photography workflow – back-up plans for the main computer

The photograph above was shot with my iPhone while I was waiting for a corporate photo shoot to commence. The sky over lower Manhattan was grim and rainy. You can see the reflection of the fluorescent lights inside the room. This gave the city scene a Blade-Runner-esque feel. And with that, this image is perhaps suitably Apocalyptic for this topic – what are your plans for catastrophic failure of your main computer?

The idea for this article comes from a discussion with another photographer – she cringed every time I mentioned, “so what happens to your business if your house burns down and your computer is gone?” My other remark that her computer’s hard drive most likely will fail at some point, didn’t seem to lift her spirits either.

So with that, let’s look at those two points:
1. Safe-guarding yourself against catastrophic loss of your computer.
2. Preparing yourself for when your hard drive crashes.

The solutions are fortunately quite simple and elegant …

Before we start, I have to offer these disclaimers:
- I can find my way around a computer to do my work as a photographer in the digital age. However, I’m not very computer savvy, and I’m not a computer geek with incredible detailed knowledge about the latest in computer hardware and software. So there might well be more sophisticated ways of doing what I’m doing. And there definitely are other ways of doing what I am doing. But I also feel that any digital photographer that strays from these basic ideas, will inevitably face very costly, if not insurmountable problems.
-  We’re just going to discuss your actual main computer – not your external hard drives or RAID arrays that hold your photographs. That’s another discussion.

1. Safe-guarding yourself against catastrophic loss of your computer. 

This year we saw the unbelievable way that Japan was hit with earthquakes and tsunamis. Devastating! And across the world, the global climate changes seem to affect the frequency and severity of the weather, such as tornados. The Mid-West of the USA saw tornado after tornado this year. And with no warning houses are shredded. Therefore it isn’t just scare-mongering to consider the likelihood of your computer being completely destroyed. Then there is always the lurking problem of theft of your computer.

solution: create an on-line / off-site version of your computer files. 

The idea here is that your computer files – your Word documents, spreadsheets, PDFs .. everything .. is stored as an immediate copy on a website. This is done automatically. You don’t have to think about it. Just pay your monthly or annual fee. Simple as that.

I use Dropbox.
There are other options out there as well on the internet. Lots of them.
Here is *what* I like about Dropbox … which is also explained in *how* I use Dropbox.

I keep *everything* of importance that resides on my main hard-drive, in the dropbox folder – contracts, receipts, reference files, presets .. everything. All my work files and documents. Instead of using the Dropbox folder on my computer as a single folder to stuff a bunch of documents in, I created a sensible folder structure within the Dropbox. Here is a screen-grab of part of it to give you an idea. Folders within folders.

Now, should my house burn down and I lose my computer and data … I can go to the Apple Store and buy a new MacBook Pro again. After setting it up, I would sign into my Dropbox account, and let the on-line version of my computer files sync to my new computer. Barely a day’s hiccup compared to what would’ve been a catastrophe if I had lost all my documents and files.

Another example of the beauty of using a solution like DropBox:
I might be in London on a trip, and a client emails me and needs a file. I can email or text my assistant-with-an-attitude to place the file in a Dropbox folder for me on the main computer in the office. A minute later (or less) it is synced on my laptop in my hotel room in London. I can then retouch the photo / make changes to a document / whatever-it-is-I-needed-to-do. Once I am done and have saved the file, it will automatically sync that file with the same file on my main office computer’s dropbox folder. (Same folder structure!) And then my assistant can print it and mail it or whatever-it-is-that-needs-to-be-done.

Elegant!

While I am recommending must-do stuff … here are two programs that I’d highly recommend. They make your life easier:

1Password 

You keep all your passwords in one place with a single super-strong password. But before you shrug this off, let me explain that you also keep note of your registered username, and registered email address and any pertinent data. Even better, you can store your software keys here. (And again, also your registered username and registered email address and any pertinent data associated with a specific piece of software.)

Best part – it can sync via Dropbox.

Evernote

With Evernote, you keep documents and photos and any clippings, all in one place. You can create folders, and you can tag various items. I keep note of everything via Evernote. It may not sound so impressive when described like that, but I am sure that anyone who uses Evernote would agree with me that it quickly becomes an indispensable part of how you work on a computer on the internet, keeping track of stuff you like and want to refer to again.

