Trail closed, selective color

Or seconds, as the case may be. You may remember this post from a few days ago. It was also posted to my photostream on Flickr, where one of the comments expressed surprise that the selective coloring took no more than a few minutes relative to the rest of the image (total time was two hours).

The trick to getting the selective color so quickly was twofold:

1. I was fortunate in that the image is almost monochrome already (remember me saying that before?).
2. I was using Photoshop CS5

To explain: if I were to do this quickly, without the editing out of distracting objects and fine-tuned sharpening, the steps to create this would boil down to:

• Duplicate the original layer;
• Convert new (top) layer to B&W;
• Add a layer mask, showing all grey;
• Punch holes in the mask to let some color through;

Looking at it like this, you would think that I hand-painted each bit of color.  This should take a lot of time, no? Well, doing it that way would take a lot of time.

I did it a better way.  Remember that this is essentially a monochrome image.  Mostly green, with some blue and some orange.  That means we can almost safely use the Color Select tool in Photoshop to select the individual elements.  The sign, for example:

• Open Photoshop.
• Click “Select” in the menu, then “Color Range.”
• Click anywhere on the orange areas.
• Move the “Fuzziness” slider until all oranges are selected (you’ll get part of the trail and a few trees, too).
• Use the lasso tool (or marquis, which is what I used) to unselect (alt-click & drag) everything that I don’t want.

Repeat for the blues.

No, to properly write up an overview of the creative process, it should really be set in order.  So in bullet points, here is the thought process that led to the layout for the final shot:

• Examine the object.
  What did I want to show?  On reflection, I wanted to show the almost-reticulated pattern on the back, the edges and how it flattens out on the bottom, and the ridged crevice that is effectively the entrance to the shell.
• Find a background.
  I needed a solid surface that would compliment the shell, while still being different enough to really show contrast. My options: a concrete floor (too hard, would have to get down), a soft wooden floor (too much surrounding light), a mottled-glass table (dusty, dirty, distracting, slightly greenish), a metal-grate table (didn’t compliment, distracted), and a wooden table (arguably, distracting).  I settled for the table.  It was more comfortable, had easy-to-control lighting (environmentally speaking), and nice, warm tones.  Being brown, it worked well with the the shell itself.
• Position the shell.
  The first thing to do is place the shell.  What am I showing? In the case of the ridged middle, I needed that to be visible.  From the left, right, top, bottom, other? To my mind, it didn’t matter – but since the ridges were primary, I put them to the left.  Western eyes start by looking at the top-left, so I tried to help them out here.
• Position the primary/key light.
  The primary light for this object should bring the most contrast to the most important part of the item.  Again, the ridges – so I angled it to be from camera left, pointing at the ridges.  After a test shot, I moved it slightly further forward, too.  This gave a slight emphasis to the ridges. It made them stand out more.
• Position the secondary/fill light.
  The primary gave a lot of light on one side.  As a result, the far side fell off into complete shadow. As such, I lost the shine to the right, along with the reticulated pattern and the dappled spots in the middle of the image (the edge of the cowry). I want them to be well lit, but not quite as well lit as the ridges.  Enter flash #2.  There is no softbox on this, so it’s a strong, bare bulb.  Way too powerful.  Enter the diffuser: the Oceanic catalog, which was nearly solid white.  By positioning it properly, I could reflect the flash off of it & create a larger, softer light source.
• Take test shot #1.
  The first one was at a stab-in-the-dark shutter speed of 1/140 at f/8.  Key was set at 1/32nd power, fill at 1/64th  At this point I find that only part of the image was in focus. A large part of the background was underexposed, too – the table was almost black, not the warm tones of orange and brown that should have been there.
• Take test shot #2.
  For greater depth of field, I bump it up to f/11.  Shutter speed goes down to 1/60th.  I now find: still slightly lost on focus, but better.  The background is OK, but the overall feeling is underexposed, like there isn’t enough light.  It’s flat.
• Take test shot #3.
  Shutter at 1/40th, aperture at f/14.  I’ve really cut down the aperture now, so I bump up the power to 1/8th on the key and 1/16th on the fill.  The results are still… uninspiring.  Not quite enough light – but nothing blown out.
• Take test shot #4.
  Shutter and aperture stay in place.  Flash up to 1/4 power on the key, 1/8th on fill.  Slightly overpowered – the  areas with sheen are slightly blown out, but everything else looks pretty much where it ought to be.
• Take shots, wrap.
  Considering the slightly blown-out highlights to be acceptable, I go for it.  In post (with RAW) I should be able to recover most of them.

