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Understanding Imaging Techniques: the Difference Between Retouching, Manipulating, and Optimizing Images

09 Mar

The post Understanding Imaging Techniques: the Difference Between Retouching, Manipulating, and Optimizing Images appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Herb Paynter.

Understanding Imaging Techniques

Three distinct post-production processes alter the appearance of digital photographs: Retouching, Manipulating, and Optimizing. These terms may sound similar enough to be synonymous at first glance, but they are entirely different operations. Once you understand the difference between these three processes, your image editing will take on new meaning, and your images will deliver powerful results.

Image retouching

Photo retouching is image alteration that intends to correct elements of the photograph that the photographer doesn’t want to appear in the final product. This includes removing clutter from the foreground or background and correcting the color of specific areas or items (clothing, skies, etc.). Retouching operations make full use of cloning and “healing” tools in an attempt to idealize real life. Unfortunately, most retouching becomes necessary because we don’t have (or take) the time to plan out our shots.

Our brain tends to dismiss glare from our eyes, but the camera sees it all. A slight change of elevation and a little forethought can save a lot of editing time.

Planning a shot in advance will alleviate much of these damage control measures but involves a certain amount of pre-viewing; scouting out the area and cleaning up items before the camera captures them. This includes “policing” of the area… cleaning mirrors and windows of fingerprints, dusting off surfaces, and general housekeeping chores. This also includes putting things away (or in place), previewing and arranging the lighting available and supplementing the lighting with flash units and reflectors where required, checking for reflections, etc.

Benjamin Franklin coined the phrase “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” which pretty much sums up the cleanup chores. We also use the phrase “preventative maintenance;” fixing things before they break and need repair.

Admittedly, we don’t often have the luxury of time required to primp and polish a scene before we capture it, and retouching is our only option. However, sometimes all we need to do is evaluate the scene, move around and see the scene from another angle, or wait for the distraction to move out of the scene.

Sometimes a small reposition can lessen the amount of touchup and repair needed.

We can’t always avoid chaos, but we could limit the retouching chore with a little forethought. It takes just a fraction of a second to capture an image, but it can take minutes-to-hours to correct problems captured.

Image manipulation

Manipulation is a bit different, though it occasionally is a compounded chore with retouching. When we manipulate a photo, we truly step out of reality and into fantasyland. When we manipulate an image we override reality and get creative; moving, adding elements to a scene or changing the size and dimension. When we manipulate an image, we become a “creator” rather than simply an observer of a scene. This is quite appropriate when creating “art” from a captured image, and is ideal for illustrations but perhaps shouldn’t be used as a regular post-capture routine.

Photo-illustration is an excellent use of serious manipulation, and can be quite effective for conveying abstract concepts and illustrations.

Earlier in my career, I worked as a photoengraver in a large trade shop in Nashville Tennessee during the early days of digital image manipulation. The shop handled the pre-press chores for many national accounts and international publications. On one occasion in 1979, we were producing a cover for one of these magazines. On the cover was a picture of Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat set against one of the great pyramids. Unfortunately, the pyramid was in a position that interfered with the titles on the magazine’s cover.

While this is not the exact picture used in the magazine, you see the challenge.

The Art Director for the magazine sent instructions for us to shift the pyramid in the picture so that the titles would not interfere with it. Moving that thing was an amazing feat back then. Normal airbrushing would have left obvious evidence of visual trickery, but digital manipulation opened a whole new potential for near-perfect deception. We were amazed at the potential but a bit nervous about the moral implications of using this power.

This venture was accomplished (over a decade before Photoshop) on an editing machine called a SciTex Response, a workstation supported by a very powerful minicomputer. Nobody outside that small building knew that from Nashville, we pushed an Egyptian pyramid across the desert floor until revealed years later. Shortly thereafter, digitally altered images were prohibited from use as evidence in a court of law by the Supreme Court of the United States. Today, this level of manipulation lets you routinely alter reality and play god on a laptop, sitting on a park bench.

Manipulation is powerful stuff and should be used with serious restraint; not so much for legal reasons, but because of diminishing regard for nature and reality. Fantasyland is fun, but reality is where we live. We quite regularly mask skies and replace boring clouds with blue skies and dramatic clouds, and even sunsets – all without hesitation. We can move people around a scene and clone them with ease using popular photo editing software. Reality has become anything but reality. Photo contests prohibit photo manipulation in certain categories, though a skillful operator can cover their digital tracks and fool the general public. However, savvy judges can always tell the difference.

Typical manipulation consisting of a clouded sky to replay lost detail.

Personal recommendation: keep the tricks and photo optics to a minimum. Incorporating someone else’s pre-set formulas and interpretation into your photos usually compromises your personal artistic abilities. Don’t define your style by filtering your image through someone else’s interpretation. Be the artist, not the template. Take your images off the assembly line and deal with them individually.

Image optimization

Photo optimization is an entirely different kind of editing altogether and the one that I use in my professional career. I optimize photos for several City Magazines in South Florida. Preparing images for the printed page isn’t the same as preparing them for inkjet printing. Printing technology uses totally different inks, transfer systems, papers, and production speeds than inkjet printers. Each process requires a different distribution of tones and colors.

Since my early days in photoengraving, I’ve sought to squeeze every pixel for all the clarity and definition it can deliver. The first rule (of my personal discipline) is to perform only global tonal and color adjustments. Rarely should you have to rely on pixel editing to reveal the beauty and dynamic of a scene. Digital photography is all about light. Think of light as your paintbrush and the camera as nothing more than the canvas that your image is painted on. Learn to control light during the capture and your post-production chores will diminish significantly. Dodging, burning and other local editing should be required rarely, if at all.

Both internal contrast and color intensity (saturation) were adjusted to uncover lost detail.

Even the very best digital camera image sensors cannot discern what is “important” information within each image’s tonal range. The camera’s sensors capture an amazing range of light from the lightest and the darkest areas of an image, but all cameras lack the critical element of artistic judgment concerning the internal contrast of that light range.

If you capture your images in RAW format, all that amazing range packed into each 12-bit image (68,000,000,000 shade values between the darkest pixel and the lightest) can be interpreted, articulated, and distributed to unveil the critical detail hiding between the shadows and the highlights. I’ve edited tens of thousands of images over my career, and very few cannot reveal additional detail with just a little investigation. There are five distinct tonal zones (highlight, quarter-tones, middle-tones, three-quarter-tones, and shadows) in every image, and each can be individually pushed, pulled, and contorted to reveal the detail contained therein. While a printed image is always distilled down to 256 tones per color, this editing process lets you, the artist, decide how the image is interpreted.

Shadow (dark) tones quite easily lose their detail and print too dark if not lightened selectively by internal contrast adjustment. The Shadows slider (Camera Raw and Lightroom) was lightened.

The real artistry of editing images is not accomplished by the imagination, but rather by investigation and discernment. No amount of image embellishment can come close to the beauty that is revealed by merely uncovering reality. The reason most photos don’t show the full dynamic of natural light is that the human eye can interpret detail in a scene while the camera can only record the overall dynamic range. Only when we (photographers/editors/image-optimizers) take the time to uncover the power and beauty woven into each image can we come close to producing what our eyes and our brain’s visual cortex experience all day, every day.

Personal Challenge

Strive to extract the existing detail in your images more than you paint over and repair the initial appearance. There is usually amazing detail hiding there just below the surface. After you capture all the potential range with your camera capture (balancing your camera’s exposure between the navigational beacons of your camera’s histogram), you must then go on an expedition to explore everything that your camera has captured. Your job is to discover the detail, distribute the detail, and display that detail to the rest of us.

