Tutorials

April 20, 2023

Photography (Slightly Beyond) Basics – Moving Between Lightroom and Photoshop

by Mickey Rountree

After doing the PSC Bootcamp on Photoshop plugins a couple of months ago, I thought I’d do an article on plugins. All of the plugins I use can be used within Photoshop, some from within Lightroom and some can even be used as standalone programs. However, when I use plugins I’m usually doing more extensive editing that requires Photoshop, so I use them as filters within Photoshop. This allows me to use them on layers, and use masks and vary the opacity to alter the effect. Using them from Lightroom or as standalones doesn’t give me the power and versatility I get in Photoshop.

So I felt the first important topic was how to get images from Lightroom to Photoshop and back again. In order to make this work smoothly there are some settings we need to adjust in Lightoom and Photoshop.

Preparing Lightroom to send to Photoshop

In Lightroom go to edit/preferences/external editing. The first section is for editing in Photoshop, and Lightroom will find and default to the most current installed version of Lightroom. These settings control how the image will be sent and opened in Photoshop.

The first setting is file format and the two choices are PSD or TIFF. I use PSD since this is Photoshop’s native format, but TIFF can work as well. If you select TIFF, you will also have an option about file compression.

The second selection is color space, and I always set Prophoto RGB, which is Lightroom’s native colorspace. Raw files (DNG, and the native format of your camera like CR2, NEF, etc.) will be sent to Photoshop in Prophoto RGB. Non-raw files like TIFF, and JPEG already have a color profile embedded and that may or may not be Prophoto RGB, and if it isn’t and we have the settings correct in Photoshop we should get a message if there is a mismatch.

The third setting is bit depth and this should be set to 16.

The last setting is resolution, and I always leave this at 240. Resolution really isn’t an issue while we work in Photoshop and only becomes an issue when printing or using a file in another program, like a word processor.

Preparing Photoshop to receive images from Lightroom

There are a few settings we need to make in Photoshop so it will properly receive the image from Lightroom.

Go to edit/color settings and set the working color space to Prophoto RGB. There are three checkboxes for missing color profiles, and mismatched profiles when opening or pasting. Make sure each of these is checked.

The last Photoshop setting is under preferences/ file handling. The setting to maximize PSD and PSB file compatibility should be set to “always”.

Sending an Image from Lightroom to Photoshop

Now there are two ways to send an image from Lightroom to Photoshop. The first is to select an image in Lightroom and right click on it and choose “Edit in Photoshop” or use the shortcut CTRL-E (CMD-E for Mac users) to open the image in Photoshop. This opens the image as a layer in Photoshop, and at this point, it is no longer a raw file, but a layer that we can work on, copy, add adjustment layers or apply one or more of our plugins.

If the image is a raw file, it will be sent to Photoshop along with any editing we have done in Lightroom. If the image is a non-raw file, you will see a dialog box asking whether to edit the original, edit a copy without Lightroom editing, or a copy with editing.

Also, since non-raw files have a color profile embedded, if there is a color profile mismatch you will get a dialog box asking what to do. I usually select the second option to convert to the document’s working profile which will be Prophoto RGB.

The second way to send an image to Photoshop is to select the image, right click and choose “open as smart object in Photoshop”.

When you open an image as a smart object in Photoshop, it is still a raw file and it will have any editing you did in Lightroom. You can tell it’s a smart object by the small icon in the lower right side of the layer thumb nail.

Double clicking on the thumbnail will open the image in camera raw and you can change your editing or make new edits. When you close camera raw, the edits are still there, but at any time you can double click and change your editing. This is a great workflow if you will only be working with Photoshop filters and adjustment layers. Since I’m usually adding third party plugins to new layers, the smart object layer is covered up by the new layer and any advantage of the smart object is lost, so I don’t use this smart object workflow very often.

Saving an image from Photoshop back to Lightroom

Once you are through with your Photoshop editing, go to file/save or use the shortcut CTRL-S and the image will be saved to the folder it came from with “–edit” added to the file name and in PSD format. If you have multiple layers, Photoshop will save the image with all of the layers intact, so you could open it later and resume editing with all layers available. The disadvantage is every layer makes the file larger and if you have a lot of layers files get very large very fast. I tend to flatten all layers once I feel I’m through with an image. The disadvantage is that if I want to do a major re-edit, I have to start from scratch.

If you need to do several versions of a file, use the file/save as command or the shortcut CTRL-Shift-S. When using “save as” you will see a dialog box asking for the file name you want to use. Also look carefully at the folder where Photoshop wants to save the image. Sometimes it’s not the folder you want, and finding the image later can be a nightmare. I may start with a basic edit and save it, then do a Black and White conversion and “save as” with B&W in the name, add a texture and “save as” with texture in the name. Be careful here with using the shortcut since if you forget to hold down “shift”, your first edit will be overwritten. Good thing I’ve never ever done that. Also after a “save as”, you may need to synchronize the Lightroom folder before the new version is visible.

So that’s the basics of moving an image from Lightroom to Photoshop and getting your image saved back to Lightroom. And we’ll use this process over and over as we get into using plugins, since I normally apply them in Photoshop.

