Friday, May 25th, 2012

Add a Photo Border in Lightroom

One hidden feature of the Lightroom print module is the ability to add a frame to an image. In this post I’ll show you how to add a frame to an image before exporting it as a JPEG image ready for uploading to the web or printing.

In Lightroom 3 you can create an image and export it as a JPG image from the Print module – however before you set this up, it’s a good idea to create a frame to use. I’m going to use a hand drawn border but you can use anything of your own design.

Step 1

Start in a program like Photoshop and create a new image the size that you want to print from Lightroom. This is a critical step because the border image that you’re about to create cannot be resized any larger in any dimension than the Lightroom file dimensions that you plan printing to.

So, for example, if you want to print a landscape image on letter paper you need to create a frame image of the exact dimensions (or at least the exact ratio of dimensions) of an 11 x 8.5 inch sheet of paper. If you do this, the frame can be sized to the full size of the image in Lightroom.

Set the resolution of the new image as desired – I do this so it matches the resolution that I want to print from Lightroom at – so I use 300 dpi

Step 2

Design your frame making sure the inside of the frame is transparent if you plan for your frame to be placed over the image in Lightroom.

When you are done, choose File > Save As and save the image as a PNG format file so that the transparency information is retained – the JPEG image file format doesn’t support transparency.

Step 3

Close Photoshop, open Lightroom, select the image to print and click to open the Print module.

From the Layout Style panel select Custom Package. In the Print Job panel select Print To: JPEG File. Select Custom File Dimensions and set the size to the same 11 x 8.5 inches that you set the frame to be.

Set the File Resolution to the desired resolution – I’ve used 300 dpi.

Step 4

You will add the frame as a graphical Identity Plate. So open the Page panel and select the Identity Plate checkbox. Click on the identity plate box and, from the menu which appears, choose Edit then select the Use a Graphical Identity Plate option button. Click Locate File, select the frame png file you just saved and click Choose. You will most likely be warned that the file is very large – if so, click Use Anyway and click Ok.

The frame will appear as an Identity Plate over the top of the image. Adjust the Scale slider to size it up to 100 percent which should ensure the frame fills the page size that you are working with.

Step 5

As the middle of the frame image was created as transparent, the image underneath it shows through it.

You can use the Render Behind Image option to place the frame under the image if that’s the way you have designed it to work.

Once you’ve added your identity plate select to print to file and the framed image will be printed to a new file.

Before I am done, I click the Identity Plate box again and choose Edit and then from the Custom dropdown list I choose Save As to save the graphic frame as an Identity Plate I can use at any time in the future.

Armed with Photoshop you can create any sort of frame and import it as an identity plate to add a border to an image in Lightroom.

 

 

Helen Bradley

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Sunday, May 20th, 2012

Hand drawn frames in Photoshop

One technique I’ve seen used a lot lately on blogs, websites and even email newsletters is a hand drawn frame effect.

In this post, I’ll show you how to create an effect like this and save and use it for your images.

Step 1

Start with a new image in Photoshop. A good size frame is important to create as you can size it down but not size it up as successfully. Start with an image around 4,000 pixels square with a resolution of 300 pixels RGB color and transparent background.

When the image opens, fill the background with a color of your choice, I’ve chosen a blue fill color.

Step 2

Add a new layer and then select the brush tool and a smallish brush. You want something that is going to ‘paint’ looking a little bit like pencil marks so I chose the Chalk 11 pixels brush and sized it up to around 57 pixels.

Select black or a dark brown or dark gray color as the foreground color and hand draw your frame. It will help if you use a tablet to do this although that’s not necessary and a mouse can be used.

Draw the frame so it has closed inside and outside edges to make the next step easier.

Step 3

Target the Magic Wand tool and click inside the frame. This selects the inner portion of the frame.

Choose Select >  Inverse to invert the selection.

Now hold the Alt key and click with the Magic Wand tool on the outer area of the image so you remove the outer edge from the selection.

