snow day

All it has done this winter is snow. I have been looking around and thinking, that would make a good photo, that would make a good photo, etc, etc. I walked outside my work building today and decided to finally take a winter shot.
Not much of a shot really but thought i would post it just the same.
I converted it to black and white by going to image - adjustments - black and white.
I hit ok and then went into edit - fade and faded my black and white conversion to 85% so just a hint of color would be left in.
Sharpened and saved.
Have a great weekend.

hdr combo

The above image was shot in a very dark arena (turned into a convention room). I photographed the event and then at the end, when the premier was speaking, I took my tripod to the back of the rink and bracketed over a 7 stop range.
On the normal exposure for the crowd, the speaker and screens were blown out. Normal for the speaker put the crowd way too dark. It took way over exposing both to bring up the red you see on the curtains as they were just these little led lights.
Another perfect candidate for photomatix.
Photomatix did a very good job at getting the entire image close but where the crowd moved a bit they got a little funky. Also the speaker and screens were still a bit light. To fix this i opened the photomatix tonemapped image, one of the original exposures where the stage was properly exposed, and one where the crowd was properly exposed, in photoshop. I used the photomatix image as my background and then using the move tool and holding the shift key down i dragged the other two images, one at a time, onto this background image. I created a layer mask on both of the top two layers and filled them with black to hide all of those layers allowing only the background to show through. I then painted in white on the layer mask to reveal the stage on one layer and the crowd on the other. Make sure you use a really soft edged brush so it blends in well.
This is an extremely easy task as layer masks could not be easier. If you make a mistake just paint over your troubled area in black and it is fixed.
Oh, and if your showing a friend your final version make sure that you leave your layers pallate open so they can see all your layers and masks. Its impressive to someone who doesn't know much about photoshop (ha).

photomerge

Sorry for my absence. I have had a very busy january, which while is very good, has kept me off the computer having fun.
The photo above is of a local bakery. If you are local or are visiting fredericton then go to the happy baker. Great coffee and even better baked goods.
Anyway, the store and bakery occupy a narrow long space which was very difficult to capture in one shot. I put the camera on a tripod and took 4 or 5 vertical shots (sorry cant remember exactly)to cover the whole store. I opened bridge and selected the shots i wanted stripped together and then went up to tools - photoshop - photomerge. I was very surprised at how good a job it did. It was way better than in cs2. The only problem i had was that there was a blurry guy at the back of the store. When photomerge creates your pano however, it uses layer masks, so if you dont like something (like the blurry guy) then you can just paint in white on that part of the layer mask and remove him (he was only in one frame not all).
I retouched and removed some distractions and sharpened a bit.
The only other thing i had to do is fix up the carpet as there was alot of white flour tracks in it. I first selected the whole carpet using the lasso tool and refined the selection using quick mask. It took awhile but looked great. I saved this selection to bring it up again later. I duplicated my background layer and then sampled a nice dark brown from the carpet itself and loaded the selection I created earlier. I then filled the selection with this brown color. I lowered the opacity of this top layer so some of the texture would show through and was pretty well done.

shoot for the dogs

This is not really a photoshop tip post but instead an insight into a shoot post.
I was asked to photograph this girl with her two dogs. Simple enough. Start early in the morning so the light is low, get them walking towards me, sun to the left at 45 degrees and take lots of photos with a long lens and shallow depth of field. Recipe for success in most cases. We met and started shooting on a long walking bridge but the side rails cast some pretty severe shadows and although she was perfectly lit the dogs were in shadow. The wind was very strong also and it was wreaking havoc on her hair. Next recipe please.
Time to head to a cool building with a very nice deck and large white wooden chairs. Throw in a couple nikon sb flash unit, like any strobist would, one to the back left for rim light and one to the front right (at about 45 degrees or more) for main light. I own two pocket wizards so i put one on the camera, one on the main light, and put a wein slave on the back light. I then crossed my fingers and hoped it wasn't too bright out for the wein. It worked, yea hoo. I placed my human subject in the chair and then it was time to bring in the dogs. Funny thing was that the dogs really didn't want to be there. They wanted to instead run and play. We must have brought them back under my light setup 20 times and they would last about two frames and that was it, time to roam.
Luckily i inherited a tremendous amount of patience from my father so i could have shot like this all day. I knew it was time for the shoot to end however when mild frostbite set into my fingers.
I did end up shooting about 100 frames but this was my favourite. I think its because it shows a little bit of our struggle.
When the dogs were leaving i could have sworn that i saw one give the other a high five and wink.

