Amersham Beyond Group - 8th May 2019

Meeting Notes on Creative Photography and Photo-Art
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spb
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Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:04 pm

Amersham Beyond Group - 8th May 2019

Post by spb » Thu May 09, 2019 8:12 pm

MONTHLY CHALLENGES

Many thanks to APS member Martin Warner for presenting to us on the subject of the summer Challenge topic which will be…

#6 PHOTOBOOK

Guidelines;
- any size
- any subject
- any layout
- be creative, have fun with it…
but – the presentation is as important as the content.

Martin explained that criteria for choosing a photo-book include; design capabilities and ease of use, spine or no-spine, book sizes, paper, binding, print quality and price. He put price last in the list as he felt that, compared with the overall cost of our photographic hobby, the saving of a few pounds for a potentially inferior book was less significant.

Martin is the owner of AllStar Photo and had compared his photobooks with the competition by attempting to reproduce the same book with each. He had abandoned several because they could not meet his design needs. Whilst the undiscounted prices were similar, many were limited in their flexibility, ease of design, preview quality and layout options.

Some of the features of AllStar Photo books are;
- on-line design software using HTML
- no hidden sharpening or enhancement of photos which photographers will appreciate to prevent unwanted changes to soft and subtle pastel-shaded images
- availability of full-bleed (edge to edge) page or double-page layouts which can be extremely effective and dramatic (but be aware that there will be a small crop around the edges when the book is guillotined)
- images are not stretched or distorted and if the aspect ratio does not match the destination area, the image can be moved to the optimum position within the available space.
- images with insufficient resolution (pixels) for the intended size on the page are flagged up, in which case you can substitute another image, reduce its size on the page or choose to accept a loss of quality
- text can be rotated and formatted flexibly, including the spine
- if a more sophisticated design is required this can be completed in an image editor such as Photoshop or Affinity Photo and imported as a full-page .jpg or .png.

Before embarking on the design process, it’s a good idea to collect all of your prepared images into one folder and write and spell-check your text in a text editor. With the AllStar Photo design software the basic book size and design, once chosen from the top-level options, cannot be changed so it may be a good idea to start several different books and pursue the one that you feel works best. There is no need to register to experiment in this way but you can’t save or purchase a book until you do so.

One time-saving option is Autofill which will lay out the whole book automatically using the images in the order in which they appear in your gallery of images. This can then be modified, as required. For a simple photographer’s album, the AllStar Photo’s Portfolio>Album may be a good starting point. If multiple copies are required, Martin recommended ordering just one initially, to check it, before proceeding with the full order.

There are video tutorials online and a telephone helpline.

THE BACK OF BEYOND – DIARIES

PHOTOSHOP CC - SHARPENING ACTION
There are many ways to sharpen an image in Photoshop, I find that the High Pass method is quick and reliable. I described this in past meeting notes here.

If you use the Photoshop CC you might be interested in an action that I have created to implement High Pass sharpening with a single click whilst allowing for subsequent adjustment for strength. To record the action;

- open any image containing at least two layers
- Window>Actions to show the Actions palette
- select the Create New Action icon in the palette
- name it ‘Stamp and Sharpen’ then press Record
- simultaneously press Shift + Ctrl + Alt + N to create a new empty visible layer
- simultaneously press Shift + Ctrl + Alt + E to convert the new layer to a Stamp Visible layer
- name the layer ‘Smart Sharpen’
- Layer>Smart Objects>Convert to Smart Object
- Filter>Other>High Pass and choose a Radius of 4 pixels>OK
- set the Blend Mode of the Smart Sharpen layer to Overlay
- press Stop Recording in the Actions palette.

To use the action, click on the top layer of any image and run the Smart Sharpen action. This will create a new High Pass sharpening layer at the top of your stack of layers. It will be at the default settings of 4 pixels radius, overlay blending mode and 100% opacity. I find that this is a good starting point for a full-sized image for printing purposes. If a copy of the .PSD is subsequently down-sized for projection purposes, the sharpening will need to be reduced. Click on the filter layer of the smart object and change the settings to 2 pixels and soft light. To further reduce the effect turn the opacity of the sharpening layer down. To increase the original sharpening strength try Hard Light blending mode. To limit the sharpening to parts of the image, apply a layer mask to the Smart Sharpen layer.

BEGINNER DRONE PHOTOGRAPHY
I have been tempted to buy a drone for several years but the cost and the steep/expensive learning curve has put me off. I looked at this again recently and realised that prices have plummeted. For £60 I purchased a Hubsan H507A X4 Star Pro drone. Whilst it definitely comes into the category of ‘toy’ it is of substantial size (A4 ish) and has a long list of features to make flying it less disaster-prone. Most importantly it has GPS tracking, altitude hold and compass onboard – features that would have cost £2K not long ago. To keep the costs to a minimum, control is via an excellent smartphone app although a dedicated controller is available for £20.

My first tentative flights have been slightly scary but the drone always went into a very stable hover after an automatic take-off. My subsequent flight control was a mix of extremely wild and very precise but the Headless Mode meant that I didn’t need to know which way it was pointing at all times to control it. Automatic Return to Home was a life-saver when it went too far away, too fast, or too high due to my inexperience.

With regard to photography, onboard video is transmitted by wifi to the phone/controller at all times and higher quality 720p video or 2MPx stills can be recorded to the onboard SD card by remote command. The camera is fairly wide-angle but only points forward so you can’t take shots looking down at all. Battery life is very short – just 8 or 10 minutes but extra batteries are quite cheap and other spares are available.

I have been impressed by the stability and capability of this little toy drone and for the money, it is a remarkable introduction to the technology. With regard to the legal aspects, it obviously should not be flown near airports, infrastructure, people etc but the weight of 150g is well beneath the 250g threshold for proposed registration laws.

IPHONE X
I have upgraded my iPhone to an iPhone XS Max and found the camera to be even better than my previous 6 plus. As with all smartphones, quality quickly deteriorates at low light levels but the twin cameras for wide and slight telephoto are great. These cameras, coupled with the software can also achieve other tricks such as artificially blurring backgrounds and HDR. Face ID unlocks the phone instantaneously and is more reliable than the previous fingerprint reader.

A couple of photographic glitches are worth mentioning. By default Live photos are turned on. Instead of single frames, these take short movies of a couple of seconds which is a bit of a gimmick. The feature isn't supported by most non-Apple software and it can create large file sizes and orphaned data files. I turned it off in the camera app.

Apple also now save images in HEIC/HEIF format instead of JPG. This will bring great benefits one day, I'm sure. However, for now it is not supported by Adobe, Microsoft and most other environments so it was also immediately turned off; Settings>Camera>Formats>More Compatible.

Cheers, Steve

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