Model shoot and fine art rendition

As always, model shoot has always been a highlight event at the camera club for me. Tonight we had a model shoot at the club. This time, my images get some fine art treatment instead of the usual realism, due to my new-found penchant for this. The first image below is the original, while the other two are artistically rendered.

How to convert an image to monochrome

Converting a coloured image into black and white can often be achieved with just a single click when using even a simple photo editor. However, the resulting image may not always be pleasing. Often this is the result of not having a good enough tonal range and the image looks "flat". To achieve the classic high contrast look in a black and white image, one of the easiest ways is to use the dodge and burn tool in Photoshop.

Here's how. First, use whichever method you prefer to change a coloured image into black and white. For instance, click on Image>Mode>Grayscale, or, Image>Adjustments>Black & White.

Now, using the Burn tool and setting the Range to Shadows and Exposure very low (to, say, 3%), brush over the entire image to make the dark areas slightly darker. Then using the Dodge tool and setting the Range to Highlights and Exposure again to very low (say 5%), proceed to brush over the image again to make the bright areas slightly brighter. That's all there is to it!

Below is an example of an image before and after the Burn and Dodge treatment.

Before Burn and Dodge

After Burn and Dodge

Fine art photography portraits

Last few days, I did a google search for fine art photography portraits. I found that many of the images have a grungy background texture. Therefore I decided to try my hand at reproducing the technique. See these images below, which I did this morning. All these images were shot against a white backdrop and have been post-edited for background effect.

Another photo art of a dog

After doings shots of Yuna (see earlier post), I have to do some shots of Mizu too. Mizu is Yuna's companion. Mizu calls the shots around the house. She barks at every dog that passes by our house, while Yuna remains unperturbed.

Hahndorf, as I view it

Hahndorf is a picturesque little German town outside Adelaide. I love it because it conjures up for me images of bygone days. In real life, of course, the scenes are not like what you see here. But in the eyes of my mind, Hahndorf is as quaint as the scenes below.

Impressionist dog

Her name is Yuna. Following on my other "impressionist paintings", I thought that Yuna might make a good impression (pun intended).

Vegetables in still life

If you Google "still life vegetables" you will find excellent paintings and photographs of the most common things we encounter on a daily basis: vegetables. Most of us will probably equate a lovely vegetable as one that is fresh and palatable. Many will probably view them only as food for eating but not food for the eyes.

Vegetables make a lovely subject for still life photography. It has always been my interest to capture them as art on a camera.  Below are two images I just did; one rendered in low key and the other in high key.

More impressionist paintings

These two images were taken at Mont de Lancey. They have been post edited to give them the antique painting look.

Seascape in Williamstown

This image was taken in Williamstown in 2013. I thought it makes a good candidate for an impressionist painting, especially the threatening clouds and the setting sun lightening the horizon. A wild sea with some thunderbolts would have gone better with the dramatic sky, but then I doubt I would have been there to make the shot.

How I created an impressionist painting

One of my favourite impressionist painters is John Constable. I particularly love his paintings that depict the countryside. Here is my maiden attempt at turning a digital image into what I hope looks like an impressionist painting. 

The post processing technique used here is relatively simple. I increased the saturation on the original image, blended in a grunge background using Soft Light blend, then repeated with another layer of blending using Overlay blend with opacity reduced. Finally I "painted" in some lights and some shadows judiciously.

High key images

A high key image is one where the background is intentionally white and featureless. If you Google for examples of high key images, you will see what I mean.

Today I managed to create a high key image that I feel good about. In particular, my greying hair no longer reveals itself starkly against a dark background. So for you guys out there, when your hair turns grey, you might also want to consider high key portraits of yourself.

Notes to myself: how to optimize Lightroom

Adobe has very good write-ups on things to consider when trying to improve the performance of Lightroom and Photoshop on the computer.The considerations include everything from HDD to RAM, to video card, to software configuration and settings. Adobe's websites also explain the why's and the how's.

For Lightroom optimization, see: http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html

Here is a list of settings which has helped to make my Lightroom a lot speedier. The notes are taken from the above link.

1. Render 1:1 Previews on import or manually
On import: When "Import" is clicked, make sure the Render Previews is set to 1:1.
Manually: In the Library, select grid view. After selecting the photos to render, click Library>Preview>Render 1:1 Previews.

