ExquisiteLines

I’m still working through my Arches images. I’m almost done. I’ve been holding back because I didn’t want to finish and not have anything new to show off. But I decided to prime the pump a little tiny bit.

I bracketed almost everything I shot and I’ve HDR’d most of them. But I did that just to give me a full exposure range – not to ‘HDR’ the final image.  I HDR’d the raw images to broaden the range, loaded them back in Lightroom then processed them normally from there.

This image just wasn’t making it for me. It was close, but I wasn’t excited. Then I had an urge – let’s HDR it hard. I’ve never tried it before, so this is my first.

Kind of like it.

I used CS5’s HDR tool.

This is long ago – me and A when he was 3 and tired. 

I miss being able to cuddle him against my shoulder.

One of my first mess arounds with Photoshop.

Happy Father’s day to all of the Fathers out there.

While we were in Moab we took hundreds of pictures of beautiful, powerful rock formations against plain, boring skies. A lot of blaa blue and slate grey – with the occasional cloud.  Sunday night we had a pretty good storm blow through, leaving a cold day on Monday and a new weather pattern – this one with clouds.

Just outside of Moab I stopped and shot a pano cloud shot. I stopped two more times between Burley and Boise and shot more clouds. Outside of town where the horizon was flat and there wasn’t a lot of clutter and there were wonderful cloud formations.

I didn’t do very well on the Moab set and it was still a bit grey. But the Idaho sets were clean and I kept the sequence simple.  I shot 3 1 stop brackets all the way around.

I wasn’t sure how well Photoshop would do stitching them together. Was there enough information in the images for it to hook them up? I included the ground as I shot, but not much. So I wasn’t sure how it would do. I was pleasantly surprised.

The first one I tried I processed via HDR. I did the HDR processing on each shot, before I merged them. I used CS5 and did a soft merge – enough to build a full exposure range. I saved the settings and processed all of the images with the same settings.  Then I ran it through the pano merge – using the auto method:

This is a 7 image merge, almost the entire way around. It merged beautifully. I didn’t do anything to help this – it was all Photoshop. It did a great job.

Then I processed the base images to see how it looked as a non-HDR:

I actually like this one better. The overall exposure range is less and it is less contrasty, but I like the look better.

The second one is a non-HDR from 13 images. On this one I followed a cloud formation up in the middle. I had 12 images even with the horizon and one shot up a level right in the middle. Again, I wasn’t sure if Photoshop would pull it in clean:

Again, it joined it without a problem.

I’m not into skies for the sake of skies. But they will be good resources for other shots that need something in the sky, like some of my Arches pictures. I dropped the last sky pano into the following Arches shot and it helped a lot. It was nice having such a big image – it let me drag the sky around until I found a good match.

The first one as I shot it:

The same image, with the clouds added:

Because the lines along the rock were well defined the selection was pretty simple using the quick select tool. But I had a halo around the inside of the arch, on the left side. I tried to feather that, a bunch of times at different settings, but that didn’t help. I was about to do the unspeakable and actually ask our Photoshop person at work for help when I found the solution in one of my Photoshop books. Just read it, didn’t even realize it was the solution until I tried it a few days later.

It was pretty simple – brush in white in overlay mode on the mask. Cleaned it right up.

Overall, I like the result.

I’m still going through my Moab images. I pulled out about 40 shots that might work. I’m through the first 12 or 13. When I get though them all I’ll put them together as a slide show and post it. Some pictures I’ve already posted and some new ones.

I’ll try to make it worth the wait.

I’ve been a bit absent – sorry about that.

I decided I needed to have more flexibility than I could get from wordpress.com. So I upgraded my current hosting plan, setup a couple of WordPress blogs there, one a replica of this site and played. I bought a WordPress book, found a bunch of custom templates to work with and discovered Windows Live Writer. I set up another blog from scratch on the new host server and have been spending most of my blog time there.  Now I need to move this one over.

I’ve also been messing around with CS5. I’ve been watching Kelby training vids and just messing with it – finding things and pushing buttons. I played around with the Content Aware fill and the Puppet Wrap – the cool new sexy things that at some point I may find a use for. I think the Content Aware fill will be nice, I just need to find where it works.  I need to play with Puppet Wrap more.

So far I’m liking the CS5 HDR. I’m a little irritated that I bought Photomatrix and haven’t hardly used it since – now I have this. Oh well – it’s just money, right?

I’ve only run a couple of things through and haven’t done anything hard yet, but I like it.

Here are the originals. 3 shots at .7 stop increments (not on purpose – I was going for full stop increments but I’m an idiot and I didn’t check it). All pictures were shot hand held so they needed to  be aligned (click to enlarge):

Here’s the original base exposure shot – standard Lightroom adjustments to Exposure and Blacks:

This is the base HDR image before any PS adjustments. All adjustments were made in the HDR panel:

The shadows opened up very nicely.  Detail depth is much better.

