The Digital Photo Guy

Why All the Leaning Buildings?

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of leaning buildings and I haven’t been in Pisa. When processing photos of buildings, take a minute to correct the perspective so it doesn’t appear as if the building is leaning back and away. Here’s a video I created a few years ago showing how to correct perspective in Photoshop Elements. Advanced PS or LR users will be able to figure out how to find and apply the Transform tool in those programs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKvrLrQM5wI

Sometimes, perspective distortion is useful in conveying a sense of height or grandeur. If that’s your intent, make it so the viewer “gets it.” In the photo below, I got as close to the building as possible to make the building seem taller than it really it. In the photo of Kayla, I got a little carried away emphasizing her long legs. In the last image, I took 10 seconds to readjust Kayla’s proportions. The point is, Perspective Control is a useful tool for many subjects. When applied judiciously, Perspective Control can even be used to “shave” off a few pounds off a subject, not that I would ever do such a thing!

Can You Really Use One Billion Colors?

Some days, I get my exercise by jumping to conclusions, running off at the mouth and pushing the limits of my technical understanding. To wit, buying a wide gamut monitor that encompass 98% of Adobe RGB 1998 as opposed to a “conventional” monitor that typically displays ~95% of sRGB. I thought I understood the considerations needed to make a clear decision on the purchase of a wide gamut monitor. Oops!

About 99.99% of all monitors are “conventional” displays that can show approximately 16.7 million colors. They have 8-bits per channel. Eight bits is equal to 2⁸ (2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2) or 256 levels (colors.) Since there are three channels (RGB or red, green, blue,) multiplying 256 x 256 x 256 gets you 16,777,216 different combinations (colors.)

Wide gamut monitors, on the other hand, have 10-bits per channel or 1024 x 1024 x 1024. That means they display 1,073,741,824 (~1.07 billion) colors, 64 times more than conventional monitors. So, that must mean wide gamut monitors are 64 times better than conventional monitors, right? Well, it all depends.

https://youtu.be/_UOJcIDK7X8

During my 4 days at Stephen Johnson’s Fine Art Digital Printing Workshop, one thing that dazzled me were the wide gamut Eizo monitors in Stephen’s lab. I’d been thinking a wide gamut monitor might help me with some photos that had caused me consternation. For the rest of my summer road trip, I researched monitors and had pretty well decided to spring for an Eizo CS2420 24″ wide gamut monitor. Still, there were some doubts that I couldn’t completely stifle. When B&H raised its price by $45, that was enough to cause me to step back and delve further into the wide gamut question. (nb, B&H has now reduced the price from $861 to $719)

Buying a wide gamut monitor isn’t just a matter of ponying up the bucks, there’s more to consider. For most of my readers, there’s the matter of the software they’re using. I do 90% of my post processing in Lightroom 6 and, it just so happens, LR6 doesn’t support 10-bit color. In other words, I would have to revert to Adobe Photoshop (CS4 or newer) which are the only versions that support 10-bit color. I like Photoshop but not enough to totally revamp my workflow.

Keep in mind that many of the colors are simply finer shades between existing colors. Let’s say we have two shades of red in sRGB with numbers 254,0,0 and 255,0,0. In aRGB 1998, there are 64 additional shades of red between those two sRGB shades. This is useful in producing smoother transitions for prints but may not make a lot of difference for 0nline images.

Bottom line, wide gamut monitors can be useful and helpful in situations where you’re using compatible software to process photos that need more colors in the blue-green space. Obviously, some purists will say a wide gamut monitor is necessary in all cases but, for most photographers, a conventional monitor could be the best current compromise.

For those looking for specific recommendations, unless you’re sure you want and need wide gamut, buy a good IPS (in-plane switching) monitor in the 24″ to 26″ size as a second monitor, especially if you’re editing on a laptop. At a minimum, the monitor should have OSD controls for color temperature in Kelvin, custom RGB adjustments, gamma settings and digital inputs. At B&H, monitors fitting these requirements can be had for $300-$500. A low cost option is a Dell U2515H for $339. On the high end, an Eizo FlexScan EV2455 will set you back about $536 but should last forever. Lower-cost options are plentiful but require careful study of the specs to ensure they can be accurately calibrated. Also, if you don’t already own one, buy a good monitor calibration device such as an X-Rite Color Munki to ensure you get the best images out of the monitor.

This Got Messy in a Hurry!

I started to write a short article on different methods of using Adobe DNG Profile Editor (DNG-PE) and quickly bogged down into a mini-thesis. This is one of those tools where it seems everyone has a different take on its efficacy and benefits. So, I decided to back up and reduce this first article to “just the facts.”

Fact: Adobe DNG-PE is a free program from Adobe that is available for Windows and Mac.

Fact: No less a luminary than John Nack invited Eric Chan, a really smart MIT scientist and Camera RAW developer, to explain the advantages of custom camera profiles via a blog post back in 2008. (Unfortunately, for Photoshop and Lightroom fans, John moved to Google in 2014. His current blog is HERE.)

Fact: Camera sensors have huge gamuts that far exceed any standard color space (below, originally uploaded by Cpesacreta at English Wikipedia) The horseshoe shape underneath represents CIE1931, virtually the entire visible spectrum. 2200 Matte Paper represents the ICC profile for an Epson Stylus Photo 2200 using matte paper. A camera sensor can “produce” (mathematically calculate) colors way outside even CIE1931. The color within a gamut are what can be “seen” with devices that use that gamut. For example, sRGB contains all the colors that most consumer monitors can display while Adobe RGB 1998 is the range of colors that can be displayed in a high-end, wide gamut monitor such as an Eizo or NEC. ICC profiles like 2200 Matte Paper show colors that can be printed using a specific printer, ink and paper combination, e.g. Epson 2200 Stylus Photo printer using Epson inks and Epson matte paper.

