photography

Want to know more about common digital photography problems like noise and blown-out highlights? Choosing between RAW and JPEG formats? Take Your Best Shot is now available from O'Reilly Media for $34.99. The book is written by Tim Grey, a member of the Photoshop World Dream Team of Instructors who has been answering digital photography questions for years on his popular DDQ: Digital Darkroom Questions daily e-mail newsletter, and his printed Digital Darkroom Quarterly newsletter.

Take Your Best Shot is 252 pages and organized by subject so you can look up any issue. "Today, many photographers feel … Read more

As an avid amateur photographer, my biggest problem with my online media has nothing to do with editing images, but organizing them first. I can click off several hundred photos of the family dog or a hiking trip, but before I even start tweaking colors of a sunset, I have a tough time even finding the right photograph. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 aims to help consumers with that common problem.

In Tuesday's edition of the Daily Debrief, I speak with senior writer and serious photographer Stephen Shankland about the new software released Monday. Retailing for $299 new or $… Read more

With Adobe Systems' release of version 2 of its Photoshop Lightroom on Monday night, the company no doubt hopes customers will be drawn by a number of new features in the software for sorting, cataloging, and editing photos.

But the company believes an external factor will also help the software: the booming sales of high-end SLR cameras. These high-end models are helping usher in many of digital photography's biggest changes, and Adobe is trying to intercept the trend with Lightroom.

From 2007 to 2008, digital SLR shipments increased a dramatic 41 percent to 7.5 million units, according to market researcher IDC. And though plenty of those cameras went to gadget-happy doctors or to snapshooters who won't exploit the cameras' full features, plenty of others went to the photography enthusiasts at whom Lightroom is aimed.

"Prices are coming down, so more people with entry-level SLRs are experimenting," said Tom Hogarty, the Adobe senior product manager in charge of Lightroom. "If you pick up the camera for the sake of creating an artistic thing and not just recording a family event, you've really taken the plunge into serious photography. Anyone at that level is an ideal Lightroom customer."

One significant feature common to SLRs is the ability to shoot "raw" photos--the images taken directly from the image sensors without the camera baking in its own assumptions about what's right.… Read more

We finally get CNET photographer Sarah Tew into The 404 lair and I screw it all up in the preshow. 'Twas totally unintentional, Ms. Tew, I promise! Ahh, this big, dumb mouth of mine. Anyway, Sarah was dragged in by Corinne Shulze, another CNET shooter visiting from the City by the Bay. In nothing short of a miracle, they still agree to do the show and we get right into it.

Wait, not quite...we have to talk about medical ailments and weekend buffoonery, right? Corinne tells us about her fight with a MUNI rail (you should've seen the … Read more

AOL is scrapping some online destinations but will push others harder in an attempt to improve its finances, according to internal memos.

Among those products to be shuttered are Bluestring, a site to share videos, music, and photos; Xdrive, a general-purpose online storage service; and AOL Pictures, where people could store and share photos, according to a July 14 memo from Kevin Conroy, AOL's executive vice president of products and marketing. The memo was published Thursday by TechCrunch.

"These consumer storage products haven't gained sufficient traction in the marketplace or the monetization levels necessary to offset the … Read more

Over at Plagiarism Today, Jonathan Bailey notes:

A recent post by photographer J.M. Goldstein raised a very interesting question about Flickr and its API, namely whether or not Flickr was policing its API well enough and doing an adequate job protecting the rights of photographers and artists that post to the service.

I would have thought the answer was obvious. No.

Or, perhaps more accurately, Flickr has apparently decided either deliberately or as a matter of generalized neglect that providing its users with more sophisticated and granular tools to protect their content isn't a priority.

While there is much that I like about Flickr, … Read more

Flickr on Tuesday entered a partnership with Getty Images to offer its users a way to potentially make money off their photography.

The Yahoo-owned photo-hosting community will be a new resource for Getty, which can now contact Flickr members directly through the site and ask them if they want to share one or more of their images for use in a special Flickr-branded Getty collection.

Flickr members interested in getting their images featured in the special Getty gallery will have to simply wait to be contacted. Otherwise, Getty and Flickr are encouraging aspiring photographers to post their content on the … Read more

Because not everyone has a Nokia N95 or comparable luxurious 5-megapixel camera (including me,) most of us have to grudgingly accept our camera phones' variable output quality or take the time to fix photos of emotional value. (Or blackmail value, which is also extremely powerful.)

There are a ton of tips out there for improving mobile phone images, and most of them involve a proficiency in advanced image-editing tools and a working knowledge of the parameters required for a dizzying number of tools. That's surely a fun challenge for digital photography enthusiasts of all levels, but what about those … Read more

FONTANA VILLAGE, N.C.--If you've got a fancy digital SLR and have been wondering how you could make money with it, I might have just the suggestion for you.

Head on out to the border region between Tennessee and North Carolina, just on the edge of Great Smoky Mountain National Park. There, you'll find a never-ending supply of people riding their motorcycles and driving their cars along one of the most famous and beloved stretches of road in the South.

Known as "The Dragon," the road is a longtime favorite, especially among motorcyclists, and hundreds, … Read more