tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50979408372116743862024-02-24T15:46:35.605-05:00Image NotebookA gallery of images and notes about their creationJ Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-71464008442808883912010-05-02T18:33:00.019-04:002010-05-02T20:24:47.521-04:00Richardson Oil Pump - Henry Ford Museum<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none } td {padding: 2px; margin: 5px;}</style><br /><a href=""><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_finished.jpg"/></a><br /><i>(Nikon D700, 50.0 mm, ISO 6400, Exposure 1/125 sec @f/2.0)</i><br /> <p>One of the advantages of living in Southeastern Michigan is the ability to visit some great museums. One of my favorites is the <a href="http://thehenryford.org">Henry Ford Museum</a> in Dearborn, Michigan. This museum houses a great collection of artifacts, mostly relating to manufacturing or machinery. One of my favorite full time exhibits is the part of the museum dedicated to power generation. Here you can see some wonderful examples of steam driven machines used to provide power to manufacturing facilities. One of the most impressive generators is one which used to be housed in Ford Motor Company's Highland Park manufacturing facility. This generator is truly huge. The shot you see above shows just one small component of this generator, an oil pump.</p><br /><p>The museum is not well lit, at least not from the perspective of getting a great picture. The lighting is quite subdued. On this trip to the museum I was using my newly acquired Nikon D700. One reason I purchased this camera was for its low light capabilities, and I must say so far it has not disappointed. If you look at the EXIF data for this image, you will see that it was shot at ISO 6400. Yet, in the unprocessed image you see below, the noise levels are fairly low and the sharpness remains fairly high. Even so, when I took the shot, my idea was that I would create a more abstract or painterly image rather than creating a realistic image. Black & white might look cool (and I may try that), but I had a thought of using Topaz Simplify like I've done in the past to create an image which contains both sharp and 'simplified' elements.</p><br /><p>As mentioned above, the starting point for the finished image is shown below, along with a snapshot of the layers used to produce the final image. The original image is relatively flat, although this isn't surprising in a raw image.</p><br /> <div class="nobr"><br /> <table><br /> <tr><br /> <td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_0.png" alt="" name="adjustmentLayer0"/></td><br /> <td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_0.jpg" alt="" name="layer0"/><br /> </td><br /> </tr><br /> </table><br /> </div><br /><p>The first adjust I did was to use <a href="http://topazlabs.com/adjust">Topaz Adjust</a> to bring out some details. There are several presets that I like to use at various times and this time I selected the 'Clarity' preset. Clarity enhances contrast and helps bring out small details. Sometimes I like to use 'Crisp' which is stronger. In many cases, I'll use the preset and then use the opacity slider to reduce the effect if I think it is too strong. In all of the images below, moving the mouse over the image will show you the 'before' version of the shot and when you move the mouse out, the image will return to the 'processed' version.</p><br /> <div class="nobr"><br /> <table><br /> <tr><br /> <td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_1.png" alt="" name="adjustmentLayer1"/></td><br /> <td><img onmouseover="layer1.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_0.jpg'; adjustmentLayer1.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_00.png'" onmouseout="layer1.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_1.jpg'; adjustmentLayer1.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_1.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_1.jpg" alt="" name="layer1"/><br /> <label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 20px;">(Mouse over and off to see change from previous adjustment)</label><br /> </td><br /> </tr><br /> </table><br /> </div><br /> <p>The next step was to take the image into <a href="http://topazlabs.com/simplify">Topaz Simplify</a> to create the painterly look. As with the Adjust product, the Simplify product has a set of presets which can be a good starting point for making creative changes to your image. In most cases I like to use the 'BuzSim' preset. This preset is similar to the Photoshop Cutout filter, but it isn't as drastic. It creates a more abstract image, but one which still has plenty of details. When I use the Simplify filter, I will often times use a layer mask to selectively reduce its effect. In this case, I wanted the details of the pump control panel to remain clear and I wanted the rest of the image to remain 'simplified'. You can see the mask used in the layer panel information given below.</p><br /> <div class="nobr"><br /> <table><br /> <tr><br /> <td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_2.png" alt="" name="adjustmentLayer2"/></td><br /> <td><img onmouseover="layer2.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_1.jpg'; adjustmentLayer2.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_1.png'" onmouseout="layer2.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_2.jpg'; adjustmentLayer2.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_2.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_2.jpg" alt="" name="layer2"/><br /> <label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 20px;">(Mouse over and off to see change from previous adjustment)</label><br /> </td><br /> </tr><br /> </table><br /> </div><br /> <p>For one reason or another, I wasn't able to get a nice straight-on shot of this pump. As a result, some of the elements are a bit too crooked for my taste. I corrected this problem by selecting the entire image and doing a Free Transform->Skew to straighten things up a bit. I prefer to use Skew over the Lens Correction feature just because it seems faster and easier.</p><br /> <div class="nobr"><br /> <table><br /> <tr><br /> <td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_3.png" alt="" name="adjustmentLayer3"/></td><br /> <td><img onmouseover="layer3.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_2.jpg'; adjustmentLayer3.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_2.png'" onmouseout="layer3.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_3.jpg'; adjustmentLayer3.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_3.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_3.jpg" alt="" name="layer3"/><br /> <label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 20px;">(Mouse over and off to see change from previous adjustment)</label><br /> </td><br /> </tr><br /> </table><br /> </div><br /> <p>At this point the image was substantially done, but I did want to add just a bit more contrast. I used a curves layer with a very subtle S curve. I darkened the low end just a bit and move the white point to the left and raised it to add some contrast in the mid to light areas.</p><br /> <div class="nobr"><br /> <table><br /> <tr><br /> <td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_4.png" alt="" name="adjustmentLayer4"/></td><br /> <td><img onmouseover="layer4.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_3.jpg'; adjustmentLayer4.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_3.png'" onmouseout="layer4.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_4.jpg'; adjustmentLayer4.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_4.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_4.jpg" alt="" name="layer4"/><br /> <label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 20px;">(Mouse over and off to see change from previous adjustment)</label><br /> </td><br /> </tr><br /> </table><br /> </div><br /> <p>Another minor tweek was to add just a bit more saturation to the entire image. Topaz Simplify will actually add a bit of color, but I wanted just a bit more. I bumped the saturation by +19 to get the final look.</p><br /> <div class="nobr"><br /> <table><br /> <tr><br /> <td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_5.png" alt="" name="adjustmentLayer5"/></td><br /> <td><img onmouseover="layer5.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_4.jpg'; adjustmentLayer5.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_4.png'" onmouseout="layer5.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_5.jpg'; adjustmentLayer5.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_5.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_5.jpg" alt="" name="layer5"/><br /> <label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 20px;">(Mouse over and off to see change from previous adjustment)</label><br /> </td><br /> </tr><br /> </table><br /> </div><br /> <p>The last thing I did was to apply an Unsharp Mask filter to sharpen the entire image.</p><br /> <div class="nobr"><br /> <table><br /> <tr><br /> <td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_6.png" alt="" name="adjustmentLayer6"/></td><br /> <td><img onmouseover="layer6.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_5.jpg'; adjustmentLayer6.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_5.png'" onmouseout="layer6.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_6.jpg'; adjustmentLayer6.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/adjustmentLayer_6.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/oilpump/oilpump_6.jpg" alt="" name="layer6"/><br /> <label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 20px;">(Mouse over and off to see change from previous adjustment)</label><br /> </td><br /> </tr><br /> </table><br /> </div><br /><p>If you found this tutorial useful, please consider visiting any (or all!) of my sponsors. Thanks!</p><br /><p>Comments and feedback welcome!</p><br /><p>Please visit my main web site at <a href="http://www.jameshowephotography.com">www.jameshowephotography.com</a>. I'm also on Twitter<br /><a href="http://twitter.com/JamesHowePhoto">@JamesHowePhoto</a><br /><p>Text and images Copyright © 2010 James W. Howe - All rights reserved.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-6091230088562238162009-12-28T21:05:00.086-05:002009-12-29T16:50:03.219-05:00Bennett Building - New York City<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none } td {padding: 2px; margin: 5px;}</style><br /><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennett_building_finished.jpg" alt="Bennett Building"/><br /><p>Since it is winter time, and I've been shooting less, I've taken the time to look over some images that I took in the past and passed over for one reason or another. The image above is from one of those 'passed over' images.</p><br /><p>This image shows the Bennett Building, located at Fulton and Nassau in New York City. I took this in the summer of 2008 when I was in New York on business. Whenever I'm in New York, I like to wander around the city and shoot architecture (primarily). In this case, I was walking back to my hotel in the South Seaport area from our office in the Financial district when I spotted this building. I really liked the details of this building, starting with the curved windows in the corner, to the ornate work around the windows. However, for one reason or another, I didn't really take the time to take some really good shots of the building. Instead, I ended up with this:</p><br /><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_raw.jpg" alt="Bennett Building - Raw"/><br /><p>There are many things wrong with this shot. I didn't have my ultra-wide lens, so I had to take this at an angle, resulting in a leaning building. The lighting isn't great either. I remember the day being very hot and humid and the combination of late afternoon light, caused the sky and the top left portion of the building to be washed out. Also, the angle of the sun caused much of the left side to be in shadow. The building has a fairly new paint job, and it looks really stunning, but this image doesn't really capture that. As a result of these issues, when I was processing the images from my trip, I overlooked this image.</p><br /><p>I've been doing more work on images requiring perspective correction, so when I was browsing images in Lightroom and saw this one, I decided to see what I could do with it. The first thing I did was to see how it would look if I corrected the perspective. For this, I used Free Transform and a combination of Skew and Scale. I first used Skew to straighten the lines. I grabbed the upper left and right corners and pulled them out to straighten the lines. Doing this caused the building to look short and stumpy. I then switched to the Scale tool to stretch the building so it looked normal once again. If you roll over the image below, you can see the difference between the original image and the 'corrected' layer'</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer1.png" alt="" name="layer1"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="bennett1.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_0.jpg';layer1.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer1.0.png'" onmouseout="bennett1.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_1.jpg';layer1.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer1.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_1.jpg" alt="" name="bennett1"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>The next thing I did was use my <a href="http://www.topazlabs.com/adjust">Topaz Adjust</a> filter to punch up the clarity. The key feature of this building is all the little detail work, and using the Clarity setting in Topaz Adjust improved the local contrast to bring out more of the features. It also makes the image look a little less hazy. Again, mousing on and off the image will show you the difference the clarity filter had on the image.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer2.png" alt="" name="layer2"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="bennett2.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_1.jpg';layer2.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer2.0.png'" onmouseout="bennett2.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_2.jpg';layer2.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer2.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_2.jpg" alt="" name="bennett2"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>Even after applying the clarity filter, I still wasn't happy with the contrast in the image. I added a curves layer with a gentle S shape, mostly increasing contrast in the midtones.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer3.png" alt="" name="layer3"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="bennett3.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_2.jpg';layer3.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer3.0.png'" onmouseout="bennett3.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_3.jpg';layer3.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer3.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_3.jpg" alt="" name="bennett3"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>The next thing I tackled was the lighting on the building. The combination of hot, humid weather, late light and shadow, created a bright, bluish area in the upper left side of the building. After some experimentation, I figured out the best way to deal with this was to convert the image to black and white. There really wasn't much color in the image to begin with, and black & white is a great way to show line and form so I think this was a good choice. I was able to get more color using some of the Lightroom development tools, but I like black & white for architecture. I used a Black & White adjustment layer, and primarily darkened the blues. I think this did a nice job, particularly with the windows.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer4.png" alt="" name="layer4"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="bennett4.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_3.jpg';layer4.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer4.0.png'" onmouseout="bennett4.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_4.jpg';layer4.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer4.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_4.jpg" alt="" name="bennett4"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>Looking at the image after the perspective correction, it appeared to me that there was some barrel distortion in the center of the shot. I decided to try my <a href="http://epaperpress.com/ptlens/">PT Lens</a> filter which applies lens specific corrections to an image. The filter recognized that I was using an Olympus Digital Zuiko 14-54 and automatically applied a correction based on its knowledge of this lens and focal length. As you can see, it did make a change right in the center of the image.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer5.png" alt="" name="layer5"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="bennett5.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_4.jpg';layer5.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer5.0.png'" onmouseout="bennett5.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_5.jpg';layer5.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer5.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_5.jpg" alt="" name="bennett5"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>At this point the image was starting to shape up, although I wasn't entirely happy with the perspective of the building. I think the combination of all the horizontal and vertical lines actually gave the impression that the top was closer to the lens than the bottom. I applied another free transform layer which slightly broadened the bottom of the image. The building now has a gentle inward angle from bottom to top.