Peter Liu Photography

How To Take Full Advantage Of Your Flickr Account – Part 1

September 21, 2009 By Peter Liu 2 Comments

Flickr is one of the today’s most popular photo sharing sites. Whether you’re a professional who wants visibility and honest feedback on your work, or an enthusiast who just wants your photos to be seen and enjoyed, Flickr is a great place to share your images and engage in discussions about them in a non-commercial setting.

Despite its popularity, the finer points of using Flickr to its full potential and bringing visibility to your images can be illusive. This is the first of a two part walkthrough that explains how to take full advantage of your Flickr account.

With a free Flickr account, you can upload two videos and 100MB worth of photos each calendar month. You can also organize your photos into three photosets and post them in up to 10 groups.

For $25 per year, you get a Pro Account, with unlimited photo uploads (20MB per photo), unlimited video uploads (90 seconds max), unlimited bandwidth and storage, unlimited photosets, archiving of high-resolution original images and the ability to replace a photo. You can also post your photos in up to 60 group pools and view your count and referrer statistics. You’re also able to browse and share ad-free.

The Basics
After you sign up, there are some housekeeping decisions about your account you should get out of the way, so you don’t have to think about them later.

Under the “You” menu, select “Your Account”. On that page, the two sections you need to take care of first are under “edit who can see what” and “if it’s searchable”. Change the options as necessary.

In the “Your Flickr web addresses” section, set the name you want to use. This is the URL you will be sending to your viewers so they can see your images. If you don’t set it, then your URL will have your actual Flickr user ID , which can be hard to remember, such as 24392742@N06. Think carefully about this, as cannot be changed once you set it!

Then go back to “Your Account” again and click on the “Privacy & Permissions” link. Set the options to suit your comfort level.

Set any other options you like in “Your Account” and “Your Profile” (under the “You” menu). When you’re done, click on “Home”. You are now ready to upload images to your Flickr account.

Uploading Images
To upload images, click on “Upload Photos” on the home page. Then click on “Choose photos and videos”. Navigate to the location of your photos and select the ones you want to upload. You can select several at once if you like.

When you have selected your files, you can set the privacy options for those images, such as whether they’re visible only to friends and/or family, or to the public.

After they have been uploaded, you are presented with the option to enter titles, descriptions and tags. Set those to your liking and click on “Save”. To help bring attention to your photos, take the time to create clear, meaningful titles, write good descriptions and tag your images carefully, so that the search engines can find them more efficiently (SEO). Voila! You now have images in your Photostream.

At this point, you can select “Organize” in the menu bar to put your images in Sets, or you can create Collections of Sets if you have several you want to keep together.

Linking To Your Images
You can obtain a static link to your photo by clicking on All Sizes above the image. This brings you to a page where you can select the size of the image you want to display or download. Copy and paste the URL corresponding to your choice. You’re also given a block of embed code you can use in a website or a blog, with a link back to the photo’s page.

Note that the Flickr Community Guidelines specify that if you post a Flickr photo on an external website, the photo must link back to its photo page, so even if you grab the individual link rather than the embed code, it’s up to you to make sure it points back to the source.

Slideshows
Your Photostream can be viewed as a slideshow by pressing the “Slideshow” link at the top right of your page. Any set you create can be viewed that way as well.

If you mouse over your slideshow while it’s running, you’ll see a menu of options across the top. One of those is the Share option, which gives you a link to the show that you can give to people, and embed code you can use to incorporate the slideshow into your website or blog.

If you haven’t already opened a Flickr account, go ahead and give it a try. Set your privacy options as described above, upload some photos and have some fun. In the next post, we’ll cover adding Contacts, Faves, Comments, Groups and Explore.

Filed Under: Tutorials Tagged With: flickr, photo sharing, social media, social networking

The 3 M’s That Are The Bane Of Good Photography

September 7, 2009 By Peter Liu 8 Comments

Sunset taken from a rooftop in Kihei, Maui, Hawaii.

The Maui sunset starting to develop.

Over the weekend, my wife and I were over at our friends‘ house for what seems to be a developing tradition for us—a dinner (potluck, barbecue, pizza, whatever) and movie night with close friends. Unlike most dinner guests, I’m the nerd who shows up with a gear bag and a tripod, and sneaks out during the dinner portion of the evening, when the sun is about to set.

They renovated their home a few years ago to include spiral staircase leading up to a flat portion of the roof where they can sit and enjoy their wonderful view of South Maui. While I was up there with my camera, tripod and ND grads, watching the sunset develop, I thought about something I remembered John Shaw saying during a workshop of his I’d attended in the Bay Area several years ago, when I was just starting to shoot professionally.

The sun setting behind Lanai.

He said there are 3 M’s that are the bane of good photography—Motels, Meals and Mates:

Motels: You need to find one close to your location, or you’re up earlier so you can drive farther in the dark to get there. In some cases, there aren’t any nearby at all, so unless you can camp there (which can mean a long hike, boat ride, whatever) or drive an RV in, you’re not getting the shot. There are a few intrepid individuals like Ben Wilmore, who sold his home in Colorado and lives in a 40-foot 1997 Prevost “Rock Star” bus, and can simply drive up to his shoot, park, set the alarm and go to bed. As much as I admire Ben and his work, I don’t think I could ever convince my wife that this is a good thing.

Meals: “Let’s have breakfast!” Well, chances are you were up in the o’dark and you’ve been out on location with your hat and gloves watching for the first hint of alpine glow, and when breakfast rolls around for your spouse and friends, you’re still shooting the last few frames before the light gets too harsh. The same story at dinner, when you’re trying to catch the last traces of orange and red on the horizon before the world goes dark. Incidentally, John also told us the joke about the seven course meal of a photographer consisting of six granola bars and an apple. I for one, always have those items in my camera bag.

