Digital Image Editing

Summary:

For this further installment of FotoTV Tech, Marc Ludwig has invited photographer Andre Brockschmidt and Photoshop artist, Ruben Schmidt of www.equipment-calender.com, to discuss the top-selling heavy construction equipment calendar, as well as demonstrate several Photoshop compositing techniques.

Brockschmidt gives us some very insightful information, including showing us some behind the scenes video on location while shooting under some very extreme conditions. Using up to 25 images per shot the calendar project had a budget of about EUR 100.000. The calendar has been a top-seller due to the extremely unique perspective showcasing large construction vehicles, on spectacular backdrops in a way we have never seen before.

In conclusion, Photoshop artist Schmidt demonstrates how he brings all the separate images together to compose one very impressive shot, which incidentally, can take up to three days to complete.

Summary:

Adobe Lightroom 3 is the free public beta version which Marc Ludwig and his guest speaker, Thorsten Kieslich are here today to demystify the new improvements of Lightroom 3 in this comprehensive tutorial for FotoTV Tech.

Adobe has released a beta version of its Photoshop Lightroom 3 workflow and image editing software. Available immediately for free download from Adobe Labs, the new version includes features such as 'intuitive' importing, improved noise reduction, enhanced slideshows and direct online publishing options such as Flickr.

Kieslich describes that Lightroom 3 beta has been completely redesigned with under-the-hood efficiencies to better handle growing image libraries and improves responsiveness with a higher-quality processing engine. In the Library module, a rebuilt import system makes bringing photos into the software more intuitive. Users can easily specify the source and destination of their images, and save common processing, metadata or destination settings as easy-to-reuse presets.

The Library module also includes new capabilities to publish collections on popular photo-sharing sites. Flickr users now have direct access to their accounts from within Lightroom and can drag and drop images directly into their Photostreams. Flickr Pro account users can automatically synch their images and even view comments made on Flickr directly within the Library. This functionality can be extended to additional sites by adding them as new plug-ins once they become available.

Some important and fun new functions and techniques that have been completely redesigned are:

(1) Importing has been redesigned with a new import window that lets you easily see where your images are coming from and where they’re going, with lots of little improvements and enhancements to make the process easier and much more visual.

(2) Drag and Drop Publishing to the Web (and more). Now you can just drag and drop an image to have it automatically published directly from Lightroom right up to Flickr, or directly to an iPhone sync folder, etc..

(3) Pro-level Noise Reduction. This is an area that Lightroom always lagged behind on, but now they have real pro-level noise reduction that competes, or beats, about anything out there (especially because it can do its noise reduction at the Raw file level, rather than on a processed 8-bit file).

(4) Built-in Film Grain feature. There’s been a lot of buzz recently about bringing back that film-grain look, and now that’s built right in.

(5) Better vignetting by a long shot. They really enhanced the post crop vignetting, and now post crop gives you a much better looking, and more natural result (and you have two choices for the type of vignetting effect as well).

(6) You can finally export a slideshow with music embedded in the slideshow (at last), and you can have your slideshow automatically sync the length of the slideshow to the length of your song. Plus, they made it so, on a Mac, you don’t need to use iTunes to host your slideshow music.

(7) Real watermarking is here. Now you can create real watermarks, at different sizes and opacities, and put them where you want them, for both web and print.

(8) Create print layouts with photos wherever you want them. Now there’s a Custom Print Package feature that lets you put as many photos, in whatever shape and size, on the page wherever you want them (you’re no longer restricted to use a grid of uniform cells), so now you can really come up with some creative print layouts without having your hands tied.

(9) You can change the background color for prints. Now you can choose any color as your background for printed pages. I know it sounds like a little thing, but it’s big.

(10) The Collections panel is now in the Develop Module, too. This one addition will dramatically increase your efficiency because now you don’t have to constantly switch back and forth between the Library Module and Develop Module, because you can get to all your collections and images from right within the Develop Module itself.

Have fun discovering the new and improved Adobe Lightroom 3!

Summary:

In this Photoshop tutorial, Karsten Franke gives step-by-step instructions regarding image repair with the patch tool.

The patch tool is another Photoshop repair tool that combines the selection behavior of the Lasso tool with the color blending properties of the healing brush tool. In a previous Photoshop tutorial with the healing brush tool, Franke worked with empty layers for his adjustments, but here with the patch tool, empty adjustment layers are not possible, therefore a copy of the background layer must first be made.

Franke shows that repairing parts of an image takes only a few seconds by following two simple steps. First select an area that you want to use as the area to be fixed. Then, drag the patch tool selection to another part of the image that has about the same color and texture as the area you want to replace. Release the mouse button and the patch tool completes the job.

In conclusion, this tool is ideal if your image has cracks, or stains, or blemishes etc. It is very similar to the healing brush tool except with the patch tool you can define a selection where you want the effects applied.

Summary:

This Photoshop tutorial with Karsten Franke shows how to remove dust spots, scratches and imperfections using Photoshop’s Healing Brush Tool.

Franke starts with the necessary steps to preparing an image before retouching by pointing out the best way to protect your original image is to do all retouching work on a duplicate layer of the original image.

The healing brush tool corrects imperfections, causing them to disappear into the adjacent image by painting with sampled pixels from an image or pattern. Additionally, the healing brush also matches the texture, lighting, transparency, and shading of the sampled pixels to the pixels being healed in either aligned or non-aligned mode. As a result, the repaired pixels blend realistically with the rest of the image.

In conclusion, Franke notes that working with the healing brush is similar to using the clone stamp tool. However, as you move the healing brush over the area to be "healed" it produces a temporary blurred effect until the computer has time to calculate the finished result. For those not yet familiar with this tool the healing brush speeds up retouching immensely, brushing away imperfections, producing natural, almost magical results.