Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Category: Craft

Confidence
I believe one of the things we develop as we mature as photographers is confidence. Not arrogance, but certainty in who we are and what we want to do.
Introvert
I’m an introvert. I suspect many of you are, too. Introversion seems to be strong in artists. After all, what we do is not really about social events or winning contests or getting to praise ourselves. If you seek those things, you are probably an extrovert and you do art for entirely different reasons than I do.
As an introvert, you wouldn’t think at first that confidence is one of the traits I would claim. But confidence comes from competence. We know we can do what we need to do. We know what we like and when we find it, we are confident we can deal with it well.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Arrogance
This is not arrogance. Arrogance gets into hubris and self-importance. Confidence is the simple assurance that I can do it. Now, the “it” may be different for different people. For me, it is that I know that when I see a scene I want, I can photograph it in a way that will make an image I will be proud of. That does not mean I know how to make that image well known and sought after in galleries. That is a whole different skill set.
But our confidence is arrogance if we believe we are too good to learn how to improve. We should always listen to criticism. And be our own worst critic. Learning and practicing and trying to improve are part of our life-long growth.
Confidence also lets me stay away from things I know I would not like or would be bad at. For example, if, for some strange reason, you came and asked me to shoot a wedding, I would turn you down. Even if the money is great, I know from experience that I would hate it. I do not enjoy the pressure of a bride’s expectations and performing to someone else’s shot list. And I really do not enjoy trying to pose people and make them seem like they’re having fun.
But if you want me for a second shooter to get candid shots, we might do a deal. I love shooting spontaneous moments, and I’m often pleased with the results. Studying people and anticipating a good moment is fun for me.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Not technical skill
The confidence I am talking about is not mainly in the technical side of photography. I have done photography for many years, and I am introspective enough to learn from my mistakes. Technical skill should be a given for a serious photographer.
You won’t find me “chimping” a lot, checking the back of the camera to see if I got the shot. I may check to verify I nailed the focus and placed moving elements in the right position or got the right blur if it is a slow shutter speed. But the technology of making a properly exposed image is rather straightforward.
I urge you to practice to the point where you are confident in your ability to get what you visualize. It makes me wonder when I hear photographers asking a workshop leader or another photographer what exposure they used. That is basic craftsmanship that we must put in the reps to learn.
Besides, our cameras do a wonderful job of helping us out. With great auto focus, including eye tracking, with powerful computers analyzing the overall exposure, even giving us real-time histograms, with constantly improving sensors with great dynamic range, it gets easier all the time. I remember when shooting film, there was always the fear of not exposing correctly. Now, with digital systems, our technical confidence should be high.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Vision
Our vision shapes our work, and it is unique to each of us. Confidence bolsters our creativity. We see connections and possibilities. Scenes are recognized intuitively as aligning with our vision. Our confidence encourages our creativity to express new insights, because we know we can do that new thing we have never tried.
We are self-assured to go for it, to stretch for that artistic vision just out of reach.
And even if we could not quite reach far enough this time, we know we did the right thing by trying and next time we will be even better equipped to succeed. Our confidence is built by failure, because each failure brings us closer to our goal.
We take in information, blend it in our brains, and a random spark ignites some sort of alchemy. Whole new things emerge. We’re almost spectators in the process. But confidence tells us what is happening, that we have seen it before, and we will go with it to see where it leads us. Confidently.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Independence
Despite its potential for good, more often social media is a force for conformity. When we are unsure of ourselves and rely on likes or comments for feedback on our worth, we are channeled to do work like everything else we see there.
The “same as everybody else” images get likes. But the fresh, possibly genre-bending new things are voted down. Until a well-known influencer picks it up and starts promoting it. Then, suddenly, everyone is doing it.
Our confidence in our own vision and ability should help us break out of this stifling cycle. If you’re out shooting with 10 other photographers and you see something they ignore, will you shoot it? I hope so. That is confidence in yourself.
Confidence helps give us independence. We do not have to follow what someone else thinks. We do not have to do work that is mostly like what an “authority” thinks is good.
