Post your pictures!

[paglamon]

My daughter was playing with a sparkler while celebrating Diwali yesterday.
See if you can bring out any more drama into this picture,you PS gurus.

[UncasMS]

i hope it is not too scary but i had the idea of a demon expelled by fire

[gonwk]

Hi guys,

@ Pagamalon ... Great Picture ... how did you do it ... shot it in the dark without a flash and fast lens!?!? BTW, Pagamalon ... you must be a "Proud" daddy ... you have a beautiful daughter.

@ UncasMS ... pretty "Nifty" special effect.

Have a Great Weekend folks ...

G!

[UncasMS]

camera used:

sony dsc-p52
1/125 + F3.8
ISO 320
no flash fired

at least this is what the picture exif data tell ^_~


+++++

these are the steps i took:

- using noiseware to reduce noise/grain a little

- inserting the sparks with knoll light factory

- inserting the white "halos" arond the sparkler with eye candy 5 impact => backlight

- removing parts of this newly created halo layer in order to have it only on the left half of the sparkler

- applying "MikeW Landscape-Light Background Gallery Frame" Action

- googling for the demon picture and inserting it top left

- applying a layer mask to the demon layer and using a wide, soft black brush to reduce the transparency of the layer from bottom right to top left so that the image seems to dissolve from the center of the sparkler

- masking the outline of the remaining demon with ctrl-click on the layer and afterwards applying eye candy 5 nature => smoke to the outline of the demon and have this smoke image created as a new layer (to be able to reduce/change transparency later on).

- moving this smoke layer to the very top of the layers in order to have this smoke effect exceed the picture layer and be even visible on the white background border

- duplicating demon layer as i had "removed" a little bit too much with the layer masking and didnt want to reverse it by applying a WHITE brush against the black one used before. it is way easier to simply have another layer add to the density a little bit.


i hope the attached screenshot with the remaining layers can shed some light on the steps taken

[paglamon]

That was absolutely brilliant UncasMS, both as an idea and as the execution.

@gonwk, thank you for the compliments.And you have got the answer about the shot from UncasMS's post.

BTW,UncasMS, I am thinking about getting a new still digicam. I am not too keen about going for SLRs. I have narrowed down my choice to Sony DSC H2/H5 ,Canon S3IS/S5IS, Panasonic Lumix FZ 27/30/50 after reading about them at dpreview. What do you suggest? One thing I really need is the large zoom because I often trek in the Himalayas and love those close-ups of the mighty peaks.

[UncasMS]

What do you suggest?

that is a difficult task

let's start with canon vs sony with their S5 IS <=> DSC H5:

those two should be in a very similar price range and thus it is rather fair to compare them as opposed to adding the Panasonic FZ 50 here which is way more expensive

judging the technical data they are close but i see a little advantage for the canon:

- higher ISO range
- slightly higher picture sensor 8mp
- 4x digital zoo

when it comes to output quality i must say i never used either one so i took a look at the dpreview results and because both camera lack a RAW output i prefer the canon way of NOT applying a too heavy noise reduction as opposed to the sony (H9 in that test) because you can hardly recovery lost details but you can easily denoise a picture with decent software!
in other words the canon picture can be made to look as vivid and smoothed as the sony h9 but you will never be able to increase the amount of visible details left in the sony.

i can't say the canon wins hands down but i'm sure i'd rather go for the canon than for the sony

( but then i'd never go for any sony product anyway)




the Lumix FZ 50 on the other hand is way more expensive and bigger than the other two candidates but it offers RAW format!

photoshop cs2 btw supports the fz 50 raw format but one would have to install a plugin and i must say that acr 3.x is not as good as the latest acr 4.x which came with cs3 but the pansonic comes with silkypix and this raw converter is said to be quite good.

i heard one user say that his canon eos 350d (a dslr cam) was the same size as the lumix fz 50 - so no gain in terms of size.

