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 ® ®
Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0:

Photographers’
Guide
David D. Busch
© 2005 by Thomson Course Technology PTR. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by
any information storage or retrieval system without written permission from Thomson Course Technology
PTR, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
The Muska & Lipman and Thomson Course Technology PTR logo and related trade dress are trademarks of
Thomson Course Technology PTR and may not be used without written permission.
SVP, Thomson Course Technology PTR: Andy Shafran
Publisher: Stacy L. Hiquet
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For Cathy
Acknowledgments
Once again thanks to Andy Shafran, who realizes that a book about working with color images
deserves nothing less than a full-color treatment, and who knows how to publish such a book at
a price that everyone can afford. It’s refreshing to work for a publisher who has actually written
best-selling books on imaging, too. Also, thanks to senior editor Kevin Harreld, for valuable
advice as the book progressed, as well as project editor, Jenny Davidson; technical editor
Michael D. Sullivan; book/cover designer, Mike Tanamachi; interior designer, Bill Hartman;
proofreader, Sara Gullion; and indexer, Kevin Broccoli.

Also thanks to my agent, Carole McClendon, who has the amazing ability to keep both
publishers and authors happy.
About the Author
David D. Busch has been demystifying arcane computer and imaging technology since the early
1980s. However, he had a successful career as a professional photographer for a decade before
he sat down at the keyboard of his first personal computer. Busch has worked as a newspaper
photographer, done commercial studio and portrait work, shot weddings, and roved the United
States and Europe as a photojournalist. His articles on photography and image editing have
appeared in magazines as diverse as Popular Photography and Imaging, Petersen’s Photo-
Graphic, The Rangefinder, and The Professional Photographer, as well as computer magazines
such as Macworld and Computer Shopper. He’s currently evaluating digital cameras for CNet.

Busch has written more than 75 books since 1983, including the mega-bestsellers Digital
Photography All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies and The Hewlett-Packard Scanner
Handbook. Other recent books include Digital Photography Solutions, Mastering Digital SLR
Photography, and Mastering Digital Scanning with Slides, Film, and Transparencies, all from
Course Technology.

He earned top category honors in the Computer Press Awards the first two years they were
given (for Sorry About The Explosion, Prentice-Hall; and Secrets of MacWrite, MacPaint and
MacDraw, Little, Brown), and later served as Master of Ceremonies for the awards.
Contents
Preface ix
Introduction x

1 Adobe Photoshop Elements and

Photography from 50,000 Feet 1
Images in the Digital Domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Transferring Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Next Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2 Camera and Lens Effects in

Photoshop Elements 15
Lens Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Motion Blur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Selective Focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Photoshop Elements Photo Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Next Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

3 Darkroom Techniques with

Photoshop Elements 51
Manipulating Digital Negatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Film Development Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Printing Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Automatically Crop and Straighten Photos . . . . . . . 76
Next Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
 Contents vii

4 Secrets of Retouching 79
Retouching, the Old Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Retouching, the New Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Tackling a Retouching Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Repairing Images with the Healing Brush . . . . . . . . 96
Canceling Red Eyes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Next Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

5 Compositing in Elements 3.0 101

Your Compositing Toolkit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Selection Refresher Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Other Selection Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Creating a Simple Composite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Stitching Two Photos Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Merging Photos the Easy Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Creating a Fantasy Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Compositing Close Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Kitten on a Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Compositing Possibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Combining Compositing and Retouching . . . . . . . 136
Next Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

6 Correcting Your Colors 141

Wonderful World of Color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Capturing Color Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Color Calibration and Gamma Curves . . . . . . . . . 152
Color Correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Color Correction Made Easy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Calibrating Your Monitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Next Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
viii Contents

7 Beyond Black and White 171

Why Black and White? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Your Best Bet for Black and White . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Converting Color to Black and White . . . . . . . . . . 176
Next Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

8 Using Photoshop Elements’ Filters 187

What Are Filters? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
What Kinds of Filters Are Available? . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Using Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Photoshop Elements’ Filter Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Reproducing Photographic Filters in
Photoshop Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Modifying Images with Photoshop Elements’
Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Next Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

9 Hardcopies Made Easy 227

Why Prints? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Color Prints as Proofs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Your Output Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Using Professional Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
Getting Set Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
A Typical Print Session . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Printing Multiple Photos with Photoshop
Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Tips for Getting the Best Digital Prints . . . . . . . . . 252
Printers and Digital Cameras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Next Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254

A Illustrated Glossary 255

B What’s New in Elements 3.0 279
I Index 283
Preface
If you’re serious about photography, you should be serious about Photoshop Elements 3.0, the
photo enthusiast’s best friend. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a casual snapshooter or a
dedicated photo buff, the latest version of Elements has exciting new features that you’ll want to
master. Plus, you’ll find that approaching Photoshop Elements from a photographer’s
perspective can put you on the fast track to mastering all the tools Adobe puts at your disposal.

Thinking about this image editor as an extraordinary photography tool can also work for you
even if your interest in photography is still on a more casual level. If you specialize in computer
technology, art, or graphics, you will find that learning about the imaging techniques that form
the basis for each of Elements’ capabilities can help you, too. A deeper understanding of
photography will help you use the image editor better, while improving those latent
photographic skills you didn’t know you had. Anyone who fine-tunes and manipulates photos
will find that this book makes them a more proficient, well-rounded image worker.

If you feel there isn’t enough photography in the average image-editing book, and there isn’t
enough image editing in the average photography book, the book you’re looking for is right in
your hands. Whether you’re a snap-shooting tyro or an experienced photographer moving into
the digital realm, you’ll find the knowledge you need here.
Introduction
There’s a reason why digital camera icons abound in the splash screens and introductory views
of the brand new Photoshop Elements 3.0. Digital photography and Elements were made for
each other. However, whether you’re using a digital pixel-grabber or a conventional film camera,
Adobe’s revamped easy-to-use image editor has the tools you need to fine-tune your photos,
correct errors in exposure, lighting, or color balance, and go beyond your basic picture to create
triumphant prize-winning photographs from shoebox rejects.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0: Photographers’ Guide is aimed squarely at those who want to
use photography creatively to produce compelling images and want to master all the tools
available to them. The emphasis here is on both traditional and leading-edge photographic
techniques and how to reproduce or enhance them in Photoshop.

You don’t need to be an ace photographer or image-editing expert to create these eye-catching
effects. All you need is this straight-forward, “all meat” book that shows you how to use
Elements to enhance your images with the kinds of effects you admire. Did you know that with
using easy-to-master Photoshop Elements tools you could:

■ Work with Photoshop Elements’ new Panorama stitching features?

■ Match colors between shots taken under wildly different lighting conditions?
■ Fix perspective in architectural photos even if you don’t own an expensive perspective
control lens?
■ Add zoom lens blur effects without using a zoom lens?
■ Move a storm-ravaged seashore 500 miles inland to the foothills of a mountain range?
■ Excise your obnoxious ex-relative from a family reunion photo without resorting to
violence?
■ Change daylight scenes into moody dusk or ruddy dawn pictures?
■ Morph images to blend or distort them?
■ Seamlessly extract images from their backgrounds?

This book cuts right to the heart of all of the most misunderstood—but easily applied—tools in
the latest version of Elements, examined from a photographer’s perspective. It bristles with
surprisingly effective examples, simple to follow techniques, and tricks that serve as a jumping-
off point to spark your own creativity into action.

While other Elements-oriented “photography” books give lip service to true photography, this
book examines each topic from every photographic angle. Which effects are best achieved with a
film or digital camera? Which effects are best applied in Elements? How can in-camera
techniques and Photoshop Elements augment and enhance each other?
 Introduction xi

Just browsing through the book can lead you to a half-dozen stunning effects you can re-create
in five minutes or less and a wealth of photographic techniques you can reproduce with
Photoshop. Invest a few hours, and you’ll be able to:

■ Process your digital camera’s RAW files with Photoshop Elements’ new Camera RAW
plug-in.
■ Even if you don’t know color correction or gamma correction from brightness-contrast
controls, and think a histogram is a cold remedy, Photoshop has several different ways to
bring off-color or dull originals to blazing life, ready for use in Web pages and other
applications.
■ Build composites that fool the eye or which form gateways to fantasy worlds. Blend multiple
images to create a new one in which all the elements work in perfect harmony to create that
photo you never could catch with your camera.
■ Duplicate darkroom effects not easily accessible to darkroom-challenged digital
photographers.

Why This Book?

Because Photoshop Elements is the most popular “non-professional” image editor, there are
dozens of books on how to use it. There are already three or four dozen books on digital
photography and hundreds more on conventional photography. Yet, oddly enough, only a
handful of these combine image editing and photography in any meaningful way. One or two
are written for professional photographers and contain little that the average picture taker can
use or understand. A few more are dumbed-down, include lots of pretty pictures, but contain
techniques that you’ll outgrow quickly. Others are weird hybrids that tell you more than you
wanted to know about camera technology, CCD, CMOS, and CIS image sensors, how cameras
work, the history of digital photography, and less than you wanted to know about image
editing. I suspect you don’t need any convincing that photography is a great idea or detailed
comparisons of all the other image editors on the market. Instead, you want to know how
photography and Photoshop Elements can work together to give you great pictures that will
astound your friends and astonish your colleagues.

I wrote this book for camera buffs, both digital and conventional, and business people who
want to go beyond point-and-click snapshooting and explore the world of photography to
enrich their lives or do their jobs better. If you’ve learned most of your camera’s basic features
and now wonder what you can do with them, this is your dream guide to pixel proficiency. If
you fall into one of the following categories, you need this book:

■ Individuals who want to get better pictures, or perhaps transform their growing interest in
photography into a full-fledged hobby or artistic outlet using Photoshop Elements as a
catalyst.
■ Those who want to produce more professional-looking images for their personal or business
Web site.
xii Introduction

■ Small business owners with more advanced graphics capabilities, who want to use
photography and Photoshop Elements to document or promote their business.
■ Corporate workers who may or may not have photographic skills in their job descriptions,
but who work regularly with graphics and need to learn how to use digital images for
reports, presentations, or other applications.
■ Professional Webmasters with strong skills in programming (including Java, JavaScript,
HTML, Perl, and so on) but little background in photography.
■ Graphic artists and others who may already be adept in image editing, but who want to learn
more about Photoshop Elements and its relationship with digital and conventional
photography.
■ Trainers who need a non-threatening textbook for digital photography classes.

Who Am I?
With a few exceptions, image editing books aren’t purchased because the author is famous or is
pictured in an attractive photo on the cover. You may have picked this book off the shelf because
you found some of the gorgeous, meaty books from Course Technology useful in the past and
were looking for more of the same. Then, like most Photoshop Elements book buyers, you
flipped through the pages looking for cool pictures or interesting techniques. If I’ve captured
your interest enough to have you reading this far, you probably don’t need my life story at this
point. However, a little background might be useful to help you understand exactly where this
book is coming from.

Before I was seduced by the dark side of technology, I was a professional photographer. I’ve
made my living as a sports photographer for an Ohio newspaper and an upstate New York
college; I’ve operated my own commercial studio and photo lab; and served as photo-posing
instructor for a modeling agency. People have actually paid me to shoot their weddings and
immortalize them with portraits. I even wrote several thousand articles on photography as a
PR consultant for a large Rochester, N.Y., company you may have heard of. Since 1980, I’ve
successfully combined my interests in photography and computers to an alarming degree,
bringing forth a few thousand articles, eight books on scanners, and four that encompass
photography.