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer6.png" alt="" name="layer6"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="bennett6.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_5.jpg';layer6.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer6.0.png'" onmouseout="bennett6.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_6.jpg';layer6.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer6.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_6.jpg" alt="" name="bennett6"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>The next thing I worked on was the overall brightness of the image. It seemed a bit dark to me so I added another curves layer to brighten things up a bit. When I'm working on an image, I'll often use several curve layers at different points to adjust things that I don't like. It may not be optimal, but it's the way I work.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer7.png" alt="" name="layer7"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="bennett7.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_6.jpg';layer7.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer7.0.png'" onmouseout="bennett7.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_7.jpg';layer7.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer7.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_7.jpg" alt="" name="bennett7"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>The next thing I looked at was the sky. The hazy day left a bland and featureless sky. I first played with making the sky black like I did in this photo of the <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhoweaa/4210544085/">Equitable Building</a>. That looked ok, but I wasn't completely happy. I then tried a mid-gray color which was also somewhat ok. Finally I decided to do something that I rarely do, and that is to drop in a sky from another image. I happened to have a shot with some clouds that was taken later in the day, so I decided to drop it in to see how it looked. I decided that I liked having a bit of texture up in the sky, so I kept it. To add the sky, I simply opened the sky image and then dragged it over to this image. I then added a mask to put the building in front of it. I could have probably extracted the building and placed it over the sky, but I had already been playing with a mask, so I used that. I should probably consider investing in a tool to simplify image extraction.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer8.png" alt="Layer 8" name="layer8"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="bennett8.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_7.jpg';layer8.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer9.0.png'" onmouseout="bennett8.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_9.jpg';layer8.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer8.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_9.jpg" alt="" name="bennett8"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>Since the sky had been dropped in after I had already applied a black and white adjustment layer, it was obvious that I needed to make the sky itself black & white. For this layer, I darkened the blue to make the sky darker, but not black.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer10.png" alt="" name="layer10"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="bennett10.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_9.jpg';layer10.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer10.0.png'" onmouseout="bennett10.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_10.jpg';layer10.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer10.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_10.jpg" alt="" name="bennett10"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>Once again I addressed the lighting issue. I felt the image was too dark, particularly in the lower left. This was the part of the image that had been in shadow so I thought I would try to lighten it up. I used a curves layer and increased the brightness and then used a mask so that the curve would primarily affect the lower right portion of the building.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer11.png" alt="" name="layer11"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="bennett11.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_10.jpg';layer11.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer11.0.png'" onmouseout="bennett11.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_11.jpg';layer11.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer11.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_11.jpg" alt="" name="bennett11"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>My next step was to add a bit of toning to the image. Many times I will use some prebuilt curves to do things like a platinum or selenium tone, but for this image I decided to do something different. I made a copy of the image and flattened all the layers. I then converted it to grayscale and the to Duotone. I applied a preset called 'Warm gray 8 bl 1'. I then copied the dutone image back into my main document.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer12.png" alt="" name="layer12"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="bennett12.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_11.jpg';layer12.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer12.0.png'" onmouseout="bennett12.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_12.jpg';layer12.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer12.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_12.jpg" alt="" name="bennett12"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>Since the image had such drastic perspective correction done to it, the details, particularly in the top of the building, were not that great. I decided to give the image a more traditional feeling by adding some simulated film grain. I used a technique that I had seen done in a video by <a href="http://www.photoshopdiva.com/">Katrin Eismann</a> The grain was created using noise layers applied to the Red, Green and Blue channels separately. First the blue channel had monochromatic gaussian noise added at 8% and then a gaussian blur of .3 pixels was added. The green channel was done the same way. Finally, the red channel had 4% noise and a .3 pixel blur. It is hard to see the effect in these small blog images, unfortunately.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer13.png" alt="" name="layer13"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="bennett13.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_12.jpg';layer13.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer13.0.png'" onmouseout="bennett13.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_13.jpg';layer13.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer13.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_13.jpg" alt="" name="bennett13"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>The final bit of work before sharpening was to add just a bit more contrast. In this case, all I did was add a new curves layer and moved the black point in just a bit, and moved the white point in about the same amount.<br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer14.png" alt="" name="layer14"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="bennett14.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_13.jpg';layer14.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer14.0.png'" onmouseout="bennett14.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_14.jpg';layer14.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/layer14.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/bennett/bennettbuilding_14.jpg" alt="" name="bennett14"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>That's about it. If you've made it this far I hope the information was helpful. Mostly when I'm working with an image I will try a variety of things just to see what looks good to my eye. Some things are obvious fixes, others are just a matter of what I think looks right. I hope to get back to New York sometime in the future and get a better base image of this building. I like the way this image came out, but I would probably try a couple different things to really capture the character of this building.</p><br /><p>If you found this tutorial useful, please consider visiting any (or all!) of my sponsors. Thanks!</p><br /><p>Comments and feedback welcome!</p><br /><p>Text and images Copyright © 2008-2009 James W. Howe - All rights reserved.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-29789316759386107722009-10-10T16:45:00.029-04:002009-10-11T11:03:22.358-04:00'39 Delahaye - Before and After Tutorial<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style><br /><a href="http://www.imagekind.com/showartwork.aspx?IMID=e9af12a6-1365-402e-afb0-d0b759763cf4"><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeFinished.jpg" alt="1939 Delahaye 165 Cabriolet"/></a><br /><p>The picture above shows a 1939 Delahaye 165 Cabriolet automobile which was on display at the 2009 <a href="http://www.meadowbrookconcours.org/">Meadowbrook Hall Concours d'Elegance</a> in Rochester Hills, Michigan. This car won the Best in Show - Foreign award at that show, an award I feel was well deserved.</p><p>I love taking pictures of classic automobiles, unfortunately I'm mostly limited to taking pictures at shows, and shows aren't the best place to get great images. The lighting is dependent on the weather, you have crowds to deal with, and the cars are generally placed close together which makes it difficult to get a great shot. I was lucky on this shot. The car next to this one was being driven as part of a 'pass in review' which gave me more room to get this shot. There were still issues with people and the background, but I managed to find a way to eliminate or at least reduce their impact on the image.</p><p>The image below shows what the picture looked like out of the camera. There were distracting elements, such as the information placard in the front of the car, the cars behind the Delahaye, and of course the people.</p><br /><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayePhoto-raw.jpg" alt="1939 Delahaye - raw image"/><br /><br/><br /><p>Here are the steps I took to convert the raw image to the finished image you see at the top. If you mouse over the images below, you should see the effect that step had on the image.</p><br /><h3>Step 1 - Improve Contrast</h3><br /><p>Raw images almost always need some sort of contrast/white balance correction and this image is no exception. The color balance wasn't too bad, but the image was sort of flat. I used a Curves layer to add a bit of an 'S' contrast curve, pushing the image just a bit darker. I liked the added contrast, but later on I worked to brighten the image up a bit. I also decided that there was too much grass in front of the car, so I cropped the image.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/adjust1.png" alt=""/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="delahaye1.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust0.jpg'" onmouseout="delahaye1.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust1.jpg'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust1.jpg" alt="" name="delahaye1"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><h3>Step 2 - Remove Distractions</h3><br /><p>In the process of cloning out the distractions I used a couple different layers. I used a combination of the Clone Stamp tool along with the Patch tool to eliminate the information placard, some crud in the grass in front of the car and some dark elements along the left hand side. On one of the cloning layers I used a layer mask to eliminate some bleed-over which occurred on the hood of the car. I think I used the patch tool to get the grass the way I wanted, but that affected the hood.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/adjust2.png" alt=""/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="delahaye2.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust1.jpg'" onmouseout="delahaye2.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust2.jpg'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust2.jpg" alt="" name="delahaye2"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><h3>Step 3 - Brighten Image</h3><br /><p>The next step I took was to brighten the overall image. I used the <a href="http://www.topazlabs.com/adjust">Topaz Adjust</a> filter to add crispness and adjust the brightness of the image.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/adjust3.png" alt=""/></td><br /><td style="position: relative"><img onmouseover="delahaye3.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust2.jpg'" onmouseout="delahaye3.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust3.jpg'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust3.jpg" alt="" name="delahaye3"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><h3>Step 4 - Simplify Surroundings</h3><br /><p>This next step made the biggest change in the image, at least to my mind. There were too many people in the shot to do any sort of cloning, but I felt that unless I did something the background would be a distraction competing with the car. I've starting using the <a href="http://www.topazlabs.com/simplify">Topaz Simplify</a> filter to 'simplify' distracting elements. I find the filter does really nice things with grass, trees and even people. If used on a whole image, it can give the appearance of a painting, but I didn't want a painting.</p><p>When I use the filter, I generally use the 'BuzSim' preset and make changes from the defaults used by that preset. Most of the time I just leave the settings at their default. Once the filter has been applied, I then create a layer mask and mask out the parts of the image that I don't want 'simplified'. Sometimes I'll also reduce the overall opacity of the filter to let some of the underlying elements come through. In the case of this image, I wanted the car to be sharp and everything else I wanted to be 'simplified'.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/adjust4.png" alt=""/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="delahaye4.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust3.jpg'" onmouseout="delahaye4.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust4.jpg'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust4.jpg" alt="" name="delahaye4"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><h3>Step 5 - Adjust Saturation</h3><br /><p>At this point I was mostly happy with the way the image looked. The only thing that bothered me a bit was the color of the car, I felt that it was just a little to red. I used the HSL tool to desaturate the reds and yellows a bit and to my eye it looks better.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/adjust6.png" alt=""/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="delahaye5.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust4.jpg'" onmouseout="delahaye5.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust5.jpg'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/delahaye/delahayeAdjust5.jpg" alt="" name="delahaye5"/><br /><label style="font-size: 12px; margin-left: 60px;">(Mouse over and off to see before/after effect)</label></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>The steps I took to get the end result may not have been optimal but I like the end result. What do you think?</p><br /><p>Comments and feedback welcome.</p><br /><p>Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe - All rights reserved</p><br /><p>Please visit my <a href="http://jameshowephotography.imagekind.com/Automobile-Details">Automobile Details</a> gallery at ImageKind to see this, and other automotive images.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-77579252942022805122009-06-14T14:25:00.048-04:002009-06-15T07:35:57.053-04:00Angelo's Restaurant - Before and After Tutorial<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhoweaa/3625938923/"><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosRestaurant.jpg" alt="Angelo's Restaurant - Ann Arbor, Michigan"/></a><br /><p>The company I work for recently move to a new office. We needed to come up with names for our conference rooms and after much discussion we decided on names of restaurants which were unique to our town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. My assignment was to get some photographs of each of the places which we would get framed to be hung in each of the conference rooms.</p><p>One of the names we chose was <i><a href="http://www.angelosa2.com/home.htm">Angelo's</a></i>, a terrific local restaurant which is only open for breakfast and lunch. I had tried to get some pictures before, but it is a difficult place to photograph. It faces north and is next to the University of Michigan Medical campus which has some large buildings. As a result, the building sits in shade most of the day. In order to get a shot of it in sunshine, you have to shoot it between 7am and 8am in the summer. I went out this weekend just to get some trial shots which would help me figure out how I wanted to shoot it. The day itself was cloudy, but bright. This prevented the building from being in shadow, but resulted in flat images. I took several shots from different angles and finally decided on a shot taken at a slight angle to the front, from across the street. You can see from the original, raw camera image, the picture is nothing special:</p><br /><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosAsShot.jpg" alt="Angelo's Restaurant - raw image"/><br /><p>As I looked at the image, I decided to see what I could do to make the image more along the lines of what I would ultimately like to take. The main things that I originally wanted to correct were the flat look and to eliminate distracting elements such as the light post, one way sign, etc. My ultimate goal with this image was to just have fun and see what I could end up with.