PhotoWalkPro

If you have children over the age of 10 you’ve probably heard the exclamation “Oh Snap!” more than once.  It’s kind of like the kid version of “Holy Crap!” but in a good way.  As a parent, I have come to adopt my children’s slang terms if for no other reason than to be able to communicate on some base level.  Well yesterday evening I found myself playing with a newly installed version of Aperture 3 and I believe I heard myself saying “Oh Snap!”as I was checking out all the cool new features.

If you have been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that I am a long-time Adobe Lightroom user.  I gave Aperture a spin when it first came out but it just never really did it for me.  I’m not sure why, but I just felt that I could be more productive in Lightroom.  Then yesterday on the way home I was talking to a buddy about Lightroom and then he mentioned some new features in Aperture that were pretty slick.  I was intrigued so I downloaded the trial version when I got home and then imported some images so I could investigate further.

Now I can’t tell you that I am going to throw my copy of Lightroom in the recycle bin because it just isn’t true.  On the other hand, there are some features in Aperture that are just crazy-good and I am wondering what Adobe is waiting for.  Case in point, the Aperture books feature just downright rocks!  Of course Lightroom doesn’t even have a book feature but I ask the question, why not?  Apple’s book creation in Aperture is smooth as butter and completely customizable.  It’s as easy as selecting Book from the New drop-down menu and then selecting a style.  From there, you can go to one of your image collections called Projects and simply drag the images you want onto the newly created book icon.  By the way, this was my first time really using the software so please forgive me if there are other ways of doing this (which I am sure there are) but my point is that it was easy enough to do without even reading a help file.

After adding the files, I chose the page layouts from a variety of choices and then dragged images from the thumbnails at the bottom of the screen into the empty image placeholders.  I could resize the images by double-clicking them and then using the sizing slider and dragging the image around in the frame until it was positioned just the way I like.

By the way, you can even backscreen your pages.  I found this out by accident as I was dropping an image into a frame and missed.  I let go on the page instead of the frame and it automatically snapped my image into the background.  I then located the wash filter and I had a beautifully washed out backscreen for my page.  Just too cool.  You can also customize just about anything else on your pages as well.  You can resize the picture frames and drag them all around he page until you have it just the way you want it.  If your image doesn’t look right, you can double-click it to take it back into the adjustment portion of Aperture and when you’re done, just double-click it again and you are right back into the book building section.

Here’s another cool feature.  When I was done, I could have selected to send my book off to the printers but instead I turned it into a PDF document.  You can’t tell me that isn’t slick.  Can you imagine creating a wedding album and then sending a PDF proof off to the client for final approval before sending it to the printers.

I could go on and on about some of the very cool features in Aperture but I’m still learning my way around and frankly, that’s have the fun of it.  So if you are a Mac owner and you haven’t tried Aperture 3 yet, head over to Apple’s Aperture page, read up on the “What’s New” section (there’s over 200 new features, which is why I’m not going to even try and list them), and then download a free 30-day trial version and have some fun.

It’s amazing how a little processing can change the look of an image.  This is especially true when the image process is HDR in nature.  There are so many looks to HDR and it seems that most folks really like that hyper-realistic look that comes from pushing the sliders to their max.  If you aren’t sure what I’m talking about, check out this image from inside the St. Salvator’s Cathedral.  I shot a 3-shot series of images for this picture and then used Photomatix Pro to create the HDR and tone map for the final look.

Please click on the images for a larger view

As you can see, it has some extreme stuff going on but it does have great information in the shadows and highlights.  Unfortunately the colors are way too vivid and the mid-tone contrasts are way over the top.  Or perhaps I should say that they are way too over the top for me.  That’s the thing about HDR, some folks really prefer the way this image would look over the ones below.  For me though, it’s just completely unrealistic and doesn’t come close to representing what I saw.

To get things a little more on track, I ran the process again but this time I was less aggressive with the sliders.  It still has that classic HDR look to it but there are less halos, the colors aren’t nearly as bright, and the tonal contrasts are a little smoother.

