Photography and Photoshop tips

Processing Trends

2009-01-18T22:15:00.000-08:00

As with most forms of art, there are trends in photography and photoshop. I've decided to list whats in and whats out, just from my observations:

Out: Heavy vignetting

Adding vignetting became popular a couple of years ago and unfortunately many people seemed to think the heavier the better. Luckily I have noticed more of a move towards light vignetting or none.

Airbrushed skin

yes I have started to see a trend in magazines towards completely natural skin, wrinkles, pimples and all. I'm in two minds about it, while I don't want to see anyones pimples, and I believe people have the right to want their skin to look good, for too long it has been going far too overboard. Right next to the magazines with natural skin was one with a woman with super smooth, bright white/overly dodged eyes. Ah. People are getting more skeptical about photography now and I think when people start questioning if every photo is photoshopped, even photos that aren't, there has to be a turn towards the more realistic.

IN
HDR
Love it or hate it, HDR is here to stay. I myself have moved away from it mostly because I only ever did single raw hdr processing (not true HDR) and the new photomatix made this difficult. Anyway there is loads of bad HDR out there, mostly people going way overboard with the effect. But there is some great HDR, have a look at these examples (note the light vignetting on the image below).

Mare d' autunno - The sea in autumn by Gigapix

There is another relatively recent trade to use HDR to create high contrast, detailed and moody black and white images. For example

The Gibbet by Simon Crubellier

Portraiture:
Muted/soft tones
A big one this last year or so...I find muted tones difficult to mimic. I think a lot of it is in the lighting. Another one that often ties in with this is smooth, white skin, as well as a trend towards cooler skin tones.

Bride Dolls/Ed magazine by Simon Pais-Thomas

Untitled - Chrissie White
this one is also an example of backlighting/haze. Note how she is looking out towards the edge of the frame, generally a composition no no. I like it...it creates tension in the image, and its good to buck the trend. Would it be better if she had turned her head the other way? you be the judge.

Backlighting/haze
I've seen stronger examples then the one I posted below, but I love this picture.

Opus by Fredirico Erra

Bokeh
Added bokeh in processing is a common lately. I've mostly noticed it in portraits. You can get bokeh packs from deviantart resources and add them in much like a texture I assume.

Eyes Wide Shut by Mishgon

Cross Processing/Contrast
What started out in the 80s by processing slide film as colour negative, is now mimicked in photoshop. Compare contrasty portraits with soft/muted ones.

Summer Smile by Sekator

And finally
Film - particularly medium format/square format
In the race for more mega pixels and faster shutter speeds, a lot of people have turned to film. Superior image quality, little quirks that develop a following (such as the holga) and purely the enjoyment of taking time to take and process an image, film is making a comeback.

Berries in the Parking Lot - by Nome Alice

Take the time to view the photostreams of the people I have posted above. Most of them are photographers who I follow because of their interesting images.

Smoothing skin - intermediate

2009-01-06T18:29:00.001-08:00

One of the main ways people smooth skin on the internet is through the use of blur (in fact I have an earlier tutorial covering that). While its "ok" for something you need done quickly, it tends to be overdone and is personally one of the techniques I really hate used frequently (with over dodged eyes). So in this tutorial I will cover a different way of smoothing skin, one thats more like painting over it.

Here is the link to the stock image http://fetishfaerie-stock.deviantart.com/art/Wrapped-in-Lace-I-107514794

Step 1: First I cropped the veil slightly off the original. Then duplicate the background and use the clone stamp tool to remove minor blemishes/pimples/dots as below.

Step 2: Next I went into liquify and made the tip of the nose smaller, using the first tool on the list to drag it up. You can skip this part if you want. If you use it, make sure you don't over do it. The second tool takes you back to your original. Here is what I ended up with below.

Step 3: This is the tricky part, use the eyedropper tool on the left to select areas of the skin and paint that colour in a NEW BLANK LAYER above using a soft brush. Do this for the various different coloured areas, example, one layer for the right cheek, one area for the forehead. Pay careful attention to the areas with pores visible. If you think you have over done it, lower the opacity of the brushed layer. I had about 5 layers over all, left cheek, forehead, chin, right cheek, nose. I then created a new background layer with my adjustments by pressing ctrl+alt+shift+e. Turn this layer on and off to compare with the original layer, if you have gone too far, lower the opacity of this one. Here is mine below.

Step 4: Next select the patch tool from the left toolbar and use it to select areas left over that aren't smooth, example in the corner of her eye. Create a loop around this area using the patch tool (make sure source is selected up top) and drag the loop to a smooth area nearby. This will copy and smooth and smooth skin onto the original bumpy skin. Be careful not to select areas of high contrast such as eyelashes/hair as this will create dark smears when the smooth skin is dragged over. Make sure when you are done, you compare your layer to the painted one below. This is my patch layer below.

Step 5: Select your edited layers and merge them together to create a final edited image. Compare this to your background layer. Go back and readjust anything if you need to. Next select the dodge tool and lightly dodge the eyes, as well as using the clone stamp tool to remove the red veins. Don't go overboard!

Step 6: Finally look at the image carefully. Walk away and come back if you can. Ask a friend. Whats wrong with the image? In my opinion the skin is too pink and too dark and the veil is too cream so to fix this I added a hue/saturation adjustment layer, lowered the saturation a bit as well as increasing lightness. I painted over the veil with a soft white brush on a blank adjustment layer and set it to soft light.

Step 7: I still don't quite like the final image so I added a curve adjustment layer for more contrast. Then I selected the eyes, copied them to a new layer and selected high pass (set to soft light) to sharpen them. I also added a colour balance adjustment going towards blue to cool the overall image a little. This is the final below.

Original

My final comment on this after taking a lunch break and coming back is that my skin is probably too smooth. Professionals often will get the texture back from the original skin and paste it in so it resembles real skin a little more. I am not sure how to do this so I will leave the tutorial as it is. You can always lower the opacity of the edited layer to retain some of the original texture too.

