What I Am Working On: Cropping and Layers

The file I was working with this morning illustrates how edits can really change a photo, and one of the most powerful tools is the cropping tool:

ISO 25 f/2.2 1/377sec 4.2mm

This first edit was created in the app Hipstamatic using the randomize feature which means that the filters were chosen for me. The second edit was also created in Hipstamatic, but I chose the various filters and it was the version that I added to my Instagram feed:

View this post on Instagram

Busy. #bee #flowers #thingsiseeonmywalks

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Jun 17, 2020 at 7:27am PDT

I go back and forth between these two and I think there are elements to both that I like but that neither is exactly right. This morning’s edit which I created using the original file in Luminar 3 is this one:

ISO 25 f/2.2 1/377sec 4.2mm

This edit keeps the original ratio of the photograph and is more top-heavy than the square version. When I was working on this edit, the crop was the second edit in my workflow. I started with basic edits like luminosity and adjusting the blacks and whites. Then on a separate layer, I did the crop. Then on an additional layer, I added then tweaked a custom Luminar look that I have saved as a preset. It turned out that when I got to that point, I wasn’t completely satisfied with the crop. Because the crop was on its own layer, it was easy to click on and edit just that layer.

So, there are two important points here I think, first is that the crop set to different ratios can really change the photo’s story and second that putting the crop on its own layer can make your editing process much easier.

Your thoughts on cropping in general or in this specific case are welcome below. This post was inspired by the Lens Artist Challenge, One Single Flower.

Cheers!

What I Am Working On: The Road Ahead

So, technically it’s not a road, it’s a path. Also, I’m not exactly on it:

ISO 25 f/2.2 1/50sec 4.2mm

But I do love this spot. A green space in the middle of the city with such gorgeous trees, what’s not to love? I’ve been walking through this park a lot in the last week, it helps me clear my head a bit. There’s a lot going on in the world and in my life. Being near this path reminds me that it is actually about the journey, it’s not important that I don’t have all the details worked out yet. The photo though, I like it, so I edited it a bit:

ISO 25 f/2.2 1/50sec 4.2mm

First was the crop, it helps to bring the path and the trees a bit more into focus. I’ve added a custom vintage film look that I created within Luminar. To me, that settles the image a bit more into the way this setting lives in my mind. It’s a bit more rich and deep in my mind than in real life. That’s me bringing my journey on the path along and placing it in the photo.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome below. This post was written in response to the Len-Artists Photo Challenge, Long and Winding Road.

Cheers!

 

What I Am Working On: Interpretation

While a good majority of my photography is about recording a scene and then editing to show what I saw, it is fun also to interpret a scene. That was the case when I shot this photo at the Rembrandtplein in Amsterdam in the Fall of 2016:

ISO 200 f/2.7 1/200sec 4.3mm

This photo gives you an idea of what the bronze statues around Rembrandt’s statue look like. They are an interpretation and tribute to his painting The Night Watch. I took the first photo as a way of remembering the overall scene. Then I took this photo:

ISO 200 f/2.7 1/250sec 4.3mm

It was a more detailed shot of the statues, as I found their texture to be very interesting. I knew I wanted a few things out of my interpretation. The first was to keep that detail of the bronze as an important element. The second was to use the terribly blown out sky in a creative way:

ISO 200 f/2.7 1/250sec 4.3mm

An adjustment to the detail slider helped bring the clarity I wanted. I used the “small details” only. The Luminar Look, Enigma, gave me the glowing sky I wanted.

Now a word about cropping. The first crop was done in-camera. That was the conscious step of photographing the whole scene and then asking myself what I found most interesting about what was in front of me and then taking a photo of that. That is how the second photo came to be. I often approach photography this way. Particularly when I travel, I find this a nice exercise in being in the moment. It makes for nice memories too, when I looked at these original files this morning, I could remember this moment. The second crop was done during the editing process, that Booking.com building is pretty distracting. When the crop didn’t remove it entirely, I used the clone and stamp tool to take the rest of it out.

