The Digital Photo Guy

Monday Morning Tip – 01/11/10

Did anyone notice today is another palindrome? It’s not as rare as 01/02/2010 but 01/11/10 is, technically, a palindrome. What’s that got to do with digital photography? Not a whole lot except that observation is a large part of good photography. Below is a photo I made over Christmas.

We hadn’t made any plans for Christmas so, when we took off in our RV at the last minute, we didn’t have reservations. Readers who own RVs know that usually means boondocking, parking overnight wherever it’s permitted and moving on the next day in search of new adventures. So, Christmas eve found us parked at the San Manuel Indian Casino in Highland, CA. We had boondocked there in the past on our way north and liked the quiet, isolated parking lot with a million-dollar view.
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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

Monday Morning Tip

Another VMMT (Video Monday Morning Tip) has been uploaded to the MMT archives on the Tips & News page. This time, I mix it up bit and show how a Topaz Labs Adjust 3 preset can be used as a starting point but then segue into a demo of Dodge and Burn Tools.

The “take-away” from today’s VMMT is to use Presets and Effects as starting points, not as final results. These are just some engineer’s idea of what looks cool/cute/hot or whatever the flavor of the day happens to be. Don’t believe for a moment that an engineer sitting in his/her cube knows more about how to enhance your photo than you.

While I’m on this topic, don’t use effects as a means to cover up lousy photos. Work to get the photo as good as you can SOC (straight out of camera). Slathering on effects to hide bad photos is like slathering on icing to cover up a burned cake. It doesn’t work in either case.

Wild Animal Park Photoshoot

The next WAP photoshoot workshop is December 5 from 9AM until 1PM. We spend 3 hours inside the park covering all aspects Exposure, Focus and Composition. Then, we retire to my RV where we download the photos and demonstrate a basic Photoshop Elements workflow to make good photos into great photos by Cropping, adjusting Levels, Color Balance and Sharpening. Register HERE using PayPal.

Another 5 Minutes Out of Nearly 200 Minutes

After the jump, I’ve added another 5 minute clip from the Rob Sheppard webinar so, if you missed the webinar or want to see what it covered before ordering the DVD, follow the “more” link. Keep reading for more goodies…

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…)