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October Q&A

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Q&As October Q&A

Apologies in advance for this one: my computer was completely flat beforehand despite having brought it with me fully charged, and as I was in the van I don’t really have a way to charge it, so to preserve energy I had to have my camera off and couldn’t demonstrate on LR.

The links mentioned in the chat are below the video.

00:14:41 renata.koningova: I use photoshop CC, is there also diference?
00:16:15 renata.koningova: I Know I cannot use the mask and refine hair etc. as wel as I see you do it
00:16:53 renata.koningova: I will look into it:)
00:18:34 Teresa: https://inspawrationphotography.com/courses/lightroom-basics/lessons/colour-casts/
00:20:31 Teresa: yeah sure
00:21:02 Teresa: https://inspawrationphotography.com/courses/photoshop-course/lessons/adjusting-colour/topic/solid-colour-layer/
00:21:17 Alessia Monaco: thanks
00:24:33 Teresa: I think you talked about printing in one of the q&a’s before – shall I also have a look for the link?
00:25:09 Teresa: https://inspawrationphotography.com/courses/resource-library/lessons/may-qa-session/
00:25:19 Teresa: https://inspawrationphotography.com/courses/lightroom-basics/lessons/exporting-dialogue/
00:26:39 Teresa: https://inspawrationphotography.com/courses/resource-library/lessons/workshop-natural-light/
00:27:07 renata.koningova: Abou t printing photos, I have a problem that my photo when I save it as jpeg becomes different colors then when I open it in photoshop. So also when it’s printed. My screen is calibrated. It is frustrating.
So what I need to do every time before saving, put it to 8 bit and RSGB, but I find it really long proces and sometimes I don’t think about it. Do you have same problem ? or how Do you save your photo’s?

00:28:26 Teresa: Photoshop is using a different color profile, the easiest way is exporting from lightroom – have a look at that exporting dialogue lesson 😊
00:30:04 renata.koningova: Yes i have windows and indeed it’s every viewer, in chrome it is fine
00:30:12 renata.koningova: but where should i Print it from?
00:31:33 renata.koningova: I use also lightroom
00:32:01 renata.koningova: I will try it out
00:32:03 renata.koningova: thank you
00:32:36 Teresa: https://inspawrationphotography.com/courses/resource-library/lessons/editing-eyes/
00:33:32 Teresa: https://inspawrationphotography.com/courses/resource-library/lessons/how-to-edit-brighten-eyes-in-lightroom/
00:34:01 Teresa: https://inspawrationphotography.com/courses/lightroom-basics/lessons/how-to-guides/
00:34:43 Teresa: that’s the first link
00:34:56 Teresa: with the downloadable action
00:36:11 renata.koningova: One more question from me 😀
I cannot find the results from the september challenge, where should I be searching?
00:36:43 renata.koningova: 😀
00:36:52 renata.koningova: no problem
00:37:06 katarina.frankova: is it better to save the files with my editing as tiff or psd?
00:38:19 anoukpermentier: How do you send your photo’s to your clients? (jpg, tiff, …)
00:38:33 katarina.frankova: thank you
00:39:27 anoukpermentier: ok thank you! <3
00:40:14 anoukpermentier: I have no questions anymore 🙂
00:40:28 Alessia Monaco: yes great 😁
00:40:35 katarina.frankova: You mentioned you are heading to Hungary? I am in Slovakia relatively near the border if you feel like visiting 😉
00:40:44 Eva: When do you plan the guest Speaker About horse photography?
00:41:01 Teresa: 13th 14th?
00:41:16 Plunkydogphotography: social media would be good to talk about. I only do the basics in instagram
00:41:24 Teresa: YAAAAAY
00:41:48 anoukpermentier: omggggg yeaahhhh!!!
00:41:49 Eva: Awesome :_))
00:43:39 Alessia Monaco: thanks so much ☺️
00:43:45 Eva: thank you!!
00:43:45 katarina.frankova: thank you
00:43:59 Plunkydogphotography: Thanks 🙂
00:44:09 renata.koningova: thank you, have a nice evening
00:44:10 Alice Nentwig: Have a good trip 🙂
00:44:19 katarina.frankova: bye
00:44:22 renata.koningova: bye
00:44:24 Teresa: bye no worries

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May Q&A Session

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Q&As May Q&A Session

Here’s this month’s Q&A. The questions we went through were:

  • Is it possible to brighten / create catchlights in dog’s eyes if they are just black?
  • I’m usually editing a photo but don’t know what I want to edit it to look like if that makes sense?
  • Can you say something about printing? For example: Prepare for printing, sharpen, save/export options, choose paper(?), what is the icc profile, and how can/should we use it? All the monitors are so different. Are every picture a surprise after printing?
  • Do you have any tips for shooting human & pet portraits? Is there anything that should be avoided during the shooting session or post processing?
  • What is your best tips for getting large catchlights in the eyes? Weather conditions, light direction, poses, etc

 

Apologies for being a bit “flat” it had been a hard day – someone stole the license plate from my van and I was trying to deal with police reports, insurance, etc etc all in a foreign country where I’m not a legal resident 😬

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March Q&A

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Q&As March Q&A

In this Q&A we look at:

