Photo editing can work miracles, but some pictures come out of the camera so bad that not even Photoshop can help them.  I was worried that this image would be one of them.

Before is on the left, after on the right.  What do you think?  Was I able to salvage it?

Is it worthy of framing and hanging on the wall after its edits?  No way.  But I think it’s much better and would make for a fun 5 x 7.  Or a Facebook profile.

I can’t even begin to list all the things wrong with this pic, but I’ll try.

• My ISO was at 12,800 because this was taken during my nighttime photography class.
• Decided to turn on my flash because ISO just wasn’t getting it.
• Forgot to turn down ISO after turning on flash.  CRAZY Noise.
• The flash washed out the subject and created harsh shadows.
• Crazy white balance due to the halogen street lights.  Remember how I mentioned ignoring white balance in my nighttime photography post?  This funky yellow cast wasn’t even atmospheric – just yucky.

These are the photo editing steps I used to combat this noisy mess:

• Imported image in Lightroom.
• 1st thing, ran Nik’s DFine noise reducer.  Normally, I would run this later in my workflow but I couldn’t concentrate until I smoothed out the grain.
• Grabbed the white balance dropper and clicked on the lettering on his shirt, knowing that this area should be a neutral white.
• Fine tuned the white balance by sliding the Temp slider just a touch towards the yellow.
• Clicked on Auto above the exposure slider.  I usually start with Auto on pictures that really need help, and fine tune from there.

After these Lightroom adjustments, this is what I had:

• Next, I opened the image in PSE 8 and ran Darker and Richer from MCP’s Complete Workflow.  This helped with the washed-out look created by the flash.
• Then I ran Color Burst Part I, from the same action set.  I masked in the areas that I wanted to have “extreme” pop.  This action is the most colorful of the 3 levels of color pop available in the Complete Workflow.  Here is my layer mask:

• Ran part II of Color Burst.
• I adjusted the Color Explosion layer to 72%.
• Finished by turning on the Color Burst Cool the Color layer, because I still wasn’t happy with my White Balance.
• Well, actually, I finished by running MCP’s Finish It so that I could sharpen, format the file for the web and show you this version:

]]> http://www.texaschicksblogsandpics.com/photo-editing-can-this-image-be-saved/feed/ 8 http://www.texaschicksblogsandpics.com/photography-at-night-tips-tricks-for-photographing-your-family-in-low-light/ http://www.texaschicksblogsandpics.com/photography-at-night-tips-tricks-for-photographing-your-family-in-low-light/#comments Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:40:38 +0000 Erin http://www.texaschicksblogsandpics.com/?p=5595

The photography class I’ve been taking (Bring on the Night by Austin Photography Workshops) is wrapping up tonight.  I will miss the class, and the 3 hours a week dedicated to practicing with my camera.  There is simply nothing like an in person class for improving skills.

The subject matter was way out of the ordinary for me.  There are no traditional portraits in the images that I captured.  However, much of what I learned can be applied to getting great pics of your children in low light situations.  Here are some of my thoughts:

Be on the lookout for "cool" scenes	Capture your family's nighttime routines, and the not-so-routine moments too.
Shoot through windows	Not your neighbor's window, of course. Maybe snap a pic of Dad reading to your kids through the bedroom window. Capture beautiful lighting and reflections.
Look for reflections	Do you have a mirror in your dining room? Feed the family, light some candles and grab your camera.
Use shutter speed creatively	Use a shutter speed of 1/30 of a second or less to blur out that tricycle or a running kid. A blurred child running past a seated, in focus child says a lot about personalities.
Embrace the inevitable soft focus	It's going to happen when shooting in low light. Make art out of it. Let the colors tell the story, rather than the details.
Tell Stories	Images that leave questions unanswered often create the best stories.
Don't worry about White Balance. The lighting adds to the effect.	Lighting with color tints adds to the nighttime feel of your images.