In practice, this means that, like you, I love photography for its own joys, and view technology
as just another tool to help me get the images I want to produce. It also means that, like you,
when I peer through the viewfinder, I sometimes forget everything I know, take a real clunker
of a picture, and turn to Photoshop Elements to help me out of the hole I dug. My only real
advantage is that I can usually offer quite detailed technical explanations of what I did wrong
and offer a convincing, if bogus explanation of how I intentionally bent technology to my will
to correct the error.

You can learn from my mistakes and benefit from what experience I have, so your picture-taking
and image editing can travel a more comfortable gain-without-pain route than I took.
 Introduction xiii

How to Use This Book

I’m not going to weigh you down with sage advice about reading this book from front to back,
reviewing portions until you understand what I’m trying to say, or remembering to hunt for
dozens of icons lodged in the margins that point out the only portions actually worth reading.
I don’t care if you go through and read just the chapters that interest you, or scan only the odd-
numbered pages, as long as you get busy having fun with your camera and Elements. Each of the
chapters should stand alone sufficiently well that you can read them in any order. A book that
needs its own instruction manual to use hasn’t done its job.

I’ve tried to make your job easier by relegating all the boring parts to the bit-bin long before this
book hit the printing press. All you need is the text, some photographs in digital form,
Photoshop Elements 3.0, and access to the files used for the exercises in this book. Here’s a
summary:

■ You’ll need a Windows PC or Macintosh OS system with enough RAM to run Photoshop
Elements comfortably (that is, from 256 MB to a gazillion MB of RAM).
■ To ease the learning process, you’ll want to work with Photoshop Elements 3.0. Earlier
versions can also be used with this book, except, of course, for the sections dealing with new
or enhanced features like the Photo Filter and Smart Fix capabilities. However, Adobe has
changed or moved a few of the menu items, modified some dialog boxes, and changed some
terminology. If you’re using Photoshop Elements 2.0, nearly everything applies, but when
you see how some of the improvements, like the enhanced Red Eye tool, work you’ll
probably want to upgrade.
■ You’ll need digital photos. If you’re shooting on film, you or your photolab will need to
convert your pictures to pixels before you can use them with Photoshop Elements. It doesn’t
matter whether you scan the pictures, receive them on a Photo CD, or originate the pictures
electronically with a digital camera, Elements will work with them just fine.
■ Access to the book’s images are on the Web site at: http://www.courseptr.com. You can
substitute your own photos, of course, but if you want to closely duplicate my work, you’ll
need to use the same photos I worked with.

Your Next Stop

While I’m not your one-stop source for toll-free technical support, I’m always glad to answer
reader questions that relate to this book. Sometimes I can get you pointed in the right direction
to resolve peripheral queries I can’t answer. You can write to me at photoguru@dbusch.com.
You’ll also find more information at my Web site at http://www.dbusch.com. Should you
discover the one or two typos I’ve planted in this book to test your reading comprehension, I’ll
erect an errata page on the Web site, as well, along with kudos to readers who report anything
that, on first glance, might appear to be a goof.

A final warning: I first came to national attention for a book called Sorry About the Explosion!
This book earned the first (and only) Computer Press Association award presented to a book of
computer humor. Since then, my rise from oblivion to obscurity has been truly meteoric—a big
xiv Introduction

flash, followed by a fiery swan dive into the horizon. So, each of my books also includes a
sprinkling of flippancy scattered among all the dry, factual stuff. You aren’t required to actually
be amused, and you can consider yourself duly cautioned.

Chapter Outline
This section is a brief outline of the chapters in this book. If you want to know exactly where to
find a topic that interests you, consult the table of contents or index.

Chapter 1: Adobe Photoshop Elements and Photography from 50,000 Feet

This chapter provides an overview of the origin of Photoshop Elements, its evolution, and an
overview of the basic skills that photographers can expect to transfer directly to their Photoshop
Elements experience. These include knowledge of composition, use of lenses, selective focus, film
choice, and other valuable skills that serve Photoshop Elements users well.

Chapter 2: Camera and Lens Effects in Photoshop Elements

Here, you’ll learn how to duplicate creative traditional effects like perspective control, zoom,
lens flare, motion blur, and selective focus using Photoshop Elements’ built-in tools. These
techniques are great to have on hand when you just don’t happen to remember to take the exact
lens or other accessory you really need on a photo shoot.

Chapter 3: Darkroom Techniques with Photoshop Elements

Those who remember fondly the acid-tinged, humid air of the photo darkroom will love this
chapter’s tips for reproducing solarization, reticulation, push-processing, and dodging/burning
techniques with Photoshop Elements. Best of all, you won’t need to ruin expensive film
experimenting!

Chapter 4: Secrets of Retouching

This chapter reveals the most valuable secret of retouching: how to avoid the need for it in the
first place. However, if you must remove the dust, you’ll also find information on how to
enhance and repair photos using advanced retouching techniques.

Chapter 5: Compositing in Elements 3.0

Although each chapter explains how to use the Photoshop Elements tools needed for a task, this
one delves deeply into the fine art of making selections and extracting images from their
backgrounds. You’ll also discover how to merge objects smoothly and match lighting, texture,
colors, scale, and other factors that scream FAKE when they aren’t considered.

Chapter 6: Correcting Your Colors

Color can make or break an image. This chapter offers four ways of adjusting color in terms
photographers will understand immediately. If you’ve ever slipped a CC 10 Cyan filter into a
filter pack, or stocked your camera bag with an 85B or 80A conversion filter, you’ll appreciate
the advice here. However, even if your color correction experience extends no further than using
the white-balance control on your digital camera, this chapter has everything you need to correct
your colors in Photoshop Elements.
 Introduction xv

Chapter 7: Beyond Black and White

Photoshop Elements includes a simple command that can magically transform a great color
picture into a terrible grayscale image. You’ll learn why the most common color-to-black-and-
white travesties happen, and how to avoid them.

Chapter 8: Using Photoshop Elements’ Filters

This chapter explains how to get the most from Photoshop Elements’ built-in filters, with an
emphasis on reproducing traditional camera effects, such as diffusion, cross-screen filters, and
polarizers. Then, you’ll get a glimpse of how Photoshop can transcend conventional
photography with some amazing new capabilities.

Chapter 9: Hardcopies Made Easy

You’ll find lots of useful information in this chapter that relates traditional printing of film
images onto photosensitive paper with the modern digital printing alternatives. Learn about
your options, calculate the maximum print size you can expect from a given digital camera
resolution, and glean some tips for getting the absolute best digital prints.

Appendix A: Illustrated Glossary

This illustrated compendium of all the jargon words you’ll encounter in this book (and a bunch
of them you’ll run across in the real world) provides a quick reference guide to photography,
digital imaging, and Adobe terminology.

Appendix B: What’s New in Elements 3.0

This appendix will introduce some of the new features found in Elements 3.0.
 1
Adobe Photoshop
Elements and
Photography from
50,000 Feet
Photoshop Elements 3.0 and digital photography were made for each other. Unlike its “big

brother,” Photoshop CS, Elements is as easy to use as the average digital camera. It’s a powerful

image editor that can do just about anything you can imagine, but it has automated modes, like

those found in the Quick Fix panel, that make all the changes and settings for you, much like the

program and scene modes in digital shooters. Even with all this automation, though, you can

tweak your pictures to customize your images so they look exactly as you want them to appear.

First introduced in April, 2001, Elements has always been a great image-editing program—
powerful, yet simple to learn, and the new Version 3.0 is even better from the photographer’s
viewpoint. There’s a slick new interface with a dockable tool palette, integrated photo browsing
that includes all the features of Adobe Photoshop Album, and fully automatic adjustments for
contrast, color, lighting, and many other aspects of your digital pictures.

Many of the improvements in Elements 3.0 are geared specifically for photographers.
For example, the application now supports the RAW camera files that some of the more
sophisticated digital cameras can produce. Working with RAW files lets you manipulate the
unprocessed digital image in Elements, before any of the corrections that are normally applied

1
2 Adobe Photoshop Elements and Photography from 50,000 Feet

in the camera are made. There’s also a new “auto divide” feature, which makes it easy to scan a
group of pictures at once, and lets Elements separate the individual photos into separate files,
and then crop and straighten them automatically.

Even a cursory examination of its feature set reveals that Elements can do just about anything
you need to do with images. There are lots of capabilities, and many different things to master.
Your advantage as a photographer is that you already have an understanding of much of the
underlying techniques that make Photoshop Elements what it is. You don’t have to rediscover
the wheel. In fact, if you’re a halfway serious photographer and more than a casual image
manipulator, you’re ready to shift into overdrive with this book.

This brief chapter, a view of Photoshop Elements, its predecessors, and photography from
50,000 feet, provides an overview that’s oriented, like the rest of this book, from a photo-
grapher’s perspective. You’ll learn the evolution of Adobe image editors that resulted in
Elements, a program created expressly to meet your needs. You’ll also discover how you can
use what you already know to make this application work for you right from the start.

Images in the Digital Domain

Certainly, you can use nothing but Elements’ automated features and end up with fine-looking
digital photos. But there’s so much power in Photoshop Elements that if you’re a photographer
and don’t use all the tools it has to offer, you’re putting a crimp in your creativity, and seriously
restricting your flexibility. For the devoted photographer, not using Elements’ extra features is
like limiting yourself to a single zoom setting, or using your digital camera exclusively in fully
automatic mode.

Certainly, some incredible images have been created by photographers who work under mind-
boggling limitations (a few ingenious pictures taken with pin-hole cameras come to mind). For
example, one of the photos shown in Figure 1.1 was taken with a $3,000 “professional”
camera, using studio lighting equipment priced at another grand or two. The other photo was
taken with a $50 point-and-shoot camera and a flashlight.

Even with inevitable quality loss that comes with offset printing, I’ll bet you can tell the
difference between the two. However, you will agree that even the cheapie photo is acceptable
for many applications, such as, perhaps, display on a Web site. Have I discovered a way to save
thousands of dollars? Or have I shown that trying to get by using the bare minimum tools is
nothing more than an easy way to impose limitations on your creativity?

Unless you enjoy hobbling yourself as a creative constraint (that’s a valid exercise, and one
assigned in many photo schools), I’d wager that you’ll want to use all the photographic tools
at your disposal. Elements is one of them. To my mind, the whole Adobe collection of image
editors, from Photoshop Elements to Photoshop CS, are the most important innovation in
photography since, say, the zoom lens or through-the-lens viewing, or, in the computer age,
the solid-state sensor.
 Images in the Digital Domain 3

Figure 1.1 One of these photos was taken with $3,000 “pro” camera, the other with a cheap
point-and-shoot camera. Which setup would you rather use?

The best part about adding this image editor to your repertoire is that many of the skills you
acquired working behind the viewfinder are directly transferable to Photoshop Elements. If you
have darkroom skills that stood you in good stead before the current transition to digital
photograph, so much the better. I’ll list some of these valuable skills later in this chapter.

Photographers who adopt digital imaging and Photoshop Elements as their primary tools have
a commanding advantage over those who approach Adobe’s popular image editor from the
computer or traditional art realms. Terms like lens flare, motion blur, and grain are familiar to
you. If you are a more advanced photographer, you probably understand techniques like
solarization, or perhaps even graphic reproduction concepts like halftones, mezzotints, or
unsharp masking. Those whose perspective is more pixel- than photography-oriented must
learn these terms the hard way.

To see what I mean, examine Figure 1.2. Many photographers will recognize the traditional
photographic effects used to create that image. (Bear with me for a moment if you are not
steeped in photographic technical minutiae.) The “sun” image appears to have a halo caused by
lens flare with the telephoto or zoom lens used to take the picture. The odd flag colors could be
produced by partially exposing transparency film during development, a technique which
reverses some colors to produce an effect called solarization. The rich colors were a direct result
of the photographer’s choice of a film stock known for vivid colors. And, of course, the flag and
buildings appear compressed in space because that’s what telephoto lenses do.
4 Adobe Photoshop Elements and Photography from 50,000 Feet

Figure 1.2 Can you find all the traditional photographic techniques used to produce this picture?

