Tag Archives: Photoscape

2013_10_15 (T) Image Post-Processing

(At the end of this blog are the same 10 images I posted yesterday, only this time with image post-processing.  There is also a new image that I created today.)

The photography workshop today was mostly classroom work.  We spent the morning seeing several image post-processing programs demonstrated and discussing their functions.  The featured programs were Faststone Image Viewer and Photoscape, both of which are free downloads.  Each of the five workshop participants contributed a few pictures from yesterday and Lou, the workshop presenter, used them as examples to demonstrate the use of the image editors.  Most of us were new to this sort of image manipulation, so the focus was on understanding the image histogram, adjusting levels, adjusting “lighting” (highlights, shadows, contrast, and saturation), sharpening, cropping, and resizing.

After lunch Sue Wharton, one of the participants, demonstrated and discussed Adobe Photoshop Elements, which can be purchased for a moderate price.  Sue has used versions of Elements, all the way back to the very first one, to organize her photographs.  She emphasized that Elements will do everything we saw demonstrated in Faststone Image Viewer and Photoscape, but demonstrated some additional features that the free programs did not have.

We also discussed Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom.  Photoshop is generally considered the ultimate photographic image editing tool, but it is a considerably more expensive program with a steep learning curve.  We were told that Lightroom, which is also not free, was the number one choice of professional photographers for managing their collections of digital images.  As of this writing I am not completely clear on the just what each of these programs does or how they (should) fit together, but the general consensus was that Lightroom is the ultimate “front end” image organizer, below which you need an image editing program or programs, which is most of what we saw demonstrated today.  Adobe Elements, however, is a very acceptable all-in-one solution to both the organizing and editing tasks.  Another program we discussed, but did have demonstrated, was Topaz Photoshop Plug-ins, along with iView (and irfinview), which are needed for the standalone use of Topaz plug-ins if you don’t have Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

The last thing we discussed was how to create panoramic photographs using a two part process.  Part 1 was setting up the camera properly on a tripod and adjusting it so you could take a sequence of overlapping photographs as you pan across the scene.  Part 2 was using special programs or plug-ins to create a single composite image from the multiple photographs.  Lou demonstrated the use of a special panoramic camera mount that allowed the “nodal point” of the lens to be positioned at the exact center of rotation.  While this is slightly less critical than back in the film camera days, setting the camera up properly for panoramic shots still leads to better compositing in part 2.  One of Lou’s favorite tools for creating composite images is Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) available as a free download from Microsoft.  He demonstrated how it works using some properly taken photographs he already had on hand.

After a mid-afternoon break, we headed to the Visitor Center in Townsend.  Everyone came, including a couple of spouses who are not participating in the actual workshop, so we first spent a little time in the Visitor Center gift shop.  The back parking lot had an unobstructed view of low hills with some middle and foreground elements that provided the opportunity to shoot up to a 180 degree panorama.  It was not a spectacular landscape, and the sky was cloudy to overcast, but it was an excellent spot for learning how to do this technique.  It had the further advantage of being close to both the Tremont Outdoor Resort, where we are all staying, and the restaurant where we planned to have dinner.

We all set up our tripods, leveled them (and our cameras), and went to work.  I first did a test shot in the center of the scene to determine the correct exposure.  Once I had that, I set the camera to Manual and locked that exposure in.  (That may not sound like a big deal, but I had only figured out how to do this within the last 24 hours, even though we have had the Sony Alpha 100 for years.)  I also set the camera to manual focus and adjusted it the way I wanted.  It is critical that both of these functions be set to manual; if the exposure or focus changes from shot to shot, the compositing software may not be able to stitch the images together, either satisfactorily or perhaps at all.  With the anti-shake feature off, and using a remote (cable) release, I shot a full 180 degree panorama with a moderate telephoto lens, taking 16 photographs to do it.

We went to dinner at a local Bar-B-Que restaurant on the river.  Linda had checked the menu in advance and packaged a blend of toppings that we could put on a salad consisting of lettuce and tomatoes.  Our salads ended up having beans, broccoli, onions, dried fruit, and peanuts (and probably a couple of other things).  Being as it was dinner out, I got small orders of French fries and onion rings.  The food was OK for the price.

