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tiistai 29. maaliskuuta 2016
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PictureCorrect.com: How to Create a Cinematic Black & White Portrait Effect in Photoshop
Despite all the wonderful real-world advantages of digital photography, once in a while the typical grainy film look just feels so enchanting. So much so that we actually seek out ways to post-process and convert some of our perfectly good color images to give them a nostalgic black and white look. In this video, Andrei Oprinca shares his workflow for transforming digital portraits into old school black and white masterpieces:
- Start by duplicating the background layer twice over. Press command / control + J twice as a shortcut.
- Highlights and shadows will be worked on separately, so the next step is to create two Levels adjustment layers. But before that, label the first copy ‘lights’ and the second one ‘darks’. Now drag the Levels adjustment layer one above darks and the other above lights.
The original background layer is copied twice, renamed, and then two corresponding adjustment layers are created.
- Clip the Levels adjustment layers using ‘Create Clipping Mask’.
- Turn off the darks and take the lights layer first.
- Double click the lights layer first to open properties. The idea is to reduce the contrast significantly. Oprinca works only with the Outputs Levels on this adjustment layer.
The Lights level is adjusted first
- Next is the darks layer. Right-click to change the blend mode to Soft Light. Next open the levels. On this adjustment layer Oprinca works on the levels directly. The target is to increase the contrast of this layer.
The Dark layer is adjusted to increase contrast
- Create a black and white adjustment layer. Optionally, you can create this before the Levels adjustment is tweaked. This eliminates the colors from the image and gives you the critical advantage of judging black and white contrast in the image better. Next, play around with the color tones in the image.
- Create an exposure adjustment layer. Now’s the time to tweak the faded effect. Oprinca adjusts the Offset and Gamma Correction values.
- Oprinca adds some noise to the image. This is of course to taste. To do this create a new layer, then go to Edit > Fill and choose 50% Gray. Convert this layer to a Smart Object. Change the blend mode to Soft Light. Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. This adds noise to the image. Oprinca prefers Uniform over Gaussian. Don’t forget to check Monochromatic. Oprinca also adds a Despeckle and a Gaussian filter on top of it.
Final image after texture is added
Let us know if you try this technique!
For further help: Cinematic Presets in the Ultimate Photography Bundle
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maanantai 28. maaliskuuta 2016
PictureCorrect.com: 10 Tips for DSLR Camera Newbies
If you’ve recently progressed to using a DSLR camera, these ten short tips will help you get off to a great start!
1. Keep Hold of Your Camera Manual
You will quickly learn that you can’t live without it. Make sure you keep it handy and take time to read it frequently, particularly in those first few months after buying your new DSLR camera.
2. Buy a UV Filter
For each lens you own, buy a UV filter—not just to improve the quality of your photos but to protect your expensive lenses.
Photo by Flickr user Amanda; f/3.5, 1/8 exposure.
3. Learn to Use Your Camera’s Settings
It’s especially important that you become proficient at changing your camera’s ISO, aperture, and shutter speed settings quickly. So, practice doing this until it becomes second nature.
4. Get Yourself a Sturdy Tripod and a Remote Release
You might just have spent a small fortune on buying the camera, but try to stretch your budget to include these two important accessories. They will help you take photos where long shutter speeds are needed (e.g., night shots).
Photo by Judy van der Velden.
5. Read Lots of Books and Magazines
They are a great source of inspiration and information, particularly those that show what camera settings were used for the photos shown.
6. Treat the Mirror Inside the Camera Body Very Carefully
It’s very important that you don’t breathe on or touch the mirror when you’ve removed the lens. If you find spots on your photos, get a camera cleaning kit and use it to remove dust or smears from the lens.
7. Avoid Changing Your Lens in Windy Conditions
Ensure you have put the most appropriate lens on your camera before you leave home. If you must change the lens outside, point the camera downward to prevent dust from getting on to the camera’s sensor.
Photo by Andy Atmtx; ISO 100, f/2, 1.6-second exposure.
8. Beware of Camera Shake
If you find that a lot of your photos are blurred, it’s usually because of camera shake. To reduce the possibility of camera shake and consequently blurred photos, you need to increase the shutter speed. Alternatively, hold the camera close to your body or rest it on a firm object nearby.
9. Think About Your Future Needs
This is particularly important when buying a camera bag. It’s quite common for photographers to have three or more lenses, so consider having a couple of bags: a bag that will hold all of the lenses and equipment that you’re likely to have in the future and another bag that will hold a single lens will cover most situations.
