The ability to make your own coffee-table book is now within reach with today’s digital tools.

At one time or another, every photographer, professional, serious amateur or hobbyist has dreamt of having work published in a beautiful coffee-table book. Seeing your images pop off the printed page in an elegant, professionally created photo book is just a major rush. Many wedding and portrait photographers I talk to still get a thrill when they see their client reverently turning the pages of a just-finished album...

After many months and several public betas, Adobe finally released Photoshop Lightroom 1.0, its professional photographer’s “toolbox” for importing, processing and managing digital images.

Designed from the ground up, Lightroom incorporates the latest digital imaging concepts and technologies, such as automated workflow processing, nondestructive editing and support for multiple file formats, including JPG, TIFF, DMG, PSD and more than 150 raw file formats..

It should come as no surprise to digital photographers that, within 48 hours of Apple’s October 2005 Aperture debut, iView Multimedia and Extensis both announced new versions of their own products. Adobe also released new photo software in January.

iView Media Pro Version 3 has some great new features, including a lightbox, better workflow tools and an improved user interface. The Pro Lightbox lets you compare up to four images side by side in a full-screen view, including the histograms, labels and rating for each image...

A look back at photography's huge technological strides in the last 20 years.

May 1989: Seattle – So I’m here in Seattle on my first trip to the Pacific Northwest and wow, is this a beautiful area! If I ever get tired of L.A., this might be a place to check out. Flying in over Mount Rainier was a treat, but by the time I got my Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic II out, added my SMC Takumar 55mm lens and loaded a roll of Ektachrome 100, we were getting ready to land. I’ll have to plan better and hope I get a window seat on the way home.

After my trip, I did a little slide show for some of the people in my office. I heard several comments that if I ever get tired of programming IBM mainframes, I could become a professional photographer. I’ve got a couple of images that I’m going to print as large Cibachromes and enter them in some contests…

Here at PhotoMedia Central, we look at a lot of photographers’ web sites. We’ve found that there are, indeed, some good, some bad and some … well, you get the picture.

If there is one thing that photographers need to understand about their web sites, it is what my publisher likes to call “impressive simplicity.” Keep it simple and knock their socks off with your images. Don’t waste people’s time with fancy technology or unusual navigation just to be cool.

For most photographers, the primary purpose of their web sites is to promote themselves and their work...

Today’s web-based photo services can market your images while they store them.

Greetings from Cambodia! I’m in Phnom Penh working on a project, and my situation here highlights the premise of this article. I have multiple backup facilities and procedures here in the field, yet if something happened to my luggage or equipment, some or all of my images could be lost.

This also could happen to all of us at home, if we experience a fire, flood, burglary, computer virus, earthquake or other disaster, natural or otherwise. No matter how good your backup and archiving plan is, if everything is in one location, you still have all your eggs in one basket...

Revving up your online image distribution with RSS

Web-savvy photographers have discovered a powerful new tool that is helping them distribute images, find locations for shoots, and keep tabs on the latest imaging trends and techniques. RSS (short for Real Simple Syndication) is an online content distribution medium that is becoming a mainstream technology. At this point, hundreds of millions of web surfers are taking advantage of this new medium, and that number is increasing rapidly...

At PhotoPlus Expo in New York City last October, Apple Computer introduced Aperture, an application that had been dubbed “iPhoto Pro” by many Apple rumor web sites prior to the official announcement. Early impressions (largely based on demonstrations by Apple) were glowing in their praise for what appeared to be a revolutionary product. The innovative interface and smartly targeted feature set promised to greatly streamline workflow for professional photographers.

For years, pro shooters have been seeking a way to manage the critical “sweet spot” of digital photo workflow, and Apple is targeting that space. The company claims that Aperture...