It is a wonderful freedom to set our own standards and select our own subjects and treatments. This allows us to make the art we can bring to the world, not someone else’s.
Color outside the lines
So confidently color outside the lines. Or inside, if that is what you prefer. Or don’t do that paint-by-numbers sheet at all. Go find your own blank frame to fill in.
Outside, inside, saturated or black & white, tack sharp or blurred, rule of thirds or not, shoot at the golden hour or at noon. Find what you are called to do right now and confidently do it.
No one can tell you what you must like. No one can tell you what picture you must make. That should come solely from within you. Have confidence in yur vision and ability.
July 16, 2025
Its Been Done
There’s nothing new left to photograph
It’s been done! We all know it and feel it. The world is over-photographed. Why bother anymore? Nothing new is left. Should we pack up our gear and stow it in a closet?
Too many photographs
Trillions of photographs are taken every year. Think of that. As many as if every man, woman, and child on the planet takes over 100 pictures a year. Most of them seem to be uploaded to social media.
Every person. you meet is carrying around a good camera – their phone. And they’re not afraid to use it.
How many times have you been enjoying the view at a peaceful overlook, only to have a car skid up and unload a noisy group of parents and kids. The kids are herded in front of you and lined up and forced to smile so they can take a group selfie to show they were there. They may even ask you to take the picture. Then they rush back to their car to get back on their phones.
Probably 99.9999% of this flood of photos are uninteresting selfies or food shots or other things like that that are just “look at me” pictures. Just think of the Exabytes of disk space they are taking up. Yes, this is judgmental on my part, but I am making a point. And I’m talking about uninteresting in an artistic sense.
There is such a glut of pictures that it devalues photography as an art form. Why should I be interested in your photograph? I can take my own. I’ve seen that scene 1000 times. To the point that It’s a yawn.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Everything interesting is shot
Every location on, above, or under the Earth that can be reached without the funding of a major expedition has been shot to death. Even the ones that are ridiculously hard and dangerous to get to have. So, should we give up?
That depends on your goals. Since you are reading this, you probably consider yourself a “creative”. What does that mean to you? Do you define your creativity as photographing a location no one has ever shot before? If so, perhaps you should modify your definition. All the major sights have been photographed.
There are other ways to be creative.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Do something bizarre?
But for many, the perceived need to stand out and be different leads to strange ends. To try to create things no one has ever done sometimes leads to going for shock, or bizarre, or, at the other extreme, deliberate banality. Is this what you want for your art? If so, go for it. You do your art. But ask yourself if that is really you.
Others may go back to film for its nostalgia. Maybe even to other non-traditional technology such as tin type or wet plates. People deliberately leak light onto film, use badly flawed lenses, or develop their film in unusual chemicals. Some use intentional camera motion or deliberate focus problems or other “errors”. Sometimes just for the goal of making something no one else has ever done.
We are led to believe that creative means totally new that no one else has ever seen or done. Perhaps this is an overly strict definition of creativity.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Be you
Artists have always done the same subjects over and over. There are only a limited number of subjects and not that many truly different ways to approach them.
Are you not going to do ponds because Monet has “done” them? Are you not going to do a night sky because Van Gogh was the only one to be able to do that? Da Vinci did the definitive portrait, so no sense going there. Likewise, will you never photograph landscapes because there are no more to do after Ansel Adams finished? Must you forever avoid flowers because O’Keeffe did everything that could be done?
Have all the songs been created? Have all the novels been written?
Of course not. Humans always come up with creative new ways to present things. Therefore, “never been done” is not the strict test of creativity.
Apply your style
If artists do the same subjects over and over, where is the creativity? Isn’t it in the unique perspective of the artist? The new point of view or treatment or interpretation they can bring to it.
If the famous ones can do it, then why can’t we? We are artists, too. Each of us can still do new, fresh, creative work.
Sure, if you park at Tunnel View in Yosemite and put your tripod in the same spot that thousands of others have used and shoot the same wide-angle scene, like everyone else, it is going to be hard to stand out. But look around. There is a nice river there, and beautiful trees. Wildlife is around, flowers, and people doing weird or dumb things. We can direct our creativity in other directions.