The advantage photographers have is that they’ve seen all these techniques before, and have
probably used them. The ability to reproduce every one of these effects within Elements is a
powerful additional tool. In truth, Figure 1.2 never saw a piece of film. It was taken with a
digital camera using the “normal” (non-telephoto/non-wide-angle) zoom setting, cropped tightly
in Elements to simulate a telephoto picture, and then a “sun” added, and flag colors
manipulated to create the image you see here.

Don’t panic if your photographic interests don’t run to camera techniques or darkroom magic.
Even if your photography skills emphasize other worthy areas of expertise, such as composition
or the mechanics of camera operation, you’ll still find Elements a comfortable fit with what
you already know, and a great tool for applying what you plan to learn in the future. From its
earliest beginnings, Adobe’s image editors were modeled on photographic concepts. Many
features incorporated into the latest version of Elements have their roots in photography, such
as the new Lens Blur effect, the seamless panorama photos you can achieve by stitching photos
together, and various filter effects that mimic standard photographic filters.
 Images in the Digital Domain 5

Evolution or Revolution?
Although Photoshop Elements 1.0 wasn’t introduced until 2001, its origins go back to the very
beginnings of image editing as we know it. Like photography itself, the Photoshop family of
image editors was born in a dark room. Thomas and John Knoll, sons of an Ann Arbor,
Michigan college professor, worked in their photo enthusiast father’s basement darkroom and
grew to love the Apple computer he brought home for research projects.

By the mid 1980s, Thomas and John were working with imaging on a professional basis.
Thomas was doing Ph.D work in digital image processing, and John was approaching a career at
Industrial Light and Magic, the motion picture computer graphics firm in California. One big
problem the brothers saw, was that the most advanced graphics-oriented consumer and business
personal computer of the time—the Macintosh—couldn’t manipulate full-color images properly.

They set out to fix that. The product that was to become Elements’
big brother, Photoshop, went through various incarnations, and a
few copies of an application by that name were actually distributed
by a company called BarneyScan Corporation with their slide
scanner. Finally, the Knolls licensed their product to Adobe Systems,
Inc., then known primarily for its PostScript and font technology, and
a drawing program called Adobe Illustrator. Photoshop 1.0 was
released to the world in January, 1990.

You can see the original tool palette of Photoshop 1.0 along side its
great-great-great grandchild, Photoshop Elements’ counterpart in
Figure 1.3. Although the icons have been moved around or combined
(and the latest Mac OS has added a 3D look), it’s amazing how little
has changed. The 24 tools in the original palette are all still in use
today. Nine of the tools shown in the Photoshop 1.0 palette have
been nested together under five multi-purpose icons, the Airbrush has
become a checkbox on the Options toolbar, and a few, such as the
Type and Brush tools, have been transmogrified so much they have
little in common with their ancestors. Photoshop Elements 3.0 even
lets you dock the palette at the left side of the window, so the tools
are arranged in a handy, single column. The latest version of
Photoshop CS doesn’t even have that feature!

The original Photoshop wasn’t the first image editor for the
Macintosh by any means, and actually drew a great deal on the Figure 1.3 Photoshop’s
concepts and interface popularized by Apple’s own MacPaint as original tool palette
early as 1984. There were programs with names like PixelPaint, (left) and its latest
ImageStudio, and SuperPaint, and, notably, Silicon Beach’s Digital Elements version (right)
Darkroom. But the precocious Photoshop was the first program to share more features
really grab the imagination of photographers and the publications than you might expect.
that employed them.
6 Adobe Photoshop Elements and Photography from 50,000 Feet

Happily, reasonably priced color scanners became available (earlier color scanners could cost up
to a million dollars each, making them practical only for the largest newspapers and magazines).
Scanners supplied Photoshop with ample fodder for its magic, and vast numbers of publications
adopted Macs and Elements as key tools within a very short period of time. By then, the key
battles in the imaging war were over and Photoshop was all but crowned the victor.

Adobe augmented its darkroom paradigm with some other powerful advantages. The first of
these was a program interface that made it possible to seamlessly incorporate add-on mini-
programs called plug-ins, developed by Adobe and third-party developers. Although plug-ins
first appeared in Digital Darkroom, Photoshop’s already commanding lead in the image-editing
market made the ability to use Photoshop compatible plug-ins a must-have feature for
competing products of the time, such as PixelPaint and Fractal Design Painter.

The final battle was won in April, 1993 when Adobe released a version of Photoshop 2.5 for
Microsoft Windows 3.x. There had been earlier image editors for PC-compatibles that (barely)
worked under Windows, or which used proprietary DOS-based interfaces. But once Photoshop
became a cross-platform tool available to both the Macs that were dominant in the graphics and
photographic industries, as well as to die-hards in the Windows realm, there was really almost
no reason to use anything else for sophisticated image-editing tasks.

The only really valid reason for choosing another image editor was cost or the need to avoid a
steep learning curve. As the professional and advanced amateur image editor of choice,
Photoshop has been priced at $600 or more, and the time required to learn to use it is almost
legendary. For the last decade or more, those who owned color scanners who weren’t graphics
professionals have wanted a less expensive, less complex program to use. In the past few years,
digital camera buyers have had the same yearning. Not everyone who uses a scanner or digital
camera needs a $600 image-editing program (although the actual cost can be much lower if you
upgrade from another application).

So, Adobe has provided a series of low-cost, reduced learn-up image editors available for $99
or less, and often bundled with scanners and cameras at no extra cost to the hardware
purchaser. A program called Photoshop LE (for Limited Edition) has served that function in
several different incarnations. Photoshop LE was often considered just a thinly-disguised “last
year’s” version of Photoshop, with a few features (such as the History palette’s multiple Undo
capabilities, or the Action palette’s macro features) disabled. Co-existing with Photoshop LE was
Adobe PhotoDeluxe, first introduced in 1996, with an even simpler interface and even more
restricted capabilities. PhotoDeluxe was considered a beginner program, with training wheels,
for those who wanted to edit some images, but didn’t want to become involved with learning
how to use a complicated program. Many of its capabilities were point-and-click automated
features, with few options.

Photoshop Elements combined the best features of Photoshop LE and PhotoDeluxe, offering
serious image workers a program built on the flagship Photoshop’s underpinnings, but with
easier operation and a higher degree of automation. Elements has been able to do many of the
things possible with the full version of Photoshop, and a few things, such as easy red-eye
reduction, that Photoshop could not. Some features, such as the File Browser introduced with
 Transferring Skills 7

Elements 2.0 in August, 2002, and Version 3.0’s dockable tool palette, appeared in Photoshop
Elements first before they found their way into Photoshop itself.

Today, Photoshop Elements is the most logical toolkit for the beginning or intermediate
photographer’s foray into the digital darkroom. Indeed, the term digital darkroom has become a
generic description. You’ll find it used in Web sites, books, and magazine articles by pixel
pushers who’ve never set foot in an actual darkroom. (Alas!) And, as an interesting footnote, the
rights to the Digital Darkroom trademark were purchased by MicroFrontier after Silicon Beach
was purchased by Aldus Corporation, which in turn, ironically, was bought out by Adobe.

Each new version of Elements has improved on the last, offering new capabilities. The best news
is that, unlike an Office suite that shall remain nameless, Photoshop Elements has generally
escaped “feature bloat,” which has been described as features few need and which are added
purely to justify an upgrade. You may not need all of Elements’ features now, but, as you grow
in experience and skills, you’ll find that those “mystery” features may prove to be lifesavers for
you farther down the road. As sophisticated as it has become, there’s very little fat in Photoshop
Elements. Interestingly enough, Elements 3.0 is the first version that offers slightly different
versions for Windows and Macintosh computers. Despite the popularity of the Mac for
graphics, Adobe has decided that the digital camera owners who will be using Elements will be
predominantly Windows users, so the Windows version has a few features the Mac release lacks.

Transferring Skills
Whether you acquired your photographic skills working with film cameras, or entirely from
shooting digital pictures, they can be transferred to Elements in a variety of ways, as befits the
multifaceted nature of photography itself. Photography has always been part art, part craft, and
part technology. Some of the earliest photographers were originally trained as artists, and used
their cameras to produce landscapes, portraits, and other works from a classical artistic
perspective.

Modest skills as an artisan were also helpful, for many of the earliest cameras were hand-built
by the photographers themselves. Even as mass produced cameras became available, photo-
graphers continued to craft their own custom-built devices and accessories. Today, you’ll still
find that some of the coolest gadgets for photography are home-brewed contraptions. (You’ll
find a few of them as special projects in my book Mastering Digital Photography, from Muska
& Lipman/Course Technology.)

Early photographers also had to be something of a scientist, as the first photographers

experimented with various processes for coating and sensitizing plates and film, exposing images
by the illumination from electrical sparks. The first-ever photograph, made by Nicéphore Niépce
in the early 19th century, was created on a piece of pewter coated with what was, for all intents
and purposes, asphalt. As late as the mid 20th century, serious photographers were still dabbling
in photographic chemistry as a way to increase the sensitivity and improve the image quality of
their films through refined darkroom technology. Now that many chemical tricks can be
reproduced digitally, photo alchemy has become the exception rather than the rule.
8 Adobe Photoshop Elements and Photography from 50,000 Feet

In the 21st century, acquiring the skills a photographer needs is not as difficult as in the 19th
century, although a basic familiarity with computer technology has become something of a
prerequisite for using microprocessor-driven digital and conventional film cameras. Digital
photography has made picture taking easier in many ways, but opened new realms of expertise
for photographers who choose to pursue them. But, while photography has become more
automated, don’t underestimate the wealth of knowledge and skills you’ve picked up. A great
deal of that expertise is easily transferable to Elements. The things you already know that will
stand you in good stead when you advance to computer-enhanced photo manipulation in
Photoshop Elements fall into 10 broad categories. I’ll run through them quickly in the next
sections.

Basic Composition
Compositional skills, so necessary for lining up exactly the right shot in the camera, are just
as important when you’re composing images in Elements. Indeed, Elements lets you repair
compositional errors that escaped your notice when you snapped the original picture. If you
want your subjects in a group shot to squeeze together for a tighter composition, Elements lets
you rearrange your subjects after the fact. The ability to recognize good composition and put it
into practice with Elements is an invaluable skill that not all image-editing tyros possess.

Lens Selection
The choice of a particular lens or zoom setting can be an important part of the creative process.
Telephoto settings compress the apparent distance between objects, whereas wide angles expand
it. Faces can appear to be broader or narrower, depending on lens selection. If you understand
these concepts, you’ll find you can apply them using Elements’ capabilities, too.

Selective Focus
Choosing which objects in an image are in focus, and which are not, is a great creative tool.
With a conventional or digital camera, you need to make the decision at the time you take the
photo. To complicate things, digital cameras often make everything reasonably sharp regardless
of what lens settings you use. With Elements, selective focus is not only easier to apply, but can
be used in a much more precise, repeatable, and easily modified way. Figure 1.4 shows a close-
up photo, at top, in which the background is fairly blurry but still obtrusive. The version on the
bottom was processed in Elements to create an even blurrier, darker background that shows off
the flower more dramatically.

