Hardly Harley

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 24

2013-06-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Bay Bridge

Week 24. Nearly at the halfway point. For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 our theme was architecture. I reworked an earlier shot to tame some colors that were getting out of hand and work on it more subtly. Topaz Labs Clarity plug-in is quickly becoming a favorite of mine for it's remarkably light touch, yet great results. I really like this version of this photo a lot more than the original.

Dog's Eye View

Over at +Project 52 B&W our theme was get low. I ended up inverting my tripod, a very cool function, I might add, and shooting across the lawn to a flowerbed and fence. Not terribly imaginative, but it worked.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

Contrasting Hills

2013-06-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

Contrasting Hills

This is a shot on my photo bucket list; rolling hills of grass leading into a more forested area. The shot screamed to be converted to black and white, so I obliged. I think the shot worked out pretty well in the end. In terms of processing I first used Topaz Labs InFocus to sharpen up the photo before going into DeNoise to get rid of the large amounts of noise in the blue sky. I wish I knew what the cause of that was. Then converted the image in Black & White Effects, doing only some basic contrast adjustments there knowing I'd go to the new Clarity for more directed contrast adjustments. The finished it off with a light Detail pass.

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 23

2013-06-10T08:00:00.000-07:00

Pigeon Point Lighthouse

For +Project 52 B&W our theme was broken. There were so many things to choose from, but I went with the broken Pigeon Point Lighthouse, with a broken window on the side building. I really liked how this photo came out, but really had to fight that searing white lighthouse to tone it down a little bit.

Infrared, SOoC

For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 our theme was Straight Out of Camera (SOoC) meaning that the bare minimum of adjustments are done. Better would be to have no adjustments done what so ever after you press the shutter button. Normally this is where you try to show your camera skills, but I took a different route and thought I'd show what I see SOoC when I shoot infrared. I used a custom white balance I have stored on my G3 which ends up giving me the aqua colored foliage I like in my infrared shots, but until I make a white balance adjustment in Aperture I get a very yellow looking photo.

(Infra)Red School House

This is the same photo after having played around with white balance and using Topaz Labs new Clarity tool for contrast. I consider this a work in progress and not a finished photo, but I'm liking where it's going so far.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

Vaillancourt Fountain

2013-06-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

HDR Fountains

In Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco there's a fountain that has always caught my eye. As a kid all I could think about was climbing it. Now, older and more mature, all I can think about is climbing it. Apparently Bono of U2 did just that in 1987.

The shot itself was taken in the late afternoon light. It is a seven shot HDR and I even made use of my tripod for this. Looking at the composition now I wish I hadn't cut off tree tops. In fact a number of shots taken that day suffer from cutoff trees or buildings. I need to be more aware of the whole frame and not just the main subject in it. Processed in Photomatix then finished in Topaz Labs plug-ins.

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 22

2013-06-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

Some #Autoawesome

For all the photos I had taken recently I felt sure I'd have something I could use for both projects this week. I was wrong, and Thursday evening (+Project 52 B&W is due on Fridays) I was scrambling for something for the theme of Technology. And by scrambling I mean looking through my library looking for something that wasn't what I used for +Weekly Photo Project 2013 that I just convert to black & white and call it a day. Then I remembered Auto-Awesome, one of the new features in Google+ Photos that recognizes certain types of photos and automatically does things to them. In theory it is able to recognize shots that can be stitched together to make a panorama, bracketed shots to make an HDR, and shots that could be made into an animated GIF, which is obviously what I did. So I took a picture of technology then let technology automatically make the final picture. I was impressed with it, even if it is kind of a weak photo in general. It took me awhile to figure out that there needs to be a minimum of five shots before Auto-Awesome will do its thing, but once I had the 5 shots in an album it took maybe five minutes for G+ to recognize the type of photos and for it to make the animated GIF. Sadly Auto-Awesome seems to be hit or miss; I still have 3 bracketed shots waiting for the HDR treatment from 2 weeks ago. If the photo isn't animated, please have a look at it here: http://goo.gl/XG6e9

Rosey

For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 our theme was Bokeh. Bokeh is the area of a photo that is rendered out of focus either on purpose for artistic qualities or due to technical reasons. Not all lenses (and cameras) give off the same subjective quality of bokeh, and my lens, I feel, gives a more harsh distracting quality of bokeh, at least for this shot.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

Reno in Infrared

2013-05-31T17:30:00.001-07:00

Reno in Infrared, a photo by iharley on Flickr.