We each have our own unique point of view and way of expressing it. Use it. Be intentional. You are drawn to certain things. Recognize that and work it. You do not need to chase the crowd of popularity. It does not matter what “influencers” are promoting.
Say what is in you, about what calls to you, in your own way. Unless you are on a commission, your art should be first for you. If everybody loves your work, but you don’t, isn’t that a failure? If you love your work but no one else seems to, isn’t that still satisfying your need to do art?
By making art, we are trying to express something we feel or perceive. Maybe to other people, but sometimes just to ourselves. That brings a unique perspective to it. If we succeed, it is perceived as different, meaningful. That is creative. No one else has done that the way you do.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Creative, our way
Creativity is not usually something radically new. Sometimes it is an incremental build on the past. It is the little twist that makes it uniquely our own. The little spin on the conventional way it has been done. Sometimes it is spotting what others overlook and treating it as art, not just something on the side of the road.
Be curious. By going through life with a mindful attitude, we can see things other people look past. Our vision usually applies to the unique way we see the same thing other people see, but don’t really see. We will not often see something that no one else in history has ever seen before. The secret is what we bring to the common. Can we make something new out of things everyone else ignores?
Everything has been photographed. But not everything has been seen.
To be a photographer today requires us to see more clearly and think deeper and work harder to separate ourselves from the crowd, but we can do that. We are artists. We have the right to be obsessed and passionate. After all, this is our art.
Follow your enthusiasm … The only quality common to all great artists and creative people is that they are obsessed with their work.
Richard Avedon
Today’s images
Given what I am talking about, I decided to feature unexpected, hopefully creative images. All are things found in my explores. None are grand landscapes or iconic locations. These are the kind of treasures I like to collect. I hope they are all things you have never seen.
June 25, 2025
Photography is About Light
Stating the obvious? I think we sometimes forget the fundamentals of what we are doing and working with. No light, no photography. Photography is about light.
Writing with light
Remember that our word “photography” comes from 2 Greek words that together mean “writing with light”. So, from the beginning of our art form, it was understood that we were recording light on some type of photo sensitive material. Glass plates or tintype or film back then. Mostly digital sensors now.
Technology changes but still we are recording light.
Embrace that. It is what we are all about as photographers. Photography is about light.
Low light is not no light
Our technology improves all the time. It is possible to get sensors that do a fair job of imaging at 250,000 ISO. Maybe more. I don’t track the latest. The highest ISO I found with a quick scan was the Nikon D6 at 3,280,000!
A 250,000 ISO is about 11 stops of additional exposure above a nominal ISO 100 setting. Eleven stops is a huge amount as exposures go. I haven’t tried it, but at ISO 250,000 I bet you could make a properly exposed landscape shot lit only by starlight.
But the point is that very low light is not the same as no light. Have you ever been in a cavern deep underground where they turned off all lights at some point? Then we encounter the eerie experience of actual, total blackness. In those conditions it is impossible to see anything. Put your hand right in front of your face and you can’t tell it’s there. There are absolutely no photons to impinge on our retina.
We could do no photography in total blackness. Of course, other artists would be almost equally disadvantaged. I suppose, theoretically, painters could make marks on their canvas in total blackness, but they would have no way to know what they were creating. Sculptors could mold clay by feel, but they would have very limited feedback on what they were doing. But photographers cannot do anything without light.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Computational photography
One clever way to get better results in low light is used in your cell phone and by astronomers. It is generally called “computational photography”.
Computational photography does not rely on the result of one frame. Instead, tens to thousands of shots are taken and processed by computer to bring out detail.
This is how your phone takes decent pictures in low light despite having a tiny sensor. It is actually shooting bursts of dozens of frames. Then it quickly processes them in the phone. It uses averaging and other more sophisticated techniques to reduce noise and bring out the desired detail. I am surprised at how well it works.
