The Adobe suite offers Photoshop and Fireworks for batch processing photographs. To Batch Process is just to change multiple photographs all in one sweep. You may want to quickly re-size photographs to be easily put on the web, or just doing a quick crop so that all your photographs have the same proportions. Chances are that the action you want to apply to a batch of photos will determine which program you’ll be using.

Batch Processing in Fireworks

Fireworks is a great choice for simple changes such as changing the format (.jpg or.gif), scaling, finding and replacing text (great for removing spaces) or renaming all the files using a rule like mynewgalleryXXXX.jpg Other actions you can do in Fireworks are:

• Rotate the image
• Set Alternate Text for web use
• Convert Photo to Grayscale
• Convert Photo to Sepia Tone

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Here’s four quick posing tips for men:

• Keep them square to the camera. Men look better with broad shoulders.
• Have him make a fist with his hand and put his thumbs in his pocket or have him cross his arms with his hands on his forearms and thumbs tucked under the arm (think Aladdin).
• Keep their weight evenly distributed on both legs.
• Remember to have him drop his chin a bit.

DPI and PPI are the same general idea. They are both a measurement of density that reflect the quality at which an image is being displayed. Both DPI and PPI are based on the concept that you can take a whole bunch of small pieces to render a much more complicated image. PPI is typically referring to digital media using pixels. Each pixel in digital can be one of 65+ thousand colors, allowing for a lot of flexibility. When you are talking about printers or DPI, it’s a slightly different story.

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Gimp is a free alternative to using Photoshop or other more expensive photo editing tools. It’s a quick 200+ MB download that’s easy to install. My review is specific to the Mac version.

Startup

When I first started the program I was not impressed. Photoshop takes about 20 seconds to start on my machine but displays a loading screen while I wait, GIMP did not provide a loading screen and I was left to wonder if the program was going to work. GIMP opens two programs: the branded GIMP program and X11 which is the program that GIMP was built on.

GIMP User Interface

Three windows are opened: One for the layers, another for the file, and another for tools. Read the rest of this entry »

The last wedding reception I photographed was a little cute backyard wedding, and they had strung up bulb lights and colored lanterns across the yard. I knew I wanted to take some photos of the bride and groom as the sun went down, but I knew they had limited time, so I grabbed another couple and had them pose for me so I could get my settings right before I dragged bride and groom away from their guests. I took a couple of shots. The first shot is all natural light, no flash.

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