Lightroom Course 9-10 Feb 2008

Hello all. For those showing interest in my Lightroom courses, I've decided to take the two one day courses 9th, 10th Feb 2008. I was hoping to take the courses earlier but I'm heading to Melbourne for an advanced studio lighting course on the previous weekend.

I have nine starters that will be contacted first thing in the new year. We have the use of a large room in Kyber Pass (Auckland City). Course time: 9am-4pm.

If others are interested, please contact me as soon as you can.

Merry Christmas - My Little Girl

I managed to shoot a few pics of my little girl on Christmas morning. Here's Cait playing with her new guitar.

Film Noir Look

This image was uploaded to Lightroom. 90% of the post processing was done in this, my favourite program. The image had a blue cast to it initially, it was made with my Nikon D80 IR camera and the white balance came out wrong. No bother as I started with a Raw image allowing me to correct it, however no need to go down this route as I wanted a B&W. I applied a B&W High Contrast preset. After this I used the Lens Vignetting sliders setting them to Amount: -66 and Midpoint: 0. Now I needed to send the image to Photoshop for a bit of skin fixing and image reduction followed by sharpening for the web. Job done. How long did it take me... 10min.

Hell better get to bed. Christmas tomorrow and it'll be a big day. Happy Christmas and New Year to all.

Nikon D80 IR D300 D3

This image was made in Rotorua with my dedicated Nikon D80 IR camera. The standard hotmirror was removed and replaced with an Infrared hotmirror. The camera only accepts light from around 700-1200 nanometers which is near the infrared spectrum. The image was initially processed in Lightroom with a high key black and white preset and then exported to Photoshop as two exposures so I could maintain detail above and below the horizon.


I'm using this camera more and more. Partly because my Nikon D200 popped on me a while ago. I'm now looking at the D300 or D3 as a replacement. A friend Kevin Raine, owns the new Nikon D300. We decided to try its merit at high ISO. This image was taken in my bathroom with Kevins camera a 1/50 f2.8 and ISO 6400!!! I must admit that I have used Noise Ninja (a photoshop plugin) to remove noise and photokit sharpener (another photoshop plugin) to sharpen the image. You make your own judgement on how the D300 performs. The D3 is even better, if that's possible.

Lightroom Basics Course Venue

I haven't finalised a date for the two one day courses in Lightroom. (mid Jan, early Feb) But I can tell you we have the use of a great location, a large room in Kyber Pass (Auckland City). We have approximately six students for both the Saturday and Sunday courses. I'm limiting the number to ten per day so we can have more one on one time.

For info, I'm now spending most of my time editing in Lightroom and only export an image to Photoshop if I need to do pixel based editing. You'll find that the whole process will speed up ten fold if you work mainly in LR and go to PS as required. It all starts with the import process. Get this right in LR and you'll be able to find any image, anytime at a moments notice.

Light Meter Sekonic L-758DR 2 of 3

Part two has been a long time coming. I've now got to the point that I more often than not, use my Light Meter, that's partly because I'm a gear geek, but it's mainly because I can nail my camera exposure every time without shooting dark or overexposing an image. I now shoot manual 99/100 times. Sure you can use Program mode and often it'll give you a decent result, but until you attempt full control over your camera, you can't fully understand how much control the camera has over the process. Occasionally I'll pop back to AP Aperture Priority, or SP Shutter Priority if I need control over just my aperture or shutter speed.


Anyway back to my Light Meter. I did a shoot the other day with a man who is starting a consultancy business. He's a good looking chap, so the shoot was easy, but it was made easier by me having the equipment to shoot confidently. We did this shoot in a board room with an umbrella camera left and a reflector camera right, I aimed the shoot through umbrella at the reflector which allowed the strobe to fire across the subject, rather than at him. The idea behind this is that part of the light will hit the subject, and part of the light will hit the reflector which bounces into the camera right side of his face. This set up allows me to not have to worry about having my shadows too dark.

I had a chat with my subject Esteban to warm him up a little and then asked him to take a seat. All I had to do was set my meter to wireless, aim the meter at my key light from Esteban's right cheek and pushed the go button on the meter. The important thing here is that I had the dome of the meter exposed. The meter gave me f8 which I set in my camera. The problem many people face is that they aim the meter at the camera and fire the strobe. This works but doesn't give you the true tone I am looking for on Esteban's right cheek, that method will only give you an average value. It then becomes the photographers choice on how he lights the shadows.

Anyway, post processing was a breeze, I only tweaked the brightness in Lightroom and didn't need to touch the exposure slider. Job done.