After dinner Vince and I headed back to the classroom where Lou helped us stitch together our composite panoramas.  I finally got back to our coach around 8 PM.  Linda and I then worked on post-processing the images from yesterday’s blog post using what we had learned today.  And here they…I hope you enjoy them.

 

 

20131014x00116(2)

2013104x00121(2)

20131014x00135(2)

20131014x00144(2)

20131014x00153(2)

20131014x00155(2)

20131014x00165(2)

20131014x00175(2)

 

20131014x00179(2)

Townsend TN Visitor Center - 180 deg panoramic composite of 16 photographs.

Townsend TN Visitor Center – 180 deg panoramic composite of 16 photographs.

2013_09_05 (Thu) A Picture Perfect Day

Today was a picture perfect day in more ways than one.  We are in the middle of one of those weather spells that makes Michigan the perfect place to be; highs approaching 70, lows around 50, light breezes, and clear, blue skies.  It was also the day we decided to start putting paintings and photographs back up on the walls of our new-to-us house.  It’s an easy job to put off because it is slightly tedious work requiring careful measuring, trips up and down ladders, putting pencil marks on walls we paid someone to patch and paint just 7 months ago, poking holes in them with screws and nails, getting the piece actually hung, and hoping it ended up were you intended for it to be.  We got 13 paintings hung, and a number of others positioned where we think they are going to hang.  Not only does it make the house start to feel a lot more like home, it finally started clearing the art clutter out of the library, opening up the possibility of finishing other unpacking and shelving projects that the stacked artwork was blocking.

Today was also a day for delving a little deeper into digital image processing software.  Although our website only has a few pages, and I have only been doing this blog since early June (2013), I was surprised to find out from Scott at QTH.com that our WordPress installation had already expanded to 1 Gb of disk space.  While I don’t necessarily consider 1 Gb to be a lot of data, web-hosting companies do keep an eye how much resource you use, and will put caps on it and/or raise the monthly price.  Any company that tells you they will give you unlimited everything for $2 /month is probably practicing the virtual reality version of bait-and-switch.  Getting to that level in only 2 months seemed to indicate that I needed to do something different going forward, besides simply paying for more disk space.

The culprit, of course, was all of the photographs I have uploaded as part of the blog entries.  I tend to shoot high resolution JPEGs, as they are usable for a variety of things just as they come from the camera.  The images are 3,872 x 2,592 pixels (10 Mpixel sensor) and roughly 10 Mb files in raw mode.  The JPEG files are typically between 2.5 – 3.5 Mb each.  That’s a substantial compression compared to raw format, but 300 of those and you’ve got yourself a gigabyte of photo data.  Hmmm, that sounds familiar.  While 300 photos may sound like a lot, it’s only five per day for two months.  I haven’t gone back to check, but I would not be surprised if that is what I have averaged.

What I find interesting is that WordPress sizes these images to 300 x 200 pixels when I insert them into a blog.  That’s a reduction factor of approximately 167, suggesting a file size of approximately 20 Kb.  Kate de Fuccio, who I mentioned in a recent blog post, told me that she can click on the images in the blog and get the full resolution photos.  But if my intent is to only make them big enough to view in the blog, it doesn’t serve any purpose to have the hi-res files available.  So, what to do?  Resize before uploading, of course.  The two default Microsoft programs for manipulating images on a Windows XP Pro / Office 2007 platform are Microsoft Image Composer and Paint.  They can do a lot of things, but resizing images easily (or at all) is not one of them.

Lou Petkus, K9LU, of the SKP Photographers BOF had mentioned at a BOF meeting back in July that he generally shoots in raw mode and uses a couple of different free programs for a variety of post-processing tasks.  We are attending a SKP Photographers BOF photography workshop/rally in October, organized by Lou, and the schedule of events indicates that there will be a session on post-processing software for digital images.  I contacted Lou to find out what programs he will be discussing and to ask about re-sizing my photos prior to uploading them to WordPress.  The programs he will be discussing are Faststone Image Viewer and Photoscape.  He suggested I use Faststone to re-size and then sharpen the images (in that order) before uploading them.  I downloaded the programs successfully and have explored Faststone Image Viewer a little bit.  I will see how well it works the next time I post images.