bridge slideshow

I have been taking a ton of photos lately but none that i have really done any exciting photoshop work on which is the reason for the slow down in posts.
I did however give a talk on composition and learning to see last night which i accompanied with a slide show set to music.
I wanted to make it as easy as possible so i placed my images in two folders, one for the slide show and one for the photos i used during the talk as examples. I opened bridge and navigated to my examples folder first. I numbered the photos from 01 to 13 so they would be in order as i wanted them to show. I selected them all and then went up to the view menu and down to slideshow options. I set slide duration to manual (the slide would not change until i hit the right arrow key), caption - off, centered, transition - dissolve, and hit play.
After my talk was over i presented my recent work in a slide show. For this i set the slide duration to 5sec, caption - off, centered, transition - dissolve, and i slid the speed of transition slider to almost half. I then clicked the done button as i did not want the show to start right then. I went into bridge and selected all my photos so they would be all ready and then got the music ready.
I cued up the music in itunes. I had two songs which i put into their own library and hit play.
I then immediately clicked back on bridge and went under the view menu and down to slideshow.
Now that they were both running i just sat back and enjoyed it.
I used a laptop plugged into a data projector and also had a set of computer speakers for better sound.
I had timed the amount of photos to the music so that both would end at the same time.
The other nice thing was that i did not have to resize my images (most people would crop them all to 800px x 600px). I just stuck them in the folder as is (some of them were big files) and bridge ran them very smoothly.
I highly reccommend this method in running your next show.
The photo above by the way is just eye candy and has nothing to do with this post.

a bit of everything

Above is the finished version for a change. You will find out how it started at the bottom of this post.
First i duplicated my background layer.
Then I started with the most obvious problem, usually how i decide where to start an image, which of course was the pavement. I used a combination of the healing brush, patch tool, and clone stamp to fix this up, oh yea, alot of patience also.
When i had that looking ok i retouched out the lights on the building and any other little imperfections i could find. I then did a selection of the sky using the magic wand tool with a very low tolerance, between 5 and 10. I hit the refine edge button and contracted the selection by about 25 and feathered about .6. I then inversed my selection and hit the layer mask button which masked out the sky.
I opened a photo of a sky i wanted to use and then drug the image onto my group photo. I placed the sky layer under my background copy layer so the sky only showed up where my mask was on the layer above it. I moved it around until i got the part of the sky i liked.
I added a curves adjustment layer and a saturation adjustment layer and smart sharpened the file.
I used my burn tool set to midtones and darkened the building and cars down a bit to finish this one off.

toned black and white

I really liked this shot i took last week and have been playing with it to see how it looks best.
I shot it with natural light coming through the trees.
First in photoshop i retouched it a bit with the healing tool and then sharpened it with smart sharpen with an amount of about 60. I then went under edit - adjustments - black and white. When the dialogue box open up just ignore it. Instead of moving the slider in the box put your mouse over the part of the image you want to alter and press down on the mouse button and hold it. You now have a scrubby slider which you can move left (lighter) or right (darker). Take a look in the box and you will see that whatever color your mouse is over is the color that is being affected.
After i had the images tones where i wanted them in black and white, i added a curve and added a bit of yellow and red to the middle of the curve. This just gave me a slight warm, or sepia tone.

