Photoshop?

You've probably heard me talk about this before, but since it comes up a lot I thought I'd post about it again. Photoshop is a great tool for making a good thing better, but the honest truth is you don't need to have it to take great photos. Even edgy hard shots can still look great without even going thru ACR or Lightroom. Focus on getting things right in camera and you'll not only save time, but it'll improve the quality of your work even after going thru post.

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Tricks For Your Toys

I just got the August Mac Life, and it had a whole article full of sweet terminal tricks! :D

Turn dock icons translucent for apps that are open but hidden.

Open terminal (Applications-Utilities) and type "defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES; killall Dock" and press enter.

If you aren't as happy with the results as I am, retype the command replacing YES with NO.

X-Ray Folders in Quick Look.

Type "defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders -boolean YES" and press enter.

I love this one, but if you don't, retype the command and replace YES with NO.

I hope this isn't too technical... I just thought they were cool! If you want more, there are 25 terminal tricks in the August 2010 Mac Life.

One thing I find most iPod Touch users don't know (and wish they did) is how to screen capture. When you have the image you want to save on the screen, press the lock button and the home button at the same time until the screen flashes. You'll find the image in the saved photos folder as a PNG. If you didn't already know this don't feel bad... I learned it by accident...

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More Affordable Lighting Tricks

Here's another lighting trick Rod showed me. The credit for this one actually goes to Brian Demint, who has mastered this little tool...

It's pretty simple. Go buy a heat lamp ( or get one out of your barn), and a 100 watt standard boring everyday average lightbulb, and have some fun.

One thing to remember here; the closer you hold the light, the more diffused it will be. Just change your shutter or aperture to keep your skin from clipping.

This light cost me $8 plus 50 cents for the bulb. I got it at Menards, so it might be cheaper other places. I haven't looked.

And if you're wondering why I am always posting photos of myself, it's because I find whenever I need someone to try something new on, I seem to always be available.

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Superimposing An Image On Paper

I had a few people ask me how I placed the image of Hannah on paper in a previous post, so I'm going to try to explain it very briefly. If I miss something, or if you want to know more you can email me or leave a comment.

I'm using Photoshop CS4 and a graphics tablet, but you can do the same thing with the last few versions of photoshop.

Final image preview.

This is a barely edited version of the original portrait.

This is my paper image. I took two normal pieces of paper ( I was out of card stock) and folded them over in different directions until I got the look I wanted, and then took a picture with them sitting on a flat piece of paper. Obviously I desaturated it at this point, but I haven't done much else to this image yet.

Here you can see it coming together a bit more. I have a high contrast version of Hannah over my paper, and I've given the paper a bit of a vignette, and decreased the contrast a little.

To get the photo to look somewhat flat and printed I decreased the layer opacity to 72%. Now to get the wrinkles of the paper to come thru and merge with my wrinkled backdrop, I set Hannah's layer blend mode to multiply. You can see the fold of the paper thru Hannah's layer now.

I selected the fold with a polygonal lasso, and created a layer mask. Then I selected a grungy brush, and masked around the edges of my portrait to give it an abused look, and blend it with the wrinkles of the paper.

To give it an old magazine look I used the halftone filter on Hannah's layer. I created a flat version of the entire image, and added some noise to blend it all together, along with a gradient map to ensure that there are no true blacks in my image. I also added a lighting effect to increase the directional light coming from the bottom left of the image.

This is a somewhat condensed description of how I merged these photos together, but I hope it'll be useful to all you photographers and graphic artists out there.

And once again feel free to contact me if you want to know more, or if there are any other images you'd like me to break down a little for you. If there's any interest, I'm more than happy to share what I've learned with all of you.

Thanks for reading!

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Lighting Technique

I know a few of my readers are photographers, so I thought I'd put this up for anyone who might want to play around with this lighting style.

Shutter speed: 1/125

Aperture: f4.5

ISO: 250

Focal Length: 183

Camera: Canon 50D

I don't have the money to buy a lot of studio equipment yet, so I do a lot of improvising. My backdrop is a large piece of white cloth, and my lights are all 500 watt halogen work lights.

I hope you find this useful!

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Creative Tips

Hannah found this site, and I thought it was so good I'd share it. If you're a photographer you definitely want to check this out.

rodevans.tv

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