Still though, when I sent this to a buddy, he kind of snapped me back to reality that this image was still not very “true to life”.  After giving it another look, I decided to process my image one more time, just to see if I could tone things down a bit more while still getting the benefit from the HDR process, which is better tonal values in the shadows as well as the highlights.  To do this, I ran the bracketed images through HDR Photostudio 2.  I find that this program has a much smoother look to it when creating photo-realistic HDR images.  As you can see from the result below, there is much less of a gritty look to this image and yet it still has great tonal values thoughout.

I guess the moral of the story is that when it comes to HDR processing, there is definitely more than one way to move those sliders and it’s all about where your personal preferences lay as to how much is too much.

I was going through some old images in Lightroom, just trying to purge some unwanted images that were kind of suckish, to quote my son, when I saw this shot.

Read the rest of this entry »

After getting back home I finally got a chance to run an image set through the new HDR PhotoStudio on my Mac.  I wrote a post the other day announcing the release of the new Mac version of this software.  I finally downloaded a copy while sitting in the airport in San Diego and installed it on my system.  I decided that for my first test I would process a group of images that I had just worked with a few days previously in Photomatix Pro.  I loaded the bracketed images and began working my way through the processing, which is very different from the workflow in Photomatix.  After working with the different controls for a while, I came out with a result that was quite different from most HDR images I had previously created.  The difference was that the version processed in HDR PhotoStudio was extremely photo-realistic, but with the expanded detail in the highlight and shadows that defines the very purpose of shooting HDR.  This is especially true in the shadow areas, which are full of detail without being overly lightened. Read the rest of this entry »

It was just a few short months ago that Nik Software announced the release of their latest plug-in, Viveza 2.  The original Viveza plug-in was a fantastic hit but Nik has taken the second generation over the top by adding some great new features, controls, and refinements to an already great image adjustment tool.  I got my copy today and I haven’t been able to stop playing with it.  I’m just going to post a few before and after pictures today but I will get a full review out to you next week with a run-down of all the new features and functionality.  I would like to tell you more now but I really want to get back to playing.

Be sure to click on the pictures to see a larger version.

The new Viveza 2 interface.

Before Viveza 2

After Viveza 2 adjustments

Before Viveza 2

After Viveza 2 adjustments

Before Viveza 2

After Viveza 2 adjustments

I found a fun little application this past weekend called TiltShift Generator from Art&Mobile.com that I thought I would share with you.  I’m not sure where I ran across it but as free applications go, this one is pretty slick.  First of all it is an Adobe Air application.  For those of you not familiar with AIR it is, according to Adobe, “a cross-operating system runtime that lets developers combine HTML, Ajax, Adobe Flash®, and Adobe Flex® technologies to deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) on the desktop.” That means that you can run AIR programs on your desktop no matter what operating system you are using.  It’s also the same technology that Adobe uses for its Photoshop.com online image editing program (formerly known as Photoshop Express).

To run the TiltShift Generator you will first need to download the Adobe AIR application for your particular operating system (Click here).  Next, just go to the Art&Mobile.com website to download the application or just click this link to download. Once downloaded, just double-click on the file to install.

Once the program is installed and running, you will find a pretty simple dialog box.  The first step is to open a file by clicking on the OPEN button and then selecting an image.  The program is made for mobile and web-based imagery so pictures that are larger than about 1600 pixels may not process properly.  Once the image is open, you need to determine what type of blur effect you want to use, Linear or Radial.

For this image, I selected Linear and then clicked on the image to set the center point.  Then I used the small grabber handle to determine the size and angle of the blur.  The strength was set by adjusting a slider on the left-hand panel along with the radius.  Once the blur was adjusted there were several other image adjustments that were made to enhance the effect such as Saturation, Contrast, Brightness, and Vignetting. When done, I simply set the JPEG quality and then saved the image.

Before TiltShift

After TiltShift

Here’s an example of how to use a radial blur pattern for a completely different look.

Applying a radial blur

Here’s a look at the file after using this effect for some selective focus.

After applying some radial blur

Now here’s one other cool thing about this program, it’s also available as an iPhone App.  Just follow this link to go to the iTunes Store and download it for only 99¢ (if the link does not work properly, simply open iTunes and then search for TiltShift in the App section).To get more information about TiltShift Generator and see some sample images, make sure you check out the Art&Mobile website.