Wait- what’s that? Did I hear someone asking what was all that about color spaces and bit depth in our settings? If you’re not confused enough already, here is a very brief explanation.

Color Spaces

A color space is simply a range of colors. As usual our eyes are superior to our cameras and can see more colors than our cameras can capture, or our computers can process or our monitors can display. In photography there are three common color spaces, sRGB which contains the smallest range of colors, Adobe RGB which is larger, and Prophoto which is the largest. BTW, sRGB stands for standard RGB but most photographers have a different name for it.

In your camera menu, there is a setting for either sRGB, or Abobe RGB. Remember RAW files don’t have a color profile embedded, so it only affects JPEGs, including the JPEG preview you see on your LCD when you capture a RAW image. If you shoot only JPEGs and select sRGB, you are limiting the range of colors your camera captures and that you will be able to work with later. If you only shoot JPEGs and do little or no editing and are only posting images to the web, sRGB might be the appropriate choice. If you only shoot RAW, this camera setting doesn’t have any effect on our editing workflow.

In general, you want the most color information possible; we can always reduce it later, but we can’t increase beyond what we start with. Lightroom uses the Prophoto color space, so if we are working with a RAW Image, it has the most colors to work with. JPEGs will default to their embedded color profile. This is why we selected the Photoshop working color space as Prophoto, and also set up the warning dialogs for color space conflicts. By the way most computer monitors can only display the sRGB range of colors and can’t display all of the subtle colors in Prophoto or even Abobe RGB, but Lightroom will make the images display nicely on screen. There are high end monitors that can show the larger color spaces, but they aren’t cheap (think the price of a high end camera body), and they aren’t necessary for most of us.

The one time you absolutely want the sRGB color space is for images displayed on the web. Most web sites and browsers do a horrible job of converting a Prophoto or Adobe RGB image to the sRGB that monitors use. If you ever put an image on the web (or even display it on your monitor outside of Lightroom or Photoshop) it will look dull and colors will be obviously wrong. So whenever an image is intended for the web, convert it to sRGB when you export it from Lightroom or else convert it to sRGB in Photoshop (Edit/convert to profile) and save a copy for the web.

Bit Depth

And now for everybody’s favorite subject – MATH! Our cameras, computers and monitors see colors as mixtures of shades of red, green and blue.

8 bit color means there are 2^8^th or 256 shades of each of the three primary colors. And since colors are a mixture of all three, the possible colors are 256 x 256 x 256 or 16.7 million colors. JPEGs are always 8 bit since the format does not support 16 bit.

16 bit color means there are 2^16^th or 16,384 shades of each color. And again since we see a mixture of the three colors that becomes 281 trillion.

Most current digital cameras capture 14 bit color (my first cameras were only 12 bit) or 44 trillion shades.

I’ve been told that processing HDR files in Lightroom or Adobe camera raw (ACR) is done in 32 bit color which is 7.9 Octillion (79 with 27 0’s.). There is also a setting for 32 bit in Photoshop, but only very limited functions are available.

For much of our processing 8 bit may be adequate. The problems come when there is a gradual transition across a narrow range of color. Think of the gradation in a clear blue sky. Adding adjustment layers, linear gradients and the like accentuates the problem and we begin to see banding, which is distinct bars of color rather than a smooth, gradual transition. I have very rarely seen banding in my RAW images, but I have seen it occasionally in JPEG’s.

16 bit gives us much more subtle gradation in shades of colors and you won’t see the banding effect. You will also see smoother transitions from shadows to highlights. The tradeoff is larger file sizes and slower processing. Also many of the third party plugins (and even some Photoshop effects) won’t work in 16 bit. The best compromise here is to do as much of our editing in 16 bit, and then convert to 8 bit (image/mode/8 bit) when it’s time for our plugins. As I get into plugins in subsequent articles I’ll try to remember to mention which plugins support 16 or 8 bit color.

For more information on color spaces

https://petapixel.com/2020/01/30/explaining-color-space-and-how-it-can-screw-up-your-photos-after-export/

https://photographylife.com/srgb-vs-adobe-rgb-vs-prophoto-rgb

For more information on bit depth

https://www.bwillcreative.com/8-bit-vs-16-bit-vs-32-bit-in-photoshop/#:~:text=The%20Difference%20Between%208%20Bit,can%20display%20281%20trillion%20colors

April 1, 2023

Photography Basics – Sky Replacement

Photography (Slightly Beyond) Basics
Sky Replacement
Mickey Rountree

As I usually do, I’m calling this article beyond basic because it involves Photoshop rather than Lightroom or other basic editing programs. With that said, this is now a pretty easy technique.

One of the most important elements in outdoor photography is the sky. It can it can complement our subject, be plain and neither add or detract, or be downright ugly and ruin an otherwise good image. A couple of years ago Adobe added sky replacement to Photoshop, and if you haven’t tried it, you should.

