Sorry About Having No Post On Monday. We Had A Bit Of Rain Over The Weekend

We'll be back on schedule tomorrow.  Hurricane Irene buzzed through over the weekend and we've had no power since Sunday morning.  Back on track tomorrow.

Thanks

Tom

A Quick Shoutout to Ricardo Roehe

Ricardo: I just wanted to thank you for your support. It appears you've been "spreading the word" about The Kayview Gallery in Brazil. Since you became a "follower" of the blog earlier this month I've seen a dramatic increase in readership in your city and country. I hope your photography brings you a lot of joy and I wish you and your family a good fall season.

A Major Milestone Thanks To Adobe Photoshop 7, CS, CS2, CS3, CS4, & CS5

I guess I could also put Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1, 2, and 3 in the title.  The "milestone" we're celebrating is the 300th post here on The Kayview Gallery" dealing with some information about the Adobe products we use.  Today's image is the one that started it all.  Is it up to snuff with how it would be done today?  Probably not, but (hopefully) that shows some growth in the past couple of years.  There's another checkpoint coming up next week.  May 12th is the date of the first post.  In the beginning I was happy if anyone gave the posts a click.  Now there a growing, loyal group of folks who read the posting on a regular basis.  I doubt if anyone has gone through the entire forty plus pages (seven first paragraphs per page) and that okay.  Some of the things I was espousing at the beginning I'm pretty much a crusader against these days.  I guess that means there has been a progression in the understanding of how to do things better and/or easier.  The image of the Layer stack shown along with today's image shows that at the time of the first posting I was fairly big into Adjustment Layers and Clipping Masks.  Today, using Smart Objects, the stack would look very different.   If you'd like to learn about the secret of today's image, hit the "read more".

The title given to today's image was "Just About Closing Time".  It could happen!  The reality is that the shot was taken a little after one o'clock in the afternoon on an overcast day.  I showed the image to a commercial photographer I know and he bought into it being a night shot.  When I told him the time it was taken, his big question was "but how did you get the detail in the store through the windows?"  The easy answer is that he saw what he thought he saw, not what really there.  The detail "in" the store is a reflection of the buildings across the street.  Take a look at "through" the window on the left.  At the bottom you can see what might be bins or a display case.  At the top there's lights.  The lights were there and were emphasized to be seen through the window.  That's probably the key to the illusion.  Just under the lights is the reflection of the railing of the upper balcony of the other building.  Without being told, you can accept it as being what's known as "top stock".  Extra stock that doesn't fit in a normal display rack. 

There was a lot of work put into today's image, but I'd estimate that I could take out at least one third of the lines using methods I use today.  Education at the gallery never stops.  Too many people get to a level where they make money using Photoshop and stop.  That means they using methods that are obsolete by today's standards, but the money keeps flowing in, so what do they care? 

Celebrating 250 Posts About Adobe Photoshop Today

Of the 250 posts that have appeared on this blog I believe 248 or 249 have been accompanied by an image and some explanation about what was done to it.  I thought it was about time to take a look at today’s image.  After all, it’s been the “bookends” of the banner from day one.  It’s an old shot, taken with an old camera on an outing with my granddaughter.  She’ll be entering high school in September and the image comes from a time before she had started school.  So, it’s an oldie.  It has been updated, so you might want to check out the explanation of what was done.  I’d like to thank everyone who has been reading the blog for any length of time.  I’m surprised by where in the world it’s popular, but it has been read in 85 countries and every state in the US except South Dakota, Wyoming and Alaska (where are the Palins when you need them ;-) ).  There’s only been one visitor from Delaware (guess Biden’s been busy too), but, in general there is a “following” in almost every state.  If you’ve enjoyed the postings here at “The Kayview Gallery” how about either leaving a comment or sending an email telling me what you like or asking for information on some Photoshop subject.  One of the things I’m most gratified by is the sites that refer people to the blog.  The sixth, seventh and ninth most common sites that people come from are those written by Dave Cross, Scott Kelby and David Ziser.  Joe McNally’s comes in at number thirteen.  The blog has been picked up by www.alltop.com and http://www.blogsurfer.us/ .  It’s been “tweeted” about, it’s shown up on people’s Facebook pages and has enjoyed pretty good “word of mouth” distribution.  Knowing people are reading and sending emails make continued writing a pleasure.   Now, back to today’s image.  If you’d like to know what was done to “update” the image, hit the read more.

