This is how we edited the steam train cab image of the Umgeni Steam Railway train from the before and after post.  The following screenshots show the process of editing in Camera Raw to finished photograph.

The image was taken on a very wide angle lens. We bought a Voigtlander 15mm manual lens for our Sony A7r and A7 before we left for a South African trip. Have to be honest here. I (Tim) am a wide angle lens freak. I can’t get enough of them. If I could only have one lens ever, it would be a prime super wide. Not only that, I really like manual focus.  Ally, on the other hand has a more rounded view of lenses and is happier with longer focal lengths but will still use wides.

The great thing about wide angles is the huge amount of depth of field they give so for the image below, I didn’t have to focus through the camera. I just set the lens to about 2m and everything from o.5 to infinity was in focus at f11.

I was standing outside the cab and just held my hand with camera inside and pressed the shutter.

Finished image with Raw editing

The Raw file editing

The whole image exactly as it came from the camera

The first thing to do was to crop the extra unwanted detail away in Raw for a better composition.

Post crop without any Raw editing

Post crop after global Raw editing

Once this was done I set about doing a global adjustment in Raw. Darker areas were lightened with the shadow slider and the lighter areas darkened with the highlights slider. Don’t over do it or it will look either too flat or like a bad HDR effect. All the editing in Camera Raw here can all also be done in Lightroom, Affinity Photo or any other raw file editor.

Doing the dodge and burn dance

Most of the work on this image was done with adjustment brushes. Every little white dot you see on the above screenshot is an adjustment brush. Most of the brushes affect the lightness / darkness as well as clarity (micro-contrast) and finally saturation and colour.

The image was finally taken into Photoshop for resizing and sharpening.

If you wish to learn Photoshop on the iPad or Affinity Photo on the iPad have a look at our Udemy courses below.

Click here for amazing money off deals to Learn Photoshop or Affinity Photo v2 on the ipad with his Udemy course

Remember – All the adjustments I have done are just a form of dodge and burn but affecting colour and contrast, not just dark and light. All the great photographers from Dorothea Lang to Ansel Adams used dodge and burn so you are not ‘cheating’.

Final image verses the original from camera Raw file. Drag the slider to see the difference between before (right) and after (left).

The post Editing in Camera Raw – How to appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Do you ever look at your images and wonder why they just don’t have the ‘pop’ that you see on other people’s shots. There are many reasons that this could be, but we have found that the main one is down to processing. We would like to show you some of our before and after photographs of the steam train we shot in South Africa. If you haven’t read the article yet, click here for these images and more.

But I don’t want to manipulate my photographs

We hear this all the time. “I don’t manipulate my images”, “I only show the ‘truth’”, “What I saw is what I show you” or even “My shots reflect reality”. Let us look at what it is to ‘manipulate’ or ‘process’ photographs.
A photograph is all about using light from a scene and translating it onto a flat surface. This could be a print or on a digital device. Just the act of taking a photograph means you put your own slant on the image. You decide what to include and what to exclude. You change your camera settings and some things are darker and some things are extremely bright as the camera doesn’t have the same range of sensitivity that the human eye has. These things are, of course, a form of image manipulation.

Using dodging and burning as well as all the other options in Raw are just ways of getting the image to look how you envisaged it. Even one of the great photographer masters, Ansel Adams used a lot of image manipulation.

So, all our images are manipulated in Adobe Photoshop, Affinity Photo or other software, so that they look like we envisaged them.

Everything is manipulated. Do as much or as little as you want but always create your own vision of the world.

The post Before and After Photographs appeared first on ImageExplorers.

I often get asked about free online Photoshop and my stock answer is that if you can’t afford or don’t want to pay Adobe the monthly rental then there are a few options.

My first option would be to use Affinity Photo that has a one off fee (around £40) or download Gimp to your computer (free). I very rarely recommend an online version for serious work but recently I had seen Photopea, (not made by Adobe) and was intrigued. Could this software actually work like Photoshop but be free and online? I decided to set myself a challenge. Could I do this whole post’s images in Photopea?

What is it?

Photopea is a simplified clone of Adobe Photoshop that works in your browser. You simply go to photopea.com and there it is. Choose File and open an image from your computer. When you’re done editing just save as a Photoshop compatible PSD file or export as a jpg, png etc. It saves these files to your download folder.

The Photopea (Online free Photoshop) interface

Let’s start with Raw

Not wanting to overload the browser I started with a 12mp file. I wanted to see Photopea’s Raw file ability so I had a dng file (digital negative file) ready to go. To say the Raw file settings were sparse would be an understatement.  5 sliders! Basic temperature, Tint, exposure, brightness and contrast. That is it! At least there is a histogram.

Not a great start; however it must be said that at least it did open the Raw dng file.

Basic Raw settings

Photopea interface

The interface you are presented with looks very similar. Mmm.. I can see the Adobe lawyers getting all hot under the collar. Anybody with any Photoshop abilities will feel right at home. The tools are similar, the layers look the same and even the masks and adjustment layers have the Adobe look.