Choosing the Right Film

Selecting the right film can be as important as choosing an appropriate lens. Some films are
known for their bright, vibrant colors. Others are considered more accurate or capable of better
reproducing flesh tones. Some films are sharper or have finer grain. Others are more sensitive
to light and make it possible to shoot pictures in near darkness, or when very short shutter
speeds are needed to freeze action. Your digital camera, too, probably provides the equivalent
of film choice in the ISO (sensitivity) options, or various sharpness and color saturation settings.
Elements can help when you choose the wrong film, or don’t set your digital camera’s controls
 Transferring Skills 9

Figure 1.4 Elements can make techniques like selective focus more
precise and easier to apply.
10 Adobe Photoshop Elements and Photography from 50,000 Feet

exactly right. Your image editor will let you boost colors or tone them down, disguise noisy
grain or emphasize it, and compensate for images exposed under less than ideal lighting.

Darkroom Techniques
There’s a reason why earlier programs had names like Digital Darkroom. The number of
darkroom techniques that have been directly transferred to Elements is enormous. From the
Dodging and Toning tools to all the tremendous range of masking techniques, dozens of
Elements capabilities have direct counterparts in the darkroom. If you’ve used a darkroom,
you’ll be right at home in Elements, but even if you haven’t dipped your fingers into stopbath,
you’ll find this image editor performs its manipulations in a logical, photography-oriented way.

Retouching
When I started in photography, retouchers were true artists who worked directly on film
negatives, transparencies, or prints with brush and pigment. Elements enables those with artistic
sentiments who lack an artist’s physical skills to retouch images in creatively satisfying ways.
You can remove or disguise blemishes, touch up dust spots, repair scratches, and perform many
tasks that were once totally within the purview of the retouching artist.

Compositing
Would you like to transplant the Great Pyramid of Egypt to downtown Paris? Or perhaps
you’re just interested in removing your ex-brother-in-law from a family photo. Photographic
masters of the past spent
hours figuring ways to
combine images in the
camera, or spent days
sandwiching negatives or
transparencies, cutting film or
prints to pieces, or using
other tedious tasks to build
great images from multiple
originals. Compositing still
requires skill with Elements,
but you can do things in a
few hours that were virtually
impossible to achieve only 20
years ago. The scene shown
in Figure 1.5 doesn’t exist in
the real world, but it took me
only five minutes to fake it
using Elements, using the
original photos shown in
Figure 1.6. Figure 1.5 It took only five minutes to create this composite in
Elements.
 Transferring Skills 11

Figure 1.6 These are the original photos used to produce the composite shown in Figure 1.5.
12 Adobe Photoshop Elements and Photography from 50,000 Feet

Color Correction
With traditional photography, color correction is achieved in several ways. You can put filters
over the lens of your camera to compensate for a slight bluish or reddish tint to the available
light. Other filters can correct for the wacky lighting effects provided by some fluorescent lamps.
Some color correction can be done when making a print. Elements has advantages over most
traditional methods: it’s fast, repeatable, and reversible. You can fiddle with your image editor’s
capabilities as much as you like, produce several corrected versions for comparison, or really
dial up some outlandish color changes as special effects. If you don’t like what you come up
with, return to your original image and start over.

Creative Use of Black and White

Black-and-white photography, like blues music, seems to enjoy a resurgence every five or ten
years. In truth, neither black-and-white imagery nor blues ever goes anywhere: it’s only
widespread public perception of them that changes. Monochrome photos are a great creative
outlet, letting you strip down your pictures to the basics without the intrusiveness and bias of
color. Elements is a great tool for working with black-and-white images, both those that were
originally conceived and created in monochrome as well as those that were derived from color
images. Indeed, Elements offers some powerful tools for transforming a full-color image into
black and white, mimicking specialized films and filters in flexible ways. In most cases, these
procedures offer much more flexibility than you’d get shooting in black-and-white mode with
your digital camera, too.

Filters
Let’s not get started on filters, just yet. In traditional photography, filters are handy gadgets you
place in front of the camera’s lens to produce a variety of effects. These can range from multiple
images to split-field colorization (that is, blue on top and reddish on the bottom of an image, or
vice versa) to glamour-oriented blur filters. Using third-party add-ons like those from
Andromeda or Alien Skin, Elements can reproduce virtually any optical effect you can get with
glass or gelatin filters, plus hundreds more that are impossible outside the digital realm. If you’ve
used filters with your film camera, and perhaps purchased a set of the Cokin series, you’ll love
what Elements can do.
 Next Up 13

Next Up
Now that we’ve taken a look at photography, as it relates to Adobe Photoshop Elements and the
rest of the Adobe image-editing family from 50,000 feet, it’s time to skydive down to treetop
level, and below, to investigate some of the techniques you can use to improve your images at
the pixel level. The next chapter explores camera and lighting effects in Elements.
 2
Camera and Lens
Effects in
Photoshop
Elements
Photography is not the only artistic endeavor in which the tools can hold as much fascination as

the process itself, or even the end result. Serious cabinetmakers may be just as proud of their

sophisticated new hollow chisel mortiser as they are of the drop-front desk crafted with it. In the

same vein, it’s common to meet a photographer who feels you can never be too rich, too thin, or

have too many lenses.

You don’t actually need a dozen lenses, a bag full of filters, or enough light sources to illuminate
the Statue of Liberty to take great pictures. Many of you probably get along very well with
nothing more than the zoom lens or electronic flash built into your camera. But whether you’re
a photo gadget freak or a photo gadget phobe, Elements has some tools you’ll find extremely
useful. Built into your favorite image editor are capabilities that let you duplicate many camera
and lighting effects.

Simulating traditional photographic techniques in Elements is useful for several reasons. First,
even if you own every lens or piece of lighting gear known to civilization, you may not always
have your prized gadget with you when you need it. For example, I’ve traveled to Europe
carrying just one camera body, a 35mm and a 105mm lens. More recently, I’ve gone on trips
with a digital camera, its built-in zoom lens, and a stack of memory cards as my sole still

15
16 Camera and Lens Effects in Photoshop Elements

photography equipment. My intent in both cases was to shoot video, and I wanted to keep
my ancillary equipment to a minimum. It’s also possible that you had a particular piece of
equipment available but didn’t think to use it, or were unable to put it to work in a fast-moving
shooting situation.

A second reason to use Elements to mimic traditional photographic techniques is that you
simply don’t have the interest in or budget for a particular item, but, from time to time, would
still like to take advantage of its capabilities. Many photographers who generally work with a
single zoom lens (including the one built into their digital camera) might want a fisheye picture
on occasion. Elements can help.

This chapter will show you how to mimic many traditional camera and lens effects using
Elements. In each section, I’ll describe the traditional camera technique first to give you an idea
of what the technique is supposed to do. Then, I’ll follow with some instructions on how to
duplicate, or improve on, the effect in Elements.

Lens Effects
Elements can duplicate the look of many different lenses, particularly some of those specialized
optics that cost an arm and a leg, even though you probably wouldn’t use them more than a
few times a year. For example, I happen to own two fisheye lenses (7.5mm and 16mm versions),
a perspective control lens, several zoom lenses, and a massive 400mm telephoto. Other than
the zooms, I don’t use any of these very often. I use even fewer lens add-ons with my digital
cameras. For example, one of my digital cameras has a non-removable 28mm to 200mm (35mm
equivalent) lens that suffices for 95 percent of my shots with that camera. My digital SLR came
equipped with a 27mm to 105mm (equivalent) zoom lens, and I have a compact 105mm to
300mm (equivalent: it’s really a 70mm to 200mm zoom) lens. So, if I happen to encounter a
shooting situation that is beyond the capabilities of these basic lenses, I often end up taking a
straight photograph and using Elements to apply the special effects.

Perspective Control
Most of the pictures we take, whether consciously or unconsciously, are taken head-on. In
that mode, the back of the camera is parallel to the plane of our subject, so all elements of the
subject, top to bottom, and side to side, are roughly the same distance from the film or digital
sensor. Your problems begin when you tilt the camera up or down to photograph, say, a tree, tall
building, or monument. The most obvious solution, stepping backwards far enough to take the
picture with a longer lens or zoom setting while keeping the camera level, isn’t always available.
You may find yourself with your back up against an adjacent building, or standing on the edge
of a cliff.

Indeed, it’s often necessary to use a wide-angle setting and still tilt the camera upwards to avoid
chopping off the top of your subject. Figure 2.1 shows the relationship between the back of the
camera and a monument when the camera is held perpendicular to the group. Notice that both
the top and bottom of the subject are cut off.
 Lens Effects 17

Figure 2.1 When the back of the camera is parallel to the plane of the subject, it’s
sometimes impossible to include the entire subject in the photo.

Switch to wide-angle mode and tilt the camera to include all of the subject, and you get the
distorted photo shown in Figure 2.2. The monument appears to be falling back, and the base
appears proportionately larger than the top, because it’s somewhat closer to the camera.

The traditional workaround to this dilemma is one that’s generally available only to those who
do a great deal of architectural photography. The solution for 35mm photographers is to use
something called a perspective control lens, an expensive accessory which lets you raise and
lower the view of the lens (or move it from side to side; perspective control can involve wide
subjects as well as tall) while keeping the camera back in the same plane as your subject. A more
sophisticated (and expensive) solution requires a professional camera called a view camera, a
device that usually uses 4 × 5-inch (or larger) film, and has lens and film holders that can be
adjusted to any desired combination of angles. Those who can’t afford such gadgets, or who
own digital cameras without interchangeable lenses, appear to be left out in the cold.

That’s where Elements comes in. You can make some reasonable adjustments to the perspective
of an image within your image editor. Often, the manipulations are enough to fully or partially
correct for perspective distortion. There are two methods you can use in Photoshop Elements,
and we’ll look at both of them.
18 Camera and Lens Effects in Photoshop Elements

Figure 2.2 In wide-angle mode, tilting the camera makes the monument look like
it’s falling backwards.

Easy Correction with the Grid

This section explains a basic perspective correction method you can use to fix a selection in your
photo, using Elements’ Grid as an aid. The procedure assumes that your image is oriented
correctly (that is, it doesn’t need to be rotated). Just follow these steps using the original image
medinaceli.jpg from the Web site, or use an image of your own.

1. Open the file medinaceli.jpg in Elements. The image will look like the one shown in Figure 2.3.
2. Choose View > Fit on Screen to allow the enlarged image to fit comfortably on your screen.
3. Choose View > Grid to display Elements’ grid overlay on your image, as shown in Figure 2.4.
4. If your grid’s squares are too large, use Edit > Preferences > Grid to define a grid layout. I
chose one line every 200 pixels for this project.
5. Use the Rectangular Marquee tool to select only the image of the tower, not the blank space
you created around it.
6. Choose Image > Transform > Perspective to activate Elements’ distortion feature.
 Lens Effects 19

Figure 2.3 This arch appears to be falling backwards, because the camera
was tilted up to shoot the picture.

Figure 2.4 The Grid helps line up your image as you change its
perspective.
20 Camera and Lens Effects in Photoshop Elements

7. Drag the corner selection handles until the lines of the arch are lined up with the grid.
8. Crop the image to arrive at the final version, shown in Figure 2.5.

Figure 2.5 The final cropped image should look like this.

Zoom
Zooming while making an exposure became popular in the 1960s as a way of adding movement
to an otherwise static image. The technique is fairly easy to achieve with a conventional camera,
especially one with manual controls: simply take a picture using a shutter speed that is slow
enough to let you zoom your lens during the exposure. Depending on how quickly you can
zoom with your left hand on the lens barrel after you’ve pressed the shutter release with your
right hand, a motion-zoom of this type can be made successfully at speeds from 1/30th second
or slower.

