Blurring the Background

I took a photo of this creation at a cluttered antique mall.  The camera I use most often for this type of photo allows no control over depth of field so the background is more in focus than I would like.

To make the subject stand out more I used Photoshop to make a selection of the subject and then I did some blurring of the background.














Most photo editors have some capability to do selections and blurring.  Editors like Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and The Gimp have pretty extensive options in this area.  So if you don't like how the focus came out in your image you have many options for making a change.  The ends and outs of making a selection and various blurring options are beyond my ability to cover in a brief post.  I will say that gaining some skill in making selections will add greatly to your ability to get your photos to look the way you intend.

Along with the blur brush Photoshop has a blurring filter with several options.  Here I used the motion blur option.  It lets you change the degree of the motion blur and the angle of the blur.

The motion blur filter in Photoshop. It has been a while since I have used Photoshop Elements, however I seem to remember that it had similar options.

The Gimp photo editor also has a blurring filter with several options.  If you are looking for a photo editor The Gimp may be a good option.  It is free and has many of the same capabilities as Photoshop. 



















My main idea with this post is just to introduce some options to some who may not have heard of them.  If you do a search enough info exists on this topic to keep anyone busy for many days. 

Some Black & White Effects

While if possible I prefer B&W film for B&W images, there are times when a digital image looks to me like it would be better presented in B&W.  There are several options for doing such conversions in the default tools in Photoshop.  There are also many Photoshop plugins that can help with the conversion along with offering some other elements like toning. Today I am showing some images that were made with a couple of these plugins.  This is not a tutorial on using the plugins.  Just some images and basic info so you can get some idea of what they can do.

The image I started with.














The first one is a free plugin called Virtual Photographer. Virtual Photographer works with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.  If you don't have these programs than you can use it in a free editing program, Virtual Studio, that is made to work with Virtual Photographer.

The Virtual Photographer preset "Aluminum".














Virtual Photographer has a large number of presets in which you can make adjustments for things like exposure and film grain. It is a fun program to play around with.  There also are a large number of effects that can be used for color images.  Unlike a lot of the free plugins Virtual Photographer has a good interface with an excellent preview image area.  Virtual Photographer only works with 8 bit images. There are a few more images from Virtual Photographer in the Some Black & White Effects Gallery.

The second plugin is Topaz Black & White Effects.  The Topaz plugins used to be fairly inexpensive when I first started using them. However in checking for this post they seem to have experienced some inflation.  Even at that they are still are more reasonable than many Photoshop plugins.  Topaz Black & White Effects comes with a lot of presets which I used in the images here to give some idea of the things it can do.  Unlike Virtual Photographer this plugin has a very large number of adjustments that you can make to your image. I usually find it helpful to find a preset that is close to what I want and then make adjustments.

This is Topaz's idea of a classic b&w image.

With a Sepia/Gold tone.














Topaz does offer a 30 day fully functional free trial.  Also in the past they frequently had special offers so that you seldom had to pay full price.  Another thing is that it seems that once you buy one of their products you keep getting free updates.  At least I haven't had to pay for a new version yet. 
There are more Topaz images in the Some Black & White Effects Gallery.

Anvil effect from Virtual Photographer.

Fixing 1940's Found Photos

Just have a short time to make a post today.  Over the past few months I have been posting photos that I made from old negatives that I purchased at an antique shop.  Most of the film strips have been in fairly good shape and haven't needed much work. The latest batch has been an exception. Most were underexposed, poorly composed, and dusty.

One of the images as it came out of the scanner.  I used curves in the scanner software to improve the underexposure somewhat.

This is the result from some fairly quickly done work in Photoshop.  I used a curves adjustment to improve the exposure and contrast.  To further lighten it I made a new layer which I overexposed and then blended with the existing layer. The clone stamp and spot healing tool took care of most of the dust and blemishes. I also used a small amount of LAB sharpening.









If you ever do work with this type of image it is very helpful to at least learn about some tools like the clone stamp and spot healing.  These are present in both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.  If you don't want to spend money to buy that software such tools are also available in The Gimp.

