Family, Photography and other misc news
We had a family party today to celebrate a birthday. While the children were playing I took a few snaps. Unusually for me I set the camera and flash to auto and just shot away. As usual it was a mistake. Shots like the one above, shooting into the sun, are always tricky for cameras. I really should learn to trust myself.
You might have spotted that I recently tweeted about my new C-Stands.
A number of you have asked “What is a C Stand”.
Well as I discovered, a light weight light stand is sometimes no good. An outdoor photo shoot a few months ago with the lovely Ashleigh nearly turned to disaster. I had a flash and brolly on a light weight light stand when a sudden gust of wind took the whole lot, and I had to chase it down.
Well my lovely wife has promised me, that see will make me some very useful sandbags, but I felt I needed heavy duty stands. The C Stand with boom arms is an incredibly versatile stand. Heavy, sturdy, with the boom arm capable of holding a hair light above the model and support a background.
While difficult to get to the destination, once there the heavy stand is essential for out door flash use. Outdoor flash is a favourite of mine, off camera, either as fill in or as the main light, using the sun as fill, it gives great results.
Even if you only have a standard hot shoe flash. Give off camera flash in daylight a go. Its well worth the effort.
I have had a lot of fun with SnapSeed on the iPad. Well now iPhone and iPod Touch owners can also join in the fun.
Now a Universal App.
Microsoft have just released a codec update allowing you to view your RAW camera files.
You can download it from here. http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26829
If you a OS X user then just keep your OS updated to support the most common RAW files.
Nikon D200 SLR
Nikor 12-24mm F/4
15mm, 1/30 Sec at f/8, ISO100
Processed in Adobe Lightroom V3.4.1
On a Mac MacBook Pro, OS-X 10.7
Having had such a busy week, I am only now getting round to processing my images from last week and our long weekend in the Yorkshire Dales. A fantastic long weekend, but it being a biking trip the photography was limited.
During our exploring I made it a goal to visit a number of waterfalls. With the heavy rain earlier in the week the rivers were full and that meant the waterfalls were in full flow.
Without a tripod I was limited but I still tried to use long shutter speeds. I also bracketed extensively, as I was intending to HDR the images like the one above taken earlier in the year.
As I was going to HDR the images I set the camera to aperture priority. You want the aperture to stay fixed while the shutter speed changes, having the depth of field change will ruin your HDR image.
Recently I have been looking at a number of HDR images on line by other top photographers, and they often have a far better, more realistic quality then mine. In an effort to get a more real quality I have now started to combine HDR with digital blending techniques.
With the camera set for auto bracketing I fired off a number of shots then chose the above two, to combine for the HDR image. I then imported one of the orginal images and the produced HDR image into photoshop as two layers. I then, where I thought was necessary masked the HDR image to bring some of the qualities of the original file back.
The end result is still not realistic but still, for a HDR image I like it.
Watch out for the end of the month shot, I feel I will be using this technique again to produce my Photo of the Month! I’ll try my best to use digital blending to make it more realistic but with a hint of HDR.
I love our iPad, and more and more Photography focused apps keep appearing.
SnapSeed is a app recently updated with RAW support, which is what attracted me to it. If your away with just your camera equipment and your iPad sometimes you want to play with your images and test out your ideas.
I shoot RAW and until now there has been a lack of applications for the iPad that support the camera manufactures RAW formats. Until now with the updated SnapSeed from Nik software.
Nik are a big player in photography processing, products like Silver Efex Pro, produce the best black and white conversion I have found.
This is not a review and not a recommendation, but it is a fun app. The image above was initially processed in Lightroom then during my lunch break last week I had my first real play with the application and produced this.
Have not had time to test the RAW support, according to their website RAW files are supported when Apple’s camera connection kit is used.
To keep the weight down on our motorcycle road trip we took, once SLR, two lens and an iPad.
The photo in the previous post was taken on my iPhone then processed on my iPad while I was on my road trip.
You have now seen some of the techniques I use in portrait post production. Which one is best?
Well thats difficult to say, It really depends on whats needed and whats acceptable.
Above you have the uncorrected RAW, Basic adjustments from Lightroom, Skin Blur and Digital Make-up. Which one is best i’ll leave to you.