I’ll start with an image I shot back in 2016. I’m happy with the helicopter, but the sky isn’t helping the image, even if it is that nice clear blue we associate with the postcards of the past. Back in 2016, I’m not sure if I even had the skills to do a sky replacement, and if I did it would have taken a lot of tedious time consuming work, but as I’m about to show you, now it’s a couple of clicks and a few seconds.

Open the image and go to Edit/sky replacement. There are several skies already available in Photoshop, or you can use your own (more about that later).

Here I selected one of the skies from a collection of skies I have shot.

I actually tried this with two different skies. Notice how the skies blend in perfectly with the blurred rotor. This is the part of sky replacement that was very difficult in the past.

After trying sky replacement a few times, you will probably want more skies than are in Photoshop. You can search and find sky sets to download, and some are even free. Or you may want to create collections of your own skies for more variety, and perhaps to feel that it makes the sky replacement feel more like “your” image. With sky replacement open, click on the gear icon for settings, and select “Create new collection” and “import sky images” and a browser will let you select your sky images. I created three collections of my own; blue skies, sunset/sunrise, and cloudy skies.

Whenever you are out shooting and see interesting skies, shoot some images of just the skies. Shoot vertical and horizontal, and shoot at different focal lengths. You could save all of your cloud files into a single folder so you know where to find them. I tag mine with the key word “clouds” and in Lightroom I created a smart collection of all images containing the keyword “clouds” so I can see all of my cloud pictures with one click.

Once you have selected and imported cloud images into your collection, there is an option to export selected skies. This puts all of the images into a single file with the suffix “.sky”. I would encourage you to do this for all of your own sky collections for two reasons; first, it makes it easy to share your skies with friends, and second, but more importantly, these files can act as a backup, and also save time the next time you install Photoshop on a new machine. As with any backup, store these in a safe place.

When you replace a sky, there are a couple of things to watch for. Look at the direction of light; if the clouds are lit from one direction and your subject from a different direction it will look obviously fake. The sky replacement allows you the option to flip the sky image to fix this. Also look at the color balance of your sky and subject. If the sky is very warm, but the subject is cool, either choose a different sky image, or there is a color balance adjustment within sky replacement. Also try to match the brightness of the sky and subject, and again there is an adjustment within sky replacement.

Here is a sky replacement with trees against the sky. Imagine trying to add a new sky and make it blend with the details of the tree branches. A few years ago it could be done, but it would have been difficult and tedious. Now two or three clicks and done.

Maybe you’re like me, and don’t know much about astronomy, or you don’t want to be out at 3 AM to catch the milky way in just the right place. There are some milky way skies in sky replacement and many more available for download. Again this was a couple of clicks, a couple of seconds, and I wasn’t up all night.

Here’s a discussion I’ve had several times, most recently with a fellow PSC member. I won’t say who, but you know who you are, Randy. Some photographers may consider sky replacement going a bit too far, but if it helps you create the image you envision, why is it any different from cropping, removing elements, color balance, contrast or any of the many adjustments we routinely do. If you are strictly a documentary photographer or photojournalist, such extreme edits are unethical and unacceptable. But if are creating art, you can (and should) use all of the tools and techniques available to you that bring your image to match your vision. It’s not “cheating” or an unfair advantage, it’s just using all of your knowledge and techniques to create the image you like.

Photography (Slightly Beyond) Basics
Sky Replacement
Mickey Rountree

As I usually do, I’m calling this article beyond basic because it involves Photoshop rather than Lightroom or other basic editing programs. With that said, this is now a pretty easy technique.

Open the image and go to Edit/sky replacement. There are several skies already available in Photoshop, or you can use your own (more about that later).

Here I selected one of the skies from a collection of skies I have shot.

I actually tried this with two different skies. Notice how the skies blend in perfectly with the blurred rotor. This is the part of sky replacement that was very difficult in the past.

March 1, 2023

Photography Basics – Small Set Photography

by Mickey Rountree

One of the simplest and most versatile lighting setups for still life photography is a small or medium softbox almost directly above the subject. The most important concept to keep in mind is the larger the light source is in relation to the subject, the softer and more even the light will be. That also means placing the light as close to the subject as possible without blocking the camera’s view. For the shots below, I used a 24 inch square softbox, because it gives me good control of the light. But in most cases a small translucent white shoot-through umbrella would work just as well and is much cheaper. Depending on the subject you will often have to add reflectors to fill the shadows, flags to block light or occasionally even add an accent light.

While I used a Yongnuo speedlite and remote, you could use any speedlite, a studio strobe or even a continuous light source like a tungsten or quartz light, CFL, or LED. If you use a tungsten or quartz light be sure the softbox or umbrella you use is designed to work with these hotter lights without catching fire.

This is a great setup to use to photograph small objects for insurance records, or selling on EBay or Craigslist. Or just use it to create still life images when you don’t want to go out shooting.

Shot 1 High Key Flute

This is the basic setup described above. I’m shooting almost straight down and the flute is placed on a piece of white foamcore. A flute is highly reflective and shows everything around it, so white foamcore reflectors were needed on each side, and even though it’s not shown in the setup photo, I had a circular silver reflector over the lens to add fill from the front. The most important part of shooting high key is to keep the feel light and airy, but be very careful not to blow out the highlights.

