ronpalmer

I know I promised to provide further information on the use of Black and White in Photoshop Elements, However, I came upon an issue that, in fact, may be a little more important, before we get to making changes to your images.

I own a Canon XTI, and have become familiar with the settings of my camera in Digital Photo Professional and Photoshop Elements 7, I don’t even think about it any more.  But when Number 1 son went out and purchased a Canon 50D and started shooting with it, he sent me a couple of the pictures.  I was shocked at how soft and flat the images were, considering the images I get off of my camera which should be a little less in quality.

So I had a look at them and found out that my son hadn’t started to get a feel for his camera and just expected the pictures to be the best they can be.

 Copyright Andrew Palmer © 2010

They aren’t bad by any means but the colours just aren’t there and the definition is there as well, So I dug out my Photoshop Elements 7 and because it was in Jpeg I had to adjust the jpeg not my favourite way but for the exercise it will work.

As you can see by the side by side there is quite a difference when the shot is adjusted.  And so you know, I asked before I used the pictures as one of my pet peeves is copyright infringement.  Nate ,my son’s friend in the picture was more than happy to let me use the picture for my blog, especially because he liked the changes I had made to the photo.

So what did I do. 

I love trying new things and I love the Imagenomics products so I decided to try an add-on by another Company TOPAZ detail2, for which I had seen some great reviews on.

So I applied Topaz Detail 2 from my filter list in Photoshop Elements (as below)

Not 100 per cent familiar with all of the functions I didn’t make any changes, I dd however go through all of the presets to see how thay affect the picture. and ended up choosing MicroContrast Enhancement on the left as below:

So I applied Noiseware as I wanted to smooth a little of the skin with Imagenomic’s Noiseware 

Using the default settings and make sure self learning is turned on.

Now the last thing I did was get the black true by In Photoshop Elements going to enhance > Levels > then selecting the black eye dropper and selecting the black lettering on the red t-shirt. This brought the picture a little too dark, so under the levels graph you will see three triangles a black, a grey and a white.  I moved the white triangle to the left to 237 and moved the grey triangle to the left half of the difference between 250 and 237 so it moved to 1.07 this evens out the grey areas in the picture.

Not a lot of work but it showed my son that there were improvements that can be made even to jpegs.

Now I am sure there are a few of you reading this and thinking why? In the original picture, Nate is concentrating on his phone but I felt it didn’t emphasize the feeling of concentration enough.  I also felt the colours didn’t pop in the picture.  But it also showed me, that similar to my camera that his camera needs to be adjusted, and I am sure there are not too many out there that do not.  On my Canon XTI with my Tamron Lens, in DPP, I move to the second tab and add 4 contrast, 4 hue and move saturation to 112 and Sharpness to 30.  Only after trying variations of this did i come to this as my standard.  And this is now one of my custom settings on the camera.  Not every picture needs all of these adjustments and I review each picture but for the most part all pictures taken on the same day will in all likely hood need the same adjustments.

So even when you own the latest camera you should sit down and try the software that comes with your camera.  Canon DPP has a lot of tools with in it that can help when you are processing Raw Files. In DPP, you can apply the settings to a batch of photos almost instantly by right clicking on the image you worked on and copy the recipe to your clipboard and then select all your other images and paste  Nikon also has a very good program.  Adobe Camera Raw that comes with Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements is also very good, however the settings are very much different and take a bit of getting used too.

As always you know what you saw, so the adjustments you make should be to get it as close to the picture you saw.

Now I am not paid by any manufacturer of software or camera, I believe in the try before you buy and that is exactly what I have done.  All software products mentioned in this article have try before you buy versions although some may be limited. Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements are Trademarks of Adobe Corporation  Noiseware Professional is a registered trademark of Imagenomic, Detail 2 is a registered trademark of Topaz Labs   Any Images used are only for instructional purposes.

 Ron Palmer

Ron Palmer Photography

Ron Palmer Contact

Photographers Direct - stock photography images

Check out these photos!

Gord Bamford 6 time nominee for the Canadian Country Music Awards, Fan’s Choice Award, Single of the Year, Album of the Year, Songwriter of the year, CMT Video of the Year, and Male Artist of the Year, Playing at Capital Ex in Edmonton Ab Canada.

