Add Cloud Background Video

Posted by Philip in Follow-up, Photo Processing, Texture Photo

I started getting requests for a video version of adding the cloud texture.  So I took yet another photo of Sierra and applied the cloud texture.

The final image:

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Step by Step Adding a cloud as a background texture

Posted by Philip in Follow-up, Photo Processing, Texture Photo

This is a step by step instruction on how to perform a similar look as the photo I enhanced a couple days ago.  First start out with your model photo.  Clean up the background or any blemishes on the model you may want to remove.

In this case the original background color is very important since that’ll be the base color the clouds will take. Overlay the clouds and change the blend mode.  In this case I used Linear Light to achieve the rich coloring.

Now we want to bring the model back to the front.  So make a selection of the model and make a new layer with a mask.  Actually we’ll need two of these.  Your selection doesn’t have to be perfect.  Since all we are doing is blending with the original image, if anything is out of place it’ll be difficult to find any errors.

The top most copy will need a little fiddling, but we’ll worry about that in a moment.  This is just the cutout of the model on top of the blended background.

Most people would stop there but it lacks some punch so the next thing to do is to make the top most copy of the model black and white.  In this case I’m going to use the top copy to enhance the lower copy.  So I don’t want the black and white to be really strong.  Just enough to heighten the shadows.

Now we change the blend mode between the two copies of the model.  I used Hard light in this case to give her a more bronzed look.  This will better match the background.

Finally you just turn all the layers on and adjust opacity as you see fit to balance things out.  To the side is all the layers I used and what I set their blend modes to if it wasn’t normal.  You can easily bring through some of the cloud texture on the model by adjusting the opacity, but in this case I didn’t like the effect.

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I Don’t “Get” Grunge

Posted by Philip in Photo Processing, Photo Technique

It could be my age, it could be that I have a different ascetic sense, but I don’t “get” grunge.  I’ve seen so many tutorials all over on how to get a grunge look and how to use lots of plugins and filters.  The steps are sometimes very complicated and time consuming. I don’t want to spend all that time working on an image unless I’m trying to clean it up. But did you know you can do grunge in-camera, sorta.  When I’m asked to do a grunge look, this is what I do:

1) Use enough light to blow out the subject.  Yes this creates and Image you would normally trash.  But this is grunge after all, it is trash.

2)  In Camera Raw/Lightroom/Aperture re-expose as far down as you can go.

There are some other sliders you may want to over-drive, but that’s it really.  Once you have the image on your machine it takes 10 seconds.  No need to load into an image manipulation program unless you need to resize or remove some clutter.  I’m sure I’m missing the point of grunge, but does it have to be anymore difficult than this?

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Refine Edges in Adobe Photoshop CS5 with flyaway hair

Posted by Philip in Photo Processing

The new refine edges in Adobe Photoshop CS5 is really good at selecting hair, but there are a few things you will want to look at even though the selection may look perfect.

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The Photography Tip of the Week #062

Posted by Philip in Photo Processing, Podcast

Reject vs. Delete
062 Photography Tip of the Week (audio)

One thing that many new to scrapbooking have trouble with is physically cutting or cropping that first photo.  We are naturally concerned or even scared of losing information.  This is just as prevalent in the digital age of photography.  As a photographer, I have no problem cropping an image, because I know I have the original file backed up in at least three locations.  This backup paranoia came in real handy since I had a hard disk crash right before writing this blog entry. But as photographers we have a similar issue with culling images.  What photos are worth keeping and which ones should we trash.

At one point I would have said that you should just reject images and not delete them.  Hard drive space is cheap and for very little money you can have multiple backups of all your files.   Recently I’ve been doing a lot of sports photography and that quick action requires my camera to be on high-speed continuous shooting mode.  This produces a lot of files and is a good place to start.  So this is what I do to determine what I should keep.  Here are three types of images to get rid of:

Obvious mistakes – There are times when we photograph our feet or someone’s back.  I hope you don’t keep these, they aren’t worth the effort of keeping.

Out of focus – I’m not talking metaphysical here.  Assuming you don’t have a blurry style, out of focus images are just blurry and no amount of enhancements will ever make them sharp.  I know Adobe has done some major leaps with each release of their software, but bringing back focus is not one of them and I doubt if it ever will.

One in ten – I would have said one in a million, but that’s another tip.  When you have a sequence of images go through them and mark which one you would want to keep.  Go through them again on a different day, and if your answer is the same get rid of the rest.  The likelihood of you needing another one out of that sequence in the future is minute. In the sequence of photos I have with this podcast, I would choose either of the first two. Which one would you choose?

It’s easy to pick out your best photo of the day.  You probably have a dozen or so you can think of on the tip of your mind right now as your best images and they should be hanging on your wall.  But through out the day you will make many images that are in focus, non-mistakes and not part of a sequence.  Here are three potential throwaway images should you keep.

Noisy photos – If an image is really interesting, noise in the photo won’t detract from a good image.  Advancements in post processing noise reduction keep getting better and better.   One day you will be able to easily remove that noise and completely reveal the image underneath.

Slide by side – These are those photos where you aren’t attempting to make a panorama, but you do recenter and take another shot either as a better composition, or you want to get something else in the frame.  Layering these images can yield you one larger image or possibly one higher definition image.

Crowd shots – I know you are saying, “What?”  I’m not suggesting that you go out and photograph a bunch of crowds.  You won’t easily win any awards for these.  But do keep photos from various events that have the crowd of people.  At some point one of those photos will be worth something to someone.

I hope this will help you to narrow down your photos.  If you actually delete the photos, I leave to you.

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Criticism: Negative Comments Follow-up

Posted by Philip in Follow-up, Photo Processing

Eric was right.  What I posted was the unedited photo. What I was hoping for was some criticism as if I had spent a lot of time working on the image.  The image was taken at a beauty school and the makeup and hair was done by a student and the model picked the clothing and accessories. The reason for the red cast is that is apparently Canon’s default for the in-camera portrait color profile.  She obviously didn’t need that extra red.

In this case I wouldn’t do a lot to edit the photo.  The background was blown out to be too white with the lights, so I toned that down a bit.  I removed some of the red cast and toned down some of the freckles, but left them there since removing them completely wouldn’t be her.  Now if this was for a magazine cover, there would be the need for a lot more work, but this was just a glamor shot for the model, and she was quite pleased with the result.

So the purpose of this experiment was to see what type and how much criticism I would receive vs. another photo where I asked for non-negative comments.  In my next post, I explain about the other photo.  But in this case the negative comments were quite reasonable.  Many where on target, but some pushed the boundaries of what I was looking for and that’s my own fault.  I didn’t state the intent of the photo (on purpose) so you didn’t know what I was hoping to achieve.

So the thing to take away from this experiment is that you should be very clear what sort of advice you are looking for when you ask for it as well as be certain the intended outcome when you give advice.  A lot of people have a hard time with criticism and get “wounded” by negative comments. Even when they ask for a critique.

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