Wednesday, December 4, 2013
How To Easily Restore A Photograph
Take a look at the image on the left, down in the lower
right hand corner. There you'll see the
words "Circa 1887". Now think
about how careful you'd have to be if someone handed you a 126 year old photograph
and asked if you could restore a family heirloom, a piece of history, the only
known shot of great great granddad. The
paper would be as stiff as an overly starched shirt and would flake tiny pieces
off with just about any movement. As you
can see, the photo, at some point was folded and probably stuffed into
someone's pocket or wallet. Putting the
photograph into a flatbed scanner would probably do more harm than good. I don't know if shooting it on a copy stand
would give enough detail to resurrect a usable starting point. How one image became the other is actually
easier than you might think. To find out
what was done to convert one image into the other, hit the "Read
More".
Read more!
Monday, November 18, 2013
A Friend Has That Currier & Ives Look Down Pat
I never begrudge anything anyone can do in Adobe Photoshop
or Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I'm always
either trying to learn new things or figure out how someone did something. I recently saw a couple images by a friend
and frequent reader of these posts (Hi Ed).
He's come up with an old timey, Currier & Ives type look to some of
his landscapes. Very, very interesting
look. He asked me for some pointers on
how to extract objects from images. I
think we need to trade tips. Today's
image is an attempt to take a shot at going for the old time feeling. It works, just not as good as Ed's. Couple of things. It is an HDR image with quite a bit of post
processing in both PS and LR/ACR (Adobe Camera Raw). With the Creative Cloud version of PS (PSCC)
you can use ACR as a filter. As long as
you make the Layer a Smart Object you can pop back and forth into and out of
ACR as often as you'd like. Great for tweaking
things as you go. You doing something
"straight" to an image, jump over to ACR. Doing anything that needs a Mask, bounce back
to PS. Compositing images, use PS. Just remember where your base image came
from, 'cause that's where it'll go back to when you eventually do a Save and
Close. (Notice I said Save and not Save
As.) If you use LR as a DAM tool
(Digital Asset Management) and you go to PS to do something that requires PS
you should probably use "Copy With Lightroom Adjustments" (CTRL E to
get to the dialog box and then use the top option). That eliminates the need to do the old
fashioned "make a copy of your Background Layer just in case"
thing. People used to do that to protect
their original image. If you "use a
copy" you're not touching the original, so you don't need that copy of the
Background Layer. When it's time to Save
your creation it'll be put back right beside the original images (or set of
images in the case of HDR or panoramas.
But, what's up with today's image.
To find out, hit the "Read More".
Read more!
Labels:
acknowledgement,
explanation,
general interest,
LR5,
PSCC,
Smart Objects,
technique
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Wednesday Q & A: Where The Hell Have I Been
It really hasn't been too much of question in the real
world, but for people who are readers of The Kayview Gallery it got some
attention. The gallery is featured on Alltop.com under the Photoshop
section. One of the things that happens
there is that you sort of slide down the pecking order unless you post
frequently. After a couple weeks you
tend to drop off the bottom of the page.
When I recently posted the shot of a Santa Claus looking guy (my
brother-in-law), the gallery was back to being included on Alltop. That's where a couple of notes came from
asking what had happened. What happened
was that we moved. Now, that shouldn't
explain a four month sabbatical, but that was it. Our explanation of why we were selling was
that we had an eight room house and we used three. The kitchen, the bedroom and the
playroom/den/tv room, whatever. The boys
are gone, the excess rooms were either dust or junk collectors, we aren't
(never have been) into liking yardwork or snow shoveling, so what was the point
of staying. Today's image is a cell
phone shot of the front of our nice new (to us) condo. Now instead of eight rooms and using three,
we have four rooms and use three. The
condo actually has more room than the house had before the addition. The master bedroom suite is smaller than we
had at the house (but then again most master bedroom suites [in
"normal" houses] are less than 650 sq. ft.). The living room/dining room is larger, the
kitchen is about a wash and the second bedroom now (for the moment) collects
dust and junk (er, useful items used for photography). To find out why it's taken almost four months
to get back to some resemblance of order, hit the "Read More".
Read more!
Friday, November 8, 2013
Guess Who My Brother-In-Law Is?
Yeah, that's my brother-in-law. My wife's "little" brother. We were over and he'd asked me to find something online for him. I'd found something I thought might fit the bill, so I handed him my iPad. That's the "main" lighting for today's image. He was sitting "Archie Bunker like" in his favorite chair. I knew the light was dim and cranked up the ISO on a Nikon D300 to 3000. (Far above what "should be" a reasonable sensitivity setting to avoid noise.) The shutter speed was 1/15 sec, hand held. It should have been a mess of a shot, but, with a little work, came out okay. There's a couple other things I should "confess" to. The background was his dining room, his shirt was blue and he's actually eighteen years old (no, that last piece is not true). To find out what became of the dining room and the blue shirt, hit the "Read More".
Read more!
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Wednesday Q&A: Photoshop Smart Objects - Try This Test
Adobe Photoshop Smart Objects are still the number one query
that brings readers to The Kayview Gallery.
We've had a dozen difference posts (check out the archive list in the
right hand column) discussing Smart Objects covering a period from 2011 through
today’s post. Today’s “image” is a
little test I’ve created that you can replicate to prove to yourself that
CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-E doesn’t work and Smart Objects do. Once you’ve done the four finger salute to
the left side of your keyboard, you’re stuck.
Sure, you can go back under the red line you see in the middle Layers
Panel in today’s image. You can make all
sorts of changes to the Layers below.