Black and white with blur

I was playing in lightroom tonight and had a chance to take a second look at some images i shot recently.
I was playing with a landscape photo and trying a couple different things (i will post it at the bottom) and thought i would try the effect i came up with on a face. I think i like it better on a landscape but anyway here it is.
First off i opened a color photo of gord and converted it to black and white by going to image - adjustments - black and white.
In the panel that opens i played a bit with the sliders to try to make the image look a bit infared. I moved the red slider to the right and the blue to the left a bit.
I then wanted to blur most everything except his eyes and what was along the horizontal path of his eyes. I duplicated the background layer and clicked on the eye icon to the left of this new copied layer to hide it. On the background layer i then went to filter - blur - lens blur and cranked the radius up to about 55. Quite blurry. I clicked on the top layers eye again to show it and then added a layer mask to that top layer. I selected the gradient tool and used the celindrical shape in the options palatte (4th icon over). I made sure my forground color was black and background white and then clicked at his eye level and dragged the mouse to about his chin. I played with this a bit till i got it right. I then chose my paint brush and painted a bit in black to the left and right of the face on the background.
I smart sharpened and did a slight curve to increase contrast and was done.

zamboni

I was asked to take a shot of this zamboni to be put on a certificate to "win a ride on a zamboni at a hockey game".
I certainly could have taken a very standard, boring shot of the thing and they would have been more than happy.
As i already mentioned however, that would be very boring.
Time to have some fun.
I bracketed over a 7 stop range and picked out a very dark exposure, an average exposure, and a very light exposure.
I processed these three images in photomatix (I know, I know. Is this photoshop2 or photomatix2) to get a result i liked.
I then opened that image in photoshop and duplicated the background layer. I left the top layer (copy) in color and desaturated the background (lower) layer. I then created a layer mask (icon at the bottom of the layers palatte) on my top layer. I used a soft edged paint brush with black as the foreground color and painted in the mask over the background. That allowed the black and white layer under the color layer to show through. I carefully painted until no more color was on the background, behind the zamboni.
I then wanted to bring some of the color back into the background (just a bit) so it wasn't completely black and white. I duplicated the black and white layer and the color layer each one more time. What i am trying to end up with is: very top layer being color with the mask on it, next layer down is black and white, next layer down is color, and next layer down (background) is black and white. This very bottom, or background, does not matter. We are really not going to see past the layer above it.
What you will need to do now however is drag mask from the lower color layer to the trash. Just click on it and drag to the trash can at the bottom of the layers pallate and hit delete when the box pops up.
You can now lower the opacity on the uppermost black and white layer to your liking. This will allow some color from the color layer under it to show through.
I flattened the image and retouched it. A heavy smart sharpen, a slight curves adjustment and it was done.
Below is the original.
I will be starting a post tomorrow on how to shoot a team photo and leave a space for someone who is missing and then add him in later. There is alot to this next post so i will do a part of it each day for a week or so.
Stay tuned.

single image in photomatix

I finally figured out today how to process one image in photomatix pro.
The above photo is the finished result and the original image is below.
I love what it does to brick and concrete but really dont like what it does to snow.
I also tried this technique on a family studio portrait and it was amazing how much detail it brought out.
Technique:
- I placed one jpeg into a folder on my desktop.
- In photomatix go to Automate - batch processing.
- Make sure the two boxes (generate hdr image and process with details enhancer) are checked.
- Make sure that ALL is selected in the box in front of "images at a time".
- In location - choose navigate to your folder with the one image in it.
- Hit run.
- It will tell you when its all done.
- Go to your folder that you chose and inside of it will be a new folder called results.
- Open that and drag the hdr image file onto photomatix to open it. (or of course go into photomatix and navigate to that file and hit open).
- Next in photomatix go to HDR - tone mapping.
- You are now ready to play with sliders.
The settings i used for this image are : strength - 100, color saturation - 60, light smoothing - high, luminosity - +7, and the white and black sliders were up quite a bit.
I later sharpened it in photoshop and did a curve to increase the contrast a bit ( i did these same corrections to the original image file below).
Note: you can also play with the settings in the first batch processing window. You will see a settings box just after the details enhancer check box.

