Great Plugins

One of the items that can come in handy for your Post-Production is plugins or add-on software for your Photoshop and Lightroom. These can be handy little programs that can give your images a little extra “pop” to make them really stand out.

The ones I want to talk about today are the Creative Kit 2016 pack by Macphun software. Macphun makes software for Macs only and their plugins are very good and can really take your images to the next level.

Creative Kit 2016 comes with six programs, which are Intensify, Tonality, Snapheal, FX Photo, Focus and Noiseless.

Intensify will help with powerful Structure, Sharpness and Details using Pro contrast and comes with dozens of built in image presets.

Tonality is a Black & White photo editor, which allows you to reimagine your monochrome image editing with hundreds of presets, layers,unique digital controls, authentic grain effects and more.

Snapheal allows you to remove unwanted objects and strangers from your photos. You can cut any odd or excessive details. It also features a Clone & Stamp tool to help you replace them with something nice. I like this one as I think it does a better job at removing objects than Photoshop alone.

FX Photo Studio allows you to experiment with styles and looks for your images. Use the large selection of filters to create customized, unique images, you can combine or apply them selectively for some really “special” images.

Focus allows you to add Pro lens effects without the expensive gear. Use smart blur controls and powerful lens effects, including adding your own bokeh in Post Production.

Noiseless will get rid of digital noise and preserve details in your structure and save your night shots by turning them into crispy & clear images. Have Noiseless work on your images pixel by pixel to make them smooth and vibrant instead of deleting them because of noise.

You can buy the entire Creative Kit 2016 on sale for $129.99, marked down from $339 and you can buy it in installments of $25 over 5 monthly payments. If you search the web you might be able to find it even cheaper, I got a deal through Stack Social and I paid only $53 for the entire kit and the nice thing is you can install it on as many Macs as you want with one license.

One final note, some people Love the new “Photos” app in OS X that replaced Aperture, some people hate it and want Aperture back. I prefer Aperture myself and bought it years ago so I will always have it. But if you do like using the “Photos” app for even minor post production, Macphun has updated Creative Kit 2016 so their plugins will even work in “Photos” as “Extensions” or plugins in the Apple world.

All of these plugins will install into Aperture, Photos, Lightroom, Photoshop and Photoshop Elements so you can use them on whichever of these programs is your favorite.






Comments/Questions

Pre-visualization vs Site visits?

Pre-visualization vs Site visits

Good morning everyone.

This week I have been doing quite a bit of pre-visualization and site walks. 

Well, they are both the same? Actually, no they are not. 

In my classes this week we have had to pre-visualize a scene before we actually shot the final images.  To me it is actually seeing the entire completed photograph before I even clicked on the shutter release button. What I want to say here is that you should just not think of pre-visualization as where you want to setup up your lights and models.

It should really be about every single facet of your photograph. You should consider, aperture, wind, light direction, poses, flag placement, hair and wardrobe and actually see what that photograph would look like; as if it were the front cover of the magazine that you would like to be featured in. Make sure that you even think about text placement, colors and take it even further by thinking about how you could use the photograph in a composite. Basically, what would the client want?

What is it that the client is wanting to do with your photograph. It is not just about taking the perfect photograph, but how everything will come together when you finally deliver the photograph to the client. Where will they use it. Is it for a wedding album? Cover of a product? As they turn the page is the model facing the viewer as they turn the page or looking towards the middle of the page.

You might say that is a lot of visualization, but to me it says a lot about how you want to change the pose of the model. If you change the pose then the lighting is going change, which in turn changes the feel and look of the photograph.

Pre-visualization is a powerful tool and when used correctly can open a can full of creativeness.

Now, onto site visits. I always think of this as where my light is coming from. We are always going to be painting with light so I always look for areas of where the light will be coming from when I am on the scene for the final shoot setup. What time of day will I be there and what do I have to work with?Here is a great app to use, which I know will help you with just that, light direction. The Photographer's Ephemeris It is a great tool if you would like to plan where light will be coming from on location. Not just for outdoors,but also if you are in-doors and you would like to use some large windows. 

The site walk is used often to get to know your terrain. You are going to use your pre-visualization in this location so here is where you look for places to place everything.

