Photoshop Tutorials with Holger Pooten

Earlier this week our MA Photography group had a Photoshop tutorial with photographer Holger Pooten. This I found to be very useful as I use Photoshop often within my practice. Just when you think that you know all there is to know about the Photoshop software, you find out that there are more techniques than you had originally thought. It is believed that most photographers only use a small percentage of Photoshops editing tools and these will be specific to the type of photography that they are involved with.

We began by looking at colour management:

We discussed the importance of calibrating your equipment so that you have a consistent workflow. However, calibrating your camera can be a little impractical, especially if you are shooting outside or taking pictures for documentary purposes. Calibrating your camera may be a good idea if you are primarily shooting in a studio with the same lighting set up. Corrections can be made in Photoshop. We also discussed the benefits of shooting in RAW.

We were shown the best way to deal with our RAW files whilst preparing and editing them in Photoshop.

The points highlighted are the most important and most commonly used.

The 4 most important elements within Photoshop are:

• Hue / Saturation
• Contrast
• Colour
• Brightness

I found this lesson to be really informative and surprisingly I did learn something new, as well as different ways (some easier) to complete a task. We will be continuing with more Photoshop Workshops next week and we are free to ask questions and seek advice on techniques that are specific to our final images for the upcoming Final Major Exhibition. I believe that we will be looking at Lightroom too.

References

Screen shoots are taken from a presentation compiled by Holger Pooten. His work can be viewed via the link below.

Holgerpooten.com, (2014). Holger Pooten Photography. [online] Available at: http://www.holgerpooten.com [Accessed 1 Aug. 2014].

Editing

Today has been a day for editing some of the images that I have obtained over the last couple of weeks. I have not accomplished much today despite my efforts, as my computer decided that it did not want to play ball and proceeded to freeze on me a couple of times whilst I was in the process of editing. Fortunately for me, I managed not to loose the work after having to reboot my computer, so that was a huge relief for me.

The editing consisted of tidying up the images where the stitching had not been applied properly. In most cases this is due to the parallax.

Parallax in Photography

Parallax error can be seen when taking photos with many types of cameras, such as twin-lens reflex cameras and those including viewfinders (such as rangefinder cameras). In such cameras, the eye sees the subject through different optics (the viewfinder, or a second lens) than the one through which the photo is taken. As the viewfinder is often found above the lens of the camera, photos with parallax error are often slightly lower than intended, the classic example being the image of person with his or her head cropped off. This problem is addressed in single-lens reflex cameras, in which the viewfinder sees through the same lens through which the photo is taken (with the aid of a movable mirror), thus avoiding parallax error.

Parallax is also an issue in image stitching, such as for panoramas

(Wikipedia, 2014)

Editing in CS6 to correct stitching errors

Editing in CS6 to correct stitching errors

I have a little way to go before my images are finished but I believe that paying attention to detail will pay off in the long run and I can be a bit of a perfectionist. Tomorrow I will be having a Photoshop Seminar with photographer Holger Pooten and hopefully he will be able to give me some advice and show me some new techniques. Here’s hoping that tomorrow will be a productive day!

References

Wikipedia, (2014). Parallax. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax [Accessed 28 Jul. 2014].