downtown hdr

This may well be my last post from the images i shot in the freezing cold downtown a couple nights ago.
I processed three jpegs in photomatix and lowered the color saturation to the far left.
I sharpened it using smart sharpen.
I wanted to try a bit of sepia tone on it for the old fashioned look but i am tired tonight and going to hit the hay.
I still plan to work on something totally different over the holidays and that is combining multiple face photos.

restaurant hdr

I was doing some downtown shots tonight and tacked on some time at the end of my official duties to take some hdr shots. I did this even though it was unbeliveably cold. My fingers still hurt.
I did my standard 7 frame bracket and then used photomatix pro to process the images.
My settings in photomatix were as follows:
strength 100, color saturation 68, luminance -5, light smoothing low, white point 1.35, black point 5.86, gamma 1.01.
This hdr shot looks 100 times better than the standard straight shot.
What restaurant wouldn't love to have a funky shot in a brochure or ad piece.

camera image number

Here is just a little aside.
Ever wonder how many images your camera has taken in its life.
1) go into bridge and click once on the last image you've taken.
2) go up to file - file info.
3) click on advanced (left column) when the file info pops up and then click on the little arrow beside http://ns.adobe.com/exif/1.0/aux/ (in the right column).
4) at the bottom of that column you will see
aux:imagenumber:????
where my question marks are is where your cameras total image count will show.
I have had my camera for two weeks now and only have 1200 images on it.
Time to get shooting.

desaturated background

I took this shot of my son last week after a big snow storm. It was the perfect image to desaturate the background, as it was mostly colorless to begin with, and make my subject really pop.
This is a really easy one.
I duplicated my background layer. With this new layer active i went to image - adjustments - desaturate.
I created a layer mask (bottom of layers pallate) and painted in black over my son so that the colored layer underneath would show through. I didn't have to be too fussy as it was mostly white behind him anyway. I used a smart sharpen at about 35 and did a curves adjustment to bring up the blacks a bit for added contrast.
I am hoping to do some experimenting for my next post. I want to use multiple shots combined to form one shot. these would be overlaid over and around each other, not stripped together. I will work on an edge effect so the shots are seperated.
Stay tuned. I also have some shooting to do this weekend of the downtown at night. I smell a hdr in there somewhere.

weird

This is strange for me and no dont worry, i am not heading in some far out direction.
I took a photo of a girl i work with and converted it to black and white. I liked the shot but it didn't blow me away or anything. I thought it had enough potential to look at a second time and see what creative things i could do to it.
I started by duplicating my background layer and with the new layer active i went to filter - sketch - chrome. I used a detail of 0 and a smoothness of 10. I used a levels adjustment and cranked the sliders to the middle so i only had black and white tones.
I actually was going down a totally different route. I started by duplicating my blue channel as i was going to try and make a funky mask and bring parts of the original image through the chrome layer.
I thought this image i ended up with would make a cool poster if text was added.
One added note by the way: you can control how thick your black lines are by where your levels sliders end up. If they are closer to the black side or closer to the white side makes a difference.
For what i dont know.

theory of a retouch

The image above got me thinking of a post on retouching.
There are many different views out there on retouching, from "oh my God, you cant retouch as then it is not pure or journalistic" to "anything goes". I like to think i am somewhere in the middle but definately closer to anything goes than to pure.
The camera and photoshop are tools in the image creation process and by developing your skill in both, you can create an image that you have envisioned.
Anyway, i am not trying to get all deep or anything, just trying to let you in on how i see the process.
The image on the left is the final retouched version and the image on the right is raw from the camera.
How i tackle retouching is as follows. I first look at the image and decide what i want to look at. Her face for example. In the image to the right my eyes keep getting pulled off the face by the earring and more subtly by the hair highlights.
With these distractions removed I can take my time exploring the face. I tend to start at the eyes, wander around the face, and end up back at the eyes.
So, what i am trying to say is: When retouching, remove tension from the photo. Tension being those elements that want to rip your eyes away from what you really want to look at.
I used a combination of the healing tool, clone stamp, dodge, burn, sharpen, and ended by adding a vignette.