Zoom in or out, as you prefer, and use a tripod with longer exposures if you want the smoothest
effect. While the image will be blurred as it changes in size from the minimum/maximum zoom
settings, there can be a relatively sharp image at some point in the zoom (usually the beginning
or end) if you pause during the zooming. An electronic flash exposure, most easily made
(automatically) at the beginning of the exposure, can also provide a sharp image to blend with
your zoom blurs.
 Lens Effects 21

Many digital camera owners are pretty much left out in the cold, because motorized zooms
aren’t fast enough to produce a blur effect except for very long exposures. You can achieve this
effect if you have a higher-end digital camera with manual zooming control. If not, don’t worry.
Elements can come to your rescue
with its own built-in zoom-blur effect.
Try the following technique:

1. Locate the basketball.jpg file from

the Web site, or use your own
image. My sample image looks
like Figure 2.6. The photo
happens to be a cropped portion
of a digital camera image taken
under available light at about
1/500th second and f4. Notice
how the girls’ hands are a little
blurry, but everything else is static
and frozen in time. I thought it
would be interesting to keep the
basketball sharp, but add a little
zoom blur to the players.
2. Create a duplicate of the image’s
basic (background) layer by
choosing Layer > Duplicate.
Elements will automatically
transfer its focus to the new layer,
making it the active layer you’ll be
working with.
3. Press A on the keyboard to
activate Elements’ Selection
Brush, which allows you to
“paint” a selection using ordinary Figure 2.6 The picture looks like this prior to adding
brush tools. the zoom effect.

CHOOSE MASK OR SELECTION

In the Options bar you’ll find the Mode drop-down list that lets you choose whether the
Selection Brush paints a selection or paints masked (unselected) areas. I usually choose to paint
a selection, but the choice is yours.
22 Camera and Lens Effects in Photoshop Elements

4. Paint an area around the basketball using a soft, 100-

pixel brush chosen from the drop-down palette at the
left side of the Options bar. Paint an area about 125
percent of the diameter of the ball itself.
5. We actually want to select everything in the image
except the ball, so if you are in the habit of painting
selections, like I am, invert the selection by pressing
Shift + Ctrl/Command + I. That leaves the ball
masked, and everything else selected.
6. Choose Filter > Blur > Radial blur from the menu to
produce the Radial Blur dialog box shown in Figure
2.7. Choose 85 for the Amount, Zoom as the Blur Figure 2.7 Choose your settings
Method, and Best as the Quality level. While you can in the Radial Blur dialog box.
shift the point around which
Elements will zoom by dragging
the crosshair in the middle of the
preview box, the sample picture
already has the main subject
centered right where the zoom will
go.
7. Click OK to apply the zoom. Your
image will look like Figure 2.8.
8. In the Layers palette shown in
Figure 2.9 (you may have to
choose Window > Layers to access
it), drag the Opacity slider to
reduce the amount of zoom-blur
and restore some of the original
image by revealing the original,
unblurred image in the
background layer underneath your
current working layer. That makes
the blur effect less overwhelming,
and makes your original image a
bit more recognizable. I scaled
back the blur to 71 percent to
create the version shown in Figure
2.10.

Figure 2.8 The zoom effect has been applied full-

strength to all of the image except for the basketball.
 Lens Effects 23

Figure 2.9 Reduce the opacity of the

blurred layer to attenuate the effect.

Figure 2.10 Fading the zoom blur to 71% makes the

image a little more recognizable.

9. Be a little creative if you like. I took the fully blurred image from Figure 2.8 and pasted it
onto the original image from Figure 2.6. Then, I used an eraser with a large, soft brush to
selectively erase part of the blurry layer, creating an image that is sharp in the center, and
becomes dramatically zoomed everywhere else. You can see the final image in Figure 2.11.

Zoom blurring works especially well with sports events, rock concerts, and other fast-moving
situations where a little blur can liven up a photo.
24 Camera and Lens Effects in Photoshop Elements

Figure 2.11 Combining a blurred image with the original

selectively gives you a picture that looks like this.

Telephoto Effects
Elements can help you compensate for that long telephoto you can’t afford, or which isn’t
available for your digital camera. Telephotos are great for bringing your subject closer when you
can’t get close physically. Telephotos also compress the apparent distance between objects that
are actually more widely separated than they appear to be. Tele lenses are often used in those
car-chase sequences you see in the movies. From the head-on view, it looks like the hero is
weaving in and out of cars that are only a few feet apart. In real life, they were probably
separated by 40 feet or more, and crammed together through the magic of a telephoto lens.

Unfortunately, most digital cameras don’t have really long telephoto lenses available. Some
digital models may have skimpy 3:1 zoom lenses that simulate at their maximum the view you’d
get with, say, a short 105mm or 135mm lens on a conventional 35mm camera. Some semi-pro
models offer 10:1 zooms (or better) that still don’t bring you close enough. The so-called
 Lens Effects 25

“digital” zoom built into many models does offer more magnification, but they do nothing more
than enlarge a selection of pixels in the center of the sensor to fill your entire image area. You
don’t actually gain any additional information. You can purchase add-on telephotos for most
digital cameras, but these can cost hundreds of dollars and you might not use them very often.
You might as well do the job in Elements, where you can enlarge and sharpen your image in
real-time under your full control. If you have a digital camera with 5-6 megapixels or more, this
can work quite well.

The key to successfully mimicking a long telephoto with Elements is to start with the sharpest
original picture possible. Follow these suggestions to get your best picture:

■ Set your digital camera to its highest megapixel rating, and use the least amount of
compression possible. If your camera has an SHQ, Extra Fine, TIFF, or RAW setting, you’ll
find these will give you the sharpest original image.
■ Use the sharpest film (conventional camera) or lowest ISO setting (digital camera) you can,
given the lighting conditions and your subject matter. That might mean using an ISO 100
film (or its digital equivalent setting) for a scenic photo, or an ISO 200-400 film or setting
for an action picture.
■ If your camera has manual settings or can be set to Shutter Priority mode (in which you
choose the shutter speed and the camera sets the lens opening), use the shortest shutter speed
you can. I’ve found that even a brief 1/500th second exposure can still be blurred by camera
motion in the hands of someone who isn’t accustomed to holding the camera really steady.
A short exposure will stop subject motion, too.
■ Consider using a tripod, if you have one available, to steady your camera. At the very least,
try bracing the camera against a rigid object, such as a tree, building, or rail.
■ Use your longest optical lens or zoom setting (not digital zoom!) to provide the most
magnification you can in your original picture.

Figure 2.12 represents a combination of best possible/worst possible scenario. On the plus side,
I managed front row seats just behind and above the dugout on the third-base side for this
professional softball game. Unfortunately, when the action started, I had a zoom lens that
topped out at the equivalent of 105mm, so my picture wasn’t the close-up look I really wanted.

Yet, because I had enough megapixels to play with, I was able to crop the photo and get the
result you can see in Figure 2.13. Because it focuses on the pitcher, it packs a lot more
excitement than the original grab shot.

For an absolutely worst-case scenario, check out Figure 2.14, which shows the view from the
$7.00 seats at Jacobs Field in Cleveland, with a box drawn around the view I wish that I’d had.
Fortunately, the rowdy gang of kids I’d brought with me couldn’t tell the difference between
these seats and the $40 Lower Box accommodations, so it was money better diverted to hot
dogs, even if my photo opportunities suffered.
26 Camera and Lens Effects in Photoshop Elements

Figure 2.12 A great seat and a short telephoto lens provide this “big
picture” view.

Figure 2.13 Cropping the image provides a telephoto effect.

 Lens Effects 27

Figure 2.14 This is the sort of picture you can expect to take 380 feet from home plate.

The original was a full-frame digital image taken with a digital camera with a mere 3.3 mega-
pixels. I zoomed in as far as I could with the 4X zoom lens, loaded the resulting image into
Elements, and applied Elements’ Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask filter, which lets you “dial in”
the amount of sharpness you want, using the dialog box shown in Figure 2.15.

UNSHARP MASKING
Unsharp masking is derived from a conventional photographic technique, and, despite its
name, is used to sharpen images. The technique was first applied to images made on 4 × 5 and
larger sheet film. In the darkroom, a film positive is made from the original film negative, a
sort of reversed negative in which all the parts of the image that were originally black are
black, and all the parts that were white are white. This positive is slightly blurred, which causes
the image to spread a bit (like any out-of-focus image). When the positive and negative are
sandwiched together and used to expose yet another image, the light areas of the positive
correspond very closely to the dark areas of the negative, and vice versa, canceling each other
out to a certain extent. However, at the edges of the image, the blurring in the positive
produces areas that don’t cancel out, resulting in lighter and darker lines on either side of the
edges. This extra emphasis on the edges of the image adds the appearance of sharpness.
Figure 2.16 might help you visualize how this works.
28 Camera and Lens Effects in Photoshop Elements

Figure 2.16 A blurred positive and negative image (left) are

combined to produce a new, sharpened negative that can be
used, in turn, to print an image like the one at right.
Figure 2.15 The Unsharp
Mask dialog box allows you to
dial in the amount of sharpness
you want.

It’s fairly easy for Elements to create the blurry positive “mask” and then match it with a
negative image of the original picture. As a bonus, you end up with greater control over the
amount of blur in the mask, the distance around the edges that are masked, and a threshold level
(relative brightness) at which the effect begins to be applied. The Unsharp Mask filter is similar
in many ways to the Sharpen Edges filter, but with this enhanced control. There are three slider
controls:

■ The Amount slider controls the degree of edge enhancement applied. You can vary the
sharpening effect from 1 percent to 500 percent, and view the results in the Preview window
as you work.
■ The Radius slider determines the width of the edge that will be operated on, measured in
pixels, with valid values from .1 (very narrow) to 250 pixels (very wide). You can preview
the results visually, but use a few rules of thumb to decide how much to move this control.
The main thing to keep in mind is the original resolution of your image. Low-resolution
images (under 100 dpi) can’t benefit from much more than one- to three-pixels worth of edge
sharpening, while higher resolution images (300 dpi and up) can accommodate values of 10
or more. You’ll know right away if you have set your values too high. You’ll see thick,
poster-like edges that aren’t realistic, accompanied by a high degree of contrast. You may, in
fact, actually like the weird appearance, but you’ve left the realm of sharpening and ventured
into special effects at this point.
 Lens Effects 29

■ The Threshold slider sets the amount of contrast that must exist between adjacent pixels
before the edge is sharpened. Sharpness is actually determined by how much the contrast
varies between pixels in an area, as shown in Figure 2.17, a super-enlargement of the clock
face in the tower that holds Big Ben (which itself is actually a bell) in London. Low contrast
equals a blurry, soft image, while high contrast tends to mean a sharp, hard image. You can
see that the pixels on either side of the enlargement are exactly the same size, but that the
contrast between them is greater on the left (“sharper”) side.

Figure 2.17 The pixels are the same size, so the

resolution must be the same. Yet, the more con-
trasty half of the image, on the left, looks sharp-
er than the lower-contrast image on the right.

When working with the Threshold slider, values from 0 to 255 can be used. A very low value
means that edges with relatively small contrast differences will be accentuated. High values
mean that the difference must be very great before any additional sharpening is applied.
Normally, you’ll need this control only when the default value produces an image with excessive
noise or some other undesirable effect. To be honest, in all the years I’ve used it, changing the
Threshold slider produces effects that were hard to predict, because they varied widely
depending on how the other two controls were adjusted, and the nature of the image itself. Your
best bet is to set the Amount and Radius sliders first, then experiment with Threshold to see if
you like the results any better.