Astronomers have special needs in photographing distant galaxies. The light levers are so low that there is nothing to see with our eye. So, they instead take hundreds, maybe thousands of images with the regular sensor on their telescope and run them through dedicated processing software. Using combinations of specialized image processing algorithms and AI, their computers “reconstruct” what is probably there.
My astronomer friends have shown me some of their new “telescopes” they got recently. These surprising instruments are generally about the size of a moderately thick hard cover book. They rely on small, cheap optics and lots of computation, but produce amazing results.
Techniques like these let images be created in what seems like black conditions. But the reality is, it is not black. Just very low levels of lighting. If it was actually black, no photography.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
See the light
As I said, the purpose of this is to remind us that our art is based on light. We need to develop a heightened awareness of the light around us, because it is critical to our art. It changes all the time and is different in different conditions.
it has been observed that a fish probably does not think about water. But we need to think about light, which is almost as important to us as water is to a fish.
Light has many characteristics and most all of them affect our photography.
We need to be intensely aware of the quantity of light at any time, its color, is it direct or diffuse, its angle, whether it is steady or changing, is our subject lit directly or indirectly, and many other properties. It sounds complicated. But learning the light is part of the craft. Learning to apply it creatively is part of the art.
For instance, it is almost an axiom of photography that you do not photograph in the middle of the day. Like the “rule of thirds”, this is one of those rules I take pleasure in violating. The reality is that it completely depends on what subjects you are shooting, the nature of your light source, and what your goals are. Shooting at midday often enhances the texture of materials. In a dense forest it can create interesting dappled light patterns. In a slot canyon or a cathedral, it can create beautiful light beams. And diffuse overcast light may be perfect for many subjects, with high brightness and soft, even illumination.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
And as a practical matter, I am not a National Geographic photographer on assignment. I can’t spend a week in the field waiting for the “perfect” shot I went out to find. I have to be creative enough to make the best use of what I find at the time I’m there.
There are no rules, only what you can do with what you have.
Tonality
Tonality is one of those important things we need to think about and know how to use. It simply refers to the difference of luminance of the parts of our image. The tonality is what lets us distinguish all the parts. It creates separation of various areas.
Think of a blank white piece of paper. This effectively has zero tonality. There is no image, because without tonal separation we cannot resolve anything. Any actual image we create has a range of tones.
If the tones are squished together, our image is low contrast. Not much tonal separation. Maybe this is what you want, like a foggy scene.
On a sunny day there is a wide range of tones. We refer to it as high contrast. Sometimes it can be too much. Do we need to use exposure or editing techniques to tame the contrast? But that is our creative choice
A low-key image involves pushing most of the tones down towards dark. But the remaining light tones stand out. Likewise, if we create a high-key image, with most of the tones pushed toward light, the remaining dark tones stand out.
Our eyes are very sensitive to tonality. We perceive tiny differences in illumination levels. Use of tones is a creative process. It should be part of our thought process and toolbox.
One of the ultimate expressions of pure tonality is black & white photography. All color is stripped away, leaving only tonality to create the image.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Color
Our eyes are an incredible design. The rods and cones have different purposes but work together to give us sight. But overall, our eye is less sensitive to color than to illumination levels.
Think of being in a dim room at night. We can make out the objects around us, but the colors are hard to distinguish. Turn the light on fully and the colors pop.
Similarly, in our images, good color requires good light. We can’t see vibrant, saturated color in dim light. I mentioned low key art. Have you noticed that most of it is black & white? This is a practical result of not being able to see much color in low light.
I believe some people’s artistic vision is drawn to color and some to black & white. If you are a color person you have to be doubly aware of light. Not enough and our brilliant colors fade.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Creativity
All art processes are defined by their technology. Photography is based on light. We cannot do photography without light. To be a photographic artist, we need to be intensely aware of light and how to use it to our advantage.
Recognize it not as a limitation, but as a creative tool. Light is a marvelously varied thing. We are artists. We paint with light. Learning it and being constantly aware of it and deciding how we want to use it for any image is part of the art.
We are seldom in a place where there is no light, like the underground cavern I mentioned earlier. There is always light around. It may just be moonlight or city lights or a flash. We may decide there is not enough light to make the image we want sometimes, but there is always light to work with. Recognize it. Use it creatively.
