Changing the Background
When i purchased my latest digital camera (a Nikon 995), I received a copy of Photo Studio 5 from ArcSoft. For the most part, I didn't do all that much to my pictures -- here and there I'd use a filter or change the brightness to the entire picture. I never really had much use for some of the other tools. In the early autumn of 2003, I went up to the Adirondacks to do some hiking when i came across a pond about 1/2 mile into a climb up Giant Mountain. The day was a little hazy so conditions weren't great for a lot of shots. In the photo below, I captured a pretty good photo of the pond with most of the backdrop (the mountain and the surrounding trees) reflected in the pond. The sky in the photo got completely washed out -- i was seriously bummed. I decided to see if I could do something about it.
Photo of pond along Giant Mountain Trail
I used the Magic Wand tool on the ToolBar on the right side of the program window (see image below) to select the white/washed out sky.
The picture below was taken using the full 3X optical zoom as well as the 4X digital zoom of my camera. Please note the grass above the plovers head -- the grass is essentially a series of white-green boxes. This is an example of how the digital zoom works.
The photo above was taken in a wildlife preserve in Maine of a Piping Plover. The bird was about 40-50 feet away and was very small, thus the need for the extreme zoom. If you want to take pictures at these distances or of small objects from a distance -- or both -- I highly recommend a higher end digital SLR camera. The ability to detach and change lenses will be an incredible asset to the artistic or wildlife photographer.
Please note - this image is NOT resized to exaggerate the dithering due to the digital zoom, this image is merely cropped (cut out) from the photo for illustrative purposes.
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