Have fun with HDR

This time I tried to be creative to create images with the HDR technique. Hope you are happy and enjoy.

       photo + photoshop

100% photoshop

my other photoshop creations  part two 1.                                                                                                                                                                  before                                                                                                               after                                                                                                                                             2.                                                     before                                                    original image by della latif                                                                                                     after                                                   3.                                             before                                  original image by della latif                                                                                       after                                                                                       4.                                            before                                            original image by rolly latendengan                                                                                                                                         after                                                                                                      5.                                                before                                               original image by rolly latendengan                                                                                                                                           after                                                                                                                                                                          6.                                                           before                                                          original image by rolly latendengan                                                                                                                                                             after

 

my other photoshop creations part one 1.  before                                            after

2. before after 3. before after    4. before after

photography

           the impressions of the D3000 @ bira island, Indonesia            

Improve your photos with our expert help. Here are 9 quick landscape photography tips to help you give your pictures a breath of fresh air…

Whether you're new to digital photography or just searching for some inspiration, our quick and easy photography tips will help you take better pictures with the minimum of fuss.

1 The magic hour

Beautiful landscape photos are often defined by the quality of light they were taken in. As a consequence, photographers tend to shoot early in the morning or during late afternoons when the sun is lower, less contrasty and often displays a subtle colour palette of moody hues. For this reason, the hours after dawn and before dusk are known as the ‘magic hours’. If rising at dawn doesn’t sit well with your idea of a relaxing weekend, don’t panic – there are plenty of great landscape opportunities throughout the day.

2 Composition

Composition is key to a successful landscape image, and if you don’t know where to start, use the ‘rule of thirds’ to get things going. It’s an easy principle to apply – simply divide your frame into imaginary thirds on both the horizontal and vertical axis. Now simply place areas of interest at the points at which the lines intersect or – in the case of a horizon – along one of the lines. However, don’t be afraid to throw away the rule book and totally disregard the conventions of composition. While you might have some awful failures, you might also create an original and striking masterpiece. Be bold and experiment.

3 Get out there

There’s no substitute for putting in a bit of groundwork before embarking on a photographic adventure. Research and find the best locations, get a map, a compass and remember that you’ll probably have to get out of the car and walk to get the best shots.

4 Polarising filters

Most landscape photographers will have a circular polarising filter in their kit bag. There are many uses for filters like this, but for the landscape photographer the two key characteristics are their ability to cut out relections and nasty glare from a scene and the increased colour intensity, saturation and contrast they create. You’ll really notice the effect in clear blue skies.

5 Depth of field

Many landscape shooters desire an image that appears sharp throughout the scene, so that elements of foreground interest, such as a rock in a lake, look just as sharp as the distant horizon. This can be achieved relatively easily using the principles of depth of field, whereby the smaller an aperture you use, such as f/22, the greater the area both before and beyond the point of focus also appear to be sharp. This principle can be taken one step further with hyperfocal focusing. Generally, when you’re using small apertures you’ll need to compensate with slow shutter speeds, so a tripod is essential.

6 ND grads

One of the great problems for landscape photographers is the difference in brightness between the sky and the land. While the human eye is capable of perceiving detail across this tonal range, a digital sensor isn’t capable of recording it. So ND Grads (neutral density graduated filters) were created and have been avidly used by landscape shooters ever since. Their gradual transition from clear to dark neutral density allows the photographer to balance the exposure between the sky and the land to make a more even exposure in which detail remains in both the highlight and shadow areas. An alternative to this is exposure blending, where different exposures are made of the scene. 

7 Man and the landscape

Great landscape photography is not necessarily about hunting out the most picturesque scene, in the most wonderful light and at the most perfect time of day. Indeed, there are many aspects of the world’s landscape that are less glamorous, such as the effects of heavy farming, rapidly expanding suburbs and sprawling industrial wastelands, that can make a poignant subject for the concerned photographer. Take a look at the effects of man on the landscape near your home and use them as photographic subjects.

8 RAW

To maximise on quality and also to allow you to edit your original images non-destructively, always shoot your landscapes in the RAW format. RAW processing software, such as adobe camera raw, is now so sophisticated that unless you want to significantly manipulate your image you rarely need to switch to traditional image-editing software, such as Photoshop.

9 Slow exposures

Slow exposures are regularly used by landscape photographers, whether it’s to optimise depth of field with a small aperture or to create smooth and milky seas. Exposures can be seconds (rather than fractions of a second) long, so a sturdy tripod is a must. To further minimise camera movement during the exposure consider using a cable release or your camera’s self-timer, as well as locking the mirror up.

labels : photographytips

photoshop tips

Membuat Langit Lebih Dramatis, Dengan Blending Mode Multiply Photoshop

 

 

Saya akan mencoba menuliskan satu tutorial sederhana, yaitu untuk membuat langit tampak lebih dramatis tanpa membuat FG menjadi gelap dengan menggunakan layer blending MULTIPLY pada Adobe Photoshop.

Berikut ini adalah langkah-langkahnya :

1. File asli yang akan kita olah.

                                           @muara angke

2. Selanjutnya kita gandakan (CTRL+J) layer BACKGROUND hingga mendapatkan layer BACKGROUND COPY.

3. Lalu pada layer duplikat tersebut kita ubah BLENDING MODE nya menjadi MULTIPLY, maka akan terlihat langit menjadi lebih baik tetapi pada FG akan menjadi gelap dan kehilangan banyak detail.

4. Lalu kita pindah ke Channels Pallete, gandakan Channel BLUE. 

5. Setelah itu lakukan Curves adjustment pada duplikat channel BLUE tersebut dan menaikan kontras sehingga jelas dan tegas perbedaan antara hitam dan putihnya.