Happy hunting.

The post Understanding Imaging Techniques: the Difference Between Retouching, Manipulating, and Optimizing Images appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Herb Paynter.


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Understanding and Unlocking the Power of the Lightroom Vignette Tool

06 Feb

The post Understanding and Unlocking the Power of the Lightroom Vignette Tool appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.

The Lightroom vignette tool is like adding a bit of spice to your favorite meal. Without a bit (but not too much) garlic, basil, thyme, or other even salt, your food might taste bland. Add too much, and it can ruin the whole thing. In a way, the vignette effect does the same job. It adds a bit of spice, flavor, and panache, to give your photos that little extra push over the cliff. It turns them from mediocre to magnificent. If you want to unlock its full potential, it’s important to understand what it does and see how, when applied to different pictures, it can dramatically affect the final output.

You and the Lightroom Vignette effect: A match made in heaven.

About Vignettes

Vignette effects are nothing new to photography. The word itself has French origins. It refers to the wavy lines that would appear like vines (or in French, Vignes) drawn around page edges marking the beginning or end of a book chapter. Over time the word was adopted by artists and photographers to refer to the gradual fade or darkening of an image near its edges.

While vignettes can be distracting if implemented poorly, they can result in a pleasing artistic effect when applied like spices when cooking. The outcome is akin to laying a reverse darkened oval across an image so that the corners and edges of the picture are a little darker. This method also serves to draw the viewer’s attention to the center. You’re basically trying to achieve the Goldilocks balance where it’s not too much and not too little, but just right.

Understanding the Vignette Options

The first step in using Vignette is simply locating it. You’ll find it in the Effects panel on the right-hand side of the Lightroom Develop module. You’re presented with an option to choose a particular style along with five sliders that help you fine-tune the vignette to taste. All of this happens after your image cropping has been applied, so if you use a vignette and then re-crop your image the vignette changes to suit your new crop.

There are three options for the Style of vignette:

  • Highlight Priority – Ensures that the bright areas of the image blend more smoothly with the darker areas. The downside here is it can make areas of the image with a lot of colors appear a little strange.
  • Color Priority – The opposite of Highlight Priority, this style makes sure that color is preserved across the vignette. However, it can make the bright areas have some jarring shifts.
  • Paint Overlay – This is a blunt instrument. It just darkens the image where the vignette is applied, with no attention paid to highlights or colors.

If you’re not sure which of these to use, I recommend sticking with Highlight Priority. Both that and Color Priority produce similar results which are not unlike the Burn option in Photoshop (which itself mimics the process of selectively over-exposing parts of an image when developing film in a darkroom). These two also let you use the Highlights slider at the bottom which helps you recover some of the brighter portions of the image that are darkened with a vignette, whereas Paint Overlay disables the Highlights slider entirely.

Additional options:

In addition to the style of vignette, you have additional options that allow you to precisely control how the effect is implemented.

  • Amount – How much vignette is applied. Moving this to the left adds a dark vignette while sliding it to the right adds a white vignette.
  • Midpoint – The degree to which the vignette reaches the middle of the image. All the way to the left results in much more of the vignette reaching the center, whereas all the way to the right keeps the vignette at the most extreme edges and corners. If you’re not sure what to do, just leave this in the middle.
  • Roundness – All the way to the left makes the vignette into more of a rectangle. Leave it in the middle for an oval-shaped vignette. Slide it all the way to the right to make your vignette a circle.
  • Feather – How smoothly the dark areas blend with the light areas. All the way to the left results in a harsh edge and all the way to the right gives you a nice smooth blend.

If you don’t want to over-complicate things you can leave all these sliders at their default values and you’ll be fine. However, they are fun to experiment with over time to get just the right look you are going for.

Visual explanations

This tool is easy to explore on your own but looking at how it affects a black and white grid may give you a better understanding of what is happening. I used the Paint Overlay instead of Highlight or Color Priority because in a simple black-and-white grid Paint Overlay gives the clearest visual representation of how the vignette is applied. The left side of each is the original un-edited grid while the right side is the same image with a vignette applied. The settings used for each one are described in the caption.

Amount -50, Midpoint +50, Roundness 0, Feather +50

Notice how the vignette gradually fades from dark to light, with the center portion of the image on the right being the exact same brightness as the grid on the left with no vignette applied.

Amount -50, Midpoint 0, Roundness 0, Feather +50

With the midpoint set all the way to 0, the unaffected portion of the vignette is concentrated in the middle with the edges and corners being uniformly dark. This highlights the center portion alone but there is very little fade-out between that and the vignette.

Amount -50, Midpoint 0, Roundness 0, Feather +100

The midpoint here remains the same but there is now a more gradual fade-out to the darkened portions thanks to an increase in feathering.

Amount -50, Midpoint 0, Roundness 0, Feather 0

Reducing the feathering to 0 makes the vignette clearly visible with virtually no gradation in how it is applied. I would never use this on an actual photo, but it is useful to understand how the vignette function operates.

Amount -40, Midpoint +25, Roundness +100, Feather +30

Setting the roundness to +100 gives you a vignette that is a perfect circle instead of a more oval shape. It’s important to remember that vignettes are applied after cropping, so if you start with a square image then you will have a circular vignette even with the roundness value set to its default value of +50.

Hopefully, these graphics give you a better understanding of how the vignette effect works. However, to really see it in action, it helps to look at what happens when it’s applied to actual photographs instead of just a blank grid.

Vignette examples

Almost any photo-editing app will let you apply a vignette, but with the extensive tools available in Lightroom you can customize your vignette to do precisely what you want and shape your viewers’ perception of an image in a very specific way. If you control parameters like midpoint and feathering, in addition to the amount, you can create vignettes that impart certain overtones and even emotions and transform your humble images in to works of art.

No vignette applied.

The above image looks fine on its own, and the viewer’s attention is meant to be drawn to the droplet of water right in the middle, but there are other portions of the image competing for attention. Adding a vignette completely changes the mood of the scene and makes the viewer feel like they are in a much more intimate setting. Notice how, with the darkened corners, your eye gets immediately drawn to the center and not to the edges at all.

Highlight Priority. Amount -30, Midpoint +50, Roundness +20, Feather +40

Vignettes can be used to eliminate distractions in the edges of the frame as well, and in doing so draw the viewer’s attention to the subject in the center. In this image below, there is a fence on the top-right and a black climbing rope on the top-left. They don’t really add much substance to the image and instead can take your attention away from the rabbit in the middle.

One way to solve this is by adding a vignette. Through some tweaking of the parameters, the end result is an image that still contains the fence and the rope but makes them far less prominent while focusing your attention squarely on the bunny.

Highlight Priority. Amount -42, Midpoint +50, Roundness 0, Feather +70

I do a lot of family pictures for clients in my city, and one of the final touches I’ll add to most of my pictures is a simple vignette. It’s often very subtle, usually only -10 or -15, but depending on the Style (Highlight or Color Priority), I might need to add more and then tweak it with the sliders. Below is an image with no vignette applied. While it’s fine on its own, the subjects are competing with the bright edges and corners for your attention.

A Color Priority vignette helps maintain the integrity of the colors while darkening them a little, and then I brought back some of the highlights particularly in the top-right corner by adjusting the Highlights slider to 10.

Color Priority. Amount -53, Midpoint +55, Roundness 0, Feather +45, Highlights +10.

Positive values

One thing I didn’t mention in this article is positive Amount values, which make the edges of the frame brighter instead of darker. In my years as a photographer, I can’t think of a single instance in which I have used this option, and I don’t know anyone else who uses it on a regular basis either (editor’s note: it may be used it in high-key photography). You may find instances in which you want to make the outer portions of your image brighter instead of darker and, if so, then positive Amount values would do the trick. Just know that it’s easy to overdo it and the results can sometimes come across as a little cheesy and forced.

