Williamsburg Kitchen

As I was cruising through old pictures of a trip to Williamsburg. VA, I saw this one.  This is part of a HDR set, that really doesn't need to be.  Aside from the darkness in the fireplace the light levels are fairly even.  When I merged the three shots together, for some reason Photomatix didn't play well with the greens stuff up front.  The green stuff was fuzzy.  Photomatix is usually very good lining up images.  No problem, it did well enough with just one image.
When I saw this image, it was destined to be right brain.  All the angles are off.  Just begging for something different.

This started as a shot with a one image edit from Photomatix, Painterly.  From there I put it through a couple of filters on On One.  (That was mostly to test the new install of On One.)  Then I hit the filters library in PS.
I was trying to get more of a painting look, but close enough.
What is an aluminum colander doing on that table?

Williamsburg Barrel House - A Case for HDR

My interest in HDR is coming full circle.  Search my history, there are images with small touches to full blown grunge.  I'm not apologizing for any of it.
There are so many photos out there where you can tell it is HDR.  To me, now the trick is to use it as a tool to help set light levels without giving away the process.  Sort of like magic?  Analogy works for me.
Maybe the last time I shot real HDR, you know the three image merge type, was in May 2016 on a vacation week in Williamsburg, VA.  I may have 25-30 sets of all sorts of scenery.  Totally forgot about them.  Until today.
There is a plantation museum, Hope Plantation, just north of classic colonial Williamsburg.  One of the exhibits is a shed with a few barrels.  Great setup for HDR.  There is just enough light coming though the space between the logs to screw with the metering on the camera.  Not that I was any good at figuring that stuff out at the time, or now some would say, but I was kind of lucky here.
But this is the perfect setup for HDR, and my goal is to make the image look 'natural'.
I don't have the accompanying Nikon JPG, but I did process the neutral image of the three image set as I normally would for comparison.  To be fair, without HDR, I would have spent more time on the image to get the light levels right, or moved on to the next image.  The edits here were done in ACR.  Not too bad, if I say so myself.

ISO 400, f/11, 1/15 sec, 22 mm

NIKON D7200 Ver.1.00 /18.0-200.0 mm f/3.5-5.6

But......  Still a little dark.  And the barrels look, well odd.

There is so much wood in this shot.  This shot is crying out to be different.  It deserves a bit more time.  And creativeness.  I have to see the wood.
There are three shots I put through Photomatix.  All are at ISO 400 and f/11.  The times are 1/15, 1/60, and 1/4.
Coming out of Photomatix, I liked the Creative and Painterly pre-sets.  They were a little on the dark side, but nothing that couldn't be adjusted.  Read the term pre-sets.  It's legal. 
This is the creative pre-set.  The Painterly had just too much 'warmth' for me.

That's pretty close to what I'd like.  Still needs a bit of sharpening or contrast, but the light levels are good.  Aside from the ceiling rafters being at a high light level, there aren't any real HDR tell tales.  We're getting closer.
To me, there is still a bit too much 'warmth' color.  I tried to cool it off a bit, but then the barrels looked like they came from the north pole.
One of the filters I tried was of the B&W variety.  This is my right brain kicking in, and I need a B&W image for club night.

I think the light levels here are really what I'm looking for.  Shifts the light a little to the right.

What if......
I bet I can neutralize the overall warmth with a little monochrome?

I overlayed the B/W shot at 50%.  (And finished up the other edit I do.)

This works.  One might say that there should be a bit more color in the wood.  I could be swayed a bit, but this to me is in the shade.  It is not supposed to be 'colorful'.  To me, the wood grain and definition is everything.  There is good balance of light inside and outside.
My standard crop cuts out more than I like, but for consistency sake I'll do it.

I can live with this one.  And a new idea to boot.  Good day.