photomatix pro

As i promised a week ago, i am going to give a tutorial on photomatix pro.
If you are new to this software you can see some examples on flickr
(http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr/pool/).
You can download a free fully functional copy of photomatix pro at
http://www.hdrsoft.com/
the only catch is that a watermark is applied. I would highly advise buying it from them as it is only $99 and you get 60% off if you are a student, teacher, or anyone associated with a school.
So how does it work.
It is a program that merges or blends together multiple exposures to give you a hdr (high dynamic range) photo. This means that you are able to see details in the shadows and highlights which may not be visable in a standard photo.
You can make the image look normal or go a little funky like i did to the building shot up top.
First start by using a tripod and bracketing your scene going from almost white to almost black. I usually take about 10 shots of a scene to then pick out 3 to merge together. Next open the images and save them as tiffs or jpegs (i used jpegs).
Put the three images in a folder that you can navigate to in photomatix.
Now open photomatix.
Close down the windows that pop open and go up to the "HDR" menu and down to generate. Hit browse and find the folder where your 3 differently exposed images are. Highlight all three and hit select. When the generate hdr window comes up hit ok.
A generate hdr options box will come up and check the "align source images" box. Also make sure the take tone curve of color profile (reccommended) box is checked and hit ok.
After it does all the work an image will appear and should look pretty bad. Thats ok.
Now go up to the HDR menu again and down to tone mapping. This is where you make your image decisions.
In the box that pops up just play around with the settings. I put the strength up to around 80 or more, the color saturation up, clicked the third or fourth light smoothing box (cant remember, sorry),and adjusted the white and black points to taste.
Hit apply and your done.
Once you do this a few times you will start thinking about images that would look good with this effect. You will also start carrying a tripod with you, which is something i never did.

combining people

I am hired each year to shoot approx. 16 people individually, strip them all together into one photo, print 5x7's, place photos in frames, and then drop off the photos so the company can give them out the next morning at 7am. This year i shot at 6:30pm and had everything delivered at 12:30 that night, last night to be exact.
I started this process by creating a new image in photoshop with a size of 15x21 and 300dpi. I made it this size so it would reduce nicely to a 5x7 and because i shoot with a nikon d200 the individuals dont have to be reduced or enlarged in size when dragged onto this image. They fit nicely.
Next i open bridge in photoshop and rate the images (1 each) of each person 5 stars that will be added to the comp. I then open these rated raw files in camera raw and do my image adjustments. I then open all the files i have corrected in raw.
Now to each photo i select the white background, using the magic wand tool for ease and speed, set to a threshold of about 22. I get as much of the white as i can and then switch to the lasso tool and holding down the shift key i add the rest of the background. Next go to select - inverse to select only the person and then go into quick mask mode and tidy up the parts still not selected, mostly around the feet.
Once your happy with the selection get out of quick mask and hit the lasso tool (just so the refine edge button is visable) and hit refine edge. I set feather to 1px, radius to 1.5, smooth to 13, and contract/expand to -28. I hit the show on black button to check it and hit ok. Then i would reccommend going to select - save selection and saving it in case you need to go back and modify it.
Drag the image into your new image and then repeat this whole process for the next 15 or so people. If some white still shows around the hair or somewhere else when a black jacket is behind it then just create a layer mask for that layer and paint it out. I then just drag the layers around until they make a pleasing composition.
I sharpened, added a curve, and a bit of saturation and was done.
In the final image i also had a logo in the front which i took out in the image your seeing. I placed a border and some guides also so the people would extend approx the same width on both sides and then saved as a psd so all my layers were intact. Now next year when i do this shoot again, the template is already done and i just have to add the new people.
Below is a view of how things looked behind the scenes.

just weird

I dont know why i do things sometimes but in photoshop things just happen.
I was not trying for this effect but fell upon it. If you look in sports illustrated magazine you will see the effect used quite often.
I assummed that they would have made a selection and then just applied a stroke, which they very well may do. However this approach would be much easier, especially around hair.
I photographed this lady on a white background and selected the background in photoshop using the color range tool. Select - color range. Just click on the white area in the background and then hold the shift key down and click again, and again until the background is fully selected. I then went to select - inverse , clicked on the lasso tool (just so the refine edge button would show) and then clicked on the refine edge button. I entered a value of 36 for feather and +45 for contract/expand. Since she was on a white background I ended up with a white soft stroke around her.
Just so it would show i opened another photo, of a cool sky i shot tonight, and while holding the shift key down, dragged her onto it. I then wanted her a bit smaller so i used edit - transform - scale, and holding the shift key down to constrain the proportions drug the top corner down until the size looked good against the background. I cropped the image and was done.

