Written on Jan 14th, 2009 by Dave Adams

Posted In: Photoshop

How to Crop Photos to Improve Composition

Cropping, Photoshop 0 comments

One of the easiest ways to give your photographs some added punch and to remove unwanted clutter is to use the crop tool to zoom in on the important element you want to emphasise.

Its not unusual for a composition to include some unwanted items around its edges, and therefore a simple crop can easily rid your image of these blemishes.

Cropping can also be used to alter the shape of a photograph, turning landscape photographs in to portraits, and vice versa. Cropping is also handy for improving a composition by altering the point that elements line up within the photograph.

The photo below is the platform 2 building at Llangollen railway in North Wales. As you can see, there are a number of rogue items around the edges that need to be removed.

Photograph Before Cropping

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Written on Nov 6th, 2008 by Dave Adams

Posted In: Photoshop

How To Create Stunning HDR Photographs

Aperture Priority, Balance, HDR, Photography, Photoshop, Shutter Release, Technique, Tripod 1 comment

What is HDR Photography?

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and within photography refers to a process of combining multiple exposures of the same scene to enable the capture of both the darkest and lightest areas of a photograph.

While the human eye is very good at distinguishing between dark and light areas as it looks around, and adjusts the iris accordingly, camera sensors cannot adjust to compensate for an area in a scene that is both too bright (overexposed) and too dark (underexposed) all in one photograph.

To overcome this shortcoming, a system was devised where multiple exposures of the same scene could be combined into a single image, thus blanacing out any under or over exposed areas. With film photography, acheiving the same result would have meant doidging and burning a photograph to ensure an evenly exposed final image.

Once multiple exposures have been combined into a single HDR file, the image is then put through a tonemapping process, and it is this part of the process that most people think of when they talk about HDR photography. HDR photography has become so popular that it is no longer used to just compensate for over and under exposure issues, its actually used as an artistic technique to produce visually stunning digital artworks. In fact many of the HDR photographs that you will see on the web could have been taken with a single exposure with no tonemapping, as the dynamic range in the image is not that wide. however, the process of tonemapping can give a real lift to a photograph, and depending on the artist the effects can be anything from mild to wild.

The following HDR image is one I created from 9 exposures, tonemapped and then applied a Topaz filter to. I will talk a little bit about the best way of taking photographs for generating a HDR image, and give a little more detail on the way the following photograph was processed. It should give you some idea of whats possible with the software thats available today. I would put this in the medium-mild category - beyond photorealistic but not over the top.

Final Result after Tonemapping and Topaz Filter

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Written on Oct 25th, 2008 by Dave Adams

Posted In: Post Processing

Sharpening Photos With The High Pass Filter

High Pass Filter, Photoshop, Sharpening, Vivid Light 0 comments

There are times when no matter how good your photography skills are, and how good the equipment your are using is, a photo just doesn’t turn out as sharp as you’d hoped it would. Never fear, all is not lost. With a little post-processing, a photograph can be easily sharpened up to give that perfect final touch you want.

Using Photoshop, there are two options to sharpening a photograph. The first is to use the standard sharpening tool that can be found under Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. While this filter can result in an acceptable final result, and there is scope for changing the filter parameters, I prefer to use a two step approach using the high pass filter and vivid light.

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