</p><br /><h3>Step 1 - Add some punch to the image</h3><br /><p>The first thing I did after getting the image into Photoshop was to duplicate the background layer. I then used the Topaz Labs <a href="http://www.topazlabs.com/adjust">Adjust</a> filter to bring out some color and character. I had recently read a blog post by <a href="http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2009/archives/4950">Scott Kelby</a> on Topaz Adjust and how he used it to create an effect similar to what you would get with the Lucis Pro plug-in filter. I decided to try a similar technique. I open Topaz Adjust and selected the 'Psychedelic' preset and saved the image. I immediately did a Fade of the effect to about 60%. You can see the effect below: (in all the image below, if you move the mouse over the image, you will see the <b>before</b> image and when you move the mouse back out you see the result with the effect/edit applied)<br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/AdjustLayer.png" alt="Topaz Adjust Layer"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="angelos1.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosBeforeAdjust.png'" onmouseout="angelos1.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosAfterAdjust.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosAfterAdjust.png" alt="Angelos after Topaz Adjust filter applied" name="angelos1"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><h3>Step 2 - Clone out offending items</h3><br /><p>When I looked at the original image, I didn't like the fact that there was a light post and a one-way street sign right in the middle of my shot. I had thought I might crop out the left side of the shot to eliminate the one-way sign, but I really wanted the whole building. I spent quite a bit of time removing the street sign, the lamp post as well as the telephone pole and wires, parts of a chain link fence on the right side and a bit of a car which was in the image frame.</p><p>Some of the cloning was simple, particularly the parts in the sky. The parts along the building were more complicated because I had to deal with brick and block patterns. I knew that I was going to be applying a 'simplify' filter later, so I wasn't concerned with perfection, but I wanted to have reasonable lines and shapes, without obvious repeating elements. Another tricky element with the clone had to do with the picture frames inside of the restaurant. The light pole covered up half of a picture. Fortunately there was another picture to the left and I was able to take frame elements from it to create the rest of the frame for the right hand picture.</p><p>I don't claim that the cloning is perfect, but I'm pretty happy with it. The one thing that surprised me is that I did most of it using the touch pad on my MacBook Pro. I found that I had greater control than with my pen. It was easier for me to position the clone point precisely. With the pen, I found that when I touched the pen to the tablet I might not get the exact position I wanted. Probably just need more practice.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/CloneLayer.png" alt="Clone Layer"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="angelos2.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosAfterAdjust.png'" onmouseout="angelos2.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosAfterClone.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosAfterClone.png" alt="Angelos after cloning to remove posts and signs" name="angelos2"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><h3>Step 3 - Simplify the image</h3><br /><p>All of the other images we are using in our new office building are some combination of HDR with the Topaz Simplify filter. I've been experimenting with the Simplify filter to create more abstract shapes out of elements in the background and to create an image which has a 'painterly' quality to it. For this image, I applied the filter and then masked out much of it on the main building. I wanted the building to be mostly sharp, but not quite.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/SimplifyLayer.png" alt="Simplify Layer"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="angelos3.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosAfterClone.png'" onmouseout="angelos3.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosAfterSimplify.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosAfterSimplify.png" alt="Angelos after applying Topaz Simplify filter" name="angelos3"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><h3>Step 4 - Make local color and contrast adjustments</h3><br /><p>These next few changes were done to change some of the tonalities in the image The first step was to eliminate the purplish cast to the road. This color was introduced by the Topaz Adjust filter. I used a Hue Saturation layer to reduce the saturation and then used a layer mask to selectively apply it to the street.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/layer4.png" alt="Street Color Adjust Layer"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="angelos4.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosAfterSimplify.png'" onmouseout="angelos4.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer4.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer4.png" alt="Angelos after adjusting street color" name="angelos4"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>The next adjustment was to add a bit more contrast to the entire image.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/layer5.png" alt="Contrast Adjustment"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="angelos5.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer4.png'" onmouseout="angelos5.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer5.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer5.png" alt="Increase Contrast" name="angelos5"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>Finally, I thought there was too much blue in the windows and some of the metal parts (like the chimney). I used another Hue Saturation layer to selectively reduce the blues in the image. If you mouse over the image below you will see where the blue was removed.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/layer6.png" alt="Remove excessive blue"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="angelos6.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer5.png'" onmouseout="angelos6.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer6.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer6.png" alt="Remove excessive blue" name="angelos6"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><h3>Step 5 - Correct perspective distortion</h3><br /><p>I find myself getting pickier about having tilting buildings in my images, and since I'm not using a view camera which offers the ability to correct for distortions at capture time, I rely on some post-processing to correct such things. I created a new layer and used the Free Transform tool to adjust the image on the left and right side. I selected Skew and pulled the top left and right corners out until I got straighter lines. I turned on the guides to help me out. <i>(as I look at it now I think I could do a better job, have to see)</i></p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/layer7.png" alt="Perspective correction"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="angelos7.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer6.png'" onmouseout="angelos7.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer7.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer7.png" alt="Perspective correction" name="angelos7"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><h3>Step 6 - Additional color corrections</h3><br /><p>I still wasn't happy with the look of the street in front of the building, so I decided to apply a localized curves adjustment layer to darken it. I started with the Curves dialog and pulled on the curve until I liked the look of the street. I then applied a mask to have the effect limited to the street.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/layer8.png" alt="Darken Street"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="angelos8.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer7.png'" onmouseout="angelos8.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer8.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer8.png" alt="Darken Street" name="angelos8"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>At this point I felt that the bright sky was a distraction, so I used a curves layer to make it a bit grayer. I didn't like it that much better which led me to the change in the next step.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/layer9.png" alt="Darken Sky"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="angelos9.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer8.png'" onmouseout="angelos9.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer9.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer9.png" alt="Darken Sky" name="angelos9"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><h3>Step 7 - Replace sky</h3><br /><p>I try to stay away from adding elements to an image which weren't in the original shot. However I really didn't like the look of the sky and I was really just trying to create a version of this image which I would have liked to have taken (and hope to get in the future) So, I decided, what the heck let's replace the sky. I happened to have a landscape shot that I had taken which was primarily ground and sky. I dropped the sky image into the image, resized it a bit to fit my image and then proceeded to mask out the parts that covered the building.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/layer10.png" alt="Replace Sky"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="angelos10.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer9.png'" onmouseout="angelos10.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer10.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer10.png" alt="Replace Sky" name="angelos10"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>Here is the original source image for the sky:</p><br /><img alt="Sky source" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer10sky.png"/><br /><p>Since the image had already been run through the Simplify filter, I decided that I should run the sky through as well. I tried to go back and add the sky to the image before the Simplify had been applied, but I figured it was too much work. If I had known that I was going to replace the sky, I would have done it earlier in the process, but oh well. The simplify doesn't have much effect on the sky, particularly in the small size displayed on this blog, but in the larger finished image it does make a difference.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/layer11.png" alt="Simplify Sky"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="angelos11.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer10.png'" onmouseout="angelos11.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer11.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer11.png" alt="Simplify Sky" name="angelos11"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><h3>Step 8 - Minor tweaks and sharpen</h3><br /><p>At this point I was just going to sharpen the image, but then I noticed that the 'Open' sign just didn't stand out enough. I zoomed in to the 'Open' sign, selected my brush tool, picked a color from the sign itself and then brightened the color. I painted over the lettering to make it just a bit brighter.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/layer12.png" alt="Brighten 'Open' sign and Sharpen"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="angelos12.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer12before.png'" onmouseout="angelos12.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer12.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/angelos/angelosLayer12.png" alt="Brighten 'Open' sign and Sharpen" name="angelos12"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>That's it. This was several hours of work for an image which isn't overly spectactular, but it was fun to work on. I'm hoping to get over to Angelo's some morning early enough to capture the sun on the building and hopefully with some clouds in the sky. It would be nice if the umbrellas were open as well. I would still clone out the post and sign, but hopefully the raw image would require less playing around with. Anyway, it was fun to work on and hopefully it gives you some ideas on things you can try with your own images.</p><br /><p>Comments and feedback welcome.</p><br /><p>Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe - All rights reserved</p><br /><p>Please visit my <a href="http://jameshowephotography.imagekind.com/UniversityOfMichigan">University of Michigan</a> gallery at ImageKind to see other shots from Ann Arbor, Michigan.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-85542649340110471962009-05-17T15:55:00.028-04:002009-05-17T17:00:37.650-04:00Stephen Ross School of Business - Before and After Tutorial<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style><br /><a href="http://www.imagekind.com/showartwork.aspx?IMID=6e23955a-9407-40ac-af61-f34520f35e3c"><img alt="Stephen Ross School of Business Building" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/rossBusinessSchool/rossSchoolOfBusiness.jpg"/></a><br /><p>This is a shot taken of the main entrance to the <a href="http://www.bus.umich.edu/">Stephen Ross School of Business</a> building at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I took this shot on a beautiful sunny spring day, with the mid-afternoon sun shining on the west side of the building. I find this building very interesting. It has a variety of interesting lines, colors and textures from the various materials used in the construction.</p><p>For this shot I used my 7-14mm wide angle lens. My camera is an Olympus E-3 which has a 4/3 sensor, so the cropping factor is 2x the focal length. This picture was shot at 7mm (14mm effective focal length) using ISO 100 and an exposure of 1/200 sec @ f/8.0. This lens is pretty good with respect to distortion, but you need to keep the sensor plane parallel to whatever you are shooting or you can rapidly get some drastic perspective distortion. I did my best to keep parallel to the building, but the image still ended up having some distortion.</p><br /><img alt="Stephen Ross School of Business Building - Unprocessed Image" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/rossBusinessSchool/rossBuildingUnprocessed.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 10px"/><br /><p>The image above is an unprocessed version of the final image. I use RAW capture, which always requires some post processing, and you can see in this shot that the image is rather flat. My standard processing either involves doing some work in Lightroom to enhance contrast, or I do the same thing in Photoshop. This time I decided to go straight into Photoshop CS4 to do my work. My main objectives with this image were to improve the contrast and fix the distortion. As I worked with the image, some additional ideas came to me.</p><br /><p><b>Note:</b> In the images below, if you move the mouse over the image, you will see the 'before' version of that development stage and when you mouse out the image will revert to its processed state.</p><br /><p>The first thing I wanted to do was correct the perspective distortion. I really prefer architectural shots to have parallel lines if at all possible (unless used for dramatic effect). </p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/rossBusinessSchool/perspectiveCorrectionLayer.png" alt="Perspective Correction Layer"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="layer1.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/rossBusinessSchool/beforePerspectiveCorrection.png'" onmouseout="layer1.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/rossBusinessSchool/perspectiveCorrection.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/rossBusinessSchool/perspectiveCorrection.png" alt="Image after Perspective Correction" name="layer1"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>In order to fix the perspective distortion I used the Free Transform tool of Photoshop CS4. From here I selected the Skew option. In the image below, you can see how I corrected the image. I started by putting in some vertical guide lines to help me gauge my progress. I then took the upper right corner and pulled it right until the lines on the right side became vertical. I repeated the process on the left. There was still some minor skewing, so I took the upper middle control and moved it just a bit to the right to straighten out the middle.</p><br /><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/rossBusinessSchool/perspectiveCorrectionEdit.png" alt="Perspective Correction Edit"/><br /><p>The next step was to add some punch to the image. I could have just used a curves layer to add some additional contrast, and possibly a Hue/Saturation layer to add a bit more color, but I decided to use the <a href="http://www.topazlabs.com/adjust">Topaz Adjust</a> filter to see what interesting look I could come up with. Topaz Adjust can create all sorts of interesting effects from simple exposure adjustments to very gritty almost HDR looking images. I wanted something with a bit more punch, but still realistic. I started with one of the standard presets and then adjusted some of the controls to refine the image. After saving I decided that the effect on the walkway was too severe so I used a layer mask to reduce the effect. I also used the opacity slider to reduce the overall effect on the entire layer.