Only problem is that they won’t be reflected back to the Layer above the
red line. The red line is “a line in the
sand”. You can’t cross it. Take the test. Set up a couple Layers that look like the
Panel captioned “This is the basic layout for our discussion”. You don’t have to follow it exactly. Do whatever you’d like to set up a test. Follow along with what you’ll find by hitting
the “Read More”.
Labels:
Adobe,
CS6,
explanation,
general interest,
Photoshop,
Question,
recommendation,
Smart Objects,
technique
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Wednesday Q&A: A Tip For Shooting Sports
What! The title says “A
Tip For Shooting Sports” and today’s image is a couple of flowers. Trust me, it’s only there to illustrate a
point. Doris has her pet orchid. She tends that little plant zealously. She has a special place it has to sit. It’s sort of like Sheldon (The Big Bang
Theory – US television) explaining why he has a designated place to sit on the
couch. Just the right amount of sunlight
(we’re back to discussing the orchid), not so much as to overheat the plant but
enough so it can thrive. At the right
height and distance from the window to maximize the rays. A slight breeze from walking into and out of
the bedroom. A reasonably constant
temperature in all seasons. Just the
ideal (or as close as you can get in our house) spot for its needs. I stole the sucker. I wanted to play with an 85mm macro. Only problem was the tripod was in the trunk
of Doris’ car. Oops! Oh well. Shoot hand held and see what happens. One thing that comes to mind is that the
depth of field is going to be severely limited due to the large aperture needed
to let in enough light. To see how these
flowers relate to sports photography, hit the “Read More”.
Read more!
Labels:
Adobe,
equipment,
explanation,
general interest,
Lightroom,
LR5,
Opinion,
recommendation,
technique
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Using Photoshop Alpha Channels To Control Composition
Today’s image demonstrates what happens when you screw
around with an image too much. I was
trying to get rid of the people in the background but give a hint of people “in
the stands”. The fact that it didn’t
work out well doesn’t subtract from the point of today’s discussion. Typically when I do something like today’s
image the mask is one big thing with all the elements selected. The ball, the batter and the catcher picked
out as one Alpha Channel. Today’s image
has four separate Alpha Channels. In
this case, an Alpha Channel is a Saved Selection. The Selection process is not important. Make your Selections any way you’re
comfortable with. If you’re reading this
and using Adobe Photoshop Elements, keep reading. PSE has the ability to save Alpha
Channels. The big difference between
Adobe Photoshop whatever and PSE is the fact that PS gives you access to the
Alpha Channels and PSE doesn’t. The question
would be: “do you really need to have that access?” Hit the “Read More” to find my thoughts on
the subject.
Read more!
Read more!
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Just A Quick Phone Camera Shot
Yesterday we were down in NYC. On the way home we heard on the radio that
there were thunder storms on the southern shore of Long Island. As the crow flies it couldn’t have been more
than eight or ten miles from where we were on the West Side Highway. Above us there was nothing but blue sky. The radio was talking about torrential rains,
lightening and high winds. We were headed
north, so we looked over our shoulders and in the mirrors. Nothing.
We live about sixty miles north of the city, in Connecticut. For the entire drive the sky was clear, until
the last mile north. We made the turn
onto Route 84 going into our home state.
To the north of us were serious clouds.
South of the highway, clear skies.
It wasn’t like going from clear, to overcast, to cloudy, to serious
clouds. Today’s image is off my phone’s
camera. The white’s are blown out, but
it gives a fair interpretation of what we saw.
What appears to be a right angle is actually a right angle. You can see the clear blue sky with a
distinct edge.
I just thought you might get a kick out of an interesting
weather phenomenon. Have a good day.
Read more!
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Wednesday Q &A: Privacy? Are You Kidding?
Frequent readers of the blog know I’m retired from a little
west coast startup named Intel. (Yea,
that Intel.) All this flap over privacy
cracks me up. Let’s go back to “the old
days” of 1999. Intel had just come up
with a great technology for the “new” Pentium III processor. Each chip would have (basically) a serial
number. This would be a great boon to
large companies for the management of computer assets. The IT Department could do all sorts of things
to keep the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) down, manage the software on each
computer, target updates to specific machines and streamline troubleshooting
problems. Only problem was that every
chip, not just the ones in large companies, would have the serial number
(identifier). Conspiracy theorists went
nuts and claimed “Big Brother” had arrived and everything you did would be
subject to being tracked. Intel backed away from including the ID'r code. Scott McNealy,
then CEO of Sun Microsystems, was asked by a reporter (Stephen Manes) to weigh
in about the noise. His quote was (and
remember this was 1999) “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”
Things haven’t changed. You have
zero privacy. Every time you make a
phone call, send an email, tweet what you had for lunch, post an instagram, or use
a credit card, someone is gathering information. To see an example of what can be done and why
you have no privacy, hit the “Read More”.
Read more!
Read more!
Labels:
acknowledgement,
equipment,
explanation,
general interest,
rambling,
rant
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Wednesday Q & A: Does LR4 Have Alpha Channel Masks?
The easy answer to today question? No.
The harder answer would be yes.
The first thing that needs to be discussed would be what is an Alpha
Channel, and the second would be how are they used. I did a post a while back about a similar
topic. It was about Alpha Channels in
Adobe Photoshop Elements. The answer is
very close to the answer to today’s question.