The last edit was to set a vignette with the center on the statue. It’s a pretty subtle vignette, particularly compared to some of the other, more drastic, edits.  A bit of a final nudge.

Your thoughts, comments, or questions about my method or the edits are welcome below.

Cheers!

Added to Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Cropping the Shot.

What I Am Working On: Editing Small Details

I was working with this file:

ISO 800 f/11 1/30sec 21mm

In prior work sessions, I had worked with other similar files, creating a few different color interpretations. For this one, I had in mind a black and white version. Something a bit glamorous I was thinking (yup that is what I was thinking) for this photo. On the first layer, I did my basic edits, cropping and luminosity were two of them. Then I created a second layer and went searching for a look in Luminar that would closely match what I was thinking. I found it in the look called “Old Hollywood Glamor”.  Close to perfect but not exactly, so I created a third layer. This layer was really about details. Little changes that made a big difference. The first thing I did was to use the small detail enhancer and I bumped the slider up to 23. But really I only wanted those details in the petals of the snowdrops, so I used a brush to paint that in and leave the rest of the file untouched. Then I experimented with the vignette, a lot. I changed it’s location, size, and amount all several times.  Here is the final version:

ISO 800 f/11 1/30sec 21mm

If you are new to editing and reading this post, I’d like you to take away the idea that sometimes small things like a vignette can make big changes in your final photo. Vignette controls are often simple and easy to understand how to use. It makes for a good confidence builder as you are mastering the basics and then moving on to more complex editing.

Regardless of your ability and level of experience with editing, your thoughts on this version are welcome in the comment section below.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Flower of the Day. Picfair version is here.

What I Am Working On: Whatever it is, It’s all at Home

I look through a fair number of blogs, most are in some way related to photography, but most photographers have other aspects of their lives. Ingrid, over at Live Laugh RV, posted about coffee cake and an eagle. I gave the coffee cake recipe a try, a photo of the result is below. The recipe is here.

ISO 100 f/2.2 1/33sec 4.2mm

Ingrid called her post the “Coffee Cake Debacle” and I could call this editing attempt a bit of a debacle as well. The photo has the Luminar Look, Food Photo Enhancer, added to it. With the look added, the edit was a mess, the little editing voice in my head going, “as if” to the original outcome. With the Clarity taken out and the Vignette tweaked, the edit was much better.

The coffee cake turned out quite nicely, I’ll be hanging on to the recipe.

The Instagram version is here:

View this post on Instagram

My take on @livelaughrv Blueberry Crumb Coffee Cake. Click over to check out her lovely IG feed, then check her latest blog post for the recipe. #baking

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Apr 30, 2020 at 4:39am PDT

Added to Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, At Home.

What I Am Working On: Two Tools, One Task

I was working on this file:

ISO 320 f/11 1/320sec 24mm

I had done a few steps of basic editing when I saw the flag peeking out from behind the grave marker. Interesting how sometimes details like this can be missed at first. I wanted to remove it from my final edit. The really good news is that removing objects from photos has gotten easier and much more natural-looking over the years. In this case, I used both the erase and clone and stamp tools in Luminar. I find the erase tool is good for removal and clone and stamp works well for the clean up of any mess the eraser leaves behind. I would also suggest that you do work like this on the biggest screen you have and make use of the zoom tool as well so that you can get a really good look at what you are doing. The final edit is this one:

ISO 320 f/11 1/320sec 24mm

This final edit has the Luminar Look, Camden Fade, applied to it. The photo was shot at Luxembourg American Cemetery. It is a beautiful spot, a good place to reflect on the sacrifices of those who fought in World War II. Your thoughts on the edit are welcome below. This post was inspired by the Lens-Artist Photo Challenge, Reflections.

Cheers!