Conclusion

These examples and explanations are designed to give you a better understanding of what the vignette effect does and how it impacts an image. I encourage you to try it out for yourself. Use the different sliders and style options and notice how they affect the vignette which, in turn, can have a profound impact on your image as a whole. Just remember the cooking analogy: you don’t want too much vignette, nor do you want too little. Strive to get it just right, and your pictures could take on a whole new life.

Feel free to share your thoughts and comments below.

The post Understanding and Unlocking the Power of the Lightroom Vignette Tool appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.


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Understanding and Unlocking the Power of the Lightoom Vignette Tool

05 Feb

The post Understanding and Unlocking the Power of the Lightoom Vignette Tool appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.

The Lightroom vignette tool is like adding a bit of spice to your favorite meal. Without a bit (but not too much) garlic, basil, thyme, or other even salt, your food might taste bland. Add too much, and it can ruin the whole thing. In a way, the vignette effect does the same job. It adds a bit of spice, flavor, and panache, to give your photos that little extra push over the cliff. It turns them from mediocre to magnificent. If you want to unlock its full potential, it’s important to understand what it does and see how, when applied to different pictures, it can dramatically affect the final output.

You and the Lightroom Vignette effect: A match made in heaven.

About Vignettes

Vignette effects are nothing new to photography. The word itself has French origins. It refers to the wavy lines that would appear like vines (or in French, Vignes) drawn around page edges marking the beginning or end of a book chapter. Over time the word was adopted by artists and photographers to refer to the gradual fade or darkening of an image near its edges.

While vignettes can be distracting if implemented poorly, they can result in a pleasing artistic effect when applied like spices when cooking. The outcome is akin to laying a reverse darkened oval across an image so that the corners and edges of the picture are a little darker. This method also serves to draw the viewer’s attention to the center. You’re basically trying to achieve the Goldilocks balance where it’s not too much and not too little, but just right.

Understanding the Vignette Options

The first step in using Vignette is simply locating it. You’ll find it in the Effects panel on the right-hand side of the Lightroom Develop module. You’re presented with an option to choose a particular style along with five sliders that help you fine-tune the vignette to taste. All of this happens after your image cropping has been applied, so if you use a vignette and then re-crop your image the vignette changes to suit your new crop.

There are three options for the Style of vignette:

  • Highlight Priority – Ensures that the bright areas of the image blend more smoothly with the darker areas. The downside here is it can make areas of the image with a lot of colors appear a little strange.
  • Color Priority – The opposite of Highlight Priority, this style makes sure that color is preserved across the vignette. However, it can make the bright areas have some jarring shifts.
  • Paint Overlay – This is a blunt instrument. It just darkens the image where the vignette is applied, with no attention paid to highlights or colors.

If you’re not sure which of these to use, I recommend sticking with Highlight Priority. Both that and Color Priority produce similar results which are not unlike the Burn option in Photoshop (which itself mimics the process of selectively over-exposing parts of an image when developing film in a darkroom). These two also let you use the Highlights slider at the bottom which helps you recover some of the brighter portions of the image that are darkened with a vignette, whereas Paint Overlay disables the Highlights slider entirely.

Additional options:

In addition to the style of vignette, you have additional options that allow you to precisely control how the effect is implemented.

  • Amount – How much vignette is applied. Moving this to the left adds a dark vignette while sliding it to the right adds a white vignette.
  • Midpoint – The degree to which the vignette reaches the middle of the image. All the way to the left results in much more of the vignette reaching the center, whereas all the way to the right keeps the vignette at the most extreme edges and corners. If you’re not sure what to do, just leave this in the middle.
  • Roundness – All the way to the left makes the vignette into more of a rectangle. Leave it in the middle for an oval-shaped vignette. Slide it all the way to the right to make your vignette a circle.
  • Feather – How smoothly the dark areas blend with the light areas. All the way to the left results in a harsh edge and all the way to the right gives you a nice smooth blend.

If you don’t want to over-complicate things you can leave all these sliders at their default values and you’ll be fine. However, they are fun to experiment with over time to get just the right look you are going for.

Visual explanations

This tool is easy to explore on your own but looking at how it affects a black and white grid may give you a better understanding of what is happening. I used the Paint Overlay instead of Highlight or Color Priority because in a simple black-and-white grid Paint Overlay gives the clearest visual representation of how the vignette is applied. The left side of each is the original un-edited grid while the right side is the same image with a vignette applied. The settings used for each one are described in the caption.

Amount -50, Midpoint +50, Roundness 0, Feather +50

Notice how the vignette gradually fades from dark to light, with the center portion of the image on the right being the exact same brightness as the grid on the left with no vignette applied.

Amount -50, Midpoint 0, Roundness 0, Feather +50

With the midpoint set all the way to 0, the unaffected portion of the vignette is concentrated in the middle with the edges and corners being uniformly dark. This highlights the center portion alone but there is very little fade-out between that and the vignette.

Amount -50, Midpoint 0, Roundness 0, Feather +100

The midpoint here remains the same but there is now a more gradual fade-out to the darkened portions thanks to an increase in feathering.

Amount -50, Midpoint 0, Roundness 0, Feather 0

Reducing the feathering to 0 makes the vignette clearly visible with virtually no gradation in how it is applied. I would never use this on an actual photo, but it is useful to understand how the vignette function operates.

Amount -40, Midpoint +25, Roundness +100, Feather +30

Setting the roundness to +100 gives you a vignette that is a perfect circle instead of a more oval shape. It’s important to remember that vignettes are applied after cropping, so if you start with a square image then you will have a circular vignette even with the roundness value set to its default value of +50.

Hopefully, these graphics give you a better understanding of how the vignette effect works. However, to really see it in action, it helps to look at what happens when it’s applied to actual photographs instead of just a blank grid.

Vignette examples

Almost any photo-editing app will let you apply a vignette, but with the extensive tools available in Lightroom you can customize your vignette to do precisely what you want and shape your viewers’ perception of an image in a very specific way. If you control parameters like midpoint and feathering, in addition to the amount, you can create vignettes that impart certain overtones and even emotions and transform your humble images in to works of art.

No vignette applied.

The above image looks fine on its own, and the viewer’s attention is meant to be drawn to the droplet of water right in the middle, but there are other portions of the image competing for attention. Adding a vignette completely changes the mood of the scene and makes the viewer feel like they are in a much more intimate setting. Notice how, with the darkened corners, your eye gets immediately drawn to the center and not to the edges at all.

Highlight Priority. Amount -30, Midpoint +50, Roundness +20, Feather +40

Vignettes can be used to eliminate distractions in the edges of the frame as well, and in doing so draw the viewer’s attention to the subject in the center. In this image below, there is a fence on the top-right and a black climbing rope on the top-left. They don’t really add much substance to the image and instead can take your attention away from the rabbit in the middle.

One way to solve this is by adding a vignette. Through some tweaking of the parameters, the end result is an image that still contains the fence and the rope but makes them far less prominent while focusing your attention squarely on the bunny.

Highlight Priority. Amount -42, Midpoint +50, Roundness 0, Feather +70

I do a lot of family pictures for clients in my city, and one of the final touches I’ll add to most of my pictures is a simple vignette. It’s often very subtle, usually only -10 or -15, but depending on the Style (Highlight or Color Priority), I might need to add more and then tweak it with the sliders. Below is an image with no vignette applied. While it’s fine on its own, the subjects are competing with the bright edges and corners for your attention.