more retouching

I took this group photo and somewhere along the way decided that i did not like the plywood under their feet. We have done the shot in the same location for about 6 years now so moving them was not really an option. Photoshop of course to the rescue.
I started this process by selecting the board. I used a bunch of selection tools, color range, magic wand, and so on until i had the best i could do with them and then switched to the quick mask mode. If you havent used this mode to finess your selections you have to try it. It is located near the bottom of the tools pallate on the left side of your screen. You click on it to get into it and click it again to exit it. It turns everything red that is not selected and you use your paint brush with white to take away the red (adding to your selection) and black to add red (adding to your selection). The nice thing about selecting this way is that you can use a soft edged brush to get a nice soft edge selection.
Once i had the entire plywood selected i hit the refine edge key to feather my selection just a bit then i duplicated my background layer and hit the delete key to remove the board from that layer. I then turned the top layer off (eye on the left side of the layers pallate and clicked on my background layer to work on it.
I went into filter - vanishing point and drew my grid for the walkway. I will not go into detail about using vanishing point here but if you are cloning anything that has perspective then you should do some reading on it. I used the clone tool with heal turned off in the vanishing point window and cloned the walk so it would cover the entire board that was visable. Now when you turn the top layers visibility back on the board, which we deleted, is now walkway.
Lastly i make a selection of the building sign where it was in shadow and did a curves adjustment to it to brighten it up a bit.
Here is the finished product.
Note: tomorrow i will be doing a tutorial on photomatix pro so stay tuned.

displacement map

I have been noticing the use of displacement maps in a few new photoshop books i got recently and thought i would give it a try.
I dont know if i have chosen the best two images to demonstrate this effect but i liked the results so thought i would post it.
You start by opening the image you want to use as the texture, i opened the phone dial pad. Next open the image you want this texture to be applied to, i opened the slot machine image. Then drag the slot machine image onto the phone image using the shift key to center it. note: i cropped both images the same size before i started.
Then click on your background layer, the phone, and duplicate it (ctrl - j).
Move this new layer to the top of the layer stack and then desaturate it (shift - ctrl - u). Now save the image as a psd but unclick the layers button when the save as dialogue opens. This will save the file but will flatten the file.
Next go back to your top layer, probably still on it, and change the blend mode to hard light. This will blend the phone into the slot machine. To make the phone contour better to the slot machine we have to now use a displacement map.
Click on the slot machines layer and then go to filter - distort - displace. When the dialogue opens type in 5 for horizontal scale and 5 for vertical scale and click on wrap around. You can also leave stretch to fit checked. Click ok. When the open dialogue appears, go to the file you had saved earlier and select it and hit open.
I added some saturation and adjusted the curves after all this was done and sharpened using unsharp mask quite heavily.
I know this was a confusing post and i appoligize. I will try it again soon with two different images.
These are the two images below that i started with.

masking multiple frames

I was recently shooting a cross country race in the park and had an idea to take multiple shots as a runner went by and then strip them together. Piece of cake right? Just use a tripod and nothing changes but the runners position.
Problem was i forgot my tripod. I also wanted a very low angle. So, hand held it is. I laid on the ground and tried to hold the camera very still. I prefocused and turned auto focus off. I took multiple shots as he ran by and the shoot part was over.
In photoshop i processed the images in camera raw and then opened all the ones i wanted to use, actually more than i needed in the end. Once all were opened i held down the shift key and using the move tool drug them one by one into one frame. I used the shot where he enters from the right and drug the rest, in order of his position, onto it.
I next used the new function in cs3 called auto align layers found under the edit menu i think. It did a great job and compensated for my not having my tripod.
I clicked on "layer 1" in the layers pallate and then drew a rough selection around the guy and hit the refine edge button. I smoothed the edge a bit and used a feather of about 2, then hit ok. I then select - inverse my selection and created a layer mask in the layers pallate. Since black was my foreground color it filled my mask with black, leaving only the runner to show through to the layer underneath. I repeated this process for each layer until all runners were showing through and all backgrounds were masked except for the original image.
I flattened the image and smart sharpened it. I also used a hue saturation adjustment layer to boose the saturation up a bit and was done.
I am sure no one will ever use the shot for anything but it was just fun to have fun.
Oh, i cropped it a bit also, just height wise. It is full frame on the length.