Start to finish - high contrast black and white with liquify

2008-12-22T17:28:00.000-08:00

Its been a while since my last update, to be honest I find the blogger template awkward and too narrow, but hey I got a free one with my gmail.

Anyway since I've got nothing to do at work I will write up a tutorial on high contrast black and white, complete with liquify and dodging.

For this tutorial I am using the stock photo from little sheep here http://littlesheep-stock.deviantart.com/art/16-100443763 . You can use any photo with this tutorial but I chose this one specifically because of the large catchlights in the eyes.

Open the image in photoshop and duplicate the background (ctrl J). Composition wise, her eye is a little too close to the edge of the frame, so go to edit - free transform and turn the image clockwise a little so the eye and nose are a little straighter. This cuts away some of the lips so I made a layer mask (in your layers box at the bottom). Click the rectangle and paint away with black the parts of the original image you want back. I painted back the lips and hair, and slightly above the eye so it blended into the image. I ended up with an image like this

Click on the layer mask - add layer mask, merge down your edited layer (ctrl E) then make another duplicate (Ctrl J). Often when people take close up shots of their faces their noses appear prominent, mostly due to the nose being the closest feature to the lens and thus it ends up bigger then normal. To fix this (or you can leave this step out), it can be done 1 of 2 ways. One way thats often used is to use the loop tool, loop around the nose and free transform it, making it slightly smaller. The second way (which is often easier) is to use liquify, go to filter - liquify and use the pucker tool, with a brush size that covers the whole nose. Its easy to over do it here (the reconstruct tool lets you go back to the original) so keep your brush pressure at around 40. I ended up with this image, after masking back the skin that had been moved.

Note there is barely a difference from the original, we don't want to give her a new face all together, just make things a little more in proportion. If you want, you can also use the liquify tool on her eyes (using the bloat tool) to make her eye a little bigger. They often do this in magazines but I don't like to use it too much because it often makes the eye blurry.

Now we can move on to the converting to black and white stage.

Press ctrl atl E to make a new layer from the previously edited ones. Make a new black and white adjustment layer with red at 100. Note how dark the whites of her eye are now. Ctrl E to merge this with your new edited layer. Now we have a black and white picture of the girl. Click ctrl J again and go to the dodge tool - highlight - 7% and dodge the whites of her eye, particularly the catchlights. Go to midtones and do this again, focusing on the whites. Use the burn tool to burn in the areas you feel like, I focused on the lips and her eyelashes below her eye. Sometimes I like to dodge lighter areas of the hair also. Next to smooth the grey tone in her face, create a new blank layer, get a soft brush at a low opacity and paint over her face with white. Go to filter - Gaussian blur to smooth to white over her face. Set this layer to soft light and erase any bits you don't want. This is my image so far.

Add a new curves adjustment layer for more contrast, you can do a simple S shape curve on the graph or just play with the settings. Paint back the areas you don't want too dark with a black brush. Go to edit - fill - 50% grey and then go to filters - noise - add noise - monochromatic - 10% or so. Set this layer to soft light (this adds some grain to the black and white, but you don't have to do this step). Finally merge all the adjusted layers (select them in the layers tab and click merge all) then Ctrl J your final b+w edited image and sharpen it by going to filters - high pass - 5-7% and set this layer to soft light. Look over your image to see if it needs any more dodging or burning, its also good to walk away from the computer or ask a friend for their opinion.
This is my final image.

Compared to the original

Talented Young Photographers

2008-09-02T22:27:00.000-07:00

I had a post a while back for talented photographers from flickr, but my eye has been on these young photographers for a while, they are very talented and still in their teens! Its a little disheartening really to us..older..photographers ;)

Anyway here is a list of photographers to watch, 18 and younger (in no particular order).

Firstly I'll mention 3 girls whose work influence each other, at least the overall mood and tone of their images have similarities, as well as the dominance of self portraits, and quirky shots of the everyday.

Lenaah - a 15 yr old from England, her creative self portraits and portraits of friends always amaze me in their originality. In a world where everyones ideas are borrowed or inspired by someone elses, she finds a way to be different.

Chrissie White - a 15 yr old from the U.S, again like Lenaah, she has a mix of self portraits and portraits of friends, but I especially like her selfportraits. Anyone who has attempted the flickr 365 photo a day project knows how challenging it can be to take a self portrait a different way a day, but Chrissie has managed to do so. Similiar to Lenaah, a lot of her photos picture the every day life, with a quirky bent, a darker undertone.

Dorellena - a 13? yr old from the US, she first came to my attention with an incredible self portrait of herself in bathers in the snow. Her photos are less processed then the previous two girls, however they are no less creative. While she doesn't upload frequently, she is still one to watch.

Emma - a 14 yr old from the US, and one of the most well known faces on flickr (her mum is another talented flickr photographer), Emma is a photographer in her own right. While the previous flickr girls photos often have a darker tone to them, Emma's photos are about friends, family and the joy of being young in suburban America, and thus much of her work features bright colours, cheerful children and beautiful bokeh.

A. Denomay - a 17 yr old Canadian boy who impressed me long ago with his fashion portraits, he raises the bar of what fashion portraits should be like. Even in fashion magazines I see a predominance of ideas being copied, photoshopped skin, blurry out of focus shots. But this guy does none of that, and still creates great images. Destined for great things!

Lastly, Matt Caplin, an 18 yr old from my city, Perth (Australia) whose beautiful portraits of his younger sisters are captivating. In todays digital world, Matt shows why film can be better. Sadly he doesn't seem to upload images very often anymore, however his photos are still worth going back to every now and then.

Anyway, these are the young photographers I have been watching for at least a year and whose work continues to amaze me (and fill me with jealousy!). Theres probably lots more kids out there, I'm sure soon there will be 10 yr olds taking portraits and photoshopping at an adult level, but for now, these teenagers are it and give an interesting insight into their lives.

