Traditional Christmas Family Portrait with Natural Light

This weekend, I took a photo of our family for our Christmas card.  In this post, I'll describe the thought process behind the photo.

Improving Color Consistency with the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport

INTRODUCTION
Different cameras see color differently - even within the same brand.  Color accuracy is not just a matter of getting the correct white balance.  Different sensors simply render color differently.  You don't have to take my word for it.  Check out the test below.

Lightroom Tip: Adjusting More than 5 Stops of Exposure

Lightroom's exposure adjustment has a range of -5 to +5 stops.  You can exceed that limit by using an adjustment brush.  You can paint the entire screen with a large brush or apply it to any portion of the image as usual.  The effect of the adjustment brush is cumulative and you can apply it more than once.

Note: Of course, this only makes sense if your camera captured detail in the first place.  This won't magically bring back clipped details.

Limits of Highlight Recovery With Lightroom and ACR

I love many things about Lightroom, and one of them is that it is very good at highlight recovery.  However, the highlight recovery tool has limits.

Photoshop Elements 10 Depth of Field Effect

I tried out Photoshop Elements 10's depth of field effect on the shot above.  It's a big improvement over the original shot:

The original shot.  What's with the evil eye, lady?

This is one effect that I can't pull off in Lightroom.  To create the appearance of a shallow depth of field with PSE 10, I used the guided mode to walk me through the steps.  First, I used a selection brush to identify the subject.  Next I clicked on the button "add blur."  Finally I dragged a lever to determine the intensity of the effect.  It's a pretty simple process, although a similar result can probably be achieved using a gaussian blur with a layer mask.

Merging a Group Shot Manually

When you plan to merge a group photo and take the shot accordingly, the results of an automatic photomerge can look great.  But what if you weren't planning on merging the group shot?  In that case, merging a group shot manually may help you get better results.

Understanding Post-Processing by Mitchell Kanashkevich

cover of Understanding Post-Processing

 Besides Rick Sammon's Light It! app, another tutorial I read over the weekend and that I'm excited about is Mitchell Kanashkevich's ebook Understanding Post-Processing.  Whereas Rick Sammon's app is addressed toward beginners and novices, Mitchell's ebook is primarily for intermediate or advanced amateurs and even pros.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mitchell Kanashkevich is a travel photographer who's career as a pro started taking off not too long ago.  He's very modest about describing how he got there, but his gallery shows that his newfound success in his photographic career is no accident.

ABOUT THE EBOOK
Many times, I've taken photos of scenes that had gorgeous lighting to my mind's eye but I felt I was unable to recreate that beauty in the photo that I took.  When I saw Mitchell's photos, I thought that many of his final images glowed with the kind of light that I have sometimes seen and sought to capture.

Mitchell has two ebooks, Seeing the Light and this one, Understanding Post-Processing.  I thought to myself: I've seen beautiful light, so perhaps his first ebook is not the critical piece that I'm missing.  I figured I would probably get his first ebook eventually, but I thought I had more to learn from his second book.

Mitchell's ebook is written with Photoshop and Lightroom in mind, though the techniques can be translated to other software as well, including Photoshop Elements 9 (whew, thank goodness).  His book assumes that the reader already has a good working knowledge of postprocessing programs, so it's not for the postprocessing novice and is written pithily (really -- it's 37 pages).  If, for example, layer masking is new to you, you might find this book challenging.  Rather, his book is for a reader who knows the technical steps of using various features of postprocessing programs, but is looking for direction in applying those techniques to photos.  (That's exactly where I am right now.)

Mitchell first discusses briefly the main tools that he uses, then he goes through 5 case studies of how he used those tools to achieve his final results, step-by-step.  In describing his steps, Mitchell explains his thought process, and shows the settings he used together with screen captures of the edits.  See thumbnails of his book at his website here.  The case studies all follow a similar process, but each one emphasizes a particular tool, thus providing readers with a view of Mitchell's general postprocessing workflow, as well as a better understanding of how particular tools can be used.

How well does the book fulfill its promise?  If you're a photographer with the level of postprocessing skill for whom this ebook is intended, none of the techniques are truly novel or earth-shattering.  However, this guide afforded me a glimpse into a gifted photographer's thoughts as he works on his images, and walking through the images showed me not only how he realizes his creative vision, but more importantly for my purposes, gave me insight and direction for elevating my post-processing work.

Post-Processing Tip: Alternative for Softening Skin

Some post-processing programs have a function for creating the appearance of softening skin.  For example, Lightroom has an adjustment brush for softening skin by reducing the clarity setting (local contrast).  Corel Paintshop Photo Pro X3 has a Skin Smoother function that can reduce the appearance of wrinkles.

Sometimes, I get better results with very aggressive luminance noise reduction, either by itself or sometimes together with the built-in skin softening functions.  In programs that have layers, I create a separate layer so that I can apply the effect selectively with a layer mask.


Yes, noise reduction reduces the available detail but you know what?  The subjects who benefit from skin softening (ahem) don't care for the additional detail, and would rather have the appearance of porcelain skin.

Here's a sample shot .... NOT!  I don't have any intention of risking my life needlessly. :)