New tutorial suggestions

[PavelM]

Hello everyone,

As you may noticed there are tutorials in the Community section of http://www.zoner.com.

HDR Tutorial

The Golden Ratio and Photographers

The Secret of Quick Fix

Shifting a Picture's Time

We are working on new ones but because those tutorials are for you - Zoner Photo Studio users - I would like to ask you:

What would you like to see in a new tutorial?

Thanks

[paalar]

Hi! I have several cameras, and notice that on a small-chip model like the Canon SX10 there is quite a lot of chromatic abberation. The CA function in Zoner does not seem to scale the blue/yellow or the red/green parts of the picture differently in a way that removes the color fringes from my test photos. I have to use the "remove color" option, a crude solution that is really reserved for "chip blooming" in overexposed areas.

A tutorial on how the CA function works would be much appreciated. (And perhaps an updated function??)

Cheers from Paal

[Erik Piper]

Dear Paal,

Thank you for writing in! The color-shifting sliders (red vs. green and yellow vs. blue) only provide linear color scaling, so they indeed cannot compensate for non-linear aberrations. This is one of the possible reasons why you could have run into trouble during your aberration removal work. Another possible reason is that there are multiple possible causes for chromatic aberrations -- for example, aberrations on the microlenses, or the use of a Bayer mask followed by demosaicing -- while at present, the algorithm in Zoner Photo Studio focuses only on chromatic defects caused by refraction.

To speak in more detail, we will need to see a sample file (at our support@ address).

You can find some relevant supplemental information in the related Wikipedia articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_aberration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_fringing

Thank you for the suggestion for a Chromatic Aberration tutorial -- tutorial ideas are always appreciated, and we will definitely take it into consideration when choosing our upcoming tutorials!

Best regards,

Erik Piper
Zoner Team

[eckhardf]

Being very new to Photo Studio 12 (purchased today!) I have an almost unlimited number of tutorial requests!!

I too would like to see a tutorial on chromatic abberation correction as well as information on how to correct for barrel distortion.

I might add that I have experimented with almost all the available trial versions of photo processing software from the "major" vendors and consider Zoner Photo Studio 12 to be superior in terms of 'useful' features, workflow and intuitive use. Thanks for producing great software and winning my custom!

[tbark]

I agree with eckhardf's comments on PS12 generally; it's a great program. I continue to find out things about it of which I hadn't been previously aware. One such thing was the Black and White editing capability described in the recent tutorial that was made available via e-mail. To that point I had been using the Black and White layer editing functions available in Photoline32 or Serif PhotoPlusX3 which I access as "helper" programs from within PS12. Both of those programs seem to allow more fine-tuning of tone values than does PS12, but with more potential for introducing posterization and grainess in some areas. The tutorial gave me a different approach to use,- many thanks. I wish someone would write a book on PS12. I'm certain that I haven't come close to using the full potential of it.

[VojtechT]

eckhardf: thanks for your tips on tutorials.
tbark: actually there is a book on ZPS11, but it is in Czech language only...

[tbark]

Thanks for the Valentine Card tutorial in today's e-mail. I'll be working on it in the next few days. Another tutorial I would like to see relates to making panoramas. How can I get a better blending of colours, particularly in the sky ? As you pan, you frequently move between a darker blue area of the sky and a lighter blue. The resultant panorama sometimes leaves a visible edge between the two.

[VojtechT]

Regarding the panorama blending, I've got to ask a colleague who took a few days off.

[Redcat]

Very happy with PS12, but still very much more to learn. The tutorials are a great help. I'd love to see something on reducing "red eye" in animals in that the problem can appear in many different colors. Getting the end result to look natural can be difficult. What are the best steps?

[VojtechT]

For animal "red eyes" the best way in ZPS is to use an advanced brush mode where you can pick a color, which you want to suppress.