Barrett Photo of Virginia
We are a family that likes photography. Taking pictures, processing pictures, framing pictures and even making pictures into books. This blog provides a place that we can share thoughts and experiences as they relate to our photographic endeavors.
Monday, September 16, 2024
Photoshop: Auto-Fix Colors aka Color Tint (PIXimperfect)
Tuesday, June 29, 2021
Silky Flowing Water
I am often torn when going to shoot a waterfall or other rapidly flowing water as to whether I want to freeze the water's motion or let the water blur to create a smooth result. Both of the approaches can create great results. Knowing how to capture both styles is, of course, essential to making the choice.
Friday, January 15, 2021
Creating a Waving Flag
I have from time to time wanted to make an object, like a flag appear to be waving or otherwise in motion. I recently bumped into an online tutorial aimed at exactly this task. So, I of course wanted to try it out and figured I should post about the process for future reference.
The tutorial is on YouTube -- Photoshop Tutorial: How to Make Your Own Waving Flag
I'll be keeping my notes on the process on this posting.
Friday, September 11, 2020
Proofing a Mixbook Book
I have been using two different printers for photo books for the past several years. I tend to use Printique (formerly AdoramaPix) for my "serious" books, those where I anticipate wanting full spread images and top quality printed images.
I also like using Mixbook. I find it easier to use and less expensive, though the lack of a practical lay flat option and my perception of their print quality keeps me from using them for books where I know I have top notch images.
Covid-19 has me delving into my archives to create new books of events well in the past. Mixbook is the right choice for me on these as:
- My images back then tended to be a bit off -- no need for big prints.
- Ease of book creation is more important given potential volume and time constraints.
- Lower cost encourages more generous allocation of pages for marginal materials.
- Thinner finished size takes less bookshelf space.
Sunday, September 6, 2020
Removing Annoying Foreground Fence
As I have been working on my shots from a family trip to Alaska in 2006 I ran across some interesting shots that were totally ruined by nasty foreground fencing. All of the images are from an animal park, taken through the fences, also as I was with a tour group I was forced to shoot through the fence. I captured images with a fence dominating my view but I remembered just seeing the animal. Rather like the following pair of images.
Saturday, September 5, 2020
Making Water Wet
It's been a while since I posted to this blog, by "a while" I mean more than a year. Lots of reasons, but I'll skip those and get right to the subject of this post: Making Water Wet (in Lightroom).
Why in the world would I need to make water wet, it is that way naturally, isn't it? Looking at raw images, apparently not always. Water in a RAW image can look flat and dull. For that matter sometimes pavement or rocks would look better with a bit of a moist glisten.
I just picked up a technique courtesy of Scott Kelby in one of his videos that literally can make water (or stones, or pavement) look wet.
(tl/dr summary) -- Use local adjustment brush and set contrast and clarity to 100 (yes, pin to the max) and brush on the adjustment.
Friday, August 30, 2019
Enlarging Techniques
AdoramaPix: Going Big