Thanks Luke. I paid for Lightroom. Super discount on Amazon. Over $100 off. This might be the only good Adobe product I've ever seen. I'll probably use it forever.
No problem! It's just great for anyone even slightly interested in photography, and it's cool you got a good deal.
If you want me to skype into geeknights as a guest I can geek out about photography and answer any more questions you might have.
That said, there's an episode about juggling yet to go up too...
Thanks Luke. I paid for Lightroom. Super discount on Amazon. Over $100 off. This might be the only good Adobe product I've ever seen. I'll probably use it forever.
No problem! It's just great for anyone even slightly interested in photography, and it's cool you got a good deal.
If you want me to skype into geeknights as a guest I can geek out about photography and answer any more questions you might have.
That said, there's an episode about juggling yet to go up too...
I had the other episode on my hard drive. The juggling episode is all Rym.
Here is a fundamental photography problem I am having. You generally want the sun behind the person taking the picture. Which means the sun is always shining in the eyes of the subject! It was very hard to have good lighting without either squinting or sunglasses.
Close your eyes and then open them just as the shot is taken? Depends on the intensity of the sun. A better solution would blocking the direct sun with a piece of cardboard or tshirt.
Close your eyes and then open them just as the shot is taken? Depends on the intensity of the sun. A better solution would blocking the direct sun with a piece of cardboard or tshirt.
Here is a fundamental photography problem I am having. You generally want the sun behind the person taking the picture. Which means the sun is always shining in the eyes of the subject! It was very hard to have good lighting without either squinting or sunglasses.
That's why slightly overcast days are best for outdoor portraits. Direct sunlight will not only cause squinting, but also lots of harsh shadows.
#2 is the best. You should have shades on, though.
Shadoworc01's law: If a group of something is shared on the internet, someone in the next 5 comments on the group will be which of that thing is the best.
The 2nd and 3rd look good. The look you give reminds me of Joey on F.R.I.E.N.D.S. with his "stop and smell the fart" acting look whenever he forgets a line and has to think about it for a second. :P
Here is a fundamental photography problem I am having. You generally want the sun behind the person taking the picture. Which means the sun is always shining in the eyes of the subject! It was very hard to have good lighting without either squinting or sunglasses.
One good trick for this is to close your eyes, then face the sun for thirty seconds to a minute. After that, you should be able to open your eyes long enough without squinting for several good shots.
In Lightroom 3: crop so the edge of right eye is on the top right two-thirds cross point. (Waaay to much space above and to the right) spot removal on neck (looks yucky, and it's the only thing my eye focused on) Temp + 7 (to make the sunset feel more like a warm sunset) Exposure + 0.2 (I want to see your eyes!) recovery 65 (lets me see more colour in the sky) Fill light 13 (details in beard and jacket) Blacks 3 (but not tooo much detail in the jacket)
Brightness +63 (boosts colour more than anything) Contrast +25 (I don't like anything wishy washy)
Clarity + 19 (doesn't have a lot of effect on a small image like this, but should make the hair and sky dividing line more crispy) Saturation -6 (Makes the white skin under your newly shaved head less noticeable compared to your face)
HSL: Saturation settings: Orange + 18 (boosts the skin tones to make you look more healthy, and also brings out the sunset sky) Blue -37 (the white skin of your scalp? looks so white because it is the bluest thing in the frame) Magenta -28 (your ear is distractingly bright red, and this makes it less so)
Post crop Vingette: Highlight Priority (dims the edges and makes you pop out from the bright sky a bit more) Amount -18 Midpoint 35
All the adjustments took less than two minutes, and writing them up here took much longer. I don't take so long on most photos, but only because I get more stuff right in the camera, and know ahead of time what I need to change.
That is a tremendous help! For one, I didn't even know there was a spot remover. I knew there was a thing on my neck, but I thought I needed actual Photoshop to fix that shit. It took me awhile to even find it even when I new it existed and I should look for it.
You know what feature I found on my own that I love the most? Limit file size on export. So when some site says you can't upload an image greater than 700K, like Steam, you can get it exactly right.
I tried messing with all the dials, how is this?
Doh, I just realized I made a mistake. I edited that photo on the second monitor, which is not the IPS ultrasharp. It looks completely different on this screen! There's a plus side, though. I can mail out yet another "I told you so" to all the haters who say you don't need an IPS monitor.
Messing with the dials is a fun way to learn how this stuff works. There are huge sections of Lightroom I've not yet learned, and big chunks I probably haven't found yet. And I've never played with any version of Photoshop for any length of time, and people use that program for years in a professional capacity and hardly scratch the surface.
