Digital Photography by Prakash SJ
At its simplest, digital imaging is the process by which photographs are ‘digitized’ so they can be used in a computer. Once there they can be cropped, improved, combined and then used in countless ways that would have been unimaginable before digital imaging came along.
Better pictures
Although improvements can be made in the computer later, it still makes sense to take as good a photograph as possible in the first place – so in ‘Taking Better Pictures’ there is lots of practical advice on key photographic techniques such as lighting and composition for many of the most popular picture taking subjects.
But whatever care and trouble you go to, few pictures are perfect, so Enhancing the Image discusses the many ways in which computer software can allow you to make simple yet profound improvements to your pictures – changing the colour, brightness, contrast and sharpness, and rectifying faults such as red-eye and converging verticals.
Digital creativity
Once you’ve mastered those techniques you’ll be looking forward to even greater challenges, and ‘Creative Imaging’ offers a wealth of ideas for imaginative projects – from turning your photographs into paintings and adding borders and frames to combining several images in a single composition.
After that, ‘Uses of Digital Photography’ takes a look at some of the ways in which you might want to use your images – including making a greetings card, creating a website or sending e-mail attachments with advice on what image format and resolution will work best.
Finally, in ‘Next Steps’ we consider some of the possibilities that open once you become more accomplished in your image-making, with a gallery of superb images from masters of the art.
But whatever your interest in digital imaging, and however far you want to take it, you’ll undoubtedly find the journey fascinating and fulfilling.
The secret, as ever with photography, is to take lots of pictures, tryout lots of techniques, learn from your mistakes and do it better next time.
But most of all, enjoy your digital imaging!
Next post: Equipment and taking better pictures
