Today most monitors can display 24-bit color. And with 24-bit color you can display 16,777,216 colors. That is a pretty impressive number and so you might wonder why would you need more? I'll show you that there are situations where 30-bit color can make a huge difference.

Cheap monitors
Many today's LCDs aren't suitable not even for photography viewing, because they have panels with 6 bits per RGB color only (giving 18 bits in total). On such monitors you will see a serious banding even on ordinary 8-bit (24-bit) images. I have prepared two images for you, the first one is with 8-bit gray gradient and the second one with 6-bit gray gradient. You should be seeing a serious banding on the second image. If both images look similar then you have a cheap 6-bit panel and if you're into photography, get rid of it.

   

Click here to download:

30-bit_display_support_in_Zone.zip (2 KB)

Wide gamut monitors
In last years many wide gamut LCDs have been introduced. At the first glance this might look as an improvement with no drawbacks. But it has one - the wider the gamut, the less bits for ordinary sRGB images. Therefore you might experience a slightly more banding then with your old 24-bit sRGB monitor. And this is one of the reasons when 30-bit displays make sense - when you have a device capable of displaying a wider color gamut.

Grayscale images
Many photographers prefer black and white photography over color. But when you start working with grayscale images you might be surprised by more severe banding than with color images. Why is that? Because all RGB channels contain same data, suddenly 24-bit color happens to be 8-bit color, giving you 256 levels only! With 30-bit capable hardware and software you'll be able to see such images with 10-bit resolution, giving you 1024 levels.

What do I need?

• Zoner Photo Studio 12 Professional (make sure that you have Build 9 or higher)
• 30-bit capable graphic card with OpenGL drivers (NVIDIA Quadro FX or ATI FirePro)
• 30-bit capable display (NEC or EIZO LCD, search for 10-bit or 30-bit color support)
• 16/48-bit image (RAW images can be used as a source of such data)

How do I turn it on?

If you have a 30-bit capable hardware, you'll have a checkbox enabled on the Advanced page in Zoner Photo Studio's Preferences dialog. Tick it on.

• 30-bit display support is available in the Editor only (RAW module will support this in ZPS13)
• In Windows Vista and Windows 7 this feature turns off Aero
• When other window appears over the 30-bit window, image will be drawn in 24-bit depth
• Tested on NVIDIA cards only, please let me know if you have ATI based 30-bit capable configuration

Version 12 brings a few significant changes to the user interface. In previous versions the interface was highly configurable and this brought confusion to many users. These new changes introduce some limitations and bring also new possibilities. Let’s take a closer look.

Modules

Zoner Photo Studio consists of four different modules: Manager, Viewer, Editor and RAW. You can switch between these modules using buttons on the top right, every new window is opened in a new tab. Manager and Viewer can be of one instance only. If you need more Browser windows, you can open a second one from Workspace menu in the Manager. Also note that Manager module can’t be closed once it is opened.

Tabs

Zoner wanted to offer to users a more familiar style of window organization and decided for tabs. This change has impact on many functions. First, multi-monitor support is now much more limited, only a slideshow window can be opened on a different screen. Switching between fullscreen and windowed mode has also changed – there are three fullscreen modes now and you can turn them on/off using F11, Ctrl+F11 and F12 keys. In these modes hidden tabs and toolbars will be shown when you move mouse cursor to the top of the window. Regarding the control of tabs, you can switch between them using left mouse button and close a tab using middle mouse button. You can also control tabs from a keyboard – you can switch between them using Ctrl+Tab, close the current one using Ctrl+F4 or Esc.

RAW module

RAW conversion dialog from the last version is replaced by a new RAW conversion module. With this module it is possible to control much more parameters, it is possible to copy settings among pictures and the RAW module also lets you put pictures into a processing queue.

Theme

As you have probably noticed, ZPS12 has a dark user interface. You can choose from four gray themes or use a system based theme.

One of the most important and challenging tasks in digital photography is image sharpening. Although many methods like Unsharp mask provide good results and became a standard, we're still searching for a better sharpening method. Zoner Photo Studio 12 introduces a new method for image sharpening which is featured as a Soft Contours effect.

