The Fine Art of Editing Your Images

Nature photographers shoot a lot of images and at some point they have to wade through all of them and determine which are best for the markets. With digital photography it’s so easy to shoot massive amounts of images because the equipment is fast and there is relatively no cost.

In the days of shooting with a 4×5 view cameras, setting up and composing a scene took substantial effort. Film was expensive so there was much more of a tendency to work longer on composition, wait for perfect light, and to make sure the image worked. This slow process was in many ways editing in the field. You worked longer on each image, took a fewer of them, and had a higher rate of ‘keepers.’

With digital it is easy to blast away and many of us do it. The scenery perfect or the light is fading fast, so moving around with the camera to grab a lot of images is a natural response. Get it before the lights gone! The result is a lot of digital captures that have to be edited; at least when it comes to deciding what goes on your website for sale. … Continue Reading

When Spectrums Collide: Selective Processing With Infra Red

by Lee Mandrell  

A Simple Infrared Selective Color Project

As they so often are, it was another perfect day in the Smoky Mountains. I’m an avid color landscape shooter, but I am always on the lookout for infrared shots as well as anything I think might separate my shots from the norm. I happened upon this scene at the end of ‘The Roaring Fork Motor Trail’, just at the edge of Gatlinburg, TN. My wife and I asked the shop owner if we could shoot the old dodge truck that resides on the property. She informed us that we could take pictures, but we had to stay on the outside of the fence, and also to let her know if we felt we got anything worthwhile. To me this meant shooting what has been shot thousands of times before me. … Continue Reading

Printing Tips : How to Print HDR Photographs

Real world colours cannot be easily captured and reproduced. To handle that the RAW image format was created: it allows to save the information captured by the camera’s sensor with minimal loss.

Yet printers  can only reproduce a limited amount of colour, thus the images need to be processed and other factors need to be taken into account so that the prints are as  close to the original as possible. Note that nothing you will print will ever have all the information that was captured by the RAW file, but you can obtain a good enough approximation. … Continue Reading

Could To Much ‘Photoshopping’ Get You Fined?

In Australia, to much Photoshop just might cost you $220,000!

You are probably aware of the debate and controversy over image manipulation. The most blatant examples draw plenty of attention and sometimes, repercussions.

Many of these cases are related to fashion and glamor photography surrounding the use of Photoshop to create unrealistic looking women (and men I’m sure) that have been made over. The issues are many but include the use of Photoshop on a women’s face and body reshaping to sell beauty products that may not do what the picture suggests.

Britain has banned a few of ads from running due to to much Photoshop work and we have seen a few times, nature and wildlife photographers in trouble for image manipulation.Now some would like to see anti-Photoshop laws in the U.S.

But Australia has gone one step further by making to much Photoshop work in a manner that obviously misrepresents ‘the product’, punishable with up to a $220,000 fine. This article spells it out and is related to the real estate market. … Continue Reading

How to Photograph a Mountain Man Rendezvous

You can get Topaz Adjust here. … Continue Reading

The Journey Back to Creativity by Cheyenne Rouse

by Cheyenne L Rouse

If you would have told me 4 years ago when I was living in Park City, Utah, that I’d be creating HDR images, living in Scottsdale, Arizona, and loving my DSLR, I would have told you that you were crazy. For over 15 years, I was a bona fide film junkie of the Fuji kind and, when the world started going digital, I dug my heels in and fought it to the point where I eventually hung up my camera for good—or so I thought.

It all started with a beautiful old red truck that I photographed 4 years ago on a road trip to S. Utah. Although I had all but given up photography as things went digital, I was out getting to know my new DSLR, that I reluctantly purchased,  when I saw this beauty on the side of the road. I actually passed it by on my way to shoot something else, but the truck stuck in my … Continue Reading

How I Removed the Branch From The Cheetahs Head With Photoshop

I have a client who recently went on an African Safari and during one excursion she photographed a Cheetah laying down. Within seconds the Cheetah spotted something and jumped up and she took another shot but a branch from a plant covered the Cheetahs eye and ruined the shot. At her office, she showed me the images and I thought it could be saved in Photoshop by compositing the two original images. But only if the head position was close enough in both originals. This video shows the Photoshop steps.

I think this worked great but how would you have done it differently? Please leave a comment.
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Julieanne Kost’s 6 Favorite Photoshop CS6 beta Features

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5 Techniques for Gritty Grungy Outdoor Portraits Pt. 4

In this series of gritty grungy techniques I have shared several that I though created a good gritty look. All have been different approaches and provided different results from HDR to just doing it in Camera RAW.

This technique is the first that uses a software plug-in and I think I like it the best as far as the gritty grungy result. The plugin I used was Topaz Adjust and here are how I set the sliders.

First, here is the original RAW file and you can see the the face is dark under the hat brim.

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5 Techniques for Gritty Grungy Outdoor Portraits Pt. 1

The gritty, grungy look for people is a popular look these days and if you Googled those in search terms you would find a wide variety of approaches from other photographers.

If you shoot outdoor adventure type images you might want to add an edgy style to your images.  There are many ways to create a grungy and gritty look and I have played with 5 different approaches and they all create a slightly different visual look to images of people outdoors.

This is the first in a series of 5 posts that illustrate the different approaches and each approach differs in complexity from very easy to very involved. This first approach uses primarily the High Pass filter in Photoshop with a sepia effect.

The other approaches coming in the next 4 tutorials include: Camera Raw, HDR, Desaturation, and Topaz Adjust software. … Continue Reading