And a good Christmas to you too Dave. I'm glad the articles have been of interest and I hope they help people get images they're happy with.

As for the Mandarin, good idea to do it with PSE. You can get some funny looks doing it in the field!!!

Cheers

Paul

Hi Chris. I always crop first then you are working on your finished image. If there is, for example, lots of light areas such as sky that you intend to crop out these will influence the levels and contrasts etc. If these are cropped before any editing is done you are just working on the pixels you want.

Paul

Hi Dave. I would imagine 90% of wildlife shots are cropped in some way. This could simply be because you want the subject bigger in the shot or you've deliberately left additional space around the subject so you can recompose the shot after it's been taken by cropping out the bits you don't want. For example, with wildlife shots you try not to have the subject bang in the middle of the shot. If it's looking left it wants to be on the right to give it space to look into. If it's a portrait shot the subjects head is usually at the top of the shot. Invariably though when we take the shot we have the subject in the middle. Leaving a bit more space allows you to crop the shot so as the subject is slightly to one side.

Bear a couple of things in mind when cropping. Firstly the more you crop the more detail you'll loose as you are effectively throwing away pixels. This isn't such a problem nowdays with modern cameras as they usually have a high pixel count. If you wanted to print a shot to A3 size you would need 4mp. As most cameras now have around 12mp you can crop 2/3rds out and still get a decent image. Secondly if you're going to crop most editing software will allow you to resize your shot beforehand. Say your shot is 4000pixels by 3000pixels (12mp) you can increase this to 8000px x 6000px. The software does this by simply copying every pixel with the one next to it. This will allow you to crop further but it will lead to a slight loss of image quality the more you crop.

You can also use cropping to reshape your shot. Some shots look better square rather than rectangular and others can be cropped to a letterbox shape (long and thin).

It's really up to you how you use cropping. There are no hard and fast rules it's more of a creative thing.

Paul

Hi Dave. Firstly, all camera manufacturers have their own RAW format. It's possible Gimp doesn't recognise your camera. Sometimes these programs need updating. Have a search on the web for any newer versions of gimps raw converter.

Personally I would go for a different editing software. I use photoshop CS4 but I would recommend photoshop elements. Don't buy the latest one (9 I think. It's about £60) but go for a slightly older version. Much cheaper and will do the same things. It will allow you to open, edit and save RAW files in a very natural workflow. It's dead easy to use once you know the basics. There are loads of tutorials on the web and plenty of books around too. It's fair to say almost all photographers use photoshop or lightroom (both adobe) to edit photos. Lightroom is  dedicated RAW editing and workflow software whereas photoshop is a more all round editing program.

I'm going to do the second part of the wildlife photography tutorials this weekend so have a look at that when it's up. I will talk about what settings to have your camera on for the best results and how you can use the histogram to make sure your shots are good straight out the camera. For now though here's some generic setting you might find useful.

For wildlife. Aperture priority, F6.3 to F8 (use a lower F-stop if your lens has one, F2.8, F4 etc), ISO 400, continuous single area focus, metering mode to centre weighted, exposure compensation set to -0.7 & white balance set to auto or daylight.

Landscape. Aperture priority, F16 (or as high as your lens will go), ISO 200, multi area autofocus, metering mode to area, exposure compensation set to -0.3 & white balance to daylight or cloudy.

Most of the above are generic to most cameras. Have a look in the instruction manual and see if these are mentioned.

If all the above seems a bit confusing don't worry. It's never that easy to start with getting to grips with all the settings on a camera and all the processing of the shots after. I'm still learning stuff now and I've been shooting wildlife seriously for over ten years.

I've never any problems demonstrating any of the above so if you ever want an "in the field" heads up on any of the above let me know. You could get to grips with all the settings in around an hour or so.

Hope that's of some use for now.

Cheers

Paul

Hi Dave. What is it you specifically need to know? Editing, converting RAW images, saving images or general photography.

Let me know and I'll try to assist.

Paul