The Digital Photo Guy

Your Turn to Critique Me

I won’t have time to update the site this weekend so here’s something to occupy you until next week.

Here are my entries for the 2010 San Diego Fair. The juried photography competition draws about 3000 entries each year of which about half are accepted. Just being accepted is the first step. Placing 2nd, 3rd, 4th or Honorable Mention is the next step and winning 1st and/or Best of Show are the ultimate goals. Tell me your opinion in the poll at the bottom.

The first is titled Open. The second is Book of Accounts and the 3rd is Dinner with the President.

All the photos were processed to some extend with Topaz Adjust4. I tried to emphasize what was already there instead of slathering on weird effects or hide some deficiency in the photo. Each was acceptable as-is but Topaz Adjust4 enabled me to oversharpen or soften or saturate without inducing artifacts.
Click to see more entries

Student Photos from Anza-Borrego

Here are the first 3 student photos from the Spring Desert Wildflower workshop in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. The first day covered wildflowers as elements in landscape photography. Notice how we shot from a low angle to make the flowers appear more numerous and dense than they really were. Click to read more

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

Catching Up on Post Processing

Between classes and workshops, I haven’t had time to work on photos from Cibola NWR so I decided to roll both this week’s MMT and post-processing Cibola photos into one task.

I saw the green and red navigation lights on the bridge when I parked my RV along the bank of the river. It was originally in landscape mode but I thought it looked better as a vertical. Other that cropping and slight levels adjustment, this is pretty much SOOC (straight out of camera). Click to read more

Precisely Identify Neutral Gray When Adjusting Color

A number of people who attended the free Photoshop Elements webinar a few weeks ago asked me to explain in more detail how I identified an area of neutral gray when adjusting levels. I posted a video a few days ago but then realized it might be of general interest. I first learned this tip at Photoshop World. If you’re thinking of attending, it will be worth your while. I try to attend every other year.

To recap, when adjusting levels and color balance, it’s important to identify the white, black and gray points in a photo. White and black are simple (if you forgot, see my YouTube video) but 50% gray (neutral gray) is a bit trickier. This technique isn’t something you use on every photo but, when it’s important to get it right, this will usually do the trick. I say usually because you might run across a photo that doesn’t have a neutral gray area.

Of course, the easiest way to set neutral gray is to include a Gretag-Macbeth Color Checker or a gray card in the scene but that’s not always practical. Can you imagine a soccer mom running onto the field yelling, “Time out! I need my kid to hold this gray card!” On second thought, skip that, I can imagine it happening.

I used the color checker in this shot to be sure I got the color of her blouse as well as her skin tone correct in post processing.

Click to read full article