Even Adobe Photoshop CS5 Can't Make This Look Better

I've got to admit it, the garage got away from me over the winter.  Some things are there for good reason.  At least it was a good reason four months ago.  In the lower left is the handle of the snow blower.  For a while it seemed like it was being used every other day for some serious snow removal.  Ten inches, twelve inches, fifteen inches.  It was a tough winter.  The reason for today's image is a promise to the wife to straighten up the garage.  I wanted a frame of reference for a starting point so, if it doesn't meet with her complete approval, at least I could show the improvement.  While I was taking a couple of shots I figured it was easy enough to fire away with the camera set on auto bracketing and see what a fringe HDR image might look like.  It turned out to be a nine shot bracket.  All nine shots were not used to make the HDR conversion.  The lightest and darkest didn't have enough information to worry about, so they were dropped.  The "proper" exposure, one two stops under and one three stops over were selected for the HDR.  I really wasn't going for any sort of exaggerated reality.  I wasn't going for any sort of reality at all.  I figured on maxing out most of the sliders in Adobe Photoshop CS5's HDR Pro.  Then the colors were pumped up even more.  The result is that I can identify every culprit that needs attention and form a plan to work toward.  For that it is a successful image.  For art?  I don't think so.  To find out just what was done, hit the "read more".

Talk about double processed, today's image was probably triple processed at least.  The first was a trip through HDR Pro.  The Detail slider was pretty much maxed out.  The Strength and Radius sliders were brought up, with the Strength slider pushed more than the Radius.  Vibrance was cranked up to about 80% and the Saturation thrown toward its upper limit.  It was then opened into CS5.

Once in CS5 the image took a trip through CS5's HDR Toning.  Detail was shoved up again and the roles reversed for the Strength and Radius.  This time the Radius was pushed harder.  More Vibrance, more Saturation brought the image to a pretty bright state.  The Exposure and Gamma were brought down to arrive at a better tonal range (like it made any difference). 

The third bit of processing was going through individual (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Cyan) Hue Saturation Adjustment Layers where each color was brought up to just below the point of going neon. 

There is a lot of false colors in today's image, but I really don't have a problem with that.  The back and left side wall is actually painted white.  Plastic bags became blue.  The cabinets look like they are made of much nicer wood than the y really are.  The floor is a cement floor but appears to possibly be a dirt floor.  All in all, it was a fun image to throw caution to the wind and move sliders all over the place.  I made have to do an insert showing the cleaned garage.  We'll see.

Why Use Smart Objects In Adobe Photoshop CS5

I was talking to a couple friends the other evening and the conversation got around to workflow in a combination of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 and Adobe Photoshop CS5 (or CS4).  Today's image is an example of why you would like to use Smart Objects for going back and forth between LR3 and CS5.  It's not exactly a stellar image, but its only there to demonstrate a point.  One of the fellows confessed that he doesn't use Smart Objects at all and just barely uses Layers.  Now, I know a few commercial photographers who make a pretty good living working with a very rudimentary understanding of how PS works.  I ran into a friend who is a part time bookkeeper for one of the photographers.  I had seen the photographer give a demonstration of his typical workflow and mentioned that his knowledge of PS was pretty limited.  She shot back that he obviously knew more than I did because he makes his living using PS to finish his photography.  There wasn't a whole lot of sense to arguing, since she had no frame of reference about my ability.  She was just convinced that the photographer must have known more.  Sort of a lame defense, but I let it go.  As I was talking with the friends and getting into how they attack a project I was dumbfounded by their methods.  The one who barely used Layers either tried doing everything on the background Layer or might have added one Layer and piled things up there.  No Adjustment Layers, no Smart Objects, no separation of work to be able to go back and change things.  The guy's a good shooter, but has basically zero knowledge of Photoshop.  The second fellow said he used Layers, Adjustment Layers and Smart Filters.  To group things into segments he uses the old "entire left hand side of the keyboard" method.  Whenever he's to the point he determines is a good place to consolidate things he holds down the Shift/Alt/Ctrl/E combination to put a flatten copy of the image on the top of the Layer Stack.  One of the things I've noticed as I've talked to a fairly large spectrum of Photoshop users is that you can almost (pretty close) pinpoint when they started using Photoshop and when they stopped learning Photoshop.  One successful photographer was giving a talk and made a flat out statement that anyone using PS had to master the Pen Tool (P).  That was true several years and several generations ago, but isn't really necessary today.  I saw a video by Dave Cross about keyboard shortcuts.  In it he said he hadn't used the Pen Tool in such a long time that he switched the keyboard shortcut "P" from bringing up the Pen Tool to bring up the Color Picker.  His justification was that he uses the Color Picker just about every day and hasn't used the Pen Tool in more than a year.  I've gone through each of the stages the people I've written about as I learned more and more about Photoshop.  To get an idea of why I'm manic about Smart Objects these days, hit the "read more".