Lightroom 1.3 update

Lightroom 1.3 update is now available. If you have problems downloading the update. Get it here.

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/lightroom/win/1.x/LTRM_WWEFG_win_1_3.exe

ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/lightroom/mac/1.x/LTRM_WWEFG_mac_1_3.dmg

Canon online Competition

Bret gets a 4th out of 105 entries in the lastest Canon online competition. I'm looking forward to putting my final image in for this year's comp and hope I can get another top 10 finish.

Light from above

A shot like this needs attention to the skin. I wanted it silky smooth, so used PhotoKit Sharpener to do the dirty work. The beauty about this Photoshop plugin is that you can selectively smooth or sharpen various parts of the image. Here I kept some of the facial features sharp, while smoothing out the skin.

Control of specular highlights

I should be posting the second part of using a light meter but I decided to tackle another specular hightlight issue. The spoon in the above image caused me all sorts of problems. I wanted to show the shape and texture of the spoon. The shape of the spoon causes problems because from its point of view it sees a large majority of the room. To solve the problem I placed a huge diffuser over the spoon. This wasn't enough to show the curvature of the spoon, so I placed a gobo on the diffuser which resulted in the dark shape in the spoon. Now we have texture and curvature detail. Job done.

With a little help from the Sekonic L-758DR

This image was created with a heap of help from my light meter. Without it I would not have had full control over the Contre-Jour effect I was seeking. I needed to expose the background by one stop over my working f stop of f/10 to take the background to 255/255/255, pure white. But I also wanted to get a little bit of wrap around effect through the diffuse material out back. I ended up with f/22 on the background which gave me a high key effect plus a bit of wrap around light around the subjects face, body and limbs. The background ended up being 2 stops over the working f stop of f/10.

The beauty about the gear (light meter) I used for this shoot is that I had total control over the process.

I will be going through the process of how I used the incident metering option in my next post.

Light Meter Sekonic L-758DR 1 of 3

I seem to be spending more and more time away from the computer with camera in hand. Lightroom has certainly changed things for me.

Last week I got myself a Sekonic L-758DR Light Meter and it's fantastic! Why does anyone need a light meter? Most cameras these days have very capable in built reflective light meters that do a superb job. Hang on did I say REFLECTIVE light meter. Yup, that's where the problem starts.

We have two types of light metering available to us (assuming you have the hardware), Reflective and Incident. If you have a digital camera, you have reflective metering on tap. So how does this work?

The inbuilt light meter measures the brightess or luminance of the light reflected from the subject. Unless the overall tonality of what's in your viewfinder is 18% grey the light meter will give you less than optimal results. Lucky for us most mixes of light reflected in a scene results in about 18% grey and we will end up with a property exposed image.

The problems start if we have a scene that is not 18% grey. To further explain this, let's say we want to snap away at a scene made up of mainly snow, maybe we have a few people in the scene, but snow dominates! If you let the camera do its thing by metering the scene for you, it will produce an image that is underexposed. Why? Well, the camera exposure sensor is pre programmed and assumes that your scene is 18% grey (mid grey). The snow will therefore be underexposed and you will end up with a dark mid grey scene. These sensors aren't very smart. Not yet anyway. On the other hand, let's say we are shooting a bunch of very dark people working in a coal mine. Not likely, I know, but go with me on this one. The sensor will again assume an 18% grey scene. You take the shot and end up with a lot of grey people working in a grey coalmine.

Many photographers know the limits of the camera when in this situation and either expose brighter in the snow scene by either leaving the shutter open longer or opening up the aperture, or a bit of both. Or if in aperture priority more (AP mode) increase the EV (exposure valuation) by 1.5 to 2 stops. Bottom line is shoot around 2 stops over the "proper exposure" when shooting a very bright scene. If shooting a very dark scene and you want the result to replicate the actual scene underexpose the scene by 1.5 to 2 stops.

Part Two to follow next post.

Ring Light Image

I love the catch lights in the eyes. I deem the ring light project a success! Think I'll be using it in future.

As usual click on the image to make it bigger.

Ring Light

Apologies for not putting out a tutorial for a while. I've been busy building this 1500 watt ring light. Images to follow. Made with a rubbish bin lid, 10x 150 watt bulbs and a few screws.

Specular Highlights

This image has had all sharpening done in Lightroom to create specular highlights in the skin. Settings are Amount 54 Radius 1.2 Detail 63 Masking 33.

If I was applying sharpening to female skin I would increase the masking to smooth out the skin. Settings of 25 1.0 25 and 70 respectively would have acheived a better look on womens skin. Click on the image to see the specular highlights.

