Archive for the ‘Tips and Tutorials’ Category

How to Keep it Blue – Blue Sky Tutorial

June 23, 2010

After asking for suggestions on my Facebook Page for tutorial topics, how to capture / create blue skies won for this week’s tutorial. As for the rest of the requests, I’ll hit them over the next few weeks as well. I promise! So let’s talk blue skies. I guess I should preface this with a disclaimer…I’m a budding photographer just like the rest of y’all, and probably much more amateur the many of you…so please don’t take this as me thinking I know it all…because I’m well aware I don’t. I welcome any input to this post, whether it be corrections, or further clarifications on the subject.

OK, so let’s get down to brass tacks. How to get an image with an awesome blue sky. I personally am a big fan of getting it straight out of camera…I’ve tried making a white or gray sky blue in post process…and honestly it takes WAY too long, and more often than not, looks worse than if you handed the image to your three year old and told him to color it blue for you. So how do we get it, and once we do get it, how do we enhance it?

I’m going to post three images I’ve shot in the past few weeks. They are straight out of camera. Zero retouching. One of the images was slightly under exposed, so I did give it a 1/3 stop bump in lightroom, but other than that, what you see is what came out of my little black box. I’ll break down each image, where the lights were placed, and what lighting I used.

First, let’s talk about a few basic rules of thumb (that I’m kind of making up, but they seem to work for me…so again, if you have better info or techniques, please share)

  1. Use a fill flash. Almost always. If you want a great blue sky, you’re going to have to expose for the sky, which will under expose your subject. You’ll have to use another light source to light up your subject.
  2. If you use off camera flash, place it directly opposite the sun – for example, if the sun were at 10 o’clock, place the flash at 4 o’clock. If you don’t have off camera flash, try using a reflector (your skies won’t be quite as deep blue, as you’ll need to adjust your exposure, but it will be better than nothing) or popping up your on-camera flash and using it as a fill
  3. Start with a narrow aperture, f/11-f/16. Adjust your shutter speed to bring in the color of sky (probably around 125-200). Add your flash, and tweak the flash settings and your aperture to properly expose your subject. I shoot with my flash set to manual and at about 1/4 power, and adjust my aperture. If it’s way off, then I’ll adjust the power settings on the flash unit.
  4. Experiment. A lot…

Image 1

Aperture: f/16.          Shutter: 1/250.           Flash: Nikon Speed Light 1/4 power.          Light Modifier (ie umbrella, softbox, etc): None

This image was shot with the sun at camera 10 o’clock, flash at camera 4 0′clock. It was about 6:45pm. Bright sky, harsh shadows, full sun. I basically followed all the rules above. I used no modifier on my flash because I needed as much punch as I could get out of the speed light to overcome the harsh sunlight.

Image 2

Aperture: f/16.          Shutter: 1/250.          Flash: Nikon Speed Light 1/4 power.          Light Modifier (ie umbrella, softbox, etc): None

This image was taken on June 17 and was shot exactly the same as the previous image, just an hour later and with with one exception. I decided to add a third light source at camera 2 o’clock. You can see it popping off there on the ledge. I added it to give the subject a little rim lighting and make him pop just a little more from the background. Why? I don’t know. I just thought it might be cool. Remember the last rule above? Experiment…

Image 3

Aperture: f2.8.           Shutter: 1/2000.          Flash: None

This shot was taken at 7:55 PM on June 3. I basically broke all the rules stated above. Again, I remind you of the last rule…experiment. The sun was lower in the sky, and behind me, at approximately camera 7 o’clock. It was still pretty bright outside, and we were in full sun, as you can see by the shadows around her. The first problem with this type of scenario is a squinting subject. It’s very difficult to have your subject looking toward a bright sky and not have them squinting. However, this was overcome by me being below her at the bottom of the stairs, so she was looking down toward the ground, rather than the sky. This however, presents another potential problem – dark pits in the eyes area. This was overcome by having her on the white cement, which acted as a gigantic reflector, opening up any shadows. Her white dress helped as well. So in the end, I was able to expose for her face, and because of the sunlight and great fill light provided by her environment, I was able to have a fast enough shutter speed to get a great exposure for the sky as well.

