Sometimes things just have to go

 

There are times when you can not avoid some obstructions the way of a clean composition, Usually it is best to walk around a little and it is surprising how easy it can be to avoid signs, lampposts etc. Other times it does seem to be impossible to avoid distracting objects in a good composition. You might avoid that sign but then a tree or parked car pops into frame.In such cases it is handy to have a context sensitive easer, (or alternatively a cloning tool). There is a really neat context toll in OnOne 10 Enhance called perfect Eraser. It works best if you just remove a few sections at a time, but it does and amazing job with a relatively few strokes. Photoshop has a similar tool and lightroom has a liner clone tool, similar to the spot removal tool and make need a few more corrections. The results can make a significant to your compositiom

A rethink on those one click wonder photo filters

I have never really been a fan of those one click wonder filters that have become so popular with the on-line photo services. You know the ones you load your photo (from your smartphone) and you see a number of thumbnails of various “looks” that can be crated from your image (sometimes it shows your images transformed other times it is a generic image). I have never seen them as a creative asset. The web is already crawling with “look and me”, “copy cat” and “wanna-bee celebrity” stuff that after the first wow interesting moments, they quickly becomes not another boring thing to scroll past, seen-it, seen-it…..

However three packages which offer such one-click filters, but with the ability to modify them and/or stack them, are changing my mind. Googles first version of snapseed, as implemented in Google+ photos let you select a filter and make standard changes but with the option that you arrive on a page with various sliders that created that look and then lets you refine the changes. In other words you select the basic look and then can tweak it (often just to bring it back a little). Unfortunately snap seed is no longer used for default edit in google photos on the web and has gone missing on the android phone app for google photos. However you can still download it as a standalone app on the android (albeit with less effects filters)

The second software, which surprised me, but had the biggest influence on my change of mind is OnOne 10. In their effect tools they has been working towards the analogy that the effect worked like adding a set of filters in from of your lens. However there was always the actual sliders, buttons and dials very prominently on the left hand side. This is where you did most of the adjustments. there where thumbnail of the main tools on the right hand side and you could get larger version showing the effect on your photo from there. The Version 10 interface has been reworked and it a lot cleaner however I think most of the tools remain. (Resizing images was one overlooked but has been added back now (version 10.1.0) There is now more emphasis on the tiles (they are bigger than thumbnails by default now) and it is easier to start on the right. Many tools have a few tiles with slightly different settings on the original sliders. I’m now becoming convinced it is easier and more natural to judge an effect visually than remember how far or my what setting to adjust a given slider.  As before you can save the filters stacks as presets, making the system very powerful. You could previously add effects on top of each other but the analogy of stacking filters is really obvious and powerful. even when they are stacked you can still make refined adjustments individually over on the left, OnOne have done great things here, even though they are essentially cosmetic.

The third app is dreamscope, which is a total surprise to me, because it was the classic, up-load your photo and here are a number of alternative looks to select (end of options). Admittedly the effects were very interesting (and often could be creatively used). I have been using them off and one for a while mainly for icons or simple graphics to support my blog posts. They must have been listening closely to user feedback and have now added larger output, customizable filters and most recently the ability to stack filters. Their users have embraced these changes and their home photostream is looking a lot less like “more of the same” and more “wow that interesting”,

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

… Scott Adams

Revisiting edits inside flickr :: Rotate & Crop

I had never imagine a big toe could be so painful, but a sudden attach of gout has laid me out for a couple of days and frustrated my daily photo project. Still I have my android camera phone and that’s fine to take photos. Pain killer and rest seems to be working for the toe but the long term prospect of having to give up so many of the foods I like is not so attractive. The one ray of sunshine is that coffee and complex carbs, as in nuts, are not banned and may actually be good for me.

However my attempt at using HDR camera+ to document my well appreciated “medicine” worked fine but my image was upside down when autoloaded to flickr. I could have used something like snapseed on my phone but I figured it was time to look at my options in flickr. The menu icon to work on the photo itself can be found on the individual photo display down on the right hand side. It is a stylized pen in a square box. Clicking on this brings up a simple menu and Rotate is the second item. which will bring up a simple selection screen showing three possible rotation left 90, right 90 and a full 180 inversion. Selecting the center one and clicking ok turns my photo up the right way. Very simply.

