team photo

A team photo, but wheres the team???
Just a note before i get started, this could be a long complicated post, you may want to click the back button.
I have done this hockey team photo as long as i can remember. Each year, with digital and photoshop, i change the way i do it just enough to keep it interesting for me. While standing on a chair at center ice waiting to fall i decided to photograph the background scene with no bodies in the shot and no strobes turned on (available light).
I always have a problem with my strobes showing up in the glass behind them (see next photo) and i have to carefully retouch them out which is a pain. Not this year.

This is the team shot with two strobes bounced into umbrellas, basic copy light really. You can see what it does to the glass behind their heads.
I started by opening the above two photos in camera raw and adjusting the colors and white balance until they looked similar.
I opened the files in photoshop and then placed the team shot on top of the chairs shot by using the move tool and holding the shift key down and dragging it over. I then highlighted both layers and went under edit - auto align layers. I was hand holding the camera and the auto align function works great almost every time. I then added a layer mask to the top layer (team) and using the paint brush painted in black over the background glass (over everything from the top of the boards up). this allowed the underlying layer to show through, hard part was going around their heads but it worked in the end.
After this was done i retouched all the lines and text off the front part of the ice using the clone tool.
If you look closely at the photo above you will notice a player missing on the right side. He was absent so we left a space for him in the exact same spot he stood last year. I did a rough selection on him from the last years photo with the lasso tool and drug him onto the new team. I used the edit - transform - scale function to size him up a bit as i must have been zoomed out more last year. Note to hold down the shift key when you do this as to constrain the proportions.
I then applied a layer mask to his layer and painted in black over everything i didn't want to show (since i did a rough selection). It turned out that his shirt did not come down far enough as there was a head in front of him last year so i had to make a selection of one of the other players jersey (lower part) and drag that over and blend it in to fill the gap.
Once he looked good i flattened the file (saved it first of course) and duplicated my background layer. I went under edit - transform - flip vertical and moved the layer down to place it where a reflection would be on the ice. I had to rotate it a bit (edit - transform - rotate) to line it up and then i added yet another layer mask to this layer. I painted over everything above their feet with black on the mask and then went around the bottom edges with a lower opacity on the brush (just to fade the reflection into the ice).
I then drug the logo over from last years photo ( i just squed it and lowered the opacity last year).
I flattened the file and sharpened and cropped and, whew, was done.
All this only took 4 hours.
Below is the final result.

new camera

I did the upgrade from the d300 to the 700 today and all i can say is wow.
So far i am extremely impressed. I have been shooting uncompressed raw files at 14 bit and they are tack sharp.
I would definately say that this is a camera that i could keep for a long time, or until a new one comes out (joke).
For this photo i took two seperate images, one focused on the d700 letters and one focused on the nikon letters.
I opened both in camera raw and had some fun with the settings, and drug the saturation down to -100.
I opened them in photoshop and placed one on top of the other. I then went into the layers palate and highlighted both layers (alt key I think and click on the layers to select them). Then go to edit - auto align layers. I use this often as it works very well, like in a group photo that half the people blink - just align the layers and use a mask..
then i applied a layer mask to the top layer and painted in black over the d700 letters to show through to the sharp ones underneath. I flattened the layers and sharpened the file quite a bit so i could see some good sized grain.
This image was shot at 3200asa.

off for the weekend

I took this shot the other day by absolute happen chance as i was shooting something else and i heard the flock coming.
I thought it was fitting as i am "flying out of the office" to start the weekend.

quarterback

Here is one more using the same method that i talk about in my last post.
I also added a .2 inch white border (canvas size) and a .1 inch black.

