Well thanks! But yea no HDR in any of those photos, I just blended exposures manually in PS

Amazing pics again skratchy!

Can you pick the one that was the most interesting to blend and just give a high-level rundown of your process? IE - 1. NR, 2. boost shadows, 3. layer mask using small brush, 4. Blended layer using gradient, etc.?

That would be extremely useful info. for me anyway.

Yea sure. I used a similar workflow for almost these photo's, so I'm just going to write down my general workflow.

All the photos are autobracketed +2, 0, -2 and I open them up in ACR. I'll choose one that I want use for the foreground and one that I want to use for the background (sometimes I use all three, with the additional one being to get the correct exposure for something in the middle of the picture). Then I'll play around with the sliders. I almost always tweak the white balance and exposure sliders, as well as increase the contrast and clarity. Sometimes I'll add fill light or increase the blacks. I rarely touch the brightness, vibrancy, and saturation sliders. Once I'm happy with the results for the foreground exposure and the background exposure its time to move onto photoshop.

Ok so I get them opened in PS, stack them, and use a gradient layer mask to blend them. (I didn't know how to use gradients until a few months ago... god I love them!)For tricky spots I'll go in and use something like a medium opacity soft brush to increase/decrease exposure in certain spots. For example the photo with rushing water (4th from the bottom) I had the exposure for the mountains right, but the gradient left the trees too dark, so I went in and lightened them up a bit.

For some photos - ones with well defined, difficult edges, this blending method just doesn't work. Take the yellow trees (3rd from the bottom). I had the exposure for the sky and the exposure for the trees. But using the brush tool to blend the trees looks absolutely terrible. So for that I used channels (color range selection would prob work too), selected the blue one, bumped the blacks and whites way up in levels until I got the leaves totally black and the sky white, and made my selection of the leaves. With the leaves selected accurately and put on a layer mask, I then filled the selection with black so that that the tree layer shows, with the sky still being the nice blue. But still the edges looked funny so I went to Refine Edge and used the smart radius slider, along with a slight feather, to correct it. If this is making no sense make sure to youtube tutorials on making selections using channels.

So after I'm happy with the blending of my photo then I usually make a duplicate layer and use the overlay blend mode at around 30% opacity to give it some more contrast, give it a little more pop! If you've never used the overlay blend mode I highly recommend it.

After that I might add an unsharp mask to whole photo, or sometimes to do high pass sharpening to something in particular I want to stick out (like the yellow leaves in the Jenny lake sunrise picture).

At the very end I might do some selective dodging and burning or cloning out something I don't like. And thats about it!!

Now this might not be the best or most efficient workflow, but I've never learned from anyone else, so its kind of self taught I guess. Also I rarely use noise reduction except for like really long exposures. Maybe I should be using ACR's NR feature...I do notice some shadow noise in some of my photos. Anyway hope that helps!

Thanks a lot. I'm going to print that up. How long did you spend on each pic on average? On the longest one?

On the ones that I blend manually I probably spend between 10 and 30 minutes on each photo. I really need to learn the shortcuts! I also love to hem and haw over minute details and agonize over which angles/compositions I like better for a given photo. I probably spent a good hour on that black and white snake river photo. Oooh and I lied, I did use HDR once - for that foreground to get the reflection on the river to really stand out. But then I blended in an exposure for the mountains and one for the sky, played around with the B&W sliders, kept fiddling around with the exposure, cloned out leaves on the sides, and did some burning here and there... all for a good, but certainly not great photo.

Ugh. I'm still at the stage where it would be a bare minimum days of fighting with Photoshop on one pic, with much crappier results. I need to bite the bullet and just learn it, but I've been procrastinating that forever.

Suzzer, if you are looking to improve your photoshop skills, I'd strongly suggest getting a www.Lynda.com subscription and working your way through Deke McClelland's back-catalogue of Photoshop tutorials. IMO he's the best Photoshop instructor out there and I remember learning a **** ton from watching his Lynda vids back when I was a Photoshop neophyte.

For a general course I'd really recommend starting off with his "Photoshop CS5 One-on-One" series, which is split into 3 parts: Fundamentals, Advanced and Mastery. It's a great series to cut your teeth on. From there you can decide to focus on certain subject areas that will be more relevant to you, but courses I think would benefit any photographer would be "Mastering Camera Raw", "Mastering Channels and Masks", "Mastering LAB colour" and "Sharpening Images".

There's a TON of stuff to get your teeth into over there, and the modest subscription fee gives you access to a ****ing treasure trove of instruction.

Thanks I will put it on my list. I've also heard the Tony Kuiyper tutorials are really good, especially for landscape photographers. And I have the Scott Kelby booky. I really just need to get off my ass and stop being a lazy POS on this.