Full blown Adobe Photoshop CS XX (whatever) definitely has Alpha
Channel. The big difference between PS
CS and PSE and I’d think LR5B is that you have access to Alpha Channels in PS
CS. If you have the default Layers Panel
open, take a look at the tabs. It goes
Layers/Channels/Paths. A Channels Panel
is available to you. The first thing you
see (if you’re working is an RGB mode) is four “Layers”. RGB/Red/Green/Blue. RGB is the composite of the other three. The Red Channel is a B&W (there’s also an
option to see it in color) representation of everything that contains even a
little bit of red in the RGB image. If
you click on only the Red Layer you’d see a B&W image. Full Blacks, full Whites and shades of
gray. Same thing happens when you click
of the Green and Blue Layers in the Channel Panel. As you click through, the B&W
representations will change. If you
think of it as a painter would view his/her paints, you see which colors and
what amounts the painter would have to mix her/his colors in to get the desired
end color. If you were to put a big old X (make one leg Black and one leg
White) across the Red Channel (any Channel you choose) and then look at the RGB
Layer you’d see a rainbow of colors. What’s
going on? You’ve changed to amount of
Black and the amount of White in the Alpha Channel. To find out what happens in PSE and LR, hit
the “Read More”.
Labels:
acknowledgement,
Adobe,
explanation,
general interest,
LR5B,
Photoshop,
PSE
Monday, June 3, 2013
105 Shots Of A Stick And One Bird
How much of your camera do you actually use? I’ve had my Nikon D300 for five or six years
now and I’m still finding new things it do to play with it. I’ve played with Auto Bracketing for years to
create HDR images. I have multiple Nikon
speedlights so I can use Nikon’s CLS (Creative Lighting System). My latest thing to play with is the built in
Interval Timer. We put a bird feeder out
in back of the master bathroom over the winter.
(It wound up being much more of a squirrel feeder rather than a bird
feeder.) It was about four feet away
from a window, just slightly above the level of the upper pane when
opened. We set up a stick for birds alit
on before dropping down to the perch on the feeder. All was set.
I put the camera on a tripod on the counter and focused on the
stick. With the focus set to manual I
knew it wasn’t going to “hunt” and would stay on the stick. With the Interval Timer on the D300 I could
set the number of shots, the time between shots and when I wanted the sequence
to start. Well, I wanted the sequence to
start immediately (and that’s an option), so I clicked the shutter and walked
away to do other things. What happened to all those shots? Hit the "Read More" to find out.
Read more!
Read more!
Labels:
acknowledgement,
equipment,
general interest,
Opinion,
recommendation,
review
Friday, May 31, 2013
HDR in Photoshop or Good Lighting In Camera?
There’s a difference in the two shots that make up today’s image. One is right out of the camera and the other is a five shot HDR image. The one out of the camera is a RAW image with nothing (nothing) done to it. The other, like I said, is a fully developed HDR image. Can you see the difference? Sure. With a little work, can I make the OOC (out of Camera) shot look just like the HDR image? Yep! A couple of slider moves in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Beta (or LR 4 or LR3) and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two. Does the OOC RAW image have some special lighting applied that the HDR image doesn’t have? Nope. The RAW shot is one of the brackets used to make the HDR image, so the lighting is exactly the same. The images are of a steam locomotive at Steamtown in Scranton Pennsylvania. It’s on the shadow side, on a bright sunny afternoon. So where’d the light come from? To find out, hit the “Read More”.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
The Passing Of A Really Great Photographer
Does he look familiar?
Do you know any of his work? Probably
not. His name is Bob Devine and he died
over the weekend. Today’s image is from
somewhere near 1974-1975. The young boy
with him is our oldest son, who would have been 43 this year. The shot is typical Bob. He was a teacher to anyone he’d go shooting
with. It didn’t matter if he was with
peers, kids, interested “newbies” or just friends.
The last time I saw Bob was last year at a local camera club. He just happened to stop down and gave the club’s president some medals the club had won back in the 60’s and 70’s. I didn’t recognize him and asked him for his name. He said “I’m Bob Devine”. I replied “I’ve got your lights”. The message didn’t connect and he couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. He said “what?”. I again told him I had his lights. His retort was “who the hell are you?” I told him I was Tom Peterson. He cracked a smile and said if I didn’t get the lights back to him pretty soon, he wouldn’t loan them to me again. I borrowed them back in the 70’s, so I’d guess him hadn’t missed them that much. They were pretty much the thing back in the 70’s. Hot lights with daylight balanced tungsten bulbs and 10” reflectors. That’s what passed for “studio lights” at the time. As an aside, I called my wife over. Bob took one look at her and said "Doris, why haven't you aged at all?" The guy was smooth.
The last time I saw Bob was last year at a local camera club. He just happened to stop down and gave the club’s president some medals the club had won back in the 60’s and 70’s. I didn’t recognize him and asked him for his name. He said “I’m Bob Devine”. I replied “I’ve got your lights”. The message didn’t connect and he couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. He said “what?”. I again told him I had his lights. His retort was “who the hell are you?” I told him I was Tom Peterson. He cracked a smile and said if I didn’t get the lights back to him pretty soon, he wouldn’t loan them to me again. I borrowed them back in the 70’s, so I’d guess him hadn’t missed them that much. They were pretty much the thing back in the 70’s. Hot lights with daylight balanced tungsten bulbs and 10” reflectors. That’s what passed for “studio lights” at the time. As an aside, I called my wife over. Bob took one look at her and said "Doris, why haven't you aged at all?" The guy was smooth.