Smart Objects are the Holy Grail of flexibility in any combination of Lightroom and Photoshop. I use LR3 as a DAM (Digital Asset Management) program. I love it. I, almost, won't print from anywhere other than the Print Module in LR3. I can have an instant Slideshow at an event or wedding from the Slideshow Module. There a lot going on in Lightroom. But the biggest asset I see is the ability to bounce back and forth between LR3 and CS5.

Today's image has two "adjustments" made to it. In Lightroom I cranked the Exposure up as far as it would go with the Adjustment Brush and cut the stones into four quadrants. I then brought it into Photoshop (Photo/Edit in/Open as a Smart Object in Photoshop) to make additional modifications. I added a new Layer and painted two Brush (B) strokes, forming an X. I selected both Layers and made the combination a Smart Object. I copied that Smart Object twice and used one iteration to Sharpen the image and the second one to put a vignette one it.

None of that is "the big deal". The key is that I can double click the Smart Object, open the underlying file, remove the "X". Then open that Smart object, bringing it back to LR3 and removing the brightened cross and then go back up through the sequence returning to the finished image.

I hadn't changed the vignette. I hadn't changed the sharpening. But, when I went File/Save then File/Close it brought me up one step. When I did it again it brought me back to the finished image. The key was that the cross and the "X" were gone. I went all the way back to the adjustments I did on the original image and updated things all the way through.

This, of course, is just a silly example to demonstrate the concept. The trick is that it can be done through two sets, or ten sets, or twenty sets, whatever is needed. Using Smart Objects all the way through your workflow means you can go back and make ANY adjustment needed at any time. You just have to remember to "walk it backwards and then walk it forward again. Great Stuff.

blue sky

I love playing dress-up, and this is definitely one of my favourite dresses to wear when I dress up. I took these photos when I was making a video for my dad's birthday.

Happy Birthday Dad!

This dress has an incredible texture. So so pretty. I only wish it was shorter so I could wear it every day, but I don't have the heart to cut it.

Ps. After my last exam last Thursday, I went and bought a ukulele. So far I can only play Happy Birthday. If anyone knows any easy beginner songs let me know!!

Have a wonderful day!

Vintage dress and hat, Guess shoes, and ribbon from Fabricland. Mac lipstick.

Look For The Details With Adobe Photoshop

At first glance, today's image probably looks like a pile of mud.  It does to me.  Click on it to see the enlarged version and you'll see the detail throughout the image.  In the deep shadow, in the highlights, in the stream, the brush, and the trees.  Detail doesn't always have to be barefaced.  It's alright that it's subtle.  This from the guy who, in probably 280 of the 298 posts on the blow puts colors and details very "in your face".  There's probably a half dozen posts where I lament the fact that I'm not very good at the nuanced image.  Today's image forces that subtlety.  It's shrouded in fog.  Fog automatically flattens out contrast.  It also makes pulling the details out that much harder.  The differences between a tree branch and the leaves of the tree is almost zero.  It's not until you look at the enlarged image that you can see how much depth there actually is.  Over on the right you can see a line of trees that goes back about one hundred yards.  On the left you can look into the wooded area and see the forest floor and the duff that's gathered there.  What looks like just a grey page is actually alive with detail.  To find out how the detail was drawn out of the scene, hit the "read more".

There' s two big things working together to bring out the detail. One, and this might be a surprise, is that today's image is an HDR rendering of the scene. It started out being a five shot, one stop per shot sequence. I wasn't sure if it was a waste of time or if it had possibilities. I'm thinking it was time well spent. With the scene as it is, anyone shooting it wouldn't be able to get a single, properly exposure image handheld. A tripod was an absolute necessary for this image. The shot that was two Stops high was pretty useless in that it just plain took on only the fog and was nearly a blank white frame. So the frames used to make the HDR image were the "as metered" (which is typically minus a third), two stops below and the one stop high frame. While in Adobe Photoshop CS5's HDR Pro the Detail was cranked up quite a bit, as was the Vibrance. That's the extent of work done in the HDR Pro dialog box.

