ackdoc » Post-processing

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Greg — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 15:05:29 +0000

Pixel Bending

Greg — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 23:28:28 +0000

Experimenting with the Pixel Bender plug-in. Trying to decide if there is artistic merit here, or if it is just another Photoshop parlor trick. Might have to see one of these printed on canvas or watercolor paper to decide.

HDR vs Exposure Fusion

Greg — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:54:40 +0000

Here are two photos shown three ways: straight out of camera, fused exposures, HDR with tone mapping. The originals (SOOC) are the captures with the best average exposure for the scene. The fused exposure version was made taking three exposures of the same scene, and using Photomatix to merge the exposures, without any further adjustments. Then taking the merged result into Photoshop and using the curves tool to heighten the contrast. The third version is my standard HDR merge using Photomatix’s tonemapping. It’s always a surprise to see what results from the tonemapping. Often the image is amazing, but sometimes it’s a little over the top. I’m experimenting with the Exposure Fusion feature to see if I like the more subtle images you can make with it. What do you think?

SOOC

EF

HDR

SOOC

EF

HDR

Textures

Greg — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:06:00 +0000

Today was a grey day. No color. No light. And since it was a day off work (Veteran’s Day), there was plenty of time to take pics, but the light wasn’t there. So I experimented with textures. Using Photoshop to add layers and blending textures with a photo. This is new to me, but kinda fun, since you can take a boring photo, and make it interesting.

Post-Processing a Liberty Belle

Greg — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:55:44 +0000

Had the pleasure of helping Amy horsesit Dr. Suzanne Duncan’s two horses, the mare Grace, and her new foal Liberty Belle. I took a few pictures of them, but I wasn’t satisfied with how they came out. Enter Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop, and Photomatix Pro.

Here is the final product (click to see it bigger):

But this is what it looked like straight out of the camera:

I used Lightroom and Photoshop to convert the Raw file to a 16-bit TIFF file, sharpen it slightly, and adjust the contrast. This represents my usual workflow with a Raw file out of the camera. This made it look like this:

I then used Lightroom to create five separate versions of the picture, adjusting the exposure up and down 2 stops:

I exported these five files into Photomatix Pro and used this to tonemap the picture into an high dynamic range or HDR image:

This looked interesting, but I wasn’t satisfied with how the sky looked. So I open this back up in Photoshop, applied a gradual mask to the background and used a Color EFx Pro filter to add the illusion of fog to the sky, resulting in the final picture you see above.

Sounds like a lot of work to salvage what is still a mediocre image, but it was a fun exercise in creativity.

Brant Point in miniature

Greg — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:32:05 +0000

Playing around with Photoshop to see if I can create a faked Tilt-Shift miniature.

Here’s the before:

Here’s the after:

I need some practice, but it’s a fun effect.

Old South Wharf

Greg — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:58:12 +0000

Taken early today and processed in HDR.

Topaz Adjust trial

Greg — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:17:47 +0000

I’m using a rainy Saturday morning to experiment with a Photoshop plug-in called Topaz Adjust.

You can accomplish a number of effects with this plug-in. It is especially good at generating the extreme contrast, almost illustrated, hyper-sharp look. Seems fairly comparable to another plug-in that has been available longer, Lucis Pro. The main difference is that the latter costs $600 and needs a hardware dongle to use. The Topaz plug-in is $49.

Here’s another one. A photo of James’ from earlier this year. The before looked like this:

The Topaz version looks like this:

Might be a little “overcooked,” but it’s a neat effect. The only other thing I did to this photo is I created a mask of the background and added some lens blur for more depth of field.

One more:

August Madaket Sunset in HDR

Greg — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:54:15 +0000

Obviously, James has lost his previously hand-me-down dSLR. Fortunately my 11-16mm extreme wide angle zoom lens survived Bill.

Figawi Weekend is over

Greg — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:28:42 +0000

As the boats were all leaving the harbor, a raincloud came overhead and temporarily tried to block the sun. As a spritz of raindrops fell, it was the perfect setup for a rainbow.

This picture, however, is totally faked. (Sorry.)