Here’s an interesting weight loss tutorial in Photoshop. This is an older video, but it demonstrates the effects very well.
Use Photoshop to virtually put someone on a diet in Photoshop! Music: Kevin MacLeod
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Coming out of the Frame
In this post, I will show you how to create a border or frame around your image but allow parts of your image to be on top of, or coming out of the border or frame. The following image shows an example of this, and in the remainder of this post, I will show you how easy this technique is to apply.
Step-1 The first step is to load your image into Photoshop. I’m using CS5 for this example on a PC, so where I refer to commands like Ctrl-X, this is a PC command and the equivalent on a Mac would be Cmd-X (I think – I’m not a Mac person).
Step-2 Now I use the selection tool and brush across the flower until all parts of the flower are selected. Doing this will sometimes select more than the flower and to deselect these unwanted areas, just hold down the Alt key and brush over the unwanted areas to refine the selection to just what is wanted. In this case, the flower.
Step-3 Now we need to add to the selection what will be inside the frame. To do this, I used the Markee tool and while holding down the shift key, I started in the upper left at about 3/8 of an inch inside and dragged the selection to the bottom right to about 3/8 of an inch inside. After making this selection, I selected “select” from the menu and clicked on “inverse” to get the selection seen in the following image.
Step-4 Since I don’t want the bottom part of the flower to be “coming out of the frame”, I added this to the selection by again using the Markee tool and holding down the shift key to select the frame area at the bottom of the image as shown.
Step-5 Now with the selection made, I unlocked the background layer and then pressed Ctrl-X to cut the selection from the image, then pressed Ctrl-V to paste the cut selection to a new layer as shown. This will allow me to control the opacity of the border area without affecting the rest of the image.
Step-6 Now I add a new layer (layer 2) and place it below my image (layer 0) and filled it with white. Then select the border layer (layer 1) and set the opacity of this layer to about 60% to achieve the following effect. At this point you can see that we have our flower coming out of the frame, but we are not done yet. We want to add a white border around the inside of our border or frame.
Step-7 Once again I use the Markee selection tool and selected around the inside edge of the border. Then I select “select” from the menu and click on “modify”, then “border” and entered a value of 10 pixels. If you want a larger border, enter a larger number. This modify will change the selection into a border centered on the selection.
Step-8 With my border selection made, I added a new layer (layer 3) so I would be painting this border on it’s own layer. This will make it easy to mask it at the parts of the flower that should be over the top of this painted border. On the new layer, I selected my brush tool and made sure the foreground color was set to white and the brush opacity was at 100% and the brush had a relatively hard edge. Then I simply painted over the border selection. This selection will only allow the painting to occur inside the selection so you don’t have to be accurate and can use a fairly large brush.
Step-9 Now that we have the white border painted in, we need to mask out the parts of this white border that should be behind the flower (top and right sides of the image). So press Ctrl-D to deselect the border then add a mask to this layer (layer 3) and with a black brush, paint on the mask over the parts of the white border where the flower is supposed to be coming out of the frame.
Now the effect is complete and you can add any other adjustments to make the image look the way you want it to!
Simple tilt-shift corrections in Lightroom
In this video tutorial, I show you the basics on using lens corrections within Lightroom to apply simple tilt and shift corrections to an image. As noted in the video, it is better to do this in camera if you have or can afford a tilt-shift lens. If you can’t, then this is a simple method that allows you to make these kinds of corrections in post.
Creating the Illusion of Shallow Depth of Field
In this, my first video, I show you how to change the depth of field of an image to reduce background distractions. The video is a little rough since it is my first. I would be very interested in hearing your feedback on this. Thanks for taking the time to watch it.
A couple of things I forgot to mention in the video. When using the brush tool to get up close to the edges as you are creating the mask, use a medium soft brush, the blending is better and looks more realistic. Getting the edges to look right takes some practice. Also, when using the clone stamp tool to remove the haloing around the subjects, as long as you are painting on the image (not the mask), you don’t need to worry about cloning over the edges of the subjects. The mask is taking care of this.
