Editing Photos

[kja]

Oh, I meant to add a link to some great, cheap memory for those who are using CF cards:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16820208340

I have been using Transcends along with a whole slew of other brands for years. Never had a problem with any of them. Just picked up this 8GB card in December and it's just fine. No slower than my Ultra IIIs in camera and I'm not at the point where I care if it's slower in my card reader (and I haven't actually noticed much difference). For $50ish dollars you can't go wrong.

I always download my cards at the end of a day and 8GB for me - even on a shoot (bar weddings) - would be tremendously difficult to fill! I still carry my other cards so if I need to, for whatever reason, I can swap them out. But now that this card has dropped again (I paid $56 US) I'm buying a couple more. Not sure if these guys ship overseas, but I will be putting an order in early next week so if anyone wants to jump in, let me know [email protected] and I'd be happy to have them come with mine (I have things shipped to my US address and my Dad forwards it to me) There may be other companies with similar great prices...

There are also SDs available for about $37 at newegg - but double check that your camera can take them...I don't think a couple of my little compacts can use anything greater than a 4GB but I haven't double checked on that!

[Ripley]

We have just arrived home this afternoon from our trip. I've checked my camera and I've taken 199 shots and have used up 1.1 gig of memory - shooting in both RAW and jpeg. The battery was running low on the last day of our trip so I shot everything in jpeg that day. Just so happened it was of seascapes, a country town, a river and a lighthouse at sunset. Oh well.

Anyway, back to PS. When I ran my shots through our wide screen tv at home, I noticed that there is a person in my landscape shot that I didn't notice when reviewing the photos on the small viewing screen that my 350D has (the 400D has a much larger playback screen). This person must have spotted me across the other side of the waterfall and is is ducking but she is there, spoiling my image. The shot itself I'm very happy with. What to do? This is a scenario where I think it's ok to clone something (or someone) out - but I haven't done this before so I'll have to google it. I'm sure there will be dust specs in some photos as well that need to be cloned out as I changed lenses a bit on this trip and only cleaned the sensor before we left. Now I know why some experienced photographers sling 2 cameras around your shoulders - I missed so many bird shots as I had the shorter lens on my camera.

I also took some shots of a friend's toddler when we stayed with them and she wants them in b/w. So I'll have to find out how to do that. More time on the puter there, no doubt.

[kja]

IF you have PhotoshopCS etc, you might want to check out actioncentral.com - they have some great,free actions that can make your life easier on things like converting to bw. I have one that I like a lot from there - it lets you tweak things so you can tailor it to each image. Let me know if you want me to send it to you.

If you have lightroom, black and whites come out great as it offers so much control. But it's a matter of playing around with all the sliders - gets time consuming as you learn coz there's always one more neat thing to try! But it's fun.

If you want any help, I'm editing photos from a shoot this weekend so will be around and would be happy to help, especially with the black and whites - even if you just need a sounding board to see how your results are going.

To remove the unwanted chick from the photo, use a combination of healing brush and clone tool in PS. You may even try the patch tool initially - it can save a ton of time and works slick!

Sounds like you had a great time! Can't wait to see some of your images!

How did you like you camera and lens? Shooting RAW?

Edited January 11, 2008 by kja

[rubiton]

To change an image to black and white just tick grayscale and it will ask if you want to remove the colour information and go OK. Then you have the image in black and white. Takes about 2 secods.

However save the images as something else (eg imagename black and white) so that if it doesnt look as good as expected you still have the original shot. I often save things as imagename and add an a to the end so they are next to each other in the folder later if I do any photoshopping beyond cropping.

Don't see th eproblem with the last day images being jpegs - unless you want to print them the size of a wall they should come out fine.

[Ripley]

Thanks for your help, kja and rubiton.

This is my problem in my waterfall shot - a hooman. :D So I bin this one. Fortunately I have a few others, LOL. Damn my short sightedness.

Edited January 12, 2008 by Ripley

[kja]

Don't bin it, just clone her out...two seconds, easy fix and you'll never know. If you're not sure how I'd be happy to point you in the right direction or do it for you.

[Ripley]

I've read up on how to do it. I have about 6 other shots so I'll just bin this. I don't really like the composition on it anyway when I have a better angled one without a person in it.

[chezzyr]

You probably won't like this: but I reckon the 'hooman' adds an element of interest to the picture.