We used to travel together to shoot and judge camera club
competitions. The two of us and our “third
amigo” (Ernie Stonebraker [real name]) would go off for the weekend and blow a
boat load of film. One trip to Maine,
between the three of us, we had something like 120 36 exposure rolls of
film. Typically it was either slide film
or Tri X B&W film. We used to scare
the hell out of camera clubs when we’d walk in to judge a competition. We’d ask what the scoring range they used was
and then tell them we would be using the entire range. Back in the 70’s the range was usually three
through nine.
Bob mentioned, when pushed, that he had driven stock cars “back
in the day”. I read his obit. today and
found out he was the USAR champion a couple times. The stuff you never knew.
Well, he was a buddy.
As far as I’m concerned, you don’t have to see someone on a weekly basis
to be a friend. People I call friends
come dear to me. I have all sorts of acquaintances,
but the number I call friends are very few.
Bob was one of the best. Peace to
you my friend.
Read more!
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Testing Topaz Labs' New Clarity Pull-in
It’s new, it’s on sale (until 5/30/2013), the demos look
good, but is it all it’s cracked up to be?
Today’s image is of one of the twenty-two named waterfalls in Ricketts
Glen State Park in Pennsylvania. We went
there over the Memorial Day weekend specifically to shoot some of the
falls. As you may have guessed from the
color of the reflections in the water, today’s image isn’t from that trip. The falls in today’s image is probably as
close to the road as you can find. When
we first “discovered” Ricketts Glen we had the place to ourselves. Over this past weekend, we didn’t. The parking lot for this falls was full,
full, full. The parking place for the
next set was also chock-a-block full of cars, vans, SVUs, pickup trucks and
campers. We drove to what we thought
were the undiscovered gems that were basically pull-offs on the side of the
road, that gave access to a couple of interesting spots. Nope, jammed packed. That’s why I pulled up a shot from a fall
trip we took in 2011. Had to try
something to test Topaz Labs’ Clarity.
To see what I found, hit the “Read More”.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Making Your Own Brushes In Photoshop
A friend was checking out a few of my recent images and
asked how the backgrounds were made.
Just flip down through the last couple of posts (you might have to dig
down four or five) to see what he was looking at. I explained that the backgrounds came from
Brushes made from shots of clouds I had taken.
To get the effect you see in the images, cloud brushes are just about
the ideal thing to use. Clouds aren’t
solid. Clouds have texture. Clouds are readily available. If there aren’t any today, look out the
window tomorrow. Sooner or later you
find some interesting clouds. I keep Folders
of clouds. I Keyword every cloud image
so I can pull them up quickly in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (any version). I pop them into scenes that have bald skies
and I use them to make Brushes for creative backgrounds. Clouds are useful little suckers. Today’s (main) image is a Brush I made this
morning to be able to capture the steps to make a cloud Brush. To follow along, hit the “Read More”.
Read more!
Read more!
Labels:
Adobe,
class,
CS6,
general interest,
painting,
rambling,
technique,
technique tutorial
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Wednesday Q&A: Is It Time To Put The Kelby Group On The Shelf?
Based on the title you may think this post will be a rant
about Kelby Media, Photoshop TV, Kelby Training, and The Grid and their support
of Adobe Photoshop CC (PSCC). It’s
not. They make a lot of good points
about who will benefit from PSCC, who might want to think twice about it and who
should probably stay away. No, it’s
about the fact that even the esteemed folks working with Kelby are beginning to
show their age as far as Photoshop goes.
One thing that bugs me is how they’re missing the point on Smart
Objects. They say ‘oh, I open all my
images in PS as Smart Objects’. They’ll
do a couple things and then say that their next step is to use the antiquated
CTRL/ALT(OPT)/SHIFT/E salute to put a composite on the top of the stack before
going on to other steps. Doing the
C/A/S/E thing breaks the link between the Smart Object and the original RAW
image. I don’t understand why they think
that’s the way they should go. Drives me
nuts. To find out how it makes me crazy,
hit the “Read More”.
Read more!
Read more!
Labels:
Adobe,
CS6,
Opinion,
Question,
rambling,
rant,
recommendation,
smart object,
Smart Objects,
technique
Monday, May 13, 2013
Using Photoshop As A Planning Tool
Today’s image is more of a “my thoughts” type of thing,
rather than some sort of wonder art. It
show how I approach an image in the develop process. You only see one “markup” on the left. There were more as the image was “developed”. Why?
How? The “why” is easy. It’s to create a plan for the image and give
a set of “attack” plans. The “how” is
equally easy. Even though all the work
of the image was done using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Beta (LR5B), the
planning is done with Adobe Photoshop CS6 (any version of PSCS or PSE could have
been used). The only reason for using an
application with a Layers function is to be able to put separate thoughts on
separate Layers. Each Layer was “assigned”
a different color for its Pencil Tool (B).
The Pencil function in PS or PSE is found grouped with the Brush Tool
(B). Using separate Layers lets each set
of thoughts stand only or they can be seen as a whole (as in the markup). To check out the sequence of thoughts, hit
the “Read More”.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Wednesday Q&A: Photoshop CC - Yes, Or Kick It To The Curb
Today’s image is another that’s just eye candy. I might offer a paragraph at the end, but the
news out there about Adobe Photoshop CC is far more important. So, Adobe’s going subscription for either the
whole shebang (all [almost all] Adobe applications) for $49.95 per month or
$19.95 on a per application basis. I use
Adobe Photoshop CS6 and (at the moment) Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Beta. I’ve kept up with all the updates since Adobe
Photoshop 7. I don’t use any of the
other Adobe applications. No In Design,
no Illustrator, no Premier, Muse, etc. I
understand that LR will continue to be a consumer product, not subscription (at
this time). It’s come down to being
available for $79.00 at most outlets in the USA. Version updates (CS3 to CS4, CS4 to CS5, etc)
have been about every 18 to 24 months and have cost $199.00 for each version. That works out to somewhere between $8.00 and
$11.00 per month. Adobe has a one year “special
offer” for those who are up to date (using CS6) for $10.00. That works out right in the ballpark of what
we’ve been paying for the past ten years or so.
