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Anyone have experience in splicing negatives together to make a composite? I am getting some darkroom time in this semester and really want to try some composites but have no idea of the process. In PS I just use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out and I set my history number to 100, it has saved me a few times.
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Jan 24, 2009 18:02
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s0meb0dy0 posted:^^^^^^^^^^ This. Thats what the histogram is for, if your just glancing at the LCD on your camera thats not a good representation of what the image will look like when printed. I hardly ever look at the image with my on camera LCD and just look at the histogram.
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Apr 27, 2009 18:36
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s0meb0dy0 posted:I mean when I import the photos into lightroom. If I take 10 variations of the same thing, I don't need to analyze what was captured, taking into account automatic settings and the histogram and whatnot, because I can see it straight in RAW. Sorry misunderstood, thought you where talking in camera.
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Apr 27, 2009 18:45
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s0meb0dy0 posted:I know this is the wrong thread, but since we are on topic here: I woefully under use the histogram in-camera. Can anyone give examples of pictures where it can be really useful? If I'm taking a picture of a sunset, I already know to dial down the exposure, does it really help to get as much as possible from a shot? Depends on what you want out of the image, keep in mind that with digital you expose for the highlights and with film you expose for the shadows. If you underexpose a digital image and then push the exposure in post your more likely to end up with polarizing and noise in the shadows. That being said I check my histogram to see where the majority of the tones are and adjust from there. A sunset type of image I probably wouldn't bother to check the histogram. When I shoot weddings and sports where the light isnt changing much I dial in my exposure using the histogram before the event to make sure most of my tones are more to the right giving me more room adjust in post. In the studio I use a view camera with a leaf back tethered to a laptop, the software has a very useful histogram that I always use. Its a matter of preference I guess but I find it very helpful to know where all the tones sit in my exposures. Edit: Beaten and out done by a gif
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Apr 27, 2009 19:13
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ferdinand posted:The only people I know that use DNG are the people in this thread, amazingly. No, maybe I've seen it come in once at work, but I don't recall. I was taught that its better to convert to DNG but haven't kept up with it so now I a crap load of images to convert. In all reality the only files that worry me are my MOS files (leaf) because its not as widely used as Cannon or Nikon. My school has a really old Mac (not sure even what model) that we use for a SCSI device that takes digital images and transfers them onto Polaroids, I forget what its called. The school also has a g4s that is hooked up to a Flextight scanner and it is extremely slow.
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May 15, 2009 19:54
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pwn posted:What? A regular DVD will degrade over time but they do make archival DVDs that are suppose to last 300 years. You also want a off site backup, either a bank lock box or even a friend/family's house (I have never trusted web based storage) and DVDs are the best for that. The off site backup should be something you never touch unless your other two backups fail. I once backed up most of my photos onto about 6 DVDs using toast and when I tried to download the files off the disks it required that all the disks had to be downloaded in order. I had a few corrupted files that stopped the download on the 3rd disk making it so I couldn't download the last disks. I got it all worked out but took me about 10 hours to get all the images off the disks. Edit: typing like I am drunk raggedphoto fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Jun 12, 2009 |
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Jun 12, 2009 20:26
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brad industry posted:Really you should just assume all of your media is going to fail or become corrupt at some point and plan accordingly. Thanks, I will look into S3... I too have heard horror stories (and have experienced them first hand) concerning DVDs but I still like to have a hard copy of my files. In all reality I have had more problems with hard drive failure than problems with damaged DVDs but I understand what you are saying. As of now my redundancy consists of this: (2) internal 1 TB hard drives on a mirrored RAID (C drive on a separate hard drive) From there everything is put onto a external hard drive and onto another portable external hard drive. Once I acquire 4.5 gigs of new photos I burn it to 2 DVDs, one to keep at home, the other to store at my folks house.