I’ll note: each time I move the shell to a slightly different position, it required moving the flashes slightly & re-taking test shots.  Generally speaking, this didn’t require changes to the shutter speed or aperture.

Another view of this specimen:

Cowry, alternate angle

(Note: slightly different from the previously shown shot, this one had a goal of showing the lip at the front of the shell, along with the reticulation on the back.)

Snakehead Cowry, side profile

By taking just a few flashes with me on trips, I can create DIY studio shoots wherever I may be.  Take the image to the right, for example: you’re seeing a snakehead cowry. We found this shell (about 3 inches long), washed up on mile 69 beach, just south of Hapuna beach.  A gift from moana, one could say.  Its owner had long since been eaten, this being just a memory of a life that was.

Now, the sea-lover in me wanted it in the deeps.  What a perfect home for a young hermit crab!  But the photographer in me wanted to see it up close, under the lens.  So to the condo it went, for a short while.

Here’s the problem with a seashell like this: it’s shiny.  Like many shiny objects, it’s tough to photograph.  You need broad light sources, but they can’t be overpoweing. Ideally you would use a professional light box. No such luck, but I did have: three flashes (I only needed two, though), a softbox flash adapter, an Oceanic sales brochure, and a wooden table.  Some tweaking of the layout, and this is how I ended up shooting that shot:

Flash setup for the Cowry shot

After thinking about it, I realized that I don’t really have a strong enough grasp of either optics or physics to pull off an in-depth, highly knowledgeable article on this.  For me, doing anything with bokeh is a bit of a crap shoot.  Intellectually, I get it – but I can only visualize it by feel, and I only know what works for me.

So, that being said, I’m slightly changing the subject: this is still a how-to, but it’s a “how to get a general feel” for bokeh.  Think of this as a training exercise, not a definitive lecture.

So, let’s start.First off: for creating nice, round bokeh-dots, you need quality glass. That is to say a good, fast lens.  And I do mean fast in the traditional sense: a large f/stop – 2.8 is the absolute smallest, but it’s better in the f/1.4 or f/1.8 range. I used a 50mm, f/1.4 lens for the shots below.

For exposure settings, you’ll want something that keeps the ambient light dark.  The bokeh is caused by lighter areas, and you don’t want to blow out the lights altogether.

So start by taking an in-focus shot (Fig. 1). Exposure is best in manual mode – I set it to -2EV for this. Next, change the focus to manual and very slightly move it out of focus (Fig. 2).

Fig. 1 - in-focus bokeh shot

Fig. 2 - Slightly out of focus

Notice that already we have a great shot, and this was barely tweaking the focus at all. Go ahead & give it a further tweak, then another:

Fig. 3 - further out of focus

Fig. 4 - Almost invisible bokeh

Here’s what I want you to notice: the further out-of-focus the light source is, the larger the bokeh circles.  The larger they are, the dimmer they are.

In fact, this is the key concept for today: all things remaining equal, the further out of focus the lights are, the larger and dimmer the bokeh.

Three lights on Pop

The picture to the right was taken with three lights.  Technically four flashes, but only three produced the light in this particular portrait. The fourth worked as the master controller for the other three.

Our goal was to show the beard – a near-year’s worth of growth, which is about to be chopped off.  We wanted to show the full size and fuzziness (this is a lot for this guy), so that later photos can accurately show the contrast.  There  were several poses that we ran through, all of which did pretty well.  This was my favorite, I think – it shows that the hair in the back grew (pony tail, yeah!), as well as the beard effect.

