Photoshop Tutorial

It is amazing how photographers will take a photo and shelve it based on small little errors when in reality you can use editing software to create something wonderful that makes your subject truly stand out. In this blog I will do my best to give you a blow by blow blog about a Photoshop edit from a recent photo I created.

This photo was taken at recent shoot I did for a city council hopeful and the venue was amazing. I want to first thank The Royal Hotel for allowing me to shoot in their lobby. I am really looking forward to going back there to capture more photos. I would also like to thank my subject Menu who is a super lady and a whole lot of fun. Now onto the edit.




This first photo is the original shot. I have said it before and will again a great edit starts from a great photo and I really like how this turned out. It has all the sharpness I need, the skin tones are nice and even and there is an interest that has been captured. That being said there are some negatives about it as well. I find the leaves dangling in front of the window very distracting, I don't like the sign poking out from her shoulder and lastly the phone cord drives me nuts. Finally there will be a little enhancing of Menu's already perfect smile and hair. Let's get into it.






Whenever I am editing a photo I always change what I dislike the most so for this photo I didn't like how contrasty it was. When this photo was shot I was using a flash with a 6x8 inch soft box which mounts to my speedlight. Even with the flash I still shot quite high ISO so the flash did not have to fill in so much light as to make the photo overly bright.

Step 1 the first thing I did was soften it a bit with a bit of noise reduction.

Step 2 was to bump up the exposure about 1 stop of light; it was just a bit dark but still had so much detail in the highlights and lowlights.

Step 3 was to replace the window I had a photo of this window in my catalogue of stock photos and I thought this would dramatize the photo just a bit more. Replacing the window is just a matter of cutting it from the original pasting into this photo and blending to make it look right.

Step 4 I used the clone tool to remove the phone cord

Step 5 grab the brush tool, sample the colour of her lips and "fix her lipstick" Now this step could have been done before the shot was taken but it was spur of the moment and neither of us thought about the fact her makeup was fading that late into the evening.

Step 6 is perhaps the most important. I used levels to brighten the photo and then with a layer mask I blocked out the section I didn't want brighter. What that equates to is just highlighting her hair and face.

That is pretty much it, now some purists will say that I changed the photo and they are not wrong. What they will fail to recognise is that I could have done the same things in a darkroom with film and hours upon hours of dodging and burning. Photos have always been manipulated to one degree or another and even the most amazing photographers in the world spend time cleaning up irritations in their photos. The difference between film and digital is time. What I can do now in my post editing software is instant, whereas what I did in film could take hours if not days.

Anyway here is the after post photo. As I said before, this photo had all the elements of a good photo to start with; I just perked it up a little. Hope you enjoy and please comment below and like my Facebook page to follow everything I do.

Sardis Digital Clickers

I have had a lot of time consumed lately with a new project. Coming in September I will be facilitating a camera club/learning program. Meeting the third Tuesday of every month at Sardis Library, in my home town of Chilliwack BC, we will have fun learning and exploring all aspect of photography.

http://www.fvrl.bc.ca/programs.php?programType=All&fromDate=&status=1&programSearch=Search+for+Programs&library=Sardis&toDate=

So if you want to learn more about how to capture great moments, or some editing techniques, or just want to help others please come down and check it out. Oh and don't forget your coffee/tea and your camera.

For now I will leave you with an image I shot 3 years ago. It was quite dull and bland until I found a mask technique called luminosity masking. Pretty powerful editing style.

Vancouver Skyline

Hope you like it.

Number One Reason Not to Throw Away

Sometimes when you take a photo and look at it there is no feeling, no emotion. The photo just falls flat and dull. Throw it away. That's it save some room on your hard drive and DELETE. OMG did I just say that. What I really meant was keep it, save it, cherish it, and look at it at a different time. Today I will show exactly what I mean. I took a photo that was that dull, delete photo but looking at it later I found a surprise in that photo. That never would happen if I just hit delete. Read on to learn more.

Very often when you are out shooting you pop off a couple hundred photos. You know that there will be some jewels in that mix and you will see them right away. Others are blurry and out of focus and just not usable. Then there are the questionable photos. These photos are what I refer to as Facebook quality, standard snap shot. Nothing special. What if they are, can you see them in a different light?

Take this photo I shot recently. The performer is an amazing "Crooner" Ron Boudreau. I approached him about a month ago to take some photos of his performance and he invited me back to his latest show at Chances Casino. After sifting through about 300 photos for the evening this one struck me as not bad, but not emotion evoking.




I scrolled through the photos a few times and this photo just kept calling me. I loved the expression on his face, the background has a quality of interest but too busy for the performer. It wanted something, so I sat for a long time and really looked at it. Since it was loaded into Lightroom I finally just started playing with some of the sliders and cropping.

First off let's minimize the back ground some and move the subject to the left third of the photo. Next we need to fix the exposure some and finally let's go black and white. Some photos just lend themselves to that one treatment. It's not something that should be used every time but that was exactly what this photo kept saying to me. It matched the performer, the location, and the lighting.