door

Ok I know, this is another hdr image, let me explain.
I saw this doorway and had to shoot it as i thought it would look amazing in hdr. I used 7 bracketed images and ran them through photomatix pro. I did my thing with the sliders, no secret, just played until it looked right, and then opened the image in photoshop. I wanted to brighten up the lamp as it was grey and low contrast. I first duplicated my background layer. I selected the front pane of glass on the lamp and applied a celinderical gradient going from white to transparent. It looked a bit better but not great. I tried changing the layers blend mode to overlay and it looked better but the rest of the image got over saturated and looked a bit overdone (can you imagine). I desaturated the layer and bingo, everything fell into place.
I am now going to be playing with changing the blend modes of a duplicated layer and desaturating it.

car hdr

I was looking to do something a little different tonight (using blending modes to combine photos) but found that i have to take some texture photos as i dont have any. Look for this in a post to come. I want to change skin into an ice texture.
Anyway, i did find this shot of my car that i shot on a tripod and shot 7 bracketed images. I loaded the 7 images into photomatix and played with the sliders. I gave my workflow in photomatix in an earlier post if your wondering.
When i had it how i liked it, i sharpened it alot with smart sharpen, probably with a value of about 90. I then wanted a very dramatic vignette so i duplicated my background layer and added a heavy vignette (filter - distort - lens correction) to this top layer. It darkened the car a bit so i just applied a layer mask to that layer and used a large soft edged brush to paint on the mask with 50 percent black. I just painted over the car and a bit on the ground and background around it for a bit of a halo effect. I used a curves adjustment layer to add a bit of contrast and was done.
Below is one of the originals.
I promise to get away from hdr for the next post although i do feel that using hdr took a pretty boring image and at least made it into something worth looking at.

softar filter effect

I need to state right up front that this is not my method. I used one of my photoshop world text books for this and the credit for its development goes to eddy tapp and monty zucker. I felt i needed the effect for this image and wanted to share it with you.
First i opened my image in photoshop and went to image - adjustments - black and white. I placed my curser on the face and left clicked and dragged to the left to lighten the skin. I placed it over the sweater and dragged to the right to darken the sweater. You would have to play a bit with this depending on your image. When i had it looking good in black and white i duplicated my background layer.
Double click on the name of your new layer and call it darken. With this layer active, go to filter - blur - gaussian blur and up the radius to around the size of your file (mine was 25mb so i set it to radius 25). Change the blend mode to darken for this layer and lower the opacity to 30%.
Now duplicate this layer and double click on the name and call it lighten. Raise the opacity to 50% and change the blend mode to lighten. At this point if it looks too soft just redo the image and use a lower radius in the gaussian blur step.
Next hold down the shift key and click on both layers to make them both active. While holding the shift key click on the "new group" icon at the bottom of the layers pallate. Now click on the add layer mask icon at the bottom of the layers pallate.
Using a black soft edged brush, paint over the eyes, lips, eyebrows, and nostrils. I used an opacity of 50% to paint with. I did all these parts once and then did the eyes and lips one more time still painting at 50%. I tried the hair also but did not like it sharp on this image.
The original file is below.
As a side note: I was quite happy with the light on this image. I used two strobes bounced into very large umbrellas that were placed one directly over top of the other. This essentially gave me an umbrella which went from ceiling to floor. With using two lights i could vary the power from top and bottom. I placed these as close to her as i could, just out of camera frame. I used two sb24 flashes for the rim light. One was behind her to the left and one to the right.

