Selective Sharpening

By Paul Kerins | Published: February 2, 2012

Selective sharpening for print output.

Sharpening photographs for prints is more subtle practice than sharpening JPEG or PNG files for the world wide web. Only certain areas of a photograph may require sharpening. A portrait or beauty photograph will most likely need selective sharpening, perhaps on the mouth, nose, cheek bones, hair, or eyebrows, and most importantly the eyes. You may want to sharpen around the eyes, like the upper and lower eyelids and the eyebrows, but want it to be less sharp than the iris and pupils. Both eyes may need to be sharpened, but one eye is less sharp than the other to begin with and will require more sharpening than the other eye in order to even out the overall sharpness of the image.

If the subject of your photograph is not a person, you may want to sharpen a element in the image to bring more attention to it. A example of this could be a landscape photograph and in the foreground is a object that is the main subject of the photograph, and it is on the soft side, but the sharpness of the rest of your image perfectly fine. You can use selective sharpening to sharpen just this one object to improve it and to help draw in the viewer’s eye to it and give balance to the photograph.

Using selective sharpening is the best way to have complete control over the sharpening process on your photographs.  Certain elements within your photograph can benefit just as much by not sharpening them as others elements do by sharpening them. Skin is is the most obvious thing that comes to mind and should not be sharpened. Sharpening digital images is basically just increasing the contrast of the individual pixels in your photograph. This is not good for nice smooth skin tones, it is best to avoid sharpening skin and to use selective sharpening on individual facial features that require it instead. That way you can retain beautiful smooth skin tones, while bringing out the facial features of your subject

Sharpening digital images is basically just increasing the contrast of the individual pixels in your photograph.

 

You do selective sharpening by painting in the sharpness on a layer mask. This is a non-destructive technique using layers and masks that you can save as a PSD file, that you can go back to and make ongoing tweaks to the file when ever you like. By using different brush sizes and controlling the opacity and hardness of the brush this allows for exacting results. If you make a judgment error and over-sharpen a area, or paint in sharpness outside the intended area, you can just as easily remove the sharpening effect by painting out the sharpness on the layer mask.

I made this video to demonstrate just how quick and easy it is to do selective sharpening. It is made in HD so you can view it full screen.

Model in Video Paula Patrice at Ford Models NYC

 

Keyboard shortcuts used in this video.

 

Ctrl + J ( Command + J for mac ) creates a new duplicate background layer.

Ctrl +  ( Command + for mac ) to Zoom In

Ctrl -  ( Command – for mac ) to Zoom Out

Spacebar for the Temporary Hand Tool, so you can move the photograph around while zoomed in.

b for brush tool

x to Switch between background and foreground colors on color palette

Brush opacity the number 1 key for 10 percent opacity, the number 2 key for 20 percent opacity, etc.

 

Don’t forget to subscribe to our email updates ( top right of this page ) or to the RSS feed to get a update notice when we post the next article.

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Subject

Your Message

Are you a bipedal humanoid ?

1+1=? 

I would love to hear from you, so do not worry, I will never share your email address with anyone . All emails will remain private and I will not use your name in future posts unless given permission by you.

Ivan Dalla Tana

By Paul Kerins | Published: January 24, 2012

Ivan Dalla Tana, master printer & inventor of the “Gold Process” a alternative photographic printing process.

The world is full of creative people, making beautiful objects and things for themselves and other people’s pleasure, but the reality is almost all of it, is a rehash of something someone else had already done before. It is a harsh truth, but if you asked any creative if they ever made something that has never been seen before, if they were honest with you and with themselves they would say no. They would say that they were only reinterpreting or putting their voice to a process that many others had used before them. I am not talking about personal style but the actual process of making art. With personal style the lines blur more, but with the process the lines are easier to see. Very few people get to go though their lives and actually create something new. Invent something that no one else has ever done before. Create a new process never see before. My friend Ivan did.

Ivan Dalla Tana invented a process for printing photographs that turned silver salts into gold when they come in contact with fibre-based photographic paper, Ivan called it “Gold Process”. Gold process is a very unique, original, and expensive process that coated a print with gold. As you can imagine it made the prints have a very warm metallic feel to them and gave the prints very rich tones. It is a difficult and time consuming process to do. It was also a process that if not handled correctly could become quite hazardous due to a toxic element used in the process of making these photographic prints of gold. Unfortunately viewing images made with the gold process on your computer screen does not have the same impact as viewing the prints in person, since the metallic sheen of the gold on the prints does not translate to a digital image. You can see more examples of this process at the website  “Alternative Photography / Ivan Dalla Tana “.