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Jun 12, 2009 22:50
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spog posted:You could follow my secure negative storage process: Yeah my negs are stuffed into very old neg sleeves in a three ring binder, placed under my bed with my porn and photo mag stash. I am awaiting the day my girlfriend throws out my stash, negs and all. My only saving grace is that I used a Flextight scanner to scan most of the negs at something like 3200 dpi so hopefully I will never need them again, hopefully. Ninja edit: My 4x5 chromes are stored in a very secure place
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Jun 19, 2009 03:45
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I am down to participate in this social experiment! Edit: Question, has anyone had problems with images coming out soft and a very low resolution no matter what settings or format? My D200 seems to be off and my images are coming out all FUBAR most of the time. At first it was only a random raw file now its JPEG and RAW, any thoughts? raggedphoto fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Jul 7, 2009 |
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Jul 7, 2009 02:28
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Most of what the studio I work for sends to post houses is for color critical work such as changing colors of products, CMYK conversions and matching colors. I found that Martin Evening books are for more "advanced" users but some of it is hand holding. Lynda.com has some great tutorials but over all you should be fine with what you already know. Advanced masking like alpha channels/calculations is helpful with stuff like hair.
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Jun 1, 2012 06:06
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Fred Miranda Jr posted:You should be using a Macintosh anyway; it's common knowledge that they are better for color critical applications. Care to explain this, what bases are making this claim on? I am not attacking here just wondering what specs made you come to this conclusion.
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Jul 12, 2012 04:14
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RangerScum posted:Because you get to act like you're better than everyone else. This is exactly how I feel about it. At work we use Mac Pros with a 30 inch and secondary 20 inch apple displays which are sRGB panels. I have a home built PC at home that preforms just as well if not better than the pro but cost me half the price. Personal preference here but I can not stand the glossy screens of the new LED displays and iMac displays.
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Jul 12, 2012 06:56
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aliencowboy posted:Screen and overlay layers probably, the smoke just looks like a brush or texture applied to the light layers. The effects look nice but make the car look really bad and out of place.. yeah we do this kinda work at the studio I work at all the time, catalogs and catalogs of smoke, light and flare assets that get used a lot, all of which we shot. It's how we post stuff like what we did with the Nike NFL campaign. 
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Sep 9, 2012 05:10
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Reichstag posted:Generally by burning something. Pretty much, we use smoke machines, steamers and liquid nitrogen to shoot smoke assets, its not an easy thing to fake and have it look organic. If you shoot smoke/light assets on black you can overlay them in screen mode, transform them to marry the lighting, very strait forward. ash with a five I will try and work up a step by step with some different images (for obvious reasons I can't use the originals shot by the studio) but to be honest after working in PS 50-60 hrs a week I am extremely unmotivated to even look at a computer screen.
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Sep 10, 2012 00:02
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Forget the background, path it out (use the pen tool!) and cut it out to white. even my 2 second fake sweep looks better (it still doesn't look good). Here is something I worked up real quick, Softlight curve helps a lot, desat the neutral colors and stamp the poo poo out of all the junk you failed to clean off the bottle. You can save the images they just need some lovin! 
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Sep 13, 2012 04:36
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Mathturbator posted:Lynda.com is awesome, it'll save you a few false starts. Randomly clicking things never worked for me. Can not praise lynda enough, well worth the money plus they cover almost every software (office, JAVA, C++) and more. aliencowboy posted:Lightroom is a nice, quick way to approach whatever look you want for your photo. Photoshop will take you the rest of the way if you're up for a lot of manual, obsessive tweaking. I wouldn't call using PS as an "obsessive tweaking" program, don't forget that not everyone shoots single capture landscapes and editorial images. Commercial, conceptual and even fine art requires several captures, masking, blending and illustration to produce the final image. I was surprised to find out how little I use lightroom/captureRAW to process imagery in the commercial world. Granted most primary color corrections are treated with capture software (capture one, phocus) on set but 95% of everything I do is in PS. Ninja edit; Being able to change blending modes on adjustment layers in PS gives you a huge advantage over LR. I use a curves set to softlight mode on almost every image I retouch. raggedphoto fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Oct 13, 2012 |
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Oct 13, 2012 06:30
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ScooterMcTiny posted:Any thoughts on Lynda vs. MacProVideo? I have never used MacProVideo before but a quick glance at what they offer it seems that Lynda has a lot more tutorials covering a broader range subjects for software like PS. I am always impressed with the bottomless subject matter Lynda covers but never using MacProVideo I can't tell you which is better.
