Uber Noise Reduction

One of the tools in Lightroom 3 that have been talked about since the release of the Public Beta 2 version of Lightroom 3 has been the noise reduction slider in the Details pallet of the Develop Module. I am here to tell you, the hype was worth the wait. It is really cool.

I was in my hotel room and took the following images with my Canon G9 of the closest thing I could think of, my MacBook Pro.

These first two images were shot AT 1/125 AND F/2.8. Both were at an ISO of 1600. This is normally an unusable image as seen in the image above. Enter Lightroom 3’s new noise reduction. The bottom image is not a different shot, it is the same one only after noise reduction has been applied.

So how does this compare to a lower ISO image. Below is 1/6 second (not bad for hand holding) at f/2.8 and ISO of 100. This effectively reduced the light sensitivity of the sensor requiring a longer exposure for the same aperture.

The tonality is slightly different between the two shots but then the exposure ratio did not remain constant. I was just trying to sho the difference between the cameras relatively good ISO 100 performance vs the cruddy ISO 1600.

I may not be using 1600 ISO on the G9 but I will not hesitate to use ISO 800 and expect usable images.

Nice work Adobe!

Have a great weekend and take care... Doug

Majestic

Early this morning I was on a flight from Seattle WA to Reno NV. This route is always spectacular when the weather is clear as you can see all the mountains from Rainier shown above. As we were climbing out of the Seattle area I knew the possibility of a really nice side shot of the mountain may exist. We were on the shadow side though which provides a different view of a traditional mountain shot.

The image below is of Mt. Hood southeast of Portland OR. We were somewhat higher and on the sunny side of the mountain. This angle though provides some interesting lines due to the time

of day. It was 7:15 pacific and as you can see form the long shadow, the sun was still working its way up in the sky. It really gives good definition to the ridges in the mountain.

Below is another shot of the same intro image only in B&W. I figured I would go Ansel Adams seeing as how our route of flight was going to take us over his infamous shooting grounds.

Tomorrow I am going to try and give an evaluation of Lightroom 3 as I have been using the fully released version of it for the bast few days.

For now though, take care... Doug

Flower Child

Well this is going to be a short post as I have been buried all week. I have been heavily into graphic development at work and then editing this shoot I did a couple of weeks ago. On the MacBook Pro your wrists rest on a portion of the computer that tends to warm up. Not hot but enough to let you know you have been on the computer for some time.

Anyhow I wanted to get this one up as I it was really the result of some artistic exploration on my part. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. All the flowers are shots I took at the Orchid display at the Hawaiian Botanical Gardens just north of Hilo Hawaii.

Working with the baby files in Lightroom, I was converting some of them to black and white and this idea struck me.

Hey, it was fun and I might shoot flowers at some different angles in the future for a library of 3D looking flowers.

That's it for this week. Cya next week and have a great weekend... Doug

Experimantal

Here is another image from the Maryland wet morning photo-drive. I think I just coined a new photo word. I am leaning towards making all of these images black and white because frankly, they have good composition and contrast, there just is no color in them from the drabness of the day. I was going to do a little dodge and burning on this image but the more I looked at it the more it stood on its own. All I did was a small levels adjustment and build a mild vignette.

The image is in its native crop and I got to thinking how it might look as square or in a 4:3 ratio. There are two layers  layers on the screen capture below labeled 4x1 and 1x1. These were created using the rectangle shape tool and set the constraints as shown in the second screen capture. These automatically go to their separate layers when created.

Now with the original image on the top layer you can go to Layer>Group with Previous to use the layer below to clip the layer above. You can also move your cursor over the line dividing the two layers while holding down the Option key noting the cursor turns to what I call the Ying-Yang scrubber and click.

Below is the rectangle options panel. I used proportional as I was not concerned with the final output size. Experiment with the other options id you like.

In the image below you can see where the original image is clipped to the 4x3 mask. What is nice about this it that up until now it is non-destructive. You can move the 4x3 layer around as well as transform its size.

Once you are satisfied with how the "soft crop" looks you can go ahead and commit to a final crop that removes data. It is time like that when I really enjoy lightroom.

I think that will do it for today. Check back tomorrow to see if I am still here.

Cya... Doug

Black and White Color Technique

Here is a nice photo of a gal looking into a mirror. An often shot wedding image that gives the viewer a look at a brides moment of contemplation and thought as she looks introspectively into the mirror. Strictly black and white images hold a very special affinity in and of there own. They are timeless and provide a sense of grounding in their own purity.

I will not be the one to slight the black and white purist but in the age of digital we have the ability to much more easily add an aspect color enhancement to the black and white image. So here we go.

This is really a quick effect on the black and white image. Four simple adjustment layers applied to the image and it takes on a whole different effect. First is a Solid Color adjustment layer set to a Color Burn blending mode. You can use what ever color you like but for this example I settled on a color of R:222, G:198, and B:144. The mask that comes with the adjustment layer get shot to black to block the effect and then a soft brush paints it joust over the skin area.

That could have been enough but I wanted to push the image a little further so I copied the  Adjustment layer by pressing Command-J and setting the masks all to black. You can tell by the red color in the adjustment layer icon that the lips were going to be really punchy so I dialed down the Fill Opacity to 26 so there would be just a hint of lip color. The Eyes adjustment layer may not have been necessary but it darkened the iris to give it a bit more depth.

Finally I wanted to add a vivid contrast to the whole image so I painted in at 10% opacity the blue eye shadow. Here is a big difference in opacity. When painting at a reduced opacity you are setting the brush opacity in the brush attributes bar just below the Photoshop menu bar. Buy using this method you can paint without releasing you mouse or pen and get a consistent "amount" of effect. When you repaint, you can build-up the effect by however much you have the brush opacity set until you reach 100% opacity. Once you have the effect painted in, it may look overdone as in this case. Here is where the layer opacity saves the day. You can see that Eye Shadow layer has an opacity of 68% attached to it. Having those value appear automatically would be nice but I type these values in so I can look at the layer stack and see all the settings at once.

So the final image gives a different depth to the original black and white image. Again, nothing against the original, just a different take.

Take care for today... Doug