Cool Shit Masking Tutorial Part 2 of 3 – Tuning Your Mask

I hope you guys enjoyed the first tutorial.  The feedback seemed to be pretty positive.

Here’s the second tutorial in the trilogy.  This will show you three techniques for “tuning” or adjusting your mask.  Don’t you hate it when you get fringing or haloing on your mask…. well this tutorial will show you how to get rid of it.

Click here to view tutorial number 2

If you haven’t viewed the first tutorial, I suggest you scroll down to my previous post and view that tutorial first.

Enjoy

Brent

A Cool Shit Tutorial For Advanced Landscapers (part 1 of 3)

Hello there photogs

Sorry for the slack work in updating my blog…. work has been very busy lately… most inconvenient getting in the way of my photography.

Anyway, I thought I would make up for it by doing a series of 3 photoshop tutorials on advanced masking techniques.   OK, All you beginners out there,  don’t bother watching these tutorials,  seriously I think you’ll find them pretty difficult to follow.  However for you guys that are competent in Photoshop,  hopefully I’ll be able to show you some cool techniques that you may not know about.

So here’s what the series is all about.

• Tutorial 1 (this one) is going to show you how to make contrast masks.  If you haven’t done this before, it is a way cool technique for making razor-accurate masks for things like sky or land etc.
• Tutorial 2 (coming soon) will show you how to fine tune your masks to get rid of halos and fringing
• Tutorial 3 (coming soon as well) will show you some of the cool things you can do once you make these razor-sharp masks.

So forget your “Magic wand”…..   Grab a beer or glass of wine and enjoy the first of these tutorials….

Warning: This tutorial is targeted at Intermediate-Advanced Photoshop Users! Beginners beware!

I’d love to hear your feedback on whether you found this technique useful.  Also I’m trying out some new screencam authoring software, so let me know if you prefer this style of tutorial?

Brent

Interested in a Night Photography Workshop?

Hey folks

I was thinking about developing an intensive workshop for night photography similar to my seascape workshop.  I would love to guage interest out there and get your feedback.  For those of you that haven’t checked out the seascape workshop here’s what I go through

• 2 hours of theory on “the capture” and equipment, research etc.
• Then we do two shoots, sunset and sunrise
• Last session is about 6 hours of intensive post processing workflows.

To support this I have developed an extremely comprehensive set of materials which include an A3 laminated workflow chart that guides the participants through each element of the workflow and printed guides that show detailed step-by-step instructions for every workflow element.  There is also a set of 27 screencam videos that show me performing the steps on screen with a voice over explaining every step.

So, I was thinking about a night photography workshop that went combined the following:

1. Straight night photography
2. Star trails
3. Landscape Light painting

Into a weekend workshop that covered the capture and post processing of night photography images.

What do you think?  Who would be interested in attending this workshop?

Brent

PS> The next Seascape Workshop is Sept 19th & 20th 2009.  Click here if you would like more information about the workshop.

Funny How We See Differently

This week I have had another Sand Groper visiting Sydney from Perth.  Neal (aka Spool Photography) who is a very talented landscape photographer who specialises in panoramas spent a few days with me and we did a few shoots together.   I took Neal back to Forresters beach, and while I was chilling out waiting for the light, I was watching the way he was looking for shots and it struck me how differently we both view the same location.

I tend to think in wide angle terms and immediately jump forward in amongst the rocks looking for interesting foregrounds and lead-in lines and that type of stuff.  Neal being a “pano guy” tends to step back and take in the landscape with a pano eye.  He’s shooting horizontal and vertical stitches and pulling out totally different compositions that I just can’t see with my eye.

I love it when two photographers with different styles shoot the same location on the same day… it’s just a blast how differently the location is interpreted.

Maybe I need to set myself some set subjects to force myself to see more in panorama….

By the way, for anybody in Sydney interested in improving their Seascapes, I’m running my next 1 Day intensive Seascape workshop on 19th and 20th of September and there are still a few places left.

BP