quad with masks

I took some photos today of my sons first ever game of football.
He did a quarterback keep play and since i had put my camera on high speed drive i managed to capture about 10 frames of the run. I opened up the sequence i wanted to play with and then changed their image size to 12 inches wide and 72 dpi (mainly because i was playing with them to put up on this blog). I then created a new canvas that would fit all the photos (25 x 16 at 72 dpi). I placed guides on the canvas, by using my move tool and draging the guide out from the rulers, so i could know where the center of the canvas was located. I place all 4 photos on this new canvas and moved them around until i had them where i wanted them. I flattened the layer and was just about to save it when i thought i might try making him color and the rest black and white. I duplicated my background layer and went to edit - adjustments - desaturate. I then applied a layer mask to this new black and white layer. All I had to do now is grab my paint brush and paint in black over him which allowed the color layer underneath to show through. I used a smaller brush and painted in white on the parts that i overpainted.
I lastly went to saturation and bumped it up by +12 to bring up the color in him a bit.
One note: If you try this, try to work with a higher res file. When i zoomed in on the image and was painting my mask, the edges were all jagged because my images were low res.

team jump

I did a team photo a couple days ago and when it was all over and the girls were walking across the field some unknown voice yelled "can we do a jumping shot"?
Of course was my answer and as soon as i saw it onscreen i knew the shot was great.
I used a 17-55mm lens zoomed to exactly 26mm. No reason for this it just looked right.
I put the camera on high speed drive and held the button down. They did the jump about 4 times but it was the very first frame that worked out best.
I posted the image mainly because i really liked it but also to state that you should always go for the spontaneous shots.
Its always those unexpected ones that end up being special.
Thanks to the girls for giving me permission to post this photo.

highlight vs shadow

Ok, last image for tonight as i have to get to bed.
I just wanted to show one more image from the d700. Pathethic isnt it how i am talking myself into it.
Anyway, this image shows one side of the street in full sun and the other in shade. In the full res photo i can see detail in everything on either side of the street. Nothing seems to block up except under the cars.

3200 iso

Thought i would post one more image from the d700.
This one was shot at 3200 iso hand held with available light and using the 24-85 lens zoomed in to 85.

nikon d700

I have been trying to decide whether to upgrade from my d300 to the d700 and finally got a chance today to test one out.
My first thought was that i would not upgrade but keep the 300 and purchase a new lens instead. We all know how much they cost. In looking at the lenses though, the only one i really liked was the 17-55 f2.8. That of course is a dx lens. My thinking is that investing a pile of money in dx would now be a waste with nikon now bringing out an affordable full frame camera. My next body would definately be full frame and the lens would just not do.
So where my head is now is in the 700 and throwing a 28-85 f2.8-3.5 lens on it. The lens is $669 and would get me by until i could find some more money for another lens.
I tested the 700 out and i was definately impressed. Much more than i thought i would be. This shot of the bike, left side is full frame and the right side is a crop of the left. It is at 200asa and shot with the 24-85 lens set at 24.
I tested it out at higher iso's also. 6400 was fairly grainy, no color noise though, but I would feel comfortable shooting at 3200 no problem.

room blending

I had to get a couple room shots ready for a local hotel and spent way too long last night working on them.
I shot all ambient light and bracketed both rooms over 7 exposures.
I chose the best overall exposure and then drug the other exposures on to it to create a file with about 3 layers, i did not use all the exposures. For example in the above photo i used one exposure for the crowd, one for the stage and screens, and one for the red lights on the curtains. I used layer masks to hide or reveal the parts of each layer that were the proper exposure. It all blended in quite nicely. I used a tripod while shooting as i knew i would be doing this later.
I also tried the images in photomatix but was not happy with the results.

This was the second room i did and i basically did the same thing as i did in the above photo. One exposure was the tables, one the screens, and one was the walls and ceiling. I even masked the table candles to a darker exposure on a layer underneath.

photo borders

This is just a quick post on how to create a nice clean border quickly.
I applied this to a high res, full frame image from my d300, just to give you some sizing background.
I used image-canvas size and entered .3 in the height and width box. I had clicked on the relative box before (this just means that you can punch in a number and that will be the size the canvas is extended) and chose white for color. I now have a .15 white border all around my image. I hit ok and then opened it up again. This time i entered .1 in the two boxes and chose black for the color.

