B&W APA Seminar on Aug. 9th

I'll be teaching another seminar for the Los Angeles chapter of the APA on August 9th with some of the folks from Bowhaus. Should be an interesting day.

APA/LA Digital Workshop: From Color to Black and White
Saturday August 9th, 2008
9am - 1pm
3221 Hutchinson Ave, LA CA 90034

Sign Up Today at www.apa-la.org
LIMITED SPACES FOR THIS EVENT PRE-REGISTRATION IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED

Join us Saturday, August 9th as we present our own Dennis Dunbar and
Bowhaus' Antonis Ricos in the latest of our series of digital seminars.
They'll be taking their audience on an exploration of the Black and White
digital world.

Dennis will start things off by delving into the process of converting Color
Images to Black and White. He'll discuss what happens when you hit the
magical B&W button in Photoshop and show you how to gain control of the
process so you can fine tune the conversion to get the results you're after.
Then he'll show you how you can "Mix and Match" conversion methods to bring
out the right tonality and detail in specific areas of your image.

Then Bowhaus' Antonis Ricoss will take over the session and show you how to
get "Fine Art" Black and White prints from your images. He'll show you how
to create Digital B&W inkjet prints with rich blacks, luminous highlights
and ultra-smooth gradations. These guys really have mastered this art and
you'll see why acclaimed fine art photographers and galleries are now
choosing BowHaus to produce their Master and Exhibition prints. He'll also
show you Bowhaus' IJC/OPM software as well as their new "True Black and
White" printmaking software that you can use to create your own stunning
Digital B&W inkjet prints.

Come join us as this seminar promises to be informative and intriguing and
will help you gain the knowledge you need to move seamlessly between the
World of Color to the World of B&W.

Pre-Registration
$35 APA/LA members
$45 ASMP, LADig, Student members
$55 non-members

Day of:
$45 APA/LA members
$55 ASMP, LADig, Student members
$65 non-members

Brought to you in part by:
Bowhaus www.bowhaus.com

Good Mask - Bad Mask

One of the more frequent questions I get asked is about masking. Almost every Photoshop user has used masks at one time or another to control how one image blends with another to limit some effect to certain areas of the image. Safe to say they're used a lot. But the question that comes up is "What makes a Good Mask?"

Of course the quick answer is "It all depends on what you're trying to do." What that really means is different tasks require different qualities of masks. For instance if you just want to 'nudge' the color of one area a little bit you may get away with a softer mask that's not too exact. But if you're going to strip in a new background behind a shot of a model you're probably going to have to be a good deal more careful with your mask.

In this case the answer to our question "What makes a Good Mask?" is primarily about 'Edge Quality'. With a mask the hardness or softness of the edge is what makes for a seamless, natural looking blend or something that looks like you used a pair of scissors on. This is what we mean when we talk about 'Edge Quality'.

To get a bit deeper with this idea take a close look at the image of your model paying careful attention to the edges that naturally occur inside the image. The edge of your mask should look pretty close to how these natural edges look. Any harder than that and the image will look 'Cut Out'. Any softer and it may look 'Mushy'. (Great technical terms, eh?)

When I'm working on a mask I usually like to use a brush to paint around the edges of the part I'm masking. And while painting this edge I look to use a brush with the right size/hardness combination that looks as hard or as soft as the edge of whatever it is I'm masking. Sometimes this means I need to change the brush as I go along because maybe the depth of field means one part looks sharper than another. After I've painted this 'border' I'll then use the lasso tool and

make a series of selections based on tracing more or less along the center of the border that are then filled to make the mask.

Here is an example.

With this image the red outline you see is the border I painted, and as usual the edge of this bear varies according to the depth of field so I had to change the brush along the way as I

painted.

Here is the image with a black line showing the selection I made with the Lasso Tool.

And here is the image with the mask filled using that selection.

Now let's check the mask to make sure it's solid White and solid Black where it needs to be.

Finally here is the image with a new background.

