Professional Resources for Photographers

I find myself loving textures. It is special to me because I can take a photo and “finish” the image with my computer by adding various textures and elements to it until I can create what I envisioned in my head. Working with textures requires some good knowledge of Photoshop, Layers and Layer Blending Modes in order for you to make the most of them. Simply find a cool image that has nice color and textures to it, drop it on top of your image, switch between Overlay, Soft Light or Hard Light in the Layer’s Blending Mode and then work the Opacity or Fill percentage until it is where you want it. You can also use the Eraser tool in moderation to remove the texture from showing up on your subject because it can be quite distracting and can make the subject’s skin not look too hot. The cool thing is that you can use it however you want and you can be free to experiment.

Here is a quick video on it:

And this is the quick sample of that image that I threw together in a couple minutes. I normally take more time with these images and really fine tune them but this is good to give you a quick sample of how your images can look:

Wow, day two and I am sticking to my guns about daily blog posts… Not bad.

Today’s Workflow Wednesday post is a YouTube video that I did to inform you all about batch processing. Batch processing can be done with various photo editing programs, from Apple Aperture, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw or even Capture One and so on. The list goes on and on. Heck even photoshop has an Automate feature that will batch process an action for every photo that you selected.

So why batch process? What is batch processing even? Batch processing is a real perk and time saving tool. After all, we are calling this workflow and not work-slow… Right? So you just shot a wedding in RAW. You have like 1,500 or more images to go through and edit. Aw man, your white balance was off for a ton of these… Maybe you even under exposed every single shot by half a stop. Batch processing allows you to select one file that is messed up and ten you go ahead and do the necessary edits to pretty up the photo. From there, you can select as many of the other images that are equally messed up and Sync them all so they can have the same settings across the board. That means you could have just potentially have edited 1,500 images in seconds! Wow! Now you still should batch process your images with something if you shoot RAW… Why is that? Well, RAW files do not contain any of the in-camera settings (like sharpness, contrast, saturation and so on) like an equivalent JPEG does. RAW basically gives you a blank canvas where you have to pretty up the file and give the file some pizazz. Usually, this just means some contrast and sharpening. Once you get the feel for what you like in your files, you can just edit one and batch process the other ones so they are all on the same page. OR you could even create a Lightroom Develop Preset and save all the edits that you find yourself doing time and time again. Instead of memorizing everything you do time and time again, you assign them to a Preset and whola… It is right there for you whenever you need it. Making your own Lightroom Presets will be a good topic down the road don’t you think?

So without further ado, here is the video on batch processing in Lightroom:

Mind you, most all other RAW conversion software also have this feature. Just crack open the manual and find out exactly how it is done with your desired RAW converting software.

Here is one on shutter drag for you to check out. For those who don’t know, shutter drag is a term used when shooting with your flash. Dragging the shutter means that you are setting a very low shutter speed on your camera (so shooting in Manual mode is a perk here) to let more ambient light in and create movement. The flash (should be set to rear curtain sync) then fires at the end of the exposure to freeze your subject. The result is an image that tells a story of movement and motion. It also helps to bring out the ambient light in the background for a more appealing photograph.

Here is an example of dragging the shutter and zooming in with my lens:

Thanks!

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I have set up a youTube channel to offer tips and tricks and some simple photography lessons.

http://www.youtube.com/michaelalanphoto

Please subscribe, add comments and whatever else. There will be much more content in the upcoming weeks. I plan on doing a mass upload around mid-November.

Thanks!

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