For this image i used canvas size once again but this time i clicked on the center bottom arrow in the canvas size dialogue box. This means that only the top and two sides will be extended, not the bottom. I entered .3 for the height and .6 for the width. I chose black for color. I then opened it up again and clicked on the center top arrow. I entered 1.5 in the height box and left the width empty. I now have a .3 border on the top and two sides and a 1.5 border on the bottom. I used my text tool , lowered the opacity of the text layer a bit so it blends in and was done.
If you do this often i would suggest creating an action, then you just have to hit a button.
I did the wonky color on purpose here by the way.
Just trying something different.

group retouching

The above photo is one i did recently for a recent co-workers fathers 80th birthday.
They were having supper with the entire family at a local hotel and wanted a group shot taken before they went in to eat.
The lobby was crazy busy so i set up two strobes in an upstairs spot overlooking the top of the main lobby. It was the only spot available and although i was not entirely happy with it i had no choice.
This top photo was straight out of the camera (cropped is all).

This is the retouched image. I started by retouching out all the distracting elements, like sprinklers, ceiling vents, people and wall plaques in background, and of course the oh so huge pillar just behind the group. For all of this i used a combination of the clone stamp and the healing tool. I usually try to clone first and then blend in the results with the heal tool.
I also wanted the family to stand out more than the background so i duplicated the background layer and applied a gaussian blur of about 2.5. I then used a layer mask and painted in black over the family so the underlying layer would show through leaving only the background of the image blurred.
I also used the liquify filter on the lady sitting on the arm of the chair to the right of center. I had placed her there and it may not have ended up being the most flattering of poses for her as her tummy was all bunched up. I tucked it in a bit as well as her arm. I sharpened the image and applied a curve for color. Not sure if i like the color curve now or not. May be a bit green. I stared at my monitor all day and i think this can hamper your color correcting abilities.
One more note on the retouching. I used the square marquee selection tool on the left side of the circle on the ceiling as the right side was hidden by the pillar. I then hit edit-copy and paste. I then went to edit-transform-flip horizontal and drug the copy to the right side of the circle.

One of the ladies told everyone to wear white, which i cringed at when i saw it initially.
I thought if i converted it to black and white it may become more balanced and subdue the pattern in the carpet a bit.
This shoot was a prime example for me that the shoot is only half of the job. I spent a good part of my evening preparing it in photoshop. Remember this when quoting on a job.

adjusting the background

I took this photo tonight of one of my neighbors.
She did a bit of modeling on the sidewalk and i managed to snap off 63 frames.
I had a fairly shallow depth of field ( i think about f4) and i used a 200 lens for compression.
Once in photoshop i wanted to see if the background would look better if i blurred it a bit more.
I duplicated my background layer and then hid my top layer (background copy). I applied a gaussian blur of about 20% to the background layer. I turned the top layer back on and applied a layer mask to it which i then filled in with black. Then i painted in white with the paint brush where i wanted the blur on the underlying layer to show through (the whole background in this case).
This left me with a mask of a white background and the girl in black. To make her stand out a bit more i went to adjustments - hue/saturation and desaturated the background layer (only affecting the background because of the mask) and desaturated a bit, mabey 25%, cant remember now.
I then clicked on the top layer (will affect the girl only because of the mask) and added about 15% saturation to give her more color.
I sharpened the file, flattened it and was done.
One thing i noticed is that you can really tell how close your mask is to your subject if you take the saturation of the background layer all the way down. If you missed a spot or if you just didnt get close enough then you will see it clearly. Just cancel out of hue/saturation if this is the case and paint some more in white where you missed the first time.
One thing i notice about the photo after looking at it again is i find it fairly flat. I am not happy with my color and contrast adjustments i did in camera raw.

lobster shanty

This is another pano from my PEI trip.
This is where we stayed with our soccer team.
Only advice is dont eat there.