Studio Lighting

2008-06-24T06:41:00.000-07:00

I avoided making a tutorial about this area because I am not really into the technics of studio lighting, usually I just set up the lights and do whatever, and don't even use a light meter. But I am still guided by the basic studio lighting set ups, this website gives a good summary of basic studio lighting techniques.

In my picture below, I used a butterfly set up as the main light to his left (the white arrows coming from above). This is actually a 3 point lighting technique, as the light bouncing off the wall filled in some light on his cheek (the one in shadow).

You can see this light reflected in his eyes, it was an ellinchrom studio light shot through an umbrella. To outline his head I positioned another studio light further way from him to his right, and shot it in the angle as outlined in the arrows. Have a back light is essential to reduce flatness in your portrait, its good for giving your portrait more depth, as well as outlining the hair of those with dark hair. Angle is important too, generally I shoot from below the chin with a male as it gives them a squarer, more rugged jawline. If you do this for a female it often creates a pudgy looking double chin, and your female friends wont appreciate this! There are many many face portraits shot above the head for a female, it narrows her face and makes her appear more attractive, however its not necessary to shoot like this, I often shoot females from below the chin too.

Even on a white background, a backlight is important in your portrait. If the light reflected from your background is stronger then your fill light, then a rim light is created, as in the picture below (there is some strange flaring from my lens in the middle).

i tried to draw a diagram showing how the lights were positioned in this shot, imagine its a view looking above the scene (terrible I know).

And finally, if you are getting confused but light set ups butterfly and 2 point what then buy yourself a simple flash that you can take off camera. This is very important, I had to buy a cord that allowed me to do this, yet I still cannot put my flash further away then a metre or so. Below is a picture I took on the weekend with my flash attached to my tripod to my right, with the sunlight from a sunset acting as a giant softbox for the second light.

an update

2008-06-03T22:22:00.000-07:00

Well I hadn't posted for a while because tutorials are a lot of work and I had enrolled fulltime in the Graduate Certificate of Photomedia at Edith Cown University, as well as still working part time.

It was good having access to a studio and lighting equipment, I was able to learn a lot more about studio lighting and off camera lighting.

I'll post some images below that I took for the course, if anyone is interested in specific tutorials for any of them (example, composite images, lighting techniques) I will make one. Below is a selection of a few.

Portraits

Poster

And a flash movie trailer to go with the poster here http://atre.deviantart.com/art/Hard-Rain-86459412

Composite (from stock)

Thanks to all my friends that helped model this semester: Justin, Chris, Elise, Clint, Joanna and baby Noah.

Impressions of the d300

2008-03-20T04:23:00.000-07:00

Yes I bit the bullet and bought a d300. It was $1995 on ebay, how could I resist that? my main reason was I have been dabbling more in portraiture these days and I have to manually focus everything, which is a pain. I wanted a camera that could focus better.

Though I have only had the camera a few days and not had much time to play with it, I have taken a couple of test shots with it that I will upload.

My first few pictures were taken to see if the high iso is as good as people have been saying.

Below is the same image taken at f1.8 with the nikkor 50mm at night under tungsten light. Note the differences in colour, they were all taken with the camera's auto everything, however I manually adjusted iso and shutter speed. I've cropped the original as they would of been too large, click on the images to see a larger version.

iso 3200, f1.8 1/10

iso1600 f1.8 1/5

iso 640, f1.8, 1/5

iso200, f1.8, 1.6 secs

Note there is slight noise visible at iso200, though the shutter speed was 1.6 seconds.

To compare a daylight shot, I took this today.

This is straight from camera, the only thing I did in photoshop was change it to srgb, reduce the size and convert to a jpg. Note the nice colours (however a polarize IS on). Images in my d70 were always a little washed out (see tip 11: landscape retouching) even though I had it set to the most saturated colours in camera as possible. Sharpness is excellent also, my d70 always required a fair amount of sharpening (even though I had it set to camera to enchanced). Though im not sure if this is merely sharpness of the difference between 6mp and 12.

Here is the above image with a selection of it cropped, from the full size image

I am not sure if its visible in the above image, but there is slight digital noise even at iso 200.

Conclusion
I wanted to take a few more shots before I made a blog post about this camera however I did so anyway, perhaps I will update this post later if my opinions change but my initial impression is as follows:

The d300 is what the d70 should of been 3 years ago. Perhaps in another 3 years $2000 cameras will be sharper, have less noise and full frame. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would give this camera an 8. It is very good but not amazing. I loathe digital noise with a passion, and would of liked to have seen none at least at iso 100-400. 3200 iso is pointless, unless you really NEED to take a shot in near dark, without flash. To spy on your neighbour, for example. Who is sleeping with the president.1600 is ok..much better then the d70, which was pretty much unusable above 200. The d300 this can be stretched to about iso800 for best results.

This camera makes me wonder what the canon 5d11's iso 25600 will look like. I mean there is no point bragging about high isos if well, things still look like shit.

Just my two cents. lol. If you are looking for an upgrade from a "prosumer" dslr then this is the camera for you. Other people I would recommend waiting for a full frame camera, as the canon 5d mark 2 is rumoured to have a starting price of $3500 (USD) as opposed to the d3's (current) $5000 AUD, and is meant to be available mid 2008. Though if you are an avid nikon user with nikon lenses you would like to retain, then this is the camera for you, unless you wish to wait for the d3 to lower in price. Perhaps when the canon 5d mark 2 is released the d3 will become more affordable for consumers.

update: a week later. The high iso is better then I initially mentioned, I went to a pub and the images it took at isos 640 were very good, even iso 3200 was usable, though I wouldn't upload it or print it out this high.

Other dislikes however are: on/off button feels soft and flimsy, holding the camera one handed to take self portraits, its easy to turn the button off. My d70's buttons were quite stiff, even the arrow key pad was harder to move then the plastic feeling d300's. The d70's remote (ML 3) is not compatible with the d300 as it has no infra red. You must use the relatively expensive nikons MC 36 . There is a cheaper ebay option the Phottix wireless remote, however both require you to plug a cord into the camera, which annoys me. Live view while novel at first, doesn't quite feel right, and pressing the shutter to focus turns the screen off.