Figure 2.18 shows my baseball picture after I experimented with the Unsharp Mask filter to
optimize the sharpness. The view is still not as good as a front row seat, but then, I didn’t have
to pay a lot for my tickets or tote around a mammoth telephoto lens, either. If nothing else,
Elements helped me create a souvenir of an exciting game.
30 Camera and Lens Effects in Photoshop Elements

Figure 2.18 Elements simulated a long telephoto lens by helping sharpen this tightly cropped
image.

Compressing Distances
As I mentioned earlier, telephoto lenses also are used to compress apparent distances. The good
news is that this effect, sometimes called “telephoto distortion” has nothing to do with the lens
itself. It’s simply an effect caused as you move farther away from a subject.

For example, if you are photographing a series of fenceposts that are spaced 10 feet apart, and
you’re standing 10 feet from the first post, the second post will be twice as far away (20 feet),
the third one three times as far away (30 feet), and the fourth one four times as distant at 40
feet.

Now move 50 feet away from the first post. The second post will now be only 1.2X as far from
you as the first post (60 feet instead of 50), the second will be 1.4X as far, the third 1.6X as far,
and the fourth one 1.8X the distance. The apparent distance between them will be much less in
your photograph. However, the fence posts will be waaay down the road from you, so if you use
a telephoto lens to bring them closer, you’ll see the images as relatively compressed together, as
shown in Figure 2.19. The exact same thing happens if you take the picture with a much shorter
lens and enlarge it. The distances are relatively compressed. The figure shows an image of the
town walls around the city of Avila, Spain, at left, and an enlargement taken with the same lens
at roughly the same position, but cropped and enlarged in Elements so only the last six towers
are visible. You can see how compressed the distances between the towers appear when the
picture is blown up.
 Lens Effects 31

Figure 2.19 An enlargement of a portion of the photo at left produces a “compressed” image
at right.

Telephoto perspective can flatten images in which the distance between the objects is not so
obvious. Figure 2.20 shows a wide view of the Spanish town of Segovia, taken from the tower of
the city’s famous castle (it’s the one always shown in those “castles in Spain” posters). When the
image is cropped to its center portion, buildings in the foreground that are 100 yards from the
cathedral in the background appear as if they butted right up against its base. Elements helps
you re-create this telephoto effect without the need for a telephoto lens.

Figure 2.20 A normal lens shot doesn’t show the compression effect of a telephoto…
32 Camera and Lens Effects in Photoshop Elements

Figure 2.21 …but cropping the image more tightly does produce a
compressed look.

Of course, you might not have any medieval walls, cathedrals, or fence posts around to try out
the telephoto compression effect on your own. However, you can probably reproduce something
similar to what you see in Figure 2.22, which used nothing more than some red peppers, a plain
background, and a camera mounted on a tripod.

The version on the left was taken with a wide-angle lens with the camera only a foot or so from the
peppers. Although both vegetables are roughly the same size, the rear pepper appears to be a bit
smaller, because the wide-angle lens stretches the distance between them. In the right-side version,

Figure 2.22 Here, the wide-angle look (left) and telephoto view (right) are dramatically different.
Elements can produce the same effect.
 Lens Effects 33

the camera was set on the lens’ longest telephoto position, and then the tripod was carefully moved
back until the front pepper appeared to be about the same size as before. The hindmost pepper now
appears to be much closer to its mate (even though it hasn’t moved an iota) and is more nearly the
same size, because the tele lens has compressed the distance between the two.

You’ll find that shooting from a distance and then enlarging in Elements produces exactly the
same effect as using a telephoto lens. All you need are enough pixels to make the degree of
enlargement you want practical.

Fisheye Lens
Fisheye lenses were originally developed as a way to provide a hemispherical view in
unreasonably tight places, generally for technical reasons, such as examining the insides of a
boiler, or for photographing things like the sky’s canopy for astronomical research. Because of
their specialized nature, they tended to cost a fortune to buy, but that didn’t stop photographers
of the 1960s who were looking for a way to come up with novel images. My own first fisheye
lens was a second-generation Nikon optic, an improved 7.5mm lens that replaced the original
8mm Nikon fisheye, and which required locking up the single lens reflex’s mirror and using a
separate viewfinder. I later got Nikon’s 16mm “full frame” fisheye lens, which did not produce a
circular image like the original.

Today, fisheye lenses are available as prime lenses for conventional cameras, or as attachments
for many digital cameras, but they’re still not something you’d want to use everyday. So, you
might want to try Elements’ equivalent effect. Figure 2.23 shows you an image of a dandelion in
its original perspective (left) and transformed into a fisheye view with Elements (at right).

Figure 2.23 A dandelion (left) and its fisheye version (right). It’s hard to see the
difference, because the original subject was already round in shape.
Other documents randomly have
different content
arrival of all whalers and steamers. Once as he went along ringing, a
girl asked him rudely where he got his bell, and his reply was, “I got
my bell where you got your manners,—at the ‘brass foundry.’”
Nantucketers declare that his death was due to the fact that he
actually “blew his lungs away.”
The Chase family has always occupied a most prominent position
in the history of the island. One of the family was Reuben Chase,
who served under John Paul Jones on the “Ranger,” and on his death
the following epitaph was placed on his tombstone:—
“Free from the storms and gusts of human life,
Free from its error and its strife,
Here lies Reuben Chase anchored; who stood
The sea of ebbing life and flowing misery.
He was not dandy rigged, his prudent eye
Fore-saw and took a reef at fortune’s quickest flow.
He luffed and bore away to please mankind;
Yet duty urged him still to head the wind,
Rumatic gusts at length his masts destroyed,
Yet jury health awhile he yet enjoyed,
Worn out with age and shattered head,
At foot he struck and grounded on his bed.
There careening thus he lay,
His final bilge expecting every day,
Heaven took his ballast from his dreary hold,
And left his body destitute of soul.”

Every islander knows the story of the Nantucket skipper who

claimed that he could always tell where his ship was by the color
and taste of the lead after sounding. Marden, his mate, on one trip
determined to fool him, and for this purpose brought some dirt from
a neighbor’s garden in Nantucket. He woke up the skipper one
morning off Cape Horn, and showed him the lead, which had been
smeared with this dirt, whereupon, to quote the words of James
Thomas Fields,—
 “The skipper stormed and tore his hair,
Hauled on his boots and roared to Marden:
‘Nantucket’s sunk, and here we are
Right over old Marm Hackett’s garden!’”

Another Nantucket captain always took to sea medicine bottles,

each numbered and indexed to suit different complaints. Once his
mate was ill, and, looking up the bottle to administer in his case,
found that No. 13 contained the cure for his patient. Unfortunately,
this bottle had all been used, so, after careful deliberation, he mixed
the contents of bottles 6 and 7, which he gave the mate, who
promptly died.
Early history tells us that Thomas Macy purchased the island for
thirty pounds and two beaver hats, “One for myself and one for my
wife,” and to him therefore belongs the honor of the settlement of
Nantucket; he had been driven away from Massachusetts for
sheltering Quakers, which was at that time against the law, and with
his friend Edward Starbuck fled to the island and established a
colony composed of such well-known families as the Coffins,
Husseys, Swaynes, Gardners, Chases, Folgers, and Starbucks. These
men were not whalers, but they watched the Indians and learned
much from them, and later on employed Ichabod Paddock to come
over from Cape Cod and instruct them further.
The character of the island and its situation far out in the ocean,
its poor soil, and the number of whales along its shores, all proved
an inducement to the Nantucketers to follow the sea as a calling. At
first, there were so many whales that they did not find it necessary
to go beyond the coast; so, under the guidance of Paddock, lookouts
were erected along the South shore, and each man patrolled a
certain amount of territory. Each one took his share of whales killed,
and business flourished. This method of whaling continued until
1712, when Christopher Hussey, while cruising along the coast, was
blown out to sea. He ran across a sperm whale, which he finally
killed and brought home. This year was epoch making, as this was
the first sperm whale known to have been taken by Americans. The
oil from this species of whale being superior to that of all others, the
Nantucketers now (1715) decided to change their methods and to
whale in the “deep.” As the vessels steadily increased in size with
greater and greater cargo-carrying capacity, voyages necessarily
became longer, extending even to periods of four or five years. In
fact, a voyage lasting but two years was considered unusually short.
The point of view of most whalers regarding a two-year voyage is
shown by the captain who, when boarding his ship, was reminded by
a friend that he had not said “Good-by” to his wife,—
“Why should I?” said he; “I am only to be gone two years.”

The famous Roach (Rotch) fleet, “Enterprise,” “Wm. Roach,” “Pocahontas,” and
“Houqua,” among a “school” of sperm whales off the coast of Hawaii. Ships often
cruised together and divided the catch. Honolulu owes its rapid rise partially to the
frequent visits of the whalers. The first vessel fitted out from the Sandwich Islands
was in 1837 and was owned by Henry A. Pierce of New Bedford.

About 1730 “try-works” were built on the vessels instead of on the

shore, and the oil was boiled and stowed away at sea, thus allowing
the ships to make much longer voyages. At this time Nantucket
owned as many whaleships as all the other ports of America
combined. Whaling continued to increase, and the sterile island was
turned into a prosperous community, when the Revolution came on,
and for the time being practically put an end to the industry.
Nantucket was the only port that carried on whaling during the war:
the island simply had to whale or starve, as the inhabitants knew no
other occupation. Most of their vessels were eventually captured or
lost by shipwreck, and over twelve hundred of their men were either
killed or made prisoners. The end of the war found the island’s
business hopelessly wrecked; but, with their usual pluck and
determination, the Nantucketers once more built up a profitable
fleet. So impoverished were they that the government for one year
levied no taxes.
At the close of the war a Quaker, called William Rotch, was
Nantucket’s greatest whaler, and even he became so discouraged
with the prospects at home that in 1785 he left the island in his ship,
the “Maria,” for London. He endeavored to make some arrangement
with the English government to import some whaling families from
Nantucket, but, failing to do so, repaired to France, where he
succeeded in making an agreement with Louis XVI. A great many
families moved to France, and carried on the pursuit from Dunkirk in
Normandy. Rotch soon returned to Nantucket, and later moved to
New Bedford, where he died. The old Rotch counting-house was
later used as a club-room for Nantucket whaling captains, and is
even now being used as such. In the old prosperous days this was
jocosely called the House of Commons, while another club, which
was used by the ship owners, was named the House of Lords.
Immediately after the war, the ship “Bedford,” one of the Rotch
vessels, was loaded with oil, and sent to England under command of
Captain Mooers. This was the first vessel to display the American
flag in a British port. It is related that one of the crew of the ship
was hunchbacked, and when on shore one day a British sailor
clapped his hand on his shoulder, and said, “Hello, Jack, what have
you got here?” “Bunker Hill, and be d—d to you,” replied the Yankee.
 The redoubtable Nantucketers resumed their whaling at the close
of the Revolution, and their energy and skill were again yielding rich
profits when the War of 1812 almost annihilated the island’s fleet.
But as it was another case of whale or starve, Nantucket continued
to send out a few whalers, and was the only American port during
the war that dared to brave the risks of British capture.

A “camel” floating a whaler to sea over the Nantucket bar. The “camel” was
used from 1842 to 1849, enabling the Nantucketers for a time to keep pace with
the New Bedfordites.

