My GPS Camera Phone

In an effort to learn the inner workings of Photoshop, I joined a new Flickr group called Second Shotz. It’s a group run by two great photographers, Chica from Photo Projectz and Drew from The BenSpark. Some members are new to Photoshop, others quite experienced, but none of them are arrogant and condescending. It’s a good group of people willing to learn from each other.

From the group description:

This group has been created to let you take and edit a “Straight out of the Camera” image. Edit it as you see fit and upload it back to the group. Each week a new image will be posted by the moderators. You will have one week to do your best on the image and upload them to the group. The top three images each week will be featured in blog posts on Photo Projectz http://photo-projectz.blogspot.com/ and The BenSpark http://www.benspark.com.

For me, this is more than just playing in Photoshop. It’s about learning Photoshop.

I often find myself balking at having to create anything in Photoshop, leaning toward Illustrator instead. I’ve always been partial to vector (points and lines), but I’m discovering that there’s a whole lot more to raster (pixels) than I give it credit. This group has already helped me learn more in two weeks by simply having fun instead of forcing myself through boring training videos or tutorials with no reward at the end.

I’ve posted a Flickr widget of the group in the sidebar if you’re interested in viewing or joining. There’s already been some great entries and I can guarantee that there’s more to come.

For most of us, the camera phone is a simple point-and-click experience with no real thought given to making the shot better. Let’s face it, camera phones have a bad reputation when it comes to image quality. However, today’s newer models are paying more attention to the camera than ever before.

In this post, I’m going to run through some commonly found camera phone photo options that you may not be aware of and how to use them. For this example, I’ll be referencing the options of my nearly-indestructible Casio G’zOne, type-V camera phone. The G’zOne camera settings can be accessed by switching to the camera and then selecting the right menu button for the options.

Option 1: Resolution
As mentioned in a previous post, the camera resolution can make or break the quality of your photos. The G’zOne has resolutions ranging from 120×160 pixels to 1200×1600 pixels. More pixels means larger images and more flexibility with what you can do with them. The drawback, however, is that more pixels will reduce the amount of photos you can store on your camera phone due to the larger file sizes. In my opinion, it’s a trade-off I’m willing to take, even with a phone that doesn’t have expandable memory.

Option 2: Self-timer
The G’zOne self-timer feature allows you to set a shutter delay for three, five or 10 seconds. Why would you need this for a camera phone? Consider your body position when taking a camera phone photo: arms extended and raised up, steadied by nothing but sheer willpower. Unfortunately, willpower isn’t going to get you that clear shot. To get the clearest possible shot, prop up your phone, compose the picture and shoot with a shutter delay. This allows the camera to be completely still while doing its work and makes for much better photos. As an added bonus, you can be in the shot, too.

Option 3: Flash
As expected, the flash on a camera phone isn’t going to be much. In fact, it’s usually so weak that I make every effort to avoid using it. The G’zOne flash is interesting in that it comes on for a second, presumably to avoid red-eye, and then the picture is taken. Most other camera phones have similar weak flashes or none at all. If there’s something worth shooting in low light, try working with the self-timer and the brightness settings to capture it before using the flash.

Option 4: Brightness
The brightness setting allows you to manually adjust the exposure level of the camera, providing you with more flexibility in variable lighting conditions. Let’s say there’s a great shot of your friends on the beach, but the sun is blazing and the light bouncing off the sand is blowing out the exposure. An easy adjustment to the brightness level will usually bring the image into something more identifiable. Likewise, low light conditions can be overcome somewhat by increasing the brightness.

Option 5: White balance
For the most part, you will leave this set to “auto,” probably because it isn’t worth manually setting or you have no clue what it’s for. In a nutshell, different sources of light emit different color temperatures, which cast different light colors on your subject. The white balance settings – incandescent, fluorescent, daylight and auto – provide you a way to compensate for the different light you will be shooting in. Auto usually makes for a decent color exposure, but sometimes it has no white to reference, thereby resulting in washed out images. If you really want the shot, manually adjust the white balance to match the light source.

Option 6: Shutter sound
Yes, shutter sound is exactly that. On or off, sound or no sound. Why should you seriously consider this when taking camera phone photos? Let’s say you’re in a nature preserve and you spot a rare animal that hasn’t been seen in years. Quietly, you take out your camera phone (because you forgot your digital camera), line up the shot and capture it. You can hardly contain yourself as you frame the next shot, only to realize that the animal ran off because of that annoying camera clicking sound. Upon reviewing the one shot you did take, it turns out that the photo is blurry and unrecognizable. Nobody believes you and you’re labeled a gold-digging hoaxer, forever ruining your career as a naturalist. All because of the shutter sound.

Option 7: Color effect
With the advances in freely available photo editing software like Picasa, I personally feel that utilizing on-board photo effects is unnecessary. However, if you aren’t into geeking out on processing photos all night, then these are for you. With settings like mono (monotone or black-and-white), negative, sepia and normal, you can achieve neat effects right when you capture the photo.

