Photoshop cs5 cho nhiếp ảnh gia part 13 pot

instead of using your mouse to haphazardly click images that you want to view in more detail, we recommend taking a close look at all of the images in the folder.. Sometimes it’s helpful

Tr y It! Practice working with stacks on a folder of your own images Create stacks, rearrange the files in them to change the one that appears on top, drag images in and out of the stack, and so on We think you’ll like this feature once you get comfortable with it

Sorting and Editing

getting your digital images onto your computer and creating a good way to view

them is certainly a start But as you’ve probably noticed, images seem to accumulate

quickly, and keeping them organized can be a bit of a chore, especially if you have a

backlog of images stored in many folders So the first step is to figure out what you

have, which images are worth keeping, and which should be deleted Then you can

select the images you’d like to start optimizing

A good approach is to plan to do at least two passes through your images First reject the images that are obviously poor on the first pass and mark those that you’re

excited about with a star rating Then take a second look at the rejects before deleting

them That way you won’t accidentally delete any files you want to keep, and you can

be more aggressive about rejecting images since you know you can opt to recover a file

if necessary next you may opt to stack the images and go through them a second or

third time, assigning more careful ratings as well as labels We’ll go into more detail

about this process later in this section

if you haven’t already navigated to the folder containing your images, do so using the Folders panel it’s a directory of everything on your computer if you will be

returning to this folder frequently, you may want to drag the folder to the Favorites

panel That way, you can find it quickly without needing to look through the entire

directory To place it on the Favorites panel, right-click/Control-click the folder, and

choose Add to Favorites, as shown in Figure 2.29 if both the Favorites panel and

Folders panel are visible, you can simply drag the folder to the area under the words

Drag Favorites Here on the Favorites panel Then click the folder in Favorites to view

the contents

Figure 2.29 Placing frequently

accessed folders in the Favorites panel makes them easier to find

instead of using your mouse to haphazardly click images that you want to view

in more detail, we recommend taking a close look at all of the images in the folder

Click the first image on the list (scroll to the top of the list if necessary), and then use

the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the images As

This gives you a much better idea of the overall composition, exposure accuracy, and image quality so you can decide whether you should delete or keep the image You can also start to get a better idea of which images deserve more attention as you sort through them

Zooming and Comparing Images

As you go through your images, you need to know whether they are critically sharp

it’s easy to tell when things are grossly out of focus, but judging critical sharpness can

be challenging, especially on smaller laptop monitors The Loupe tool enables you to quickly check sharpness, as shown in Figure 2.30 To access it, simply click the image preview or Ctrl+click/F+click if you have checked the option in Preferences to require

a modifier key, and then drag the loupe wherever you’d like The pointed corner of the tool points at the area it will magnify Alternatively, click anywhere on the image that you’d like to view at 100% magnification

Figure 2.30 Being able to view multiple images simultaneously with a loupe to check for critical sharpness makes it easier to decide

which image is the best

By default, the Loupe tool is set to 100% To adjust the magnification, up to 800%, press the + and – keys The magnification percentage is visible by the filename beneath the image preview To remove the loupe, click the X on the outer-rim corner

of the magnifier

Sometimes it’s helpful to be able to look at two or more similar images simul-taneously to decide which one is the best (Figure 2.30).To see more than one image

in the Preview panel, Ctrl+click/F+click the thumbnails in the Content panel The previews will automatically resize and move to accommodate as many images as you want to compare To remove an image from the Preview panel, Ctrl-click/F-click it in

the Content panel You can create a loupe for each image that’s currently in the Pre-view panel, as shown in Figure 2.30

Rating Images

Bridge includes a rating capability that allows you to assign a value of one to five stars

or “reject” to your images, much like you might rate a movie in so doing, you can quickly go through your images and rate them so that when you’ve finished with the sorting and editing process, you’ll know exactly which images are your favorites and which ones need to be deleted

As you sort through your images, begin by rejecting those you definitely don’t want to keep To apply a reject rating, press Alt+delete/option+delete The image will

remain in the folder but will be marked with Reject in red You could opt to delete each

throwaway image instead, but then there is no safeguard if you accidentally reject/delete one that you later decide you should have kept We strongly believe it’s better to first mark the throwaways with a reject rating