You are looking for power sources, slope of the land, size of the space, height of interior rooms. It is also a trip to see if your visualization will actually work within the environment of the location. The site visit is also a way to figure out all the other logistical requirements you might need. Who is going to carry all the equipment, is their budget for transport, is it going to be windy (if you are outside) and last but not least, is it private property and do you require permission to get inside.

The two, pre-visualization and site visits work very closely together and I cannot emphasize how important both are to the success of your shoot.

Therefore, in closing I would just like to say that you should remember to always take notes, make sketches of what you see, hear and smell. But most important of all, take photographs. You might visit more than one location and knowing which one worked and which did not, especially if you are sending someone else can be very important in the long run. Another great app that you could use is GPS MotionX Instead of buying an expensive GPS system for your camera the IPhone version (I am not sure if they make it for other phones) you can track your locations and then email the file to you so you can upload it into Lightroom under the map feature. It will sync up with your photographs you have taken giving you a great idea of all the locations that you have visited. Just make sure that your clocks are synced correctly so that you can get the correct times for each photograph. For only$0.99 it is a much cheaper option.

So here is to better visualization and creative inspiration from all of you.

Have a great week.

Denzil

Ps: Please let me know if you would like to see something here we could discuss.

Preserving your Work

Preserving your Work.

Preserving your work -- a guide to backing up your photos so you'll still have them when you graduate, and be able to find them for your portfolio

Hello everyone. A very good wednesday morning to you. I have a great topic for you this morning. I am sure many of you have your own way of saving files and may be very organized. That is just fantastic. I am here to show you what has worked for me over the past few years and how I am able to find all my files and images that I need especially when I started with my final year. It your system is great and you can find your files within 30 seconds of opening a location then that is a great method of organization.

You are going to need your information and photographs from previous years so get started now with some really great organization.

Let’s start with the easiest part of organization. Where should you store all your files and images that you use on a daily basis. Well, your Harddrive you would say is your best place to store all of it it correct? I would say yes, but now that I am 3 years into my course I have found that some courses require only a small amount of space, but others required much more space because of all the images that you have to save, edit and export. You never want to delete anything so for me I bought an external Hard Drive, WD 4TB USB drive and that was probably my best investment to-date for all my classes.

It frees up some space on your hard drive and it is just a good place to store files in the event that you have some computer malfunctions. Cloud backup is also recommended so that you always have a duplicate of all your work. I use Crashplan, but you can use anyone of the top rated companies out there. It is just $5 per month for unlimited file storage.

For storing my weekly files I created a filing system that is very easy to follow and I can always add and remove files when I need them. I made a simple weekly structure and a resources folder for all my work. As I create my files I store them under the appropriate week as well as create folders as I require them.

As I export images from Lightroom I also create folders from there and they are stored under the appropriate week as well.

Recently I moved the same structure to Dropbox for each course. I did this because I am always at work or on the road. I can access my work from my laptop or IPad and still be able to do assignments or post work and images to the appropriate folder for later use. You have to do what works for you. The basic structure remains the same but you are able to become mobile and manage your time so much better.

Lastly, I think one of the most important areas that needs to stay organized is your Lightroom catalog. You will be taking hundreds, if not thousands of photographs over the course of your degree. So make sure you have a great structure in place. I used the same naming principle in Lightroom that I use for all my other work. I created collections with course numbers for all my work making it so much easier to find when I did a search. Do not forget your keywords for all your images.

I can always go back and change the wording, just do what works for you best. Again the structure is the same, but the content will always vary.

Well, that is the simple structure that I work with. It has worked well for me in the past and whatever method you use, remember that you will be needing many of these files and photographs again during your final year courses.

Start well now and make your life so much simpler in the future.

As always please let me know if you have any questions and how I may be of assistance. I will answer all your questions and comments. If you have suggestions for post please pass them along.

Have a great wednesday.

Denzil

A very good Wednesday to you all. 

I hope you are all starting to enjoy the beautiful Spring weather in your area. (If you had it for a while then fantastic. We are just starting to get some great weather here in New England.)

Today I want to discuss something that is often neglected and can be very frustrating for your Professor’s and classmates alike. That is, NOT reducing the size of your PDF files. When you upload your photographs for review it can become quite large and especially if you start adding additional files you land up having files in excess of 100MB.

