Thread: Create a photostream with Flickr

1. To get started with Flickr you'll need a Yahoo ro, If you've already got a Yahoo emall address or use Yahoo Messenger, : you can Simply sign In uSing those details. OtherWise, head to uk yahoo com and sign up for a free account Now head to fllckr com and sign In CLick Upload Photos to get started.

2. You can browse to the photos you want to upload and select them individually, or download a Flickr desktop tool to automate the process. We used jUploadr. Right-click on the photo to automatically send it to a Flickr set or create a new one. You can auto-resize images via Edit, Preferences, Upload Actions.

3. When you start adding photos to your Flickr page, you create a photostream. This can be a single set of images or be organised by subject, location or any label you' wish. To rename an image, click in the file name field and overwrite the text. Press Save, 'Add to Set' to instantly organise your uploads.

4. If you haven't yet created any sets, you can do so now by choosing a theme for the photos the set will contain. When you're in the Organize menu, you can grab several photos on your photostream and send them all to your new set or group, or assign properties to all of them at once.

5. The photos you upload to Flickr are set as Public. You can alter this under Organize, where it's also possible to adjust whether your photos can be found by their tags, image type and other criteria. Public Flickr photos show up in image search results. You can also set age restrictions and a suitability filter.

6. There are millions of photos on Flickr. You can make your photo collection as hidden or as prominent as you like by adding obvious or more obscure tags (searchable descriptions of an image's content). For ideas, go to the Explore tab on the Flickr home page, enter a search term and see what comes up.

7. Although you'd normally want to minimize image noise, some infrared photographers like noise because it emu¬lates the grain of infrared film. To add this effect, select Noise, Add Noise from the Effects menu. Now adjust the controls until you get the desired effect and click OK.

8. To add color to an infrared shot, you can combine an infrared photograph (with the filter in place) with one taken normally. The shots must match perfectly, so use a tripod and don't move it between exposures. Use aperture priority or manual exposure so the aperture is the same, Ideally. you should shoot RAW or Tiff images.

9. Our first color technique duplicates Kodak's Infrared Ektach rome film, which reproduces infrared as red, red as green and green as blue, Open the normal image and select Image, Split Channels to, RGB, Three new images will appear, showing the red, green and blue content of the original image respectively.

10. We're not going to use the blue .image, so close it without saving. Now open the matching i,frared photograph. Convert it to monochrome and adjust the contra'st as you did in steps 5 and 6, Next, we can combine the infrared, red and green images into a false-color photograph.

11. Select Image, Combine Channels and choose RGB as the mode in the Combine dialog box. Select R as the channel and browse to your infrared image in the image list. Then choose Gas the channel and the red picture from the list. Finally select B as the channel and the green image. Click OK, and you're done.

12. This type of color infrared photograph is interesting because it reveals details that can't normally be seen, To the untrained eye, however, it looks like yet another false-color image produced by digital manipulation. For a more artistic way of introducing color, split channels as in Step 9 but choose instead of RGB.

13. The I and a images contain the color information and theimage contains the intensities. Substitute the infrared shot for the Y image and you should end up with correct colors but the tonal properties of an infrared photograph. Close the image and open the infrared one. Convert it as before and adjust the contrast.

14. Select Image, Combine Channels and choose VIa as the mode in the Combine dialog box. Select Y as the channel and your infrared image from the list of images. Next, choose I as the channel and the I image from the list. Finally, select Q as the channel and the a image from the list. Click OK.