To eliminate any anti-aliased edges, choose Select > Modify > Contract and contract the selection by around 12 pixels.

Step 4

Add a new layer between the frame drawing and the background and fill it with white.

Return to the frame layer and select the inside again, this time choose Select > Modify > Expand and expand the selection by around 12 pixels.

Add a new layer and fill the selected area with a black/brown or dark color. This is the template for your image.

Save this image as a layered .psd file so you can use it anytime in future.

Step 5

To frame an image, open an image to frame and this frame too.

Drag the background layer of the image into your frame image holding the Shift key as you do so to center it. Press Ctrl T + Ctrl 0 to size the image to size. Make sure the image layer is directly under the drawn frame and above the dark template layer.

Now, with the image layer selected choose Layer > Create Clipping Mask to clip the image to the size of the inside of the frame.

You can move the image layer using the Move tool so it is positioned as desired.

Now size and save the image for print or the web.

 

Helen Bradley

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posted by Helen Bradley @ 9:00 amNo Comments links to this post

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

A “Happy Snap” Lightroom workflow

At Halloween last year I was asked to photograph some kids I’ve shot from time to time since they were born. Basically their mum likes to have some up to date photos of the kids and Halloween seemed like as good a time as any to get some shots.

When I’m shooting like this, my aim is to get some good shots but nothing formal and I prefer not to use a flash because I get a better response from the kids without one. I captured the images in raw and I chewed through three small size camera cards in about an hour and a half.

My deal with their mum is that I get to use the photos for my work and she gets a disk of pictures. To keep this fun – so it doesn’t feel like work for me – I need a fast and effective processing workflow.  I need to get the images off my camera, sorted, processed, burned to a DVD and delivered to mum in time for her to enjoy them.

Thanks to Lightroom the process was simple and, in all, I reckon I spent less than 2 hours getting the photos from the camera cards to a DVD. Here is what I call my Happy Snap Lightroom workflow – it’s what I do to quickly process casual snapshots:

Step 1: Determine a plan of attack

To begin with I have some criteria I work by. I never give away substandard photos so anything blurry, out of focus or over exposed gets permanently deleted. Then I sort out the best of the images intending to give mum around 50-60 photos of the kids – it’s a nice range of images for her to use to scrapbook and post to Facebook and it doesn’t over burden her with too many photos to choose from.

Step 2: Download the images

To begin, I download all the images from all three cards into a single folder on my hard drive (if there were only one card I would omit this step).

From there I import the images into Lightroom at the same time copying them to their permanent storage on my external photo drive and making a backup to a second drive. Copying rather than adding images to the Lightroom catalog lets me make backups and also add my metadata to the images so, when they popup on Facebook my copyright details are embedded in them.

Importing all the images in one step also means that when I’ve started the import process – which includes rendering standard previews – I can start working through the images and I don’t have to do it multiple times or switch out cards as I work – (the process works for me – your mileage may vary).

Step 3: Eliminating the duds

The first time I run through the images I am looking for images to delete as well as getting a general look at what I shot.

As I work through the images I’ll press X for images to delete and use the right arrow key to move past everything else. I’ll select to delete all out of focus images, anything where someone has their eyes closed or similar, and anything I don’t want to put my name to!

Once I’m done I choose Photo > Delete Rejected Photos to delete the images from my primary external photo drive. There are still copies on the backup drive and my hard disk but not on my main photo drive.

Step 4: Sorting the usable images

On the second run through the images I pick those I want to use. By now I have a rough idea as to what I have and what I might want to give mum. So this time I run through the images pressing P to pick an image and using the right arrow key to move past those she won’t be getting.

Step 5: Create a Collection

Once done, I isolate the picked images by clicking the first of the filter flag icons above the filmstrip. Then with only the picks visible I press Ctrl + A to select all of them and then click New Collection > Create Collection and type a name for it. Because the images are already selected, I leave the Include Selected Photos checkbox enabled and click Create.

