Day is done...fine tuning with CS5 from RAW Files

For reasons unclear this set of images keep drawing me back to work them differently for different reasons. Maybe its because it was a colorful sunset, something generally lacking here in So Cal unless we have a raging fire somewhere, or because the location has special meaning to me. Not sure, but I keep reworking.

Today I took one of the bracketed exposures and used nearly all the tools available in CS5 "Photography" section to adjust and fine tune exposure, color, hue, lens correction etc to get to this image "Day is Done".

Tonight, July 31st is the second of the Monrovia Association of Fine Arts Summer Art Walks and it is dedicated to photographers. I'll be there in the Paint n Play Studio and Art Gallery from 7-10PM. IF you see me and are in the mood for a little tipple, just ask as there is a private reception that I can invite anyone I want into at the back of the gallery. The Paint N Play Studio and Gallery is located at 418 S Myrtle Avenue, Monrovia CA. (This is the shameless self promotion portion of this post).

New image for 7/31 MAFA Art Walk

This is among several new images printed just for the Monrovia Association of Fine Arts Summer Art Walk being held in Old Town Monrovia this weekend. The image is one of several I shot at Missouri's Elephant Rock State Park earlier this month.

To see me and my other images you're welcome to attend the Free Art Walk dedicated to photographic arts July 31, 7PM-10Pm. I will be in the Paint n Play 2 Art Gallery and Studio located at 418 S Myrtle Avenue, Monrovia (91016 if you need a zip for google maps).

Surfers in Ventura

Just a couple of quick arty shots from our trip up to Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. We took a nice stroll along the sidewalk bordering the ocean near Harbor Blvd in Ventura. Great little spots to just and sit enjoying the ocean and surfers. They even have a nice pier that isn't commercialized like some of the others in the area where you can just walk out and not be annoyed with a dozen vendors hawking stuff....makes for great sea life watching at the base as well as watching surfers from afar.

Sigh...to return from cool oceans breezes to Monrovia's 110+ heat was a bit of a shock. Wish I was back there right about now. With my boogey board.

The two images were post processed to fine tune exposure, contrast and color vibrancy from RAW files using Adobe CS5.

Lake Cachuma Valley in panoramic form

So after the long weekend of play back in MO I took off with the better half for a few days of continued play in the South Central Coast area of So CA. Managed to hit the wineries in Solvang (you gotta track down Lion's Peak winery) and Santa Ynez.

What was a bit of a disappointment was that CA State Highway 154 from Santa Ynez to Santa Barbara had too few turn outs and vista points where one could really get out and do some shooting in the beautiful hills and valleys. We did find one nice "Vista Point" where we stopped and grabbed a few shots of Lake Cachuma and the surrounding hills and valley, even got this decent panorama stitched from 5 individual frames. You can click to embiggen this image.

Lovin' the ease Adobe's CS5 lets one stitch panoramas together so well.

One last Sunset for MO...ala HDR

I kept it "photorealistic" not surreal. The scene was surreal with the sun lighting the bottom of a clearing thunderhead at sunset that it didn't need any further digital help.

To have some detail in the shadows this was shot with rain drops falling bracketed +/-2EV (stops) and the resulting RAW files were run through Photomatix for the HDR file generation. The resulting HDR file was then tonemapped in Adobe's CS5. A little color correction was in order to remove the too much orange reflected from the clouds and voila "Cemetary Sunset" was created.

Elephant Rock State Park and HDR...

Among the spots I hiked was the Elephant Rock's State Park in the Ozarks of Missouri. It is an interesting are where gigantic boulders of granite were exposed after eon's of weathering. On any given day you come across way to many hikers to call it solitude, but even with them in the rocks its a pleasant way to spend some time, they just have a habit of being around to "ruin" shots of the rocks one wants to get for use arty reasons.

All of these were shot bracketed +/- 2 stops (ev's in the digital realm, but what the heck am old school) and from there the RAW files were blended into an HDR file using Adobe's CS5. The tone mapping was also done with CS5 and done so to maintain a photorealistic as opposed to surrealistic image.

Enjoy 3 images from Missouri's Elephant Rocks State Park.

Panoramic images in CS5

Woot its a party at the PC with CS5's multiple options for blending images for panoramas from several shots. You need to play around with them to get to understand how they take images and blend them together. What you need to know is I used "Spherical" as the option and used 3 basic jpeg files to get to the desired image with minimal distortion.

The actual file is HUGE...so I re-sized and dumbed it down to fit into a blog post. Suffice it to say its still a very large image that gives you a sense of the depth and views from atop Tom Sauk Mountain in MO looking over the St Francios Mountain Range that is with the northern Ozarks and is the highest point in all of MO.

Click away for a larger version for your viewing pleasure. I sure do pick nice places to explore over vacations.

Next is the wine growing regions of Santa Barbara County.

A Little HDR in the photorealism realm

I shot this from a balcony at the hotel we stayed at for a basketball tournament this last weekend. Pardon the noise....I used a high ISO setting to keep the shutter moving fast(ish).

I did the tonemapping with Photomatix...I like its controls better still than CS5 for capturing fine detail and the ability to micro control contrast.

HDR Photorealistic option

'Nuff said. It works. Old image that the drop down not only teamed the demons of ultra contrast range but multiple colored light sources. Life is good when you want to be a realist and still use HDR generation.