A Color Priority vignette helps maintain the integrity of the colors while darkening them a little, and then I brought back some of the highlights particularly in the top-right corner by adjusting the Highlights slider to 10.

Color Priority. Amount -53, Midpoint +55, Roundness 0, Feather +45, Highlights +10.

Positive values

One thing I didn’t mention in this article is positive Amount values, which make the edges of the frame brighter instead of darker. In my years as a photographer, I can’t think of a single instance in which I have used this option, and I don’t know anyone else who uses it on a regular basis either (editor’s note: it may be used it in high-key photography). You may find instances in which you want to make the outer portions of your image brighter instead of darker and, if so, then positive Amount values would do the trick. Just know that it’s easy to overdo it and the results can sometimes come across as a little cheesy and forced.

Conclusion

These examples and explanations are designed to give you a better understanding of what the vignette effect does and how it impacts an image. I encourage you to try it out for yourself. Use the different sliders and style options and notice how they affect the vignette which, in turn, can have a profound impact on your image as a whole. Just remember the cooking analogy: you don’t want too much vignette, nor do you want too little. Strive to get it just right, and your pictures could take on a whole new life.

Feel free to share your thoughts and comments below.

The post Understanding and Unlocking the Power of the Lightoom Vignette Tool appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Simon Ringsmuth.


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Understanding Tonal Range in Photography

02 Nov

Understanding tonal range in photography can be the last thing on a photographers mind.

As we progress on our particular paths, there can be times when even the most mindful of us take some things for granted. The simple elements are sometimes overlooked first – such as a sloppy tripod setup or assuming our cameras settings are where we last left them.

In the same vein, the steadfast technical concepts of our photo work are misunderstood, misinterpreted or worse – completely forgotten. This malady spans every level of skill and afflicts both pros and hobbyists alike.

Understanding Tonal Range in Photography 1

Take as an example the most basic building block of any photograph; light. In our weirdly flexible digital age of post-processing, we can sometimes forget what is happening with the luminance values of our images.

Our photographs are displays of contrast between light and dark, but the distance between the two are virtually limitless.

A Brief Word on Tonal Range

All that we’re talking about here today is the measure of brightness from complete dark to complete light. The range between the different brightness levels within our photos determines its degree of contrast. Take a look at this tonal scale:

Understanding Tonal Range in Photography 2

We move from complete darkness on the left (black) to complete light (whites) on the right. This scale applies for both color and black and white photographs. Now, let’s talk about each of these values and how they relate to your photography.

Highlights

Traditionally, I’ve always thought of highlights as the brightest portions of an image, which is not the case. At least not the case to the utmost extent. In truth, highlights can be considered the areas of a photograph which consist of high luminance values yet still contain discernible detail. Here’s an example of highlight luminance values:

Understanding Tonal Range in Photography 3

Notice that even though these areas are bright, there is still some discernible texture and detail to be made out within the bright spots. If we were to increase the exposure, in camera or with post-processing, it would become so bright that it would lose detail entirely, which brings us to our next point.

Whites

If we increase the brightness to the extent that our highlights become ‘blown out’ (where details are invisible), we have complete white.

Even if the white area doesn’t appear white, it may be considered a total ‘white area’ due to the lack of detail. The following is an example of luminance considered total white:

Understanding Tonal Range in Photography 4

Depending on your photograph, it may or may not be desirable to push the exposure to the point of white-out. We’ll talk more about this as we discuss the relevance of tonal range in regards to constructing your images.

Midtones

A mid-tone is precisely that – all luminance values that are not dark or light are considered to be mid-tones. Most of the time our camera meter will attempt to expose for this average brightness when in ‘Automatic Mode.’

Understanding Tonal Range in Photography 5

While mid-tones help to ensure much information is contained in an image, a photograph consisting of only mid-tones lacks dynamics.

Shadows

Areas that appear as shadows are closely related to highlights albeit in the opposite direction. Shadows are the areas of a photo that are dark but still retain a level of detail.

The above photo is a perfect example of more information in the shadow areas, so let’s use it one more time:

Understanding Tonal Range in Photography 6

These darker areas still possess information seen by the viewer. However, if we darken them to the point where that detail gets lost or ‘burnt out,’ then…you guessed it, they become a completely black luminance value.

Blacks

Any portion a photograph that has zero luminance is considered to be black. Much like the complete white areas earlier, these points within our images don’t have to be utterly devoid of color to be regarded as pure black.

Let’s look at some shadows that are completely burnt out and retain no detail whatsoever:

Understanding Tonal Range in Photography 7

Completely black areas are so dark that you can see nothing. Consider them the ‘dark abyss’ within a photograph. Having these areas within your image isn’t necessarily a bad thing, so let’s talk about that now.

Luminance Values and You

If you ever open a conversation among a group of photographers about the suitability of brightness levels within a photograph, you’d see that the schism is split. Some photographers feel that images should contain no areas of complete black or complete white – that all portions of the photograph should present some level of detail for the viewer.

Understanding Tonal Range in Photography 8

Still, others contend that it’s perfectly fine to either burn or blow out some luminance values for the sake of contrast. Doing this means that there is an area of complete black and complete white so that all the other luminance values fall somewhere between those two absolutes.

While it’s true that it is often desirable to deliver the maximum amount of visual information to your audience, this is not always the case. There are times when a crushed and burnt out shadow or a super-bright highlight are just what you need to bring a photograph home.

Understanding Tonal Range in Photography 9

Final Thoughts

I’m happy to profess my opinion that there is no such thing as a set technique for each photograph you make. It might seem like a simple thing to remember, but it’s easy to overlook the importance of how different levels of brightness affect an image. Let’s take a quick run back through what we’ve learned about luminance values:

  • Highlights – Bright areas within a photo that still maintain detail
  • Whites – Areas of extreme brightness where there is absolutely no information(detail) remaining
  • Midtones – These are neither shadows or highlights but rather a middle value of luminance
  • Shadows – Darker areas of the image that still maintain detail
  • Blacks – Completely ‘burnt out’ portions of a photo that contains absolutely no detail

Like most concepts in photography, it’s essential to have a full understanding of the tonal range falling within your photos. You should use this knowledge to strive for technical excellence and also so you know when to break the rules in favor of fulfilling your creative vision.

How do you make use of tonal range in your images? Share with us your thoughts and images in the comments below.

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Understanding Sensor-Shift Technology for High-Resolution Images

11 Sep
rock silhouette sunset - Sensor-Shift Technology

Georgian Bay – Summer Landscape

Changing How Photographs are Taken

In recent years, a number of manufacturers have produced cameras that are capable of producing higher-resolution images through something called Sensor-Shift Technology. This technology has been made possible with the advent of in body image stabilization (IBIS). Camera designers have used the IBIS as a way to get incredible increases in image resolution or to improve the color information for the images that are taken.

There are a number of names for this technology including High-Resolution Mode, Pixel Shifting Resolution System, Pixel Shift Multi Shooting Mode or the more generic names of pixel-shift/sensor-shift but in the end, the concepts behind this technology are all the same. Multiple images of the same view are taken in such a way that the images are stacked and blended to create a single, usually large, high-resolution image.

There are strengths and weaknesses of this new technology and understanding how it works can help you make better images yourself if you have a camera that is capable of doing this.