So, how it was done: we started by running through the house.  We needed a background that would be visually interesting if we chose to light it. It also had to be in a room large enough so that we could use light to isolate details if need be.

In the end, we chose the main living room.  It’s large, has dark walls, and a natural-stone fireplace (barely visible in this background).  Unfortunately, a few shots in & we realized that the mantle cuts right through an adult’s head from virtually any angle.  So, darken it we shall!  Take the rear light, turn it around & give the subject rimlight.  This was at 1/32nd power.

For the main light, I opted for an umbrella.  This was not because I wanted to – there was too much spillage for this room with an umbrella.  I only have one softbox, though, and it’s a small one.  So the primary light came from an umbrella.  To keep the splash to a minimum, I choked up the umbrella and zoomed in to 70mm on the flash.  That was going at 1/8th power, so it created a good, but dramatic light.

Too dramatic.  In comes the third flash with the softbox, to camera left.  That was also at 1/32nd by the end of the test shots. It helped give some definition and reduced the severity of the shadows.

Layout of the final shot:

Setup of lights

Strobed cake

Go ahead, take a gander at the pic to the right. Click it, look at it up close. This is one of my favorite (recent) pics – taken just last week on the fly.  Since posting it on Flickr, I’ve had a few people asking about the details.  Perhaps better said: they wanted to know how I did it.

First off, this is a single-strobe shot. The background was brighter than the foreground, so that’s my primary area of exposure concern.  This means taking a reading on one of the brighter areas with a spot meter.  In my case, the in-camera one – no prob.

Now, dial it down a little, to bring in the saturation of the colors.  End result: before I’ve taken the shot, I’ve already set the camera in manual at 1/100th, f/ 9.

This makes the foreground far to dark.  So quick, set the on-camera flash to commander mode, yank of the large flash, set it to sync mode, and hand it to someone nearby (thanks, Josh!).  Set that to 50mm (limit the spread of the light), and have him hold it up near the ceiling.

At this point we have a remote flash, the background exposed properly, and a nearby diffuser to blast light off of (the ceiling).  Set the external flash to iTTL, with “0″ compensation across.

We’re set, now let’s go: give it the first test shot.  As expected, it was too dark. This is mostly due to the light color of the cake and the bright background.  Dialed it up to +.7ev on the flash and took try #2.  Dead on – we’re good.  All shots from that point on were like that.

Flash is barely three feet to camera left for this.  Remember that this is while people are milling about and setting up wedding decorations.  It’s a great effect in little time.

At-home studio shoot of a dark bottle

What you see to the right is a quick shot of some hot sauce that was done at home, to show some friends what the bottle looks like.  The setup I used is rapidly becoming one of my favorite techniques for doing a quick at-home photoshoot that looks like it should be done in a lightbox.

Basically, when you’re doing a lightbox shoot, you’re trying to create an environment where light is diffuse, outside light doesn’t interfere, and you can control all aspects of the shot. Oh, and it has to be quick!

So, setting this up: first of all, I made sure that this was taking place after dark.  No light from outside to interfere.  Then, move to a room where light can be turned off.

Now, with the lights on, setup everything.  In this case, I setup a cookie tin in the back, and stole a pane of glass from a picture frame.  This became the bottom and the sides.  Then, one flash firing towards the back – to illuminate this guy from behind.  One more flash to the right, to give a kick to the site, and for some separation from the background.  Last, a softbox overhead, to light up the tag and make the lid stand out.

Below: a look at the overall layout, courtesy of the Online Lighting Diagram Creator.

Quickshot Layout

Now, how to pull this off.  First of all, you need a layout for the photo.  In my case, I started with a white peice of paper as a background (yeah, it was pretty big).  I also added the tea, cup, plate and chocolate, deliberately picking white dishes.

So that’s the first part, making sure everything is light.