10. Experiment, Experiment, Experiment!
The quickest and best way to learn to figure out what you can do with your camera is to experiment. Try using different apertures when shooting landscapes or different shutter speeds when photographing moving objects, such as waterfalls.
I hope you found this short list of tips useful. Take them on board and you’ll soon be making the most of your new digital SLR camera.
About the Author:
John is an enthusiast (digitalslrbrandtalk dot com) when it comes to digital SLR cameras and is keen to help fellow enthusiasts.
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PictureCorrect.com: How to Customize Your Photoshop Toolbar
If you’re like thousands of other occasional users Photoshop, you may not have given this a thought. A lot of the popular editing software’s interface is customizable, which means you can play around with the default panel and toolbar. This video from the PTC gives you a quick demonstration for a better workflow:
Customizing the Photoshop Toolbar
Click on Edit > Toolbar to bring up the Toolbar edit dialog.
The Photoshop toolbar is located on the left of the screen and this toolbar can be customized in Photoshop CC 2015 using two different approaches. You can either go to the Edit menu and click on Toolbar, or you can click on the icon with the three dots and open the Edit Toolbar dialog.
Click on the icon with three dots.
The Customize Toolbar dialog is pretty much a drag and drop thing. Each time you remove a tool or change its position, the toolbar is updated in real time.
Customizing the tools in Photoshop is a simple drag and drop exercise.
You can even create your own new sets of nested tools by dragging a tool out of its nested position and dropping it between two sections. From there you can drag and drop other tools under that new section to create your own new set.
Custom Workspaces
Custom Workspaces is a new feature that works in tandem with the Custom Toolbars. This feature lets you create a custom workspace that is attuned to the kind of work that you are doing.
Let’s say you’re working on a new logo or editing a photo or doing some sort of 3D work. For each of these tasks you may have a set of tools that you frequently use. With the standard toolbar it’s a big irritating to locate the specific tools each time you need it. The solution is to create a customized toolbar that is activated as soon as you switch to the specific workspace.
Create a custom Workspace in Photoshop.
Click on the Workspaces dropdown menu and select the type of task that you want to do to bring up the related panels on Photoshop. You can then change things around, adding the tools you need and closing the ones that you don’t normally use. Each time you bring up the Workspace your customized toolbars will be available to you. You can even assign keyboard shortcuts to each of the tools to make things easier to remember.
Save the custom Workspace.
To save the customized workspace and toolbars, drag the workspace to New Workspace and the Save New Workspace dialog will open up. Enter a name for the new workspace, check keyboard shortcuts, menus, and toolbars, and hit Save.
Have you tried this out? Let us know how you customize your Photoshop workflow.
For further training: 33 Premium Photoshop Tutorials
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PictureCorrect.com: Interesting Photo of the Day: Tiny Mountaintop Earth
Who needs panoramas when you can create tiny Earths on your smartphone? Not jsmooth7, who trekked up Panorama Ridge in Garibaldi Provincial Park, in British Columbia, Canada, only to eschew the namesake panoramic route and opt for a little sphere of wonder instead:
(Via Imgur. Click image to see full size.)
The photographer captured this shot with an old Nexus 4 phone and put it together with the Google Camera Photosphere app. If you’d rather go a different route, though, you can also create these sorts of images in Photoshop.
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PictureCorrect.com: See Inside The Kodak Technology Vault
It’s like walking down the aisle of history—photographic history to be precise. Tips from the Top Floor anchor Chris Marquardt gives us a peek at his private tour of the humongous George Eastman Museum Technology Vault in Rochester, NY:
The museum’s technical curator, Todd Gustavson, was kind enough to show off everything right from the Daguerreotype, to wet plate cameras, to 35mm film cameras, all the way to specimens from the modern digital era.
He also took Marquardt around to see fringe items such as a gold Leica replica, a pinhole X-ray camera, and the oldest known camera sold in the US (incidentally also a Daguerreotype camera).
During the tour, Gustavson shared numerous anecdotes from the early days of photography and the people who were involved in it. This is truly a lesson in the history of photography in general—and camera technology in particular—that no one interested in photography would ever want to pass up.
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sunnuntai 27. maaliskuuta 2016
PictureCorrect.com: Landscape Photography at Twilight
There are various phases of sunrise and sunset, however each phase repeats itself twice a day – once during sunrise and once again at sunset. All phases during sunrise are the same for sunset phases – the only difference is chronological order i.e. when each phase begins and ends. Therefore, sunrise and sunset are exactly the same, except that sunset reverses the order of phases seen at sunrise.