If they make that a permanent subscription price for plain old PS (not
an Extended Version), I’d sign up today and happily pay by the month. I’ve never used 3D, I don’t believe I need
3D. If I had it available to me I might
find it to be a wonderful thing, but I don’t think so. Hopefully Adobe will figure out a slightly
more tiered pricing structure during this first year. I do have a couple thoughts on what I “might”
do if I would have to go up to $19.95 a month for PS CC only. Hit the “Read more” to find out what my
thoughts are.
Read more!
Read more!
Monday, April 29, 2013
When Can't You Snap The Shutter?
I was giving my sister-in-law a ride down to one of the New
York airports this morning and she was telling me this story about how she had
gotten in trouble taking some pictures over at the local mall. Now, mind you, she was taking pictures of the
swans swimming around in the retention ponds outside the mall, beyond the
parking lots. A security guard (???)
went over to her and said she couldn’t take pictures, it was against the
law. Yeah, right. Today’s image presents sort of the two sides
to that story. It is a photograph, taken
with a digital camera and “photoshopped” to look like a sketch. The house is the Mark Twain House at Nook
Farm in Hartford Connecticut. It’s on
private property as is the mall in this discussion. If today’s image were a “real” sketch, the
artist could have sat at the same spot, put up an easel and sketched away. (Would have been a really nice pencil sketch,
but you can probably find a hundred artists who could do it justice.) At times, the (whatever it is) Nook Farm
Association or Mark Twain Society or something invites/sponsors/encourages
artists to do “en plein air” work in the yards.
I don’t know that the mall does the same type of thing, but it’s
certainly something they “could” do. So,
the question is: Canvas? Yes. Camera?
No. Hit the “Read More” to find out
what’s up.
Friday, April 26, 2013
A Rant On Using Manual Exposure Mode On Your Camera
Raw images are notoriously dull. Straight out of the camera there’s no
sharpening, no contrast or color adjustment, no here’s Nikon’s (or Canon or
Sony or whoever) best guess as to what the finished image should look
like. Take a look at this past Monday’s
post. It has a before (right out of the
camera) and after (the lead image) and demonstrates where an image can be taken
to by developing a RAW image. Typically
photographers fall into a few categories.
Those who shoot exclusively RAW and will develop an image. Those who shoot exclusively JPG and let the
camera make the decisions. Those who consider
what they’re shooting and why and decide either to shoot RAW or JPG. If they’re shooting personal stuff that might
become a portfolio piece, they shoot RAW.
If they’re shooting a local high school baseball game, they shoot JPGs
to get the shots to the newspaper or school without needing to do additional
work. Then there’s another, rather odd
duck, sort of shooter. He/she will shoot
everything in RAW. If the images will be
developed or printed as is, they still shoot RAW. It’s rather bizarre. Another case would be something that I came
across the other night. I was out doing
some test shooting with some friends. We
have a night shoot coming up and were trying to get the parameters down. Somehow the subject came up and one of the
women said she only shoots in Manual mode.
She was very proud of that fact.
Now, she has one of the more expensive cameras out there. I don’t understand why someone would buy an
expensive computer (the camera) and then use it as if it was a shoebox. Knowing her, she’s just not that capable
enough to determine exposure just by looking at a scene. It appears she’ll take a shot, say “oops, it’s
too dark (or light)”, fiddle with the settings, try another shot and keep
going. Again, another bizarre thing to
do to get an image. I understand why she
doesn’t shoot sports. As we were shooting
she would make comments like “I was at F10, but it was too dark. I’ll switch to F 9 and try again”. Really, was she so close to a great exposure
that she was changing by 1/3 stops to get the absolute perfect exposure? No, she was closed to 3 stops off than 1/3 of
a stop. I suggested she change it by a
full stop. She said she had, from F 10
to F9. Where’s a rim shot when you need
it? (Music term, not photography.) To find out my thoughts on using manual
settings on a camera, hit the “Read More”.
Read more!
Labels:
acknowledgement,
general interest,
rambling,
rant,
recommendation,
technique
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Wednesday Q&A: Import Issue In Lightroom For A Friend
I was out with a group of photographers last night and a
friend asked me a question about importing images into Adobe Photoshop
Lightroom 4. (I believe he said he hadn’t gone up to LR5 Beta yet.) His file system is a date system, where the
first level folder is the year. The next
level down is the month. He said he was
very faithful to Keywording. If you’re
absolutely on top of Keywording you could dump all your images into one giant
folder and depend on Keywords to find any images you want. Trick is you’d have to be 100% true to
Keywording every image. Naturally you
can do it by the batch. Highlight
everything that has to do with the same subject and add the keywords to all of
them at once. You can also use the Paint
spray can found at the bottom of the Grid View to apply Keywords just by “spraying”
over images. As with almost anything
coming from Adobe, there’s a dozen different ways to accomplish a task. The issue this friend had was ending up with
a duplicate year folder filled with the same thing he puts in the folder he
created. To learn what the problem might
be, hit the “Read More”.
Read more!
Read more!
