Clipping Mask Using Squijoo.

It seems there are some technical (possibly legal) technicalities with Squijoo at the moment, but many photographers have their templates saved and want to be able to use them.  I’m nervous about the site disappearing forever (it’s down right now) so I wanted to write a quick article about how to insert photos into the templates using the clipping mask!  You can read their article on it here, however right now all their images are down.

First, you  open the template, then using the move tool, drag and place the image directly over the picture mask layer.

PC Users: press Control+G (Photoshop CS and earlier) or Control+Alt+G (Photoshop CS2 and newer)

Mac Users: press Command+G (Photoshop CS and earlier) or Command+Option+G (Photoshop CS2 and newer).

The image will automatically clip and work perfectly in the template!

*Very important: Make sure that your photo is directly ONE layer on top of the layer named “picture mask”. The best way to do this is to first select the “picture mask” layer in your template >> then go to your photo and drag it into the template*.

-Christine
Duluth MN Portrait Photographer

Add A Person Into A Bubble – Photoshop Tutorial – Combine Two Photos Together

Adding A Person Into A Bubble – Combining Two Photos Together – Merging Two Photos – Photoshop Composite – Photoshop Tutorial

This is going to look long at a glance but it’s actually not hard to do at all.. it looks long because I took a screen shot of every move to help out beginners.. When I was trying to use Photoshop they would say “duplicate the layer”, assuming I knew how, and I didn’t.  So I prefer to be extra thorough :).

This is a tutorial on how to add two photos together.. in this one in particular, we’ll be adding a shot of me into a shot of a bubble.
This will be the final product:

These are the original images:

^That’s me BTW :).  Anyway, open both photos in Photoshop that you want to merge together.  Copy and paste the photo onto the other photo.. in this case I’m going to copy and paste the photo of me on top of the photo of the bubble.

^The photos are both from different cameras, and the bubble photo is smaller than the photo of me taking a picture (please ignore the lens cap :p I edited it out of the final edit!).  Anyway, so I need to make this file smaller.

^Back in the original file, I go to “Image” “Image size” and reduce the size of it and copy it again to bring over and paste.

^Now it is smaller but it’s too small.. this is easy to work with though…

^Select the marquee tool and click and drag it over the image

^Now it is selected..

^Right-click within the selection and select “free transform”

^Hold down the shift key which will retain the proportions of the image and click and drag the arrows to make the image bigger or smaller.

^Next, be sure that the top layer is clicked on, then click the little square towards the bottom of the layers palette (the layer mask tool) and click it.

^You now have a layer mask on your top layer!  This will allow you to add and subtract from the top layer via the paintbrush.  Select your paintbrush and be sure its color is set to black.

^Ensure your layer mask is clicked on and now you can paint on the image to make it disappear!

^The image after painting with the black paint brush.  But now I’ve removed too much of the image and need to bring some of it back..


^Turn your paintbrush white and paint wherever you’d like to bring the image back.

^Image after bringing back some of the image.. it still isn’t aligned perfectly because it’s hard to tell where the bubble is exactly.

^To gain the ability to see the bubble below it, reduce the opacity of the top layer.  The opacity determines how “see through” the top layer is.. by reducing the opacity we can see underneath it to better determine where the lines of the bubble are.

^At this point, you could be “done” if you wanted to be.. but if you want to perfect it more, there’s some additional steps.
First, reduce the opacity of your brush.. set it to around 5-15 and paint over very select spots to make it look more 3D (the paintbrush at such a low opacity will only take off a tiny bit at a time vs a lot at a time).  I chose to paint around the bubble (so there is less image on the outsides, so it’s strongest in the middle and most faded on the outside, helping it have the round appearance).  I also painted additionally off on the colorful lines of the bubble also to help show the shape of the bubble.

^Now it’s decently aligned (I ended up cleaning it up again later..).  This is a really good time to “save as .psd” so if you need to come back to it later, you can.

^Now, right click on your layer mask and select “apply layer mask”.

^Right click on your top layer and select “screen”.

^This was my final verdict on this edit.. top layer opacity 60% with a screen applied to it.  I still have a few things left to do..

^Right click on the top layer and select “flatten image”.

^Right click on your layer and select “duplicate layer”.  This will create a second layer.



^Ensure the top layer is clicked on and click the dropdown arrow and select “overlay”.  This will help blend, sharpen, and increase colors.