Hope you enjoyed these techniques. Coming soon, posts on Work Flow and also Sharpness.
Special thanks go to Shelley Giard, Corey Barker and Kelby Training, thanks guys, these techniques have been stolen shamelessly from you. Thanks for making me a better photographer.
Want to learn photoshop and learn about these techniques in more detail, then check out the Podcast “The Photoshop Guys” and also the websiteKelby Training, well worth subscribing to.
In Parts One and Three we covered the use of the use of the healing brush. Now its time for skin smoothing. In Part Two we used the most controversial technique, skin blurring.
Now were going to use what could be termed digital make up.
From our Part 3 post we had ended up with the image above. The major imperfections have been corrected (see Part Three) now its time for the skin blur.
Using photoshop duplicate the layer (Command-J on the Mac), don’t work on the original layer. If you have multiple layers all contributing to the final image then use Shift-Option-Command-E (On the Mac) to produce a new layer based on the previous layers.
Our first job is to create a layer mask based on the cleanest channel of the image.
If you deselect all channels except one and view the image in turn you will soon see which channel is the cleanest. Normally its the Red Channel.
With just the cleanest channel selected, Command-Click (Control-Click in Windows) on it to produce a selection. Click back onto the layers tab and click on the create new layer, then click on Add Mask. A mask based on the channel selection will be created.
Make sure you have the new blank layer selected before you start. Select a small soft brush. The intention is to layer on a colour that will mask the skins imperfection, just like a layer of make up. If you have a tablet then this is far easier but it can be accomplished with a mouse or a Mac touch pad or Magic track pad. Just set the flow to a low setting between 1-10 no higher.
Using option click sample a good skin tone and then paint this on. Keep sampling and painting. On the new layer you will end up with something like this:
This overlaid produces a very pleasing image retaining texture in the skin tones.
As I mentioned in Post 3, you could now go on to work on the eyes and teeth but the basic work is complete. Once you have it looking like you want its just time to add the sharpening and final tweaks.
Below, is a crop of the before, a crop of the after using the blur technique from part 2 and a crop of the digital make up technique used here.
Special thanks go to Scott Kelby and Kelby Training, thanks guys, these techniques have been stolen shamelessly from you. Thanks for making me a better photographer.
Special thanks go to Shelley Giard, Corey Barker and Kelby Training, thanks guys, these techniques have been stolen shamelessly from you. Thanks for making me a better photographer.
Want to learn photoshop and learn about these techniques in more detail, then check out the Podcast “The Photoshop Guys” and also the websiteKelby Training, well worth subscribing to.
Back in Part One and Part Two of this series, we processed a RAW image, made some basic adjustments and ended up with the following image.
Then we took it into Photoshop, cleared up the complexion and applied skin softening techniques using the skin blurring techniques.
In this part we will again take the image into Photoshop but this time try our best to retain the original skin texture leaving a more natural look. This technique requires more effort but for gives better results.
Using photoshop duplicate the layer (Command-J on the Mac), don’t work on the original layer (I am going to keep repeating this, its easier to delete a layer and start again on that stage then to have to start from scratch).
In the above image using the spot healing brush with the mode set to Lighten but with content aware switched on (CS5 not available in previous versions) the major imperfections in the skin have been removed. Use a small brush, just bigger then the spot your trying to heal and remember to use a soft edged brush. Dab a away on the darker imperfections gradually removing them. For the lighter areas and excessive skin shine, the same technique can be employed but set your Mode to Darken.
If your working on an area close to a boundary like an area of skin next to the hair or the dress, it can make the image look worse. If this happens just undo and switch from the spot healing brush to the healing brush. Select from an adjacent area (Option-Click on Mac; Alt-Click on Windows), and then click on the area to heal. For larger areas, then you will need to resort to patch tool, but be careful to prevent reoccurring pattens from forming.
Next we will soften the skin but this time use a more advanced technique to preserve the texture. See you in Part Four.
Special thanks go to Shelley Giard, Corey Barker and Kelby Training, thanks guys, these techniques have been stolen shamelessly from you. Thanks for making me a better photographer.
Want to learn photoshop and learn about these techniques in more detail, then check out the Podcast “The Photoshop Guys” and also the websiteKelby Training, well worth subscribing to.