basic digital concept

[christopher_diao1]

looking to switch from film to digital

where can i find some online reading on raw, adobe rgb, jpeg, twain,

layer.... etc.?

 

any basic introductory reading, books on digital process and adobe?

[beauh44]

Hi Christopher, I like the "Real World" series, i.e. "Real World Adobe Photoshop" by Blatner and Fraser for PS; "Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS" by Bruce Fraser, and "Real World Color Management" also by Bruce Fraser. All excellent books. Good luck!

[andrew robertson]

Dude, don't cross post.

[christopher_diao1]

those two books are very thick.

 

i want something basic, introductory.

[andrew robertson]

How much do you want to know?

 

Maybe you should learn a bit about film photography first, as most of the concepts translate

well onto the digital world.

[christopher_diao1]

i am film photographer for 20 years

 

just don't know anything about raw, twain, layer, histogram....

[krisheylen]

Tom Ang's "Manual of digital Photography" helped me out a lot. It talks about everything you need to get into digital - analog or digital capture. Of course, every theme could have been another book, but that's for later.<p>

p.s. not sure if I translated the title correct, as I have the spanish version. Anyway, I have two books of him and I recommend to get the thicker and smaller in size, it's newer and has all the information that was in the former as well, and a lot more.

[GerrySiegel]

This one is basic and covers all the territory a beginner might want to know, including the topics you mentioned: " The Complete Guide to Digital Photography", Michael Freeman, ISBN=1-57990-534-X, Lark Books.Check Amazon affiliate in Florida for a discount price on Lark series. Nicely illustrated. Probably no single everything book will be enough,but this comes close. I can recommend it.

[alan_gage]

I find it much easier to learn by doing AND reading instead of just reading alone. What I mean is that if you've never really worked with digital photography I don't think you're going to learn very much by just reading (at least I don't).

 

I find I learn MUCH better if I spend a little bit of time messing with something new myself first. That lets you figure out quite a few of the basics that aren't tough to figure out, and it also leaves you with specific questions that you want answers to. Then when you read a book or tutorial instead of wondering "what the heck is he talking about". You tend to think, "oh, that's what how you do that, I wondered what that was".

 

So, with that said I'd recommend just playing with some digital files before doing a lot of studying. Since you probably don't want to spend the bucks on a digital camera just to find out you don't like it I'd recommend taking some of your film negatives into a lab and have them scanned to a CD. That will be a cheap way to play with digital for now and since you are already familiar with those pics you'll have a reference for how well you're adjusments are doing digitally.

 

Alan

[jack paradise]

Christopher,

 

Search the archives over at Luminous-Landscape. You'll find info on most everything.

 

Here's something about RAW:

 

http://tinyurl.com/2cd9v

[peterblaise]

basic digital concept

 

 

.

 

 

http://www.google.com/

 

 

... and other search engines.

 

Daily, I search for whatever I'm interested in, read a bit, decide if the web page interests me today, then I print a lot. I then go sit away from my computer and read the ream and a half of paper I have printed, red pen it, circle interesting or confusing stuff for further investigation, and so on. Then I start al over again the next day! The neat thing I find in reading Internet stuff is the CONFLICTS from people who can throw up any ol' web page full of ideas without any sort of editing from a third party or vetting out from other people with experienced of the topic. It's a hoot! (See "lens perspective" - hahahah!)

 

However, I've heard that there are at least 4 ways to learn. Some people like hands-on, some like to be shown, some like to read, some like ... there are 4 ways, I'm sure, but I don't remember them all, so I guess I like one of the ways that does not lead me to independently discover ALL 4 of the ways, eh? =8^o

 

I'm kind of a hands-on learner, but I also LOVE to read reference works - I have photographic encyclopedias from the 1930's where zoom lenses are dreamed of, from the 1960's where digital is a dream, and from the 1990's where they are so overwhelmed by the breadth and depth of photography that they don't know what to cover, or more accurately, what NOT to cover!

