Points of View Photo Project #27
Welcome to the 27th week of the Points of View Photo Project!
This week we are fortunate to have a source image from Friend-of-the-Blog Marc Benton of the Columbus Skyline. Thank you Marc!
We have 6 versions for your enjoyment this week! I am excited for the continued growth of the project and I encourage you all to give it a shot for next week. We have a special image at the end of the post that comes from my brother, Chris, from his recent trip to Antarctica.
So have a look at what we all did to process this initial photo and, who knows, you might learn a little something too!
I’ve Been Invited!
In case you missed it, last week over on Friend-of-the-Blog Scott Kelby’s site he announced that Adobe has graciously allowed NAPP to invite a select number of their members to be private Beta testers of the next version of Photoshop.
Points of View Photo Project #24
Welcome to the 24th edition of the Points of View Photo Project here at Jason D. Moore Photography!
UPDATE: New deadline for submitting your version of the image for week #25!
Each week readers from all over the world tackle a common source image and display it to show the many interpretations, perspectives, and approaches that can be taken from the same starting point. I always fins it interesting how a single image can be manipulated and processed to express such different feelings and emotions.
If you are new to the project, or if you’ve been following along regularly and would like to participate, be sure to scroll to click on “More…” and scroll down to the bottom to download the source image for next week and learn how to submit.
But now, on with this week’s images!
Points of View Photo Project #22
Welcome to the 22nd edition of the Points of View Photo Project! This week we have been lucky enough to have a chance to work with not one, but three source images from reader and blog contributor Steve Kalman who challenged us to produce an HDR image, if we were so bold to try it.
Read on to see what some of our regulars have done with these photos and to learn how you can grab next week’s source image and participate in this excellent project that gets your creative juices flowing, invites you to experiment and try new things, and opens you up to the different perspectives that can come from a common image.
Also, be sure to scroll down to the bottom to find out how you can share your photos and a source image for one of our upcoming editions of the project!
Playing Around with Topaz Adjust
I was working on a logo design for a former co-worker of mine last night when I got the urge to just play. I’ve only been feeling creative sporadically lately so I thought I would take advantage of this moment of inspiration and indulge it a bit.
Best Shots of 2009: A Year in Review
As the old year passes I like to take a few minutes and review my work from the previous 12 months.
I know I took more bad shots than good but, as I’ve been told, a professional is someone who knows which photos to leave out of their portfolio. I also tend to believe that any artist worth anything is never satisfied with their work. It is never finished, simply abandoned.
So as we round out the year, rather than showing you some great shots, here is a collection of my photos that sucked the least. (Just kidding…)
Take a look through my Best Photos of 2009 gallery and let me know which are your favorites!
The Results Are In: October Photo Contest!
It’s that time once again to announce the winner of the latest Monthly Photo Contest!
As it is every month, I am both excited at the number of entries and daunted by the many excellent images submitted. I am also pretty stoked by this month’s prize. The lucky winner is going to be receiving one of their images sublimated on a 16″x20″ piece of metal from our friends over at IGT America. I have one, myself, and it is not only an amazing process, it is also a very unique way of presenting your work.
So, without further ado, the winner of the sublimated photo print is: (more…)
Software Review: Topaz DeNoise
I sat down last night to see if Topaz DeNoise was all it’s cracked up to be. No matter how hard you try, every so often you will find yourself in a situation where your settings were off or the light changed or you’re shooting at night and your image has a lot of noise. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the most technical photographer out there when it comes to making sure I have everything set properly in-camera. So this happens to me every so often.
To show an example of the kind of noise that can arise when your settings are a little off, here’s a closeup detail of shot I took over the summer with Kim and I took off for Niagara Falls for a spontaneous weekend away. It was a little dark and when I increased the exposure in post, the noise really came out.
As you can see, it’s not too bad, but is noticeable and it’s got to go. I usually do some noise reduction in Lightroom or ACR but it’s not quite right. So, I brought the image into Photoshop CS4 as a Smart Object and applied the Topaz DeNoise plugin to it so it would work as a Smart Filter. I used one of the presets and played with the sliders only a little bit here and there and the results were fantastic:
I was expecting to lose detail as though I used a surface blur but Topaz DeNoise targeted only the noise within the image and left the edges and details alone. This wasn’t necessarily a “throw away” shot before, but it’s definitely a keeper now. With just a few clicks I was saved from having to make some tough choices about sacrificing detail to lose the noise.
There’s really not much else to say about it, other than Topaz DeNoise simply does what it’s supposed to. It has all of the pros and cons I mentioned in my post about Topaz Adjust and the price ($79.99) is definitely with reach and I’d say is worth it for the job that it does fixing a tough problem.
I couldn’t just leave the photo at that, I had to keep playing around with Adjust to make the shot even better. Here’s the original:
And here is the final image. All I did was adjust the exposure and white balance in ACR, apply Topaz DeNoise, make a few enhancements based on a preset in Topaz Adjust, and add a touch of lens vignetting:
“Ask Jason” – What’s the Difference Between Opacity and Fill?
Welcome to the first of what will hopefully become a more regular series here on the blog. I invite you, my readers to send in questions about Photoshop and digital photography that I may address them here. No question is too small and the learning process of such a deep and complex program such as Photoshop and Lightroom is an ongoing endeavor. As I’ve mentioned before, I work from the philosophy that when I learn something about Photoshop I want to share it so that you can learn more too. So please, ask away!
