Pronouncing "Bokeh"

Bokeh is a modern word to describe the background blur of a photo like in the photo below. The rusty iron is in focus but the sea behind is not.



A common question is which lenses have the "best" bokeh, but that does not interest me very much. It is like asking which colour is best, red or green? Or which is best, food or drink? Sometimes you need one and sometimes the other. Sometimes a lot of blur is needed. Sometimes it just looks artificial.

However, what I think is interesting is the pronunciation and origin of the word.

It is generally agreed that it comes from Japanese ボケ (boke), which is a technical photo term with the same meaning as in English. The Japanese word is an abbreviated form of the verb 暈ける (bokeru), which means "fade" or "appear blurry". It may be worth noting that Japanese classical art, like the 狩野派 (kanōha) or Kanō school, works a lot with detailed foregrounds and non-intrusive or even empty backgrounds. However, the expression ボケ is usually not used in this context, but only when it comes to photography.

The word has only been used since the late 1990s in English, so no widely accepted pronunciation has yet evolved.

If you want to use the Japanese pronunciation, it is /bɒkɛ/, with "bo" of "Bob" and "ke" in Kenneth. However, in English, it does not sound very natural to end a word with a short ɛ. Besides a vowel before a syllable starting with a single k in English is usually long, so the "bo" bit does not seem natural either. It therefore seems perfectly acceptable to pronounce it exactly like "bouquet" in English.

If someone laughs at your pronunciation, you can be confident that other people laugh at their pronunciation as well.

And now for a warning. If you think that you learnt a Japanese word today, you need to make sure the context is right, when you use it. Even though 暈ける (bokeru) means fade, the word 惚ける with exactly the same pronunciation means "to become senile".　呆け or 惚け, both pronounced /bɒkɛ/ mean senility. Another meaning of the same pronunciation is the plant 木瓜, Japanese Flowering Quince (Chaenomeles speciosa). In other words, when you use it, make sure the context shows which boke/bokeru you are talking about.

Deleting photos from your iPad

Deleting a large number of photos on your iPad may not be obvious. There are a few solutions.

Deleting Several Imported iPad Photos using a Mac

The most convenient way to delete a large number of photos is probably to use your Mac. (It is probably possible to use some similar method on the PC, but I do not know which application to use.)

1. Connect your iPad.
2. Open Preview on your Mac (Image Capture would also work with a slightly different scenario).
3. Go to the menu item File > Import from (the name of your iPad)...
4. Select the pictures you want to delete.
5. Click on the red delete icon at the bottom of the screen.

To better select the photos you want to delete, you can use the two icons in the bottom left corner.

In the icon view you can get reasonably large previews of the photos.


In the list view, you can sort the images according to a large number of criteria. You can also move the columns around, so you see the information that interests you.


To select several pictures, you can use the standard multi-select shortcuts: Click and shift-click on another photo to select all photos in between. Command-click to toggle selection of an individual photo without affecting which other photos are selected. Command-A to select all photos on the iPad (in all folders!).

Deleting Several Imported iPad Photos on the iPad

You can also delete several photos at the same time on the iPad itself, but it is not that elegant. If you have a large number of photos in the same folder, it is not easy to select them all, and if you have photos in several folders, you often have to delete them folder by folder.

1. Locate a view with the photos you want to delete.
2. Click on the Export (!) icon with the arrow in a square in the upper right corner.
3. Do not click on the tempting red Delete button, but click once on each of the pictures you want to delete. You can also drag with two (!) fingers over the photos you want to select. (In the first version of the Photo app, you used one photo, but Apple thought that was too easy.)
4. Click on the Delete button.

Synched photos

Photos you have synched with iTunes, you can remove in iTunes, by simply not synching them any more. It seems impossible to delete them from the iPad itself in iOS3.

1. Connect the iPad.
2. In iTunes, click on the iPad icon.
3. Click on the tab Photos.
4. In Projects and Albums, unselect the folder you sync.

Updating metadata in a CR2 file

To find images quickly using a disk search tool, like Mac OS X' Spotlight, you can update the metadata of the images. You can for example set the description to "Holiday in Sverdlovsk". Searching for that string in Spotlight will quickly show you all the images.

For JPEG files, you can use for example Adobe Bridge to quickly do this. I assume Lightroom also works.

However, when it comes to RAW files, like NEF and CR2, Bridge adds the metadata in a separate xmp file. When you search for the string using Spotlight, you will find the xmp files but there will be no preview of the image in the search result.

Bridge itself finds the data of course, but you may have moved the files to a computer without Bridge installed.

To update the Description field you can use View NX (free) or Capture NX for Nikon's NEF files. For Canon's CR2 files, however, it seems like it is not that easy.

One solution is to use Aperture.

