Advance Photo Editing Workshop

This month of September, another exciting month. An advance Photo Editing workshop I will be coaching and share my knowledge in photo editing using tools like Photoshop and Capture NX2. This workshop was made for photographers who want to expand their knowledge in editing their photos. To join this workshop simply call 088-270733. 

Two dates available to join 9th Sept and 16th Sept 2012. Venue will be at Borneo Images Gallery Tanjung Aru Plaza Kota Kinabalu. www.borneoimages.com

Adobe just announce it new Photoshop CS6

Adobe just announce its new Photoshop CS6 and there are several new tools or new feature added indeed very cool. Here are 6 of the new feature added.

1. The new none destructive crop tool

2. Advance video editing.

3. Content aware move tool

4. Tilt-shift filter / Iris blur

5. Content aware move tool

6. Patch tool with content aware.

Here is a Video just a quick sneak peek of the new CS6

Watch in HD here
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10150644512244389

Short Tutorial of Nikon Capture NX 2 Color Control Point

Simple and short tutorial of Capture NX2. Not the best video but hope this helps.

Photoshop Workshop: Basic Photoshop for Photographers

We starting to releasing our monthly on filed photography workshop starting March with the photoshop workshop which will be held in Borneo Images Gallery Tanjung Aru Plaza. Place only limited to 8 people for the workshop.

The program:

9am - Introduction of Photoshop and learning the Photoshop tools.
          In this part participant will learn how to use each of the basic tool found in photoshop. 

10am - Break

10.30am - Basic adjustment - In this part, participant will learn the basic adjustment that can be found on the menu to do adjustment of their photos. They will learn how to use Brightness/Contrast, Level, Curves, Hue/Saturation & Shadow/Highlight. They will have an exercise during the tutorial.

12pm - Lunch Break

1.30pm - Understanding Layers - In this session, they will learn how to use layers in their photoshop editing. How to put all basic adjustment they've learn in the morning session in layers. They will do some exercise during this tutorial to batter understand the subject.

2.30pm - Black & White - In this part they will learn how to convert their images into black and white in few different method in photoshop. In this way, they will know how to get the best black and white convertion suitable for their images.

3pm - Image for web use - Participant will learn how to prepare images best for web sharing facebook,  flickr, blog and websites.

3.30pm - Finish. Time for Q&A


Coming soon for Sandakan side for Photoshop workshop!

Photo's Color Profile for Web

Some of you must be wondering everytime you put your photos on web or blog or even on facebook, you see the photo's color does not look like what you have in your computer. This is actually also happen to me while ago, so decided to make a post here just to help to explain others about what is going on.

Ok.. you must have been told by others that when you take photo with your Dslr, make sure you set the color profile to Adobe RGB. The reason for that is, when you bring your photos into photoshop Adobe RGB is much better to work with only if you know what you are doing. 

Wiki:

The Adobe RGB color space is an RGB color space developed by Adobe Systems in 1998. It was designed to encompass most of the colors achievable on CMYK color printers, but by using RGB primary colors on a device such as the computer display. The Adobe RGB color space encompasses roughly 50% of the visible colors specified by the Lab color space, improving upon the gamut of the sRGB color space primarily in cyan-greens.

OK now you have a little idea what is Adobe RGB, now... sRGB is a world standard color profile, internet only use one color profile that is sRGB. sRGB is more vivid and brighter color profile. When you wanna put your photos into the internet make sure you change the color profile from Adobe RGB into sRGB in photoshop before you upload. Refer to screen shot below where to change your color profile.

Click photo to view large

 Now here in a sample of two different color profile of photos.

Adobe RGB

sRGB

 

Adobe RGB

sRGB

I know hard to tell the difference in this photos, Sample 1 see hill's green, Sample 2 see clouds and highlight.

Photoshop: Curves

I use curves often in my picture editing in Photoshop. A little tweak with curves can make a lot of different to the photo. Curves adjustment can be found from PS menu, image>adjustment>curves. To adjust contrast of my pictures, I never use the Brightness/contrast adjustment. It is just useless to me, I never use it since I found out how to use curves. If you don't know how to use the curves adjustment, sometimes it can lead you to spoiling the image rather than making it look better. Here bellow I put example of a simple tweak with curves which change the contrast and saturation of the images.

click screen shot to open large

Before






After



I hope this useful for you all cheers!

Another Infrared photos made in Photoshop

Although it is not as best as the real IR image using IR filter. Green colors turns to silvery color.

IR in Photoshop

Getting an infrared filter here in Malaysia are so difficult. We had to order it online on the internet but shipping very costly for just little filter. Anyway.. the technology nowaday are so advance. Now we can just shot the photo and change it in photoshop. I have created my own photoshop action converting normal color photograph into an infrared shot. Below is a sample of images comparing normal black and white shot and the IR shot.

Normal Shot


Normal Black & White



IR Shot



Second sample

Normal Shot


Normal Black & White


IR Shot

Patch match Adobe Photoshop CS5

This is interesting, love to share it here.

Running at 100km per hour

The recent trip to Philippines, during the drive to Clark Airport. We were traveling in a van at 100km per hour and I still manage to get this shot from the van's window without getting blurry image. This can be achieve by using fast shutter speed. Setting was ISO:400 @ 1/1000 no vr. The noise reduction was turn off as you can see some noise on the sky area. In order to freeze movement in picture, the shutter speed must 1/1000 or above.

Nef to jpeg: Capture Nx2 or CS4 RAW 5.0

Sample 1

Sample 2


I've been reading some review done by most website doing comparison between cameras. When they do RAW shots comparison, they never clarify what software they use to convert the RAW file. I'm a little bit skeptic about it. The raw 5.0 by adobe still can't produce the exact color that came out from the Nikon cameras. When you do Nef conversion using Capture NX2, what you see is what you'll get. The RAW 5.0 in cs4 alter the color of the photo during conversion.