Open Your Eyes

This was a tough one. My Portrait Photographer Maree Turner asked me to open the little girl's eyes. At first I thought this would be a breeze as Maree had given me two similar images of this shot, one with the little girl's eyes closed and one open. I initially thought that the new feature in Photoshop CS3 would solve all my problems. The idea here is to drag one image into the other and use the auto-align function by going Edit>Auto Align Layers... unfortunately this function didn't solve my problem as the eyes of the little girl in each image were to far apart to work. In the end I had to do the whole thing manually by dragging one image into the other. I then used the warp function to match the eyes. To help with the process I reduced the opacity on the top layer and then matched the eyes. Then I applied a layer mask to the top layer and painted in the open eyes. Job done!

Skunk Lighting

I'm testing out some new lighting techniques so no Lightroom or Photoshop tips here, apart from standard sharpening in Photoshop.

Don't be too hard on yourself

This image was made with two exposures and auto aligned in Photoshop CS3. This feature is fantastic and allows you to blend images without a tripod. All you need to do is bring both images into Photoshop CS3, drag one image to the other image, then select both layers. Go Edit>Auto-Align Layers... use the default mode in the dialog box that comes up. Once the layers have been auto aligned, the last step is to create a mask on the top layer and use a black or white brush to blend in the layer below.

Lightroom's new Painter Tool

The Painter tool is new in Lightroom 1.1

When viewing a collection or folder and you're in grid view in the Library Module a spray can icon appears in the grid tool bar. The spray can has a vertical tag icon and the tooltip says "Painter". On rollover we see some dots emerge from the cans nozzle. So you select the spray can and it comes off the tool bar (there is a darker circle showing where it belongs). Clicking on the circle puts it back. But you find yourself wondering what the hell does it paint. With the tool selected a partial answer is evident because you now see "Paint : Keywords" with a text field next to the Painters circle. It turns out you can type keywords in the text field and then "paint" them onto multiple images. In fact successive paints will toggle the keyword (i.e if the keyword already exist it is removed. Nice :o)

But wait there's more! Keywords is one option of many. You could also choose to "Paint" a :

Label
Flag
Rating
Metadata
Settings
Rotation

Settings is pretty interesting as it lets you paint on one of the presets (i.e Sepia tone, Grayscale, sharpen) or your own user defined settings. Rotation is sort of fun as you watch a whole row of images rotate clockwise.

It still feels sort of odd to be "painting" on keywords or a rotation. But ignoring the metaphor it's a very useful tool if you use any of these attributes. I use keywords to order my collections and I use ratings when working out image preferences. The keywords I use in bulk. Though ratings I tend to use on one image at a time. But I'm sure we all have very different workflows so this will suit different users in different ways. Give it a go. I'll be posting a video on the Painter soon.

Two shots in the top 0.1% of images on flickr.com

Flickr has a very interesting stream called "Explore," in which they give a shout out to what they think are really cool photos.


The rankings in Explore for all dates change all the time even for dates in the past. Photos are uploaded to Flickr at a rate of around 400/minute and are constantly being viewed, faved, and commented by millions of members. Interestingness rankings are recalculated for all photos many times per day. Photos uploaded a day, a week, even a year ago, are still receiving activity in the form of views, comments, favorites, etc. And all of that activity affects each photo's Interestingness ranking, even for photos that were uploaded years ago. Explore is very dynamic. When you browse through Explore on any date, you are viewing what the Interestingness algorithm has selected as the highest ranked photos at that moment.

So to get your images on this selection you are competing with 500,000 additional images every 24hrs.

Lucky for me I have a ranking of 67 and 120 for these two images. Rankings change very quickly so you can be dropped at anytime.

Sharpening in Lightroom at the Howick Camera Club

I will be giving a short tutorial at the Howick Camera Club on Mon 24th Sept. It will cover image sharpening and making sense of the four Detail sliders.

Lightroom Catalogs

Me preparing for my Lightroom tutorials

I should be able to get this week's video out by Friday.

Maree Turner - Portrait Photographer

Maree Turner is a Wedding and Portrait Photographer. She's asked me to run a few of her images through Lightroom/Photoshop. Things are definately easier when you have fantastic images to deal with first. Maree's work is a joy to play with. Here are a few images I've tweeked to make the images pop.

Here are Maree's contact details:

Maree Turner
Photographer
Associateship Photographic Society of NZ
Qualified Member of The New Zealand Institute of Professional Photographers
Multi Award Winner
maree.design@xtra.co.nz
www.mareeturner.co.nz
09 271 5406
0274 741 479

I'll be giving a few details in the comments section of this post this afternoon.