So still a few annoyances with the camera. However it still has an excellent focus system (and even has focus tracking) as well as a very good representation of colours. In bracketing mode it takes pictures incredibly fast.

How to NOT photoshop

2008-03-11T19:50:00.000-07:00

Came across this hilarious blog today. While very funny, its a good representation of how careful you should be while photoshopping, as even the smallest errors can be picked up by other people. I say this but I often make mistakes in my flickr photos and leave them, the main ones being cloning mistakes and splodges from paintbrush tool I cant see but other people can.

I think this link is a good lead up to my next tutorial, the perfect portrait , which will cover not only skin and sharpening, but adjusting faces (remember that famous dove ad?)

tip 12: Composition

2008-02-14T06:09:00.000-08:00

Composition and lighting are an important aspect of photography, though I can never decide what is more important. Too much light and our shot becomes too bright and suffers from harsh shadows, too little and we have to resort to long exposures (though this is not necessarily a bad thing, in terms of landscape photography). Take this shot for example. Without the wonderful lighting it would simply be a guy holding a guitar on a beach. Without the use of a flash, the shot would suffer from harsh shadows.

However this tutorial is not going to be about lighting, mostly because I only use natural light, but rather, composition.

Wikipedia defines composition as the plan, placement or arrangement of elements or ingredients in an art work. It contributes to a response from the viewer; the work of art is said to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye if the elements within the work are arranged in a balanced compositional way in other words, arranging the elements in your photo to look the most pleasing to the viewer.

Whilst many people argue that composition rules are unnecessary because rules are made to be broken yadayadayada. These people do not know how to take photos.

As an example of successful composition, I will use images from the talented Peter Bowers.

Firstly, click here for a brief explanation of the rule of thirds.

Next is an example of one of Peter's pictures overlayed with a grid (centre) and minus the boat (right). Note how empty the image seems without the boat. The boat is an excellent use of foreground interest, made better with the angle its in and the positioning.

If the boat had been dead centre, it would have split the image into two, and lost much of the reflection. At the angle its at going from one corner to the centre, it leads the viewers eye into he centre of the picture, as does the shape of the clouds.

Leading lines are are useful composition element also. They tend to lead the viewers eye along them, and ideally they should lead into the picture to where the rest of the image is, as below.

both of these shots use a leading line as its main compositional element, however the left one is probably a more successful image because the viewpoint is lower, the wall or whatever it is takes up more of the photo and thus is able to draw more of our attention. Also the skyline is larger, allowing us to focus on it after. The right is better in terms of colour, however, and also has its merits. I've included the shot below as an example of excellent use of natural leading lines.

Notice how the log at the bottom points in the same direction as the clouds, this shot is also a great example of symmetry. The reflection matches whats above the horizon, and the snow covered log points towards it. Overall its a wonderfully balanced shot.

Another example of leading lines is in my own picture below. Note how the leading lines converge into a vanishing point in the distance. The car adds foreground interest. It also has geometrical elements.

Curved lines are another compositional element used. From wikipedia In photography, curved lines can give gradated shadows when paired with soft-directional lighting, which usually results in a very harmonious line structure within the image.. Its easier to find curved lines in the natural environment then it is is straight lines. Below is an example of a curved line used well in the image.

In the right example, notice how each section contains something different in the image, and particularly how the curving lines lead to the centre of the image, and onto the sunset.

notice how in all the above pictures (except the first) the horizon is not mid centre. In landscape photography, a mid centre horizon rarely works unless its dividing the image into two halves, to create symmetry, such as in the image below.

Finally when it comes to placing objects in your scene, try to avoid placing it dead centre, as many tourists do (also called the bulleye effect). Placing your subject (be it person, foreground rock, boat) to the left or to the right will make it much more pleasing to the viewer. Below is a good example of perfect composition.

Note how the sun lies off centre to the right, the lines from the shadows lead to the sun (the focal interest) and the horizon lies in the top third of the picture.

There are still several other elements that could be mentioned, however this post is long enough already, and these are the main ones to remember. Essentially rule of thirds and composition elements are there to guide the photographer. There are many things to photograph if you are out photographing landscapes, and its easy to get bogged down with just shooting anything. If you take the time to consider where the best spots are then your images will be more satisfactory, in the end.

Thanks again to Peter Bower! check out his pictures here. One thing I failed to mention is that he predominantly shoots in evening light. This is known as "the golden hour", the half hour before sunset and the half hour after, where the light is most beautiful. Learn to use light to your advantage as well as composition!

For an interesting link explaining the golden section (I just learnt about it yesterday) click here.

Tip 11: Landscape Retouching (beg/int)

2008-02-04T04:48:00.000-08:00

Landscapes aren't particularly hard to Photoshop, as really there is minimal work to be done, unlike portraiture. Well it depends if you are creating an image from a number of pictures, but I dont do this because it seems kind of deceitful to the viewer.

Anyway this will be a quick and easy tute on how I Photoshop my landscapes. I don't use it on every landscape, of course, but it is good for enhancing the colours in sunsets.

step one: open your image, I took this one earlier tonight.

Pretty ok, but the colours are kind of washed out (I like to overexpose a little so to get detail in the ground). A grad filter would enhance the sky colour, but what about the water? So to fix this duplicate the layer, and Gaussian blur this layer, at about 20. Then set this layer to soft light. I get something looking like this.