trying to make something out of nothing

I was asked to photograph this thai shelter so my city could give a gift to a travelling thai delegation. It really is not the best photographic subject so i thought, how could i make it look its best.
I picked early morning to shoot it so the light would be on the shelter and there would be some shadows.
I also bracketed my exposures as i was planning to use hdr to lighten the wood under the roof and darken down the sky and i shot it from every angle possible. I downloaded my photos and made a quick web gallery in photoshop and sent the link to the client. They picked this view and then i got to work.
I had forgotten my tripod so using multiple shots proved difficult in hdr.
I picked the best exposure and opened it by going to file - place so it would come in as a smart object. Now the trick to this is you actually have to open your photo before and do a select all - copy. Then close your image. Now when you create a new document, place, it will be the right size automatically.
After having this open i wanted another smart object layer so i went to layer - smart object - new smart object via copy. This will give you two seperate layers and each is editable in camera raw, independantly of each other.
I double clicked the top layer and changed the camera raw settings for the under side of the roof. I then created a layer mask and painted everything in black except for the underside of the roof.
I then flattened my file so i could retouch. You could also just created a top flattened layer by clicking on shift - control - alt - E. Or something like that.
I used a combination of the healing brush, clone tool, and patch tool to get rid of what i thought were distracting elements.
Like the dead tree, garbage can, sign shadow, just to name a few. I added a curves adjustment layer and a saturation layer.
I then did a selection of the tree in the upper left corner and copied and pasted it into place so that corner would not be bare. Next came smart sharpen and lastly i added a vignette by going to filter - distort - lens correction.
Here is the final image.

white socks

Two posts ago i put up a shot of me looking pretty macho in front of a white mustang. Well guess what, i was wearing my wifes white stubby socks. How cool am I.

previsualization

This isn't so much a post about photoshop techniques as it is about the diary of a job. I will sneak in a photoshop tip however so please continue reading.
I was sent the beautiful brochure you see before you, as a pdf file, and was asked to freshen it up photographically. It is for a library and the main commons area was just redone. They felt the photos were stale and did not portray the new, lively theme of the library.
I booked the shoot for this morning and ended up shooting 4 different areas in the span of about 2 hours. I went in without any preconcieved ideas except for the lighting. I wanted the light to be a bit edgy and dynamic. In some shots i used three lights and in others i used two, plus some ambient here and there.
We did not have models lined up but instead just grabbed people that were there. They all ended up being great which is rare. I tried some different angles at each location and varied my lens choice pretty well through the range of 12mm to 200mm.
I only took about 120 frames but felt quite happy that i may have something when we were done.
I downloaded the images, retouched a bit in photoshop and rated the images. Out of the 4 different shots i ended up liking 2. I then opened the original pdf of the brochure in photoshop and stripped in the two shots i liked. I added a bit of a red border to the top of the page and was done.
One thing i did not plan but just worked out was the fact that in each photo my main subject would be facing the center of the page.
insert: - photoshop tip. In the photo on the left i brightened up and corrected the color of the computer screens (actually on another file and not the one i am showing here) by selecting the screen (1 at a time) with a combination of the magic wand tool and the lasso tool and then applying a curve to that selection. Remember that when you have a selection and you then go to edit - adjustments - curve only the area inside the selection will be affected. end of tip.
Below is the revamped brochure.
Of course i have not heard back from the people who made the initial request for the images so i fully expect an e-mail tomorrow stating that they would like the shots to be brighter (flat light), without any shadows (flat light), and to include someone of a different ethnic origin, perhaps even someone who is disabled so everyone will know that the space is wheelchair accessable.
I will then walk down with an on camera flash and put them all in a row and go click, click and the client will love it.

