topic of Camera RAW, we should talk about where the image setting instructions are stored for your files.  When you process files using Camera RAW, the various settings you use are stored so that you may open the same file at a later date and still maintain the same settings. 

The setting information is stored as Metadata and where this information is stored is define in the Camera RAW Preferences.  (To edit Camera RAW Preferences open Bridge CS3 and select Edit > Camera RAW Preferences...) The Preferences dialog confuses this matter a bit by only offering two options for where to save image settings:  in Camera RAW database or in sidecar "XMP" files.  There are, in fact, three locations to store this information.

When processing any proprietary RAW file format, Camera RAW will look at this preference and store the image setting information in either the Camera RAW database or the XMP sidecar file - whichever you have selected. 

Camera RAW now process JPEG and TIFF files and image setting information for these file formats is stored inside the original image file.  This is also true for Adobe's open Digital Negative (DNG) RAW file format. 

You'll fine that whether your talking about Camera RAW image settings or other Metadata, the issue of where this information is stored is the same.  I shoot a lot of RAW files and now convert all the RAW files to the DNG format when they're imported using Bridge.  This way, all my camera RAW settings are stored in the image file as well as metadata such as my copyright and contact information. 

Where should you save your image settings?  That depends.  If you generally process and use proprietary RAW files on one computer, then storing the image settings in the Camera RAW Database is fine.  If, however, you want to move your RAW files to another computer you'll need to have the image settings stored in an XMP sidecar file.  AND, you'll need to be sure the sidecar file travels with the Raw file. 

Don't panic if you do lose the sidecar file.  The only thing you've lost are the Camera RAW settings and not the image itself. 

For more details about Camera RAW settings and other workflow issues you may want to consider enrolling in my new Digital Workflow class.  Visit my website for more details.  

To download your free copy of the GreatPhotography White Paper on Converting from Adobe Photoshop CS2 to CS3 click on the link