About this time, in one of the Pacific ports, an incident occurred

which showed in an amusing light the ready wit and intrepid courage
of an American whaleman. He had in some way displeased an
English naval officer, who, feeling himself highly insulted, promptly
challenged the Yankee, who accepted and, being the challenged
party, had the choice of weapons. He selected, of course, the
weapon with which he was most skilful and took his stand with a
poised harpoon. It had altogether too dangerous an appearance for
the irate Englishman, particularly as the whaleman was evidently an
expert in the manual of thrust and parry, and so with as good grace
as he could command, the Englishman withdrew from the fight.
 At a very early day in the fishery, whaling vessels, which were at
first long rowboats and later small sloops, began to increase in size,
and about 1820 ships of three hundred tons were found profitable.
The increase in profit producing capacity, strange as it may appear,
actually sounded the death-knell of the Nantucket whaling, for
across the mouth of the harbour ran a bar, over which it soon
became impossible for whaling vessels of large size to pass. The
difficulty was for a time overcome by the true Yankee ingenuity of
some inventive Nantucketer, who devised the “camel,” a veritable
dry-dock barge in which the larger whaleships, lightened often of oil
and bone, were floated over the bar into the forest of masts which in
those days characterized a harbour now frequented only by a few
schooners and sloops, the small pleasure crafts of the summer
residents, and an occasional steamer.
As whaleships still continued to increase in size, the “camel”
expedient was only a temporary success; for the time came when
vessels were of too great tonnage to be thus floated over the bar,
and the daring and skilful Nantucketer, who had taught the civilized
world not only how, but where, to whale, had to admit defeat and
gradually give up the industry to more fortunately situated ports. At
this time, about 1830, Nantucket was commercially the third largest
city in Massachusetts, Boston being first and Salem second.
In 1843 Nantucket owned its record number of ships, eighty-eight.
In 1846, which is referred to as the “boom” year in American
whaling, sixteen vessels cleared from Nantucket and sixty-nine from
her near-by rival—New Bedford. In 1869 Nantucket sent her last ship
and disappeared from the list of whaling ports. The great fire of
1846 also contributed to the downfall of the industry.
A new era in whaling was to be born, with New Bedford as the
centre, and Nantucket was to become only a health resort and
mecca for sight-seers, more than ten thousand persons visiting the
island in 1914.
NEW BEDFORD
New Bedford undoubtedly owed its whaling success to its
proximity to Nantucket, to its wonderful harbour, and to the honesty,
thrift, and good business ability of its citizens, most of whom were
Quakers.

A whaler leaving New Bedford Harbour.

As in Nantucket, the whole city lived to go whaling, and as each

inhabitant made more money, he moved his residence higher up on
the Hill. It is said that there was an inn called the “Crossed
Harpoons,” and another called “Spouter Inn,” and there is a
Whaleman’s Chapel on Johnny Cake Hill where regular Sunday
services were held, at which the following hymn was always sung by
the congregation:—
 “The ribs and terrors of the whale
Arched over me in dismal gloom,
While all God’s sun-lit waves rolled by
And left me deepening down to doom.

“I saw the opening maw of hell,

With endless pains and sorrows there;
Which none but they that feel can tell—
Oh, I was plunging to despair—

“In black distress I called to God,

When I could scarce believe him mine,
He bowed his ear to my complaints—
No more the whale did me confine.”

The pulpit of this chapel was made to represent the prow of a

whaleship, and was ascended by means of a rope ladder, which the
minister, who had been a harpooner in his youth, hauled up after
him. Around the walls of this little church can still be seen tablets
erected in memory of many whalemen who lost their lives at sea.
There also was a daily paper called The Whaleman, which gave the
reports of the whaleships and the whaling news. It has been said
that New Bedford fathers gave whales for dowers to their daughters,
and that they had reservoirs of oil in their attics to burn on gala
occasions.
It is a curious fact that three Morgans not long ago married three
Rotchs, three Rotchs married three Rodmans, and three Rodmans
married three Motleys. Among other well-known New Bedford
whaling families are the Hathaways, Swifts, Howlands, Morgans,
Stones, Delanos, Rodmans, Seaburys, Giffords, Tabers, Grinnells,
and Wings.
Whaling was a tremendous financial gamble, and until a vessel
came home “clean” or “greasy,” meaning empty or full, the success
of the voyage was not known. They tell a story of a New Bedford
captain who had been out for nearly four years, and as he came up
to the wharf the owners asked him what luck he had had. His reply
was, “I didn’t get any whales, but I had a damn good sail.” There is
another tale of a seaman whose vessel left New Bedford on the day
of his mother’s funeral. Naturally he set sail with a heavy heart, and
during his three years’ cruise he thought many times of his sorrowful
father at home. As the ship neared the docks he was met by his
father with “Hurry up, Jim, I want to introduce you to your new
mother.” There were many changes at home during a long cruise,
and sometimes even the fashions had entirely changed. One
whaleship captain described his surprise at seeing for the first time
the crinoline or hoop skirt.
The real founder of New Bedford, and the pioneer of the whale
fishery at this port, was Joseph Russell, who sent his ships out in
1765. Several years later the first ship was launched and was called
the “Dartmouth,” and this vessel is well known to history owing to
the fact that she was one of the ships that carried into Boston
Harbour the tea that was thrown overboard. The whaling industry
increased steadily, except during the wars, until 1857, when the New
Bedford fleet numbered three hundred and twenty-nine vessels, was
valued at over twelve million dollars, and employed over twelve
thousand seamen. If these vessels had been strung out in line, they
would have stretched over ten miles. In addition to these sailors,
thousands of others were employed at home making casks, irons,
ropes, and many other articles used in whaling. In fact, it was often
stated that the population was divided into three parts,—those away
on a voyage, those returning, and those getting ready for the next
trip.
There were many nationalities represented in the crews of the
whalers, and the New Bedford streets presented a very foreign
appearance, with Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegians,
Germans, French, English, Scotch, Irish, Sandwich Islanders, and
New Englanders at every turn. A large number of Portuguese served
on whaleships, and a part of the city near the south end of Water
Street became known as Fayal.
The “Golden Age,” as it is called, of whaling was between 1825
and 1860, and during the whole of this period New Bedford assumed
the lead, even long after other ports had given up the pursuit. It is
estimated that about the year 1848 there were over seventy millions
invested in the industry and seventy thousand persons derived from
it their subsistence.
It is an interesting fact that the insurance on American whalemen
was about one-half the rate that was charged the Englishman, which
certainly showed the superiority of our Yankee seamen. There were
several whaling insurance companies in New Bedford. There is a
story told of a New Bedford ship owner who had just heard that his
vessel had gone down and he hadn’t yet received the insurance
policy from the company. He sent a letter down to the office which
read as follows: “I have heard from my ship and thee need not place
the insurance.” Of course, the policy was sent up immediately.
The New Bedford whalers explored new grounds, and to this fact
chiefly is due the continued prosperity of its whale fishery, but it was
to die slowly; in 1875 the fleet from this port had declined to 116
vessels, in 1886 to 77 ships, and in 1906 to 24.

The famous Stone Fleet sailing from New Bedford, Nov. 16, 1861. The ships
were loaded with stones and were sunk in the mouths of certain Southern
harbours during the Civil War, to prevent blockade runners from entering. The
vessels in this picture are the Garland, Maria Theresa, Rebecca Simms, Leonidas,
South America, Archer, American, Harvest, Amazon, Cossack, Courier, Henrietta,
Potomac, Kensington, Herald and L. C. Richmond.
 The captains of the Stone Fleet. A fine type of old New England ship masters.
Standing from left to right—Captains Beard, Gifford, Swift, Childs, Stall, French,
Wood, Cumiski, Willis, Bailey. Sitting from left to right—Captains Malloy, Swift,
Brown, Howland, Worth, Tilton, Brayton, Taylor, Chadwick.

One of the chief historical events of New Bedford happened in

1861, when the famous Stone Fleet sailed from that port. The United
States government decided to purchase some old ships and sink
them in the channels of the harbours of Charleston and Savannah,
to prevent blockade running during the war. H. Bartlett & Sons
supervised their purchase and Captain Rodolphus N. Swift was the
general agent. Bartlett purchased some of the old whalers for as
small a price as thirty-one hundred and fifty dollars, some of them
having more cement than wood in their hulls. To James Duddy, a
teamster, fell the task of supplying the seventy-five hundred tons of
stones with which to fill the vessels, and many a New Bedford stone
wall now lies at the bottom of some of our Southern harbours.
Captain Rodney French, an old “slaver,” who afterwards became
Mayor of New Bedford, was selected as commander of the fleet, and
on Thanksgiving Day most of New Bedford assembled on the
wharves and saw fifteen of her once famous fleet, which had for
years been the homes of its seamen, sail forth never to return. It
must have been a very sad day for the city, and it may be said that
this event marked the beginning of the decline of the industry at
New Bedford.
One captain insisted upon washing the decks of his ship every
morning, using pulverized stones instead of sand, and another, to
give the fleet a warlike appearance, mounted a formidable “Quaker”
gun, made from a section of a spar.
A second fleet sailed later in the year, making forty-five vessels in
all. Although the expedition cost the government about a quarter of
a million dollars, its success was only temporary. The captain of the
“Alabama” swore vengeance on New Bedford and destroyed or
captured every whaler he could find, and in the “Alabama” awards
that were made after the war New Bedford received a large share.
Ten years later occurred the worst disaster that ever befell a
whaling fleet. Thirty-four whalers were caught in the ice in the Arctic
regions and sunk, and it is a curious fact that, while the loss reached
one million five hundred thousand dollars, not a single human life
was sacrificed. These three pictures of a series of five on the
following page show the sinking of the ships, the abandonment of
their vessels, which had their flags union down, and the eighty-mile
sail through the ice-floes to the open sea, where twelve hundred and
nineteen men, women, and children were taken home in the seven
whalers that had not been lost in the ice. It must have been very
crowded, as each ship had to stow away several hundred persons in
addition to her own crew. There were many sad hearts as they left
their vessels and almost all of their belongings, and started off in the
small boats. The trip to sea and the trans-shipment in the heavy
swell must have been made with the utmost care, otherwise many
lives would have been sacrificed. The loss to the New Bedford
owners was so tremendous that they never really recovered from the
catastrophe, and many families had to economize for years after.
The Swifts, Howlands, and Rotchs were among those who lost ships.
On one of the vessels in the first picture of this series was a large
quantity of the finest Manila cigars and also some rare Madeira wine,
that had been picked up in the Philippines the year before on
instructions from the ship’s owner. When the captain of this vessel
reached New Bedford and reported the loss of his command, the
owner’s first question, after listening to the dismal tale, was whether
his cigars and wine had been saved. “All of it,” came the reply.
“Where is it?” said the owner, looking more cheerful. “Well, you see,
I drank the wine and Mr. Jones, the mate, he smoked the cigars, and
they certainly done us both good,” replied the captain.
The ship “Progress,” shown in the last picture, forms an interesting
connecting link between the Stone Fleet and this 1871 disaster.

Abandonment of the whalers in the Arctic Ocean, September, 1871. Vessels

surrounded by the ice, and many of them in a sinking condition.
 Abandonment of the whalers in the Arctic Ocean, September, 1871. Showing the
whaleboats being hauled up on Blossom Shoals, where the ship-wrecked crews
spent the night crowded under the upturned boats.

Abandonment of the whalers in the Arctic Ocean, September, 1871. The seven
ships receiving the 1217 men, women, and children of the abandoned vessels. The
sea was very rough and the trans-shipment was very dangerous. The ship
“Progress,” whose history is given on the opposite page, is at the right of the
picture.

