Nik Radio is on the air

I use almost all of the Nik products and just love what they do for my processing.

I'll discuss that in a minute, but first I have to tell you that I download Nik Radio and listen to it every week. The program "delivers a variety of educational programming created to inspire digital photographers of all levels." You can find it on itunes, free. You can't beat that.

The filters in Color Efex Pro 3.0 are great. I use at least 2 or 3 of them on every image and more when I'm experimenting. Tonal contrast touches them all. Vivesa 2 allows me to point, click and slide to make adjustments without the need to make complicated selections. Silver Efex Pro creates professional black and white images using presets and sliders. Sharpener Pro 3.0 uses the same u-point technology as all the other programs to take the guess work out of sharpening individual areas.

U-point technology is great. All it means is that "you point", click and drag to make local adjustments. I suggest that you check out the different products and download the free trials. Let me know what you think.

Single image hdr

before

after

I know that you can process a single raw image in photomatix as well as in CS5 with some good success. I've been trying a new technique and getting, what I think, is much better results. It's simple but requires a few more steps in the beginning.

Shoot raw

Open the Raw image in photoshop. I don't think the version matters.

Save this first image as a tiff. That's your mid-range exposed image

Open an Exposure layer in the layers pallet

Change the Exposure to +2 and save this as a TIFF. Make sure that you give it a meaningful name. "+2" will work

Now change the Exposure to -2 and save as a TIFF. Give this image a meaningful name also.

Do the same thing with -1 and +1.

You now have a single image with 5 different exposures all saved as TIFF files.

Open photomatix and process as you normally would.

Let me know how this works for you.

No Photo Thursday

So I get a call today from a very dear friend and good shooter. He shall go nameless so he remains my very dear friend. He's on a circuitous road trip down in the southern states of our beautiful country. He gives himself and assignment for the day. OK, it's his time to go out and shoot some of the most wonderful waterfalls around. Being a retired rocket scientist he does all the research. Locations, recommended gear, settings etc. Loads up every piece of equipment he has. Drives for however long. Here is where I don't have all the details, because I was laughing so hard. I think they hiked to the falls. Goes to set up for the great American shot. OK, wait for it. He brought all his gear but one thing, the camera. We both were hysterical. I hope I never do that. He'll never let me live it down. Oh and by the way, I won't let him either.
What a great life.

Scott Kelby takes a walk with Jay Maisel

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Kelby Training has just released a new class featuring what amounts to a New York photowalk with Jay Maisel. I challenge you to watch it just once. There is so much information and yes, philosophy imparted by Jay, that it can't all be taken in at one time. I have never seen Scott react this way. I tell you that he can't believe what he is hearing and I would wager he changes some of his shooting practices instantly. I know I will and so will you. You can find it here. It's worth every cent.

Photowalk and Fireworks

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Today it was announced that Scott Kelby's 3rd Annual Worldwide Photo Walk will be held on Saturday July 24th. You can find all the information here. You should check it out. The first 2 were great fun. This year I'm signed up for the New York City Chinatown walk. There are only 50 people at each walk site and I believe mine was filled in one day.

On the fireworks front, Laurie Excell has a great post today about shooting fireworks. It's worth a read. You can find it here.

Vincent Versace was a Gerber baby

Did that get your attention? If you follow my blog, you know that Vincent Versace has a great influence on my photography. Both while out shooting and in the digital darkroom. I have watched his DVDs and followed his blog, but today's post on Scott Kelby's blog is absolutely amazing. (Post dated May 26, 2010)

The first part of the post is an autobiographical walk down memory lane, including the part about appearing on a Gerber Baby Foods jar label. (Don't miss the part about Marilyn Chambers). It's interesting but read on and get to the really good part. He gives some wonderful bits of psychology for us simple photographers to think about. I can't recommend this and all of his work more.

CS5 - some really cool upgrades

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I'm still having some issues with my CS5 install but I really haven't taking the time to look into a fix. There's nothing major just annoying little things.

The good news is that some of the features are wonderful. The quick selection upgrade with the "Refine Edge" tool" is great. "Content Aware" is remarkable. I've tried the "HDR Pro" but I'm not quite sure about it. I've used Photomatix for so long that HDR Pro seems slow. I'll give it some time and more testing before making my final decision.

The guys from NAPP did a week long series of Webinars showing all the new features in CS5. They explain them better then I can. Watch it here.

Friends for the Marsh Juried Show

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The Friends for the Marsh provide a unique educational experience for central New Jersey. Each year they sponsor a juried photographic show. This year it was titled "Ebb and Flow- Voices of the Marsh". I was fortunate to have 2 pieces accepted. I hope you like them.

I installed CS5

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I installed the disk and it all went well. I have a 64bit Dell machine and there in lies the problem. I was prompted to check a box to load the 64bit version and/or the 32bit version. I check both and in fact, both versions were installed. Great. I clicked on the 64bit version and CS5 opened. I did the same for the 32bit version and got a error message that the application failed to start. I had to clicked "OK" 3 or 4 times and that version opened. OK, so no problem, I'll just use the 64bit version. I went into my files and transferred all my "plug-ins" from CS4 to CS5. Checked my work and open CS5 64bit version. No "plug-ins" appear in the filter menu or anywhere else. So I go back and transfer all the plug-ins into the 32 bit version and open that. Get the error message, click 4 time, the program opens and all the plug-ins are there. It hits me that my 64 bit Dell does not support any of the plug-ins.

It should be interesting later today when I call Adobe tech support to try to straighten this out. Stay tuned.

CS5 is shipping

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I just order CS5 and I've been watching the CS5 classes that Kelby Training has put up on their site. I must say that they do a great job. I usually just download the program but this time I decided to get the disk. Just trying something new. I'll let you know how the installation goes. The new features look interesting. There are new selection options, new brush tip designs that will help when painting and even an HDR Pro dialog section that has a great looking deghosting capability.

I know that I haven't been posting much lately, but I think I'm back in the game.

Have fun shooting and let me see some of your work.

By the way, the above image is from a recent trip to Maine. What a great place to shoot. I'll post some more pictures soon.