1. Open the file in Aperture.
2. Click on Metadata and choose the "General" set.
3. Update the field "Caption". That is the field that other applications usually call "Description".
4. Go to File > Export > Master...
5. Enter the data as you want, but make sure the option Include IPTC is set.
6. Save.

You can of course export several images at the same time, and even mix different formats.

There are other solutions than Aperture, I am sure. It should for example be possible to use the utility exiftool which is free. However, Aperture is the most convenient solution I found so far.

Which Nikon camera settings matter when you shoot RAW?

Almost all the settings in a Nikon camera matter when you shoot JPEGs, as a JPEG is supposed to be good enough for immediate use.

When it comes to RAW/NEF files it is a little more complicated. Some settings matter a lot. Some settings do not matter at all. For some settings it really depends. There does not seem to be any exhaustive list of which settings matter and which can be ignored - probably because it is so complicated. The following list is not exhaustive.

Shutter speed is important, as it obviously cannot be changed in software.

Aperture is equally important, as it cannot be changed in software.

ISO is less obvious, but it is also important. ISO is not just a matter of how bright the picture is, but it sets the physical light sensitivity of the sensor. The incoming light is amplified by hardware. When a lot of amplification is needed (high ISO), the system is more likely to introduce noise. Even if my explanation may not be one hundred percent clear, a simple experiment can show that a NEF taken with long shutter speed (much light) and low ISO has less noise than one with short shutter speed (little light) and high ISO.

Long Exposure NR seems to matter. There is no way to undo it even in Nikon software.

White Balance can in theory be ignored, but it is practical to give it a correct value. It is visible to virtually all RAW conversion software, and it can be changed freely in most software. However, some software is unable to correctly adjust bad White Balance, like Picasa or the Finder previews in Mac OS X.

Exposure compensation does not really matter on its own. However, it affects shutter speed and aperture, so it indirectly matters what you set it to.

Active D-lighting is not clear cut. The setting seems to be ignored by Adobe software. At the same time, it cannot be switched off in Capture NX, if you use that software. Anyhow, when you switch it on, it will change images to a somewhat darker exposure by changing shutter speed or aperture, so it indirectly affects the image.

Picture Controls can safely be ignored. They can be changed freely in Capture NX and View NX, and they are not even visible to non-Nikon software like Adobe Camera RAW, Lightroom or Aperture. This is the reason why a black and white NEF file is displayed in colour in Photoshop.

NEF - what is it?

NEF, Nikon Electronic image Format, is Nikon's format for RAW files.

This blog has a number of entries that concern NEF files.

Nikon's Active D-lighting - what is it?

"Nikon has gone through great pains to promote this feature without telling anybody what exactly is going on."

Frans Waterlander

I have no idea who Frans Waterlander is, but I think he was spot on in a discussion forum. This blog post lists some known facts and some important guesses - if you switch Active D-Lighting (ADL) on.

ADL is a technology Nikon uses to handle pictures with big contrast - a lot of light and a lot of darkness in the same photo.

To make it work properly, use Matrix metering.

Switching on matrix metering on a Nikon D300.

ADL is not the same thing as D-lighting. D-lighting does about the same thing - it reduces shadows and highlight, but it is made after the picture is taken. Active D-lighting is made while the picture is being taken.

How it is done, no one seems to know. One theory is that it is done by the camera sensor itself. Another is that it is a setting applied to the RAW camera data.

You cannot change the level of ADL in Capture NX or View NX. Normal D-lighting can be changed in those products.

It is rumoured that ADL does not work when you take pictures in Manual mode in the camera.

When you use ADL in A, P or S mode, it makes the general exposure slightly darker.

From experiments it seems like Adobe products ignore ADL in NEF files completely. In other words: if you shoot RAW and use Adobe products like Lightroom or Photoshop, Active D-lighting will serve no purpose.

Normal D-lighting can be applied in the retouch area of the camera in many models. It can also be applied in Capture NX and View NX.

My own strategy currently is to switch ADL off. It is complicated to handle, it takes time to switch on and off, there is a risk factor that you do something wrong, and life is too short to learn all the aspects. If there are high contrast images to take, they can often be handled by post processing anyhow.

What use is Adobe Photoshop - for a photographer?

Adobe Photoshop CS4 is probably the most powerful image editing tool on the planet right now. It can do a vast number of things and integrates well with other programs like InDesign (for publishers) or Dreamweaver (for web designers).

Some basic functions that apply for photographers is described in the following.

The program Adobe Bridge, which comes with Photoshop, contains tools to display and organise photos of a wide range of formats, including RAW files from a large number of manufacturers. With Bridge one can also initiate actions in Photoshop like stitching a number of pictures together.

From Bridge, one can open RAW pictures in the program Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) which also comes with Photoshop. In ACR one can adjust RAW files, remove noise, change brightness, convert to black-and-white, fix vignetting and chromatic aberration and a ton of other things - much like one can in Aperture, Lightroom, Capture NX or DPP.