^I felt there were a few additional edits to be done so I took the final edit and layered it with the original, used the eraser tool to erase away some of the edges to give it more of a 3D look.  I used the burn tool around the diameter of the bubble and I also used Coffeshop Blog’s Perfect Portrait Action on this.. I used “Urban Grit” @ around 20% and “Eye Define” at around 50%.  If you do not know how to use layer masks with actions, I have a blog post explaining How To Run An Action With Layer Masks here.  I believe there is also a tutorial on Coffeshop Blog’s page.

^This is my final edit.  Not perfect & I think it’d look cooler if the photo I merged in were in color but oh well.. and hopefully this blog post gave you enough information to be able to do what you’re wanting to do!

If you have any additional tips or resources, leave them in the comments below :).

-Christine Ann
Duluth MN Photographer

How To Add Color To A Black & White Image With A Layer Mask/Photoshop Layers Explained

A Beginner’s Tutorial On How To Use Photoshop Layers, Layer Masks, And Bring Back Color To A Black And White Image (All-In-One!) With Image/Screenshot Examples
*Note:  This article might look long/hard but it’s because it’s written assuming you know nothing about how to use Photoshop so it’s just very thorough.. this is VERY easy and fast to do!

Many years ago my husband got Photoshop for me.  I was super excited.. I opened it up and was so overwhelmed I didn’t open it up again for another year!!!!  WHen I did open it up a year later, it was because I had seen an image on Facebook and someone noted on it “Edited with auto color in Photoshop”.  “Auto edit????  I can do that!”.  And I excitedly opened it back up.  Once it was re-opened I started playing around with it more and learning new things about it.  I was still very confused about how you could add color to a black and white image and my husband explained it like this: Imagine you have 2 photographs.. a color photograph, and a black and white version of the exact same photograph.  Imagine you put the black and white photograph on top of the color photograph and then take an eraser and erase away parts of the black and white image to reveal the color beneath it.  ta-da!  Like magic, I now understood the concept of Photoshop layering! The very first thing I learned how to do with layers was add a pop of color to a black and white image.  You can do it as I stated above (layer a bw image on top of a color image and use the eraser tool to erase away the bw image to reveal color) but the issue with doing it that way is.. what if you make a mistake?  What if you erase away too much?  You cannot go back to add the black and white back.  For that reason I want to teach everyone how to use a layer mask.  With a layer mask (VERY easy to do!!!!) you can remove parts of the top layer AND bring them back again!  And you can use it for endless different projects beyond a selective coloring/color pop image! I’m a very visual learner so that’s how I like to explain things as well.

^STEP ONE:  Open The Image
We’ll start with what your image looks like when you open it in Photoshop:

^STEP 2:  Duplicate Layer
This is the step where you layer 2 images on top of one another.. do do this by going to the layers palette, right click on your layer, and select “duplicate layer”.  You can also simply go to your menu on top of the screen and click “Layer>New>Layer From Background”.

^STEP 3:  Turn The Top Layer Black And White
Make sure your top layer is highlighted in the layers palette and then turn your image black and white :).  You now have a black and white image on top, and a color image on bottom.

^STEP 4:  Add A Layer Mask
This is where you add the layer mask I was mentioning earlier.. this mask will allow you to remove parts of the black and white image as well as bring back parts of the black and white image.

^STEP 5:  Select A Black Paintbrush
Your layers palette should now look like this.. the white box next to your bw image is the layer mask.  You will use the black paintbrush to remove the black and white image, and the white paintbrush to bring back the black and white image.

^STEP 6:  Verify Your Layer Mask Is Selected
If you have anything other than the layer mask selected, this will not work and the paintbrush will work normally (adding a white or black streak on the image).

^STEP 7:  Paint Anywhere You’d Like To Add Color Take your paintbrush and paint anywhere you’d like to add color!  It’s that easy!  If you run over the lines, it’s okay.. you can turn it back to black and white which we address in the next step.

STEP 8:  Select The White Paintbrush To Bring Back The Black And White Image
Change the color of your paintbrush to white and paint over anywhere you did not want to bring the color back.  It helps to scroll in very close to the image, use a brush that isn’t 100% soft, and make the edges as clean as possible.  It looks very sloppy when the color runs outside the lines.

^The image after cleaning it up with the white paintbrush (again verify that your layer mask is clicked on!).

^STEP 9:  (Optional Step):  Reduce The Opacity/Strength Of The Colors
I always feel that bringing back the full strength of color in an image is just too intense/harsh.  For this reason I like to make it sort of a blend of half black and white/half color.. this tones down the coloring a lot and makes it look much more gentle and blends better.  (This is just my opinion and what you like may be different!  I compare a full strength color pop image to a partial strength color pop image here if you’d like to compare for yourself).