The difference among the newly introduced method and other conventional methods is that you can control sharpness of details of a different size independently and that you can not only enhance them, but also suppress them. This is especially important and powerful when sharpening portraits, because you can sharpen the most important smallest details of eyes or eyebrows and hide skin blemishes and soften the look of the portrait at once. Let's see an example...

             

Click here to download:

Soft_Contours_effect.zip (425 KB)

The effect is controlled by four sliders, where every slider controls a presence of details of a specific size. When value is equal to one then there's no change. When you push slider to higher values then you'll emphasize the desired details, when you push it to the left, you'll suppress or completely remove them. Another three images in the gallery above show which details are affected by which slider, going from the smallest details to bigger.

Of course this new method can be used in other situations too. I've prepared another example to demonstrate the effect...

Ordinary sharpening

2x Soft contours effect + contrast adjusted

One of the most common task in digital photography is export of the final result to World Wide Web. Most applications have special functions that can automate whole process and upload an image to a web server, but they rarely reach optimal quality. Therefore it is good to know what is hidden behind.

Step One: First of all image has to be downsized to a size of a monitor or less. These days more than a half of the computers on the internet use a higher resolution than 1024x768 - this might give you a hint on what size to choose.
If you want to resize image in Zoner Photo Studio, open image in Editor and press Ctrl+E to launch a dialog which is shown below. Enter desired size to Width and Height fields. If you have Keep proportions checked you can enter one of the dimensions and the other one will be filled in by the program while preserving an original ratio.
Another important parameter of resizing is resizing method. By default Supersampling should be selected which gives best results for photographs. Its downside is that images lose sharpness during downsampling process, therefore they need additional sharpnening. If you don't want to mess with more sharpnening methods you can use sharpening slider which is present in the dialog.

Step Two: In the next step we need to save the image to a jpeg. You can use two functions for that - Save As or Save Web JPEG. The only difference among them is the way how final size of the file is controlled.
Save Web JPEG has a special slider for a file size. This might be useful if there is a limitation on an upload size of the file. However it has its drawbacks - every image is saved with a different quality and especially images with many details might have many artefacts if the desired size is too small.

In Save As a Quality slider controls the file size. This ensures optimal quality for all downsized files.

EXIF checkbox stands for metadata - they can be useful on some websites.

Step One: Open image in editor and select Rectangular selection tool. Press Ctrl+A to select whole image. Press Ctrl+C afterwards to copy the image to clipboard.

Step Two: Paste the image using Ctrl+V shortcut. Select Overlay or Soft Light mode in toolbar. To alter the effect strength modify Layer opacity. If the result doesn't satisfy you, try other blend modes or the alternative step which is described below.

Step Two (alternative): This screenshot shows result of auto levels (Shift+L). Contrast has improved, but colors are a bit dull. However that doesn't mean that one method is better than another - every image has its own needs. Result of this method can be improved using Vignetting function (Ctrl+Shift+V) with automatic mask (strength 50%) and by applying levels afterwards.

Here's a table which shows mapping of text fields to EXIF, IPTC and XMP fields.

Please note, that the list of supported XMP fields can be extended through Custom Information as described in Zoner Photo Studio's Help file.

Step One: Select all images and launch a GPS assignment dialog from Information | GPS | Assign GPS Data.

Step Two: Select a map in which all GPS positions will be displayed. If you have a Google account, you can choose Google map and you'll be asked to login so a special mapplet can be registered. Once you do so, you'll see the mapplet in a list on the left as you can see on a screenshot below. Now you can minimize the list. You might notice that a special marker appeared on the map. You can click on any position in the map and the marker will move to that position, transfering GPS information from Google Maps to appropriate fields in the GPS dialog.
If you don't have a Google account or don't want to register the mapplet, choose Custom Link as a map. Google maps will be displayed without the marker and with some additional limitations.

Step Three: Click on Read Data from GPS Track Log and select a file with a track log. If your track log file format isn't supported by the application you can convert it with a third party application to a GPX format. Once a track log is successfully loaded, a Number of records, First record time and Last record time are displayed in the dialog.