Step 6: Apply initial processing to the images

Now I have a collection of the picks and it’s time to process them. I start out by selecting all the images in Grid View in the Library and from the Quick Develop panel I select Auto Tone. This gives me a head start on fixing them but, because of the lighting, pretty much all of them needed a white balance adjustment.

Step 7: Process in the Develop module

Switching to Develop module with the filmstrip visible I selected the White Balance Selector and then made sure that Auto Dismiss was disabled. This allows me to adjust the white balance on one image and then click on the next one in the filmstrip and continue to adjust the white balance from one image to the next without having to reselect anything. Basically all that most of these images needed was some white balance adjustment.

For those that needed cropping, I cropped as I finished with white balance adjustment and then moved on to the next image. This ensured that each image was dealt with only once as I progressed across the filmstrip.

Step 8: Make one off fixes

So, having fixed the worst of the problems I work backwards through the filmstrip to see if any of the images warrant special attention. If so, I make a call to fix them or simply remove them from the collection. To remove the image, right click it and choose Remove from Collection .

Here I had one issue with a couple of images where one child’s face was in shadow. For this, I used the Adjustment Brush tool at a small size with a large feather radius. I brushed over the areas where her face was in shadow and then adjusted the Brightness and Exposure to lighten to her face. In the same images other faces were overexposed so I added a second Adjustment Brush adjustment with the opposite settings to attempt to deal with this. The final result wouldn’t  stand up to close scrutiny but is just fine for the web and 6 x 4 printing.

Step 9: Export and burn

Once this was done it was time to export the images. Because they’re all in a collection, Ctrl + A selects all the images. I chose File > Export and then exported them as JPG images, 80 percent quality at the largest size and I added sharpening to them in the process. I made sure these images all went to a new folder so that they would be isolated from everything else and easy to find.

From there, it was a matter of launching Ashampoo Burning Studio, grabbing all the images and burning them to a DVD.

This workflow is one giant step better than simply burning the images direct to a DVD. It takes only a little more time with Lightroom to sort and apply some basic fixes to the images and it also means that only the best of the images get circulated and those that do have my copyright information embedded in them.

So now it’s over to you. What’s your “happy snap” workflow? Do you capture snapshots in raw? Do you process using Lightroom? And how do you get your images processed quickly so you’re not spending hours on images that are really just family snapshots?

Helen Bradley

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Friday, May 11th, 2012

5 top tips for working with Gimp

I know that a lot of you use Gimp and, in the interests of taking a step away from Photoshop for a minute, here are 5 of my top tips for working with Gimp.

Rounded corners

Gimp makes it dead simple to round the corners of an image. To do this, choose Filters > Décor > Rounded Corners. A dialog will open. Select the Edge Radius, which is the amount of curve, and if desired, click to add a Drop Shadow and then set the Shadow Offset and Blur Radius. You can select to work on a copy of the image (rather than the original), and select whether or not to add some background behind the curved corners – the current background color is used for this. Click Ok to round the corners of the image.

Reassign keys

When I use Gimp, I sometimes forget and use Photoshop keys for things like deselect. Unfortunately in Gimp, the Photoshop deselect keystroke duplicates an image! You can, however, remap your keyboard shortcuts by choosing Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts. So, for example, to map the Ctrl + D keystroke to the Select > None option, click to open the Select menu, locate the None option and click it so that the words New Accelerator appear in the Shortcut column. Then press the keystroke to use – I chose Ctrl + D, which is the Photoshop equivalent. Because this key combination is already used a warning appears – if you are ok with replacing the shortcut, then proceed to assign the new shortcut key.

When you change or reassign a shortcut, Gimp is smart enough to add the new shortcut to the appropriate menu so the Select menu here shows the newly assigned shortcut.

