Mastercolor Labs Blog

The Perfect Christmas Gift During a Recession

All of us have been affected by the downturn in the economy over the past 18 months. Now the holidays are looming large and we look at our Christmas gift list and our wallets and struggle over what to do. Here’s the perfect solution: give pictures. Not just any pictures but meaningful photos. You can never go wrong by giving someone a photo of someone or somewhere they love. There are many suggestions of how to present the perfect gift for little money:

• Take a few of the digital images from last summer’s vacation that have been on your computer for months and make a collage for your husband’s office.
• Take one of your favorite photos from childhood, reproduce it and give it to a sibling or childhood friend.
• Get photos of your children growing up and put them into a special photo album for the grandparents.
• Take a favorite photo and put it on canvas.
• Scan old family slides and photos and give a CD of all the images to your siblings.
• Take a favorite photo of yourself and give it to someone you love.
• Find an old photo of your great grandparents, scan and print it for your family.
• Take that really cute picture of you and your best friend, frame it and write her a note to tell her how much she means to you.
• New empty nester? Take the photos of your child growing up and give them a CD of all those photos for them to take with them into their new life.

The ideas are only limited by your creativity.
This is the year to give a perfect, meaningful and personal gift that will not break the bank.
Give us a call and let us help you create the star gift of the season.

R. Clark

It is the single most common mistake we see when new photo editors start playing with their images.  Let me start by saying " I don't blame them", whenever you bump up the contrast is makes your image burst of the monitor.  The adjustments to your new file will also "burst" off the page, literally.  One of the biggest short comings in this digital photo world we live in is that your printed matter will never match your monitor perfectly.  As printers we can get very close but nothing will every have the brilliance in illuminated colors like you see in your monitor, and transparencies are the next closest thing.  However, most of us do not have large light boxes on the walls of our home to display our prints.  Let's get back to the problem at hand:  Adjusting your contrast will really brighten your picture on the screens and give your image that pop and look as to be razor sharp, but what it really has done is made the lighter areas lighter, and the darker areas darker, and the mid tones are forced to go one direction or the other.  The final result with all of this is typically "hot spots" or areas that look pure white, and what has really happened is that when you turned up the contrast you have taken what little digital information there was in the lighter areas and thrown it away, "POOF" they are gone, and once you have saved the file this way, there is no bringing them back, even if you try decreasing the contrast after you have received your unsatisfactory prints. If you have Photo Elements or Photoshop there is a video here showing me editing the same images listed below: http://www.mastercolorcanvas.com/helpfulvideos.html It is really very simple to do this adjustment:

1. Open your original file in Photoshop
2. Go to "Image" on your tool bar and scroll to "Adjustments"
3. Select "Levels" and the histogram of your color balance will appear

[gallery link="file" columns="2" orderby="ID"]

Once your "Levels" control panel is open it is simple to make the adjustment that will give your image that extra snap, but yet maintain the "hot" or heavily lit areas of the photograph.  Notice your Histogram looks like a "wave".  Start by simply moving the triangle under the right side of the histogram to the left so that it is just inside the "wave", next do the same with the left side triangle, moving it to the right so it is just inside the wave.  The left side of the histogram represents the dark tones of the image and the right side the lighter tones.  After you have done the extremes, move the triangle in the middle to adjust the mid tones.  You can play with moving each and then clicking the "preview" square in the bottom right corner.

The histogram above is not a perfect model, the perfect histogram will resemble  more of a "bell curve", but the sample above does show that even in a really dark picture you can bring back the detail in most areas that were dark, but yet not "blowing" out the white areas.

If you use this method of correction, I know you will be happier with the results!

