All images in these galleries are under a Creative Commons License except where otherwise noted

In short, you can: copy, distribute, display, make derivative works and make commercial use of them, everything under the following conditions: you must attribute, in a clear way, the authorship of the original images to www.yaop.org moreover you must make clear to others the terms of this license. For any other use please contact Yaop. click on the logo above to read the full license text from the official site.

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TIPS, TRICKS AND SOME TECHNICAL POINTS AND QUESTIONS

About Yaop's images colors and light (that is: why is the previewed image different than the one I've downloaded?) - What you see in these galleries are modified versions of our images. What this actually means is that when you download the high quality version (bigger file), you will find a totally different photograph. You must understand that in the world of photography, the final image is always an interpretation of an original. We take very seriously this aspect and for the sake of respect and to avoid imposing our tones and lights, Yaop! gives you, say, the "original". In other words what you get is the untouched original photo, as it was shot (even if it is a Jpeg or a Tiff file). This way, once you download an item, you're able to edit it at your will, modifying it and giving your personal color preferences to it (warmth, temperature, tones, light, etc).

About digital RAW capture and his friends (Jpeg, Tiff, etc) - People interested in photography nowadays can count on this incredible technology and thus, the opportunity to get unparalleled control over their images. Raw format could be seen as the real negative film of the digital world, in that you can "develop" your photos later, with the help of a special software (a raw interpreter). Raw images are files that contain unprocessed data. Jpeg and Tiff photos instead are the result of an interpretation made by you camera. Images that normally people handle are based, say, upon a "standard beauty" that camera makers have materialized, adding some variations, producing as a result different images, depending on the brand you use. This have a very important consequence: an already interpreted image (Jpeg, Tiff, etc) have a smaller range of possibilities to be enhanced, changed or modified, than a raw image.

How to process your RAW images - Follow these steps and advices to obtain very good "developed" images.

- Don't do anything with saturation as a first step. If do so, it'll be hard for you to get good colors later. It is necessary to say this because a very common error is the following: to open an image > to notice the lack of depth, contrast and light > start to manipulate colors and brightness. If you do this you're forgetting that what you have in front of you in an unprocessed image (Raw).

- So open you image and take an overall look and, as a first step, go straight to the exposure controls. It could help if you activate a shadow and highlight warning. Activate one at a time if it's possible, to avoid getting confused. Move controls until you get you highlights still showing details (if you have any).

- Once you've finished with exposure go straight to shadows and here things go along the same path: work on it until the existing details show.

- If you think your image still need some light retouching, then the following step is to work with the brightness controls. Go easy with the brightness control because you'll work on the image as a whole, unlike the aforementioned steps, which let you manipulate only shadows or exposure time, so you could flatten everything and loose contrast dangerously.

- Now is time to play with the contrast, depending on the image.

- Now and only now you can start with color enhancements.

Resuming, what you have here is a workflow based on this rule: play with light and shadows first and then manipulate colors. Enjoy!