Queensberry Connects


Posts Tagged ‘Photoshop’

Photoshopping the soul

December 16th, 2009 in Photography & Design by Johannes van Kan


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L15_2-j0810 071026copy1copy1We have discovered a new range of Photoshop plugins that allows us to put the soul (which we forgot to put in while shooting) back into our imagery.

Because these soulful images are our unique selling point, I can’t tell you where we found them.

With this set of plugins we are able to take a loveless bride and groom and turn them into passionate beings. We are able to take an indiscreet glance and turn it into the look of love. We are able to take monochromatic feelings and turn them into a fiercely burning fire … all with the help of some photoshop and a couple of plugins.

It’s not true! That’s the thing.

The most important thing in the imagery … the soul of the image … cannot be added later.

Where do you find the soul in the imagery … it lives in the people that populate your work. I cannot emphasise enough how important this is to the imagery we put into our albums. Emotion always wins over a dramatic landscape.

To create the emotion we nurture trust with our clients, and to get the soul (in its simplest form) we let the bride and groom focus on being together over being in front of our camera.

There is no easy answer and it certainly doesn’t exist in Photoshop as a filter.  As much as technology plays a dominant role in the new age of wedding photography there is that thing which technology cannot ‘create’ and strangely it is the thing that is most important.

Best, Johannes

 

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    • Interview with: Bruce Gabites

    June 3rd, 2009 in People by Nigel Hicks


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    239_2

    Late last year Ian and I caught up with award winning photographer Bruce Gabites at his new Auckland studio. He’d just won his eighth straight Kodak Gold award  in the Wedding Album category, and we wanted to find out his secret…

    We spent a morning talking with him about why he enters photography competitions and what makes him so successful, the affect winning awards has on his business, and albums – the part they  play in his packages, and how he goes about selling them.

    To listen to our interview with Bruce Gabites click here (22 mins).

    Cheers, Nigel

    PS Bruce recently shared some good advice about dealing with complaining clients with us. Click here to read it.

    030

     

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    • Interview with: Johannes van Kan

    May 22nd, 2009 in People by Nigel Hicks


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    Greg and Natalie by Johannes van Kan

    Johannes has been posting on Queensberry Connects for several months now. It’s been great to have a regular photographer perspective, and personally we’ve found his insights and opinions inspiring.

    We asked him to contribute to our interview series by sharing his thoughts on album design.

    In the conversation, Ian asks him to expand on several posts he’s written about the benefits of getting to know your clients before the wedding, and his ”six secrets” to designing a great album…

    He also questions Johannes about how he interacts with his clients, his workflow and the part Photoshop plays.

    To listen to our interview with Johannes click here.

    And here’s an album we featured recently on Queensberry Connects.

    Cheers, Nigel

     

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    • Die hard

    August 12th, 2008 in Marketing by Ian Baugh


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    wineglass

    My interview with Rod Ellmore talked about how the close partnership between photographers and vendors in the ’70s and ’80s helped build some great careers, but it wasn’t all positive.

    One disadvantage was that marketing gimmicks picked up at seminars organised by the vendors propagated like viruses! Like this one – the notorious “couple in the brandy glass”.

    Pam brought us a picture (left) from her brother Martin’s 80s wedding to Simone (thanks for sharing!). And I found proof that tacky ideas live on in Photoshop.

    Now you know I’m a snob – but not as much as I used to be:

    • There’s nothing wrong with tack, just unoriginal tack (yes, I loved The Wedding Singer)
    • Unfortunately, tackiness hides real quality, at least from people like me.

    For example in the seventies I was listening to Neil Young, The Band, Dylan, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell et al. Also Linda Ronstadt (but only because she sang Warren Zevon songs). Never Abba! It took Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Muriel’s Wedding and now Mamma Mia to prove their songs have great bones. And when you go back and look they actually played it pretty straight, at least in this clip. They just didn’t look like my heroes:

    It’s easy to laugh at older bad taste, but the newer stuff isn’t as easy to spot.

    Cheers, Ian

     

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    • High-Res Export with PJ Retro and CS3

    June 13th, 2008 in Products & Services by Ian Baugh


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    Some people have experienced problems with Retro High-Res Export using Photoshop CS3 due to the fact their filenames have lower-case extensions, eg .jpg instead of .JPG. Photoshop CS3 scripting seems to be fussier about this than earlier versions and the solution is to change the extensions from lower to upper case, which you can do in Bridge, and then try re-exporting. Read on also for how to avoid the problem in the first place.

    Here are the Batch Rename settings you need in Bridge (click on the images to enlarge them):

    batchrename

    This will leave the filename alone but change the extension to upper case.

    IMPORTANT – YOU DON’T WANT THIS…

    batchrename2

    In Bridge you can rename files and “preserve” the original file name in the metadata. Wwhat you’d be doing in my second screen-shots is changing the extension of the ORIGINAL filename, instead of the current one, to upper case, which isn’t going to help.

    Most important, you need to avoid the problem in the first place by un-checking the User Lower Case Extensions option in Photoshop preferences, as below:

    ps_file_saving_prefs

    The screen-shots are from CS2, which is what I have installed, but hopefully they make the point.

    I originally wrote this on the PJ Forum and found it again with the Search feature. Chances are there are solutions to your questions or problems right there.

    Cheers, Ian

     

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    • If your images could speak

    April 22nd, 2008 in Photography & Design by Ian Baugh


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    Bear with me for a minute while I get opinionated – I know plenty will disagree with me ;-)

    I happened across a forum post recently. Someone asked if a certain prominent photographer’s winning print at a certain prominent convention was so close to the edge that it had fallen off!

    After checking it out I thought the comment was a bit tough, but I could see the point. And the prominent guy wasn’t alone – all the winning images were photoshopped within an inch of their lives. But the most striking thing? How different those images were to so much of what we see and admire in our Bindery.

    It’s incredible how much some photographers expect of themselves today that was impossible a few years ago.

    It’s a few years since naturalism and photojournalism were the buzzwords du jour. Maybe it’s time for the pendulum to swing again – and maybe save you a ton of time.

    Two questions worth thinking about: Are your clients paying for your Photoshop efforts? And could your images speak for themselves?

    Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be. That’s been good advice since the dawn of desktop computers.

    Cheers, Ian

     

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    • Reduced opacity tip

    February 16th, 2008 in Products & Services by Ian Baugh


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    This is an important message if you send us layered PSD files. If any of the layers have reduced opacity what you see on screen may NOT match the print – unless you check an obscure preference box in Photoshop’s Colour Settings. In this post we’ll tell you what to do about it, and why.

    colour-settings

    In Color Settings’ Advanced Controls you should CHECK the box, “Blend RGB Colors Using Gamma” (as in the graphic). Leave the value set to 1.00. This is considered ‘colorimetrically correct’ by Adobe and will match our settings in the Lab.

    This check box affects the way that RGB colours are blended and displayed in layered images. Because it manages the way two images intersect, it does not affect single images.

    Now, why. It’s important to understand that WHENEVER you send layered files to us, the Lab does the final blending (when it flattens the files for printing).

    The problem is that we have no way of knowing whether you have checked this box or not. If it’s not, Photoshop will use the system gamma (ie 2.2, or 1.8 on older Macs) and there may be an appreciable density difference between what you see and what you receive. If you flatten the images before uploading to us (as is normally the case with print-ready), what you see is what you’ll get, because the blending happens on your system.

    Hope this helps!

     

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