One of the ways of overcoming the current technology limitations in photography is called Focus Stacking.
This technique allows us to overcome the area of focus (DoF) in images. We can take multiple shots with different focus points and later combine these to get the entire image in sharp focus.
Let us see how this can be done using Lightroom and Photoshop.
This is a little known feature on Mac OS which allows you to clear the trash extremely fast compared to the normal “Empty Trash/Bin”.
For example, if you have thousands of files left by some application, or, just want to rebuild files for any application and delete the existing ones, just emptying the trash can take quite some time.
A typical example of this, in my case, would be to delete the preview files in Lightroom or ON1 Photo RAW cache which can have thousands of files.
This is far more apparent if the data is on a HDD, external or internal, rather than a SSD.
One way around this is to use the command line and delete the files and folders using the rm command. Fortunately, the trash/bin in Mac OS has an equivalent which just deletes instead of displaying the file count and its status while emptying the trash/bin.
Let’s see how this works…
Photoshop has built-in actions for a variety of functions that not many people that I know of actually use.
Not that I personally use those a lot, but, these built-in actions can save a huge amount of time if you need to do anything similar.
Before we look at the actions, there are a couple of points to keep in mind…
Now that we are done with the issues, let us take a look at all the goodies we have already built into Photoshop.
Sometimes, when I already have made some edits in Photoshop and find that I missed out some small areas when using the auto-mask in Lightroom, it was a pain using a brush to fix it.
Turns out that Photoshop not only has an equivalent to the Lightroom auto-mask feature but, it is far more powerful in the way you can control how the auto-masking works.
So, without spending any more time on explaining this, let us open a raw file in Photoshop and see how this works…
Finally, Fixed?
Not quite…Still 50% away for now!
These updates were released a few hours ago and we will take a brief look at both to figure out the changes.
Of course, the individual features and internal changes will follow in a later video…
I have already shared how to create black backgrounds earlier, but, this one is going to be slightly different as we will also discuss a bit about the original exposure and which shots lend themselves well to a white background.
Do not confuse a white background with a high key image. High key images are those that are mostly light and white which is not true for just a white background image.
We will go through the process of making a white background in Lightroom, Photoshop (with and without Topaz Mask AI) as well as ON1 Photo Raw.
Yes, I have recently installed the trial version of Topaz Mask AI and so far, not very impressed as far as wildlife is concerned. Still learning more about it and experimenting…
This would also give us a reasonable comparison as to what one can do with each.
So…This is an image from my rooftop shooting today and this is what we will use in this session. Let’s start with this in Lightroom and then we will look at the same in Photoshop and finally in ON1.
First, the shot itself. As you can see from the base EXIF, this is overexposed specifically for a white background. I have avoided the wall behind the bird and it’s mostly the floor of the roof in the background. The angle of the shot is just over the bird to do this.
Similarly, when you have grey and/or overcast conditions, you can always look to overexpose a bit to create similar effects. Even low light conditions are good for this as long as the subject is close enough. In this case, the bird is just 6 meters away.
Now that we already have a dull background, let’s see how we can make this image pop a bit…
First, we apply my wildlife preset to this and tweak it a bit for a white background. Then, as with the black background, we use the adjustment brush and mask the background around the bird and then pull up all these sliders to make it white.
Do keep in mind that we can only do black or white in Lightroom, anything beyond that, you would have to look at some other application.
Okay, now, let’s remove the mask and try the same in Photoshop.
First the select subject.
Now, let’s try the Topaz Mask AI
Finally, let’s do the same in ON1 Photo Raw…We will use the local adjustments here with the perfect brush which is the equivalent of the auto-mask in Lightroom.
#Photography #Post #Topaz #Photoshop #ON1 #Lightroom
Time to clean the camera or lenses or both!
One of the commonly asked questions is what should I use to clean the lenses. Most people are fine with cleaning the camera with some kind of cloth, but, are wary when it comes to lenses.
Yes, we do have the lenspen and a variety of kits around and most of those work fine. Over a time period, I have found a better solution to cleaning my gear…Camera body and lenses.
I use plain isopropyl alcohol swabs, the kind we use in the medical field for cleaning up before and after injections. For larger work, like the camera body and the outer part of the lenses, I use Zeiss lens wipes which are larger in size and have more “juice” on the wipe.
To wipe off the lens element, I use a lint-free glass polishing micro-fibre cloth rather than any simple micro-fibre cloth. Ideally, the cloth you use which not look like a towel and should be smooth. Very similar to the kind you get when you buy spectacles.
For the camera and lens body, almost any absorbent, fine micro-fibre will do. Just dab around with the cloth and try not to wipe the gear using pressure on the cloth.
Let’s see how we can clean up our camera and lens…
Ideally, don’t even wipe the lens without using a blower on it first. There might be particles on the surface of the glass that might scratch the element while being wiped across. The same applies to the viewfinder and LCD glass.
Since we are using alcohol, it will evaporate almost instantly in the case of the swabs and in a few seconds when using the Zeiss wipes. Remember not to use excessive pressure on the swabs or wipes when using then. Since we already have alcohol on them, additional pressure will not do anything.
When I am outdoors, I prefer using the blower with either the lenspen or the polishing cloth to clean up any fingerprints or dirt that might have fallen on the front element.
Since I did not clean the contact areas, that is all that I will actually clean here…The rest is “understood” types 🙂
That’s it!
Done.
#Photography #Gear #Sensor #Nikon
As a wildlife macro photographer, I have learnt the hard way that even a single dust spot on the sensor could, potentially, totally ruin a photograph.
While this is not really a major issue for non-macro photography, over some time, this can impact other genres as well.
For the last few years, I always check for sensor dust before I leave home even when I am not going for a macro session.
I have devised my own method for checking for dust and cleaning it. This is what I will demonstrate here in this video.
First, make sure you have a fully charged battery in the camera. In case we need to clean the sensor, a fully charged battery is required. Also, since this is what I do before I move out to shoot, it is always a good idea to have a fully charged battery anyway.
Since I started making some videos on photography around a month back, I was looking for some options to make my YouTube channel URL more readable and usable.
I already have a couple of domains that I use for other purposes and since I could not find much on YouTube, I decided to forward a subdomain from one of my existing domains.
This is a relatively simple process and once you update that with your domain provider, it should be active within an hour or so.
The video has all the details and how to go about this process.
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