A New Try At Sharpening

 Recently, I listened to a video on YouTube done by Blake Rudis of F64 Academy.  In the video he went through a process of making the layers into a group, making the blend mode to be Linear Light, making the Fill slider to be at 30%, the desaturating the layer. He then used the High Pass filter, made a black mask and then brushed the areas that he wanted to be sharpened.

In this photograph, I sharpened the wood, and the water, but left the bushes alone.  I did not use the Blend If like he did.  I think that the picture turned out well.

If you have an interest in Photography, Meditation or Mindfulness, you are welcome to contact me and I would be very happy to set up a day and time for us to meet and talk about it. 

Pushing On

While the Covid-19 pandemic pushes on, over one million cases have been reported in the United States, with over 1,600 cases in my county and over 2,000 in my immediate area.  Yet, the governor has partially opened the state, to commerce.  I am sorry, but this is scary to me.  Many businesses were boarded up during this time with lots of graffiti artist painted their graffiti on the boards.  Because of some of those businesses deciding to open up, many of the boards are coming down.  It seems like a waste of talent.  Why don't some of those businesses use the boards as part of their decor?  It could be that they don't want to be reminded of the times, but it is a piece of history.  Someone once said, "The reason that history repeats itself is because we don't learn from it".  Some have said that the world will not be the same after this and others have opined that perhaps we should not go back to the old ways.  Perhaps.

Focusing more on the positive, I have been listening to podcast and getting ideas for things that can help my process my photographs.  I created a preset for Lightroom, that I will use to process my photographs as I import them into Lightroom.  I also made a LUT (Look Up Table) for my colors and tones in Photoshop.  Both of those were inspired by listening to Blake Rudis' podcast on the Virtual Summit that Dave Cross put on.  Now all I can have all of my colors and tones can look the same throughout my photographs.  I am looking forward to using it on many if not all of my photographs.

I also listened to Dave Cross' podcast called "Talking Shop".  He made a suggestion about using two curves in Photoshop, one for darkening and one for lightening and then making an action to put the two curves on your layer stack.  I have been interested in trying to burn and dodge in Photoshop without using the burn and dodge tools.  It is my thought that with using a mask in Photoshop, making the mask black, then painting in white with my settings at 10% intervals for the brush and going over and over until I am satisfied with how the highlights and shadows look in my photograph.

If you think about it, every object that we see, has highlights and shadows.  Photographs are two dimensional objects having only a length and width.  It is putting highlights and shadows in your picture that helps it become three dimensional helping it to have depth.  Having the ability to dodge and burn will really help in my processing abilities.  I am looking forward to making the action and putting it in my library in Photoshop so that I can use it in my post processing.

I am itching to get outside and take pictures but I am doing my best not to dwell on the negative and focusing on the positive.  I hope that you are as well.

COVID-19 Continues

Grrrrrrrr COVID-19 still has me stuck at home.  I am still hoping that as some of the medical experts have said that heat of the summer will kill the virus.  Is it possible that many of these restrictions will be eased up?  In my state, some have, but then the city is still taking precautions since there are close to 1200 cases of the virus here.

I am a person that needs to get out.  This business of sitting at home is getting to me.  I still want to go places and see things that I haven't seen or really experienced yet.  Yet my camera is sitting in its bag gathering dust on my floor.

You might have noticed that I did not post last week.  That was because I was attending a Virtual Summit on Photoshop.  As per the typical summits or conferences, some of the instructors were very informative and others were just so so or down right not interesting.  One particular instructor that I enjoyed was Blake Rudis from https://f64academy.com/.  It was through him that I learned to do a LUT (look up table) to help with my post processing.  While, Blake uses Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw to process his pictures, I am going to split his process putting the Adobe Camera Raw part into Lightroom as a Preset and the Photoshop part into its own LUT.  Then, when I import my image into Photoshop, I can use the LUT at the first action to get the proper tone and colors to begin my processing with.  I am excited to set this up and start using it and see what it does to my processing.