Move the selection mask

It is so much easier in Gimp than in Photoshop to move the actual selection marquee once you have made it. To see this at work, make a selection, then click the Move tool. Make sure that the Move option is set to Selection in the panel and you can now drag the selection into a new position. This works for circles, rectangles as well as selections made with the free select tool. Once you’re done, return to the tool to perform another task such as Ctrl + Alt + drag to move the selected area or Shift + Alt + drag to copy it.

Merge to a new layer (and keep the original layers)

One command that is useful when you need to flatten an image but where you don’t want to lose the layers you have already created is the one which flattens the visible portions of an image to a new layer. This layer is at the top of the stack but is created in a way that leaves the original layers still in place. In Photoshop you do it by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E. In Gimp, choose Layer –> New From Visible. Now you can, for example, sharpen the image but, if you need to make changes to the image, you can delete the top merged layer, adjust the image on the layers below and then remake the new merged layer and sharpen it.

Crop Tool Smarts

The Crop tool in Gimp includes a range of cool options. When you select it, check out the panel options. You can, for example, crop just the current layer (or all the image) or you can select the crop area from the middle out (rather than drawing from one corner). You can crop to a fixed aspect ratio or a fixed width (height is variable), fixed height (width is variable), or set both height and width. From the list which shows No Guides, you can choose to display a Rule of Thirds overlay, Center lines or Golden Sections to help you create a well composed image. Enable Highlight to see a dark border around the area you plan to crop to.

So, there are my 5 top Gimp tips. It is over to you. What is your favorite Gimp tip to share with others?

Helen Bradley

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Monday, May 7th, 2012

Crop to fixed ratio in Photoshop

By Helen Bradley

If you’ve ever tried to crop an image to a fixed ratio in Photoshop you may have run up against an issue. There is, it appears, no option for cropping to a fixed ratio such as 4 x 6, 5 x 7 or even 1 x 1. You can crop to fixed sizes like 4in x 6in and you can set a resolution for the image but you can’t on the face of it just crop to a simple 1 x 1 without specifying a unit of measure. Here I’ll show you how to do this, but first things first…

The risk you run if you don’t watch how your settings are configured and if you don’t watch what you enter in the dialogs, is that Photoshop will not only crop, but also determine the units of measure and resample the image for you.

Default Settings

The default units of measure and the default resampling method are set in the program preferences which you can locate by choosing Edit > Preferences > General (Photoshop > Preferences > General) and then read the image interpolation method being used. In this set up it is set to Bicubic:

The default units of measure are set in the Units & Rulers options or the Panel options for the Info Palette as the ruler measurements:

If you type a number in the Width and Height boxes when you select the Crop tool in Photoshop then the default units of measure are used unless you also type the desired units of measure. This might not sound like it is a problem but if the default units of measure are pixels and you type 6 x 4 and have the Resolution set to 300 dpi you might end up with a very small size image indeed!

It is not possible to type a number in the Width or Height box for the Crop tool without a unit of measure being applied to it. So, what do you do if you want a 1 x 1 ratio crop not a 1 in x 1 in image?

The solution is to type 1in or 1cm in each the Width and Height boxes and ignore the units of measure. Then, remove anything from the Resolution box. When Photoshop is told to crop to a fixed size/ratio and is not told the Resolution to use it crops to the size requested, it doesn’t resample the image, and it simply adjusts the Resolution of the final image to suit the image. It might sound weird but it works to let you crop to a fixed ratio. The problem is of course, that the resulting resolution can be very large indeed.

Here I cropped this image to 1 in x 1 in with no resolution set:

Here are the final image dimensions – the size is 1 x 1 but the resolution is very large:

Change Resolution but not Size

If the resolution of the image is important to you then you can change it by choosing Image > Image Size, disable the Resample checkbox and set the desired Resolution and click Ok to adjust this. This resizes the image to the chosen resolution but does not resample it in the process.

Crop and Resample

On the other hand, if you set a width and height for the image in the Crop tool options and if you set a resolution, Photoshop will crop the image to that size and resolution.

