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Lion at the Werribee Park Open Range Zoo
For PhotoFriday‘s topic Beasts
I took up the offer to download perfect effects 8, its was for a limited time. However i didn’t write about it during the offer because the stand alone version always froze in browse mode and in fact hung my computer everytime (so fully I could start task manager so I had to turn off the computer and restart it to get going again). This was a bit disappointing because I have a couple of OnOne presets (some are free to download) and they are a cut above the rest. Even so I wasn’t about to recommend the free perfect effect 8 download, till I could find out more and possibly get it working.
At the moment I suspect the problem related to the version of drivers for the graphic cards I have on Windows PC (you need at least 256MB of dedicated VRAM and a video card driver that is OpenGL2 compliant, I found this looking in the manual, there is a downloadable pdf) and elsewhere on the web this “freezing” is not just for me and in fact wide spread. Strangely this topic is missing from the OnOne’s Knowledge base and specifically the Perfect Effect 8’s FAQ section. Also I haven’t yet had a reply to my more direct email requests.
The good news is providing you also installed the lightroom plug in, you will discover that perfect effects brings you two really significant features into you lightroom world. They are masking and layering, which normally require round tripping into photoshop (which many of us lightroom users don’t have). You have to look past the one filter one effect approach and start playing with the masking brush, masking bug and layer, particularly the blending controls. Whilst the capabilities of these features in perfect effects is not as extensive as those in the full perfect photo suite, I’m sure they will open up some amazing possibilities for those who have been using just lightroom alone.
Continuing on with the HDR theme, which seems to be this week sub-plot. I was out walk (unusually without my DSLR) and notice an interesting cloud formation. Of Course I had my phone, A normal exposure would be ok but I guess an extended dynamic range HDR might be better. So I used my HDR Camera app, which has been changed a little lately. It still takes and processes the three bracketed images on the phone, and has the big advantage that you don’t have to keep the phone exactly steady and it now has the more common interface where you pick the look & tone mapping from small thumbnails I like the natural tone mapping but sometimes I might do light tweaks to the exposure and colour vividness. It still does this on the phone, so you can cross reference back to what you are actually seeing.
I’m sure there are a lot of HDR apps out there now, Yet for those, such as an artist, who might like to capture difficult subjects straight onto the phone as close to what they are seeing as possible, and check, doing everything on the phone is a big bonus. More traditional HDR approach are normally carried out some time later under different lighting and colour context so it can become a little more challenging to get the “feel” of the colours
I can’t as yet find a histogram presentation in Google+ Photo | |
After boldly claiming this might be the year of the photo book I have resolved to create several this year and write a bit about my experiences along the way. One of the books I would like to create is something like “A Year in Jells Park” (which is almost just on my doorstep, ok a short walk). Jells Park is vast and I’m sure there will be a lot to photograph and discuss. Already some of the post in the blog are fodder for the book. This evening I went to photograph the water birds down on the lake. on the way I liked the lighting across the lake but without a wide angle lens, I did my usually trick of taking a set of overlapping images, no tripod or fancy panorama head just hand held (like I always do). I then just sent the jpegs straight out of the camera into Autostitch to see what it looked like (well via Picasa)
I hadn’t tried to balance the exposure (of the sky and lake) across the set and autostitch returns ragged edges because my hand held overlap was pretty approximate. Yet it does give a wonderful view that is hard to capture without special lens (and cameras). I will certainly tweak this view further, when I have a little more time, perhaps even for a double page spread in a photobook! Ok lets not get ahead of ourselves here!
While I had all the images on my phototray in picasa I selected the collage tool to create a david hockney style joiner. I’ve set up one of the configurable buttons in the print/share area of the phototray. If you haven’t set up this key look under Create/Picture collage… item on the main menu. I then selected the Picture Pile under options. I set the without borders, and solid background colour which I selected with the eye dropper as part of the sky’s middle tone blue. I also click on the drop shadows to just highlight the photos edges a little. I then slide the photos around with the mouse to almost, but not quiet, have the photos overlap. Again clearly the photos don’t quiet match in tone and exposure but I think that just adds to the charm and realisation that this is a big vista.