Photoshop Magic

Posted on January 28, 2012 by rkg_wp

 

I am totally in love with Photoshop. It is an amazing program that gives todays photographer creative tools that wasn’t even imagined ten years ago.

One of my favored features is contact aware which can be used with a variety of tools. I use this to spot retouch my images, or to sometimes manipulate an image to create the look I wanted, but wasn’t able to capture. This was true of the example below. I had an assignment in Italy, and spent a very, very short time in Venice. I wanted to show the wonderful cancels in a classic way. Unfortunately a power boat sat in the middle of the image, but I took the shot anyway. When I got home I opened my digital darkroom and simply (well, with a bit of work) removed the offensive boat.

To accomplish this I used the lasso tool, the magic wand, and the patch tool. First I created a duplicate layer. Then working at 100% magnification I carefully made my selections, and then shift/deleted the selection I had made – each on a separate layer to give me an escape plan. Occasionally you have to redo the deletion. Each time you do it will be somewhat different until you get what you are looking for. Anyway this is the before and after images.

If you found this helpful (or just interesting) please [like] it, and share it with others.

Canel In Venice, ItalyCanel in Venice, Italy

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When One Isn’t Enough

Posted on December 26, 2011 by rkg_wp

 

I recently started looking at ways to combine images to create unique photographs that either tell a story, or that make a somewhat uninteresting photograph something you might want to look at twice.

The first example is a series of four shots I took at the US Opens of Novak Djokovic playing tennis. In reviewing my shots I saw that I had been able to capture his serve. However, each individual photograph didn’t really convey what was happening. So I decided to combine the four shots in order to tell the story. To combine the four images I brought them into Photoshop from Lightroom, and sized the images so that they all were the same. Then I opened a new file (File > New) at the same resolution of my images with the size that would accommodate all  four images with a little extra white space. I copied, and pasted each image into my new file, and adjusted the placement so I had just a slight white space between each. I than cropped the final image, and made my final image adjustment – saved – and done!

 

 

 

 

The next example is a photograph I took on a trip to the Finger Lakes region. I liked the lines in the image, but it really wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be. So from Lightroom I opened the image in Photoshop and flipped it horizontally. and saved it. Now I had one image going left, and the other image going right. I than opened both images, and again, made a new file that would hold both images. I than copied and pasted the images to create the ‘V’ shape and saved it. Once I had my completed image I used Nik filters to enhance the colors. By the way I always sharpen at the end after I’ve determined the final size of the image. Hope this post inspires you to take a second look at your images, and see if there are images hidden in them you can expose.

 

 

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Retouching A Portrait

Posted on November 10, 2011 by rkg_wp

In this post I though it might be interesting to share with you how I go about retouching a portrait photograph of a woman who doesn’t want to look her age. Truthfully, that’s how I feel, but this isn’t about me. For this example I’m using a photograph I took of Judy Collins at an outdoor concert on Governor’s Island a couple of years ago.

This is the before and after:

Before

 

After

 

The first thing I do is soften the focus on the entire image. I use Nik Sharpening Plug-In, but you can use your own method. With Nik I soft focus everything, click on the ‘brush‘ which creates a layer mask, and simply apply the filter exactly where I want it to be soft.

Then I work on the eyes, and mouth. There’s an excellent ‘how to’ article in the October 2011 issue of Popular Photography (pg. 42) which gives you the step-by-step – this is an overview.

All of these directions are done on selections that you first make using the Lasso tool.

  • 1) First work on the eyelashes by using a very tiny brush, and drawing them so they are very clear, and sharp.
  • 2) Now you can work on the eye-shadow area using Hue/Saturation in a adjustment layer.
  • 3) Add contrast to the eye with a Curve Layer, and then using the Soft Light Blend Mode via the opacity to create the look you want.
  • 4) To brighten the whites in the eye use another Curve Adjustment Layer.
  • 5) Finally go back to your method of sharpening and sharpen the eyes.