(Action lovers alert:  See the end of this post for the action recipes I used to make these images pop!)

Photography as I know it just wouldn’t have been possible with film cameras. I tend to take lots of pictures of any one subject until I get it right.  Developing every image I take would make an already expensive hobby absolutely impossible.

I learn by practice and repetition, so this process is good for me.  Bless the hearts of my very patient teacher and classmates in my current photography workshop, who don’t mind waiting on me!

Taking multiple photos of the same subject does cause me some issues though, especially when deciding which is my favorite to present to the workshop for critiques.

Each of the 3 photos on this page were taken at exactly the same position but they are all so different.

The first really emphasizes the coolness of the cars and the occasion.

For the 2nd photo, with soft focus, I took the exact same shot except that I manually changed my focus.  This photo, to me anyway, is more about the lights and colors than the cars.  I think it might be my favorite of the 3.

And this last image caught people in it.  Because the sun had set about 2 hours before I took these pictures, I was using a long shutter speed – 1/25 of a second in this photograph.  That means that nothing that wasn’t perfectly stationary would be in sharp focus.  The blur of the moving feet brings the photo to life for me.

Action Combinations:

I used the following actions on each of these images.  Each action works in Photoshop Elements.

• My Free Defog action for Photoshop Elements – these images were taken at an extremely high ISO, and defogging helped minimize the resulting noise.  I used the Pea Soup setting on each photo.
• MCP’s Complete Workflow for PSE- Color Burst on the first image, Darker and Richer on the other 2
• MCP’s Finish It for PSE- Brand It Bottom (Framed) to size, sharpen, frame, watermark and add the caption block.

Wondering how I use actions to make my photos look their best?  Take my Photoshop Elements Actions from A to Z class.  The evening class is filling up quickly, so sign up now if you’re thinking about that one.

Do you know how to get the most out of all those actions you’ve downloaded lately?

(Check back soon – more classes added every month!)

High quality actions for Photoshop Elements are available in so many places. They can correct a poorly exposed photo. They can make blown skies blue. They can convert your photo to black and white or make the color pop. They can sharpen. Whiten teeth. Brighten eyes.  They can even format your images for professional looking blog posts or to print out a scrapbook page or a beautiful display for wall hanging.

However, as any first time action user knows, you do need to have some basic training to use actions to their full potential.

This 1 hour online class will teach you everything you need to know to use your actions as their designers intended them to be used.  The session will cover:

• Types of actions and what each does
• Brief overview of how to install the various types in Photoshop Elements (I recommend that you install your actions before class starts.)
• Running
• Adjusting overall effects
• Fine tuning effects
• Q&A

Photos used as examples in this class will be everyday photography from class participants in order to vividly illustrate the difference that actions can make.

Purchase your class here for $50, after choosing the session that works best for your schedule.

Actions from A to Z Tuesday, August 17, 10:00-11:00 AM CST	Actions from A to Z Wednesday, August 18, 8:00-9:00 PM CST

If the session you want isn’t available, sign up for the Texas Chicks newsletter to be informed of future classes.

This class will be hosted online.  You will receive an email shortly before the session begins instructing you how to join the session.  You will have live audio from me and a screen shot of my computer for the one hour session.  Live chat will be available for all participants throughout the session to allow for questions and comments.

Nighttime Photography is the latest class hosted by Austin Photography Workshops that I’ve participated in.  I love it and have learned lots of juicy tidbits about getting great shots at night, some of which I’ll share next week.

The lights at night have so far been my favorite subject for photographing, and this past week I tried something new.

Ok, so clearly my technique needs a little work, but I really love this idea.  Here’s what I did:

• I cut circular pieces of black poster board and black foam that were exactly the same size as the UV filter I leave on my 50mm lens.
• Punched shapes into the poster or foam
• Placed this new filter snugly inside a 2nd UV filter, which I put on top of my normal UV every time I wanted this bokeh in a shot.  Essentially, I had a sandwich with my bokeh filter between two UV filters.
• I used my largest aperture lens, which is my 50 mm f/1.4.