© Estate of Ivan Dalla Tana
“Scans courtesy of alternativephotography.com “

I had found out recently that my friend Ivan Dalla Tanna had passed away . Ivan was one of those very rare people that created something new, something never seen before. Ivan was a master printer, he printed and made photographs his whole life. He began working in the darkroom at the age of fourteen and in the end, he had 47 creative years in a career that he loved very much. I knew Ivan had a very rich artistic life but Ivan was a modest man and I did not really understand just how rich of a artistic career he had until I had lunch for the first time at his house. There he showed me his library of art books of all these famous artists; artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat , Keith Haring , Claes Oldenburg , Michael Heizer , Malcolm Morley , James Rosenquist , and many others. It turned out that he had collaborated with all these artists, in all the books he was showing me. It was a modest amount of art books of around 100 or so, but when you consider he had, in some way contributed something to every book that was in front of me it ended up becoming a extremely impressive body of work that I was being show. Ivan photographed their art work and made the prints for the books, collaborating and working on some massive art projects. He also showed me prints that were given to him by some of these artists, including a painting that Keith Haring gave to him as a gift. Ivan had lived in New York from 1976 until 1994 where he worked and partied with the most famous artists of the time in NYC and was good friends with many them, before he moved home to open his lab “Darkroom Project” in Milan, Italy.

Ivan was a very open and generous man, both him and his wonderful girlfriend Luisa. She worked with Ivan retouching the photographs he had printed. She did this by hand using photo-retouching dye and tiny camel hair brushes. They would always invite me to lunch, several times a week or we would met for aperitivo ( easily one of the best things about living in Italy ) after work. When my mom came to visit me in Milan, Ivan and Luisa invited us out to their house in the country side for lunch and Luisa create this magnificent several course Italian lunch that my mom still raves about to this day.

I was very lucky to have met, and worked with Ivan. We became very good friends. I was also quite fortunate that he allowed me to watch him print as he rarely let clients into his darkroom while he worked. I had printed both colour and black and white photographs myself for over 15 years before I met Ivan, and he later told me that is why he let me watch him work in his darkroom. He had said to me that most clients had no idea of what goes on in the darkroom and had no rhythm when it came to printing, so they just got in the way. I was a good printer and even printed professionally for a master photographer, before I went pro as a photographer myself, but Ivan Dalla Tana was a master printer and observing him while he printed was like watching poetry in motion. Ivan was a true delight to work with.

It is difficult to explain what it was like to see Ivan at work, as being a master printer is like being a master photographer, but back in the analogue era, where there has to be a wonderful balance between the artistic side and the technical side. The way Ivan waved his hands over the paper to manipulate the light as it was being exposed from the enlarger, all his experiences working with so many other great artists over his long career, plus Ivan’s vast knowledge of chemicals, papers and processes that so few other artists possessed, these are some of the many traits that made my friend Ivan one of the best printers the world has ever known.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our email updates ( top right of this page ) or to the RSS feed to get a update notice when we post the next article.

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Subject

Your Message

Are you a bipedal humanoid ?

1+1=? 

I would love to hear from you, so do not worry, I will never share your email address with anyone . All emails will remain private and I will not use your name in future posts unless given permission by you.

Vignetting

By Paul Kerins | Published: January 19, 2012

Vignetting Photographs for Artistic Effect.

Vignetting to put it simply is the darkening of the outside edges of a photograph.
In photography there are many types of vignetting, mechanical vignetting, optical vignetting, natural vignetting, pixel vignetting and finally vignetting for artistic effect. All the different types of vignetting ( excluding vignetting for artistic effect ) are not considered desirable and are caused by objects on the lens
( mechanical ),  in the lens ( optical ), by light fall off ( natural ), or in the case of pixel vignetting this can happen in some digital cameras because of the angle of the light hitting the digital sensor in camera. The most common is optical vignetting as it is just a inherent trait in modern camera lens design and is easily corrected for by stopping down the aperture on your lens 2 or 3 stops. If you want to learn more about mechanical, optical, and natural vignetting, then I recommend you read this well written article about vignetting by Paul van Walree

Vignetting for artistic effect has been used by photographers since the creation of photography and has been very popular with portrait photographers in particular, but has been used by all types of photographers in the creation of their photographs. The darkroom process to make a vignette on a photograph is to either dodge the centre of the photograph while exposing the photographic paper to light from the enlarger, or to burn the outer edges of the photographic paper to darken the area around the main subject of the photograph by adding more light to the desired area to create the vignetting effect. The purpose of vignetting is to draw the viewer’s eye into the centre of the photograph and to help lessen the impact of the outer area of the photograph so it will not distract the viewer from the main subject.

