Fem korta frågor till Karl Foster

Karl Foster skriver. Massvis. För de flesta bra brittiska tidningarna. Både inom Digitalfoto och musik.

Du har mest största säkerhet läst artiklar av Karl. Åtminstone om du spanat in tidningen Digital Foto. De ståtar inte alltid med namnen på författarna i sin tidning (troligtvis för att det inte ska märkas att den är översatt). Men det som är riktigt bra är oftast skrivet av Karl.

1. Do you remember using Photoshop for the first time?

I do. I was working on the launch of PC Format magazine and, while the designers were dibbling around in Quark establishing the look of the mag, I had precious little to do as production editor. So I wangled a copy of Photoshop and set about warping the faces of the advertising team. It struck me then, even with this very early version of Photoshop, that the application would have a profound impact on the photographic image. These days, of course, when you’re not sure that a photo is real, the phrase ”it’s probably been Photoshopped” is part of the language.

2. What made you feel that ”This is the thing, I’m gonna waste an enormous amount of time with this?

I don’t really have a great deal of time to waste, so I’m pretty focused during my Photoshop sessions and I’m always looking for shortcuts. What I have found is that I always mouse to the Photoshop icon when I have an image-manipulation job to do. As a technology journalist, I’ve used and written about pretty well every commercial imaging app available and have found that there’s nothing you can’t do in Photoshop (adequate DTP aside) and the results always appear better.

3. Favorite tool that can never ever be removed from Photoshop?

There are loads, but if I were to ignore the obvious, I’d say Unsharp Mask. Digital cameras, even those with mega resolution, output images that are a little soft, to my eyes. Most benefit from a hint of Unsharp Mask – just a hint, mind. And I must point out my favourite key-combo ever. Press Command+Option+1 (white Apple keyboard) to select all the lighter components of an image, then get busy with layers/blending modes. You can do all sorts with that.

4. Smart objects, smart sharpen and smart blur. Can Photoshop get any more intelligent or have we reached the peak?

I doubt Photoshop will achieve ‘intelligence’ any time soon, but there’ll always be something new coming along. Adobe doesn’t sit on its laurels. Let’s see how they leverage the power of the Intel Macs. I just hope the developers don’t bloat Photoshop with semi-useful tools, such as Extract, from which I’ve rarely obtained useful results. What I would like to see is some kind of high-quality upsampling gadget, like onOne’s pxl SmartScale, built in.

5. What to you do with your own vacation photos? Do you retouch them?

I tend to archive them as shot, once I’ve deleted the unusable, and only tweak them if I’m printing or using some for an article. Typical tweaks would be Crop/Rotate, Levels, sometimes Color Balance and a hint of Unsharp Mask. I only go beyond that if I’m demonstrating a specific technique for a magazine piece, or if the image is way out of kilter, but special enough to deserve rescuing.

www.karlfoster.com