Tag: post-processing

Monday’s Spectrum Exploration

An episode to talk about the creation of the “Extraterrestrial Totem” image. This includes a step by step post-processing overview.

After last week’s “Monday’s Spectrum Exploration” very much experimental approach, we’re going to more refinement in this episode. Also, I will write a bit more about the process used to create this image.

Let’s take a look first…

Extraterrestrial Totem

I expect that the first thing you notice is a more natural, blue sky tone in this image. Also, I brought a bit of color into the foliage as part of the process.

Let’s go over the process in a bit more detail:

  1. The first step is to import the RAW image file into the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) utility. As part of the CLiR Mastery Course, I have a number of profiles installed that are specific for my camera. In this case I chose the Canon EOS 5D MkII CLiR Swap 3 profile, which takes care of the Red/Blue channel swap and produces a nice blue sky.
  2. Now I let ACR open the file in PhotoShop, copied the layer and did a little bit of cleanup. There was a pesky little branch that went into the clouds and annoyed me.
  3. Next step I took the cleaned up layer back into ACR; as I use Tony Kuyper’s TK9 plugins, this is really straightforward. In ACR, I look for a profile that gets me close to the look that I want, which was Artistic 03 in this case. There are plenty of great choices and, if you haven’t yet, I encourage you to explore ACR.
  4. Then I create another copy of the layer and apply a bit of sharpening using Unsharp Mask. Another copy is made of that layer, which I blend using the Soft Light mode. This is a regular part of my processing technique; I always keep the opacity fairly low (< 10%); in this case I went a bit higher, as it looked great.
  5. I add a bit of contrast and some brightness to get the correct feel.
  6. Recently I started adding a Black & White layer with very low opacity. You may think this a rather odd choice, but I find that it’s a great way to control saturation in the image.

That’s all there is to it! I hope some of you might find this process overview useful. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

Monday’s Spectrum Exploration

Further experiments in infrared photography with an eye toward how different materials appear.

As I continue working through some of my infrared photography images, I am really enjoying this ‘alternate’ part of the spectrum. As I mentioned in last week’s post on ‘Creative Light Experiments‘, I am still learning (which will never stop).

Here’s this week’s image in the longer end of the spectrum…

An infrared image of the bridge over the Quinapoxet river in West Boylston
Quinapoxet Crossing

This shot is part of my set of experimental images that I shot to get a better understanding of how different materials will appear with a 720nm camera conversion. The stone of the bridge and the guard rail look fairly unaffected. As I processed the sky with a red/blue channel swap, it appears normal to our eyes. The green leaves are most affected in this treatment.

Some of the other experiments to try include playing with the White Balance in ACR. That will definitely happen during this week!

In other news, I am sending in a second camera to be converted. As I use mirrorless for all my ‘regular light’ shooting, my Canon 5D MkIII will be converted. I’ve selected 590nm for the filter for this conversion, so that I have two different parts of the spectrum. I’m looking forward to the next set of explorations!

Creative Light Experiments

Further explorations in infrared photography techniques and processing methods. A step along my creative journey.

A couple of weeks back (What’s in Color?), I mentioned my explorations in infrared photography techniques. As part of this exploration, I’m expanding some of my processing approaches. To this end, I am working my way through a course by the folks of Creative Light & IR (link). With this course, they also provide a large number of profiles for lots of different cameras; these profiles enable the processing of the RAW files in a more standard workflow.

Let’s take a look at an image that has gone through part of the process…

Tower Hill Pond

This image is a view of the lovely pond at Tower Hill Botanic Garden (link). I photographed the pond with my Canon EOS 5D Mk II, which has been converted for infrared photography. For this camera, I chose to have the filter let through light of wavelengths longer than 720nm. This still allows some of the color to come through in the captured image.

I still have several modules to complete in the course, as those will cover more details on color replacement and creative techniques to enhance images. Stay tuned!

My Photo Workflow

Turning over a leaf

Last week I shared an example of an edit that I did to highlight a blue canoe on a rather dreary, sleety day. In that post, I mentioned that quite often I do very little to adjust a photo. So in today’s post, I’ll detail my standard workflow.

Even though I do a lot of little adjustments in Lightroom for events, I only use Lightroom for print preparation. To get any image ready for print, I use Photoshop, as all my printer/paper profiles are available to me in Photoshop.

Let’s take a look at the steps that I used to process this image of a solitary leaf that I used as one of my test images to explore the Fuji X-T1.

Solitary Leaf

In Photoshop, my first step is to duplicate the background layer (Cmnd-J/Ctrl-J), as I don’t want to make any changes to the background layer that I might want to undo later. This also has the advantage of doing quick comparisons between layers.

Select this new layer, I will apply some amount of sharpening using the Unsharp Mask filter. My typical range of settings for the Unsharp Mask are:

  • Amount between 50-100% (note that too much sharpening will create some artifacts
  • Radius in the 2-4 range
  • Threshold in the 3-5 range

These values tend to work pretty well; for this specific image I used 70% with a radius and threshold of 3.

Next, I duplicate the Unsharp Mask layer and select the Soft Light blend mode for the new layer. Soft Light darkens or lightens the colors, depending on the blend color. The effect is similar to shining a diffused spotlight on the image. If the blend color (light source) is lighter than 50% gray, the image is lightened as if it were dodged. If the blend color is darker than 50% gray, the image is darkened as if it were burned in. As the impact of the Soft Light blend mode can be pretty overwhelming, I tend to use an Opacity of 7-15% on this layer (it’s usually more than enough). The effect of using the Soft Light blend mode is to provide a subtle bit of saturation without overdoing it. I find this works better for me than using the Saturation adjustment.

Last step is to adjust the Brightness/Contrast to make sure that the brightness is right. Also, I make sure to use Contrast to ensure that the image is not overly muddy.

At this point, I save the Photoshop document and, if I want to create a cropped version of the image (quite often I don’t) that is a next step. There are times when I have a specific format in mind that I will crop for; if that’s the case, I save the cropped version as a separate Photoshop document.

That’s all there is to it! Hope that this was interesting to you, and feel free to ask questions, if you have any.