These are good resources for more info:

• The first one, here at Pompo Bresciani Photography, suggests starting by cutting a hole in an extra lens cap.  I tried this, but it was just too much work.  My Exacto knife didn’t stay hot long enough to make more than a tiny hole in the cap.  However, I think with a more sophisticated tool, this would be the best method.
• DIY Photography illustrates a different technique for making the filter.
  

The problem for me with the paper filter taped onto the lens is that I didn’t want all my images to have this bokeh, and it wasn’t practical to walk around on a shoot taping and untaping a filter from my lens.  This is why I like the idea of a lens cap with the filter cut into it.  Not being able to manage that, I decided to use poster board or black foam (like you see everywhere kids make arts & crafts these days) to make a filter that fits snugly into my UV filter.

I like the durability of the foam filter, but the foam was too thick to fit into my heart punch.  So I made the heart filter out of poster board and the star filter from foam.

The other supply I needed was a punch – your shapes have to be perfectly crisp to make this bokeh work.  I bought a medium sized heart and a tiny star. As far as the sizes go, you might try something like this for the heart and this for the star.  My star was much too small.

These punches that you make in your filter are actually creating new apertures for your lens.  So, the smaller it is, the more you are going to have to rely on long shutter speeds and high ISO to bring light in.  The hole needs to be as large as possible, but remember that the filter won’t work if it’s too big.  That’s where this DIY Photography tutorial came in.

One of the hardest things about using this method was getting the focus right. Part of my problem was using a double UV filter stack.  I learned to clean the UV filter after changing from the star to the heart because I got lots of finger smudges from switching them out.  This is why I’d prefer to use the lens cap method, once I figure out which tools I need.

Another thing to for me to do better next time would be to focus on a subject as close to me as possible, with the lights I want for Bokeh as far away as possible.  That will help in getting great bokeh as well as great focus on the subject. Keep in mind that this bokeh will only appear in the parts of the image that are out-of-focus.

I also think that this technique isn’t perfect for really low light situations.  Obviously, you need enough darkness so that lights “glow”, but you also need to have good lighting on your subject.  I’m thinking that little holiday lights in a room with just-before-sunset light might be great.  Can’t wait for the holidays to try it!

New actions for Photoshop Elements are available for you from MCP Actions.

MCP’s Blog It Set 1, Blog It Set 2 and Print It sets together give you over 120 actions that create custom collages from your images, either for printing or for posting on your website.  And they work in Photoshop Elements!

For the image above, I used the 7 opening collage from Blog It Set 1, followed by the sharpening and resizing actions included with that action.  It took me all of 45 seconds to create it!

I’ve been working on converting these actions to be PSE compatible for a few weeks now.  As always, when using her actions, I have been amazed at everything included in her sets.  Any one of these 3 new sets will give you at least 15 different collages with customizable colors, sharpening and sizing options.  The Blog It Boards will also create Branding Bars for you professionals out there, or for those who want a spot to write captions.

The Blog It Boards (Set 1 and Set 2) produce creative collages that present anywhere from 2 to 16 images.  Images can be replaced with text boxes for journaling and captioning purposes.  The branding bar actions place branding bars of various colors suitable for logos or captions on the top, bottom or sides of your image.  The borders around the edges can be any color you’d like.  Blog It Boards Sets 1 and 2 create low resolution images for web use only.

The Print It set creates high resolution collages of 2 to 16 images ready to print on paper, scrapbooking material, canvas or anything else you’d like. It also includes adjustable sharpening and sizing actions.  The Print it set has several 12 by 12 collage options perfect for scrapbooking, and creates spots for the incorporation of journaling or digital embellisments.  The borders and frames around the images have an infinite number of color combinations.

Check out MCP’s website for more details and to see stunning examples of what you can create with these action sets.