This is the basic shot. If I made the foamcore background pure white, the shiny highlights were totally blown out, so I shot and processed for a light gray rather than pure white. Also at his point every flaw and scratch on the flute and background shows clearly.

Even before I shot this, I had envisioned it as having music superimposed on the flute, and then textures and color added over the whole image. I scanned a sheet of flute music and in Photoshop I added it to my base image and selected darken as the blend mode, so only the notes the notes would be added without blocking out the flute image. I added a couple of textures and some color grading which also minimizes the scrathes and flaws and here is the final result.

Shoot 2 Low Key Still Life Grapes and Wine bottle

Again this uses the same basic setup. Behind the setup is a sweep of white background paper, but since it isn’t receiving any light it will appear as black in the final image. Because the dark green bottle blended into the dark background, I added a second light coming in from behind and about 45 degrees to place a highlight on the edge of the bottle and glasses and also a white reflector camera left to fill in the shadows. Again I had a silver reflector (not shown) over the lens. The base was a sheet of foamcore covered with woodgrain bulletin board paper. Normally I would shoot at my synch speed of 1/200 sec, but here I slowed the shutter to 1/6 sec to allow the candle flames to show better.

Here is the final image. In Photoshop I added a blur to the candle flames for the soft glow, and used a star brush to produce the starburst in the flames. I used Topaz Texture Effects, and a vignette to complete the image.

Shoot 3 Watch on Black Rocks

This the same basic setup again. My background is a piece of black felt, and some river rocks I spray painted black. I first used the rocks over 30 years ago and they are such a useful background that I still use then frequently. There is a small card held by a “plamp” to block some light from the watch crystal. More about that later. And of course I used a sprayer to mist everything.

One of the problems in this shot is that the watch crystal mirrors the light source so it has a white reflection over the whole face. Since this was a relatively large light, the highlight is even and diffuse, and not specular like a small light source would produce. Some would find this acceptable, but I wanted the watch face to be more clearly visible. My solution was to use a small card as a gobo to block light from the crystal. It was mounted on a “plamp” to make it easier to reposition. With a continuous light source or a studio strobe with modeling lights, it is simply a matter of looking through the camera or using live view and moving the card until the reflection was gone. Since I’m shooting without a modeling lamp I had to position it through a series of test shots, and I usually got it right within three shots. The card had to be readjusted every time the watch or camera moved. So why don’t we see the shadow of the card or the plamp arm? With a small harsh light source, we would, but a softbox that is relatively large in comparison to the subject casts light from its entire surface from different directions eliminating the shadow. If we were using a small harsh light source the shadow would be obvious. Here you can see the reflection over the whole face, covering about half after my first adjustment, about a quarter after my second adjustment, and completely gone in the final image.

February 1, 2023

(Beyond) Photography Basics – Splash Photography

by Mickey Rountree

I would consider this article somewhat beyond basic as it uses layers and masking in Photoshop. If you aren’t already using layers and masking in Photoshop, you should take some time and learn about them. Layers are where the real power of Photoshop lie, and they open up a world limited only by your imagination.

You’ve all seen the shots of fruit splashing into a liquid like milk or fizzy water. I had never tried it until just recently, but I’ll describe how I got my shots. First a word of caution; I didn’t use a laser beam trigger, so this technique is more miss than hit and you should expect to do 50 or more drop/splashes, just to get a few good splashes to work with. Also all that splashing is messy. I used a 3×4 foot sheet of corrugated plastic and soaked up excess liquid every few shots. This might be better shot in the garage or outdoors (but not in daylight) if you don’t have a good plan for dealing with the mess.

Shooting
My setup was a 3×4 piece of white corrugated plastic on a high tabletop. My background and the only light was a 24x24in softbox with a speedlite. The camera has to be mounted on a tripod, and once you have the glass placed where you want it in the composition, set focus and DO NOT change the focus or move the glass as we’ll be compositing multiple shots in Photoshop. Allow plenty of room above the glass to allow room for the splashes. Since you’ll be in front of camera dropping the fruit you definitely need either a wired or wireless remote.

Set a low power on the speedlite for a shorter flash duration. In manual mode set your camera’s fasted synch speed (Usually around 1/200 sec), an aperture around f/4 or f/5.6. Fill the glass with your chosen liquid, place your fruit in the glass, and shoot a test shot with the highlight warning (blinkies) turned on in your review screen and shoot a test shot. You want most of the background to be blinking, but not the glass and fruit. If you need to, adjust your ISO until you get a mostly blown out background, but detail in the fruit and glass. Don’t increase the speedlite power past about 1/64 power to maintain a short flash duration.

When you have a good exposure, top off the liquid and shoot several shots with your fruit submerged and still. This will become your base image. Now for the real fun and mess. Remove the fruit, top off the liquid and drop the fruit into the glass from a height of 6 to 8 inches. Try to time pressing the release just as the fruit splashes into the water. You’ll improve with practice, but one good splash for every 10 drops would be a pretty good success rate. Top off the liquid between drops and use a towel or paper towels to clean up the spills.

