Matt Kloskowski's Compositing Book

This isn't going to be a true review of Matt's book.  Let's just say I have a stack of books by Scott Kelby, Matt Kloskowski, and Joe McNally and a bunch of other people associated with Kelby's NAPP.  If you've followed the postings here you probably know that I do a fair amount of compositing.  Never the less, I'm a firm believer in the fact that there's always something to learn.  That continues to be true with Kloskowski's newest book.  As I read through the book (the power was out over the weekend due to Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene so I was literarily reading through the book rather than following through the examples) I'd sit there and said "yep, yep, yep, aha".  Every once in a while there was a nugget that was new to me.  Using an inner glow to get rid of a little halo of left over color was one such nugget.  Very cute trick and it's now in my hip pocket whenever it'll be needed.  I think Kelby's sense of humor must rub out on the folks working for him because Matt's book is written in the typical irreverent style of Kelby Media.  I'd much rather read a book that teaches while not taking itself (actually the author not taking himself/herself) too seriously.  I've bought a number of books from pompous asses and, for the most part, they sit in a stack of books that have the first two chapters read.  I just can't handle someone who might as well, figuratively, write "I'm better than you" at the start of each paragraph.  What they say might be the key to my becomes the world's greatest Photoshop expert, but I'll never know.  I just can't get through the book.  Books out of Kelby Media Group, their DVDs, the online training, their online TV shows and about any other thing they put out have an easy going style and, while they treat the subjects with respect, the authors/stars all have a self deprecating sense of humor.  To find out which tricks from the book were used on today's image, hit the "Read More".

There are two big lessons that were used on today's image.  One is technical and the other is more inspiration.  Which of the two are more important?  Neither!  Both are equal.  Going back to Kelby and Kloskowski, they just did a discussion on the talk show "The Grid" this week about sweating the small stuff.  Is it more important that I got all the "t"s crossed and the "i"s dotted or is it more important that I was inspired by Matt's book.  There's the old saying about "give me an infinite number of monkeys and an infinite number of typewriters (that's word processors, pre-computer) and an infinite amount of time and I'll give you Shakespeare.  The "mechanical" stuff is one thing.  Anyone can train and become a good mechanic.  There's a huge gap between being mechanically capable and being creative.  Luckily Matt's book ignites a creative spark.

The first lesson is to pay attention to the details.  If you have shadows, make sure they're all going in the same direction.  It's little thing like that that will trip up some composites.

The second lesson is to be bold.  Take a ballerina and composite her into an old factory or something.

As well as a composite is done well, it photography and art at the same time.

Has Photoshop Met It's End?

I saw a note about a software App for the iPad the other day and had to download it to give it a shake.  It's a version 1.0, so there might be a couple of "gotchas" floating around, but I haven't seen any yet.  I figure it was a free App, so what's the worst it could?  Blow up the iPad?  (figuratively) Since it was software , either Apple or the software writer would put up a fix pretty quickly, so why not play.  Today's image comes from playing with just a couple sliders, after choosing what I wanted to work on.  It was free, I was playing and I was impressed.  Today's image was a finished image, having gone through Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 and a trip over to Adobe Photoshop CS5 and back, but there's always something more that can be done to an image.  In this case it was taking a fully saturated image, with real good greens and some nice, plugged in clouds and antiquing it.  Sort of takes it out of the modern day New York/Pennsylvania border area and puts in kind of a rural Appalachia locale.  Makes the sturdy barns look a little more weather beaten and the foreground building a share croppers cabin.  It just changes the mood of the image.  To find out what this magical, free, iPad App is, hit the "read more".

The App is called Luminance, from a company named Subsplash, Inc.  It appears to have been released about ten days ago.  Interestingly enough, their other Apps appear to be church related.  Now, that's what I call a "leap of faith", thinking that a church app company could (would) come up with a pretty handy photo enhancement application.  It's different alright.

Regardless of who wrote the app or what they done in other aspects of the creativity, Luminance is pretty slick.  Pick what you want to do (fix white balance, hue/saturation [globally only - no tweaking individual colors], exposure and others and push a couple sliders around.  Or they have some presets.  If the preset gets you close, you can always kick a slider one way or the other to get the image to your liking.

The title of today's post is a bit of a stretch.  I don't think designers and photographers and other creative types will be chucking CS5 in favor of Luminance or Nik Software's Snapseed any time soon, but we're still at the bottom of the hill when it comes to what can be done on any tablet.  

Luminance, and Snapseed and a half dozen other Apps that are either out or on their way are making "instant photo finishing" in the field a real possibility.

Playing With A Freebie Plug-in From Adobe

I must be veering off toward the dark side.  Here's a second post about a plug-in.  I typically don't use plug-ins, preferring to figure out what a plug-in is actually doing and duplicating the effect using straight Adobe Photoshop CS5 in all its glory.  Dave Cross, one of the Photoshop Guys over at NAPP, did a piece on a "new" (it was at the time) plug-in available on the Adobe Labs website. I downloaded it at the time and it sat, languishing at the bottom of the Filters dropdown is CS5.  I suppose I could get the same result by using the Mixer Brushes available in CS5, but that would take some artistic talent and I've proved over and over again that I don't have any.  I guess when they were handing out the part of brains for talent I thought they were giving out pains and said "no thanks".  (Old joke.)  After my exploration of Fractalius from Redfield Plug-ins on Wednesday I thought I give the only plug-in I have loaded in Photoshop a shot and see what it does.  Most of what I found added up to a zero as far as I'm concerned.  Most are a mishmash of algorithms for the sake of writing an algorithms.  I can't imagine what I'd use them for.  But one, called Oil Paint had possibilities.  For a link to the download site for the plug-in and a little about today's image, hit the "read more".

It would be fairly easy to do a Google search on Adobe Labs and figure out what the plug-in is called and where to find it, but it'll be easier still to just click this link: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/pixelbenderplugin/ . The plug-in is called Pixel Bender and I've come up with a couple of guidelines and caveats for using it.

Guidelines: Before I would consider using the Oil Paint option in Pixel Bender the image would have to be pretty graphic. I'd use an image with powerful "blocks" that are well defined. I'd look for solid coloring that won't get lost in the technique. The range with the plug-in can go from completely abstract to reasonably fine, but a lower mid-range looked like it produced the best results (on today's image). This is a technique that need to be judiciously applied. With the right image it winds up being "art".

Caveats: It seems to me that this is not something to play with on subtle images. Images with a lot of necessary details would probably be overwhelmed by the algorithm. I don't think I'd use it on portraits, but with that said I do think a portrait might come out looking like one of Van Gogh's "self portraits". I'd say the same thing about sweeping landscapes, but then you have Van Gogh's "Starry Night", "A Wind Beaten Tree" and "Olive Trees". All of which look like they've been put through the plug-in. They say "art is in the eye of the beholder" and I'd guess that's as good a statement about Pixel Bender as I can come up with.

About today's image. The original looks like it might have had some HDR work done. That's not the case. The image was broken down into components and each piece exaggerated in color. Blend Modes and Masks were employed to either Screen sections or Multiply parts. The Screen Bland Mode was used to open the stairway inside the door. Multiply was used (and Opacity reduced) to add depth to the porch. Before it ever went through Pixel Bender it was extensively worked. It was done a couple months before Pixel Bender ever popped into my head.