tutorials

painting with light

I was thinking about painting with light today (and how fun and easy it is) and I came across two great photographers/collectives that have mastered this technique. The first I want to show you is Burn Blue Photography aka Toby Keller. I thought this series was amazing, and I loved how the light seems so natural like it is part of the landscape. And of course any post about painting with light has to mention LICHTFAKTOR. They specialize in this sort of thing, so obviously their photos are amazing, you have to go see their website for more.

All you need to do to pull this sort of thing off yourself is have a camera that can do long exposures, a tripod, and a flashlight (or anything that generates light).

1. set your camera on your tripod (or really, any sort of stable surface where it won’t move)
2. set the shutter speed to the longest speed you have (usually bulb, but basically the setting that keeps the shutter open until you press the button again)
3. make sure you’re in a dark room or if you’re outside there isn’t a lot of ambient light that’s going to overexpose and ruin your photo.
4. jump into the photo! i know it seems weird, but because it’s so dark and if you keep moving, the camera will not expose you (or usually not all of you).
5. wave your flashlight/light source around and draw pictures. Simple!

You’ll have to experiment with settings and exposures, but it’s pretty easy to figure out, especially with a digital camera so you can see right away what works best. It’ll vary according to how much ambient light is already present, but you can get some pretty awesome results with minimal effort!

Another cool way to do it is use your handheld flash and expose only parts of the subject. You can also use any sort of flashlight to expose your subject matter, instead of pointing it at the camera, use it to illuminate what you’re taking a picture of, it makes a really cool soft and flowing looking exposure!

video tutorial: whitening teeth, brightening eyes

I’m really excited to add a new feature to still, I’ve been working on it for a couple days now and I hope you’ll like it! I’ve decided to do some short video tutorials to share some of the Photoshop and photography related knowledge I have, just some simple and easy to do techniques that I think anyone with a basic understanding of Photoshop can probably pull off.

The first tutorial in the series is called Whitening Teeth & Brightening Eyes, and it’s a simple little trick I picked up in school which I used a lot and which takes no time at all. The key in this tutorial is the non-destructive image editing, which basically means you always retain your original image and do all your image editing on other layers. This is a great (if not mandatory) practice to get into, so I talk a little bit about the benefits of it in the video.

Oh I should probably add, the intro with the logo is quite long so wait it out and I promise the actual tutorial will start. It’s my first video, I’m still perfecting it!

Please let me know if you like it and if you have any suggestions or feedback!

whitening teeth + brightening eyes from still: photo devotion on Vimeo.

the orton effect tutorial

Photographer Michael Orton created this popular look, where he sandwiched two images, the first, sharp, image overexposed by two stops and the second, out of focus image, over exposed by one stop. He used film to get this effect, but it’s possible to recreate in Photoshop (what isn’t?) so I’m going to give you a quick tutorial. It’s pretty easy. There’s a variety of ways to do it, but I find this way to be the simplest.

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make magazine photos with three simple layers

Being a photographer is not all about taking photos. Back in the day, you had to know how to use a darkroom. These days, you have know your way around Photoshop if you want your images to stand out, or at minimum be on par with some of the impressive work out there. This is a good thing, because working in a darkroom is a pain. Photoshop, by comparison, is a lot easier!

Even to know the most basic of post-processing, color correction, gets you way beyond what the average person knows. I’m not going to talk about color correction, because that’s a huge topic unto itself, but I’m going to give you a couple simple techniques that I’ve used that don’t require a lot of Photoshop knowledge, but can get your image looking pretty decent in about a minute or two, and at least will get you a step above just uploading your photos from your camera and posting them.

I’ve noticed, scanning through post processing message boards that a lot of people want to know how to take photos that look like they come from a magazine. The short answer to that is, you need to know everything you can about Photoshop. I’ll admit, I’m by no means a great post-processor, there are people out there that do things I didn’t even know possible. But I do have a couple tricks.

Another answer to the same question is that there are a million different ways to get a magazine quality pro photo, a million different techniques that require varying skill levels. The ones I’m going to show you today are pretty basic, and I think most people can probably pull them off.

