Photography & Photoshop Techniques

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Address: Singapore, 069531, SG
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Photography & Photoshop Techniques

Learn professional photography and photoshop techniques to create amazing images

29/05/2017

Never shoot with your subject positioned against a strong backlight. If you must do so, use a flash so that your subject is well lit.

There's a limit to what can be recovered from an image with a backlight problem. My advise is, shoot the best quality photo you can with your camera. Although Photoshop can do a lot of amazing tricks, backlighting problem is not something easy to fix. It may help somewhat if the photo is shot in RAW (which preserves the details in the highlight and shadow areas). For JPEG format, however, the image is already heavily compressed and details are lost as a result. So there is very little you can recover from it.

15/04/2017

It took me awhile to center-align the cam with the line on the jogging track, and to bottom-align the shadow of the chairs with the horizon of the cam. It was burning under the hot afternoon sun! But I just couldn't resist taking this shot because the cloud had this natural motion effect. Also, the deck was empty in the hot afternoon, a perfect opportunity to shoot this the photo.

Composition Technique: Symmetry (left & right rolls of chairs), Texture (the chairs), Patterns, Triangles, Contrast (emptiness of sky vs busy deck), Motion (cloud direction), Diminishing Perspective, Multiple Horizons, a dash of warm colour (jogging track) against the cooler blues. Gee, everything's there!

26/02/2017

Composite

14/08/2016

How to shoot a video against a strong backlight yet maintain a soft (blur) backdrop and a well lit subject?

It was a question asked at one of my videography coaching sessions because there are times when (1) the client insists to shoot at a certain location/facing with a backlight; or (2) you are limited by the choice of backdrop and the only one available has a backlight.

The challenges with shooting against a backlight:
- It results in a dark foreground (i.e. the subject) due to how the camera sensor works.
- To achieve a soft (i.e. blur) background, the aperture must be set wide opened (at f/2.8 to f/4). But this will over-expose the shot (i.e. the image becomes so bright that you can't see anything but white).

Translating the requirements into camera settings. For...
- Soft backdrop (shoot at an aperture of f/2.8 or f/4)
- Cinematic Look (set frame rate to 24 frames per sec, Shutter Speed kept constant at 1/50 sec)

Technique:

To reduce the backlight, the usual solution is to mount a Neutral Density (ND) filter to the lens. However, it will darken the entire image, not just the backdrop. Hence it can be difficult to see what you are shooting or to take focus. The other option is to dial down the sensitivity of your camera sensor, say at ISO 100 or lower.

To ensure the subject is well lit, add at least one light on the subject. Adjust the brightness to the desired level. (Note for serious hobbyists: I usually use False Colour, Zebra and the Histogram as guides). That's it! Spot metering may help but it will also brighten up the backdrop which we are trying to do otherwise.

20/03/2016

Fred's Photography Lesson on FB: Composition Technique

I shot this photo at f/2.8 to create a sense of depth in the picture. This can be seen by the out-of-focus foreground and background but the lounge seat is in focus. The rule-of-third is also applied. There is a nice balance of warm, cold and neutral colour. The lounge seat and blue-tile wall gives the photo a good texture.

Bonus Tips: How to create a soft backdrop to achieve visual separation:

1. You can create visual depth by placing the subject away from the backdrop. By how far? It depends on the space constraint (eg: a small room), as well as situational and environmental factors. Use your good judgement. Anyway, try this tip and your photos would look great.

2. Do you want a soft backdrop but do not have a lens that can do an aperture of f/2.8? Assuming that you have followed tips #1, zoom in on the subject at the widest aperture your lens can afford you. You would also achieve a soft backdrop. There is a compromise with this method, however. The backdrop will appear closer to your subject.

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III, 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lens.

02/03/2016

Colour grading for cinematic effect.

A friend took this photo at Slovakia. The top pic is the original one. The bottom pic is colour graded with a greenish-blue tint to give it a surreal and cinematic mood. The colour is desaturated slightly for effect. I further added the texts to make it look like a screen-capture shot of a spy movie.

Credit to Kelvin Soh for the photo.

02/03/2016

Removing the lanyard and restoring details.

The client requested the lanyard to be removed from this person because the other people in the photo were not wearing it. Also, the picture was too bright resulting in lost details. So I had to bring the details back. It was a challenge working on this photo as it was shot in JPEG format. As you know, JPEG is a highly compressed file format. A lot of details are discarded by the camera after it saves an image in the SD Card.

06/12/2015

Removing the exhibit barriers with Photoshop.

I don't want my favourite X-Wing fighter photo spoiled by distracting objects. So I decided to remove the exhibit barriers. The Photoshop tools I used are: Clone Stamp, Pen, Brush, Paint and Selection. To ensure photo-realism, I varied the brush opacity and flow during the stamp cloning process.

The disjointed markings on the floor were repainted using this process: Create an outline of the curve marking with the Pen tool > Transform the pen-drawn outline into a selection (to be filled with white later) > Sample the colour values of the original white marking > Fill the selected area with the sampled white using the Paint tool > Adjust the Opacity of the filled white to blend in with the original marking's white > Touch-up the connecting points to create a seamless flow.

Care was exercised throughout the touch-up process to ensure that the vehicle's shadows are preserved. The floor was given a good tidying-up.

Click on the photo thumbnails to view the works and read the comments in each photo.

04/12/2015

Christmas Toyland

The "Before" photo is the original image shot in Camera Raw. Raw is an uncompressed file format. It is not affected by the Picture Style and White Balance settings of your camera. You can see a tint of magenta in the photo as there is no white balancing. The "After" photo is the finished product after post-processing with Photoshop. For this photo, I want the area of interest brighter. It creates a sense of depth in the photo compared to the original one which looks flat and uninteresting. This is done using the Radial Filter tool in the Camera Raw Filter where I adjusted the exposure. You must view it in fullscreen to appreciate it.

Photoshop processing is an integral part of professional digital photography nowadays. All professionals use this workflow.

Check out the album for this and the other photos at:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153360008144423.1073741899.775969422&type=1&l=f060238ebf

14/11/2015

The advantage of shooting in Camera Raw format is the ability to retain full image data for post-processing. Here's an example.

I shot the (Before) image at pre-dusk while on my way to dinner at Holiday Inn Baruna, Bali. It was an impromptu shot and I didn't think I would keep it anyway.

The foreground is under-exposed due to the bright background. This is because the camera was set by default to center-weighted metering. I could have set it to use spot-metering and to lock the exposure while taking the shot. While it would brighten the foreground, the background would be over-exposed. Alternatively, a flash from the speedlite would have helped but I didn't have it with me. Hardly an interesting photo, I thought at that time.

When I looked at the image after the trip, I realised that it is a good composition and it has the making of a beautiful photo with some Photoshop touch-ups. Fortunately, the photo was shot in Camera Raw, a lossless (uncompressed) file format. Hence I was able to recover the details in the highlight (the sky) and the shadow (the foreground). I cranked up the saturation and brightened up selected areas in the photo to create the final (After) image. I also cropped the image to remove the distracting objects. An otherwise boring image is now an interesting piece of work.

The photo was shot with a 24mm wide-angle lens. So it is distorted at the sides. Using the "Perspective Warp" tool in Photoshop, I was able to straighten the bar hut on the left of the photo (see the second image).

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark III
Lens: 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM

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