Post-Processing

Here’s an awesome post-processing tutorial by photographer …

Some friends of mine asked me to shoot a quick band photograph of them recently without any preparation or planning. Luckily, the location was pretty nice (we were at a hostel) and the weather was a bit cloudy so there wasn't harsh sunlight.

Those epic photographs of stars and galaxies that you see on sites like NASA’s …

Here’s yet another awesome Photoshop tutorial by Sean Armenta showing how to use …

Like the Pen Tool tutorial we shared last month, here’s another awesome tutorial by …

Have you always wondered how to use the Pen Tool in Photoshop but have never gotten around to learning …

We've featured a couple beautiful examples of fake slow-motion video created using Twixtor shot with the Canon 7D and 550D. If you don't want to shell out $300 just for Twixtor, you can do something somewhat similar using only Final Cut Studio. The above footage was shot at 60fps using a Canon 60D and created entirely with Final Cut Studio. Yes, yes, we know the wheels look strange, but it's still a neat effect and might produce interesting results with the right kind of footage.

The Internet viral sensation "Double Rainbow" video was captured on January 8th, 2010. About two weeks later on the 23rd (and long before that video went viral), I saw a double rainbow myself when looking out my window. I quickly grabbed my camera (a Canon 40D at the time) with my 16-35mm lens (I wanted the widest shot possible) and ran out to shoot the rainbow.

My friend recently had two stray kittens randomly walk up to her doorstep. I was called over to see them, and carried my 5D and 24-70mm along. There wasn't much light to work with, and I didn't bring a flash, so I had to shoot at 1600 ISO for any chance of capturing a sharp image of the energetic kittens. I haven't done a walkthrough post for quite some time (opting to post guest posts instead), but here's a quick walkthrough of how I post-processed one particular image of a kitten. I used Adobe Camera Raw (comes with Photoshop CS4) with my adjustments, but you'll have the same settings in Lightroom, Aperture, etc...

Living in the Southwest United States gives me a great opportunity to capture lighting. Every summer “Monsoon Season” arrives, officially June 15 through Sept 15th, in Arizona. Prevailing northwesterly winds carry humid air north out of Mexico where it meets the hot air of the desert, resulting in powerful thunderstorms nearly everyday. The thunderstorms often produce localized areas of heavy wind, thick blowing dust (Haboobs), rain, and most importantly, lightning. I regularly track the storms on the local Doppler radar feeds and try to guess where the best shooting will take place.

I took this shot with my Canon EOS 450D, and a Canon 50mm f1.8 -- my favourite lens in the case of portraits especially.

I chose to make the shooting session about a hour and half before sunset when there's still a lot of light, but with a warm, lovely quality to the light. I prefer warm tones, and to emphasize these tones and balance the cool colours of my model dress and tree leaves I set White Balancing to "cloudy". You can see in the picture that the sun was on the right side of model, so she didn't have too much direct light on her face. The white wall behind acted as a discrete reflecting panel, resulting in light that's quite uniform.

Asters of any kind provide such potential in photography: the colours and the gentle curve of their tiny thin petals combines with their close-growing nature to give the impression either of flowers fighting each other for space and light or of a mass of colour, huddled together for comfort. The clump of asters shown in this shot are a soft, luscious purply-cerulean-cornflowery-blue. Light seems to dance off the petals. Or it would, had there been much light when I took this. Instead, it was a fairly overcast day and I pondered whether it was worth the damp knees necessary to get down low enough to grab this shot. Turned out it was.

About a week ago I did a shoot with the band Strange Birds as we were walking there was a point that I saw light rays trickling down right in front of us. I told all of the guys to stop and arranged them to my liking.

One of the most important things about shooting for me is having an idea of you want the photo to come out in the very end. I tend to adjust my white balance in camera and set almost everything up so it makes less work on the computer and closer to the final product. Below is the original image:

For a cover shoot of a men’s magazine, it’s no surprise if liberties are taken in post-production. Generous Photoshopping is …

A banner on Andrew Romanoff’s Senate campaign website provoked a bit of an outrage from a minority group when …

We posted a while back on how to sharpen your photos like Flickr for smaller resolution images.

Adding a vignette to a photograph can add depth to the composition and draw attention to interesting details. However, …

Went to Bodega bay to do some crabbing for the first time, and took this photo while walking to the …

Here’s an unprocessed portrait I took a couple days ago. Canon 40D + 16-35mm f/2.8 at 21mm. f/5.6, 1/125s …

Crater Lake in Oregon is such a beautiful place that post-processing isn’t really even needed for photographs taken there. Here’s …

Today I’ll be doing a post-processing walkthrough with the following photograph I took about a week ago: It was …

One of the results of always carrying around my camera is that I end up with a lot of portraits …

I was over at Lake Tahoe attending my brother’s soccer tournament this past weekend, and took this photograph from behind …

Here’s a photograph I randomly snapped on a tennis court a few days ago: It was taken with my …

Here’s a photograph I took of my brother skateboarding (or attempting to) back in 2005: This post is a …

A few weeks ago, I was taking photographs of my friend Tommy at his …

One of the things I became very aware of during a recent road trip to Oregon is how much easier …

This entry will describe my thought process when editing a portrait, though it could apply to general photos too. Here’s …

Here’s a photograph I took today while hiking with friends on the Bailey Cove Trailhead in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest: …

When browsing around on Flickr, I used to be amazed by how sharp many of the photographs I came across …

You’ve probably heard many of the common arguments people give for whether to shoot in JPEG or RAW. When people …