Here’s the best part about Dropbox and 1Password and Evernote – it syncs across devices. So I have the same info on my laptop and main computer and iPad and iPhone. Anything from bus schedules to airplane flight details to client contracts.

2. Preparing yourself for when your hard drive crashes.

You absolutely *have* to have a rock-solid system in place here, for your hard drive is … well, I don’t want to be as dramatically emphatic as saying your hard drive *will* crash at some point, but you know it is quite likely to. And it is easy to be prepared for this.

My choice: Super-Duper!  and an external hard drive. 

I like their tagline: Heroic System Recovery For Mere Mortals.

And that is exactly the best part about Super-Duper. I’m a photographer.  I have *other* stuff to do than figure out software programs and set them up. Super-Duper is very easy to use.

With Super-Duper you set it up to make a bootable clone of your main hard drive. The “bootable” means that if your main hard drive should crash, you could boot your computer off the cloned drive … and you continue to work. You can take your computer in for repairs a day or so later. You know … when you have time, because *right now* have stuff you have to do and finish up. That it is a bootable clone is extremely important. It isn’t just a copy of my files. It is an actual copy of my hard drive as it existed at a specific time the previous day. And I can work on it, just as if it is my actual computer hard drive. (Any difference in the documents that I may have been working on that day, are easily fixed by finding the most current file on Time Machine or Dropbox.)

I have Super-Duper set up to make a cloned copy of my hard drive at 3am every night. And I can sleep safe and sound. It’s done for me.

Then of course, because I’m paranoid, I also have Time Machine set up to run and keep copies of my files on another hard drive. Redundancy is a good thing!

Final summary:

As I mentioned at the start of this article – there are other ways of doing this, and other software options. These are what I am using right now to safeguard me from that heart-stopping moment when I realize my computer is gone, or my hard drive is just clicking away, not responding. Right now, these are minor annoyances compared to what could be – devastating loss. I can cope and recover without much drama.

It don’t think it is often that I am prescriptive in my advice … well, except when it comes to shooting in RAW, and shooting in manual exposure mode. Aside from that, I know there are many ways of working. Tastes vary. Intended results vary. Artistic intent varies. However …

… I  strongly feel that if you haven’t set up something similar to what is described in this article, you are courting disaster. You *have to* do something about this where there is no possible gap where computer failure or loss of a computer is devastating to you as a digital photographer. And you have to do it now. The options are so easy to use, and so seamless, that there is no excuse. You have to.

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Adrian, a regular follower of the Tangents blog, (better known as the ever-helpful Trev in the Tangents forum), has the guest spot this week. Adrian has expanded on his explanation of the actions that he mentioned in the comments section of the recent article on Selective Sharpening in Photoshop. Even better, he has made it available as two downloadable actions as well.

Photoshop actions to help with Post Processing after RAW conversion (free download)

Intro:

The following downloadable actions with the instructions on their use can save some time and grief on getting a good result after RAW conversion. Even using your RAW converter may not get a fully desirable end result and these very easy to use actions will help in that regard. They are not complicated and you don’t need any plug-ins to achieve a simple lift to your final image.

.
The actions, while still utilising the features in photoshop, do it in a different way to what you may have learnt or been shown, by using layers and masks you keep the integrity of your image at the same time giving it that lift.

Things like a simple contrast can be achieved in less than 1 second running the action, but, without the undesired color shift you would get with the ‘generic S Curve’.

Once you have run it through the RAW converter, you can still open the RAW file itself [from ACR] and have an image adjusted quicker and easier than during the RAW stage, or once exported, having a batch opening and then checking selected images make further adjustments much easier.

Sharpening is always a contentious point, many varying views, but the one thing that remains a ‘given’ is you don’t want to sharpen skin tones, looks nasty, so running a sharpen action after export could be done even in batch mode to your images.

Another action, cleaning colours, helps lift faces if used sparingly or boosting colours, but in a way that’s not too dramatic. Bit like Vibrancy slider in Lightroom without having to go to LR.

download the 2 actions from here, (right-click & save-as)

Description of the Actions:

Note: Some of these actions will change how your Curves dialogue box looks like. I operate on percentages, not levels based in using Curves, since everyone can relate to a % figure without having to wonder what an Input of 230 Output of 241 will result in, but with percentage base, a no-brainer.