Velvia Vision

I had a friend who recommended me to use Velvia Vision to edit my landscape images. I did try it and the result below. Velvia vision has been use by other photographer for quite awhile now and I just started using it. Velvia vision is the closes you can get to Velvia color transparencies color. It is a simulation of velvia film that come as a plug in for photoshop. At the moment it is only compatible with photoshop 7 , CS, CS2, CS3 but not CS4. The plug in price if you want to buy is $24.90 = Rm87.50. http://www.fredmiranda.com

The plug in works for landscape image but I haven't try on others like portrait. If anyone of you have tried it, might be want to share it here.

Unsharp Mask

Some one have ask me on how I sharpen all my images. I used several way to sharpen my images but mostly I used one most often. You can visit my tutorial blog to see my simple sharpening way with photoshop.

Adobe Lightroom

When I first try the adobe lightroom, I couldn't understand how it works. But after I took some tutorials I begin to like how the lightroom works. Its cut my image editing in half with lightroom than I used to with different method.

I had made a post in my tutorial blog briefly about how lightroom work. You can read about it more to this link http://lancephototips.blogspot.com

How much editing I do?

Some of my friend have question me, how much editing I do normally on my shots? Well basically in my preference, I try make it as natural as possible. Try to do less photoshop. Basically in photoshop I only use Color saturation (don't go beyond +28), Brightness and contrast, color balance (to adjust the color like the photo below, the original has over cyan so need to reduce a bit) and some dodge and burn. Most of my shots I don't do the editing much with photoshop but with Capture NX. It gives me more control and quality much better than the PS CS3.

Star Trail Shots

I just came back from shooting a star trail. Its kind of hard though to find a place in KK which without a street light. I posted in here some of the shots I made(taken between 2-3am). All of these was captured with long exposure setting on bulb. I need to get my sleep now, explanation will be posted soon(remind me). Enjoy!

Updated: How to shoot star trail

Right! some of you may be wondering how did I took this what setting and so on.. you may be think I used small aperture like f10 or f22. No! I used aperture range of f3.5 to f8. I never go greater than f8, not enough light. With a digital slr camera, suitable setting is aperture set to f5.6 with ISO100 or lower. I know some camera don't have ISO100 but you still can use ISO200. Shooting mode is Manual set to "Bulb". For shooting with bulb, you need cable release which has a shutter lock to lock the shutter during the exposure.

Tripod, you need a steady tripod. sometime during the exposure strong wind can shake your camera if your tripod not steady enough. Especially when shooting near the beach where strong wind.

How long is the exposure? The longer exposure time, the more longer star trail you get. Those I have was only 15 minute+another 15minute noise reduction job. which make it altogether 30 minute to wait then I can make another shot. Some people let the exposure up to 1 hour. Waiting time can be boring.

My advise when shooting star trail at night, don't go out there alone at night. You know you are bringing expansive equipment. an less you are shooting from your own house backyard.

You can post on comment if you still need to ask question ok. or if you are in KK you can call my mobile number.

Basic HDR Process

HDR or (High Dynamic Range) is not a new thing in photography. But still, not many people know how to do it. If you don't know what it is, HDR is where you want to get the best result of certain photo by taking several same shots with different exposure setting, start by overexpose to underexpose. Tripod is a must for this kind of shot. So this waterfall shot, I took four images with different exposure, as I want the best result I used RAW. Then after that converted them to jpeg. I used photomatix to do my HDR, in photomatix up in the menu go to HDR>Generate>Browse photos. Load all the images then click ok, then it will take about few second for it to process then after that when it open the image, the process is not yet done so go to menu again click HRD>Tone mapping. It will open up an adjustment window for you to choose your desire saturation and exposure. Then save as.
You will find that the result is not what you expected so you make another adjustment of the HDR photo in photoshop or Capture NX. For my waterfall I did the adjustment of the contrast and saturation with Capture NX.

The Different exposure (Click Image For Large)

The Result

I love to hear from you guys too, if there any better idea. You can post it on comment.

Adobe Photoshop Photomerge - Creating Pano

Some people have asked me before how I made the pano picture using photoshop, so now I decided to post it in here so everybody can learn from it too. These are just a simple step by step images of the stitching process. You can click the images to see large view. In making a long pano from few images, I used Adobe Photoshop Cs3 to stitch it. Right..

step1- Open images that you want to stitch together in photoshop, you can either open all the images in one time in open folder or go to (step 2) file>automate>photomerge. I usually like to open all in using open folder option as it save loading time.

Step 2 -Go to file>automate>photomerge
Step 3 - Once the photomerge option box open, they will ask to either browse images from folder or just add already opened images. Make sure check the desire style of stitching, there are few option in there auto, perspective, cylindrical, reposition only and interactive layout. I usually used cylindrical way. Make sure the box blend images together was checked then click ok.

Step 4 - After step 3, you will actually have to wait it automatically align, blend and stitch the images together. After it was done, you will see something like image shown below.

Step 5 - Crop the stitched images to something like shown in image below then flatten images into only one layer. That you can find under layer>flatten images.


Step 6 - By using Rectangular marquee tool, select all image then right click at the image then choose free transform . The click wrap mode which you can find just above to image. In wrap mode you can drag the photo edges until the white area you cannot see. In wrap mode also you can fix the level of the image. Then after that just press enter when done.
Step 7 - The result you will get is some thing like image below. Now you can do all the normal adjustment such as contrast, color correction or saturation, make sure you save the file under Save as new file, other wise the original gone.
I hope you can understand my simple photoshop tutorial, please ask me if you still don't understand the process.