^This is the image with the coloring reduced by 50%.. it blends much better.

I’d like to make a quite note that the above images are not ones that I would choose to do.. They are only edited this way for the purposes of this article.  If I brought back color to anything I would choose the boots but for the purposes of this article I wanted to choose something that was easy to see and overall I just prefer this photo in color :).

I really hope this helps you all learn some more about how to use layers in Photoshop and how to add color to a black and white image!

-Christine Ann

Duluth MN Photographer

Does Resampling / Resizing An Image Affect Its Quality? [With Image Examples & Free Actions].

The question was recently asked – does reducing the size of an image affect its quality? I couldn’t find anything on the internet with image examples (I’m sure it exists somewhere in the depths of the internet; I just couldn’t find it!) so I thought I would make my own so we can see for ourselves what happens when you reduce the size of an image (****I need to disclaimer here that technically when you “reduce the size of an image” to make it smaller for contest submissions or website submissions, you are physically changing the number of pixels in your image (the Pixel Dimensions) and this is called resampling.. resizing is something different and has more to do with printing and the document size than the [pixel] size of your photo, but for all intents and purposes, I’ll speak colloquially, and most people just say resizing when they mean reduce the pixel size). I will upload a full res image, along with 3 additional images which have been reduced in size. Perhaps you already know what happens to reduced images and are about to click that X on the top of the screen – instead, you may want to consider scrolling to the bottom of the page where some nice, free resize/sharpen actions lurk :).

Anyway, the best way to compare each of these photos is to open a new tab for each photo (to do this you can hoover the mouse over the photo and click the scroll wheel or you can right click and select “open in a new tab”). By the end of the comparison you should have 5 new tabs in a row starting with high res and moving towards smaller res. When you get to the last 2 images the photos appear smaller.. to see how they look you may need to zoom in. To do this hold down the “control” key on your keyboard and then scroll your mouse wheel up to zoom in (and then down to zoom back out).

^ Full resolution image. The image is 3744×5616.

^This image has been reduced to 600×900. 600×900 is considered the “ideal” size to post to Facebook and web [update:  within the last couple months of June 2014 Facebook’s ideal image size has changed to 960 or 2048..] It is highly recommended to resize and sharpen on your own because if you upload a huge file to the internet, the internet will automatically reduce the size and quality.. if you do the job on your own, you retain control over how the photo looks. Although compressing it like this makes it lose sharpness so it is recommended to do a little bit of sharpening to anything that has been reduced this amount. Personally I run a high pass filter @ .5 – 1.0 and it’s perfect! While it is easy to do this manually I created some actions to speed up the process of resizing and sharpening. If you are saving in Lightroom there is a simple box you can check to sharpen upon export.

Here is the same file size – 900×600 with a .5 high pass filter applied to it.. it is definitely an improvement from with no high pass filter and looks almost identical to the original file despite being significantly smaller. 600×900 is the perfect size to put on the web without worrying about how the web will change your photo. (If you want a free high pass filter action, I put a download to one I made at the bottom of this page!).

^This image is 267×400. You can very clearly see how much it has been degraded at this point so we already have our answer that reducing the size of an image does impact how it looks and degrades it.  If you cannot tell then hold down “CTRL” + scroll the scroll wheel of your mouse up.. this will zoom into the image so you can see the quality up close.

^This has been set to 134×200. Though uploading that is probably overkill at this point since the point was already made in the above photo :).

I’ve created 2 files I want to share with everyone.

The first one includes 4 actions – Two of these actions reduce your file size to web-sized files (2048 on the longest side) and the resolution to 72 and the other two actions reduce the size to the same size but also apply a .5 high pass filter to the image which helps sharpen it. When you reduce the file you are squishing pixels on top of each other and losing information.. that’s why a little bit of sharpening is ideal.

Please note this actually “resamples” the image but I am using colloquial language and most people call it resizing :).

Resize Horizontal
Resize Vertical
Resize and Sharpen Horizontal
Resize and Sharpen Vertical

You can download this free resizing and sharpening action here.

The second one also includes 4 files. All of these only sharpen images, regardless of their size. The smaller the image is, the smaller HPF you’ll want to apply. For full res images I usually run HPF 3-4. For 600×900 I run at .5. If you want above a 4 you can run HPF 4 and then HPF 1 (totaling HPF 5). Anyway these are the actions included in this set (HPF stands for High Pass Filter).

HPF .5
HPF 1
HPF 2
HPF 4

You can download this free sharpening action here.

Of course there are countless ways to do resizing and sharpening, this is just one of many 🙂 and there is software designed to assist you in resampling the image without hurting the image quality so if you need something like that, programs like that exist!