The colors were brought up using individual (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, and Blue [no Magenta]) Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers. Color was removed from the water as it tumbles down the slight cascade and the area brightened using a 50% Grey Layer in an Overlay Blend Mode. A small, soft white Brush (B) with its Opacity set to about 5% was used to just brush over the white water areas. The flow of water was brought up just slightly with several strokes.

But, that's not how more detail was brought out. The High Pass Filter (Filters/Other/High Pass) method of sharpening was used to snap more detail into view. The difference between turning the Layer on and off was dramatic to say the least.

That's it. Two simple tricks to bring out a wealth of detail.

happy easter!

Happy Easter to everyone! This is a rather more conservative outfit, but I was really glad to have to chance to wear this skirt. I got it as a gift about 2 years ago (I think), but it's so pretty and because it's a Diane von Furstenberg skirt, I've been terrified of ruining it. The first time I wore it was back on a dreary January day of this year when I attended a museum gala. The slush and salt on the streets were basically a death trap to this skirt, but luckily nothing bad happened, although it did take me much longer to get anywhere because I walked super slow as not to splash the skirt.

Anyways, I'm really glad I wore it today, and happily it matched all the green that's been popping up everywhere. Spring is a' bloomin'.

Ps. I don't know why I'm not smiling. I think I was so busy squinting because it was so bright out (even though there was no sun) that I forgot to smile. Oops!

Wearing Diane von Furstenberg skirt, Steve Madden heels, Forever 21 blouse, Forever 21 ring/gifted rings, Marciano jacket, and nude tights.

Making The Mundane Interesting

If someone were to ask you to shoot a shot of a blanket, how would you make it interesting?  The red in today's image is "just a blanket", thrown on a chair.  It's even a solid color, so there's not a lot of detail to focus (bad pun) in on.  To give it a little life it was shot through a large Mylar backdrop.  The backdrop was hung across a backdrop stand and the end touching the floor allowed to bob and weave in whatever manner it fell.  That gave the reflective surface a lot of undulations and made the blanket sort of breathe with a sensual feeling.  The chair is actually purple, but the colors started adding up and it was changed very simply in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.  We'll get into that after the "read more".  The setup for the shot was a light, aimed at the chair and blanket as though it was to be a straight shot.  A white board was use to fill in the shadows rather than allowing them to get too dark.  The whole intent was to make a plain old blanket interesting.  The end use the client had in mind was cover art and room had to be left near the top and bottom for descriptive text.  The upright of the arm of the chair serves as a divider between two sets of texts.  So, three areas needed to be formed and the arm of the chair accomplished the purpose.  Not every shot can be a beautiful landscape or model.  A "piece of art" can help get a photographer's name out in higher circles maybe a little quicker than putting things in to your local county fair, but it seldom pays the rent.  A, now retired pro once told me he takes pictures of invisible things.  I told him it must be pretty easy to convince the art buyer that you gave him/her a good image.  He said I was missing the point.  Most of what he shot on a day to day basis was everyday items.  A hinge, the screws for the hinge, a piece of metal he had no idea what it was for, and maybe a lockset.  Most of what he did was catalog work.  Not the runway models at a fashion show, but the things that show up in a workman's hands to find the right piece for a job.  It's not even thought of as a photograph, it's a pictorial description of what he/she is going to buy.  No glamour, no jostling for a better angle for a shot, just very methodical shooting, trying to make something abstract interesting.  How the chair's color was changed after the "read more".

The change in color on the arm rest would be an easy Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer in Adobe Photoshop. It's just about as easy in Lightroom. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 doesn't have Layers, but everything done in LR3 is nondestructive. You can think of LR3 making a spreadsheet of every step you make on an image. It would look something like:

What do ya wanna do?
Change a color?
How much? 50% toward green

Lightroom just keeps track of what you do to the image. If you were to follow the steps you might find a sequence like: crop the image, scratch that, crop differently, nope - scratch that too, make it a vertical, make it a pano, change the aspect ratio and on and on. Going back a step is counted as making a step. If you were to spend an hour working an image you'd end up with a sheet with hundreds, if not thousands of steps.

At the end, you can step back, survey what you've done, say "nope, I don't like it", hit the reset button and be back exactly where you started. That's the beauty of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

wake up where the clouds are far

This is a quick study break outfit post. Next time I blog, I shall be free from school. I cannot wait to get back to regular blogging, I've missed it so much over the past couple months. As much as I love university, I wish I could successfully mesh blogging with it, but somehow I haven't developed that routine yet. Hopefully next year I will.