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/rossBusinessSchool/colorAdjustLayer.png" alt="Color Adjustment Layer"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="layer2.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/rossBusinessSchool/perspectiveCorrection.png'" onmouseout="layer2.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/rossBusinessSchool/afterColorAdjustment.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/rossBusinessSchool/afterColorAdjustment.png" alt="Image after Color Adjustment" name="layer2"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>At this point I was ready to stop but then I decided to go ahead and play with the sky. I really like architectural images with some contrast, particularly against the sky. I decided that a black sky might go well with this shot. Fortunately the roof lines of this building are simple and straight. I used the pen tool to draw along the roof lines and created a selection once I completed the path. I created a new layer and filled in the selection with black. I ultimately added a second layer where I filled in a few spots that I had missed. I probably could have used the Select -> Color Range... tool or one of the smart selection tools as well, but I decided to use the pen tool instead.</p><br /><p>The final steps in the process were to run a noise reduction tool (there wasn't much to begin with) and do some sharpening. The final image is what you see at the top. I had played around with a black and white version as well, but I didn't like it as much as the color version in this case.</p><br /><p>All processing done with Adobe Photoshop CS4.</p><br /><p>This <a href="http://www.imagekind.com/showartwork.aspx?IMID=6e23955a-9407-40ac-af61-f34520f35e3c">image</a> is for sale in my <a href="http://jameshowephotography.imagekind.com/architecture">Architecture</a> gallery on ImageKind.</p><br /><p>Comments and feedback welcome.</p><br /><p>Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe - All rights reserved.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-45791717935092833172009-05-02T10:12:00.064-04:002009-05-02T16:28:21.438-04:00Ann Arbor Graffiti Alley - A Before and After Photoshop Tutorial<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style><br /><a href="http://www.imagekind.com/showartwork.aspx?IMID=df00c3cc-64fe-4ceb-b4ed-20dd388a557a"><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/annArborGraffitiAlley.jpg" alt="Graffiti Alley - Ann Arbor, Michigan"/></a><br /><p>I originally posted this image to <a href="http://images.jameshowephotography.com">images.jameshowephotography.com</a> (my photo gallery blog) a few days ago, and at the time, I thought that it would make for a good 'before/after' tutorial for this blog.</p><br /><p>I took this shot in an alleyway in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The alley runs between Liberty and Washington streets and is situated between some old buildings and a newer building/parking structure (seen here in <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=E+Liberty+St,+Ann+Arbor,+Washtenaw,+Michigan+48104&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=46.409192,73.212891&ie=UTF8&cd=3&geocode=FRgihQId4icC-w&split=0&ll=42.279381,-83.742481&spn=0.005326,0.008937&z=17&layer=c&cbll=42.279375,-83.742371&panoid=7veyDUMoohhFu-LnKC4r6g&cbp=12,7.610729046562033,,0,2.0828331332533008">Google Maps</a>). The alley originally had a mural painted on it, but some time ago at least part of the mural was painted over with white paint, and new graffiti sprouted. A search on Flickr for 'ann arbor graffiti alley' yields a large collection of images of this area. There are actually two alleys, one is sort of a branch off of the other. The shot above was taken of the 'branch' alley. This alley was meant to service the buildings, whereas the main alley functions more as a path from the parking garage on Washington Street to the Liberty Street area of Ann Arbor.</p><br /><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/annArborGraffitiAlleyAsShot.jpg" alt="Graffiti Alley - Unprocessed Image"/><br /><p>The picture above shows what I started with. The colors were rather plain and flat. Since this was a RAW image, it isn't surprising that it would need some work to make the image look more like what I saw when I took it, so my original goal with this image was to simply bring out the color a bit more. However, as I worked on the image, I decided I wanted a slightly more intense and grungy look that was more in keeping with the subject matter. As you'll see below, it didn't take a great deal of work to get to the finished image, and I didn't really do anything drastic, but I think the end result produces an image which has a lot more visual impact.</p><br /><p><b>Note:</b> In the images below, if you move the mouse over the image, you will see the 'before' version of that development stage.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/lightroomAdjustments.png" alt="Initial Lightroom Adjustments"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="lr.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/alleyAsShotSmall.png'" onmouseout="lr.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/afterLightroomAdjustments.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/afterLightroomAdjustments.png" alt="Graffiti Alley After Lightroom Adjustments" name="lr"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>The first thing I did was to import my image into Adobe Lightroom. Inside of Lightroom I played around with various adjustments to convert the RAW image into something more in line with what I envisioned. I actually created a couple different versions using the Virtual Copy capability. The other version had more of a brighter HDR look to it, but it wasn't quite what I was going for. What you see above are the operations I did on the original RAW image to initially develop it. If you compare the altered image to the RAW image, you should notice that it is darker, has more contrast and has a bit of a vignette to it.</p><br /><p>At this point I liked the result, but I still wanted a bit more 'pop' so I decided to take the image into Photoshop for some additional work. I probably could have done almost everything in Lightroom, but I'm more comfortable with using Photoshop at this point for certain changes.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td style="vertical-align: top"><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/curvesAdjustmentLayer.png" alt="Curves Adjustment Layer"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="contrast.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/afterLightroomAdjustments.png'" onmouseout="contrast.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/afterContrastAdjustment.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/afterContrastAdjustment.png" alt="Graffiti Alley After Curves Adjustments" name="contrast"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>The first adjustment was to add a Curves layer to give the image a bit more contrast. As you can see from the curve, I shifted the white point to the left and added a bit of an 'S' shape to the curve to increase contrast.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td style="vertical-align: top"><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/clarityAdjustmentLayer.png" alt="Clarity Adjustment Layer"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="clarity.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/afterContrastAdjustment.png'" onmouseout="clarity.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/afterClarityAdjustment.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/afterClarityAdjustment.png" alt="Graffiti Alley After Clarity Adjustments" name="clarity"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>The next adjustment was to simulate the 'clarity' capability of Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw. For this layer, I converted the layer to a Smart Object so I could make edits later if I wanted, and the applied an Unsharp Mask filter with a small amount percentage and a very large radius. Clarity simply adds a bit more local contrast.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td style="vertical-align: top"><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/distortionCorrectionLayer.png" alt="Distortion Correction Layer"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseover="distort.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/afterClarityAdjustment.png'" onmouseout="distort.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/afterDistortionCorrection.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/afterDistortionCorrection.png" alt="Graffiti Alley After Distortion Correction Adjustments" name="distort"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>Looking at the image, I noticed that there was a bit of distortion created by the angle at which I took the shot. I didn't like the fact that the window on the right wasn't parallel to the edge of the frame, so I used the Free Transform/Skew tool to straighten things out a little bit.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td style="vertical-align: top"><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/dodgeBurnLayer.png" alt="Distortion Correction Layer"/></td><br /><td><img onmouseout="db.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/afterDodgeBurn.png'" onmouseover="db.src='http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/afterDistortionCorrection.png'" src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/graffitiAlley/afterDodgeBurn.png" name="db" alt="Graffiti Alley After Dodge and Burn Adjustments"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>The image was almost done, but I felt that the bottom left and upper right corners were too bright and distracted from the main subject area. I decided to use the Burn tool to darken these areas. To accomplish this, I first created a new layer which contained all the information from the layers below. The Burn tool is destructive and I wanted to be able to have some flexibility to simply remove this layer if I didn't like it. Normally I would use a curves adjustment layer, which is non-destructive, and then paint on a mask to control the area and amount of the change, but for some reason I decided to go with the Dodge/Burn tool. I used a relatively large brush at a lower opacity and simply painted the areas with the burn tool to darken the two corners. I finished up with another unsharp mask layer using a low radius and moderate amount to get the finished image.</p><br /><p>The steps I took to go from start to finish may not be the most optimal. I tend to start with the image, work with it a bit in Lightroom to get something I like and then finish in Photoshop. For this image, most of what I wanted to do could probably have been accomplished in Lightroom alone using some of the newer tools like the adjustment brush and gradient filter. In Photoshop, I simply experiment with curves and other adjustment layers until I get the look I like. As <a href="http://www.bertmonroy.com/">Bert Monroy</a> is fond of saying, you just need to "play". That's the nice thing about the digital darkroom, you can play with your image, and as long as you don't overwrite your source 'negative' file, you can develop and redevelop your image many times to suit your mood. Ansel Adams once referred to the negative as the score to a piece of music and the finished print as the 'performance'. I think the same holds true in the digital world.</p><br /><p>All processing done with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS4.</p><br /><p>This <a href="http://www.imagekind.com/showartwork.aspx?IMID=df00c3cc-64fe-4ceb-b4ed-20dd388a557a">image</a> is for sale in my <a href="http://jameshowephotography.imagekind.com/color">Color</a> gallery on ImageKind.</p><br /><p>Comments and feedback welcome.</p><br /><p>Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe - All rights reserved.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-62513100679300615392009-04-19T11:31:00.065-04:002009-04-20T19:40:44.472-04:00University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA)<style type="text/css">.nobr br { display: none }</style><br /><a href="http://www.imagekind.com/showartwork.aspx?IMID=8f39a7ef-23c9-41aa-92e1-dac39328e942"><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/finished.jpg"></a><br /><i>(Olympus E-3, 7-14mm at 7mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/125 sec @ f/11)</i><br /><p>This image shows the back side of the new wing of the <a href="http://www.umma.umich.edu">Museum of Art</a> on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The architecture of the new wing is quite stark, with lots of clean, flat surfaces. It's quite a contrast to the original museum (to which it is attached), since the original museum was done in the Beaux Arts style (see <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhoweaa/3217104470/">here</a>). The clean lines of the new structure offer some interesting photographic opportunities.</p><br /><p>I took this shot on a sunny day in late morning. The sun was to my left and created a very high contrast situation which was difficult to capture. I tried to expose the image so that the bright side of the building wouldn't lose detail, while at the same time keeping detail on the shadow side. I was surprised that I was able to capture the entire dynamic range without any clipping. I used my Zuiko 7-14mm lens at 7mm. I backed away from the building to a point where I could capture the entire side while at the same time keeping the camera as parallel to the face of the building as possible. This lens is reasonably distortion free, but as with any ultra-wide angle lens, if you tip the lens you will start to exaggerate the perspective. Keeping the sensor plane parallel with the building minimizes that distortion. My goal was to try to take a relatively distortion free image and then crop out parts of the image that I didn't want. This approach is similar to what would happen if I had a true tilt-shift lens, but I don't have one of those, unfortunately.</p><br /><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/rawshot.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 10px"><br /><p>The image above shows the original, unprocessed image. When I took the shot, I wanted to make sure I had some blue sky. I was thinking that I would probably want to convert the image to black and white and having the blue sky meant that I could easily lighten or darken the sky by adjusting the blue slider in Photoshop's black & white conversion tool.</p><p>When I started working on the image, I initially planned on keeping most of the sidewalk at the bottom of the image. I liked how the concrete led up to the building. However, I didn't like the manhole cover and the vent. I briefly thought about cloning them out, but decided against it. Instead, I started playing with different crops. I initially went for more of a square crop to eliminate the two manhole covers (bottom and lower right), but I still had the vent. I then cropped a bit higher to eliminate the vent. I also brought the crop in from the side, trying to keep the big sculpture (upper right) in the frame. These two crops are shown below:</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table style="margin-top: 0px; padding: 0px"><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/crop1.jpg"/></td><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/crop2.jpg"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p style="margin-bottom: 5px">I kept playing with the crop as I continued to work on the image, finally arriving at the crop of the finished image. The remaining work on the final image involved converting to black & white and correcting for some of the remaining lens distortion. The series of images below show the steps I took in arriving at the final image. Some of the changes might be hard to see at this size.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table style="margin-top: 0px"><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/background.png" style="margin-right: 10px"/></td><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/backgroundLayer.png"/></td><br /></tr><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/whiteBalance.png" style="margin-right: 10px"/></td><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/whiteBalanceLayer.png"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>The white balance adjustment was created by picking a black point and a white point using the curves eye dropper tools. When I was working with the color image, I thought it made the concrete too yellow, so I used a layer mask to limit the effect to the sky. Ultimately in the black & white conversion this layer probably didn't have much effect.