-Christine Ann

Duluth Senior and Family Photographer
Facebook Page

Photos From 85mm 1.2L Lens.

Which lens you decide to use on your camera has a big impact on how the photo turns out. A big contendor in the photography world for people who are very invested in photography is the 85mm 1.2L lens by Canon. This is the first professional level lens I invested in and I am very fond of it :).
The first thing you have to decide when picking a lens is if you want a prime lens (does not zoom in and out) or a zoom lens (has a range of how close or far you can get to the subject by rotating the lens to zoom in and out). THere are advantages and disadvantages to each (perhaps a future blog post topic 🙂 ) but one of the best and most noteworthy features of the 85mm 1.2 lens is that the aperture can reach .. *drumroll* .. f/1.2! The lowest number you usually see on a zoom lens is f/2.8 so this is quite a big difference on the prime, however you do lose the ability to zoom in and out. The f/1.2 is amazing for when you want to get as much light into the camera as possible and also if you want a very small depth of field (meaning only one thing will be sharply in focus and everything else will be blurred).
The f/1.2 is so sensitive that on my full frame sensor camera body (how far 1.2 takes you depends on a handful of factors including your camera body), if I focus on someone’s nose, their eye will be out of focus. It’s a very very narrow depth of field and very unforgiving for in focus images! There is a learning curve to harnessing this power. I would not recommend using any new equipment at a shoot that you haven’t practiced with in advance. YOu will probably get some out of focus images when you start out with this lens. I try not to go to 1.2 anymore, personally. f/2 or higher is usually ideal but if there is low light or if I want a certain look I will bump it down lower.

Anyway, I wanted to make a blog post showing image examples of photos taken on the 85mm f/1.2L lens so people could take a look and maybe it could help people make more informed purchasing decisions.

I do need to explain that I reduced the image size significantly to post to the web. Standard web size is 900×600.. the originals are around 3800×5700 so they don’t reflect the same quality as they do out of the camera but I hope it gives a good idea.. especially since the originals are better :). If you would like to see a full resolution version of anything just ask in the comments! I am happy to post!

Anyway, without further ado….

^f/3.5

^f/2.8

^f/1.8

^f/1.2 – wide open!

f/1.8

^f/1.4 – close to wide open :)! If you’re shooting this low you must nail the focus spot!

^f/2.5

f/1.4. I was able to take a photo with one fairly dim light on @ 1.4.. this low aperture also created a very nice bokeh effect on the Christmas tree.

^f/1.8 (This lens is great for Christmas lights!).

^f/2

^f/1.8

f/1.6. Notice how narrow the focus is.. the arm is in focus and his entire body is blurred.. there’s about a foot between what is in focus and what isn’t. If the aperture were higher (around f/4+) the arm and body would both be in focus.

^f/1.8

f/1.8. Loving how blurred the background is! Notice how even the front of the scarf is blurred.. 1.8 is not a very large depth of field.

f/1.8

^Here’s one at f/1.2 – this is as low as it can go. I am going to do another blog post soon zooming in so you can see the eyes are in focus but even the nose is out of focus. It still looks okay zoomed out but if you zoom in you’ll see how sensitive the focus is.

^f/2.8

^Wide open at f/1.2. To do this shot over I would have used a higher aperture since her hair is blurred out but I still love this photo :).

^Another photo taken at f/1.2. I’m trying to include a lot at 1.2 since a lot of people are curious about what photos like at that aperture.

f/1.8 portrait

^f/1.4

^Here’s a shot taken at a higher aperture of f/4. As youc an see.. still plenty of lovely bokeh :).

^f/2.2

^f/2.2

f/2

^f/2.2

^This is a full res version of an image taken at f/1.2 – click on it to see full detail.

To see zoomed in versions of the photos to see how the depth of field looks up close at f/1.2 check out this article.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask!

-Christine Ann
Duluth MN Senior and Family Photographer Website
Duluth Photographer Blog
Duluth Senior and Family Photographer Facebook Account

How To Run An Action With A Layer Mask In Photoshop

Apply An Action Set And Using Layer Masks In Photoshop

Did you invest in some actions and now are not sure how to use the action in Photoshop?
Read on :).

First install the actions into Photoshop.

Once installed, click on the action set you want to run (you can run the individual action or an entire set – this highlights running a set but running them individually involves the same steps. So, anyway, click the action set, and hit the “play” button at the bottom of the palette.

Step 1. Highlight the action you want to run
Step 2. Hit “play”

Once you run it, you will see a new icon appear in the layers palette (what is circled on the far right of the screen in the photo above).