To start us off, here is a question I received from a reader the other day:
Jason,
I’ve been trying to distinguish between Opacity and Fill. As an experiment, I created two layers, black over white. I then adjusted opacity to 50%, flattened and measured the color of grey (r=g=b=128). Repeating the process but adjusting fill to 50% gave the same results. What’s the difference and when would I prefer to use one over the other?
Thanks,
Steve
What Steve is asking is actually a fairly common question and even some more advanced users aren’t quite sure how it works or when to use it. In fact, I asked a couple of my fellow designers in the graphics department at work and they didn’t really know what it was for. So, Steve, you’re in good company!
So we all know what we’re talking about, in the upper right corner of the Layers Panel you will see two boxes, one for Opacity and one for Fill and it is very easy to assume that they both do the same thing.
Before getting into a discussion about Opacity vs. Fill, I want to make a distinction that has always helped me to understand what’s going on here. The distinction is between a layer and the contents of the layer. A layer is the row within the layers panel on which you can add objects such as shapes, text, images, drawings, etc. The contents of the layer are those things (text, shapes, etc.) that are on the layer. Simple enough, right? But this is a very important distinction. You do not apply layer effects to a specific object on a layer, you apply the effects to the layer as a whole. Which brings us to the question at hand.
Opacity, as I understand it, acts on the layer – the contents and the effects – while Fill acts only on the contents and leaves the effects alone.
To illustrate this, on a new layer, make a square of any color you like. Next, apply a decent sized stroke to it (inside, outside, color, whatever you want to do) and click Ok. Duplicate the layer and move the square so they are next to each other. Now lower the opacity of one of the layers to 50% and you will see that the square and its stroke are now more transparent. Select the other square, but this time, lower the fill to 50% and you will notice that only the square, not the stroke, is semi-transparent while the stroke is still fully opaque.
Most of the time adjusting the opacity slider along will do the job for you and you don’t have to worry about fill. However, when using layer effects you may want to play around with the fill to give yourself more options. For example, if you want to have text that is only an outline, add a stroke and lower the fill. If you want to create a semi-transparent box to hold some text in your design, create a black box, add a drop shadow that has a distance of zero and a decent size, lower the fill to about 20% – or whatever works for you – and there you go.
So, in a nutshell, Opacity affects the layer, Fill affects the objects on the layer and this really comes into play when using Layer Effects. Play around with it and I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it in no time! Do you know of another way of explaining the difference? What helps you remember? Are there other uses for Fill that you’ve come across? Please share them in the comments!
If you have any Photoshop questions, please send them along and you may soon find the answer here! Don’t be shy, I’m sure you’re not the only one wondering the same thing. By asking your questions, you’ll be helping others to understand and use Photoshop better too.
Points of View Photo Project Reminder
Just a quick reminder that there is still time to send in your image for the Points of View Photo Project. Simply follow that link to download this week’s source image and do whatever you want to it. Send it back to me by tonight – really if you make it by early afternoon tomorrow you’ll make it in – and I’ll include it in the gallery on Friday.
For those of you who may be new to this project, there are no restrictions on how you process the image as long as you use the source photo in some way as you produce your final image. This isn’t a contest, there are no prizes or anything like that. It’s simply meant to be an exercise for your creative brain. So have fun with it! Experiment. Try something you’ve never done before. And send it in!
I’ve been meaning to put together some sort of banner for this project but haven’t gotten around to it. So, if any of you would like to play around with some ideas, send in a banner that is about 600px wide by no more than 200px tall to my dedicated email address and I’ll pick the best entry as the official banner for the project. Good Luck! And I’m looking forward to seeing how everyone processes the image!
Workflow Friday: Michael Palmer
For this week’s Photoshop Workflow Friday post we get a look inside a recent HDR project from DC-area photographer, Mike Palmer.
(click to enlarge)
I shot all images RAW with a D200 w/ 24-120 VR Nikkor , I shot Aperture priority, bracketed, 3 shots, hand held at f3.5. I overlapped the pano 20 percent for each shot.
Imported the .NEF’s into Lightroom. I selected the series (3 x how many in the pano) I was going to batch processes in Photomatix, created a new folder in LR and put the images in the folder. Started photomatx, did a batch of that folder at 3 images, and walked away. So how do I get the look? These are the setting I used. If you use Photmatix, you know they a a bit over the top, but I went to a HDR seminar by Chris Alvanas at CDIA and he is the one who turned me on to this. He was also the guy that was in Nikon World Magazine for HDR and the cover for Shutterbug.
After they batch processed in Photomatix Pro ,the tonemapped .Jpegs would be plaed in a new folder, I synced the folder in LR, and the tonemapped .Jpegs would import into LR. Select (Ctrl-click) the .Jpegs and right click, Merge to Pano in Photoshop. Ctrl-Shift-E to merge layers, Crop, Curve, Sharpen (unsharp mask Amt 185, Radius 1, Threshold 5-10), add letterbox effect in canvas (Alt-Ctrl-C). Save and export for the blog at 2000 wide 72dpi.
Bottom Line, Its FUN, I do not carry a tripod everywhere, and I think the water came out really cool in the process, very angry. Try it yourself and have some fun… If I was not clear (not the first time) or you have a question, feel free to email me Michael@mpalmerphotography.com.
Check out some Mike’s other HDR shots from this series:
Thanks Mike!
Boston Photowalk Images
Last week while I was in Boston for the Internet Retailer Conference, I had the pleasure of meeting up with fellow photographer and regular reader Chris Stern to go on a photowalk around the Boston Common area along Tremont Street from the Ritz to the Old City Hall and back.
