In last week’s Photography News, I mischievously let you guess which lens I used for my opening photo. The mysterious and somewhat unusual lens was successfully identified as a spotting scope for bird sighting. Today, I have a similar challenge for you, only the answer this time is a little easier. If your detective work is successful, you will find out the identity of a lens that we’ll be reviewing soon. But now, onto the latest announcements from this week, which brought a lot of exciting news to the photography world.

Most photographers and videographers are used to capturing images/video onto an in-camera storage device, offloading it to a portable hard drive, and later offloading it again onto a desktop system. SanDisk’s recent product line, the Pro-Blade, aims to unify these different methods of data management for pro users.

NPR reports “Delta announces special mid-day flight on April 8 to follow solar eclipse’s path.”

Umbraphiles can catch the April 8 total solar eclipse in-air from Delta flight DL 1218, Austin-Detroit, which departs Austin at 12:15pm CDT and lands in Detroit at 4:20pm EDT. The A220-300 slated for this flight features extra-large windows (and we assume no movie).

NASA says that part of the US will experience a total eclipse and that a partial eclipse will be visible throughout all 48 contiguous US states. Click here for NASA in Spanish.

You can download NASA’s map here. 

On NASA’s website you’ll also find a matrix that shows the starting and ending time at various cities located along the eclipse’s path. For example, in Carbondale, IL the drama begins at 12:42pm, reaches maximum at 2:01pm, and concludes at 3:18pm (all times CDT). In Buffalo, NY the fun begins at 2:04pm EDT.

More importantly, NASA also provides important safety information. Don’t lose your vision. Sounds like good life advice, and it’s really, really important when you’re looking at the sun.

We wrote about the subject of safety, too, in a piece titled, The Sun is Never Completely Blocked by the Moon During An Annular Solar Eclipse.

For how-to tips about photographing eclipses in general, read this story and watch the embedded video.

UPDATE! Bad & Good News
Delta’s eclipse flight sold out in 24 hours, but there are other flights that provide a good look at the eclipse, albeit for a shorter time, according to National Public Radio. This news begs the question: since the first flight sold out in less than one day and the eclipse doesn’t happen until April 8, why doesn’t Delta schedule more flights? Probably easier said than done, we concede; still, it seems like there is a primo revenue opportunity being overlooked by the airline industry.

Submit Your Best Eclipse Photos
Become a Member of the Shutterbug Community. Register for a free account. Sign up for our free newsletter. Spend five minutes (or less) uploading your best shots once every week or so, starting with your awesome pics of the eclipse. It could become a Shutterbug Photo of the Day winner. In any case, join us now and enjoy viewing the fantastic work being done by thousands of photographers all over the world—and add your images to the enduring collection.

—Jon Sienkiewicz

Have you ever noticed when cutting elements out of an image that edges appear rough and imprecise? If so, this Photoshop tutorial from the Photoshop Café YouTube channel will set you straight in a hurry.

Instructor Colin Smith is an image-editing expert who specializes in straightforward techniques that anyone can master. In this episode he demonstrates how to achieve selections with smooth and clean edges, and the method takes barely seven minutes to explain.

This is the second installment of Smith’s two-part mini-series on masking for beginners and you can find Part 1, and other great tips by visiting his instructional channel. The topic of this lesson is unlocking the power of Photoshop’s Select and Mask capabilities, and he covers everything from manual controls, additional tools, and a variety of quick tricks for refining your results.

The problem can be particularly acute when cutting out objects with hard edges, like the car in Smith’s demonstration photo. He begins by choosing Select Subject at the top of the screen, while explaining why using the Cloud may deliver better quality. Even then, you’ll notice edges that need some work.

The next trick involves using the Object Selection tool to make a selection around the area(s) that the first step missed. This typically detects and repairs the offending edges. Then Smith grabs the Quick Selection tool and further refines the edges. He explains his approach like this: “I like to first make the selection in Photoshop because it enables me to take advantage of other tools before turning to Select and Mask.”

When Smith jumps into Select and Mask you can see there’s a bit more that needs to be removed from the rear corner of the car. Now he carefully examines the mask by tapping View and choosing the Back-and-White option. Once you do this any rough areas that need fixing are readily apparent. He selects a Brush and paints away the problems and reveals the settings he recommends.

While the selection is much cleaner at this point, there’s still a few more steps if perfection is your goal. Smith walks you through a few global refinement tools, and demonstrates how Smooth, Feather, and Contrast adjustments contribute to the desired effect. The transformation concludes with a few additional tricks for accomplishing a perfect result.

Be sure to watch Part 1 of this lesson on Smith’s popular YouTube channel, and then explore the other helpful lessons that he has available.

We also suggest checking out the tutorial we posted earlier in which another post-processing expert demonstrates a unique, easy, and precise method for eliminating distracting shadows in Photoshop.