Lightroom, where does it fit in?

Before I start on the up and coming weekly video tutorials, I want to mention a few things about where Lightroom fits into the family.

Firstly, it's been built from the ground up for photographers. You can use Photoshop if you like but not to the same speed as Lightroom. Being a database driven application, it moves at a blinding pace so best get your coffee and chocolate all set before you start as rendering is a thing of the past.

Lightroom has five main modules and these will expand to more in the future. But for now we have The Library for sorting, working with metadata and managing your entire library of images. And they can sit anywhere. On a local hard drive or any number of external hard drives.

The Develop module, for processing your RAW, JPEG and TIFF images. You can do all sorts of things in this module that doesn't require you exporting your images to Photoshop. 90% of your time you will find spent here for image manipulation. Maybe 10% of the time will require you sending the image to Photoshop for some deep pixel massaging.

The Slideshow module blows Bridge out of the water, I can't see why anyone needs bridge any longer. All Bridge does, Lightroom does better and faster.

The Print module is simply fantastic, no need to go through 35 steps to make sure all the setting are correct for printing at home as is the process in Photoshop, here in Lightroom we are in a better happy environment, it even smells better.

Finally we have the Web module. With a little digging you will be able to post galleries in html or flash form on the web, but I will be covering this later.

So follow me along next week.

Bob Jones knows good wine

I popped over to a good friend's place yesterday morning to help him out with Lightroom. As I was leaving he gave me a bottle of red...oh my it's good! Thank you Bob and if you need another favour, just let me know!

Lightroom 1.2 Update

Not a ground breaking update like 1.1

But, in Lightroom 1.1, some photographers had complained that the software applied overaggressive noise reduction when importing raw images, the unprocessed image sensor data without any in-camera processing. Adobe apparently took heed with Lightroom 1.2.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.2 Update

Corrections for several issues including XMP auto-write performance, Vista grid display errors and noise reduction for Bayer patterned sensors. Additional camera support for the Canon EOS 40D, Fuji FinePix IS-1, Olympus EVOLT E-510, Panasonic DMC-FZ18 and more.

Lightroom weekly video

I've been thinking about the best way to post lessons on Lightroom. As many don't know the first thing about it, I've decided to start from the beginning. I recently promised to give twice weekly video tuts on Photoshop and Lightroom. What was I thinking. I don't have the time.

My new approach is to give a weekly tut on Lightroom starting from the absolute beginning. I'm in the process of setting up the videos so it may take a week or so to get the first one out.

Light Control and Lightroom

Here's an interesting question that may get your brains working.

Apart from the fact I did use Lightroom to close the image of Shelley down, another reason exists for having such a dark background and it happened at the time of shooting, not during manipulation. The image was shot at midday in my lounge with the ambient light flooding into the room. It was bright!

So how is it possible to make the background go almost totally dark while exposure properly for the subject? Any answers, fire away!

Shelley in Black

This is an interesting composition of my lovely partner, Shelley. As usual, click on the image to make it bigger.

I used Lightroom to establish a white balance. Went with a warmer tone than Lightroom initially picked. The best way to find a white balance that works is to take a look at what Lightroom dishes out first, then if you don't like it, swing the temperature slider way left and then way right, a little like a swing in the play ground. Continue to swing each way with smaller and smaller swings until you settle at a point that suits. This is of course an artistic choice so it's totally up to how you feel about it.

Then I reduced the exposure and brightness somewhat to darken the blacks, I also applied a vignetting to totally close the image down. You may be aware that I almost always shoot as bright as possible and then reduce the values in Lightroom after the fact. This is one of the few occasions that I exposed the image normally as I knew that I was going to reduce the exposure/brightness anyway so wasn't too concerned about shooting bright in this instance. Remember the brighter you shoot the great detail you will have in your image.

Then I increased the Clarity Slider to about 30 and increased the vibrance. I finally used the Details Panel to sharpen the image the way I wanted it. I used 35/1.2/20/70 respectively from top to bottom (I'm talking sliders here). I then exported the image to Photoshop for some final sharpening.

Questions - Fire away.

Fixing Blurred Images in Photoshop

This image was sent in by Margaret Penney from the Manukau Photographic Society and also Pukekohe Franklin Camera Club. It's a tough image as the jeep is blurred beyond what I would normally tackle, but for the purposes of demonstration, I'll take you through the steps I used.

First I selectively increased the saturation of the yellows and reds with a hue/saturation adjustment layer. Most greens you see in trees and grass are made up of more yellow than green.