Now go try it out
Hopefully, this clears up any confusion for some of those unused features on your camera phone. The next time you’re out and about, experiment with the camera settings. You might be surprised at what your camera phone can produce.

Author’s note: In my opinion, the Casio G’zOne type-V is far superior to the type-S, with the only potential drawback being the lack of bluetooth capability. The type-S has bluetooth, but all other features are inferior to the type-V. Compare them and see for yourself.

If you own a Mac, you’ve got to check out the Preview program. There’s more to it than I expected.

Edit your own photos! Get professional-grade software here!

Yesterday was my 21st Wordless Wednesday post and, in my humble opinion, the best one to date. In this post I’ll answer the big question of how I did it.

First, a bit of back story: I had a doctor’s appointment to get my back evaluated to see if I’d need surgery to repair a blown disk (L5/S2 for all my chiro/neuro peeps). The appointment was at Shands Hospital directly across from the local Veterans Administration hospital. Being a vet, I go to the VA for annual check ups. Being a civilian, I do NOT go there for much of anything else.

Considering that the parking-to-patient/visitor ratio is somewhere around 1:683, I decided to be sneaky and avoid paying the $3.00 to park in the Shands garage. You could say I’m a master of elusive parking, but you probably won’t.

Motorcycle parking at the VA is free and always open. I own a motorcycle. On top of all that, I can be a pretty smart guy sometimes. Taking this into consideration, I decided to park at the VA and then stealthily walk to Shands via the sooper-seekrit underground tunnel that only people of my caliber would know about.

Which brings us to the photograph. This tunnel is ultra-sterile and feels like a bomb shelter. I mean, you could probably perform open-heart surgery in there – it’s that clean. Anyway, it offered a neat perspective, so I snapped two shots from different angles (as seen in this post) and was on my way.

I had planned on posting one, but both of them were overexposed from all of the reflections and fluorescent lighting. I sat there and thought of how I would weasel my way around another Wordless Wednesday, when suddenly it hit me; combine them into one.

Here’s how I did it, in bullets, because I’ve already wasted enough of your time (and it’s easier to comprehend):

• Open both images in Photoshop (I use CS2, but you can probably adapt this to any program)
• Drag one of the images onto the other, which then gives you an image with two layers.
• Save the new image as something else and close the source images.
• After adjusting levels, tweak the top layer’s opacity until the desired result is achieved. You want to go for a blended image that looks like the two were taken as one.
• As part of the above step, adjust the opacity of the bottom layer as well. Try playing with blending modes also. I think I used “multiply” or “overlay” on the top layer.
• Create a new layer below the image layers and paint it white. This will lend a light and ethereal feeling after reducing the opacity of both image layers.
• Select both image layers and create copies. Then select the two original ones and merge them together.
• Rotate the merged image layer 180 degrees. This layer should be the bottom layer with the two copies above it.
• The copied layers are probably at 100% opacity, so you’ll need to adjust them as before. Once you get a decent result, you’re good to go.
• Merge all layers into one and then save the image for the web.

I’m happy with the result and I’m glad to see that at least 19 visitors were as well. If you’re still confused, drop me a line in the comments section and I’ll confuse you even more.

Back in late February, I posted a camera phone photo of some ferns with a tree bark background. The photo was edited in Picasa2 using the “Focal B&W” effect which allowed me to retain the green color information while discarding the rest. In this tutorial, I’ll show you exactly how I did it. Achieve a professional look in just about two minutes!

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Every so often, that award-winning photo you had envisioned turns out to be a waste bin liner. You thought the frame captured what your mind saw, but apparently not. Other factors like equipment and lighting may cause problems with the final product as well, but this shouldn’t leave you discouraged. There is a way.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to salvage a bad photo in three easy steps, using Picasa2 photo editing software. A little crop, saturation and sharpening goes a long way. So before you delete those photos, watch this!

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About a month ago, I discussed a the possibility of bunch of new things coming to My GPS Camera Phone. Today, I am happy to present one of those big additions – video tutorials on photo editing.

Being a visual person, I find it difficult to learn about graphics software by just looking at a user guide or a text tutorial. While there are many good tutorials out there, I haven’t seen many video-based ones. In an attempt to fill that void and to bring the mysteries of photo editing to the “regular guy/girl,” I’ll be creating and offering these short tutorials.

Each video will only run around three minutes, so watching them won’t require a huge block of time. I’m hoping to pass on helpful photo editing tips and software use methods so anyone can understand them. While you can’t make a bad picture good, you can make a good picture better. I hope to be able to show you how.

On to the tutorial!

How-to Prepare a Photo for the Web (Quick and Dirty) run time – 3:30
Learn how to quickly crop an image, adjust the levels and punch up those colors in three easy steps. Based in Adobe Photoshop® CS (not CS2 like I say in the video).

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