Monday, April 22, 2013
Using Lightroom 5 Beta Radial Filter All Over The Place
How do you get two weeks ahead in three plus hours? You drive back from Cooperstown New York to
Connecticut. The foliage was two weeks
behind up there. We had snow (just a
little) on the car as we were leaving Sunday morning and the temperature was
just above freezing. Brrr, for April 20th. We went to Cooperstown, home of the Baseball
Hall of Fame. You’d think that was the
reason for our visit. Nope. Cooperstown is also the home of the Farmer’s
Museum. We’re not farmers by any stretch
of the imagine. In fact, we don’t even
like doing yard work, let alone farm something.
Today’s image was taken in the blacksmith’s shop at the museum. Needless to say, it was pretty dark in
there. You can see the building next
door through the window. You can also
see there’s another window off to the left.
Today’s image “could have been done” without Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5
Beta, but it would have been harder to control.
The Adjustment Brush could have been used. The nice thing about the Radial Filter in
LR5B is the control it offers. Once you
get to the second paragraph of today’s post you’ll see how many times the
Radial Filter was used on today’s image.
Go ahead, hit the “Read More” and check it out.
Read more!
Friday, April 19, 2013
Antiquing With Photoshop & Lightroom & Nik & Topaz, Oh My
Can today’s image pass as an old photograph? Perhaps a pencil sketch? I don’t see why not. It’s neither.
It’s a typical image, shot with a digital camera. I don’t have a GPS fix on the location, but I’ve
been past it often enough that I know exactly where it is. It’s at the last crossroad going north on the
Taconic Parkway in New York. You can’t
miss it. There’s a gas station and a
diner on the east side and this barn on the west side. The funny thing about today’s image is that
it took a lot of “high tech” work to get it to look old and pencil
sketchy. There must be a half dozen
modified copies in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 Beta from where I took a copy
over to Adobe Photoshop CS6, messed with it and did a File/Save – File Close
back to LR5B. With every iteration something
was done in each program. To find out
what a couple of the flip-flops entailed, hit the “Read More”.
Read more!
Labels:
Adobe,
CS6,
Lightroom,
LR5B,
Nik Software,
Photoshop,
technique,
Topaz Labs
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Wednesday Q&A Adobe Lightroom 5 Best Guesses
A friend just bought Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 less than a
month ago. When the public Beta of
Lightroom 5 was announced the other day I sent him an email with a link to a
sneak preview and a review. I was on the
fence as to if I was going to download the Beta or wait for the RTM (release to
manufacturing) version. It took me two
days to decide I needed/wanted the features of LR5. Today’s image doesn’t look like it would have
much to do with LR5, but it wouldn’t be possible without it. At least not easily. It’s not that today’s image didn’t take a
couple trips over to Adobe Photoshop CS6, it certainly did. It’s a partial digital painting. I been slightly fixated on making
photographic images look like painting/photograph hybrid. Today it was taken to a wee bit of an
extreme. To find out was due to LR5 and
what was because of CS6, Hit the “Read More”
Labels:
acknowledgement,
Adobe,
CS6,
general interest,
Lightroom,
LR5,
make over,
painting,
Photoshop,
technique
Monday, April 15, 2013
Photoshop Brushes And Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers
Face blurred because I don't have parental permission yet. |
Read more!
Friday, April 12, 2013
Would Rockwell Use Photoshop To Do His Stockbridge Main Street?
Norman Rockwell was (is) one of America’s greatest visual
story tellers. A flat out statement. That’s my opinion of his value to the interpretation
of American life in the twentieth century.
One of his most famous works is titled “Home for Christmas” or,
alternately “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas”. There are several differences between today’s
image and Rockwell’s masterpiece. The
most obvious is probably the fact that his truly is a “masterpiece” and mine is
not. Take a look at today’s image and
Rockwell’s painting and you will see the same buildings. They’re really there (at least they’re
somewhere) along Main Street in Stockbridge Massachusetts. Today’s image doesn’t carry as far down the
street and doesn’t include the venerable Red Lion Inn, but it captures (I
think) the spirit of his painting. There
is one thing the two do have in common.
You can’t see the scene as presented in either the painting or today’s
image. The backdrop of Main Street
Stockbridge is the neighborhood behind the stores, not a vista of the hills to
the south. Basically, there are no hills
behind the buildings. It just falls off
looking like many Main Streets. In the
image you’re looking south. The hills
(they ain’t mountains by any stretch of the imagination) run north south, with
one set not too far to the east and the western set being a good distance
away. To learn where those mountains are
and how they got into today’s image, hit the “Read More”.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Wednesday Q & A: When To Use Photoshop's Eraser Tool --- Never!
I look through a lot of tutorials. Some have some interesting tricks that I’ll
incorporate into my workflow. But! I’ll tell you where I lose my curiosity. As soon as the mention of the Adobe Photoshop
CS6 (and before)’s Eraser Tool (E) comes up, I’m out of there. I might flip through to see how the
tutorialist (hey, somebody has to make up new words) gets to their finished
product, but as far as thinking I might learn a trick or two, no thanks. I haven’t used the Eraser Tool in at least a
half dozen years. As far as I’m
concerned, there’s just no use for it.
My recommendation, for anyone trying to learn something from internet
tutorials, is to have a red flag/fireworks/a distress signal of any stripe go
off at the point where the “educator” first mentions the Erase Tool. Take a look at today’s image. Obviously I’m not trying to impress anyone
with a wonderful work of art. It’s
strictly there as a means of explaining my advice to anyone using the Eraser
Tool in Photoshop. It’s a one word
suggestion/recommendation/nudge/command/shout/warning. STOP.