Fact: Color IS subjective. The word red means different hues to different people.

Fact: Camera manufacturers have their own interpretation of colors. Some manufacturers even provide different interpretations (e.g. Canon Picture Styles.) The three photos (below) were processed using different camera profiles in Adobe Lightroom 6. The first uses Adobe Standard, the default. The second photo uses Camera Landscape and the third is Camera Neutral. Camera profiles (in PS & LR) are Adobe’s interpretation of the camera manufacturer’s JPEG rendition on the LCD. The camera’s JPEG rendition is discarded as soon as the file is brought into any software other than the camera manufacturer’s programs. For Canon, that would be Canon Digital Photo Professional (DPP) which is included with just about every Canon digital camera.

Fact: If camera manufacturers can offer different profiles (interpretations,) users can create their own profiles as well or “tweak” existing profiles to suit their own interpretation. Adobe DNG Profile Editor is the tool for doing this.

Fact: No one has perfect color memory. Some people are very good but NO ONE is perfect. Photographers only think they remember what they saw at the moment they released the shutter. By my calculations, in  Photoshop, there are about unquadragintillion (give or take a few septendecillion) combinations and permutations of colors. Trying to reproduce an exact color from memory is not a useful exercise.

Summary: Adobe DNG Profile Editor produces profiles for PS, PSE and LR that replicate the look you saw on your camera’s LCD which is a JPEG rendition using the manufacturer’s “secret sauce” of JPEG adjustments.

The manufacturer’s JPEG adjustments are discarded when a RAW file is imported into an Adobe product because Adobe can’t decode the manufacturer’s “secret sauce.” Instead, Adobe applies “Adobe Standard” which probably doesn’t look the same as the in-camera JPEG.

In Adobe Camera RAW and LR, Adobe supplies camera profiles such as Camera Faithful, Landscape, Neutral, Portrait and Standard. Different cameras may have different profiles. These try to replicate what Adobe engineers see when they look at the JPEG on the camera’s LCD. Camera owners may or may not be satisfied with these camera specific profiles. In that case, Adobe DNG-PE can be used to “tweak” the supplied profiles or, in extreme cases, create whole new profiles.

The advantage to doing this is less post-processing but, more importantly, freedom to “roll your own” camera profiles. This probably isn’t of interest to most photographers but, if you’re serious about getting as close to perfect as possible, this is one way to get there.

My next article will show how to use Adobe DNG-PE, step-by-step, the “normal” way. Finally, in a wrap-up article, I’ll demonstrate how you can use Adobe DNG-PE to “wing it” after the fact when you want to adjust colors without a Color Checker based camera profile.

Wow! I Can See Again!

Earlier this year, I was diagnosed with cataracts. My right eye was the worst so that was the obvious candidate for immediate surgery. Unfortunately, Mary and I were getting ready to leave for the summer and the doctor didn’t have any openings until September. Since I felt very comfortable with Dr. Patel, I opted to wait until we returned to Arizona. Surprisingly, the right eye deteriorated at an accelerated pace and by the time I got back, my right eyesight was severely compromised.

Today, 2 days after surgery, my right eye seems to have healed well and I’ve noticed an amazing difference. To show you, instead of just telling you, I prepared the photo below. The left side is what my uncorrected left eye sees. This effect uses a Photoshop Warming Filter 85 plus a small curves and desaturation adjustment. The effect is a bit exaggerated to make it easier to see but pretty close to what my uncorrected left eye sees versus my corrected right eye.

To me, the colors before surgery appear as if I had set the wrong white balance and slightly underexposed the image. There’s a slight yellow/orange cast compared to the corrected right eye.

So, if you’re of “a certain age” (code word for old,) you might want to have your eyes checked for cataracts. As you can see, editing and correcting colors can be a crapshoot with cataracts. Of course, everyone is different and every surgical procedure has risk so be sure to carefully discuss your options with your doctor.

A Bubbly, Fun Young Model

I recently had the opportunity to work with P (as always, until she’s sure she wants to be identified, I’m using an initial,) a young 22 year old model who is just getting started. She was super fun and very open to lots of ideas, even contributing some of her own concepts. I haven’t yet finished post-processing (PP) the photos but a quick review shows we made some good art. Because she’s new, I went with a different style of poses as well as PP. Please let me know what you think.

I did more PP than usual simply because I wanted to test some ideas. On the last two photos, I applied an effect to make them appear older. One looks like the 50s while the other has an even older look. I used a skin smoothing technique as well as a spot removal tool to touch up freckles and blemishes.

P was a change from my usual models because, at 5’7″ and 140 lbs, she’s not the typical model but what I call “a real woman with curves.” This was her first nude shoot so she was understandably nervous at first but my female assistant, an experienced model, helped her overcome that. Once she got comfortable, she was bubbly and overflowing with enthusiasm and ideas.

All the photos were made with my “go-to” set-up, a Canon 5D Mk II and Canon 24-105/4L IS USM. The lights were standard studio strobes with a 36″ strip box and a 48″ octagonal umbrella. Both were fitted with grids for better spillage control. All processing was done in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6. If I have time, I’ll take a few out to Photoshop for final touches.

P is the fourth new, inexperienced person in a row who has turned out to be a good model. This is totally contrary to my experience in the past where newbies have proven to be unreliable flakes. Hopefully, I’m getting better at screening new models. More of P when I get back to her photos next week.