<br /></p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/darkenSky.png" style="margin-right: 10px"/></td><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/darkenLayer.png"/></td><br /></tr><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/lightenSide.png" style="margin-right: 10px"/></td><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/lightenLayer.png"/></td><br /></tr><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/blueFilter.png" style="margin-right: 10px"/></td><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/blueFilterLayer.png"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>Since I decided to convert the image to black & white, I experimented with various photo filters. I finally settled on blue. The blue filter let me darken the sky more as well as some of the other shaded areas. It also darkened the bright side a bit, but that was fine.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/blackAndWhite.png" style="margin-right: 10px"/></td><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/bwLayer.png"/></td><br /></tr><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/toned.png" style="margin-right: 10px"/></td><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/toningLayer.png"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/tonecurve.png" style="margin-right: 10px; float: left;"/><p>For toning, I used the curves adjustments you see to the left. This curve adjusts the red and blue curves to give the tonality of the old platinum toning process. I didn't create this curve myself, but rather downloaded it from <a href="http://www.butzi.net/articles/toning.htm"/>Paul Butzi's</a> web site from an article discussing image toning. For this application, I applied the curves adjustment and then backed off on the opacity to about 58%.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><p>At this point the image was mostly done. However I was not happy with the remaining distortion in the image. The left side was pretty good, but the right side wasn't straight. Since the building has nice vertical lines I wanted to get those lines to be as vertical as I could in the finished image. The first image shows the layer after I corrected for the distortion on the right side. Unfortunately this kicked the left side out a bit. I then applied a second correction to bring the left side back into vertical. I used Free Transformation with a combination of skew and warp tools to adjust the perspective.</p><br /><div class="nobr"><br /><table style="margin-top: 0px; padding-top: 0px"><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/distortion1.png" style="margin-right: 10px"/></td><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/distortion1Layer.png"/></td><br /></tr><br /><tr><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/distortion2.png" style="margin-right: 10px"/></td><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/blog/umma/distortionLayer2.png"/></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></div><br /><p>I created a couple variations of this image, one being a lighter version of the finished image, but in the end I preferred the darker image.</p><br /><p>All processing done with Adobe Photoshop CS4.</p><br /><p>This <a href="http://www.imagekind.com/showartwork.aspx?IMID=8f39a7ef-23c9-41aa-92e1-dac39328e942">image</a> is for sale in my <a href="http://jameshowephotography.imagekind.com/universityOfMichigan">University of Michigan</a> gallery on ImageKind.</p><br /><p>Comments and feedback welcome.</p><br /><p>Image and text Copyright © 2009 James W. Howe - All rights reserved.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-59239161660476651432008-11-08T11:31:00.057-05:002008-11-09T15:24:30.409-05:00Red Ferrari<a href="http://www.imagekind.com/Showartwork.aspx?IMID=e63d00e4-8a41-43f4-b270-b2e7d5cf8b0d"><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/20081108/finished.jpg" width="500"></a><br /><i>(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm at 35mm (2x crop factor), ISO 100, exposure 1/100 sec @ f/8.0)</i><br /><p>This shot of a new Ferrari automobile (sorry, I don't know the model for this one) was taken at the 2008 Concours d'Elegance held at Meadowbrook Hall in Rochester Hills, Michigan. This car was in a special section of the show reserved for new, high performance vehicles. This particular part of the exhibit included a couple different Ferraris, two different Saleen models as well as some other high end cars. When I originally went through the shots I took at the show, I passed this one by. It just didn't grab me. However, I was passing through my images at a later date and I decided to see if there were things which would improve the image.</p><br /><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/20081108/asShot.jpg"><br /><i>(as shot)</i><br /><br/><br /><p>The image above shows the image as it came from the camera, before any processing at all. I liked the composition, but the color of the car was a bit off, the lighting was too bright (It was taken on a bright, sunny day) and there were other aspects of the shot which weren't great.</p><p></p><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/20081108/lightroom.png" style="float: left; margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px"><p>I had imported the image into Lightroom 2.0 and most of the processing of this image occurred there. To the left, you can see the history panel from Lightroom which shows the adjustments that were made.</p><p> I started with some exposure correction to make the image less bright and then pumped up the blacks to give it a little more contrast. I then adjusted the color a bit to make the red a little stronger. It may not be exactly what the car looked like, but my feeling of the car was that it was <b>red</b> so that was what I wanted to see in the image.</p><p>The next section involved adding some post-crop vignetting. For me the vignetting was change which made the biggest improvement. The addition of the vignette made the car look like it was under a spotlight. It also highlighted two distinctive elements of a Ferrari, the badge and the stallion.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><p></p><br /><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/20081108/afterLightroom.jpg" style="float:right; margin-top: 10px; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px"><p>The image to the right shows the state of the image after making the Lightroom adjustments. It was definitely better, but there were a couple aspects of the image that I still didn't like.</p><p> First, I didn't like the red color which was reflected in the stallion. The other was the fact that the background color of the badge was so faded. I think the angle of the sun just really washed out the yellow which should have been there.</p><p> I opened the image in Photoshop to make some local adjustments. It's possible that I could have done the same thing with the adjustment brush in Lightroom, but I'm not adept enough at that tool as of yet.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><p></p><br /><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/20081108/layers.png" style="float: left; margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px"><br /><p>Here is a the Layers palette from Photoshop CS3 for the final image. The major items are an adjustment layer to remove the redo from the stallion, another layer to correct the badge, a sharpening layer and a couple additional clean-up layers.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><table><tr><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/20081108/redHorse.png" width="200"></td><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/20081108/noRedHorse.png" width="200"></td></tr><br /></table><br /><p>The images above show a closeup of the stallion before I made my change and after. The change was pretty simple. I used a saturation adjustment layer and selected the reds. I then set the saturation to 0 to eliminate the red. Of course, the car was red so that pretty much took the color out of the car. I fixed that by creating a layer mask which masked out all of the car but left the grille alone.</p><br /><table style="padding: 5px; margin: 5px;"><br /><tr><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/20081108/plainBadge.png" width="200"></td><br /><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/20081108/yellowBadge.png" width="200"></td></tr><br /></table><br /><p>The next thing to change was the Ferrari badge. The background should be yellow and in the raw image the color just wasn't right. I took another image which had a Ferrari badge in it and i sampled the yellow color. I then simply created a new layer on which to paint. I used a brush with the color set to Ferrari yellow and painted over the badge. I painted relatively carefully but I wanted to make sure the yellow was everywhere I needed it to be. I then cleaned things up by zooming in and painting on a mask to remove the yellow from places where it shouldn't have been.</p><br /><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/20081108/layerMask.png"><br /><i>(layer mask)</i><br /><br/><br /><p>After I sharpened the image, I noticed that there were several flecks on the paint which were probably left after the car was washed. I created a layer and used the spot healing brush to remove them. Tedious, but simple. The other thing I did was to remove some reflections in the hood which looked more like paint flaws. I created another layer just for this and again used the spot healing brush to remove the unsightly reflections. The images below show a closeup of the hood before and after the spot healing operation</p><br /><table><tr><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/20081108/hoodCrud.png"></td></tr><br /><tr><td><img src="http://www.jameshowephotography.com/images/20081108/noHoodCrud.png"></td></tr><br /></table><br /><p>I'm happy with the way the image came out. I think the badge color now looks realistic and the vignetting makes the car look like it was lit from some lighting source rather than looking like a car that is just sitting out in the sun.</p><br /><p>This <a href="http://www.imagekind.com/Showartwork.aspx?IMID=e63d00e4-8a41-43f4-b270-b2e7d5cf8b0d">image</a> is for sale in my <a href="http://www.imagekind.com/GalleryProfile.aspx?gid=0fbf5399-aca3-48dc-ab89-5e3654752bf0">automobile details gallery.</a></p><br /><p>Comments and feedback welcome.</p><br /><p>Images and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe - All rights reserved</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-37383049300211485052008-11-02T11:41:00.005-05:002008-11-02T11:48:03.692-05:00New Photo Blog<p>I've started a new image blog at <a href="http://images.jameshowephotography.com">images.jameshowephotography.com</a>. My plan is to post a new image to that blog several times a week (hopefully daily). This blog will continue as well at about the same rate as in the past (a few times a month). I would appreciate it if you would take the time to check out my new blog and leave me feedback.</p><br /><p>Thanks!</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-77929372494081234052008-10-26T19:56:00.009-04:002008-10-27T06:25:16.001-04:00Experimentation<a href="http://www.imagekind.com/Showartwork.aspx?IMID=5740bb0b-e51b-43df-a5b2-042694c58279"><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SQUDXsbeqJI/AAAAAAAAAZM/04vmhW8AD44/s800/finished.jpg" /></a><br /><i>(Olympus E-3, 14-54mm lens at 20mm (2x crop factor), ISO 400, exposure 1/15 sec @ f/8)</i><br /><p>Sometimes when I find myself in a creative rut I revisit previous images that I have taken to see if there is something new that I can do with them from a post-processing standpoint. The image above is one such example. The image came from a photography I made of a 1937 Cord 812 Beverly Sedan. The car was on display at the <a href="http://gilmorecarmuseum.org">Gilmore Car Museum</a>. Shooting in a museum is always tricky. You have lighting in the buildings which creates hot spots on the car, sometimes the lighting is dark, or other problems exist. For this image, the lights created hot spots on the car, there was a window just behind the car, and the overall lighting was sort of dark. I really like Cord automobiles, but I have never had a finished shot that I really liked. I'll sometimes get good compositions, but other aspects of the image don't work for me. In the case of the image above, I liked the composition, but I didn't like the way the lighting worked, so I didn't put any more time working on the image.</p><br /><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SQUDYPQy5yI/AAAAAAAAAZQ/Ugv2hOLJA0U/s400/_8245231.jpg" /><br /><p>The image above is the 'as shot' image of the Cord. If you look to the left, you can see a window in the image, on the right there is light from another window reflecting off of the floor. In addition, there are little hot spot lights reflecting off of the car itself. As a 'regular' image, I just don't think this image works. However, I still liked the look of the shot. I think I like Cord's because they have a very angular design. They have interesting lines and details. If I could find some way to emphasize those features, I figured I might have a good image. Turns out that Photoshop had a filter which worked perfectly, I just didn't realize it existed!</p><br /><p>Even though I use Photoshop on a regular basis, I tend to focus more on it's digital darkroom tools such as curves, levels, etc. I don't often venture into the more artistic filters. In general, I prefer to create photographs rather than photographic or digital art. However, it doesn't hurt to experiment. The other day, I was playing around with a new noise reduction tool. I found that when I used some extreme values I got an interesting result. Based on that experimentation, I decided to try some of the standard Photoshop filters. I ran across one that I had never used before called Cutout.</p><br /><p>Cutout is interesting because it lets you create images which sort of look like maybe they were printed using wood block technology. You can dramatically limit the number of colors in the image, and you can play with how the edges in the image are rendered. Using different values you can get a complete abstract image if you want, or you can get something more like Andy Warhol. I found that by using this filter on images with some complex edges and colors, you could get some really cool results. I used this filter with varying settings on a variety of images. On some the effect was pretty useless, but on some of my detail shots, particular of mechanical items, the results were very pleasing.</p><br /><p>On the image above, I used Cutout to create a highly posterized version of the image. I liked the way the color gradients came out. Because of the simplification of the color, I was able to go in and paint over the more annoying light spots. I also took out the side window as well. I could never have done this with the regular image using the clone tool because the colors were just too complex and the result would have look horrible. Some expert cloners might have been able to do things, but not me.</p><br /><p>After getting the basic image where I wanted it, I increased the saturation a bit and added some additional contrast. I didn't need to do any sharpening, because the filter altered the image enough that sharpening would have been pointless. I simply saved the image with the end result that you see at the start of this posting.</p><br /><p>Comments welcome.</p><br /><p>Text and images Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-59228241844817797742008-10-20T19:47:00.009-04:002008-10-20T20:21:13.770-04:00State Theatre Marquee<a href="http://www.imagekind.com/showartwork.aspx?imid=7efbeaed-ab18-4301-b3b5-e294baaaae17"><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SP0RkyO6D5I/AAAAAAAAAYQ/i4haOvoIZY4/s800/finished.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 10px"/></a><br /><div>This is a close-up shot of the marquee of the State Theatre in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This theatre was designed by C. Howard Crane and built in 1942. Crane also designed the ornate Fox Theater in Detroit. Most of the exterior of the theater is still intact, but inside the theater was cut up to create 4 theaters over two floors. Later the bottom two theaters were removed and converted to retail space.</div><br /><div>I've always been attracted to the signage of this building. It has great Art Deco elements and I like the vivid colors. Even though the sign has seen some wear, it is still quite impressive. I was going through some shots I had taken of the theater and I was playing around with the zoom tool in Lightroom. I had zoomed in really close in one image and I really liked the extreme close up. It gave the image a bit more of an abstract feeling to it. I decided I needed to go back and use my 70-300mm lens (2x crop factor) and take some close up shots. I've posted a series of them on my <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhoweaa/sets/72157608175212350/">Flickr</a> account. I choose this one to post here because I liked the variety of elements in the shot. I like the color and shape of the sign, combined with the pattern of the brick and the shadow line along the right side.</div><br /><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SP0Rlky4yAI/AAAAAAAAAYU/w_UFAEWnHnk/s400/_A186235.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 10px" /><br /><div>The finished image has had some work to get it to where it is. The image above is the raw image as it came out of the camera. The shot was taken mid-afternoon and the sun was shining directly on the sign. This had the effect of creating some nice shadows, but it also washed the color out. I really wanted to emphasize both the color of the sign, but also the age of the sign as well. In order to do that I worked to improve the contrast, and pump up the colors. Most of the work was done in Lightroom 2.0. I used the blacks slider to add a bit of contrast. I used the vibrance slider to bring out some additional color in the brick and I used the individual saturation and luminosity sliders to bump up particular colors in the sign.