Look… It’s online Photoshop! Except it’s not

Start with the adjustment menu to alter the contrast with a curve. Well it works but it’s very basic.

Curves in Photopea are minimal

Non-destructive editing

I wasn’t holding out much hope when I went to the adjustment layers. I thought I would try out a very simple brightness and contrast but it actually worked very well. I was surprised. I even had a mask to use to stop the adjustment affecting the sky. Things are looking up. I was getting into it now and just copied the adjustment layer like I would in Photoshop by dropping it on the new layer button. Yes! that worked too. Better and better.

Adding an adjustment layer

Couldn’t stop now. I had to add a gradient adjustment layer and mix it with the layer below to hide the white using the blend mode. See our tutorial on how to make the sky dark in a photo. If you’re not used to layers and masks, see our post on using these with our textures tutorial and the Vatican multi-image edit tutorial.

This is the colour final version

Why stop now!? So on to converting it to Black and White to finish off the whole thing.

Changing the image size has very basic options – Bilinear or nearest neighbour as interpolation option.

Still, it didn’t look too bad.

After using the crop tool I exported out as a jpg.

The finished image

See what we think makes a good black and white image.

Conclusions

So how was it? Well there are good and bad.

First the good.

• It’s free
• It works on a browser so both Mac and PC
• The software doesn’t take up room on your drive
• You can use it on an iPad. We got it to work on an iPad mini
• It strips the software down to the bare basics
• Even the brush size keyboard shortcuts using the [ and ] keys worked. (See our top 10 Photoshop shortcuts).
• You can save as PSD files and all the functionality is still there in Photoshop

Now the not so good

• The Raw settings are too stripped down
• It struggled a few times and things slowed right down. I made sure I had no other tabs on the browser open but it still occasionally froze
• The crop tool was a bit clunky. I struggled with it as it kept freezing.
• The brush was a bit difficult to control.
• The interpolation options are a bit sparse and as this is an online version I suspect it will be used for a lot of resizing.

So would I use it again?

If I was totally stuck without Photoshop or Affinity Photo then yes I would, but I’d always go for a non-online browser based option first.

Would I recommend it?

Only if you are going to do image manipulation a few times a year and really can’t afford Affinity or Photoshop or you need to do some quick manipulation on your tablet.

I do have high hopes for Photopea though (or any free online photoshop). It can only get better and faster and as a free web resource it is actually very good.

Give it a try. You have nothing to lose.

The post Free online Photoshop? appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Learn from the Masters

Some days we look at well-known photographers images and something in us just cries out “I wish I could create images like that”! At first I thought it was just me but I have discovered that the majority of photographers feel like this about certain other photographers some time. If you have ever seen the beautiful black and white zen-like work of Michael Kenna then you will probably know this feeling really well. If you don’t know Michael Kenna’s work, have a look at his web site. Once you have finished weeping with inadequacy come back and let us look at how to photograph like Michael Kenna so you too can create similar style images.

Have a look at our other  ‘How to photograph like…’ series that includes Edward Weston and Ansel Adams to see how to create images like they have.

Now before we get started there are a few things to know.

• Michael Kenna creates images on a medium format Hasselblad.
• He uses film
• He has a very zen-like nature about him
• He is a photographic genius
• He is a darkroom super-craftsman

So now the bar has been set so spectacularly high, let’s see what we can do with our DSLR or Mirrorless digital cameras – no pressure then!

I photographed these cranes at the Bristol harbour, UK in a Kenna style with simple shape and no shadow detail

Analysing the Master

When trying to imitate anybody’s style we start by analysing their techniques, so when looking at Michael Kenna’s photography, this is what I saw.

Composition:

Michael Kenna looks for simplicity in his composition, moving closer or framing the subjects to get rid of extraneous objects. He uses a lot of symmetry and rule of thirds but is not afraid to break rules if the composition calls for it. As he photographs on a Hasselblad which has a square format, a vast number of his images are square.

• Pro tip – Michael will often put the horizon on almost the centre of the image. He uses a technique called the optical centre. This is about 10% above the centre of an image and is where the eye naturally rests.

The images have a timeless quality about them, which suggests a photographer who is in no rush, and analyses every scene and possible angle before creating the image.

Black and White film:

In an interview with Procameraman.jp Michael talked about his favourite film as Kodak Tri-X 400 ISO. This is a very forgiving / flexible film and well suited to the long exposures he does. Some are as long as 10 hours. It also has a very distinctive and pronounced grain structure.  See our post on what black and white film to choose to find out more.

ND to blur clouds or water and other filters to darken skies:

In order to create the long exposures, to get the milky water during daytime we need to assume that Michael uses an Neutral Density filter and the camera on a tripod. See our how to photograph with ND filters tutorial.

We can also assume he uses a red and or polarizing filter to darken and lighten parts of the image. We have written extensively about using filters in black and white photography in other posts.