And this is the final, adjusted HDR:

I like the result. It aligned nicely, which was a problem I had with Photomatrix – not a big problem, but enough that I noticed it. The panel is simpler than Photomatrix which for the moment is nice, but usually that indicates less possibilities. Need to dig deeper to flush that out.

More to come on CS5 HDR.

One more thing to add – I need to move this to the new site. Editing this in the base maint tool basically stinks. Windows Live Writer is a joy compared to this. I’m motivated now.

I spent the last couple of months watching hours of Photoshop training vids at Kelby Training. Dumping as much in my head as fast as I could. Jumped around to different subjects, lighting, B&W, HDR, portrait retouching, and on and on. I learned a lot, but when I pulled up one of my own pictures I was still at a loss as to what to do with it – how to get it where I wanted it. Too much running around in my head, nothing sticking.

Last week I pulled up a course on ‘Beauty and Portait Retouching’ by David Cuerdon. Great course. I watched slowly, took notes, backed up as I needed and watched it again. When I was all the way through I sat down last Saturday and worked through the whole course – twice.  I applied each principal he taught on his sample image. My original plan was to do it 3 times, but it took me so long the first time I ran out of day. Still, it was a great exercise. Things finally started sticking. All the stuff I’ve been cramming in my head started coming together and making sense.

In the past few days I’ve sat down and played a bit with my own pictures.

This was the first one. My kids have been watching me messing around with Photoshop and Lightroom and they wanted to do it too. K, my 8 year old, wanted to make a colorful sunset. So we started with an HDR TC I took last summer.

K wanted more ‘creative’ coloring. So, I popped up a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer and under her direction we changed a few things:

I’m a literalist. I have to push myself to see outside of the box. In theory I don’t have an issue with manipulating a photograph. Photographers have been manipulating images since day one. But when it comes right down to it, 99% of the adjustments I make don’t change the base nature of the image. I even struggle with cropping. It was drilled into my head that most of the work should be done in the camera. Plus, since I shot mostly in color chromes and it was expensive and a hassel to have much post processing modifications made (and I was poor and impatient), I stayed pretty close to what I shot. Now so much more is possible it isn’t an issue of the tools – its an issue with my vision.

K’s little exercise started me thinking about pushing beyond normal bounds. So I pulled up an image I shot my first time out with my D90.

I’ve always liked this image – felt there was potential here. But I wasn’t sure what to do with it. So I dropped a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer and played with the color. Some Layer Mask blending and a heavy crop and this was the result:

Still not sure I’ve found the essense of the image, but it is definiately more interesting, more compelling. I see more what grabs me about this image – two of my favorites elements: Texture and Direction.

One more. I was sending images of our cabin to a family member. I have one image I like showing the outside view from the great room. An image of a beautiful snowy day. The exposure is for outside, and the inside is dark. I decided to try and even that out.

I dropped in a Curves Adjustment Layer and adjusted the image for the shadow area. Then I filled the Adjustment Layer Layer Mask with black to hide the affect and painted in the areas I wanted to apply the adjustment with white on the Layer Mask.

It was like turning a light on in the room.

It’s starting to get fun.

I signed up on the Kelby Training on-line training site. So far its been a good investment in time and money. It is also why I haven’t posted for a while – I’ve been spending a lot of time absorbing.

But to make absorbing effective, it needs to be followed by some doing. I’ve started trying out some of the techniques and ideas I’ve learned.  I’m liking the results.

One of the first things I tried was a second wack at the tramp composite. The same day I shot the pictures of my daughter, I shot some of my son and his friend. While my 7 year old art critic rejected my effort, my son was more impressed. He asked if I would do one for him and being the good father that I am I obliged. It also gave me a chance to improve on my previous efforts.

Here’s the end result:

For the most part it was a repeat of the first try. My selections went a bit faster and cleaner. My shading went better. Overall it was a smoother effort. The primary difference was in the base image. On the first one I pulled up an image of the girls on the tramp and added other images around them. About halfway in I wanted to move them and couldn’t, because I hadn’t generated an image of just the tramp.

So on try #2 the first thing I did was generate an image of the tramp without participants.  I found two images where the jumpers were not overlapping. I stripped the jumpers from the base image. Then I did a Photomerge of the two images to align them. Then I dropped a layer mask on the second image and simply erased the hole away. It worked very nicely. I had a clean picture of the tramp and I was able to position the jumpers more easily.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in the back reading ‘Within the Frame’. Naturally, I had my camera in my lap while I read. Just to enhance the reading experience. My daughter and her cousin were jumping on the tramp. It hit me that there was a good opportunity to do a fun little composite. So I shot a bunch of pictures and put them all together. Nothing brilliant by any means, but it was some practice in selections and blending. Learned a few things.

I showed it to my 7 year old daughter fully expecting her to be thrilled with it. Instead she scrunched her eye brows together and said that she didn’t like it – she prefers her pictures to be ‘realistic’.

Oh well.

There are, in my mind, two approaches to learning – memorization and integration through repetition. Memorization takes more a focused effort and provides immediate results but fades over time. Integration takes longer, provides results more slowly, but when you get it, you keep it. That’s particularly true when you’re developing skills. Sure, you can memorize the Photoshop features, know what they all do, but until you start using them, it’s just not going to jell.