If the image is very large and the desired size is comparatively small then Photoshop will downsize the image and in the process resample the image. If there are insufficient pixels in the image to crop to the desired size and resolution, Photoshop will upsize the image resampling it as it does so.

An Alternate Method

There is an alternative method that lets you crop to a fixed ratio without altering image resolution. It is a little longer but it works well and is bypasses the crop tool entirely. Instead, target the Rectangular Marquee tool and select Fixed Ratio from the Style list and then set the Width and Height as values without measurements. Select the area to keep – if necessary, hold the Space Bar as you are drawing the shape to move it to a new position.

When you ‘re done choose Image > Crop to crop it.

Next time you need to crop to a fixed aspect ratio, one of these methods will ensure you get the result you expect.

Helen Bradley

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Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Photo editing with Photoshop Express on the iPad

download: Photo Express on the iPad – free

When it comes to apps sometimes you get great value in free apps and other times you get rubbish. Photoshop Express falls somewhere between the two extremes – it isn’t rubbish but it’s far from great.

Photoshop Express has a very strange interface which left me tapping furiously on the screen trying to get it to do something – anything!  The problem is you have to swipe the screen to adjust the intensity of the edit? So, to increase saturation you choose the Saturation option then swipe across to the right to increase it or to the left to decrease – Ok – where exactly did that interface metaphor come from? I feel like I missed class that day and there is nothing  on the screen that makes this behaviour easy to discover.

Interface complaints aside this app lets you crop and fix your images and apply some effects to it.

Here is the crop/straighten/rotate/flip options:

Here is the image with contrast and saturation improved:

The noise reduction tool requires you to buy an add-in – OMG Adobe just gets some things sadly wrong and this is one of them! Either give the program away or don’t but why do they make one fix a pay for feature? It makes no sense – and they could just have easily left out noise reduction altogether. If you want this feature, expect to pay a hefty $4.99 for it.

In the border area there are a handful of free borders and others you can buy but which you can preview on your image first – this is useful so you get to see how they look before you commit to buying them. They come as an all in pack of 22 borders for $1.99.

There is also a small range of effects you can apply by selecting the effect to add to the image.

A lot of folks will download this app because it is from Adobe. Lots of these same folks will be wondering why they bothered to do so. This app is competent but it is hard to look past the silly in-app purchases and the screwball interface – Adobe is better than this – this app damages the company’s reputation – why not do something like they have at photoshop.com?

You don’t have to reinvent interfaces for the iPad and you don’t have to make up new interface gestures for adjusting images when a slider will do just fine – if you use sliders folks can see the slider and work out quickly how to use it – instead here with the swiping you really have to guess how to make the thing work and you shouldn’t have to do that.

Helen Bradley

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Thursday, April 5th, 2012

Photo fixing and painting with PhotoPad

Download: PhotoPad by Zagg for the iPad free

This app is interesting and would be useful if it were more functional. It has a few problems and most annoying is the inability to preview changes on the image before you select them. So you have to apply the effect and then undo it if you don’t like it. It just seems a whole lot more cumbersome to use than many other apps of this genre.

The rotate tool has no grid so lining up a rotation is total hit or miss. And worse still the program adds a colored matt background around the rotated image – wtf? Most photographers won’t want an image on an angle with a colored background showing up just what you did to the image. In reality what we need and want is the option to rotate the image and, at the same time to crop or resize the image to get rid of this skewed background.

There are a range of paint tools which let you sample colors from the image or select your own color and paint onto the image. This paint goes on a layer above the image so you can erase it if desired. There are 4 brush types – soft, hard, square and line but they’re not really different enough or a wide enough range to do much – you’d go to another program if you were serious about doing real painting of an image. Here I just did some fun brush lines.

The fixing tools are limited to color levels, saturation and hue, contrast and brightness and things like redeye.