_____

Activate Your Action

Since this is a set, there are numerous actions you can activate from here, however they are all consolidated into the one folder. To make them all visible just click the arrow next to the folder like this:

_____

Select Your Action

Now there are several actions that you can see but none of them are being applied to the photo (your photo would look awful). Instead, you have to decide which ones you want applied to the photo and click the “box” next to each action. Once you click in the box an eye will appear. The eye means that action is now visible, if there is an empty box/no eye, that action is not applied to the photo.
For this blog post, I will choose “Film Haze” to apply.

^Click the empty box to make the layer visible – an eye will appear.

_____

Apply Your Action
.. using a white or black paintbrush

Now that your action is visible and ready to be used there are 2 ways to apply it to the photo.
The first way is adjusting the opacity (what is circled in the upper right in the photo below). 0% opacity will make 0% of the action appear, 100% will apply it full force, and 50% is half strength (and so on). Even if the opacity is set to 100%, if the action is a layer mask you still may not see any change in the photo – which brings us to the next way to apply the action tothe photo. Many actions use a layer mask which means you have to “paint” it on (or off). The layer mask will either be black or white.

If the box that appears after you run the action is black, it means you won’t see a change and you will use a white paintbrush to apply the action (turn the paintbrush black to undo the action). If the box turned white it means it was applied to the entire image and you set your paintbrush to black to remove the action from where you do not want it visible. In the photo below, I selected the paintbrush, set it to black, and removed the action at 100% from the umbrella pole and the face and hair. I removed it at 50% from the jean jacket. In the area circled on the bottom right (in the photo below) you can see the pure black is where it is removed at 100% and at the bottom where the jean jacket is it looks grey, because the action is at half strength there.

I hope that helps to explain how to use a layer mask :).

Here is one more photo using an action I have from CoffeShop Blog which uses both white and black layer masks to help drive the point home (It’s done sloppily but just to help make what I did more noticeable

🙂 ).

A couple notes about the image:

1. I made the action is called “vignette” – it apllied a vignette to the image and I didn’t like how it looked so I made it invisible (see how there is no “eye” there – I unchecked it). When the action runs it automatically applies to the entire image (because the box is white) at 50%. If the box were black I would have to paint it on with a paintbrush. I also could have just reduced the opacity to 0 to make it invisible or greatly reduced it to make it less noticeable.
2. This layer is called “Urban Grit” – it basically sharpens and increases color wherever it is applied. When I ran the action, the box is black, meaning that it did not apply to the photo.. I had to paint it on with a white paintbrush.. I applied it on to the umbrella bar (you can see how the photo looks different where the umbrella bar is.. that is where I applied that action) – it is not visible anywhere else in the image. If I wanted to remove it I would turn the paintbrush black and paint over it to remove it. If I wanted to reduce the effect I would change the opacity on the paintbrush. If I only wanted to reduce it a little I would make the paintbrush 20% opacity, if I wanted to remove most of it I would turn it to around 80%.
3. The box was white when the action ran so it applied to the entire image. The action is a “color pop” action, which enhances the color wherever applied. I turned the brush black to remove from her face so the color enhanced to all the rest of the image.

If you want to learn how to apply your own layer mask to images to help with editing (you can layer a black and white image on top of a color image and reveal the photo below it to add color to certain spots, do face swaps, change skies, change backgroudns etcetc by layering your photo with whatever you want to add into your photo by using a layer mask – this is a very useful tool to help you with your editing – and extremely easy to do! Read how to do this in my Add a Layer Mask article!

-Christine Ann

Duluth Photographer Website
Duluth Photographer Facebook

Why your photos are blurry (with image examples)

One long time mystery amongst people who take photos is “why are my photos blurry?”. The answer is much more simple than you probably realize but will take a moment to explain.

Photo from December 2010 😉 – camera settings this photo was taken at are listed later in this article.

There are 3 major components which determine how your photographs turn out.. one of those components is what your shutter speed is.

What is a shutter?
Picture a stage with curtains that open and close. This is, essentially, what a shutter is. It opens and closes (this is a video of a shutter opening and closing). The shutter is the sound you hear when you take photos – you can hear it open and close. Sometimes it opens and closes very fast and sometimes it opens and closes very slowly. When the “curtain” (shutter) is open, it captures ALL movement in the photo up until it closes. Hence, when it opens and closes fast it “freezes” the moment and does not capture any blur; when it opens and closes slowly, it captures a lot of movement.