</div><br /><div>When I was mostly finished in Lightroom, I took the image over to Photoshop CS3. I noticed that the color of the wall seemed to have a bit of a greenish cast, so I used the color balance tool to make it a little redder and browner. The original shot also had more dark wall to the right which I felt distracted from the main element. I liked the shadow cast by the bricks so I kept that, but I trimmed away most of the dark area of the image. The other thing I did was to skew things a bit to straighten things out. I had to shoot this from down below and I didn't have the benefit of a tilt/shift lens, so I used the free transform tool in CS3 to move things around a bit. I finished up with some sharpening and a little vignette.</div><br /><h3>Image Details</h3><br /><div>The image was taken with an Olympus E-3 camera. The lens was the Zuiko 70-300 which gives a 35mm effective focal length of 140-600. The shot was taken with the lens zoomed to 92mm (184mm). Exposure was 1/250 @ f/13 at ISO 100.</div><br /><div><br />Please feel free to leave comments or feedback. I would also appreciate it if you would visit my gallery at <a href="http://www.jameshowephotography.com">www.jameshowephotography.com</a>. If you have any feedback about the gallery itself, please leave those comments here.</div><br /><div>Text and images are Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe - All rights reserved</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-76361649522255345962008-09-28T12:01:00.010-04:002008-09-28T12:27:12.876-04:00Pierce Arrow Interior<a href="http://www.imagekind.com/showartwork.aspx?imid=86901c9a-3de9-4561-bcd7-099f0610da09"><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SN-qRa-9OiI/AAAAAAAAAXw/RqqwLj-xmYc/s800/finished.jpg" width="500" style="margin-bottom: 10px"/></a><br /><p>This is an interior shot of 1920 Pierce Arrow automobile. The car was part of the Pierce Arrow Club's annual car show held at the Gilmore Car Museum near Battle Creek, Michigan. What I find interesting about this shot is the look of the gauges, particularly the speedometer. Instead of using some sort of sweep hand, it rolls up like an odometer (and tops out at 75).</p><br /><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SN-qQqkhmWI/AAAAAAAAAXs/v-oLyZUucTk/s400/asShot.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px"/><br /><p>This image has actually had very little processing done to it. The shot was originally in a 4/3 aspect ratio but as I looked at the image I decided that I would prefer a square crop. I wanted the emphasis of the shot to be on the gauges and the full shot had some stuff below the steering wheel which dragged my eye down and out of the image. The main processing for the shot was done in Lightroom 2 with a tiny bit of post processing in Photoshop. Other than the crop, the main thing I did in Lightroom was to add a 'post crop' vignette of -21 with a feather of 62. The vignette tool gives a nice darkening around the edge which helps draw the eye into the image and the feather helps to smooth out the vignette so you don't really notice it that much. I didn't want the vignette to be a distraction on it's own.</p><br /><p>This shot was taken with my Olympus E-3 and the Olympus Zuiko 70-300 lens. Exposure was 1/125 @ f/6.3 and I was zoomed to 96mm (2x crop factor)</p><br /><p>Image and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe - All rights reserved.</p><br /><p>This image (and others) are available for purchase at my <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a> gallery. Also, please check out my new website at <a href="http://www.jameshowephotography.com">www.jameshowephotography.com</a>. Right now the site has a single gallery of some of my favorite images, but I hope to be adding more galleries in the future.</p><br /><p>Thanks for looking in and please feel free to leave any comments you might have.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-29639014085686596302008-09-09T08:09:00.018-04:002008-09-10T18:48:05.826-04:00'39 Plymouth<a href="http://www.imagekind.com/showartwork.aspx?imid=8672ff94-cb7d-458c-953a-45d1b8ce4d20"><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SMZkucAsQyI/AAAAAAAAAWo/JGJRQaCE8ck/finished.jpg" height="600" /></a><br /><p>This image is of a 1939 Plymouth Deluxe Convertible Sedan taken at the 2007 Concours d'Elegance at Medowbrook Hall in Rochester Hills, Michigan. I was digging through some old photos, keywording, flagging and such, and I came across the shot from which this image was created. I had passed this image by several times, thinking that it was just too plain. The color of the car was sort of flat and there was a bit of background in the image which made the shot look more like a snapshot than a composed image. This time when I was looking at it, I realized that with just a bit of work I could eliminate the background and probably improve the overall look of the image, so I decided to give it a try.</p><br /><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SMZks76dMiI/AAAAAAAAAWc/kksCdoQm5tc/s400/plymouth%20as%20shot.jpg" width="200" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px;"/><div style="margin-bottom: 1em"><b>As Shot</b></div><p>To the left you can see the image as it came out of the camera. The details on the car itself are relatively flat, the color is mostly unexciting. The upper part of the background isn't too bad since it is darker and provides some contrast with the car itself, but the lower part of the background is too close in color to the car and there is very little separation between the car and background. Green cars on grass tend to have this sort of problem. My processing goals were fairly simple, blacken the background (to create contrast and remove distractions) and improve the color and contrast of the car itself.</p><br /><div style="clear: both"></div><br /><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SMZktUxBvTI/AAAAAAAAAWg/MPh4HpdUdnk/s400/plymouth%20step%201.jpg" width="200" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px;"/><div style="margin-bottom: 1em"><b>Step 1</b></div><p>The first thing I did after bringing the image into Photoshop CS3 was to apply a curves adjustment layer. I used this layer to darken the entire image. This made the dark part of the background even darker (or completely black) and it helped create a little contrast between the car the the grassy area at the bottom of the image. At this point I wasn't interested in working on the car itself, so I created a layer mask to cover the car, leaving the adjustment layer to affect just the background area.</p><br /><div style="clear: both"></div><br /><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SMZktkjNo0I/AAAAAAAAAWk/OSakUJPXhGo/s400/step%201%20paint%20top.png" width="200" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px;"/><div style="margin-bottom: 1em"><b>Step 2</b></div><p>In this step, I used the brush tool to paint the dark area of the background black. Much of the upper left portion of the image was already black, so I just had to paint over the areas which weren't. I used a soft brush and zoomed way in to the areas I wanted to paint and carefully painted with the black brush.</p><br /><div style="clear: both"></div><br /><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SMZkur3ZNdI/AAAAAAAAAWs/1qUnYtG5Gx4/s400/step%202%20vector%20mask.png" width="200" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px;"/><div style="margin-bottom: 1em"><b>Step 3</b></div><p>In Step 3, I used the pen tool to create a vector mask of the car. I placed points along the curved parts of the engine area in the lower right of the image and then quickly added additional points to capture the entire car. I then went back and zoomed in on my points and adjusted them so that the curves matched the curves of the car. Once I was satisfied, I selected Layer->Vector Mask->Create from path... to create a vector mask. I then created a blank layer below my current layer and filled it with black. The background was now black, but it still needed some tweaking.</p><br /><div style="clear: both"></div><br /><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SMZkshS_4HI/AAAAAAAAAWY/cFfOuy_H4ck/s288/Picture%203.png" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px;"/><div style="margin-bottom: 1em"><b>Step 4</b></div><p>When I zoomed into the background, I noticed that the line between the car and the black background was too sharp. In the original image, the background was fairly light so making it black with the sharp edge of the pen tool made the background look too fake. There are probably other ways to correct this, but my solution was to take a soft-edge brush at a lower opacity, and gently follow the curves of the car to soften the edge between the car and the background. I was using a Wacom tablet so this was a little easier than if I had been using a mouse. The image to the left shows the areas that I painted.</p><br /><div style="clear: both"></div><br /><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SMZksc1j1GI/AAAAAAAAAWU/yEvvYXCkGeU/s288/layers.png" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px;" /><div style="margin-bottom: 1em"><b>Layers Palette</b></div><p>Once I had the background complete, I turned my attention to the car itself. My first step was to use another curves adjustment layer to increase contrast in the car, and darken it. I used Normal blending mode instead of Luminosity because I wanted the bump in saturation. I liked the deeper green created from the adjustment layer.</p><p>I then noticed there was some red reflecting in the chrome so I added a Hue/Saturation layer and eliminated the red. Of course, there is a bit of red in the hood ornament, so I used a layer mask to recover the red in that spot. I gave the image just a bit more saturation, which helped bring up the color in the badge on the front of the car.</p><p>Finally, I used the Emboss filter to sharpen the image. I used a level of 4, desaturated the color, used Hard Light as the blending mode and reduced the opacity just a bit. </p><br /><div style="clear: both"></div><br /><p>Overall I'm pleased with how this image came out.</p><br /><p>This shot was taken with an Olympus E-500 with the Zuiko 14-54mm lens zoomed to 35mm (70mm if you use the 2x cropping factor). Exposure was 1/250 at f/4.0 using ISO 200.</p><br /><p>Comments and constructive criticisms are always welcome.</p><br /><p>This image and others are for sale at my <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com/automobile-details">Automobile Details</a> gallery on ImageKind. Please check it out.</p><br /><p>Image Copyright © 2007 James W. Howe - All rights reserved</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-69437857753826751022008-09-02T21:40:00.007-04:002008-09-02T22:04:37.254-04:00Scream<img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SL3rXHhfh9I/AAAAAAAAAVw/CrCBM7M3rC8/s800/_8235033%20finished.jpg" /><br /><p>This shot was taken during Scott Kelby's Worldwide Photowalk in Detroit, Michigan. I don't normally take pictures of kids simply because people might get the wrong impression, however during the photowalk there were several of us taking pictures of kids in the fountain so it was less of a problem. This particular fountain is located along the Detroit Riverwalk, just behind the Renaissance Center (GM Headquarters). The day of our photowalk was quite warm and there were several kids playing in this fountain. This particular boy was running through the fountain yelling at the spouts of water as they shot up. As he was running through the fountain I took several shots and this one was the best of the bunch. I like the way the water is just coming up from the fountain as if his yelling was causing the water to shoot up.</p><br /><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SL3rX1KAzaI/AAAAAAAAAV0/ECpG5doarZw/s400/_8235033.jpg" style="float:left; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" /><p>The image to the left is the 'as shot' image. When I was working on the image I wanted to eliminate extra elements from the shot and focus on the boy and his relationship with the fountain. While I did some original work to adjust the color, I decided fairly quickly on that a black and white image would look the best. All processing was done using Lightroom 2.0, with minor finishing work in Photoshop CS3. </p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><p>This shot was taken using an Olympus E-3 with the 70-300 Digital Zuiko lens. Focal length was 190mm with a crop factor of 2x. Exposure was 1/640 @ f/5.6 using ISO 100.</p><br /><p>Comments and suggestions are welcome.</p><br /><p>Image and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe - All rights reserved</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-7526567840404401512008-08-29T10:13:00.005-04:002008-08-29T10:26:06.464-04:00Thanks!<p>Recently I had the pleasure of attending the Detroit edition of Scott Kelby's Worldwide Photowalk. Scott has written a new book on Lightroom 2.0 and as a way of celebrating its release he decided to arrange for 'photowalks' in numerous cities. Each photowalk was limited to 50 people, but some cities had more than one photowalk. The idea was so popular that there were photowalks in more than 237 cities world wide. As part of the event prizes were given out. The leader in each city picked a winner from their photowalk. That winner won a copy of Scott's new Lightroom 2.0 book. Each of these winners was then in the running for a grand prize. In addition to the grand prize, there were also 10 runners up who won a prize as well. Well, Scott announced the winners today on his <a href="http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2008/archives/1895">blog</a> and I'm honored to be one of the 10 runners up with my <a href="http://imagenotebook.blogspot.com/2008/08/renaissance-center.html">Renaissance Center</a> image.</p><br /><p>Given the high quality of the images that were submitted for the photowalk (search Flickr tags for 'scottkelbyphotowalk', or just search for "Scott Kelby's Worldwide Photowalk") it is quite an honor to be selected not only as best for the Detroit photowalk, but to be one of the 10 runners up. I'd like to thank Scott for having this event, and to <a href="http://terrywhite.com/techblog/">Terry White</a> for running the Detroit photowalk. I had a great time wandering around the Detroit riverfront area taking pictures with a bunch of other photographers. I hope this becomes an annual affair (prize or no prize.)</p><br /><p>Thanks!</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-63524565062210598812008-08-24T21:52:00.014-04:002008-08-25T21:48:21.678-04:00Renaissance Center<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhoweaa/2790524173/" title="Renaissance Center by jhoweaa, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3195/2790524173_6c02ef85e9.jpg" width="500" height="388" alt="Renaissance Center" /></a><br /><p>This is a picture of the Renaissance Center located along the river front in downtown Detroit, Michigan. The building was built in the 70's with funding by Ford Motor Company and in an interesting twist, the building is now the world headquarters for General Motors. The building was designed by the same firm that designed Peachtree Center in Atlanta, Georgia and a similar facility in downtown Los Angeles (the name escapes me). This shot was taken during the the Detroit edition of Scott Kelby's Worldwide Photowalk. The photowalk was meant to celebrate the publishing of Scott Kelby's latest book on Lightroom 2.0. Up to 50 photographers in over 200 cities world wide participated in the photowalk.</p><br /><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SLISC7SD3DI/AAAAAAAAAVI/n2Ov7Fy8aTk/s400/as%20shot.jpg" /><br /><p>This is the shot as it came out of the camera. There is a slight tilt to the shot and the color is a bit flat. I used the tools in Lightroom 2.0 to straighten the image and also adjust the exposure and perform the conversion to black and white. One of the things that I wanted to bring out in the image was the character in the sky. When I took the shot I was already thinking that it would look good in black and white. I knew the blue sky could be darkened a bit to create some more drama. However, as I was working on the image I debated about just keeping it in color, but as you can see, I ultimately decided to go with black and white.</p><br /><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SLIUWYlmoNI/AAAAAAAAAVo/QcitCIdgOCw/s288/exposure.png" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" /><p>These are the settings I used in Lightroom to get the exposure where I wanted it. I left the exposure slider about the same, but I used recovery to bring out a bit more in the sky, and I used the black and fill light to add a bit more contrast to the building without losing detail.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SLIUWVKQ6UI/AAAAAAAAAVk/nK_He2BSwdA/s288/toning.png" style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"/><br /><p>The conversion to black and white was done using the Grayscale palette. I wanted to darken the sky so I reduced the blue, and then I used the color selector tool to selectively brighten or darken parts of the image. I finished things off using the split tone functionality.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><p>Some additional changes were made in Lightroom including adding a bit of clarity and some sharpening. I finished the image off in Photoshop, mostly to do some final sharpening and to add a border to the image.</p><br /><p>The image was taken with an Olympus E-3 using the 14-54mm lens at 14mm (28mm full frame equivalent). Exposure was 1/400 at f/8.0 using ISO 100.