Please let me know if this was helpful, and, please share other methods you may have discovered with me.

Posted in How To | Tagged , , , | 109 Comments

Sharing Your Images With The World

Posted on October 10, 2011 by rkg_wp

Most passionate photographers want to share their work with others. Truthfully, I never did till 2005 when I decided it was time to start leaving footprints. So I joined photography groups, submitted images to juried shows, and created a website. And this is where my story begins. I used Dreamweaver to create my site because I wanted to have a specific look, and control over the entire pages. The challenging part was creating the portfolios that contained my images, and giving it the same look as the rest of my site. Not an easy task, but I did it. Only problem was that when I wanted to update my portfolios with other images it was very time consuming.
Enter into my life Lightroom 3 with its wonderful web module. But how to move the page Lightroom created into Dreamweaver, and still maintain my website look. Then I got an email from NAPP announcing a free video from the Kelby Training site which showed you how to do this – well almost do this. The video was great, but didn’t cover the issues involved with doing this with a hmtl portfolio – only flash. Because Google isn’t ‘flash’ friendly I want my images to be in a hmtl page. But it did give me a jumping off point, and after a week of hair raising fiddling I did it – and it’s great!
If anyone out there needs help please get in touch with me, and I’ll do my best to explain how I did it.

 

 

Posted in website development | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Digital Photography The Good – The Bad – The Ugly

Posted on September 7, 2011 by rkg_wp

With film your limited by the number of exposures a roll of film provides – in 35mm it’s 20 or 36 exposures – and then you have to rewind, and load a new roll of film into the camera to continue. This actually has an advantage – you tend to be more careful with what you shoot. Each frame is special.

With digital your limited by the size of the card your storing your images on, and the size of the image based on your camera – the larger the megapixels of your camera the larger the file it makes. Since cards now come in very large sizes some photographers use the camera as they would a machine gun. Not my kind of photography, but I’m not judging (too, much).

With Film your limited my the ASA of the film you’re using. ASA refers to the amount of light needed to render an image. The lower the ASA (25 ASA) the more light is required.

In the digital world you can adjust the sensitivity of each exposure via the ISO. Each time you double the ISO (100 to 200) you reduce the amount of light you need by half. This allows you to shoot in a variety of situations from bright sun to indoors without changing anything but the ISO. Of course, with a higher ISO (400+ ) you run the risk of increasing noise in the image (noise looks like grain in a film image), but this can be reduced in the digital darkroom.

This brings me to the biggest difference – the darkroom. In the world of film you have to work in literally a dark room, with only a red light to guide you when you make a print. Your limited to burning, dodging and toning in the darkroom, and retouching is done on the final print. you can adjust tonality by the way you develop the film, but it’s not an exact science, and requires a lot of practice,

The reason I have totally embraced the world of digital photography is the digital darkroom. I shoot only in RAW, and I recommend anyone shooting seriously to do the same. This gives me complete control of almost every aspect of the image. The only thing you have to remember is that while in film you should expose for the shadows, and develop for the highlights – in digital you expose for the highlights, and then make adjustments in the digital darkroom. specifically, you expose for the brightest area in an image where you still want to retain detail.

In my next post I’m going to talk about workflow so please stay tuned.

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Welcome to my world!

Posted on August 1, 2011 by rkg_wp

This blog is all about photography. I am going to share my experience and knowledge with the hope that you will do the same with me.
My first article talks about infrared photography. This will be followed by an article on landscape photography, and so on. Over time we will be covering other photographic subjects which hopefully will interest you.
I will also look to link to other blogs that cover other photographic issues.
In the future I will also offer articles on digital darkroom techniques including the use of Lightroom, Photoshop, and Nik software.
One of the things I thought might be useful is a section where photographers can list equipment they are selling, or looking to acquire. Emails can be sent to me as a contact point. Not sure yet how this will work, so any ideas you have are most welcome.

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