Autochrome and CS5

I can get the feel, but not the same delicate images. I can create grain, but that is part of the equation. The original autochromes had potato starch that was died and outlined with carbon black. I can duplicate the color grains by adding noise and pointillising the image, but I can't get the black outline around the "grains" created in CS5.

I shall keep working on it, but until then here are two images in the style at least to keep me contented that I am on the right track. Once I nail it I'll post the step by step it took me to get there.

A little orton...of an area now burned out.

Concurrent to the Station Fire that wiped out so much of the Angeles Forest in the San Gabriel Mountains there was the smaller Fellow's Camp fire that did damage as well to the forest. I'll be heading up there in a day or so to see what wild flowers and other green has returned to the area. When I was last up there, much of the west side of the river was burnt to the ground and nothing but ash, but that was January before the rains really came in hard and washed stuff away.

Hopefully there was enough rain to ensure the wild flowers and stuff returned this spring. It will be many years before this view looks the same. Maybe I shall get a pic from the same vantage point and post as a comparison in the coming days? Maybe.

Another stab at painting...

This is quite the learning curve I am on. Right now am just learning one brush at a time to see what it does. This time around its a wet stiff bristled shorty. So far so good, what my next step after completing the learning about what each brush does...is to learn to combine them on one canvas like a real painter would do.

I have learned its a must to scroll in close and work top to bottom doing back grounds before the foreground or subject matter. It does make it much easier to bring about the feel of a painting.

Out of focus backgrounds are a challenge to blend and I am not completely happy with the result on this.

Iris. I have a ton of them, enjoy just this one.

More with the magic brush...wet pick up and bold brush

OK...I haven't decided whether this is a useful tool in my kit or just a novelty. Regardless I am enjoying using it and learning what it can do. I see the potential to apply it to "real photographs" for some spot work as well as making paintings. The latter I think on watercolor paper will help the "painterly" effects even more.

What you see here is the original image and my rudimentary learning on how to use the tool.

A little surrealistic HDR work

The surreal tab in the HDR menu blasts contrast and details, leaving an end result not unlike how one would imagine a nuke blast looks. I kind of like it.

I've been sitting on this one for a little while, mostly because there were some huge power lines running through the sky that I just couldn't get rid of in old CS2, or at least delete them believably. In CS5 and the "content aware" fill as you use the "band aid" to remove them its another story. An otherwise distracting element rendering an image you want can be saved in CS5. (I should note the proper name for the band aid is "spot healing brush" with 3 other tools available in a drop down available by right click).

more fun with magic paintbrush

This is actually kind of fun. Tedious with a mouse, but fun none the less. The magic paint brush lets you pic up color from the underlying layer whilst painting away. Blending and all that other stuff is done with adjustable presets allowing some of the underlying to show through, if you want.

In playing around with this tool I've discovered that the lower res, smaller files are easiest to work on and get acceptable results. I tried working on an 8 megapixel image and nearly lost my mind sampling small areas at a time and trying to paint. It is much easier to reduce the size of the image and dpi and work from there. The compression of detail doesn't matter, actually helps in putting together an impressionistic image...like Painted Jalama Dunes you see here.

I really need to invest in a pen and tablet if I am to explore this option further. Of course to get there I need to sell A LOT of prints.

One more orton and I call it a day...

This area is gone now, the Station Fire of last fall saw to the destruction of much of the Angeles National Forest in the Big and Little Tujunga Canyons. Sad, but I have this little bit recorded for posterity and it will be years before it looks like this again.

Fortnight Lily ala orton

Thankfully tools in don't change much and I can easily create layers and ortonize images. This is the Fortnight Lily aka African Iris that has been given the Orton treatment. Starting from RAW files as discussed earlier gives one a lot more detail to work with to start, the added bonus comes into play when working in the orton style in that you have highly detailed layers under the blur to add to the impressionistic feel of the final image. I like that.

Meander through the garden this morning...

With so much in bloom I opted to play in the garden with the camera this morning. I've been shooting and working from RAW for quite sometime now for a lot of reasons. Adobe's CS5 has some really powerful tools for taking that RAW file and getting it ready for use in photoshop with nominal adjustments needed. The advantage to this is that you are using all the data captured at the time of the shoot and have it available for use as needed.

Anytime you have an uncompressed file you have more to work with which helps. Of course to get it to fit here in downloadable fashion I do have to resize and reduce the dpi and save in jpeg fashion which unfortunately compresses out a lot of detail. In the end you get here a flavor of the final image, the real deal needs to be seen in person for the full effect.

The two roses are among my favorites in the garden. The pink one is "Shropshire Lass" that is a beautiful single rose that blooms just once a year. The yellow is my favorite of all the yellows out there. It too is a David Austin English Rose, and is named "Golden Celebration".

Playing with paint brushes...

I'm intrigued by the variety of tools in paintbrush, specifically the "mixer brush" that allows you to pick colors from a background and paint on a new layer pick up "paint" or color from the underlying layer and mixing.

This image was worked with the mixer brush and using several different samples of color to fill in the sky and buildings for a painterly effect. I like these tools.

I think if I'm going to do anything bigger or more dramatic will have to invest in a tablet and stylus as doing this with a mouse is very tedious work.

RAW fun with Adobe CS5

Am enjoying the use of the RAW tools available in CS5. Much better than what came with the camera. I have to remind myself that the camera's program is 5 years old and programming and technology has grown in leaps and bounds since I bought the camera. This program has certainly breathed some extended life into the use of this camera body.

Enjoy the fish sculpture shot at the Santa Monica pier.