Monday, February 25, 2008

More on photography

This tip comes from years of studio experience it's about using a white background. There are problems white as a background if it is near the subject it is difficult to light and also it tends to "bleed" round objects making edges less clearly defined. My best advice is to keep the backround as far away as possible and I do mean far. The further the better. Light it as evenly as you can but dont make the brightness too much or it will bleed. In the studio when shooting fashion the model is frequently on a raised "stage" ( a sheet of chipboard on beer crates) this can be covered in background material and the subject of the picture is lit separately. If you are shooting small objects then it still applies. Background as far as possible (within reason).
Lighting is all important but it is down to personal taste (or lack of) how you go about it. If you have nice clean, white ceilings then it is good to use the ceiling to reflect diffused light down. This produces the most natural light. Small objects can be livened up with bits of mirror or aluminium foil stuck to pieces of card etc. If you can-use flash off camera. I have experimented with using on-camera flash to set off seperate flash units couple to slave cells and very effectively. One of the good things with digital cameras, however, is that you can change to a tungsten light setting- thus making room light vey useable. It doesnt work with low energy bulbs vey often though.
Further to my comments about shooting on white backgrounds. If you need to cut the image out to put onto a different background then it is better to use a light grey. Pure white produces edges that are very difficult to see when masking them out in Adobe Photoshop (for example).

Edit with Adobe Photoshop

I downloaded Photoshop Elements to see what the difference is between elements and photoshop.
Not much, surprisingly. If you only want basic editing it is ideal. My real reason for checking it out was to see what recommendations they made regarding saving files without losing the integrity of the original. I am sorry to say that my banging on about ever decreasing file sizes and quality is not covered. So if you did not read my blog of a couple of days ago here it is again. When you first open an image in any image editing program make sure you ahve a back-up in the original state as shot or scanned or whatever. Picasa, Elements and Photoshop all will save over your original mostly without warning. If you use photoshop save your file-before you work on it-as a PSD file or TIF (if you have a recent version that save layers). Then if you are editing the picture you only need to save it without "saving as".
The next phase of editing, I think, should be to make a duplicate layer to work on. This done by clicking on "Layers" in the tool bar and clicking on "Duplicate Layer".
In Photoshop there are many different ways of achieveing the same result. If I tell you to do something a particular way it is because I know it works. There may, of course, be quicker ways of doing the smae thing - but so what.
Specifically with Adobe Elements and Photoshop your next step might be to make some colour correction and brightness/contrast correction. There are tools that will do just that. In elements you can have the programme do it for you at the click of a button. In Photoshop if you go to the top toolbar and click on "image", "Adjustments", "Levels" you are presented with a slider control thatallows you to adjust shodow detail, mid-tones and highlight detail. Firstly all three colours can be adjusted (RGB), then if you click on the RGB box the drop-down menu will allow you to select any of the three colours. In the colours section moving the left hand (shadow deatail) slider towards the centre will cause the colour to intensify for the colour you select ie Red will be redder etc. If you move the right hand (highlight) slider towards the centre you will go towards the complimentary of the colour (the photographic opposite). The compimentary to Red is Cyan or Blue -Green for some other English speaking countries. It is worth while taking some time and experimenting with these effects as colour problems are a regular feature of photography as the colour of daylight and artificial light varies dramatically. Once you have achieved a result close the box and thats it - unless you change your mind. If you have followed these instructions to the letter you will be able to go back by clicking on the "History" tab and reverting to a previously saved version. A better way would have been to click on "Layer" again and this time clicking on "New Adjustment Layer" in the drop-down and selecting Levels, corves or whatever you want. Having made sure that the layer you are editing is highlighted. If you use this approach the adjustment layer allows you back in to change what you have done. If you want to apply your corrections to the layer immediately below the the adjustment layer be sure to tick the box that says "Use previous layer to create a clipping mask".

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Day Two - tip for today

If your camera has a screw thread for a tripod - buy a tripod. Although the camera looks as if it will always produce a sharp picture there are always times when it needs to be held shake-free. If your camera tells you what exposure settings you are getting anything with a shutter speed longer than 1/100th second will be liable to camera shake - unless you can stop your heart beating. Tripods come in all sorts of strenghts and weights. Obviously the sturdier it is the better. However, even the most flimsy lightweight tripod can be given that bit extra. For example to give it more weight - hang something heavy on it. You can improvise with anything heavy - your shopping bag, a 5litre water bottle can be tied to a leg of the tripod - anything that weighs 4 or 5 kilos (10lbs) should be enough. No string to tie it on with - a lace from a pair of trainers will do. Using this device you can even get more over the top of objects that you might want photograph - food photography, for example, where you might want to get the whole of the dish in the shot rather than a profile. I will demonstrate fairly soon with some images but for now - take my word for it - it works.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Day One Part Two

If you are computer savvy you might already have an image editor. Most images can do with a bit of a lift in the pre-digital days photolabs would enhance the image duriong the printing process by dodging and burning-in. Even now you will find the latest printing equipment makes changes to the image - enhancing shadow detail for example. These are all quite simple tricks. Once the basics have ben mastered then making the next step is logical and easy to do.
Most digital cameras offer a choice of image format ie. jpeg, tiff or raw. The most widely used format though is jpeg, mainly because it produces a smaller file without too much degradation. The downside of using jpeg is that it is all too easy to compress the file again making it even smaller and degraded to a noticeable degree. The first thing to do, when image edit a jpeg, is to re-save the image in a different format. For example saving a jpeg as a tif file will prevent this from happening and if you then look at the properties of this new file you will notice how much larger it is. As an example an photo taken with a Canon 350d might be 3,643kb but when opened in photoshop and fully decompressed it will be 22.8M. Now if this image is re-saved as tif or photoshop psd file - without compression - it will be 23.36M. However, if you save the picture again - even without doing anything else to it - it will resize down to 1,904kb. Your image is degraded, next time it will be worse and so on. If you are worried about filling up your harddrive you can delete your tif (psd) file once you have made all the changes you need.
This first step has to be the first thing you do - that is (again) before you edit your picture save it as a tif or psd file. Edit it save the tif and keep it until you are sure its ok. If you need prints from a supplier that will only accept jpegs thats fine just re-save your file as a jpeg at maximum quality. It will be as good as the original, better, hopefully, if your editing was ok. For editing I do mean anything such as cropping, red-eye correction, swapping body parts and etc.

Day One

This is the first day of my blog. Lets start with the obvious. You will need to read your manual. Unless, of course, the salesman sets your camera up for you and tells you which button takes the picture. So go and take pictures. The only rule in photography is "there are no rules". Just look in the magazines - anything goes. If you have an artistic bent it may help looking around some galleries. By all means copy the techniques of the famous - but if you have your own it is much more rewarding. It is useful to know what you will do with the pictures you take. If you are just viewing them on screen the image size - usually called quality doesnt need to be high. If you want prints - what size? An image from a mobile phone can look quite good even up to 10inches by 8inches or even A4 - but even better at 6"x4". If you can't stand the excitement of seeing you pictures on you computer it is ok to take your camera to your local print shop and have them do it all for you, however, I think you might want to play. See my next entry