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Awesome New Photo Editing Software Helps Us See What Our Cameras Couldn’t

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Imagine taking a single photograph of an object and being able to bring that lonely image into editing software that would allow you to turn the object around 360°, revealing all its sides which the camera never even saw. Software that would let you take a single picture (just one frame) of an origami bird and still allow you to turn the bird around, flip it over, even animate it as though you had many photos of the bird from every angle….

Sounds pretty cool, right? Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University thought so, too.  The researchers are actually working on a piece software that will allow us to isolate certain objects in our photographs and apply some wicked 3D manipulations to them. And, as it turns out, they are already doing some really cool photo edits with it.

But, how do they do it? Check out this quick video clip for an inside look of the software at work (spoiler alert: the camera doesn’t actually see the unseen…)[Read More…]

10 Steps to Better Photo Workflow

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I don’t know about you, but I got into photography so I could spend my time taking photos. What I did not get into photography for was the post production, the marketing, the meetings, the consultations, the pitches, the proposals, and the networking. Or the countless hours away from my family. For that I could have kept practicing law and left photography on the shelf as a hobby. The things we do in life always look different to those on the outside looking in. Just like my non-lawyer friends were convinced that all of my courtroom appearances were worthy of a “Law & Order” script, I find that many of the non-photographers in my life have a totally warped view of what those of us who make a living with our cameras do every day. Realistically speaking, I’d have to say that maybe only ten percent of my life as a photographer is about shooting. The other ninety percent is the stuff that makes me wish I could afford a full-time assistant. For me, it comes down to the best use of my time. Does “insert activity here” take time away from shooting and/or family? If so, what I can I do to switch that around?

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Lytro’s New 40-Megaray Camera Is Nothing Like Their Previous Toy

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Post-production focusing is something that’s gotten a good amount of attention in the past two months, thanks to the new HTC One and Google’s latest Camera update. But those guys weren’t the first to mess with the technology. Two years ago, a company named Lytro introduced the world’s first light-field camera, which allowed the refocusing of pictures after they’ve been shot already. Their first camera, however, was nothing more that a nice gadget with no real use. Today, the company announced their second entry into the game, and it’s absolutely nothing like what they released back in 2012.

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Photographing a Mermaid – a Photoshop Breakdown Tutorial by Colin Smith

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Using the image above, which was inspired by Disney’s Little Mermaid, I’ll walk you through how to employ an artform called Computer Generated (CG Photography) to create a powerful, surreal image. For the record, I have no purism in my personal style of art. I’ll use whatever I can to create the look that I’m after. I love to blend photography, illustration and 3D together to create something that doesn’t exist in the real world. It’s also worth mentioning that this image spent about a year as a showpiece on the homepage of Photoshop.com and Adobe used it in their keynote presentation when they announced Photoshop CS6.[Read More…]

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