USING LAYERS in PS

[FUJI]

I thought I would share with you the results of my recent delving into Photography books and the use of my DIY diffuser (best thing since sliced bread), oh! and my personal take on using PS or other software to make your photographs POP!

 

The books, have helped  to clarfify and then develop many photographic techniques and settings......My simple to make Basin Diffuser works as well as any costing over £100 and has made shooting Macro a real pleasure..........here, you can see how it, combined with controlled Flash and ISO settings, help to enhance a subject whilst avoiding hard shadows or harsh highlights caused by the flash alone:

 

In PS or any other processing software with layers there is a very simple way of using them to enhance tone, colour, saturation and sharpness in targetted areas, if your shoot RAW then all of that detail and colour etc is there to be found and then tickled out a layer at a time, each layer is flattened before the next is worked on:

 

Somewhere in TIPF archives there is a tutorial that I produced together with Phil:

 

These three shots clearly demonstrate, first, just how effective my diffuser is, and how the layers processing method helps things to POP!

 

Best viewed LARGE....Click on Pics:

 

FUJI

[annie]

lovely....beautiful colour in that geranium..and yes things are popping, look at the detail deep in the petals.. 

 

lol.....where i have been going wrong then...''flatten each layer as it is worked''.......i been trying to save them all up to the end! 

[FUJI]

lovely....beautiful colour in that geranium..and yes things are popping, look at the detail deep in the petals.. 

 

lol.....where i have been going wrong then...''flatten each layer as it is worked''.......i been trying to save them all up to the end! 

 

Hi, Annie,

 

No! You are not going wrong, it is the way that is taught and done by many PS users..............I learned the flattening method from Martin Henson, the creator of processing known as...Contrast Grading...for mono photography.....the flattening of layers as you work saves disc space, but you do need to ensure that you are happy with what you have done:

 

Most folk know that I have a numbers/sequencing problem so I always go for the simplest route and it works..........one of my recent PS tutors tried to teach me a whole series of Key-Strokes...Hopeless!....I can never recall them, so I stick to the menus:

 

Come on!.......I want to see how your diffuser performs:   

 

FUJI

[Guest DaveW]

You still seem to have a bit of a warm cast on your pictures with the diffuser to me Fuji. Is it your diffuser or in Post Processing?  Try taking a sheet of white paper with your diffuser and see if it comes out white, or a grey card and see if it still is neutral grey? If not you can perhaps adjust the camera white balance, or correct in post processing.

 

http://www.techradar.com/news/photography-video-capture/how-to-fix-white-balance-in-your-photos-973511

 

But first make sure your monitor is regularly calibrated, preferably using a monitor calibrator, or if not inbuilt software in Windows or software off the Web, since you may be seeing different images on your monitor to what other see.

 

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/how-to-calibrate-your-monitor/

 

Note with this online monitor test moving your mouse arrow up to the top of the page brings down hidden menu's for different colours etc:-

 

http://tft.vanity.dk/monitorTest_scale.html

[FUJI]

Dave......thanks....

I calibrated my monitor only this morning.......a warm cast?.......The pics were taken as the sun was setting last night, it could be that........as far as processing went, I only slightly boosted the saturation of the green in the fern.

The flash is firing through my opaque plastic kitchen basin that has a single layer of white kitchen towel inside the lid plus the top quadrant inside the basin/ diffuser is lined with kitchen foil.

I will check that I haven't left my camera White Balance on artificial light though.

I am happy to receive any comments and observations on these shots so fire away folks.

FUJI