Tag Archives: editing

Photoshop Sign Removal

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I had to try it.

BEFORE

This photo of San Xavier Mission is somewhat marred by three signs. (The third is very small and hard to see in this size.)

While at Saturday’s San Xavier Mission shoot, I commented to the other photographers about how unsightly some of the signs on the outside of the building were. (Whenever possible, I’d actually moved portable signs before pressing the shutter release.) All of the photographers I was with at the time agreed, but one of them went on to complain that they were a pain in the neck to remove in Photoshop. When I asked whether he actually did that, he replied that he always used Photoshop to remove signs he didn’t want in his photos.

Of course, I knew this was possible and, in all honesty, I’ve done my share of Photoshop editing. Still, I was amazed that someone would go to all that trouble to remove elements photograph of a photograph in post processing.

You see, I’m a bit of a “purist.” I believe that a photograph should be created in the camera. The photographer should photograph what’s there, carefully framing the shot to create his image of what’s in front of him. Creativity comes with exposure, depth of field, composition, choice of lens, point of view. What the camera records on digital media — or film, for that matter — is the photograph. Editing beyond the removal of specks and scratches or minor adjustments to exposure or color balance is — to me at least — not photography. It’s image editing.

You could argue that a real “purist” wouldn’t edit at all. I’d have to agree with you. I didn’t say I was an absolute purist — although I’d love to be one. My photos, unfortunately, sometimes need a little help. Like most other photographers these days, I turn to Photoshop or another image editing application to get that help.

I think the difference is how much help I get from Photoshop. I draw a line before a lot of other people do. Maybe it shows — for good or bad — in my photos. I don’t know. But I’d rather get it “right” in the camera than “fix it” in Photoshop.

AFTER

After a little sign removal. The photo certainly looks cleaner, but is it a true representation of what I saw?

But after the shoot, when I went back to my camper to relax for the afternoon, I started wondering what kind of difference sign removal would make and how well I could pull it off. So starting with the photo you see above, I used the brush and clone tools to remove the three signs that were visible. You can see the end result here.

I’m not sure how this would hold up if printed as a large photo. I’m confident that the closest sign, which appeared on a stucco wall, was neatly removed. The far sign was too small to be noticeable in the first place. But that middle sign…well, who knows?

Would I do this all the time? No way. I’d rather find creative ways to keep the signs out of the shot in the first place.

What do you think? Use the Comments link or form to share your views.

Spelling Checkers Don’t Work if You Ignore Them

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Reminding my brain not to block out the red underlines that indicate potential spelling problems.

Check Spelling as You Type has been a built-in feature of many word processors for years. It’s now in most applications I use — including my Web browsers, for Pete’s sake! — and the red squiggly or dotted underlines are an integral part of my writing life.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about — do you live in a cave? — I’m referring to the feature that indicates when a word you’ve typed may have been spelled wrong. This is supposed to flag the word so you can check and, if necessary, correct it.

A Blessing…

I vaguely remember when this feature first appeared in Microsoft Word years ago. It was a blessing — and a curse.

I initially loved the feature because it often identified my typos. I’m a touch typist and can get up to 80 words per minute when I’m tuned in. But those aren’t always error-free words. Check Spelling as You Type was a great feature for finding typos as I worked, eliminating the need to run a spell check periodically or at the end of document creation.

As you might expect, it also found spelling errors. My spelling was always pretty good, so it usually found more typos than actual spelling mistakes. But that’s okay. An error is an error and I want to remove all of them from my work, whenever I can.

…and a Curse

But over the years, I’ve found some problems with the Check Spelling as You Type feature — and spelling checkers in general.

The feature does not identify all typos or spelling errors as errors. For example, suppose you type bit but you really meant but. A spelling checker doesn’t see any problem with that, so it won’t flag it. That means you can’t depend on a spelling checker to proofread your work. (And yes, in case you’re wondering, a grammar checker would likely identify this as a problem. As well as the sentence you’re reading right now, because it isn’t really a proper sentence. And this one, too.)

