More and more photographers are going without a copy of Photoshop, given its price tag of several hundred dollars. Many of these users are using the much more affordable, and for most photo tasks much more practical, Lightroom to organize and edit their images. There are also the users still working in iPhoto, but who have reached the point of wanting more advanced features than iPhoto offers.

Such users have the need to occasionally make localized edits, layered files, composited images, images with text added, and other such tasks not covered by Lightroom or iPhoto. Acorn is a very legitimate option for both these cases.

In the first post in this series, I mentioned the importance of “getting it right in the camera”. Well, how about the option of “getting it right in the computer”, too?

Many of us are taking advantage of shooting with the camera connected with a cable or wireless device to a desktop or laptop computer. Often referred to as shooting “tethered”, this offers several advantages. Images are immediately transferred to the computer, and stored on its hard drive. It’s also possible to create a system whereby incoming images are automatically backed up to a second storage device for safety. In fact, in many ways, images can be processed as they are imported from the camera.

This is the first in a series of articles discussing proactive management of key elements involved in creating high-quality digital images. In this segment, I’ll review use of the SpyderCUBE in managing dynamic range and exposure.

The simplest take-away from the oft-misunderstood Zone System, is that an image should be exposed to utilize the most or all of the range from black to white, without unintended clipping of near-whites, or blocking up of near- blacks. If the image does not incorporate the full dynamic range in a scene, the photographer should have done this by intent.

In digital photography, the most commonly recommended camera settings involve protecting detail in the brightest parts of the image, and correcting everything else in post-processing.

Magic Lantern is an Open Source project that was created to provide extended features and more user control to the Canon 5D Mark ll camera, specifically for videography purposes. The project has since been extended (no surprise) to the 5D Mark lll camera as well, and offers some advantages even for still imaging. Magic Lantern is firmware that is run on top of the Canon firmware. As such, it involves “hacking” your camera to install it, but has a history of successful use without problems.

All this now becomes much more important, as Magic Lantern has recently been making progress that has captured the interest of the entire videography industry. They have moved on from “short burst” video capture to continuous capabilities, and now are able to capture 14 bit RAW data from the 5D Mark lll. The results of this are more than interesting; they may well be groundbreaking.

Watch as Datacolor Color Management Experts David Tobie and David Saffir discuss the different concerns photographers face with calibration before they even start a shoot or sit down to edit their images. They’ll take you through Datacolor’s calibration solutions for capture and post-production workflow and give real-life examples for practical usage and improved results.