When I was in school at Boston University back in the day (“which was a Wednesday, by the way…”) I wandered these streets time and time again, but it wasn’t until I was out of college that I really got into photography and this was my first opportunity to get out and about in the city with my camera.
I took about 250 shots – which includes my usual 3-4 captures per subject/angle – and there is still a lot to get through. However, there have been a couple of standouts in the batch I’ve processed so far. View a small gallery of some of my shots from the day.
Points of View Photo Project: #5
Welcome to the fifth edition of the “Points of View Project”!
Every other Friday I will post a new, out-of-the-camera image for you to download. You may process, manipulate, composite, experiment, or otherwise alter the photo in any way you wish. The hope is that we will get to see a number of different takes on the same image and/or see it used in unique ways as a part of a new image.
This is not a contest or competition. It’s simply a way of stretching our creative muscles and to get those juices flowing through experimentation and seeing how many different interpretations can be applied to the same starting photo.
Check out our Points of View Gallery showing this week’s source image and how it has been seen from 7 different points of view.
Thank you to everyone who contributed this week!
Here’s the image for week #6:
Click here to open the full-size version to download as your starting point. Have fun with it! I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
You can do whatever you want to the photo as long as you use the given photo in some way as part of your final image. In fact, I know the potential is there for a number of people to end up processing the image in very similar ways and getting similar results. Because of that, I’d like to encourage you to experiment and/or take things a couple of steps further to really challenge yourself to make it truly unique.
Once you have worked with the image as much as you feel it needs, simply email it back to me at pov@jasondmoore.com by Wednesday June 17th for inclusion in the project. Please be sure to include your name, location, and website/blog URL so I may properly credit you.
If you would like to send in a photo – unprocessed, straight out of the camera – for us to use as our starting image for a future week, please send me an email to the same address listed above.
I’d like to note that the image(s) that will be used in a given week are only offered for use within the confines of the “Points of View Project“. I am not releasing any rights for use beyond creating your submission. I would also express the same for any starting images that may be provided by other participants. Feel free to re-post your version of the image on your site to share your participation in the project. I just ask for a link back here when you do.
Also, if you would like to sponsor this or any other project here at Jason D. Moore Photography, or would like to support the site as a whole, please visit our “Become a Sponsor” page today to learn how!
“On the 4th” Photo Project
Welcome to another installment of the “On the 4th” monthly photo project hosted by Jason D. Moore Photography (brought to you in part by User 40.0).
The purpose of this project is to compile a collection of images taken on the 4th of each month providing a unique perspective of the similarities and differences of our unique and varied experiences on a given day throughout the year from our scattered locations around the country and across the globe.
This month we feature shots from 2 different countries including Belgium and the USA giving us a glimpse of life “On the 4th” around our world.
The project will only get more interesting and more comprehensive with more contributors. If you would like to participate, simply take a photo today, June 4th, and send it to me by the 20th for inclusion in this new and exciting project!
Thank you to all of those who have already submitted images and I hope to see even more next time!
Enjoy!
1630 GMT+2 – Hendrik Demey, Belgian Coast
7:29pm Eastern – Jason D. Moore, Johnson City, NY
The “On the 4th” Monthly Photo Project is sponsored in part by the blog User 40.0. Please take a minute to stop over and see some of the great things they are doing over there!
If you would like to sponsor this, or any of our other regular series, or if you would like to advertise on this site, please visit our “Become a Sponsor” page today to learn how!
Quick Blog Thursday
It’s been a crazy week around here which has made it tough to keep up with quality posts everyday. Kim has come down with strep throat just as her students’ art show is coming into full swing. I’ve been doing what I can to help out and get things finished as best I can and try to nurse her back to health.
To make up for it a tad, here is another one of my shots from the Ithaca Photowalk a few weeks ago. It’s another angle on a subject I posted an image of before (below). I’m not sure which one I like the best but I really like how the processing turned out with the color and tone and I’m turning into a fan of the rounded corners as part of the post-crop vignetting options. (Both shots processed entirely in Lightroom 2).
In the meantime, since today was when I was planning on posting the latest P&P Weekly, I’ll simply invite you to visit the Photoshop & Photography Blogroll and peruse our member sites to see some of the great things they’ve been up to lately.
Updated Ithaca Gallery
I felt the need to do something creative this weekend. You know how it is, you have a list of things you have to get done and you just feel so out of it and unmotivated. Well, that was how it was for me on Sunday afternoon.
I developed some writer’s block and just didn’t know how to move forward with what I was doing – still don’t, really. I needed to give my mind a break from that way of thinking and so I went to work processing most of the remainder of my shots from our recent Ithaca Photowalk just over a week ago.
I’ve updated the Ithaca Photowalk Gallery with an additional 14 images. You’ll see all of the shots from before in there but there are also some new ones that I’m pretty happy with.
It’s an interesting process to narrow down all of your shots from an afternoon of shooting. I started out with roughly 230 captures and widdled it down to about 50 keepers and have processed about 30 to a place where I feel good about them. (All processed entirely in Lightroom 2.)
It’s not that I took 200 bad photos that day. I always take anywhere from 2-4 shots of the same composition/angle to help make sure that I get one that’s sharp. I have pretty steady hands, but not always, so I like to increase my chances of getting a keeper by snapping a couple of extra – one of the joys of digital vs. film. In reality, I took about 60 distinctly different shots, chose the best versions of the 3-4 captures of those shots, ended up tossing 10-15 that just didn’t work the way I thought they would when I took them, and processed the rest. And what I’ve ended up with is a decent collection of about 30 images of the Ithaca Commons.