2. Catalog and Preview cache
Both are in the same folder buy default. Keep it that way. To see location, click Edit>Catalog Settings>File Handling. The location is set at the very first time Lightroom ever imports a file. To change the location, delete all files in the existing location. Lightroom will then prompt for location when you next import a file. To set default location, start the first import process, then click Quit before setting any new catalog location.

3. Keep standard size previews as small as possible,
but not smaller than the screen's resolution. My computer screen's highest resolution is 1280x1024. In Edit>Catalog Settings>File Handling, set Standard Preview Size to 1440, and Preview Quality to Medium or Low. Keep Automatically Discard 1:1 Previews at After 30 Days or never, but remember to delete if hard disk space starts running out.

4.Turn off Autowrite XMP
In Edit>Catalog Settings>Metadata, uncheck Automatically write changes into XMP.

5. Once in a while, optimize the catalog
Click File>Optimize Catalog...

6. Increase Camera Raw cache size.
Click Edit>Preferences>File Handling. Set Maximum Size to 20GB.
The location of the cache is also shown here.

For Photoshop optimization, see: http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-performance-photoshop-cs4-cs5.html#main_Scratch_Disks

p/s Do a registry cleanup on the computer after changing the Catalog and Preview caches. This is important and necessary. How? Just google for "free registry cleaner". 

Difference between Photoshop and Lightroom

Perhaps I should explain what is the difference between these two photo editing software. Both are products of Adobe. When Adobe first released Lightroom, it was advertised as a tool for photographers (which I have found to be very true indeed). Even though Photoshop has long established itself as the industry standard in photo editing, Lightroom did not unseat Photoshop, but appears to complement it very well. Adobe has cleverly filled in a workflow gap that has made "light" of post processing work (pun intended).

Here is the difference. When you use Photoshop, you work with Layers. You cannot master Photoshop without mastering Layers, and without mastering the various Selection tools. Both are not easy to master. Lightroom does not require you to work with Layers or the Selection tools, which is a big relief. Indeed, for someone familiar with photo editing, it can be learned in one sitting. In Lightroom all the adjustments are made on one layer. Since there is no Selection tool in Lightroom, you cannot do cut-and-paste. For such graphics work, one can seamlessly migrate over to Photoshop and continue working on the image.

Adobe Lightroom 2; 4 weeks later

I have used Lightroom for about 4 weeks now and I have grown to love it. This is the first time I have given serious thought to improving my workflow, thanks to Lightroom. What do I mean by workflow? In digital photography, some of us take lots of pictures. In a typical day's shooting, I would shoot about 500 pictures. It is not easy to sift through thousands of pictures after a trip. I have always kept everything I shoot, but since I started shooting in RAW, my hard disk is filling up very quickly and I have decided to sort out the rotten apples. Using Adobe Lightroom, I would "import" a folder that I want to sort. Lightroom makes it very easy for me to put a star rating on the pictures I want to keep. I can quickly sift through several rounds until I am happy with those I want to keep.

Next, I can quickly make slight adjustments to those that need a bit of tweaking to get it right, such as a bit of cropping or exposure adjustment, etc. I can even copy the adjustments made on one picture and apply it to any number of others. This is particularly useful when you need to adjust the white balance of pictures shot under artificial lighting.

Finally, when I have sorted out all the pictures I want to keep, and made adjustments to those that need correction, I can compress all the files to the size I want and "export" to my archive. At the same time, I would cherry pick those good enough to be placed in my gallery for public viewing.

Lightroom must have been designed by photographers because the thoughts that have gone into designing the software fits the needs of photographers very well. I am delighted by two things in particular: 1) if you shoot Jpeg and Raw at the same time and you import these into Lightroom, it automatically lets you edit in Raw. When you delete, you can delete both Jpeg and Raw at the same time; 2) when you have done all the preliminary work in Lightroom, you can still continue to do more fancy manipulations using Photoshop if you so desire.