The older I get the less my brain wants to learn new things. I really have to force it. Or give myself rewards like "Photoshop for an hour and then you can look at porn." Sad. Don't get old.

Too late for that particular warning I'm afraid......

suzzer, what kind of photoshop are you looking to do? you still in LA? I'd be glad to meet up and show you a few things.

anyway- speaking of LA, I just finished a big project with the Arclight in Hollywood and put together a whole sort of mini-doc on it. We made a little video of the process and everything, which can be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9JPpye6-20


Setup:


Picture 1 by mike kelley / mpkelley.com, on Flickr

Before:


IMG_0264 - Version 2 by mike kelley / mpkelley.com, on Flickr

After photoshop, flash work, models, final result:


Arclight by mike kelley / mpkelley.com, on Flickr

It's not often that i actually see landscape work that makes me look twice or say 'woah' outloud...fantastic shots! i also think the leaf/mountain/lake shot is great, even if the mountains are out of focus, i like it just how it is.

I have to agree with "shark man" that those blend modes are pretty amazing! I usually play around with overlay, soft light, multiply and see what looks best. Had no idea what those were in PS until a few weeks back .

If you like books that show you how to do stuff in PS without 4 pages of explanations then I can recommend Matt Kloskowski's book, "Layers: The Complete Guide to Photoshop's Most Powerful Feature".

Very nice pics by the way!

mikekelly, my buddy is vice president at this professional lighting company in Van Nuys: http://www.litepanels.com/language/pages/homepage.php

I could probably get you some kind of discount or you might at least want to meet up brain/vice versa.

Question for camera people. I have about 20k pictures taken on my Nikon D-80, and I've dropped it in the dirt and dust a couple times. I know my primary walk-around lens has a little grit in it because I can feel it when it zooms. Also I'm starting to get paranoid that maybe my pics aren't as vibrant as they used to be. Like maybe there's some dust on the hi-pass filter over the sensor.

Is there some kind of standard professional cleaning you can get for D-SLRs, and is it a good idea?

Camera shops will do it, but you may start thinking about a new body. 20k exposures is a lot and the D5100 is around $650. Lenses are a different matter, I'm sure there are shops that will do it, but it doesn't sound cheap.

I thought they usually ran to 50k?

Possibly, it's been a while since I was a big camera geek. I just know the D5100 is less than I spent on either of the Nikon's I've owned and is much better.

I just figured I would run mine until it died then hopefully have enough for a full frame.

20k should still be squarely in the safe zone. The D80's shutter is rated at 50k apparently, so that shouldn't be the problem. Sizzler, I don't know the D80, but apparently they have a tendency to overexpose, which is a possible reason for shots not seeming as vibrant. Do you tend to dial in exposure compensation when you're shooting?

Having said that, I doubt it's the best sealed camera out there, so you may have picked up some internal gunk during your exploits. Might be worth seeing how much your local camera store charge for a service.

its usually ~$100-150 to clean the sensor/camera

FINAL2_145 by lozingitall, on Flickr

Canon 7d; 10/22mm EFS lens at 10mm; 30 seconds, F8; +1-1/3; Iso 200

I was out late tonight, testing my new Canon 7d and happened to have a shooting star briefly appear in one of my shots. Unfortunately, it wasn't all that prominent, but it does show up near the top center of the photo. Is there any way to make it stand out a bit more using photoshop?

I used photoshop to edit this photo, and had never used the program before. The photo still seems just a bit off to me and I would love to hear any constructive criticism anyone has on how to improve it. I am a complete newbie when it comes to photography but have plenty of time on my hands to learn.

Thanks a ton,
lozingitall

I have a couple silly questions. I'm starting to print up pics for people as gifts, and who knows maybe sell some someday. I've already decided I'm not going to sign the front of them since my handwriting it so horrible and I just don't feel right marring the pic with it. So I will sign somewhere on the back. I'm thinking about some kind of silver pen. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

I would also like to include some kind of information card with the title of the pic, where the picture was taken, any other relevant details, a link to my website, etc. Does anyone else currently do this? I feel like I should get the cards done on professional stock so they don't get ratty. Then I wonder if I should glue them to the back of the photograph or maybe just set them in there. And finally if anyone does this by any chance could you give me the template you use (I get hives just thinking about trying to lay stuff out in Word or equivalent).

I hope this makes sense. Basically I see the card as maybe 2.5"x4" (portrait), and something like this:

overthinking it maybe?

re: deke mcclelland

dude knows his hsit.

but his personality is grating, ..hard for me to get over this