Quite a lot of contrast and high key:

Michael Kenna’s images appear to have large tracts of almost black and almost white in them. The middle tones are there but are in the minority. A lot of his images are also high-key, meaning most of the image is really light although almost every image has something nearly black in it. As a master craftsman Kenna is probably using a combination of film development chemistry and darkroom techniques to augment the original stark image. For more ideas about black and white, see our post on what makes a good black and white image.

I photographed this high key image in Wivenhoe near our home on a misty autumn morning. Not quite Kenna style as it doesn’t have any very dark areas.

How to Photograph like Michael Kenna Step-by-Step guide

Find your Perfect Composition

This is the hardest part of the process but with a little patience you will achieve extraordinary results. Don’t rush things. Leave your camera in your bag until you have found the perfect spot to create an image from. Try to pre-visualise the final image before you touch the camera.

Look around for simple details, structures or shapes. To photograph like Michael Kenna, try to ignore the colour aspect that can be overwhelming.

To help us compose we set the Sony A7R camera to black and white mode so the images appear in the viewfinder as black and white (most mirrorless cameras have a similar feature).

If we’re using Ally’s Nikon D600 DSLR or a film camera that doesn’t have this feature then we view the scene through a strong coloured filter. This gives you one colour, and even though it’s not black and white, it helps to show the shape and form of the scene.

Exposing the Scene

To photograph like Michael Kenna, use long exposures with the camera on a tripod to get movement in clouds and water. Make sure you’re using a solid tripod, as even the slightest movement on the camera during a 30-second exposure can ruin an image. Use a Neutral Density filter to help you get the very long shutter times you need. Our 10-stop filter usually allows us to achieve 30-second shutter times in normal daylight.

We use Manfrotto and Gitzo heavy duty tripods with robust heads. They are a pain to carry but so worth it when you images are stunning. We recently tried out a travel tripod from Manfrotto but it was much to wobbly in even the slightest breeze so it’s going on eBay soon. Don’t forget your red or orange or polarising filter to darken the sky. These will also help to give you longer shutter times.

Not all of Michael Kenna’s photographs are long exposures though but they are all about simplicity. Taking the essence on the scene into a beautiful composition. Michael once referred to his images as a Haiku rather than a literary work.

The Digital Darkroom

Michael is known as a darkroom master artist and artisan and so it comes as no surprise that he does a lot of dodging and burning on his images. He also mentioned in an interview with Camerawork magazine that he uses Ilford Multigrade paper so he can dodge or burn areas at a variety of contrasts.

All of this we can do in our RAW files using adjustment brushes.

Finally, a how to photograph like Michael Kenna post would not be complete without talking about toning. Michael uses sepia tone on his images to give the highlights a bit of colour. We can easily do this to our RAW files in the RAW converter or, (and we prefer this method), use a Gradient Map adjustment layer in Photoshop.

Final and original image from our Michael Kenna style photographic trip. Drag slider to see more.

Putting it all into practice with a trip to the North Norfolk coast in the United Kingdom

The Photographic Process

Ally and I live in a county called Essex, which is about an hour’s drive from central London (or 2 if the traffic’s bad). About 2 hours drive north of us, is the beautiful undeveloped coastline of Norfolk that offers plenty of scope for interesting images. After a long hot summer we set off for 2 days photography knowing that we wanted to create something simple and stark.

The first day was stunning, bright blue sky with small puffy clouds, long sandy beaches with sand dunes, photography heaven. The second day was rainy and overcast and just awful. So how did we do? Well, the first days’ images were ‘pants’. (This is an English expression meaning rubbish!)

Tim looking for the perfect composition on the rocky pier

It was the overcast sky that gave us the beautiful stark and simple images (without harsh shadows) that we were looking for. I find this very annoying as I (Tim) am a sun worshiper and hate overcast days but there we go.

Ally trying a different angle

Once I had viewed all the potential photographic vantage points for the pier I wanted to photograph, I set up the Manfrotto tripod on the rocks and made sure it was secure. I wanted to do some longer (30 sec) exposures to give the water movement so I attached our ND filter. The exposures ranged from 10 to 30 seconds and even though I had a sturdy tripod the wind still gave me a bit of camera shake on some of them.

This is what the bit of wind did to my long exposure when it buffeted the camera

When composing I used a combination of symmetry and the rule of thirds for my horizon.

Rule of Thirds

In the Digital Darkroom

I am using Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud (2018) however this technique will be very similar in any software that enables RAW file editing including Affinity Photo, a favourite of ours on the iPad.

Cromer contact sheet in Bridge including some edits

In Raw, the un-retouched original

In Raw with very basic edit 

The first thing I did when opening the image in Raw was to convert it to Black and White. I also set the options to sRGB (not greyscale) and the channel bit depth to 16.