Light is fundamental to photography. Learn to see it for what it is and learn to use it creatively. It is what you are photographing.
May 7, 2025
The Color Is…
Color is one of the major considerations in our photo processing. And it can be hard. Have you ever considered how many tools and settings there are to control color in Lightroom and Photoshop?
But where are you on the color concern spectrum? For you, is color:
1. Critical. It must exactly match
2. Important
3. An annoyance
4. Just a design variable
5. Don’t care
Why do we need to change it?
Despite all of the great technology we have, color is still an imprecise and slippery thing to deal with. Different camera manufacturers often create their own unique ‘look”. Fuji, for instance, has profiles built in for some of their famous films (remember Velvia?). But because of different technology and processing tradeoffs, there are subtle differences between, say, Nikon and Canon. There are even small variations between samples of the same camera model,
The color variations are magnified as we move further along the processing chain. What we see is greatly influenced by the decision to shoot RAW or JPEG, and if JPEG, what color balance is chosen. And is our monitor calibrated to ensure it correctly represents the colors in the digital file?
Finally, when we make a print everything can change drastically. The print is strongly influenced by the paper we choose and the printer’s ink set. Using good profiles for the printer and paper combination helps to produce an output that is “similar” to what we edited on screen, but it will never be the same. Just the move from illuminated pixels in RGB space to reflected light from a paper substrate in CMYK space means they can never be exactly the same. The physics is completely different.
The variations along the way are the process of color correcting the image.
Most of us do not see or pay much attention to these differences. The importance to us depends on our application.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Tools
The color correction tool chain starts back in our camera. Specifically, the color balance setting.
The color of the light on our scene varies greatly in different conditions. Bright sunlight is completely different from open shade, as is a cloudy, overcast day. Indoors under tungsten or fluorescent lighting and. even LED’s give different color casts.
Out eye/brain automatically adjusts for most of these differences, but the camera does not. The color balance setting in the camera is a means to dial out the color casts. But this is only useful for JPEG images and the preview we see in camera. Color balance has no effect on RAW images. Those compensations are made in our image editing software.
My camera stays set to Auto White Balance. I only shoot RAW, so it has little effect on my processing or results.
Lightroom
When I say “Lightroom” that is a shorthand for “Lightroom Classic”. That is the only version I care about. But I”m pretty sure everything I say about it applies to both applications. There are differences in color representations in other RAW image processors like Capture One, but I do not have enough experience with them to say much.
Lightroom is packed full of ways to change the color of our image. In the Develop module you are never far from something that can modify color.
Some of the controls change color globally, that is, for the whole image. Just scanning down from top to bottom (I think my controls are still in the default order), we start with profile. This can be a simple selection of default balance or you can set any of the many provided color effects, including black & white toning.
Next there is the white balance adjustment to allow us to adapt the image to a color that should be neutral. Next to that is the color balance selection to partially compensate for lighting conditions.
Right under them is the Temp and Tint sliders. Vibrance and saturation do not actually alter colors much, but they have a strong effect on the look of colors.
Then there is the Tone Curve, where we can adjust red, green, and blue channel properties directly, followed by Color Mixer and Color Grading. Finally there is the Calibration group where we can control hue and saturation of each channel.
All of these are only the control that affect the whole image. We have many of the same controls to perform selective adjust color in regions (like a linear gradient) or spots (e.g the brush tool).
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Partly driven by the application
Hopefully, you get the impression that Lightroom gives us a lot of control of color. It must be important. I won’t even go into Photoshop with its many adjustments. I trust the point is made. This is not a “how to”.
Color adjustment is a large part of what we may deal with in post processing.
Maybe.
It depends on our application and needs.
If you are doing product photography, the customer is very concerned that the color of their logo or product absolutely matches their specification. Portrait customers have a fairly narrow tolerance for off colors in people’s faces. Or you may have a self-imposed rule that the final color must exactly match the original scene.
