Posts in Photography

Picture Styles!

Photography

Some say this is utter useless, others think that it’s the best thing since sliced bread! Since my workflow is primarily in RAW and I’ve enough automated actions, adjustments and scripts to do most of those, how does this Picture styles affect me? For wedding photography, I prefer to hand-adjust the ones going into the PhotoBook but when bulk printing or for inclusion into a CD, a carefully tuned Picture style can do all that in camera can give you the JPEGs that you can use right out of the camera. I’ve just started experimenting so that ideal picture-style for me is still a ways off. But check out the following photo with several different Picture-styles applied. I believe the styles are ‘Landscape’, ‘Monochrome with orange filter and medium contrast’, ‘Nostalgic’ and ‘Clear contrast’.

Canon EOS-40D, first impressions

Photography
Mong Kok KCR Station, Hong Kong

After six-hundred frames in HK… I can sort of say the following few things about the 40D improves upon the 20D. I don’t have a 5D or 1D-series so those are out of the question.
The Pros:
– Lower noise – Clean images at ISO 3200 plus hi-ISO noise reduction actually works!
– Much quieter shutter – Almost inaudible in the typical environment.
– Full-time ISO display in the viewfinder!
– Image quality is miles ahead of the 20D.
– Picture-styles rock! Overall better tonality and dynamic range!
– Customize!! So easily to customize and save then into presets
– Big, bright viewfinder. Much improved.
– Faster-focus (just a feeling but it’s snappier)
– Quicker write and longer buffer.
The Bad:
– Screen is lovely and large but gets facial oils in a hurry!
– Needs firmware fix for Adobe Camera Raw

EOS-40D

Photography

Unbelievably priced in HK. I guess if the 5D replacement was out, I would have gotten it! Darn. Real-life usage report coming… after my stomach gets a rest from 48-hours of eating! Sorry for the bad photos. After walking all day, eating all day, it was hard to get a good photo in the poorly lit hotel room.

Photoshop World 2007!

Photography

Blogging live from the Sapphire Conference room of Mandarin Oriental KL City Center via Maxis HSDPA!

Registration counter!
Lots and lots of people!

Post Processing

Photography
Work in progress…

Image workflow… 2015 RAW images. 24 Gigabytes (including the JPEGs).

1. Tag, tag and tag images for post-processing
Images are tagged with stars (1-5) and color tags (yellow, blue, red, etc) for various purposes – PhotoBook, bulk printing, etc. First cut invariably always ends up with about 20% of the photos selected. Subsequent passes will reduce PhotoBook selection to about 60 photos.

2. Adjust white-balance, tonality, exposure and color
Photos are grouped together according to physical location (i.e. dining room, hallway, ballroom sections) to ease correction of white balance. Color, tonal curves and exposure are also tweaked. Occasional photos may require individual adjustment, others, group adjustments are made.

3. Post-Process!
For PhotoBook images, they are individually hand-processed, tweaked, adjusted, cropped and have full works from tonal adjustments to special effects done on them. They retain full resolution. Bulk printing photos are batched processed, reduced to 4 Mega-pixels for printing up to 8R (8″ x 5.33″) with few exceptions. All images are post-processed to ProPhoto color space and 16-bit before reduction to 8-bit sRGB images. Bulk images are saved as Quality-12 JPEGs. PhotoBook images are saved in Photoshop PSD format.

4. RJT PhotoBook Layout and styling
RJT PhotoBooks layouts are done in sRGB 16-bit for quality and flexibility. Once completed, the final pages are output as 8-bit sRGB TIFF images for printing on a Gretag LightJet Digital printer.

5. Bulk printing & PhotoBook printing
Off they go!

Out-of-body experience

Photography

Well, it’s kind of strange that for the first time, I’m sitting down at my PC, going through photos on Bridge, Working it over with Photoshop and compiling a PhotoBook. Nothing out of the ordinary that you can tell except that the photos are all mine. Not mine as in photographed by me, but all the photos are all about me and my precious darling. Just feels slightly odd though.

Layers, layers, layers!