This gives me an image with smooth gradients that I can add colour to in Photoshop. If you open it from Raw into Photoshop in greyscale mode you will have to convert it to RGB colour to add the toning adjustment layer. Having it as 16 bit rather than the default 8 means that there are thousands of shades of lightness per channel rather than just 256. This gives you smoother gradients without as much ‘banding’.

I then took down the highlights as some of the clouds were overexposed.

Raw gradient to get the dark sky Michael Kenna style

Along the top of the camera Raw window you will see a little gradient icon. I clicked the icon to get to the gradient area and added 2 gradients to darken down the clouds a bit.

Raw dodge and burn edit like Michael does in the darkroom

Clicking the little paintbrush along the top again, takes you to the adjustment brush area. I added a brush, painted the area I wished to adjust and then adjusted the settings on the right. Not only can you lighten and darken but also change contrast, sharpening, clarity and a host of other properties. As you can see by the dots on the picture I did 13 different brushes. Some to lighten the water, some to increase contrast and detail on the rocks. The little mask button at the bottom allows you to see the areas you are painting. I switch it on and off to see what I’m doing.

Overall on the image I lightened the highlights and darkened the shadows to get that distinct Michael Kenna look.

Lastly I added a selenium tone adjustment layer

I opened the image in Photoshop as a Raw smart object. You do this by holding down the Shift key while clicking the open image (object) button in Photoshop Raw.

If you wish to learn Photoshop on the iPad or Affinity Photo on the iPad have a look at our Udemy courses below.

Click here for amazing money off deals to Learn Photoshop or Affinity Photo v2 on the ipad with Tim’s Udemy course

Having my image in Photoshop as a Raw smart object allows me to double click the smart object any time and go back into Camera Raw to make adjustments. If you’ve never converted to black and white before, check out our post with technical and geeky explanations!

I added a Gradient map and chose the Selenium tone Gradient Map. Even though Michael Kenna uses sepia tone over selenium I thought it looked better on this particular image. The difference is that a sepia tone works on the highlights first and selenium toning works on the shadows first.

Final Image

Go Forth and Create Like a Master

As you can probably tell by the tone of this post, Michael Kenna is one of my favourite photographers and although I don’t go out to copy his work, it has always had a great impact on my personal style. Anybody can copy anybody else’s technique; however you need your own personal vision to really create you own image of he world. Learn all you can from all the master photographers but then turn all that knowledge into your own unique vision. See our post on photographing like Edward Weston  and Ansel Adams.

To sum up a post of how to photograph like Michael Kenna we need 2 things. Beautiful simple composition and lots of shadows and highlights in a toned Black and White image.

Try it out. You might find that your own style, added to this technique creates some amazing images you’d never thought of doing before. Mostly, have fun doing it.

The post How to photograph like Michael Kenna – Tutorial appeared first on ImageExplorers.

More than once, Ally and I have arrived in a new town to photograph, all prepared and excited however things don’t go always go according to plan. The weather is dire, the scene itself is spectacularly awful due to building work, there are too many tourists etc. I’m sure you have all felt this at various stages. Don’t give up! What we do in these situations is to do texture photography. Even surrounded by hundreds of tourists in a building zone during awful weather we can always find some texture detail to light up our photographic souls.

On the surface of it, many people think of textures as just background images. Filler photos to put text on top of but a beautiful texture is a joy to behold in its own right. Think of them a “mini” landscapes that very few people stop to look at and it will bring you hours of photographic pleasure.

Wales snow in sand texture

Dubrovnik roof texture

Church wood and stone texture in cyanotype style

The other use we have for texture photography is to create something that we montage or blend with other images in Photoshop. See the how-to further down this post.

Using layer for texture photography on HMS Victory hull

What equipment do you need?

We just use whatever we have with us and as we said in our bios, we travel very light. I have listed a few things below that could be helpful if you have them with you.

Ally photographing wheel textures on a UK quarry

Macro lenses for close-up

You don’t really need any special equipment to photograph textures unless you want to go really close-up in which case you might need a macro lens. These are lenses that are optically corrected for close-up photography and most of them allow closer focusing than normal lenses do.

Tripods

We find a tripod really useful if we need more depth of field with longer shutter speeds so we can keep the camera steady for that all important sharpness that we try to get. Another use for the tripod is to help compose the perfect image. Having the camera on the tripod allows us to keep the camera composed on one area while looking around to see if there are any other areas that look better without losing our original composition. This seems ridiculous, but with close-up texture photography you’ll be surprised how easy it is to lose that perfect picture, as there is so much detail to take in.

Filters

Filters can be really useful. A polarizing filter can get rid of reflections and boost your colour saturation. A single coloured filter on black and white film can lighten or darken the same or opposite colours. See our post on how to make the sky dark in a photo for more details about these techniques. Even though there probably won’t be any sky in your texture photograph, the same principles apply to other colours. So, a green filter will lighten greens in black and white film photography etc. Of course, you can always do this in Photoshop or Affinity Photo when editing your images created on a digital camera.