But messing is only the first step. Once you know what something looks like with the slider in the middle or at either end, you have to learn which settings to change to achieve the desired result.
I'm not sure what the above photo looked like before you played with it, as all I can see is the tiny avatar file. Personally I preferred the second photo, mainly due to the weird shadows on your chin. There are too many lines converging on one point (line of chin, jacket, shirt, beard, throat, adam's apple) and it makes it the focus of the photo, or at least of your face. The second photo has a nice highlight under the chin to break it up. It makes it so your neck isn't a massive expanse of bright skin the size of your face too.
Um... I'll play a minute.
First! The crop needs to be tighter. In the photo I manipulated you are looking up, not just to the left. The crop I did made it look like you are gazing up at the corner of the photo. Right? In your photo you are looking slightly down your nose (slightly). You can cut more off the top for sure.
Second! The shadow on the left of the frame needs to go. With the vignette it's way too dark and distracting. Crop it out
Third! The contrast is weird. It's a bit wishy washy. This could be a style thing, but for a portrait that you want to use as an avatar, you want your face to pop out from the background more than it is.
So here's a good trick.
1. Turn down saturation to zero, to leave you with a greyscale image.
2. Bring up the contrast or the blacks until it looks good in black and white. Here's my take (merely putting the black slider to +11 from your version).
See how much contrast there is between your jacket and beard and the buildings in the background?
3. Bring the saturation back up to where it was before. You might need slightly less than before in some cases, as blacks and contrast can bring out colour in interesting ways that aren't always helpful.
So that's it! A tighter crop and extra contrast (or in this case more black) is all you missed. Or all I would change.
But then I'd use the second photo, not this one. That's not up to me though.
There's a plus side, though. I can mail out yet another "I told you so" to all the haters who say you don't need an IPS monitor.
Scott, I was still living in Pudsey when that argument kicked off, and I've been back in this country a year, meaning you've been carrying on with this shit for just over two fucking years. Just let it go, dude. We get it already, we believe you, even though I feel obligated to point out that your anecdotal evidence proves exactly dick and you should know better. And if we didn't get it by now, then we probably wouldn't care about it enough for it to bear repeating.
That's a really nice self-portrait, Scott. I like the way the evening sun gives you a rim light on the side of your face. I always like dusk/dawn shots when they come out okay. You look handsome and stoic in that picture. Can you take my portrait some time?
I can mail out yet another "I told you so" to all the haters who say you don't need an IPS monitor.
You need an IPS monitor if you are working with color. If you're doing art, film, photography, web design, graphic design, any of that shit, even as an amateur or hobbyist, then you probably need an IPS monitor. I don't think anyone denies that. If you're watching silly YouTube videos, playing videojames, programming, and looking at Facebook, then an IPS monitor will be better, but a cheaper monitor will suffice.
That's a really nice self-portrait, Scott. I like the way the evening sun gives you a rim light on the side of your face. I always like dusk/dawn shots when they come out okay. You look handsome and stoic in that picture. Can you take my portrait some time?
I purposefully did it during the "golden hour." I learned at least one thing from the Internets! Even checked the sundown calendar.
I can try to take your picture, but don't expect professional results, obviously. Seeing as I've been taking "real" photos for, only a few months now. Should be easier to take a picture of someone else since I won't have to use the timer and run around.
Another trick I learned from the Internet. How do you focus on yourself when you aren't in front of the camera to be focused on? Two methods. One is to have a cardboard standup of Han Solo, or a broom, to focus on. Then move it out of the way. I used another method which is even more clever. Take the camera off the tripod. Stand where you are going to stand. Then focus on the tripod. Now put the camera back. The focus distance will be exactly right if you don't bump the tripod or stand in the wrong place.
Take the camera off the tripod. Stand where you are going to stand. Then focus on the tripod. Now put the camera back. The focus distance will be exactly right if you don't bump the tripod or stand in the wrong place.
I think if you don't learn this one of the internets, you learn it pretty quickly in the field independently! I know I did, and many other photographers I've talked to.
OMG, I discovered the before and after view. Now everything is ten billion times easier. I practiced on this pretty good photo of Kate I took on New Year's. Did I do it right?
OMG, I discovered the before and after view. Now everything is ten billion times easier. I practiced on this pretty good photo of Kate I took on New Year's. Did I do it right?
Excellent, though I think the second is just a tiny, tiny bit too bright.
The side by side view is handy, but I rarely ever use it now. I never care what a photo looked like in the past, I only have in mind what needs to change next. For learning purposes it is invaluable though.