NOTE: Because websites use lower resolution images, the images used in this article have been downsized and modified to simulate the differences between the high-resolution images and the standard output from the cameras. When looking at the images in full, the images look similar but when you get closer to the details in the images that is when you start to see the differences.

gerbera daisies - Sensor-Shift Technology

Gerbera daisies indoors, regular resolution (20 MP) Olympus OMD EM 1 Mark II

Gerbera daisies - Sensor-Shift Technology

Gerbera daisies indoors, high-resolution (50MP) Olympus OMD EM 1 Mark II

Many Approaches to Sensor-Shift Images

Sensor-shift image capture has been transformed from expensive specialty cameras to become an increasingly available feature on newer, resolution-oriented cameras. Today, in addition to Hasselblad’s monster H6D-400c (400 Megapixel images), there are offerings from Olympus, Pentax, Sony, and Panasonic.

These versions generally use the same conceptual approach but at much more accessible prices.

Sensor-Shift Technology diagram

Sensor-Shift Movement

Who Uses Sensor-Shift?

Regardless of the manufacturer, the basic action of sensor-shift image capture remains the same. Take multiple images but move the camera’s sensor slightly for each image to capture more image data and then put the image together.

By moving the sensor around, the image color data improves allowing for more detail to be resolved by overcoming the inherent problems with color specific photosites. Ignoring the Hasselblad, the systems that use this technology include cameras such as the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II (Micro Four Thirds), Pentax K-1 Mark II DSLR, Sony a7R III, and Panasonic Lumix DC-G9 (Micro Four Thirds) although there are others from the same manufacturers.

Three of these lines are mirrorless cameras with the Pentax being a crop sensor DSLR. It is interesting to note that the Panasonic/Olympus cameras take one approach and Pentax/Sony take a different approach to the same concepts.

The Olympus/Panasonic systems use an approach that makes very large high-resolution images whereas the Pentax and Sony systems use the sensor-shift to improve the color information of same size images. Both the Pentax and Sony systems also allow for the separation out of the individual sensor-shifted images whereas the Olympus and Panasonic blend the stacked images into a single photograph.

Sensor-Shift Technology Olympus camera

Olympus OMD EM5 Mark II has the sensor-shift technology.

How does sensor technology work?

To understand how sensor-shift technology works you need to also understand how a sensor generally works at a very small scale. In the good old days of film photography, cameras used light-sensitive film to record images. Digital cameras use a very different approach to record light.

Digital cameras use light-sensitive photodiodes to record the light striking the sensor. In most digital cameras, each photodiode has a specific color filter (red, green, or blue), forming a photosite. These photosites are arranged to allow the light to be blended to see the color from the image coming onto the sensor.

The red, green, and blue photosites on a sensor are generally arranged in a specific pattern known as a Bayer array (a.k.a. Bayer matrix, filter). There are also other configurations such as the Fuji X-Trans sensor (used on several of their camera models) or Sigma that uses a Foveon sensor.

With a Bayer arrangement, there are twice as many green photosites as red or blue because human vision is most attuned to resolving detail in green. This arrangement generally works well but if you think about it, on an image, a color pixel is created by blending these photosites together.

The sensor does not know how much red there is on a green sensor location or a blue sensor location so interpolation is required. This can create some artifacts in photographs if you look very closely and tends to mean that RAW images have an ever so slightly soft focus. All RAW images need some sharpening in post-processing (the green, the red and the blue for a pixel are blended together).

Sensor-Shift Technology

Bayer pattern of photosites

Static Sensors

In a regular camera without IBIS, each photosite only records the light from one color in that one spot, so the data that it records is technically incomplete. It is like a bucket that only collects light from a particular color. A cluster of light buckets in the Bayer pattern is used to create a single pixel in the digital image but within that pixel, there are two green buckets, one blue and one red.

To meld the image together and put a single color into that one pixel, the signals from the cluster of photodiodes are resolved together. The collected data is interpolated via a de-mosaicing algorithm either in-camera (jpeg) or on a computer (from a RAW image), a process that assigns values for all three colors for each photosite based upon the collective values registered by neighboring photosites.

The resulting colors are then outputted as a grid of pixels and a digital photograph is created. This is partly why RAW images have a slightly softer focus and need to be sharpened in the post-production workflow.

Moving Sensors

IBIS means that the sensors now move ever so slightly to adjust for subtle movements of a camera to keep the image stable. Some manufacturers claim that their systems are capable of stabilizing the sensor and/or lens combination for an equivalent of 6.5 stops.

Sensor-Shift Technology

Moving the sensor allows all the color photosites to record the data for each location on the sensor.

This stabilization is accomplished by micro adjustments of the position of the sensor. For sensor-shift images, those same micro adjustments are used to have each photosite exposed to the light from the single image recording. In essence, the sensor is moved around not to adjust for external perturbations but to have each portion of an image contain full-color information.

Photosites Rather Than Pixels

You may have noticed the term photosites instead of pixels. Cameras are often rated by their megapixels as a measure of their resolving power, but this is confusing because cameras do not have actually have pixels only photosites.

Pixels are in the image produced when the data from the sensor is processed. Even the term “pixel-shift” which is sometimes used, is misleading. Pixels don’t move, it is the sensors that have photosites on them that move.

In single-image capture, each photosite records data for red, green, or blue light. This data is interpolated by a computer so that each pixel in the resulting digital photograph has a value for all three colors.

Shifting Sensors

Sensor-shift cameras attempt to reduce the reliance on interpolation by capturing color data for red, green, and blue for each resulting pixel by physically moving the camera’s sensor. Consider a 2×2 pixel square taken from a digital photograph.

Conventional digital capture using a Bayer array will record data from four photosites: two green, one blue, and one red. Technically that means there is missing data for blue and red light at the green photosites, green data and red at the blue photosites and blue and green at the red photosites. To fix this problem, the missing color values for each site will be determined during the interpolation process.

But what if you didn’t have to guess?  What if you could have the actual color (red, blue and green) for each photosite?  This is the concept behind sensor-shift technology.

Sensor-Shift Technology

A normal resolution image.

Diving Deeper

Consider a 2×2 -pixel square on a digital photograph that is created using pixel-shift technology. The first photo begins as normal with data recorded from the four photosites. However, now the camera shifts the sensor to move the photosites around and takes the same picture again but with a different photosite.

Repeat this process so that all the photosites have all the light for each exact spot on the sensor. During this process, light data from four photosites (two green, one red, one blue) has been acquired for each pixel, resulting in better color values for each location and less of a need for interpolation (educated guessing).

Sensor-Shift Technology

A high-resolution image at the same ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.

The Sony and Pentax Approach

Sony’s Pixel Shift Multi Shooting Mode and Pentax’s Pixel Shifting Resolution System operate in this manner. It is important to note that using these modes does not increase the total number of pixels in your final image. The dimensions of your resulting files remain the same, but color accuracy and detail are improved.

Sony and Pentax take four images moved one full photosite per image to create a single image. It really is simply improving color information in the image.

The Olympus and Panasonic Approach

The High-Resolution Mode of Panasonic and Olympus cameras, which both use Micro Four Thirds sensors, takes a slightly more nuanced approach, combining eight exposures taken ½ pixel apart from one another. Unlike Sony and Pentax, this significantly increases the number of pixels in the resulting image.

From a 20 megapixel sensor, you get a 50-80 megapixel RAW image. There is only a single image with no ability to access the individual images of a sequence.

What are the Advantages of Using Sensor-Shift?

Using sensor-shift technology has several advantages. By taking multiple images, knowing the color information for each photosite location and increasing the resolution you accomplish three main things. You decrease noise, reduce moire, and increase the overall resolution of the images.

Noise and Improved Resolution

By taking multiple images with a subtle change in position of the sensor, the resolution of the image goes up but so does the color information in the images. This allows similar images to allow for a greater drilling down into the image with smoother colors, less noise, and better detail.

Sensor-Shift Technology - pink gerbera daisy

A normal resolution image.

