The Digital Photo Guy

UPDATE: Just heard from Roger at LensRentals.com (see end of MMT) that they have a 5% discount going on right now. Sounds like a great excuse to rent a wide angle or macro or both and join me at the Anza-Borrego Desert Wildflower Workshop next weekend (3/13 & 14) or the following weekend (3/20 & 21). If you rent a lens from LensRentals.com and e-mail a copy of your invoice to me, I’ll take 5% off the price of the workshop. (Cannot be combined with other offers or discounts).

Duh! forgot to include the discount code: PIXEL5. Somedays, it’s better to stay in bed. I don’t know when the discount promo ends. Send LensRentals an e-mail if you think you’ll use it in the near future.

Yeah, yeah! I know today is Friday and this is a Monday Morning Tip but I won’t have time this weekend so it gets posted today. If it bothers you, just wait until Monday to read it. Sheesh!

Topaz Labs releases Adjust 4

Until recently, I pretty much used plug-ins to make specific adjustments, not create a final result. When I bought the Topaz Labs bundle at Photoshop World, I was more interested in using the tools to help me tweak photos, not produce a finished, final image. But, as they say, “Even an old dog can learn new tricks if properly motivated!” (OK, so I just made that up) Maybe it’s just laziness in my old age but I’m beginning to like several presets in the new release of Topaz Labs Adjust 4. Some were available in Adjust 3 but I never really explored them thinking I could do better than some geek engineer who’s probably never seen sunlight, much less a dSLR.

Here are some side-by-side examples of Adjust 4 presets versus my normal workflow:

One photo in each set (I’m not telling which) is my normal workflow. The other is a Topaz Adjust 4 preset where I simply clicked a button and said, “Do it!” There’s no right or wrong but do you have a preference? BTW, one photo is an HDR produced with DP-HDR. Click for more examples

The Digital Photo Guy Blog Gets a Facelift

This is the 6th year for this site. During the first 4 years, it was a static site that was rarely updated because making changes was excruciatingly slow, complex and costly. In 2008, I resolved to fix the problem and commissioned a web developer to develop a new site that I could easily and quickly update myself. He recommended WordPress and the initial implementation took just 6 weeks. As soon as he was done, I started making changes and quickly learned how to do just about everything by myself. I’m no rocket scientist but WordPress makes everything simple and straightforward.

Now, a year after the initial launch, a new static home page has replaced the previous dynamic home page. A dynamic home page was fine in the beginning but, now, with so many articles and posts, it was quickly becoming unwieldly. Readers couldn’t easily find the information they sought. A static home page can act as ”street signs” to help point readers in the right direction. As you can see, some of the signs are still not working. That’s because all the MMTs, posts and articles weren’t always correctly or fully tagged.

Tagging the material at this time would be counter productive because each update would generate an e-mail notification of an update and readers wuld be innundated with e-mails.

Starting in 2010, I’ll be more careful about tagging each MMT, post and article so readers can quickly find all material pertaining to Cameras/Lenses/Gear, Photo Editing and Photography.

In the meantime, the existing tags (right side of main blog) can help you find specific articles or MMTs. You can also use the Seach box along the right side of the main blog.

A website is a never-ending process. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment here. Good light, good memories and good luck in 2010.

Monday Morning Tip – 12/07/09

If you’ve ever tried to cut a person or pet out of a photo and found it to be an exercise in frustration, you need to watch today’s Video MMT. Topaz Labs has released ReMask2 and it is an order of magnitude improved over the first version. Here’s a quick example of what ReMask2 can do for you.

The initial pass took about 3 minutes and I spent another 3 minutes cleaning up the edges. It’s still not perfect but much, much better and faster than previous manual methods. Click here to read the rest of this MMT

Last week’s Photohop Elements webinar with Rob Sheppard was a huge success. For those who were unable to attend the live webinar, the videos are available as high resolution DVD files for just $19.95 plus $2.00 S&H (see below).

Here’s a short clip to give you a taste of Rob’s easy-going personality and clear, concise teaching style. Rob is so smooth and good that I was able to edit the videos in near record time.

Five Minutes Out of Four Hours

Check out more of Rob’s lessons, techniques and workshops at his site. You can also keep up with Rob’s immediate activities on his blog.

I hope to have Rob back early next year after Adobe Lightroom 3 is released to tell us why Lightroom and Photoshop Elements are the best combination for digital photographers. Stay tuned.

Buy the 4 hour DVD here:

Another Video MMT

Good morning! This week is another VMMT (Video Monday Morning Tip). This time I review the noise reduction capability of Topaz Labs Adjust 3 and compare it against my old favorite, Neat Image. I’ve been using Neat Image for about 5 years and the company has been great about keeping the product updated. But, bottom line, I believe they’ve wrung out about all the performance that can be gotten from their wavelet-packet noise reduction algorithms. Topaz Labs claims their newer design is better than wavelet analysis.

(If you’re a “bottom line” sort and just want the results, the VMMT is in the Tips & News section)

Anyone who uses noise reduction (NR) software knows that a basic trade-off is loss of details. This is seen in portraits where skin looses texture and appears “plastic” when NR is applied with a heavy hand. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good test portrait but I used an otherwise very noisy photo.

After I produced today’s VMMT, I remembered these photos from the Barona Indian Powwow. These photos are good examples of bad examples and work well for NR testing. The first two are resized, compressed jpegs of the entire photo while the third is a portion of the image to better show NR details. Can you tell which is which? A major advantage of Topaz Adjust is that both NR and sharpening can be performed inside one plug-in.

Topaz Labs intrigued me because their proprietary algorithms are developed in-house which makes sense as the founder, Dr. Albert Yang, is a DSP (digital signal processor) expert. (continue reading…)