For those students that have slower internet speeds, this just means we don’t download and critique your work. We just do not have the time to sit around and wait for large files to download. So how can you reduce the files, but at the same time make sure you have great detail and clarity in all your photographs?

Well it is very simple. Export your 300ppi, yes I know they sometimes want 150ppi or 72ppi because of the size, but to get around poor resolution export everything at 300ppi. (To do this in Lightroom I will discuss this in a later blog.) Once you have exported your contact sheets or final images for review you will then combine them into a PDF using Acrobat Pro version. The other versions do not have this option. There is a newer version for Acrobat on the market and because I am using Adobe Creative Cloud, that is the version I will discuss here.The principle and method is exactly the same for all the other versions as well.

In the following example I combined a contact sheet and nine images that I needed for my Creative Concepts course. I landed up with 15 files in the document which included my creative proposal, 9 final photographs for review and my contact sheets.  The final PDF size was just over 75MB.

I uploaded full resolution files for the detail and I had a 6 page Word document as well as my 4 contact sheets included. As you can see that is a very large file. So how do we reduce this file size. It is very simple. Under the tools menu in Acrobat, the location has changed for Acrobat CC, it is located on the left in Acrobat CC and on the right hand side in all the other versions. Click on the tools menu and select OPTIMIZE PDF.

Once you do this you then select the reduce file option on the menu bar.

In older version it says reduce file size in the right hand column. Click on the Reduce File Size option. Follow the instructions for saving and renaming your file. Acrobat will process all your photographs and files and make it easier for viewing on a computer screen.

If you check your file properties now you can see the change in file size. I have managed to reduce my file from 75MB down to 4.14MB

This makes it so much easier to upload to the class discussion area and I can vouch for it, your classmates will really appreciate the smaller file size.

I hope you found this tutorial useful. It makes such a difference when you are working late and that deadline is looming. Everybody appreciates it and you do not lose any detail from your photographs.

I am always willing to help so if you need additional help please send me an email or leave a message on the site blog. Where are here to help you.

If you have any suggestions for things you would like to see on the blog then also drop us a note and we will see about putting it into the roster of topics to discuss. As always I look forward to hearing from you and wish you all a great week with your assignments.

Denzil

Wednesday Ambassador.

The Art of Architecture (and why it is imortant)

Saturday Ambassador

I enjoy architecture for all its myriad details, the complexity of its engineering and the art form that it presents. I also enjoy photographing it; however, architecture presents a special challenge in this regard:

Hayden Ferry Lakeside Building, Tempe, Arizona, Deva Mayorga-Malone, 2013

It is imperative that the vertical lines of a structure remain straight in order to provide an accurate representation. Also, this is the way we perceive architecture after our brains automatically correct the distortion caused by perspective. Your camera, however, makes no such correction on its own. When you tilt the camera back to look up at a tall structure, a "key-stoning" effect is the result:

Hayden Ferry Lakeside Building, Tempe, Arizona, Deva Mayorga-Malone, 2013

You can use this to aesthetic advantage with symmetrical compositions which highlight architectural details and exaggerate the height of the structure, though usually a more precise approach is preferred.

               

 

Hayden Ferry Lakeside Building, Tempe, Arizona, Deva Mayorga-Malone, 2013

There are a number of ways in which this may be accomplished: Traditionally, architectural photographers often shoot large format with a camera which allows movement of the lens in relation to the film or sensor plane. However, tilt/shift lenses for the DSLR are becoming more common. They achieve the same purpose, in a more practical (and affordable) manner. For the rest of us, perspective correction must be achieved with software. Both Lightroom and Photoshop have excellent tools for this:

·         Lightroom: In the Develop Module, scroll down to Lens Correction and select Manual. There are sliders for distortion, vertical, horizontal, rotate and scale.

 

·         Photoshop: Under Filters, select Lens Correction, then the Custom tab. Here, you will find essentially the same options.

The effective use of these tools requires some practice, along with minute and careful adjustments. The end result, however, can be stunning:

Hayden Ferry Lakeside Building, Tempe, Arizona, Deva Mayorga-Malone, 2013

As an industrial photographer, the ability to shoot architecture is important to me. However, regardless of your genre, it can be a handy skill. For example, portrait and fashion photographers often pose their subjects in an architectural environment, and commercial shooters regularly photograph within interior architectural spaces. Regardless of your intended path as a photographer, honing these techniques can only prove beneficial.