If you want the gritty details, open your Curves dialogue box, click on ‘Curve Display Options’ and check ‘Pigment Inks’ which will also swap your Shadows/Highlights around, dragging down for lighter and up for darker, and if you place your cursor and click on a point, the figures are now percentage based, not levels.

If you want to see what any of the Masks are protecting/enhancing in any of the following actions, simply Alt [pc] Option [mac] and click on the Mask itself and it will show the actual mask on your image. Reverse procedure to get back to full colour image or simply click on ‘background’ of your image.

Anyone who is familiar with actions, can also get out of button mode, open up the action arrows to see what was applied. Some look involved but fairly simple for anyone who can create and understand them. Obviously you can change defaults if comfortable with them.

1st Action Set Name: TOOLS for PROCESSING

Actions:

1] Gradient POP 20%
A simple gradient map, blend mode Soft Light, Opacity 20% which can be varied.

2] Sharpen 250 Protect Skin
Great for wedding/portrait with lots skin. Sharpens 250%, Radius 1.8, Threshold 0 with a Red Channel Mask protects reds for skin tones. Opacity 100%, can be varied to taste.
Fantastic other colors around faces except red. Gets in between eyelashes, etc., protecting the skin tones.

3] Sharpen 150 Protect Skin
Same as 250 but Sharpen set to 150. Opacity can be varied.

4] Clean Colours Independently [using UK English spelling of ‘colours’]
Great for ‘cleaning’ colours which may have been a bit ‘muddy’. Use sparingly set to 20% adjustable.
Simple use of ‘Selective Color’ adjustment layer. eg: Red is Magenta and Yellow, so I make Cyan -100%; Blue is Cyan & Magenta, so I make Yellow -100% and so on for each colour.

5] Boost Colours Independently
Similar to above, but to increase colour saturation. Use sparingly. Set to 20%
This time you +100% the colours you want. eg: Reds – Magenta +100%; Yellow +100%, Cyan 0, etc.

The Clean & Boost is handy if once you find you processed image still lacking a bit you can without having to go back to original, give the quick boost via actions. You can also add layer mask to the ‘Selective Color’ layer to mask out anything too intrusive, eg: faces.

6] Reflector Open Shadows
A great way to open up eye sockets, faces if a tad too dark, simply using Soft White Brush, paint in on Black Mask around 15-30% opacity until you have built up the desired effect. There is a protective mask on there which will help preserve highlights. Gentle brushing to build up is far better then aggressive brush opacity flow rate.

7] Remove Blues from Whites
Simply use of Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer with the ‘Blues’ set to -65%, using Soft Brush, opacity set to 100% simply brush over the whites, removes Blue only.

8] Sunburn Relief
Ahhh, ever had the ‘sunglasses white eye sockets with burnt surrounds’ or simply just sunburnt.
Brush out on the mask around 10-30% until happy with Soft White Brush.
Simple use of Selective Color Adjustment Layer with Reds having -33% Magenta and -27% Yellow.
Why those percentages? Just cause I found it a nice combo, but feel free to play around.
Only effects the ‘Reds’.

9] Contrast via Masks 5%
Now, this is the “be all, end all” in my personal opinion.
Many people apply contrast via S Curves but that can destroy colours, it *will* change them.
I found a great tutorial [forgot site name] on this a good while back, made a lot of sense, so I made 2 actions. 5% and a 10%
Using Curves Adjustment Layers for both Shadows and Highlights [S-H, percentage based] I applied a 5% for dark tones, but, using the midtone point in the Curves Palette.
Input 50% Output 55%, PLUS a protective layer mask.
Same for Highlights, this time 50% Input with a 45% Output and mask to protect darker tones.
Alt click on the mask to see what I mean. Alt click on mask again to get back to image.
You can change the percentages, but you need to do it in the Curves Palette, the layer opacity is always 100%, of course you can alter Output to different % for each of the Shadow/Highlights, nothing says you need to keep both at 5% or 10%. You may find having the Shadows at 5% plenty but open up the Highlights to 10%.