place into

Yes I know, this is an easy one. Could be done in your sleep. I know.
I started by showing you the finished version and if you scroll down you can see the starting image. This is a photo of yours truly just out for a sunday drive in red rock canyon in las vegas. I was there for 6 nights for photoshop world recently and wish i could have done some more exploring.
Anyway, back to photoshop.
This image screamed for a sky. I didn't look far and perhaps could have picked a better one, but this one was in the same folder. I started by selecting the sky, not with the magic wand because that is bad, but with the select - color range command. The secret to this tool is to not just click once in the area you are selecting and then playing with the fuzzy slider. Just like adding to a selection with the wand tool, you hold down the shift key and click around the area you want selected. Then if need be slide the fuzzy stick.
After i had a good selection of the sky i used the lasso tool to deselect the car and my socks as they too were white and got selected. I then hit the refine edge button and expanded my selection so i would avoid the white line on the horizon.
I opened the image i wanted to take the sky from and did a select all, and then hit edit - copy. I went back to my main image and did an edit - paste into.
This placed my paste on a new layer with a layer mask all done. With this top layer selected i could then move it around with the move tool to place it where i wanted it. It looked pretty good but i then just flattened the file and retouched the little parts of the horizon that didnt look so good.
I did a curve adjustment, bumped up the red a bit, and then smart sharpened about 40%.
I would not reccommend a mustang by the way. Stick with volkswagen.

person swap

This image is from a shoot i did last week where i had to photograph about 70 deans list students shaking hands with the dean. Well, the girl on the left was early and the dean was late and she had to go. Bring in the stand in. My co-worker/boss did a fine job but deans list students are smart and she may rather be seen with the dean.
I looked through the other photos to find one that had his hand shaking hand in about the right place to start. I did a loose selection of him (very loose) with the lasso tool. Then using the move tool i drug him out of that photo and into the one in which i needed him. I moved him into place and then created a layer mask and with a large soft brush i painted in black on the mask to blend the backgrounds from the two images together. This was very easy. I then made my brush much smaller and started carefully masking out the excess from my top layer. I did a bit of cloning where needed and then healed it a bit to blend better but for the most part just masked the layers together. The fingers on top of the certificate ended up way above where they were suppossed to be so i did another rough selection of her fingers and copied it and pasted to a new layer. I then slid them down into place and rotated them a bit using transform. I made another mask to clean up around the fingers and was done.
I should also mention that i used one light here placed to the right and bounced into an umbrella.

letter enhancement

I recently was asked to take a photo of a friend of mine who has just been inducted into the radio broadcasting hall of fame. He brought with him a prop which looked like a microphone but was actually a fm radio. When you plugged it in the letters on the top lit up. Well of course they were not that bright so i brought them to life in photoshop.
At the time i did this i used the magic wand tool and selected the letters. I selected one and then held down the shift key to add to my selection. When they were all selected i then hit the refine edge button and feathered the selection just a touch so the edges would look better. I then used a curve adjustment to add contrast and while still selected then bumped up the saturation. That pretty well did it.
Looking back now i would reccommend trying the selection with the color range command. I'll bet you could get it in one click. This is by far the best tool to use for selections as it gives you a great natural edge. If you saw a selection from the magic wand tool beside a selection made from the color range command I guarantee that you would never use the wand again.

coming soon

Sorry for my lack of posts lately.
I just got back from photoshop world in las vegas and i have a ton of new photoshop tips and ideas to share.
I also took about 1000 images while i was there so some of those should be appearing soon.
Thank you all for your patience.
I will try to get something up tonight.

