StormTrain: A tale of two white balances

Last week I uploaded the following photo to flickr, showing the south end of the Berwyn platform during Chicago's first major snow storm of 2012:


Nikon D7000 w/ 16-85mm, 1/20sec at f4, ISO400. © Andy Marfia 2011 All Rights Reserved.

At the time, I debated between that version and the following:


© Andy Marfia 2011 All Rights Reserved.

I thought I'd let my blog readers see them both.  Of the two shots, I find the first to be more attractive, but the second is closer to what the camera recorded-- it's a more accurate document of the moment.  This was at the very tail end of the blue hour, so there really wasn't much blue in the sky-- it was more of a deep, dark purple.  I wanted it to be closer to blue, so I adjusted the white balance from 2850k to 2000k when I processed the RAW file:



I also made an adjustment to the orange channel (dropping the white balance that low had turned the orange lights into a soft yellow and I wanted to retain the orange):



If you have a preference between the two, leave a comment and let me know?  Note: there is no right and wrong answer.  Night photos are tricky to process-- city lights can be a variety of color temperatures, and sodium vapor lights (which are in decline but still prominent in Chicago) often leave the world a garish orange.  Whether you like that look or not is quite subjective.  For me, it varies from photo to photo.  Also, sometimes you just have to throw your hands in the air and convert everything to black and white.

Adobe announces Photoshop CS5 with new Lens Correction Tool

Adobe formally announced their Creative Suite 5 yesterday, which of course includes a new version of Photoshop.  I already touched on the new "Content Aware Fill" feature in a previous blog post.  Other new features include an improved selection tool, the ability to better remove noise (or add grain) to photos, a new warping tool called "Puppet Warp" that just sounds weird, some HDR crap for those who care about HDR, and finally, a much improved Lens Correction Tool.

It's the last item that I'm most excited about.  Up until now, Photoshop has had limited features for correcting complicated lens distortion.  Sure, you could correct barrel and pincushion distortion, but many zoom lenses exhibit BOTH barrel and pincushion distortion AT THE SAME TIME.  Photoshop has never really been able to deal with that.  This new version will be able to read your EXIF data and correct distortion specific to the camera and lens you were using.  It's a great idea, and frankly one that's long overdue.  DXO labs Optics Pro has had this exact functionality for some time now, and I've used that program with some success.  The only downside is that it's a standalone program, so using it screws up my workflow (it essentially replaces Camera Raw).  If I can get the same results out of Photoshop, that would be a better solution.

For more information about the new version of Photoshop and the other programs in Creative Suite 5, I suggest you check out the Adobe official launch web site.  Once there, you can watch an hour long video of some over caffeinated Adobe employees explaining all the new features.  It's actually rather entertaining.

Adobe dazzles with new Photoshop 'Content-Aware Fill" Tool

Adobe has released a video showcasing a new tool for Photoshop CS5, called the "Content-Aware Fill"-- essentially an expanded and much more useful version of the healing brush tool.  This has been going around the internet for the past week, so much so that four different people have now emailed it to me.  Everyone seems genuinely excited.



I think the video speaks for itself.  It looks amazing, right?  For graphic designers, the time saving possibilities here are pretty mind boggling.  For photographers, I'm sure this will be useful as well... though I hope it's not too useful.  I'd like to think that I wouldn't take a photo that needed an entire tree removed.  Still, you never know.

I'd like to point out a couple of unknowns at this point:

1) What kind of processing power does a tool like this require?  If I had to guess, I'd say the guy in the video is using a Mac Pro with at least one (and quite possibly two) Intel quad core Xeon processors.  In other words, if you're not using bleeding edge equipment, this will run much more slowly. 

2) It's hard to tell from the video how good this looks zoomed to 100%?  Does it leave behind artifacts or smudge the details?  Will grain and texture match?  These things matter if you care about quality and are making prints larger than 8x10.

