Photo editing using photoshop and efex pro

 Hi, long time no post! sorry i.ve been busy with work and haven’t had much time for blogging or even photography!! Today i’m going to show my workflow for one of my selfie images. This was taken on a nikon d90 in my bedroom with just window light from a window facing me. The camera was on a tripod and tethered to lightroom on my laptop. The image was taken in raw for maximum info.

 In lightroom i cropped the image and adjusted the contrast and highlights and shadows as well as boosting the clarity, i then opened the image in photoshop cs4. Here i created separate masks to lighten and darken areas of the image without degrading the image.

 Finally i opened the image in silver efex pro and used the high structure filter with slight adjustments to highlights and shadows. I know it a kind of basic explanation but i just wanted to show what can be achieved with just a few editing techniques. The image took about 45 minutes to create and i think looks a lot better for it. I will try to post a more detailed explanation in the future when i work out how to take screen shots!! thanks for reding and as usual i will answer any question or comments,

Street Photography using the iphone

Hi all, took a trip to London again yesterday for some street photography using just my iphone4 and iphone5. Had mixed results! I started off at the Barbican Centre on the overhead walkway and managed to get some atmospheric images using the hipstamatic app with the Lowy lens/Blackeys supergrain combo. I handheld all the shots and because it was quite dark there under cover some of the shots had blurring! I need to either rest the phone on a wall or other solid structure or make a conscious effort to keep my hands steady!! Anyway here are some of the better shots firstly from the barbican centre..

The first image is an overview of the Barbican centre, taken from one of the walkways. The second image is of one of the stairways leading down to a restaurant/leisure area.

These two images were taken on the walkways where it was quite dark. The day being overcast didn’t help either!

Two more “grab” shots from the walkways themselves.

From the Barbican I took a leisurely walk to Brick lane via Leadenhall and Aldgate. Stopped off at old Spitalfields market before heading home..

Two images from Brick Lane..

 Old Spitalfields Market…

Finally the Underground back home. All these were Taken on the iphone which I would not have attempted 18 months ago, and although I had some blurring issues and exposure problems these can be overcome and with patience and practice the images will get better ( at least the quality, if not the content!!). So  take the plunge go somewhere with just your smartphone and see what can be achieved! thanks for reading and as usual please comment..Bye

 

Iphone Manipulations

Hi all, I thought I’d share some of my iphone images today. These are all part of a series of images that I have created on the iphone5 using the phone as the camera and editing tool. I haven’t named the series yet although I have toyed with a couple of titles ie Echoes, Memory. They are all set in hallways or corridors and have people in them walking away from the camera as ghostly figures or memories of what the hallway itself would remember if it had the ability!!

 These were the first three that I created using the iphone and where the idea first sprang to life. I was fascinated by the concept of buildings having memory and what events or stories they have silently witnessed over their lifetime. Especially school corridors where countless generations of children have been left by their parents on the first day and of the emotional responses that involved.

All these images were taken on the iphone and blended using an app called superimpose where you can have a background image and paste onto that other images and effects. I then developed the image further by using Snapseed primarily and other apps like scratchcam, icolorama and distreesed fx for finishing touches.

As you can see most of my models are repeated in the final images as they were saved in superimpose as already edited and they suited the overall theme well. This is an ongoing project that I have no idea where it heading or if it will change or evolve in some way. I will hopefully keep you posted as and when it does. Thanks for looking and please comment if you have any input. 

Creating images using Iphone editing and blending apps

Hi, today I thought I would share some more editing techniques and effects with you. I have a pretty standard way of doing things generally but do like to shake it up a bit or try new techniques/apps as well!  These next few images were edited using a variation of these apps, Snapseed, Scratchcam, Superimpose and Icolorama. My workflow is usually snapseed for basic edits, superimpose for blending, then snapseed, icolorama and scratchcam for filters and effects.

 I will now walkthrough the final image with my blending and editing workflow..