Once you’ve got blue in the sky, the post process tweaking is simple. I personally use Adobe Lightroom for the majority of my workflow. If you’ve got some nice color in your sky, with a few minor tweaks of your Hue, Saturation and Luminance (HSL) sliders and you can put the final touch on those skies. Just be careful, it doesn’t take much to kill what could have already been a great sky.

So hopefully this was helpful. Please feel free to post any questions and or comments or tips in the comments section. Thanks and good luck!

Tags:
Posted in Tips and Tutorials | 2 Comments »

Blog Collage Tutorial – Part 3, Optimizing File Size for the Web

March 31, 2010

Welcome to part 3 of the blog collage series of tutorials…if you haven’t read the first two parts, you can see them by clicking below:

So, first can I rant for a minute? I HATE nothing more than to go to a site or blog, then sit there for 20 minutes while the images load…optimize people! Optimizing file size is really quite simple, and adds just one small step to your workflow (maybe two depending on the final size of your image). In order to dispell the notion that you might lose image quality by reducing file size (as long as it’s done correctly), I’m going to show below two images, one before and one after – both are the same size (600 x 900 px), but one is optimized for file size…betcha can’t see a difference!

Before

After

So any guesses on what the difference in file size is for these two identical images? The “Before” images weighs in at nearly 550 KB, while the “After” is a measly 150 KB!

So, how does one achieve this modern day marvel? First, determine how wide (in pixels) your images are on your blog. There is absolutely no reason to upload images that are larger than the blog will allow. If you do, you are letting some tree full of internet elves resize your pictures for you…and trust me, they don’t care what your file size is, and the result will most definitely be sub-optimal. There are several ways of determining the width of the images on your blog, but the easiest is to take a screen shot of your blog, paste it into a new photoshop document, and crop it down to a horizontal image in your screenshot. Once you’ve cropped your image, just press Cmd+Alt+I (Ctrl+Alt+I on a PC). The width and height will be displayed at the top of the dialogue box that opens. The most important number to note is the width. Any image you upload with a width greater than the maximum allowed by your blog will be resized by gypsies. Don’t let it happen! From this day forth, you will resize your blog images to that maximum width.

Now for the final step – optimizing file size – the step that will win you awards in heaven and earth (OK, maybe not, but it will make you way cooler than everybody who skips this step). Once you have your image resized, click File>Save for Web and Devices. A dialogue box will open with several options. All you need to do is select the preset “JPEG High” then click Save. Ta da…you’ve just saved all your fans precious moments of their lives waiting for your images to load…and maybe even saved their souls from the devil by preventing the foul words that might have spewed from their mouths while waiting to view your masterpieces.

Now if you’re real smart, you’ll create an action that will do all this for you…play around with the information you learned in the last tutorial to save yourself a little time in this area as well!

Posted in Tips and Tutorials | 3 Comments »

Blog Collages Part 2 – Creating an Action

March 23, 2010

Looking for our current contest and giveaway? Click HERE. Otherwise, read below for the tutorial.

For the second phase of the blog collage tutorial, we’ll be discussing how to create a set of actions to quickly place images in your blog collage templates.

Create your Templates

Before we begin, it will be necessary to have at least one template created. You can learn how, or download my template, from the first tutorial in the series by clicking here. Because we built our templates using adjustment layers, modifying the templates to create new ones is a very simple process. I recommend creating a variety of templates, just be sure to remain consistent in the way you name your image placeholders (img 1, img 2, img 3, etc).

Creating the Action

The action we are going to create will a) open the correct template, then b) place the images in their placeholders.