The shutter is responsible for 2 things:

1. It contributes to how light or dark the photo is

2. It is the reason your photos turn out blurry or not blurry (*from motion blur – Photos being out of focus can make them blurry in an “out of focus” way which is not due to the shutter).

If you are getting motion blur in your photos there is one simple answer for it: Your shutter is staying open too long.

So, what causes the shutter to stay open for too long?

Low lighting.

Now that I’ve said that you’ve probably realized that most of your blurred photos were taken indoors or at night.

Why does it stay open long in low lighting? Because the longer the shutter is open, the more light it lets in. Photos NEED light. If there isn’t much light, your camera needs to do things to make sure it gets enough light, otherwise you will be left with a black photo.

The photo at the top of the page was taken at the following settings: f/3.2 ISO 640 Shutter speed 1/8 (aka too slow!!!!).. that means it was open for 1/8th of a second which sounds fast but it isn’t fast enough for kids who move around. I usually try to stay around at least 1/100, and ideally a little higher, when photographing kids (what speed you set changes based on your lens and what you are photographing; things that are sitting still can be photographed at a lower shutter speed but you still have to shoot fast enough to avoid camera shake from your hands unless you are using a tripod).

How to Avoid Motion Blur in Your Photography

The easiest and most simple way to avoid motion blur in your photos is to get more light! Take your photos outside or closer to a window. You can also just turn more lights on inside but then you might want to be aware of your white balance because a lot of photos taken indoors will have an orange/red tint due to incorrect white balance (<– article about that tint and how to avoid it).

The last option is to use your flash. Most professional photographers will agree that the flash built into your camera is not good and actually hurts your photos. My rule for using in-camera flash is only use it if the alternative is a super blurry or black photo. A photo with flash is better than a blurry or dark photo. The other option for flash is to buy an external flash – one you can take off the camera and diffuse it. This is the ideal option if you need to use flash (I will write more on this later!). I try to shoot outdoors as much as possible :).

If you own a DSLR there is another option for eliminating motion blur: Set your own settings and tell the shutter what its speed needs to be.

There are two modes in which you can do this:

TV Mode. TV mode is found on your dial and it is “shutter priority mode”. Shutter priority means that all other settings are formed around your shutter speed.. so you tell your camera what your shutter speed needs to be, and it figures everything else out for you. It is a good setting for people starting out with their DSLRs – however there can be consequences to this such as your camera may bump up your ISO, causing your photos to be grainy, or shoot at too high or low of an aperture, losing the “blur” effect or giving you too much of a blur effect.. however you can guarantee they won’t have motion blur 🙂 and sometimes you have to made decisions like that (ie I’ll have a grainy photo instead of a blurred photo) because when there’s not enough light, something’s gotta give.

M Mode (Manual Mode). This is ideal. This is the mode most professional photographers shoot in. You tell your camera exactly what the settings need to be and it shoots at that regardless of what it would want to do in auto mode. You set the shutter speed (if you’re getting motion blur you increase the shutter speed), you set the aperture, you set the ISO.. you can understand what is happening in the photo and what the outcome of the photo will be based on your settings, however it requires more knowledge than TV mode so it’s perfectly fine to start with TV mode and keep working towards M mode.

The fun part of understanding how the shutter affects your photos is that you can use it to intentionally capture motion blur and make some interesting photos! Leaving the shutter open on purpose is called Bulb Photography.

To do bulb photography you must put your camera on a tripod so it stays perfectly still (otherwise there will be camera shake which will hurt the photo) and then have the subject move around while you leave the shutter open and capture all the movement.

Here are some examples of the camera being on a tripod with the shutter left open:

f/3.2 ISO 6400, shutter: 1/25.

Notice in the bottom right photo you can see 2 red streaks in the background – those are the taillights of a car :).
Settings: f/11 ISO 500, shutter speed 4 seconds (shutter was open for 4 seconds).

Settings: f/11 ISO 500, shutter speed 7 seconds (shutter was open for 7 seconds). I was wearing all black to minimize being seen and did additional editing to completely “disappear” from behind the sparkler otherwise you would see me as motion blur in the background :).

(My white balance is off in this photo which is why it has a red/orange tint).

Most photos of the sky at night are done on a tripod with the shutter left open.. it allows the camera to pick up many stars. When I do exposures like this, the camera “sees” many more stars than I can.

—–
Fast shutter speed:

Just to contrast these photos with slow shutter speeds, here is an “action shot” frozen because of the fast shutter speed

ISO 100, f/9.0, shutter speed: 1/320 Please ignore the harsh lighting :p I only posted to show a photo taken with a fast shutter speed 🙂 she is mid-jump and there is no motion blur! At a low shutter speed there would be a ton of motion blur.

