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White Atamasco Lily and Blended DOF
gmitchel850
Registered Users Posts: 100 Major grins
Here's another holiday flower. A white atamasco lily. This shot also uses three stacked shots to extend DOF.
I started in ACR 5.2. I selected the shots and then clicked on the Tools | Photoshop | Load Into Photoshop Layers menu item.
Inside Photoshop CS4, I used Edit | Auto-Align Layers with the Auto Projection option and then Edit | Auto-Blend Layers with the seamless Tones and Colors option. That stacked the layers and blended them.
After I stacked the shots in Photoshop CS4, I used the TLR Professional Sharpening Actions. TLR HRDC Capture Sharpening, TLR Clarity Enhancement. After recducing the photo to 1000 pixels wide and converting to sRGB, I used the TLR Web Output Sharpener.
This was shot under natural light with a Canon 1Ds MkII, Canon 180mm "L" Macro Lens, Gitzo tripod, Kirk BH-1 ball head.
The pistil for the flower extends well in front of the stamens. The stamens also varied in height. No way a single exposure, even at f/32 could get the DOF necessary when I was about 18 inches from the pistil of the flower. You'll see that even the pollen grains on the pistil are sharp.
Comments are welcome.
Mitch
I started in ACR 5.2. I selected the shots and then clicked on the Tools | Photoshop | Load Into Photoshop Layers menu item.
Inside Photoshop CS4, I used Edit | Auto-Align Layers with the Auto Projection option and then Edit | Auto-Blend Layers with the seamless Tones and Colors option. That stacked the layers and blended them.
After I stacked the shots in Photoshop CS4, I used the TLR Professional Sharpening Actions. TLR HRDC Capture Sharpening, TLR Clarity Enhancement. After recducing the photo to 1000 pixels wide and converting to sRGB, I used the TLR Web Output Sharpener.
This was shot under natural light with a Canon 1Ds MkII, Canon 180mm "L" Macro Lens, Gitzo tripod, Kirk BH-1 ball head.
The pistil for the flower extends well in front of the stamens. The stamens also varied in height. No way a single exposure, even at f/32 could get the DOF necessary when I was about 18 inches from the pistil of the flower. You'll see that even the pollen grains on the pistil are sharp.
Comments are welcome.
Mitch
0
Comments
It is a big improvement with regard to the pollen on the white petals. I had to take the photo down to 12 x 8 at 240 ppi and 8-bits per channel for this.
Given that I used +2 exposure compensation, I pretty well nailed the exposure and I am also happy with the color. So, I foresaw no serious problem with 8-bits per channel.
What do you think? A significant improvement, isn't it!
Cheers,
Mitch
Last week I posted a couple of examples of DOF blending with the Photoshop CS4 Auto-Align Layers and Auto-Blend Layers commands. One was a white hydrangea. The other was a white Atamasco lily that made a composite of four shots.
I promised a video tutorial. I'm still intended to do that. Probably next week. In the interim, I have produced a PDF tutorial (around 20 pages altogether) in a new layout.
www.thelightsright.com/ExtendingDOFWithPhotoshopCS4
What's different about this tutorial is that it has lots of practical advice as well as a description of the technique.
Comments about the technical cntent and about the new layout are welcome.
Best wishes for the new year!
Mitch
http://www.thelightsright.com/ExtendingDOFWithPhotoshopCS4Video
Enjoy!
Mitch