I am so excited!

[MacHeadCase]

I had taken a couple of years ago some photo at the Biodôme and the lighting was that atrocious low pressure sodium orange light.

Yuck! I didn't have a correcting filter on my lens and had only recently bought my EOS 300D at the time so hadn't experimented with the White Balance adjustment (hmm... come to think of it, I haven't done that with my EOS 350D either! Oopsy!) so all my shots came out looking pretty horrid.

I tried correcting them in Photoshop but I had limited knowledge and the things I tried really didn't work at all. I kept those photos anyway just in case one day I could find a solution.

So anyway this week we learned all about the Adjustment Layers in Photoshop, among them is the Photo Filter, Selective Color, Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layers and it does a wonderful job! w00t!!!

It's one thing to learn new stuff, it's quite another to see what you learn in action! Yay!!!

 

[Stretch]

Have you been able to properly correct them now?

 

[MacHeadCase]

Yes! The photos look like they were taken under normal lighting! I'm just leisurely going through them at the moment to correct them. Sure am glad I kept them and I can practice what I learned this week!

 

[bobtomay]

Post some before and afters? or on your website?

 

[MacHeadCase]

I could even attach one example here... Just gimme a sec... If it doesn't work I'll upload the examples in my Flickr account. Hold on!

 

[MacHeadCase]

The one that has Natural in its file name was an as is shot with the low pressure sodium lighting. You will see the colour gamma has way too much orange in it.

The other one is the corrected picture. I didn't do anything too fancy here, just a Photo Filter adjustment layer and added for the final correction a Color Balance adjustment filter.

This, btw, is certainly NOT the photo of the century, you dig? This is just so I can practice what we learned in class.

 

[Stretch]

Wow, that is a huge improvement. You might have to teach me some of photoshops tricks, although, I have been getting better, since I've been using it more.

 

[MacHeadCase]

Sure, Stretch! Get me in chat and we can go over this some time! It's very easy to do, you just need an eye for colour and you're good! :girl:

 

[D3v1L80Y]

Using the PHOTO Filter, you were able to edit and correct the PHOTOgraphs you took. This PHOTOshop thing is amazing.

Sorry, no offense, MHC... but I find it both refreshing and amusing that someone got so excited using PHOTOshop for what it was actually intended for... editing PHOTOS.:black:


Photoshop is not really meant for all of the crap people do with it, there are often times when other software that is much less expensive or simply better suited for the job will do. Sure, it is a nice little bonus, what PS can do with some things.... but it is really nothing more than a PHOTOgraph editor at its core.:black:

 

[MacHeadCase]

Yeah exactly, DB. I know what you mean.

Usually people will use Photoshop for eye candy but this is really what it is meant for.

My first intro to Photoshop was in a 3D course I took in 1996-7 and we used Photoshop to create our materials and textures. So basically this was for eye candy too.

Then I kinda let it all slide away and didn't do anything much of Photoshop till I got my Canon Digital Rebel then my Digital Rebel XT.

And I'm excited 'cause I thought those photos were ruined and a waste of CD space.

 

[Brown Study]

Ain't computers wonderful? Sitting at a desk correcting colour instead of standing all day over a hot enlarging easel dialling in colour correction and going through expensive paper and developer like it was going out of style — which, come to think of it. . . .

Nice work, MHC.

Your excitement takes me back to the way I felt when I saw QuarkXpress 2 and what it could do. (Quark fit on two floppies. Imagine.) And when I bought ColorIt!, way back in the early '90s, the world was mine.

 

[MacHeadCase]

Thanks Brown. Oh and about the enlarger easel, development paper and acid, you'll never guess...

After I spent hours on end till the wee hours of the mornings with my old Pentax Spotmatic II in my parents basement developing my own black and white photos and film, they discovered I have severe allergic reactions to dark room acids. When I come out of school, I won't be able to work in a printing shop either as solvents and other chemicals are bad for my lungs and eyes. Plenty of printing shops still develop film in dark rooms for the printing press plates: we are learning all about RIP and uhm in French a imageuse (it prints on film your documents ready for print). Just the fumes of the dark room (I'm not even in it) make my eyes bug out of my head.

Bummer.

So Photoshop at least is good to me.

 

[ToddG]

Very excellent, MHC. Glad it worked out so well for you. Recovering "bad" photos is always a great thing.

Now if Adobe would just come out with CS3 ...

 

[MacHeadCase]

Soon, very soon, Todd. :^)

I heard things that will make me want to get Photoshop CS 3... Not sure if I will be able to though.

 

[ToddG]

I used to use Elements 4.0 on my PC. I keep meaning to get a platform transfer from Adobe for the Mac version but just never get around to it. If a UB version of Elements comes out shortly after CS3 I'll probably just get that ... the extra features of PS-CS3 aren't likely worth the hundreds of dollars extra it would cost (for me).

 

[Brown Study]

. . . they discovered I have severe allergic reactions to dark room acids. . . .

That's awful. A couple of years ago, the last time I was in the proximity of a commercial darkroom, the fragrance of the chemicals was like ambrosia. Ha ha ha. I love it.

But sadly, the darkroom was to close for good in two weeks.

 

[MacHeadCase]

Oh you know: time comes and time goes. I'll adjust. :girl:

Too bad about the shop closing, I'm sure you would have still been able to lend a great hand over there.

 

[bobtomay]

That's pretty cool MHC.

Never spent the time to get into photography, though at times wished I had in my younger days when I did a fair amount of backpacking / camping.

 

[MacHeadCase]

It's never too late, Bob! I had abandoned photography for 20 years.

Digital photography makes it very easy nowadays.

 

[christm]

congrats - nice shots