hdr gordo

Here is another shot from the weekends adventure.
We haden't even really got to shooting yet but the light was so good in tim hortons that i had to run out to the car and get my camera. I put the camera in liveview to test it out and took three bracketed images handheld. I am posting the original files under this text so you can see them also.
I opened the images in photoshop just to knock them down to 8bit files (i had the camera set to 14bit) and saved them as jpegs.
I processed the three images two seperate times in photomatix and then stripped them together in photoshop. The reason i did this was that i liked his face and background in one of the trials and his hands and body in another. I just dragged one image onto the other and used a layer mask to do the work.
I am not giving my photomatix slider info just because it never seems to be written in stone. Just play with the sliders.
I wanted this look by the way in photomatix even though you may be screaming overprocessed. Gordo is truly a cartoonish figure and i felt the effect was needed.

fight on the beach

I got to get away and have a little photo excursion today and now have a ton of new images with which to play with. I will be making many posts this month.
This image is made up of two images. I set the camera up on a tripod and I took gordos photo serveral times as he did some pretty funny jumps. He then shot me doing the same thing. I opened them both in photoshop and while holding down the shift key i dragged one photo on top of the other. My tripod is not the best and it was also sinking in the sand which resulted in the photos not being perfectly aligned. In photoshop cs3 under the edit menu there is a new function called auto align layers which i used next. To get this to be ready to use you have to first go into your layers pallate and highlight both layers.
Auto align worked perfectly on these except for the clouds as they were different in each image. I next highlighted the top layer and created a layer mask. Use a reasonable sized soft edge brush with black as your forground color swatch and paint over the image where you want the underground image to show through (gordo was hidden on the underground layer). This made both of us visible in the image. The sky was not perfect so where i over painted i then switched my forground swatch to white and painted over the over painted areas around gordo. I flattened the image, did a slight curves adjustment to warm it up a bit, smart sharpened 45% and was done.
You can have alot of fun with this. Try shooting yourself in multiple positions in a room and then use this method to strip the images together.

channel noise

This photo was taken with a nikon d300 camera at 1250asa. Nikon has finally made some good advancements with noise reduction. As a side note, if you dont often need high iso's then just keep your d200's or whatever as you will not see alot of image difference.
I was reading the new napp photoshop magazine today and there was an article on reducing noise on just one channel. It didn't go into a whole lot of detail on the topic so i thought i would play with it a bit.
I started by scrolling through the channels in the channels pallete to see what one had the most noise. Definately the blue channel 9 times out of ten. Funny thing was however was that when i performed what i am going to tell you on the green channel it seemed to reduce more noise overall than the blue. Weird.
So i highlighted, or clicked on to activate, the green channel and went to the filter menu - noise - reduce noise and used a strength of 10, preserve details 9, and sharpen details 8.
I hit ok and then in the channels pallete clicked on the rgb at the top to view all channels together again. It softens the image just a bit but if noise is the problem then its worth it.
I also added a vignette to the image by going to filter - distort - lens correction, and moved the vignette - amount slider to the left (darken) to about -35, i also moved the midpoint to the left a bit too to make the vignette move in closer to the middle.
I put a black line around the image by simply going to image - canvas size and clicking on the relative box then putting in .2 to height and width. For background color i chose black.
Back to the camera for a minute.
I had the setting on the camera set to uncompressed raw and set at 14bit.
When i opened it in camera raw i opened it in the prophoto space (largest color space).
I made my corrections and then opened it in photoshop.
What you will have to do however if you do this is remember to go under image - mode, and knock it down to an 8 bit image when your done having fun with it in photoshop. You must also go under edit - convert to profile, and set srgb in the destination space if you want to put the image online or send it to a photo lab to be printed.
Sorry on this one to be all over the place.

photomatix again

I got a chance this weekend to get out and do some personal shooting in a small town not far from me.
It was great to just walk around and shoot whatever appealed to me. I also took the opportunity to do some shots to play with later in photomatix.
The image above was created in photomatix using three bracketed exposures. I have already previously done a post in this blog on how to use photomatix by the way so just scroll through to find more about it.
The settings i used here were strength 100%, color saturation 0, light smoothing - high, and then i played with the white point and black point until i got the look i wanted. I did nothing else to the above image other than smart sharpen 40%.
The bottom image is the normally exposed scene desaturated in photoshop for a comparison.