Texture photography on old Bristol War Department  tanker train

What to photograph

Just look around you with a critical eye. Texture photography takes in anything that has a texture, so from rough walls to smooth building marble, tree trunks to old rusty metal, there are just so many photographs to create. Ally and I love finding old buildings with weather distressed wood where the paint is peeling and the sun has bleached the colour.

Texture on South African Railway train

Old rusted farm equipment left out in fields or old trains that we come upon while walking, always yields some beautiful textures.

Don’t forget wave and sand textures

Black and white or colour photography?

This depends on what you have with you. If we are photographing with black and white film loaded, when we come upon textures we will be looking for textures that lend themselves to black and white and try to ignore the colour in the scene. (A good tip is to look at the scene through a coloured filter as this removes the multiple colours you see and allows you to concentrate on the all-important texture shapes.)

When using colour film, we look for contrasting or sympathetic hues.

Digitally you can do whatever you like. My (Tim) Sony mirrorless A7R camera has an option to view the scene in black and white through the viewfinder but it still records a full colour Raw file in case I change my mind later. I really like this feature, not just for textures, as it enables me to concentrate on the shape and texture in an image and not get distracted by the colour.

Process

As I mentioned earlier, a texture photograph can be a beautiful image on its own but should you want to incorporate it into a different image it can really bring the image to life. I mixed the photograph of the Lord Nelson ship, the HMS Victory, moored in Portsmouth in the UK with a texture photograph of side detail of the ship. This was done in Photoshop by putting the texture layer on top of the ship layer, reducing the opacity, masking out the areas I didn’t want and then experimenting with various layer modes until I found the one I liked. I used Soft Light however my usual go-to layer modes are Multiply (which hides the lighter parts of a layer) or Overlay (which gives a really increased contrast mix).

Texture photograph on ship for use in final image

Using layers with Soft Light mode for texture photography

I started this post by making out that texture photography is something you do if you can’t do ‘real’ photography due to unforeseen circumstances, but in reality, photographing textures can be an extremely satisfying process and yield some incredible images. Whether for use in a mixed layer image or as a beautiful image in its own right, you will find you can fill your photographic soul with texture goodness. Give it a go and, like us, you will be hooked on textures.

The post Texture Photography appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Have you ever seen beautiful old photographs with a blue tone and wondered how you could create the same? A romantic cyanotype photo can look so stunning yet is so easy to do digitally. Let me take you through the process and have you creating an amazing cyanotype photo in minutes. It’s a bit messy but oh so worth it.

Traditionally, a cyanotype photo print is usually created using ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide chemicals. The original process was invented by an astronomer, Sir John Herschel, around 1839. Of course, this was and still is a very messy process requiring coating paper with chemicals. This paper is then allowed to dry and then contact-printed (using your negative) onto the paper using a UV lamp or sunlight. It is washed and then dried. Lots of trial and error and not to mention cost. I want to show you how to get the same result digitally. It would be a shame however not to get your hands a little dirty so the first part of the cyanotype photo in digital will still require a bit of mess.

Some totally useless geeky info

Copies of architectural plans were named ‘blueprints’ because they originally used the Cyanotype process resulting in blue prints – now you too can impress your friends…

The preparation process or, as I like to call it, “Woo-hoo – I’m 5 again”

Ink, heavy duty paper and a brush is all you really need. I poured some ink onto the paper and painted it, making sure not to be too neat with the edges. When it had dried, I scanned the painted page in at a high resolution. I use 600 ppi at A4 as this translates into 300 ppi at A3 size. You can always photograph the paper if you don’t have a scanner. (Just make sure the camera is parallel to the inked paper.)

Cyanotype photo process – preparing the paper

Let’s get toning

While traditionally a cyanotype is Prussian blue and white, you can also achieve a slight yellow in the highlights by bleaching and toning. This split tone look is the one I am going for here.

Open your chosen image in either Adobe Photoshop Raw, Lightroom or Affinity Photo. I will be demonstrating in Photoshop Raw.

Original Image

After you have got your settings for lightness, darkness and shadow detail correct, you will need to click on the black and white photo button. Of course you can then still lighten and darken certain areas with the Black and White control sliders.

Converted to Black and White

Next step is to choose the toning tab. I added a small amount of yellow in the highlights, and more blue in the shadows.

Split tone sliders in raw for cyanotype colour

With Cyanotype photo colour tone

Creating the digital painted frame look

Open up the scanned image in Adobe Photoshop or Affinity Photo. Bring in your toned image. Drag or copy/paste the scanned inked paper onto the toned image.

Paste Painted paper scan onto cyanotype photo

Now for the magic … set the paper layer mode to Screen. Ta-da. A beautiful cyanotype photo with a hand painted paper edge replicating hand-made sensitised paper.

Set layer to screen for Cyanotype photo emulsion look

Useful Geeky Info about Modes

Simply put, the Screen mode hides the black on the layer. It is the opposite of Multiply which hides the whites.