Next, setup the lighting.  I did this in steps:

1. Previsualize the image impact intended
   I knew that I wanted to blow out the background.  This means I need a strobe to cover the background (white piece of paper), and it needs to be brighter than the other light.  For detail in the image, I need light coming from the front (more or less), but also from the side.  Possibly above.
2. Setup the background light
   First flash/strobe is setup.  In this case, I put it to camera left, and just to the left of the cup.  It’s aiming at the background.  This does two things: it lightens the background (allowing me to blow it out), and it creates a backlight,  which will illuminate anything translucent.  This is set to 1/64th, since light in my house/studio is somewhat subdued.
3. Setup primary light
   This is the  light that illuminates the main item (the cup).  It must be brighter than ambient, but not as bright as the background flash.  I set it at 1/32nd, and slapped on a soft box.  Due to light loss with the softbox, the effect is 1/128th (a little under that, actually)
4. Setup kicker light
   A “kicker” would normally be a very soft light (1/128th or more for this with diffusion added) that would rim the object.  In this case, we’re dealing with extremely low power, though.  I opted for a reflector (ahem, a white piece of paper), aimed to send the primary light back in to the shadows
5. Test shots
   A few test shots to flush out details.  In this case, the light settings were fine.  There was some tweaking of the camera settings, but they were minor.  Effectively ended at: 1/125th, f/11, ISO 100.

An example:

Drop of Honey

Note how the drop is lit up by the backlight?  That’s part of the benefit of the high-key imagery…

Mountains over Seward

Almost a year ago, I went to the NAPP Photoshop World in Las Vegas.  I’m dying to go again this year, but I’m afraid I’m out of time.  Maybe next year – especially if they would add more about using Photoshop in the medical field… but I digress.

One of the main concepts I came away with was courtesy of Jean Paul Caponigro.  He said: color is merely a blend of hue, saturation, and luminosity.  He lamented that a photoshop filter (similar to the channel mixer or the contrast/brightness applet) had been removed, but then pointed out that it was back in Adobe Raw, and pointed out a couple of ways to fake it in Photoshop.

Well, that’s kind of the point of the photo to the right.  It was a poorly processed HDR image, which just couldn’t be brought close to color properly in Photomatix – not easily, at least.  The original was far too grey, in fact.  But with H/S/L, we can bring back the colors to how they should be.  The steps I took here, and why:

• Tweaked hue for yellows and greens – moved them more to the green side of the scale, but very slightly.  Yellows, about 11, Greens about 18.  This moved the muted greens over to a more pure green, without adding saturation or brightness.
• Tweaked green luminosity – added no more than 10.  This brightens the greens, which means we lose saturation.  A side benefit: we lose some of the greys.
• Removed about 8 in luminosity from yellows – after the tweaks, they were almost too saturated.
• Slighty bumped green & yellow in saturation – this gets rid of the last of those greys and makes the hills feel “alive.”

Red strobed flowers

Taking a picture with strobes can be somewhat challenging with the setup that you have to the right.  What we have here are two primary colors, red and blue, with slightly different tones that need to come out well saturated.  I’m doing this indoors, so I don’t want the light to be quite as harsh as I did last time, so I’ll use a softbox.  How am I going to set this up so that the background recedes and the flowers are well saturated?

A few things.  First, I need to keep the lighting on the flowers delicate.  They’re already pretty bright, so they don’t need a lot of light.  Too much, and the colors bleach out.  I also need them to be brighter than the background – the background is actually a mid-to-light blue color (my daughter’s lunchbox, in fact).

So I start by exposing f/stop wise where I think I’ll need it for the light.  f/11 or so.  Then I adjust shutter speed while exposing for the background, aiming to hit -1EV for that guy.  Flash with softbox is perched to camera left, set on manual (14 mm spread) at 1/32nd power.  Blinds it out on the petals.  Move it down in third stops until it stops bleaching out: 1/64 even is the flash.  Try slightly smaller and larger f/stops, find f/11 is still the best.

That’s all there was to this.  These petals are from the www.moosestooth.net parking lot (my daughter snagged them).  I did the full setup, shooting and teardown in 20 minutes – her bath.