JHP Newsletter - 2005, No. 7, 14 October

Equipment: Photoshop CS2

I've upgraded from Photoshop CS to CS2 since the last newsletter, and the new spot healing brush tool is a wonderful addition. It's great for removing dust from images, especially in regions of gradual color changes, because the sampling is done automatically. There are some situations though where the sampling brings in unwanted colors or textures, and sometimes this can be corrected by using a smaller-diameter brush to paint the same area, or by changing the shape of the region to be painted.

Another new capability of PS CS2 that I was interested in, High Dynamic Range, doesn't appear to be very useful. It's designed to automatically combine several different exposures, ones that cover the whole tonal range of the scene, but in my tests so far, the results are very disappointing.

Equipment: Epson Stylus Pro 4800

I am now using an Epson Stylus Pro 4800 with photo black inks and Epson Premium Luster paper for my fine art prints. The new Ultrachrome K3 inks, with black, light black, and light, light black inks, produce a much darker black than the older Ultrachrome inks. Switching to photo black (or glossy black) inks from the matte black inks that I had been using, along with changing to a luster (or pearl, or semi-gloss) paper from a 100% Cotton fine art paper, allows me to generate prints with a much larger tonal range which makes the prints jump off the page.

Travel: Raptor Models Shoot

I just finished one of the most unusual organized photo shoots that I've been on — a raptor models shoot just to the northwest of Denver, CO. It was scheduled as a four-day shoot, and the weather is usually sunny with highs in the 70s at this time of year. We actually had 2.5 days of shooting raptors, and it rained the first day, and snowed the second day!! We shot both of those days, and the falling snow with snow on the ground made for good, and also unique, images. The heavy snow caused the roof of the muse (bird house) of one falconer to collapse, so the morning after it snowed, we went to the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster to shoot, and it was a poor substitute for raptors. We shot 21 different raptor species and 25 different individual birds.