Cyanotype photo with emulsion paint effect

A Reversed Background

The reversed background is nothing like a Cyanotype photo but still quite cool. If you wished to have the image look like it was painted onto a black background you could invert the paper layer and then set the paper layer mode to Multiply.

Original paper layer as used in cyanotype print

Paper layer as used in cyanotype print inverted

Convert mode to multiply for cyanotype on black paper

Variations on the theme

This Cyanotype photo technique has so many variations when it is done digitally. Why not try painting on various surfaces to get interesting textures on you photographs. Create other interesting split tones or even use it on full colour images. As always remember. A Black and White toned image will not rescue a boring photograph but a good photograph can be made even better with sympathetic tones. Mostly, have fun.

The post Create a Digital Cyanotype photo without too much mess appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Why would you wish to convert colour to black and white? After all, we all see in colour. There are so many reasons. Maybe the original image has too many clashing colours? It could be that the weird mix of colour balance (eg, a mix of outdoor light with some indoor lighting) in the image is just too time consuming to correct. Or perhaps you want to replicate old film. There are so many other reasons. But, I usually want to convert colour to black and white because it is just so very beautiful and striking.

This staircase that Ally photographed at our AirBnB in Bournemouth looks so much more graphical in black and white.

Here is the original colour version before converting to black and white

Surely you just choose a menu command and it’s done?

Well yes, you can do that but you would be missing out on the joy of controlling the converting of colour to black and white and seeing your image come alive. Most of the quick fix conversions just remove the colour from your image. This, more often than not, leaves a flat dull photograph that requires a lot of dodging and burning or contrast correction to give it more ‘pop’.

The technical explanation that you don’t really need unless you’re a geek or sitting in a coffee shop waiting for a friend!

All colours, whether in the real world or in an image have 3 main values.

1. The actual colour value (Hue)
2. The amount of saturation that colour has (Saturation)
3. And finally, how light or dark that colour is (Luminance / Lightness).

Colour Picker

This can be easily seen in a lot of colour pickers. It is usually referred to as HSL in software adjustments.

Hue, Saturation and Luminance (or Lightness)

So, to convert from colour to black and white, what we want to do is to remove the colour. But we also need to be able to adjust the lightness values of the separate colours individually. This is so we can maybe brighten up that beautiful red sunset cloud whilst at the same time darkening down the blue sky.

But this black and white voodoo never happened in traditional photography I hear you say

Ah, but it did. Here is some more geeky stuff to explain it. Traditional film (silver halide) is sensitive to light. So photographers used varying colour filters to lighten or darken parts of the image they were exposing. One of the most common filters was an orange filter. This absorbed blue light so when the image was exposed, less light from the blue areas got to the film, resulting in a darker blue. This was usually used on landscapes to make the sky go dark and dramatic whilst keeping the clouds white.

One of the greatest traditional landscape photographers, Ansel Adams, used yellow, orange and red filters on his camera to achieve the spectacular images of Yosemite and some of his skies are almost black in the print.

A different technique with film is to use a polarizing filter to darken down the sky.

We are doing the same thing, but with digital we can lighten or darken any colour in the image during conversion.

How the magic is done

In Photoshop or Affinity Photo go to your layers panel and at the bottom find the adjustment layers button. Add a black and white adjustment layer – in here you can lighten and darken the various colours to achieve a spectacular black and white image.

Using black and white to lighten and darken when you convert colour to black and white

Some tips to achieving black and white Zen

Quick tip 1: Try to pre-visualise your black and white image at the creating stage. Many mirrorless cameras let you change your display settings so the display presents in black and white. I use this technique a lot on my Sony A7R. This way, I concentrate more on the shapes and composition as well as the lightness values of the image. This helps stop me getting distracted by the colours. The great thing here is that the camera still records the full colour image, so I can have my cake and eat it!

Quick tip 2: If your camera doesn’t support this function you can take a coloured filter with you. View the scene through the filter to help get rid of distracting colours and enable you to concentrate on the lightness values and shape. Remember to take the filter off the camera before you take the photograph though. Also remember the filter might affect the way you see the values: such as a red filter will make the reds lighter and the blues darker. See our post on essential filters for black and white photography.

Quick tip 3: Geeky stuff alert! If you convert colour to black and white in the Raw file converter, be aware that the default file that opens in Adobe Photoshop will be a single 8-bit channel greyscale file. 8-bit channel images are made up of 256 levels of lightness per channel, from black to white. Therefore, a greyscale image only has 256 shades of grey. An 8-bit RGB image has 3 channels, each with 256 shades. This could mean you get banding in the beautiful graduated sky areas. (I will cover this in detail in a separate post soon.) More importantly, unless you convert the image back to RGB colour, you won’t be able to add colour in Photoshop, even in the form of text. You can do this by going to the Image menu > Modes > RGB colour.

