Category: Tips

Nik photo editing tools now free!

A few years ago Google bought the Nik software company. They began to sell the Nik photo editing suite and integrated some of Nik’s technology into google Photos. March 23, Google announced that all the tools in the Nik editing suite are now available for free. The Nik suite includes Analog Efex Pro, Color Efex Pro, Silver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro, and Dfine.

It used to sell for almost $500US!

Change Your Camera’s Clock

These days, so many of the clocks in our lives set themselves automatically and know when and how to change to daylight saving time. If you have an older camera, it may not do this automatically.

While you change all your other analogue clocks, remember to update your camera so that the time recorded in the EXIF data is correct.

Critique a Photograph

We can all learn something by having someone who’s opinion we value give constructive criticism of our photographs. This article, this video and this article all contain tips on how to critique a photograph. We can also use these techniques as guidelines to help us when creating photographs.

Adjustment layers and layer masks

During the March meeting John showed a video example of using adjustment layers and layer masks. This article shows the same technique in much more detail. This technique applies to all versions of Photoshop and to Photoshop Elements since version 10.

If you want to practice you can use one of the public access computers at the Centre. If you want one-on-one help, you can book a session with a computer tutor.

Camera Raw Defaults & Image Resize

During the February meeting, John Williamson showed us how to:

His notes that explain how to do both have been added to the meeting resources list on the Meetings page under February 2016. They can also be accessed buy clicking the links above. Thanks for the excellent presentations and notes.

 

(not) Professional Photo Tips

Contrary to the name, Joshua Cripps‘ Professional Photo Tips channel on YouTube is a great collection of short instructional videos that all of us can watch and learn from. Some of the topics he covers are basic for example his recent video: “What is a Stop?” and some are more advanced like: “How to Use a 10 Stop Neutral Density Filter for Long Exposure Photography“.

Take a look. If you find any other sites you’d like to share with the rest of the club, please let us know at cameraclub@kanataseniors.ca.

Catherine Easton Slideshows

At the February 5th meeting, Catherine Easton showed 2 slideshows she had made. The first was done using the PicturesToExe program (Essentials: $69, Deluxe: $129) and the second using Microsoft’s free program Windows Movie Maker. Note that this was the first slideshow Catherine created with Movie Maker.

Well done Catherine and thank you for sharing.

If you have a short (3 minute or less) slideshow you’d like to share at a future meeting, please let us know by emailing us here.