Sensor-Shift Technology - flower

A high-resolution image.

Sensor-Shift Technology

Cropped in tight to the normal resolution image, you start to see noise showing up like grain and color variation.

Sensor-Shift Technology

Here is the same crop on the high-resolution version, the color and detail are better with less noise.

Less Moire

Moire is the appearance of noise or artifact patterns that appear in images with tight regular patterns. Newer sensors tend to have fewer issues with Moire than in the past but it will still appear in some images.

The cause of the moire tends to be related to the tight patterns being recorded and the camera having problems resolving the pattern because it is having problems with the sensor photosite patterns. The color information for the Red, Green and Blue photosites have troubles with edges in these tight patterns because not all the color for a single location is recorded.

With sensor-shift, all the color for each location is there, so moire tends to disappear.

Sensor-Shift Technology

Normal resolution image.

Sensor-Shift Technology

High-resolution Image with crop area highlighted

Sensor-Shift Technology

The cropped area on the standard resolution image – noise starting to appear (the scratches on the paper were there before).

Sensor-Shift Technology

The higher-resolution image has less noise and more detail.

So Why Not Use This for Every Image?

Well, the main reason is that you have to take multiple images of a single scene. This means that this really doesn’t work well for moving subjects. The process requires, at a minimum, four times the exposure time of single image capture. This translates into four opportunities for a part of your composition and/or your camera to move during image capture, degrading image quality.

Such constraints limit the technology’s application to still life and (static) landscape photography. Any movement in the scene being captured is going to create a blurry or pixelated area. This is a problem for landscape photography if there is a wind moving plants or clouds as well as areas where running water is present.

This also means that usually, you need to be very stable and use a tripod, although there are some clear intentions from manufacturers to make available versions that will allow for handheld shooting of the camera (Pentax has this feature).

Sensor-Shift Technology

High-resolution image shot on a tripod.

Sensor-Shift Technology

Movement artifacts are visible when viewed more closely.

Quirks of some of the systems

As sensor-shift technology has been implemented in different ways and depending upon the system used, the problems are a bit different. The main quirk is that you generally need a tripod, so no run and gun.

The Sony system has other limitations that you cannot see the image until you process the four separate images together. This means you cannot review your resolved image on the camera. In addition, due to the high pixel count on the A7R mark III, any subtle movement of the tripod is particularly noticeable on the resultant image. In order to edit the images, you also need to use proprietary Sony Software to merge the images together.

Pentax has some interesting features. Using the software application that comes with the camera allows for addressing movement by using an algorithm within the software for removing movement artifacts. This works better than software commonly used for image manipulation such as Adobe.

The Olympus system has been around a while and in the most recent iteration on the Olympus OMD EM1 Mark II, any detected movement will have those affected pixels replaced with parts of one of the single regular resolution images in areas of movement. This creates uneven resolution but makes the image look better for things like wind. It also limitations particularly if there is a lot of movement. Often the images look a little pixelated.

trees - Sensor-Shift Technology

Standard resolution image of a tree – everything is sharp.

Sensor-Shift Technology

A high-resolution image of the same tree but it was windy… Cropped area is shown in the yellow box.

Sensor-Shift Technology

Cropped area expanded – the wind movement generated some artifacts on the image.

Limitations

The greatest challenge facing sensor-shift image capture is moving subjects. Additionally, trying to pair a strobe with a camera using pixel-shift image capture can be complicated by the speed of image capture, flash recycle limitations, and general compatibility problems. Manufacturers are aware of these problems and are working to resolve them.

Overall the Technology is Only Going to Get Better

More and more systems are using algorithms to produce these higher resolution images. As the technology matures, the implementations will get better and better results, potentially able to deal with movement and handheld conditions.

The advantage to manufacturers is that better quality images are produced without the need for really expensive high pixel density sensors (cheaper). The advantages to the user are that the images can have better noise and color information for better final results.

Happy hunting for that perfect high-resolution image!

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DPReview TV: understanding 4K and 6K photo modes on your camera

12 Aug
Special 4K and 6K photo modes may be one of the most under-appreciated features on recent cameras. After all, with today’s models boasting impressive performance and high frame rates, why would you need them? In this week’s episode, Chris and Jordan take a closer look at these modes and explain why – and when – you’ll be glad to have them on your camera.

For more information check out our in-depth article explaining 4K photo mode.

Read our in-depth article about 4K photo mode

Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get new episodes of DPReview TV every week.

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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Controversial copyright ruling based on ‘faulty understanding’ but shouldn’t set precedent

06 Jul

A copyright ruling against a photographer whose work was re-used has been criticized as a “very poor decision,” based on “a faulty understanding of the fair use doctrine,” by copyright lawyer Bert Krages.

The widely-reported ‘Brammer v. Violent Hues LLC’ case in the Eastern District of Virginia appeared to accept that the use of a crop of a photograph without permission as fair use. However, while Krages questioned the decision, he also stressed that “the decision does not serve as precedent in other cases,” though he thinks “it’s likely that other defendents in copyright cases will cite to the case in the hopes of getting a favorable decision.”

A faulty understanding of the fair use doctrine

The legal matter began in 2017 after photographer Russell Brammer filed a complaint against Violent Hues Productions, LLC, for using one of his images on its website without first receiving permission. The image had been taken in 2011 and was uploaded to Flickr with an “All Rights Reserved” copyright notice.

Violent Hues removed the image upon being contacted by Brammer, but the photographer sued, both for copyright infringement and for removing copyright information from the image. The court dismissed the copyright removal claim but then made a controversial ruling that Violent Hues’ use was covered by the ‘fair use’ exemption from copyright protection.

‘Fair use’ in US copyright law includes the consideration of four basic tests:

  • The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature. . .
  • The nature of the copyrighted work
  • The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
  • The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The court decision works through each of these tests but Attorney at Law Krages said “The court seems to apply the factors in a way that excuses the infringement as opposed to applying them in a way to determine if the societal interest in fair use is served.“

In particular, he expressed surprise at the court’s assessment of the character of the usage. The ruling states that Brammer’s work was ‘promotional and expressive,’ whereas Violent Hues’ was ‘informational,’ and that the usage was, therefore ‘transformative.’

The downloading of an image off of a website to use on another website is hardly a new or unexpected use.

“The District Court seems to have failed to recognize that a finding of transformative use requires that the source work has been used in a completely new or unexpected way,” he says. In particular, he questioned the case cited in the ruling: “Although the court cites to a Fourth Circuit decision that held that the use of papers written by high school students in a database intended to detect plagiarism was “transformative” because the purpose was different, In this case, the downloading of an image off of a website to use on another website is hardly a new or unexpected use.”

The ruling goes on to suggest the nature of the copyrighted work was a factual representation of the world, even though it contained creative elements, and therefore decided in favor of fair use on the second test. It dismissed the third test by saying that Violent Hues had cropped the image so that only the amount “necessary to convey the photo’s factual content” was used. It then concluded that Brammer had managed to sell the image after Violent Hues had used it, and hence the use hadn’t undermined the work’s value.

In my opinion, this was nothing more than an unfair misappropriation of an artist’s talents

Krages disagrees: “The four fair use factors are neither exclusive nor are they to be given equal weight. The court seems to apply the factors in a way that excuses the infringement as opposed to applying them in a way to determine if the societal interest in fair use is served. Violent Hues purpose for using the image was to make its website look better, and the usage did nothing to promote public interests such as commentary, news reporting, and scholarship. Violent Hues did not use the image to comment on the image as art, to report that someone had made an interesting image, or in connection with a scholarly work on photography. The image obviously had value or Violent Hues would not have wanted to use it. In my opinion, this was nothing more than an unfair misappropriation of an artist’s talents.”