Once the image looks good, one can save it in one of several formats or open it in Photoshop. In Photoshop, one can cut and paste pieces of the different photos and mix them. One can add patterns, text and a lot of other things. The final picture may be resized and saved for use on the internet.

With smartobjects, one even mix layers of different colour spaces and file formats.

If one fully masters Photoshop, there is a good chance that one does not need any other image editing or RAW conversion software at all.

To explore Photoshop further, one can often download a trial version from Adobe.

What use is Aperture? Or Adobe Lightroom?

Apple's Aperture is a RAW converter and image management system for Mac OS X. It is a high end program with a vast amount of options and functions. It supports RAW files from a large number of manufacturers, but not as many as the competitor Adobe Lightroom.

As so often, it is very difficult to tell which program is "best". If one of the programs does not support your camera, you should clearly stay away from that program. If you have Windows, you do not have to consider Aperture, as it is Mac OS X only. If you need to batch process files, either program will do fine. If you need to script a program, Aperture can be scripted with AppleScript, but it seems like Lightroom 3 still has very limited scripting capabilities.

Aperture uses the same RAW converter as Mac OS X, which means that any image that can be opened in Aperture, also can be opened in Preview or Quick Look. Lightroom uses the same RAW converter as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw, even though the version may differ.

Both programs have the following main purposes:

• Adjust RAW files.
• Sort and manage images.

If one already has other programs that do this well enough, one probably does not need either of the programs.

Both Adobe and Apple often have trial versions of the software to download to further explore the programs.

What use is Digital Photo Professional?

Digital Photo Professional (DPP) is Canon's RAW conversion tool. It comes for free with Canon cameras that produce RAW pictures, and once you have it, all updates are free. However, you cannot download it for free without an original copy to update. DPP opens CR2, TIFF, CRW and JPEG files.

When it comes to high end RAW converters, like DPP, Adobe Camera RAW, Adobe Lightroom and Apple's Aperture, they all have their strengths. It is very difficult to tell which one is "best". Someone who masters any one of them, can usually do what s/he needs to do with that program. Anyone who does not fully master any one of them will probably not achieve the best possible result.

Comparing DPP with Nikon's RAW conversion programs is not easy either. DPP can do more with CR2 files than View NX can do with NEF files. Capture NX has more functions for NEF than DPP has for CR2, but what you find in DPP may be more than enough.

If you want a full blown image editing program, neither DPP nor Capture NX cuts it. You cannot use them to paste a face from one person onto another. Neither can you render patterns or add text strings to a picture. For such tasks, you need to use a tool like Adobe Photoshop or the gimp.

DPP can perform batch jobs on several pictures at once. However, it is not scriptable with any internal macros or AppleScript.

What use is Capture NX?

Capture NX 2 is Nikon's high end RAW converter. It opens NEF, JPEG and TIFF files and also saves in those formats. It has many more adjustment options than View NX, and it can add and remove them in a way that is similar to Adobe Photoshop's adjustment layers.

The most unique feature of Capture NX is probably the "Control Points" that let you easily make adjustments to areas of the picture that are similar.

When it comes to high end RAW converters, like Capture NX, Adobe Camera RAW, Adobe Lightroom and Apple's Aperture, they all have their strengths. It is very difficult to tell which one is "best". Someone who masters any one of them, can usually do what s/he needs to do with that program. Anyone who does not fully master any one of them will probably not achieve the best possible result.

Capture NX is not an image editing program. You cannot use it to paste a face from one person onto another. Neither can you render patterns or add text strings to a picture. For such tasks, you need to use a tool like Adobe Photoshop or the gimp.

Capture NX can perform batch jobs on several pictures at once. However, it is not scriptable with any internal macros or AppleScript.

What use is View NX?

View NX is a free picture browser from Nikon. You can use it to view NEF, JPEG and TIFF files, and you can make "Quick Adjustments" to the files, like changing white balance or exposure. You can also convert NEF files to JPEG or TIFF. If you want to make more than just simple adjustments, it is better to use a more advanced tool like Capture NX or Adobe Camera Raw, but they cost money.

One "problem" with the adjustments you make to NEF files in View NX is that they are not visible in non-Nikon products. You cannot see the modifications in Adobe products or Picasa or UFRaw for example. This is actually perfectly normal. You cannot see Adobe modifications in non-Adobe products either usually.

One more thing you can do with View NX is to upload your pictures to Mypicturetown, Nikon's web sharing site.

Adobe Camera Raw "Batch conversion" of White Balance

... or other settings.

I took a number of pictures today with my Nikon D5000 with the White Balance set to "incandescent", which was silly, because all of them were taken outside on a sunny day. As I had taken only NEF pictures, I was not too concerned. I know that one easily can adjust white balance in RAW files. The only question was how.

