Tag Archive for post-processing

naturephoto | January 2, 2011
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Winter scenes at Mer Bleue

Here are photos taken at a recent outing at Mer Bleue Bog in Ottawa.

Winter tree silhouette against blue orange sky-HDR

This photo is made up of 3 images that were merged with Photoshop CS5 HDR Pro. To put the finishing touches on the HDR tone mapped image, the file was saved as a tiff file in Photoshop and then opened with Adobe Camera Raw 6.3.  If you’re like me and like making the bulk of your photo adjustments using Adobe Camera Raw, did you know that you can make use of all those familiar adjustments on your TIFF or JPG files as well.  This is a great way to make final color/contrast adjustments to your HDR images.

Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) Tip:  You can set ACR to open JPG and TIFF images and be able to make use of the same adjustments that you use against your raw files.

From Adobe Bridge, to specify Camera Raw preferences, choose Edit > Camera Raw Preferences (PC) or Adobe Bridge CS5 > Camera Raw Preferences (Mac).  At the bottom of the dialog there are two menus under the JPEG and  TIFF Handling headings.  These two menus have the same impact on their respective files formats.

This is how the TIFF selections impact the TIFF files when doing a double-click on these files in Bridge.

Disable TIFF support: You will not be able to open TIFF files using Adobe Camera Raw. This is the default setting.

Automatiacally Open TIFF with settings: TIFF files which have previously been modified using ACR will be automatically open with ACR, and TIFF files which have not been modified with ACR will be open by Photoshop

Automatically Open all supported  TIFFs: All TIFF files will be  automatically open using ACR unless they contain layers in which case they will open in Photoshop.

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Category: Photo Techniques, Photos, Photoshop | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
naturephoto | November 2, 2010
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‘A World In HDR’ by Trey Ratcliff – quick book review

A World In HDR

A World In HDR


Like many photographers these days I have been experimenting with HDR photography (see previous post). I wanted to see if I could pickup some tips by getting Trey Ratcliff’s book on the subject titled: ‘A World In HDR’. Trey and his website; StuckInCustoms.com are known as an authority on the subject of HDR photography.

Unfortunately the book does not provide much in terms of tips and technique.

The bulk of the book (first 171 pages out of 208) is made up of a collection of HDR photos by the author with general commentary about the locations of where the photos were taken, his views on HDR photography, art, and life in general.

The remainder of the book covers what is basically the same tutorial that is available online at the author’s website: StuckInCustoms.com : HDR Tutorial – Everything you need to know about HDR Photography.

The print quality of the book does not do justice to the photos when compared to what is available online at StuckInCustoms.com either.

I can’t hide the fact that I was quite disappointed with this book. I would not recommend it for anyone wanting to learn anything more than the basics of HDR photography!

Category: Reviews | Tags: , ,
naturephoto | October 11, 2010
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Fall Colors at Mer Bleue with HDR

I was out catching some landscape photos of fall colors at Mer Bleue Conservation area in Ottawa. I decided that I would shoot some photos to process them as HDR.

HDR horizontal fall landscape Mer Bleue Conservation Area Ottawa

What is HDR? HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. As the name indicates, an HDR photo is a photo that has increased dynamic range compared to a regular photo. In a conventional digital photo, the sensor’s capture abilities cannot match what your eyes sees in terms of contrast ratio. Your eyes/brain can easily adjust and see the full range of information within a scene. For example, in a scene where you have part of the scene in full sunlight and part in full shade, your eyes/brain will adjust and allow you to see the part of the scene lit by the sun and also the part of the scene that is in the shade. Unfortunately you camera cannot capture that full range of information. You will have to compromise and decide between one of:

1) Exposing your image for the sunlit portion of the scene and loose information detail in the shaded portion of your scene.

2) Exposing your image for the shaded portion of the scene and loose detail in the sunlit portion of the scene.

That is where HDR processing comes to the rescue. It allows merging multiple images that were captured at different exposure settings into a single photo covering a larger dynamic range that can look more like the scene you wanted to capture.

Note that many camera models are now being released with the ability to capture in-camera HDR images. Meaning that multiple exposures are taken when you take the picture and they are processed in-camera. However the technique that is explained here can be used with any camera that allows exposure adjustments because the image processing is done on a computer.

There are two main steps in making HDR photos: Capture and Post-processing.

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Category: Photo Techniques, Photos, Photoshop | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
naturephoto | September 6, 2010
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Smalltown rodeo photography

Smalltown rodeos are great for photography. Because they are smaller, you can get closer to the action more easily than at a larger rodeo. I went to a rodeo on a late August Sunday afternoon in St-Albert, a short drive outside Ottawa Ontario. This event was scheduled through the Rawhide Rodeo Company and was part of the St-Albert Curd Festival.

Cowgirl on the run

Cowgirl on the run

Although the shooting conditions looked less than ideal because it was a bit rainy.  The overcast sky actually provided good even lighting as opposed to the harsh/contrasty lighting conditions of a sunny day. Less light however means shooting at higher ISOs than on a sunny day. All photos were shot with a Canon 40D with a 100-300 5.6L lens. Most photos were shot at ISOs ranging between 400-800 in order to be able to shoot at acceptable shutter speeds for this slow lens. In order to help with stability, I used a monopod.  The monopod helps to get better panned shots as some of the included shots

In order to protect the camera and lens I made myself a protective cover using a large Ziploc bag and an elastic band. This worked well because the rain was quite light. As with any rain cover however, it works better when your lens is an internally focusing lens. In this case, the lens was not an internally focusing lens, so focusing caused the plastic bag to twist with focus which can prevent achieving the right focus…

One of the problems with shooting this type of event is getting a good backgroud. Using a fast shutter speed and freezing the action would mostly yield photos with a subject having very little definition with respect with the background.  The subject would blend in with the background.   In order to prevent having clear views of spectators as a background, I like to use a panning technique to get a relatively clear image with a blurred background.
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Category: Photo Techniques, Photos, Photoshop | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
naturephoto | March 19, 2010
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Topaz Adjust 4 at the Sugar Shack

I was out at a maple sugar farm last weekend and took a few pictures. Here are side by side comparisons before and after photos.
The photos were processed in Photoshop with the Topaz Adjust 4 plugin.
In both cases the Topaz Adjust filters were applied with Color blending options to fine tune and tone down the effects. Some curves adjustments were also used in processing the photos.

The Topaz Adjust filters will make for very saturated colors and they are often used in a final post-processing step for HDR images.

Factoid: It takes 40 liters of maple sap to make 1 liter of maple syrop!

Un-processed photo of maple sap collector bucket

Un-processed photo of maple sap collector bucket

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Category: Photo Techniques, Photos, Photoshop | Tags: , , , , , ,