Photography Post-Processing: Questions and How-Tos (HDR :getin:)

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > Photography Post-Processing: Questions and How-Tos (HDR :getin:)

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

A video tutorial I made about Topaz Adjust and my basic processing technique.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThYH4a92yvk

Here is the final image from the tutorial.

Zoowick fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Jan 14, 2009

# ¿ Jan 14, 2009 17:29

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:19

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

friendship waffle posted:

yeah, I shoot in JPEG, always run them through RAW converter, rockin' it like ren rockwell

here's how to make a massive vignette guys, I know it's hard work but that kind of post processing really pays off when you're a bigshot like me

oh yeah, horrible HDR clouds is the poo poo on portraits! it works even better if you have the subject looking off into space at the edge of the frame, with lots of negative space behind her! what's that? you say I shouldn't crop edges off people's legs? nah, the rules of composition don't apply to true masterminds.

I never said it was the right way, it's just how I roll. Some people dig my poo poo others not so much. It's all good, I suck at following rules anyway.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2009 17:48

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

friendship waffle posted:

really, you're really defending him?

First of all, shooting JPEG and running it through RAW converted instead of just shooting RAW in the first place, for posed shots, is 100% stupid ken rockwell poo poo.

Second, the mega HDR look is extremely cheesy and overdone. The same applies to slapping a vignette on everything.

Third, the composition of that photo is undeniably bad, and violates all the basic rules taught in your first photo class. It's fine to break rules if you have a reason but this just looks sloppy.

I'd love to see an actual rebuttal to any of those three points.

I shoot JPEG to keep file sizes down and to speed up my workflow. I average about 10 or so sessions a week plus weddings. The composition sucks I'll give you that one, I just really liked the look of her body and the way the light way laying on her in that shot. I enjoy what I do as do my clients and at the end of the day that's all that really matters. I'm curious who some of your favorite photographers are? Mine are Jill Greenberg, David Hill, Joey L so obviously I like that overdone look. My target market does not give a poo poo about technically flawless images they just want to look awesome.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2009 19:35

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

Fidel Castronaut posted:

If anybody has any input or good tutorials on using textures in post, that would be greatly appreciated.

Grayscale the texture you are working with and mess with all of the different blending modes, the ones I frequent are "overlay" and "softlight" Here is a quick sample:

Starter image:

Grayscale texture:

Texture with "overlay" blending mode. I masked about 50% of the texture off of the subjects face to preserve details. I also did a little "highpass" overlay to pop the details.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2009 19:44

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

Mannequin posted:

I enjoyed watching that, thanks! How did you put this together? Some kind of screen-recording program + microphone?

Edit: with regard to the Photoshop memory thing, if you haven't done it already, get an external HD and add it as a scratch disk in Photoshop so that it starts using up HD space in conjunction with your RAM. It will really improve your performance. I have 3 externals that I use for this purpose as well as backing up my images.

I never answered this, I used Camtasia. Also you are my hero for informing me about that external HD tip.

http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp

# ¿ Jan 19, 2009 17:42

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

DoLittle posted:

I did some post-processing on friend's holiday photos. Mostly for practice. The originals are .jpg:s shot with a point'n'shoot.

Original:

Post-processed:

The processing consisted of blending layers with different exposure adjustment together (-2 -1 0 ans +1), noise ninja and sharpening a'la poopinmymouth. Thank you for the great tutorial! It was what got me started on more intensive processing than playing with the sliders in Lightroom.

Is there something you would have done differently?

Made me think of this video

# ¿ Mar 9, 2009 03:51

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

Cyberbob posted:

I really enjoy David Hill, but I'm not sure what techniques he uses to gain the effect he goes for. Any pointers?

Best I could come up with

http://limeliteimages.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/dave-hill-tutorial/

# ¿ Mar 10, 2009 01:29

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

brad industry posted:

The thing you have to remember is that Dave Hill is carefully lighting his images with whatever processing he does in mind from the beginning. He's not just slapping some sliders around in LR or PS.

Definitely, he's got some videos on his website and some of them show the insane amount of lights he uses on his shoots. He is what I'm striving for as far as lighting goes.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2009 05:00

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

I made a tutorial today, some of you might be interested in it.

Straight out of camera.

After processing

How to video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V1h0u5Dow0

Zoowick fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Aug 18, 2009

# ¿ Aug 18, 2009 03:23

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

rigeek posted:

Dude, awesome, please please keep these coming!!

