Photography Thread

[kenstogie]

you can get very inexpensive (cheap) remotes $3-5 for Canon stuff at meritline.com. They don't do everything but they trip the shutter release. I believe they have them for Nikon as well but haven't tried them.

[spectrrr]

Originally Posted by kenstogie

you can get very inexpensive (cheap) remotes $3-5 for Canon stuff at meritline.com. They don't do everything but they trip the shutter release. I believe they have them for Nikon as well but haven't tried them.

I've got one, its handy.

[Wolfgang]

Ive got the nikon brand one. the store had it for $10 at Xmas the range sucks. but does the job pretty well. I may buy one of these to compare the two.

[kenstogie]

If you patiently wait they have them on sale for under $2 shipped. Yes they are cheap as he!! but if it works who cares? It's not like I am attaching it to my camera.

[Wolfgang]

Went to the museum again. here is the rose garden located in the middle of the grounds.
C&C always appreciated.



P.S. Got a call form the camera store and the lens was delayed for another 7-10 days. I cancelled my order with them, drove down the road and ordered it at another store. Should be here Friday or Saturday.

[OLS]

Originally Posted by Roland of Gilead

MY Gosh! Look inside that afterburning turbofan! That's a fantastic shot.

[kenstogie]

for the "seasoned" photographers.
What would you consider the essential skills to learn in Photoshop?

(if you have good links that'd be great too!)

[Wolfgang]

crop and sharpen.



but seriously

learn how to do levels, curves, selective color, and color balance.

[spectrrr]

For starters, Camera raw. much easier to get it semi right before it hits photoshop.

After that, the essential can't live without skill I think is LAYERS and MASKING. Being able to add a curves layer, then use a brush to paint in the effect where needed is invaluable.

ALWAYS work non-destructively - make a new layer for most new edits, that way you can always follow the breadcrumbs backwards to change something if its not working or needs tweaking.

[kenstogie]

Originally Posted by spectrrr

For starters, Camera raw. much easier to get it semi right before it hits photoshop.

After that, the essential can't live without skill I think is LAYERS and MASKING. Being able to add a curves layer, then use a brush to paint in the effect where needed is invaluable.

ALWAYS work non-destructively - make a new layer for most new edits, that way you can always follow the breadcrumbs backwards to change something if its not working or needs tweaking.

Well I just watched 3 tutorials on Masking and they made perfect sense but my head is swimming just a bit.

[spectrrr]

Originally Posted by kenstogie

Well I just watched 3 tutorials on Masking and they made perfect sense but my head is swimming just a bit.

create a layer mask with the little button in the corner.

use the Paint brush. Black paint makes it disappear, white paint makes it appear.

I prefer to paint with the brush opacity set to 100% and the flow set to 5-20%

Best natural blending results if you right click on the canvas with the paint brush selected and set your hardness to somewhere less than 50%

Done

[kenstogie]

Well I think I have the hang (somewhat any way) of masking. A very powerful tool. With that I PS'd a pic. Constructive criticism/praise is very welcome The first is the untouched and the second is retouched.

[spectrrr]

Originally Posted by Darrell

That is trippy.

[spectrrr]

Originally Posted by kenstogie

Well I think I have the hang (somewhat any way) of masking. A very powerful tool. With that I PS'd a pic. Constructive criticism/praise is very welcomeThe first is the untouched and the second is retouched.

My main C&C points would be:
1) Too much blur in the face, ends up looking a little unnatural. Best way to do it is have a layer of heavy blurring, then paint in the mask, then lastly, dial back the fill or opacity on the layer itself until it looks good. The first few times you’ll want to make it too blurry, but in most cases, you have to under-do it a little bit so it is subtle enough to deceive the eye.
2) The face is too dark, even darker than the rest of the body. Make a curves layer to increase the brightness and then brush it on with a mask over the face. Use a brush with 100% opacity and 10% flow. Big size, 0% hardness. Practice big subtle strokes, so that a little bit of the adjustment bleeds off the edges of the face or wherever you are painting. Then the viewer won’t be able to tell you brightened the face.

Helpful hints:
1) Be SUBLTE! You really don’t need to go crazy with an effect, just do it lightly. A touch here, a touch there. Always use a soft brush and a low flow so it will blend together well.
2) Pay attention to your edges!! Look at the optical illusion below. If the colors were side by side, you would know they were the same color. But you believe they are different colors because of the edges that separate them. The same principle holds true in Photoshop, and also it’s inverse. When you have two dissimilar regions, you can trick the eye into thinking they are the same by blending or altering the edges between them.