I needed to go into aviary, to do the crop. I had used aviary quiet a lot (and liked it) back in the days before flickr bought it and it was still a stand alone. When first first bought into flickr however it forced you to save a copy go out of flickr and save you edits as a new post. The round trip seemed a bit tedious and I stopped using it. the new version still sets up a separate window (and probably a new process) but it no longer appears like a round trip.

The same tools  (and fancy filters) appear to be there but the tool bar is simpler and cleaner. The cropping tools works much the same as before and you see what is being cropped out of the image. Inside the crop limits are display at the normal exposure outside that is greyed out. There are a set of common aspect rations (to match typical screen displays and print sizes, or a custom crop which I used. Unlike many other crop tools around today you can not do straightening at the same time. Such is life.

The really big improvement now is when you click on save you have the option of replacing the existing, which is the default. or saving it as a new copy (I suppose this might be useful is you use one of those over the top filters).

A different type of straightening

A perspective straighten is very useful manipulation for some situations where you cannot find a enough room to get back from your subject (a window or large painting across the room or a building across the road). With a wide angle you will get diagonals running in several directions. The edges may even be noticeable curved. Lightroom now has a Upright command to do this under the lens correction menu. I assume it is doing a fair bit of distortion transformation mathematics, but it can do a good job providing the distortion isn’t too large (and perhaps it needs to recognise the lens). I have found a marvellous alternative in a plug-in for AfterShot Pro called zPerspector which achieved much the same transformation via a set of four sliders that independently adjust the sides/quadrants of the photos. With a little experiment it is easy enough to fix even extreme diagonals. You can also use the plug-in to create your own extreme perspective.

PhotoEditTool :: Another good pair of add-ins

Following up on some more add-ins for Aftershot, I reloaded the 64-bit version of Bez, a neat tool for managing tonality and this new version is smooth and fast. Bez (which comes from its use of Bezier Curves) was originial develop for Bible to bring in Lightroom like tonal controls. I like the 5 tone narrow curves that mimic the basic brightness controls in recent versions of lightroom. You get separate sliders for Shadows(Blacks), Low Midtones(Dark Grays), Grey (aka Mid Gray), High Midtones (Light Grays) & Highlights (Whites). It also incorporated an opacity slider, useful to reduced the effect of the filter itself. It definitely enhances Aftershot tonal controls.

The other add-in of interest when considering tonality is Zone. It is a new, well I haven’t noticed it before, and it simply lets you see the Zones (from dark to light) as used by Ansel Adams in his Zone System. When you active the Preview Zone Systems by tick the radio button, the photo you are working on becomes black & white and the hightlight a zone slider is activated. Sliding the the zone changes from 0 (the darkest) up to 10 (the lightest). Each zone is highlighted in a dull yellow as you step through the zones.

The magic happens if you see that one zone overpowers the image (in this case the shadows are very dark and lack detail and represent a large portion of the image) so you can then adjust the appropriate bez sliders. I prefer the 5 tone sliders at the base of the Bez panel. Remember each of the 5 tone sliders crosses two zones in the zone system.

It is also very important to turn zone off, once you are happy with the tonal balance, So that the final photo is correctly rendered (in colour).

There is no HDR technique here, although I am capturing a AdobeRGB colour image (thus high bit colour). All I have done is looked at the 10 zones of Ansel Adams system and made sure I have balanced the tones in each zone. It this case it has bought detail into the shadows and midtones, at the same time this lifts the apparent intensity of the green foliage.

PhotoEditing Tools :: Cropping in Picasa

After straightening (or levelling) in my opinion the second most useful tool is the crop tool. Often the must be used together to trim off the little blank triangle around the edges. In fact most newer software either does that automatically or gives a fit option in the cropping. However trimming up the edges is not the only reason you should crop and I will talk of other reason in future posts. The cropping tool in picasa dates back a long time but it is very easy to use and has two important features. The first is that it is interactive and it show the area to be trimmed off greyed out. So you can  judge what you are removing. The second is it offer both a freeform (manual) mode where you can stretch out the bow to any size elongation you want as well as fixed ratio crops so that the cropped image will fit certain paper or screen sizes. In this second mode the cropping marks will expand or contract in both dimensions to maintain the selected ratio. The recent version of picasa even give you three example crops and you could click on the most suitable. In this example I'm trimming up the edges on a hand held multi-image panorama for I’m using the manual trim.