Post Processing

Select the base image and several shots with a good splash. It doesn’t matter how the fruit looks in the splash shots, or even if it is fruit causing the splash. Here are the base image and splash shots that I used.

With the base and splash shots selected in Lightroom, right click on one of the images, select “edit in” and then choose “open as layers in Photoshop”.

Once the images are in Photoshop, move the base image to the bottom of the layers, then select all images, then edit/auto align layers.

Change the blend mode of the splash layers to “darken” and add a black mask to each layer. Turn off the “eyeball” of all layers and then turn it one for the first splash image. Make sure the mask is selected and use a brush to paint in white over just the splash. Repeat for all of the splash layers. Turn on all of the layers, flatten the layers and make any final adjustments. I used hue/saturation to make the lime a more vivid green.

Here is my final image. The splashes on the table top were added with a Photoshop water drops and splashes brush. You can download lots of specialty brushes for free. In this case just search for “free Photoshop brushes splash” on google.

For my second and third images I used a different glass, and an orange slice. I shot my base image, but the orange slice wouldn’t fit in the glass to drop. I was looking for something smaller, dense and waterproof to drop and found an old plastic frog for the drops. You can also see how my timing wasn’t always perfect. Again I used some splash brushes on the table top. I selected the base and five splashes for one image and the base and five different splashes for the other.

This was my very first attempt a couple of weeks ago. Not bad, but I didn’t like the glass.

January 1, 2023

A couple of Photo Challenges

by Mickey Rountree

Here are a couple of photography challenges to help you stay creative during these hot months when we all just stay inside in comfort. You could do this as a onetime project or plan to do it weekly or monthly and get even more benefit.

Challenge 1

If you’ve been photographing for more than a year or two, editing software like Photoshop and Lightroom have evolved and have new features, and are easier to use. Also along the way, your tastes have probably changed, and hopefully your editing skills have increased with time and practice.

The challenge is to go back into your files from the last few years and find an image that you just couldn’t edit properly at the time. Start from scratch with an unedited image and see if you can bring your vision to life with today’s software and your current skills.

Here’s a four shot panorama from 2015. Unfortunately, when I shot it I was in aperture priority rather than manual exposure mode, so when I panned across the scene the exposure varied slightly from image to image. In 2015, combining these images in Lightroom produced a couple of dark band in the sky where some of the exposures overlapped. When I redid the pano using the current (as of July 2022) version of Lightroom, the new algorithm was smart enough to also blend the mismatched exposures. And the ability of the new masking tool to select the sky worked much better than a simple linear gradient.

December 1, 2022

Faking Shallow Depth of Field

by Mickey Rountree

In portraiture and fashion photography many photographers like the extremely shallow depth of field that comes from shooting at very wide apertures, such as f/2.8 or even more extreme wide apertures like f/1.8 or f/1.4. It can be a dramatic look, as the subject is the only thing in focus and really jumps out from the out of focus background. But the look and technique are not without some drawbacks.

Here’s an image shot at f/1.8. Notice the very shallow depth of field. One eye is sharp. The other is slightly soft. And even the tip of the nose and the hair id out of focus. It’s a great look, but hard to shoot.

The shot below is at f/2.8 and also the face is more parallel to the plane of the sensor, so both eyes are in sharp focus. Notice that at f/2.8 and close focusing depth of field is still very shallow.

The first problem is the cost of those very fast (wide aperture) lenses. A Canon 200mm f/2.8 lens costs about $650 and a Canon 200mm f/2.0 will cost about $6000 if you can even find one. That’s ten times more expensive for just a 1 stop faster lens. Maybe that’s OK if you are shooting indoor sports at the Olympics with a major magazine footing the bills. A Canon 85mm f/1.8 is around $350, while the 85mm f/1.2 is $1400. Again that’s four times more for only a 1 stop gain.

The second problem is the extremely shallow depth of field at those wide open apertures. Yes, that’s the look, but there are also problems inherent in that shallow depth of field. In tight portraits, it’s not unusual for one eye to be in focus while the other eye isn’t. Or the eyes are in focus, but the lips aren’t. And when depth of field is so shallow, just breathing, either by you or your model can cause the image to be out of focus. Shooting tight portraits wide open tends to produce a lot of rejected images where the focus just isn’t quite where it needs to be.

The third problem is if something isn’t in focus, but you wish it was, there is not much you can do about it.

So I’m going to show you a way to fake that shallow depth of field look, while shooting your original image at a smaller (and cheaper) aperture and adding the shallow depth of field by blurring parts of the image. I’m going to show you how to do this in Photoshop, but you can do a similar effect in Lightroom, but you don’t have as much control.

This is the image we’ll start with. It was shot at f/11 in late afternoon sunlight. Notice how sharp the road and hills behind her are. Either open the image in Photoshop, or send it to edit Photoshop from Lightroom.

Create a duplicate of the background layer with Ctrl-J (Cmd-J for you Apple types). Select the subject that you want to remain sharp. It doesn’t have to be a super precise selection for most images, and here quick select did a perfectly fine job.