Here is the result and I don't think anyone would be disappointed in this.

And there it is folks. DO NOT throw away a photo that is on the border just sit quietly and let the photo tell you what it needs. Not every photo will but sometimes you will find that jewel in the rough

Histo What

Have you seen or heard of the histogram on your camera? Do you know what it is and when or how to use it? Is this an easy thing to learn and remember? Read on in this week's edition to find out the what, when, and why of using this very valuable tool on your camera.

When you take a picture using the LCD screen on your camera you see a LCD depiction of what that photo looks like. How often though do you look at it and say to yourself that photo looks amazing only to go home load it onto your computer and say what a bunch of crap. This photo is way too dark or light. This is when knowing how to read a histogram becomes so important.

Let's start with how to show the histogram on your LCD screen. On a canon camera when you choose view photo you can then press the info button on the back left hand side of the camera body. Nikon users will have to look it up in your manual but it should be similar. As you click through you see a variety of views from shutter count to RGB and then there is histogram view.

Now that you can see your histogram let's talk about what it is and how to read it. The histogram shows the tonal range of a photo. That is the dark, the light, and the neutral. On the left hand side is the dark or black, on the right hand side is the light or white, and the middle ground is the neutrals and grays. When you take your photo what you want to see is a nice balance over all three sections right? Wrong. This is where most articles confuse you and I will try to keep it simple.


Look at what you are shooting before you press the shutter. Consider what tonal ranges are in your photo. If you are shooting on a very bright day and a lot of the subject is white you will see a stacking like a spike on the right side of your histogram. If your subject is a full third black or very dark then the histogram will stack to the left. It's only when everything is kind of equal across the range you see a nice balance across the histogram.

You can see in these three examples exactly what I'm talking about. The top photo the range is fairly balanced with a small spike in the middle and a large spike on the right. The spike on the right is the "blown out" sky. Blown out refers to the loss of digital information. The sensor is so overwhelmed there is no information to read on that far side.




This photo represents the tonal mid-range. There are a few spikes and those would be the sparkle off the dress and the clouds.






Finally A photo with the histogram pressed heavily to the left. With all this black there is no information to read.





As you can see from the examples reading a histogram is not really that difficult. Look at your shot watching for what you expect the histogram to read like, really bright, really black, or neutral and then expose for that using aperture, shutter speed or ISO

What to bring, what to bring!

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges to an SLR photographer is what equipment to carry. The easy answer is all of it — but is that a logical response?

This past Tuesday I was a parent escort on a trip to the local aquarium with my son's biology class. I traveled on a school bus with the students for an hour and a half, and if you've forgotten what that's like, I can definitely say avoid the experience if possible. The seats have shrunk by half, and the manufacturers seem to inject the smell of sweat into the seats. (I'm sure it can't be that I got bigger and learned the value of good hygeine.)

Anyway, I digress. Long before pondering the school bus experience, another question filled my attention as I started preparing my equipment the night before. What to bring, what to bring. The urge is, of course, to bring everything. But that's not always possible — especially if you have to cram into a bus with a bunch of highschoolers. How do you narrow lenses, filters, tripods, and miscellaneous equipment when it is all begging to be taken along?

The first question is what subjects will be available to shoot. Then consider what lighting conditions are available — what are the local restrictions, if any? The easiest way to find the answers is to look at websites if available. You will be able to see what others have shot, by looking at any photo galleries that pop up online,  as well as check to see if there are any restrictions on what you can bring in or use.

At my aquarium nothing is off-limits to photograph, so I then considered what my subject matter would be. I was excited to see they were currently running a jellyfish exibition so needed to consider equipment for that in particular, as well as equipment to shoot frogs and reptiles in the rainforest room. I figured taking a light source was not an option, since any flash would only reflect against the glass and setting up a separate light stand would be in danger from the milling crowds. Cutting out lights means only taking lenses and tripod — easier and a whole lot heftier to pack. In the end  I decided on taking a standard lens, medium telephoto, macro, and (just to be interesting) the 50mm prime. I also packed the tripod, since I knew I would be shooting in a very dim enviroment and the shutter speeds were going to be a bit long. Like this post.

Here are a few of examples of the photos I took with my pre-planned-and-packed equipment.

3D Dolphins. Hope you don't get wet:)

Undersea Life

Yes I am a frog and I am looking at you

The beauty of Jellyfish

The other benefit to planning ahead is that you get to enjoy your time far more. I ended up arriving at the aquarium 40 minutes before it opened, and was allowed to wander the nearly-empty aquarium and shoot to my heart's content before the crowds arrived. I had the luxury of being able to really set up and plan the shot, which is not always possible at a usually-busy attraction like the aquarium. When the doors opened and the public came in, shooting was very tough, and again it came in handy to have all my equipment organized and close to hand where I wanted it.

By the time the crowds became too thick to handle, it was time for lunch and a coffee followed by enjoying the displays as a casual observer. This is another important lesson for any photographer: don't forget to come out from behind the camera and enjoy the experience.