Someone else that I really enjoyed was Jack "Wow" Davis http://jackdavishowtowow.com/.  Jack took a step by step approach to using Lightroom for my iPad.  He really made it seem interesting to me and I have the feeling that it is something that I can use if I am at lunch and want to see how some of my pictures may look once I put them on my desktop computer.  Presently, I use my iPad to take panoramas, so I am looking forward to using it and getting over some of the wonder that I might have after I take a picture that I feel really good about.  As I tell many of the people that I interact with, "Everything looks good small".  It is when you get it larger that you start noticing the flaws.

My Processing Workflow -- Part 1 Lightroom

From my experience most of us are visual learners.  If we watch someone and take notes through what they show us, we can learn, but it is much better when we put the methods that we are taught into practice and then repeat them over and over again.

Two primary teachers I have had are Jack "Wow" Davis and Mark S Johnson.  Jack Davis taught me about Lightroom and Mark Johnson taught me about using Photoshop. I took what I learned from each other them and then worked it into my own workflow.  Yes, I have learned techniques from other people like Blake Rudis, J.R. Rodriguez, Anthony Morganti and others, but this system works for me.

This will be a two part blog post separating my work in Lightroom from my work in Photoshop.  They are two different programs and some people may only desire to use Lightroom and not include Photoshop in their workflow. If you happen to be using Photoshop, Lightroom works very similar to Adobe Camera Raw (ACR).  For me Lightroom is less intimidating.

Once I have loaded my photographs into Lightroom (I use Lightroom to catalog my photographs rather than using Bridge which is part of Photoshop), I go way down to "Lens Corrections".  Check the boxes that say "Remove Chromatic Aberration" and "Enable Profiles Corrections".  Be sure to check your Histogram up at the top on the right hand side to see what the length of the lens you used was.  You might find that it is giving you the wrong lens.  Then go down to "Transform".  Here I select "Auto" but I also look at the picture as I might have to manually adjust my picture to get it the way I want.

Next I go to the top and crop my picture to the way I want it.  Then I go into the Basic panel and set my White Balance.  On a RAW Photograph, you have choices (just one of the reasons I shoot in RAW).  From there I adjust my Highlights and Shadows.  Most of the time you will find yourself pulling the slider to the left to reduce your highlights and to the right to open up your shadows.  It is important to make sure that you are not clipping your whites or blacks, but if you don't like what you are seeing you can always adjust them in Curves, when we get there.  Then go down to Clarity and adjust your Clarity.  You will see your photo sharpen right up.

Then adjust your Whites and Blacks. This might help some of your clipping, so it is why I don't adjust my Curves until I get there.  Then you can adjust your Vibrance. You will really see the colors come to life doing this.  From there I go into the Radial Filter.  Hold the Ctrl (on MAC the Command key) and double click on the picture.  You will see that you get a vignette. Make sure that "Invert Mask" is checked.  This will allow you to adjust what is inside the mask.  Most of the time all I adjust is the Clarity here, but you might need to make some other modifications  Remember you are the artist.  As Bob Ross would say, "It is your world, so present it the way you want."

So just a quick recap to this point:

Lens Corrections
Transform
     Auto
Crop Tool
Basic Panel
     White Balance
     Highlights/Shadows
     Clarity
     Whites/Blacks
     Vibrance/Vignette

Jack Davis calls this the "Wow Tango".

If you still need to fix your clipping for blacks and whites, go to Tone Curves and adjust the side of the curve on the left (for blacks) or the right (for whites).  Just push it straight up to adjust the blacks for clipping and straight down for the whites (you need to be in the point curve for this maneuver).  Once you get the triangles not to have white in the Histogram, you have done the job you need because we will make another adjustment in Photoshop.

Go into the HSL panel and adjust the colors to the way you want.  I start with the Luminance, then go to Hue and then to Saturation.

Then go into Detail and adjust your Sharpening (typically 71 is enough for me), Masking, then Luminance if I notice grain (a look that looks like someone took and threw a handful of sand across your image.) and then do the Detail for the Luminance and the Masking (just about the Masking slider).

That is my basic Lightroom workflow.  When I am finished in Lightroom, I right click on my picture, go to Edit In, and choose Photoshop and let the program transfer the program.  That way I keep my pictures from being destroyed by Photoshop.

Stay tuned for my workflow by Photoshop.