The purpose of vignetting is to draw the viewer’s eye into the centre of the photograph

 

I do often use vignetting on my images. Not all of my images require vignetting though and I only use vignetting when I think it will benefit the final image. Also, most of the vignetting I do is very subtle, and most likely will not be noticed by people ( see the above example photographs ) as I tend to use vignetting as tool to improve the over all impact of the photograph. I generally do not use vignetting as a feature of the photograph as some portrait photographers do, using vignettes as a type of frame within the photograph, but done correctly this can be a very powerful effect on the right portrait.

Today vignetting in Photoshop is ridiculously quick and easy to do and best of all it is extremely simple to get it to look exactly how you want it to look. I created this HD video to show you just how easy and quickly you can add a vignette to your photographs.

Keyboard shortcuts used in this video.
Ctrl + J ( Command + J for mac ) creates a new duplicate background layer.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our email updates ( top right of this page ) or to the RSS feed to get a update notice when we post the next article.

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Subject

Your Message

Are you a bipedal humanoid ?

1+1=? 

I would love to hear from you, so do not worry, I will never share your email address with anyone . All emails will remain private and I will not use your name in future posts unless given permission by you.

Beauty Photography – Make-up & Hair, plus Point of View and What to Look For.

By Paul Kerins | Published: January 15, 2012

Beauty Photography – Part Four of Four

Beauty Make-up and Hair

Beauty photography is used to sell many things, make-up and hair products are the most common and usually the first thing that comes to mind, but beauty is used to sell much more than just cosmetics. Beauty is also used to sell brands, ideas, and ideals. There is a simple purity to beauty that sells. Think of all those famous advertising campaigns that you have seen using beauty photography to sell products like perfumes, jeans, bras, eyeglasses, or handbags, the list is endless.

There is a simple purity to beauty that sells.

 

 

Make-up and hair for beauty photography is as you can imagine is quite important. So when you talk to your hair and make-up team about what you want to see, you should be quite clear to them about the direction you want to go in. Remember that beauty photography is more raw emotionally than glamour photography, and is more about a emotion than creating a fantasy. It is more understated than glamour and takes a light touch from both the hair and make-up artists. Please don’t misunderstand what I mean, I am not saying to stay away from strong make-up and hair when doing beauty. You can use many different combinations of hair and make-up, both light and strong, just remember that both hair and make-up are there for the model and not the other way around. Use hair and make-up to enhance or frame her beauty, both should be considered accents to her beauty, and the model’s beauty should always remain the main focus in beauty photography.

olena 238x300 Beauty Photography Make up & Hair, plus Point of View and What to Look For.

 

 Point of  View ( Camera Angle )

While you are looking at your model, trying to find the best way to photograph her, your point of view should be considered. Depending on which facial feature on your model you choose to accent, your point of view will affect the shape of the model’s face and give more prominence to one facial feature over another. Shooting from a higher angle will bring more emphasis to her eyes, while shooting from a lower point of view will bring more emphasis on the mouth and neck. It can also be a neutral point of view if your camera angle is at eye level.

 

Point of view will affect the shape of the model’s face and give more prominence to one facial feature over another.

 

 

Many factors will have to be considered when you are deciding what your camera angle should be. Lighting placement may be one of them, for example if the light is set up very close to the model, it might restrict your movement which may limit your choices of camera angles. Certain hair styles may look fantastic from a particular point of view but flat and boring from another angle. Make-up may pick up a highlight from your light that accents your model’s face beautifully at a lower angle; it could be something you might not see at a higher angle of view. Accessories like glasses, sunglasses, hats and jewellery will also need to be considered and factored into your camera placement decision when deciding what is the best point of view for your model’s face when doing beauty photography.

Conclusion

Beauty photography is not easy to master, many of the best fashion photographers in the world are horrible at photographing beauty. I think it is because they do not have any real portrait experience, plus it is a very intimate type of photography which might take some photographers out of their comfort zone. Portrait photographers may find some elements of beauty photography easier to do than fashion photographers, but only if the have a very strong natural sense of style, other wise they might have a hard time of it as well.