What do you think?
Photoshop Interview: David Ziser
This month we welcome wedding photographer, lighting expert, trainer, blogger, and all-around great guy, David Ziser of Digital ProTalk. I first got in touch with David back when he was a newbie blogger in the summer of 2007 and he’s now logged well over 1650 posts in the midst of his regular schedule of shooting weddings, running his successful master class for photographers, traveling around the country to run photography workshops, and writing a new book.
I was lucky enough to sit down with David over the phone about a week ago to talk a little bit about where he comes from and where he’s headed.
Jason D. Moore Photography: First off, thank you for taking the time to sit down with me today. Tell me a little bit about your background and how did you get into photography?
David Ziser: I never really went to school for photography. My dad always told me to get a “real” job, while he was alive. My background is actually in physics and engineering. I’ve got a degree in physics and I’ve got another degree in engineering. And I was actually trying to attempt a triple major back in my college days so I’m like 2 classes short of a computer science degree.
I worked my way through college as a photographer so I’ve actually been shooting weddings for 45 years.
I graduated college in 1971 and worked as an engineer for a couple of years. My friends started to get married and asked me to do their weddings ‘cause they knew that I’d been doing it since I was 15 years old. So it was actually in October of 1978, 31 years ago, when I opened my studio doors for business and I’ve been doing it ever since. And, as a matter of fact, I started winning different awards by around 1979-1980 and was asked to start lecturing by Art Leather, the album company, around 1982/83. Lisle Ramsey got word about what I was up to and put me on the international circuit around 1984 so I had already lectured in New Zealand only 5-6 years into my career and then again in Australia. And the rest is history.
I’m a guy who carefully avoided public speaking my entire high school and college career and now it’s about half of what I do for a living.
JDMP: How did you get started with Photoshop?
DZ: I’m not like some of these guys who jumped in with version two, I didn’t jump on board until around version 5.
I shot my first digital wedding at the end of 2000. I was an expert, I could just about use the dodge and burn tool and maybe the rubber stamp tool and that was about it! If I didn’t need it I never really tried it. Finally with Photoshop 7 I started getting more involved with it because by then we were into the whole digital swing of things.
Now I feel like I’m pretty good at it. I wouldn’t call myself a Julieanne Kost or a Scott Kelby or any of those guys but I know my way around a Layer Mask or two.
We probably do 80% of our image adjustments and enhancements in Lightroom and just go to Photoshop for the heavy lifting, do skin retouching and taking out big exit signs or something like that.
JDMP: How do you see the relationship between these tools and the execution of the artist’s vision?
DZ: The camera is a tool and the software is a tool. For Ansel Adams the developer and the developing time and exposure, those were his tools to get what he wanted, and burning and dodging and so forth. And aren’t we doing that with the software now? What’s cool with the software these days is our vision can change. I think the software can even modify your first impressions of what you wanted image to be.
Look at the painters from the traditional painters to the modern art painters. We can adjust any pixel the way we want it, and they adjusted any pigment on their canvas the way they wanted it. Who cares if it’s pixels or pigments we still have the control and the latitude and the creativity that we can bring to it with our knowledge of how our tools work, whether it be brushes and pigments and inks, on the painter’s side, or pixels in Photoshop and Lightroom on the digital photographer’s side.
Some photographers say, get it right in the camera, you don’t need Photoshop. My rule is, if it takes you longer to get it right in the camera than it does in Lightroom or Photoshop, than go to Lightroom or Photoshop. Take the darn picture and fix it in two minutes in Photoshop or Lightroom.
JDMP: What about those who think you need to have the latest and greatest camera?
DZ: I had this slide in my PowerPoint about a year ago, when Nikon was running the ads with Ashton Kutcher, and the question was, “Do you think the camera lets you take a better picture?” And it was something like 40% thought most of the time, and like 30% thought all the time. It was a goofy number like 79% of the people thought that the camera would help you take a better picture. I would agree to that, to some extent, that you can get the exposure down and everything else but A good picture is more than just a properly exposed photograph.
JDMP: How did you first get into blogging?
DZ: I’m a two-finger typist, by the way, so when I blog, I really invest myself into this thing!
Scott Kelby and I had been emailing while he was doing his Lightroom 1 tour and asked me how to tweak the lighting before he went up on stage. By the time I got to email him back I said, “Well why don’t you come up to help me with a wedding?” The timing worked out and it was July 27, 2007. We finished the wedding at about 1, we went back to my home and we sat up talking until about 3/3:30 in the morning about blogging because I was curious about trying it and what he said to me was, “You’ve got to feed the monster every day or it dies. And that was where we left it.” My wife and I took a trip to Paris and I started blogging the trip. It was called “David and LaDawn on the Road” and that was my first blog.
We came back and I started Digital ProTalk in mid-August. #1 I find the blog to be creative for me. It gets me thinking about what I do: photography and teaching. It’s leveraged how I teach because I put something on there every day. And another thing, and I’m not sure if others will say the same thing, I find it to be relaxing and rewarding when I wake up at 6 or 6:30.
I’ve done 1650 posts to date, and counting.
JDMP: You have a new tour just getting started. Tell me a little bit about your Digital WakeUp Call Tour.
DZ: I’m a photographer who has studied classical lighting and posing and this and that and everything else and I wasn’t seeing that a lot in many wedding photographs. So we went out in ’06 and we talked about composition and good lighting and also some software things and some business building things.