Good Concert Photography involves a little luck and lots of work.  For this concert there was no Flash photography used, all pictures were taken with a Canon XTI, fitted with a Tamron 18-250 Lens no filters, and taken at 1/200 at 1600 ISO and F6.3.

And the Competition for Gord Bamford is none other than George Canyon, the Headliner for the show at Capital EX on Sunday July 25, 2010.  George Canyon was nominated in 3 Categories for the CCMA’s in Edmonton this year. Fan Choice, Male Vocalist, Single of the year

George Canyon in colour above and then converted to Black and white below.

Double G, the Fiddler, from George Canyon’s Band. These 2 pictures are showing the use of stage Lighting (below) and natural lighting.  Part of the art of taking concert Photography is to be prepared for anything. The Picture above was taken when Double G came out into the crowd and stood on one of the seats with the background exactly as you see it.

George Canyon and Gord Bamford for an impromptu duet during the concert, you need to always be prepared.

Using your lens can also give you different effects.

The Use of black and white instead of colour can sometimes enhance a picture. In this case, I used a filter in Adobe Elements to recreate a Infra-red effect.

Equipment used:

• Canon XTI Fitted with a (2 Battery) Battery Pack
• Additonal Batteries
• Tamron 18-250
• Adobe Elements 7
• Canon Digital Professional

As you can see I don’t have the big Expensive Camera (although Hopefully someday) I use my camera to help me capture what I see, so you can get pictures with your camera as well.

All in all Concert photography can be fun.  There are some Caveats make sure you can take a camera in, it is no fun paying for a concert and then not being able to shoot the shots because you can’t bring in your camera.

Try to get permission ahead of time, contact the agency or manager for pemission at least 3-4 weeks a head of time. Many will if you offer them first options on the pictures.

Once you start shooting keep shooting you never know what could happen and you might miss the picture that makes the front page.  For this Concert I took 900 pictures in 2.5 hours. But in the end I got everyshot I wanted and some I didn’t. But hey, at a concert you never know when the person in front is gonna move just the wrong way.

When taking pictures at a concert watch the lighting, as it can tell you where people are going on the stage. As well you can see the moving lights and time your shots.  I know this will sound crazy but I also shoot with both eyes open, so I can see what else is happening as well, and be ready.

Processing The Images:

For Concerts I process my pictures a little differently than I do for other photography.  Because I am using a high ISO (1600) I use a noise filter as part of the process, the one that comes with the Canon software is okay, but there are third party noise filters that are better, In this case I used Noiseware Professional from Imagenomic because it is an add-on filter you can use it and then smart key it for one stroke processing for noise.

So now the Process:First is to process the raw files, here I use the the Adobe Elements Editor (only process between 30 and 50 files at a time, otherwise, you could be waiting a while to work on the pictures in full edit) because it allows me to set my primary settings for multiple pictures in a single window and then I process those pictures in the full editor. Once you have processed each picture for the primary settings, so they are close to what you saw. then hit select all and open images

Using Adobe Elements 7, I always set my Black first for concerts, under Enhance - Adjust lighting - levels (CTRL-L) by selecting the eyedropper that has the black ink and then click on the area that I know should be black (it is not always the most black area, this may take a couple of tries till you get the feel for it). 

Now, I will adjust my contrast and brightness from there. Enhance - Adjust Lighting - Contrast and Brightness (sorry no Key shortcut here) This is where your eye kicks in. Usually after setting the Black - I will look to see if maybe some areas are to bright and drop the brightness a little and then kick the contrast up a little.  I find this makes the colours pop, However some pictures don’t need anymore.

There are other adjustments such as colour and convert to black and white.  I will explain a Little about the convert to black and white tool as it has some great applications - 2 of which I have used above, one is the landscape and the other is the Infra red.  Landscape tends to pull out some drama in the picture, and the Infra-Red makes the details pop in Black and White.  In this case, the Black and White picture made the artist look like he was in an old time film using the landscape mode and the infrared version just punches out the details in an otherwise okay picture. Each Black white catefory (there are six) changes your image a little further, In my next blog, I will show all of the versions using six versions of one photograph, so that you can see the differences, until next time….

Keep Shooting - You take the pictures the camera only holds them for you.