In these cases you are probably using gray cards or Color Checker swatches to ensure you faithfully match the original. You may even be calibrating your camera to minimize discrepancies. You will probably be using many of these Lightroom controls to adjust the colors to balance out shifts or color casts.
I’m a Fine Art Photographer
But I’m a Fine Art Photographer. I dislike that term and I’m not completely sure what it means, but I do know that what I create is art. Art is not tied to a real scene. Maybe someday I will get into a discussion on indexicality, but not today. By my definition, anything I want to do as art is acceptable.
I may not care at all about the color of the original scene. I’m certainly not fanatical about matching it or balancing color casts. My consideration is how the resulting image looks (to me) and what effect it has for the viewers.
Yet I do use most of the color controls I listed earlier. Except I very rarely use Calibrarion to adjust color, but that’s just me and my thought process. All the other controls, in global and regional and spots, are tools I use frequently.
Color is a subtle thing. Almost imperceptible shifts can create large perceived changes. It can be tricky, or impossible, to achieve an effect I have in mind. But I try.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Not an absolute
Breaking the assumption that my image must look like the original was difficult for me. Coming from a very technical, engineering background made me think in absolutes. Precision was important. But now that the assumption is broken, it is freeing. The realities I started with no longer hinder my vision (as much).
Even so, I do not usually create comic book-like pop art. Unless I want to for some reason. But, on the other hand, I do often enjoy making images that are so extreme you will think I modified them too much, even if I did little at all.
Sometimes color is the subject. Sometimes an image “needs” to be a different color than the original. An extreme use of color modification is black & white. Yes, taking away all color and just leaving tonality is extreme color manipulation.
In the questions I posed at the start, I’m usually operating at about 4 or 5. It is a tool I can apply to accomplish my vision. Not something I am stuck with because that’s what the original was.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Do what you need to do
Color perception is one aspect of a visual image. But it is a powerful one. With our technology, we are blessed with extreme ability to control or modify color. Don’t be afraid to use it creatively.
Unless you are working in an application that demands absolute fidelity to the original, color becomes just another design element to be used for art.
Make your art. The color is… what you need it to be.
Today’s feature image
Is this the “right” color? I don’t know. First, I didn’t have a gray card with me. Second, even if I did, I couldn’t have held it out the window at 40,000 ft. Third and most important, I don’t care.
This is what I remember seeing at the time. It is the way I chose to make the image look. It is art. I like it like that.
March 26, 2025
Why Do We See 255 Everywhere?
Do you ever wonder about the magic number 255 you see all over Photoshop and even in Lightroom Classic if you look? It seems like 255 pops up everywhere. Why is that? It is a strange number to choose.
It’s just a number
First let me say that at this point in time, 255 is just a number without meaning. It is the number chosen to represent the maximum value of a channel or color. Something has to be used to represent the maximum value. Looking back, 100 (as in 100%) would have probably made more sense. But we have 255.
Think of it like Fahrenheit and Centigrade scales. The boiling point of water is 212 in Fahrenheit and 100 in Centigrade. Either way, it represents the same thing, the boiling point of water. That does not change no matter how the number is represented.
So when you see 255 just read it as the maximum value of that thing. If that is the level you wish to understand, this would be a good point to stop reading this article. 🙂
Personally I hope you continue. Understanding some of the history and details of our tools can only help improve our craft.
Roots in binary
Before we go deeper I need to justify where the number 255 comes from. It is rooted in binary coding. You are probably familiar with digital notations. We have lived with it for so long it seems to permeate everything around us.
Please pardon me for going full on Geek here. I so seldom get to use my training that it is fun. A very, very brief background: when digital computers were being developed, it was found to be simpler and more reliable to create circuits that were either on or off, no in between states. This was called a bit. A piece of data that was either off or on, noted as 0 or 1. The advantage of this seemingly silly decision is that the bits could be made very small and can be operated on very fast.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
A single bit by itself isn’t very valuable. To represent realistic information and do calculations bits were combined together in larger units. The next widely used unit was 8 bits. This came to be called a “byte”. Eight bits is a byte – Geek humor.