I’ve been using Photoshop since v3. I can do the basic stuff real well, crop, resize, spot, some easy clean up. I’ve never moved far beyond that. I’ve done the tutorial thing over and over. I walk through the instructions, kind of see what they are doing and walk away more frustrated than enriched. My current book, ‘Lightroom & Photoshop Workflow Bible’ by Mark Fitzgerald was a new approach and has made all the difference. Instead of going through steps he walks through the process and how the tools play into the process. For the first time its coming together.

When a new understanding is building, its always nice to come across some independant reinforcement. I found it on Scott Kelby’s Photoshop Insider. His Weds guest blogger was Tomasz Opasinski. He has a unique take on learning Photoshop that dove tailed with my new approach. 

 To free myself from tutorials, to free myself from someone’s way of thinking, from someone’s way of doing things… to THINK PHOTOSHOP. What I mean is that by reading and following someone else’s tutorials I was able to REPEAT his/her actions… but from one tutorial to another I lost MY OWN way of CREATING new things. I stopped THINKING… I began relying on SOMEONE ELSE’S ways of doing things in design or Photoshop. I just got LAZY…

Read the entire article here.

I learned years ago when I was teaching programming that the people who tried to find the solution in a book never caught on. Those who tried to figure out how the pieces worked first where the ones who succeeded.

I read my book all the way through once. Got the concept down, but not much in the way of real skill development.  Then I turned the book back to page one, got a pen and paper (actually my netbook and MS OneNote) and I read slowly, built a Help Sheet to burn the info into my head and to give me a memory boost later. Then I stopped and played with it for awhile. It’s taken a long time, I’m still working at it, but I’m feeling pretty good with Lightroom. Just starting to play with Photoshop. For the first time I feel like I know what I’m doing instead of just pushing buttons and hoping it works.

To finish, I’ll share today’s project.

First picture is SOOTC (Straight Out Of The Camera):

The second image is after I finished my basic Lightroom corrections, White Balance, Exposure, Blacks, a couple of gradations, some color mod, some vibrance and a sharpness adjustment:

Then I wanted to see if I could do a decent B&W. My real love. I dropped out the color in Lightroom, fine tuned the Exposure, Blacks and Contrast. A little more gradient darkening around the edges. Played with the color channels which really popped the eyes. Then I dropped it in Photoshop, some more fine tuning, some creative burning and printed one. To grey. I added some sepia (actually a little yellow, a little red, a little green, some more yellow, took out the green…):

All in all, a definite improvement. And what was really cool, I started with an end in mind and actually got the the desired result.

Right now I feel a tad overwhelmed. Overwhelmed, and psyched.

I finally found ‘the book’. I’ve owned Photoshop since version 3. I can open files, crop, mess around with brightness and contrast and change the image size with the best of them. I’ve bought books on techniques and tried to follow the step by steps. Sometimes it worked – but it never stuck. Photoshop, the monolith -so much that I just didn’t know where to start, where to go. So I’d wander around, move a slider here , click a button there and quit.

I bought Lightroom 1 about a year and a half ago. I loved the Library function. I organized my digital library and added keywords to all of my images.  I bought another book, wandered over to the Develop module, played around a bit, grew frustrated and left.  A month or so ago I upgraded to Lightroom 2 and liked it – it didn’t crash as often.  I bought a new book, ‘Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Photoshop Workflow Bible’by Mark Fitzgerld last Saturday. And started reading, and reading and reading more.  And the pieces came together. Technique is secondary – it focuses on the purpose and the process. It defines the of the tools, the purpose of Lightroom and Photoshop and Bridge and ACR and how they fit together. The flow, from import to end image and I finally feel like I know where I’m going.

What great tools! I am a solid B&W darkroom tech. And I knew how to shoot to get the color shots I wanted with minimal manipulation. And I found a great color lab to figure out any manipulation I needed. Then the digital world interfered with my pleasant little world. Not because it was hard, but because it was so much bigger. There is so much more you can do with it – it is just WOW.

Now I’m playing and liking it. I’ve only gone through the Lightroom part so far. The part that more or less mimics what I used to do in the darkroom. I’m starting to get what I want. Now I need to burn it in until it is works as easy as taking a breath – kind of like printing in the darkroom. I don’t have to think about it. I just do and it happens the way I want.

I went back to the first pictures I took with my digital. Pictures that were kind of blah. I looked at them, followed the Lightroom process and did what I used to do in the darkroom, when I could make a picture look the way I wanted.

This is what it looked like right out of the camera:

This is what it looked like after 10 minutes in Lightroom:

It’s not going to win any prizes, but I like the change. A little Histogram adjustment. A little sharpening. A little vignetting and a tiny amount of burning. Never touched Photoshop (until I had to resize it – didn’t work the way I thought it would in Lightroom).

I’ll share more of the how when I’m a little more solid on the technique and have something a little more impressive to show off.