Fifi Leigh
Monday, 2.12.18
I woke up very early and ate my breakfast, before working on my graphic novel. I also went on the internet to check things. Then, I decided to wear sweats and walk to UCI because I thought the Lunar New Year Street Festival will start at 1 pm, and I wanted to go early so that I would return home earlier. It is Vendor Week at UCI, but half of the vendors showed up because of windy weather and possibility of rain. The wind wasn’t bad and it didn’t rain. I walked around until I decided to go to Starbucks to buy a cup of Cappuccino. I should have stayed at home and watched the Olympics from noon to 2 pm, and walked to UCI at 2:30 pm, which would give me one hour to browse around. I noticed that the Lunar New Year, Year of the Dog will start at 3:30 pm. I also noticed that the inside of Starbucks was remodeled to look like study hall. At 3 pm, I took some snapshots, and when the people started to arrive at the event, I did some videos. I wrote my wishes on a red ribbon and tied it on a wish tree. I did another small wish tree with three paper ribbons. I played some games, ate some samples, and got some fortune cookies. I thought I ate 4 fortune cookies, but I only found 3 messages in my purse. Maybe I accidentally dropped the fourth one. I tried the TinType photo for fun, which is an antique photography method, but I think I looked terrible because my face looked tired and I didn’t have much makeup. They said they would contact me later about the photo. The sun played a game of peek-a-boo, as well as there were some winds. I walked back home at 5:30 pm because the photo meetup is at 7 pm at a neighboring city. At home, I changed my purse, and drove to Canon. While driving, I noticed the time was 5:55 pm.
The Photography Meetup was about editing photographs for weddings and portraits. Yaneck Wasiek provided some tips. Social and web photos are different from portrait and wedding photos.
If you want to photograph weddings and portraits, then you must have 5 requirements.
- A Calibrated Monitor because it displays the “true” colors as well as it is a monitor with many color options.
- Wacom Tablet
- Color Spaces—Adobe RGB has more colors than sRGB.
- 8 bits versus 16 bits? 16 bits contains more colors in each channel. It tends to use up more space on the computer as well as have very big files.
To make the subject in a photography stand out, make your subject brighter, sharper, more saturated, and create a better color temp and color balance. The subject should be sharper, brighter, have more contrast, and be more saturated than the background. The subject should also have a different white temp color balance.
To make your photo editing more efficient, use proper exposure, tethering, presets, actions, and workflow. Actions have to do with creating your own automated Photoshop steps to help make your work easier and faster. The typical editing workflow include raw photo, Photoshop, blemishes, liquefying, check perspectives, removing unwanted stuff, dodging and burning, Nik detail extractor pro contrast—which are filters. Also, edit the lighter/darker center to check for grading, structure, sharpening, exporting for web and print, converting to RGB, sharing on web and print, tethering tools—such as orange cables for tethering camera shoots straight to your computer.
There was a demonstration with a female model, Amber, dressed in a metallic gown, for indoor controlled lighting photo shoots. It is important to properly place the strobe so to face the wall in order to create softer light and shadows. The 2nd strobe is facing the subject. White is better than silver strobe because white gives off soft lighting while silver gives off harsh lighting.
Image stabilizer should be on and use a low ISO.
Liquefying shortcut Control-Shift-x
Forward Warp Tool is used to slim features to make person appear thinner.
Frequency Separation tool is used for separating photo into low and high frequency details.
Mixture Brush Tool is used for blending and mixing colors together.
Healing Brush tool I is used for fixing tonality, not the texture.
Dodging and burning involves pressing ALT-new layer-soft light-neutral color.
Create Action has to do with recording your steps in Photoshop for a particular detailed action.
Action Option: choose the function key.
Selective Color allows you to adjust certain colors.
Grayscale grading should be 20% opacity.
Filter is used in camera raw to change white balance.
Solid color has low opacity, green, and blend colors.
Sharpening: go to new layer, choose soft light, and run filter—3% to 4% sharpening.
NIK sharpening is used for adding texture to dress—15% to 20%.
Content Aware
To size photo for Facebook—use action.
Filter to add noise is good for printing—40% to 50%
If you see blending in the phot on Facebook, then add noise to make picture more natural. Adding noise should be the last step, which is done during sharpening.
I added an old photo of me with my 3 late shihtzus as well as my late parents’ late shihtzus on the couch.