combining elements

This is just another example of why i love digital photography.
I saw my cat sleeping very comfortably and thought i would grab a shot without disturbing her. After i took about 10 frames i noticed the pillow on the bottom left of the frame and decided that it was distracting. I snuck over, moved the pillow, and took some more shots. But she moved, just a bit, and the light on her face was not as good. No problem, its digital.
I made a selection of the dark part of the image, without the pillow, just using the lasso tool. I hit the refine edge button and feathered my selection by 3. Then holding the shift key (to center the move) i dragged the selected part of that image onto the other image, creating a new layer and covering the pillow. To refine the edge just a bit more and soften it I then made a layer mask on my new layer and painted over the edge of the selection with a large soft brush. Just like erasing the edge of it but the mask allows me some flexibility.
I then got really fussy and decided i wanted the window frame to be more square. I used the transform - skew command and drug the corners a bit till the window looked better. I then sharpened the image, did a bit of healing on some stray hairs and was done.
Here is the final product.

xray filter

If you have cs3 and have not yet found the xray filter dont feel bad as your not alone. They hid this very well and i feel fortunate to have found the filter that can turn your photos into xrays with the click of a button.
Are you excited, well of course you are , and now i feel bad as i have been pulling your leg. This is actually an xray of my sons hand as he broke his baby finger this week. Can you find the break???
The original image , two put together here, was quite low contrast and really not that sharp. I applied an adjustment curve and tweeked the shadows (darker) and the highlights (lighter) and then applied a smart sharpen to crisp it up.
To get both images into one i created a new window (sized so both would fit) and made the background black. I dragged both images into the new window and moved them around as i wanted them. I then used a layer mask to erase the top layers parts that were blocking out the bones on the underlying layer. I flattened the layers and saved as a jpeg.
This was just a fun post and as i am approaching 1000 page views so far this year i will put the push on to create some informative posts in the near future.

hard color correction

I was hooking up my slide scanner to a new computer and thought i would try a scan to make sure it was working.
This above image was shot on daylight slide film inside a bar (having breakfast in boston) full of tungsten lights.
I made the scan and saved the file as a tiff.
I then opened it in camera raw (just go to file-open and when the dialogue opens select camera raw as the file type on the bottom left of the box, assuming you have cs3 of course (works with jpg and tiff)) and made some highlight recovery corrections and clarity, vibrance, etc. The temperature and tint however did not help me much in taking out all the red color.
I then opened the image in photoshop and applied an adjustment curve, adding some cyan and green and blue to highlights and shadows. This got me closer but not enough. So now what, how can i correct the image so i can live with it.
I converted the image to black and white using image-adjustments-black and white. Still not happy.
I then brought back some of the color by going under edit-fade and brought the opacity down to 38%.
This was the best i could muster with this one.
I should have just picked a different slide to scan.
Finished result is below.

sepia toning

This is a little lesson on sepia toning as a result of being asked how to do it tonight and me not remembering, how to sepia tone that is.
There are always a few ways to do one simple thing so here is two.
1. Open your photo in photoshop and go to window - actions.
Expand the default actions tab {by clicking on the little triangle to the left of the words default actions} and then scroll down and highlight {click on} the sepia tone action.
Next just hit the play button at the bottom of the actions pallate and presto you have a sepia tone image.
Personally i did not like what the action did all that much so i went into my layers pallate and double clicked the round half black and half white circle on the hue/saturation layer which allowed me to edit the sliders. I lowered the saturation a bit and moved the hue slider to the right just a bit.
Much happier.
If you then look in the history pallate you can see how this was done.
First a duplicate background was made and then desaturated. Next a hue and saturation adjustment layer was created which gives the image its sepia tone color.
The really important thing to notice in the hue/saturation box is that the colorize box is checked. This allows the color to show on a desaturated image.
Have to put my son to bed now so will finish the other method soon.