TO see my explanation and why I’m saying it, hit the “Read More”.
Labels:
Adobe,
CS6,
general interest,
Photoshop,
Question,
recommendation,
technique
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Wednesday Q&A: How Do You Reset "Color" In The Lightroom Adjustment Brush?
Today’s image is just eye candy. It has nothing to do with the question at hand. I’ve been asked this same question twice in the past two weeks and have recently seen erroneous answers to it from (of all people) “The Photoshop Guys”. Specifically, both Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski. Today’s post is going to be one of the shortest ever. Don’t even bother hitting the “Read More” down at the bottom of the post. There won’t be anything more to read. For the proper answer (and I know there are a dozen different ways to do something in Lightroom or Photoshop), let’s make it a little bit of a quiz. Or maybe it’s better stated as an exercise in deduction. Let’s go.
·
If you have the Adjustment Brush selected in
Adobe Lightroom 4 and the Exposure is set to some increased value, how can you
reset it to exactly zero? Answer: Double click on the word Exposure.
·
Still using the Adjustment Brush, how might you
reset the Clarity slider to zero?
Answer: Double click on the word
Clarity.
·
Here it comes!!!
Even still with the Adjustment Brush active, what might you do to zero
out the Color Picker? Hmmm, let me think
about that one. Ya wanna guess what you
would do to reset the Color to a zero value.
You guessed it. Double click on
the word Color.
Now that wasn’t so hard to deduce, was it? (Apologies to Scott and Matt for picking on them.)
Monday, April 1, 2013
My Thoughts On Windows 8
Today’s image is just a different take on a vintage baseball
shot I did a few weeks ago. Rather than color I went for a sepia tone and put a
texture on the image. But, today’s post
is my thoughts and opinions about my experience with Microsoft Windows 8. Daily I have people visiting the Gallery from
Microsoft. It started as a trickle
(visits from Microsoft in Hialeah, Florida) and has grown so there are now
visits from Microsofties from coast to coast
and as far away as Japan. I’m happy for
the support, love to see you “guys” taking an interest in The Kayview Gallery
and hope you’re enjoying what you’ve been reading. Something tells me you won’t be quite as
enamored with my experience with MS Windows 8.
Hit the “Read More” to checkout my opinions of Win 8 "on my machine".
Friday, March 29, 2013
Playing With The Nik Software Suite
As most of you know,
Google has had a sweet Suite deal for the complete Nik Software Suite this
week. I used to have a copy of Nik Color Efex Pro 2, but I never really used
it. I’d sort of lusted after Silver Efex Pro but, seeing as I don’t do a lot of
B&W, I couldn’t justify the expense. When Google offered the entire
suite for $149.00 US I could resist. I looked for an email saying I had
registered the Color Efex recently enough to qualify for upgrading to the suite
for free, but didn’t find anything along those lines in my email history. Oh
well. Today’s image has been pushed and pulled in almost every piece of the
software. Just checking what each one does and where it might be useful. I
finally stopped fiddling with today’s image because it reminded me of a lot of
images found in church bulletins. It might be a truer B&W and printed
on a parchment colored paper to get the sepia effect, but today’s image is
pretty close to what you’d see. To see the gyrations done to today’s image, hit
the “Read More”.
Read more!
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Wednesday Q&A: Is Photoshop's Pen Tool Dead?
I was out with some friends last night and one of my “buddies”
said he had recently "discovered" the Adobe Photoshop Pen Tool (P). His sidekick asked if I used the Pen
Tool. My response was that no one has
used the Pen Tool in the past decade. He
insisted that it was a new “wonder tool” they’ve both added to their arsenal of
“ease of use” tools lately. I asked if
he had also just upgraded his auto sound system to an eight track player. He said, having been practicing a little, he
could now create a Path around an object in less than five or six minutes. I shook my head and rolled my eyes. I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t
going to convince either one that they were “going down a rabbit hole”. Once home I got to thinking about what they
were trying to do and where using the Pen Tool might be a good thing. Today’s image is just a shot I was playing
with a couple years ago to look at some lighting. Once I finished playing with it I “put a ring
on it”. I put a Stroke (Edit/Stroke) on
it just to show the Selection I’d made.
To find out about my thoughts on the Pen Tool (P) (pro or con) hit the “Read
More”.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Wednesday Q & A: How Not To Use Photoshop Smart Objects
I just saw something the other day that made me nuts. I subscribe to Kelby Training and watch most
of the video classes they put up. Joel
Grimes is a particular favorite of mine and I've watched every single video
they've had by Joel. I like his style. I like his photography techniques. I like his compositing. His desaturated colors. Everything.
But, his latest class made me cringe.
He said he always opens his images as Smart Objects in Adobe Photoshop
CS6. That's great. Everyone should as far as I'm concerned. It just my opinion and I've seen enough
questions bringing people to the Gallery to know Smart Objects make people
crazy. They shouldn't. They're the greatest thing since sliced
bread. I was with Joel up to a
point. To find out how Joel Grimes
starts out using Smart Objects and where I think he goes wrong, hit the
"Read More".
Read more!
Labels:
Adobe,
CS6,
Lightroom,
LR4,
Opinion,
Photoshop,
smart object,
Smart Objects,
technique
Friday, March 15, 2013
The Skinny About My Photoshop Portraits
Enough with the philosophy of Smart Objects. Today we'll get back to just a plain old
"How To". Today's image is a
"file photo" from a trip to Key West we took a couple years ago (ten
years ago actually) that has been portraitized (hey, a new word. Somebody has to make 'em up). Obviously there is no abandoning the Adobe
Photoshop CS6 Smart Objects. It's just
that they won't be the focus of what's going on. You'll see, after the "Read More",
an image of the Layers Panel for today's image.