You’ll also want to start thinking about which images are your favorites, since those are the ones you’ll want to spend the most time optimizing To assign a rank, simply press a number from 1 through 5 to assign a star rating

Note: You must change the Label preference in Bridge preferences to enable you to assign labels and ratings without pressing the Ctrl/F key Otherwise, the keyboard shortcut for applying ratings is Ctrl/F plus a number key from 1 through 5 We have found no advantage to using the additional key-stroke; it’s much faster to do the rating by simply pressing a number key

if you prefer to not use the keyboard shortcuts to apply ratings, select an image (or images), and move your mouse over the row of five dots below the thumbnail The dots represent the possible star ratings, so click the first dot to rate it as one star, the second dot to rate it as two stars, and so on (these dots are visible only if the image

is selected, but the star rating you’ve applied to an image will display regardless of whether it is selected) if you have multiple images selected when you click, the rating will be updated to the same value for all the selected images You can remove a rat-ing by clickrat-ing to the left of the row of dots The star-ratrat-ing display replaces the dots below the image, so you can see at a glance what you rated a given image (see Fig-ure 2.31)

Figure 2.31 When you apply a rating to

an image, that rating is reflected with stars displayed below the image thumbnail

This gives you a much better idea of the overall composition, exposure accuracy, and

image quality so you can decide whether you should delete or keep the image You

can also start to get a better idea of which images deserve more attention as you sort

through them

Zooming and Comparing Images

As you go through your images, you need to know whether they are critically sharp

it’s easy to tell when things are grossly out of focus, but judging critical sharpness can

be challenging, especially on smaller laptop monitors The Loupe tool enables you to

quickly check sharpness, as shown in Figure 2.30 To access it, simply click the image

preview or Ctrl+click/F+click if you have checked the option in Preferences to require

a modifier key, and then drag the loupe wherever you’d like The pointed corner of the

tool points at the area it will magnify Alternatively, click anywhere on the image that

you’d like to view at 100% magnification

Figure 2.30 Being able to view multiple images simultaneously with a loupe to check for critical sharpness makes it easier to decide

which image is the best

By default, the Loupe tool is set to 100% To adjust the magnification, up to

800%, press the + and – keys The magnification percentage is visible by the filename

beneath the image preview To remove the loupe, click the X on the outer-rim corner

of the magnifier

Sometimes it’s helpful to be able to look at two or more similar images

simul-taneously to decide which one is the best (Figure 2.30).To see more than one image

in the Preview panel, Ctrl+click/F+click the thumbnails in the Content panel The

previews will automatically resize and move to accommodate as many images as you

want to compare To remove an image from the Preview panel, Ctrl-click/F-click it in

Labeling Images

The labeling feature in Bridge allows you to take the rating system a step further

by assigning a color code to your images You do this by applying a colored label to images in a way very similar to ratings You can then filter the display to show only the images that are labeled or only those labeled with a specific color The available colors for labels are red, yellow, green, blue, and purple

To use these effectively, you’ll first want to come up with a system that identifies what the colors mean You might, for instance, use the labels to identify categoriza-tions of images For example, you might use a yellow label to mark images to use for a contest or competition, a green label to mark images to illustrate an article, and a blue label to designate images for a slide show it’s a good idea to document your system

so you won’t get confused later as you are reviewing images that have been previ-ously labeled or as you are trying to remember what color specific images should be labeled in a new group of images You could opt to add the information to Labels in Preferences as mentioned earlier in this chapter, but once you do so, you can’t change

it easily Changing the text associated with each color label can result in older labels changing to white if you view images that were labeled with the text set a different way Consistency is important to taking full advantage of this capability

To label an image, you simply select it (or several images) and press the num-bers 6 through 9; 6 for red, 7 for yellow, 8 for green, and 9 for blue (purple doesn’t have a shortcut key) Alternatively, you can choose Label and then the desired color from the menu You can turn off the label by pressing the number key a second time

or by selecting Label > no Label

When you label an image, a colored bar appears below the thumbnail (see Fig-ure 2.32) This allows you to see at a glance which images were marked for a particu-lar purpose, based on the system you’re using for color-coding with labels