Everyone was telling me to do it again and ‘09 was the year to do it. So for the last 6 months we’ve been putting together the content of the tour and designing the presentation and we started right after Photoshop World.
It’s 4 hours long and we’re talking about lighting, lightning and even more lighting – how to get the best use out of your on-camera flash and how to use off-camera flash to really make your images sing. There’s way too much software and way too little time to learn it all so what I talk about are “Software Magic Bullets” – things that make your workflow really streamlined. And the last part of the program is about business building and what any photographer can do, from seasoned professionals to part-time photographers to emerging professional photographers, to build their business.
The tour has caught fire! We’re giving away ¼ million dollars in giveaways over the course of the tour. It’s generated a tone of interest and people are loving it. I’m really excited about it!
JDMP: What else do you have going on?
DZ: I’ve got my first book coming out this summer and I teach my Digital Master Class, a week-long class where photographers come in here for about 50 hours a week. I think we’re the best value class going. It’s photography for 2 days, software for about a day or so and then, of course, business building at a price that doesn’t break the bank.
JDMP: Thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me! It’s been a real pleasure!
DZ: Thanks for your support and for linking over, and I really appreciate it! We’ll have to guest blog for each other sometime.
Photoshop Interviews is brought to you in part by Towner Jones Photography, LLC. Check out all of the great things Rob is doing over there!
If you would like to sponsor Photoshop Interviews or any of our other regular series, or if you would like to advertise with us, visit our Become a Sponsor page today!
HDR Revisit: Yellow
I’ve been playing around a little bit more with HDR Photo Studio and everytime I use it I am really impressed with the results.
I took this shot, of my car, for my entry for “Yellow” in the Geographic Composition project, posted exactly 11 months ago today for week #29, actually. You can see the original there and it’s pretty obvious how much sharper, and full of depth this version is compared to how it looked when I only used Lightroom.
It’s so easy to go overboard with HDR processing but as you can see here, it can also be utilized to do some pretty effective fine tuning to draw your viewers even deeper into your images.
Grab HDR PhotoStudio today and see how you can take your photos to the next level.
P&P Weekly: #113
Welcome to week #113 of The Photoshop & Photography Blogroll’s P&P Weekly!
I’m going to just jump right in and get started with all the news that’s fit to post:
- Starting this month I will be a regular contributor to the PsPrint.com blog writing about graphic design, tips and inspiration. I’ll be posting on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays once I get going. My first month’s topics have been approved and I’ll be starting to write soon. So check over at http://blog.psprint.com starting in the next couple of weeks to follow me there.
- The Ithaca Photowalk is coming up in a couple of weeks and we still have a few openings left! Let me know if you’re planning to come join us!
- There are many opportunities available for sponsoring of one of our weekly or monthly series, or if you would like to be a sponsor of the blog as a whole, please take a minute to review our “Become a Sponsor” page.
- The April Photo Contest is now open! Be sure to enter for your chance to win!
(Sponsored by Competico.com) - Our new series Points of View is coming up this Friday. Read about this new project and grab our starting image here. Please send in your interpretations by tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon to pov@jasondmoore.com so you can be included in the project!
And now, on to some of my favorite posts from our Blogroll Members:
- Kerry of Camera Dojo – “Cleaning Your Own DSLR’s Sensor – The Right Way“
- Jason of Cannon Blogger – “Artist Statement Appeal – The Power of the Pen“
- Doug of Blamit Blog – “Flint Hills Friday“
- Joey of Joey L – (I couldn’t grab a permalink that worked but there are a couple of posts that are quite remarkable. FYI, some might find the first post a little disturbing.)
- Jennifer of Laughing Lion Design – “8 Tips for Speeding Up Your Navigation Around Photoshop“
- Matt of Lightroom Killer Tips – “Lightroom and Photoshop Automation“
- Rob of Towner Jones Photography – “National Cherry Blossom Festival“
- Lori of VirtualPhotographyStudio.com – “10 Photography Tips for Better Outdoor Portraits“
- Andy of Visual Realia – “Forks“
- Scott of Weekly Photo Tips – “Microstock Photography“
- Aaron of What the Duck – “WTD #682 & 683″
- Damien of Your Photo Tips – “The Show Us What You’ve Learned Giveaway!“ - Win a free Canon PowerShot SD770IS 10MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Black)
Review: HDR PhotoStudio
Last week I downloaded a copy of HDR PhotoStudio from Unified Color. I’ve played around with a couple of different HDR plugins and have to say that this one really delivers.
For those who are still new to the whole concept of HDR, here’s a quick rundown to get you up to speed. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and basically you create an HDR image by combining multiple images together – each at a different exposure – to take advantage of the details in the highlight and shadow areas so the final image can more closely resemble the tonal range seen by the eye at the time of capture. The result is an image with a great deal of tonal depth where, when done correctly, retains a great deal of information in both the brightest areas as well as the darkest without clipping – unless you’re ok with a certain amount of clipping for the effect.
There are schools of HDR photography where the final image is on the more surreal side of things. I’m wuite impressed with it when it’s done right but more often than not, this style of HDR is overdone, in my opinion, and can be more of a distraction and can get in the way of creating a pleasing path for the eyes through the image.
For me, the real power of HDR comes with the added clarity, sharpness and tonal depth that can come from the merger of multiple exposures. But one of the added benefits of HDR PhotoStudio that really sold me was how you can apply an HDR effect on a single image. Let me offer an example.
