vesalius (857) 2007-01-22 22:36:10

Nothing special. I just thought the mood of your shot might look interesting when conveyed in black and white. It makes the suject feel more distant somehow.

Kindest regards,

Donald

vesalius (857) 2007-01-22 22:18:27

I'm experimenting with different b/w techniques. This original one was simply a desaturate technique which I learned from Scot Kelby's book "The Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers." Although there are many great tips in this book, I like the new technique listed at www.gormanphotography.com.

vesalius (857) 2007-01-19 23:18:01

Hi Susana, I made this adjustment just to highlight a technique, not because it improves on your excellent photo.

The point here is that a wide angle lens can cause barrel distortion as evidenced by the sides of the buildings not being parallel. This can be corrected in PS at the costs of sharpness.

Technique
1) Open photo and ensure you have surrounding grey canvass to work with (zoom out)
2) Ctrl A to select all
3) Ctrl-T to bring up free transform function
4) While holding "Ctrl" grab the center spot with the mouse and bring it to the bottom of the square and lock it into place
5) You can now adjust your photo to make the sides of the buildings parallel with one another. To do this, hold "Ctrl" and grab the right or left upper corners and pull them up and out until you get the perspective you like. Once you're happy, hit "Enter"

I also cropped the photo, applied a limited curves, a frame, and then sharpened.

I think the photo isn't quite as good quality, but the perspective may be a little less distorted.

Please let me know what you think,

Don

vesalius (857) 2007-01-18 22:17:37

Hi Asa,

I made a crop to put the focus of the photo squarely on the lighthouse. My only other changes were an auto-levels and a small boost in saturation. I then added a frame and sharpened gently after the frame.

Just a twist on an otherwise good photo.

Take care,

Don

vesalius (857) 2007-01-17 23:48:17

Hello David,

I took the liberty of posting a workshop, please let me know if you have any comments.

The focal point of this photo is the sky, as such I cropped out most of the foreground. I left the road in the frame as it adds perspective to this shot.

I did an "auto levels" and slightly boosted the saturation to bring out the blues in the sky.

I then added a frame and sharpened with USM.

I hope you don't mind.

Don

vesalius (857) 2007-01-17 23:29:43

I would appreciate any feedback you might have. I really like b/w here and I'm searching for a good b/w technique. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Kindest regards,

Don

vesalius (857) 2007-01-17 01:18:19

Hi Csilla,

I tried a couple of things just for my own learning.

1) Crop
2) Extended the frame higher because I needed more canvas due to the rotation
3) Reduced noise
4) Added a little contrast with "curves"
5) Frame
6) Sharpen

Please let me know if you have any comments.

Kindest regards,

Don

vesalius (857) 2007-01-09 22:42:14

This is a very difficult problem as you want to bring out the foreground as more white without overexposing the background. HDR would be very good for this, but I don't have access to that. Here's another trick:

1) Contrast Mask
a) Duplicate layer and set to "overlay" with and opacity of ~ 80%
b) Desaturate (Shift + Ctrl + U)
c) Invert (Ctrl I)
d) Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur
-radius ~ 90
e) Now you can adjust your opacity on the level until you get the right effect (50 - 80% is about right)

2) I "dodged" the foreground using the dodge tool
3) Sharpen

Please let me know what you think.

Regards,

Don

vesalius (857) 2005-01-01 19:18:38

Hi Ania, I really like the colours in your shot. I've made a few adjustments to hopefully pull these out a little bit.

1) Crop to get rid of the extraneous grass at the bottom of the shot
2) Contrast mask: this basically improves the contrast by brightening the foreground and darkening the sky.
i) duplicate the current layer
ii)set this duplicate layer to overlay ~ 80%
iii) desaturate (image->adjustment->desaturate)
iv) invert (image->adjustment->invert)
v) gaussian blurr (radius 20-80 pixels)
vi) then I adjust the opacity to get the result I want, it's usually btw 20-40%
3) Velvia: this is an action a bought from FredMiranda.com and I really like it for my outdoor shots. It basically increases the colour saturation as if you were shooting on Fuju Velvia film.

Thanks alot, and if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Don

vesalius (857) 2004-09-18 14:12:38

Hi Jan, sorry it's been so long. I decided to work on a perspective correction.
1) Increase canvas size
2) Select all (Ctl-A)
3) Free transform (Ctl-T)
4) There will be a dot in the center that you drag down to the bottom middle of the frame and it will lock there, this serves as an anchor point for the remainder of the free transform
5)Bring two vertical bars onto the photo to serve as reference bars. You can do this by ensuring the rules are visible and simply holding the L mouse button down over the vertical ruler and dragging the reference bar over your photo. I usually do this near part of the building I want to be straight
6) While holding the "Ctl" key,you select the R upper corner and drag it until you get your building straight on the right. You then repeat this using the Left upper corner. At the end, you need to elongate the picture by dragging the middle top tab straight up.
7) This sometimes makes the picture look bloated, so you use a filter: Distort_Pinch set to about 5% which helps a bit.
8) Sharpen

This technique was taken from Scott Kelby's book "The photoshop CS book for digital photographers."

As you can imagine, it works but at the sacrifice of sharpness, so it's a balance. I think a shot like this, with really strong contrast is more difficult. Try playing with this yourself, and if it's not clear, I can send you the technique in more detail.

Regards,

Don