10] Sepia Protect Whites
Convert to BW your way first, then run the action.
Excellent way to get genuine Sepia tones, without tinting the whites.
Mask to protect the whites from looking silly, they remain white, and it tints perfectly and gradually through midtones to shadows.
It uses the ‘Solid Colour’ Adjustment Layer with a mask, so you can change the colour if you want by double clicking on the Icon in layer, and change to your hearts content.
Default gives a good ratio of Red 60, Green 30, Blue 0; but feel free to experiment as the whites will always be protected.

11] Teeth via Green Channel
Great way to whiten teeth using Curves with Image Calculations on the Green Channel since this gives the greatest contrast between gum/skin/teeth so you can brush confidently without having to be careful. Brush at 100 full brush, then change opacity to suit. You don’t want a in your face ‘Hollywood’ look, 40-50% layer opacity is generally pretty good.

12] Dodge Brighten Eyes
Once again, Curves/Mask Layer Mask, brush in white brush until happy. Change layer opacity to suit.

13] Dodge & Burn General
Nope. Definitely NOT the Dodge-Burn Tool, that’s a useless tool in my opinion.
This uses once again a Curves Adjustment Layer for each of the Dodge/Burn Layers with protective Masks.
Simply use soft white brush, around 10-30% or change opacity on the fly to lighten/darken areas of the image using the different layers created.
Of course hitting X on keyboard you can brush back in something you may have been too aggessive with.

2nd Action Set Name: SHADOW RANGE

Actions:

1] SHADOW RANGE GREEN
Great for opening up shadows, using the Image/Calculations/Green Channels, but protecting highlights, run, change layer opacity to suit. Default 100%

2] SHADOW RANGE GREY
Same as above, but using a ‘generic’ greyscale in Image/Calculations/Grey

If familiar with actions, you can put a ‘stop’ on the Shadows/Highlights Palette Box, to change values before proceeding on. I left it run at defaults of Amount 60%; Tone Width 60%; Radius 300 for Shadows; Zero for Highlights; Black Clip 0.01; White Clip 0.01; Color Correction +30.

by Adrian, Five Star Studios – wedding photographer, Mackay, Queensland in Australia

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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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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:

1. your images will most likely look different than your camera’s preview or the JPGs from the camera.

Your camera processes the data it captures. You set your White Balance, and perhaps a few other Picture settings which determines how you like the Contrast and Saturation to appear. This processing is done in-camera, to give you a JPG.  Even if you shoot only in RAW, the camera’s preview is what the embedded JPG of that RAW file looks like. So the preview shows a processed image of some kind.

As an aside – you don’t have to shoot (RAW + JPG) to get the JPG image. There are software options which will allow you to extract that embedded JPG. (It might be of lower resolution though. This depends on the camera make & model.)

Most RAW convertor programs have no way to access the picture info that your camera wrote to the RAW file, such as Contrast and Saturation and other picture style settings. The only RAW programs that allow for this, are:
Canon’s Digital Photo Professional (DPP) software.
Nikon’s Capture NX / NX2 software.

Canon DPP is software that comes for free with your Canon DSLR, and is actually a great program to start off with. It will follow your camera’s settings, and give you the same picture settings as your camera did. Since the Canon skin tones are superb, and is sometimes difficult to get right with other RAW program, DPP really is a nice way to ease into a RAW workflow. The controls are limited compared to Lightroom or Photoshop’s Bridge / ACR, but the software is easy to grasp and use.

Nikon Capture NX2 software has to be purchased. Great image quality, and it mimics your camera settings for any specific image (just like Canon’s counterpart), but I found it a fairly slow program to use for a workflow dealing with a large number of images at a time. These software programs are continually tweaked and improved, so it will definitely be a good decision to at least check out the free trial version.

So those two proprietary software programs will be able to give you JPGs that will look exactly like your camera would produce – but with all the flexibility in post-processing that the RAW file allows.

All other programs that you might use to process your RAW files, will give you results which look different than the in-camera JPG would. (In theory it is possible to calibrate your RAW file’s profile to give you exactly that.)

2. you will have to adjust the RAW converter’s default settings

Since your non-proprietary RAW editing software will only be able to decipher the White Balance you had used, you will have to change the default settings.

There is a variety of programs available to view and edit RAW files. The two most prominent software suites which offer a complete workflow, is Lightroom by Adobe, and Aperture by Apple. Both of those software programs offer a robust and complete workflow for RAW. If you want to dive head-first into a complete RAW workflow solution, either of those would be superb.