-Christine Ann
Duluth MN Senior Photographer Website
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Why Your Photos Have An Orange, Red, Blue, or Purple Tint – White Balance and How to Set It (With Images)

Have you ever taken a photo that turned out extremely orange, red, or blue?  It seems inevitable, especially when you’re indoors.. however there is a very simple way to fix/prevent this!  You have fallen victim to auto white balance.  On auto white balance your camera is trying to guess your lighting situation.. sometimes it does a good job and sometimes it does not.  If you simply tell your camera what your lighting situation is instead of it guessing you can get much more accurate colors.
The times I most notice incorrect white balance is when I’m indoors and my photos turn out red/orange.  I remember a few years ago I took some Christmas photos and the coloring seemed off on all of them.. and I had no idea why or how to fix it (most of them were turned to black and white).  Put simply, the white balance is off.

All I need to do to fix this is go into my camera and tell it my white balance is “tungsten” or “fluorescent” (depending on what type of lighting is in the room).
This is the easiest way to try to get it right in camera however there are a few other options:

1.  Use a grey card.  You take a photo with the grey card in the photo, then take the rest without it and later, in your editing software, you can use the “white balance dropper” tool to select the grey card and tell your program what your white balance truly was and it adjusts the photo based on that.
2.  Adjust it in an editing program.  Most editing programs have ability to “warm” the image or “cool” it down and these sliders help a lot to fix WB.
In the following image, the first one is straight out of the camera, unedited (VERY blue) and the second edit is my edit adjustment in Lightroom, adjusted only with the “WB slider”.. I moved the WB from “as shot” to “auto” (LR tries to predict what the auto wb should be) and then I slightly tweaked the slider from there.  Super easy.

3.  Adjust WB in camera based on the presets such as “daylight” “cloudy” tungsten” “shade” etc.

After seeing how blue the first shot came out I changed the WB to (I believe?) tungsten and this is how it affected the image.. this image is unedited.

4.  Custom set your WB by telling your camera which temperature to shoot at.  The range on my camera is from 2500 (cool) to 10000 (very warm) .. I can set it at any increment of 100 between those 2 numbers.

Most photographers use the presets (cloudy/flash/etc) or set the temperature manually and then tweak it by hand during editing if necessary.

White Balance presets (ie:  daylight, cloudy, shade, flash etc):

Auto White Balance:

Auto White Balance ^.

Daylight:

^ Daylight.

Tungsten:

^ Tungsten.

Fluorescent:

^ Fluorescent.

As you can see,  the presets are pretty useful and accurate.. they are also very simple and make a big difference in the image.

If you select “color temp” you can manually enter what temperature you want the image to be taken at.  The range on my camera is 2500-10000 and it is measured in Kelvin.

2500 Kelvin – very “cool”:

^  2500 Kelvin.

3500 Kelvin:

^3500 Kelvin.

4500 Kelvin:

^4500 Kelvin.

9500 Kelvin:

^9500 Kelvin.

So as you can see there are many options when choosing how to set your white balance.  I feel that auto white balance often does a pretty good job but I usually use a preset (daylight, shade, flash, tungsten etc) and tweak during editing.. but everyone needs to try out different options and find for themselves what works the best for them and their style.

Hope this helps everyone in understanding what white balance is and how to accommodate it in your images to reflect the look you want!

Here is an excellent chart to summarize everything and make it concrete:

–Christine Ann
Duluth MN Photographer
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Instantly Improve Your Editing With Layer Masks