Try Out a Free Blog It Board Action from MCP

Download MCP’s 3 image Blog It Board here. It is Photoshop Elements compatible and will create a collage of your images, but does not include the branding bars or sharpening actions that come with the full sets.  If you’d like a free sharpening action, try MCP’s High Definition Sharpening, which is also Elements compatible.

Current MCP Discounts on Action Packs

If you’re interested in buying, MCP is currently offering a $10 discount if you purchase both Blog It sets, or $25 off if you purchase Blog It Sets 1 and 2 plus Print It.

And if you have questions about the way they work, post a comment.  I can help!

]]> http://www.texaschicksblogsandpics.com/new-mcp-actions-for-photoshop-elements-and-a-freebie/feed/ 0 http://www.texaschicksblogsandpics.com/fireworks-photography-recap/ http://www.texaschicksblogsandpics.com/fireworks-photography-recap/#comments Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:00:18 +0000 Erin http://www.texaschicksblogsandpics.com/?p=5442

Remember my fireworks photography checklist from the 4th of July?  It worked really well and I am happy with my fireworks photos.  In addition to my family, we were with a group of friends, two of whom are photographers also.  We had a competition where we asked our other friends to judge whose photos were best.  Unfortunately, I didn’t win, but I had a blast!

Here’s a recap of my checklist for getting good photographs on the 4th of July, with my comments on how they worked:

• Use a tripod – check.  This one is a necessity.
• Shutter speed – the longer, the better.  The shutter was open for 21 seconds in the photo above where you can see the city line at the bottom!
• Bulb Mode – I kept my camera in this mode the entire time.  I would depress the shutter button when I first saw the firework shooting up.  I held the button down until the firework started to dissipate.  This was great, because I didn’t have to estimate before hand how long to keep the shutter open.  I mean really, who could guess how long one firework would take anyway?
• Multiple fireworks in one exposure – I used the tip from this Digital Photography School article about holding black foam core board over the lens between fireworks while the shutter is open.  I used a black plastic plate instead of the board, and my friend used a hat.  This method produced that same image above with the cityscape.

This was tough because I wasn’t exactly sure when to remove the plate from the lens and when to replace it.  Definitely will take more practice.  It was also a challenge because the fireworks were bursting at approximately the same point in the sky.  Some of my images taken this way just look like a blob of fireworks on top of each other, whereas I was hoping for well defined bursts horizontally across the image.  I wonder if this would require moving the tripod just a tiny bit while the lens is covered.  Something to practice on next year….

• Multiple fireworks in one exposure, part II — one of my friends has a Nikon that will let you tell it to record, for instance, 5 shots on one exposure.  So, you press the shutter button 5 times to produce one image.  I need to research whether my camera does this.
• ISO – 200 all night long.  There is no noise in these pictures!
• Aperture? – I used f/10 in just about every picture to get good focus throughout the image while letting in enough light.
• Zoomed in shots – I had planned on zooming in really close on some of the fireworks to capture only part of the scene.  This was harder for me.  I wasn’t close enough, for one thing, and didn’t want to waste time putting on my zoom lens.  Maybe next year.

How did your pictures from the 4th turn out? Link to them in the comments to share them, if you’d like!

Is photography on your agenda for those of you in the states this holiday weekend? Last year was the first time I put serious effort into photographing fireworks.  This year, I’m going to incorporate everything I learned into the my photo workflow:

• Use a tripod. This is the key to crisp photos at night.  Using long shutter speeds means you will get more blur just from holding the camera with your hands.  Using a tripod will eliminate this camera shake.
• Shutter Speed – the longer the better to capture light trails.
• Bulb Mode – an easy way to control shutter speed. Set your camera mode to B and hold down the shutter button from the time you first see the firework.  Release the shutter button when the firework dissipates.  Or when the smoke starts – that’s a sure way to muddy up your image and reduce clarity.
• ISO – as low as possible to avoid noise.
• Aperture – use a medium to high number to get an aperture opening on the smaller side of the scale.  Using long shutter speeds will give you enough light to offset a low ISO and small aperture
• I’m going to try, depending on my location and lens, to get a few really zoomed in shots like the one in this Digital Photography School article.
• In the same DPS article, a reader described a technique of using a black foam core board to get multiple fireworks in one exposure.  If I’m feeling good about the way my shots are turning out, I’m going to try that more advanced method.  Have any of you ever done that?  Do you have any tips for me?
• Read this page from Canon about fireworks photography tips. It’s very helpful!