Notes to myself: advanced selection in Photoshop

In Photoshop there are many ways to select a desired area, which is then used to cut-and-paste to another picture. When it comes to marking out the hair or similarly intricate objects, it requires some special techniques to make the job easier. One such technique is to use channels. The procedure is as follows:

1. Open an image, then go to the Channels window. Select the channel (in grayscale) that gives the most contrast.
2. Go to Image>Calculations. Choose Source 1 and Source 2 to be the same selected channel and choose the Blending option that maximizes the contrast. Set the Result to New Channel (Alpha channel).
3. Hit Ctrl L (shortcut for Image>Adjustments>Levels) to make adjustments to further boost up the contrast.
4. Use the paintbrush to paint the image, or eraser to erase undesired parts of the image. The idea is to be able to paint in the area that will be used as a mask later on. The hairy parts, which are difficult to paint accurately, should be made automatically black by the preceding steps so that not much painting is involved.
5. Without making any selection, but with the Alpha channel still active, hit Ctrl I (shortcut for Image>Adjustments>Invert) to inverse the selection from black to white if necessary. White is what will be used for mask later on.
6. Hold Ctrl and click the Alpha channel to make the selection for mask. Now reactivate the RGB channel and deactivate the Alpha channel (i.e. the "eye" icon). Go back to Layers window and you will see the selection you have made.
7. Alternatively, you can click Select>Load Selection and choose the Alpha channel to reload the selection to be used as mask. Use Ctrl J to copy and make a new image minus the background (if desired).
8. Now you can copy and past the selection to another image. To further improve on the parts of the hair that is not well defined, use Burn tool to darken. (In newer Photoshop, use Refine Edge).
9. Alternatively, if the hair is light in colour, try converting to Lab colour mode and use the channels to paint the background black, instead of the subject black. The technique is the same.

Adobe Lightroom ver 2.5

This software is designed for photographers to make adjustments to a digital image. While Photoshop has been traditionally used to make those adjustments, I have always thought that Photoshop is an overkill. I confess I did not immediately take to Lightroom. In fact I went as far as deleting it a couple of days after downloading and installing the trial version. Even now I still immensely dislike the "Library" function, which is actually a cataloging function that can potentially lock you into a rigid system of managing your files and folders. Thanks, but no thanks, Adobe.

The "Develop" module is what I love about Lightroom. It truly simplifies all the tasks a photographer would typically need to do on a digital image. There are no "layers"; which I say is the life and soul of Photoshop, and the bane of one trying to learn Photoshop for the first time. Instead, all changes are done virtually on one page and can always be completely reverted back to the original. The best part of all is that it can be learned fairly quickly, so that the photographer can stick to shooting pictures without having to master Photoshop as well. Having said that, it is only fair to say that Photoshop is still the king of digital manipulation, so don't expect Lightroom to do everything.

Digital painting

When I was in college I bought an easel and tried my hand at oil painting. I actually did a complete canvas and eventually gave it to a friend when I left America. It was a delight to see the image progressing from an empty canvas into a completed work. In the same way, when you develop pictures in the darkroom, it is exciting to see the image slowly appearing before your eyes.

Corel Painter actually lets you draw or paint digitally, as well as automatically transforming the picture for you. This is where the fun begins. The picture shown here is half painted by Corel Painter and half by me using digital brushes and ink on a computer screen. Now that I have tried real digital painting and real oil painting, I must say the Corel Painter software does quite an amazing job of emulating the real thing! You can choose the brush type, different media, as well as applying wet or dry paint, etc, etc. (Photoshop has Brushes too, but I haven't tried that yet)

Notes to myself: How to add border to image

I picked up this tip from a photography magazine. It is just a simple task. To include one of the ready made borders, you simply add the border as another layer to the opened image in photoshop. Then select "Lighten" or "Screen" and the image will appear with the predefined border, as shown in the example here. It does add a bit of character to the image, doesn't it?

Exploring High Dynamic Range photography

Now that I got myself started on photo impressionism, I would also like to mention here a digital imaging technique that has intrigued me earlier on. Used with discretion, it can be a very powerful technique. However, over-use of it will quickly wear down its novelty. The theory behind HDR (high dynamic range) can be easily found in Wikipedia; it is not my intention to expound on it here. The technique involves taking 3 shots of the same scene, with exposure bracketing for under- and over-exposure. A handy software such as Dynamic Photo HDR does the rest for you in a few simple steps. It is that easy!

This is an example I got from the website. An ordinary shot has been turned into a surreal picture. Google on HDR will quickly reveal lots of beautiful HDR images.








Below is my first attempt using a trial version of the Dynamic Photo HDR software. See the difference between a normal shot and an HDR-rendered image.









You can also do a simulated HDR using a single shot instead of bracketing 3 shots. Below is an example using a plug-in imported into Photoshop. (Newer versions of Photoshop CS has built-in HDR tool).











It is easier to achieve satisfactory result with HDR than with digital infrared photography. I guess now I'll have to write about my experience with IR (infrared) photography in my next blog.