What it does take to do beauty photography well is experimentation and lots of practice. Communication with the model and your team. Not being afraid to try something new, and to have a critical eye of the elements you are putting together in the photograph like the light, the hair, make-up, or any styling elements, like jewellery or clothing. Most importantly it is knowing when to change something when that something is not working, whether it is your light, the make-up or some other element within your photograph. It is about being a perfectionist with something that is already perfect.

Part One of Four – Beauty Photography – The Power of Beauty

Part Two of Four – Beauty Photography – Understanding Photogenic Beauty

Part Three of Four – Beauty Photography – Ten Tips for Better Beauty Photography

Don’t forget to subscribe to our email updates ( top right of this page ) or to the RSS feed to get a update notice when we post the next article.

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Subject

Your Message

Are you a bipedal humanoid ?

1+1=? 

I would love to hear from you, so do not worry, I will never share your email address with anyone . All emails will remain private and I will not use your name in future posts unless given permission by you.

Beauty Photography – Ten Tips for Better Beauty Photography

By Paul Kerins | Published: January 10, 2012

Beauty Photography – Part Three of Four

There are loads of tips and tricks of the trade for shooting beauty photography. Below are ten solid tips to help build a strong foundation for your beauty shoot.

marie sophie wilson carr 239x300 Beauty Photography Ten Tips for Better Beauty Photography

1. Pay attention to the models face when you are moving the lights or when you are moving the model into place to see how the light reacts to the shape of the model’s face as it happens.

2. While you are moving the lights always keep in mind where your camera placement, and what your point of view will be when you begin shooting .

3. Have the model move her face slightly, up and down, side to side, or tilting her head off to one side or the other to get a better idea of how the light reacts to her face. This is also helps you to get a feeling of what angles will work best on the models face.

4. When you are looking at the model while lighting, change your point of view, bend down a few inches or move to the side a few inches. Doing this will help over all with your light, point of view, and finding the best angles of the model’s face.

5. Don’t just move the lights side to side, but also up and down, and back and forth, keeping your eyes on the model’s eyes for the catch lights, and also under her chin and on her neck for shadow length.

6. Not all problems are fixed by moving the lights, but many problems are uncovered by the light. Problems like make-up or hair issues, make sure to point out the problems to your team and have them fix it after you have finished tweaking your light. Don’t let them just jump in and fix it until you have finished lighting because it may break your rhythm.  Unless you personally have a lot of experience with hair and make-up, do not touch the make-up or the hair on your model, let the make-up artist or hairdresser take care of  it. Just direct them and let them fix any problems. Also don’t let the model try and fix any problems with her hair, they can’t see what you are seeing and may make things worse.

7. Use a camera  lens with a normal angle of view or  longer
( telephoto lens ) for beauty photography. Using a wide angle lens to shoot beauty will distort the model’s face.

8. When shooting beauty outside using available light, try to plan your beauty shoot for the magic hours ( also called “golden hour” ) of daylight. The first two and the last two hours of the day are considered the “magic hours” for outdoor photography, the best times to shoot beauty. Keep in mind you can continue to shoot for several minutes after the sun has set using ambient twilight. Otherwise use tunnel light or open-shade ambient daylight for outside beauty photography.

9. Shooting beauty outside can be great but be careful of temperatures. To hot and the model’s make-up will run, to cold and the pores of the model’s skin contract making it difficult for the make-up to be applied and it may look chalky as well. In cold temperatures skin colour will change; this was a nightmare for photographers in the pre-photoshop days, but it is something you should still be aware of when working in cold weather. Also when people are cold it is much more difficult to have them looking relaxed.

10. Just before you begin shooting, really look at the model’s face, scan it for flaws in the make-up and/or hair, your light, etc., take your time and make sure everything is perfect. Tell the model what you are doing while you are doing it. If it weirds you out, or if you think the model might be uncomfortable with you scanning her face then do it while looking though your camera. Having the camera between you and the model will act like a barrier and will become less personal. It is best to do the final scan of your model  face to face if you are able. Most professional models will have no problem with you scanning their face looking at minute details if you explain to them what you are doing, just make sure to pop a breath mint first if you had eaten any garlic recently.