So you’ve got a feature that makes you lazy by doing about 90% of the proofreading work for you, as you type. If you neglect to do the other 10% of the proofreading work, you could be very embarrassed — especially if you write professionally and editors expect your work to be error-free.

The unflagged error that zaps me most often? Typing it’s instead of its. At least I know what it’s supposed to be.

It’s worse, however, for people who don’t know the correct word. How many times have you seen people use then instead of than? There instead of they’re or their?

The feature has degraded my spelling skills. In the old days, before spelling checkers, I simply knew how to spell. If I wasn’t sure of the spelling of a word I needed, I looked it up in — can you imagine? — a dictionary. It made it worthwhile for me to actually learn how to spell words. Knowing the proper spelling saved me time in the long run.

But now, I simply type the word as I think it might be spelled and wait to see if it’s flagged. If it is, I use a context menu — Control-click or right click the word — to choose the word I meant to type. Yes, it’s convenient. But I seem to be doing it an awful lot more than I used to use a dictionary.

(Perhaps it’s also expanding my vocabulary by making it easier to use words I’m not as familiar with? There’s something there.)

The feature identifies any word it does not know as a potential spelling error. That means that if your document is filled with jargon, technical terms, place names, or other words that do not appear in a dictionary, those words will be flagged as possible errors. The word unflagged, which appeared earlier in this post, was also flagged. Is it an error? Or does my spelling checker simply not recognize it? Seems like a word to me, so I let it go.

And herein lies my biggest problem: I’m so accustomed to seeing words flagged in my documents that I’ve managed to tune out the red underlines. (It’s kind of like the way we all tune out advertisements on Web pages these days.) This happened to me just the other day. I typed the word emmerse in a blog post. My offline editing tool flagged it with a red dotted underline — as it just did here. But for some reason, I didn’t see it. I published the post with the error in it. A friend of mine, who referred to himself as a “spelling Nazi,” e-mailed me to point out my error. I meant immerse, of course. He knew that. Readers likely knew that. But I got it wrong and I shouldn’t have. How embarrassing!

Spelling Checker

Here’s a look at the spelling check feature in ecto, my offline blog composition tool of choice. It works just like any other spelling checker. (And yes, I do compose in HTML mode.)

The correct way to go about this is to look for every single possible spelling error and resolve it so those red lines go away. That means learning or adding the unknown word so it’s never flagged again or ignoring it so it doesn’t bother you in this document. All of this should be done with the appropriate menu command. Simply telling your brain to ignore a problem just sets you up to be blind to it when it occurs. That’s not how the software was designed to work.

The Point

This post has a point — most of mine do — and here it is: spelling checkers, including any Check Spelling As You Type feature, are only as good as allow them to be. Use them, but don’t depend on them. Follow up on any flagged words and resolve them using the software so the red underlines go away.

Spelling checkers are just a tool. Like any other tool, it won’t help you if you don’t use it correctly.

What Editors [Are Supposed to] Do

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And what they’re not supposed to do.

As I travel across northern Arizona by helicopter, escorting two paying passengers among Arizona’s natural and semi-natural wonders, I find myself working remotely on a book project I started before I left and will finish when I return. I promised to keep the ball moving while away and that means reviewing edits of chapters I’ve completed.

It does not mean getting angry about editors overstepping their bounds and making manuscript changes they have no business making.

In an effort to educate writers and editors about the various editing jobs out there, I decided to put together this list of editor job types and duties. I’m hoping that my project editor and the miscellaneous editors she’s managing will read this and learn.

Rather than discuss all kinds of editors, I’ll concentrate on just two: technical editor and copy editor. These are the ones I work with directly most often — and the ones that give me the most headaches.