You are kind of left thinking "where has she been, where is she going?" :D

[Ripley]

She's been under that watefall and probably covered in leeches like I was, chezzyr! I wish I'd taken my little pocket digital to get a shot from UNDER the fall in the cave. No way was I risking the DSLR doing that.

[rubiton]

LOL - covered in leeches!!!!

However with a background that defined it would be easy to clone a person out if need be. Its photos taken somewhere like a Royal Show i the arena that I wont attempt as the background is not the same so you cant just clone even a few millimetres. However where there is trees/plants/grass you can get away with it as people will not look really closely if they didntknow something was there in the first place.

Talking about photo trips I was checking out the Adelaide zoo website - looks like the tigers are behind glass these days and the vulture and some of the smaller big cats have gone (died not replaced maybe). Though the site mentions Leopard feed times yet no leopard on the map (the had the tigers and lions out front and panthers, leopards and vulture out back of the big cat area. Whole area appears to have been redone on the site.

ETA - I agree with you Ripley - half the idea of photography is to get it right when taking the photo I'm not keen on highly photoshopped stuff either. I know some cropped around horses and replace the background I don't like how it looks (which is probably good since I can't trace around the outside of a horse eimage either with PS due to stuffing the tendon years and years ago - fine for everything but holding the button down long enough to trace even with the magnetic lasso). At least on photography magazine raved about how much you have to adjust every image you take but I have found that wrong I think they were just anti digital and trying to hold on to film. As for film negs that are 5 years old are OK but the ones that are 20 years old have started to degrade regardless of being kept in storage away from dust in dark places and as cool as possible

Edited January 13, 2008 by rubiton

[persephone]

'm currently at the end of a 2 week road trip and have shot in both RAW and Jpg - but have a 2 gig CF card. I am using a 2 stop ND grad filter on landscape shots at sunrise and sunset to hold the sky and it's a pain in the butt to affix it and take it off but I'd rather do it this way than in photoshop - call me antiquated, old fashioned etc.

No, I'd call you a photographer

[Ripley]

rubiton, I buy Outdoor Photography magazine, the UK edition. It's a gorgeous looking mag full of amazing landscape and wildlife shots with articles on locations and wildlife in the UK. Comes out monthly. They aren't focused on digital imaging in PS and don't have a "must alter every image" approach. They also put up work from photographers who use slide film. I borrowed ruthless' film SLR on my trip as she was kind enough to loan it to me. I put slide film in it. I didn't use it as much as my 350D as I didn't want to lug around 2 cameras on some of the strenuous hikes we did, but I have shoot about 10 images with it. Usually just using the AV mode or P mode as I didn't understand the camera as much as my own.

You get lovely shots in Outdoor Photography that are natural looking, none of this HDR processing that is on some landscape websites. The tutor I had at this weekend photography workshop I did was very much against that look and the rest of the students seemed to agree, both young and old. He was against taking a crap shot and then working on it so much that people gush what a great photographer you are. To me, some of his images looked a little flat, but then I realised I was so used to seeing over processed shots with a lot of PS work and that his photos were in fact, very good. He's a professional after all with 30 years experience.

As for city zoos, well, I have strong opinions on certain species of mammals in captivity so I won't visit them - the free range ones I don't have a problem with. You just have to read the news lately to see the problems that happen with big cats in captivity in unnatural environments. That's another hate - people who take shots of captive animals and try and pass them off as wild - cloning out jessies on birds of prey is fine for your post imaging work IMO, but then trying to pass that bird off as being taken in the wild is deceiving if you plan on selling that shot. If the animal is shot in captivity and it's a good shot that's great for you but trying to pass it off or sell it as taken while on safari in Africa is another issue. Again, personal thing for me! Can of worms and all.

Rant over.

[rubiton]

No thats fair enough - have noticed that in a few of the stock books (where they list contacts for magazines etc) many list that they don't want zoo bird shots (these were wildlife magazines) and there was a spiel about not to take zoo shots and try to pass them off as wild shots. I just remember the vulture (or it may have been the other bird that looks like a vulture) as he was sitting up there as his meal (the rib cage of what looked like a horse) was sitting on the ground cooking in the sun.

The open range zoo and city zoo are run by the same people here - Monarto seems to have expanded as they were planning so am also planning to head out there too (went there maybe 15 years ago and they would point and go here we will have this and that as we were looking at bare paddocks) - they only had the horses, zebras, Giraffes and a few antelope last time from memory.