Posts filed under 'Photoshop'
I promised you a review of The DAM Book by Peter Krogh. I’ve read it over Eastern and it was the best damn DAM thing I’ve ever read. This book is an absolute must for anyone that takes more than a few thousand digital pictures a year and that intents to keep them around. It answers every single question I’ve been struggling with over the past few years.
It is mainly written for high-volume professionals (100+ frames a day), but a solid workflow is just as essential for a guy like me that cherishes his family snap shots. Being targeted at pro’s the book does assume you own a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS2 (which I do) and being a DAM book, it assumes you are willing to invest in DAM software (which I am). If that is the case, you do want to buy this book. It teaches you everything you need to know about handling your pictures from the minute they come out of your camera, until they are properly archived and backed-up. It’s well written, nicely illustrated and although it handles about technology and software, a lot of the content is timeless. It’s a book you will be browsing through for years to come. Peter even goes out of his way to not offend us Windows users too much. So go and buy this book and read the forums in the mean time.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with Adobe or Peter Krogh and don’t make a penny out of this review.
Note: Peter Krogh is associated with Adobe as an alfa-tester. He is also a very fine photographer.
April 18th, 2006
This picture I took in August 2004. It’s the Jugendstil Museum in Ålesund.
I remembered the picture because I liked it. I also recalled I published it once, after I photoshoppped it, adding some kind of Lomo effect. I don’t have that edition anymore, but I still have the original.
Anyway, I tried to reproduce it, using the same technique as I did back then. I followed a short tutorial from Kingyo Senbei (via Kottke). Et Voila.
April 2nd, 2006
My passport is about to expire, so I needed a new passport photo. Being Dutch and all, I figured: why spent a 100+ Krones on something I can do myself for 2 Krones? The problem is that I don’t have any lighting equipment, just the build-in flash. The result is obvious if you look at the picture on the left: shadows and a dirty background. So here comes a very quick Photoshop tutorial on how to clean it up.
- Select the Magic Wand Tool with a Tolerance of 30. Make sure Anti-alias and Contiguous are checked.
- Click on the background.
- Decrease tolerance to 10, select ‘Add to selection’, blow up the picture and fine tune by clicking on the areas you want to add (or visa versa by selecting ‘Subtract from selection’) until you’ve selected the whole background.
- Click Select>Feather… and use a Feather Radius of 3 pixels. Click OK.
- Click Image>Adjustments>Levels… and move the black slider at the bottom of the dialog box (under Output Levels) all the way to the right. Click OK.
- Click Select>Deselect.
- Done!
Now I just need some Tips on how to make that guy look better.
March 6th, 2006