If you are pressed for time, you can leave it like this, or add a simple curves adjustment. But I will continue because thats one thing I got plenty of, time ! Anyway. I dont like the blurred vegetation so add a layer mask (the rectangle like box below your layers) and paint away with a black brush. See tip #7 for a simple tutorial on how to use masks. If you are not familiar with layers, simply erase away the blurred vegetation. Keep the brush and eraser to an opacity of 30-40% or so so you dont go too far. When you are happy with the result, add a curve adjustment layer (the circle thing next to the rectangle below curves) and add more contrast to your image to pop the colours. This tends to darken the vegetation so again I add a mask and paint away the part of the land I dont want too dark.

This is basically it, but if you are really a perfectionist like me, press CTRL+ALT+shift+e to make a new merged layer. Then go to filter>other>high pass and set this to about 5 and set this layer to soft light. This is a sharpened layer. You can reduce the opacity of this layer if its too sharp, and if you only want to sharpen the vegetation, again mask out the sky. This is the end result.

Very basic really. You may want to tweak the colours a little, maybe add a vignetting layer (filter>distort>lens correction>vignette darken), maybe try a texture layer if you want (see tip #8 for using textures). But thats basically it!

Talented Photographers on Flickr

2008-02-01T07:18:00.000-08:00

ehhh no new posts for a month :( . To be honest the tutes are a lot of work, and I dont like to work unless its for $$$$.

Anyway, I will post a simple tute this weekend. But until then, I would like to list some of the photographer's on flickr whose work I really enjoy following.

First I will begin with talented people who deserve more views!
pastel kitchen caught my eye with this interesting photo

I found more of her stream featuring this young girl, that I assumed to be her daughter. But its actually the photographer herself! At only 13 years old, her pictures are worth a look.

I believe photoshop and photography should go hand in hand, and a person that is capable of producing works of art from his pictures using photoshop, is flamejob. a photographer living in Melbourne.

Originally catching my eye with the above pic, Skorj has the most interesting polaroid images of Japan. His titles are equally as interesting.

Check out moaan for a beautiful bokeh filled gallery. His pictures make me long for a noct-nikkor!

While I dont want to seem biased by mentioning people I know irl, Junglejuz deserves a plug for his incredible panoramas. Why travel the world when you can experience exotic locations through his pictures!

Finally, I will link some people whose work never ceases to amaze me. These people don't need more views, but take a look anyway.

brettwalker - beautiful, emotional black and white portraits. If I have any qualm, he never responds to people who comments, and he never shows his exif info, or tells people how he does his shots. Photography should be all about sharing!!
tabu - incredibly interesting, mostly black and white street shots from Adjara, which used to be part of Russia.
Rui Palha - again, interesting black and white street shots from Portugal, however he has the rare talent of knowing how to use HDR.
Ollik - beautiful landscapes from Finland, every shot of his is in square format.

That concludes my list, of course, there are many more talented photographers out there.

A great place to see talented photographer's work is to refresh explore on flickr

The Scientist Photographers Group's Annual Charity Project

2008-01-01T20:47:00.001-08:00

The Scientist Photographers Group's Annual Charity Project
Originally uploaded by hhsc_2000/Greg

The scientist photographers group (a flickr group I quite enjoy) has made a 2008 calender with proceeds going to Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors without Borders.

I was lucky enough to have one of my pictures included (the bottom one, third from the right). The pictures were selected from the winning entries of the weekly admin run selection competitions.

tip 9: Infra red techniques

2007-12-29T08:01:00.000-08:00

Infra-red has to do with infra red wavelengths of light. I am not going to go into the scientific specifics here, but a good summary about infra-red and its application to photography can be found on wikipedia.

There are several methods of capturing infra-red light using a camera. I will outline the methods I know of below and my experiences with them.

Film: haven't been able to get a hold of any infra red film anywhere, unfortunately.

Filters: There are several IR filters out there, one of the "best" being the hoya r72, which I bought on eBay for $50. The problem with filters is that it increases exposure time and its neccessary to use a tripod while taking the shot. Exposure time at a minimum is 1 second. Another downfall of the long exposure times is motion blur (though this can add to the effect). Below are some pictures I took using the r72 hoya filter (note the camera captures an image that is mauve in appearance, I converted these to monochrome in photoshop and painted in the blue.)

Converting a DSLR
As outlined in the Wikipedia link, removing the film on a digital SLR's sensor is one way to go about taking infra-red shots. Further explanation of this method, with example pictures can be found by clicking this lin k.

Digital editing
The easiest method of creating infra-red images with a digital camera is through editing in photo shop. There are many tutorials on the internet available but for this tutorial I will use a method I came across in a magazine. The images that work best with this tutorial are ones that predominantly feature green and blue, and so I will be using the image below taken by GMB

I could run through the tutorial used, but it isn't my own so to make things simpler I have turned into a simple action, which you can download here . Save the action onto your hardrive and go into the action toolbar in folder, click load action and select the download IR.atn and click play (the green arrow).

So using this action, the image above is converted to this image below:

As you can see its a little dark, but all of the layers made by the action are adjustable, so by clicking off the levels layer and reducing the grain layer to 50%, we get a more pleasing image closer to what infra-red using film looks like.

I like to keep the blue of water and skies however, so to do this duplicate the background layer and place it above all your IR layers. Set it to soft light and it looks pretty. However for this tutorial reduce the background copy layer to whatever looks good, I used an opacity of 50%. Next add a layer mask and using a soft black brush carefully paint away the coloured vegetation. If you make a mistake simply paint back with a white brush. Its easier to zoom in and painstakingly go around the vegetation with a small brush, however as the image I am using is rather small, I did the sloppy version below:

Next, to give the vegetation a snow-like effect, click CTRL+ALT+shift+E, create a new layer (set to soft light) and using a soft white brush, paint over the vegetation. A soft white layer set to lighten works pretty well also. Lightening the overall image with a curve adjustment layer as well as adding a soft blur layer using Gaussian blur gave me the final image below:

Comparing the new Nikon Cameras

2007-12-15T18:11:00.001-08:00

Recently nikon released the d300 and its first full frame dslr, the d3. We all know how fast the technological world moves, my trusty nikon d70, which I have been using for 3 years now, is a relic by dslr standards. I would like to point out though, that I have never had a problem with it. And I have dropped it many times, got it wet, and its been through several insanely hot Aussie summers, as well as traveled to Japan and New Zealand. I call it my workhorse (ok sometimes my baby).