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I wore this outfit to church on the weekend. I don't go to church all that often, but it was Palm Sunday, so it was nice to break out this skirt that I bought for my summer job. I felt really feminine in this outfit, skirts this length always make me feel like that. My dad said I looked French, which I take as a very big compliment, although it only made me want to go to Paris and sit at a sidewalk cafe, sip an espresso and talk fashion, art, film and music. Unfortunately, after church I went back to studying.

Ps. Why, yes it is snowing in these pictures! That's April in Canada. Haha.

Pps. How many of you wish you were at Coachella? I watched it live via Youtube on my study breaks and it was INCREDIBLE!

Marciano trench. H&M skirt. Aldo shoes and hat. Vintage top and scarf. La Senza top. Michael Kors watch. Gifted jewelry. Nude tights.

IOWEYOU

I was recently contacted by some people involved in the creation of the IOU Project. This company basically grouped together to create a line of clothing that would be totally unique and handmade. This way you can trace each piece of clothing back to its production, right to the person who wove the fabric. It's a pretty incredible idea, and I sincerely hope that the company does well. I don't usually talk about particular companies, but this one really caught my eye, especially THIS VIDEO. It's incredible, and sends an amazing message. I really recommend watching it.

This is a small preview of some of their clothes! I'm really loving the peter pan collars, the colours, and the mix of prints in the shift dress (I feel like this needs to be added to my closet).

The company is basically creating an experiment to rethink how good are produced and sold in a way that would benefit everyone.Instead of having people pay more for clothing that is machine made that they buy at the store, their company will use the internet to connect with everyone. This way you pay a normal amount of money but get handmade clothing.
They believe:In empowering the ArtisanIn celebrating UniquenessIn our right to TransparencyIn the power of Technology to make these happen.

How Far Can You Take A Raw File Using Adobe Photoshop Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers?

Today's image, to me, looks sort of European.  The tight buildings, the bright colors, the street lamps and similar lamps by the doors, just kind of Amsterdam-ish.  If you saw only the finished image (that would be the one on the left) you could easily say "nice, they painted the buildings with bright colors".  The truth is somewhere between the original and the finished versions.  The smaller image (on the right) is directly out of the camera, having been shot in RAW.  With Raw, nothing is done to the image "in camera".  No White Balance, no color correction, no sharpening, basically no nothing.  That's what a RAW image is all about.  What you do with it is up to you.  It has to be processed or it ends up looking like the "out of the camera" shot.  Today's image takes it a little over the top, but it a pretty straight forward processing.  The buildings had nice bright colors to start with and all I did was accentuate them.  It find out "how" each color was brightened, hit the "read more".

Everything was done with Adjustment Layers. Each time I use Adjustments Layers I do individual colors. The Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer is used six (in this case seven) times. One each for Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, and Magenta. I find it easier to concentrate on specific areas of the image and apply as many same color Adjustment Layers as necessary to treat each areas. In the case of today's image there's two Red areas. The Red segment of the building and the bricks lining the ramp. You can do it with one layer and masking using shades of grey. That's so of hit or miss. By masking the two distinct parts the Saturation level two Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers can be set independent of each other. In the case of today's image the Lightness of the redder layer was brought down to deepen the red. If only one Adjustment Layer had been used, there would have been a compromise. With two red Hue/Sat Adj Layers no compromise was necessary. Each was set to the value needed to achieve the effect desired.

Using individual Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers in whatever combination is required sounds like doing extra work. It's actually a time saver. As long as you can do a reasonable job making Masks (saving Selections as Alpha Channels) is a very quick way to work.

70's flare

I was going to wear this outfit to my exam the other day, but then the pants just looked wrong in the photos, and then in real life, so I ended up having to change.

These are incredible vintage 1970's high-waisted flared plaid pants, but the last owner must of had a really weird body because they bunch up really awkwardly around the stomach area, and if I pull them down, then the my body looks really awkward. Basically, these pants need a lot of work. I pretty much despise these outfit photos, but I do think they are awesome pants nonetheless, so I'm posting the photos anyways. I took so many, but the pants just looked terrible. I sort of realized it half-way through, so some of my poses was me trying to make the pants look better. Haha. Hopefully I can get them fixed soon.

One exam down and two more to go. Summer is so close, but so far.

Vintage pants. Unknown knit top and scarf. Mango tank. Minentonka shoes. Line leather jacket from Holt Renfrew. Michael Kors watch.