Of course since I used the mask as a "Layer Mask" all I've done is hide the original background so the new one can show through. This means I can easily fine tune this mask to make sure everything looks just right.

Adding Glows to Hair

Lately a good deal of the work I've been doing has been with photographers who shoot high end beauty shots. Part of this work usually involves adding "a nice glow" to the hair and skin of the model. While there are several ways to do this I thought I'd share here a simple technique for adding a soft, luminous glow to the hair.

To get this effect we're going to use one of Photoshop's "Layer Blending Modes". As you're probably aware there are many blending modes we can use in Photoshop. These break down to variations on a few themes. There are blending modes that affect Contrast and Saturation, modes that darken the image and modes that lighten the image as well as a few other ones.  

Now one thing that users frequently forget is that an Adjustment Layer set to a particular blending mode even without any adjustment made to the settings of the layer itself will give you the same effect as if you had copied the image itself as a layer and set it to that same blending mode. 

The cool thing about using an Adjustment Layer (I like Curves myself) is that it adds almost nothing to the size of your file, which can be an important consideration if you're working on big files. The other cool thing is that while you don't need to play with the adjustments in the layer you can to tweak the effect you're getting. 

The mode we'll use here is the "Screen" mode. This blending mode will lighten an image based on how light the tones are in the layer. So White will have the strongest effect and Black will have the weakest effect. And all you need to do is add a Curves adjustment layer set to "Screen" blending and then make sure the mask for this layer is filled with black (this hides the effect of the layer). 

Now just look at your image and picture where you want the Glow to appear. Then  take the Brush tool and paint White in the Layer Mask wherever you want this effect to show. To really get this right you need to think a bit like an illustrator, but armed with the knowledge that you can always undo the effect by painting Black in the Layer Mask you're free to play and experiment until you're happy with the effect. If it's too strong you can also turn down the opacity of the layer to back off. 

So try it on one of your own images and see how it works. Play a bit and I bet you'll like it.

Communicating Color Effectively

Remember the story about the 3 Blind Men who are shown an animal and asked to describe it? Of course, being blind, they use their hands to feel parts of the animal and then describe what they think the animal is. The first one goes to the front and reaches out to the animal he says, “This is long, thick and strong like a python snake!” The second moves forward, feels the side of the animal and says. “This is tall and wide, like a wall!” Then the third goes to the back and says, “No, this is long and thin, like a rope!”

Meanwhile what the men don’t realize is that they are meeting an elephant, not a python, wall or rope. Communicating the proper appearance of digital images can be a lot like this. When there is no tangible image what we see depends on how our systems are setup. Without following proper color management procedures, or paying close attention to what the others in the workflow are doing we become like the blind men, describing something based on just a small part of the whole picture.

Fortunately the answer has gotten a lot easier in the last several years. Advances in software and hardware has made trusting what you see on your screen possible. By calibrating and profiling your displays using any one of the reputable packages available these days we can know that we are looking at something pretty close to “The Truth”.

If it stopped there life would be easy. But, of course, life is not so easy. In the vast majority of times there are others in the chain we need to deal with. Making sure your image is treated properly and winds up looking like you planned is one of the big challenges in the modern digital workflow.

Here communication is key. Knowing who to talk with, and what questions to ask can be critical to the process. How do you know what the client needs? And how can you get it to them in a way that makes getting it right easy? This is where groups such as UPDIG and DISC come in.

UPDIG, (the Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines, www.updig.org), is an industry-wide group created by a consortium of photographer’s groups such as APA, ASMP.EP.PPA and many more throughout the world that is focused on determining the requirements for digital images in the various parts of our industry. The folks working on UPDIG have created many resources for photographers and clients including guidelines and “Best Practices” documents for both image creators and those receiving digital images.

This work, begun at the 2004 PPE show, is on-going and continues to grow in both scope and reach. Go to their website, www.updig.org, to learn more about the group and to download the guides and best practices, then put them into practice and share them with your clients, and anyone receiving your digital images. Remember, communication is key.