See the final crop on flckr

PhotoEditingTools :: Straighten in Paint.Net

Paint.net is a really nifty little program, ideal for those that just working on jpeg files. However on first look it doesn’t seem to have a straighten tool (ie something to level the horizon), the image menu seen to have rotates (only 90° left and right or a 180° twist and horizontal and vertical flips, no obvious small and definable rotation! However a deeper look around will show you there is such a rotation tool under the layers menu item. Yet there is an even bigger omission, no simple levelling tool to help pick the horizon and overlay guides (like aftershot or picasa) of a drag to mark a second point to define the rotation (like lightroom or perfect photo). Trying to straighten a horizon is starting to look tedious, but it isn’t!

No need to panic, it is easy to use the layers to create your own temporary guides. Starting with the Layer item on the menu pick the add new layer item on the menu to create an empty and transparent second layer. Now mow to that layer by clicking on layer 2 in the layers window. Next using the shape tool from the main drawing tool bar and use and open rectangle, mark a suitable large rectangle on the screen. It will be easier to judge if you have this rectangle cross the horizon somewhere near the middle of the image. This rectangle becomes your level guide.

Now you can return to the background layer and this time select the rotate/zoom tool.It looks a bit complex (and it can do a lot) but we are only going to use the little rotation ring on the round shape tool on the upper left) As you rotate this by clicking the mouse on the reference mark on the outer ring and moving you mouse up and down. you will see the photo rotate, while the rectangle your created on layer 2 remains steady. Gently rotate until the horizon is parallel with the rectangle edge. Simple. If you want more control of the rotation you can enter an angle or use the little up and down adjusted beside the angle dialogue box..

To finish you will need to delete your temporary layer 2 (go back into layer 2 and select delete layer from the layers menu) and then crop the image to avoid the undefined edges, but that's a subject of a future post!

Red Sky in the morning

I must admit I’m normally still snuggling in a warm bed at this time of the morning, and it has been a very cold spell. However I was up and awake early today and able to capture the first light of dawn. Giving me a great opportunity to compare my “girls” (the three current mistresses, aka photo managers/editors, I’m using rather than picasa/google photos) as I would normally edit/tweak them. The Photo on the right is the original unedited Jpeg. The photos below are edited by AfterShot , Lightroom  and Perfect Photo Suite 9. These three systems render my .pef file (Pentax’s RAW format) differently but their RAW file renders all look very flat compared with the jpeg. I liked the dark silhouette of the trees, so I have left the images very low key and just just concentrated of adding a little extra contrast and vibrance.I also straighten and cropped each version. In the edge they all look somewhat similar, supporting the observation that it probably doesn’t matter a lot which software you use as long as it does what you want.

AfterShot Pro 2, which has become my first stop on my laptop. In this case I have just click on Perfect Clear and lifted the vibrance slider a little. With a straightening and crop to finish. All over in seconds
Lightroom 4.4, was a little more considered and all done in the development module, lifting clarity (rather than contrast) and a little vibrance (not saturation) then straightening and crop.

Perfect Photo Suite 9, was a actually my second port of call but I have left it till last as it seems to match my memory of the moment best. I started in Perfect enhanced (which is where cropping and straightening are normally undertaken. Whilst there I couldn’t resist using their wonderful content aware magic  perfect eraser to remove the two light poles (which would have bee a very time consuming task with a cloning tool on the second post behind the tree). I also finished with perfect effects, a natural Dynamic Contrast, A fall enhancer Colour Enhancer bought back to 60% layer opacity and a soft darker vignette

PhotoEditingTools :: Straighten (Levelling) in Perfect Photo Suite

If you are looking for a straighten tool in Perfect Photo Suite it could prove frustrating because it is called levelling and only shows up when you select the cropping tool, either under perfect layers, perfect enhance, perfect resize. Once you select the crop tool from the left hand tool bar, a levelling tool shows up un the middle of the tool bar above the image, You can either enter a rotation angle, or click on the small triangle to get an interactive slide that will tilt the image or better still click on the little bubble level icon and the cursor will change into the level tool. Move to one convenient place on the strong horizontal (such as the horizon) and click and drag a line across your photo that want to be level (ie the other side of the horizon) then click again.

