logo stripping

This is a christmas card idea for my wife who sells volkswagens.
I shot the tree and made sure i had a good sized bulb close to the center of the frame. The bulb was gold when i shot it and my goal was to keep some of the reflections and make it look natural.
I opened the logo in a seperate window in photoshop and using the move tool dragged it onto my tree image. I used free transform, holding the shift key down to constrain the proportions, to make it fit to the size of the bulb. Also to help with this i lowered the logo layers opacity so i could see the bulb size clearly.
I then changed the logos layer mode to hue (modes are in the top left hand corner of the layers pallete). This made the two layers blend and look natural. It killed the white in the logo however so i duplicated the logo layer and changed the logo copy layers mode to normal. I selected the white in the logo, did a select inverse, and hit delete to get rid of all but the white. I then lowered the opacity of this layer to 56% so it too would blend but still remain white.
Lastly i retouched some of the distracting reflections out of the bulb and placed a vignette on the outside of the image.

selections of people on white

This photo was one of 16 or so that i wanted to strip together to make one large group photo.
I started by selecting the white background.
I used the magic wand tool with a tolerance of about 30 (lower this if the selection goes into your photo) and clicked on the background.
then hold down the shift key to add to your selection.
I get as much as possible selected with the magic wand and lasso and then fine tune any problem areas in quick mask mode (Q).
Once i am happy with the selection i select-modify-expand (2 or 3 pixels).
I then select-feather (1 pixel).
Next select-inverse.
I can then grab the person (selected) with the move tool and drag them into a new document that i have made for the group.
If you just wanted a white background in the original photo you could have just filled the background with white before the select-inverse step.
Hair, obviously, is the hard part. Thank goodness these people wore hats.

selective blur

I had some fun tonight shooting this fan i have had for over a year now. I have wanted to make an image of it but the how never came to me until now.
I made the image and felt it needed just a little something else, gaussian blur.
I duplicated the background layer and added the amount of gaussian blur i liked to the background copy. You can lower the opacity if you go too far. I then just created a layer mask and painted in black over the logo in the middle of the fan. I think i used a very soft edged large brush at an amount of about 50 and built it up till the letters were clear.

links

these are links from the 2006 pdn photo annual from the best web sites section:
www.hanskristianriise.com
www.stevenlippman.com
www.joshrothstein.com
www.ba-reps.com
www.brendakenneally.com/theblock
www.chasejarvis.com
www.stocklandmartel.com/smart_book/2005
www.jefftse.com
www.garryowens.com
www.craigsherodphoto.com
www.marvilacar.com
www.nathanperkel.com
www.benjaminkrain.com
www.andreafazzari.com
www.feinknopf.com
www.allisonvsmith.com
www.matthewstylianou.com
www.glanger.com
www.oculi.com.au
www.dananeibert.com
www.bobbifabian.com
www.seanmurphyphoto.com
www.3am.net
www.jeremycowart.com
www.zizola.com
www.reena-adam.com
www.TogashiStudio.com
www.jamesdayphoto.com
www.mediastorm.org
www.mitchrangerphotography.com
www.noelletheard.com
www.grunertimaging.com
www.jefflipsky.com
www.reneeritchiephoto.com
www.flotowarner.com
www.LifeShots.co.uk

dodge white backgrounds

I do a great deal of portraits on a white background and making that background white is difficult with lighting. You could set your background light to two stops brighter than your main light but this also usually produces flare or interferes in some way with your subject. I dont worry too much about this because i have a dodge tool in photoshop that works quite well. Set the tools mode to highlights in its option bar and the strength quite low (10 - 18). Use a nice soft brush, not too small, and go over the white areas of your background. It should not affect your subject unless they too are wearing white.