Step Four: Using a picture from a know place set Time correction so a time from a digital camera and from a GPS track log match exactly. Once this is done, you can click on any of the thumbnails and map will display a correct position according the track log. To save the information for all images just press Apply to All. If you want to adjust position for every image, you can do so in Latitude and Longitude fields and save information with Apply image after image. You can also paste coordinates from a clipboard if you will be able to get them there in a compatible format.

Step Five: Once you return to a Browse window again a small globe will be visible on each thumbnail. You can use it to for a quick access to a map with images position.

Step Six (voluntary): Once an image has a GPS position assigned, you can use it on many places throughout the Zoner Photo Studio. One of them is an Image Information dialog, where you can let the application fill in Image Origins by clicking on Get Information Online.

In this tutorial we will replace a sky in one image with a copy of more dramatic sky from another image. We will learn how to use selections, magnetic lasso, magic wand and a temporary editing layer.

Step One: Find a suitable image with a new sky. This image should be of a similar size and the sky should be coherent, so there shouldn't be any trees etc. Once you have the source and destination image, open them in Photo Studio's Editor. To open the first image, just doubleclick on the thumbnail in Browse window. To open the second one, you'll have to hold a CTRL key while doubleclicking. This will tell to the application that you want to open the image in a new editor and leave the other one as it is.

Step Two: Select all the sky in the destination image. You have a wide range of selection tools available for this operation. Because we have an image where the sky is much brighter than other parts of the image we can take advantage of a Magic Wand tool. A magic wand is a selection tool where the selection is based on a similarity of pixels with the selected one. This tool has two parameters that affect its behavior. The Tolerance determines the similarity or difference of the pixels selected. The Continuous option determines whether the selection will "spill" out into all similarly-colored areas in the whole picture, or stay in just one continuous area. To actually perform the selection, click on the color and the area (if using Continuous) where you want it.

Step Three: Refine the selection by adjusting the parameters and by applying the magic wand tool multiple times. To erase the current selection just press ESC. After that you can set tool's parameters to a more suitable ones and create a completely new selection. However it is unlikely that you will be able to create a perfect selection in a single step. Therefore it is good to know that you can add to and subtract from selections. By holding a SHIFT key a selection tool will switch to a mode where a new selection will be added to the existing one. By holding a CTRL key you can subtract from an existing selection. You can also switch between different selection tools at this stage.

Step Four: Now switch to the other editor and select the sky in the second image. Because the image has a low contrast we can't use a Magic Wand tool as easily as in the first case. On the other hand we can see the horizon quite clearly and this is a perfect situation where it is wise to use a Magnetic Lasso tool. To perform the selection, click on the appropriate icon on the toolbar and then click on the left end of horizon. Move your mouse along the horizon to the right and you'll see that the tool snaps to edges. Because the tool will occasionally fail to follow the edges, you'll have to fix a position of a selection by a single click from time to time. When you get through the horizon to the right part of the image, continue creating the selection along the edges of the image to select the whole sky. Once you get to the start point, just move the cursor over it until its shape changes and then click to finish the selection.

Step Five: Copy the selected area from the source image by pressing Ctrl+C. Paste it to the other editor by pressing Ctrl+V. In most situations the position and size won't match the desired ones. You can move the inserted picture freely and resize it by dragging its edges. Because the inserted image behaves like a temporary layer now, you can modify layer's blend mode and opacity to get an alternative look.

Step Six: Once the new sky is positioned you might find out that the outline of the selection disturbs you. You can hide it by turning on Selection Editing Mode and setting it up the same way as on the screenshot below. Now you might notice that the outline has been hiding some imperfections on the edge of inserted image. In the selection editing mode you can use Paintbrush tool to fix the local imperfections - in this mode brush tool draws into the selection.

Step Seven: If you want to avoid the hard part of the work with the brush tool, you might try to Modify Selection using a dialog which is available from Selection menu. By expanding and bluring the edge you can hide many imperfections quickly although not that precisely as with a brush.

Result: Once you are ready, turn off Selection Editing Mode and click on Apply to merge the temporary layer with the background. The selection will stay so you can make further adjustments like a tonal ones. Save the image under a new filename because this operation can not be undone once the editor is closed. Zoner Photo Studio doesn't fully support layers and therefore you can't save the image as a background with a layer, you can save the final result only.