It turns out that 8 bits is enough to start encoding useful information. For instance, it will hold 1 character. A byte is big enough to code all the upper and lower case letters, punctuation, and some special symbols. At least in English. And we will see that it holds a useful amount of image data.
Let me give a very simple description of digital value coding using 3 bits:
Each combination of the 3 on/off values is assigned a value. The encoded values range from 0 to 7.
Going back to the unit we called a byte, the 8 bits can encode 256 values, 0 to 255. This is the origin of the magic 255.
History of Photoshop
It is hard to think that there was a “before Photoshop”. Thomas Knoll needed to develop ways of doing analysis on images for his PhD thesis. In those days, nothing was available, so he taught himself programming and developed a library of operations. Here is an interesting interview with Thomas.
His brother John worked for Industrial Light and Magic. He saw applications for image processing in some things they were doing, so he encouraged Thomas to enhance his library. Eventually they decided to try to make it a product. Adobe was interested. It is amazing how things come to be.
In the days when the library, later Photoshop, was developed, the state of the art of image representation was to code each pixel as 3 8 bit values. One byte each for red, green, and blue. Each color had the value range 0 to 255. This number scheme became baked in to Photoshop and a standard metaphor of the user interface.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Today’s data
Early digital cameras shot 8 bit images. Today, though, images and Photoshop has grown well beyond that. As an example, my Nikon Z7 II captures 14 bit data. Each red, green and blue channel is 14 bits. That is 16384 values per channel instead of 256. Some other cameras have even more bit depth.
Photoshop allows us to select if we will treat our files as 8 bit or 16 bit or 32 bit. With all these variables it could impose a huge burden on the user to deal with the actual value range of the data he is editing. Some of these numbers get to be staggering (for 32 bit data each channel has 4,294,967,296 values). Adobe chose to keep the maximum number we see at 255. In effect, it became an arbitrary measuring scale we work with across the apps.
By the way, Lightroom uses 32 bit data internally. You do not get a choice. But even in Lightroom (Classic at least) the 255 illusion peaks through in one place. Look at the Tone Curve tool. The scale is 0 to 255.
Still, it’s just a number
Fahrenheit or Centigrade. It is just an arbitrary number to represent the same thing, the boiling point of water. Adobe has kept that historical number 255 and given it the implied meaning of “maximum”. It no longer has a tie to the actual size of the data you are editing or the maximum value of an 8 bit chunk of data.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
They have done us a service in this. I would hate to think of the mental complexity I would have to go through if this number changed all over the place to be the actual values I am working with. But a simplification comes with some challenges. People tend to forget why the simplification was made. Even that one was made at all.
When you are using the curves tool and other things, freely accept 255 as meaning “maximum”. Do not forget and think that your data only goes to 255. Or that it has somehow discarded all those other wonderful bits our modern cameras give us. When someone tells you that white is 255/255/255 and seem to think that is the actual value of their data, remember that is just a number on a scale. Smile to yourself knowing you probably understand it at a deeper level than they do.
I don’t have many images in my catalog that are actually 8 bit data. I am very glad the technology has moved on in wonderful ways. And I am grateful for the simplified scale that normalizes what I see when I am working with all this data. Thank you Adobe. This is something you did right. It doesn’t matter what the number is, something had to be defined as a convenient value for “maximum”.
Today’s image
The image at the head of this is actually 8 bit. An 8 bit jpg file. All the data is actually 0 to 255. Back in 2006 that was about the best I could do with the camera I had. It’s not terrible. I like the image, but I wish I could shoot it again with a modern camera.
As a matter of fact, all the images in this article are 8 bit. I wanted to emphasize that it was a very workable system.
Side note
In today’s digital systems we seldom worry much about a few bytes. Every time I press the shutter on my camera it writes about 50 million bytes to my memory card.
I mentioned that digital bits could be made very small. As an example, Apple’s M4 processor, which is their main CPU as of this writing, has 28 Billion transistors. On one chip. That is hard to comprehend. It certainly wasn’t anticipated when Thomas Knoll developed Photoshop.
December 25, 2024