A Different Take On Infrared.

I've talked about infrared before (10/11/10, 10/8/10, 1/6/10, 8/24/09, 8/21/09, 7/8/09, and 6/1/09).  I revisited it this morning to see what other ways I could push infrared.  Today's image is a combination (more accurately it might be called an overlay) of a straight image and an infrared image of the same scene.  Some infrared snobs might be wondering how you might be able to take an infrared image with a converted camera and match the image with a camera that hasn't been modified.  I suppose you could have the same quick release base for your tripod on each camera and carefully switch between the two, but the chances of zero movement during the switch is close to 100%.  I've written about using a non modified camera to shoot infrared in past posts. It can be done.  The exposures are by guess and by golly, but once you dial in on the right exposure for the scene in front of you, you're in.  The way I do it is to use an unmodified camera.  The same camera I use on a daily basis.  I get bright white leaves in the trees and very dark skies.  As you can see from today's image, the detail in the branches of the trees is just as they would look out of an altered camera.  I'll put my camera on a solid tripod.  Setup the camera and adjust the framing to my liking and then screw on my Hoya R72 Infrared filter by just enough to get it to catch.  Probably a quarter to a half thread.  I'll take several exposures at increasing intervals to find the optimum.  Once that's done I'll shoot one infrared, carefully take off the filter, switch the camera to Aperture Priority, click the shutter again and repeat many times to get just the right pair.  One thing to remember is that the long infrared exposures will result in movement in the leaves.  It's true in any infrared photography.  But, today's post is more about the post processing than the physical snapping of the shutter.  To find out what was done to today's image, hit the "read more".

The first step was to bring the infrared image over to the straight image as a Layer. Pick your favorite method of doing this. It can be drag and drop, copy and paste, open both images as Layers or any other technique you wish. My first choice of combining the images was to check out an Overlay Blend Mode. Yuk! That didn't do anything at all for me, so I started at the top of the Blend Mode list and hit the down cursor arrow to walk through the possibilities. I almost gave up hope of finding one that works. The last possible choice, Luminosity, proved to be the ideal candidate. At that point it needed a little more "pop".

Rather than try for a "natural" look I noticed the facets in the sky formed by the movement of the leaves and thought accentuating it could result in an interesting effect. A "set" of Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers (one each for Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, and Blue [Magenta added nothing so it was dropped]) was used to maximize colors in specific areas. The Cyan and Blue each added facets to the sky. The sky wound up looking like a mosaic, while the rest of the image looked more relaxed, more organic.

The original intent was to get something that could have HDR Toning applied. In the end it didn't appear to need the added steps of HDR Toning. Goes to show, if your play in Adobe Photoshop you can come up with some interesting effects,

metro

I wore this super casual outfit for random downtown frolicking with two of my friends on Sunday. I haven't worn this denim mini in ages...and for good reason, it's really short, and rather uncomfortable when I sit down because it rides up. Anyways, this was a very "back to grade 10" outfit.

Sporting my bright pink lipstick. Yay!









Newspaper print nails in action.



Gifted jewelry, vintage cardigan, Hollister denim mini, unknown tights, AE shirt, MAC lipstick, Enzo Angiolini shoes, Ray Ban Wayfarers.

These are some random pictures from my day. :)

Awww how cute are these cookies. I didn't buy one because I find these cookies are always way too sweet.

Quick Use Of The Multiply And Screen Blend Modes

Take a look at today's image.  You can see the contrast range is pretty extreme.  We have bright sunlight and deep shadow.  The trick is to take control of the extremes and bring the shadows up and the highlights down.  There are many ways to accomplish the task, but there is a technique I use that gives all the control you can possibly ask for.  The first thing was to go to HDR Pro in Adobe Photoshop CS5 and make a reasonably natural looking HDR image.  That got us part of the way.  I wanted to keep the scene looking fairly straight, not the wild side of HDR.  The image was still contrasty.  It needed selective attention in at least three areas.  The first thing to do was to make a couple Alpha Channel Masks.  One of the group of people to the left of the pole.  Another for the umbrella canopies and a third getting the entire group.  A couple secondary masks were made for the woman on the left's chin and the Harley Davidson patch on the man's jacket.  To find out how each mask was used, hit the "read more".