My first attempt was using View NX. I highlighted all the pictures in the browser, clicked on "Quick Adjustments" and chose the white balance "Calculate Automatically". I then sat back with a good book and waited while View NX updated all the files. There was a progress indicator in the lower right corner, so I could see approximately how thick a book I could read. Somewhere along the line I also clicked on the Save button, when View NX prompted me to do so.

The "problem" was that View NX did not update the original setting in the NEF files, and Adobe products only read the original setting. In other words, even though they looked fine in View NX, they still looked wrong in Adobe Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw.

So the solution had to be within the Adobe products themselves:

1. Double click on the first image in Adobe Bridge, to open Adobe Camera Raw.
2. Select the White Balance you want (for example Auto or Daylight).
3. Click on Done, to close ACR.
4. In Adobe Bridge, right click on the image and select Develop Settings > Copy Settings in the pop-up menu.
5. Select all the other images.
6. Right click on them and select Develop Settings > Paste Settings.
7. In the dialogue you get, choose which settings you want to paste. To get just White Balance, you can select the Subset White Balance.
8. Click on OK.

Once ACR has finished processing the files, they will look fine in Adobe products.

Difference between RAW converters

There is one big advantage of pictures taken in jpeg format compared to RAW: you have a fairly good idea what they will look like.

With RAW pictures, be it CR2 or NEF or any other version, it is just the raw data from the camera, and each RAW converter may interpret it in their own way. One converter may handle noise better than another. One converter may interpret the white balance or luminosity in one way, and another converter may have another idea of how things should work.

Here is an example where compensation for distortion is radically different. The pictures are taken with a Canon S90 camera.

The first picture is a CR2 file processed with Canon's own Digital Photo Professional. The lines and the tiles are pretty straight.



The next picture is the same CR2 file, processed by Picasa 3.6.1. Note the very bent lines. In the corners of the photos, there is actually more information than there is in the straight picture.



What likely is happening here is that DPP has information about how much the lens bends the picture. DPP corrects for it, and the tiles look like they should do. Picasa, however, probably takes pixel for pixel from the sensor of the camera, and the result is the bent aspect.

It is very possible that Picasa will update its converter for CR2 files from S90 in the future, so they will look closer to reality and further from the pixel data.

Note that converting to DNG is not a solution. If you convert to DNG, that does not remove the distortion, and Picasa displays the DNG as distorted as the CR2 file.

How do the Selection tools in Capture NX work? Can I modify selections?

The Selection tools in Capture NX may at first look a little confusing. This is where I would like to say, "but it is really simple..." That would be lying however. It is confusing. In the following, I will try to make it a little clearer.

First a rule to make life easier: Get the Selection right from the beginning.

The easiest thing is if you first select exactly what you want to apply an adjustment too. Then you apply the adjustment, and you are done.

If you make a mistake, you can always delete the adjustment and start from the beginning. You can also "revert" adjustment or selection, but that may be confusing, so wait with that until you really need it.



Now, let's assume that you have applied an adjustment, but you were not happy with the selection. You can do the following things.

Revert the selection. Once you have clicked on the revert or delete button for the selection, the adjustment will apply to the entire picture. Adding a selection again using the Lasso tools will not bring the adjustment back, but do not panic.

This is how the different tools work after an Adjustment selection has been deleted:

The Selection Control Point will add a new selection, and it will apply the adjustment to the selection.

The Lasso, the Polygon Lasso, the Rectangle Marquee and the Oval Marquee will create a selection without adjustment. The entire picture will be without adjustment. However, you can later fill in the selection using the next tools.

The Selection Brush will add a selection where the adjustment applies. However, if there is a previous selection from one of the lasso and marquee tools, the Selection Brush will only add the adjustment to areas which were already selected.


The logic of the Selection Gradient is identical to the Selection Brush. It will add a selection where the adjustment applies. However, if there is a previous selection from one of the lasso and marquee tools, the Selection Gradient will only add the adjustment to areas which were already selected.

The Fill / Remove Tool is arguably the silliest "painting" tool of all. It does not matter where in the picture you click. If you use the Fill tool (with the plus sign), all selected areas will get the active adjustment. If you use the Remove tool (with the minus sign) selected areas will not get the active adjustment, but other areas will.

This is very confusing. As it does not matter where in the image you click, this should be a simple command, not a tool you have to click on twice (on the tool and on the picture) to activate.

Nevertheless, it is very useful, just like the other selection tools, once you have spent some time understanding how they work.


In the example picture above, a blue Color Balance adjustment has been applied to the following selection: Top left - a rectangle with a cut out oval. Top centre - a selection control point based on the colour of the waves. Right - an oval selection filled with a gradient selection. Bottom left - text scribbled with the selection brush in a selected rectangle.