football portrait

My son got his football gear tonight and a portrait was in order.
I set up a sb flash behind him and one to camera right at about 45 degrees. Both were pointed directly at him and on manual.
The image to the right is what came out of the camera.
The image to the left was achieved by first opening the image in camera raw and opening into photoshop as is.
I then opened the image into camera raw again and took the vibrance, clarity, fill light, recovery, and contrast to 100 percent.
I then took the saturation to 0, making it black and white.
I adjusted the exposure and blacks to get the photo looking how i wanted.
I opened it and then placed the original color image on top of the black and white image.
So now i have one image opened with the color top layer and the black and white bottom, or background, layer.
I clicked on the color layer to activate it and changed its blend mode to overlay.
I then took the opacity down to 62%.
I flattened the image and smart sharpened.
I then retouched the light stand using the clone tool and healing brush (just do it rough with the clone and then blend it in with the heal).
That was it.
I have two more panos in the cue for tomorrow.

another pano

As per my theme for the month, here is yet another pano.
This one went together fine.
I think i will look for a nice sky photo to strip in and i will post it again.

360 pano

I tried a 360 degree pano and here is how it turned out. The first frame i shot ended up being the center of the pano.

pano month

It looks like it might just be pano month for me. For some reason i am enjoying playing with the photomerge feature in photoshop. This is one i shot this weekend on prince edward island while on vacation. We were at a really cool beach on panmure island.
This is a 180 degree pano stripped together in photomerge. It did not do a very good job on this one and i did a bunch of masking to correct the flaws.
If you look at this one and my last pano (alley) you will notice that i have been trying to get fairly close to my subjects so the middle of the pano looks like a point.

overlay blending

I coulden't decide whether i liked this photo as it was shot or after it was run through photomatix better, so i combined the two.
I ran the image through photomatix and opened it in photoshop. I then opened the normal image and dragged the photomatix one onto it. I then duplicated the normal layer. So i now have the photomatix layer on top with two normal layers under it.
I clicked on the photomatix layer and changed the blending mode to overlay. I then merged this layer with the normal one under it. Then i lowered the opacity on this new combined layer to let the normal one under it show through until i had the look i wanted.

alley photomerge

I did a photo shoot last night of my niece and her three friends (late birthday present from me).
We were looking for some cool locations and found that in a downtown alley.
I thought i would try a pano using available light and above is the result.
The alley was about 7 feet wide and the wall your looking at is straight.
I took 5 photos hand held and shot vertically then stripped them together in photomerge.
I will be posting more images from the shoot later using 1 off camera flash.

photomatix again

I was driving to the photo lab the other day and went past this old train station.
I had the camera in the car and thought i had better get a shot of it before it got torn down.
It was midday and the shadows were fairly blocked up. I thought it would be a perfect candidate for hdr.
I took 7 bracketed frames (bracketed by 1 stop each). I choose the normal exposure, darkest , and the lightest of the 7 frames.
I put all three images into photomatix and hit generate. I kept the strength at about 90% also as i wanted the effect to be strong.
I opened the image in photoshop and applied a curve to up the contrast just a bit, sharpened a little more and was done.

bracketing exposure

This is another shot i took while out on an excellent boat cruise.
The image as you see here looks nothing like what my eye was seeing at the time. The sun was getting close to setting but was still fairly bright. I did a few bracketed exposures to darken the clouds and sun and came up with this.
When the first shot looks lame, try something else, like bracketing.

To crop or not to crop

Here is a photo of a boat i took last week for fun. I was in a friends awesome cruiser and his friend pulled up along side. We were going the same speed for a couple minutes and i thought i would take a few frames. The sun was down and as a result i did not really like the color in the image. I opened the image in camera raw and did the same adjustments to it as my last few posts to bring up the contrast and detail. I took the saturation slider to -100 and opened the image. It did not look very good yet so a dramatic curves adjustment was needed. This brought up the contrast quite a bit. I sharpened the image and that was about it.
Then comes the question to crop or not. I like the balance of the above cropped photo. You will notice that most of the action and lines are toward the center of the image and the boat itself is pretty well centered. This of course would be breaking one of the rules of better photography "dont put your subject in the center of the frame but use the rule of thirds". The boat is actually on the thirds line going across, just not up and down. The crop still works however as the top of the image and the bottom, dead space on both, are equal and balance the image. Being cropped also makes the boat occupy more space in the frame.
There is no real set rule about cropping is what it comes down to. I like to try different crops until the image works for me. It usually only takes a minute and can be very well worth the time.