The program I still use to edit RAW files, is Photoshop’s Bridge and ACR. ACR is the abbreviation for Adobe Camera RAW, and is the part of Photoshop with which RAW files are handled.

Comparing the image shown at the top, with one generated from the original default settings:

The left-hand image is with Photoshop Bridge / ACR at the default settings. The right-hand image is with my choice of default settings. It has more contrast and a bit more pop to the colors. Our model, Nikki had a nice tan to her, and wasn’t as pale as the left-hand image.

For both of those images, I did pull up the exposure since I unintentionally under-exposed this image by firing the flash too fast. I also changed the WB for both the images. But the other settings remained at the default for the left-hand image.

The left-hand image looks good, but is a little flat, and lacks some contrast.

Here is what my settings look like in Bridge / ACR in comparison:

You’ll notice the settings on the left-hand screengrab are mostly zero’d out. For my own default settings, I increased the contrast and bumped up the other settings as well. This gives me a punchier default image when I load my RAW files the first time, or view the images in Bridge the first time.

These are the settings I’ve arrived with in using my Nikon D3 bodies and wouldn’t necessarily transfer to other cameras like that. I didn’t go through a process of calibration via a color checker chart. These are simply changes to the default settings that gives me color and contrast and saturation that I like as a starting point to editing the RAW files. By a process of trial-and-error, I gradually adjusted my RAW files’ default in Bridge / ACR to these to give me images which immediately have more punch.

Similarly, if you are just starting out with editing RAW files for the first time, you might find the images look lackluster, and even a touch under-exposed. You would then either through a process more scientific than mine, or by looking at your calibrated monitor, come to settings which look good.

Because I don’t shoot something as rigorously demanding of accurate color as commercial photography, there is a certain latitude here in my approach to this. I just want the images to look good, while relying on the benefits of the RAW capture.

With this brief introduction to a RAW workflow, I wanted to help newcomers that may be concerned with or frustrated by their RAW files not immediately popping with color. The idea here then is that it would be necessary to “take charge” and create defaults to your RAW files that give you basic images that look closer to the way you’d like them to be.

Of course, the beauty of working with a RAW file then is that it is impossible to make a mistake. You can always go back if you change your mind, or as discover more about digital photography and digital workflow.

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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.

You have no excuse to shoot in JPG (only) format, unless perhaps …
- you’re out on assignment in Afghanistan and need to wire your images through, or
- you’re shooting hundreds of portraits on location to be printed out immediately, or
- you really really really need the small file size of a JPG, or
- you shoot with the Fuji S2, that JPG machine, or
- your phone’s camera is your choice of artistic expression, or
- unless you have some other truly specialized need to shoot in JPG.
Other than that, there is no reason not to shoot in RAW. It has to be RAW. Always.

If you shoot in a studio, and have absolute control over the lighting, and colour balance, and have fine-tuned your in-camera settings … then sure, shoot JPG. Knock yourself out. You are all set to shoot within one specific scenario. Great.

But let me emphasize my previous statement again:
There is NO photographer on this planet who is good enough to get every aspect of the image quality correct during the moment of capture, for every situation they are likely to encounter.

This implies that you will have to do some kind of adjustment on your selected images in post-processing. And then you might as well use the file format that gives you the most latitude and control for your initial edit and adjustment … RAW.

[ / discussion ]

You might hear the rebuttal that if you are good enough, you wouldn’t need to rely on the latitude of RAW. Well, that insult is disingenuous, since it assumes we are always in control of our environment. We usually aren’t.

Here is a typical scenario I encounter as a wedding photographer. During a key moment, guests will whip out their cameras, and blast away with their point & shoot cameras. These are often set to red-eye reduction mode. So there’s a lot of flash going around.

During this wedding ceremony, I was trying to retain as much of the ambience as possible, shooting with only the available light. My camera was set to Incandescent WB. This meant that during the key moment – the kiss – my shot was severely over-exposed by a guest’s flash going off. This also means that I had the wrong WB set. I had Incandescent WB, not Flash or Cloudy WB.