  • Focus issues with under-exposed dogs and how to deal with underexposing vs. slightly blowing out the highlights, what the best option might be for you and your camera
  • Bracketing – taking photos with different exposures, for example one photo where the highlights are correct, and one where the shadows/subject is correct, and bringing them together in Photoshop.
  • Basics of masking for head-swaps, background swaps and so on
  • Different requirements for saving files from Photoshop, for printing, to re-edit later, and for social media
  • Lens UV filters, whether they’re needed
  • Sync photo settings across photos in Lightroom
  • Using the liquify tool in a way that appears natural
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February Q&A

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Q&As February Q&A

In this month’s Q&A Session we cover:

 

  • Is there a way to add that soft, blurry foreground you often have or is it a result from the lens?
  • Do you compose your shots first, and then place the dogs? Or do you move them round finding the best spots for how the background interacts with them?
  • Discussion about Depth of Field
  • I would like to know how I know if a lens needs to be calibrated or if I am just not great at getting things into focus as precisely as i would like To.
  • I would like to understand how the basic panel sliders and the tone curve interact. When the basic panel is changed, it affects the histogram in the tone curve, but I don’t understand why (and I’ve seen lots of people do this but I don’t understand what is happening) a common basic panel adjustment is to lower highlights, and raise the shadows, but then in the tone curve to bring in the contrast using the S-curve – by raising the lights and decreasing the darks. Is this counter-intuitive? Find the answer below.
  • I want to know, how to correctly make the background stay smooth, because I never get that effect! 
  • If you’ve got a red/brown dog or any dog that isn’t pure black or white how do you ensure the dog looks the correct colour in a set of photos? Especially if you’ve had to remove colour casts and they’re in different lights etc.
  • Can you explain more about color cast in the coat? I find it difficult to edit this properly.
  • I was wondering how to fix or how to avoid rim or catch light(chromatic aberration/fringing – check out last month’s Q&A) that is usually purple or green. (Not like in a back light situation with that sun “glow”) I have this show up in harsh sun, snow with clouds or sun, and sometime with thinner more reflective clouds. 

Info I Found re: Basic Panel vs. Tone Curve

Most people who do use the Basic panel slide right past the Contrast slider and dive straight into the Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks below.  Lightroom adapts the tone-mapping controls in the Basic panel to optimize them for the contrast range of each image.  Adjusting the Contrast control before moving to the other tone-mapping sliders is an important step to set you up to use the rest of them to optimum effect.  It’s important to reduce the contrast setting for high-contrast images before moving to the other tone adjustment sliders.  Similarly, it’s important to first increase the contrast with low contrast images, before making other tone adjustments.

–Source

I personally rarely use the contrast slider, but it could be worth experimenting with before moving on to the other sliders, to see if this gives us more editing choices.

In the Basic panel, Highlights and Shadows serve as the primary tone mapping controls. They are sensitive to image content and edges within the image. They are effective at adjusting overall (global) contrast, while preserving local contrast. They are useful for tone mapping high dynamic range (HDR) images. They automatically expand their effective range when applied to high-contrast images (like HDR images), and automatically reduce their range when applied to low-contrast (e.g., foggy) images. The underlying mechanism behind Highlights and Shadows is generally known as “local adaptation,” which means that the controls do different things in different parts of the image. It’s as if each pixel has its own tone curve. In short, the Highlights and Shadows controls in the Basic panel are very “dynamic” in nature.

In the Tone Curve panel, Highlights and Shadows are much more straightforward or “direct” controls. They simply adjust a portion of the overall global tone curve. Unlike the controls of the same name in the Basic panel, the ones in the Tone Curve panel act globally, and do the same thing at every pixel. Their range is always fixed. They do not adapt automatically to image content in any particular way.

For these reasons, I recommend using Highlights and Shadows first in the Basic panel for primary adjustment, and then (optionally) using Highlights and Shadows in the Tone Curve for fine-tuning (later in the workflow). Put another way, we have the more adaptive, dynamic, “smarter” controls in the Basic panel, and the more low-level, direct, “standard” controls in the Tone Curve panel.”

–– Source

Steps to Remove Colour Cast

 

  1. Set correct WB
  2. Desaturate gradually with radials, raising white, until it starts to go grey
  3. Add opposite colour with radials (not too much).
  4. In PS: Desaturate. Raise lightness +1 or +2, OR lighten with curves layer to stop it going dull
  5. Solid colour layer of opposite colour. Set blend mode to “hue” (works for black/white, to only effect that opposite coloured area) and lower the opacity to 5-20%. Paint it in where needed.
  6. Check with Saturation
  7. Don’t aim for 100% black/white/grey. It will look weird. 
  8. Keep an eye out for “off” colours on other coloured dogs. Those are probably colour-casts. To fix, try the opposite colour technique from above, or add the opposite colour with colour balance adjustment layer (eg., if Journey is a bit green on his cheek, use a colour balance layer to add magenta and paint it in). 
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January Q&A

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Q&As January Q&A

This was our first Q&A Session. We worked through several submitted questions including:

  • What is fringing (chromatic aberration). How to remove it, and how to use the defringe tool
  • Discussion about lenses
  • How to scout for photoshoot locations, when to get the client to do it, and what to tell them to look for
  • Most important thing to remember for action shots
  • Common mistakes I see in editing (and some discussion on style)
  • Full frame vs. crop
  • Getting soft, dark backgrounds

Plus the questions asked in the chat, which you’ll see in the video.

I realise that next time, I will pin myself to the screen so that when you watch it back you’ll be watching me, rather than all those empty frames/letters. But, well, once I’m done screen-sharing, you can treat it as a podcast I guess!

Don’t forget to submit your question on the Q&A page for it to be answered next month!

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