In Summary …

Finally just remember… A boring photograph is still a boring photograph even if it’s converted to black and white. But a good photograph can sometimes become even more stunning once you convert it to black and white.

The post Convert Colour to Black and White – Tips and Geeky Explanations appeared first on ImageExplorers.

Photoshop shortcuts can really speed up your workflow, so we’re going to share our favourite top 10.

1. The Tab Key

The tab key will show and hide all of your panels and toolbar. This is one of those Photoshop shortcuts that if you don’t know about it and you hit by mistake, you will wonder where your tools have all disappeared to! Well tab again and to bring them back!

2. Shift and Tab

Shift tab is really cool because if you hold down the shift key and then press tab you can hide all of your panels but not the tools, so you can work away with your tools then just shift tab to bring back to panels. If you’re like me you’ve got panels all over the show and this is a really easy way of working.

3. F key

No Ctrl or Cmd. No Alt. No Shift. Just the letter F! What the F key does is, it changes your screen mode so you can go between standard screen, full screen and full screen without the menus or panels. Really useful!

4. The Square Brackets

Left [ = smaller brush
Right ] = larger brush
Just keep hitting either one and you will change your brush size appropriately.

5. Shift and the Square Brackets

Shift and [ = Makes your brush softer and
Shift and ] = Makes your brush harder
Just hold down Shift and keep pressing the left or the right square bracket to make your brush softer or harder.

6. Ctrl Alt click and drag (Mac) or Alt Right Click and drag (PC)

This sounds confusing but is a really handy shortcut for once again, making your brush larger or smaller, if you drag left and right, or softer and harder, if you drag up and down. Now you should see a red preview of the brush hardness and size but if you don’t, don’t worry about it, it’ll still work – (it’s to do with the graphics card on your machine as to whether you can see it or not).

7. D key

Now most people know that if you use Ctrl or Cmd D, it’s for deselect in Photoshop, but if you just press the D key by itself you will be changing your foreground and background colours to the default which is pure black and pure white this is very useful if you’re going to be working on layer masks and you need a pure white or black.

8. X key

Now of course if you are working on a layer mask you want to flick between black and white really quickly so that you can either show or hide the layer. Now what X does is it flicks your foreground and your background colours over really speeding up working and erasing and showing on masks.

9. Cmd + or – or 0 (Mac) / Ctrl + or – 0 (PC)

These are your zoom-in, zoom-out and fit to screen shortcuts for Mac or PC.

10. Spacebar

By holding down the spacebar you can change whatever tool you’re in, except for the Type tool into the hand tool so you can move around on your document. This is really good because those little buttons on the right hand side at the bottom for scrolling around are just so unbelievably annoying!

Although these are the Photoshop shortcuts, a lot of the Affinity Photo shortcuts are similar. See our blog post on Photoshop vs Affinity Photo.

For tons more tutorials on Photoshop and other Adobe graphics software, see Red Rocket Studio tutorials.

Go forth and give the software a thorough thrashing and don’t forget enjoy it!

The post Top 10 Essential Photoshop Shortcuts appeared first on ImageExplorers.

The Tombs of the kings before and after image is of a UNESCO World Heritage Site about 2 km from Paphos Harbour. Many of the tombs date back to the 4th century BC. It has nothing to do with kings! The name comes purely from the magnificence of the tombs.  There are a lot of ruins obviously, some more interesting than others. But if you go down underneath some of them there are some amazing images to be made. One in particular, with lots of pillars, with the golden light coming through was beautiful. We visited the site late in the day so the light was streaming in at an angle.

Drag the centre line to see the difference

The problem image

The problem with the scene is that I wanted a bit of detail in the bright sunlit areas as well as in the darker bits. Most cameras have a range of light that the sensors can record. This is known as the camera’s dynamic range. Using Raw you can access a greater range of light, than photographing as a jpg will give you. I exposed my image so I definitely had a bit of detail in the highlights and then ‘pulled back’ the details from the shadows in Adobe camera Raw. I used a manual setting on the camera so as not to overexpose the highlights as the camera can lie to you about exposure.

To create more atmosphere, we kicked up some of the dust so it was hanging in the air. Unfortunately this didn’t give us the ‘correct’ looking light streaming through the haze so we added it in later in Photoshop.

Let me show you the steps we took with this Tombs of the Kings before and after tutorial. It is done in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop but could easily have been done in Affinity Photo. Click the link to see our favourite Photoshop Shortcuts.

Into Camera Raw

Original out of camera image before adjustments

So straight into Adobe Camera Raw. (Quick tip: Instead of double clicking an image to open it in Raw try right-clicking it. This allows you to choose to open it in the Raw file converter without waiting or Photoshop to open first.)

Setting the base adjustment

Adjusting the exposure is not the way to get effective results

If you just adjust the exposure you will find that the highlights also get lighter. This is similar to what would happen if your camera was set to auto and the camera would try to lighten the large dark area.