Williamsburg Governor's Palace - North Side

At last night's photo club meeting I volunteered to do a demo on Adobe Camera Raw (ACR).  We have some new members who don't understand what it does, other than it annoys them.  We have members who use PS and Elements, so this 'discussion' will be beneficial to both groups.  My 'discussion' will be in essentially five weeks.  Unlike my school days, I will try to prepare more than a day out.
Since any chat about ACR on its own might take 20-30 minutes, I'll have to do some demoing.  That can fill up the other 90 minutes.
Tonight I was looking for RAW file images to use.  My criteria was to have some dynamic range, but not outrageous.  For the club, I want to use a somewhat realistic image not one that was deliberately taken to prove a point.
This is a photograph of the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg, Virginia.  Most people approach the Palace from the south side, main entrance.  Apparently I got lost and found my way to the lesser known north side.
I like this landscape shot.  Nice carpet of grass, bricks for detail, a not very common gold seal on the doorway and most importantly a sky that I won't have to replace.  There is a landscape dude that will have to be dealt with by some form of removal or crop.  We'll go for removal because I like a challenge, plus for the club I have cred that needs a bolster every now and then.
Here is the original image.

May 19, 2016 - I did have the D7200 at that time.  The lens is my 18-200.  ISO 400, f/11, 1/250 sec, 38 mm.

First step - open RAW image file in ACR.

There are two settings in ACR that I know of that are not available once the image is imported to PS.  I need to make my selections here.  I also do my initial light level sets.

First I will set the profile to Adobe Landscape.  For my light levels, I just hit the Auto setting.  First pass, I'll detail it later.

In this image, that is not so necessary, but is some other darker images this step will at least let me see what is there.  

The options that are not available later are the lens corrections.  I need to set them now.

I want to use this options to remove chromatic aberrations and enable profile corrections.  (It will change the image!)

From here I will take the corrections and open PS.

PS will open with the image as the Background layer.  As practice, I never work on the background layer, so I make a copy layer using the shortcut Ctrl+J.  Layer 1 is created.  Again as practice, I make Layer 1 a Smart Object.  This will allow me to make changes at a later time if necessary.

At this time I will open the RAW Editor Filter.  This is ACR inside PS, except for the two parameters I've already changed in Lens Correction.  I'll use the shortcut Shift+Ctrl+A to open the editor.

From here, I'll set the temperature and tint levels.  For this shot, I'll bump the temperature a bit, to give the illusion of some sun light.

I'll also move the other light levels as necessary.  I want a good photograph with a good sky.  No blown pixels, some (small) black areas are OK.  I'll also set my Clarity, Dehaze, Vibrance and Saturation.

When the colors and light levels are set, I move to sharpening.  For this, I generally use the heavy preset.

From here, I'll move to the Transform section.  Because I've already it the image with Lens Correction, there won't be much change unless the level is off.  I start off with the 'waffle' selection.  Unless I'm off at an extreme angle this will do the trick.

Nothing can ruin a good photo like spots.  Dirty lens, dust on the sensor, even a small flying critter will subconsciously catch an eye.  I always check for spots in the sky.  ACR makes this really easy to do with the spot removal tool and the Visualize Spots option checked.

No odd images in the sky.

Last stop in ACR is the Adjustment brush.  I didn't make any spot changes.  Usually when I do, it will be to over or under expose a small area.  There are some dark areas in the image, but non that I want to tackle.

At this point the image is basically done.

For the final touch, I need to remove the lawn service dude.  It would easy to crop the image and remove him.  But the Content Aware Fill option worked really well.  I did some touch up cloning along the brick wall just for fun and practice.  I also removed the top of the lightning rod that extends out of the picture.  Personal preference, not real fond of items that extend out of the photo if I can avoid it.  I'll finish by cropping it to 1920x1080 and adding the frame.

Fun image to work on.  Little bits of everything.

Williamsburg: The Boathouse

When one thinks of Williamsburg, VA - one tends to think colonial.  And in most cases, one would be correct.  But not this one time.
Just outside of the colonial village, there is Bassett Hall Nature Trail.  It's a 2 mile walk between two golf courses.  Being that it splits two golf courses, there is a lake/reservoir between the two golf courses, and the walk goes along the water for some time.  Along the walk, and in this body of water there is what looks to be a boat house.  It has all the qualifying marks, basically in the water and a larger enough door on the water to let a water vehicle transit.
This scene has all my favorite elements, water, wood, reflections and a story.
The particulars:  3 Shot HDR, 400 ISO, Aperture Priority, Focal length 50 mm, f/11, speeds 1/200, 1/1600, 1/25.
I used Photomatix to get my base image.  I was planning to just set the colors, but it turns out I really liked one of the preset effects.  Wow - I didn't have to go too much further on this one.  This is my base image.

