Photoshop Seminar with Dave Cross March 2, 2010
Posted by Nicole : Photoshop , add a comment
Last week I attended the “MAXIMUM Photoshop Tour” with Dave Cross. I’m a NAPP member so I’ve been to both seminars and Photoshop World and always enjoyed them thoroughly … this seminar was no exception! I consider myself an advanced Photoshop user so there are usually topics on things that I’m already familiar with, but the great thing about Photoshop is that there are soooo many ways to do one thing so I always learn something new that I can plug into my workflow.
If you ever have the opportunity to attend a NAPP seminar I would highly recommend it – you can find them at KelbyTraining.com. They are usually $99 for one full day of training, but if you’re a NAPP member like me then you get a nice $20 discount. At the end of the day I always feel like I get my money’s worth. :)
BTW, if you’re an avid Photoshop user and not a NAPP member then you should definitely check it out. It’s only $99/year and you get a magazine subscription, access to tons of online training and lots of discounts on gear, software, and other cool stuff. I’ve been a member for about two years now, and it’s so worth it. :)
Two Minute Tip: High Pass Sharpening February 5, 2010
Posted by Nicole : Photography, Photoshop, Tips & Tricks, Tutorials, Video , 4 commentsHere’s another “Two Minute Tip” on how to selectively sharpen images with the high-pass filter using Photoshop.
Photoshop Abuse? I Plead “Not Guilty” January 26, 2010
Posted by Nicole : Photography, Photoshop , 20 comments
Last week I came across my name and a link to one of my recent blog posts in a forum (thanks to Google alerts), and in the same sentence were the words “… photographers vastly overuse the Photoshop crutch to repair their images”. Another photographer chimed in and said that we should “shoot it correctly in the first place – you won’t make any money in Photoshop”. (Hmm … last I checked the guys over at NAPP don’t seem to be hurting.) :)
Now, I’m not the kind of person to get into heated discussions in a forum (and I actually think that that kind of thinking is out-dated and somewhat comical) so I stayed out of it. But the idea did stick with me … and if I could have a face-to-face conversation with someone like that over coffee, what would I say? Well, keep reading and you’ll find out.
First of all, who really cares? Some people get so wrapped up in the process that they forget what our goal is as photographers – to create memories and make beautiful images. It doesn’t matter how perfect you photograph something in-camera, in my opinion it can always benefit from a little touch-up. And just to set the record straight: getting it right in-camera is a wonderful thing, and I highly encourage it! I want to spend as little time staring at pixels on my computer screen as possible and still get wonderful results, and when I perfect an image before it hits my computer then I shave off a lot of time to my editing.
But if a photographer wants to heavily rely on Photoshop to make their images look good, then so what? I really don’t undersand why it’s such a big deal. Photography is evolving and changing, but it’s still photography if you digitally edit, enhance, crop, tint, or alter your images. I’m sure that there is a point when the image crosses the “photography” line and becomes “digital art”, but think of some of the types of photographs we can create these days that were difficult in the past. HDR would not be possible without using some sort of post-processing software … but we could always argue that it’s still something that could be carried out in a wet darkroom, tedious though it may be (as are several other methods of post-processing).
I also wonder, is the overall debate an issue of new technology and younger photographers? Are these people worried that they’re going to lose their corner of the market to someone who’s owned an SLR for three months but can use a computer? As a photographer heavily involved in micro-stock I’ve seen other photographers throw a lot of hateful comments towards the industry in general, and there is only one word that I can use to describe those types of people: insecure. If you’re really afraid that your job is at risk, then adapt and overcome. The cream will always rist to the top.
And in my own defense – I do know photography, and I have a pretty good understanding of light … but I still use Photoshop. And back when I was shooting film and processing images in both color and black-and-white wet darkrooms, I still had to adjust the color and tones, and even use filters to make my prints look the way I envisioned them. Oh, and I even had to push-process my film every once in a while cause T-Max didn’t go past 3200 ISO. Is all of that cheating, too?
When I hear comments like I read in that forum post I always wonder if there’s more “between the lines” than what is actually said. I don’t think those people are anti-Photoshop, I think that they try to justify their insecurities and refusal to adapt by belittling photographers and artists who do use digital editing tools. But enough of all this talk – I’m gonna stop ranting and go make some more photos. Cause, as we all know, talking about photography is not doing photography.
:)
Photo by Rich Legg
“Two Minute Tip” – Watermarking Your Images January 22, 2010
Posted by Nicole : Photoshop, Tips & Tricks, Tutorials, Video , 7 commentsHere’s another “Two Minute Tip” on how to add a basic watermark to your images using Photoshop.
Photoshop Before & After: Salmon January 20, 2010
Posted by Nicole : Before & After, Food, Lightroom, Photography, Photoshop, Tutorials , 3 comments
Yesterday I posted some white-balance tips for shooting food photography. In this post I’m going to go through the steps I took to edit the image. The photo used in this post is from the same shoot and is edited identically to the image in the previous post.
I reduced the images sizes in this post for format purposes … feel free to click on them to view in a larger resolution.
The images I photograph, whether they are for work or for fun, always go through Adobe Lightroom before I edit in Photoshop, and sometimes, if they are not “work” images, I will just export straight out of Lightroom and not even use Photoshop. I’ve been using the program ever since it was released and have found it to be an essential part of my workflow.
So, for this image, I started by editing the RAW file in Lightroom. I made some slight temperature and tonal adjustments (the changes are hi-lighted in yellow). Then I exported the image as a PSD file and opened it in Photoshop CS4 to do further editing.
When I edit images I typically use a lot of layers. This photo didn’t need too much work to it, so it’s not as complicated when it comes to my typical work-flow. I prefer to use adjustment layers to preserve the non-destructiveness as much as possible during the editing process … and so I can go back and fix anything I missed the first time around.
The first layer is a Levels Adjustment Layer – I named it “light” in my layers panel to the left (click here to view the actual RGB adjustments). One thing you’ll note is that, hi-lighted in yellow is the blending modes drop-down and I have it set to “luminosity“. I do this with my images so that I can do masking that will only affect one aspect of the adjusmtents, if necessary. In this particular image I didn’t want the red areas of the salmon and topping to be overly lightened (it was creating some ugly blotching in the darker red areas) so I used “SELECT –> Color Range…” to find the red areas, then I filled in the selection with black in the layer mask.
Next I added another Levels Adjustment Layer, changed the blend-mode to “color” and did some minor color editing. I used the far left slider on the “Red” and “Green” channels and brought them in slightly to the right until the colors looked balanced (click here to view the adjustments).
The third layer is a Black and White Adjustment Layer, the blend mode changed to “Soft Light” (I also will sometime use the “Overlay” blend mode”) and then dropped the opacity down to 20%. This will usually give a nice contrasty look to the image, and often will make the blacks stand out in the image more.
(If you want to learn more, please click here to view a quick two-minute video tutorial on this effect.)
The last thing I do in my images is add a sharpening layer. I prefer to use the “High Pass” filter and use masking to show only the part of the image I want sharpened, in this case the basil leaf furthest to the right. (I explain how to do this effect towards the end of this video tutorial, at about 5 minutes in.)
And that’s my editing process! I always save the un-flattened PSD version of the image, along with a full-res JPEG. Saving the PSD files eats up more space, but I have found it useful when I need to go back and re-edit a file (or do fun tutorials like this one).