When you release the mouse the photo will be adjusted by the desired angle. The cropping marks will automatically be adjusted to the best fit cropping of the rotated image to avoid blank edges. All very simple once you find it.

There is also a rotation tool in the layer transform tool within Perfect Layers which allows both the speciation of the angle and the interactive slider but it does not display the levelling tool.

PhotoEditTools :: AfterShot’s HDR

Despite being a fan of HDR (used with restraint) and having had Version 2 of AfterShot pro for a while (and used it often), I actually had not got around to trying out its new HDR feature. I figured I’d work on this series of a stormy sky for this weeks PhotoFriday, perhaps HDR can enhance the drama of a coming storm?

There are a three modes in which you can run the corel aftershot  HDR, and I will just used the conventional method of working with a set (three in this case) of bracketed exposure. To do that you simply select the photos you want and then right click and select the Edit with AfterShot HDR option. This takes you into a new window (and new process) shown above, which merges the three images into one with a wider dynamic range. At this point you have the ability to select individual photos as if the are layers and paint in or out details from that photo. I haven’t used this feature here but I can imagine it is going to be very useful.

After you click on process you get a new panel which undertakes the tonemapping (it is called HDR Adjustments) and there are the typical series of garish Presets (the don’t have typical tone mapping names) but the all tend to overbake the effects, eg disturbingly contrasty and gritty or lurid false colours. They are not my style so I turned off the presets and underneath this filter panel are a series of more conventional tone sliders and I just lowered the shadows a little. Normally this is where many HDR systems would leave you but Aftershot HDR has another panel.
The third and final step in the Aftershot HDR, which is called fine tuning gives you access to a histogram with some basic tonal sliders. Lower down on this right hand panel are a number of other fine tunning tools. This is actually a smart idea because I normally take the HDR tonemapp and do some further “fine tunning” on it in say lightroom or perfect photo suite. I have aftershot pro on my laptops rather than the  lightroom/prefect photo heavy weights so this is going to be very useful. If you are happy with the tonemapped version you can just press the Save and close key at the bottom of the screen

I should have tried this earlier.

Here is the photo after some extra post processing in Perfect Effects

Last of Autumn Start of Winter

This was taken with my new android phone during a break in the rain. It was taken using HDR Camera+ and then lightly adjusted to soften the colour a square crop and add the ragged frame using Adobe’s Photoshop Express for Android. Photoshop express was one of the early photo editor apps I used on my previous Android phone so I am roughly familiar with its basic operation. By the way the controls are nothing like other adobe photo editors, At first impressions it has more in the common format of small filter icons to pick the effect you want from a scrollable ribbon underneath the phone giving the impression of a one-click fix. However if you look a bit deeper on the icon on the bottom line there are a number of useful tools for basic edit. The key is the several filters can be used cumulatively on the one image. The first three overlapping circle control cropping tool, which bring up the filters related to colour with a horizontal slider bar to increase of decrease the effect. Next is a small icon with two overlapping l shapes which is the cropping took. Then a simplified icon of two sliders to control exposure, and many tonal and sharpening/noise options. The eye is for red eye reduction and the small frame icon is for adding a frame or fancy edge. Finally there is a band aid to remove blemishes. All in all most of the edit tools you might want to use.

