Nikon User Thread

[MattinSTL]

Yeah... and I was so impressed that I passed out, fell off of my office chair, hit my head on my DVX and snapped off the built-in microphone... then when I came to I staggered up, saw the picture again, was even more impressed then the first time then fainted again and cut my head on the jagged magnesium from where the built-in mic used to be.

If it hadn't been for all that happening over the past hour I'd have said, "that is one of the coolest pictures I've seen yet... you've really proved your photoshop talents because I LOVE how the ballons appear to be yellow metalic now instead of basic yellow... I especially like the folds and the lines of contrast within the shapes and how you really brought those out with this photo transformation."

I would have said that, but the blood loss was too great to think of that comment.

 

[Matt Grunau]

Dude... the truth of the matter is that Yankee was the only guy talking me into the d50... I really wanted somebody to talk me into the d70s... where the hell were you?


For a PS master like yourself I think you could take pictures with anything and get gold... check out www.j3r.com

That's all d70... and it's some of the absolute most stunning photography I have ever seen in my entire life. I actually considered ordering prints from that guy... then after that go to www.pbase.com and check out Christopher Hart's "the girls" all shot with d70... again... incredible stuff coming from a guy that says he knew nothing about cameras before getting the d70... so yeah... this little adventure really wore on my pea-brain.

As an experienced SLR shooter... like I said... I really wanted to be talked into the d70s... just for the TTL off-cam flash, etc.

But NoooOOO, YOU guys left me alone in the room with Jeremy and NOW look... d50 on the way.

I know, but didn't anyone get the EDIT EDIT EDIT parts? That was pretty much the whole point.




The D50 is gonna be fine. My next one will be the D200 or something of that order.

 

[MattinSTL]

Me too... that's actually why I decided on the d50... let's say I got the d70s and then along comes the d80-spam... what the heck then? Because I like spam... and I'd have the d70s, which is a bigger-spam camera then the d50, and it's more capable-spam... but the thing is what the heck kind of backup body is that thing gonna' be if Nikon-spam comes out with a d80 that's 8-10 megapixels, got the improved sensor, and every other feature of the d70s-spam? Then that d70s is gonna' seem like an over-sized, old-tech cam... and the d50 is STILL gonna' be this fun little camera that's really capable for it's size and price-spam...

"Why you saying 'spam'...?"

"That's what we serve here."

"but I don't like spam..."

I would have acknowledged your edits if I wasn't an English knigget... and I can't remember if my mother was the hamster or my father smelled of elderberries?

 

[Chris Messineo]

This thread is being too complicated. It makes my head hurt.

Chris

 

[cheezweezl]

I would have acknowledged your edits if I wasn't an English knigget... and I can't remember if my mother was the hamster or my father smelled of elderberries?

.....empty headed animal food trough wiper.....now go away or i shall taunt you a second time........

 

[Jeremy Ordan]

A picture of my younger brother taken at his birthday party...

This picture makes him look evil or something, I like it.

Shot on the Nikon 70-210mm @ 210mm.

Original

Corrected

Just general curves, saturation, levels, contrast, some selective layers, blur, and lots of other stuff... burning of the image.

Comments or suggestions welcome.

-Jeremy

 

[Matt Grunau]

Original

Corrected

-Jeremy

Awsome work. The tone of the pic matches his expression perfectly. That looks great.

 

[Jeremy Ordan]

Awsome work. The tone of the pic matches his expression perfectly. That looks great.

You have taught me well Now if I can just learn how to do other stuff in Photoshop.

-Jeremy

 

[Jeremy Ordan]

OK, I figured I would do one more, just to show a couple of the things that Rapier has taught me along with some of the things that I learned from the Joey Lawrence DVD.

The first thing Rapier taught me was to visualize the picture as I'm taking it... Well that was a little late with regards to this one... but on other stuff I know when I snap something how I want it to ultimately look. For this image I figured I wanted the dog to sort of stand out from the background and really emphasize a guilty look on the dogs face as he is doing his business (BTW: this is my brother's friend's champion American Bulldog, it's head is the size of mine!).

So here was my original image I snapped of him

Well, I want to make him look guilty, but I want to retain the color of the image. The first thing I did was select the dog from the background because I wanted to be able to really add some more depth of field. So I select the dog and make that another layer. Then I go in with some curves and levels, really focusing more on how the dog looks rather than the background, because I know I am going to blur the hell out of that in a bit. So I do curves, levels, and contrast. I always do contrast after the curves and levels because then I need to add less contrast. Once I had him where I wanted him I took the saturation down 50%. I think that black and white has some mystery to it, and a color image with 50% of the color removed adds some mystery or emotion more than full color. I thought that looked good, so then I started to work on the background. For the background I added gaussian blur until the detail was gone. For this image at full rez it was about 10pix.

At this point it looked good and I went to the burn tool. I set the exposure to 5 and then really went at it with midtones and shadows. I did enough so that it doesn't distract from the image but that it pulls the dog out of the blured background. I left the highlights in the grass and between the fence posts alone because I thought it would look good with the dog.

I unsharped the dog, took another 50% off the background to make him stand out more but not do a selective desaturation, and then resized.