There are about 5 million different things you can do to edit a photo in Photoshop.  Some of the things you learn will be totally pointless and some will be invaluable.  I am going to brush up on one of the most valuable editing techniques (in my opinion):  how to add a layer mask to your layers and why they are important.  This will benefit you in so many ways!  And it is SO EASY! Learning new things in Photoshop is always intimidating but this is literally something you can do in a couple clicks.  (To summarize:  you layer 2 photos on top of each other, click the layer mask button, select a black or white paintbrush to hide/reveal the bottom image and that’s it!). Directions for adding a layer mask: Open up a photo in Photoshop.  Pick another photo to layer on top of it (you can just copy and paste it on top).  Click on the top layer so it is highlighted and then click the square with a circle inside it at the bottom of the layer palette (The layer palette is where you see all your layers towards the right side of Photoshop).  The icon I am referencing, if you hover your mouse over the top of it it will say “add layer mask”.  It looks like this: Click on the white box that appears next to your top layer. That’s it! You are done, you’ve applied a layer mask! Now how do you use it?  Also very easy.  Select the paintbrush icon and make the color that it paints white.  (Image below shows where to select the paintbrush and where to change the color of it at). Paint wherever you’d like to reveal the image below and you will reveal the image beneath it!  If you make a mistake simply change the “white” color of the brush to black and it brings back the original image. ^ Example Photos: Color photo on bottom, black and white photo on top, layer mask selected (you select it by just clicking on it), select the paintbrush and make it black and just start painting.. it will reveal the photo beneath it.  If you make a mistake and want to bring the black and white image back, simply turn it white, like in the second photo.  :). Boom.  Done :). This method is perfect for head swaps (place the new face underneath the one you want to change and reveal the photo below it).  It is also perfect for doing selective coloring (adding color to black and white images).  You can change the background of your photo by adding a nice background behind the image and masking the original background off.  You can edit things out like power lines by moving the bottom image a few centimeters to the right and masking  them out.  There are so many possibilities! TIPS: 1.  You can change the opacity of your brush.. so if you only want to kind of reveal the background but not entirely, just set the opacity of your brush 50% (vs 100% and it will only bring 50% of the background in and leave 50% of the original intact.  You can also build on it by changing it to 10% and doing another round, bringing it to 60% revealed).  It looks much  more natural if you build up in that way vs just doing it at 100%! 2.  If you right click on the “background” (the bottom) layer and select “layer from background” you “unlock” the layer and can now move it around.  You need to be sure to highlight (click on) this layer when you want to apply changes to it (such as moving it.  You can move it using the move tool).. and then when you want to apply the layer mask with the white and black brush, be sure to click the white box next to the top photo :).  Any changes you make will occur on whatever is highlighted in the layer’s palette. 3.  There is a learning curve to using layer masks in a realistic way.. such as when you get to the edges you need to make the brush smaller and that it really  helps to lower the opacity of the brush to blend it better.  But after a few rounds of practicing you’ll start learning how to do it better and better. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! -Christine Ann [website] Duluth Photographer Christine Ann Photography Facebook Maternity, newborn, senior, wedding, family, children, portrait photography.

1 Tip Which Will Improve Your Color Pop/Selective Color Images

I frequent many photography forums and one topic that comes up often is “color selection” or “color pop” edits.  This is when you have a black and white images and you bring back color on just a couple select spots.  These images are not often well received by lot of pros.  I am amongst this group 🙂 but they do have their place :).
I think the worst part about color selection is just how harsh the color is in the image.  It doesn’t flow well.  This is when I created my own way of doing color selection photos, where you just bring back about half of the color instead of all the color.  It makes a huge difference!  And I definitely much prefer the subtle color to the sharp, vivid color.

How do you accomplish this?  If you are layering a color image over a black and white image and erasing, then erase away at around 30-40% opacity.
If you are using a layer mask, set your paintbrush to around 30-40% opacity.  tada!  Very simple indeed.  This will make a huge difference in how the photo looks after you edit it.

One other tip I have is to pick just one focal point to selective color..a lot of people go a little crazy with their brush and bring back half the image so it’s half color and half black and white.  This looks a bit odd and unnatural and also there is no real concept behind it.  Usually you want to color pop something with meaning or symbolism or a concept (not always but like usually just an item vs a shirt).  In the sample image I am posting here I decided to have 2 color pops so they would balance each other out more but notice the items I picked were small so it doesn’t overwhelm the photo.  I believe my opacity for this image was around 30%.. to do it again I  might bump it up a bit higher, but you get the idea.

This is the image at 100% opacity.. this is the full color image brought back to the black and white image, and this is what most photographers who do color pop do:

^ Color brought back at full strength.

And the photo shown below is the same image with the color brought back around 30% opacity.  It might even be more like 20%. It is a little bit dull but it looks so much less distracting and more natural.. I much prefer it to the full color photo.

^Color brought back around 20-30% strength.

For one more example I’ll show one brought back around 50% opacity.

^Color brought back around 50% strength. This is my favorite edit of the three (I might tone it down a notch but overall the color isn’t too overbearing and “sharp” and it blends much better than at full strength – in my opinion anyway!).

As with all things in photography, which is better is subjective.  Surely there are people who prefer the first to the second.  If you do like the first you could even play around with bringing back the color around 70%-80% so it’s just not so vivid and contrasting.  While I’m not a huge fan of color pop photos, I do find myself much more receptive to them when done in a more subtle manner, just thought/style I would share with everyone :).

-Christine Ann
Duluth Minnesota Photographer
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