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Oct 15, 2012 04:52
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Yes the lighting helps and it does look look like the retoucher had a spasm while making a window reflection. I would have shot at least 3-8 different exposures for the shot. One base capture with mid tones properly exposed Highlight layer(s) with bounce moved between shots to get each highlight I wanted including on windows Added fill for wheel wells and grill. Mask all the captures together to get a cool image. Start masking curves, color layers and retouching to massage it into a final image. Beyond what was done I would've cleaned up areas circled (removed plate, tower growing out of the roof, other car reflection in bumper) Then again I work in advertising. 
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Oct 24, 2012 06:26
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ash with a five posted:You do automotive stuff, raggedphoto? I haven't shot many cars and none of them are portfolio worthy. The studio I retouch at mainly shoots athletic apparel, mostly shoes. We work creative directors on ad campaigns so its a lot more involved then catalog work. My take on cars is with something that has so many different angles and textures you have to shoot for individual assets and assemble the image in post. On a image like that car total time in post could easily be 8-10 hours Edit; It honestly doesn't look like the photographer spent that much time on shooting or in post on the image. I am just explaining what my process would have been. It looks cool but feels a bit rushed and unfinished to me. raggedphoto fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Oct 24, 2012 |
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Oct 24, 2012 20:38
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I meant to take a screen grab of the file structure of this shoe but I don't want to cause problems with work and reveling to the world our exact workflow so this will have to do. Once the photographer establishes a good base capture, he will use light modifiers like gradient cards and mirrors, even add/move the strobes to light various areas. These areas are either feathered or pathed onto the base capture. If the job calls for a Digi-tech I will assemble the image on set otherwise it's after the shoot. The captures for this shoe break down to the areas I circled.  -Light wraps for the toe and heel. -Mid and upper sole for fill and highlights (I even faked some highlights to make them carry further) -Swoosh capture for texture -Cage glow, plus a glow capture for the diamonds on the toe -Tongue tag recovery -Reflection capture The glow elements coming through the midsole are all done in post using light assets we shot on black backgrounds (flare, gradients). Adding flare and glow over white is a total pain. From there it gets a few hours of clone stamping, color correcting, at least 20 different adjustment layers to dial in the look. Once we feel it's in a good place we send proofs off the art director in charge of the project for feedback. We make changes accordingly and deliver final files. Sometimes there can be a few days of changes depending on the complexity of the image. Some projects offer lots of creative input on the photographers and retouchers end while others are clearly planned out by the art director. All in all I send a ton of time retouching shoes and apparel to make it look perfect which can be boring at times but I still love it.
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Oct 29, 2012 04:08
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Paragon8 posted:Nice! that's cool to see. I never planned on being a retoucher when I went school but I found it to be just as stimulating as shooting, the only downside is sitting on my rear end for 10+ hours a day staring at a screen. I did however want to shoot product ever since I first stepped into a studio. Being able to control every aspect of the image has always appealed to me.