The jeep is moving which works to our advantage as I can selectively motion blur the surround and give the jeep a subtle sharpening effect. The contrast between the blurred surround and the sharp jeep will make the jeep look sharper. Gota use any method available for this one as the jeep will never be tac sharp.

So how did I do this. Firstly I duplicated the background and applied a motion blur to the top layer at a similar angle to the movement of the jeep. I then applied a mask to the top layer. The mask will be white, so all I need to do is select a soft brush and paint with black over the jeep. (make sure the mask layer is selected). This will cause the jeep to have no motion blur.

I now flattened the image and applied a selective sharpening of the jeep with PhotoKit Sharpener, I used the haze cutter tool which works similarly to the Clarity Slider in Lightroom. I then applied an export sharpening for the web.

Comments are welcome.

Black and White in Lightroom

Black and White in Lightroom is a joy. All you need to do is go to the HSL/Color/Grayscale Panel and click on Greyscale. Then click on the little target at the top left corner of the HSL/Color/Greyscale Panel and go to your main image. Click and drag up or down on various tones in the image and you have excellent control over how dark or bright you want those tones to be. Sweet! You'll notice the Red/Orange/Yellow/Green/Aqua/Blue/Purple/Magenta sliders move as you change the tonal values.

Changing the feel of an image

Above is the Raw Image

Photoshop and Lightroom are tools to create the feel you experienced in an image when you made it. The thing is, it's impossible for others to appreciate the sensations you felt at the time. That's when you need to use tools to create the feel you experienced and that will allow others to get an idea of what it was all about.




Above is the Completed Image

As always click on the image to see it bigger.

The image at the top is the "Raw" data, the one underneath incorporates Lightroom and Photoshop manipulation to magnify the feel of the image.

It was cold and windy this morning so I wanted to impart those feelings in some way. When I get very cold I feel my vision becomes more focussed on a single point. My peripheral vision reduces. I sense a feeling of white and blue colours. You get the idea.

First things first - lens choice, I decided to go with a lensbaby with a wide open aperture to give a heap of blur away from the focal point, I then increased the shutter speed up to 1/640 sec for two reasons, one because I was at F/2.8 and two because I wanted to underexpose the ambient by a couple of stops (you know that cold feeling) so now I had to use a flash to bring up the exposure on the subject.

After I got home I imported the images into Lightroom, I cropped an image the way I wanted it. Then I changed the white balance temperature to something cold. I then increased the clarity and vibrance in the image to make it pop and little. What the heck is Clarity. It allows you to add punch in the midtone contrast. So now you know what the slider does. You'll find you'll put it up to at least 40 on most images. I then popped down to the Lens Correction panel to create a vignetting effect, to close down the image a little, you know that cold feeling.

I then exported the image to Photoshop and removed skin problems by using the Spot Healing and Healing Brush tools. I wasn't keen on the hard shadow under the nose created by my small light source. It would have been better to increase the size of my light source when I shot the image but because I didn't I applied a subtle smudge along the shadow line under the nose with the Smudge Tool.

I created a new layer, filled it with 50% grey, changed the blend mode to Soft Light and used a white brush at 10% to whiten up the knuckles a little (cold cold cold).

I then used PhotoKit Sharpener (plugin) to selectively sharpen Shelley's left eye and thumb and a bit of the scarf. And selectively smoothed out her skin with a tool in PhotoKit Sharpener.

Finally I applied an export sharpening for the web. Done! Any questions. Fire away.

Got a Great Idea!

Okay here's the plan. Send in any image that you want to change but are at a loss on how to go about it. I will then show the before and after images and show the steps I used to get from A to B. If I get a huge influx I may not be able to cover all images. Let's see where this goes. It will also be an opportunity for comments on the images sent in.

Photoshop Reflections

Michael from the Henderson Camera Club sent me the top image asking me how I would remove the branch from the bottom left of the image after cropping in tight.

The steps are as follows.

Duplicate the background layer

This is a tough one as I think the bottom part of the image needs to be cleaned up a bit. I thought about it for a while and came up with the idea of copying the top part of the image by selecting it then press Ctrl + J (pc) to move the selection to a new layer, then flip the layer vertically. Then move the copied part of the image on top of the reflection to match the original reflection.

I've had to edit this post as a person commented that reflections don't compress and of course he/she is right!

Step two was to create a mask on the flipped layer and brush out the areas I didn't want. Ahhh the control you get with masking.

Any questions, fire away.

Here comes another one just like the other one

This image is similar to the before and after image of Shelley. Again, only one light has been used. I had a strobe shooting through an umbrella high camera right. The strobe is doing two things. FIRSTLY it's lighting the subject and SECONDLY it's creating a specular reflection off the background which also drowns out any background shadow. (Like playing billards with light) If you look at the face of the subject you will see a soft diffused to shadow transfer zone which has been created by the large light source.