If you have never used Actions before in Photoshop, you’re missing out on a HUGE time-saver! Actions are basically a set of recorded steps that allow you to automate your workflow and replay it with the click of a button, making everything you do more consistent and much more quick.

  1. To access your actions palette, click Window > Actions
  2. At the bottom of the actions palette, click the folder icon to create a new action set
  3. Name the set “Blog Collages” and press OK
  4. With this new Blog Collages action set selected, click the new action button (looks like a paper with the bottom left corner folded up)
  5. Name it “Blog Collage 01″ and press Record. At this point, your action is being created by recording everything you do
  6. Click File > Open and navigate to your first blog collage template. Select it, then click Open
  7. Click on the “img 1″ layer to select it, then Cmd+Click (Ctrl+Click on a PC) on the “img 1″ thumbnail to create a selection around the placeholder (this will center your image over the placeholder)
  8. Click File > Place and select the first image you’d like to place in your collage, click Place, then press the Enter to complete the placement
  9. ***Important*** Next to the action steps (on the left-hand side) you should see a check box and a small blank box. For the “Place” step you just created, click on the blank box. You should now see a box with three small dots in it. This will allow you to choose the images each time you run the action, and not just place the same image each time it is run
  10. Press Cmd+Alt+G (Ctrl+Alt+G on a PC) to create a clipping mask (don’t worry if your image is cropped incorrectly right now, you’ll resize it later)
  11. Follow steps 7-10 for the rest of your image placeholders
  12. Press Stop (the small square at the bottom of the actions palette)

Congratulations! You’ve just created your very own action. You can now resize your images by clicking on the image layer, then pressing Cmd+T (Ctrl+T on a PC). Remember, the images are smart objects, so any changes you make are non-destructive.

Now the beauty of this is you don’t have to go and recreate the action for every template you have.

Duplicate the Action

You can create duplicates of this action and modify it very easily to run on your other templates.

  1. To duplicate the action, just drag the action over to the “New Action” button at the bottom of the actions palette and drop it.
  2. Double click on the new action to rename it.
  3. Double click on the “Open” step of the action to specify the correct template to open
  4. Add steps by clicking the Record button at the bottom of the Actions palette and then following steps 7-10 above.
  5. Delete steps (in the case that your new template has less image placeholders than the first) by selecting the steps you want to remove and dragging them to the trash (at the bottom of the actions palette)

The concepts from these tutorials can also be easily applied to storybook templates, greeting cards, announcements, etc. Also, try to modify the action to be used with templates you have purchased.

Next week, I’ll complete the blog collage series by discussing some ways of optimizing your image filesize for the web. Feel free to email me with any questions on the tutorial at travis@bokastudios.com.

Posted in Tips and Tutorials | 2 Comments »

Photoshop Tutorial – Simplifying Blog Collages with Smart Objects and Actions

March 16, 2010

If you’re looking for our current contest for free sessions, click HERE…otherwise, read on!

Let me start off by saying, I’m an efficiency nut! Anything I can do now to save myself time down the road is a huge priority. I think sometimes my wife wants to kill me, because I sit down next to her as she works, and the whole time I’m saying, you know…there’s a better way for doing that. She’s only tried to strangle me twice, but I know she’s thought about it a lot more! So I figured, if I’m doing all this stuff to be more efficient, why not share it with the world. You see, if I make you more efficient, maybe we can all be out shooting more…

So the first thing that came to mind was blog collages. (In reality, you could use these concepts to create lightning fast templates for storybook albums as well.) So the background: Jean asked me to put together some templates for her to use on her blog, and I thought this was something everybody may like to learn. We all love collages. The problem is, it’s such a hassle to put them together. There are templates out there you can purchase, but in reality, with just a few minutes, you can piece together your own templates and create an action that reduces the time you’ll spend creating the collages to a matter of seconds. And best of all, you’ll be using smart objects to create the collage, so if you decide you want to make changes to the images (ie resize, change to black and white, or even swap images) you can do so non-destructively!