Before:
You may have seen this image posted here before. It’s one of my shots from Kim’s and my trip to Paris last year (taken at Versailles). I processed the shot entirely in Lightroom and was quite pleased with the sharpness and depth that came with the enhanced features of Lightroom 2.
Then, I brought it into HDR PhotoStudio…
As you can see, the resulting image is much sharper and the statue is all the more separated from the background and shows a lot more of the three-dimensionality of the actual subject.
The Pros:
I really like the simple yet comprehensive interface of HDR PhotoStudio. It is very easy to find your way around and work your processing. Moving right down the list of adjustments from one to the next you can have a pretty good workflow already laid out for you. First you can rotate your image and crop it as necessary before setting your brightness and contrast and your white balance (or “whiteness” as they call it). Then the real fun starts as you move into your local contrast and shadow/highlight adjustments to really get that HDR effect moving. A great feature of this software is the ability to reduce the amount of halo that is generated during these processes. It’s only a checkbox where a slider might be more beneficial in a futre version, but it does a good job overall.
I found myself using the sharpness and saturation adjustments – the next two down in the list - only sparingly. They each do a good job but one of the things that creates sharpness is contrast along edges of objects in the scene and while making your local contrast adjustments a good amount of sharpness is introduced. As I said, I had also worked with this image in Lightroom ahead of time so the color was already where I wanted it to be. That said, like the other tools, the adjustments are smooth and do a good job of helping you dial in just what you want.
The Cons:
There aren’t really a lot of cons here. I’m a big fan of looking back and forth between the before and after versions and there isn’t a method for comparing the two.
The other thing I think could be improved upon would be making the adjustments re-editable. I haven’t seen it in other HDR apps so it may just be the nature of it, but it would be nice if you could go back to the Local Contrast settings, for example, if after closing the dialog box and moving on to Shadow/Highlight you decide you need to change something. You can undo to go back, but the settings in the dialog box are reset once it’s reopened. Like I said, though, it may just be a reality of where HDR technology is right now, but it’s something to keep in mind when working with it.
In the End:
Overall, I really like HDR PhotoStudio. It’s interface is intuitive and clean-looking in its design. Adjustments allow for a good deal of control over your image so you can get just what you’re looking for. The price tag is also set within reach (at $149.99, or $127.99 through this link just for my readers) making it fairly competitive with the Photomatix bundle.
I still want to do some more playing with it, and will, but I can honestly say that it is worth the investment if you’ve been looking to get into HDR photography or find a better way to process your HDR images. Give it a shot.
Workflow Friday: Scotty Graham
This week’s Workflow Friday comes from the other side of the world from my humble home here in the states. Scotty Graham lives in Indonesia and takes some tremendous shots from all over the world, both above and below the water. Today’s workflow contribution gets us beneath the surface of Scotty’s process and will surely offer some info and inspiration as you approach your own work.
Scotty, they’re all yours!
From Dive To Print
I am honored to be Jason’s guest blogger today on Workflow Friday. My name is Scotty Graham, and I am a professional photographer. Although a professional, I do not make my living taking photos, thankfully. I am a teacher, and my hope is that you can learn something new today.
I enjoy all forms of photography. However, my passion for the past 25 years has been underwater photography. My workflow is different with my underwater photography than it is for my work above ground. In fact, my workflow for my “land” photography is not much different than the other professionals that have shared their workflow on this blog. Today, let’s change the pace just a bit, and let me describe my typical workflow for an underwater photograph. Let me warn you, this is a lengthy post, but in reality, it only takes me a few minutes to actually edit my photographs. Learning short cuts in Photoshop, and using pre-recorded actions helps save heaps of time.
Before I start, I must thank Scott Kelby and his incredible staff at NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals). Virtually everything I know about Photoshop and Lightroom was learned from these incredible educators. If you are not a member of NAPP, sign up NOW….it will be the best 99 bucks you ever spent.
Ok, onto my workflow…using Scott Kelby’s style, I will go step by step…
Step 1: The first actual step is the preparation before the dive. Underwater, you cannot change lenses, and some camera functions cannot be changed either (depending on your housing). So, before I jump on the boat, I must decide if I am going to shoot wide-angle or macro or super macro. Each requires a different set-up with my equipment…ie, which ports to use, which strobes to use, which strobe arms to use, and which lens to install. My decision is really based on the amount of ambient light available at the time of my dive, the visibility, the tide, current, and the time of day. If it is a bright sunny day, I prefer to take wide-angle shots as there will be lots of ambient light that my camera can capture beyond the scope of my strobes. For the shot I am going to describe, I decided to go wide angle. It was early morning, the sky was blue with a bright sun, visibility was good, and we were going to a nice reef with many schooling fish with strong current. Strong current usually means lots of fish, but more challenging for the photographer.
Step 2: Set up your equipment, and check to be sure all camera settings are set beforehand, and that your camera and strobes are working. Check all dive equipment to be sure all is in good working order, and that your tank is full of air. Again, once underwater, if something is not working, you are stuck. Your SCUBA equipment should be in good working order, and your dive skills (especially buoyancy skills) should be top rate. Don’t take photographs underwater until you are an experienced diver or an accident is ready to happen.
My equipment for this shot: Nikon D300, Nexus housing, two Nikonos SB-105 strobes, Nexus dome port and Nikon 10.5 mm DX lens.
