Interviews

Mark Galer - in conversation
Author of the best selling Photoshop Essential Skills and Adobe Photoshop Elements Maximum Performance titles talks about his passion for editing digital images.

Inspiration
The famous photographer Ansel Adams was once quoted as saying that if the negative was the music score, then his work in the darkroom was his performance. My own post-production skills were also learned in the darkroom during my own undergraduate studies and I have always considered that post-production is an essential aspect of the holistic process of creating an image. I teach my students that the camera does NOT faithfully record a scene - the camera merely interprets it. Photoshop, however, is capable of rendering an image to appear how we first saw and experienced the scene. Photoshop is capable of restoring the emotional reality as well as altering reality.

As well as optimizing and enhancing images I have also been interested in creating images that explore altered realities. I drew early inspiration from surrealist painters and the British design group Hypnosis who created album cover art in the 70s and 80s. The composites that have featured on all five versions of my Photoshop Essential Skills book were inspired by the artwork from this period. I started creating composites 10 years before Photoshop was released but this type of cut & paste work, utilizing multiple prints, scalpels and copy stands, was an extremely time-consuming process. Photoshop now makes these altered realities easier that ever before and has transformed commercial photography, where compositing is now the 'norm', rather than the exception. I now live, eat and breathe Photoshop, and as a leading international 'Photoshop Guru' my skills are now recognized as some of the best in the world. I suppose I feel lucky that I have been engaged in Photoshop's long development over the last 20 years, and as a result, I have never seen it as a daunting or complex experience to edit an image. My task as a Photoshop teacher is to provide others with the skills so that they can master their craft. My Photoshop books help in this task, by providing an independent learning package for photographers who want to empower their own creativity and take control of the best post-production software currently available.

My workflow
Most of the time I have previsualized the outcome before I start editing an image, so the end point for the editing procedure is dictated by how quickly I can achieve this goal. As I know how to drive the software (I am a self confessed control freak) this usually happens in a matter of minutes rather than hours. Occasionally I may find myself working on an image where I do not have a final outcome in mind - I can see something I like in the original but something needs to happen to elevate it to a folio image. On these occasions I will edit the colour and tonality in Adobe Camera Raw (as this editing space is built for speed). I often see students nudging sliders slowly, waiting for some magic to happen, but I would advocate big and bold sweeps with the controls so you can find the visual breaking point that each slider can inflict upon an image before winding back to the most appropriate setting. As I work with a smart object workflow (where the Raw files are embedded in layers) there is no absolute ending to the edit process. As ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) gets better and better over the coming years I will find myself re-editing a file to access superior demosaicing, sharpening or noise reduction.

My favorite subject
My personal work is now dominated by landscapes. This has not always been the case but now I find shooting landscapes at dawn gives me the most reward. I enjoy planning the best vantage point, at the best time-of-day and I have taken to using mobile apps such as the Photographer's Ephemeris (http://photoephemeris.com/) to help me plan the perfect shoot. Prior to landscapes it was editorial stories that incorporated events or people as the main focus for the story. My final assignment at college was to document the last working coal mine in the Rhondda valley in South Wales and my most in-depth editorial story to date was to document my own 2-year 'round-the-world' charity trip on a motorcycle in the late 1980s (about 20 years before Ewan McGregor's 'long-way-round'). The subjects that are intriguing me most, at the current moment in time, are time-lapse, compositing video and HDR photography (High Dynamic Range). The advent of video on DSLR cameras and portable tablet devices such the iPad has shaken the industry vigorously and I always like to be engaged in change rather than stand back and watch it happen. I am also obsessed with building the best automated actions and making them available on my website http://markgaler.com

Most powerful editing feature in Photoshop
My favorite shortcut would have to be the 'Stamp Visible' shortcut (probably because Adobe has never officially documented it). For a Mac it is Command + Option + Shift + E and for a PC it is Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E. Next to this shortcut it would have to be the shortcuts for changing the blend mode of a layer. As a 'know-it-all' user I don't have to cycle through the layer blend modes looking for the one that might work I can just hit the shortcut for the blend mode that takes me straight through to the mathematical answer that resolves a visual problem or task in hand. I have found the Layer blend modes to be the most under-utilized editing feature for inexperienced users. I find them so useful I devoted a whole chapter to them in my Photoshop Essential Skills book and they are a dominant feature of the Maximum Performance projects for Photoshop Elements users. The essential blend modes are invaluable time savers.

The most powerful new features to arrive in Photoshop in recent years are Adobe Camera Raw 6 for its enhanced noise reduction, creating a post-crop vignette and sharpening controls, Merge to HDR pro (especially its de-ghosting feature) and the new Refine Edge feature in CS5 that makes hair extraction really fast. For Photoshop Elements users who do not have access to some of these features (elements) I explore alternative, and sometimes unique, workflows that allow sophisticated composites and image enhancements. I have to admit to enjoying the challenge of writing a Photoshop Elements book that is aims to show users how to engage in professional quality editing with a piece of software that has a few features (elements) missing. The workflows I create circumnavigate the shortcomings of the Elements concept (budget software with a couple of editing features short of a six-pack!).

My best tip for a Photoshop user wanting to progress to the next level
If you are a photographer and you are looking to become a master of your craft then take a look at either one of my Photoshop Essential Skills or Adobe Photoshop Maximum Performance books. They have been training the best post-production artists for over a decade and have become the textbooks of choice by many colleges around the world. Each title is supported by a comprehensive resource of learning assets (images and videos). With so many tutorial videos (12 hours for CS5 and 10 hours for Elements 10) they are more of a short course or training package rather than just a simple book.