In this tutorial we will learn how to take advantage of Batch Filter which is available in Browser and Editor in Edit menu.

Step One: We will demonstrate an use of a batch filter in Browser window, although it can be used in Editor window too. As a first step, browse to a folder with images and select some of them using a mouse or a shift key. Then go to Edit menu and click on Batch filter... command.

Step Two: A dialog will be shown. You can see that there are previews of selected files in the left part of the window. On the right side there's a list of filters which are meant to be applied on all selected images. A top center part contains a preview of current image, by default showing a "before and after" state of the image. A histogram can be displayed voluntarily and preview mode can be changed to a different one. You can use middle mouse button on preview to switch between before and after too. Bottom part contains controls for current filter which is selected in the right part.

Step Three: Click on the button with a green plus sign. A dialog will be shown where you can choose which filter will be added to the queue of operations.

Step Four: Once you have more operations, you can change their order using drag and drop. Please note that for Format and Renaming filters order can not be changed, because these two define how a result of a batch operation will be stored on a disk. This doesn't apply to batch operations in Editor window where these two filters are disabled.

Step Five: Because many filters have many settings, it is wise to learn how to use presets. There are two kinds of presets in Batch filter dialog. Local presets which you can find right below preview section apply to a selected filter. Global presets which are available in bottom right part apply to a whole dialog.

Step Six: You can click on any thumbnail to see a preview of your new batch operation before it is applied. If you're happy with the result, you can click on Apply to apply the operation on a selected file only, so you can adjust settings for the next image, or you can click on Apply to All to apply the operation on all files that you have selected in the first step.
Beware! If you don't have Format and Renaming filters in your queue of operations, an original image will be overwritten by the result of applied operation. Therefore we recommend to you to work on copies only.

Step Seven: Once you learn to use global presets in batch filter, you can apply all the predefined operations directly from Browser or Editor menu without having to launch Batch filter dialog.

Conclusion: Although the Batch Filter functionality in Zoner Photo Studio is very useful, it is necessary to use it with caution. When called from a Browser window, once it is applied it can not be undone! Therefore it is crucial to work on copies of original files. However once you learn to use it, it will save you a lot of time - instead of repetition of many operations you'll have to perform a single step. And then you can share your presets with your friends using the Preset Manager.

Anaglyphs are pictures that look 3D when viewed through a special colored glasses.

Step One: select two images and click on 3D Images command in Publish menu. You can also create anaglyph from two images in a single file which is JPS, PNS or BMS format.

Step Two: Image alignment needs to be performed. Zoner Photo Studio automatically sets shared points. Using these points, it tries to compose the anaglyph precisely even in cases where you turned, raised, or lowered the camera between the two shots. If the wizard found some points that it should not have, you can delete the extra ones by selecting them and clicking Delete Selected Point or pressing [Del]. You can delete all the points by clicking Delete All Points. You can add new points by clicking on the previews. The most points you can add is 12.

Step Three: In this step an anaglyph is created. You have to put on the 3D glasses to see it properly. It is important to ensure that the left photo is on the left and the right photo is on the right. If the photos are switched, the final picture will not look 3D. If you do need to swap them, you can use the Left <-> Right button for this.
You can choose from among four types of 3D picture. Black and white anaglyphs are created in such a way that the two photographs are converted to grayscale and then each grayscale picture is converted to the target colors. The remaining three methods create 3D pictures in color. Color retains all colors. If the scene contains any large bright red surfaces, they can look unpleasant in the final picture. To minimize the effects of this unfortunate fact, you can use Half-color, which weakens the red channel in a predefined way. To weaken the red channel by a different amount, you can use Optimized. With that option on, you can set a Red Channel Level numerically or using a slider.
The arrows controls on the bottom left let you manually correct the positions and rotations of the pictures against each other. Use the button in the middle of them to remove your manual adjustments.

Step Four: When you save an anaglyph to a jpeg format, it is crucial to use 1:1 color sampling as can be seen on the screenshot below!

Result: You can see more pictures in a separate gallery.