 After basic edits in snapseed my first port of call is superimpose. This is a powerful and amazing blending app and my number one choice. There are other great blending apps out there so feel free to use the one your most comfortable with as I believe the principles the same. In the first instance import your background…

 It will allow you to crop and choose your constraints. I normally work with the square crop. Once this is done I import the foreground..

 I can make this the same size as the background by double clicking the image in transform mode. I then enter masking mode where I click on the mask item to hide the background.

 From here there’s a brush palette where you can adjust size and softness, select an eraser or magic wand tool as well as a lasso and a color range masking tool. As you can see it’s quite easy to paint on the mask and you can zoom really close for fine details. I normally use a stylus but your finger works just fine. There’s even a blur icon where you can feather the edges.

 Once finished with the masking filter you enter the transform filter where you can resize the image, rotate and use blending modes to change the appearance…..

 When you have finished you can merge the images (ie flatten) and save to your camera roll..

 Next it’s back to snapseed for some fine tuning, a slight HDR effect and a conversion to B&W. Again I save this to my camera roll. Next I will open up icolorama which is a  fantastic and very powerful editing app..

 Here I can select the image from my camera roll and even have a choice of sizes to edit from. I nearly always go for the largest so I can print later..

 There’s so much to learn in this app that I could go on all day, you can mask and manipulate to your hearts content and even add scripts and different filters to an image. I just went for a simple style effect called sketch which I then reduced the opacity of it to give a more subtle finish.

There are some great Videos on youtube that walkthrough some of the icolorama effects and are well worth checking out. There’s also some links in sites like the appwhisperer. http://theappwhisperer.com/.

Thanks again for stopping by and I hope this helps some of you. Feel free to comment below and have a great Xmas and New year…bye..

 

Hipstamatic combos and images

Hi, I’ve recently realised i’m shooting with the hipstamatic app more and more! I have about four or five different camera apps loaded onto my iphone including camera+, camera pro, 645 pro and others, but the go to app seems to be Hipstamatic time and again and here’s some reasons why.. Firstly variety! there’s so many different combinations of lenses and film it’s pretty mindboggling! you can customise your camera with different coloured cases and even different styles! and you can even save your favourite combos too. you can shoot with a low resolution (640×640 pixels) for web use right up to high res (2448 x 2448 pixels) for print quality. Just be careful you’ve got the high res switched on as it’s easy to knock the lever back down to low res as i’ve done in the past!! 

ok here’s some of my favourite combos and some images to show you..

    

Lowy lens and Uchitel 20 film. Old fashioned look!

   

Lowy lens and Robusta film. Lovely colour rendition..

   

Yoona lens and Blanko BL4 film. I love this effect!!

 

 

   

Tinto 1884 lens and D-type plate film..Old plate type effects..

 

  

Sergio + maximus LXIX..Warm image rendition..

   

Lowy + Claunch 72..For B&W lovers..

    

John S + Blackeys supergrain. For gritty B&W lovers..

The combos go on and on so I won’t bore you with anymore. I just wanted to give you an idea of how good this app is. It’s free to download from the app store with some basic combos, but you can purchase loads more from 0.69 pence!! …

 You can share your images from the app onto Oggl, instagram twitter etc.. If you have Oggl ( a hipstamatic sharing site a bit like instagram) you can download all your combos there ( for a small fee) and share directly online even using it’s own native camera!!

I import my hipsta images into all my different editing apps and blend with other images taken from different camera apps to create all sorts of various effects so there really is no end to your creative urges!! I also print many of my hipsta images 10″ x 10″ and have even won some competitions with the finished prints so quality is first class! I will post about Oggl in the near future as this is a great sister app for hipstamatic with a growing fanbase and some stunning images there. Until then thanks for reading and hopefully be inspired to give Hipstamatic a go!!..

 

Iphone editing on fuji x20 images.

