January 2003 Meeting Summary

FinMUG March Meeting Summary

PhotoShop Demo

By Keith Cooper

On March 28, the Finger Lakes MUG met again at the Watkins Glen Elementary School, not far from Senaca’s southern shore, for our monthly meeting. A small gathering of about 9 were treated to an informative demonstration of Photoshop, a nearly-successful game demo and some light discussion about Macs and Mac miscellany.

Kathy handed out a packet of April Fools jokes pulled from the pages of MacAddict magazine, while we discussed technical issues and news at Apple.

There wasn’t a lot to discuss of the latter, save the recent introduction of cluster-configured X-Serve servers. These industrial-strength server packages are well-suited to scientific applications and further legitimize Apple products and OS X as commercial solutions. You can learn more at .

Next we turned the floor over to Tom Alley, who drew upon his vast experience in PhotoShop to give us a small taste of this powerful image editing application.

Adobe PhotoShop – Image Editing Software
PhotoShop is Adobe’s flagship application and with good reason. It is, without a doubt, the industry standard when it comes to the editing and creation of professional quality images. As a graphic designer, I can attest to the importance of this powerful tool. Every day, photographers, designers, film editors and print professionals rely on PhotoShop to provide them the ability to shape photographic images in amazing ways. A host of adjustments, filters and special effects are available to the user, and Tom was only able to scratch the surface of the functionality of this great program, given his short time span. What he gave us were some essential techniques that every one of us could use to make their photos more aesthetically pleasing:

Adjustment Layers:
PhotoShop includes the ability to create what it calls adjustment layers. This layer is positioned over the original untouched image, allowing you to tamper with settings without disturbing the integrity of the original. This is critical because some adjustments made to the original image discard portions of the images color and contrast depths, which cannot be repaired. The use of adjustment layers also makes revisions easier by allowing the user to come back and make further setting changes, even once the file is saved and closed.

Brightness & Contrast:
These settings are easy to adjust and result in the most striking results to the beginning photo editor. The brightness setting is self-explanatory in what it controls. Tom used this setting to brighten a picture taken of his daughter in a dimly lit room. He noted that by lightening the photo slightly the image began to flatten or look washed out. By turning to the contrast setting he showed us how we could improve the image by adding more contrast (darkening the darks and lightening the lights), until he had a much more attractive photo. Again, these changes were made on the adjustment layer, leaving his original image layer, unaltered.

Levels:
This is a great tool as well. It takes a little practice to use properly, but it allows the user to adjust the intensity of the high (lights), low (darks) and midrange values of the image. Moving the left arrow toward the center of the spectrum intensifies the dark areas of the image. Tampering with the right arrow allows one to intensify the highlight areas of the photo. Care must be taken here to avoid the dreaded hot spot, which is a washed out, completely white area of a photograph.

Sharpen:
A tool with the unlikely title of ‘Unsharp Mask’ can be used to sharpen a slightly blurry image. Beware. Over-sharpening an image can produce artifacts or blotches on a photo.

Hue & Saturation:
By adjusting the hue and saturation settings one can selectively alter the color content of an image or simply intensify or tone down the intensity of a color. This is a powerful technique as Tom demonstrated by salvaging an unnaturally yellow photograph.

Selection:
Tom showed us how to use selection techniques to edit small portions of an image without applying changes to the entire image. Using a feather effect softens the borders of the selection and avoids an unnatural hard edge around the edited portion.

Tom finished off his demo by giving us a pictorial tour of his boat, a 35 foot sailboat, called “TomFoolery”. Tom can be seen sailing her on Seneca Lake when the weather permits.

Formula 1 Racing
Next, we turned our attention from nautical visions to another part of Watkins Glen history – the passion for road racing. Tom offered to demo a game brought to us by British software developer, Feral Interactive http://www.feral.co.uk, called Formula 1 Championship. Unfortunately, the demonstration was fraught with difficulty and our limited success left us somewhat underwhelmed. We’ll attempt to work the bugs out for a future demonstration.

We finished out the night with some discussion of Mac-related April Fools pranks and friendly chatter.

A round of thank you’s goes out to Bob, Marianne and Watkins Glen Elementary, for hosting last month’s meeting; to Tom for his great demo and conversation; and to Kathy for all her hard work as Apple Ambassador to the group. Keep watching our website at http://homepage.mac.com/finmug, for updates, tips and meeting times. Hope to see you at our April meeting.

Hope to see you at the next meeting.