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$0 digital pinhole camera

I was so excited when I saw this article on Make! I used to love pinhole cameras and the dreamy, blurry images you could get from them. But since I don’t have a darkroom, or any photo paper anymore, I had pretty much given up on taking them. Until now! The greatest part about this tutorial is that it’ll basically cost you nothing because you probably already have the materials in your house already. All you need is a digital SLR camera, some black construction paper, aluminum foil, a rubber band, and tape, and you’re good to go.

digital pinhole photo by Aurélio

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diorama illusions

This tutorial is currently circulating, so I thought I’d post a link to it since it’s pretty fun and I’ve been seeing a lot of it lately so I’m sure people want to know how to achieve the same effect. The tutorial is called “Using Photoshop and Your Brain to Create Diorama Illusions” but I’ve also seen it called things like the toy model effect. Basically what you’re doing is taking a normal photo of a scene and creating depth of field in photoshop to create the visual illusion that it’s a lot smaller than it is.

Sounds a bit confusing, but here’s a before an after picture to give you an idea of what I mean:

You can see how the blurriness, or depth of field tricks you into believing that the planes look like small toys, instead of being actual size.

The tutorial is written really well and has great instructions, you’re going to be able to pull it off even if you’re not familiar with all the techniques. Give it it a try, it’s a fun effect and you’ll probably learn a few things about photoshop in the process. Actually, the rest of the website Psdtuts+ is pretty great too, so take a look around and check out some of the other tutorials.

amy dresser & retouching

Ok, so what I’m going to share with you today is hands down the coolest tutorial I have ever found on retouching and commercial airbrushing. I found it years ago on a site  called Retouch Pro but it comes originally via an amazing photographer and retoucher named Amy Dresser.

I don’t even think the original content is still up at her site, but luckily I saved her instructions in a text file so that I could refer back to them. I’m reposting her instructions because I think her methods produce amazing results and people always seem to want to know how to get this professional, commercial look. I’m not going to lie, it’s difficult and definitely requires more of an advanced use of Photoshop, as well as a lot of time spent working on each photo. But if you’re up for it, you’ll definitely learn some new and useful techniques that you can even take and modify to your own workflow.

Before we get to the tutorial, here’s a before and after of one of her images, so you can get an idea of the kind of results it can produce. The before image is obviously shot well with professional lighting to begin with, but this tutorial can work with images that are also a bit more raw. Of course, it’s much easier to start with a good, well lit photo!

The following is the tutorial, posted by Amy Dresser. At the bottom, I’ve also included the original pdf which goes along with it and further illustrates her techniques. It’s extremely helpful in understanding her instructions and giving an example of how the layers are going to look.

For the record, I get asked about my methods pretty regularly. I’m not opposed to sharing my them, but i think most are underwhelmed by my approach. They expect me to say “blippity blap layer at whatever mode= voilà!” When in reality, i don’t have much for short cuts. The images i work on i purely labor over.

There’s nothing cool about clients showing me a blurry raw image and saying “make this look like THAT” while pointing to a photo that has completely different lighting and shot with a super high-end camera. My approach is far from beeline, and much more touchy-feely and gradual. Unfortunately, the more a photographer gets used to the idea of retouching, the lazier some of them get. The example I’m sharing was a fantastic photo to start with, so it didn’t need any damage control– just the fun stuff.

before i do any retouching…
I adjust the overall color of a photo (no point in retouching anything that will be blown out or hidden in shadows in the end). Most of my color adjustments are through curves (i adjust the individual channels) and an occasional hue/sat layer— just personal taste. typically desaturate the reds a bit… as most peoples’ flaws are reddish in nature, this diminishes some the areas vs. actual bumps. Also, i’m a bigger fan of desaturated images vs. saturated ones… i think i can control the shape of things better when i don’t have to worry about weird saturation drop-offs.

I usually work an image up in an all over and gradual manner… kind of general to specific. I refine color as i go along, carve features and remove blemishes sort of all at the same time. This way, if don’t spend as much time as i’d like, the image should be fairly presentable if the deadline is sooner rather than later.

Here are the general things i do:

Rubber stamp out major stuff (on a copy of the original layer of course) at 100% on normal mode. I make sure that all the cloning i do is completely unnoticeable. No big blur blobs all over the place or step-marks. Not a fan of the healing brush either.

Dodge and burn small light and dark spots and areas… anything that distracts and jumps out at me– always set on midtones at about 3-4% with the fuzziest brush you got with “other dynamics” selected so the pen pressure is in effect. This is where i spend the bulk of my time. To speed this up, i have programmed the 2 buttons on my pen to be the short cuts for decrease brush size and increase brush size.