The first step was to maximize the color saturation using individual (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Magenta) Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers. The method I use is to create a separate Adjustment Layer for each color. I'll just go down the list found in the dropdown near the top of the dialog box that shows "Master" by default. I'll take each color and raise the Saturation to 100%. After highlighting the Amount I'll Hold down the Shift Key I'll tap the Down Arrow Key. This bring the amount of Saturation down ten points per tap. Without the Shift Key the reduction would be one point at a time. You'd have to have amazing eye to see a one, two or three point change. Ten points, you can see the differences piling up. The only thing I was interested in was the umbrella canopies. Everything else in the scene still looked pretty neon when the canopies looked the way I wanted them. I tossed the Layer Mask that came with the Adjustment Layer in the trash, switched to the Channels Panel and Ctrl, clicked on the canopy Alpha Channel Icon, and flipped back to the Layers Panel. Hitting the Add New Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the panel produced a Mask with the selection in place. If you need to, hitting Ctrl I (eye) will invert the Mask. The canopies were now the right shade of color and the rest of the scene returned back to neutral.

A copy of the overall scene was put into a Multiply Blend Mode, darkening the scene and throwing the group under the umbrella much too dark. I went over to the Channels Panel and Ctrl clicked on the Alpha Channel icon showing the group of people in the shade. Clicking the Add New Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel resulted in the overall scene being tined down and the "shadow group" staying brighter. The same Mask, inverted, allowed the "shadow group" to be changed to a Screen Blend Mode, making it brighter.

The woman on the left's chin was much too bright, so a Bland mode change to Multiply with a Mask of only her chin toned the chin down. The Harley Davidson patch on the man's jacket was too blue, so using a Mask of the patch a Hue Saturation Adjustment Layer was used to Desaturate the patch by about 50%.

Each intermediate step was made into its own Smart Object. Using Smart Object allows you to go back to any point in the post processing and fix whatever flaw notice in the end image. Smart Objects should be made a standard part of your workflow.

newspaper print nails

I noticed newspaper print nails on Tumblr a couple days ago and I really liked the effect, so after googling a bit, I found many tutorials on how to get the look. After trying it out myself I decided to create a tutorial for all my readers.

Enjoy! And let me know if you try it out yourselves!

Happy weekend to all!

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These nails take around an hour to complete (if you want them to turn out properly, plus I've factored in the nail polish drying time, but it might vary depending on the polish you use).

1. You will need a top coat nail polish and then a coloured one. Make sure you use a light, bright colour because otherwise you won't be able to see the words. White, beige, cream work the best because it looks like paper. I'm using OPI nail polish in Alpine Snow and OPI Top Coat.

2. A little bit of either vodka or rubbing alcohol. Just enough to dip your nail into.

3. Cut 10 pieces of newspaper, small enough to handle easily, but big enough to be easy to work with.

4. Paint your nails in the colour you chose. I painted two layers. Let dry completely. It is vitally important that your nails are fully dry before proceeding to the next step.

5. The next couple steps have to be done one at a time for each nail. Take your nail and dip it into the vodka and hold it there for about 5 seconds or until fully wet.

6. Take a piece of newspaper and put it on the nail, press down and hold it for 20-30 seconds before taking it off. Try to not move the newspaper otherwise it'll smudge the words. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for all the nails. Then wait about 5 minutes, and paint on a top coat. Make sure that you do put on a top coat because otherwise the newspaper print will come off, and your nails won't look that good anyways.

Finished product.






Hope you all enjoyed the tutorial!

Eight Steps To Using A Complex Mask Tutorial

This is the image at the start of the process.

Adobe Photoshop CS5 has this great new tool called the Quick Selection Tool (W). There have been a lot of tutorials done showing how well it does, when used with the Refine Mask dialog box, to select wispy hair and other complex "solid" objects. One place I haven't had much luck with it is on complex objects that look like Swiss Cheese. Something with lots of open space within the outline of an object. Today we start out with an image that has possibilities, but a rather bland sky. The Quick Selection Tool - Refine Mask combination can't figure out the internal lattice of the trees. In order to make an accurate selection and come up with a Mask we'll take one step back to take two steps forward. The one step back is using the Calculations dialog box (Image/Calculations) to come up with a good Mask. The rest of this tutorial is all visual with captions to walk through the "two steps forward".