So your second imaged of Kate is way better, but I'm going to have to point you to another feature of Lightroom, and thereby cause you to waste another dozen hours of your life.
Keep in mind that there is no "right" way to manipulate an image. It's an art, and you can use the tools in Lightroom or Photoshop to do anything you want. But here's what I would do differently with this photo:
You thought "The blue on her tongue is the main point of the photo, so I want to make it stand out" which is logical, but you used the wrong tools for such a job. You've increased the saturation of all colours some, and then it looks like you've increased the blues even more. This means the jacket on the left is more blue, the car and street is more blue, and the buildings in the distance are more blue too. The blue of the tongue, while more blue than before, is now LESS prominent than before, due to being surrounded by a general blueness.
In the top right of the develop module is the Brush tool. Or press K to open it. Paint a Kate's tongue, then you can adjust just that area of the image. Boost the saturation there, and nothing else. Close the Brush tool, and then work on the whole image again. You'll discover you don't need to play with the colour sliders to make the blue tongue pop out now.
Or, as I said above, maybe you want Kate to be a blue girl in a blue world. It's a question of tone. And by tone I don't mean colour, I mean the feel you want to create with the image
Also, while you're at it, press M to open the gradient tool. Make the guy on the left slightly out of focus by casting him progressively more into non-sharpness. This will make sense as soon as you play with it.
Then crop the photo slightly, removing some of the guy on the left, and a sliver of the sky above Kate's head.
Then do some spot removal to the cruft on Kate's jacket.
Then, in my opinion, you'll have a photo which wouldn't look out of place as a quarter-page image in a lifestyle magazine. Which could be good for you or bad for you, but at least it's something which could be done with this photo.
WARNING: The Gradient tool is very powerful, and with great power comes great responsibility. Please don't use it to make massive chunks of your photo illogically out of focus. Not every photo has to be bashed into fake shallow depth of field! Get that as right as possible in the camera, and then de-focus sparingly.
OMG, I discovered the before and after view. Now everything is ten billion times easier. I practiced on this pretty good photo of Kate I took on New Year's. Did I do it right?
Excellent, though I think the second is just a tiny, tiny bit too bright.
But would you think that if you hadn't seen the original?
OMG, I discovered the before and after view. Now everything is ten billion times easier. I practiced on this pretty good photo of Kate I took on New Year's. Did I do it right?
Excellent, though I think the second is just a tiny, tiny bit too bright.
But would you think that if you hadn't seen the original?
Yes. If I didn't know he'd used lightroom on it, just looking at it and not seeing the previous photo, I'd say he'd over-exposed it just a little bit.
Comments
If you want me to skype into geeknights as a guest I can geek out about photography and answer any more questions you might have.
That said, there's an episode about juggling yet to go up too...
In Lightroom 3:
crop so the edge of right eye is on the top right two-thirds cross point. (Waaay to much space above and to the right)
spot removal on neck (looks yucky, and it's the only thing my eye focused on)
Temp + 7 (to make the sunset feel more like a warm sunset)
Exposure + 0.2 (I want to see your eyes!)
recovery 65 (lets me see more colour in the sky)
Fill light 13 (details in beard and jacket)
Blacks 3 (but not tooo much detail in the jacket)
Brightness +63 (boosts colour more than anything)
Contrast +25 (I don't like anything wishy washy)
Clarity + 19 (doesn't have a lot of effect on a small image like this, but should make the hair and sky dividing line more crispy)
Saturation -6 (Makes the white skin under your newly shaved head less noticeable compared to your face)
HSL: Saturation settings:
Orange + 18 (boosts the skin tones to make you look more healthy, and also brings out the sunset sky)
Blue -37 (the white skin of your scalp? looks so white because it is the bluest thing in the frame)
Magenta -28 (your ear is distractingly bright red, and this makes it less so)
Post crop Vingette: Highlight Priority (dims the edges and makes you pop out from the bright sky a bit more)
Amount -18
Midpoint 35
All the adjustments took less than two minutes, and writing them up here took much longer. I don't take so long on most photos, but only because I get more stuff right in the camera, and know ahead of time what I need to change.
Play about, and you can learn shit like this too!
That is a tremendous help! For one, I didn't even know there was a spot remover. I knew there was a thing on my neck, but I thought I needed actual Photoshop to fix that shit. It took me awhile to even find it even when I new it existed and I should look for it.
You know what feature I found on my own that I love the most? Limit file size on export. So when some site says you can't upload an image greater than 700K, like Steam, you can get it exactly right.
