Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Friday, March 23, 2012
Cool Photo Editing with Photoshop CS6
From The New York Times — Gadgetwise ...
March 22, 2012, 6:15 pm
Adobe’s Photoshop CS6 is Free, for Now
By ROY FURCHGOTT
As of today you can get about $700 worth of the latest Adobe Photoshop software free. But there is a catch.
Adobe is putting out Photoshop CS6 for beta testing. Anyone who signs on will get a full-featured version of the coming software to use (and help uncover glitches) as it is being refined for final release.
The catch is that when the final version comes out, the beta versions will not work anymore, and you will have to pay for the software that they hope you will find indispensible.
Why indispensible? By Adobe’s count, 62 percent of the features are new — that is, in addition to tweaks and enhancements of existing features.
Some of them are fiddly little things, and some are large, behind-the-scenes changes, like a new graphics engine that will make Photoshop run faster. A lot of the changes will matter most to professional users, but this is, after all, a professional’s program (the very capable Photoshop Elements, which has almost everything a hobbyist would need, can be found online for about $80).
There are a few new features that will make pro and amateur alike sit up and take notice.
Some of the more subtle additions are improved automatic adjustments. The system now compares your photo’s histogram to those of top shots from photography schools for more nuanced corrections.
There are also improvements to the astonishing Content Aware Fill, which lets you remove part of a photo – like a piece of trash on the lawn — and then automatically fills in the spot based on the background, in this case with more lawn. But sometimes the program searched too large an area for the fill, and it might fill in that patch of lawn with some sky instead. A new tool, called Content Aware Patch, lets you choose the part of the picture used for the fill-in, so the lawn stays lawn.
There is also a new tool called Content Aware Move, which — as its name implies — lets you grab part of a picture to move it, and automatically blends it in. So the two kids playing ball can be moved closer together with a few clicks of the mouse. The success rate is partly dependent on the background, though.
If you are fascinated by the new Lytro camera, which lets you shift the focus of a photo after you take it, there is Photoshop’s “Blur Gallery,” which lets you add blurring selectively to a photo. While there are tilt-shift filters and programs today that can add blurring, the Adobe version is much more adjustable. You can even have multiple focus points, meaning you can have people at different distances from the camera in focus.
On the more mundane but useful end, Photoshop will have automatic saving to keep you from losing work in a crash.
There are literally dozens more features worth looking at, and it won’t cost you anything to do so — at least for now.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Wanna Meetup?
Some interesting Meetup Groups in Singapore ...
The Singapore Vegetarian Meetup Group
The Singapore Tennis Meetup Group
The Singapore Writers Meetup Group
The Singapore Expat Meetup
The Singapore Shuffle - Jogging/Hiking Meetup
Singapore Digital Photography Meetup Group
Women's Chill Out Kakis
The Singapore Movie Fans (and Food Lovers') Meetup Group
Singapore Travel Meetup Group
SFC - Singapore Friends Club
Feel free to check it out!
Feel free to check it out!
Sunday, December 12, 2004
Framing in Photography
One of the things I find extremely useful when taking pictures is the use of 'frames'.
When we talk about frames, we usually think of a photo in a frame. Framing is similar to this concept in photography, except that it is less obvious and naturally becomes a part of the picture. Using frames helps make pictures more interesting. It also helps directs the focus of the viewers on objects in the picture that want to be seen. One of the best ways of framing is the use of nature to construct a frame around or at the side of a main object within a photograph. Examples are the use of trees, branches, and flowers.
Take a look at the following picture. You see a scenery and some branches at the top right hand corner. Imagine what the picture would be like without the branches. Does the photo looks natural? Will it look nice with too much white or sky space?
Look at the photograph of the church below. Without the branches at the top, it will look plain, and with too much white space, our eyes linger and become distracted, unsure what to look for, although it is obviously the church. Without the branches the picture will be less interesting and will be less focused on the object.
Framing is not all about just putting branches into pictures though. It can also be about beautifying your pictures with unrelated objects to blend in as part of the environment.
Take a look at the picture of the lake below. It looks nice with the flowers in the foreground. In truth however, it is trick photography. There never were flowers in the bushes. The flowers were actually potted flowers, arranged in a row in front of the place where the photograph was taken, at a concrete pavement. What the cameraman did was to lower his position to the eye level of the flowers, making sure the pots are hidden from the camera view, before the picture is captured with the grass field overlooking a lake and mountains as the background.
Let's take another look at framing using the picture below. Does it not look nice because of the branches on the left? In your mind, imagine how it will look without the branches. Will the picture of the canyon and mountain looks good on its own? The answer is a definite "NO".
There are of course other forms of framing in photography. You can use frames such as doorways, windows, or others when taking pictures of a person or a place. Take the example of a photograph of a person. Instead of taking a person against a wall, you can take the person within an opening of the wall, such as the doorway. In this case, the wall is the white space, while the doorway becomes the frame where the person stands within. Such a picture immediately focuses the viewer on the person, and the frame of the door directs the viewer's attention to the object within. Another example will be to take a picture of a person outside the window. This approach automatically frames the person within the window opening, example, within a square box frame.
So when it comes to taking scenic photographs or people, always consider the inclusion of frames in enhancing focus and making the picture more interesting. Whether it be trees, branches, flowers, doors, or windows, framing always help to make the environment within the photograph looks better.
Happy photographing! (",)
When we talk about frames, we usually think of a photo in a frame. Framing is similar to this concept in photography, except that it is less obvious and naturally becomes a part of the picture. Using frames helps make pictures more interesting. It also helps directs the focus of the viewers on objects in the picture that want to be seen. One of the best ways of framing is the use of nature to construct a frame around or at the side of a main object within a photograph. Examples are the use of trees, branches, and flowers.
Take a look at the following picture. You see a scenery and some branches at the top right hand corner. Imagine what the picture would be like without the branches. Does the photo looks natural? Will it look nice with too much white or sky space?
Look at the photograph of the church below. Without the branches at the top, it will look plain, and with too much white space, our eyes linger and become distracted, unsure what to look for, although it is obviously the church. Without the branches the picture will be less interesting and will be less focused on the object.
Framing is not all about just putting branches into pictures though. It can also be about beautifying your pictures with unrelated objects to blend in as part of the environment.
Take a look at the picture of the lake below. It looks nice with the flowers in the foreground. In truth however, it is trick photography. There never were flowers in the bushes. The flowers were actually potted flowers, arranged in a row in front of the place where the photograph was taken, at a concrete pavement. What the cameraman did was to lower his position to the eye level of the flowers, making sure the pots are hidden from the camera view, before the picture is captured with the grass field overlooking a lake and mountains as the background.
Let's take another look at framing using the picture below. Does it not look nice because of the branches on the left? In your mind, imagine how it will look without the branches. Will the picture of the canyon and mountain looks good on its own? The answer is a definite "NO".
There are of course other forms of framing in photography. You can use frames such as doorways, windows, or others when taking pictures of a person or a place. Take the example of a photograph of a person. Instead of taking a person against a wall, you can take the person within an opening of the wall, such as the doorway. In this case, the wall is the white space, while the doorway becomes the frame where the person stands within. Such a picture immediately focuses the viewer on the person, and the frame of the door directs the viewer's attention to the object within. Another example will be to take a picture of a person outside the window. This approach automatically frames the person within the window opening, example, within a square box frame.
So when it comes to taking scenic photographs or people, always consider the inclusion of frames in enhancing focus and making the picture more interesting. Whether it be trees, branches, flowers, doors, or windows, framing always help to make the environment within the photograph looks better.
Happy photographing! (",)
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