I'm presently shooting IR only as I blew up my D200. Had something to do with my camera touching one of the umbrella spokes while taking a shot. Somehow the camera shorted in the process. I'm sure Canon users will have something to say about this!

This image was sharpened in Lightroom using the four new sliders in the Details Panel.

Nikon D3 released

Here are some of the specs on the new Nikon D3.

The only down side is that Nikon have now moved to a full frame sensor, fine for those that don't have DX lenses... I do. However the camera automatically allows for DX lenses by providing an autocrop, unfortunately this reduces the size of the image.

Nikon D3 Key Features

First ever Nikon DSLR with a Full-Frame (36 x 24 mm) sensor (coined FX format)
12.1 megapixel full-frame sensor (8.45µm pixel pitch)
ISO 200 - 6400 (with boost up to ISO 25,600)
Also supports DX lenses, viewfinder automatically masks (5.1 megapixels with DX lens)
5:4 ratio crop mode (10 megapixels, up to 9 fps, viewfinder masked)
14-bit A/D conversion, 12 channel readout
Nikon EXPEED image processor (Capture NX processing and NR algorithms, lower power)
Super fast operation (power-up 12 ms, shutter lag 41 ms, black-out 74 ms)
New Kevlar / carbon fibre composite shutter with 300,000 exposure durability
New Multi-CAM3500FX Auto Focus sensor (51-point, 15 cross-type, more vertical coverage)
Auto-focus tracking by color (using information from 1005-pixel AE sensor)
Auto-focus calibration (fine-tuning) now available (fixed body or up to 20 separate lens settings)
Scene Recognition System (uses AE sensor, AF sensor)
Picture Control image parameter presets (replace Color Modes I, II and III)
Custom image parameters now support brightness as well as contrast
Nine frames per second continuous with auto-focus tracking
Eleven frames per second continuous without auto-focus tracking
Ten / eleven frames per second continuous in DX-crop mode (AF / no-AF)
Dual Compact Flash card slots (overflow, back-up, RAW on 1 / JPEG on 2, copy)
Compact Flash UDMA support
3.0" 922,000 pixel LCD monitor
Live View with either phase detect (mirror up/down) or contrast detect Auto Focus
Virtual horizon indicates if camera is level (like an aircraft cockpit display)
HDMI HD video output
'Active D-Lighting' (adjusts metering as well as applying D-Lighting curve)
Detailed 'Control Panel' type display on LCD monitor, changes color in darkness
New MB-D10 vertical grip fully integrates into body, multi battery type compatible
Buttons sealed against moisture
Dual battery charger as standard
Available November 2007

Photoshop Portrait - Before and After

Okay be subtle when touching up portrait images, a little goes a long way. Have a look at both images and see if you can pull the retouched image apart. I'll give you a step by step soon. As usual, click on each image to bring it up to size.

Lookout all you Canon shooters!

Someone has inadvertently disclosed the new Nikon digital SLR top D3 series of posters.The posters on the backs of the camera clearly marked : the high-precision 51 points autofocus system! The nine per second shooting speed! Up to 920,000 pixels, covering a total area of 3.0-inch low-temperature polysilicon LCD screen!

I believe the unveiling will happen 24th August, less than a week away.

Photoshop Colour Correction Part Two

Follow through the steps in this tutorial and you'll be able to colour correct almost any image.

Photoshop Colour Correction Part One

Colour Correction Part One

Photoshop Colour Correction

Later today I'll be posting two video tips on colour correcting an image in Photoshop. Part One will deal with the initial steps which only need to be applied once.

Part One

Step One - Setting the eye dropper tool set to 3 by 3 average.
Step Two - Resetting the RGB default values in the black point, grey point and white point which can be found in the curves dialog box.

Sharpening with Lightroom 1.1 Video Tip

Here's the Lightroom 1.1 sharpening tutorial I promised. And it includes sound. Excuse the quality of the video, still fine tuning the ideal size of the video. You'll get the idea of how to sharpen an image in Lightroom after viewing.

READ BELOW

I great tool for checking out how your sharpening is coming along is to blow the image up to 1/1 or 100% and then hold down your Alt/Option key as you move any of the four sliders. This will allow Lightroom to give a better view of what is and isn't been sharpened.

Lightroom and Masking in Photoshop

Okay, used a bit of lighting on this one. Have a go at reverse engineering the image and post your ideas on how this was acheived. HINT. I used a tripod and shot two images.