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Oct 29, 2012 05:04
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If anyone is interested here is the studio I work at (please don't stalk me) https://www.swansonstudio.us
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Oct 29, 2012 05:09
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taqueso posted:Raggedphoto, can you expand on combining the different captures together? Do you just set up a mask layer and paint in the area to replace? That seems too simple to work. As long as nothing moved and I mean nothing it really is that easy. The best way to do it is to path along dividing lines, like with shoes, change in materials or color. You get a nice dividing line without the risk of soft areas from any shifts between shots. Masking by brush is a bit tricky, you have to watch the hardness and opacity of your brush and how its effecting the pixels along the edge of the brush. If say there was a slight shift in the captures (which there almost always is) the two overlapping points of both captures might become soft which is more prominent when the gradient of the brushed masked if there is too much feathering. Plus everything has to make sense in the grand lighting scheme, final look and background plate. So here is some quick mock-ups of what I am talking about. Pathed and masked upper mid  Heel light wrap brushed in  Here is how I build out all my images. Folders with masks applied to main elements makes keeping things organized so much easier plus keeps a single clean mask vs dozens of masks doing the same thing.  Hope that helps, honestly I am not the best at describing how I work in PS. Its all so autopilot for me now, at least I get to be creative and have fun with looks, backgrounds and illustrations! I do love Photoshop....
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Oct 31, 2012 06:44
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Mathturbator posted:Color management is hard Manually adjusting as much as you can helps a lot. I am not sure why the MBP is a lot warmer but keep in mind that the two monitors will probably never look exactly the same since the color gamut will be different. Check to make sure the color space is set to RGB1998, that could be causing some issues.
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Nov 2, 2012 04:00
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Target Practice posted:After enjoying a few years of access to the local community college darkroom, I may lose access indefinitely after this semester is over. We have an Epson V500 scanner and Lightroom, and I am beginning to learn how to use them. This is my first attempt (click for larger): I've gotta ask, why are you using Lightroom to adjust an image you feel is a hero? I understand lightroom for universal adjustments or editing a ton of images but a image like this I could spend hours/days in the darkroom to get right, why not use Photoshop? If there is detail in the 3/4 tones with the negative it should be there in the digital version, hell you can pull a lot of detail out of silver so maybe its a scan issue. What are your scan settings? 16 bit? resolution? 35mm?
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Nov 15, 2012 07:54
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1st AD posted:Fun fact, this shoot happened before the D800e was released. Now that my friend owns one, he never rents anything medium format. I find that surprising, judging by his portfolio he shoots mostly fashion and the lack of a low pass filter on a D800e makes for horrible moire' issues. Perhaps you can remove some of it when outputting raws (I haven't played with one yet) but it seems like a big gamble that you will be able to remove all of it. I've had to dodge and burn moire' out of an image before and it is not fun. Paragon8 posted:the digi op doing the comps on the fly was super impressive. Whenever I assist post heavy photographers there's always an awkward "it'll look totally different finished" conversation. I digi tech for a lot of our post intensive jobs, even create concepts on the fly with art directors while the shoot is going on. It can be extremely stressful to work things up as fast as you while trying to be creative and having a group of people standing behind you watching and directing. I never though that I could get completely exhausted from working at a computer before I became a retoucher.
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Nov 21, 2012 07:02
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Google Butt posted:
The colors look good to me but I am on my laptop with a crummy screen. There is a hot spot that catches my eye on his top forehead and I personally would add some more contrast overall but otherwise it looks good. I would soften the patch work done on the upper right corner a touch, it looks too sharp.
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Dec 28, 2012 21:48
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Instrumedley posted:Solid color fill layers set to exclusion will also do the trick. Instead of a solid color layer I find its better to use a flare shot on black set to screen mode and colorized. That way there is a gradient and light source, making it look more natural. You can shoot flare elements at home using a light source and a black card/floppy to get something like this. I like a basic gradient flare without the circles but sometimes they add to the image. Don't be afraid to stretch and warp the living poo poo out of it to position it just watch out for banding. (I didn't shoot this) 
raggedphoto fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Jan 9, 2013 |
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Jan 9, 2013 05:32
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triplexpac posted:So this is totally cheesy & overdone, but it's the kind of look I need to go for for a project: As terrible as that image is it probably took over a hundred layers of lens flare, illustrations and adjustment layers to achieve the final look. If you step into this project thinking that its just some quick textures and glow you'll find yourself very frustrated. There is a ton of masking and transforming involved just for the glow aspects, prepare for a lot of hours if you want something as polished as that image.
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Jul 20, 2013 22:03
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