PhotoEditingTools :: White Balance, When & Where

Colour correction, usually just called white balance these days, has been an issue since the earliest days of colour film. Some aspects even stretching back further into the martials used in the construction of black and films. Looking around current net explanations the need for colour compensation might be related to a technical limitation of colour film or modern digital sensor, actually the truth is they are pretty good at capturing the true light and they are getting better. The issue is the human eye (and yes a lot of this pre-processing is done at the back of the eye and on the way to the brain) is very good at accepting that a wide range of illumination is actually a “white” light source and reflection of it in the surroundings. This acceptance of what is supposed to be white is general subconscious and takes a very short time. Yet light sources (particularly artificial ones) can vary in strength and their colour profile, which can be measure on the Kelvin Scale (shown on the right), which actually an absolute measure, but it has been adopted in photography as a measure of colour temperature. These measure all very technical and somewhat theoretical but essentially different light sources emit light that corresponds to different hues (colours). A candle or tungsten globe seen in daylight will appear quiet yellow/orangish but in a room just illuminate by that light source our eyes will happily convey the image as if illuminated by a white light. The camera however will “correctly” capture the image a with distinct orangey bias. Objects that our eye saw a white will actually be orange and other colours will have excessive yellow and/or red tints. Thus the photo may look wrong.

Cambridge Colour  website has a great tutorial on the theory of colour compensation (aka white balance) as well as good practical advice, for those that want to investigate this deeper.

The best place to adjust white balance is in your camera, and this is an area you will need to consult your camera manual but most digital cameras, even the less expensive point & shoot ones will have a number of white balance options typically indicated by icons like those on the right. They normally cover a decent range of common lighting sources. What’s more AWB Automatic White Balance techniques have become very dependable in most modern cameras, so it is the obvious default setting. Older Camera phones might be the biggest exception here, particularly in low and/or artificial light. So it is worth looking at you camera settings on your phone. understanding the right setting and changing them as required could make a big difference to your low light photos taken with your phone

When It comes to RAW photos the white balance may not have to be set in your camera (ie just leave it on the default AWB) because there is usually enough information stored in the RAW file to allow the colour adjustment to be undertaken on the RAW image, Most RAW photo editors then allow the recalibration of the image to either a given Kelvin temperature, standard light sources or even a better estimate of the “as shoot” balance.

Having advised that AWB (Auto White Balance) is probably the best default I need to point out that there can still be situation that can confused the camera (ie an scene of dominantly warm or cool colours). Alternatively if you are always reaching for the warming slider trying setting your white balance to cloudy or shade.

PhotoEditingTools :: Straighten in Picasa & Google+ Photo

For me picasa was the first software to offer a seriously easy to use straightening tool. There were some tools with stretch out tilts but most only offered slides and or the ability to type in an angular change. They were not easy to use and generally didn’t show you interactively how the photo was being rotated. Picasa even in its early versions (pre-google ownership) included a straighten tool in the first basic enhance panel. By comparison the picasa straightener put a detailed grid over your image and as you move the straightening slider. Moving the slider to the right is a clockwise tilt and moving the slider to the left is anti-clockwise tilt. The big improvement was that as you moved the slider the whole photo was moved on the screen so it was relatively easy to line up the horizontal or vertical straight lines in your photo.

The on-line end of picasa is now google+ photo (I’m expecting that name to change name soon) and it also has some good basic editing tools. Specifically a decent straightening tool. However it is somewhat hidden because the tile that activates it is called crop, but it does have a curved arrow above the typical crop icon. To find it firstly click on the edit item on the tool bar above your image, which appears above any single photo display. This the brings up a side panel which has a number of tiles representing various tools and filters. At the top of this panel are basic adjustments and these are all green tiles with “identifying” icons. The crop & straightening tile is on the lower right.

The crop/straighten panel (shown above) is then displayed and it has a number of tools to rotate the image. I’m using the ruler called straighten. Using it you first select one point, say on the horizon, click and then you stretch out desired the desired new horizon, and click on a second point on the horizon. The photo is then adjusted on screen and you set where the automatic cropping is also displayed (outside this the triangular salvages are still displayed but subdued). The two icons with the small rectangle and curved rotation arrows can be used to rotate the photo through 90° to right or left (ie correct for the camera held at 90°). The sliders also rotates the photo but only by a limited amount. Like the original picasa straightener moving to the right is a clockwise rotation and moving the slider to the left is anti-clockwise tilt.