Use the Highlights, Shadow, Clarity and Vibrancy sliders to set a base exposure

Instead of adjusting the exposure a lot, I pulled the Highlights slider down to darken the lighter areas, the Shadows slider up to lighten the darker areas, and the Clarity slider up to to get as much texture in the rock as possible. Finally I added lots of vibrance to bring out the colour of the rock.

Selective lightening with the adjustment brushes

Go to the adjustment brushes tab along the top of the screen (it’s a brush icon) and paint an area you wish to adjust. I painted a large area (where I put the green circle) and then changed the settings on the right until I liked what I saw. All the white dots you see are where I added a new brush adjustment. The red dot in the red circle is the active brush.

Adding your own lighting

I was still not happy with the light rays, so I decided to create my own. I will be dedicating a full tutorial to this technique but basically I made a selection where I wanted the rays to be, added a solid white adjustment layer and then feathered the mask. Finally I reduced the opacity of my new ‘ray’ so it’s barely visible.

Final Image

Tombs of the Kings in Cyprus

So to sum up the edit of the Tombs of the Kings Before and After image.

• Photograph in manual
• Do your initial Raw edit with the whole image in mind
• Use adjustment brushes to ‘dodge’ and ‘burn’ areas until the image you envisaged appears.
• Possibly add extra lighting you were unable to capture in camera.

I was really happy with the final result as it was just how I had envisaged the final photograph.

The big question is! Is this a “cheating” image, as I added in the rays that were not visible? Well… I think that it reflects what I saw when I stood there but you might think differently.

The post Tombs of the Kings – Cyprus – Before and After Image appeared first on ImageExplorers.

When you are looking out for editing software the usual choice is Adobe Photoshop. The industry standard is everywhere and image manipulation is now even known as “Photoshopping”. But what are the cheaper options and are they any good?

I have put together this blog to give you some more insights on the main competition that photoshop has, namely Affinity Photo. In this Photoshop vs Affinity photo blog, I would like to show you the pros and cons of each so you can have a clearer idea of which to invest in.

Software Costs

You might have noticed I used the word invest in the previous paragraph rather than buy. The reason is that whatever software you buy, you still have to invest in other things. It could be training courses cost, new hardware to run the power hungry app or your time learning the software. The actual cost of the software is just one thing to consider.

Photoshop is by far the most expensive and has made a lot of people angry by going to a subscription model. This is when you pay monthly to ‘rent’ the software. If you don’t keep paying then your software will stop working.

• Adobe Photoshop is £9.98 per month – This will go up every year or so.
• Affinity Photo is £48.99 – forever including all updates.

Other things to consider in the Photoshop vs Affinity Photo debate

• There are far more training courses (paid as well as unpaid) available for Photoshop.
• Photoshop is the industry standard so if you are using it professionally you can work at most places. Most companies will have Photoshop as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite as they will also use Illustrator and InDesign or other video editing app like Premier pro or After effects. Far fewer companies use Affinity Photo. This however, will probably change over the next few years as Affinity introduce their version of InDesign. They already have a version of Illustrator called Designer.
• Photoshop is bundled with Lightroom and Bridge.

The software itself

Both programs will do the job and they both have similar functions for photographers. Raw file corrections, Layers, Cut outs, masking, selections…. it’s all there. If you are confident in one program you should be able to find your way around the other without too much of a problem. Adobe Photoshop has got some extra abilities like handling and editing video and 3D, but Affinity has a slightly easier-to-navigate interface.

Raw panel in Affinity photo

Raw file converter in Photoshop

Other Versions

• Adobe sell a cut down version of Photoshop called Elements. It’s a one-off payment of £86.56 but upgrades are charged for. Elements is like Photoshop but lacks CMYK support so if you’re doing anything for commercial printing then don’t even think about it.
• Affinity has Affinity Photo for the iPad. This is a very well thought-out app with everything you could wish for on your iPad including Raw support and CMYK. (I will be looking at this in a later post.)

iPad affinity photo screens showing full layers palette.

Final thoughts in the great Photoshop vs Affinity Photo debate

I have been a long time user of Adobe Photoshop and started when it was version 2.5 and layers didn’t exist. Also I am and Adobe Certified Expert and Instructor. An Adobe fanboy however I am not. I have seen it go from a small digital darkroom program to the monster it is today. I was horrified when Adobe announced their subscription model and even though I subscribe to it I would still rather buy it outright. The interface also seems very clunky compared to Affinity.

Adobe Photoshop is however, all things to all people, it is “Jack of all trades and master of all”. I still turn to it every time I need to edit or create a bitmap image. It really is a brilliant piece of software!

If I was starting out however and I didn’t have to work commercially with the software (only editing my own photos) I would probably go for Affinity Photo!

There you have it – The winner in the Great Photoshop vs Affinity Photo debate is………

Well it just depends…..

The post Photoshop vs Affinity Photo – Which should I buy? appeared first on ImageExplorers.