One of the things I like to see in tutorials is what's going on "behind the scene. So, each image will show the whole screen so you can follow along easier. " Hit the "read more" to follow the steps.

1. The first thing to do is to take a look at the Channels Panel and determine which Channel (Red, Green or Blue) has the greatest contrast to start with.  In this example it's the Blue Channel.  Select the Blue Channel.

2.  After selecting the Blue Channel, open the Calculations Dialog box (Image/Calculations).  You'll see that the Blue Channel is set up (based on your selection of the Blue Channel) as Source 1 and Source 2.  You can walk through the Blend Modes to come up with the mode that best darkens the blacks and lightens the whites.  In this case it was the Multiply Blend Mode.  The Result (the last selection dropdown at the bottom of the dialog box) should be set to New Channel. 

3. It time to start filling in the Mask leading to a strict Black and White Mask.  Since the entire bottom (treeline on down) needs to be filled with black, an easy way to fill it is to use the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) to select as much of the area as possible.  To the left of the image we can see that the foreground color is set to black.  Use black to fill the selection made with the Marquee Tool (in this case - Alt Backspace on a PC).  Then Deselect (Ctrl D).



4.  Bring both pointers (the black and the white) toward the center.  This will deepen the blacks and brighten the whites.  The center pointer can also be moved to increase the contrast.  In this case it was moved toward the black pointer.  Care must be used not to push the sliders too far so as to block up the blacks or push too much white into the fine details.

5.  The Brush Tool (B) cn now be used to cleanup the Mask to its final, usable form.  Take a soft Brush with the Mode set to Overlay and its Opacity set low (25% - 30%).  This will limit the Brush to affecting only the Black areas or only the White areas.  Set the foreground color to Black and paint over the image.  Reset the foreground color to White (X) and repait over the image.  The Black paint brush will deepen the Blacks and the White will ligten the whites.  When finished, go back to the Layers Panel.





6.  However you typically do it, bring the sky into the Layer Stack.  Use the Move Tool (V) to position the sky where you want it.  To the sky is too big or too small, use Free Transform (Ctrl T) to adjust size.  You can't go nuts and make a little tiny sky into something usable.  Once you have the sky in place go back to the Channels Panel and CTRL click on the Mask icon.  This reselects the Mask we just worked on.  Now go back to the Layers Panel.  With the sky Layer selected, click on the Create New Layer Mask at the bottom on the Layers Panel.  Magic happens.



7.  Here's today's image ready for any finishing you might chose to do.  All it took is two Layers and nothing was done destructively.  Anything can be modified as needed.  I'd probably increase the color saturation in the tree portion of the scene using Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers.  If the sky needed to be deepened I'd make a copy (Ctrl J) and change the Blend Mode to Multiply.  If that was too much I'd pull it back down by decreasing the Layers Opacity.  I'd probably add a reflection of the sky in the water and Blur and Fade it's intensity.  I'd sharpen only the tree area (using the same Mask to limit what was sharpened and then put a vignette on the overall image.

it smells like spring

For the past couple of days the weather has been warming up to such an extent that today I ditched my heavy winter coat in favour of a wool jacket, and my boots for some lighter ankle booties. All in all, the warmer weather put me into a much better mood than I've been in for the past few weeks. I love this transitional weather (although most people hate it), it just provides so many opportunities for outfits. Here are some photos that are currently inspiring me for life in the warmer months (some are fashion related, others not).

Ps. I was recently introduced to the CSN Stores which is composed of over 200 online stores where you can basically find anything you want. You can get everything from shoes, handbags, home decor, cookware, even swingsets. After all, your home should look just as fashionable as you are.

Have a good weekend everyone, and outfit post coming up very soon!

1/2-source unknown/3/4/5/6-source unknown/7-mine/8-source unknown/9-mine/10-mine/11/12-source unknown/13/14/15/16/17-source unknown/18-source unknown/19/20/21(if you happen to know where the "source unknown" photos are from, please let me know)