Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
One of the parts of editing and post-processing I enjoy the most is colour grading. You can really add to the emotion and story depending on how you edit the colour palettes of an image.
In this excellent video from Adorama, editorial and commercial photographer Emily Teague shows us how she goes about colour grading an image. Emily is using Capture One to edit her image, however, the same principles apply to whichever software you’re using.
Capture One has released a powerful update to Capture One 22. The improved version features a re-envisioned keystone tool, an array of feature updates with expanded capabilities, and Apple silicon performance advancement that brings a host of substantial speed improvements.
This update also brings new camera and lens support for a number of the most recent hardware releases.
You can achieve Foveon-like images with deep colors and crisp individual pixels with your conventional (Bayer) camera. However, this comes at the price of losing 75% of your megapixels and having to work experimentally and outside the comfort zone of your camera manufacturer’s color science.
Owners of Foveon and 3-chip video cameras swear by their camera’s color reproduction, and for good reason. Other, conventional digital camera sensors can’t see true colors, but only record monochrome red, blue, and green pixels. In other words, a 24-megapixel camera with a conventional (Bayer) sensor doesn’t really record 24 million color pixels, but 6 million monochrome red, 6 million monochrome blue and 12 million monochrome green pixels.
It’s time we put some updated sensibilities’ behind the statements “fix it in post” and “getting it right in the camera”.
A few people mentioned these phrases to me recently and honestly, I was surprised to hear how they interpreted the meaning behind them. I was even more surprised and disappointed when I posted the topic on social media today and quite a few people weighed in with very strong opinions and RULES for how things should be done.
I know, I know — I shouldn’t be surprised by people arguing their opinions on social media.
When you edit a landscape photo, it’s easy to get carried away. I know I’ve been guilty of it even years after being into photography. And many times, it’s not even easy to see when you’ve gone overboard. In this video, Mark Denney gives you six signs that will help you recognize when you’ve gone too far with the image editing. And when you learn to recognize them, they’ll help you improve your post-processing skill.
When I work with an image, I want to create something pleasing to the eyes, a piece of art with a wow-factor. I desire to produce a scene that takes the viewer on a journey from foreground to background.
When it comes to editing, it really helps to have a guiding template. It helps the creative process. Many call this a creative vision. That said, I would never advocate or introduce rules for landscape photography. My photography’s core motivation is the freedom to express myself in whatever artistic fashion I find fulfilling. It should be the same for you.
For me, though, I have always found it helpful to have some guidelines that outline the direction I am heading. Walking blindfolded isn’t something I enjoy. I have adopted three main principles for my post-processing, and I will explain each of them in detail.
I vividly remember how stunned I was by the landscape images I saw when I started with photography. It was beyond me how someone could create such beautiful and striking images. Those artists inspired me, but they also created a strong desire to improve my own photography.
I set out on a long journey, and in this article I will share some of the lessons I learned along the way which may help you to improve your skills as a landscape photographer.
The perfect graphics tablet doesn’t exist. But you’ll eventually adapt to the weird specifications and ergonomics issues of your tablet model and make it perfect for you. This adaptation process made by your body (in regards of the ergonomics flaws of your hardware) will have an impact your health on the long run. It might also affect your pleasure to draw and paint…
Since 2002, I bought and used a lot of tablets to try to build the best setup I could. It came as a necessity to ease my full days of digital painting. Nowaday, my quest for the best graphic tablet still continues as the technology keeps evolving years after years. If you want to read more about what I used and why, read my maintained “Tablet history log” article, from 2002 to today. But beyond the choice of the hardware itself, I also studied other aspect about it. And the first one that comes to my mind is the ergonomics of my desktop position. So, let me share with you my experiences about ergonomics.
When it comes to processing our images, there are all kinds of weird and crazy techniques out there. This is an interesting Lightroom one from Pye Jirsa over at SLR Lounge, which he calls “Dark Mode”. It allows you to quickly and easily draw a distinction between the lit areas you want to highlight, and the shadowy areas, without sending them to pure black.
It’s an approach I’d not seen before. It essentially involves bringing the exposure way down, the blacks way up to bring back the shadow detail and then controlling your contrast with the highlights. Some thought needs to be put into the shooting technique for this to work, but it looks to be quite effective if this is the final look you’re going for.
Yes, it’s post processed.
I get this question all the time, like every other photographer on the planet, and it often sparks heated debates that challenge the notion of objective reality and the meaning of photography.
My claim is: all photographs are post-processed.
In one way or the other.
FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!