Helpfull shortcuts:
1) Ctrl+backspace will fill the mask with the background color
2) Alt + backspace will fill the mask with the foreground color
3) When you are painting, the X key switches between the foreground and the background colors (effectively switching between black and white, show and hide)
4) Holding Alt and clicking on a layer mask will display the black and white layer mask. With this, you can see how your brush strokes appear.
5) Holding Shift and clicking on a layer mask will temporarily disable the mask (same effect as filling it with white).
6) Holding Alt and clicking between two layers will make the top layer ONLY apply its effect to the layer below it. It will also be subjective to the layer mask below it. Sounds a little complicated with words, but try it and you’ll see.






So here is my take on retouching the image. Below the image, there’s some explanations and a link to the PSD file.
Retouching is always a bit of a subjective thing, as are the monitors we’re viewing on. I gave a couple options, and depending on the monitor you are viewing it on, one will look better or the other will.

retouch 1


retouch 2


The PSD file for these can be downloaded HERE


I got a little carried away with the retouching and went beyond adding just a couple layers of brightness. You probably want to download and open the PSD file before reading further. I’ll give a quick rundown of the layers and what they do. You can turn off all the layers and then, starting from the bottom, turn each one on and you will see the individual effect of it. 80% of the retouching could have been accomplished with just two layers to blur and brighten. All the other layers are just the final 20%, the details.

The layers:
1) This layer is the only difference between the first image I posted and the second image. This just adds a little bit of edge contrast. The layer was created by blurring the image, then heavily sharpening it, then dialing back the fill % on the layer. The final touch wad a layer mask to brush out the eyes, because a natural side effect of this kind of adjustment is that the eyes get darker, and we don’t want that!
2) Just your standard garden variety Gaussian blur, but very subtle. Pay attention to the lines of the face. Cheeks, mouth, nose, eyes, these all need to be sharp. Everything else is optional.
3) Just a plain blank layer of white. Turn on this layer and off to see the effect of the retouching layers above it.
4) I used the healing brush to take out the strand of hair in her face, and some misc. pimples, color splotches, and other things.
5) I used the clone stamp tool to take out the errand strands of hair on top of the head, and to retouch a couple of the healing brush’s mistakes.
6) Her teeth were not bad, but I went ahead and did it anyway to show you. Create a layer that just desaturates it, then brush this in over the teeth and the whites of the eyes. This is an example of where a HARD and precise brush is needed over the usual soft one. Finally, dial back the fill on the layer so that the effect is very subtle, NO ONE has perfectly white teeth, so if you make them too white and bright, the eye knows something is wrong!
7) In addition to the whitening, I also wanted to brighten the teeth ever so slightly. This layer ONLY applies to the layer below it (and thus is subjective to the layer mask of the layer below it). It is achieved by holding alt and clicking between the two layers.
8) Here is one of the most important layers, because it corrects the darkness in the face.
9) Shadows and bags under the eyes are always difficult to deal with. Sometimes there is very little you can do for them, because anything you do will look strange an unnatural. In this case, the best bet was to soften them a little. Without them, her face looks flat, the bone structure appears off. This was not the best example of how to deal with that, but it gets the job done. I just clone stamped some cheek skin over the bags, then dialed back the fill on the layer so you could still see them, just softened a little.
10) I like my images nice and bright, so here’s a general boost!
11) The eyes needed just a little more brightening than what we got from the teeth layer, so this layer is just a subtle boost.
12) She has beautiful green eyes, so I wanted to bring out the color a bit more. Subtlety on this one is extremely important – too much and she gets lizard eyes! Play with this layer a tad, increase the fill on the layer a little bit, and you’ll see how quickly the effect is overdone.
13) In Photoshop, the colors on the image look great to me (and would print great from a lab). BUT on the web, in the sRGB color space on the browser, the image gains A LOT of red saturation. This adjustment layer fixes that by dialing back the red channel a little bit. I only masked it into the face, because the skin tones were the only areas that was bothering me. Depending on your monitor, this may look great or terrible.
14) Same as the above, except I duplicated the previous layer and masked it in again on a couple extra saturated spots on the cheek
15) This layer is subjective, you may like it or not. I reduced the laugh lines a little bit by completely erasing them with the healing brush tool (precision is not needed). Then I dialed back the opacity on the layer until I liked the level of the effect. Then I filled the layer mask with black and just painted in the lines.
16) That’s it! Here’s the original image, you can show and hide the layer to compare and see the difference!