There are a few filters but the thumbnails don’t indicate well enough what they do so you have to apply them to the image to test them. Basically they’re a pretty lacklustre range of filters which just about sums up this app – lacklustre and hardly worth bothering with – there are far better apps out there which do all this does and more and way more to boot.

Helen Bradley

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Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

Find the best photo and graphic editing software

If you’re in the market for some new graphic software the first thing you’ll want to know is what’s the best for you. The folks at findthebest.com have done a lot of the work for you.

Visit the website and you can select to compare a range of applications. I’ve selected Photoshop, ArtRage and Lightroom – 3 very different applications, and then I ran a compare on them. You’ll get a heap of information including the Smart Ranking, what the purpose of the software is, the latest version and all sorts of details including ratings from the key sites such as PC World, PC Magazine, CNET and MacWorld. There’s plenty of information about supported file types, color spaces, help and online resources and whether or not the application runs on Windows or the Mac.

Findthebest.com is a great resource when you’re looking to compare different programs. Use the slideshow tab to view simplified information about each selected application and click the chart to see how the applications compare.

There’s plenty to like about this site when you need to get an overview of the kind of programs that you may want to use.

I think the interface looks a bit similar to those airline ticket site where you can sort by price, category and all sorts of things. Only here, you’ll get the best photo editing programs not a ticket to London!

Helen Bradley

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Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

Photo-editing in Photogene

Download: Photogene for the iPad $2.99

I have had Photogene now for a while but just cranked it up today to see just how it performs. I have to say it has some cool features – sort of an all-round app that could be all things to some people but which hasn’t a huge amount of depth.

It doesn’t have layers but it does have a mask you can paint on to paint on features such as the dodge and burn fixes. I got a bit confused with the presets – they are great for applying effects but they seem to have been added on rather than integrated with the program itself. It’s a minor complaint but you feel like filters and frames appear  in two different places – as regular tools and as presets. Problem is that if you use the presets you get access to some frames that you can’t get to elsewhere – which is a little frustrating if you are a DIY person and like to have better control over your images.

This image was shot in NY and I shot it specially to use for iPad editing. Here I gave it the treatment in Photogene. The image wasn’t perfectly straight so I started with the rotate tool and straightened it.

I cropped it using a 1:1 crop with the Crop tool.

Then I added a vignette using the Burn brush which is a Retouching tool. The built in vignettes didn’t give me the control I wanted and being able to paint the vignette on is great.

When you are dodging and burning you can change from paint to erase by tapping twice on the screen and there is an Intensity slider you can use to dial down the effect.

You can also choose to see the mask overlay which helps you when you’re trying to work out where you painted.

I used the Dodge brush retouching tool in the middle to lighten the image and then applied an effect from the effects collection.

Then I applied a cross process effect. You can do this to the entire image or it can be painted on using the retouch tools.

To finish some adjustments were made to the image saturation, vibrance and clarity.

This was the end of the process in Photogene but I felt the image needed a little something extra. I saved it out of Photogene to the Photo Library.

Then took it to Scratch Camera to add the final touches you see here.

Helen Bradley

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Sunday, April 1st, 2012

Scale a Pattern in Photoshop

I use patterns a lot in Photoshop to fill backgrounds and to apply effects to my images. Problem is that ahead of time I never really know how big the pattern needs to be. If you fill an image with a pattern using Edit > Fill then you get the pattern in the image but at the size it is in the pattern swatch so you get zero control over it.

Instead, if you prefer to add your pattern in a scalable way, apply it using a fill layer. To do this, choose Layer > New Fill Layer > Pattern, click Ok and then select your pattern to fill the layer with.

You will see a Scale slider and you can use this to scale the pattern to suit the image.

If you don’t want it to stay a fill layer, right click the pattern layer and click Rasterize Layer to rasterize it so that you can then do other things with it.

While it remains a pattern fill layer you can double click the layer and rescale the pattern if desired.

Helen Bradley

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