A break from my own photography into some Photoshop magic. Or not so magic, as it turns out, if you don't know what you are doing. I came across this blog via some obscure route this morning (probably started in Brighton Flickr pool). There are some hilarious blunders there, and quite surprising ones, too. I bet you never noticed what was wrong with the sky in 20th Century Fox logo (widescreen version, presumably "stretched" from a 4:3 aspect image). I hadn't. And what about that Photoshop book "How To Cheat in Photoshop CS3"... looks like it's a testament to crap editing. I mean, don't they see the irony in the image on the cover and the slogan "The art of creating photorealistic montages" over it? Seems to me like the book endorses cheap and nasty shortcut editing. The examples inside the book are as horrendous as the cover.
Now, I have to admit that this subject is my pet peeve at the moment. It makes me angry when I see an impressive image in thumbnail size, then click on it and see that it's been created with bad, sloppy editing. Honestly. I should have some aspirin next to my computer in case a poorly edited photo attacks me through my monitor. What angers me most is Betterphoto.com daily e-mails. (And bear with me here, as most of the time I love seeing the daily photo.) I subscribed to these e-mails a year or two ago, and get one photo sent to my inbox every day. Most of the time the "Photo of the Day" is great, and sometimes simply stunning. But sometimes... well... for example, exactly how realistic did the creator of this image think it would look when you combine a dark, after sunset image of the sky and a harshly side lit daylight image of giraffes? And this is by no means one of the worst examples of bad editing amongst the Betterphoto.com "Photo of the Day" picks. (BTW, just clicking through the giraffe image guy's portfolio on Betterphoto reminded of another editing faux-pas: that awful, completely unrealistic "Photoshop water reflection" that some people seem to adore.) But like I said, most of the time the "Photo of the Day" picks are absolutely stunning images - have a look!
I'm not by any means saying that my own editing skills are great, but at least I strive for - well, if not 'perfection', then at least 'very good'. And when I can't achieve that, I prefer to hide the evidence and go away and practise more before showing the image in public.
Showing posts with label photoshop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photoshop. Show all posts
Thursday, 8 May 2008
Tuesday, 1 April 2008
Egypt, Day 2
So, it's the first day in our resort in daylight. Obviously we have to go and see what the beach looks like.
Hmm, not so keen on lying on the beach all day... Much more interested in other things, like this cunningly disguised radio transmitter.
Here's a little confusing image for my (straight) male readers, but see if you can work it out. Can you see a camel in this picture?
We were walking along the 1,5 mile beach of the holiday resort Taba Heights, shared by the five different hotels along it.
We see lovely lounging chairs and parasols, people wading and snorkelling in the water here and there... And suddenly we come across this sign:
Did you miss that? It was:
Huh? Well, we decided to walk on and check out another "sea entrance" further along the beach: the long jetty.
Once we got to the end of the beach, we continued walking up the hill.
...but couldn't go to far as we didn't have drinking water with us. So, just had a look at the view...
...and turned back.
Back at sea level... A local dove (exact species not identified by me yet)
Yellow wagtail.
Late lunch and a drink at a strange HDR'ed place in the "village" of Taba Heights.
And back to the hotel via the beach camel. If you are going to read all the posts from our Egyptian trip, prepare yourself for a lot of camel photos. I can't help it; I've always loved camels.
Most evenings we sat on the balcony watching the changing light take the colours of the sea, sky and the mountains through a fascinating show of different tones and colour combinations. And here is a ridiculously long panorama (of 15 frames) from our balcony, mainly to demonstrate Photoshop CS3's fabulous stitching capabilities! All you need to do is stack your photos one on top of the other (all photos in one file, each photo in its own layer), hit Edit -> Auto Align Layers, and after that, hit Edit -> Auto Blend Layers, and as if by magic, you have a perfect panorama without ANY visible seams. (Provided that you have done the right thing and used same manual settings - aperture, SS and focus - for all the photos and used long enough focal length to avoid barrel distortion). All you have to do is crop and adjust levels, if necessary, and that's it. It's truly an amazing tool. Click on the photo to see bigger version of it.
Hmm, not so keen on lying on the beach all day... Much more interested in other things, like this cunningly disguised radio transmitter.
Here's a little confusing image for my (straight) male readers, but see if you can work it out. Can you see a camel in this picture?
We were walking along the 1,5 mile beach of the holiday resort Taba Heights, shared by the five different hotels along it.
We see lovely lounging chairs and parasols, people wading and snorkelling in the water here and there... And suddenly we come across this sign:
Did you miss that? It was:
Huh? Well, we decided to walk on and check out another "sea entrance" further along the beach: the long jetty.
Once we got to the end of the beach, we continued walking up the hill.
...but couldn't go to far as we didn't have drinking water with us. So, just had a look at the view...
...and turned back.
Back at sea level... A local dove (exact species not identified by me yet)
Yellow wagtail.
Late lunch and a drink at a strange HDR'ed place in the "village" of Taba Heights.
And back to the hotel via the beach camel. If you are going to read all the posts from our Egyptian trip, prepare yourself for a lot of camel photos. I can't help it; I've always loved camels.
Most evenings we sat on the balcony watching the changing light take the colours of the sea, sky and the mountains through a fascinating show of different tones and colour combinations. And here is a ridiculously long panorama (of 15 frames) from our balcony, mainly to demonstrate Photoshop CS3's fabulous stitching capabilities! All you need to do is stack your photos one on top of the other (all photos in one file, each photo in its own layer), hit Edit -> Auto Align Layers, and after that, hit Edit -> Auto Blend Layers, and as if by magic, you have a perfect panorama without ANY visible seams. (Provided that you have done the right thing and used same manual settings - aperture, SS and focus - for all the photos and used long enough focal length to avoid barrel distortion). All you have to do is crop and adjust levels, if necessary, and that's it. It's truly an amazing tool. Click on the photo to see bigger version of it.
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