With the subject selected, use Ctrl-J to put just the subject on a new layer. With that new layer selected, go to selection/load selection/ from transparency.

With that selection in place, select the middle layer and then delete to remove the model on the middle layer. At this point, nothing looks different because we still have a copy of the model.

With the middle layer selected and the selection of the model still in place, go to edit/fill/content aware fill. What we’re doing is getting rid of the model so that when we blur this layer there won’t be an image of the model that will blur and create a halo since blurring tends to expand the image.

Here’s the result of the content aware delete. Ctrl-D to deselect.

Make sure the middle layer is selected, and go to filter/blur/Gaussian blur and select a fairly strong blur. Here I used 38, but we’ll adjust the final effect that adjusting the opacity of the blurred layer. Rather than Gaussian blur you can also use blur/blur gallery/field blur which will give more options and make fake lens blur a bit better.

Adjust the blur to taste by changing the opacity of the blurred layer. When it looks good to you, go to layer/flatten image and save the image.

Here is the final image with the blur effect.

If the deleting the model and content aware steps seem like useless extra work or you don’t understand the importance, here is the image if we don’t delete and fill the model. Notice that when the model is on the blurred layer, she blurs outward and creates a halo around the sharp image.

The exact same procedure can be used on other subjects like products or architecture.

November 1, 2022

ND Filters with Flash

by Mickey Rountree

In my last article, I described using high speed flash to shoot in bright light at shallow depth of field. But what if your speedlite doesn’t have High speed synch? Or maybe you don’t have a speedlite and you’re using a studio strobe outdoors, again with no high speed synch. Here the trick is use an ND filter to bring the exposure down to allow a wider aperture at the camera’s synch speed.

For example, let’s say the exposure that gives the background look is 1/200 at f/16. But we want a much shallower depth of field than f/16 provides. If we use a 3 stop ND filter, we can use 1/200 at f/5.6. With a 6 stop ND filter the exposure becomes 1/200 at f/2.0.

Sounds pretty easy so far, so there have to be some problems, and there are. Most cameras will have no problem focusing with a 3 stop ND filter, but it may not focus well with a 6 stop (or more) filter. In that case, focus carefully without the ND filter and then carefully hold the ND filter in front of the lens without disturbing the focus. Also with a backlit subject and a ND Filter it may be very hard to see facial expressions or even if the eyes are open. It helps to have a model who can give a good expression on command, and sometimes it helps to count down to the shot. Lots of chimping (looking at the LED after the shot) and overshooting help make sure you have the expression.

Also many ND filters create a slight color cast. And from a past article, you might remember that the easiest way to fix that is once you have your exposure figured out, shoot a shot with a gray card and use that shot to color correct all of the other shots using that ND filter. If you use two or more different ND filters during a shoot, remember to shoot a gray card with each, since each density of ND filter will have a different color cast.

Just like with high speed synch, this works much better manually setting the shutter speed, aperture and flash power.

Here’s a sequence showing the technique in use. The first shot is the test shot to set the background exposure. Exposure is 1/200 at f/16 with no flash. This is also about what you see through the viewfinder, so you see more of a silhouette and will have a hard time seeing expressions.

October 1, 2022

High Speed Synch

by Mickey Rountree

When using flash, we normally have to shoot at the camera’s “synch speed” shutter speed or slower. For most cameras the synch speed will be 1/200 sec, but check your manual to be sure. A shutter speed faster than the synch speed does not allow the shutter curtains to be fully open, but instead the curtains open as a slit that moves across the sensor. The higher the shutter speed, the narrower the band becomes. So using flash at a shutter speed faster than synch speed will result in a band of underexposure, and the band gets larger as the shutter speed gets faster.

Normally at “synch speed” or slower, the shutter curtains open completely, the flash fires, everything is lit evenly, and then the shutter closes. High speed synch mode allows us to use flash at shutter speeds up to the fastest speed of the camera. It requires a flash that is compatible with the camera, and has high speed synch (HSS) mode. It works by continually firing low power flashes at a fast rate, so that the entire image is evenly illuminated. The higher the shutter speed, the more rapid the pulses, and the lower the power output of each flash. These pulses may be several thousand times per second and a speedlite can’t recycle fast enough at full power.

So why do we need HSS? The main use is in shooting with flash outdoors where bright sunlight requires a faster shutter speed. While it may be possible to stop down the aperture and achieve a proper exposure at synch speed, depth of field will be great. Many portrait and glamour photographers prefer to shoot at wide apertures for shallow depth of field, and also slightly underexpose the background which requires even faster shutter speeds.

What are the disadvantages of HSS? First the speedlites (or now even larger strobes) must be specific to the camera brand, and they generally cost more than speedlites without HSS. Second, HSS decreases the output of the flash, so it must be close to the subject, and it may even require multiple speedlites. The higher the shutter speed, the lower the flash output, so you will need to adjust flash output with every shutter speed change. Third, even though the light output is low, those multiple flashes consume a lot of power, and battery life is shortened. And last, but not least, all of those fast pulses can cause a speedlite to overheat. The better speedlites will shut down when they overheat; strobes without good heat protection may self-destruct, or worse yet, catch on fire.

