1. Course on
In Embassy of Finland, Nairobi, June 2012 Seppo Toikka

2. This course consists of:
7)Basic ideas and concepts in photography
8)Digital photography technique
9)Composition and subjects in photography
10)Digital editing, workflow examples
11)Other topics requested by you

3. Digital editing
Happens in two places…
In the camera, when you take a photo
On your computer, using an editing
software

4. What does the camera do?
Camera processes the image that
is saved to the memory card
Camera adjusts image contrast,
saturation, sharpness, white balance,
noise reduction

5. Image size, type & quality
JPEG, TIFF, RAW
Image size: small, medium, large
Quality: low, medium, high

6. What settings should I use?
Use JPG, unless you specifically
know you want RAW
Medium size is enough, unless you want
to do digital cropping or huge prints
Use highest quality, unless file size is
a problem and you won’t print the photos

7. From camera to computer
Memory card reader is your best friend
Remember backups!
Keep things organized

8. Example workflow
Copy images from camera to computer
hard drive and an external drive
Folder year -> month -> date+place
Go through the images in a viewing/
editing software – flag good photos,
delete failed fotos, ignore the rest

9. Example workflow (cont.)
Delete all but flagged photos from
computer hard drive
Back up computer hard drive
Delete images from camera memory card

10. Digital editing
Why edit photos?
Simple answer…
Photos will look better!

11. Contrast & Saturation
Contrast emphasizes bright and
dark areas in the photo that are close
to each other
Saturation increases color depth,
Makes colors more vivid

12. Normal +33% contrast +33% saturation +33% contrast &
+33% saturation

13. More digital editing
Exposure, Highlights and shadows
White balance (RAW > JPEG)
Image resizing, cropping

14. What programs to use?
Windows image viewer
Picasa (recommended), Photoscape,
iPhoto (Mac)
Avoid camera manufacturer software!

15. How to share?
Picasa web (Google), Dropbox
Resize & change pixel density (DPI) –
image height 1080px, 72DPI
If you want to print photos/book, use
software to ensure best quality (colors)

16. Cropping
A picture within a picture
Second chance to get a good
composition!
Utility depends on the size of the
original photo and the intended use
of the cropped image

19. Collections and photosets
Different photosets for different use
Photosets tell a story
What story do you want to tell?
You’re the artist – use your artistic freedom

20. Photosets and consistency
With every bad photo, the viewer
loses interest
Put the best photos to the beginning
and to the end
Remember that the viewer does not
have the same emotional attachment
to the situation where you took that photo

21. OK. It’s Q&A time.

22. Forget the rest, just remenber this:
Photography is all about light,
respect the light
Before pressing the shutter button,
stop and think what you are doing
After copying the photos to your
computer, look them through –
think what was good and whan can be
improved. That is the only way to learn!

23. Online
photocoursenairobi.wikispaces.com
Slides, example photos with
explanations, glossary
seppo.i.toikka@gmail.com

24. Thanks for
participation!