Digital Cameras Specialty Digital Cameras

Digital photography is quite different than taking pictures with film. Unlike film cameras, digital photos are turned into pixels and stored digitally. The main problem that can arise with storing pictures in pixels is that these pixels can get "noisy" and make for very unpleasing images. Because of this problem, many digital cameras nowadays have filters created within the camera that will soften this noise and make the noise less pronounced.

If you are having to get rid of noise and edit it out in photo editing software then you'll probably have realized that certain situations create noise that is much harder to reduce or get rid of than others. Getting rid of noise from a night shot with a very high ISO can be very easy if the photo is of a bright building and the noise is in the dark sky. Because the sky is dark and mostly one color the noise can easily be stamped out. However, if there was noise over the bright building this would be very hard to get rid of.

When the digital cameras reduce the noise themselves the result can make for blurrier photos. Many people will try to get rid of this blur by sharpening the image. However, when sharpening the image the noise that was reduced from the camera will become much more obvious. That's why sharpening the image can make the image much nosier.

Fortunately, there is a rather simple way to sharpen photos without actually sharpening the noise that the picture has. The way we do this is through the color modes in a photo editing software, preferably Photo Shop. There are various color modes. For digital images the main mode used is RGB or red, green, and blue. For print the color modes used are CMYK. If you are going to print your image you should try sticking with CMYK. Another color mode that you can use is the LAB mode. The lab mode has three different aspects to it. The first aspect is the lighting. The second is the green and red parts of the photo. And the last aspect is the yellow and blue parts of the photo. This means that you can adjust any one of these without affecting the others. You can adjust the lighting without affecting the colors.

What you can do with this special mode is choose to make the light mode sharper and not make the color channels sharper. This will sharpen the noise of that specific node but the others won't be sharpened.

Of course, many special techniques for digital photos won't work if your photo is too noisy to start with. So the best thing to do is to take the best picture possible at the start.

Al Sanez has a great program that teaches you how to take better photos. He also teaches people how to sell pictures online.