Exposure Fusion in Photomatix – A Reference
If you are looking for a good way combine multiple exposures to achieve dynamic range in a natural or realistic maner, you should give the exposure fusion method a try. Although you can achieve realistic looking images using the tone mapping options, exposure fusion will give very good results with a lot less work on your part. The exception is that if you have moving objects in your scene, you might want to use the tone mapping option to take advantage of the deghosting feature. Additionally, for really high dynamic range images, tone mapping will be the better option as exposure fusion doesn’t handle really high dynamic range very well – i.e. it won’t look natural.
The first options you have within exposure fusion allows you to select how the exposure fusion should work or which method you want to use. There are five options.
Average will average the exposures together based on the available information in the exposures. You do not have any options available to you with this method and I find it rare that you would ever want to use it. After all, when would you want a straight average of anything?
Highlights & Shadows – Auto looks at the highlights and shadow information in each of the exposures and blends these exposures together to achieve a natural and realistic look. Again, there are no adjustments that you can make with this method. Although the results look pretty good, I would rather have some control over the outcome rather than letting the computer decide what the final image should look like. So again, it is rare that I would use this method.
Highlights & Shadows – 2 Images allows you to select which two images of your set to use then applies the “auto” method to blend these images together for the final result. There are no adjustments available other than selecting which two images to use. This method may get you the result you’re looking for, but if you want to tweak your image, this is not the method to use.
Highlights & Shadows – Intensive applies a rather aggressive blending or fusing method that often causes banding or an unnatural look in clouds. Luckily, this option gives us three sliders for some control of the final look. Of the three sliders, Radius has the most effect on the image because it sets the weighting amount to use when fusing the images together. The higher the number the less banding and haloing you will see, but it takes significantly longer to process the image. If you use this method, and you should try it, adjust the radius first to dail in the overall look of your image, then adjust the local contrast using the Strength slider. Negative numbers on the strength slider will flatten your image by removing contrast and positive numbers will punch up the contrast and increase depth. Lastly adjust Color Saturation to your desired amount. Just remember, too much of a good thing is not good – make small adjustments and maybe don’t adjust the color at all within photomatix. Save the color adjustments for photoshop, lightroom, or other photo editing software used in your post processing work flow.
Highlights & Shadows – Adjust applies the same blending or fusing of the auto method, but allows you to make a number of adjustments to the final image. This is the default method for exposure fusion and is the method you will end up using for more than 90% of your images for which you use exposure fusion.
At left you see the adjustment panel for the adjust method. I will go through each of these controls in the order in which you should use them (which is not the order – top to bottom – they are presented). Although I am suggesting a certain order for using these controls which I hope will make sense, you can use them in any order you choose. So let’s get started.
Blending Point – this controls the weighting given to the under exposed images versus the over exposed images. If you want the fusion to use more information from the underexposed images, move this slider to the left or into the negative numbers. Likewise, move the slider to the right or into the positive numbers if you want to include more information from the over exposed images. Another way to think of this control is to think of it as an exposure control – negative numbers will under expose where positive numbers will over expose your image.
Accentuation – this is the same as the Strength slider in the intensive method. It controls local contrast. Moving the slider to the left into negative numbers will remove contrast and flatten the look of your image. Moving the slider to the right into the positive numbers will punch up the contrast and increase depth.
Shadows – this controls the brightness of the shadow areas without affecting the highlights. If the shadow areas in your image are too dark, move this slider to the right to brighten up the shadows. Again, remember a little adjustment goes a long ways. Don’t over do it.
White Clip – Think of this as a fine tune adjustment for contrast in the highlight regions of your image. Increasing this slider – moving it to the right – will increase contrast in the image but does it at the expense of detail in the highlights. You will lose detail in the highlight regions when increasing the white clip slider.
Black Clip – works the same way as the white clip, just does it’s work in the shadow regions of your image. Increasing this slider – moving it to the right – will increase contrast in the image at the expense of detail in the shadow regions, i.e. you will lose detail in the shadows when increasing this slider.