Keith Cooper
Finger Lakes Macintosh User Group

FinMUG March Meeting Summary PhotoShop Demo By Keith Cooper On March 28, the Finger Lakes MUG met again at the Watkins Glen Elementary School, not far from Senaca’s southern shore, for our monthly meeting. A small gathering of about 9 were treated to an informative demonstration of Photoshop, a nearly-successful game demo and some light discussion about Macs and Mac miscellany. Kathy handed out a packet of April Fools jokes pulled from the pages of MacAddict magazine, while we discussed technical issues and news at Apple. There wasn’t a lot to discuss of the latter, save the recent introduction of cluster-configured X-Serve servers. These industrial-strength server packages are well-suited to scientific applications and further legitimize Apple products and OS X as commercial solutions. You can learn more at . Next we turned the floor over to Tom Alley, who drew upon his vast experience in PhotoShop to give us a small taste of this powerful image editing application. Adobe PhotoShop – Image Editing Software PhotoShop is Adobe’s flagship application and with good reason. It is, without a doubt, the industry standard when it comes to the editing and creation of professional quality images. As a graphic designer, I can attest to the importance of this powerful tool. Every day, photographers, designers, film editors and print professionals rely on PhotoShop to provide them the ability to shape photographic images in amazing ways. A host of adjustments, filters and special effects are available to the user, and Tom was only able to scratch the surface of the functionality of this great program, given his short time span. What he gave us were some essential techniques that every one of us could use to make their photos more aesthetically pleasing: Adjustment Layers: PhotoShop includes the ability to create what it calls adjustment layers. This layer is positioned over the original untouched image, allowing you to tamper with settings without disturbing the integrity of the original. This is critical because some adjustments made to the original image discard portions of the images color and contrast depths, which cannot be repaired. The use of adjustment layers also makes revisions easier by allowing the user to come back and make further setting changes, even once the file is saved and closed. Brightness & Contrast: These settings are easy to adjust and result in the most striking results to the beginning photo editor. The brightness setting is self-explanatory in what it controls. Tom used this setting to brighten a picture taken of his daughter in a dimly lit room. He noted that by lightening the photo slightly the image began to flatten or look washed out. By turning to the contrast setting he showed us how we could improve the image by adding more contrast (darkening the darks and lightening the lights), until he had a much more attractive photo. Again, these changes were made on the adjustment layer, leaving his original image layer, unaltered. Levels: This is a great tool as well. It takes a little practice to use properly, but it allows the user to adjust the intensity of the high (lights), low (darks) and midrange values of the image. Moving the left arrow toward the center of the spectrum intensifies the dark areas of the image. Tampering with the right arrow allows one to intensify the highlight areas of the photo. Care must be taken here to avoid the dreaded hot spot, which is a washed out, completely white area of a photograph. Sharpen: A tool with the unlikely title of ‘Unsharp Mask’ can be used to sharpen a slightly blurry image. Beware. Over-sharpening an image can produce artifacts or blotches on a photo. Hue & Saturation: By adjusting the hue and saturation settings one can selectively alter the color content of an image or simply intensify or tone down the intensity of a color. This is a powerful technique as Tom demonstrated by salvaging an unnaturally yellow photograph. Selection: Tom showed us how to use selection techniques to edit small portions of an image without applying changes to the entire image. Using a feather effect softens the borders of the selection and avoids an unnatural hard edge around the edited portion. Tom finished off his demo by giving us a pictorial tour of his boat, a 35 foot sailboat, called “TomFoolery”. Tom can be seen sailing her on Seneca Lake when the weather permits. Formula 1 Racing Next, we turned our attention from nautical visions to another part of Watkins Glen history – the passion for road racing. Tom offered to demo a game brought to us by British software developer, Feral Interactive http://www.feral.co.uk, called Formula 1 Championship. Unfortunately, the demonstration was fraught with difficulty and our limited success left us somewhat underwhelmed. We’ll attempt to work the bugs out for a future demonstration. We finished out the night with some discussion of Mac-related April Fools pranks and friendly chatter. A round of thank you’s goes out to Bob, Marianne and Watkins Glen Elementary, for hosting last month’s meeting; to Tom for his great demo and conversation; and to Kathy for all her hard work as Apple Ambassador to the group. Keep watching our website at http://homepage.mac.com/finmug, for updates, tips and meeting times. Hope to see you at our April meeting. Hope to see you at the next meeting. Keith Cooper Finger Lakes Macintosh User Group