[spectrrr]

Originally Posted by Roland of Gilead

-Mark.

Originally Posted by OLS

MY Gosh! Look inside that afterburning turbofan! That's a fantastic shot.

Gotta agree on that one, I love this shot.

[kenstogie]

Francis, Thanks for the tutorial, I have been trying to digest it and am working at it now and more later. I was all set to add my 2 cents worth but I've got to say that I am using my laptop's monitor and I am not sure I am seeing what I should be. I have a monitor at work (Viewsonic I think but it's mine)
that I am going to bring back home and try this further. I will share my comments at that point. As I am actually studying this as it's great to have the PSD file and see how its done by a pro. Thanks again for the tutorial

I attempted to "rep' but "you must spread some rep around before add to this individuals reputation" Damn.

[spectrrr]

Originally Posted by kenstogie

Francis, Thanks for the tutorial, I have been trying to digest it and am working at it now and more later. I was all set to add my 2 cents worth but I've got to say that I am using my laptop's monitor and I am not sure I am seeing what I should be. I have a monitor at work (Viewsonic I think but it's mine)
that I am going to bring back home and try this further. I will share my comments at that point. As I am actually studying this as it's great to have the PSD file and see how its done by a pro. Thanks again for the tutorial

I attempted to "rep' but "you must spread some rep around before add to this individuals reputation" Damn.

My pleasure. It will take some time to get the hang of it. Photoshop is very complex, and there are dozens of different ways to accomplish each and every step I listed there. Some ways are better than others in certain situations. Everyone's workflow is different, so as you go along you'll get a feel for how YOU like to see a photo, and how YOU like to work. Some people swear by levels and won't touch curves. Some people swear by curves and won't touch levels (me). Both work, its just what you're comfortable with (in most cases).

If you want to see absolute friggin magic, download a trial of this and play around it with it. http://www.imagenomic.com/pt.aspx

Monitor colors are always troublesome. Unless you pick up certain high LCD monitors, or you are using a Mac (which include high end LCD displays as a standard feature), you are never going to get a super accurate representation. Laptop displays in particular are usually pretty bad for this. Even if you have a good display, you won't really know what you are getting unless you calibrate it. It's AMAZING the variations I see from monitor to monitor. Looks fine when you are using it, hell, you get so used to it you never notice the color differences... but line 3 monitors up side by side, put the same photo up on all three of them, and your jaw will hit the floor.

Further complicating the color issue is that of color spaces and where the image will be displayed. If you open an image in photoshop, PS will give you by default an accurate view of the images color in that working space. BUT if you save the image and open it on the same computer in your web browser or the windows image previewer, you'll probably see a completely different set of colors, because those programs are operating in a different color space then the one you might have used when you edited the image in PS. I'm afraid that I am not qualified to give a good tutorial on color spaces, you'll have to look that one up later on.

[kenstogie]

I have noticed the differences. At work I hook up that monitor to my work laptop and I can drag the pic back and forth or display it at the same time on both displays. For now I am going to get a handle on PS. I have to add my buddy has a spyder system that I will be using soon.
Posted via Mobile Device

[spectrrr]

Originally Posted by kenstogie

I have noticed the differences. At work I hook up that monitor to my work laptop and I can drag the pic back and forth or display it at the same time on both displays. For now I am going to get a handle on PS. I have to add my buddy has a spyder system that I will be using soon.
Posted via Mobile Device

There ya go! my spyder has served me well over the years. For super accurate color you're supposed to recalibrate every few weeks, but every 2-4 months is generally "close enough for government work"

only other thing to consider is knowing your monitor's responsiveness to whites and blacks. Some monitors lose their flexibility in those ranges, so for example, everything 92% up to 100% white will simply show as white. All the calibrating in the world wont fix that, all you can do is know your monitor and how well it responds. (take a photo and make it really bright, then compare it on your monitor and any friend with a high end calibrated display. That's how you can figure out the difference). My laptop is HORRID at this... I avoid any kind of photo processing on it because everything looks blown out, even though it's not.