</p><br /><p>Comments and constructive criticisms welcome.</p><br /><p>Image available for purchase at my <a href="http://www.imagekind.com/showartwork.aspx?imid=008de3b4-0274-49bc-b534-004776a30ceb">ImageKind</a> gallery.</p><br /><p>Thanks for looking in!</p><br /><p>Images and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe - All rights reserved</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-91595799377318780332008-08-19T21:54:00.015-04:002008-08-20T07:18:52.411-04:00809 Kingsley<a href="http://www.imagekind.com/showartwork.aspx?imid=da87c28d-bf1e-43fe-a918-483fa81383ba"><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SKt4hUwtmWI/AAAAAAAAAU0/vlNbH7_Ruio/s800/finished.jpg" /></a><br /><p>This image is of a local apartment building located near the University of Michigan medical campus. This part of town has many rental units, but most are either converted houses or more mundane apartment buildings. This building was built in 1929 and is a great example of the Mediterranean Revival architectural style. I took the shot mid-morning when the sun was shining on it at a nice angle and I really liked the strong shadows created by the unique architectural elements. I wasn't able to get the shot of the building straight on, there were people working on a house across the street which prevented me from getting a good angle. I ended up taking the picture from a slight angle and then relied on Photoshop to help with some perspective correction.</p><br /><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SKt4hxnk1GI/AAAAAAAAAU4/iSlKbUCp1Tw/s400/as%20shot.jpg" /><br /><p>The image above is the 'as shot' version of the image. As you can see, the image has a bit of perspective distortion because was forced to take the picture from a slight angle. The image also tilts back a bit since I had to shot at a slight upward angle. When I took the shot I figured I would have to do some perspective correction, so I made sure that I framed it a little wide so I would have extra pixels to deal with.</p> <br /><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SKt4iaChv1I/AAAAAAAAAU8/fTERnxueoDQ/s288/layers.png" style="float:left; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 10px" /><br /><p>The layers palette above only shows part of the story of the processing. I started in Lightroom and made adjustments to bring out the color in the brick. The shot was taken in bright sunshine, and the raw image sort of washed out the vibrant color that I remember seeing when I took the picture. In Lightroom I increased the black level a bit and increased some of the contrast. I adjusted the exposure and recovery a bit to bring out the color in the brick.</p><p> The remainder of the processing involved performing some perspective correction and some curves work to bring out the color of the windows in the lower part of the image. When I took the shot, I noticed the blue sky reflecting in the windows and I thought it made an interesting color combination with the orange/red brick. As I processed the image, the window color sort of got lost, so I added a curves layer to focus on just the windows. I finished off with a dodge/burn layer to brighten the windows up just a bit more.</p><br /><p>This image was taken with an Olympus E-3 DSLR using a 70-300mm Zuiko lens. This lens has a 35mm FOV equivalent of 140-600. The lens was zoomed to 141 or the equivalent of 282mm on a 35mm camera. Exposure was 1/400 at f5.6.</p><br /><p>Comments and constructive criticism/suggestions are welcome. This image available for purchase at my <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com/color">Color</a> gallery at ImageKind.</p><br /><br><br /><p>Image and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe - All rights reserved</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-75853985714061980532008-08-07T22:05:00.020-04:002008-08-07T22:48:09.926-04:00Duesenbird<a href="http://www.imagekind.com/showartwork.aspx?imid=b6b6648c-e2ab-4aa6-b79b-f9ccc69a5b21"><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SJupa2Fw7iI/AAAAAAAAAUI/qXdt7yOtyIQ/s800/finished.jpg"/></a><br /><p>This is shot of the hood ornament (mascot) of a 1935 Duesenberg Model JN. This particular Duesenberg was a gift to Clark Gable from his wife, Carole Lombard. The Duesenberg was one of many fine automobiles on display at the 2008 Concours d'Elegance held at Meadowbrook Hall in Rochester Hills, Michigan. The background of this shot is actually a 1934 LaSalle owned by auto executive Robert Lutz.</p><p>Shooting cars in the 'wild' is always a challenge. You have to deal with crowds, weather, distracting reflections, etc. An ideal day for shooting would be overcast where the light is even. Unfortunately the day of the event the weather was too nice, blue skies and no clouds. When I took this shot, the car was under some trees so the lighting was a bit more diffuse, but there were still plenty of reflections to deal with. As you can see in the 'as shot' image below, there was quite a bit of green reflecting in the chrome. The nice thing is that the curve of the chrome helped make the reflections a bit more abstract. You can make out the sky and trees, but you don't see a lot of people or defined shapes.</p><br /><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SJupbKHbd6I/AAAAAAAAAUM/Dlaw4BAJ_0g/s400/as%20shot.jpg" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" /><br /><p>My first attempt at processing involved simply using Lightroom 2 to do all the adjustments. I increased the blacks a bit, increased contrast and got an image that was quite nice. However, the more I looked at the image the more I thought that a black & white conversion would produce a better image. For one thing, it would make the images in the reflection a bit more abstract. I also thought it would focus the eye more on the details themselves rather than the color.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SJupbJ5w5OI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/5q0OMc5aeng/s288/layers.png" style="float:left; margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;" /><br /><p>To the left you see the layers palette for the black & white conversion. There wasn't much processing needed. I started with a basic black & white adjustment layer. I lightened the background a bit and darkened some of the grillework. After the basic conversion, I added a curves adjustment layer to increase the contrast. I also wanted to bring out the Duesenberg badge so I added another curves layer which dramatically lightened the image. I used a layer mask to mask out all but the badge. I finished things up by using the Emboss filter in Overlay mode to sharpen the image.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><p>This image is available for purchase in my <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com/black-and-white">Black & White</a> gallery at ImageKind.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-70191226302736526102008-07-22T22:00:00.017-04:002008-07-27T14:20:53.097-04:00Monona Terrace<a href="http://www.imagekind.com/showartwork.aspx?imid=c243a23d-a4e6-4889-a384-a95c3ea619b1"><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SIaRciWmNBI/AAAAAAAAAS4/WpmVpEK4IxY/s400/_9024875%20square%20with%20copyright.jpg" /></a><br /><p>This is a shot taken from the top of Monona Terrace in Madison, Wisconsin. Monona Terrace was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright but never built in his lifetime. Several years ago the project was resurrected and built. The building itself is hard to photograph unless you are out in a boat on the lake. The rooftop has a great terrace which has wonderful views of Lake Monona to the southeast, and the capitol building to the north west. The terrace also has a walkway which leads directly out to downtown Madison and it's a short walk to the capitol.<p><br /><p>As you can see in 'as shot' image below, the original image was in color. I was trying to capture some of the lines and curves which make up the design of the building. I also liked the pattern in the pavement. My feeling is that while I may have captured some of the elements that I wanted, the raw image looks more like a snapshot than a finished work. There is visual competition from the parking lot/garage in the bottom right, people walking in the upper right and the buildings at the top. When I worked on this image, I wanted to reduce the clutter and make the image more about the lines and curves of Monona Terrace itself. I liked the buildings in the background, particularly since they are of a more 'traditional' design, but I wanted to de-emphasize them.</p><br /><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SIaRTRM6WSI/AAAAAAAAAS0/ajTvHdobPts/s400/terrace%20as%20shot.jpg"/><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SIyzmH1PT1I/AAAAAAAAATo/WxkPo4-0xO0/s288/layers.png" style="float:left; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px" /><br /><p>To the left is the layers palette as it exists in my Photoshop document. The names on the layers give an overall indication of the work done to the image. However, much of the actual darkening occurred before the image got to Photoshop. I did some initial corrections in Adobe Camera Raw. In particular, I pushed the blacks level to 55 and reduced the exposure just a bit. This helped darken the areas below the roof top. I converted to black & white which helped further develop the blacks.</p><p>The wide angle lens created a bit of distortion in the far buildings so I used the transformation tools to straighten them. I also did some painting in the lower right corner to remove the last remnants of the parking garage and other non-essential items. The final items were just to tweak the result. I added some film grain, cloned out some remaining non-essential items and added a slight vignette.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><p>The image below is a variant of the final image. I wanted to see what the image would look like if I left it in color. This is not a selective color image. This is a full color image. It gives the appearance of a selective color image primarily because the buildings at the top are mostly gray and they are gray whether they are in the color image or a black and white image. This version of the image didn't get the full treatment that I gave the black and white. The buildings at the top aren't straight and there are some other things I would correct before I would consider this image done. I put it here to show an alternative interpretation.</p><br /><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SIaWQ67vu6I/AAAAAAAAATk/0onAHkIWnMw/s400/intermediate.jpg" /><br /><p>All images Copyright © 2007 James W. Howe, all rights reserved.</p><br /><p>This image and others are available for sale at my <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">Online Gallery</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-64024361992802265222008-07-18T07:42:00.005-04:002008-07-18T07:50:49.663-04:00Flying<a href="http://www.imagekind.com/Showartwork.aspx?IMID=70bedb04-ec35-47b1-8f33-48452f0a7107&P=1" title="Flying by jhoweaa, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3278/2617354266_d5fe92c28a.jpg" alt="Flying" height="361" width="500" /></a><br /><p>This is a shot of a hood ornament from a 1933 Cadillac V16 452C. The car was one of many classic cars on display at the Eyes on Design car show held at the Edsel & Eleanor Ford Mansion in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan. I'm really pleased with how this image came out. The figure itself is sharp and shows the artistry and detail that was put into these things. The lighting is reasonable, and I think the background is nice as well. I converted this image to black & white and then used a curves adjustement layer to give just a bit of 'platinum' tone (see curve, below).</p><br /><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SICCcZmgUVI/AAAAAAAAASU/jy_w9GeePa0/s400/curves.png" style="margin-bottom: 10px;"/><br /><p>Shooting hood ornaments (or mascots) is not the easiest thing to do, particularly when you are trying to take these shots in the wild, rather than under the controlled conditions of a studio. Lighting is always tricky and controlling reflections is probably one of the biggest challenges. Another difficult element is backgrounds. If I had an assistant I could have had them hold up some board or cloth to create a background, but that wasn't an option. Instead, what I try to do is use a shallow depth of field and then try and find an angle on the object which puts an interesting background into the frame</p><br /><p>One difficulty with using a shallow depth of field is that you really would like to get most of the figure in sharp focus, but you want the background to be quite blurry. In this case, I used my 70-300 lens (140-600mm 35mm equivalent focal length) at a wide aperature to ensure the out of focus background. Taking the shot from the side meant that I could get most of the figure in focus. If I had taken it more head on, I would either have had to close down my lens to get more DOF, or I would only have the front part of the figure in focus. Of course, the more DOF in the image, the less blurry the background.</p><br /><p>At this car show, like most, the cars were parked next to each other, and fairly close, but not too close. I thought the hood ornament on this car went well against the background of the hood of another vintage vehicle. While I didn't notice it at the time, I like the brighter out of focus circles created from the car in the background and the way they line up with the head and wings of the figure. I also lucked out on the lighting. The sky was bright but overcast, so it created what amounted to a giant softbox. No real hotspots to contend with.<br /></p><br /><p>The image itself didn't require much post processing work. The usual curves to increase contrast a bit and the conversion to a toned black & white was about all the work that went into this image.</p><br /><p>This image is for sale in my <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com/hood-ornaments">Hood Ornaments</a> gallery at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a>. Please check it out.</p><br /><p>Comments, questions and constructive criticism are welcome.</p><br /><p>Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe - All Rights Reserved</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-32173211399119770682008-07-12T17:34:00.009-04:002008-07-12T20:19:22.950-04:00Verticality<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhoweaa/2637284770/" title="Verticality by jhoweaa, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3062/2637284770_b0fbe1d47c.jpg" width="500" height="395" alt="Verticality" /></a><br /><p>This is a shot of the Palmer Commons and the power plant at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I was out one Sunday morning walking around campus looking for interesting things to take pictures of. This particular area is just outside of the central campus area as you head up towards the dormatories and the medical center area. The thing that really caught my eye, and the thing that made me want to take a picture, was all the vertical lines from this vantage point.</p><br /><p>Starting from the right side of the image you see the tall smoke stack from the power plant. In the same area, a little lower there are the posts for the street signs. There are the lines in the pavement marking the cross walk. On the roof of the power plant there are short colored pipes sticking up. The windows of the building (Palmer Commons) create more vertical lines and when you get to the left side, there are the light poles. However, it took a bit of post-processing to get the image back to the way that I saw it when I was there.</p><br /><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SHkk5Jl2HqI/AAAAAAAAASE/oToBjQnzcvk/s800/verticality%20as%20shot.jpg" /><br /><p>The image above is the 'as shot' version of the finished image. As you can see, many of the vertical lines bend inward. I took this shot with a wide angle lens which introduced some distortion into the image. If I would have had a tripod with a nodal point bracket, I probably could have taken a panorama of the same scene and ended up with less distortion, but I didn't have that option. The other thing to notice about the unprocessed image is that the colors are relatively flat. This also wasn't quite what my mind saw when I was there.</p><br /><p>When I initially worked on processing the shot I focused on the color. I did some work with curves and hue/saturation to bring more color and contrast to the image. The curves also gave me a more intense sky. After working on the image for awhile I sort of gave up. I thought it looked ok, but not great. Recently, I was going through some older shots when I saw my original take on this image. I really liked the look of the color, but I didn't like the distortion. Since I last worked on this image, I've picked up a few more Photoshop tips and I decided to give them a try. In particular, I wanted to use the Transformation tools to see if I could correct for most of the distortion.</p><br /><p>Like my previous blog entry, High Rise - High Key, my main tools were the Transform -> Distort and Transform - Scale. I started with the Distort which allowed me to straighten the smoke stack on the right and the light poles on the left. Making this change, however, caused the image to shrink from the top. I then used scale to bring the elements back up to where they should be. Once I corrected for distortion, I then proceeded to work on the color.