Infrared. For me it's like a drug I can't quit. The long exposures, the blurriness, and the noise all combine to make most of my IR shots hard for me to look at. This one, pleasantly, isn't so hard to look at. Taken in the mid-day Reno sun the exposure time was a far more reasonable time of 2 seconds. The clouds were my initial focus, as IR really does something to make them pop more that normal, but the trees came out nicely too! Love how you can make out the green in the hills in the background.

Via Flickr:
Reno in Infrared

The Ferry Building and Flickr

2013-05-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

When I heard that Flickr was upping their free storage for photos to one terabyte, my first thought was, "I hope Google does the same." And for me, that's the problem with the Flickr news. I have a Flickr account that I post to about once a week, when I post a shot on Thursdays here on the blog, but beyond that I've just not been able to get into using it. I've joined a couple groups there related to micro four-thirds, HDR, and a couple relating to the software I use, but I've not been able to get any kind of engagement there. Instead I use Flickr as a browsing agent. If I'm going to be in a certain area I'll search for the area on Flickr to see what kinds of photos there are to be found there. So I've been trying to figure out just what I can do to take advantage of so much storage.

My current strategy, if you can call it that, is to make Google+/Picasa my main photo sharing site. This works well because Google+ is my social network of choice and Blogger is a Google product with tight integration with Google+ Photos/Picasa. And since I like to schedule blog posts in advance, the whole system just works smoother. I then Use Fotostat to upload the same photo to Facebook, Twitter, 500PX, and Flickr then schedule the photo to be shared at the same time the blog post goes live. This system works for me.

What Flickr has going for it, besides the full size photos and terabyte of storage, are excellent sharing options to many social media sites, including Blogger, and, if you like it, their new design. I happen to like it. There's no Google+ sharing, which I believe is an issue with Google not Flickr, but you can easily grab a URL and paste it to Google+. The only issue I have, really, is that I can't schedule Blogger updates. So I'll need to try out different things to see if I can fit Flickr in my workflow as something more than an afterthought.

The shot. This is the San Francisco Ferry Building. This is a 7 shot HDR taken from nearby Pier 14. I took a lot of shots from this vantage point of the Ferry Building and the hardest thing I found when processing the shots was to get some separation of the sign "Port of" from the background. I found the HDR version of the shot created the best separation, but even that had to be massaged a little in Topaz Labs Adjust and Detail.

HDR Fountains

2013-05-28T12:56:00.001-07:00

Fountain HDR - Version 2, a photo by iharley on Flickr.

So I'm checking out the new Flickr, as I'm very interested in the terabyte of storage of full size images. One thing that was keeping me from really making use of Flickr was in the area of sharing. It looks like I can share to Blogger straight from Flickr. There's also the Facebook and Twitter sharing which is straightforward enough. Sadly there's no Google+ sharing (that's Google's fault), but I'm finding this promising.

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 21

2013-05-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

Busy SF Street

Compositionally this isn't the greatest, but I enjoyed playing around with long exposure shots from the comfort of a 23rd floor room. Our theme for +Weekly Photo Project 2013 was Action/Motion. I had a number of shots to choose from, but I kept coming back to this one. This was a full 60 second exposure that I only worked on in Aperture because a recent Topaz Labs update has (temporarily?) killed my normal workflow. I primarily played with white balance to try and get rid of the very strong yellow cast from the street lights.

A Row of Curves

This wasn't an intentional shot. I was walking by the Ferry Building and looked up and thought I'd try to compose a little differently. I also liked the row of arches to fit in the theme for +Project 52 B&W of Curves. Also in an unusual move for me this is a JPEG straight out of camera with no touch ups. I was quite pleased with the lighting.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

The Bay Bridge

2013-05-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

Bay Bridge at night

Usually thought of as the lesser Bay Area Bridge, the Bay Bridge (which connects Oakland and the East Bay to San Francisco) recently got some LED art installation. You can see more about it here. It's fun to watch and draws a large photography crowd most evenings. I took this at the oddly numbered Pier 14, which for some reason comes before Pier 1 and is the closest pier to the bridge. I think I'll try here again maybe for a panorama shot leading from Treasure Island/Yerba Buena Island (on the left) into San Francisco (cut off).

