Flash Photography with Canon EOS Cameras - Part I.
Dealing with artificial light can be confusing at best. Here’s a link to an in-depth article about how to get the most out of your Canon EOS flash system.
He covers everything from internal flashes to Sunpak. From slave flashes to external power packs. From indoor to outdoor. It’s all here!
Woot.
Brides will love you for this one…
If you have a nice portrait, with a close-up of the eyes, here’s a snappy bit of Photoshop magic.
• Select the Dodge tool and feather the brush edge (shift-[ to increase feather, -] to decrease it).
• Make the brush size the same as the iris of the eye ( [ to decrease ] to increase)
• At the top of your screen, set the Dodge tool preferences to Midtones and about 30% exposure
• Click a couple times to lighten up the eyes
Cool. Now the eyes are nice and bright. Now let’s make them more colorful.
• Select the sponge tool
• Make it the same size as the iris and feather it a bit
• Set the preferences at the top to “saturate” and “flow” at about 70%
• Click a couple times to increase the saturation of the eye
Perhaps the pupils are a little washed out from the Dodge?
• Select the Burn tool
• Make the brush the size of the pupil and feather it a touch
• Select midtones, exposure around 30%
• Click a couple times until satisfied
Now your client’s eyes glow a touch. She’ll love it, and she won’t even know you touched up the photo.
See… We’re not all about Macs. Well, maybe we are. Spotlight (built into OSX) is so cool, Google went and tried something similar for Windows. It’s free and it works nearly as well (just not as pretty…)
Go get you some:
Google Desktop Download
Merlin, from 43folders.com, gives us some good advice about how to get organized about getting organized…
Rebel Fish knows… Rebel Fish knows… It’s Apple this, Apple that–we’re working on some useful Windows tips. Don’t give up hope.
But, OSX users can get a quick shot of their Photo’s EXIF Metadata by opening an image in preview, hitting Command-I, and clicking on the Details tab.
More information than you’d ever need–or want–including when the photo was taken, the make and model of the camera, the exposure, shutter speed, lens focal length, whether the flash fired, blahbiddyblahblah.
At the risk of feeling like a magician revealing other magician’s tricks, a real simple way to get that high-intensity color some photographers produce is available to all in Photoshop…
• Open your photo
• Duplicate your layer
• Increase the saturation of the top layer significantly (e.g. +40)
• Where it says “normal” on your layer palette, change it to “soft light” or “hard light”
• Adust the transparency of the top layer until your happy with the result
• Use the eraser on the top layer with a feathered brush at 30% opacity to remove the effect from areas of the photo you don’t want saturated.
• Merge the layers and save
And now… You’re a Photoshop Badass. Experiment with less amounts of saturation (the effect is actually groovy without any additonal saturaion–just use hard light on the duplicate layer). Experiment with other blend modes. Fun. Fun. Fun.
If you want to be really cool, record and save it as an action that you can batch apply.
If you’re on a Mac, you’re in for a treat. Quicksilver changes everything… and it’s free. Play with it for a few days and see if you don’t get addicted. You will be more efficient, and you’ll enjoy your computer even more.
Click here for one of our heroes, Merlin, giving a very brief video on Quicksliver.
Here’s an excellent summation:
Quicksilver’s greatest strength, however, is not search. Any item you are able to find, drag, or otherwise pull into its universe is endowed with many potential uses. Hitting
In the end, Quicksilver has one very important effect. The effort associated with frequent tasks fades into the background and you are able to act without thinking. After an adaptation period, Quicksilver becomes an extension of yourself; the process fades away leaving only the results.
If you’re using Showit Web for your slideshows, then you know that you can set the show to music using the “timing” tab. A frustration is that you can’t see the slides. You may want to hold a slide longer than another. Here’s a solution: Using Bridge (or some other application that shows you thumbnails), you can easily show the thumbnails of all the images in your slideshow, then you set Showit next to the thumbnails. While you set the custom timing, every time you hit space (to trigger the next slide), you can look at the next thumbnail so you know what slide you’re on.
If you’re shooting a wedding or engagement session with multiple cameras, save yourself a headache later and sync the cameras clocks before you start shooting.
That way, when you bring your images into Lightroom, Aperture, Bridge, iView, etc., you can sort by date captured and have everything all prettied up.
Here’s a little how-to from David Jay’s OSP. (Go DJ!)