Playing around
My daughter and I were just goofing around in the yard yesterday afternoon. She mostly likes acting as a subject for me, but she was getting sick to death of me twiddling with settings and focus points and decided to run off until I "tricked" her into running back towards the deck (where I was standing).
Most of the shots are mediocre snapshots, but something about this one appealed to me despite that as it caught the "essence" of her personality. So, even though it was blurred (and those leaves are neither adding a very good frame nor croppable, darnit), I decided to twiddle with it in Paintshop. Bear in mind that I am VERY VERY new to any significant PP, and still at the "Gee, I wonder what happens if I click this?" stage of development, spending more time with the "undo" button than anything else (I'm trying to wrap my head around layers and I understand the *concept*, but I haven't quite figured out how one uses the actual software commands to achieve what I want). I did a filtered B&W conversion in Picasa (I also prefer their "add grain" selection as a 1-click way to noise it up) and the rest in Paintshop.
Anyway, here's what I started with:
And I twiddled until I came up with this:
I keep wondering if I should add even more noise, and perhaps not boost the highlights on the face quite so much, but it's been an interesting experiment for learning what's possible!
C&C definitely welcomed - I'm trying to learn! These are "exercises", as far as I'm concerned, and any satisfying portraits I get out of it are a bonus
(PS I'm also working with a new monitor, so I'm adjusting to what I see - I may have misjudged some of the contrasts because of that. I need to get some prints done so I can better figure out how what I see onscreen realates to "reality"!)
Most of the shots are mediocre snapshots, but something about this one appealed to me despite that as it caught the "essence" of her personality. So, even though it was blurred (and those leaves are neither adding a very good frame nor croppable, darnit), I decided to twiddle with it in Paintshop. Bear in mind that I am VERY VERY new to any significant PP, and still at the "Gee, I wonder what happens if I click this?" stage of development, spending more time with the "undo" button than anything else (I'm trying to wrap my head around layers and I understand the *concept*, but I haven't quite figured out how one uses the actual software commands to achieve what I want). I did a filtered B&W conversion in Picasa (I also prefer their "add grain" selection as a 1-click way to noise it up) and the rest in Paintshop.
Anyway, here's what I started with:
And I twiddled until I came up with this:
I keep wondering if I should add even more noise, and perhaps not boost the highlights on the face quite so much, but it's been an interesting experiment for learning what's possible!
C&C definitely welcomed - I'm trying to learn! These are "exercises", as far as I'm concerned, and any satisfying portraits I get out of it are a bonus
(PS I'm also working with a new monitor, so I'm adjusting to what I see - I may have misjudged some of the contrasts because of that. I need to get some prints done so I can better figure out how what I see onscreen realates to "reality"!)
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Not sure about the grain, may be because of the softness of the original it doesn't really add to much
Keep on shooting, you have a great subject to practice on!
www.intruecolors.com
Nikon D700 x2/D300
Nikon 70-200 2.8/50 1.8/85 1.8/14.24 2.8
Thanks so very much! I'm on the wrong computer and thus don't have access to the file, but the lens is a 55-250is on a Rebel XT, and the light was not terribly good - sun had already gone down. I think I was on either iso 200 or 400, and I'm willing to guess it was at maximum aperture thus the blur will be a combo of camera shake and moving target - IS can't fix everything, darnit
I kind of set myself this as an exercise of "nice expression in the eyes, rotten technical shot - what can I do to salvage it?", hence why I'm plugging away at it.
Re layers: I have looked at the tutorial in here, I have tried to read up on it and I have played around with it just to see if I can get it to make sense, but so far I'm stuck. Does anybody know of a decent *paintshop* tutorial for layers and, more specifically, for photographic use? I've seen some which were explaining how to do art effects and, literally *paint* in layers, but that kind of lost me.
Let me see if I have it straight so far:
I understand that each layer can be created and independently adjusted for specific qualities.
I understand that the background layer is thus being edited "non-destructively" (because the individual layers are taking the changes, not the original)
I understand that when you render/merge them as one image, you get ALL the effects of each layer blended together.
(Right track?)
What I CAN'T seem to figure out is
- howto work on a layer that shows up as a checkered grid
- how to work on isolated sections of a layer
- how to apply an effect to a layer selectively (for instance, just for fun in a different shot I was trying to make everything except her hairband black and white, but no matter how I lasso-ed it or copied/pasted, EVERYTHING would go black and white). I assume this is what masks are for, but I'm stuck on HOW to use them.
All pointers warmly welcomed! I wish I had Photoshop so I could just work with the many tutorials available, but at the moment, Paintshop 9 is the best I can do... I know the principles are the same, however, so I will indeed keep plugging away!
Thanks again so much!