weak channels

This is a great tip for weak color channels. For example, if you shoot something red (flowers for example) you will notice that you dont see any detail in the reds. Heres how to fix that.
Step 1: go to your channels window and click on the red, green, and blue channel seperately (or use ctrl 1,2,3 and the tilde key to get back to rgb).
If a channel is weak you will see alot of white and no detail.
Step 2: choose the channel that the detail looks best in. For weak reds the green channel is usually the best.
Step 3: go to window - layers and duplicate the background layer.
Step 4: highlight the background copy layer and click on the weak channel in the channels palette. You should now be viewing the background copys red channel for example.
Step 5: go to image - apply image.
Step 6: here is what you want the settings to be in the apply image box.
layer - background
channel - green (or whatever channel had the best detail in it)
blending - normal
opacity - 100%
Step 7: hit ok.
Step 8: go to your layers palette and change the blending mode of your background copy layer from normal to luminosity.
Step 9: make sure in the channels palette you are on rgb (you want to be viewing all the colors)
Step 10: lower opacity of the background copys layer till it looks good.
note: you could always make an action of this to use in your workflow.

city hall show

To my former photoshop students, great job on your city hall show.
I was there today dropping off an invoice and out of the corner of my eye saw rebekah staring at me (her portrait that is). If it were really rebekah in person i would probably still be there talking (just kidding rebekah).
Quite honestly i did not expect to be as impressed as i was. It looked very professional and the images were very well chosen. Congratulations.

ocean in color

just wanted to post the color version.
I used the same technique that i did with the cat.

color space for web photos

See, back already.
When you post images to the web or send them to a 1 hour lab for printing, make sure that they are in the srgb color space. If you are shooting in raw just make sure that the space in the bottom of the camera raw dialogue box is set to srgb. If you have a file in the rgb 98 color space just go to the edit drop down menu - convert to profile - destination space - srgb. Just do a comparison and you will see the difference.
I am not saying by the way to never use the rgb 98 space as that is what i use the most. It has a greater range than the srgb space. I use it for photos that will be seen on my monitor or photos that i will print locally (ink jet printer in office).

photographers site

sorry for the slowdown in posts.
I have been preoccupied by photography lately.
My thoughts and efforts have been dedicated to photoshop for years now but recently i have become interested once again with lighting and overall photography. I will still be updating this blog with photoshop stuff regularly and cool photos. Keep watching. The main reason for this post was not to talk about my thoughts but to give you a link to a bunch of photographers work.
http://www.ba-reps.com/list/photographer
Be back soon.

cool effect

This is Fred.
Ok, now that introductions are over what did i do to the photo. I have been playing with an effect (all mine so far as i can tell) that messes with the color and depth of the image a wee bit.
First i duplicated the background layer and highlighted the background copy in the layers pallete. I went under the image menu and down to adjustments - channel mixer. I clicked on monochrome at the bottom and then slid the red channel all the way to the right, took the blue quite far to the left (not all the way), and then the green to the right just till it looks right. I hit ok and then in the layers pallete changed that layers mode to luminosity. I lowered the opacity to about 80%, added a curves adjustment layer to boost the contrast, added a saturation layer adjustment to boost the saturation and ended by smart sharpening. I recorded all of the steps (not the curve and sat layers) in an action and can now use it on other images quite quickly.

ocean 2

I am waiting for my 350 images to download that i shot tonight and thought i could take a minute to post another ocean trip photo. All i did to this one in photoshop was crop and sharpen. Also my friend noel would be proud of me as this is a found shot and was not altered while being photographed.

ocean black and white

I had a few minutes after a shoot today and thought i would do a little fun shooting and get a bit of sun. In the short time i was there i came away with about 5 seperate images that i liked. This image was of course 3 seperate photos stitched together. My stitching software and photoshop photomerge did not work at all on this project so i had to do it manually with the help of layer masks. I made a mask on the center photo and then applied a gradient to one side to blend into the background image. I then had to do the other side and that was even more fun. I copied the layer with the mask on it and held the ctrl key while i clicked on the layer mask. This gave me a selection of where my mask was. I inverted the selection and hit the delete key which got rid of part of the image on that layer.
I then place the layer mask in the trash and made another one. This time i used a gradient in the mask but applied it to the other edge of the layer to blend that side. I then sharpened the file and converted it to black and white in channel mixer. I put the red channel all the way to the right and moved the blue channel quite far to the left. I used the green channel to lighten it up a bit in the midtones. A little border and done.
I will post another tomorrow with much fewer photoshop steps.