Oh, and don’t forget the details:

Hayden Ferry Lakeside Building, Tempe, Arizona, Deva Mayorga-Malone, 2013

~Saturday Ambassador

 

Current Project...

Happy Sunday Everyone! I hope you had a great and productive week. Today's blog wont be a long one, I just wanted to talk briefly about personal projects. Many photographers have a personal project that they choose to do for their own reasons, many are unsolicited.

I had mentioned in a previous blog post about the current class that I have Digital Image Illustration. The final assignment is to produce a surreal image for a fake company that is "Green" and what could happen if we abuse our natural resources. While initially it was just a school assignment, it put so many different ideas in my head, which lead to my personal project.

My personal project I think can and will speak for itself, but the reality is... we could end up in this situation if we don't step up and take action. My personal project has me photographing then doing so radical edits to images of people in different settings wearing gas masks.

This is a work in progress below are some of the newer images I have created this past week.

 Photos By Wayne Salat of Flash Mob Photography Network

  Photo By Wayne Salat of Flash Mob Photography Network

 Photo By Wayne Salat of Flash Mob Photography Network

  Photo By Wayne Salat of Flash Mob Photography Network

  Photo By Wayne Salat of Flash Mob Photography Network

  Photo By Wayne Salat of Flash Mob Photography Network

 Photo By Wayne Salat of Flash Mob Photography Network

Sorry for such a short blog this week, life has been a bit crazy

Enjoy Your Sunday and Photograph Something Everyday!

Sunday Ambassador~ Wayne

B&W and Color, which one you prefer?

Hello, and welcome to another Terrific Tuesday!  I am your Ambassador for today, and we are going to talk about something that I think will be a topic of conversation for decades to come.  I am talking about B&W against Color images!

Last week I had a conversation with two of my co-workers, one of them asked: “why don’t you do some more black and white photography?  That is the classic and best type of photography there is, all the classic photographers used black and white!”  Then my other co-worker stepped in: “are you crazy?! Why bother with black and white when you have color and all those other software programs that can help him make the images better!”

So the argument lasted for about an hour and it never got settled, so that made me wonder; what is better, black and white photography or color?

Before I continue let me tell you all that I have done images in both formats and they both have their merit, but I am not telling anyone that one is better than the other!  I feel that everything has its place and there is a place for everything.  With all the equipment we have today in the DSLR cameras, there is opportunity to do both, however, you also need to be careful when selecting which one to use.

In today’s market, almost all DSLR cameras are capable of taking images in both formats, but please be careful, read the instruction manual that comes with your camera.  In some instances you can select the option to take images in black and white by selecting that option with a camera, the downside is that once that image is taken in B&W it cannot be reverted to color.  What is an option?  Take the images in color and then work on them on black and white. 

Lightroom has a plethora of settings that can help you with experimenting with the black and white format.  You can see your image in B&W with different tonal settings, and you can work with the controls to adjust the shadows and highlights in the image.  My main point here is simple, play and explore with your software until you become proficient in it, the same way you take pictures after pictures to practice the art and you will become better each time you do it.

But by now you might be asking: “What about color?”  Color of course has its merits and images that are in color are just as beautiful as the ones in B&W (personal opinion, keep reading!).  There are significant changes and enhancements that can be made with color images to make them more visually appealing.  Most of you will be probably be shooting in color most of the time, but remember what I said earlier; there is a place for everything and everything has its place.

Here are a few samples of B&W imagery against color, tell me what you think.

The above images were taken at Zilker Botanical Garden in Austin, Texas.  As you can see it is the same water lily but changing from color to B&W might have made this image not as interesting.

Ok, what about the top two, which one looks more classy or just better to the eye?

Interesting in seeing some old-fashioned B&W images?  Follow the following link:

http://www.edward-weston.com/edward_weston.htm

Well, I am going to close for now, drop me a line and tell me which one is your preference, and if you have time, tell me why.

Until later then,

Tuesday Ambassador

Time to Contact your Sheets!

          Hello everyone and welcome to another Tuesday here in cyberspace!  Hope that you all are doing great things with your classes and that photography is still the passion in your lives and that your studies are just opportunities to hone your skills in the art!

