Introduction

The future of photography is in your hands, and it’s becoming all digital! Not since the 19th century, when photographers had to be artisan, craftsperson, artist, chemist, and public relations expert rolled into one, has so much of the photographic process been entirely in the control of the person taking the picture. Now you can compose and view the exact picture you’re going to take by using your camera’s full liquid crystal display (LCD) screen. Review the picture an instant after pressing the shutter. If your computer is nearby, you can upload it seconds later, view a super-large version on your display, crop it, enhance it, and then make your own sparkling full color print — all within minutes! When you go digital, you never need to buy film or wait while your photos are processed in a lab. You decide which images to print and how large to make them. You can display your digital photographic work framed on your wall or displayed proudly over your fireplace. You can make wallet-size photos, send copies to friends in e-mail, or create an online gallery that can be viewed by relatives and colleagues over the Web. And if alchemy is in your blood, you can transform the simplest picture into a digital masterpiece by using an image editor. Correct your photos, delete your ex-brother-in-law from a family portrait, or transplant the Eiffel Tower to the seashore. Digital photography gives you the power to take pictures on a whim or to create careful professional-quality work that others might be willing to pay for. The choices are all yours, and digital photography puts all the power in your hands. All you need is a little information about how to choose and use your tools and how to put them to work. That’s what you’ll find within the pages of this thick, comprehensive, all-in-one guidebook. The most exciting aspect of digital photography is how rapidly the technology is changing to bring you new capabilities and features that you can use to improve your pictures. Today, digital cameras with 4-megapixel (mp) or less resolution are difficult to find except in photo-capable cell phones — and some cell phones offer 10-megapixel or more resolution! Even the leanest digital camera you’re likely to find in stores will have 5–6 megapixels of resolution. I’ve tested models in this range that cost less than $150! You’ll find 7-megapixel and 9-megapixel cameras for $500 or so, and even 10 megapixel models are widely available for quite a bit less than $1,000. Digital single-lens reflex cameras (dSLRs) with interchangeable lenses are available from companies like Nikon, Canon, Olympus, and Sony if you’re willing to pay top dollar. Adobe Photoshop has bumped up the image editing ante with lots of new capabilities of interest to digital photographers, and even inexpensive applications like Adobe Photoshop Elements have more features than you could find in the most powerful image editor four or five years ago. Your new hardware and software tools make working with digital images easier while giving you important new capabilities.