Hi, just got back from a week in Wales which was great and it only rained once! Took my iphone5 and my fuji x20 and got some great shots. Just beginning to get to grips with the fuji and I’m quite pleased with the results. I always used to shoot raw but I’m finding that the jpegs straight from the camera are great. I’m also editing all my images on the iphone and the results are good. These shots were taken in Brick lane London on the fuji and edited on my iphone5 when I got back.. I used some of my favorite apps to edit namely Snapseed, Scratchcam and Filmnoir. I used the HDR filter in snapseed to bring out some details and then dialed it down to about 25-30%. My next image is of my son Callum taken against bright sunlight in Wales. I used a black and white filter on the fuji and spot metered of his face. I then adjusted in Lightroom and copied into my iphone to play with some filters, I quite like the results.  The first image is the original straight from the camera, the second is after it went through lightroom. The next image is post iphone editing using snapseed, filmnoir, icolorama and scratchcam.  

The next picture was taken at the same time, here’s the original..

 After some minor tweaks in Lightroom I imported to the iphone and edited in this order..snapseed, filmnoir , scratchcam and snapseed again..

   And here’s the final version.

 I prefer the first image but my wife likes this one best… All in all it took about 20-30 minutes per image so not bad or nearly as long as photoshop.

Thanks again for looking and please comment..

Street Photography and iphone editing

Hi, today I’m posting three images taken on a trip to London’s Brick Lane in the borough of Tower Hamlets. This is a great place for street photography as it’s so busy and colourful with some amazing characters. It’s also a great place for a curry!! All three images were taken on my new fuji x20 and then transferred to my iphone5 and edited in just three apps, Snapseed, scratchcam and Noir ( a great B&W textures app). Here’s the  first image…

 I cropped and did all the basic editing in snapseed then imported it into Noir and scratchcam to try different textures and effects…

 I quite like the gritty film look especially the scratches on the second image. Heres the next image..

I love the look just as I pressed the shutter….Again I processed in snapseed and used a subtle Hdr filter there to bring out the details more. I then processed in Noir and scratchcam to add some grungy effects to the image..

 

Again I prefer the last image with it’s just found in the street effect!! The first two images were just developed in snapseed using the Hdr filter and the grunge filter..

Finally there’s this image..

 I once again used just the three apps to get some different results..

 My favourites are 2 & 3. 

I was quite impressed with the fuji x20. It only has a small sensor but coped remarkably well. It’s ideal for street photography as it’s retro, small and silent! It’s fantastic with B&W images and even the low light shots look grainy as opposed to noisy. It’s an ideal second camera.. Thanks for looking and please feel free to comment.

 

 

Snapseed and iphone editing

Hi, I thought I’d show you my favourite editing app today. Snapseed by Nik software. inc. Lots of online tutorials out there so I won’t go in to extensive details, but it’s worth having a look and explaining what effects I use mainly from this great app. When you first open up snapseed on your iphone you have the choice of taking an image and editing from the app or loading an image from your camera roll and editing from there on in. The latter is the option I always choose as I take my images either on the Hipstamatic app or Procamera 7, so I will start with an image loaded from the camera roll onto snapseed.

I will not choose Automatic normally as this just gives the apps choice of editing based on the info that it can read. My first port of call is usually Tune image. From here you can globally adjust the brightness, ambiance, contrast, saturation, shadows and warmth of your image.

Next step is usually Straighten and cropping. Straighten is great for Horizons and uneven shots and I will always straighten before cropping as you will lose some of the image depending on how uneven your shot is. Cropping is great, you can free crop or set a parameter like square or 3:2 etc to size your images as you want.

 You can make all the adjustments using you fingertips and it’s very intuitive. There’s load of special effect filters to use in snapseed to give your images an extra dimension, I’ll start with Black & white.

 You can adjust the Brightness, contrast and grain using this filter and you can also use one of there set filters like contrast, dark or film. There’s even a set of coloured filters to give your B&W images extra effects.

Two filters that I think are closely related are Drama and HDR. These can greatly influence your images but not always for the best so they do offer slider controls to tune them down, so you get loads of control..