Next in part four of Beauty Photography. ” Beauty Make-up and Hair, plus Point of View. “

Part One of Four – Beauty Photography – The Power of Beauty

Part Two of Four – Beauty Photography – Understanding Photogenic Beauty

Don’t forget to subscribe to our email updates ( top right of this page ) or to the RSS feed to get a update notice when we post the next article.

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Subject

Your Message

Are you a bipedal humanoid ?

1+1=? 

I would love to hear from you, so do not worry, I will never share your email address with anyone . All emails will remain private and I will not use your name in future posts unless given permission by you.

 

Paula Patrice on the January 2012 cover of Italian Vogue.

By Paul Kerins | Published: January 5, 2012

Model Paula Patrice on the cover of Italian Vogue photographed by Steven Meisel.

First off I just want to say happy new year to everyone, and I have some good news to start the year off with a bang.  My dear friend Paula is on the January 2012 cover of Italian Vogue   ( she is the model in the red dress ) photographed  by Steven Meisel . I may be biased because I worked for Condé Nast shooting editorial for Vogue for a few years when I lived in Milan, but out of all the Vogue magazines in the world,  Vogue Italia is hands down my favourite. I always loved what Franca Sozzani brought to the Italian version of Vogue magazine.

I met Paula in 1995 in Paris and she was the first model I photographed when I moved to Paris to live. We hit it off immediately when she charmed me with her energy and a smile that could light up the darkest room.  We had many adventures together and did some really beautiful photo-shoots. She is one of the hardest working professional models I have ever met, but she is much more than just a pretty face,  she is also a full fledged geek of epic proportions. Paula has her own tech company PPWeb Technologies. a company that builds websites for her many clients and develops apps for Apple Computer’s iPhone. It was Paula that convinced me to add the print store , plus this very blog you are currently reading to my website. She has given me loads of great advice for my website over the years. You can read about her Italian Vogue shoot on the blog of her modelling website paulapatrice.com . Here are a few photographs I made of Paula back in the day.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our email updates ( top right of this page ) or to the RSS feed to get a update notice when we post the next article.

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Subject

Your Message

Are you a bipedal humanoid ?

1+1=? 

I would love to hear from you, so do not worry, I will never share your email address with anyone . All emails will remain private and I will not use your name in future posts unless given permission by you.

Beauty Photography – Understanding Photogenic Beauty

By Paul Kerins | Published: December 22, 2011

Beauty Photography – Part Two of Four

 A Eye for Photogenic Beauty

I am not sure if having a eye for beauty can be learned, but I do think that by photographing enough people you can learn what traits are needed for someone to be considered photogenic.
Some of the most physically beautiful women I’ve met have also been some of the least photogenic models I have photographed. Beautiful in person but flat in front of a camera. It is incredibly frustrating to have someone in front of your camera who is so stunningly beautiful in person that she can literally stop traffic with her looks, but when you try and photograph her beauty, it becomes so bland that plain rice cake seems like a delicious taste sensation by comparison.

Being beautiful and being photogenic are not the same thing, you can be both beautiful and photogenic but they are not mutually exclusive to each other. In fact many of the best beauty faces I have photographed were imperfect in some way or another. Often it was the imperfections that made them beautiful and photogenic. Many of these imperfect models would not get a second look from many photographers because in person they are not that spectacular to look at and can be quite ordinary looking to the layman, it is only when they are in front of a camera does their true beauty start to shine.

You can be both beautiful and photogenic but they are not mutually exclusive to each other.

 

The Myth of  Perfect Beauty

Which brings us to symmetrical and unsymmetrical faces. A perfectly symmetrical face is often thought of as ideal beauty trait. I don’t believe that to be true at all. Perhaps in the world of non-photographers this may hold true, but for me it is just another type of beauty. Also a symmetrical face does not mean it is a photogenic face. To many times I have had model agents and model scouts tell me that some new girl is going to be the next big star ( blah, blah, blah… ), but they don’t know this for sure, because they are not photographers. Generally they are judging beauty based off of symmetry, but it takes years of photographing all kinds of faces to develop the skill set to be able to tell if someone is photogenic without photographing them. These people can of course guess and some are better at guessing than others, but more often than not they are just wrong. It is simply a numbers game for them and this is why model agents always get the girls tested by photographers they trust first, before really becoming fully committed to a new model and putting out a ton energy selling the new model to clients.