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 20

2013-05-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

The SF Night Sky

I haven't posted photos for my projects for the last couple weeks mainly because they've not been photos I enjoyed taking, never mind looking at. But these I enjoyed. I love San Francisco. It has some great photo opportunities day or night, but I really liked my night shots. The theme for +Weekly Photo Project 2013 was Contrasting Colors, and I think we have that covered.

Hemmed In SF

For my black and white group our theme was Framed. I chose this street shot originally for it's close in, hemmed in, feeling, that only seems to get worse as you head down the hill. Then someone pointed out all the "frames" on the buildings. That works too. As is my usual I did the conversion in Silver Efex Pro 2 and in an unlike me decision, put more grain into the picture. I think I wanted to give it a "street" or "edgy" look to it. I don't think I pulled it off.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

Golden Gate

2013-05-17T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Golden Gate on a typical SF day

It's been a bit since I posted. It'd also been a while since I had felt like shooting anything. I think the Golden Gate Bridge, and San Francisco in general is a good remedy for what ever the equivalent is for writer's block for photographers. I have a couple GG shots (a couple hundred) but this is my first down from the Fort Point area. That's Fort Point, a Civil War era fort, under the bridge. I'd seen a lot of GG shots from this vantage point on G+ so thought I'd give it a try. I like the heavy chain, it gives a kind of anchor and a little extra to the shot. Sadly the waves weren't so big as to give me a real dramatic bridge shot with a wave crash. Maybe next time. Weather was also not ideal for a photo, but was typical SF. Should have waited around a couple hours for the clouds to burn off. Other things I would have done differently would have been to actually use the tripod I had in the car with me, that might have made this seven shot HDR composite a little sharper.

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 17

2013-04-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

Night Lights. Literally

I thought this was going to be the week that I stumbled and didn't turn something in for at least one of the projects, but I was able to get photos in for both of them. Just not in a photographic state of mind. So for +Project 52 B&W our theme was night lights. Had I been on my game earlier in the week I would have lined something up with the moon through a window in my house illuminating the hall. By the time I got my act together fog and clouds obscured the moon and I was left with this night light. And a mirror.

Where the magic doesn't happen

For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 our theme was favorite room. This is not always my favorite room, but it is in the morning. Just me, my cereal, and something to read. This shot is an HDR shot and also my first interior/room HDR shot. I realized that one processes these shots differently than outdoor shots.

Through the Arch

2013-04-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Archway

I spend some time on G+ looking at photos. Usually I'm looking at style as I'm trying to figure out just what my style is. Other times I'm looking for ideas and subjects. I've been seeing a lot of these water arches recently so I was happy to come across one of my own. I'll have to try and venture back here with a little more water drama and not in the middle of the day.

This is a seven shot HDR. I wanted to get all the detail in the shadows of the rock formation so figured HDR was the way to go. Apart from that I used Topaz Labs Detail. It was a very windy day, and my fairly lightweight camera and tripod were probably moving a bit during shooting. Detail lets me lessen blur and sharpen things up a bit.

Quick Post

2013-04-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

The IR Path

Just a quick post with some shots that I shared on Google+ that I thought I'd bring in here too. These were shot over the weekend. This first one is an infrared shot that tempted me after I had decided to not shoot IR anymore. For saying how windy it was on the coast, it was remarkably still here allowing this five second exposure to not look that bad in terms of motion blur. I've yet to figure out how to effectively do color channel switching, so the only thing I've done to this is set the white balance and increase contrast.

Beach Painting

It was really windy on the beach, and as I was walking into the wind I had my head down and was trying to protect my camera. As I was walking I was some lighter sand on top of the wet dark sand. I looked up and captured this. I try to "see" in what I want the final photo to be, whether it's black and white or infrared, and this was easy to visualize in black & white.

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 16

2013-04-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

Searching for aliens? No, searching for something to watch on TV

It's Monday and that means another recap. For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 our theme was technology. There's not much to this shot, and I wouldn't place it high on my favorite lists. The one thing I will say about it is that flip-out and rotate touch screen made this a much easier shot to take. This was held as high up as I could reach, then when I thought I had the shot I wanted I just tapped the screen for the shot. Not much in the way of processing either. I wanted to emphasize the dirtiness of the dishes so took the shot into Topaz Labs Detail. All in all a boring shot.