6. Setelah itu kita klik tombol LOAD AS SELECTION di bawah, lalu pilih channel RGB kembali, bisa ditambahkan feather (SELECT>FEATHER / ALT+CTRL+D) supaya lebih halus gradasi nya. 

7. Setelah itu kita pindah ke LAYERS PALLETE dengan seleksi yang kita dapatkan tadi kita klik tombol ADD LAYER MASK yang ada di bawah, lalu jika pada layer mask masih ada FG yang bocor terkena BLENDING MULTIPLY bisa anda BRUSH dengan warna HITAM.
8. Jika hasil blending MULTIPLY kurang membuat langit menjadi dramatis anda dapat menggandakan layer yang kita mask tadi beberapa kali hingga anda suka dengan hasilnya. Pada contoh foto ini saya menggandakan menjadi 3 layer

9. Sampai pada tahap ini langit sudah terlihat lebih indah dan dramatis, tetapi foto masih terlihat FLAT. Maka itu kita tambahkan 1 Layer Adjustment BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST di mana kita akan mengurangi BRIGHTNESS nya dan menambah CONTRAST nya (Isi parameter sesuai dengan selera dan kondisi file anda), kemudian merge all layer (SHIFT+CTRL+E).

10. Pada tahap akhir saya beri UNSHARP MASK untuk menajamkan detail, dan inilah hasil akhirnya :

 

   

 

photoshop tips

Get High Impact Silvery Black and White Photos

If you’re converting your color photos to black and white by using a simple desaturate (Ctrl+Shift+U), you may have been disappointed by the results you get. Black and white images created this way often look a bit murky and lacking in contrast. There are huge number of ways to get better black and white photos but here’s a really quick way to get a nice silvery look.

Here’s our starting image by andyi…

The first step is to duplicate the layer (Ctrl+J) and then desaturate the duplicate (Ctrl+Shift+U). What you now see is the result of a simple desaturation - it’s black and white but nothing special…

Next set the desaturated layer’s blend mode to Overlay which will bring back the colors and give you a contrasty image like this…

So far the process has been the same as the first part of our 3 in 1 grunge effect tip. Now though we’ll add a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer and set the Saturation to -100 and we get a much better looking black and white image than our earlier desaturated image…

Depending on the image, this can leave us with too much clipping in the darkest and lightest regions so I’ve added a Curves adjustment layer with a reverse S curve to recover some of those regions. If you’re not comfortable with curves, a Brightness / Contrast adjustment with contrast set to -50 can be used but with less control.

Here’s the final image which looks much better than the simple desaturation shown above…

I hope you find this quick black and white conversion useful. If you’ve got a favorite black and white conversion method why not leave a comment to tell us how to do it.

Start to finish - high contrast black and white with liquify

Open the image in photoshop and duplicate the background (ctrl J). Composition wise, her eye is a little too close to the edge of the frame, so go to edit - free transform and turn the image clockwise a little so the eye and nose are a little straighter. This cuts away some of the lips so I made a layer mask (in your layers box at the bottom). Click the rectangle and paint away with black the parts of the original image you want back. I painted back the lips and hair, and slightly above the eye so it blended into the image. I ended up with an image like this



Click on the layer mask - add layer mask, merge down your edited layer (ctrl E) then make another duplicate (Ctrl J). Often when people take close up shots of their faces their noses appear prominent, mostly due to the nose being the closest feature to the lens and thus it ends up bigger then normal. To fix this (or you can leave this step out), it can be done 1 of 2 ways. One way thats often used is to use the loop tool, loop around the nose and free transform it, making it slightly smaller. The second way (which is often easier) is to use liquify, go to filter - liquify and use the pucker tool, with a brush size that covers the whole nose. Its easy to over do it here (the reconstruct tool lets you go back to the original) so keep your brush pressure at around 40. I ended up with this image, after masking back the skin that had been moved.



Note there is barely a difference from the original, we don't want to give her a new face all together, just make things a little more in proportion. If you want, you can also use the liquify tool on her eyes (using the bloat tool) to make her eye a little bigger. They often do this in magazines but I don't like to use it too much because it often makes the eye blurry.

Now we can move on to the converting to black and white stage.

Press ctrl atl E to make a new layer from the previously edited ones. Make a new black and white adjustment layer with red at 100. Note how dark the whites of her eye are now. Ctrl E to merge this with your new edited layer. Now we have a black and white picture of the girl. Click ctrl J again and go to the dodge tool - highlight - 7% and dodge the whites of her eye, particularly the catchlights. Go to midtones and do this again, focusing on the whites. Use the burn tool to burn in the areas you feel like, I focused on the lips and her eyelashes below her eye. Sometimes I like to dodge lighter areas of the hair also. Next to smooth the grey tone in her face, create a new blank layer, get a soft brush at a low opacity and paint over her face with white. Go to filter - Gaussian blur to smooth to white over her face. Set this layer to soft light and erase any bits you don't want. This is my image so far.



Add a new curves adjustment layer for more contrast, you can do a simple S shape curve on the graph or just play with the settings. Paint back the areas you don't want too dark with a black brush. Go to edit - fill - 50% grey and then go to filters - noise - add noise - monochromatic - 10% or so. Set this layer to soft light (this adds some grain to the black and white, but you don't have to do this step). Finally merge all the adjusted layers (select them in the layers tab and click merge all) then Ctrl J your final b+w edited image and sharpen it by going to filters - high pass - 5-7% and set this layer to soft light. Look over your image to see if it needs any more dodging or burning, its also good to walk away from the computer or ask a friend for their opinion.
This is my final image.



Compared to the original