Before

After

How to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c11v5qe7jKk

# ¿ Aug 19, 2009 04:14

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

Before

After

How to

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn3d4MMKWnw

# ¿ Aug 19, 2009 05:51

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

Aslan Bebop posted:

I've gotta be honest, I think the corrected one looks pretty horrible. WAY too much fill light and general HDR horribleness.

I've noticed on tutorials that I've watched even if I hate the final outcome there is usually some cool information or a little trick I pick up that makes the tutorial worth it to me.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2009 18:09

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

pwn posted:

I liked the fact that you are in love with your brand.

I should incorporate a little "me" loving my logo in the logo. Branding is good for business.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2009 20:18

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

Toupee posted:

I have to say, I think you take your warming way too far.

Other than that, these are nice, as I'm too lazy to lookup keyboard shortcuts for stuff. I'm curious why you don't just make an action for vignetting though.

The same reason you don't lookup keyboard shortcuts for stuff.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2009 21:00

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

Shannow posted:

Question - You mention that you shoot almost excusively on iso50, just wondering why? My understanding of the extended iso modes on the 5d was that you sacrifice tonal range to enable it (I think it's highlights clip earlier at 50 ande shadows at 1600, without looking up that may be the wrong way round). Just seemed an odd thing to do when you say at the start that you pump up the fill light gain more tonal range in the first place.

Least amount of noise possible. It just gives me more leeway when pulling from shadows. Also I like to incorporate dramatic skies in a lot of my portraits with strobes so you need a really low ISO to keep from going over your camera's sync speed.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2009 21:10

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

AIIAZNSK8ER posted:

What is the filter action he mentions Lucius 30? I don't understand what it does.

It's a filter called "Lucis Arts" I have an action that uses that filter named "Lusic 30" I got the action from another forum. Basically it's like Topaz Adjust, I just like the way it deals with skin better.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2009 21:12

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

rigeek posted:

It's easy to over-use the Topaz / Lucis filters .. but when a properly lighted photo is processed with one of them correctly, the end result is usually pretty good, Dave Hill or not. I'll be the first to admit sometimes stuff looks over-the-top, but bottom line is, and I'm sure Zoowick will back me up here, that's what certain types of clients want these days .. they want over-the-top, larger-than-life type photos. Bands, HS seniors, etc. Gotta give 'em what they want!

Now not to derail, a question .. been doing Google searches with not much luck .. where to find some good textures for Photoshop? Inspired by Zoo's latest tutorials, never really thought of using textures and overlays in processing, but I have a few shots it would work well with .. don't mind paying for them if reasonable but free would be better.. anyone?

Just take some images of concrete, wood, paper, rocks, rust... they all work awesome for overlays and they'll be the exact size you need. Even google images will get you a ton of stuff if you are the lazy type.

# ¿ Aug 21, 2009 18:32

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

My interpretation of the David Hill look

Before

After (actually a slightly different image from the same set but processed the same)

How to video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-uzEJlQhCw

# ¿ Sep 12, 2009 14:13

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

The Twilight look

Before

After

Awesome lighting diagram.

How to video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h4ZltGTfDQ

# ¿ Sep 17, 2009 17:29

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

Before:

After:

How to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_01v4ha6KU

# ¿ Sep 18, 2009 16:40

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

poopinmymouth posted:

Amazingly I found it again: http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/DNG_Profiles#Downloads_and_Installation

Thank you for this.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2009 14:06

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

fenner posted:

I made a tutorial of how I do it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xDKxRdpyS0

Awesome and thank you.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2009 03:22

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:19

Zoowick: Apr 9, 2007; Making fifteen year old girls looks like whores since 2006

Bottom Liner posted:

reposting this from the wedding thread to hopefully get a suggestion tonight:

Question; I'm shooting a wedding tomorrow thats outside on a mountain hillside and the guests will be facing straight at the sun at 5:00 when the ceremony starts. I was there today for the rehearsal and the lighting was a pain in the rear end. The backlighting was so strong I either had completely over exposed sky or completely underexposed subjects. Is my only solution to use flash during the ceremony? Can I edit this to be nice and soft somehow? What should I be metering in a scene this dynamic? Here's the setup:

(straight from camera, and I have no idea how to make it look decent)

In short, how do I deal with intense backlit sun here?

Expose for them and add a sky in post. Also try and compose the images so there is not a lot of sky in them. Also take a few from the other side in those bushes so you can use the light.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2009 03:31

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > Photography Post-Processing: Questions and How-Tos (HDR :getin:)