 

I concur with the recommendation to revisit all we THINK we know about photography in our pre-digital experience. I'm a computer consultant, and the worst customer I have is one who wants to automate something they do not do NOW by hand - they have no internal concept of what they are currently doing and they presume automation will organize them. It's always an expensive mess as they only start to learn AFTER spending loads of money and time on automation that cannot in any way automate them. If you can afford it, this may work for you - buy something and try it and see if you can learn that way?!?

 

So, in an effort to center myself and remind myself of what I already know, or, more accurately, all I SHOULD know about photography PRE-digitally, I find that reading the ancient wisdom of, say, Ansel Adam's "The Negative", is a rewarding yearly journey for me that re-centers me and keeps me from feeling overwhelmed by the new jargon and new features on new software gizmos - as they are usually, in the end, just new spins on the same old photographic concepts Ansel helped define so well.

 

RAW = digital negative, the "as captured" in-camera image file that can be reinterpreted fully at any time later outside the camera, nothing is lost (versus much being lost in JPEG/JFIF file format - see below). RAW is usually 10, 12, or 14 bits of information per pixel, and when converted outside the camera to a non-RAW file like TIFF, which is usually 16 bits per channel (of red, green and blue, or 48 bits total if you add them all up, often referred to as 16/48). Note that RAW is black and white, er, gray scale from non-Foveon digital capture sensors - the CMOS and CCD chips in non-Sigma and non-Polaroid (some) digital cameras are gray scale capture. Only Foveon are RBG native capture and require no conversion from the black and white, er, gray scale capture of CMOS/CCD chips into a color output.

 

Adobe RGB = a "color space" (look it up) that is as large as possible given the range of color devices in the hands of photographers and computer users - scanners, printers, screens, printing presses, FILM, and so on. Versus sRGB for screen display, or other lesser color spaces - see also DonRGB and other intelligent modern color spaces for more. This is ALL color theory that did NOT happen with digital capture - it's been around a while! CIE figured out most of this in the 1930's.

 

JPEG/JFIF is a "lossy" compression of an image file for quick sending over "the wire" originally for newspapers. Low compression (higher quality) JPG satisfies most people most of the time. It is 8 bits of information per channel (red, green and blue - or 24 bits if you add all three together = 8/24 is how it's sometimes called). JPEG is an organization, JFIF is a computer file format. JPG is a file name extension on a computer.

 

TWAIN = as in "east is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet" is a way (software/protocol/hardware) of connecting one device to another, and since it was probably NEVER going to be reliable, and yet, amazingly DID finally work, the "twain" phrase stuck. Computer people CAN be funny, I've heard. For us photographers, it's usually scanners and a TWAIN driver that allows us to scan directly onto the screen within Photoshop or other image file editing "application" software. Otherwise, without a TWAIN driver, we scan to a file on our hard drive, and then open it in our image edit software as a separate step.

 

Layer = the image itself (layer #1), AND an additional mathematical construct (layers #2 and on) applied on top of layer #1, like a filter, to accomplish an effect. Since a digital image file is nothing but numbers, a layer can say "bend all mid-range numbers up" and has the effect of a lightening curve, or "average all pixels with the numbers of the pixels within 1 pixel on all sides of the original pixel" (programming languages are fun, eh?) which is a blurring adjustment. The mathematical possibilities are endless. The beauty of layers is that we can always look at the bottom layer #1 untouched as if it were an original film negative, and then add subsequent layers and look at each effect in sequence to see how the potential "print" is going to turn out with each change. Each program, Photoshop, et cetera, tends to use proprietary schemes to manage their layer mathematics, and so the image usually gets "flattened" (visible layers merged down) to a non-layered file for interchange with other programs. I tend to work on layer #1 only, and use a COPY of my master file, so I can always look back at my master file untouched as if it were my original "negative". Either way is fine, there is no right or wrong, and whatever floats your boat, so to speak, is probably the right way for YOU to work now.

 

Tell us more about your digital photographic journey and tell us where you share some pictures!

 

Click!

 

Love and hugs,

 

Peter Blaise peterblaise@yahoo.com http://www.peterblaisephotography.com/

[conrad_fischer1]

I like this one for some information

 

http://www.photozone.de/7Digital/index.html

 

Just play around with it some and try new things. And don't forget to overdo some things as well, I find that I learn a whole lot that way.