It’s been cropped. The original had the horse trainer about in the center of the image. He’s been moved to a more powerful spot. The spot David Ziser calls nodal point four (the crosspoints created by the Rule of Thirds).

His jacket has been given more definition with the use of the Dodge and Burn Tools (O). It took a trip through Adobe Photoshop CS5’s HDR Toning applet (Image/Adjustments/HDR Toning). I didn’t want to go too crazy with the HDR Toning and brought it up just enough to give greater definition to the horse’s musculature and brighten up the graphic on the edge of the ring. A stagehand was removed from the lower right hand corner.

The actual “star of the show” in today’s image (in my opinion) is the Smudge Tool (no keyboard shortcut) Its in a Tool Group along with the Blur and Sharpen Tools. The lip of the ring in the lower right hand was “fixed” through the use of smudging. Any straight (or gently curved) lines that were a little messed up were hit with the Smudge Tool to create a better looking edge. The Smudge Tool, used at less than ten pixels, pulls fuzzy lines into apparent sharpness.

The image was sharpened in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.3. LR3 was also used to put a subtle vignette around the whole image.


It’s not a bad up date and a way to celebrate the 250th posting on the blog. Everyone take care and keep those emails comes in.

Wow! Hello Montreal, Outremont, St Laurent and Laval.

Wow is all I can say. In the past month, readership north of the border has skyrocketed. I’d like to welcome the readers from the greater Montreal, Quebec, Canada area. The blog has readers in 76 countries around the world and, in most cases, numbers have climbed at a steady rate. In the past thirty days the increase in Canada in general, and the Montreal area specifically has made a real jump. The data I get only shows the cities and town around the world where readers are. Absolutely no personal data is obtained. Therefore, without being able to send each of you a personal email, I can only give a general acknowledgement and say how encouraging it is to see the same cities pop up day after day.

All I can say is that I appreciate your readership and will continue to try to provide interesting anecdotes and techniques on photography and Photoshop related subjects. Let me know what you’d like to hear about and I’ll put up a post on the topic. Thanks to every reader, everywhere.

Looking Through A Dirty Window

Okay, it’s another gimmick shot, but it looks pretty cool to me. I have to give props to Scott Kelby. A couple years ago he put out, for download, a set of Triptychs. He explained that he had some time (I believe on a flight) and just started messing with different ideas for Triptychs. The result was about fifteen different ideas. Most of his were verticals, a couple were two verts and a horizontal or vice versa, but none were horizontals like what you see today. That does mean it an original, just a modification of one developed by Scott. The actual image is mine and it’s an eight shot panorama. The unfortunate part of the whole thing is that the shot was taken prior to having a GPS attached to the camera, so I haven’t the foggiest idea exactly where it is. I think we were in western Massachusetts, traveling along the old Route 20 and saw a sign saying something about a “farm museum” just to the south of where we were. I remember driving down an increasing narrow road and crossing, what looked like, a half lane bridge. (It was almost too narrow to be a one lane bridge.) Just past the bridge the road rose up to the farm. It was a small museum and the highlight was being able to walk out to the pastures and see the animals and gardens. If anyone recognizes the farm, please leave a comment. There’s more to today’s image than initially meets the eye. To find out what went on to get to today’s image, hit the “read more”.



The first thing that happened was to go back to old school to make a mask to separate the sky from the grounds. Using the Quick Selection Tool (W) just didn’t work. So, I went back to looking at the individual Channels (Red, Green and Blue) to find which one gave the best starting point to make the Mask. The Blue Channel gave the best starting point, as the blue sky pretty much dropped out and the white clouds were pretty much non-existent. The Blue Channel was dragged down over the Make New Channel icon. With the copy selected the Calculations Dialog Box (Image/Calculations) was opened. The Bland mode in the Dialog Box was highlighted and the down arrow key tapped to walk down the list of options. Which Blend Mode was best is not important. It’ll be different for each image. With the bright areas in the lower half of the image, a mask directly from the dialog box was impossible. The “closest” approximation was selected and the result saved as a new Channel. Clicking on the new Channel brought up the mask itself. Using a combination of the Brush Tool (B) and the Magnetic Lasso Tool (L) made short work of filling in the ground areas. (The fence, the buildings and the steeple.) With Black as the Foreground Color, each selection was filled using ALT Backspace. Once any ground objects were turned solid black, the black area was selected using the tragic Magic Wand Tool (W). Hitting the Combination of CTRL Backspace filled the sky with white, completing the mask. The Alpha Channel Mask was used to allow the ground and the sky to be treated separately and the colors and tones adjusted as needed.


