Andrew Macpherson

Just spent an hour going through an excellent HDR Tutorial from the travel photography blog Stuck in Customs by Trey Ratcliff.  It merges nicely in one spot the various tips I’ve been picking up round the net, and adds in some new to me packages (Topaz Art springs to mind) to help finish the pictures.

He has discount codes for one to use on most of the software he’s promoting (Topaz, Photomatix, Nik and more), so the site is probably worth visiting just to check out his reviews if you’re considering buying one, and pick up the codes if you’re convinced to buy.

I’ve mentioned that I’ve been learning on-line from hundreds of free podcasts, and related video blogs.  I would particularly like to thank:

• Photoshop User Tv
• D-Town TV now that it’s not just Nikon
• Photoshop Killer Tips

All of which are available as free podcasts which you can subscribe through the  iTunes store, or follow the links above.  These ones are also all manifestations of the American National Association of Photoshop Professionals.  The obvious way to say thank you is to buy some of the related books, and to buy a year’s membership of NAPP (even if it is horrifically expensive in Europe)  I have done that, but publicly I’m saying “Thank You!” here too.

On Friday evening I went to an eye-opening evening at Hertford Camera Club who had invited Kevin Herbert, a judge of 35 years experience, to give an insight into the judge’s view of a competition.

He added to the theory I had spent days researching about depth of field and the viewing distances which reduce a circle of confusion to a single point in human perception, with a remark about a British standard for how close to inspect a print.

The answer was a fairly surprising requirement to view from a distance of twice the diagonal, and not more than four times the diagonal, which he qualified with the comment that one can then look closer to analyse defects seen from that range.

That was the technical bit.  Most important was the initial overview in which the judge has to assess the author’s intent, or at least the effect of the author’s work and presentation, putting firmly aside personal likes and dislikes of subject matter.  How to deal with the technically excellent presentation of the boring or revolting, the technically poor but original presentation?  All good thought provoking stuff and an evening well spent.  I hope we’ll have Kevin along to the local club in the near future, as I’m sure others would enjoy his talk, and come away with entirely different highlights.

Well as I said I’ve been looking at video podcasts, and I started wondering which were sticking…  Some are just different ways of doing things one’s already happy with, but some are so interesting that I go off to try them immediately.  Then comes the fun, as many are from CS2 and superseded in CS4.  Ones that spring to mind that still work are:

• CMD-click on the title-bar of an open document to find which directory it came from  – does not work in consolidated tabbed view unfortunately
• Use a threshold layer to pick white and black points for tweaking a curves adjustment, then use a 50% grey fill layer in difference blend mode behind the threshold filter to pick the mid tone for that same curves adjustment.
• Switch to LAB colour space to intensify colours by adjusting the A and B curves to a steeper gradient, particularly good for photos with low colour content to start with
• Use the LAB Lightness channel for less obvious «sharpening» (added acutance with consequent detail loss) — there is less of a colour effect
• Alternatively a high-pass filter layer in hard light blend mode gives a different sharpening effect.
• Use Colour selection from the selection menu as well as of the magic wand
• Use alpha channels to make selection masks
• Once you have a selection on its own layer, use DeFringe to tidy the edges
• The patch tool is a good start to repair a crack in an old print
• Aren’t layer styles great?
• Wow! I didn’t know that was there — the animation tool! (under the window menu)
• One can type © as Option-g on the Mac keyboard.
• Make a self scaling visible watermark for web publishing: make a file containing it twice as wide as one’s largest picture will be with a transparent background, type the message, and free transform it to the full width (add height as needed) use grey text, add a bevel and save the file.
  Then make an action: Select all on the target image, Place the copyright message file into the image — this will bring it in as a centred smart object (which automatically scales to fit the target image) accept the placement, finally set the layer blend mode to hard light, and merge down.

And make a point of watching the “Steamy” episode 43 of Photoshop User TV — as good as the classic death giggles commentary on TMS for presenters choking.

There were also some photography tips…

• The presenters on Photoshop User TV gave a great plug for the Expodisc white balance filter (£75), but a little reading around threw up the Seculine Vivicap white balance lens caps available from Warehouse Express at £17 about 1/4 the price (ie twice normal branded lens cap price), but the outright winner in function and value is the Melita basket filter (yes a white coffee filter paper) and an elastic band at about £1.50 for 50 from a comparison review of WB Filters published in 2008.

One of the other things one notices is how some of he versatility is salami sliced away in the newer releases of photoshop.  In CS3 under actions there was effectively a mini RIP for producing a set of different sized prints on a sheet.  Gone in CS4, replaced by the output function in Bridge which is only really for single prints of each image, and all at the same size.  The same complaint also applies to the LightRoom print module (Including LR3 beta 2).

There are a lot of Photoshop Video Podcasts out there, many directly brokered by the iTunes store.  I’m a great podcast fan for storing interesting speech for driving, for the train and tube, but the video podcasts are not such a great idea on any medium other than one’s laptop, or I suppose an iPad, though I’m not sure if the screen is big enough on that.

There are 2 axes they can be judged on beyond the simple quality.  One is how far away from the product they stray — are they about Photoshop, or are we in the 3D effects of Photoshop Extended, are we integrating with Adobe Illustrator.  The other noticeable dimension is the photo to artwork axis, with some of the talks being in a zone delineated by the advertising message, and using techniques that work only in relatively low resolution.

My needs as an aspiring amateur stop at presenting my photographs well, whether for club competition,  or as a gallery wrap canvas of a family portrait that someone’s prepared to pay for.  so I’m only going to point you at ‘casts which meet my needs most of the time, and don’t overwhelm the viewer with advertising — some is OK to pay for the content after all, but some casts are 75% advert 20%chat and 5% content.  I may be missing really good content because I haven’t found it (yet), but there are ‘casts that I’m deliberately not mentioning too.

So what shows am I finding Useful? (continue reading…)