We can do that because there aren't a lot of Layers to do one of
these. Rather than go through a lot of
blah, blah blah, let's get right to it.
Go ahead and hot the "Read More".
Read more!
The way I work is to select the "hero shot" in
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4, do whatever touchup needed there and bring the
complete (head and shoulder and background) shot over to CS6. Next I'll resize the canvas to the
anticipated output size. (Usually 16 x 20 or 20 x 24.) I'll make a "canvas Layer" under
the hero shot, turn off the visibility of the head shot and start working on
the clouds.
Labels:
Adobe,
CS6,
Lightroom,
LR4,
Photoshop,
place,
recommendation,
smart object,
Smart Objects,
technique
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Wednesday Q & A: Photoshop Smart Objects In The Real World
For the past month or so in the Wednesday Q & As I've
been talking about Adobe Photoshop CS6 Smart Objects. If you go back through the posts you'll see the
What, the Why, and the How of using Smart Objects. In my opinion it's the number one most
powerful feature of CS6 (and CS5). But
what would be a "real world" use of a Smart Object that wouldn't be
totally abstract in the explanation?
Well, over the weekend our Granddaughter called and said her high school
science project had been selected to complete in the state science fair. All the work on the project was done and she
needed to produce a "project board" .
An ~4' x 3.5' three fold board that described what she had done, her
methodology and the results. Her idea
was to lay the whole thing out in Photoshop CS4 (her current version), print it
out and mount it to the store bought presentation board. I have a wide carriage printer, but not that
wide. The three sections were 11",
22" and 11" wide. She brought
the finished layout over on a USB drive.
To learn how Photoshop Smart Objects helped immensely, hit the
"Read More".
Read more!
Read more!
Monday, March 11, 2013
The Secret To Photoshop Digital Image Paintings
Today's image is another "digital image painting". The reason I'm using that term is that they
start is a capture from a digital camera.
I wouldn't want to call it a "digital painting" because that
would diminish the work by the crazy good digital artists out there. I've never been able to pick up a pencil or a
stylus and make something interesting on a piece of paper or screen. It's just not something I was given the
natural talent to do. So, I take image
that I've taken with a digital camera and change them. Sometimes for the better and some people
think sometimes not so much for the better.
The key to the DIPs (digital image paintings) I've been featuring lately
is have a "hero" image as the central (both figuratively and
literally) focal point of the composition.
If you had only a set of small images scattered around "the
canvas" it wouldn't be something that was saleable. A "commission work" similar to
today's image would have to have a premium to the pricing. The TAM (Total Available Market) for
something like today's image is one, maybe two.
It's not something you'd be able to sell in the dozens or hundreds of copies. Maybe the subject, his kids, his mom, his
favorite uncle. It has a limited market
potential. Therefore it demands a premium
price. If the image were of a famous
athlete or actor (and you have a model release) you'd be able to, possibly,
make thousands of dollars selling $25.00 posters. That isn't the case with a personal
commission. Taking into consideration your
time to do the shoot, your post production time, your marketing time, your
production costs and whatever else you can think of to throw in there, you're
probably talking of a selling price for a 20 x 24 framed print would probably
run in the many hundreds of dollars range.
To find the key to making this type of digital image painting, hit the
"Read More".
Read more!
Read more!
Labels:
Adobe,
CS6,
general interest,
Lightroom,
LR4,
painting,
Photoshop,
recommendation,
smart object,
technique
Friday, March 8, 2013
Sports Montages With Photoshop
I'm kind of getting into these sports montages using Adobe
Photoshop CS6 (CS6). Today's image is a
continuation of the discussion from Wednesday's post. One of the biggest comments I can make to
start with is that the past few montages/digital painting cannot be sold. For this one in particular I was a guess of
the team photographer and shooting for pleasure. Something fun to do after a day's work. It's always better to be shooting rather than
shooting products shots or photoshopping something. At least being out in the field you get to
stand, stretch, move and not become a lump in a chair staring into a box. The reason this image can't be sold is that I
didn't get a model release. I can do whatever
I want for my own pleasure. I can post
it on the blog because I'm using it to demonstrate a concept. I can toss it onto my iPAD to be able to show
it to friends. I can show it to clients
to give them an idea what it is that I do.
What I can't do with it is make money off it. Without that model release the only way I
might be able to make a buck off the image is to sell it to the guy in the
image. He**, I'd probably give him a
copy just to get the model release. I
wouldn't do it as a routine matter, but if I thought I could make some change
selling additional copies, it might be worth the "investment". I don't know how many "fans" this
guy has, and the fee they'd be willing to pay probably isn't very high. With a model release the image is worth about
$300.00 - $400.00. Without it, a cup of
coffee. Just goes to demonstrate the old
axiom that, if you're a serious photographer, trying to make a living, you
should always have model releases in your gear bag. And don't be afraid to ask to get them
signed. In fact, with the motocross
images I did a couple weeks ago the plan would be to have samples of the work
at the track and charge a "sitting" fee at the track, before agreeing
to shoot the rider. With the advent of
smart phone based transactions (Square for example) it would be easy to charge
a fee, get a model release signed, and leave the track with cash (charged fees)
in hand. Well, this is a photography
blog, not one dedicated to how to make money.
So, to find out about today's image, hit the "Read More".
Read more!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)