the amount of digitial noise is said to be quite clearly visible with the fz 50 or to be eliminated by applying heavy denosiers which is said to result in loss of detail. on the dprev site you can find two pictures taken with iso 800 and the noise is strong - cf. the monkey and the baby pic.

this is what you hear often: strong noise with higher iso rates - no need to mention that a smaller dslr like an eos 350d/rebel won't show this amount of noise with iso 800 due to the much bigger sensor of a digital single lens reflex.

but then on the other hand: this noise can be reduced with photoshop

moreover, the display of the lumix fz 50 seems to be a nice feature when you want to take pictures from rather unusual angles/positions.

the image stabalizer is said to do a good job but i think the same goes for the sony and canon as well.

and last but not least the quality of the lens (leica elmarit) should turn the lumix into the best choice here despite the fact that this cam is more expensive and bigger than other candidates.



so if you don't mind the extra money and a slightly bigger cam than i'd opt for the panasonic lumix fz 50.

and make sure to take your pictures with RAW mode because it is so much more powerful when it comes to turning a rather bad pictures (in terms of light) into something decent because the raw format stores much more details/information.

[paglamon]

Thank you UncasMS for an extensive comparison of the cams.It will go a long way for me to make a decision.

[paglamon]

I ended up with this after getting the idea and methods from UncasMS. Thank you UncasMS for opening my eyes regarding PS filters.

[UncasMS]

you're more than welcome and nice work!

[UncasMS]

up in smoke

...or the curse of modern day temptation:

EOS 30D
Vivitar 100mm, 2.8 Macro, Canon FD Mount
lens used with FD => EOS adapter
Iso 100
F 2.8 for the Cohibas
F 5.6 for the San Christobal
F22 for the Porsche pipe
Exposure times from 1/10 to 30 seconds

Pipe pictures is made from 6 different exposures in order to realize a wide dynamic range


as always => click image for full size

[UncasMS]

Hope you'll like them:


EOS 30D
17-50mm Tamron



Dom_001:

Iso 400
17mm
F18
0,4-13 secs
HDR Image from 5 different exposures


Dom_002

Iso 400
17mm
F3,5
1/125 sec
Sepia toned


Dom_003

Iso 400
17mm
F3,5
1/50 sec
Original picture turned into 3 different exposures and then into a tonemapped pic


Dom_004

Iso 400
32mm
F3,5
1/40 sec


Dom_005

Iso 400
17mm
F2,8
1/40 sec
Image perspective corrected and heavily filtered

Click into the final (not only the thumbnails below) pictures for full size

[Kabuchan]

The flying buttresses in the second photo are wonderful but I think I like the first photo for the depth created by the arches. They are all really wonderful

[BR7]

I apologize for me taking so long I have been busy.But anyway here is what I came up with it's close to what I was wanting but I would like to see if I can get it to look like it was done with a pencil/pen it's not to convincing the way I did it.Please disregard the error on the right side I just realized I missed but like an idiot I didn't save it in psd so I can't fix it

[UncasMS]

hi br7,
thanks for keeping us up2date

could you by chance provide a bigger version of your picture?
it is rather hard to "go into details" with this one *g*

what comes to my mind is this:
- have you thought about applying different filter styles to your main areas (rock / sky)?
- masking/selection may be worth spending some time on ( i very much like layer masks btw!)
- vignetting could be removed (by using stamp tool or filter => lens correction)


if you like / don't mind could you provide us with the source picture?
i'd like to give it a try and see if i could realize what i have in mind and of course give you a step by step description of the parts i may edit.

but like an idiot I didn't save it in psd so I can't fix it

i know exactly what it feels like ^_~

i was editing one of the pipe pictures i took recently and was almost finished when ps all of a sudden heavily crashed and ruined my entire work.
i didnt save the tonemapped, layer masked and stamped picture a single time and was punished for being much too careless.

[BR7]

Masking is something I need to work on, but I do get what your saying.I never really gave any thought to doing it in sections and I think I will give it a go.The picture came with XP but I will post it anyway