I think the reason why most people are unable to understand what qualities makes a face photogenic, is because we live in a 3D world, and the photographs we make are of that world, but in 2D. This is what makes a photogenic face special, because it works in the 2D world. Learning to understand that as a photographer is like learning to see the world in tones ( shades of grey ) instead of colour when we look at a scene that we want to end up as a black and white photograph. You have to train you mind to see it and that takes a lot of practice and you have to be consciously aware of it as you are working, in order to learn to see the world as a photographer.

katharina 238x300 Beauty Photography – Understanding Photogenic Beauty

Photogenic Beauty, the Gift That Keeps Giving

For any photographer, photographing someone who is photogenic is like receiving a wonderful gift. There is no formula to tell who is photogenic and who is not, only that they are photogenic or they are not. You will know when someone is photogenic, when you are lighting them and when you are photographing them. You will see it and more importantly you will feel it. How do you feel when someone is photogenic? That is easy, everything will feel effortless to you, your light, your camera angles, everything will just fall in to place. It will feel like the light loves the model’s face and it will seem like a  impossibility to make a bad photograph of the model as you are photographing her.

After you have experienced this feeling a few times and have photographed enough people who are not photogenic, you will start to get the feel of what makes someone photogenic and be able to spot people who are photogenic more easily.
Just so you know even the most seasoned photographers can still be surprised occasionally by someone who they thought was not a photogenic beauty upon meeting them. Leaving even the most grizzled veteran photographer with a big silly grin on their face at the end of the day, because their shoot turned out so beautifully thanks to their camera loving the face of the model.

In the upcoming part three of Beauty Photography.  ” Ten Tips for Beauty Photography. “

Part One of Four – Beauty Photography – The Power of Beauty

Don’t forget to subscribe to our email updates ( top right of this page ) or to the RSS feed to get a update notice when we post the next article.

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Subject

Your Message

Are you a bipedal humanoid ?

1+1=? 

I would love to hear from you, so do not worry, I will never share your email address with anyone . All emails will remain private and I will not use your name in future posts unless given permission by you.

Beauty Photography – The Power of Beauty

By Paul Kerins | Published: December 15, 2011

Beauty Photography – Part One of Four

 Introduction

One of my subscribers asked if I could write about beauty photography, so this is my attempt to explain something I love, but something that really has no formula to speak of. I guess what I am trying to say is beauty photography is much more than just pretty light, model, and make-up. It is about beauty, something that is always difficult to define. Beauty as they say after all, is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is visual, but it is more visceral than tangible. Beauty photography I believe can best be described as a hybrid cross between very good portraiture and fashion photography. In this four part series I will delve into what is beauty photography, and offer some beauty photography tips.

Beauty is visual, but it is more visceral than tangible.

Beauty is not Glamour

Beauty photography should not be confused with glamour photography, as glamour photography is much closer to fashion or fantasy photography, in which you are not really photographing a person so much as you are creating a character. Really good beauty photography is more about the photographer connecting with the subject like in portrait photography but with the keen eye of a fashion photographer. This is why many photographers do not shoot beauty well, it is a balance between both fashion and portraiture. Glamour is much closer to fashion in the sense that both are in the world of fantasy, where beauty is more grounded in reality, like portraiture or reportage photography.

The Power of Beauty

I believe that beauty photography is more powerful than both fashion and glamour photography because of the connection between the model and the photographer and ultimately the viewer of the photograph. The beauty of the model with her trust in the photographer, mixed with the passion of the photographer can create very emotionally intimate moments. So in the end, the emotions you see in the images are real, and just like in any good portrait, the viewer is drawn into the photograph more because of this.

adriana 240x300 Beauty Photography The Power of Beauty

Beauty Light

In the professional photographer’s world there are really only two kinds of light, good light and bad light. Beauty photography only works with good light; of course that can be said for any type of photography but with beauty photography it is the corner stone of a good beauty shoot, without it everything else will not fall into place. No matter how beautiful the model, the make-up or the hair without the right light to tie everything together it can not considered beauty photography. In fashion photography you are lighting for a scene, the clothing and the model, in beauty photography you are lighting for the face so having a good understanding of portrait lighting is important.

Back light, front light, side light, hard light, soft light, spot light, there is no right or wrong light, as long as you always light for the face. Every face is different so there is no formula way to light for beauty, and you need to approach every face with fresh eyes. Looking for the strengths and weakness of the face that is in front of you, using your light and angles to accent the strengths and masking the weaknesses to bring out the full potential of the model’s face. Get your light right and everything else will fall into place.