I’m going to break this tutorial down into 3 segments spread over the next three weeks.

  1. Creating the template
  2. Creating the Action
  3. Optimizing file size for the blog

Each segment, I believe, will help you become more efficient in your workflow and more proficient at Photoshop. In addition, I’ll give you a download for the template we’ll be discussing and the action that goes along with it.

Creating the Template

The first step is deciding what size document you would like to create. If you’re creating this collage for your blog, the document size should have the same width as your blog images. For example, my blog images are 900 px wide. The height of your document will depend on how many images you want to create, and what orientation you would like them. When creating the document, I don’t worry too much about the height, as I can adjust it later as needed.

The document I’ll be creating in this tutorial is 900×900 px. Once you have decided on your document size, open Photoshop and click File > New (or Command+N on a Mac, Ctrl+N on a PC).

Enter the Width and Height and be sure you are setting pixels (not inches, or points, etc). I leave the resolution set to 72. However, that number is irrelevant, since we are establishing the document size in pixels rather than inches. Click OK to create the document.

In this next step, we’re going to be creating image placeholders for the template. Grab you’re Rectangular Marquee Tool, and drag out a selection on your document where you would like to place your first image. Don’t worry about being too precise, as we can adjust the placeholders at the end.

Once your selection is made, click the Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of Layers Palette (looks like a white and black circle). Select “Solid Color” from the list. Pick a color (doesn’t really matter which). And press OK.

This should have created a new layer and filled the selection with the color you selected.

Now repeat for the other image place-holders you would like to create. I typically choose a different color or shade for each layer so I can see where each image will go. See below for an example of my document:

The next step is to rename (and I like to reorder) the layers. Double click on the text next to the layer mask on each layer and rename to “img 1”, etc. This is an important step in order to have the action work correctly.

At this point, you can adjust the image placeholders as needed by simply clicking on the mask (the small thumbnail on the right hand side of each layer) and resizing. There are several methods for resizing. I typically just click on the move tool (the black arrow at the top of the tools palette) and make sure I have the “Show Transform Controls” box at the top of the Photoshop window checked. You can also resize by clicking on the thumbnail and pressing “Command+T” on a Mac or “Ctrl+T” on a PC. Want to change the color of the image place holder? Just double click on the thumbnail (the one on the right hand side of the layer) and choose another color from the dialogue box.

Now save the document as “blog-collage-01.psd”. Ta-da! You’ve just created your first template. However, the real efficiency comes when we combine smart objects and actions with these puppies. Keep reading to see how to best use smart objects with the template, and come back later for part 2 of the tutorial…Creating the Action.

Placing Images as Smart Objects

The action we’re going to create in the next tutorial will simplify this process, but until then, I’ll demonstrate how to place a Smart Object in the template and create a clipping mask to fit the image within the place-holder.

First, click on the “img 1” layer, then “Command+Click” (or “Ctrl+Click” on a PC) on the layer mask. This should create a selection around the layer. Next, click File > Place…Navigate to the folder where you have the images you would like to use for your collage, and select one, then press enter.

Your image should now be placed in the document, centered over the “img 1” place-holder. Press enter again, then press “Command+G” (“Ctrl+G” on a PC) to create a clipping mask. This fits the image to the image place-holder. You can now resize or move the image all you want, and anything outside the place-holder, will be hidden from view. Also, keep in mind, you can adjust or resize your place-holders as well without changing your images…play around with the template as you use it and get comfortable with how all the layers work together.

Follow the same procedure to place images over the remaining image place-holders. Once you are finished arranging your images, click File > Save As and save the document as a jpg file for the blog. (You’ll also want to optimize the image for the web, however, that will be discussed in a later segment). Your image is now ready to be uploaded to your blog!

As promised you can download the template I created for this tutorial along with an action that automates the image placement by clicking HERE.

Posted in Photoshop, Tips and Tutorials | 5 Comments »