The Digital Photo Guy

Video Monday Morning Tip – 12/14/09

This week is a continuation of last week’s VMMT on Topaz Lab’s ReMask2 masking plug-in. However, in my enthusiasm, I skipped a few intervening steps so it’s a bit like Star Wars where later episodes were aired first, followed by earlier episodes. To quote Jean-Luc Godard, “A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end… but not necessarily in that order.” This VMMT shows how to use brushes to touch up a mask where fine, fly-away hair is too complex to mask. As usual, the Video MMT is in the Tips & News area. Registered users can use the password they received when they registered. To register, use the form to the right.

The above photo on the left is the original. You can see how the hairs are too fine to be easily selected. The photo on the right shows the final result after touch up with hair brushes. Click to read more

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…

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…)