I have never really had great success with night photography. Often my images are comprised excessively of bright lights and blown out detail. Nothing I was really ready to write home about. It was on a lark I thought about capturing a series of images to create an HDR image and see where that would take me.
A long weekend in New York City and first stop is the Observation Deck at Rockefeller Center. I indulge my affinity for panoramas as a afterthought, I took a set of four images to photo merge a set laterally rather than the usual side too side.
What is the difference between saturation, vibrance and luminance? I found myself in the midst of a class on advanced tools and techniques for Photoshop and I watched a young man go screaming for the saturation slider and just shredding what should have been a reasonable correction. I was not sure he was going to get much out of the class as many of the concepts to be covered required a foundational knowledge of Photoshop to get through.
Continue reading Photoshop CC: Saturation, Vibrance and Luminance Mask
Panorama of Midtown Manhattan taken from the observation deck of 30 Rockefeller Center. Continue reading Nikon D850 on Manhattan Island, NYC
I have covered Alien Skin and its offering of Exposure 7 in an earlier post, but when I found the need for an additional license, I purchased Alien Skin’s bundle of Exposure X2, Snap Art 4 and Alien Skin Blow Up 3. Total cost was $138, more or less. Continue reading Photoshop CC Plugin: Alien Skin Exposure X2
While researching for a blog post on mobile photography and editing software, I came across this image from a few years back. My phone is clogged with images from scouting sites for my Nikon, and this little one was captured on a day trip long ago. I dumped it on my Mac, and in Lightroom I shifted the perspective down a bit. In Photoshop, I played around in Alien Skin’s Exposure 7. I used a preset for vintage film where colors were subdued and grain was added. A light vignette and it’s good enough for paper.
Have a great day.
I have previously posted about focus stacking in regards to macro photography and studio photography in general, but I left off a small part that can be of considerable help to people doing photography in ‘the wild’. Continue reading Focus Stacking in the Wild
Focus Stacking is very popular with people who specialize in macro photography. The simple reason being the knife edge depth of the field on many macro lenses. A 105mm macro lens with an f-stop of 40 might have a depth of field of 0.25 inches. That is under ideal conditions. This makes for some serious problems when you are taking an image of an object of irregular shape or much larger size. Continue reading Focus Stacking, Inside and Outside of Macro Photography
On a week long trip to Los Angeles, I had a chance to visit some of my old haunts and reconnect with my brother and his family. I happened to mention how I missed going to Tower Records and the recent documentary on Tower Records rise and demise. My newfound best LA friend and sister-in-law decided I needed a big surprise. Continue reading Los Angeles in Music, 2016
Judging from the inscription on the back of this photo, it was taken in 1974 as what I assume was part of a wedding album. This still very young lady is the wife of an old friend, tough mentor and shipmate from my earlier life as a fleet sailor.
His request was simple and welcome. His still remarkable and beautiful wife was retiring and he needed me to restore and enlarge a portrait of her for a surprise party honoring and celebrating her transition from hard working spouse to retired and, most likely, hard working spouse.
White balance is hard to explain to someone. It is even worse to explain when something goes wrong and it has to be fixed in post processing. I guess the most simple way of putting it is: you have to let your camera know what white is in an image. Once your system knows what white is, the other colors fall into place.
Continue reading White Balance in Lightroom and Photoshop CC
There are any number of reasons for the longevity of black and white images in this new age of digital photography. Artistically speaking, some moments lend themselves to monochrome more than they would in color. Commercial printing costs can be a factor. Sometimes even the weather can make a photoshoot go in a direction you did not intend. For me, it is a case of my early exposure to black and white film photography in the late 1970’s. Continue reading Black and White Photography in the Digital Age
Adobe RGB or sRGB? Which to choose…
Some time ago, I was looking at the settings for my Nikon and took note of the two options I was offered in the color space menu. Checking the camera manual, there was really no information about the benefits of one or the other, so I went on a hunt for information about “color space” in general and these two settings specifically. I am all about trying to get the best image for my dollar and the cameras’ manual was very non-judgmental about these two options. So it was up to me.
I got the camera thing going on early in my life. My first camera was a Kodak Pocket Instamatic 110 for my birthday in 1973. I have no photos from that time, but later on I saved enough to purchase a Sears Brand Pentax SLR. I set up my own darkroom and developed my own film, favoring Ilford HP 5 over Kodak’s offerings.
Continue reading Black and White Photography in the 70’s and 80’s
Finally had a chance to get out of town and head off to SinCity USA… Las Vegas. I was there to click off a few pictures, partake in the overpriced food and meet some of the cast members of the various incarnations of the Star Trek franchise. Continue reading Sci-Fi Color Study; To Boldly Go…
This is a real easy time saver for those moments when you want to really make the colors in a photograph pop. It’s not for every occasion, but this seems to be the moment to mention it. Continue reading Making Colors Bounce In Photoshop CC… A Quick Time Saver
A few days ago I posted an article about optimal print sizes, resolution and scaling up an image. Call me racked with self doubt as I always find myself going back and checking the spelling and grammar. This time it was the image. I noticed the heading image was kind of flat. I knew what I did, or failed to do. You can go back and look, but I fixed it… didn’t need that picking at my brain any longer than it did.
Continue reading Print Colors vs. Web Colors and Photoshop CC
“… know this is very grainy. I have the print. If there’s anything at all you could do with a higher resolution scan of this one I’d owe you for life.”
I’ve done it before and learned. People have asked me to print them 13 x 19 prints from photos they captured with their iPhone and I ended up warning them off. It’s not a good idea. It would be a waste of time and money. How about a nice 8.5 x 11?
But it does raise the question of how large of a good quality print can you get from your camera? Continue reading Print Size, Resolution and Scaling Up
Soft proofing a photograph is one of the least understood aspects of making a hard copy of an image I have ever discussed with photographers. Prosumers (consumers with a taste for the professional) rarely check their images before sending it to their printer, risking the possibility of printing a poor representation of their work. Even some professionals make a hard copy then adjust from there. Waste of ink and paper in my opinion.
Photoshop Elements, Photoshop CS6 and CC6 can save you a ton of aggravation, as well as wasted ink and paper, by using a very helpful tool under the View Menu called Soft Proofing. Continue reading Learn to Soft Proof and Save Some Money
The Digital Lens 