Category: Photoshop CC

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Half Moon Bay Photography Photography - Canon 5D Mark II Photoshop CC Textures

Paddleboarders entering the water at Half Moon Bay’s Princeton Harbor

Paddleboarders - Princeton Harbor - 2012

Here’s another image that I’ve had fun adjusting by applying a couple of textures to it. It seems like images like this one – with its big expansive sky – benefit from the use of textures and how they add more visual interest to those areas of the the image.

This image was shot in June 2012 at Half Moon Bay’s Princeton Harbor using my Canon 5D Mark II. My friend Doug Kaye and I were exploring the area that day and stopped by the beach area to check things out. The fog layer was breaking up and – as we were taking some photos – this paddleboarder couple walked by us and into the water.

I added the textures to this image using Photoshop CC and the Adobe Paper Texture Pro panel extension that Russell Brown developed. It includes a number of textures from Flypaper Textures – two of which I used on this image (Villa Adriana and Aquaflore). Both were applied using the Overlay blend mode and had their opacity reduced into the 55-65% range to diminish the effects a bit.

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Cuba iPhone 5 Photography Photoshop CC Textures

Back to the Malecón in Havana

Golden Hour on the Malecón - Havana - 2013

I’ve been taking advantage of the holiday (July 4th) today to do some reading and exploring around the use of textures in images. I find that the addition of a texture or two to an image can add additional visual interest – especially those images that have large areas of sky or water.

With Photoshop CC, Adobe’s Russell Brown has made available a new panel extension – Adobe Paper Texture Pro – which comes pre-loaded with a number of excellent textures from Flypaper Textures. Using these textures – along with the built-in Photoshop watercolor filter, I added a couple of textures to this image shot using my iPhone 5 from a bus as we were coming into Havana following our flight. It was late afternoon in late January – near the “golden hour”!

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iPhone 5 Lightroom Photography Photoshop CC San Francisco/California Stages

Delight at the de Young in San Francisco

Delight - San Francisco - 2013

Earlier today, photo buddy Doug Kaye and I met up at the de Young Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for one of our monthly photo shoots. We try to get out for a few hours before lunch on a roughly monthly schedule and then head to a nice spot to share lunch and chat. Today Doug wanted to learn more about Bitcoin – but that’s a story for another day!

We’re starting to have a few favorite venues for these photo shoots. Embarcadero Center and the Ferry Building seem to be at the top of our list – there’s always great shots available there. It’s a beautiful combination of great architecture, that amazing fountain, the Ferry Building shops/restaurants (Slanted Door!) and street photography. So much in such a beautiful spot.

This morning we headed to the de Young – I think this was our second time shooting there together. A great thing about the De Young is that they allow photography in their permanent collection areas – and they’ve got some great collections! Another great thing is the tower that rises up about ten stories above the museum and provides a remarkable floor to ceiling view of the western part of San Francisco. It’s a special spot – and a great example of what Jay Maisel calls a “stage” – a place just to observe as people come and go. We’re becoming pretty good at spotting these stage opportunities – during our trip to Havana Cuba earlier this year we found a couple that we great spots.

This image is one of those shot on the stage – and, for me, it captures the sheer delight these little devices bring into our lives. She took a couple of iPhone shots from this end of the tower – and that look on her face says it all!

This image was shot with my Canon PowerShot S100 – and post-processed mostly in Lightroom 5 with a few final tweaks in Photoshop CC. Below is a shot of Doug “working the stage” in the tower at the de Young!

Doug Kaye - San Francisco - 2013

Categories
iPhone 5 Photography Photoshop CC

Exploring Photoshop CC’s Shake Reduction Filter, Upright Feature and more…

I’ve begun playing a bit with some of the new features in Photoshop CC (even after complaining about it so loudly!)

One of the new features is the Shake Reduction filter (found under Filter/Sharpen/Shake Reduction). Here’s an example of what this can do using an image I shot recently with my iPhone 5. I thought I was holding the iPhone pretty steady – but it’s an indoor shot and the camera probably had to adjust – the metadata says the shutter speed was 1/20th of a second – clearly not ideal for a handheld shot.

iPhone 5 - Camera Shake

In addition to have some camera shake, the image isn’t very will lined up – although I sure thought it was at the time I took it! So, in creating this final image, I also used the new Upright feature that’s included in Camera Raw 8.1 – which, in yet another new feature, can now be run on a layer INSIDE Photoshop – pretty cool!

So, 3 quick steps in Photoshop CC, a bit of noise reduction and a touch of sharpening both added back in Lightroom 5 produced this significantly improved version of that original iPhone 5 image:

2013-06-30 11.41.42-Edit-2