While I think this image is interesting because of the extended look at the vintage decor, the intended focus likely was meant to be on the woman and child.

Using the same tools as before.























If you ever tried to fix an old photo back in the days before digital than you may be like me and sometimes see the tools available in programs like Photoshop as being almost magic.

This also needed some fixing up, however I am showing it because the girl is holding a camera.  I finally was able to see that it is a Kodak Target Six-16












Also the man in the undershirt and the woman with the child on her lap were in one of my favorite images from a previous post.

Imitating Film Cameras in Photoshop

I can well understand how the idea of using Photoshop to try to make a digital image look like one from a film camera could be a horror to many. However I have to admit that on occasion I like to play around with such effects. Still I do believe that these effects, like with most imitations, while they may be interesting and entertaining they aren't a replacement for the real thing. 

The newest version of Topaz Adjust has some film effects. There are some presets or you can make your own settings.

This is another one done with Topaz Adjust.  Topaz makes several plugins that are useful for digital photos.  And they are generally more affordable than other plugins for Photoshop.

This is one of the many sets of effects in the Filter Forge plugin.  It is called Memeroid and is supposed to imitate a Polaroid photo.

Another Memeroid.  While not of the same proportions as this type of Polaroid I think it adds some interest to the image.  The Filter Forge plugin is sorta expensive, however it does let you make your own filters.  And you can download a large number of useful filters made by Filter Forge users. 

This is a filter from Filter Forge called Analogue.  Some of the effects in Filter Forge can take a while to render.  I had a cup of coffee and went outside and took some pictures while this one was processing. Normally my computer handles Photoshop stuff quickly.  Some Filter Forge effects are the exception.

I think this effect fits the character of the buildings.  This one is from Topaz Adjust.

Here is one from Filter Forge call Toycam 82.  The buildings on this page are in Danville IL.  An interesting town to take pictures in although they have a tendency to tear down their most interesting buildings.

Lastly, one from Alien Skin Exposure.  This is supposed to be an imitation of one of my favorite 70's slide films, GAF 500.  When looking at a much larger version I thought it did a pretty good job. At this size I am not sure if the looks so good. Generally I don't find the Photoshop versions of films to be very satisfying.



So here you have some of the results of my playing around with these filters. If you are like me and enjoy this kind of look than you may find that these effects can liven up some otherwise dull digital photos.  Still as someone who has experienced both I think you can more easily get more satisfying and interesting results using real film cameras.  

Garage Sale Finds

Twindar Star, Suprema Mini GTG, and Vivitar T200








Pickings have been slim around here camera-wise.  I went to the Champaign County Humane Society garage sale and the cameras above were the best I could do.  And this is from one of the largest community garage sales of the year.  This haul did only cost $2.  I also got four rolls of expired Kodak Gold Max 400 for a dollar and five rolls of expired Kodak Gold 200 for the same price.  The Twindar did have a manual that says it is f/9 with 1/100 for the shutter speed.  The other two don't give those details although I would guess they have similar specifications.  The Suprema has a 28mm lens.  The other two look like 35mm. 

So I have nothing to add to a museum of fine photographic equipment.  Still I am looking forward to putting a roll of the expired film through each one and seeing what happens.  I am getting quite a collection of these cheap plastic cameras.  Some I have gotten some pleasing results from.  And at least they don't cost much.  Still I hope that I run across some more sophisticated cameras this summer.

If you need to purge your eyes after looking at these lowly cameras this link may be helpful to you.  It is to a bunch of articles on historic and classic cameras at Shutterbug Magazine.

Content Aware Fill Solves a Problem

I haven't used Content Aware Fill in Photoshop for a while, however it came in handy for an image I was working on the other evening.  I saw these furrows in a field curving toward a interesting looking cloud.  The problem was it was difficult to get the shot I wanted without having my shadow in it.  I thought I was close until I loaded the images.

I saw that I would like to have a little more on the cloud side.




