In part two of Beauty Photography I will be focusing on photogenic beauty.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our email updates ( top right of this page ) or to the RSS feed to get a update notice when we post the next article.

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Subject

Your Message

Are you a bipedal humanoid ?

1+1=? 

I would love to hear from you, so do not worry, I will never share your email address with anyone . All emails will remain private and I will not use your name in future posts unless given permission by you.

Understanding Histograms

By Paul Kerins | Published: December 5, 2011

How to Use Histograms

Introduction

Probably the most useful as well as the least used and understood tool in your digital camera is the histogram.
Histograms are the reason why I don’t have to bring my light-meter with me anymore when I am out photographing landscapes ( I will always use a light-meter when photographing people). A histogram is a visual graphic representation tool that analyses the exposure range in the photograph you just made. Unlike a light-meter which measures light before the exposure, the histogram analyses the image after the exposure.

Thinking of Exposure

When I think of exposure, I think of latitude, which is the range limit of under and over-exposure that both DSLR and film have, before you lose detail in the shadow and highlight areas of your photograph. In order to have a good base negative or good raw file to work with, you need to stay within range of the maximum latitude of the equipment or materials you are working with. Both film and digital images have a maximum latitude range, of how far you can under or overexpose a photograph before you have a image that will not have a workable tonal range. Bottom line, non recoverable blown out highlights or no detail in the shadow areas.

Where to View the Histogram

You can view the histogram of a image you made on your LCD screen of your DSLR camera. In most DSLR cameras the histogram floats over the image on the LCD screen like the example photo I made for this article, in some cameras it might be off to the side of the image. If you are unfamiliar how to access it on you camera consult your camera’s owner’s manual, if you do not have a owner’s manual it should be easy enough to find out by searching you camera’s “make” and “model” plus “histogram” on your favourite search engine. When you do find the information for your camera you may have to go into your camera’s menu to turn the histogram on, plus you might have the option to have it always show up on the preview image in the LCD screen every time you take a photo.

histogram lake durrance 300x227 Understanding Histograms

Shadows and Highlights on a Histogram

A histogram shows you where your exposure lies within your camera’s latitude. The left side of the histogram is the shadow area and the right side of the histogram is the highlight area. Ideally you want the histogram to show you a balanced exposure.
When the histogram is heavily weighted to the left, the shadow area will have less detail and the highlights will have more detail. When the histogram is heavily weighted on the right side or even worse if it spikes on the right side, the highlights will be blown out and there will be no detail at all in the whites. Film is the opposite of digital, you expose for the shadow in film because it is easier to lose detail in the shadow and film is excellent at retaining detail in the highlight areas of the image. With digital files it is easy to lose detail in the highlights, but digital camera are very good at retaining detail in the shadow areas of the image.

Why You Should Use the Histogram

As you can see in the above image with the histogram, I prefer to go darker when I am shooting with my DSLR, I do this because I know that once highlights are gone they are gone forever and it is much easier to pull detail out of the shadow areas of a RAW file than to try and recover the highlight details.
A lot of people use the LCD screen on the back of their DSLR to see if their exposure is correct. The problem with using the on camera LCD screen to judge the exposure range of a photograph is that it is to small to really make a proper assessment of a image. A good RAW file will look flat on the LCD screen of your DSLR. Much flatter than most people would think looks good, and those same people will want to see more snappy looking image on their LCD screen. They are thinking if the image looks good then the exposure must be good, but most likely they are blowing out the highlights and ruining the photograph. I have heard other photographers say that they can do it, but I find it very hard to believe. The only way to know for sure that you are using the correct exposure or at least the best exposure for the scene is to use a hand-held digital incident-light meter or to use the histogram in your DSLR.

lake durrance 300x200 Understanding Histograms

Conclusion

Don’t think of the image on your camera’s LCD screen as the final photograph. Instead try thinking of it as a digital negative,  and your goal is to make the perfect negative so when you go into your digital darkroom to make the final photograph you have the perfect file to work with to make the best print possible. Learning to correctly use the histogram and applying it to your light, will bring you much closer to your vision as a photographer.

 

Don’t forget to subscribe to our email updates ( top right of this page ) or to the RSS feed to get a update notice when we post the next article.

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Subject

Your Message

Are you a bipedal humanoid ?

1+1=? 

I would love to hear from you, so do not worry, I will never share your email address with anyone . All emails will remain private and I will not use your name in future posts unless given permission by you.

