Photo How To

Remember last July 4 while watching the Independence Day festivities, and you thought to yourself, "I wish I had taken time to figure out how to photograph fireworks because I really could make some great images tonight?" That turns out to be a common refrain, so we're go to help you prepare for next week in advance.

You don’t need three magic wishes to make your Mac or PC more digital photography-friendly. Here are five ways anyone can upgrade their computer to improve the speed and efficiency of Photoshop, expand storage space for all those Raw image files, add room for unlimited back-ups of your photo archive and make the whole shebang more secure—without touching a screwdriver.

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than smart. For me, luck means getting a decent picture even though I use precisely the wrong settings, or when I use exactly the wrong equipment for the situation. Yep, I admit that I benefit from luck a lot. 

Let’s say you open an image on the computer, the focus is perfect, you nailed the exposure, and composition is fine. But wait: the colors look awful. So you trash it, right? Not so fast.

Distortion is often a challenge with outdoor photos, like landscape images with tall trees, or city scenes with soaring buildings and other vertical lines. Fortunately, these distractions are very easy to fix during the editing process, as you’ll see in the quick tutorial below.

It’s not impossible to capture compelling landscape photos on flat, foggy days, but more often these conditions result in boring, uninspiring images. If that’s what you get on your next outing in the field, we encourage you not to trash the photos with the intent on returning on a better day.

Let’s face it: We all make exposure mistakes on occasion that prevent a good shot from being a great one. Fortunately, there are a few simple shooting and editing tips that will help you get the best out of your images.