Anyway, much as I love my camera, its getting to the stage where its a little dated. For a while now, I had been waiting for a 12 megapixel nikon camera, rather then upgrade to the 10 MP d200. And I got it with the d300/d3 release. However, the d3 proves to be such a beautiful camera that now I am stuck debating my longing for it over what I can afford.

In this review I will compare the specifications of the d200/d300 and d3, in case people don't understand what it means when you look at them. Though people considering buying these cameras should know all this stuff anyway.

Lets look at the nikon d200 compared to the d300.

The d200 is 10.2 mp opposed to the d300's 12.3. This really isn't a big deal. The Canon mark III is 21 MP!!!. The d200 uses a ccd sensor while the d300 uses cmos. I think this is something to do with the quality, I only glanced at an article about it a while back. And sorry I dont get paid for this, so you can look it up yourself ;). In the d300 they have removed the option of shooting jpg+raw. Maybe because no one ever uses it. Haha. The metering is the same, the usual spot, centre and matrix. So far not much is different.

Moving onto ISO. The d200 can shoot at iso 100-1600 while the d300, 200-3200. Whoa! Whilst I have always longed for nikons to shoot at iso 100, and I have no idea why they would remove this in the d300 (perhaps to allow the iso to be increased to 3200), 3200 is a bit of a jump. That said I always shoot in iso 200 as much as I can help it, because I cant stand noise. However I have read that the grain at high isos in the d300/d3 is not very noticable. Exposure settings are the same in the d200 and d300.

Onto LCD size. My old d70's is 1.5 inches. This is too small. The d200 is 2inches. Better..The d300 is 3 inches! double the size of my d70!.

Another notable upgrade is frame per second (fps) my d70 shoots at 3 fps in continuous mode, the d200, 5fps and the d300 6. So its not a big jump from the d200 to d300, but from the d70 it is. Bracketing here I come!

Weight. Sadly I have just noticed both the d200 and d300 (at 1.8 pounds) are heavier then my d70, which I already thought too heavy. You may not think weight is overly important but when you are lugging your camera around...when you are trying to take self portaits and your puny arm is shaking with holding your camera in their air. Well then.

So overall if I had the d200 I wouldnt upgrade to the d300, though I have read reviews of people doing so. If you have the money to blow, sure, go ahead, though if it was me I would sell the d200 to put money towards the d3!

Lets have a quick look at this camera.

12 mp. no biggie. CMOS sensor again. Same exposure settings as the d200/d300. Iso available from 200-6400! (and I read you can shoot at 100 in some sort of mode). This itself is pretty awesome. But heres the clincher, the sensor size is....23.9 x 36mm opposed to 15.8 x 23.6mm on the d300/d200 (however the sensor on the canon mark III is bigger). DSLR's that dont have a full frame sensor (equivalent of a 35mm film camera) have a crop factor when using film lenses (1.6x). Nikon has built lenses specifically for its DSLR cameras to factor this in (known as the DX series lenses). Be aware of this when buying a d3, that any DX lenses would be wasted on the full frame sensor. As well as the sensor, the d3 shoots at 9-11 fps in continuous mode. On the downside its heavier then the d200/d300, at 2.7 pounds.

But does all this justify the $7k (AUD) price tag? Personally I wouldn't know, because I haven't seen a single d3 or d300 being sold in stores here, so am unable to test either of these. And unlike ken rockwell, I don't have the er..financial means to buy them anyway. ha...

Thus this review is merely a comparison of these cameras' technical specifications. Sorry!

If you are interested in the new canon cameras, check out the canon mark 11 and mark 111.

For a great site giving in depth reviews on many cameras, have a look at
http://dpreview.com

Celebritiy before and afters

2007-12-14T08:57:00.001-08:00

Came across the site today http://www.hemmy.net/2007/05/25/celebrities-before-and-after-photoshop

A lot of them are pretty ordinary touch-ups, some sharpening, curves, etc. But it seems the close ups of faces are the most photoshopped. Check out this example of Nicole Ritchie below

Ever taken a self portrait? zoom in in photoshop and its just plain scary! That said I personally think the plastic look of heavy airbrushing prevalent in magazines is going overboard. Certainly, no one wants to see pimples and other er..imperfections. But freckles are cute! It really makes you wonder if society is that obsessed with beauty.

(or maybe I am just jealous because I don't know how they do it)

kidding!

Go here for more examples of celebrity photoshop goodness!

http://www.iwanexstudio.com/

An infinitely productive day

2007-11-20T06:08:00.001-08:00

An infinitely productive day
Originally uploaded by JungleJuz

What my coworkers like to do at work...

This image was created using a mathmap plugin for gimp

A Guide to Successful Landscape Photography

2007-11-10T19:31:00.000-08:00

Following is a guide of mostly common sense things that I have found useful while out taking photos. Of course I often don't follow my own tips, and that is why I always get bitten by bugs.

1. Stay alert and aware: Landscape photography usually involves walking in isolated locations, so it is important to be aware of the dangers you may face. Take a friend with you if you can and they can often hold your gear for you as well! Be aware of the location, most suburban places after the sun sets aren't the safest place to be, especially if you are alone. As well as possible dangers from other people, stay alert to other risks you may face i.e snakes, trip hazards if you are out in the dark. Always make sure you tell someone where you are going, and carry a phone with you.

2. Be prepared! Be prepared for the situation. For short walks as long as you wear the right clothes for the conditions you should be ok. Keep extra clothes in your car in case things change by the time you get to your chosen location. For longer hikes, take water, food, a raincoat if you think its necessary and sturdy shoes. Old shirts and cargo shorts work for me in summer, as well as sandals that can get wet (boots for longer walks). Its always handy to wear something with pockets that you can place items like lens caps, keys, spare filters. Suncream and bug repellent are other essential items.