Midtone – controls the overall brightness of the image but also affects contrast. Moving the slider to the left reduces brightness in the image and increases contrast. Moving the slider to the right will brighten the image but reduce overall contrast. To dial in just the right look may require multiple adjustments to Accentuation, White & Black Clip, and Midtone sliders. Just make small adjustments as you dial in the right look.
Color Saturation – does just what the name suggests, it adjusts the saturation of the color in the image. This is a global control and as such you may want to consider making color adjustments in photoshop, lightroom, or other photo editing software that is designed specifically to work with color. I have at times increased this slider to add just a little more color to my image, but I will always fine tune the color in other photo editing software.
360 degree image – removes the seam from a 360 degree panorama. This is another option that is probably better left to another application that is designed specifically for processing panoramas.
Presets – allows you to select and/or save presets for use. If you have dialed in a specific look that you like, save it as a preset. Then on the next image all you need to do is select your preset and your done!
Again, remember that when you click on the process button, you are not done. Your image is now at that RAW stage and additional post processing is needed to finish up and give the image it’s final look.
That’s all! Hope you find this reference of use.
Shooting a Moving Target
Have you ever wanted to just shoot that kid that shows up to your door with the “pants on the ground” and the world revolves around me look about him to take your daughter on a date? Kind of like how the two old men in Second Hand Lions dealt with salesmen coming to their door. My neighbor across the street has three beautiful daughters and he has told some of the young men coming to his door that his neighbor shoots people for a living! Amazing how well behaved they become and how respectful they treat his daughters – gotta love it! Anyway, I digress…we won’t be shooting this kind of moving target!
I was out shooting electrical boxes near the railroad tracks when I heard the train coming. I wanted to get a shot of the train as it went by, so I hurried to get into position by the tracks. I wanted the shot to have good depth of field and good focus throughout, so how was I going to get it? There are several ways to do it – using auto focus and an aperture of f/22 would do if you could maintain focus as the train approaches would be one method. Another method would be to use the hyperfocal method so that even as the trains moves through the frame it would stay in focus no matter where on the train the camera is pointed. Since there isn’t a lot of time to think about this when a train is approaching, I quickly decided on the hyperfocal method which had me scrambling to pull the chart out of my wallet to see what settings to use on the camera. Note: I did not use the Optimal Hyperfocal method for this, just the standard hyperfocal method.
I wanted to use a wide angle and have everything from five feet to infinity to be in focus which meant a hyperfocal distance of 10 feet. Looking in the chart for a focal length of 28mm at 10 feet indicated an f/stop of f/8. I also wanted to freeze the action, but I wouldn’t know on this until I had the train in the frame. I quickly set the camera for these settings while praying to the optical gods that I had made the right choice.
Just as I was putting the hyperfocal chart back in my wallet, the train came into view. I had the camera set for burst shooting so I quickly raised the camera into position and fired off a rapid burst of shots hoping the shutter speed was fast enough. My camera is able to shoot at eight frames per second and I shot seven frames. Then shot seven more frames. By then the engines had passed by and the shot was gone. When looking at the frames of the first burst, I noticed that the train moved about four feet for each frame! The train was moving, but I got the shot and was able to freeze the motion! Yea! The shutter speed was fast enough. The second series of shots the engine of the train was already moving out of frame.
The next problem I had was the surrounding elements in the frame were not all that interesting, and I really wanted to give this a look of importance, breaking through a barrier, or a saves the day kind of look. So I opened the selected image in photoshop, duplicated the layer and added a radial blur (zoom) at 90%. Then added a layer mask to the blurred layer and painted with a black brush over the areas of the train engine that I wanted to show through and be in focus (black reveals the layer below). The radial blur creates lines of motion radiating out from the center, and by painting back parts of the train engine I get the effect of the train breaking through a barrier and the surrounding uninteresting elements in the frame now add to the effect.
Here’s the result:
ISO 200, 28mm, f/8, 1/320
This demonstrates that the hyperfocal method of focusing can be used in situations other than landscapes, and that the optical gods smiled upon my choice. 