Shooting Raw. Save your files in DNG.

More and more photographers are saving images in DNG. DNG is fundamentally a universal format for RAW. DNG helps ensure that photographers will be able to access their files in the future.

Key benefits for photographers:

The DNG format helps promote archival confidence, since digital-imaging software solutions will be able to open your raw files more easily in the future.

A single raw processing solution enables a more efficient workflow when handling raw files from multiple camera models and manufacturers.

A publicly documented and readily available specification can be easily adopted by camera manufacturers and updated to accommodate future technological changes.

Key benefits for hardware and software manufacturers:

DNG removes a potential barrier to new camera adoption, since raw files from new models will be instantly supported by Photoshop and other applications.

If you are saving your images as the native raw file of your camera, ten years from now you may have problems opening your raw files as the camera manufacturer may change the raw format.

Saving your images as DNG files removes this problem. If you haven't started this process, might be time to start it now.

A bit of Photoshop and a bit of Lightroom and a bit of Something Else

Any ideas on how this image was produced? If you were caught in midday harsh blinding sun where everything looked flat, how would you have shot and processed this image? Just throwing it out there. Any ideas you have, post them here. Don't forget, you can click on the image to blow it up to full size, that may help pull the image apart! Here's a few hints. yes it started out in Lightroom, yes the vibrance was increased in Lightroom, yes Sharpened selectively in Photoshop, but there is a heap of tonal information here? No more clues just yet.

So what's this got to do with Lightroom or Photoshop?... If you see an image you like on your LCD (but it doesn't pop), visualising how it can be processed can help you see your non-processed images in a different light!

Lightroom 1.1 Catalog Feature

Okay this is big, and you should use whatever option you have to imprint this info into your memory.

Lightroom 1.1 has a new feature that allows you to move a catalog from one computer to another. Best I think, to give you an example.

Let's say you have two computers. A main computer at home and a laptop. The main computer has one main calatog where all your images reside.
You decide to head out to the Wintergardens to take a heap of shots of flowers. You take your laptop with you and while you're away you import all of your shoot from your camera to the laptop. Over lunch you decide to delete a few images, maybe rate them, maybe even make a few changes to your images. All this work is not wasted.

You now have the option of exporting the shoot as a catalog, maybe to your desktop on your laptop. Then when you get back home you can now import that catalog from the desktop on your laptop into Lightroom 1.1 on your main computer AND all the ratings and changes can be imported along with your images. THAT'S BIG and can be a big time saver.

New Nikon Professional DSLR, D3... maybe

In the next week we may see Nikon's new D3 DSLR camera. Although the actual model number is still a closely guarded secret, be ready for 2 new features said to put Nikon way above anything its rivals currently offer. Maybe it's a hard drive enabled camera, 60GB would be nice! Full frame sensor is something I understand is NOT on the cards. That's super good news, as I have a number of DX lenses which would be unuseable on a full frame sensor. Maybe we will be looking at 12fps in burst mode at 6MP. I'll update this blog as soon as I have further info!

Lightroom Weekend Course

I will be running a Lightroom course in the next couple of months. It will take place over a weekend. By the time you leave on Sunday afternoon you will be using Lightroom most of the time and occasionally diving into Photoshop for pixel based editing.

If you are interested, please express it here. And spread the word! In the next week you will see an application form on the lucaschaos.net site

The cost will be $100 and will run 9am-4pm with a one hour lunch break.

Until then I will be posting tips on Lightroom and how to use it here.

Back from Hong Kong

We are back! Touched down this morning at 8am and ended up sleeping most of day. Feeling much better now and have six copies of Lightroom to dish out. So make contact with me to arrange a time for the hand over.

Bridesmaid

An image of one of the bridesmaid's. Again Lightroomed. Applied a preset to get the monochrome look, applied a vignetteing under lens correction and sharpened. Sharpening has been stepped up big time to include four sliders giving you almost the control you have in Photoshop.

My Sister's Wedding

I had to include this shot of my sister laughing her nut off! This image was shot in Raw mode, colour corrected, increased vibrance and sharpened in Lightroom. Total time... 2minutes.

Still here in Hong Kong!

Shelley and I got bumped off the flight back to Auckland tonight so we are now staying at the Novotel and they upgraded us due to hotel renovations! We aren't complaining. So WHO WANTS LIGHTROOM?

I've sold four copies and have another two available for $160 NZD sooo get in.

Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom available

I picked up the three copies of Lightroom that people wanted ($160 NZD) and have come into another three copies if anyone else is interested. I can also get genuine copies of Photoshop CS3 for around $400 NZD. This is approximate, but a good indication of the actual price.

