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2018 / 19 Workshop Using Lightrooms
Last night we had a master class in the use of Adobe Lightroom by Phil Mallin. He described his general work flow and the types of adjustments that he does whilst working on an image in Lightrooms. Basic Adjustments: He starts with the basic tools panel which does global adjustments As a general rule he reduces the Highlights to around -50, increase both the shadows and whites to +50 and finally reduces the blacks to -50. Note this is just a starting point and during the pressing will often return and do further minor tweaks to these values. If you want to see the image full screen press F (see https://makeawebsitehub.com/adobe-lightroom-keyboard-shortcuts-cheat-sheet/ ) for other keyboard short cuts Spot removal: Having set some basic adjustments he looks to clean up the image using the spot removal tool Set to heal Scans the image for imperfections due to marks on lens or dust on sensor You probably need to be zoomed in to do this use the zoom options which are to the top left Too move / pan around the image whilst zoomed in and having a tool selected, press and hold down the Space bar which changes the cursor to the hand icon. You can also visualise where these imperfection might be by selecting the visualise spots toggle on the tool bar If this tool bar is missing select the Show Tool bar from the View menu or press T Note although this is called spot removal and the brush is round its really a clone stamp and you can select any area by moving the brush whilst...
2019 Beauty Retouching
Getting rid of blemishes and spots. Open your image in Photoshop. Create 2 copy layers of your background. On layer 1 rename the layer to “low”. Go to FILTER– select, NOISE and then select dust and scratches. Make the radius between 20 and 25. On layer 2 rename the layer to “high” Go to IMAGE – APPLY IMAGE under Layer select LOW, select SUBTRACT and change the scale to 2 and Offset to 128. Change the layer mode from normal to linear light. Get the healing brush – ensure that the brush is on Current layer and on the high layer select the blemishes you wish to remove. If at this point you are happy with the changes you have made to can is wish flatten the layers. Smoothing the skin Now that you have removed the blemishes we need to smooth the skin a little but still keep some definition. Create 3 copies of your background layer On layer 1 rename to “Smooth” Go to FILTER select Noise – MEDIAN to 30 On layer 2 rename to “Texture” Go to FILTER – OTHER-HIGH PASS increase the radius to between 10 and 15. Change the layer mode from Normal to Soft Light or Overlay. On layer 3 rename to “Working” create a layer mask. With a soft black brush with a flow of 100% and Opacity of 100% and a hardness of 18% Turn off the Background and Smooth layers Using a black brush and on the mask on layer 3 “Working” bush over the skin avoiding the eyes, eye brows and lips. Continue to brush over other parts...
2019 Tips and Tricks
Tips, Tricks and Observations Before you go out: Plan your shoot – Know where you are going and what time of day you need to be there. Check online for sunrise and sunset time or Moon rise and Moon sets for the location. timeanddate.com or Photograher’s Emphemeris at www.photoemphemeriess.com . Check the times for any transport you are photographing or need to use to get to location. Check the weather. There are many apps you can put on your phone or android and they are free. Write down a list of things you what to take a picture of when on the location. Go on goggle and find other photographers images of the same location and see if you can think of a different and better image. Camera Cards- Always format cards in camera not on your computer this can corrupt the card when done on computer. Always buy the best and fastest cards available. Check that you have a camera card in camera and spares in your camera bag. Have a place in your camera bag to place used cards or a gadget to hold them. If you worry about losing images from less reliable cards buy small cards such as 8 or 16Gbt instead of the larger 64Gb and above. Batteries – always buy the manufacturers camera batteries, other brands may not hold the charge and will empty a lot faster than the manufacturers. Check that your batteries have full charge in them and that you have a battery in camera and spares in your camera bag. Keep batteries in the dry, warm and waterproof place....
NON Destructive Sharpening in Photoshop & Photoshop Elements
The following High-Pass sharpening procedure can be undertaken in either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements but should be done after you have completed all of your processing. It is not always the case that you want to sharpen everything in your picture. The reason the High Pass filter technique works so well at sharpening images is because any areas in the image which are not an edge are left untouched. The only areas that have sharpening applied to them are the edges, which is exactly what you want, To achieve this you create a high-pass sharpening layer and layer mask and use the brush tool sharpen only those parts I want sharpened. The process is as follows images shown are for Photoshop but Elements is similar. :- Duplicate Layer Once you have finished working on your image the final step is to sharpen the places that require sharpening. The first thing we need to do is to make sure we have a layer at the top showing the final image. this could be the background layer as you have flattened your image or you have merged visible. I can see in my Layers palette now that I have my original Background layer at the bottom, which contains my original pixel information, and the duplicate of it, which Photoshop automatically names “Layer 1”, above: Change The Blend Mode Of The Duplicate Layer To “Overlay” Next, we need to change the blend mode of the duplicate layer from “Normal” to “Overlay”. The reason is that the High Pass filter is going to turn all non-edge areas of the image into neutral gray, and the...