Step 3: Plan your dive with your buddy. Make sure he/she knows your plan for what you are going to shoot, and to be prepared to hang around while you take many shots of the same subject from many different angles. Diving with another photographer is usually better as other photographers understand that sometimes an entire dive is spent around one small area of the reef.
Step 4: Dive your plan. When I entered the water, I looked down and saw a gorgeous reef and schooling Yellowstriped Snappers. I instantly knew what I wanted. I wanted a photo of the Snappers swimming across the reef with a blue water background.
Step 5: Get the shot. This is the tough part. Fish are not cooperative models. They rarely swim where you want them, they are always moving, and they are shy and don’t like to get close to your camera. There is also current, surge, and other environmental hurdles trying to prevent your from taking a photo. The key is to stay relaxed, to be patient, and to be a “quiet” diver.
I was able to find a nice sandy spot on the bottom behind a reef that blocked the current. I set my aperture to f-11 (I had decent ambient light for a mid-range f-stop), and my strobes to maximum power. For wide angle underwater, you need to be within inches of your subject to be sure your subject is well lit, and doesn’t appear too small. I waited for the fish to circle the reef, and then slowly approached the reef trying not to disturb the fish. I also wanted the sun in the photo. While viewing my composition in the small viewfinder of my housing, I drift as close to the fish as I can, and fire. Of course, as soon as my strobes fire, the fish scatter…I go back to my spot in the sand, check my photo in my small screen for correct exposure, composition and focus.
Usually, something is off, so I keep repeating the above with different settings and perhaps from a different angle until I get a shot I am happy with. This is the beauty of digital photography. In the old days, I would shoot an entire roll of film on one spot bracketing every shot in hopes of getting one keeper. Digital saves heaps of time as I can just delete underwater if I missed the shot, and I don’t have to wait a week after my dive trip to see if I got the shot or not. What a great time to be an underwater photographer.
Step 6: After the dive, I remove my CF card and download my photos to my EPSON P-5000 (one of the best things I have ever bought). I soak my camera in fresh water (with the housing, of course), go to the nearest hammock, turn on my ipod, and check out the photos I just took looking for keepers. I never delete photos in the EPSON P-5000 unless they are total crap…sometimes a photo that looks like crap turns out to be a good photograph, so I usually keep everything until I see them on my big screen at home (I have a 24-inch iMac).
Step 7: The dive trip is over, and I am home. I hook my EPSON P-5000 to my computer, and download all the photos to a folder on my hard drive named after the dive trip and date…example, RajaAmpat_March2009. I then burn a back-up copy of the photos onto a DVD.
Step 8: I import the photos from this folder into Lightroom, assign key words to all the photos, and keep them in the original folder.
Step 9: I have two monitors, so I have set up Lightroom so that I can view each of my photos in my Apple 23-inch cinema display, and the rest of Lightroom on my 24-inch monitor of my i-Mac. My 23-inch monitor is profiled and calibrated using Spyder3 software (and hardware) for my EPSON 9880 printer, so any adjustments to my photo should be viewed on my calibrated monitor so that accurate prints can be made later.
I then browse through my images and flag the shots I like and delete the totally awful shots (believe me, there are tons of the latter).
Step 10: I then go to the shots that I have flagged as possible keepers, and start the editing process. I chose this photo to edit. All my photos are taken in RAW, and this particular shot is the best I got of the Snappers swimming over the reef. My settings are f-11 at 1/60 sec at ISO 200…10.5mm lens.
Step 11: Move to the develop module in Lightroom. This is where my workflow differs somewhat from my land shots. Color underwater is a mess. You lose color very quickly underwater. The color is lost in order of the spectrum of light…remember ROY G BIV? First, you lose your reds, oranges and yellows, then greens, then Blues, Indigo and violets. Get to a depth of just 10 meters and everything looks grey until you artificially add light, and then the color comes bursting at you. This is why it is imperative you shoot with strobes underwater. Even with strobes, my photo above looks washed out and drab. My goal in Lightroom is to bring back the color and make my image “pop”.
Step 12: I first look at the histogram and check for proper exposure. In this case, the photo is a bit underexposed but with some “spikes” on the extreme right. So, the first thing I do is slide the exposure slider to the right slightly, and then slide the recovery slider to the right to bring down those spikes and to gain back any detail lost from over-exposed parts of my photo (mainly the fish bellies in the top left)
Here is my original histogram…
Here is my new histogram…
Now my photo looks like this…not too different…
Step 13: Crop. I don’t like the light from my strobes showing in the top left of the photo and the right side of the photo. I will crop those areas out of the photo.
Step 14: Now for the color. This is the most difficult part of the process. Above ground, I usually make my photos warmer. Underwater, if you move the temp slider to a warmer temp, you will lose the nice blues in the water. On the other hand, if you cool the photo down to bring out the blue water, you lose the nice yellows in the fish. Since reds are the first colors that are lost underwater, I almost always need to move the tint slider to the right for more magenta. The trick is finding the right balance between the two sliders…and I usually do this by eye. I know what the scene is supposed to look like, so I just mess with the sliders until I get close to what I want. I also will use the eye-dropper and click on a neutral gray, and see what Lightroom gives me, and then tweak from there…I settled on these settings…
Step 15: Now go to the color palette and the Tone Curve. I go through each color and move the sliders to bring out each individual color, and then move to the Tone Curve to darken or lighten the highlights, lights, darks and shadows. The most important color to play with is the blue. Here I darkened the blues and added more saturation.