Regardless of where you are, I hope you have a great weekend!  Make sure to link to your photos here if you get some good ones, and share your secret tips too!

Without photographic inspiration, I sometimes get bored with my images.  It usually only takes a quick internet surf to get me back in the mood with new goals and ideas for my photographic journey.   Kelly Willette’s Finding the Joy workshop, which I’m taking right now, is also a great source of inspiration.  You can read more about it below.

Here are some of my latest photographic loves.  Thank you to all these talented ladies for allowing me to link to their images.  Each of them has an Esty shop.  Be inspired by them, and perhaps find some new art for your home in their shops.

Yvette Inufio Photography

Blog:  Morning Light in My Room

Etsy:  Yvette Inufio Photography

I love the subtle pastels and soft focus from this photographer.  Would love to decorate my bedroom with her images.

Much Love

Blog:  Much Love, Anna
Etsy:  Much Love, Anna

Next time I buy a house, it’s going to have lots of pretty windows and perfect spots inside for photography.  My current home just isn’t this photogenic.

Gabrielle Kai Photography

Website:  Gabrielle Kai Photography

Blog:  Dreaming in Pink

Etsy:  Gabrielle Kai Photography (Note that Gabrielle’s Etsy shop will be closed for the entire month of July.   A new baby is on the way!)

I love the subtle range of colors in this image, plus the idea of the stories it might tell.

Life Through the Lens

Blog:  Life Through the Lens

Etsy:  Life Through the Lens

That blue in the background is amazing.  Where did it come from?  I love the the treatment on this image.

More Photography Inspiration

Danni at (oh, hello friend.) you are loved is always presenting beautiful photography to her readers.  I don’t know how she finds the images, but every one of them is amazingly pretty.

Also, I’m taking Kelly Willette’s Finding the Joy children’s photography workshop and loving it.  (Not that you could tell by the amount of homework I’ve turned in.)  I have read every word that Kelly posted and I’ve gotten tons of great info for capturing great photos of kids.  She is super organized and creates the cutest guides and checklists for each lesson of the workshop.

One thing I wish Kelly had not introduced us to was her love of music playlists.  Because I have created more than one playlist since then, but haven’t submitted even one photo as homework!

So, at a time when I already had playlists on my mind, I was reading Joy St. Claire’s blog.  For those of you who don’t know her, she is a very talented photographer.  She also sells a couple of very cool, colorful texture/overlay sets for Photoshop.  And she has a great playlist on her blog.  The music was soothing and motivational for me to work to, so I copied most of it.  I added a few more of my favorite songs and posted it here for you to listen to.  Thank you Joy!

Now’s the time to join Clickin’ Moms if you’ve been thinking about it.  Use coupon code FRIEND to save 10% on the 6 month or full year memberships.  Or (and this is a great deal!), use discount code LOVECM to save 20% on a lifetime subscription to Clickin’ Moms!  An offer like that doesn’t come around very often.

Here are some of the great discussions/tutorials going on right now at Clickin’ Moms:

• How to Get a Silhouette in 4 steps
• Newborn photography inspiration
• Color Correcting in PSE

The photography posted by CM members is awesome.  This forum saves me a lot of time blog hopping, because tons of excellent photographers post their work here as well as on their blogs.

Feel free to post any questions you have about joining.  The sale ends on Friday, July 2, so make sure to purchase before the end of the week if you’re interested.