The Triptych was opened, copied and pasted as a Layer. The dimensions didn’t fit the pano, so Free Transform (CTRL T) was used to reduce the height and increase the width to match the image. The “original” of the Triptych was black centered on a white background. Flipping the colors from Black on White to White on Black was done by tapping the CTRL I (eye) combination, inverting the image. From there the Bland Mode of the Layer was changed to Darker Color and the panorama could be seen through the openings in the Triptych. The Black was darker than anything else, so it could be seen and the image was “darker” than White, so it also could be seen.

Blend Modes were the key to today’s image. They were used to create the Mask and to allow the image to be seen through the Triptych.

200 Images And Counting

Today we are at image number 200. This blog was started on April 21, 2009. So far it’s been fun, challenging, productive, growing and read around the world. Lately, Montreal, Canada has been a hotbed of readers, with more people spending more time each day. Drop a note and say hello wherever you are. It would be an understatement to say that most visitors are from the United States. It may surprise you to learn that the foreign country where the blog is most highly read is Pakistan. The country that flips through the most pages is Sweden. I’m not sure if it’s because I have a good Swedish name, but they also spend the greatest amount of time per visit reading the posts. When I was at Intel we used to use a hockey stick as a metaphor for growth of processor sales. The time to reach the curve got shorter with each generation of processor, but it always looked the same. In fact, there’s a T-shirt showing the graph that Intel put out a couple years ago. Well, it appears this blog is at the curve of the stick. In the past month the number of visitors has grown considerably and, on a daily basis, the increase is accelerating. I would encourage new visitors to flip back through older posts. Like most endeavors, we started out with the “best stuff” we had. We have continued to grow, so some of the newer post exceed anything posted early on, so don’t skip back too quickly. Most of what’s been on the blog has been an anecdote, followed by a technique used on the day’s image. If you only read the splash page and don’t got to the full post, you’re missing out on the “instructional” part of the blog. I’d like to thank those readers who are “the regulars” and encourage everyone who gets a kick out of the posting here to tell ten friends about “The Kayview Gallery”. There are the seeds of plans to offer step by step instructional posts, with screen shots of each step. In the works are videos showing the progression of an image from RAW file to a frameable print. We’re talking with possible “sponsors” to promote services and tools we use on a day to day basis and believe in. The second 200 images will be, hopefully, as exciting and interesting as the first 200 have been. To find out what’s up with today’s image, hit the “read more”.



Today's image is of New York's South Street Seaport and the buildings of Manhattan. You can see a slight lean of the building toward the center of the frame, almost pointing to the top of the mast of the ship. The image itself is another example of combining two copies of the same image to create something that’s greater than the sum of the parts. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I don’t particularly like HDR skies. I do, however, like the effect HDR has on the buildings. In order to separate the sky from the buildings a mask was needed. This isn’t a good example of where the Quick Selection Tool (W) is the tool of choice. Having more than one way to attack a problem is a good thing to have in your pocket “just is case”. In this case, going back to the Calculations dialog (Image/Calculations) box is the way to go. First step is to decide which channel is going to give you the biggest head start. In the case of today’s image that was the Blue Channel. Most of the tutorials I’ve seen on the Calculation dialog box have started out by saying “make a copy of the Channel with the best contrast”. It’s not really necessary. The output from the dialog box is going to give you a new Alpha Channel anyway, so why start with a copy? Anyway, once the new Alpha Channel is made the contrast can be increased using a Levels Adjustment (not a Levels Adjustment Layer) (Image/Adjustments/Levels). The reason for not using an Adjustment Layer is that you want to changes to actually be on the Alpha Channel, not a non-destructive change applied over the Alpha Channel. Once you have the Calculations dialog box open, the default will be two copies of whatever Alpha Channel you thought gave you the best contrast. Look at the Blend Modes and scroll down through the list to find the Blend Mode that gives you the best separation. In the case of today’s image that was Linear Burn. After hitting Okay to confirm your choices it was a simple matter to using the Polygonal Lasso Tool (L) to isolate the remaining chunks of the buildings and filling them with black. (D for default/X if needed to make Black the foreground color and ALT Backspace to fill the area.)