Here is the comparison to what the JPG-only shooter would’ve started off with in the editing of the images. On the right-hand side, is the JPG that I very easily generated from Canon’s DPP software. I pulled the exposure down by more than a stop, and completely changed my WB.

My starting point, as a RAW shooter, is the JPG on the right. The JPG-only shooter would’ve had to deal with the problem image on the left. I have no idea of how to go about fixing that as a JPG. And honestly, I have no intention of ever finding out how to fix that JPG. For me, it is irrelevant.

To finally reiterate this point – all the discussions and arguments you’ve seen about RAW vs JPG are trivial, because the one format is clearly superior.

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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.

To get an even spread of light and to get softer light than a smaller umbrella (ie, smaller light source) would’ve given me, I used two 60″ umbrellas. Both of them with T2 Q-flashes. But in this small space, two speedlights would’ve worked equally well.

I shot close to the one large umbrella, hoping to create a kind of wrap-around light on the little girl.

She and her brother had come in for this photo session. Of the sequence of images, I like this one. She and her brother were great subjects, but her younger brother, being .. well, young, didn’t have any interest really or the attention span for the photo session. He was zooming around the dining room and living room area. My assistant Jessica had the idea to use a laser pointer to get the cats involved to see how the kids would react. The kids were just as animated as the cats.

This image here was when she was on the floor and whipped her head around to look at me. I liked the way her hair, slightly in disarray, moved around her face, giving a kind of 3D effect there. Since she isn’t posing for the camera here, I think this is more true to her spirit. I like it.

Back to the lighting. It really was a very straight-forward setup.  We had used a lightmeter to get the light on the background at least 1 stop brighter than where I would position the little kids. I wanted the white backdrop to approach blowing out. But not so much to create too much spill light (and flare) on my my subjects.

Looking at the histogram, we had the exposure bunched up tight on the right-hand edge.  This showed as well then that we were over-exposing the white background.  Even so, for the final edit of the image, I knew I would have to clean it up with Photoshop. But it is always best to start with the best possible image in camera.

camera settings: 1/200 @ f9 @ 400 ISO
Nikon D3; Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S VR II (B&H)

Here’s an animated GIF to show the effect of the various steps in post-processing.

Image 1: the image directly out of the RAW converter. No adjustments made.

Image 2: clean up the white background; remove sensor dust spots; brighten eyes

I use the Magic Wand tool in Photoshop, and set it to a Tolerance of around 10. The entire background won’t be selected on a first click.  Keep the Shift key down and click on the other areas which weren’t initially selected. Select as much of the white background, without selecting large portions of hair.

Now with the background still selected, use the Eraser tool to erase the background and make it white. (Make sure the color is selected to white first.)

After this, use the History Brush to bring back any part of your subject that was lost with the selection and erasing of the previous step.  This can be tedious, depending on the level of precision you need in the final image. There are software tools like Vertus that makes this whole process much easier. I am sure there are readers of this blog that will have better ideas of how to accomplish this. Perhaps even doing this with minimal effort – a few clicks and its done.  I’d love to hear.

The better separation you get between your subject and white background, the better.  For then you have to do less work in Photoshop. But the trick is to find that balance where you don’t cause flare or a kind of halo around your subject.

For the next step in post-processing, I brightened her eyes by using the History Brush, set to Screen, with an opacity of less than 10%

Image 3: further retouching

With this step I would use the Healing brush to remove any skin blemishes. Yup, little kids often have scratch marks and bumps. I then went through my usual series of steps for skin retouching, but brought down the opacity on some of those edits.

Image 4: some Photoshop fairy dust to subtly make the image pop a bit more. This step will have to remain my secret sauce for now.

There are the steps I typically use to photograph a portrait against a white backdrop, starting with the lighting of my subject and the background … and then finally finessing the image in post-production.

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your best digital work-flow tip / your best office work-flow tip

I’m once again on a mission to get more control of office work-flow, and to streamline my digital work-flow even further. In a post much earlier this year, I described my Mac awakening, and how a few key things changed my work-flow completely and made my life easier. De-cluttering my desk then made a big difference.  Adding some pieces of technology in a more sensible way to my office too, made my life easier and allowed me to work faster.  Well, I’m again changing a few things to improve my work-flow. (More about this later perhaps).