3. Take the right gear: There is nothing worse then the feeling of dismay when you see something you would like to capture, but didn't bring the correct lens for it. Ensure you bring your essential gear, but balance out what you deem neccesary, as you will carry it all yourself. I usually carry only my camera with an attached lens, for landscapes the sigma 10-22mm, with a circular polarizer attached and a ND8 filter and 81b (warming filter). Take a tripod, unless you think you can balance your camera on rocks, your bag, or your shoes, as I have before. The general consensus is the heavier the better when it comes to tripods, but again its as much weight as you are prepared to carry. Your images may suffer from camera shake with a lighter tripod, however.

4. Keep an eye on the weather conditions: If you are planning on shooting at sunset, watch the skies during the day. The best sunsets are those with some clouds in the sky, too much can lead to dull sunsets as the sun becomes hidden behind the clouds, no cloud (which is often the case where I live) leads to boring sunsets as the sun itself is too harsh to shoot until after it has gone below the horizon. Often I wont bother going out if I think the sunset will be weak however many times I have gone out expecting a dull sunset only to be surprised. Heavy clouds can still give you dramatic cloud shots, even if the sunset is dull. No clouds can give you great reflection shots and strong colours in long exposures, as below.

5. Choose your time for going out shooting: Landscapes can look dramatically different depending on the time of day. I personally do not shoot at all during the day due to the sun being too strong. Half an hour to an hour before sunset (I usually use this time to scout out a good location in my chosen area) to half an hour to an hour after sunset is my favourite time of day. You get the sunset and you have time for some long exposures after sunset. Unfortunately it is often the time when the mosquitoes come out (see tip 2).

6. Composition! composition!: While out in the big wide world it is easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of things to take pictures of. Don't fall into the trap of being snap happy! Remember some basic rules of composition and take your time to look around and find something suitable. Foreground interest, Z and S curves, leading lines, and rule of thirds I consider very important for clarifying shot composition.

7. Be patient! You may be cold, hungry, tired, bitten by mosquitoes, but if you get one or two decent shots out of it, then to me its worthwhile. Many landscape photographers will set up in a place they think will be their perfect shot and wait for hours until the light is right. Well thats not me, because I cant stand still for very long and prefer to see what other places have to offer. Think of it this way, you might get the perfect shot by waiting for hours in one spot, but what about all the other places you may have missed out on? Its up to the individual photographer in the end, of course.

These guidelines may seem simple but follow them and you will wear the same self satisfied smile I do in the shot below :D

tip 8: Using textures (intermediate)

2007-09-21T09:20:00.000-07:00

Textures are a really easy way to do something different to your standard photos. It can turn a dull picture into something artistic, but easily can be overdone. The secret is to find the right photo and add the right texture(s).

In this tutorial I will show how I got this picture

from this one.

Bit of a difference, huh?

To be honest I am not too positive how I created the first shot because I never save PSD files, though I should. But I can make something close to it.

Firstly I opened my image in photoshop and cropped it to a square format. Then I duplicated my layer and blurred it using gaussian blur and then set this layer to soft light (see tip #2). Next I added an adjustment layer (channel mixer set to monochrome and this layer set to multiply). After that my image looked something like this:

Now the fun part starts. Find some FREE textures on the web. I like to use flickr because its a good resource for ripping stuff off. With permission of course. I used two from nessters popular ttv selection, notably the first two in his set here nesster's textures. Save them, open them in photoshop and paste them into your picture using ctrl+c and ctrl+v. Set the texture layers to soft light over the top of your original image and you end up with an image looking like this.

Flatten the layers (right click a layer and select flatten) and then duplicate the flattened version and again gaussian blur + soft light. To get this:

Tip 7 Using masks (beginner/int)

2007-09-12T22:14:00.000-07:00

Masks are a useful tool I have only begun to use this week, since they always appeared complicated to me. I have used the eraser method for years and using a mask is not dissimilar, however with a mask you have more control over the editing process, and you can make edits in the future without having erased away your image.

Begin by opening a new image and duplicating the layer. Select the little rectangular in the bottom of the layer box, it has a circle in the middle of it. This will create a white mask. If you click this button while holding alt, this will create a black mask. Add some effect to your duplicated image to see how the mask will effect it. I set mine to screen. Select a black brush and paint away to reveal the layer beneath.

You can reduce the opacity of your brush for a lesser effect. The best part about using masks is that if you don't like what you have made you can paint back the opposite colour to get what you originally had.

Now try using a black mask. Click the mask button while holding alt. Make sure you have your mask selected not your layer. Now change the layer to screen. Paint white on the layer using airbrush and see how it paints away the normal looking image to reveal the screened layer beneath it.

I was able to create the following image using radial blur and a few simple masks.

some updates

2007-09-10T05:34:00.000-07:00

Things I have learnt this past week:

in regards to the previous tutorial, if you press ctrl+f after the radial blur part this will remove the scattered dots look that may be apparent in some of the blur. You can press ctrl+f repeatedly until the dots are removed.

Select>all selects the entire image.

I have been messing around with light ray tutorials.

I have started using masks! in fact thats what the next tip will be.

Tip 6: Using radial blur to create motion (intermediate)

2007-08-26T07:03:00.000-07:00

This is something I have only discovered recently, so I am not too familiar with how to use it, but for this tutorial we will give it a go anyway. GMB has kindly allowed me to use his picture for this tutorial. I will be using his image below, to create the one below it.

Begin by opening the image and cropping to remove the distracting trees on the right. Create a duplicate layer and go to filter>blur>radial blur. Select Zoom and make sure the focal point of the zoom is where you want it, in this case where the road begins. Since photoshop doesnt let you select the point off your image, this may take some trial and error. Set the zoom to as much as you like, I used an amount of 63. When you are done you will have an image looking like this

You can leave it looking like this but I chose to erase some of the blur around the focal point, using eraser and opacity set to 30%, so we end up with something looking like this.

next to make it dark and moody create a new monochrome channel mixer adjustment layer and set it to multiply. It makes the image a bit too dark so lighten it by reducing the opacity of this layer , I set it to around 70%.