Speaking of battery life, if you work with speedlites a lot, it pays to invest in good rechargeable batteries and a good quality charger. I have found Eneloop to be the best batteries, and I use a Powerex 8-cell charger.

Here I’ll show you some examples of using HSS to capture a portrait with shallow depth of field to isolate my model in bright sunlight. I had my model under shade so there wouldn’t be harsh shadows on the face. I used a Magmod softbox with two Yongnuo YN600EX-RT speedlites off camera and a YN-E3-RX controller on the camera.

It should go without saying that I am in manual mode so that I have complete control of aperture and shutter speed and also adjust my flash power manually. The first shot is at 1/200 sec, f/16 with no flash. This gives me the slightly dark background I want to help separate my subject. I find it best to turn off the flash and set the background exposure first. Without flash the subject is totally silhouetted.

The shot below is at 1/200 sec (my camera’s synch speed), and f/16. It’s nicely exposed and balanced, but at f/16, the background is too sharp for the effect I’m after. Also even at f/16, the two speedlites were only ay about ½ power.

For the next shot I switched to HSS, 1/4000 sec and f/2.8. Notice how soft and out of focus the background is. The two speedlites were at full power to provide enough light at f/2.8.

Below is a similar series. The first shot is at 1/200 sec and f/16 and the second shot is HSS, 1/3200 and f/2.8. Again it took two speedlites at full power to light the shot with HSS at f/2.8.

September 1, 2022

ND Filters

by Mickey Rountree

Neutral density filters are filters that decrease the amount of light entering the lens. They have two main uses either to allow shooting at a slower shutter speed, or shooting at a wider aperture. The much more common use is slow down the shutter speed to allow moving subjects to blur, or with extremely long shutter speeds allow moving subjects like tourists to completely disappear. Shooting at wider apertures is usually done by selecting faster shutter speeds, and unless you have rare situation where you need both a wide aperture, and a slow shutter speed, the faster shutter speed is no problem.

ND filters are available as square filters, or threaded round filters. If you use the threaded filters, you can get a set for your largest diameter lens and get step up rings for your smaller lenses, or if money is no object get a set for each lens size you plan to use.

What do all of those numbers mean? There are several different ways of naming ND filters and how much they reduce light. The simplest way would be to state how much they reduce light, such as 1 stop, two stops, 6 stops etcetera. But that would be too easy. The most common naming either uses optical density, or the filter factor.

In the optical density format, 0.3 equals one stop, 0.6 equals 2 stops etc. Most days I can do the math in my head.

The filter factor system is based on the log of two and how many stops it reduces. So for example a one stop reduces light by ½ or 2^1. Two stops would be 2^2 or 4, three stops would be 2^3 or 8. I don’t mean for this to become a math class, and you can just refer to the chart below. The advantage of this system is you can multiply your shutter speed without a filter by the filter factor to get your new shutter speed with an ND filter.

You can also stack filters and the effect is additive, so a 6 stop plus 10 stop equals a 16 stop filter. Also if you get caught out without your ND filter a polarizing filter is about a 1.5 stop ND.

OK, those are the advantages; you know there must be some disadvantages too. Ideally ND filters decrease light without causing a color shift, but in practice there is a color shift until you get into the more expensive filter lines. You can color correct in camera raw by finding a neutral tone to color balance on, or shoot a gray card in your first shot and use it to color balance all of your images.

Focus can be a challenge because of the dim viewfinder. My DSLR focuses well with a three stop, but autofocus struggles with 6 stops and above. My M50 mirrorless works well with 3 or 6 stops. I haven’t used my 10 stop yet, but supposedly most mirrorless cameras can handle it. If focusing becomes an issue, focus before placing the filter, and switch to manual focus. Be careful not to change focus as you place the filter.

Most cameras will only do timed shutter speeds up to 30 seconds. Beyond that you’ll need to switch to bulb mode and use a timer. I have two free ND filter apps on my phone that will calculate shutter speeds with various ND filters and also have built in timers. I use an Android phone, but they (or similar) apps should be available for I Phones. Look for “ND Filter timer” or “ND Expert”.

Here are some examples I shot the other day at Goforth creek. They aren’t best example since it was fairly overcast and the cascade is in shade, so my shutter speeds were already pretty slow. Most American photographers like the smooth silky water produced by a slow shutter speed. How slow that shutter speed needs to be depends on the amount and speed of the water. Experiment with different filters until you find the look you prefer.

I shot the first photo wide open at 1/40 and ISO 800 to show water that is too sharp.

The next shots were 0.8 sec at f/16 and no ND filter, 6.0 Sec f/16 with a 3 stop ND, and 30 sec f/14 with a 6 stop ND. In these shots, there’s very little change between the 3 and 6 stop ND filters.

These last shots were in much brighter light, so the difference should be more obvious. The first shot was at 1/60 sec with no ND Filter, and 3.2 sec with a 6 Stop ND filter.

So, whenever your photography includes flowing water, or other subjects you want to blur, remember what ND filters can do, and don’t leave home without them.

