Archive for Photo editing

Framing in portraiture

I spend a lot of time giving feedback on photos. One of the comments that pops up again and again is that I'll feel as if an image is framed awkwardly. Some times, I'll find that an image is nigh-on perfect, but it fails to make the mark because it's difficult to understand the motivation of the photographer: What are they trying to achieve with this photo? It's true for all photography, of course, but it's more complicated with portraiture, as it isn't necessarily very intuitive. How, after all, can you connect a story to the way a portrait is framed?

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DIY Toy camera presets for Lightroom

Given the popularity of the Holga, Lomo, and the other toy cameras out there, I suppose it was only a question of time before some enterprising soul would release Hipstamatic, the app which lets you take cool, toy-camera like photos on your iPhone. There's something about that app which jars quite viciously with me, however: Unlike the 'real' toy cameras, this app doesn't actually alter the iPhone camera at all. And despite getting pretty awesome results (if you like that style of photography, of course), it's all post-processing. That got me thinking... It has to be possible to make my own post-processing presets for Lightroom, to turn my carefully lit, exquisitely sharp and ridiculously high-resolution camera RAW images into blurry, colourful, vastly attractive garbage. So I created a couple of presets for Lightroom 3 - and I'll walk you through the thinking behind one of them and I'll show you how to make your own. How's that for a double whammy of awesome?

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Digital Schizophrenia

One of the first things I started doing when I started shooting digital images, was thinking of ways of doing digital double exposures - adding one part of an image to another - for a greater impact of my digital shots. It turned out to be relatively simple, but carrying high impact. All it takes is suitable photos, a copy of Photoshop (or the Gimp, which is sort-of nearly as good as Photoshop, but free), and a bucket full of time... Have you made any cool images using this method? Post them somewhere on the internet - your blog, perhaps - and add a link to the comments, so we can admire the photos!

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Your photos, 300-style!

Movie audiences of the world are vastly and completely amazed by the beauty of the new movie 300. With its extremely distinctive style, quick-moving plot and -- like Sin City, another of my favourites -- relatively closely based on one of Frank Miller's graphical novels, it's got it goin' on. If you've seen the film, you can't have failed to notice the amazing quality of the artwork involved: The CGI is amazing, of course, but even the live-action bits of the film is nothing short of stunning. So, how, exactly, can you recreate the effects? We interviewed graphic artist Jason Niedle to find out more...

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Contrast in photos

If you are reading this, you have probably heard people moaning about lack of contrast in one of your pictures. I am sorry about that, but -- really -- it is one of the most annoying things in the world. The medium of photography allows you to enhance the way you see the world, so you have an option of showing what you would like to show better. When the option is there - why not use it? This is the picture we'll be working with for now. I know it isn't exactly the best picture in the world, but at least it is bland - it is nothing short of boring. Why? Well - mainly because nothing is the way it should be. I believe that, in photography, black should be black. White should be white. In most cases, there is no real excuse for having almost-white and almost-black as the darkest and lightest point of your photograph (unless it is part of a photographic effect, in which case this all doesn't apply.) It's worth noting that this article is aimed especially at beginners, who aren't that clued up on Photoshop. If this doesn't apply to you, you may just want to dive right into the adjustment layers instead!

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How to spot faked images

If you've ever worked with Adobe Photoshop - or indeed any image manipulation package, you'll know how easy it is to make small and big changes to a photograph. But do you know how you can spot if an image has been doctored or not? Do you know the difference between a doctored photograph and the genuine thing?

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