 The first image is the Drama screen where you can control the overall filter effect and the colour saturation. The second screen is for the HDR filter which gives you a couple more controls with smoothing and brightness.

Three filters which I usually use independently of  each other, (although not always!) are the Vintage, Grunge and Retrolux filters. Vintage adds a different style filter to your image and there are 9 styles each of which you can dial down with sliders for brightness, saturation, texture strength, centre size and style strength, so there’s loads of control.

Grunge can be really useful and give your images a totally different look, which you can also adjust via the sliders. There’s literally hundreds of different grunge effects…

 This image shows effect style 720 and the various sliders to effect that style.

Finally there’s Retrolux. This give various different light leak effects and 13 individual styles all of which are adjustable!!

 I don’t use this filter very often but occasionally it saves the day with a particular image..

Now here’s two of my favourite filter’s in snapseed, select adjust and details. Select adjust lets you select any area on your image and tune that area only with brightness, contrast and saturation..

 You can make that area of influence as large or as small as you want and you can even see the area as a red highlight on the screen. You can select multiple areas and if you run out just come out of the filter and go back in again….

 This filter is great as well and I normally use it toward the end of my editing work. It sharpens your images and you can also adjust the structure which defines the sharpening and looks great, especially in Mono.

The next two filters are Centre focus and Tilt + shift. Centre focus gives you a vignette effect which you can darken or give an old lens look too. You can also adjust the size of it and use the blur slider to increase or decrease the effect.

  The tilt+shift filter give you a transitional fade top to bottom or left to right and can give some interesting looks to some images..

The final filter effect is Frames and this does what its says on the tin!. Loads of different frames which you can make bigger or smaller and even change the colour..

 There’s 23 different frames to choose from, so plenty of choice…

Ok that’s my brief look at snapseed. It’s a great editing app, and it’s free!! so well worth a visit. I hope I’ve covered the main filters here as there’s so much to show, but as I said earlier theres some great video tutorials out there you can look at. Here’s a link for snapseed..https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/snapseed/id439438619?mt=8 thanks for looking …

 

Speaker’s corner, Hyde Park, London.

 Today I’m posting some portraits from a recent shoot in Hyde Park, London, at Speaker’s corner. This is a meeting place where anyone who wishes can stand on a soap box and talk about, argue, debate, incite just about anything they wish to. As you can imagine it can get quite heated with various religious/political viewpoints being extolled/trashed depending on your standpoint. But it makes for some great photo opportunities and I’m never disappointed when I go there. I normally take my panasonic GF2 with a 14mm pancake and a 45-175mm zoom lens. I also always take my iphone5 for plenty of candid/street shots. Here’s some of my images from there.

As you can see plenty of animated characters. There’s always an argument going on somewhere and plenty of crowd participation as well…

So if your ever in London on a Sunday you could do a lot worse than Speaker’s corner for some great and unique photo oppotunities..Thanks for looking..

 

Passing Time Iphone image Edit.

Here’s another image that I decided to create from Five separate images off my iphone. All the editing was created on my iphone as well using a number of different apps, namely Snapseed, superimpose, distressed fx, mextures and scratchcam. To begin with I needed a background…..

 Plain grey with a bit of texture, a plain old wall!   These were the four main ingredients to my image, a picture of snow drops, a clock from my kitchen, a spinning girl from a wedding and a street shot of some people walking past me in London’s Hyde Park. The next step(s) was to import into superimpose separately and work on each image until I was happy with the final result.

 This is a screenshot from superimpose with the background grey wall and foreground Snow drop being worked on. You can mask the foreground and then erase any of the image you want before using the transform to scale and position on to the background image and using the blending mode to finish. I then saved each mask until I had my final image.

 I then tweaked a bit in Snapseed before running the image through distressed fx and mextures. I finished the image in Scratchcam.

 This is great fun and fairly easy to do with a bit of practice and can give your creative side a boost. I take pictures of lots of backgrounds and objects lying about with the intention of creating single images from them. Please leave your comments below and of course any questions about my techniques. Thank you.