Foggy Lane

For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 our theme was the vague sounding fade. To get the shot I wanted I ended up having to go to the archive to pull something out, and even that wasn't good enough. Originally this shot (in color) had hints of fog in it. I need to figure out how to better take photos of fog. Longer shutter speed? Shorter? Anyway, I needed to help the fog out. I used Topaz Labs Lens Effects which was able to add some fog to bolster my fog up and have the street almost fade out.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

Toning Fun

2013-04-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

Black Cerulean Tea Rocks

My +Project 52 B&W is a very strick black and white group. No sepia toning. No toning above 15%, whatever that means. I'm sometimes surprised shades of grey are allowed haha. I suppose it makes sense, the group is a black and white group, but there's some fun to be found in toning. Topaz Labs Black and White Effects have some great dual and quad tone toning presets that I always want to play with but don't because of the rules. Well it's Thursday and this photo is (probably) only going to be used here on the blog so here's "Black Cerulean Tea Dynamic" from B&W Effects Cerulean collection.

I'm still trying to get a hold on toning, but it's basically moving color tones to be other color tones. This photo has four colors to it, a dark blue, a very light red, black, and white. I don't think Silver Efex Pro by Nik/Google has quad toning, but just the fairly standard dual tone. Hopefully I can play more with these in future photos.

Babbling Brook Before and After

2013-04-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

Baseline Single Exposure and Final HDR photo

I thought since our +Weekly Photo Project 2013 group just finished up the theme of HDR that I go into a little more depth on how I created my image. Most of my steps were taken from +Trey Ratcliff's wonderful +Stuck In Customs HDR walk through and changed to better fit my equipment and workflow. The above two photos show what the camera felt was the correct exposure for the scene and what my finished HDR photo turned out to be. And after the break I'll outline how I got from the shot on the left to the shot on the right.

The 0 Exposure

Here's Exposure 0. It's what the camera decided on how to handle the light in the photo. One mistake I did on this whole set of exposures was to have my aperture too small af f16. I wanted to capture the flowing water but I didn't need an f16 to do that. I probably could have gotten away with an f8 and not blown out so much of the water. So besides that problem the shot doesn't capture much of what's in the darker parts of the photo. That's where the six other shots, or brackets, come in.

The Brackets

Above we see all seven brackets now in Aperture, starting with Exposure Level 0 on the right, moving to -1 to +1, -2 and +2, and -3 and +3. The photos are all RAWs. Many people use JPEGs, but I use RAWs because if I end up not liking the HDR I can still have a lot of flexibility in using a single exposure in RAW format. Most people just use 3 shots (-3 or -2, 0 +3 or +2) but my camera doesn't have a lot of flexibility when choosing how many brackets and at what interval, so the only way for me to get a -3 to +3 range to is to shoot seven shots along the way. I could do the brackets manually but that is more time consuming.

At this point I now typically send them straight to Photomatix Pro. I would normally take the time to DeNoise each file in Topaz Labs DeNoise, but to be quite honest I'm too lazy for it and I find the option to let Photomatix remove noise to be good enough most times, with just a little extra DeNoise work after the HDR is created.

The Created HDR

Here's what it looks like after it leaves Photomatix. We can see more into the shadows and the foliage has more depth to it. The details found in the shadows come from the over exposed (+1, +2, +3) brackets and the details in highlight areas come from our underexposed (-1, -2, -3) brackets. This is great, but HDR often leaves photos feeling flat due to low contrast, which makes sense because we're trying to bring out more information in both the darks and light areas, so I almost never consider a photo finished when it comes out of HDRing. With this photo I wanted to saturate the colors more, bring in some contrast and try to minimize the overblown whites in the running water.

Now the photo goes for what I call finishing. Using Topaz Labs' great photoFXlab I can access my Topaz plugins quickly and easily and make use of layers. First stop is to DeNoise to take care of the noise that seeps into HDR images. I love DeNoise for it's ability to remove noise and retain detail. After that it's off to Adjust where I do what I think of as large scale changes to saturation and exposure to get the overall mood and look I'm looking for. It's in here that I dealt with the overblown whites, add in some contrast and get the saturation so that greens are green. And then I finish it all off in Detail to bump the details of the photo up a little bit, and deblur it. Great thing about Detail (and most Topaz Labs plugins) is that I can brush out the effects, which I did on the water to keep the smooth flowing look.

Finished

I think I accomplished what I wanted in this final shot. The water smooth and flowing with the white highlights toned down (but still too noticeable for my eyes). The greens of the moss and ferns now pops some more with the changes in saturation, along with the other colors. The shadows have shadow areas have come back but are more detailed and more interesting to the eye. All in all I was quite pleased with this shot as it turned out better than I thought it would when I was behind the camera taking the photos. I hope this is of some help to you.