Under the name of the “Charles Phelps” she whaled from

Stonington, Conn., for a number of years and finally was purchased
for the Stone Fleet. She was found to be in such good condition that
the government decided not to sink her, and she returned to New
Bedford and was sold; and it was this same vessel that took part in
the rescue of the twelve hundred and nineteen shipwrecked people
ten years later. In 1893 she was fitted out as if for a whaling voyage
and towed by way of the St. Lawrence River to Chicago, where she
was exhibited at the Fair, and now lies rotting on the sands of the
lake at South Chicago. No other whaler ever had so interesting and
varied a history.
The year after this Arctic disaster found the fleet again in the
Arctic, and the “Minerva,” one of the ships left at Point Belcher, was
discovered and found to be in good condition; the others had sunk.
One lone person was found who had remained on board his ship for
the whole year, and his sufferings had been fearful. The natives had
stolen all the whalebone and oil from the sinking vessels, and when
some of the same shipwrecked captains arrived the next year the
Esquimaux tried to sell them back their own property, and one native
was using one of the chronometer cases as a dinner pot in which to
boil his blubber. The “Minerva” was manned and sailed to New
Bedford and continued in the whaling industry.
New Bedford ships suffered severely during the Rebellion, but
later new ones were added to the fleet and business again
prospered. Lack of space prevents enumerating the achievements of
American whalers during the Civil War. Captain William P. Randall,
however, will go down in history as a hero of this war; he was
brought up on a whaleship and later served in the navy.
Captain Frederick Fish, father of Frederick P. Fish and Charles H.
Fish, of Boston, was one of the best known and most respected of
the whaling captains sailing out of New Bedford. He commanded the
“Montreal” and the “Columbus” when only twenty-two years old,
made nine voyages round the world, and was one of the most
successful whalers of his day. Once when near the Sandwich Islands
his vessel happened to anchor very close to an English ship, and
Captain Fish noticed that every evening at sunset the English
commander, while at anchor, set all sails and then furled them again
in order to show how quickly this work could be performed. After a
few evenings Captain Fish ordered his crew to do the same, and the
time consumed was so much less that the next evening the
Englishman decided he did not care to go through the performance;
in fact, he never tried to show off again in that port.
There is also another amusing story told about Captain Fish. His
ship at one port took on a great many chickens, which were used for
food, and finally one of the crew rebelled and informed the captain
that he had eaten enough hen. He was immediately ordered out on
a yard-arm and was made to crow like a rooster for such a long time
that when he was again allowed on deck, he had a most excellent
appetite for another chicken dinner. Captain Fish delighted in telling
of the time when he took a local pilot on board somewhere in the
Pacific to conduct his vessel into port. He asked the navigator if he
were sure of his course, and received a prompt and decisive answer
in the affirmative. Presently, to the disgust of the captain, the vessel
touched. The next question put to the pilot was whether or not he
could swim, and finding that he could, Captain Fish ordered his crew
to throw him overboard. This was done, and, the distance being
short, the swimmer made the land, and the captain himself took his
vessel in the rest of the way.

New Bedford fifty years ago (1808). (This print is dated 1858.)

Captain Fish was an excellent story teller, and another yarn has
been handed down in connection with one of his trips. The voyage
had been very unsuccessful, and as he was looking over his chart he
tossed his dividers down in a disgruntled manner, and by accident
they chanced to stick in the chart. He then conceived the novel idea
of sailing to the very place where his instrument happened to land,
and curiously enough he was rewarded by a very large catch.
 Once when one of his whaleboats had been overturned by a
fighting whale he hurried to the assistance of the crew, who were
struggling in the water, and to his amazement found two of them
squabbling over the ownership of a pair of old shoes, instead of
thinking about saving their lives. It is a curious fact that he never
learned to swim, and often saved his life when capsized by grabbing
some floating débris. His nerve and courage were remarkable, and it
is related that even on his death-bed he told the doctor an amusing
story.
This picture of New Bedford in 1808 is most interesting. The oil
market shed on the right-hand side of the street was built in 1795 by
Barnabas Russell for his son Joseph, and the last building shown on
the right of the picture was the mansion of William Rotch, Sr., and
the first estate in the village at that time. This Rotch was the son of
Joseph Rotch, one of New Bedford’s earliest whalers, and he himself
is represented in his old chaise, the only private carriage then in the
town. He is negotiating for a load of hay, and from all accounts he
must have been a keen business man, for he was often seen going
to market so early that he had to use a lantern. All the other figures
in this picture also are intended to represent well-known citizens of
the time. The two men shaking hands are Captain Crocker and
Samuel Rodman; the latter, who was the son-in-law of William
Rotch, had the reputation of being the best dressed man in New
Bedford in his day. One of the boys harnessed to the small cart is
the Hon. George Howland, Jr., great-uncle of Llewellyn Howland. H.
H. Hathaway, Jr., and Thomas S. Hathaway have three ancestors in
the picture.
 Oil stored on the wharves at New Bedford awaiting a favorable market. The
owners, dressed in silk hats, long-tailed coats, and polished top boots, might often
be seen watching, testing, and marking the oil-barrels.
OTHER NEW ENGLAND WHALING PORTS
Rhode Island pursued whales in 1731, Newport and Providence
being the two most successful ports. Fifty ships were owned by
Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1775. Massachusetts owned over
three hundred at this time. Rhode Island was more of a “slave” than
a whaling State. New London became a great whaling port in 1846,
and was the third in importance in New England.
The people of Cape Cod began sending ships to sea about 1726,
and a few years later a dozen or so vessels were fitted out at
Provincetown. Boston claimed twenty whaleships in 1775, and
registered from one to eleven vessels almost every year until 1903,
since which date no whaleship has been recorded from this port.
Gloucester turned to whaling in 1833.
The following figures show the different whaling ports in
Massachusetts and the largest number of vessels enrolled in any one
year in each. New Bedford, of course, held first place with 329 in
1857, with Nantucket 88 in 1843, Provincetown claimed 54 in 1869;
Fairhaven 50 in 1848 to 1852; Edgartown and Mattapoisett owned
19 each; Salem had 14 in 1840; Boston 11 in 1868; Dartmouth, 10;
Plymouth, 9; Falmouth, 8; Wareham, Fall River, and Marion, 7 each;
Beverly, Holmes’ Hole, Orleans, 5 each; Lynn, 4; Newburyport, 3;
Gloucester, Dorchester, and Sandwich, 2 each; and the following
claimed 1: Braintree, Hingham, Marblehead, Barnstable, Duxbury,
Quincy, Truro, Yarmouth, and Wellfleet. Of the Rhode Island towns
Warren owned 25; Newport, 12; Bristol, 10; Providence, 9.
Connecticut towns that owned whalers were New London, 70;
Stonington, 27; Mystic, 18; and a few scattered among half a dozen
other places. Portsmouth, N.H., at one time owned two vessels, and
between the years 1835 to 1845 Bath, Bucksport, Portland, and
Wiscasset in Maine each had one. Massachusetts, however, could
claim five-sixths of the total fleet.
 A few words must be said in praise of Samuel Mulford of Long
Island. Governor Hunter of New York claimed for his State a share of
all whales caught, whereupon Mulford waged war against this act in
every possible way. Finally he sailed to London and put his case
before the Crown. The people in London were much amused at his
country clothes, and the pickpockets in particular became a nuisance
to him in the streets. Mulford, however, showed his resourcefulness
by sewing fish hooks in his pockets and succeeded in capturing the
thief. Another incident shows the ingenuity of the whaleman. The
ship “Syren” was attacked by a horde of murderous savages, and the
crew of the ship would, doubtless, have been murdered had it not
been for a quick stratagem of the mate. He remembered a package
of tacks in the cabin and yelled, “Break out the carpet tacks and sow
’em over the deck.” The natives, yelling with pain, jumped headlong
into the sea, and the ship was saved.
 The Japanese method of capturing whales was to entangle them in nets. A
great many boatloads of men would drive the whale toward the nets by throwing
bricks and stones at it. When once entangled the infuriated animal could be easily
killed. In 1884 the Ukitsu Whaling Company employed over 100,000 whalemen.
One of the most successful of the Japanese in this pursuit was Masutomi
Matazaemon, who accumulated a large fortune. The Japanese have been very
slow to adopt our Western methods.

A typical “blubber hunter” cruising for “right” whales in the Arctic.

The world owes many discoveries to the energy and determination

of whaleship captains. Over four hundred islands in the Pacific were
discovered and named by American whalemen, and the history of
New Zealand is closely connected with the visits of New England
whalers. Australia, too, was opened to the world by the whalemen.
It was to a certain extent due to the testimony of Captain Bryant,
a whale captain of Mattapoisett, that Alaska was purchased by the
United States government. That there was a northwest passage was
also discovered by American whalemen in this way: the date and
name of a ship were always marked on its harpoons, and in several
instances whales were captured in the Pacific by ships that were
known to have been cruising not long before in the Atlantic. It was
Captain Timothy Folger, of Nantucket, who charted the Gulf Stream
at the request of Benjamin Franklin, to whom he was related, and
this drawing was engraved on an old chart and preserved in London.
In this way English mariners discovered how to avoid the swift
current and thereby gain much time. Our seamen in the early days
were not very kindly treated by the Japanese, but, finally, several
whalemen secured their good will by teaching them English. This
encouraged the American government to send out Commodore
Perry’s expedition, which succeeded in making our first treaty with
Japan, thus opening that country to Western civilization.
It was difficult to make discoveries ahead of our whalemen. In
1834 two Russian discovery ships approached a forlorn little island in
the Antarctic Ocean and the commander was about to take
possession in the name of his Czar. There was a dense fog at the
time, but when it cleared away they were very much surprised and
vexed to see a little Connecticut ship at anchor between their two
vessels. The name of this whaler was the “Hero” of Stonington,
captained by Nathaniel B. Palmer, who was only twenty-one years of
age and was just returning from his discovery of the Antarctic
Continent. The Russian commander was so impressed by the
achievement of this youthful captain that he cheerfully acquiesced in
naming the place Palmer’s Land. This name has since been changed
to Graham Land. It is an undisputed fact that the whalers prepared
the way for the missionaries.
ABOARD A “BLUBBER HUNTER”
Nothing can be more romantic than to be attending a clam-bake
on Mishaum Point or Barney’s Joy and to see a whaleship, or
“blubber hunter” as she is often termed, round the point and start to
sea. It is with quite different feelings that one peers down into her
forecastle, which is often referred to as the Black Hole of Calcutta.
This room, which is the home of thirty to forty men for three or four
years, is reached by a perpendicular ladder through a small
hatchway, which is the only means of ventilation. The bunks are in
tiers and are about the size of a coffin, so narrow that it has often
been said that one has to get out of them in order to turn over. A
small table in the centre of this “hole” and the seamen’s chests
lashed to the floor comprise all the furnishings, except possibly a few
bottles of rum, which were often labelled “camphor.” In fact, one
might speak of the dis-accommodations of the forecastle, and it is
no wonder that a cruise in a whaler is often spoken of as a “sailor’s
horror.” The odor of grease, dirt, oil, and lack of air are unbearable
except to one thoroughly accustomed to a whaling trip, and sailors
often say that this attractive place should not be approached without
a clothespin on one’s nose. The utensils comprised a few tin plates
and a bucket of water, with one cup for the use of every one. The
food consisted of “longlick” and “scouse,” the former made of tea,
coffee, and molasses, and the latter of hardtack, beans, and meat. It
is not difficult to see, therefore, why most of the captains anchored
their ships well out beyond the harbour, so as to prevent desertions
after the novice seaman had glanced at his sleeping quarters. There
have been cases of sailors jumping overboard on the chance of
reaching land, and it is on record that the greater part of a
whaleship’s crew once floated to shore on the cover of the try-works.
A captain was very careful where he allowed his men to land, and, in
case he was afraid of desertions, took care to allow them shore
leave only at places where the natives were troublesome, or where
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