This is where Content Aware Fill came in handy.

I expanded the canvas on the image.





















Then I selected the white area and ran content aware fill.

This is the result I got after a little work with the clone brush. 





















If you don't have PhotoShop CS5 the Gimp has a plugin called Resynthesizer
which can do the job.  I remember having used it in Gimp several years ago and found the results to be quite good.  And of course the Gimp is a free program. 

Getting it Right in the Camera

When I used to look at photography forums more than I do now I can remember seeing a lot of people talking about how they don't use programs like Photoshop because, "they get it right in the camera".  I suppose the implication is that only photographers who lack the skill to "get it right in the camera" need the help of a program like Photoshop.  And at the extreme there seem to be those who feel it is some kind of virtue to never let your image be touched by a program like Photoshop. Post-processing of images seems to have gotten a bad name. My own belief is that this viewpoint may be a product of the digital age where some may be unaware of how much post-processing goes on in the camera and think that what they are getting is some kind of pure image.

A camera either using a digital sensor or film is just recording information.  That information requires interpretation to make an image. Back in the film days when many photographers had the experience of developing and printing their own film the need for interpretation was more easily seen.  Especially when it came to printing images there were decisions to be made that could result in dramatically different images from the same negative.  Making a successful print often depended as much on your skill in the darkroom as it did on your skill with a camera.  In a lot of ways the relationship of darkroom to camera was similar to that of camera to Photoshop today.  And many of the tools in Photoshop have parallels to skills that are needed in the darkroom.

With digital if you use a output format like jpeg you may get an acceptable image, but be unaware of how much your camera has done to the image to make it look that way.  First if your camera is capable of also putting out raw files at greater than 8 bits then your camera has made a decision to throw out a lot of the information it recorded.  Your camera also has made decisions for you about things like sharpening and color saturation.  While this process may end in a satisfactory image it would be wrong to believe that the image received no post-processing. Actually it probably has undergone an amount of processing similar to what it would were it a raw file processed in Photoshop.  The only difference is that the decisions about what the final output will be is left up to the camera instead of the photographer. For me I would prefer to make these decisions myself even if that means a little extra work in Photoshop. Even if your camera doesn't allow for raw files it may be possible to change its settings so that it does as little in camera processing as possible.  The images may not look as good to you out of the camera, however you will have more flexibility to shape the image the way you want it to appear.

I use jpeg as an example because I tend to doubt that anyone who has used the raw file format would be unaware of the need and even the advantages of making your own interpretation of your images. And to me photography is about having the ability to make my images look the way I want them to. I think the philosophy of "getting it right in the camera" if that means just accepting whatever interpretation the camera decides to make of the image is a limitation and not a virtue.

Well, I suppose this is my first rant post.  I don't really have a problem with taking the pictures you get from a digital camera and being happy with them the way they are.  It is more the sometimes smug attitude I see in some who talk about how their images are Photohop free.

Not related to the post, however I had to add an image.  Taken using an Imperial Reflex 620 with Fujicolor.

Useful Photoshop Plugin and More Found Film

At least a couple of my goals with this blog are to give some information that is useful or at least interesting. For useful this morning I am thinking of Nik's Viveza plugin for Photoshop.  Viveza lets me with a click add control points to an image that will adjust things like contrast, brightness, saturation, and so on. In the example below I wanted to get the cat ornament to stand out more from the background.

The one on the left is the before picture.  In the picture on the right I used control points to darken some of the background while leaving the ornament alone.  I also was able to make some adjustments to the ornament without effecting the background.  In the past the main option for making non-global changes like this would be by using selections. And that can be a difficult process.  With Viveza such changes are pretty quick and easy.

I'm not sure if this is the most impressive example of Viveza's capabilities, however it was something I did today that bought Viveza to mind.  I would rate Viveza as one of the most useful plugins for Photoshop.  If you have not heard of it it is worth checking out.

In another development I uploaded a few more images from the negatives that I wrote about finding earlier.

Looks like a visit from a son in the military.
Found Negatives Gallery