I tried messing with all the dials, how is this?
Doh, I just realized I made a mistake. I edited that photo on the second monitor, which is not the IPS ultrasharp. It looks completely different on this screen! There's a plus side, though. I can mail out yet another "I told you so" to all the haters who say you don't need an IPS monitor.
But messing is only the first step. Once you know what something looks like with the slider in the middle or at either end, you have to learn which settings to change to achieve the desired result.
I'm not sure what the above photo looked like before you played with it, as all I can see is the tiny avatar file. Personally I preferred the second photo, mainly due to the weird shadows on your chin. There are too many lines converging on one point (line of chin, jacket, shirt, beard, throat, adam's apple) and it makes it the focus of the photo, or at least of your face. The second photo has a nice highlight under the chin to break it up. It makes it so your neck isn't a massive expanse of bright skin the size of your face too.
Um... I'll play a minute.
First! The crop needs to be tighter. In the photo I manipulated you are looking up, not just to the left. The crop I did made it look like you are gazing up at the corner of the photo. Right? In your photo you are looking slightly down your nose (slightly). You can cut more off the top for sure.
Second! The shadow on the left of the frame needs to go. With the vignette it's way too dark and distracting. Crop it out
Third! The contrast is weird. It's a bit wishy washy. This could be a style thing, but for a portrait that you want to use as an avatar, you want your face to pop out from the background more than it is.
So here's a good trick.
1. Turn down saturation to zero, to leave you with a greyscale image.
2. Bring up the contrast or the blacks until it looks good in black and white. Here's my take (merely putting the black slider to +11 from your version).
See how much contrast there is between your jacket and beard and the buildings in the background?
3. Bring the saturation back up to where it was before. You might need slightly less than before in some cases, as blacks and contrast can bring out colour in interesting ways that aren't always helpful.
So that's it! A tighter crop and extra contrast (or in this case more black) is all you missed. Or all I would change.
But then I'd use the second photo, not this one. That's not up to me though.
I can try to take your picture, but don't expect professional results, obviously. Seeing as I've been taking "real" photos for, only a few months now. Should be easier to take a picture of someone else since I won't have to use the timer and run around.
Another trick I learned from the Internet. How do you focus on yourself when you aren't in front of the camera to be focused on? Two methods. One is to have a cardboard standup of Han Solo, or a broom, to focus on. Then move it out of the way. I used another method which is even more clever. Take the camera off the tripod. Stand where you are going to stand. Then focus on the tripod. Now put the camera back. The focus distance will be exactly right if you don't bump the tripod or stand in the wrong place.
Original
Lightroom'd
So your second imaged of Kate is way better, but I'm going to have to point you to another feature of Lightroom, and thereby cause you to waste another dozen hours of your life.
Keep in mind that there is no "right" way to manipulate an image. It's an art, and you can use the tools in Lightroom or Photoshop to do anything you want. But here's what I would do differently with this photo:
You thought "The blue on her tongue is the main point of the photo, so I want to make it stand out" which is logical, but you used the wrong tools for such a job. You've increased the saturation of all colours some, and then it looks like you've increased the blues even more. This means the jacket on the left is more blue, the car and street is more blue, and the buildings in the distance are more blue too. The blue of the tongue, while more blue than before, is now LESS prominent than before, due to being surrounded by a general blueness.
In the top right of the develop module is the Brush tool. Or press K to open it. Paint a Kate's tongue, then you can adjust just that area of the image. Boost the saturation there, and nothing else. Close the Brush tool, and then work on the whole image again. You'll discover you don't need to play with the colour sliders to make the blue tongue pop out now.
Or, as I said above, maybe you want Kate to be a blue girl in a blue world. It's a question of tone. And by tone I don't mean colour, I mean the feel you want to create with the image
Also, while you're at it, press M to open the gradient tool. Make the guy on the left slightly out of focus by casting him progressively more into non-sharpness. This will make sense as soon as you play with it.
Then crop the photo slightly, removing some of the guy on the left, and a sliver of the sky above Kate's head.
Then do some spot removal to the cruft on Kate's jacket.
Then, in my opinion, you'll have a photo which wouldn't look out of place as a quarter-page image in a lifestyle magazine. Which could be good for you or bad for you, but at least it's something which could be done with this photo.
WARNING: The Gradient tool is very powerful, and with great power comes great responsibility. Please don't use it to make massive chunks of your photo illogically out of focus. Not every photo has to be bashed into fake shallow depth of field! Get that as right as possible in the camera, and then de-focus sparingly.
http://flic.kr/s/aHsjyEBKQe