Recently, I have started telling myself that I’m not old; thinking if I say it enough I will begin to believe it. So far, it hasn’t worked. Suddenly, for me, old age is not something over the hill anymore, it’s just around the corner and I’m wanting to head in the other direction. I don’t want to become my mother. I don’t want to have blue hair. I don’t want to drive slow and need to sit in a car seat to see over the steering wheel. Yet, things keep happening to me that make me feel as though it’s time to move to Florida and start swilling Metimucil. Just the other day, I was looking at all these cute clothes and realized that none of them would look cute on me. Not anymore, anyway. They are designed for women who don’t have wrinkly knees and whose stomach is actually smaller than their hips. That made me feel old. Then last night, my dear friend Katy and I were at a restaurant drinking a glass of wine lamenting that—yes, indeed, we were there for the early bird special. But such a deal—salad, entrée, dessert and a glass of wine for $20! Even with the cost savings, it was hard to forget the fact that we were eating dinner about the time we used to pick our kids up after school. I could feel my roots showing before we ordered dessert. Then, there’s the picture from last weekend’s football game. My sweet Sarah bought a new digital camera: one of those fabulous little Canon Powershots.
“Mom, let’s take a profile picture together.”
“OK,” I said, “I’m ready.”
Shutter snapped. Then a quick look at the back of the camera. Hilarious laughter ensued. “Mom. What are you doing in the picture?”

“I thought you wanted a profile picture,” I said.
“Mom. I meant a profile picture. You know for Facebook.”
Enough said. I am no longer young and cool enough to realize the current cultural definition of a profile picture.
I’m changing my screen name to “Whistler’s Mother.”

R Clark

"Charles, I am thinking of getting a new digital camera."  I hear this a lot from friends.  Other times  I have the chance to print an order that they have sent to us and I tell them " You need to get a new digital camera".  I guess since I am on the processing side of the photo industry some of my closest friends think I am a Camera expert, well the Camera experts are gone.  You can thank everyone's thrifty nickel for that.  You now are pretty much stuck buying it from a part time clerk at Walmart, or Costco, or trusting what you read from the discount houses online.  What I do know now is that all the cameras have improved.  A few years ago you could have bought a lemon, but today... I say go with what's in you budget.

Let's talk about "point and shoot cameras", because SLR's are out of my league and my advice there will always  be "go with Nikons " cause down the road you will be buying lenses and I like Nikon Lenses the most. So what to look for in a point and shoot?

• SIZE If it is not easy to carry with you, chances are you won't.  While at the store slip it in your front pocket (tell the cashier first to avoid an embarrassing situation), and notice I said front pocket, cause if you get accustomed to putting it in your back pocket, I promise you will have a broken LCD screen soon.  Don't go too small ("that's what she said") because larger hands have been known for taking pictures of the photographers fingers.
• Mega Pixels.  How many? MORE !MORE !MORE!  Chances are that anyone reading this Blog (if anyone does) will never use the maximum resolution that a 10 or 12 mega pixel camera gives them.  Most point and shoot camera are used to take birthday photos, or Christmas Morning smiles, the kids first swim, the new puppy,.... you get the idea.  We are not talking Ansel Adams work.  The maximum resolution most will ever need from their point and shoot is for a 4x6 photograph, and since a 4x6 photograph is only around SIX uncompressed megs we are talking complete overkill.  A Five mega pixel compressed file straight from my camera will open n Photoshop at 25 megs (or close), so really all we need is a file that is 1/5 this resolution to give a nice looking print.  File size is very confusing and you can look at one of our earlier Blogs to read more about it, but the fact of the matter is you a bogging down your computer with files that you will likely never need maximum resolution.  If they still made 3.2 cameras I would suggest those , but I think the best camera for a point and shoot is a 5 mega pixel, but since they are all so cheap now, get the 10 mega pixel and lower the setting to medium unless you plan on cropping out large portions or the image.
• Battery Make sure your camera comes with a rechargeable battery and charger.  You will go broke feeding it "AA" batteries, especially with the larger LCD screen on today's cameras.
• Memory Make sure your camera uses an SD card.  There is a reason that most brands and models have switched.  Go with what they are making the most of, don't buy into technology advantages other cards promise.  How many of you are still renting videos on a BETAmax?  SD cards are for sale everywhere, if you lose your card on a trip, walk to the nearest drugstore or hotel gift shop, they also tend to have the best special.
• Video Make sure your new camera has video.  Almost of the new models do, and most support avi and mpg files (the standard), but if you can get one with the "YouTube ready" feature I would, it's great embarrassing friends without having to go to a lot of trouble to do it.

And after you take all these wonderful pictures, please send them to Mastercolor for processing.

C Wright