Finally for an added effect, tilt the whole image by pressing ctrl alt shift e for a new layer and then going to edit>free transform.

As you can see the edges dont quite line up so to fix this use the clone stamp tool to carefully clone the image to its borders. And then finally you get something like this. Easy right?

tip 5: Portraits (intermediate)

2007-08-26T02:32:00.000-07:00

Now we have mastered some photoshop basics, lets move on to something more advanced, editting portraits. As a woman I like pictures of me online to look as good as possible, as Im sure any other woman does. Lets start with a stock photo, here I have used one from Deviantart.

http://dust-stock.deviantart.com/art/window2-62902157

begin by duplicating the background layer. We will start by using clone stamp tool or healing brush tool (for newer versions of photoshop) to edit out the spots on her face. Select clone stamp, select an area of the girls face close to where the spot is, hold down alt to select the patch of skin to clone from, release alt and clone away. Make sure your paintbrush is a small size. Ctrl + or - zooms in and out of your image. Here is mine:

I also added a sharpening layer (see previous tip) using the high pass filter set to 5. Press ctrl+alt+shift+e to duplicate the sharpened layer.

Blur this layer and set it to soft light as per tip 2. If you find the shadows too harsh select the eraser tool and erase away. Since I like the keep the eyes sharp I often erase the blurred/soft light eyes layer. Following that make a new layer to dodge and burn as you like, I dodged some of the harsh shadows on the girls face and pasted some white into her irises.

Looking better but still not ok (to me). I dont like how her eyes are quite blurry so to fix this (my lazy way) save the whole thing as a jpg and open it again in photoshop as a new image. Now lets try another PS sharpening technique, go to filter>other>custom and select the settings there. Everything will probably be too sharp but I like how the eyes are now so I erase what I dont want sharp, or you can simply lower the opacity of the whole layer until you get something you like. Play around until you get something you like, remembering the basics from before. I added a light blur layer to her face as well as dodged her irises just a little again until I got something like this

For a final bit of zing I created a channel mixer layer, set it to overlay, and reduced the opacity to 70%, see the final version here http://atre.deviantart.com/art/Tutorial-63299831

Tip 4: Sharpening (beginners)

2007-08-26T01:38:00.000-07:00

There are many ways to sharpen. I use Photoshop CS 2 so there are a couple more methods then the older versions.

We will begin with the most common method of sharpening before CS 2, using the Unsharp mask.

Open your image, here an old one of me jumping over Hiroshima. Right click the background layer and select duplicate layer.

Next go to Filter>sharpen>unsharp mask. Play around with the slider bars and see how it effects your image. I used these settings:

note how the buildings in the back have been sharpened. You can reduce the opacity of your layer if the effect is too strong.

Another sharpening method is using the high pass filter in CS2. Make a new background layer as before and go to filter>other>highpass. Set the slider to whatever you like, here i have used 5 pixels. Click ok then set the sharpened layer (now looking grey) to soft light.

Tip 3: Using channel mixer (beginner)

2007-08-25T03:34:00.000-07:00

Channel mixer is the preferred method for changing a colour image to black and white. There are other methods of course, however it is the one I use so I wont go into the others.

Open your image and select a new adjustment layer in the layers box. Click on channel mixer. Or select Image>adjustments>channel mixer. In the channel mixer box, select monochrome (bottom left). You can adjust the blue, red and green channels if you want, but try not to adjust them too much from their settings. Click ok. Now you have a black and white adjustment layer. I find this method results in a too flat image, since I love contrast. To fix this, create a new adjustment layer as before, and select either curves or levels. Play around with curves or levels and see how it effects your image. Below is an example of an original image, with channel mixer adjustment and the third image with channel mixer and levels.

Tip 2: A subtle glow effect (beginner)

2007-08-25T03:27:00.000-07:00

This technique is so basic but can be used anywhere, from landscapes to portraits, but especially works best for smoothing out wrinkles and blemishes in portraits and adding a little contrast.

Duplicate the background layer of your image (right click the background layer, select duplicate layer).

Select Filter>blur>gaussianblur. Set gaussian blur to any sort of radius, usually about 30 pixels. Your layer will be blurred. For a subtle glow, reduce the blurred layer to an opacity of, say, 40%.

Dont like the cheesy glow effect? then set your layer to soft light, with an opacity at 100%, or less for a less strong effect.

From left to right, original image, image with guassian blur at 40% and normal opacity, blurred layer set to soft light with opacity 100%

Tip 1: Dodging and Burning (beginner)

2007-08-25T02:59:00.000-07:00

Photoshop has its own dodge and burn tool however I prefer not to use it because it can be a bit jagged. Instead try painting using airbrush and white for dodging (lightening) or black for burning.

To simplify:

Open your image in photoshop. Go to Layer>New>Layer. Name this layer "dodge"
select brush tool, ensuring foreground colour is set to white (for dodging, black for burning).
In the layer channel set opacity layer to "softlight" (you can also paint away in normal and change to soft light after).
Paint away the area you want to lighten.
Because the layer is set to soft light the dodging wont be strong. You can change the layer to normal for more lightening, and reduce the layers opacity accordingly. You can also duplicate the layer you have dodged for more dodging of the same area.

You can also try painting different colours into your image to replace current colours. Remember a normal layer will be too strong a colour and the opacity must be lowered accordingly, usually to something like 10%. Soft light is a more subtle colour change.

Have fun and paint away!

Here is one I prepared earlier. I also added a channel mixer layer (see #tip2) and copied the picture layer, placed it above the channel mixer adjustment layer and set the eye layer to overlay. This gives a nice gritty, desaturated and contrasty look.

to this