There isn't too much to do for the color levels, although I might make it just a bit darker.  The sun was out full, but I see this as a bit darker.  i will crop it closer to the building to really see the wood and reflections.  I need to cop out the grass in the foreground and maybe remove a stray blade or two.  I'll work on some effect to age the building more than it is.  But the first thing I want to do is sharpen the image.  At the club meeting last night, we started talking about the Nik sharpening programs.  I applied the pre-sharpener to this image before I 'aged' the building - and then used the post sharpening at the end.  In the preview pane, you can see some action going on.
So in the end, after the effects, sharpening and a 5x7 crop, this is what I get.

I really like the end product doors.  I usually favor a deeper yellow - but this is right on.  I thought I'd be spending more time on this project but this fell right into place.  After the picture of the Inn (Williamsburg Inn Morning), this is more my speed.

Williamsburg: The Inn - Morning

Last week I spent a wonderful few days with the family.  Williamsburg, VA was the chosen location.  We had lots of time to visit (no kids).  We were there at the not quite tourist season and the weather was most comfortable.
On the photography side, I stayed mostly with HDR instead of focus stacking for my adventures.  I did try the stack on one outdoor flower and there was just too much movement in the air to get a good shot.  So I worked on my HDR technique.
One of the best changes I made was to utilize the camera timer.  I set it up to delay 1 second  after the shutter button was released to fire three shots with a half second in between each shot.  At first the one second delay was awkward - but I found after releasing the release, I could focus on steadying the camera.  Worked out quite nicely.
I also worked on my back button focus.  I like the configuration and have been using it for a few months.  I just have not used it enough to be second nature comfortable with the process.  I did work on this quite a bit and am getting much faster in getting to the picture.
I did get one photo request - that was to get a frontal picture of the Inn where we were staying.
I was able to get two shots of the Inn.  One at night and one early morning.
This is the early morning shot.  The particulars:  ISO 100, f/Stop f/8, focal length 18mm.  There were three shots: 1/60, 1/500 and 1/8.  Mode is Aperture priority.  Shots were taken hand held.
I put the three shots through Photomatix and chose one of the Smooth settings.  I did this to keep the halo between the roof of the building and the sky to a minimum.  For the most part, All i want is to set the colors and shadows.  i also upped the shadows a bit to bring out some of the red in the shutters.  This is what I came out with - and is my starting point.

I know from past experience when this gets to a 5x7 format I will lose quite a bit.  I'm not happy with the almost what area on the left in the trees.  I have options for removing that area, but I think it will be best to just make that part of the crop.  I will also do what I can to get most of the roadway out of the shot as well.  The light blue sky is not really what I like, needs to be deeper - and I can do that.  Last, being shot at 18mm there is a lot of camera distortion that needs to be corrected.
Working in Photoshop, I will be using the Smart Layer function with the RAW editor.
To darken out the sky a bit, I used the Adjustment brush to mask in a cooler color.  Very targeted cooler cast on the sky is just enough.  And I don't have to deal with a halo.

Didn't take much, just enough to get the haze look out.
All I need to do now is address the camera distortion before I do a final sizing adjustment.  To tackle the camera distortion, I will use the Camera Raw filter again - but this time on a separate layer.
Using the Camera Raw Filter, select the Lens Correction tab.  In this tab you will find the tool to correct level, horizontal and vertical perspective corrections.

When this filter is applied, the building with straighten out - and look like a building.

And you would be correct in saying that some of the photo is removed and unusable.  But I'm going to crop to a 5x7 format and I need to lose the sky issues on the left.  I'm looking at this as a win.
One of the issues I have not yet solved with Photoshop is when an image is re-sized, it re-sizes the entire process, not just the layer.  To bypass that problem I will save the layer as a TIFF and open it for editing in a new window.
On this file I will do my final crop/sizing and other final processing.

I think the crop worked out well.  I wanted to keep the barrel by the signpost.  And I wanted to get rid of the white sky.  The right side of the building is cut a bit close, but if that's all that is wrong - I'm good with the picture.

Since this was a request, I didn't go overboard on the effects - this may be the first 'conventional' photo I've every published.  Maybe I'll add my version later?