August 1, 2022

Rain in the Studio

by Mickey Rountree

I found a nice purple iris in my yard, and decided to bring it into the studio to photograph it. I almost always spray some water on my flowers for extra interest and texture, but today I decided to shoot as I sprayed to get a rain effect. While I got some shots I liked, there was one unexpected problem that I’ll talk about in a minute.

I shot with my Canon 5D Mark IV and 100mm f2.8 IS “L” Macro lens. My bloom was held with a Wimberly Plamp which makes positioning the flower easier and precise. I lit this with a large Octabox camera left, and a strip light with a grid behind the flower and camera right. This is very similar to one of my favorite portrait lighting setups. The indoor rain droplets came from a two small spray bottles; one gave a fine mist and the other a coarser spray. Exposure was ISO 200, 1/125 sec and aperture varied between f/16 and f/22 for deep depth of field.

Here is one of the first images I took. I like it, but if you look at the raindrops closely, you’ll see the problem. In nature, and how we perceive them in our minds, water drops fall with the fat part down, and the trailing tail of motion blur going up. The raindrops in my shot look just the opposite and that almost makes them appear to be going up rather than falling downward.

There are several reasons this happened, and there are a couple of possible fixes that I may shoot later if I’m not feeling lazy. First, many people assume that the speed of a flash firing is so fast it will freeze motion. But different flashes have different flash durations. Generally, at full flash power like I was using, the flash duration is longer. Also on a studio strobe like I was using, there is an initial discharge where most of the light is produced, giving us the bright fat part of the drop, but then it falls off gradually from there leaving the motion streaks below our drops. The streaks weren’t from ambient light in the studio because the room lights were off. Also studio strobes use what is called front curtain synch. So the strobe fires as soon as the first curtain starts to move so any movement during the time the shutter is open appears to blur in front of the drop, rather than behind it.

So how do I fix it? First, I could buy a really large, powerful (and expensive) strobe with a very short flash duration. That’s not happening; have you noticed the price of gas and groceries lately? The second, cheaper fix is to shoot using speedlites rather than a studio strobe. Speedlites have a shorter flash duration, especially at lower power, and they don’t have the slow fall off of a studio strobe. Also most camera and speedlite combinations allow for rear curtain synch, so the flash doesn’t fire until the shutter is closing, so the streaks have already occurred behind the drop before the flash lights it.

So there must be a downside (or two or three) or I would have just started with speedlites. The first down side is the limited power of speedlites. I was shooting at ISO 200 and f/16 or f/22. To do that with speedlites, the light would have to be very close, I’d probably be at a much higher ISO and larger aperture (not what I needed for depth of field), and I probably couldn’t get enough power to use a softbox. Again at full power the speedlite would have a longer flash duration also. It would be difficult to get the light quality, good depth of field and the quality of a low ISO with speedlites, but I may do some experimenting later. And the biggest downside is that speedlites don’t have modeling lights, so placement is trial and error.

Generally, my style in the studio has been clean, sharp, graphic images like the one below.

Lately I’ve been experimenting more and more with textures, color grading, and other filters to produce a less realistic and perhaps more artistic look. It’s still a learning process and I’m not fully comfortable with it yet, but I’m getting there.

This last image required focus stacking four images because of the very shallow depth of field produced by extreme magnification. Even f/22 couldn’t provide enough depth of field for the look I wanted. And if I’m being honest, I had to go back and reread my older article on focus stacking because I haven’t had to use it in over a year.

BONUS

I knew I wasn’t going to sleep tonight unless and until I got out some speedlites to see if they really would change the look of the rain. I had a very small (about 5X7 in) and inexpensive softbox that goes directly on a speedlite. I placed this about 4 inches from the iris for two reasons. First by placing it so close it was still relatively large in relation to the flower and produced a fairly soft light. Second by placing it so close, I was able to shoot at f/22 at ISO 400 at only 1/16 power, which makes for much shorter flash duration. I used a second speedlite with a grid, also at 1/16 power behind the flower and camera right to backlight the flower and “rain”.

So, did we learn anything? First, I already knew it, but now you know it too; I’d rather do photography than sleep. Second was a bit of a surprise to me; I was able to get my f/22 exposure by only going to ISO 400, and still only used 1/16 power on the flashes. That was important because of the short flash duration. Third, the speedlites really did produce less of a “tail” on the raindrops, and even where it did the drops don’t feel like they are rising up instead of falling down. Fourth, it matters how I sprayed. If I sprayed down on the flower with a slow squeeze, the drops were larger, and fell faster due to direction and weight. If I made a fast squeeze aimed more above the flower, the drops were smaller, lighter and didn’t fall as fast or blur as much.

I have been working with speedlites more and more, and other than the lack of modeling lights they can handle small jobs almost as well as studio strobes, if not better, as in this case.

Here’s a detail of the rain shot by a speedlite. Notice the tails are almost nonexistent or very short due to the short flash duration. And the tails don’t taper and look like they’re rising.

Here a slow squeeze aimed downward produced larger drops and slightly longer tails.

Here a quicker spray aimed above the flower produced small drops with almost no tails.