There is art in nature, and there is nature in art. Making successful photos of art/nature requires being there completely, with your psyche and camera.

All the images in this tutorial are full frame; no cropping was done. Photos were taken with Casio and Fuji digital still consumer cameras in AUTO mode.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 6′s QUICK FIX adjustments were used, as indicated below every photo. Versions 3, 4, and 5 of Photoshop Elements also have Quick Fix available, but version 6 is more robust and responsive. iPhoto’s ADJUST editing panel is comparable, in versions 4, 5, 6, and 7, but Adobe’s Quick Fix in Elements 6 is the very best.

This is an “after-only” tutorial. I’ll explain what settings I used to improve the original pictures into what you see here. The goal is to inspire you to make a lot from a little, with a few minutes of intense digital image editing using affordable software containing powerful, simple slider tools.

* * * * *

1 – RUSHIN’ RIVER

We stopped at Yosemite National Park on our way from Arizona to San Francisco. Snow melt from higher elevations cascaded down to roaring torrents on the valley floor. The original photo was in color, so I moved the SATURATION slider all the way to the left to convert the photo to black and white. Then I LIGHTENED SHADOWS 20 percent, boosted MIDTONE CONTRAST 10 percent, and moved TEMPERATURE to the right 5 percent.

This location in the forest was very dark. I needed to preserve that feeling, and give the black and white final photo enough dynamic range of light to represent the experience I had standing above the boulders and spray.

* * * * *

2 – HIGH ON SKY

Five percent each plus of LIGHTEN SHADOWS and MIDTONE CONTRAST added emphasis and energy to the clouds and waves at Baker Beach. We had glorious weather during the first few days in San Francisco, but then the famous fog rolled in. Mid-summer twilight in central California lingers into the evening, when this image was made.

* * * * *

3 – TIDAL MOUND

Adding 25 percent SMART FIX plus 10 percent MIDTONE CONTRAST gave life to these undersea forms exposed during a rare summer low tide. The hour was very early, the weather was lousy, and all my other images were horrible. Walking beyond China Beach where the Pacific Ocean normally resides is always an amazing hour.

* * * * *

4 – DANCING REFLECTIONS

Sunny, windy Chrissy Field Beach is two miles east of foggy Baker Beach. A small sand spit is suitable for hopping and dodging shallow incoming waves. When the light is right, reflections are plentiful. Take a bunch of photos, hoping for a winner, or time your snap precisely to catch your subjects in blissful positions. The original image was good enough that only a tiny 5 percent plus of MIDTONE CONTRAST added sparkle to the highlights.

* * * * *

5 – MYSTERIOUS PYRAMID

Back at Baker Beach on a rare sunny afternoon, revelers wondered who made the amazing sand pyramid. Have you ever tried to build one? Good luck! This photo is our transition from the aquatic/nature theme to our art theme.

Great original lighting enablers the image to be posted here without any tweaks, which is atypical. The sunshine was so bright that I didn’t realize until days afterward how well the tall piece of wood carries the viewer’s eye from mid-photo through the Golden Gate Bridge to the very top of the frame. Pure dumb luck, infused with fifty years of photographic experience.

* * * * *

6 – FOUND SCULPTURE, FULL OF BEANS

Not to be outdone by tidal anemone mounds or pyramids of sand, the afternoon kitchen shift at a neighborhood restaurant piled a thousand beans on the rear table, destined for the thousand degree wok. Our lunch waiter looked at this spontaneous sculpture without passion, as he attacked his three course meal reward. A 50 percent SMART FIX improved color balance.

* * * * *

7 – WOW!

A very different restaurant graces the Palm Court of the Palace Hotel on Market Street in downtown San Francisco. Afternoon tea for two will set you back over a hundred dollars. I wonder if the food is as good as the setting, because the entrance is as far as I ventured.

The color balance was a little peculiar, so in addition to 75 percent SMART FIX I added 25 percent each to LIGHTEN SHADOWS and DARKEN HIGHLIGHTS. That did the trick, without requiring any adjustments from the three color sliders in Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.

* * * * *

8 – WEIRD STAIRCASE

The Fine Arts de Young Museum hosts special exhibitions in the lower level gallery. Heavy overcast lighting offered a reflective glass wall instead of a view of the artsy atrium. One quick snap was all I could grab of Mr. X in descent. At first I wanted to realign and straighten the frame, but I decided the photo has more energy being tilted.

All of the lighting adjustments wrecked the mood of the original image, so I left it alone. Viewers can form their own opinions of the subject, composition, and motives of the photographer.

You can’t see it in this reduction, but in the original 36 x 48 inch 72 resolution photo there are a lot of intriguing details that would have been appropriate for the 1966 movie “Blowup.” Rent it if you’ve never seen it, or again if you have seen it.

* * * * *

9 – COLORFUL GLASS CEILING

Glass master Dale Chihuly has a retrospective exhibit in that de Young Museum lower gallery. One room’s display is overhead, lit from above, with countless glass creations resting on a clear interior roof. This image is a small segment from the overwhelming experience.

I boosted SATURATION by 25 percent, and MIDTONE CONTRAST by 10 percent. I could play with this photo for a week and cook up infinite variations, from sublime to bizarre.

* * * * *

10 – ART BEHIND BARS

Across town at Fine Arts Legion of Honor Museum, deep in the fog belt, a massive Dale Chihuly outdoor installation awaits the art-seeking crowds. Judicious cropping might improve this photo, but I’m leaving the composition alone for the tutorial.

Boosting LIGHTEN SHADOWS by 25 percent was as much as I could stand. Anything else altered the balance between gloom, visual tension, and colorful expression.