If anyone is interested in either Lightroom or Photoshop, please let me know by commenting on this blog or emailing me as we are leaving Hong Kong within the next 24 hours. Be quick and take this opportunity while you can.

Two copies of Lightroom left

Here's an update to the Lightroom offer. I have purchased three genuine versions of Lightroom for approximately $160 NZD. One has gone already and I have two left. If you want one, be quick and respond to this blog by posting a comment.

Hong Kong Lightroom Prices

Twelve hours walking around Hong Kong today, too much. Anyway here are the prices on Lightroom.

Before I go into prices. These are genuine. It looks like I can get the Academic version for around $150. There are three copies in. So first in, first served.

The standard version is, and I need to confirm this around $390.

I need to get back to the sellers before 3pm NZ time (Thurs 12th). So move quickly and let me know if you want the standard or academic version. They are essentially the same.

Just send a comment on this post to make your order, if I can't fill it for whatever reason, I'll let you know. I'll fork the bill and you can pay me back when you see me.

Hong Kong Lightroom 2

We are heading to Hong Kong Island today to check out the shops and the cost of software, namely LIGHTROOM. So I'll post the price soon.

This is our second day in Hong Kong after walking what felt like 37.5 miles yesterday. We canvased the area in Kowloon and got lost in the train system for a couple of hours. We managed to get back to the hotel but were so knacked after all the walking and 31 degree heat that we lounged round the pool for a while.

Tonight we're heading to Victoria Peak. Hope to catch the city by night.

Hong Kong Lightroom

I'm heading to Hong Kong Monday 9th July for a week. I'll be looking at getting a few copies of Lightroom if anyone is interested. I'll send a blog with the price when I get there. Best to put your hand up now to indicate interest!

Lightroom 1.1

Lightroom 1.1 adds improved noise reduction and sharpening and raw file support for a number of new digital cameras from manufacturers including Canon, Nikon, Olympus.

I've had a play with the new sharpening options, which include Amount, Radius, Detail and Masking.

Last Night for First Photoshop Course

Hello everyone, we are now in week ten which brings us to the end of the course. I want to thank everyone for participating and hope you will come along to more courses.

My promise on Monitor Calibration still holds, wish we had 48 hours in everyday! Anyway, anyone on this course is welcome to take my Spyder2Pro home and calibrate your monitors yourselves. Just email me and we can arrange a time for you to use it.

On Thursday we will be covering the following.

1. How to fix up a portrait
2. Panoramic stitching
3. New features in Photoshop CS3 that will blow your minds!

We may also cover a few other things as time permits.

I will email you all images required for fixing a portrait today or tomorrow. Notes will also be emailed.

Any comments or questions you have, please post them on the blog and we will attempt to cover them on Thursday.

See you then.

Week Ten Task Two - Raw Portrait

Shoot a portrait image in Raw mode. Make sure you shoot the image as bright as possible without blowing the highlights. The histogram should favour the right side in camera. If you use AP mode wind the EV up to move the histogram right if required.

We will look at how to make the most of the image. If you can shoot to get a reflection in the eyes, even better. Then we'll look at a way to bring out the detail in the image and still maintain good shadow detail where necessary.

Have a go, you'll learn a heap!

Week Ten Task One - Panoramas

In the final week of this course we will be looking at how to merge numerous photos together. YOUR TASK. Have a go at shooting 3 or 4 images by panning horizontally or vertically. Bring your images along on week ten.

Take note of the following tips.

Panorama Tips:

Tip #1: You want to take steady shots, so use a tripod or some other stabilizing element like your mate's shoulder, or rest your shooting elbow up against a building.

Tip #2: Include an overlapping element in each shot. Maybe 25%. That is, if you're taking a series of three shots, make sure you include a slice from the first shot in the second, and a slice of the second shot in the third. That way you have bits to align with. This will make more sense when we tackle the Photoshop part in week ten.

Tip #3: Try to ensure that the lighting (exposure) is similar. I suggest you shoot in manual mode and have your exposure set the same for each shot. That way you won't have brightness issues when merging your images.

If you need help on how to shoot in manual mode. let me know on Thursday night and we'll cover it.

Introduction

Hello everyone. This blog is dedicated to helping people on my Photoshop courses understand Photoshop CS2/CS3 and Photoshop Lightroom. I'll be starting a new course on Lightroom in the near future.

You can post questions and I'll answer within a reasonable period of time.

So if you need help with anything Photoshop or Lightroom, ask it here and I'll get back to you.

This blog is aimed at all users from Beginner to Intermediate to Advanced.