So, this image should give you a clue of what I am going to talk about today.  

                                                                www.duncanfawkes.com

          I remember when I started the first photography classes and the professor asked for contact sheets, sometimes referred to as ‘proofs’.  The process is easy (well now it is!) and I am here to review the process and give you maybe a pointer or two about contact sheets.  Just remember that it could be worse, back in my younger days (a galaxy far, far away) we used roll of films and after developing the negatives, we put them on photographic paper in strips of 6 or 7, put a flat glass over them and expose the paper to light for a set period of time.  Later we developed the paper in stinking chemicals know as developer, stop bath and fixer to get the contact sheet (you probably read about it in one of your photographic history classes!).

So, what is the easiest way to do contact sheets?  See if the following steps help you:

1.       Import images from your camera into the Lightroom library.

2.       Select images you want to use to create a contact sheet.  You can do this in different ways, put them in folder, highlight them and select them, select them by key words (remember last week blog).

3.       Click on the ‘Print” module of Lightroom, it should default to contact sheet mode.

4.       Look for the ‘Layout’, go into the page grid on the right column of the layout style, select and play in how you want your layout to be.

5.       If you want to use the templates provided by Lightroom, go to the template browser (on the left side of the page) where you have several different templates to assist you in the creation of the sheet.

6.       The photo information part will let you post the necessary information for the images, however this sometimes depends on the requirements of the class or your professor.  You can customize your selection and use it time after time.

7.       When ready, print to file in jpg mode and then convert to pdf if required.

There you got it an easy and simple way to create contact sheets for your classes.  My best recommendation at this time is to practice and play with all the commands in each module of Lightroom in order to get acquainted and comfortable with everything.  Trust me, no matter how long is your degree, you will be doing contact sheets for a long period of time!

You want to see how others do contact sheets?  Click here for an example from the web!

Well, there you have it, hope that this helps a little when creating contact sheets.

And of course here is something to ponder, it is late but I  think that it goes well with last week celebrations!

So go ahead and drop me a line and let me know that everything is going ok in your classes, until then, see you around!

Tuesday Ambassador

Where is that picture?!?

Where is that picture?!?

          This is the situation: you have finished your photography assignment and the Art Director approaches you and says: “Hey, I love your pictures and the way you frame them, I liked one specific image you did for me last year about this time, the one with the red flowers along the river bank, can you get me another copy in about one hour.  I will use that picture to get you another job”.

          If you have made a habit of tagging your images with keywords, then you should have no problems finding that image…however, if haven’t then what are you going to do to find that specific image?

Keywords are a way that photographers can tag images for reference in finding them later on.  As a photography student you probably will be accumulating images at an alarming rate as every single assignment would have a minimum of 30-40 images to be posted.  To get that amount of images, you probably have taken about twice every single time in order to select the best ones.  Entering my fourth year of studies at the AiO, I have accumulated over 15,000 images during that time, not all of them for classes, but still that is a lot of images!

          It would be a good idea (if you haven’t done it yet) to start using keywords with all your images and projects.  We all use Lightroom, and with this program, keywording your images is painless.  So, there are several things that you can do to make your life easier with the use of keywords:

1.      You can assign the keyword during import, that way as you download the images, they are tagged with the words selected for that specific download.  If you forget to do it during import, you can still do in the library mode.

2.      When assigning key words, use those that are relevant to the images.  If you take a portrait of a family on location, you can use the location, names, date, background, and/or

anything that will go along with the picture.

3.      Variety is key, the more words you use the chances to find that specific image is higher.

4.      Later on you can search the entire library by simply typing the word.

Want to read more about this, then click here.

How about an exercise (no it is not graded) to demonstrate what I am talking about.  What key words would you use with the following image?

          The keywords I used were: Zilker (location), water, lily, pink, lily pad, single, side view.  Of course, that means that I have more and that I needed to be precise (I have 450 images of water lilies). If you used any of the above words, then you are ready to start using keywords, if you already are using them, then keep up the good work!

Let me share a cartoon that reminded me that there is always a bright side to small incidents that can happen to us from time to time, and yes, this has happened to me!

Until later, drop me a line,

Tuesday Ambassador