Once the mask was made, another copy of the image was opened and HDR Toning (Image/Adjustments/HDR Toning) applied the image were brought into the same set of Layers and the mask used to show the non-HDR sky over the HDR buildings. From there it was the same old same old of brightening each color (Red, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue and Magenta), sharpening (using a High Pass Filter) and putting a Vignette on.

Hi Dave. How About Leaving A Comment? Let Me Know What You Think. Thanks

Here is the beginning of my post. And here is the rest of it.

Just A Quick Update

Longer posts come out on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  Today is just a little note about some news we received at the gallery yesterday.  We've been a member of the NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) for a couple of years now.  Last month we started putting some of the gallery's work up on their portfolio page.  Each week NAPP chooses an "Image of the Week" along with five "Editor's Choice" selections.  This week the image shown here (and discussed in a September 18th post) received an "Editor's Choice".  Not bad for only contributing for a month.  We've gotten many favorable comments since the week's picks were announced yesterday.  It does encourage our continually striving to produce the best possible images.

Happy Birthday to U.S.

If you've been following this blog you've probably noticed most of the images are not subtle. They tend to smack you up along side your head. I'm not going to pretend that the colors in today's image are not fully saturated, but there is a subtlety that takes a moment to see. One of the details of this shot (composite) is the placement of the flag. There are three silos and the flag could have been put on any of them. The reasoning behind using the middle silo was to give the "breeze" somewhere to blow. If the flag had been put on the far right silo the edge of the flag would have bumped up against the edge of the frame. It would have looked pretty awkward and have been a distraction rather than an element. To check out the subtle part of the image "read more".

When you look at the image you basically see three colors. Yes, there is the pale green of the roofs, but cool colors tend to recede and it isn't a big color element. The big, bold colors of the scene reflect the colors found in the flag, giving an overall patriotic feeling. In about 80% of the image the colors you see are either red, white or blue. Here we have a case of using color to tell a story. The flag is a very small part of the shot, but it takes on more than it's physical share of importance due to the repeating colors found in the rest of the image. We, at the gallery would like to take a moment and wish everyone following our little stories a very good 4th of July. Like most of the holidays during any given year, rather than thinking of the moment, think of the meaning. Have a good weekend.

Hello Intel People

This will be the first posting without a picture to accompany it. I'd just like to say hello to the Intel folks checking out the blog. In the past couple of weeks (since I put the info out that I have a blog) I've had 16 Intel individuals look at the site a total of 22 times. I can narrow it down to those coming through Oregon and those reaching the blog from Folsom. If you're not aware, all Intel internet traffic seems to be going through one of those two portals.

If you're getting a kick out of the blog, feel free to visit often. Leave a comment (thanks Lenny) so I'll get an idea of what you think of it. I'd be happy to stay in touch and get any critiques (constructive confrontation) you might want to give.

Just in case you're wondering, there is undoubtedly a "cookie" on your computer letting me know that you're a returning visitor.

"A Grateful Nation"

Happy Memorial Day. Today we have a composite image that's from a of couple years ago. I was thinking about 9-11 and asked a friend to pose for a couple of shots. In small town's across the country fire fighting is done by volunteers. John is a volunteer. I had John stand on a bridge over a fairly still pond. The distance between the landing of the bridge and the water was just a few feet. The concept was John standing on the bridge dressed in street clothes and his reflection in his fire fighting gear. Even the two feet of disconnect wound up being too much. Just before we left the area I asked John to put his hat on a rock wall and I took a few shots.

With the original idea a bust I turned to his hat. The accompanying image is a composite of three shots. Obviously John's hat is from the arranged shoot. The flag was flying in the parking lot of a shopping mall and the clouds came from a drive through the Catskills in New York. It's a pretty straight job of putting three images together, except for the visor of the fire helmet. The visor is made of clear plastic. If I had left it, to block the flag, the shot would have had a weird "piece of something" in the lower quarter. The visor would not have been apparent as a part of the gear. The visor is actually a fourth layer with the opacity reduced. The visor is still clearly visible and the flag can be seen behind. Attention to detail is important when the final image is a composite.

The image has resonated where it's been shown and has won several awards. The title, "A Grateful Nation" is a tribute to all who serve our great nation.