vacation

I just noticed that it has been almost a month since my last post.
I have still been getting lots of visits to the site and that helps to make me feel guilty for not putting up some new info.
I have been shooting a ton of images that i will be playing with in the near future. A break was very much needed by me in all areas of my work as i was truly burnt out, thus the lack of posts to this site.
I took the photo above yesterday morning on an early walk down the beach. For the next week or so i will just post some images. I will be back to business very, very soon.
Thanks

flowers

I typically dont shoot many flowers but thought i would give it a try last night.
I played a fair amount with the images in photoshop of course after.
Mainly saturation and curves to make them look the way i wanted and then i applied a vignette using filter - distort - lens correction to darken the edges of each image separately. I sharpened about 75% and put them together on one canvas.

autoblend

I took about 6 photos of this bbq fundraiser and intended to strip them together using photomerge.
I tried and it didn't even come close to working.
I then went to my old standard which has never let me down, autostitch.
That didn't work either.
So, what now.
I thought i would try to bring all the images into one new blank canvas and see how close i could get them to where they should be. I did this and then highlighted all the layers in the layers pallate and hit edit - autoblend layers.
It actually did a fair job.
Looking at this finished photo you may be noticing all kinds of blending problems but you should have seen what photomerge and autostitch did. They just made a nasty mess, and even though auto blend was not perfect it was close enough for me on this one.
Just an idea if all else fails.

camera raw details

Just wanted to do another post to further explain the effect i did in my last post on the car.
In the image above you will see the original unaltered image on the left.
In the middle i took the recovery, fill light, contrast, clarity, and vibrance up to 100% in camera raw. I then lowered the saturation down to 0.
In the image on the right i left the camera raw settings the same as in the middle image but brought the saturation back up a bit to keep some color in.
I sharpened all images the same and applied the same curve to each to boost the contrast up a bit.
I like this effect but just need to experiment a bit more with it to add my own flavour.

camera raw effect

I am once again a tad bit on the busy side but had a few minutes to play tonight.
I had a flash set to each side of the car mainly to hit the headlights and then spill onto the body.
I opened the file up in camera raw and then took the clarity, fill light, recovery, and contrast sliders all the way to the right.
I took the saturation all the way to the left.
I then played with the blacks and exposure to get to the look i wanted.
I opened the image in photoshop and did a curves adjustment to further increase the contrast and sharpened the image about 100% in smart sharpen.
I got this recipe from this months issue of photoshop user magazine. I read it a few days ago and did not refer back to the book tonight while doing this image so i may have missed a few of their steps.
It is a very good issue by the way and i highly reccommend getting this latest issue.

photomerge river

I took a few photos at a riverfest event today and thought i would try making a pano with photomerge in photoshop.
I usually use autostitch for this task but gave photoshop a chance on this one.
I shot 14 vertical photos handheld and overlapped each image by about half. I selected the 14 images in bridge and went under the tools menu and down to photoshop and to photomerge. I left everything set at default settings and hit ok.
Once it was done i just cropped it to get rid of the jagged edge and that was about it.

busy time

Just wanted to throw up a photo of a good friend of mine and let everyone know that i have not abandoned this blog.
When things slow down a bit, soon, i have some good tips to post.

happy long weekend

Just wanted to wish all us canadians a happy long weekend.
As you can see our neighborhood started it off tonight the right way.
A bonfire and smores, yum, yum.

face shoot

I was just bored tonight so asked my daughter if she would stand in front of my light for a sec. I was surprised when she said yes and actually managed to take about 10 frames before american idol came back on and she left me.
The main reason for me wanting to shoot was to play with a shoot through umbrella a bit more. I have been using shoot throughs for about a month now and am now officially converted. I have always hated soft boxes as i just find the light too soft, old fashioned, and to me boring. I am finding that a shoot through gives me a compromise between a reflective umbrella and a soft box and when you can get it in really close to your subject you get a nice wrap around type of light.
For the background i stuck a nikon sb flash on a stand and zoomed the head in all the way (85mm) and pointed it straight at the wall behind her, she was out about 10 feet from the wall.
Once i got the images into bridge i really liked the three images placed together. I had not planned this but thought it may work later. I was glad that i kept in the same spot for all three and just her look changed. Just never know what your going to get i guess.

