A little Corel PhotoPaint in action on a classic Rikk sunrise image.
A Blessed Merry Christmas To You All
More articles to come after…
Rikk Flohr
Holiday Shenanigans from Rikk
Posted in Image Editing, Pretty Pictures with tags Christmas, Image Editing, photopaint, sunrise on December 24, 2009 by Rikk FlohrSpyderCube™: Don’t take a digital picture without it!
Posted in Gadgets, Photography with tags exposure, SpyderCube, white balance on December 23, 2009 by Rikk FlohrWell, don’t edit a photo in software without one anyway.
I just received what will likely become my new favorite photo gadget. It is a little piece of plastic with a metal insert to screw it down to a tripod. It is called the SpyderCube and it is made by Data Color.
This is the SpyderCube. It is a device to aid you in properly exposing an image. It helps you find white balance, control specular highlights, set black points, gray points and white points. The strategy of this device is that you place it where ever you are lighting a subject and it gives you a quality reference for using your image editing software. The image above was shot with a Canon 20D (those old cameras are good for something) at ISO 100 @ 1/200th @ F11. The lighting was provided by a single soft box at image right. Background is tech-green seamless paper. Following the instructions provided with the SpyderCube yields the image above.
Contrast this (no pun intended) with my standard Lightroom editing technique. The image on top was developed in the RAW processor according to Data Color’s instructions. The second image was developed based on Lightroom’s pre-cooking of the file and my subsequent adjustments from experience. My goal was to:
- Correct for the color by providing the previously measured Camera Profile
- White Balance
- Expose the Whites to White
- Expose the blacks (the little dark trap barely visible (or invisible) in the middle of the black face) to black.
- Make the 18% gray surface have RGB percentage values of 50 50 50.
Normally I eye-ball gray level as few items can be identified as true neutral gray. In the top image I actually measured it out and adjusted my image until the gray was where Data Color told me it should be. It is hard to judge final results on a geometric cube. In fact, I actually like the image of the cube on the bottom better.
To torture test the SpyderCube, I decided to put a face on the image-mine. I created a Snapshot of each edit style in the original Cube close-up, and then made a Lightroom preset so that I could apply it quickly and consistently. Note the SpyderCube about pocket-high in the shot.
Here is the result of my normal edit process. Overall. The color is correct but the mid-tones are a little hot. I used the same image and applied the SpyderCube preferred method preset to see how I was doing.
With the same adjustments made on the lone cube applied to my own mug, the flesh tones suddenly came back into line. The hotspot on the shirt darkened up and the levels of tone in the very-dark green shirt I was wearing became on-par with realism. As starting points go, I would much rather work from the bottom image than start at the top image.
While I still have some experimenting to do, I have no doubt that this will become a go-to tool in my exposure arsenal. It doesn’t matter if you are using a RAW processor or an Image Editor. There is no piece of software, RAW processor or Image Editor, that cannot give you a better picture starting point if you integrate the Cube into your Digital Photography.
Rikk Flohr © 2009
Behind the Shot: North Shore Christmas Tree
Posted in Behind the Shot, Pretty Pictures with tags CorelDraw, lightroom, North Shore on December 19, 2009 by Rikk FlohrCourtesy of Canon, Adobe and Corel and of course Rikk Flohr at Fleeting Glimpse Images.
This is the official Fleeting Glimpse Images Christmas Card for 2009.
This image was captured at the High Falls at Tettegouche State Park in July of 2006 on a Canon 20D. Raw Processing was originally done in Raw Shooter Essentials and again redone in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The Electrical Outlet was photographed at the FGI studio. The electrical cord was created in CorelDraw X3. The Tree was decorated in Corel PhotoPaint X3 and the composite was assembled there. Below are a couple of the steps along the way.
The Original image on the left after RAW processing and the “Night Time” treatment from Lightroom.
This image is also a part of my North Shore Holiday Card Set. It is a little late for this year to buy a set but there’s always next year!
I wish you all a blessed season and a prosperous 2010.
Rikk Flohr © 2009
Goggle This!
Posted in Smart Phone, Software to watch with tags Android, Apps, Droid, Photographs, Searching, Smart Phone on December 17, 2009 by Rikk FlohrRoad-testing the Android App Goggles from Google goggles labs.
More loyal to my cellular service company than to my device, it was inevitable, I suppose, to find myself with a Motorola Droid instead of an I-phone. As I plowed through the miniscule, by comparison, app store in search of augments for my new smart phone, I stumbled upon Goggle. Goggle purports to be an app that lets you photograph a person, place or thing and then it searches for the subject based on the image you take with the on-board digital camera.
The App, when launched, opens up your camera’s capture dialog and you are allowed to take a normal photograph of whatever it is you want to search for. Take a photo of the Statue of Liberty and the app will analyze the photo and bring back a Google search result showing information about the Statue of Liberty.
When it returns the results, it asks you to rate the capture/analysis/search combination on a 5-star system. I presume this is so that it can refine the results for future accuracy improvements. On a tip from a fellow Droid owner, my daughter, I decided to photograph one my own photographs.
As a photographer selling images I thought: ‘It would be great if people could see my photograph, capture it with their smart phone and then order it from me. Wouldn’t it?
I set this photograph of a Lake Superior Ice Berg on a chair in my office and snapped a quick picture. This is an image I might have hanging in a gallery and if some one saw it and wanted to know more about me, all they would have to do is capture it with their smart phone and Google Goggles would do the rest.
If all goes well, (and because you are reading this article, it did) Google Goggles will find it and return a good search result.
After taking the picture, Goggles analyzes the image, comparing it to vast amounts of picture data on the web. If it finds a match or matches, it brings them up in a list. For places which you photograph live, it gives you search engine results. For pictures it tries to also give you similar looking images.
The result was a good one. As you can see on the snapshot of the Goggles screen at the left, the first similar image it found was my photo on my own website. Tapping the photo, it brings me to a link for my website and gives me the internet version of the picture for comparison. The link to my website was there for the tapping.
Of course, I couldn’t resist the tapping.
Tapping on the link brought me right to the purchase page on my website where I could physically place an order at my on-line store. What could be simpler? You can see an image on the wall, take a quick photo, and buy it for your own living space-all with in the span of seconds-without access to a traditional computer. Is this the future or what?
I already own this photo have been its capturer so I didn’t buy it. As a photographer with images to sell, I find this tool to be exciting and holding the promise of the world-wide virtual gallery to come.
As a person who just loves cool apps, I find it a great way to source information about anything you can capture with the on-board digital camera in your smart phone.
Go to the Google Goggles Labs website by clicking on the image above and see what all Goggles can do for you.
Rikk Flohr © 2009
