Amersham Beyond Group - 7th Nov. 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 - 7th Nov. 2019

Post by spb » Sat Nov 09, 2019 1:44 pm

MONTHLY CHALLENGES

#7 PLAYING WITH PERSPECTIVE AND SCALE

We had about 45 images submitted for this light-hearted challenge to begin the new season. There were a mixture of interpretations; straight photos which featured exaggerated perspective, images with photoshopped out-of-scale figures or animals and constructed scenes with models. Several members said how much fun they’d had creating them.

A difficulty that came up more than once in advance of the meeting was creating realistic shadows on assembled images. These are essential to create realism and make elements ‘sit’ correctly in the background.

I demonstrated how to create a transparent new layer below the component requiring shadows and then with a brush and black paint create a small dark shadow tight underneath a shoe or anything touching a surface. This is called a Grounding Shadow. A second transparent layer can then be used to create a bigger shadow which would arise from the direction of the lighting on the scene. This is called a Lighting Shadow.

If the lighting would have created a shadow on top of a picture element (eg an arm creating a shadow across the body) this should be added on a layer above. Grounding shadows are usually black or very dark, Lighting shadows can be lighter, depending upon the strength of the light source. Each layer can be blurred with Gaussian Blur to soften the edges appropriately.

This method of creating shadows on a separate layer allows total control over the shadow in comparison to adding a shadow directly onto image component layers and thus fixing it.

A more sophisticated method involves filling the new layer with 50% grey (Edit>Fill Layer>50% Gray) and changing it’s blending mode to Overlay. It will then disappear, but the Burn Tool on the grey layer will enable the shadows to be created. Another use of this technique when the grey layer is used above image layers is to lighten the image with the Dodge Tool or darken it with the Burn Tool and so provide a Non-Destructive dodging and burning effect. Soft Light or Hard Light blending modes instead of Overlay give less or more strength respectively to the effect and the Opacity slider can also reduce it overall. Like all non-destructive methods it doesn’t change the underlying image and can always be deleted if you don’t like the result.

Several non-destructive techniques were detailed in previous Digital Group notes;
April 2011
May 2011

Here are a couple of other tips for those continuing to pursue this Challenge in the future (they never expire);

- the TiltShift app on an iPhone (£1.99) can create miniature worlds from your images by selective blurring. Other apps are available. It can also be done in an image editor, of course but is most realistic if the image is taken from an elevated position, looking down.

- model figures in many poses, painted or unpainted are widely available online for creating miniature scenes.

- cling film looks like the sea!


The next Challenge will be;

#8 STILL LIFE

Guidelines;
- traditionally of small domestic objects on a tabletop
- dedicated studio lighting is not expected or necessary (see below).

You have total control over every aspect of the image - the subject lighting, focus, arrangement and composition. So no excuses!

If you are not feeling very inspired, there are thousands of examples of excellent still-life photos online so you could find one that you like and try to emulate it.

Lighting Basics;
Key Light - start with the main source of light at about 45 degrees to one side and in front of the subject. This could be a window, a table lamp, a torch etc.
Fill Light – to prevent shadows from the Key Light being too dark, this lesser light from about 45 degrees on the other side of the subject could be another lamp or a reflector such as white card.
Back Light – at 45 degrees behind the subject, this lights hair or fur and is less relevant to hard-edged still-life subjects.
Background Light – at 45 degrees behind the subject, this can be used to light the background, if required.

A moody low key effect can be achieved with a dark background, little or no fill light and a narrow focussed key light such as a torch.

Still life subjects don’t move so the level of lighting can be quite low, if you use a tripod and a long exposure. Surprisingly sophisticated results can be achieved with domestic lights, torches and everyday materials. LED light sources can be fairly neutral but this doesn’t really matter as colour balance can be adjusted by post-processing. It would be more critical with portraiture and skin tones.

Light tents, sold for photographing subjects to sell on eBay are less appropriate for this application as they produce even, shadow-less lighting which lacks atmosphere and will also produce huge highlights on shiny objects. Ordinarily I would not expect any pure white burnt-out areas in a still-life image except for reflections of a light source.

If you do decide to purchase photographic lighting there are hundreds of inexpensive LED studio or movie lights available on sites such as Amazon. Whilst the reviews are often gushing, my experience is that quality of Chinese electrical goods is as low as the pricing. But then it is very cheap!

BACK OF BEYOND – DIARIES

FASTSTONE
I have long-recommended Faststone as my daily go-to image browser, organiser and simple editor for Windows (£0). It is widely used by the imaging community.
A daily joy is that once an image editor has been associated with Faststone (Settings>Programs), any selected image opens into that editor with just an E keystroke. However, two members have contacted me recently with the same problem; having associated Photoshop Elements, the E opens it but the image is not displayed.

This happens because the wrong .exe has been associated. Make sure that you have (for example) C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 2018\PhotoshopElementsEditor.exe selected and not something that looks rather similar in a nearby folder.

PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS PALETTES
I have two lovely big 24” NEC screens at home so screen real estate for Photoshop CC is never a problem. When demonstrating for the Beyond Group the single tiny 4:3 laptop screen (4:3 is dictated by the projector) is cramped enough but this week I also had an annoying problem where the three Photoshop Elements palettes that I rely upon (Layers, History and Info) were displayed on top of the image and refused to dock into the right hand edge of the screen or with one another.

Of course when I got home the problem was resolved in about a minute. I had forgotten that the controls for screen layout are cunningly hidden (damn you again Adobe).

If the palettes are undocked, at the bottom right hand corner of the screen is a cryptically enciphered rectangular icon and the helpful word ‘More’. Right-click the down arrow that appears and then click Basic Workspace. This will dock the layers palette only. Click again and you get more palette tabs that can now be, docked, undocked or deleted as required.

Another helpful option is Window>Reset Panels if all else fails.

Cheers, Steve.

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