off camera flash

I took this photo recently and thought i would post it to talk about the importance of planning your lighting. My client wanted all these people around this driving simulator and wanted the screen to show. If i had hit the scene with on camera flash the screen would have taken a hit and not looked good. I could not bounce my flash off the ceiling as it was way too high and probably would have affected the screen also. I brought a light stand, an extra flash, and two pocket wizards with me just to be safe. I usually have the car packed pretty well just in case i run into a situation where i need more equipment.
Once i saw the setup i first picked my shooting angle and then placed an off camera flash directly behind the screen and up quite high, with a pocket wizard attached. I placed a second flash on my camera which i did point straight up with the white reflector card pulled up about half way. This on camera flash provided fill on the dark side of the people, i set it lower in power compared to the off camera flash. Both were set to manual so its easy to adjust, if one is too bright just dial it down. I set my shutter speed for the driving screen, i think it was somewhere around 1/60 sec.
Now if you dont have pocket wizards dont worry. You can get a cheap optical slave for your off camera flash and your on camera flash will set it off. They dont work great outside but work very well indoors.
This type of lighting is by no means rocket science. It is actually very easy to do and really makes your photos better than the easy on camera flash only technique.

flood 2

I just wanted to post one more flood photo.
My small town is dealing with a flood crisis at the moment and as i mentioned in my last post i got to take a few photos of it.
I haven't been out shooting again as i have been busy with other stuff but hope to go for a stroll tonight.
I will have a good, informative , photoshop post soon, promise.

water rising

I actually did zero to this image in photoshop. I shot it for western canadian newspapers and apparently it will be the cover of the national post tomorrow.
I am more happy about the conversation i had with her, 81 year old June, than i am with the photo. We talked about the flooding of course, about her husband Karl in his rubber dingy, about their home and how long they lived there, and about eye surgery. We had the same surgeon if you can believe that. She is having trouble with her eyes and they cant seem to help her.
June was just one of those people that caught my interest right away. I have no idea why but i definately did enjoy our meeting.
This was shot for a story on our towns rising river. The water level is very high and getting higher. If you are shooting for newspapers the only tip i could give you is to include a person in the shot. Be as creative as you like but get the human element in there.

black and white conversion

I only have a few minutes tonight but wanted to get an image up that i shot a couple hours ago.
I set up two flashes for this shot. One was placed to camera left and acted as the main light. It was pretty far over, mabey at about 70 degrees. The second flash was placed to the right and just behind her a bit. I played with the shutter until the sky was where i wanted it, i think it ended up at about 1/250 sec.
I brought the image into photoshop camera raw plug in and tweaked the white balance and exposure and brought up the black slider quite a bit to make the shadows strong. It looked pretty good in color but lastly i thought i would bring the saturation slider all the way to the left to check it out in black and white. There it stayed. I felt it was a much stronger image this way.
The foreground grass and top of the sky were a bit on the light side so i duplicated my background layer first of all. Then with the top, new layer, highlighted i went to filter - distort - lens correction and applied a vignette. I made the amount quite high (slider moves to the left) and moved the midpoint to the left also to bring the darkness into the image. I then made a layer mask on this layer and painted in black over her face just to make sure that none of the vignette darkened her. I didn't paint in the mask around her feet as they were ok to go darker.
I smart sharpened about 50% with a radius of 1 and was done.

