Alternative Presentations

Here is another composition from my short trip to Ricketts Glen State Park. (The other composition.) And I want to take the opportunity to say a little about the possibility of showing more than one interpretation of a digital shot (capture).

A while back I did a post titled Digital Has Changed the Way We Shoot. In it are links to a few of Brooks Jensen’s audio podcasts. These particular podcasts were about the differences in how he used to shoot with film and how he now shoots with digital capture. In part, he talks about when he shot with film needing to capture the tonal values the way he wanted them to show in the final output (print). But with digital he wants to capture, not necessarily the best looking image, but rather a file that contains the most data for future post processing. Read more »

Making lists seems to be a popular way of blogging. (Maybe we are getting too much David Letterman.) Anyway, at least for this post, I’ve decided to follow the heard. Photoshop CS 5 (and Lightroom 3) have been out for a while and I’ve had a chance to revamp how I work on images because of the new features in them. In order to make the list the feature must have a significant impact on how I work on images. Here are my top five new features in Photoshop CS5.

1. Updated Refine Edge
2. ACR’s Process 2010
3. ACR’s updated Lens Correction
4. Enhanced Noise Reduction in ACR
5. Content Aware Read more »

There are two types of contrast that can be used to make images more interesting: color contrast and tonal contrast. But for now I only want to talk about is tonal contrast. And specifically the two types of tonal contrast: overall contrast and midtone contrast, and how they can be modified during post processing. Read more »

For those readers that are “local” to the West Chester PA area,  I’ve published the classes and workshops I’m offering this Fall and Winter. I have them listed on two interlinked web sites:

• The Workshops and Classes Page on this blog
• The It’s All About the Light Tours web site.

There are a couple of new entries: Advanced Raw Workflow with Lightroom and/or Adobe Camera Raw Workshop and a Digital Black and White class for the Chester County Night School. Both of these are relatively short, at three sessions.

And if you are not local. can’t fit a class or workshop in your schedule, or prefer learning on your own you can visit this blog’s Resource Page for book recommendations. If you buy a book , or anything for that matter, after clicking through to Amazon I get a few pennies and you get a warm felling all over because you helped keep this site going. Thanks!

In my post on how to Double Process a Single Raw File I showed the two different ways of creating a copy of a Smart Object (SO) layer. To summarize, if you simply duplicate the layer both SO layers are “linked” back to the same version of the raw file. And any changes you make to one will be reflected in the other. But if you choose New Smart Object via Copy then you create a second independent SO. The resulting 2 SO layers can be modified independently from one another.

On his Adobe Photoshop Killer Tips site Matt Kloskowski has a short video that shows the differences in these two ways of making a copy of a SO layer. If my explanation leaves you scratching your head, check out his 2 minute video.

Since I’m on a B&W kick I thought I would post another monochrome image. This is another shot processed with Silver Effects Pro.

This was shot last week at Fort Delaware, which is on Pea Patch Island in the middle of the Delaware River off of Delaware City. It was originally built to protect the entrance to Philadelphia. As evidenced by the number of large gun emplacements. Even though the fort was used to house POWs in WW II it is most noted for it’s use to house POWs during the Civil War.  This scene is a recreation of a union solder’s coat and a woman’s coat (his wife?) hagging next to the door. The scene is lit with available light through the open door.

Read more »

I’m not big on Photoshop plug-ins. Most of the time they “simplify” things you can already do in Photoshop but at the expense of control.

When I work on an image I start by evaluating the image and deciding where it is I want to take it; that is, what do I want to “say” with the image. After I figure out where I want to take the image then I think about how best to accomplish that in Photoshop. So I’m not big on opening up a filter or a plug-in and then clicking around to see what happens. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I never click and/or drag on a setting to see what will happen–especially when learning to use a new tool. Read more »

This image is a composite of two different interpretations of the same raw file. One with a cool White Balance to enhance the blues and greens in the sky and foreground grass. The other version is a warm White Balance to enhance the coat of the horse. I outlined the technique for Double Processing a Single Raw File in yesterdays post.

Read more »