Equipement Used:

Camera: Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3

Lens: Kit 14-42mm f3.5-f5.6

Tripod

Software:

Apple Aperture

Photomatix Pro
Topaz Labs Plugins

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 15

2013-04-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

Babbling Brook

We didn't change too many of the themes for +Weekly Photo Project 2013 when we were using the 2012 group's themes, but some did get the axe. In place of one of those themes was my suggestion for HDR. Yes, I might have suggested it because I knew I'd have no problem coming up with a photo, but I also thought of it as a good way to introduce the method to those who had never done it before. This is a 7 shot photo processed in Photomatix then bombarded with Topaz Labs' DeNoise, Adjust and Detail.

Elusive

For +Project 52 B&W I figured it would be easy to shoot the theme flowers. I didn't take into consideration the weather keeping me indoors, oh, and no flowers around my house. A two hour bike ride didn't find me anything more than dandelions and some smaller flowers that didn't really photograph well. I finally came across this guy just as I was heading back home.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

The Cave

2013-04-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

Who Lives Here?

While hiking around I stumbled across this. I didn't really think much of it until I heard some kid wondering who/what lived in there. Man, where'd the imagination go? 8 year old me would have been betting on some kind of amphibious undiscovered monster living there. Maybe the North American Loch Ness monster. The kind of whirlpool action on the right just adds to the mystery of the cave. Man, I wish I could look at things like that kid again.

In terms of the photo itself, it's a seven exposure HDR. HDR does interesting things to water, which I tend to like, making it more turquoise and showing more contrast. I'm about at the end of my Nik collection trial and did process the photo through the two different sets of plugins. Though I liked how the photo looked initially coming out of HDR Efex Pro, I felt more comfortable going through the Topaz plugins in getting what I wanted

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 14

2013-04-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

A Dark and Stormy Night

This was quite literally a last minute shot for +Weekly Photo Project 2013. I hadn't an idea for our theme of Night, and the weather wasn't helping much. So, I looked outside the front door. From my G+ post:

"So there I was, sitting at my computer looking at all the #weeklyphotoproject2013 photos when it dawned on me, tonight is the last night I can take a night photo (and be on time). Well, the weather was one reason why it came down to this. So, there I was squatting on my front doorway stairs with a remote shutter release in one hand, an umbrella in the other and my camera hanging upside down from my tripod, which I didn't know it could do until today, so there's that. Everyone's been there before, right? No? Well, the neighbors tend to look at you strangely."

That pretty much says it all. I did minimal work on the post processing side, some DeNoise-ing and a little brightening of the shadows.

Beauty and the Beast

For +Project52-2012 our theme was transportation, and I happen to run across this wonderful Jaguar D-Type with the beastly AC Cobra in the background. Both lust worthy cars for different reasons. Dad brought me up to appreciate classic cars, and the Jag D-Type is just about my favorite classic car out there. I played around with this image a lot. The color image wasn't that great to begin with, it was a really flat day out. On a mistake I took it into Lens Effects from Topaz Labs and applied the tilt-shift lens preset. It didn't do the usual "make big things look small" effect but did really play with the focus.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

Fogged in Panorama

2013-04-05T08:00:00.000-07:00

7 Shot Panorama

On a rare sunny day in Humboldt I was able to trek to get this 7 shot panorama of College Cove with Pewetoll Island and Trinidad Head being fogged in.

This is a seven shot panorama processed in Photoshop for the actual stitching. I also ran it through Hugin, but have been finding Photoshop's stitching to be more consistent. I thought Hugin would handle these shots better since it was handheld, but Photoshop just beat out Hugin. I then ran two copies of the photo through Nik and Topaz Labs software and at the end I chose the Topaz Labs processed version. In Adjust I used the Vibrance pre-set and fiddled with the adjustments from there. Then to finish it I took to Detail. I had originally envisioned this shot in black and white, but wasn't able to get it together in time for posting, though I think I'll try it later.

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 13

2013-04-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

Shadow and Light

For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 our theme was Playing With Light. I had a couple ideas on the theme, but when I got to shooting them they just didn't work out. So due to it being the last minute I had to find something in the archive. I liked this shot in black and white better, but it turned out ok.

The King of Trees

I had better luck with the +Project 52 B&W theme of Look Up. A giant redwood in the middle of a ring of redwoods.