blackandwhite

My son gave me another 10 minutes tonight to take his photo on his bike. He was sporting his new hair cut and my sunglasses and looked pretty cool so a photo was a must. It was close to dusk and the sky looked on the dramatic side so i grabbed two sb flashes and placed one to the left of him and one to the right. Not copy lighting mind you but more cross lighting as they were directly to his sides and not out in front of him at all. I had a pocket wizard on one and a slave on the other to trigger them.
I set the aperature for the flashes and the shutter speed for the sky behind him.
After i got it into photoshop i played with the image a bit, a curve for color correction, healing brush and clone stamp for distractions, and smart sharpen to finish it off.
I liked it in color but thought i would take a look at black and white and i really liked that approach. The sky became even more dramatic which surprised me. As you know there are many, many ways to convert an image to black and white. For this one i used image - adjustments- black and white. Once you get into this panel instead of moving the different color sliders around try just placing your curser on the image and when you left click the curser becomes a scrubby slider. So for example i placed the curser on the light part of the sky, left clicked and by dragging it to the right (or i think it was to the right) it made the sky lighter in that area. I placed the curser on the dark part of the sky and dragged the opposite direction and made those parts darker.
And so on and so on. Remember that when you click on a part of your image all areas of that color will be affected.

improvements??

I always love it when something about a photo I take interests me. When this happens it seems to stay on my mind until i can get a chance to sit down and play with it and make it even more interesting.
I shot this photo yesterday of a neighbors child as all the kids were out on the street with their new bikes. I was in front of him and his scooter (actually my daughters) and held the camera down at ground level while aiming it up at him. I had it on continuous focus and i walked forward while shooting as he made his way up the street.
I took about 10 or 15 shots of him and this was my favourite. I knew that i wanted to make the shot look a bit more dramatic and to do this i darkened the sky and road. For the sky i ran the photo through the lucis art plug in which helped a bit. I also used the burn tool set to shadows and painted (burnt) in the dark squiggles of sky that poked through the clouds. For the road i made a selection of it using both the lasso tool and quick mask mode. Once i had it selected i just applied a curve to darken it down. I actually did the sky and road adjustment on a new layer which i had converted to black and white. I then changed the blending mode of that layer to luminosity. After that i just retouched out the street light, sharpened a bit and was done.

multiple image parts

I was reworking this image tonight as i was given some ad space in a magazine and i needed to come up with an idea for it. I ended up not using this image but thought i could at least make a post out of it.
I ran the file through the lucis art plug in twice. Once set on exposure and the second time set on wyenth. I liked the cards and chips using wyenth and the skin and body on exposure. Now just needed to combine the two and use the parts that i liked from each. If you would consider using a selection of the chips and cards and then dragging it into the other photo, well you have way too much time on your hands. Take the easy way i always say. I opened both files in photoshop and while holding the shift key down i dragged one onto the other. I then created a layer mask on the top layer and painted in black over the parts that i wanted to hide on that layer so the bottom image could show through. I had the good card and chips on the top layer so i painted over my sons body and head. Always use a nice soft brush and it will blend together quite nicely.
I find i have been doing this sort of thing alot lately.
I have shot a fair amount of group photos and the people in the front row are too bright and the people in the back are too dark. If you do a layer for the proper brightness for both the front and back and then follow the steps above you will be able to match up brightness levels very easily. Today i in fact did this exact technique. I took it a step further though and opened my image as a smart object by holding down the shift key while i was in the camera raw plug in. This will change your "open" button to "open object". Once you have it open you then go to the layer menu - smart objects - new smart object via copy. This will copy your background layer as a smart object so you can double click on either of the layers and be able to adjust them in camera raw independant of each other. If you just drag the background to the new layer icon it will not work the same. When you alter one the other will change also. Using the new smart object via copy will give you some sweet flexibility.

ice

Just wanted to put a photo up since I haven't posted in so long. I have been quite busy with real work and have not had much time for play. This is a photo i took today of a little ice sculpture i was working on. We have had tons of snow and ice this year so i have been breaking it off the driveway in very large chunks and placing it ever so carefully atop some of the snow banks. Its amazing how fast it shrinks.
I ran this photo through lucis art plug in, sharpened a fair bit and then posted.
Oh, right, there was some flaring in the sky and i used the patch tool to remove it as it was fairly large. If you haven't tried the patch tool you should. It is housed under the healing tool and works the same. After you click on the patch tool to make it your active tool you just click on your mouse button and hold it down. Draw a selection around what you want to heal and then release the mouse button. Now click your mouse somewhere inside of this selection and drag it to the part of your image that you want to heal from and let go of the mouse. Thats all it takes. If you prefer to make a selection first using any of the selection tools (marquee, lasso, etc) thats fine too. After the selection is made just highlight the patch tool and drag the selected area to the good clean area of your image so the healing can begin.