Adobe is set to officially announce CS5 on April 12th, so stay tuned.

satellite love (before and after)

I thought this would be a good photo for my before and after series.  This is the original, unprocessed photo:



I shot this with a Nikon D90 and 16-85mm lens at 85mm.  When I took this photo I knew that I would try cropping it in post processing.  I really wanted to zoom in closer on the satellite dishes and the moon but didn't have a longer lens with me at the time.  Fortunately, the photo was high enough quality to allow for the cropping-- this is an instance where having a 12mp sensor verses 6mp really comes in handy.

Aside from the cropping, I really just darkened the whole image, and boosted the saturation a bit in the sky.  I did this all with Adobe Camera RAW.

SUNLIG_T! (before and after)

One of my flickr contacts emailed asking about the processing of this photo, so I thought I would post a before and after shot.  Here's the RAW version:



I made three small changes to this photo: 1) I increased the saturation by about 15%, 2) I cropped it slightly, and 3) I compressed the levels, thus increasing the contrast and blowing out a good deal of the highlight detail.

I do #3 on virtually every photo I post, though normally without the blown highlights.  Maintaining highlight detail is actually a pet peeve of mine, but since this photo was already overexposed to begin with, it seemed logical to carry that further.  Rules are meant to be broken.

Photo Details: Nikon D90 w/16-85mm lens, 1/200sec at f7.1, ISO200

The City Grey

The City Grey is a Chicago based experimental rock band, consisting of local musicians Neil Klemz and Scott McKenna.  I have no idea if this name will stick-- they seem to change it weekly-- or if they will ever record an album, but I hope they do.  I've noticed lately that some of my photographs seem to work well with their name, so I had a little fun with Photoshop today:





Clicking on either image will lead you back to the original photograph, which I should note are Copyright 2009 Andy Marfia.

More information (or possibly less) about The City Grey can be found via Neil Klemz or maybe on their myspace page.

Photo details: Nikon D90 with 16-85mm lens, f8, ISO200. The top photo is a 1/100sec exposure where as the bottom photo is 1/320sec.

Making Lemonaid out of Lemons.

One of the things that I love about digital photography is the ability to work with photos in post processing.  I usually try to keep this to a minimum-- that is, to keep the final image reasonably close to what was captured with the camera-- but sometimes a photo requires more dramatic changes.  Below is a good example:

Final version:



Original:



This was shot through the window of a moving car while passing through the Chicago Skyway Toll Plaza.  I was using a Nikon D50 and an 18-70mm lens, 1/640th at f9, and the ISO was set to 200.  The RAW file was processed using Adobe Camera Raw and then Photoshop CS2.  I thought about keeping this a color photo, but even with the increased contrast the colors didn't quite pop, and black and white seemed to better match the retro feel of the signage.

For the record, here are the steps that I went through in processing this:

1. RAW conversion.
2. A slight perspective adjustment.
3. Dust spots removed using the healing brush tool. 
4. A subtle vignette was added.
5. Levels adjustment.
6. Conversion to B&W via the Channel Mixer.
7. Faux film grain added.  I apply grain via a layer that you can download here, set to "overlay" at 40% transparency in this case.  I don't always add grain to my digital b&w photos, but sometimes the photo feels like it needs it.
8. Sepia toning.  This was set to the shadow areas only via "blending options".
9. Finally, the border.

collapsed b&w

I feel like it's been ages since I posted a good b&w.  This photo of a collapsed volleyball net was split toned "dark red" in the shadow areas via photoshop.  I usually tone my photos either red (to simulate a traditional darkroom selenium tone) or sepia.

Click on the photo to see a larger version over at flickr.

Nikon D50 with 18-70mm lens.

Watch.

An advertisement for Comcast, demanding that we watch... something.  I don't remember what.  Or perhaps they're watching us.

I'll admit to a little photoshopping on this one.  In the original photograph the word "Comcast" was partially visible in the lower left corner.  I cloned that out for compositional reasons.

Nikon D50 with 24mm lens.