* * * * *

BONUS - “Please Do Not Lean Against the Sneeze Guard”

AUTO SMART FIX, boost MIDTONE CONTRAST by 25 percent, and pass the mustard.

* * * * *

LINKS
Previous Ten Point Tutorials
Low Tide Photo Essay
Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac, including free trial>
San Francisco Fine Arts Museums
San Francisco Area beaches and natural amenities
Dale Chihuly

email – MyMac Magazine – Twitter – Advertise – Reviews Archive – Podcast

eWallet for iPhone
Company: Ilium Software
Price: $9.95
http://www.iliumsoft.com

Call it iPhone irony. Why is it that a program as powerful and versatile as this – which provides the ultimate in convenience for securely storing and accessing passwords, credit card numbers, PINs, memberships, bank account info, Web logins, and lots more-offers only the most inconvenient method of inputting all that data?

As I put eWallet through its paces, I found myself increasingly impressed with the sophistication of this information storage program, while becoming increasingly frustrated with having to input every bit of info using the iPhone’s keyboard. The developers at Ilium say desktop syncing is coming, so for now I’ll try to focus on those things that eWallet does well, which are many.

Though new to the iPhone, eWallet is by no means a new program-it’s existed on the Palm and Windows Mobile platforms for over 10 years, so the iPhone version clearly benefits from its extensive pedigree.The program works by storing cards containing your personal info in a virtual “wallet,” and you can create multiple wallets with multiple categories and cards in each.

What I was most impressed with were all the presets that are available right from the get-go-instead of just offering a basic data entry form with space for a name, password and description, eWallet presents you with customized icons and templates for both cards and categories that not only assist you with visual cues to organize your info, but help with the data entry and display for each type of card. The cards themselves look like actual cards with rounded corners and shiny faces that sit on a black reflective shelf, giving the app a very Mac-like appearance.

Here’s the American Express card I created for myself. It almost looks like the real thing except for the way the numbers were blurred to protect the innocent, and I could customize it even further if my thumbs weren’t already aching from all the data input.

Example: If you elect to create a credit card entry, let’s say for your VISA card, you can choose not only to use a VISA icon for your card, but also to choose the card type of VISA. This presents you with only those fields that make sense for entering your credit card information. If on the other hand you choose to create a card for your voicemail retrieval info, that card is pre-configured with fields for you to enter not just the voicemail number and PIN code, but also the touchpad commands for skipping, deleting and fast-forwarding your messages. There’s a passport card type pre-configured to handle all the essential data that exists on a typical passport, and a voter registration card that does the same.

And if all that’s not enough for you, each card allows for up to 10 additional data fields, along with a Notes field, beyond what’s presented in the card template, so you can customize to your heart’s content. You can add any photo from the iPhone’s photo library to a card, and you can even adjust the appearance of the card in terms of its glossiness, the rounded corner shape and more, if you’re so inclined.

Of course, all that helpful functionality and all those flashy icons won’t feed the Admiral’s cat if the data isn’t well-protected. As I entered more and more of my personal info, including numerous Web site logins, my bank accounts and my ATM card number and PIN, I couldn’t help but feel a tad queasy thinking how much of my digital life was now residing on an iPhone that seems so vulnerable to loss or theft.

Not to worry, though, eWallet’s got a lock on the situation-a 256-bit AES encryption lock, to be precise, considered sufficient to protect classified U.S. Government information up to the TOP SECRET tier (for more info on AES encryption, see the Wikipedia entry). So your PIN code and bank account numbers can now enjoy the same level of protection as classified CIA torture memos; not too shabby for a program that costs less than ten bucks.

Not so fast, I hear you saying. Suppose someone gets ahold of my iPhone while my “wallet” is still unlocked? What good does all that 265-bit gobbledygook do for me then, huh? Well, that’s where eWallet’s Security Settings come into play. From here you can enable the “Lock When Inactive” option and choose how much time elapses before the application auto-locks itself, from one minute up to one hour. You can also set it to limit the number of password attempts a user is allowed to make before eWallet will lock itself down and permit no further attempts at password entry.

The flexible Security Settings let you decide how quickly eWallet will lock itself up when inactive, and also how many times you-or a prospective data thief-can enter the wrong password before he or she is forced to try again at a later time. Shown here are the settings I eventually decided upon; your paranoia may vary.

A final point regarding the location of the data stored via eWallet: For better or worse (and I vote “better”), eWallet stores your data directly on your iPhone as opposed to an online database, as is the case with some other password and personal info managers. I can see online storage as advantageous if you need to access your data via multiple devices, but given that I don’t know where I might happen to be at any given moment or what kind of signal I’m likely to have there, I’d much prefer my data resident on the iPhone, thank you.

Overall I’m very impressed with the functionality and the polish of this program. In answer to my complaints about the lack of an alternate means of data entry, the folks at Ilium are promising a desktop version of eWallet by the fall of this year that will sync via iTunes. So for those of you who, like me, aren’t looking forward to thumb-typing in years of personal info, sit tight and keep checking the eWallet product page for further announcements.

In the meantime, I’ve got no choice but to give eWallet a hearty-what else?-“thumbs up.”

MyMac.com Rating: 4 out of 5

email – MyMac Magazine – Twitter – Advertise – Reviews Archive – Podcast

Downlod the show here, or subscribe via iTunes

Harry McCracken, founder of Technologizer.com and former Editor-in-Chief of PC World joins the podcast this week for a lively and fun interview. Harry is one of the most respected tech writers on the web today, and has been writing about technology for a decade and a half. Other topics include Mac clone maker Psystar, cracks in iPhones, and much more.

This weeks podcast is sponsored by Other World Computing. Check out the eyetv hybrid at OWC here.

Send us your comments here

Links from the show:
Technologizer.com
Squared 5
Keywack