Newsletter

Corel Corporation has kicked off the "Summer of Painter" with two announcements
regarding Corel Painter IX. The Corel Painter IX 9.1 update is now available as
a free download for all Painter IX customers. The update provides customers with
new features and enhancements including:



Dual Monitor Support for Windows Customers running Windows 2000 and Windows XP
can now also experience the same level of dual monitor support enjoyed by Mac
OS X customers. Palettes, toolbars, and the toolbox can now be moved outside the
application window and dialog boxes appear on the same monitor as the active canvas.




New Art Pen Brushes Following the introduction of the Corel Painter IX Art Pen
Brush Pack this spring, Corel has introduced five additional brushes to take advantage
of the powerful realism and control of the Wacom 6D Art Pen. Customers who download
the 9.1 update will receive 10 brushes in total, which include the five brushes
previously introduced in the Art Pen Brush Pack.



Enhanced Dab Type Support for 'Rotation' Expression In addition to adding new
brushes to take advantage of the Wacom 6D Art Pen, Corel Painter IX 9.1 offers
rotation expression with the following Dab types: Circular, Captured Dab, Artists'
Oils, Camel Hair, Flat, Liquid Ink Camel Hair, Liquid Ink Flat, Watercolor Camel
Hair, Watercolor Flat, Palette Knife, Liquid Ink Palette Knife, and Watercolor
Palette Knife.



Enhanced Support for Mac OS X Tiger Corel Painter IX 9.1 now provides even better
overall performance when running on Tiger. This enhancement complements the Corel
Painter IX Spotlight plugin introduced earlier this spring that enables customers
to take full advantage of Tiger's advanced searching capabilities with their Painter
files.



To download the Corel Painter IX 9.1 update and to access a full list of included
enhancements, please visit www.corel.com/painterix/91update.



Corel has also introduced the Corel Painter Open Upgrade Program for customers
in North America and the United Kingdom. Until August 31, 2005, the Corel Painter
IX upgrade policy has been broadened to include any graphics or imaging software
package from the following companies: Adobe, Macromedia, ACD Systems, Corel (including
Corel Painter Classic, Painter Essentials, and any previous version of Painter),
Microsoft, and Apple. For a limited time, Corel Painter IX is available through
Corel and participating resellers at the upgrade suggested retail price of $229
a savings of $200 off the full suggested retail price of $429. Resellers may sell
for less. For more details, please visit www.corel.com/painter/openupgrade.
...

As the sun was setting, I continued to photograph the historic Neue Synagogue in the eastern sector of Berlin, making sure to include the sightseeing boat on the river. I set my framing and exposure to capture some detail in the foreground but in the process I lost any hint of the colorful tapestry I’d hoped to capture in the sky. I took another exposure, this time underexposing by 1 stop. There was more of a hint of sunset, but still not as much as I’d wanted and I’d lost the boat, which had moved on. Worse yet, the foreground was now muddy, practically entirely devoid of detail.

Crop & Frame For Impact

Find The Shot Within The Shot

by Jack Neubart

The moment you use the camera’s viewfinder to look at a subject, you are framing that subject. In essence, you are isolating that subject from the larger world surrounding it. And you are bringing the viewer into the scene you’ve defined...

When shooting portraits, just setting the color balance on Automatic or one of the Temperature “modes” is not the most efficient way of capturing natural skins tones. Instead, take a manual white balance reading of your subject in the environment and then make adjustments from there.

With all of the portraits I shoot, there are a few constants: low ISO (200–400), mid range f/stop for more lens clarity (f/5.6–f/9), telephoto lens for narrow depth of field (70–120mm) and the sharpest part of the image being the subjects’s eyes. The last “given” when I shoot is to always capture the image in Raw—knowing I can easily manipulate it in editing if needed.

High scene contrast always creates difficulties for photographers, whether
shooting film or digital. The difficulty stems from the difference between the
ways the film or sensor "sees" and how the human eye sees. Our eyes
are adaptive, and can resolve large variations in brightness by the way it scans
throughout the scene and the amazing reflex of automatically restricting and
dilating the pupil to adjust to bright and dark areas before us. While light
metering systems in cameras are impressive in the way they can read light, the
fact remains that at the moment of exposure the lens on a camera records a scene
at one fixed aperture, or opening. In most situations this is no problem, as
the meter averages light values and the bright and dark areas are distributed
through the recording medium properly. But high contrast presents a problem.

A better solution is to use the --1 contrast setting. This allows for smoother tonal gradations and addresses the need to control the divergent light values in this backlit scene. All Photos © George Schaub, All Rights Reserved

...

On The Cover
In this issue we present lab and field tests on a variety of digital cameras, including the Nikon D800, Pentax K-01, Sony A57 SLT, Olympus OM-D, and Canon Rebel T4i. We also have studio tests of two light modifiers, plus a fascinating look at some user collectible panoramic cameras. And, be sure to read this month’s Business Trends feature on marketing your images!