“Head-On” captured by Mark Broughton
Twilight phases at Sunrise:
- Astronomical twilight
- Nautical twilight
- Civil twilight
- Sunrise
The phases of twilight at sunset are the same just in the opposite order. Let’s begin with sunrise and discuss each phase separately.
The length of twilight before sunrise and after sunset is heavily influenced by the latitude of the observer; therefore I will not discuss the length of each twilight phase since it is highly variable. The first phase of morning twilight is known as astronomical twilight. This period of twilight occurs when the center of the sun is between 12° and 18° degrees below the horizon and slowly increases before day time officially begins.
Most casual observers would consider the entire sky already fully dark even when astronomical twilight is just ending in the morning. Atmospheric colors consist of deep dark blue toward the horizon, and completely black when facing west. Astronomical twilight really brings cityscape photos to life. The deep blue mixed with warm artificial lights from city buildings, streets, and cars produce nice contrasts. Arguably, this is the best time to photograph cityscapes, but this clearly depends what you’re attempting to capture. Images during all twilight phases and during sunrise require a tripod. The photo will be blurry, regardless if your lens has vibration reduction or image stabilization.
Nautical twilight is when the center of the sun is between 6° and 12° below the horizon. The primary color cast across the atmosphere is usually a deep blue hue with noticeable orange and yellow tones at the horizon due to the rising sun. Light will begin appearing quickly throughout this phase, and the blue sky will get begin to get brighter and paler. Details will become easier to distinguish but will lack most edge definition. Again, cityscape photographs are nicely produced during this phase. Most landscape photographs will be uninteresting during this phase because there is not enough available light. Silhouettes begin to look interesting, and get better in the next twilight phase.
“Winter Solstice in Reykjavik” captured by Ævar Guðmundsson
Civil twilight is the brightest phase of twilight and begins when the geometric center of the sun is 6° below the horizon and ends at 0° sunrise/sunset. The horizon is clearly visible and shadows are easily discernable. Objects are clearly defined and no additional light is needed in most cases. The light cast during this phase can be anywhere from warm golden tones to cool pink tones. During civil twilight, the colors of the sky are going to change quickly. Colors of pale yellow, neon red, and bright orange will dominate the sky. If clouds are present they begin changing colors, first from soft pink then to deep ruby red. When looking westward you can see the twilight wedge, which is a mixture of Earth’s shadow and scattered light. The pink and blue hues of the twilight wedge are separated by multiple layers. Most landscape photos begin coming to life as available light increases and details become obvious.
When the sun finally rises, deep ruby red and dark pink colors splash all over the terrain. Shadows come alive and retain purple and blue hues due to scattered light. The contrasts of red and blue are at a pinnacle, and will arguably provide for the best landscape pictures. The mixture of colors and shadows helps distinguish form, shape, and texture, and these compositional elements should be utilized. The color of light is quickly changing from red to yellow, and you must react very fast if you decide to change composition or frame.
As the sun continues to rise in the sky, colors shift from yellow to white. This is why the first hour of sunrise and sunset is called the “golden hour“, because red light shifts to gold. After the first hour of sunrise the color of light begins turning whiter and is not conducive to most landscape photography. The only circumstances that could create gorgeous photos in midday are during storms when the sun breaks through high clouds illuminating spots of land. Otherwise, forget about taking good landscape pictures – they will not be compelling.
Photo captured by Denis Krivoy
The best time of day to create evocative landscape imagery is during twilight and sunrise/sunset. There are rare exceptions when these “rules” do not apply, which is why if you are seriously considering landscape photography you must be out in the wilderness during these hours. Yes you will miss breakfast and dinner, yes it will be hard waking up very early in the morning, and yes you will be frustrated many times when the photo opportunities are just not there because it’s too cloudy, or no clouds, etc. But who ever said photography was easy?
This stuff is not meant for the meek. As with anything in life you have to really want it. You have to be passionate about taking away a beautiful photo, even though it took many visits to the same spot to get your photo. This stuff can be grueling at times, but for me, the rewards far outweigh the repeated disappointments. I hope this article has helped those seeking to become landscape photographers.
About the Author:
This article was written by Stefan Hofer (stefanhoferphotography dot com). A creative photography enthusiast.
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