adding image size

I have a job coming up and my client needs a high res file to print 11x17 for a calendar.
No problem. At least thats what i tell them. They dont know that my camera will only capture a file that is 15x10 at 200dpi.
I tried some tests to see how best to add two inches to the height while keeping the dpi at 200.
I tried 4 different methods and its quite hard to tell the difference in a print between them.
What i kept similar in all of them was the way i scaled up two inches. I created an action and went to image - image size.
I went up in half inch increments and changed the mode at the bottom to bicubic smoother each time until i got to 17 inches. This means that yes i went into image size four times and hit ok after each half inch addition. Where i modified the other steps was in the sharpening. I tried sharpening first then upsizing, tried upsizing then sharpening, and lastly tried opening my raw file as a 16 bit prophoto file, upsizing, sharpening, converting to adobe rgb98, mode to 8 bit. For all the extra effort i cant really tell a difference. The file that looked the worst however was the one i sharpened first then upsized.
I now have the word out to sell my d70 camera and am ordering a d200 very soon. Dont tell my wife.

lens baby

Just a quick note to let you know that if you are a student or educator you can get a much better price on a lens baby. Just go to www.lensbabies.com and order direct from them. We have one on order and cant wait to play.

layer masks

Another blog requested by the paperboy.
Layer masks are a great way to blend images and do local tonal range adjustments.
If you have an image open just drag the background layer down to the create new layer icon in the layers pallete to make a copy of it. Now if you look at the bottom of the layers pallete, the third icon from the left is "create layer mask".
Click this and you will see the mask appear on that layer in the layers pallete.
You now use a paint brush with black ink to hide that layer that the mask is on.
If you make a mistake with the black just paint it back in with white ink. Obviously if the bottom layer is the same as the top this mask will acomplish nothing. Select the bottom layer and do a curve adjustment on it. Now when you paint with black in the mask you will see the underlying layer show through.
Remember that you can use a brush with a low opacity to show through lightly.
You can also apply a gausian blur filter to the mask to blur it.

orchard

Its funny how you can find a place that just seems to enlighten you.
My son and i walked through the apple orchard today and there was nowhere else i would have rather been. I will be going back often and will have many photos to post.

old photo site

My buddy the Guru just posted a cool site.
http://westfordcomp.com/updated/found.htm
I enjoyed looking at it but at the same time noticed how badly the images were in need of some photoshop work.
I thought that it would be a perfect place for photoshop students to find images to practice on.
I am showing one here I downloaded and worked on for a minute.
I corrected the contrast (via a curve of course), retouched it, used the burn tool set to shadows to darken up the background buildings and sidewalk, and sharpened it using smart sharpen.
Try one, its addicting.

feather viewing

Just a quick easy tip tonight.
If you want to apply a feather to a selection to soften the edge you would go to the select menu and down to feather, enter the amount of feather you want and hit ok. The trouble is that you can never tell how much it will feather because it does not give you a preview. If you want a preview just go to quick mask mode (q) after you have set your feather and you will see what affect it will have.

autostitch

Some of you who like to stitch photos together using photomerge or the crazy people who do it manually, may be interested in this post. You can download a free stitch program (windows only) at
www.autostitch.net
By default it creates quite a low res file. If you go into edit - options however you can change the size to 100% and jpeg quality to 100. Then all you do is go to open and select the jpeg files you want it to stitch. Hit ok and it does its thing. Very easy and extremely accurate.
The sample i am posting is made up of 26 images that were shot vertically and handheld. I retouched the sky and water a bit but only for objects that were in the original photos and not for any problems the software had.