Figure 2.32 When you apply a label

to an image, a colored bar appears below the thumbnail in Bridge

of course, just seeing a colored bar or a star rating below the thumbnail image doesn’t quite provide you with a powerful way to review your decisions about the images

By using the Filter panel, you can make even better use of the rating and labeling options

Using the Filter Panel

When you have assigned a rank and/or label to all the images in your current project, you can sort the images by a particular parameter such as ratings or labels by clicking

the Sort Manually icon You can also opt to display only a subset of

the images—in other words, to filter them from the Filter icon or from the Filter

panel

The Filter icon enables you to view only images that have a certain rating or label by clicking on the desired option To specify images that have a certain rating or

higher and a label, Ctrl+click/F+click on the additional option Toggle off a criterion

by clicking on it again

The Filter panel enables you to choose which images to display at any one time according to a larger variety of parameters in addition, Bridge shows how many images

in the folder match each parameter You can select just one parameter such as stars,

labels, or reject, or you can select multiple parameters if the parameters are within the

same category, such as ratings, then selecting more than one parameter is the

equiva-lent of saying, “Show all images with this rating or that rating.” When you choose an

additional parameter from a different category such as Labels, then you are instructing

Bridge to show only those images that meet the conditions checked in both categories;

for example, in Figure 2.33 they must have a rating of five stars and a yellow label if you

clear a label or rating for an image at this point, it will disappear from the current view if

it no longer meets the display criteria When you want to see all the images again, toggle

off all the check marks in the Filter panel

Figure 2.33 Use the Filter panel to

selectively display images meeting specific criteria

You may want to combine using the sort and filter options For example, you may choose to view images with three or more stars or those containing a label You

can then use the Sort Manually options to reorder the images according to a variety of

parameters, including file type, bit depth, rating, labels, and so on

in our workflow, after we have made the first pass through our images and rejected some of them, we filter the images to show only the rejects We then quickly

look through the images to make certain there are none we want to keep To delete the

images, we select them all (Ctrl+A/F+A) and then press delete A warning dialog will

appear asking whether to delete or reject the images Choose delete

Note: You may opt to check the box to prevent the warning dialog from appearing in the future since by rejecting the images first, you have introduced a safety step It’s a matter of personal prefer-ence to keep or eliminate this particular warning

Creating Collections

The idea behind collections is that you may want to view certain groupings of your images even though the files are housed in different folders To begin, click on the Collections panel if it’s not visible choose Window > Collections Panel Then click the icon name the collection, then click and drag one or more images into it To remove an image from a Collection, right-click/Control-click on the thumbnail in the Content panel and choose remove from Collection

By clicking the refine icon and choosing review, you can view all the images currently visible in the Content panel in a full-screen Preview-only mode if there are more than a few images, the images will appear in a carousel By clicking the arrow, you can delete images from view Click the icon to place the remaining images into a collection A dialog will appear in which you name the new collection

You can opt to have Bridge create collections for you based on certain param-eters that you specify as shown in Figure 2.34 To begin, click the new Smart Collec-tion icon in the new dialog box that appears, specify where Bridge should check for potential images You could choose a folder or a broader part of your computer

Then specify the criteria The first drop-down window says Filename by default, but

by clicking within it you can choose from among a huge number of options if you want to specify more than one parameter, click the + sign at the end of this line and then repeat the process until you have specified all the criteria next choose between

if Any Criteria Are Met and if All Criteria Are Met in the drop-down window To create the collection, click Save The Smart Collection will have a blue icon in the Collections panel To edit the criteria, click the edit Smart Collections icon in the lower left of the panel

Figure 2.34 Smart Collections help you

organize your images in groupings that are meaningful to you

Using Keywords

Applying keywords to your images is essential if you want to be able to easily find par-ticular images, or types of images, in the future Although it may feel like a nuisance, it’s important to apply keywords to your images early in your workflow it’s all too easy to procrastinate and figure you’ll do it later so that you can get on with the fun part of optimizing your images But if you skip adding the keywords, you’re likely to wind up with thousands of images stashed in various folders without an easy way to