You can view my Weekly Photo Project album here.
My black & white project album here.

Peaking Sunset

2013-03-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

Topaz'd Sunset

Pulled this set out of the archive. Earlier this week Nik (owned by Google) released a new version of their software plugin suite for Aperture (and those other photo editors) for a much reduced price of $150. Considering the suite used to go for $450-$500 this was a pretty big deal. In this suite is an HDR plugin (HDR Efex), a black and white conversion (Silver Efex), a color and tone enhancer (Color Efex), a sharpener, and a denoise tool. I had gotten Silver Efex and absolutely love it, but had tried some earlier version of HDR Efex that I felt weren't as good as Photomatix, and I couldn't get into using Color Efex. But with this new release and tempting price I thought I'd try them again.

Nik'd Sunset

I denoised in Topaz's DeNoise. After playing with Nik's version I just felt more comfortable with DeNoise and wanted the 2 HDR photos to start off on the same equal footing. After that one set of exposures went to Photomatix for HDRing then to Topaz Labs plugins for finishing and the other set went through the Nik suite of HDR Efex and Color Efex. I originally wanted to try and get the same look and feel for the two. I wanted to bring out the colors and the clouds, the reflection in the water, and the sun rays peaking around the cliff. Some of those things are brought out in both photos but certain things obviously turned out differently.

HDR

Nik HDR Efex is a two step process. The first step involves alignment on or off, helpful for when you shoot handheld, ghost removal, and chromatic aberration removal. The first two are pretty automatic with you being able to click different percentages of ghosting, but the chromatic aberration removal have two sliders that I couldn't really get the hang of so I ignored them. After that the HDR is made and you're able to do a bit of toning. I felt more comfortable in this area than I do in Photomatix's comparable screen, though photomatix uses quite a bit more sliders to fine tune things, and after years of playing with them I'm comfortable using all of them now. I think if I was just starting out HDR Efex would get the nod here in terms of being able to jump in and do things, though I feel I can do more in Photomatix. So I'm going to give Photomatix the nod, if just barely.

Toning and Finishing

Topaz Labs a little bit ago released an awesome plugin/standalone program called photoFXlab which allows the user to easily access all their plugins through a simple interface, and even make use of layers. My typical workflow has me sending the HDR photo to FXlab where I make layers, or copies, of the photo with every plugin used. This way I can easily see the progression of the photo, and if need be tone down some of the edits with layer masks. My two most used plugins are Adjust 5, which works on the colors, toning, and detail of a photo and Detail which, well, works on the details of a photo in a much more powerful way. For this photo I only used Adjust.

Nik Color Efex and Topaz Labs Adjust have a similar workflow; presets on the left, photo front and center, and sliders to fine tune an effect on the right. In both you can one click a preset and call it a day, if you like. Their presets are grouped by looks (Adjust) or uses (Color Efex) which are helpful to quickly sorting through what amounts to a hundred or so presets. The big difference between the two are in how you can adjust locally, or specific parts of a photo. Topaz Labs does a kind of internal layer that you can either brush in or brush out an adjustment while Nik uses control points. Place a point in an area and on a specific part of a photo and you now have control over that circle of influence. Going into this I thought Topaz's way of doing things would be easier, but I think Nik's control points were easier to get the hang of using. With Topaz I found myself often resetting the mask and adjust the opacity of the effect, or the overall effect, then re-painting. With control points there are sliders available that make it easy to make adjustments on the fly. But after years of using Adjust I admit to feeling more at home there which is why I'm again giving Topaz the nod, though I think Nik might even take that spot.

I'll be using the Nik suite more over the next couple weeks to see how it works out, but either way you look at it $149 for these world class plugins is a deal. Topaz Labs used to seem like the best deal in this space at $300, but at half the price Nik and Google have made a statement. The question is, can the quality stay up to par?

Weekly Photo Projects, Week 12

2013-03-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

No More Fires for This Guy

Another Monday another week done for my photo projects. For +Weekly Photo Project 2013 the theme was Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. I was tempted to find a copy of the movie and just shoot that, but then this abandoned firetruck ruined those plans. This is a seven exposure HDR that might have gotten a little too sharp and crispy. Especially in the sky, which is why I cropped it the way I did.

End of the Tracks

For the +Project 52 B&W the theme was uneven. I had a couple to choose from, but liked the play between the light and shadows in this one. I know if you have to explain why a photo fits the theme you've probably failed, but it's in the trees.