Noise is an inherent feature of digital images. Digital images are composed from millions of photo receptors. Not every one of those millions of photo receptors responds exactly the same to the same level of light. Add to that, the fact that the reaction of digital image chips is not perfectly linear, which is a fancy way of saying that they are more sensitive to bright light than they are to shadows.

Matt Kloskowski posted a video on adding camera-specific profiles to Adobe Lightroom 2. The problem with videos is that it's hard to show someone where to go on the Web to obtain a resource.

I decided to write an illustrated tip to walk you through the steps and give you the URLs. Matt rushed through his video and left out some important details, too:

Photoshop Elements 8 continues open support for Photoshop actions that began with the Action Player in PSE 7. This opens up many automation opportunities. The one limit, of course, is that the actions can only invoke features supported in Photoshop Elements 8.

That covers a lot of functionality. But it also means than many actins will have to be rewritten. Some will be completely unavailable. The first action set converted for PSE 8 is the TLR B&W Toning for Photoshop Elements action set.

This tip was requested by a site member. How do you use the Replace Color command effectively?

My tip Quick & Easy Sepia Tone Effect tip demonstrated my personal favorite for making a sepia tone image. It uses a twist on a popular method of B&W conversion that uses a pair of Hue/Saturation adjustment layers. This week's tip will go a bit further with toning. We'll use Image | Adjustments | Variations to alter the tone. You'll soon see, you have a lot more options than sepia, too.

Photoshop CS4 has added a new Vibrance command. You can find it on the Image | Adjustments submenu. There is also a new Vibrance adjustment layer. (Definitely my preference, since you can work non-destructively with the command this way.)

Some users confuse Vibrance and Saturation. That's understandable, since Vibrance and Saturation are related. Vibrance is a "tamer" version of the Saturation command. You're less likely to cause serious damage to your photograph with the Vibrance command because it has more "smarts" than the Saturation command.

Want a quick and easy way to whiten and brighten teeth when retouching? Did you know that brushes have a Mode that you can set, which works like a layer blend? Let me show you how this can work for retouching.

Start by duplicating the Background layer or merging all of the visible layers into a new layer.

When you want to use Photoshop's Color Range tool to make a selection in a small area, the tiny thumbnail preview isn't usually much of a help. Photoshop reduces the entire photo down to a thumbnail.