Here was the final result:

And then a side by side comparison:

I think that there is almost a halo around the dog that is a little distracting, but I like it and think it adds a little mystery. I think the corrected version also conveys that guilty expression and that sense of "why is this guy looking at me while I'm trying to take a ****?"

I think most people will know these steps, but I am including a PSD you can download and check out, it's small, like 2meg. The PSD is available here.

I hope this helps someone like I've been helped by Rapier, Matt, Joey, and Chris.

Thanks and enjoy... now I'm going to work through that Glamour Thread and learn how to do more fun stuff.

-Jeremy

EDIT:

I made this post not to show off my photoshop or photography skills, because I think I am lacking completely in both categories, but because I have gotten a couple of PMs and emails asking me about what I have been doing and how I have improved so quickly. Rather than just point everyone to Rapier (who everyone should contact about Photoshop) I figured I would just show the steps that I take. This post is simply here to show that with a couple of weeks of work you can get decent results that you might want to hang on your wall.

 

[MattinSTL]

Your stuff is really looking good... I hope I can catch up quick... it's gonna' be duelling banjos but with d50s... but at this point you'd win too easily...

(say like Christopher Walken): I coulda' used a little less weener...

 

[Chris Messineo]

Jeremy,

Great cc work. Thanks for sharing so many details from your process.

I think if people share this stuff enough I might actually understand some of it.

Chris

 

[Jeremy Ordan]

Jeremy,

Great cc work. Thanks for sharing so many details from your process.

I think if people share this stuff enough I might actually understand some of it.

Chris

Work through Rapier's thread... I don't know if my PSD will help at all, but him sending me ones really helped me. My process is a work in process. Chris, you gotta start posting more pictures though. What have we seen from you since the softball game?

-Jeremy

 

[Jeremy Ordan]

Here is another picture that I was playing around with today. I'm actually really happy with the result of this one. Lots of layers, levels, selections, desaturation, more levels, more curves, lots of burning, some dodging, USM'ing... Just lots going on to get the final look. Here is the PSD (3.48mb) if you're curious, I kept it as wide open as possible and tried to rename each layer. I'm happy with the result.

Original

Corrected

Shot on the 70-210mm 4.0-5.6 Nikor.

And then just for fun I wanted to see if I could make my mother's husband (I figure if they get remarried after I'm almost done with my 20's then they're spouses, not step parents) into a comic book character... PSD

And finally just a more clear cut realistic b&w rendering... With this I really went over the line with processing, but I wanted to ensure that this would be very stark with whites and blacks and not much in between. PSD

-Jeremy

 

[matt s.]

jeremy i really like your corrections on all of your photos. i dont own a still camera yet but ive been browsing this forum and thank you for posting your .psd's. i really like to see how other people work and ive been learning about tools ive never even used.
thanks man!

 

[Jeremy Ordan]

jeremy i really like your corrections on all of your photos. i dont own a still camera yet but ive been browsing this forum and thank you for posting your .psd's. i really like to see how other people work and ive been learning about tools ive never even used.
thanks man!

Dude, thank Rapier... I'm just taking what he's shown me and trying to apply it.

-Jeremy

 

[matt s.]

Ok Thanks Rapier and anyone else who cares to share p-shop knowledge!

 

[Jeremy Ordan]

OK, did this one real quick... I wanted to see if I could save an image that was screwed up.

I now like this picture

Original

Corrected

-Jeremy

 

[MattinSTL]

I'm gonna' check out your PS files and see if I can get some of that figured out in the next couple of days... I can't believe I'm finally about to join the party. Thanks for the encouragement Jeremy McYankster. There's nothing worse then a like-minded friend who "forces" you to spend your money.

On the previous shot of your mother's husband... I would have liked to see that cigar dodged up to be a major feature in the picture... I mean all the way down to a fake cherry on the end... that picture is pretty cool and with the sunglasses it's screaming with attitude... all you gotta' do is pump up that cigar to a borderline surreal element.

 

[Jeremy Ordan]

I'm gonna' check out your PS files and see if I can get some of that figured out in the next couple of days... I can't believe I'm finally about to join the party.

It's about time... You've been talking about these things for a while... Get on the bus already!

Thanks for the encouragement Jeremy McYankster. There's nothing worse then a like-minded friend who "forces" you to spend your money.

How much debt have you caused me from your audio threads?

On the previous shot of your mother's husband... I would have liked to see that cigar dodged up to be a major feature in the picture... I mean all the way down to a fake cherry on the end... that picture is pretty cool and with the sunglasses it's screaming with attitude... all you gotta' do is pump up that cigar to a borderline surreal element.

You're right... I just didn't think about what I wanted and was more or less just playing out of fever induced boredom and stir craziness. The moment my fever breaks I'm going to either A) go to work B) get some better pictures taken so I can share them here (since I know everyone is so far from sick of having me post crap).

Welcome to the club, Matt... Welcome to the club...

Now, Rapier, where the hell are more of your pictures?

-Jeremy

 

[Jeremy Ordan]

Last one I'm posting. The original was shot on the 50mm 1.8. It has been cropped, but I was manually focusing and don't think that I was really tight on the focus with the original image. I wanted to do something different, and this is what I came up with.

Original

Corrected

-Jeremy