Technical Editor

A technical editor’s job is to ensure that a book’s content is accurate and instructions are easy to follow. Technical editors are widely used in the computer books I write, although for many of my titles, I’m responsible for my own technical accuracy. When a technical editor is put on a job, his duties include the following:

  • Reading the entire manuscript.
  • Reviewing all statements of fact to ensure they’re correct.
  • Trying all instructions to make sure they work.
  • Reviewing all screenshots to ensure that they’re correct.
  • Asking the author for clarification on something that’s not clear.
  • Informing the author of inaccuracies in text or screenshots.
  • Suggesting additional information that the author may have missed that’s within the scope of the book and may be useful to readers.

A technical editor should not — I repeat, not — do the following:

  • Make changes to information or instructions. That’s the author’s job on reviewing the technical edits. An exception would be to fix an obvious typo.
  • Add information or instructions. That’s the author’s job on reviewing the technical edits.
  • Ask the author questions about how the program works. The technical editor should know how the program works. If the author got something wrong, it’s the technical editor’s job to tell him — not to ask him if it’s right or wrong.

Under no circumstances should the technical editor make changes to the manuscript to introduce information or instructions that he has not verified. The author should never be required to perform technical editing chores on text introduced by the technical editor. It must be assumed by the author that the technical editor’s comments and suggestions are accurate and correct. Otherwise, why have a technical editor?

Copy Editor

A copy editor’s job is to review the manuscript and make sure the text is grammatically correct and conforms to the style guidelines established for the publication. The copy editor’s job is to improve the book, not change it. Specifically, his responsibilities include:

  • Reading the entire manuscript, or, for a revision, the portions that have changed since the previously published edition.
  • Identifying and fixing typos and spelling errors. If there are a lot of these, the author is simply not doing his job.
  • Identifying and fixing grammatical errors. One could argue that if there are a lot of these, the author probably shouldn’t be writing. I’ll agree with that. But every author is prone to making a few grammatical errors and should probably be forgiven. The copy editor needs to fix it.
  • Identifying and fixing style errors. I’m talking about usage like e-mail vs. email, Web site vs. website, and press the OK button vs. click OK. Style should be established in advance and adhered to by the author, so there shouldn’t be many of these problems, either.
  • Point out sentence constructions that aren’t clear. If a rewrite is necessary to clarify, the author should be allowed to do it. If it’s an easy fix like adding punctuation or a few words, the editor should be able to do it.

The copy editor should not do the following:

  • Change the author’s voice. It is the author’s book, not the copy editor’s. The only exception should be in the event that the author’s voice is so far off established standards that it needs changing. That’s a problem that needs to be resolved by the editor in charge of the project, though.
  • Change the author’s common usage to something the copy editor prefers. If the author likes to use a phase such as “If desired, you can…,” the copy editor should not change the phrase to “If you want to, you can….”
  • Create awkward sentence reconstructions to remove prepositions from the end of a sentence. While old-time grammar rules say you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition, it’s commonly done in casual voice writing. An author should try to avoid this, but should not be required to make his sentences sound like those in a college text book to do so.

There are good copy editors, bad copy editors, and copy editors who should not be copy editors at all. I love having a good copy editor; I love feeling that a revised sentence remains in my own voice but is improved. I love to learn from that. A bad copy editor, on the other hand, won’t find the errors he’s supposed to find. It’s embarrassing when they’re found in the printed book. A copy editor who makes changes for the sake of changes — as if to justify his own importance to the project — should not be editing. He should be either writing his own books or doing something that has nothing to do with writing. These copy editors create bad feelings for experienced authors and make their work a real chore.

What Do You Think?

What are your thoughts on this? Are you a writer with some editor stories to share? Or an editor with some author stories to share? Please share your comments on this post. I’d like to get a discussion going about this. I think I’m on track with this assessment, but maybe you have other ideas?

In the meantime, I’ve got to make a phone call. One of my editors needs to be reminded of her responsibilities and their limitations.