</p><br /><p>The color work consisted primarily of converting the image to LAB and strengthening the A and B channels. Once I had the basic look, I converted back to RGB and did some tweaking of the curves to increase contrast just a bit more. I was trying to get something just a little bit unreal in the sky. The clouds that morning were quite interesting and I wanted to accentuate the sky just a bit more.</p><br /><p>Overall I'm pleased with how the image came out. There is probably more noise in the sky than I would like but I haven't gone back to see what I could do about it. There are some other minor things that I would like to improve as well, but on the whole I think it looks pretty nice</p><br /><p>This image was taken with an Olympus E-500 DSLR with the 14-54mm lens. The image was shot at 14mm (ff eq 28mm) with an aperture setting of f/11 and an ISO of 100.</p><br /><p>Comments and constructive criticisms welcome</p><br /><p>Copyright © 2007 James W. Howe - All Rights Reserved</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-63224708954805332302008-07-05T13:58:00.026-04:002008-07-05T14:58:12.219-04:00High Rise - High Key<a href="http://www.imagekind.com/Showartwork.aspx?IMID=c078ad63-1880-47f5-9c2f-66a6f881ed35&P=1"><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SG-4XXkVf1I/AAAAAAAAARg/Qk7Na3yI80Y/s800/finished.jpg" /></a><br /><p>I've been making a pass through some images that I have shot in the past looking for ones that I may have overlooked, or images that might give me a chance to experiment with. The image above is the result of one such experiment. The structure in this shot is the Trilogy Apartments in Boston, Massachusetts. The building is located about a block or two from Fenway Park. I was in Boston on vacation and had been wandering around taking pictures. It was late in the day and the sun was setting. This created some nice warm colors and a deep blue sky. I found the structure of the apartment building to be very interesting. I've always been attracted to buildings with strong geometric qualities so I took a few shots of the building from various angles. When I originally was looking over the images from the trip, I passed on the ones I had taken of the apartment building. I liked the underlying image, but it just didn't click with me.</p><br /><table border="none" style="padding: 2px;"><tr><td><br /><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SG-p5p1uZ0I/AAAAAAAAARA/Kekg9eZt1o4/s400/as%20shot.jpg" /><br /></td><br /><td><br /><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SG-7WA5JtqI/AAAAAAAAARw/orluGmLQZB8/s400/post%20raw%20conversion.jpg"/><br /></td><br /></tr><br /></table><br /><p>As I was reviewing my images I once again took a look at the one you see to the left. I liked the color and shape, but it didn't really convey the geometric nature that had attracted me to the building in the first place.</p><p>My first thought was to produce a color image with the sky darkened. The windows in the color image were all dark and I thought the image might look nice if I replaced the blue sky with a black sky and left everything else alone.</p><p>In an effort to move the image in that direction, I bumped the blacks a bit in Camera Raw and then remove the saturation of the blues in the image and reduced the luminosity as well. This didn't completely blacken the sky, but it gave me a good start. My original plan was to go into Photoshop and use a curve and some masking to turn the sky black and then work on the rest of the building.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><p>Before I did any more work on color/contrast I decided that I didn't like the way the building was tilting away from the camera. I didn't have the luxury of using a perspective correcting lens so I had to resort to some Photoshop post-processing to clean things up a bit. The first thing I did was create an editable layer which would let me do some transformations. I selected Transform->Skew and moved the upper left and right corners out until the sides of the building were parallel with the side of the image frame. The image below shows where I placed the corners.</p><br /><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SG-1e3ah-xI/AAAAAAAAARI/NmXQ0-TLbfo/s400/skew.png" /><br /><p>Adjusting the skew caused the building to become quite short so my next task was to stretch the building back to something which resembled its original stature. For this I used the scale tool and simply scaled the building up until it looked right. After this, the image still had some perspective issues so I tweaked it a bit more using the warp tool. I also used the Lens Correction filter to remove a bit of barrel distortion as well.</p><br /><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SG-1fJcMyDI/AAAAAAAAARM/yUZCOb1XiSw/s400/scale.png" /><br /><p>At this point I had the image pretty much where I wanted it so I added a curves layer to darken the sky.</p><br /><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SG-1fhHfRVI/AAAAAAAAARQ/VEj_zkmHB-8/s400/pre%20bw.jpg" /><br /><p>I liked the color version of the image seen above, but I decided to see how it would look as a black and white. I added a Black & White adjustment layer and pushed the building toward white while still keeping some detail and tonality.</p><br /><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SG-1gNZb6mI/AAAAAAAAARU/MTvQZ10ZFfI/s400/bw.jpg" /><br /><p>I then added a curve to see if I could pull out just a bit more contrast while still keeping some tonality. As I adjusted the curve, I just kept increasing the contrast and the more extreme it got, the more I liked it. I finally used a curve which is almost vertical. The end result is what you see at the top, a pure black and white which really highlights the geometry of the building.</p><br /><p><b>Technical Details</b></p><br /><p>This shot was taken with an Olympus E-500 camera. The lens was the 14-54mm zoom lens zoomed to 23mm. Since the Olympus is a 4/3 camera, 23mm translates to a 35mm effective focal length of 46mm. Aperture was f/2.8 at ISO 100. The image capture was RAW and processed using Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop CS3.</p><br /><p>Comments and constructive criticisms welcome.</p><br /><p>This image (and others) are for sale in my <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com/Black-and-White">Black and White</a> gallery at ImageKind. Please have a look around.</p><br /><p>Thanks!</p><br /><p>All images and text Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe - All Rights Reserved.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-91174608631163709282008-06-30T22:36:00.035-04:002008-06-30T23:41:40.753-04:00Treated and Released<img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SGmi13geNMI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/EZTnf0bWWbQ/s800/finished.jpg" /><br /><p>This image is of the Biomedical Sciences Research Building on the campus of The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I took this shot last summer (2007) as a series of exposures with the intent of creating an HDR. However, when I processed the multiple exposures I wasn't particularly happy with the way it came out. I didn't find any one of the series of images to be particularly compelling, although I did like the cloud formations. I decided to try some experimentation to see what I might coax out of the image. The building is an interesting structure, particularly the auditorium which is located in front of the building. Some people refer to this building as the 'pringle', in reference to Pringle's potato chips. I think this building has a slightly alien look to it, so I tried to create an image which had a 'otherworldly' feel to it.</p><br /><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SGmX6bspxMI/AAAAAAAAAP8/NfQ_CQOGMXU/s400/as%20shot.jpg" style="float:left; margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 10px" /><br /><p>The image to the left is the raw, unprocessed image. It is relatively flat, but has some potentially interesting color and texture in the clouds. I wanted to use something which would bring out the texture and shape. There is also some detail in the building itself but it is hidden in the dark.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SGmi00_G32I/AAAAAAAAAQs/f5vF836TTg4/s400/layers.png" style="float:right; margin-top: 10px; margin-left: 15px; margin-bottom: 10px" /><br /><p>In the layers pallette you can see that the number of processing steps was minimal. Since I had originally tried to create an HDR from multiple images, I decided to see what I could do if I used the Photomatix tonemapping plugin for Photoshop. I opened the plugin as a smart filter so I could go back later and make adjustments if I wanted to. The remaining steps were designed to improve the contrast just a bit, add some additional texture and tone.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SGmX6j-8JeI/AAAAAAAAAQE/oCTtcEM_ieg/s400/tonemap.png" style="float:left; margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 10px" /><br /><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SGmX6wCjf4I/AAAAAAAAAQI/7N7S1yl-3so/s400/after%20tone%20map.jpg" style="float: right;margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 10px" /><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><p>Above you can see the settings I used in the tone mapping plugin and the effect it had on the image. I used a high strength setting but desaturated the entire image. I wanted to bring out some of the light areas of the image so I set the light-smoothing to a mid value and luminosity to it's highest setting. In the contrast settings I wanted enhanced detail so I selected a high micro contrast, but I liked the look with the micro-smoothing set low. Finally I played with the white/black clipping levels to get an image that had the brightness levels I was looking for.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SGmX7OFA6hI/AAAAAAAAAQM/Dl3CS17oOiM/s400/curves.png" style="margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 10px" /><br /><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SGmX7fu3uhI/AAAAAAAAAQQ/2dF-1SWvKdM/s400/after%20curve.jpg" /><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><p>After finishing with the tone mapping I still didn't like the overall contrast in the image. I added a curves adjustment layer to get just a little more punch to the image. You can see the curve I used and the resulting change to the image above. After the curves layer, I made a minimal correction to the exposure and then put a true black and white layer since the tonemapping left just a bit of color in the image. I finished this particular image off with a 'platinum' toning curve (below) and a vignette to darken the edges.</p><br /><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SGmi1AydYKI/AAAAAAAAAQw/4lf1ny2fpGY/s400/toning%20curve.png" /><br /><p>As always comments, questions and constructive criticisms are welcome.</p><br /><p>All images Copyright © 2008 James W. Howe</p><br /><p>This image is available for purchase in my <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com/color">Color</a> gallery on ImageKind.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-34724895123261207392008-06-27T20:17:00.006-04:002008-06-28T13:55:44.901-04:00'57 Imperial<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhoweaa/2581747530/" title="'57 Imperial by jhoweaa, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3273/2581747530_b356855a72.jpg" width="395" height="500" alt="'57 Imperial" /></a><br /><p><br />This shot of a 1957 Chrysler Imperial was taken at the 2008 <a href="http://www.eyesondesigncarshow.com/">Eyes on Design</a> car show held at the Edsel and Eleanor Ford Mansion in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan. The show itself is a fundraiser for the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology. They had several cars in different age and style groups. I found this Chrysler Imperial to be particularly interesting. The color is typical '50s and the chrome on the car was beautiful. I really liked how the passenger side mirror combined with the antennae and shadow from the sun, created a nice abstract pattern of lines, shapes and colors.</p><br /><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SGWFjGuThII/AAAAAAAAAPY/YEtu2dAa9Zs/s400/as%20shot.jpg" style="float:left; margin-right: 15px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px"; /><br /><p>As you can see from the image to the left, the original image lacked just a little bit of punch. Most of the processing was designed to bring out the color that I saw at the show and to emphasize the lines. Overall, processing on this shot was really quite minimal. I used Adobe Camera Raw to make some minor white balance adjustments along with enhancing the blacks just a bit. In Photoshop, I used a very simple curve to increase contrast. The chrome was reflecting a bit of the trees and grass so I added a HSL layer and desaturated the yellows and greens. This helped the chrome be more 'chromelike'. I also cropped the image just a bit to eliminate just a bit of the windshield wiper.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><p>This shot was taken with an Olympus E-3 and a Digital Zuiko 14-54mm lens at f22. Zoom was at 29mm (58mm full frame equivalent). Shot at 1/80 at ISO 100.</p><br /><p>Comments and constructive criticism are always welcome</p><br /><p>This image is for sale at my <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com/automobile-details">Automobile Details</a> gallery at ImageKind. I hope you check it out.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5097940837211674386.post-86595710139427979152008-06-21T16:16:00.014-04:002008-06-21T17:11:14.963-04:00Car Buff<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jhoweaa/2591739688/" title="Car Buff by jhoweaa, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3238/2591739688_1b7b9a075d.jpg" width="377" height="500" alt="Car Buff" /></a><br /><p>I recently attended the <b>2008 Motor Muster</b> held at <a href="http://www.thehenryford.org/village/index.aspx">Greenfield Village</a> in Dearborn, Michigan. The show brought together more than 700 cars from the 30's through the 70's. I was there to take pictures of the automobiles. I'm not generally a people photographer. However, when I saw this little boy wandering around I just knew I had to get a shot of him.</p><br /><p>I was just about done shooting for the day when I noticed him. He was walking around like he owned the place, very determined to get somewhere. He wasn't lost and his mother was nearby. I was using my 70-300 lens on my Olympus E-3 at the time (35mm effective focal length of 300-600mm) and I was trying to get a shot as he darted in and out of the spectators. I finally managed to get this show, along with a few more. I really liked this shot in particular because it really gives the feeling that this boy is very self-confident and knows exactly what he wants.</p><br /><img src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/jhoweaa/SF1mTKj-s4I/AAAAAAAAAO0/LUkChkCXQLs/s400/car%20buff%20as%20shot.jpg" style="float: left; margin-right: 20px; margin-top:10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"/><br /><p>My goal in processing was to make sure that the boy was the center of attention. As you can see in the unprocessed image to the left, the boy is in focus, but the elements around him are only minimally out of focus. Even though I was using my 70-300, I was at 70mm f4 which doesn't provide the shallow DOF that I would have had if I had been at something like 300.</p><p>I did some basic processing in Camera Raw, adjusting white balance, exposure, etc. before launching Photoshop. Once in Photoshop my goal was to bring more attention to the boy. Since the other elements in the image were too sharp I decided to try the <a href="http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=35">Focal Point</a> Photoshop plugin by OnOne Software to see what I could do.</p><br /><p>The Focal Point software lets you define the area of your image that you want sharp and lets you set different parameters for how much blur, type of blur, feathering of the blur, etc. It's all done with a control that they position over your image. You simple drag the focus point around, drag some points (similar to the way the pen tool works) to expand or contract the area of focus, and drag some different controls to set the blur type and amount. It's all very visual and quick. I'm not sure that I do this sort of work enough to warrant purchasing the product (I was using an evaluation copy) but it is definitely a slick product.</p><br /><div style="clear:both"></div><br /><p>After getting the selective focus where I wanted, my next step was to darken everything except the boy. I used a curves adjustment layer in combination with a layer mask. I darkened the image and then used to mask to restore the original lightness level to the boy. I followed this up by using the Lens Correction tool to add an additional vignette to further darken the edges of the image. I then sharpened the image, but only the boy, I masked out any sharpening from the rest of the image.</p><br /><p>At this point I thought I was done, but I still thought the other elements in the image were distracting from the boy so I made one more change. I added a black & white adjustment layer to desaturate the colors from everywhere except the boy. I then applied a mask to make sure that the boy was in color. The end result is what you see at the top.</p><br /><p>Please feel free to leave comments, questions or constructive criticism and thanks for looking in</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Most images for sale at <a href="http://allencreek.imagekind.com">ImageKind</a></div>J Howehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10473420679502543413noreply@blogger.com1