Ultimately, though, Krages has reassuring words: “Although it is likely that other defendants in copyright cases will cite to the case in the hopes of getting a favorable decision, hopefully it will not encourage other parties to engage in infringement. In any case, it should not prevent similarly-situated plaintiffs in other cases from receiving just compensation.”

The court’s ruling in the case can be found in its entirety here.

A copyright ruling against a photographer whose work was re-used has been criticized as a “very poor decision,” based on “a faulty understanding of the fair use doctrine,” by copyright lawyer Bert Krages.

The widely-reported ‘Brammer v. Violent Hues LLC’ case in the Eastern District of Virginia appeared to accept that the use of a crop of a photograph without permission as fair use. However, while Krages questioned the decision, he also stressed that “the decision does not serve as precedent in other cases,” though he thinks “it’s likely that other defendents in copyright cases will cite to the case in the hopes of getting a favorable decision.”

A faulty understanding of the fair use doctrine

The legal matter began in 2017 after photographer Russell Brammer filed a complaint against Violent Hues Productions, LLC, for using one of his images on its website without first receiving permission. The image had been taken in 2011 and was uploaded to Flickr with an “All Rights Reserved” copyright notice.

Violent Hues removed the image upon being contacted by Brammer, but the photographer sued, both for copyright infringement and for removing copyright information from the image. The court dismissed the copyright removal claim but then made a controversial ruling that Violent Hues’ use was covered by the ‘fair use’ exemption from copyright protection.

‘Fair use’ in US copyright law includes the consideration of four basic tests:

  • The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature. . .
  • The nature of the copyrighted work
  • The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
  • The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The court decision works through each of these tests but Attorney at Law Krages said “The court seems to apply the factors in a way that excuses the infringement as opposed to applying them in a way to determine if the societal interest in fair use is served.“

In particular, he expressed surprise at the court’s assessment of the character of the usage. The ruling states that Brammer’s work was ‘promotional and expressive,’ whereas Violent Hues’ was ‘informational,’ and that the usage was, therefore ‘transformative.’

The downloading of an image off of a website to use on another website is hardly a new or unexpected use.

“The District Court seems to have failed to recognize that a finding of transformative use requires that the source work has been used in a completely new or unexpected way,” he says. In particular, he questioned the case cited in the ruling: “Although the court cites to a Fourth Circuit decision that held that the use of papers written by high school students in a database intended to detect plagiarism was “transformative” because the purpose was different, In this case, the downloading of an image off of a website to use on another website is hardly a new or unexpected use.”

The ruling goes on to suggest the nature of the copyrighted work was a factual representation of the world, even though it contained creative elements, and therefore decided in favor of fair use on the second test. It dismissed the third test by saying that Violent Hues had cropped the image so that only the amount “necessary to convey the photo’s factual content” was used. It then concluded that Brammer had managed to sell the image after Violent Hues had used it, and hence the use hadn’t undermined the work’s value.

In my opinion, this was nothing more than an unfair misappropriation of an artist’s talents

Krages disagrees: “The four fair use factors are neither exclusive nor are they to be given equal weight. The court seems to apply the factors in a way that excuses the infringement as opposed to applying them in a way to determine if the societal interest in fair use is served. Violent Hues purpose for using the image was to make its website look better, and the usage did nothing to promote public interests such as commentary, news reporting, and scholarship. Violent Hues did not use the image to comment on the image as art, to report that someone had made an interesting image, or in connection with a scholarly work on photography. The image obviously had value or Violent Hues would not have wanted to use it. In my opinion, this was nothing more than an unfair misappropriation of an artist’s talents.”

Ultimately, though, Krages has reassuring words: “Although it is likely that other defendants in copyright cases will cite to the case in the hopes of getting a favorable decision, hopefully it will not encourage other parties to engage in infringement. In any case, it should not prevent similarly-situated plaintiffs in other cases from receiving just compensation.”

The court’s ruling in the case can be found in its entirety here.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Understanding Creative Profiles in Lightroom Classic CC

26 Jun

In April of 2018, Adobe took a much-anticipated advance in the way it allows users to process their images in Lightroom. Beginning with the version 7.3 release of Lightroom Classic (and ACR 10.3) Adobe now offers the use of something called “Adobe Profiles” as well as “Creative Profiles”.

For us photo nerds, this is a BIG deal.

Understanding Creative Profiles in Lightroom Classic CC

Image courtesy Adobe Blog https://theblog.adobe.com/april-lightroom-adobe-camera-raw-releases-new-profiles/

But exactly what are these new “profiles” and how can you use them in your everyday image processing? Well, sit back and relax because I’m about to tell you all about the brand new creative profile section in Lightroom Classic. If you can’t tell…I’m really excited about this!

What are Creative Profiles?

Before we go too far it’s important to note that you’ve probably used profiles before either in Lightroom or right inside your camera. All those settings in your camera for things like Vivid, Standard, Landscape or Portrait are all considered profiles.

Understanding Creative Profiles in Lightroom Classic CC - camera profiles landscape

All of those modes found in your camera are just a way that your camera’s tiny internal computer can process your images. When you shoot RAW, those profiles are simply bypassed in favor of more control in your editing later. The new creative profiles in Lightroom Classic work in essentially the same way.

Think of the profiles as ways to “cook” your RAW files while not needing to sacrifice any editing power. Furthermore, Lightroom’s new profile feature harnesses the user-friendliness of develop presets and integrates that creative simplicity with the power and flexibility of what’s called a color LUT (look up table). I won’t go too far into explaining LUTs in this article but just know that they are used extensively to color grade images.

The great thing about the creative profiles is that they allow you to use custom made LUTs in your editing.

How to Use Creative Profiles

Making use of the new profiles feature in your editing is extremely easy. These profiles can be applied just like develop presets…only not. What I mean by this is that a profile is similar to a develop preset in that it instantly performs edits for you with simply a click of the mouse. But this is where the similarity between profiles and presets end.

The difference comes down to how the nature of the profiles and how they apply their edits. Develop presets are simply saved blueprints of adjustment slider settings. This means that develop presets override the current setting of each adjustment slider and set each slider according to the saved value on the preset.

Understanding Creative Profiles in Lightroom Classic CC - LR preset settings

While develop presets are a powerful tool for any workflow, you can still run into trouble when you begin to use multiple develop presets while editing the same image.

Applying Profiles

A creative profile works differently from a preset in that it does not rely on the adjustment sliders to make changes. This means that a profile can be added at any time during your processing workflow without affecting the edits you might have already made. Let me show you.

This image has had some basic processing and now I’m going to apply one of my presets.

Understanding Creative Profiles in Lightroom Classic CC - scene of a desert and dark blue sky

Have a look at the adjustment sliders before…

Understanding Creative Profiles in Lightroom Classic CC - sliders in LR

…and now after the develop preset is applied.

Understanding Creative Profiles in Lightroom Classic CC

The preset will automatically change the respective sliders that I saved when I made the preset. This can cause some problems especially if you choose to apply the preset at the end of your editing. It can be one big post-processing headache.

Next, we’re going to take that same image and apply a creative profile.

Just look at the image and the sliders as compared to before we applied the profile. The profile has applied edits without affecting those we already have made.

Understanding Creative Profiles in Lightroom Classic CC

I don’t have to tell you how extraordinarily convenient it is to be able to impart a certain look to the photo without disrupting the things I’ve already adjusted.

Adjusting Profile Density

Not only can profiles be used completely autonomously of the current image adjustments, but you can also control how much of the profile is applied. Think in terms of opacity and intensity.