What I Am Working On: Capturing the Action

Storm Ciara has been through our neighbourhood this past week. Lots of rain and high winds here. I’ve been doing my usual walking at times when things seem a bit settled. Even at those times, it has still been quite windy, leading to photos like this one:

ISO 25 f/2.2 4.15mm 1/1304sec

This file was shot with my iPhone in long exposure mode. I originally wrote about this technique and how to achieve it on my SE model of iPhone here.  I then edited this photo further in Hipstamatic:

ISO 25 f/2.2 4.15mm 1/1304sec

I have created a lot of similar variants of the landscape this week. Here is another from my Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

Bit Blowy. #stormciara #longexposure #hipstamatic

A post shared by Amy Maranto (@marantophotography) on Feb 10, 2020 at 11:31am PST

On Sunday, there will be more in my weekly wrap-up, both “as-shot” and edited in various ways. I’ve had plenty of time to work on the editing while listening to the rain pound on the roof and the winds test the limits of the local trees. Your thoughts on my images are welcome in the comment section below.

Cheers!

Added to Tuesday Photo Challenge, Action.

 

 

What I Am Working On: Using the History Button

It’s fair to say that when you are editing photos, sometimes you like the potential of an earlier version of your work, and you would like to revisit it. That is when the history button can be a very useful feature of editing software. This morning I was working with this file:

ISO 250 f/11 55mm 1/15sec

I wanted to make a black and white version. After a few basic edits including a crop, white balance adjustment and luminance boosting, I added a custom look I had created in Luminar. After a few more tweaks, I had this black and white edit:

ISO 250 f/11 55mm 1/15sec

I like this edit so I saved a version of it. But is also true that at one point in the editing process, I liked another idea and I wanted to revisit it.

The other idea came at a point in the edit after I had applied my black and white look but before making the final adjustments. At that point I had experimented with the slider that adjusts the amount of the look applied to the photo. Because I was applying a black and white look to a color photo, the result was that the color version begins to show through. I ended up really liking that effect. So after I had saved my version above I went back in the history to where I had been working with that slider and started reworking the edit from that point. Here is the resulting color edit:

ISO 250 f/11 55mm 1/15sec

This ability to go back through your history and rework from a certain point can be very helpful if you are interested in creating more than one version.

Your thoughts and comments on the edits are welcome in the comment section below.

Cheers!

Added to Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge, Any Kind of Geometric Shape and Cee’s Flower of the Day.

What I Am Working On: Seemingly Small Adjustments

Sometimes it is little things that can make a big difference. The original file:

ISO 250 f/11 22mm 1/640 sec

The edit:

ISO 250 f/11 22mm 1/640 sec

Custom white balance and lens distortion, these are two adjustments that I started with that made a big difference.

Seemingly unimportant details like the trees in the foreground are helping to tell an important story about this scene, like how far up you have to hike to see this view. I wrote about that a bit in a previous post and showed a different part of the landscape. In this case, I think a photo of this scene without the trees would be telling a completely different story. Your comments and thoughts are welcome below.

Added to Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, Summer Scenes and Tuesday Photo Challenge, Trees.

Cheers!

What I Am Working On: Contemplating the Rules

If you know me or have stopped by the blog a few times, you probably know that I like to walk. Earlier this week I had set out to do just that. It was a cold day but also sunny, both of those things being a bit rare in this part of England. I did manage to get a lovely walk in but only after two false starts due to local flooding.

You may also know that generally speaking, I follow photography rules. In my opinion, they are often helpful. For this photo, I was wanting to show the scene as it was. Both beautiful and a bit ominous.

The original photo is this:

ISO 100 f/11 18mm 1/400 sec

The first thing I did to accomplish this was to shoot directly into the sun. It’s a bit bright and disconcerting.  So that’s a rule broken on purpose to highlight the problem this photo is showing. The second thing I’ve done is to follow a rule or two.  In Luminar, I’ve cropped the photo to straighten the horizon line and the phone pole now sits on one of the vertical rule of third lines. I’ve used the lines of the electric wires to lead your eye into the scene. The bright streaks of sun and the lens flare are left in as attention grabbers.

This is the edit:

ISO 100 f/11 18mm 1/400 sec

The edits are subtle on purpose, I really think the scene speaks for itself. Walker beware, flooding ahead. Feel free to leave comments or questions below.

Cheers!

Added to Lens-Artists Challenge, Leading Lines.