In a kind of parallel to this, there was the recent article on the extra items in your camera bag – with some ideas on organizing your camera bag by adding some non-photography essentials. There were some contributions by readers of the Tangents blog who came up with additional suggestions. Mention was also made there of the Shoot Kit – a neat collection of the smaller essentials, all neatly packed into an accessible canvas holder. It contains safety pins and a sewing kit and headache tablets and such.  The kit, when rolled left-to-right is secured with a Velcro strip, but rolled right-to-left is easy and silent while opening. (Check the link to the shootkit for the exact details of what is included).

Tying this all together thematically with the idea of organizing your work / life / camera bag, there was a small contest, (now closed):

- post your best digital work-flow tip, and / or
- post your best office work-flow tip.

Even though the contest is closed, everyone is still invited to add their tips and ideas.

The prizes and the rules were:
There are two prizes up for grabs.  Each will consist of:
- a Shoot Kit set.
- a copy of my book on off-camera flash when it is released in April 2011.
(you’ll just have to be patient for a few months until it becomes available.)

The  rules:
1. When entries close in a week’s time, the two people with the most helpful or innovate or insightful entry win.  (Use Lightroom! doesn’t count as a winnable suggestion.)
2. So what would constitute the most helpful / innovative / insightful entry?  Those that *I* decide are the best in some way. Indeed, I have the final & only say in this.
3. No whining will be allowed. This remains important.
4. The contest will be up for a week, and around lunchtime on Wed, 14th Dec, I will announce the winner.

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I get frequent questions about how I add my logo to the images, so I thought I’d explain it in a blog post. Here it is …

My log is added as a layer set to ‘Screen’ blending mode, with a drop shadow to actually make it appear again.

When I have a cluttered background, I change the blending mode to ‘Normal’, and remove the drop shadow.

If the background is too cluttered, I add another layer, sized to about the same height as my log, but with the color as a gradient.

That’s it. Simplicity itself.

But here’s the sad news. I do this manually for every image I post on my blogs or on Facebook. I haven’t figured out yet how to automate it for images of varying sizes. So if anyone knows how to do that precisely, I’d love to hear. Thanks!

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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 …

Look at the white dress especially.  There is a distinct blue tint to it.

Merely using the eye-dropped tool to click on the whites to give a neutral white, will often give us a far too warm image, as in this example below.  The whites are now technically neutral, as per Photoshop .. but the skin tones are too warm.

Here is a simple quick-fix trick I use to give me white clothing that actually look more ‘white’.  In the HSL tab in Photoshop ACR or in Lightroom, I pull down the blue saturation fader a bit. (The other panel shown here is just to show my basic default RAW settings for this camera.  I did adjust the WB though. For me, this is a quick adjustment when adjusting a number of RAW files simultaneously.

Pulling down the Blue Saturation obviously has an effect on any blue clothing that are worn, and on blue eyes. Therefore it won’t be a viable method when we have important areas that are blue. But most often, when we have predominantly white tones, we can get away with this little trick to give us a more pure looking white, without affecting skin tones.  It is really handy when editing wedding images.

Click through this link for the two images for a side-by-side comparison.

Equipment used during this photo session:
Nikon D3;  Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 AF-S (B&H);  Nikon SB-900 (B&H)
Lastolite EZYBOX 24×24 softbox (B&H)
Manfrotto 680B monopod (B&H);
brass stud to attach softbox to monopod (B&H)

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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 …

For those times when I do have to deal with an image with noticeable noise, and need to correct for it, then I use Neat Image. I’ve tried several software programs, including Noise Ninja and Topaz DeNoise, but prefer the results from Neat Image.

Here are 100% screen-grabs of the image above, to show you what the noise looked like, and how Neat Image handled this instance. In Auto. That’s important to me. I like software where the defaults already work and make sense. I’m just too busy to go delving deeply into every bit of software I end up using … so it’s a real time saver when a bit of software just works without effort. So while the software offers all types of controls and fine adjustments for those who want to fine-tune their settings for optimal results, I really like it that the defaults give impressive results.

This photo was under-exposed by a stop, and was shot with the Canon 1D mk2N.
1/160 @ f2.8 @ 800 ISO; a touch of on-camera TTL fill-flash.

Click on the photo for the 100% screen-grab of each version.
It should be very apparent which one was fixed with Neat Image.

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