You can now determine how much or how little of the effect you need and then dial in the desired setting using the amount slider.

Understanding Creative Profiles in Lightroom Classic CC

Here’s the profile effect at approximately 75%…

Understanding Creative Profiles in Lightroom Classic CC

…and now with about 25%

Understanding Creative Profiles in Lightroom Classic CC

Something to keep in mind when using profiles is that even though they are more flexible than develop presets that doesn’t mean they don’t come without their limitations.

The main one being that you can only apply one profile at a time. So don’t get any ideas of stacking profiles…at least not yet.

Final thoughts on Creative Profiles

I love presets. I love making presets. In fact, a good bit of my work revolves around the developing and constructing of develop presets for Lightroom. So when I say that I love the direction Adobe is heading with the profiles feature in their latest versions of Lightroom Classic CC hopefully you’ll want to give them a try as well.

Profiles are extremely similar to develop presets in that they allow you to perform a lot of processing in the fraction of the time it might normally require. The difference between profiles and presets is not in their outcome but rather in the little detours each one takes to reach the final destination.

Will profiles ever totally replace develop presets? I don’t think so, at least not for a while. And why should they? Like most aspects of photography, each small link in the chain serves to pull together a greater whole; it’s in this way that presets and profiles complement each other.

Once you understand the basics of using Adobe’s new creative profiles each one of them will serve you extremely well. As always, use presets and profiles up to and never beyond the point of your own creative vision for your images. Less is usually more. Have fun and enjoy shooting!

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How to Improve Your Landscape Photography By Understanding Portrait Lighting

24 Jun

The further I have gone on my photography journey, the more I have come to learn about the importance of understanding light. I believe light is the single most important element that makes a photograph. Not a great subject. Not great composition. It’s great lighting that will make a photograph amazing.

colorful landscape scene - How to Improve Your Landscape Photography By Understanding Portrait Lighting

So what is great light? There is no one type of light that makes a photograph good or bad. Hardness, brightness, color, direction. All these things and more will dictate how your image looks, and more importantly, how it feels.

One of the ways I’ve learned to see and understand light and how it affects my landscape photography is by learning about and understanding portrait lighting. Portrait photographers know that the way light falls on the human form dramatically affects the photograph.

Although you can’t control the light in landscape photography, learning to apply the principles of portrait lighting will help you create far more dramatic landscapes that make the viewer feel something.

Light and Shadow

At its most basic level, a photograph is made up of light and shadow. We have a tendency to focus a lot on light in photography, but shadows are just as important, if not even more so. Shadows reveal shape, depth, and texture.

aerial photo - How to Improve Your Landscape Photography By Understanding Portrait Lighting

Portrait photographers understand light and shadow better than anyone. They shape a portrait by moving the light source around until the light falls in just the right way so that the shadows reveal the contours of the subject. When shooting with natural light that can’t be controlled, they will move the subject instead.

The transition from light to shadow is often lost in modern landscape photography. Camera sensors with incredible dynamic range, along with the popularity of HDR techniques, have allowed us to bring back a lot of detail in the shadows of our landscapes.

This isn’t a bad thing in itself, because usually, we want some detail in the shadows, but it often goes too far. Just because we can brighten the shadows doesn’t mean we should. Leaving parts of the image in darkness add mood and mystery.

long exposure seascape - How to Improve Your Landscape Photography By Understanding Portrait Lighting

Rembrandt Lighting

I learned about Rembrandt lighting before I had ever heard of the artist it was named after. Rembrandt was a master painter who understood the principles of light and shadow better than anyone. Studying his paintings will teach you a lot about how they can create mood and drama in an image.

Rembrandt self portrait - How to Improve Your Landscape Photography By Understanding Portrait Lighting

Rembrandt self-portrait.

Rembrandt lighting has become known as a classic lighting setup in portrait photography. Using soft side-lighting, this technique creates a beautiful look that you will likely recognize.

When the light source is coming from the side of the subject, it causes the light to reveal and conceal various elements. The parts of the subject that are visible to the light source will be illuminated while the parts which aren’t visible to the light source will be in shadow.

portrait lighting for landscape photography - How to Improve Your Landscape Photography By Understanding Portrait Lighting

Understanding portrait lighting to bring out texture and dimension.

You obviously can’t control the light source when photographing landscapes, but you can still apply the same principles.

Considering how the light will fall on your landscape can guide the way you photograph it. The position you shoot from, your composition, and the time of day will all affect how the lighting affects your landscapes. Even though you can’t control the light, it never stays the same, so waiting for the angle of the sun to change or for a gap in the clouds can make a big difference to that way it illuminates the scene.

Reverse Engineering Photos

A great exercise for learning to understand light is to reverse engineer a photograph. When I was learning portrait photography I would regularly study an image and try to figure out how it had been lit. Is it natural light or flash? How far away from the subject is it? How big is the light source? Is there more than one light source?

How to Improve Your Landscape Photography By Understanding Portrait Lighting - lighthouse on a rocky shoreline

These days as a landscape and travel photographer, I still ask myself those questions when looking at a photograph. Which direction is the light coming from? What time of day was it taken? Was the sky clear or cloudy? Learn to get in the habit of analyzing photos that you admire by asking yourself more specific questions like this rather than what gear or presets the photographer used.

Dodging and Burning

Shaping light and shadow doesn’t stop when you take the photo. Dodging and burning is the process of lightening and darkening areas of a photo in post-production. It doesn’t need to be a complicated process. Often all that is necessary is burning (darkening) areas that could use more shadow or might be distracting.

portrait lighting for landscape photography

One of the best ways to think of dodging and burning is to ask yourself where you want the viewer to look. It may be a specific element of the photo, or you may want to draw the viewer’s eye through the image. You can paint more light and shadow into a photo to guide this process.

Our eyes are naturally drawn to brighter parts of an image. Portrait photographers will often dodge and burn to draw the viewer to the subject’s eyes or another important element of the subject. When editing landscapes, try to paint in light and shadow to control which parts of the image are attracting your attention.

waterfall and mountain and reflection in a pool of water - How to Improve Your Landscape Photography By Understanding Portrait Lighting

Go Practice

The next time you’re photographing a landscape, try taking another look at the light. Ask yourself some of the questions I’ve mentioned. Look for the shadows. Experiment with side-lighting. Wait until the light changes. By understanding portrait lighting you will be better equiped to apply it to your landscape photography.

You’ll find that thinking of the landscape as contours with depth and shape rather than separate elements will help you make more engaging landscapes with mood and drama.

The post How to Improve Your Landscape Photography By Understanding Portrait Lighting appeared first on Digital Photography School.


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Video: Understanding the science of camera sensors

22 Apr

When we see a technical video posted online, purporting to explain some scientific concept that has to do with photography, we typically brace ourselves. More often than not, they fall into two categories: (1) oversimplified, or (2) blatantly incorrect.

That’s why this Filmmaker IQ episode on the science of camera sensors is such a breath of fresh air: not only is it factually solid, it goes into more detail and makes that detail easier to understand than just about any other technical breakdown of image sensor science we’ve seen… and they throw in a great explanation about how film works just to sweeten the pot.

The 13 minute video explains:

  • How photographic film uses a thin coating of silver halide crystals to capture light.
  • The science behind the photodiode that converts light into electrical current for all digital image sensors
  • How a Charged Couple Device (or CCD) sensor works, and its pros and cons.
  • How a Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (or CMOS) sensor works, and its pros and cons.

If you’ve never bothered to dive into the science of image sensors or, every time you tried, the explanation was just too dense, give this video a look and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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