Lightroom: Stunning Black & White

Photograph © Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
Chris Orwig of Layers magazine has written an article on how to create stunning black & white images in Lightroom.

I sometimes test tutorials, whether for Lightroom or Photoshop (the latter less and less frequently), but usually find them too complicated...and frankly, not worth the time to learn them. As I often mention, I'm far from being a pixel pusher, and my fiddling with photographs is kept to an absolute minimum. So I'm not at all keen in learning a superfluous new technique that I sense will keep me chained to my desk for hours.

However this one is well worth the time and effort...it's simple, it's effective and even allowed me to add some tone to the final image. I've used it to create the above photograph taken last week in Coney Island in a matter of minutes.

Partial Color/Sepia

Peeping Toms (Bali)- Image Copyright Tewfic El-Sawy

Here's a simple Photoshop technique to convert an image to sepia, and paint spots of color back into it.

1) Open your image file In Photoshop, and select Image>Adjustments>Desaturate to remove all color from the image. The image should be still RGB.

2) Your image will now appear in black & white.

3) Go to Image>Adjustments>Photo Filter, and choose Sepia. In the Sepia dialog box, Adjust Density to your liking and also check Luminosity. Click OK when you're satisfied with the sepia image.

4) Select the History brush from the tool palette. Choose a brush size appropriate to the spots you've chosen to color in, using the palette located just under the file menu bar. The brush hardness should be 100%.

5) Using the History brush you can now “paint” the color back where you want it. Don't paint all in one stroke, but stop and go so you can undo any errors without having to start all over again.

6) Continue the process until the area is complete. Save.

Adobe CS2 Offer

For those who have Adobe Elements and $300 to spend, here comes an interesting and worthwhile offer from Adobe. Adobe Photoshop Elements customers are now entitled to buy Adobe CS2 software for $299, which is a saving of $350.00 off the regular price of $649.00.

All you need is the serial number of the Elements software. The CDs are in either Mac or PC versions. The offer expires on February 27. Once you install the CS2, you can try out the CS3 Beta as well.

Adobe CS2 Offer

PDF Slideshow

Photoshop has a frequently overlooked but very useful – and super simple- feature which generates PDF slideshows of images in a matter of seconds. These PDF slideshows can be emailed (or burnt on CD) to photo editors, clients and friends to view your work. Since Adobe Reader is on virtually all computers, there's no difficulty in viewing the PDF slideshows.

Here’s how simple it is:

1. Open File Browser in Photoshop.
2. Click on File>Automate>PDF Presentation
3. The PDF Presentation Dialog Box>Browse>Select Images
4. When images are selected, select Output Options>Presentations
5. Select Presentations Options: Advance after 3-4 seconds
6. Select Transition type
7. Save
8. The PDF Options dialog box opens: Click OK
9. The PDF Presentation Saved on Desktop
10. Right Click (on Mac) to create Archive of PDF for an email-able zip file.

For ways to send large files, look at my earlier post: Send It!!

Tritone Your Photographs!

Inle Lake Fishermen - Image Copyright 2003 Tewfic El-Sawy
I occasionally decide that some of my photographs would look better in black and white, but I rarely leave them as B&W and prefer to give them a warm tone. In the above photograph of the fishermen on Inle Lake in Myanmar, I used the following technique in Photoshop (I use Mac but I expect that Windows would be the same) to tritone it:

1. Open your image (RAW or jpg), and make all your normal adjustments in terms of levels, curves, brightness, etc (but do not sharpen yet). Flatten the image.

2. Go to Image>Mode>Greyscale in the menu, which will convert your image into black & white. Then go again to the menu, and choose Image>Mode>Duotone. This will bring up the Duotone options. Under the Type pull-down menu, select Tritone where you will be given the choices of 3 inks to choose from.

3. Select these three types of inks: Black, PANTONE 1205 C and FOCOLTONE 5011. This is done by ticking on each square of the ink samples in the dialog box. Click OK to confirm your three choices.

4. Your image should now be warm toned and probably darker than you’d like. So go to Image>Mode>RGB and switch the mode back to RGB.

5. Open your Levels adjusments and user the sliders to increase the highlights and mid-tones to the levels you feel is right for the image.

6. At this stage, you can sharpen the image and save it.

Reuters: Use of Photoshop

As a consequence of a recent fracas involving manipulation of images of the Lebanon-Israel conflict last summer by a photographer associated with Reuters, its Editor-in-Chief recently posted rules governing the use of Photoshop to its photographers/photojournalists. These have raised a debate within the photojournalism industry as to what is digital manipulation...is it any different from the traditional darkroom techniques used by film photographers? Is it relevant to travel photographers? I think so, but you decide.

I agree wholeheartedly with these rules. My use of Photoshop is limited to the very basics. For example, I seldom crop my images in Photoshop, but I used selective sharpening on a few of my images, as well as auto levels. However, I do not use anything other than minor color correction and sharpening when submitting my photographs to buyers. Why? Because it's unethical and digital manipulation is always found out by a professional editor.

Here are the rules summary:

ALLOWED:

• Cropping
• Adjustment of Levels to histogram limits
• Minor colour correction
• Sharpening at 300%, 0.3, 0
• Careful use of lasso tool
• Subtle use of burn tool
• Adjustment of highlights and shadows
• Eye dropper to check/set gray


NOT ALLOWED:

• Additions or deletions to image
• Cloning & Healing tool (except dust)
• Airbrush, brush, paint
• Selective area sharpening
• Excessive lightening/darkening
• Excessive colour tone change
• Auto levels
• Blurring
• Eraser tool
• Quick Mask
• In-camera sharpening
• In-camera saturation styles

Motion Blur

I've recently experimented with a few techniques involving motion blur, especially in dance. Whenever I photograph dances as those in Bhutan for example, I favor shooting the rapid movements of the dancers with a slow shutter speed. To me, there's some degree of trial and error until I get the right amount of blur to impart movement rather than creating an abstract image. Using one the fastest digital cameras around (Canon 1D which goes up to 8 fps) allows me to shoot a bunch of images of a whirling Tsechu dancer, capturing his movements over 10-25 seperate images....all of which will be blurry if I used a slow shutter speed.

This is useful because I can then sequence all these shots (and repeat them if necessary) on the timeline of the wonderful Soundslides (my favorite flash-based slideshow maker), and if I keep the duration of each image under a second, I obtain a moving image of the dancer's motion, similar to the well known 'flip book' technique used in animations or in cartoons. The 'flip book' concept was pioneered by many photographers, but Ed Kashi produced one on Kurdistan quite recently.

To view my 'whirling' Tsechu dancer based on the above technique, drop by my Dancing Monks of Prakhar slideshow.

Motion blur can also be achieved in post-processing in Photoshop. The tutorial is found here.

Bobbie Goodrich, whom I met on a photo tour in Bolivia, has made a name for herself by doing just that. She photographs dancers, and post processes the images in Photoshop possibly using the same procedure. Her excellent dance portfolio can be found here.

There's no question that I much prefer the real thing, however there's a little something to be said about the post processing technique, although it's not my cup of tea.

Image from Dancing Monks of Prakhar-Copyright 2006 Tewfic El-Sawy