Step 16: Now I go to the other fun sliders…fill light, blacks, contrast, clarity and vibrance. I rarely touch the saturation slider…I just play with these to add contrast and to give the photo some punch. Here are my settings…
Step 17: The last thing I do in Lightroom is to darken the edges with a Lightroom preset that I got from Matt Kloskowski’s website…called Edge Darkening. After darkening the edges, I sometimes have to increase the exposure or fill light to balance.
Step 18: Time to move into Photoshop. Press Cmd + E, and my photo opens in Photoshop with the changes I made in Lightroom.
Step 19: I have some actions that I created that does some magic with colors…in this particular action, I have done the following with one click of the mouse…
A curves adjustment layer to brighten the scene…
A levels adjustment layer to intensify the contrast…
And a Hue and Saturation adjustment layer to boost the colors…
Here is my layers palette…I group all of these adjustments, and then lower the opacity of the group so that it is not over done…
Step 20: Now for some dodging and burning. I want to lighten some of the coral in the foreground, and the school of fish, and darken some of the coral in the background. I do this by creating two new curves adjustment layers with a mask. Once again, I have actions that create these two layers and masks with a single click of the mouse. One brightens the exposure, and the other darkens the exposure. I then paint in both masks where I want the photo brighter and where I want the photo darker. Here is my layers palette. Notice the white parts of my two masks….where I have painted white is where light has been painted or where darkness is painted…
Notice in the photo how the foreground is now brighter, and there is more depth to the school of fish making it appear almost 3-D. The image really pops now as well…
Step 21: My final step in Photoshop is sharpening. I have many sharpening techniques. One of my favorites is a third party filter called Lucis Art. It is like sharpening on steroids. I use the sculpture filter, and sometimes the wyeth filter. The wyeth filter has a tendency to make your photos have an HDR look to them… sometimes good, and sometimes not good. For underwater, I don’t really care for the HDR look, so I usually just use the sculpture filter from Lucis Art. Of course, Photoshop’s unsharp mask works really well too if you don’t have Lucis Art. Anyway, I flatten my image, then duplicate the layer (cmd+J on a mac), and apply the filter, and then reduce the opacity if the effect is too strong.
Step 22: I am finished editing, and am now ready to print or save to the web for my website. I save my changes in Photoshop, which then saves the changes to the copy of the photo in Lightroom. I then print from Lightroom to my EPSON 9880. Printing is an entirely different tutorial…but Lightroom does make it easy, and the nice thing about printing from Lightroom is that it has built-in output sharpening developed by Jeff Schewe and Bruce Fraser who are legends in fine art printing.
Here is the before image…
Here is the final image…
If you are interested in seeing more of Scotty’s work, check out his photo blog at
http://www.scottygraham.blogspot.com or his website http://www.scottygraham.com
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Photo Review: Erik Anderson
This edition of our photo review series features a shot from self-proclaimed “government lackey” from DC and amateur photographer, Erik Anderson.
Before we begin, here’s a little context of the shot from Erik:
I’ve only been taking pictures sporadically for a couple of years now as a hobby. This was taken on a visit to the Grand Canyon as my fiancee and I were driving across the country to Los Angeles. The weather was very strange that day. It was mostly cloudy with scattered rain/sleet/snow showers rolling through all day.
The photo was taken with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, ISO 100, f/8, shutter speed 1/125, focal length of 32mm, jpeg file format. I had the camera set on the landscape setting, b/c the primary intent of my shooting that day was to document our visit and I’m not comfortable enough with Manual settings yet. I’m just starting to scratch the surface of what can be done in post-processing, learning from tips and tutorials from various blogs and the like. Also, because I’m an amateur, I couldn’t justify the cost of Photoshop CS or Lightroom so I did my noodling in Photoshop Elements.
I always like to start with the positives. One of the first things that strikes me about this shot is how twisted and almost arthritic the branches are. They show the strength and enduring nature of this tree that has been through a great deal to maintain it’s view of the canyon. Being in focus is always a plus too, especially when the subject is something as hard as aged wood and stone.
I like how the lower half of the tree appears to have more sun to highlight it’s lines and separate it from the darker canyon walls behind. At the same time, the more distant parts of the canyon that recede towards the horizon and the bright sky push the upper portions of the tree more to shadow creating a great contrast making those branches reall stand out as well.
I’m always a fan of the combination of warm and cool colors in the same image, and I really enjoy more muted hues as well. This shot does a nice job of moving from warm at the bottom to very cool at the horizon and eventually to neutral at the top with the sky and clouds. It really helps direct the eye from bottom to top and from foreground to background.
There are only a couple of areas for improvement that I see here. First, the horizon is going slightly uphill from left to right. When fixing this in post, you will end up having to crop the image a touch which will make you lose a little bit of room around the tree but it might be worth it so the horizon isn’t distracting.
I think the foreground could use a little bit of sharpening, just to make it stand out even more. Wood and stone – and other hard surfaces, like metal, for that matter – can take a bit more sharpening than, say faces.
I think the tree could afford to be a touch brighter too. Perhaps some dodging and burning and/or a Curves adjustment to lighten the highlights and midtones – while keeping the shadows whre they are – would really make it pop. It would also saturate the ground a tad.
Finally, I’d do some adjustments to the sky. It’s not blown out, but it’s bright enough to draw the eyes away from the tree.
I have to say, though, that I really like this shot and the subject. It has great potential and with a little more processing it could be quite good.
Thanks for sharing it, Erik!
If you would like to submit one of your photos for review, get all the information you need on our photo reviews post today!
