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August 1, 2011
Photoshop action – selective sharpening (download)
Jim McGuinness, a regular follower of the Tangents blog, has made available a tutorial on how to do selective sharpening in Photoshop. Even better, he has made it available as a downloadable action as well.
You can download the action and the instructions on how to use it, from here.
Right-click & save-as, 2 of the files files:
- the action as either Windows / Mac compressed file
- the instruction as a PDF
Expand / uncompress the sitx file. You’ll get a Photoshop icon.
Drag your image onto the icon, and photoshop will run it.
I’ll let Jim follow up for any questions that may crop up.
[ Jim McGuinness is an Adelaide based wedding and family portrait photographer ]
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June 19, 2011
a RAW workflow – the first step – changing your default settings
As a bit of a forward nudge to those who are entirely new to a RAW workflow, or who hesitantly moved to shooting in RAW – here’s the next step forward – changing the defaults for your RAW file.
Before we even get there, shooting in RAW is very much part of the serious photographer’s environment. Shooting just in JPG is rarely an option. As I have mentioned, there are few occasions where shooting in JPG might be an advantage. So with that in mind … RAW it is. And has to be.
Now, some notes for the newcomers to shooting in RAW.
There are a few things you have to keep in mind:
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June 18, 2011
RAW vs JPG – the final discussion
The RAW vs JPG debate has raged on to the point where pretty much every photographer has been worn down, or left confused. It’s been done. But bear with me on this one. It’ll be quick. And convincing. Then we really are done with this. Here it is:
There is NO photographer on this planet who is good enough to get:
- correct white balance,
- correct exposure,
- correct brightness level,
- correct overall and local contrast,
- correct saturation,
- a good black point,
- or anything else you’d like to add,
DURING the moment of capture, for EVERY situation they are likely to encounter.
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April 11, 2011
personal work – Manhattan cityscapes
It’s been a long cold winter without much chance to roam around and explore with a camera. The past weekend it seemed like the weather was finally relenting and becoming warmer. Taking to the streets to shoot for myself a bit with no purpose in mind, I ended up with three images that I liked – all deserted New York city scenes. Or in the case of the image above, nearly deserted.
It felt good to let my thoughts roam for a while, getting some exercise and listening to music … looking for anything that visually appealed to me in the camera’s viewfinder.
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January 5, 2011
children’s studio portrait – lighting setup and post-processing
The lighting setup was very simple. Mostly because there wasn’t much space in the area where I set up my home-studio in my dining room area. But also, because a complicated lighting setup wasn’t necessary. Just two lights. One light on my subject – this adorable little girl; the other light on my background.
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September 8, 2010
Chuck Arlund is a Fashion Photographer whose elegant photography is made even more impressive with the simplicity of his set-ups and use of lighting.
Chuck’s previous guest spot here on the topic of on-location lighting techniques using reflector & flash, was very well received. Therefore I’m very happy that Chuck is graciously sharing more of his ideas with this guest post. Also, check out Chuck’s workshops and mentoring sessions.
Inspiration and Homage,
compositing and multiple lights made to look natural
This photograph is from a recent fashion story, and has a couple of elements going on. There is an obvious Americana theme, and in that, there is the homage to Norman Rockwell. Who captured that spirit better than Norman Rockwell?
I’ll just tell the story of how the image came about and then describe the technique behind it …
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August 24, 2010
Photoshop Tips – retouching for portraits
When retouching portrait photographs, I have a certain look that I (currently) like – a slightly ‘polished’ look, but still natural. Definitely not ‘plastic’. With a few steps in Photoshop, and a few steps that I may or may not add, I can easily get to the styling in post-processing that I want. Some of the steps are specific, but others are added depending on taste or ‘feel’. Some of the steps involve Photoshop plug-ins which are essential for me …
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August 11, 2010
reducing the blue color cast in white clothing
Often when working in the shade, or anywhere we need Cloudy or Shade white balance, we’ll often see a blue tint in the white clothing. I suspect this might be due to detergents being used which give a blue-ish tint to white clothing to make them appear cleaner. Or perhaps this is from UV light when we’re working in cloudy conditions or in the shade. However it might be, we will often get that blue tone in white clothing, as in this photo below …
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August 7, 2010
The best way to deal with digital noise in photographs is to start with having a correctly exposed photograph taken by a high-ISO capable camera. Then digital noise mostly isn’t an issue unless you start pushing the upper limits of what the camera is capable of. But sometimes (hopefully only sometimes), you have to deal with an under-exposed photograph from an older camera … and then the digital noise becomes apparent. Then we have to use software to clean the image up …
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June 20, 2010
what white balance should I set my camera to?
… that’s a question that baffles photographers who are just starting out with digital photography.
You have a few options in setting the WB on your camera:
- you could shoot in auto white balance (AWB), and hope your camera nails it. And then you can also feel excited as each new generation of camera offers better AWB.
- you could set your camera to one of the preset WB settings, such as Daylight, Cloudy or Incandescent. And hope your camera’s preset is close to the correct WB.
- you could do custom white balance readings and save it as you encounter and work in new situations. These custom white balance readings can be done with all kinds of white balance cards and discs.
These all work … usually. However, what we need to understand is that quite often, there is no ‘correct’ white balance setting. What we are after is a pleasant white balance …
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