Photoshop Performance Preferences

By Paul Kerins | Published: December 1, 2011

How to get the best performance out of Photoshop.

The first thing everyone should do after installing Photoshop is set up their performance preferences. On a PC  go to menu “Edit”, “Preferences” > “Performance”, or “Photoshop” “Preferences” > “Performance” if you are using a Mac. The fastest way to access preferences is to use the keyboard command CTRL + K which will bring up the general preferences dialog box, then select “Performance” from the menu on the left side of the dialog box.

Memory Usage

In the “Performance” dialog window you will have several choices available to you. Top left you will see “Memory Usage”, I set mine to 70 percent, but this really depends on how powerful your computer is. If you have a more modern computer with a dual, or quad core computer chip and 2 gigabytes or more of ram installed then you can safely go to 70 percent or more. You will have to most likely play around with this to find the correct balance for your needs. Other things to consider also when adjusting “Memory Usage” is what other programs are running in the background and on your desktop. If you have several other resource intensive programs running on your desktop it can slow down the performance of Photoshop. If you are on a PC you can press “Ctrl-Alt-Delete” and in the task manager dialog window that opens you can see all the processes that are running, many processes you may know but there will be even more you may not know. If you do not know a process you can Google it to find out more, but be careful with stopping certain processes as they may be important to windows working properly. Only set services to Manual or Disabled if you are a advanced computer user or a power user and have carefully researched the processes before hand.

memory usage 300x228 Photoshop Performance Preferences

Scratch Disks

Below “Memory Usage”, you will see “Scratch Disks”. If you hover your mouse over it in the Description box under it explains what it does and how you should use it, but in a nutshell what it does is if you have more than one hard-drive you can use the other hard-drives as virtual memory. This allows Photoshop to use the empty space on the drives you selected to temporally write information on, giving Photoshop a performance boost.  As you can see in the screen shot I have C:Drive unchecked, it is better that you do not check the drive on which your operating system and Photoshop are installed and only check drives you use for back-ups and storage. You can not uncheck the C drive unless you first select another disk or disks from the list. Adobe recommends that you defrag the disks that you are using for scratch disks regularly. I highly recommend you use Auslogics Disk Defrag for defragmenting your harddrives.

scratch disks 300x228 Photoshop Performance Preferences

GPU Setting

To the right of “Scratch Disks” you will see “GPU Setting” with a check box labelled “Enable OpenGL Drawing” I recommend you enable this only if you have a excellent graphics card installed on your computer. Enabling this option adds many more features to Photoshop, many nice graphic intensive features, but to many to go through in the scope of this article. Instead I will just link to Adobe pages that explains the features. GPU and OpenGL features and preferences | Photoshop and Bridge | CS5, CS4
Here is a link to Adobe Tested video cards that will work with OpenGL Drawing. Tested video cards | Photoshop CS5
Also, Adobe has OpenGL support page for more information about OpenGL Drawing. GPU, OpenGL support | Photoshop CS4, CS5
If your computer’s graphics card have enough power to use OpenGL Drawing, you should try it out, it really is worth it.

gpu settings 300x228 Photoshop Performance Preferences

History & Cache

Above “GPU Setting”, is “History & Cache”. The “History States” number is how many times you can step back in time. Mine is set to the default 20, so I can go back 20 steps. I had set this lower before but having the extra steps to retrace can be a life saver when you get wrapped up in your work and go to far and you need to go back to a previous state without closing the file and opening it again to your last save.

“Cache Levels” and “Cache Tile size” is about finding a balance , to much or not enough will affect your performance in a negative way, the default setting should be fine ( it is what I use )  but again this really depends on your computer. Here is a link to Adobe with more information on this subject. History & Cache preferences

history cache 300x228 Photoshop Performance Preferences

Bonus Extra

One last thing, I recommend that you select “Never” for Maximize PSD and PSB File Compatibility. It is in the preferences dialog box under “File Handling”, you then select “Never” from the drop down box in the “File Compatibility” section. What this does is reduce the size of you PSD files. It is a personal preference and you can chose to always write for Maximize PSD and PSB File Compatibility, but your file size will be much larger.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our email updates or to the RSS feed to get a update notice when we post the next article.

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Subject

Your Message

Are you a bipedal humanoid ?

1+1=? 

I would love to hear from you, so do not worry, I will never share your email address with anyone . All emails will remain private and I will not use your name in future posts unless given permission by you.