weird ideas

Its funny how sometimes you get these weird ideas that seem to fly into your head. Well hopefully you do and its not just that i am strange. I had not shaved this week and thought i would take a quick pic to put up on facebook. I try to do a few different self portraits for my profile and add them to go with what i am doing at the time. For this shot my plan was to get a close up of my face and have my eyes covered with my hat. Why I really dont know.
I stood looking out my back window and held the camera in my outstreched hands which ended up touching the glass in the window. Light was pretty good and shot was nice and crisp, but not crisp enough. I opened in photoshop and went straight to lucis art plug in. I chose the 4th button over from the left and moved the intensity slider to somewhere between the half and three quarter point. This brought out the detail to say the least. I retouched some of the unsightly blemishes off my mug and then sharpened the image a bit. I did a curve adjustment to get the tones where i wanted them and then cropped into a square. Some people have difficulty cropping to an exact size for some reason. To do this easily just choose the crop tool and enter the height, width, and dpi in the options bar at the top of the screen. No matter how big you draw the marquee for your crop it will always come out to be the size you entered. Just be carefull you dont make it bigger than your original was to begin with. I always check my image size first so i know i will be ok.

liquified leaf

This was a shot I took recently that i really liked. We were shooting with lights and the shots looked really good but the room had these massive windows with blinds in each one which looked great. Add on to this that we had a leaf display sandwiched inbetween glass and that pretty much screamed sillouette. The unedited version looked good but just needed a few tweaks in photoshop. I did a couple curves layers on it until i was happy with the darkness of the black and the lightness of the windows. I sharpened a fair bit (about 100) using smart sharpen and then did some liquify (filter - liquify) to smooth out her shirt. There were bumps along the arm and at the back of her neck where the shirt was buckled. I used the forward warp tool (top one in the toolbar) and just pushed down the bumps. After that i just retouched a black bar that ran up the windows from the top of her head to the ceiling and in front of her neck. I used the clone stamp tool for this job. Last but not least i painted in a bit more white in her eye just to create a catch light using the brush tool with the foreground color set to white.
That was it. Its always a treat to work on a photo that you like in the firstplace.
The only other thing i may do it to take out the vertical lines in the blinds. I would use the clone stamp for that task.

night photo

I haven't posted in awhile as i have been away and on top of that I have been extremely busy.
Things are getting caught up however and i should be good for a massive onslaught of photoshop tips very soon.
I have one in mind on how to use the liquify tool on eyes, which i have done to my last two portraits, just to pop them open a bit. I just took the photo of my son you see above about 10 minutes ago. We were playing outside and of course i ran in to get my camera, a 50mm lens, a nikon sb flash, two pocket wizards, and a light stand. I put the light to the left, and zoomed the flash head in to about 50mm just so the snow would not blast out.

rockin in black and white

I stood in line this moring, early, for 45 minutes to get one of 10 guitar heros for the wii. I swore to never stand in line to spend money ever, but it was actually a rush. On the way in i actually hip checked a 10 year old boy who tried to butt in front of me, kidding of course, it was all a very civilized process.
I took a couple photos with the d300 at about 800asa and a 50mm 1.8 lens (which seems to grind very noisly now when i focus) using only available light. I put the images together, flipped the one of my daughter horizontally first, and then ran the image through lucis art plug in. I then converted to black and white by hitting desaturate (not the best way to convert remember). I then duplicated the background layer and applied a gaussian blur to it at about 4 (i made it a smaller file which is why the blur setting is low). I changed that blurry layers blend mode to multiply and lowered the opacity of the layer to around 40%. I sharpened with smart sharpen a fair bit and that was it.

last lucis

Your probably getting sick of the look already as this is the third photo I have posted with the same plug in. Time to get back to photoshop tips on the next post.