How to re-size and send images to DS Colour Labs for printing
The following steps are a guide to those of you who have Photoshop and would like DS Colour labs to print off your images. This is the way I do it, but others might have another ways. Basically I create a new document in Photoshop and paste my image onto the new document. I then brightened the image and save it as a JPEG, then I download it onto the DSCL site. So this is how I do it. Go to the DSCL website and find the printing size you want, write down or remember the size needed. As a rule I use the 12X16” print size or smaller. Open up your image in Photoshop, making sure it is processed and to your liking. Open up a new document in Photoshop by going to file – NEW- Name the new document as required. Change the Width to inches and Height to inches, Change the values in each to those you want for printing for example 12×16”. Change resolution to 300. Colour mode should be RGB and Background contents should be White. Go to your image and flatten your layers. Now select (CMD A) your image and copy (CMD C). Go to your new document and paste (CMD V) your image into it. Your image should be larger than the new document in which case Free Transform (CMD T keeping the perspective) your image and resize as required. Once re-sized brighten your image by at least +10 using a brightness and contrast layer. The reason for doing this is because our monitors have light at the back of them and...
Keyboard Short Cuts
Remember before mice we used to use a keyboard well many programs stil have keyboard short suts that can improved your workflow see http://www.setupablogtoday.com/adobe-photoshop-keyboard-shortcuts/ http://www.setupablogtoday.com/adobe-creative-cloud-cheat-sheet/ http://www.setupablogtoday.com/adobe-lightroom-keyboard-shortcuts-cheat-sheet/...
Photographic Distortion And Perspective Correction
Following on from last nights theme of How do I do That Dave Carter has submitted the following like to an article on Photographic Distortion And Perspective Correction...
50% Grey
Not 50 shades of grey I hasten to add During the recent Show & Tell session various techniques were discussed about how to lighten or darken an area of an image aka Dodge and Burn. One technique that seem’s to be used a lot with varing success particularly on sky’s when the original image really needed a graduated ND filter, is to select the sky, apply a large feather selection and then create a levels adjustment layer in which you move the black point on the histogram to the right to darken. This technique is often then followed by inverting the selection, creating a new levels adjustment layer and then moving the white point on the historgram left to lighten the foreground. The disadvantage of this technique is if you over do it by moving either the black or white point beyond the ends of the histogram you tend to leave a halo effect along the selection boundary i.e. An alternative method which has been discussed before is the 50% grey adjustment layer with an overlay blend mode. Martin Godfrey discribed this method last season as a way of implementing a non distructive Dodge and Burn. To recap I will discribe this in relation to Adobe Photoshop elements. Open your image in PSE Create a Solid Colour Adjustment layer Select the colour In the layer pallette you should now have You can simplify the layer The Layer pallette should now look like Set the blend mode to Overlay (Soft light has a similar but not quite so dramatic effect) If the colour you selected for the solid colour was...
ETTR – Exposing To The Right
In digital photography, exposing to the right (ETTR) is the technique of increasing the exposure of an image in order to collect the maximum amount of light and thus get the optimum performance out of the digital image sensor. The name derives from the resulting image histogram which, according to this technique, should be placed close to the right of its display. Advantages include greater tonal range in dark areas, greater signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), fuller use of the colour gamut and greater latitude during post-production. ETTR images appear to be overexposed when taken and must be correctly processed (normalized) to produce a photograph as envisaged, therefore care must be taken to avoid clipping within any colour channel, other than acceptable areas such as specular highlights. (see WikiPedia for full definition) I’m not going to write an article on a technique that has been written about hundreds of times before and can be found by just by doing a Google search for “exposing to the right” But for those who can’t google here’s some Digital Photography School Cambridge in Colour Luminance Landscape Digital Camera World SLR Lounge DPReview ScrewePhoto Online Photographer Martin Bailey...