Even out the skin tones to be basically the same hue, saturation through out a figure/face/image. i’ll use the lasso with a fat amount feathering on it and circle/trace areas that i want to adjust. Again, i favor curves. These typically will be very subtle in nature… with the middle of a channel’s curve just pulled up or down a notch or 2.

Carving and painting highlights:
I refer to already existing highlights and exaggerate and/or simplify them. This is one of those things that will come naturally if you’ve done a lot of figure drawing, otherwise, it just takes practice. I have a few methods of doing this and sometimes i use one… sometimes more.

1–more dodging and burning! I almost always do some amount of carving directly on the retouched image by dodging and burning– pure and simple. 0% hardness brush, still at about 3%. It’s a good idea to do this on a second copy of the retouched layer just in case i get carried away and something starts to look weird. In case the client says “woah, too much!”– it’s easy to lightly mask out what’s overkill.

2–make 2 curves layers… one curve pulled down, the other pulled up. I fill both masks black and then paint in areas on the individual layers that i want to carve down or up (0% hardness on the brush, 100% opacity, 1% flow). This is method make a low-impact on your file size, but i dislike it because i have to switch back and forth between layers.

3–make a new layer, fill with 50% grey and set that layer to “overlay” and paint black or white (again, 0% hardness on the brush, 100% opacity, 1% flow) to carve down or up. This method sometimes adds more saturation to the carved shadows than i would prefer.

4–plain old painting white on an empty layer set to “normal”– 0% hardness on the brush, 100% opacity, 1% flow, “other dynamics” selected. I do this to every image i work on.

5–this may possibly be my only “trick.” This has to be done as a final step or it will magnify any so-called-flaws that are white in nature. Make a new empty layer on top of everything. with pure white selected as the foreground color in the tool bar go to Select > Color Range. The whites of the image should already be selected by default. Move the fuzziness slider so the slightest dusting of selection will be made (click selection radio vs. image radio), hit OK. Fill this selection with white. Mask or erase out what is too much. sometimes i blur this layer a bit.

And that’s it.

Download the psd

strobist

The key to good photography is simply one thing: lighting. You have to know how to use the light, or your flash, to make your photos look the way you want. Otherwise getting good photos is hit and miss. I love fine art photography a lot more than commercial photography, but I do often find that artists don’t know all the same techniques that the commercial photographers know, and sometimes their photos could be a lot better if the lighting was improved. If lighting is mysterious and confusing or you don’t even know what I really mean by “lighting” then the website Strobist should be your new best friend. No matter what type of photography you’re interested in shooting, you’re going to have to know how to light.

Basically Strobist focuses on teaching you how to use your small off camera flash.

The Canon Speedlight is an example of the kind of flash that they specialize in teaching how to use. These are pretty affordable compared to larger strobes, not to mention extremely portable. Strobist’s philosophy is that bigger, expensive equipment usually stays packed away or in the studio. At the same time, smaller does not necessarily mean limiting, and they want to show you how you can take less powerful equipment and use it to light any situation.

There are over 1,000 articles on how to light with small strobes, as well as a ton of lighting techniques using non- professional lights.

The website is divided into two parts, Lighting 101 (and Lighting 102) which is like a course you can take that “begins with you getting your flash off of the camera. Learn how to position it, clamp it, synch it, bounce it, soften it, snoot it, cookie it and balance it with ambient light.”  The second part is On Assignment where they take commercial photos and break down exactly how to light them so you can learn all the professional lighting techniques that commercial photographers use. Sounds amazing, right? And the coolest part is that it’s all free information.

The only real difference between an amateur and a pro is knowing how to light. Check out Strobist if you want to learn how to get the photo you want all the time. It’s a resource I constantly browse through and I am always learning new things!

cross-processing

Cross-processing is a film technique where you process slide film in negative film chemicals, or vice versa. It was huge in the 80’s and 90’s, you don’t see it as much anymore, probably since digital has become ubiquitous. It’s still a pretty cool look though, strange oversaturated colours, lots of contrast, total unpredictability.

If you’re looking to try out some digital photography cross-processing in Photoshop, check out one of my favourite tutorials from photoshopsupport.com. There are a million different ways to get a cross-processed look with Photoshop, but I like this one because it gives the most traditional look that I’ve found. It also uses curves to achieve the look, so you can modify it to your tastes and to the specific photo, unlike a predetermined Photoshop action which will just give the same result everytime.

Here’s some random examples of cross-processing. To really get a feel for the possible looks though you’ll have to look more in depth. I suggest starting with flickr and searching through the various groups dedicated to the look.