[Tanner Studios]

Vonna, the photo the sales guy shot is very nice. But your problem, is the same problem most everyone is having. Most of you think that macro means close up photography. But what it really means is VERY close up. Thats why the photo looks great. But when you try to back off, so you get the whole set in the photo. The image is soft. The reason for this is the limitations of your len. With cameras that have fixed lens, The len is design to do snap shots of your mother and babys. So the macro setting has a very small area where it will be sharp ( Very close up ). How what I want you to do is back off even more. Set up your shot and do some testing. come in as close as you can. Snap a shot. back away and take another so on and so on. Make notes of the distance between the lens and the subject for each shot. Then take all of the photos into the computer, open the image and view them at 1to1 ( in photoshop double clicking on the magnifying glass ) then compare . This will help you find your len's sweet spot. Remember that you only need a very small file for the web. So you don't have to fill the whole image area in your camera.

Now about GAMMA, this is not something you should be useing. What gamma is, is a problem when printing on a printing press and the process of converting a RGB file to a CMYK file. (cmyk, cyan,magenta, yellow, black ). These are the color inks that printing press use. We on the other hand are publishing on the web, so we use red, green and blue (RGB) light to get our colors. Whats happening when you use the gamma tool is your losing some of your colors intensity. and by the way in paint shop it's just a preset levels adjustment anyway. So learn levels and you won't have gamma problem in the first place.