The last of the sun's rays from behind Lanai.

Mates: “Come on! You’re going to take another one? You already took one!” Fortunately, my mate is far from that sort and is extremely patient and supportive of my leaving our warm bed to freeze my behind off in the dark waiting for the sun to come over a mountain (as long as she doesn’t have to come along). If you’re not fortunate enough to have a similar mate, your days as a photographer are numbered.

A smile came to my lips as I thought about John’s words of wisdom, and I was thankful I had understanding and forgiving friends, who didn’t miss a beat when I disappeared from the table and simply refilled my plate while I was gone, then moved on to the movie portion of the evening.

The last glow of red and orange on the horizon.

Filed Under: Landscape, Travel, Tutorials Tagged With: hawaii, kihei, maui, sunset

How To Get One Good Shot Out Of Two Bad Ones With Photoshop CS4

August 7, 2009 By Peter Liu Leave a Comment

You’ve probably been there. You’re shooting an event, running around all over, trying to capture anyone and everyone, taking advantage of any impromptu group poses when you happen upon them, not really sure what you have or don’t have. Everything happens in a whirlwind, and you’re observing it all through this tiny portal on the back of your camera, and whatever shows up in your peripheral vision.

You finally get a little time to import your shots off the card, sit back and go through them, and then you see it… two great shots of two old friends who haven’t seen each other in a long time.

There’s just one problem—neither of the two shots works. One of the two people looks great in one shot, and the other looks great in the other.

Nowhere else in your pile is there a shot of these two particular subjects together, so now you’re stuck having to either deliver these as they are or trashing them.

But wait! Don’t give up yet! You can combine them into one great shot simply and quickly using Adobe Photoshop CS4 to create what’s known as a composite.

Here’s how:

Open both photos as layers in Photoshop, or combine them as layers after opening them. If you need to fix color and tonality in Lightroom or Camera RAW, do that first. (Tip: In Lightroom, you can select both, right-click and choose “Edit In > Open as Layers in Photoshop…“.)

The next step is to make sure the two photos are aligned, so that all the static elements (trees, walls, etc.) line up exactly. Start by selecting both layers.

From the Edit menu “Auto-Align Layers…”.

When the Auto-Align Layers dialog box comes up, simply choose the default, which should be “Auto”, and click “OK”.

When it’s done, go to the top layer and add a layer mask. Remember—black conceals, white reveals. You want a white one, which “reveals” all of the top layer.

Set your foreground color to black and grab the Brush Tool with a soft edge, and the Opacity and Flow both set to 100%.

Start painting over the subject with the bad pose to reveal the good one in the layer underneath.

As you get into critical areas, zoom in and decrease the size of the brush for better accuracy. Take your time.

To make sure you haven’t missed anything, take a look at the mask. All the areas you want to hide should be black. If you have any white spots, check where they are in the image and paint over them if they should be hidden.

Last step is to crop and save. There you have it.

Tip: For this to work more effectively and save you time, don’t stop down the aperture too much when you’re shooting. In fact, keep it as wide open as you can unless you have a reason not to.

By keep the depth of field fairly shallow, more of the background is blurred, and you don’t have to do as much painting on the mask to blend elements together.

So, parting thought… is this cheating? I guess it’s a matter of opinion. You did have two shots with great poses of each person, just not together. In the scheme of things, that’s pretty tame in the cheating department.

Filed Under: Photoshop, Tutorials Tagged With: Photoshop

How Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Changed My Workflow

June 2, 2009 By Peter Liu Leave a Comment

About a month ago, I read a post by Thomas Hawk about his workflow, which inspired a friend of mine to blog about his own, so I started thinking about how mine has changed radically in the last few years.

The catalyst for this change is Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Prior to Lightroom, my workflow consisted of:

Downloading my images from the cards using Downloader Pro, which allows excellent control over tags and other IPTC data, including convenient presets.
Using Photo Mechanic to do my initial triage, find my winners and losers, adjust tags and metadata as necessary and decide my editing strategy. (This is still the fastest photo browser I’ve ever used, even though it doesn’t come anywhere near Adobe Bridge in functionality.)
Using Nikon Capture NX to do my initial color and tonality work. (At the time, there was some debate about whether you could trust Camera RAW to do the right thing with respect to Nikon’s proprietary white balance, which had to be reverse engineered. Having spent a prior career in the computer industry, I knew what “reverse engineering” meant, no offense to the most excellent Adobe Photoshop engineering team, without whose product I would be nowhere.)
Using Adoble Photoshop to continue editing and produce the finished images in PSD format.
Exporting the images as JPEGs, in high and low resolution (yes, two sets), so I have “finished” versions I can show the world or deliver to clients.
Managing all these files manually—the initial RAW files in folders according to category, place, etc., and the corresponding PSD files and JPEG files with matching filenames, in matching folder structures. So, for example, image1.nef would have a matching image1.psd and two matching image1.jpg files in separate, identical folder trees.
Backing up the shoot.

Thinking back, I wonder how I ever delivered anything without getting mired in my own processes, and how I ever kept track of the images without losing any of them.

All of that changed when Adobe Photoshop Lightroom arrived. It took a while to break out of the little box that I’d made for myself and think differently about how to manage my files and workflow, but once I got it, I never looked back.

In contrast with the above, my workflow today consists of:

Importing my images from the card after creating or editing metadata and filename presets to match the shoot.
Taking a first pass through all of them and flagging all the completely useless ones (out of focus, misfires, serious motion blur, etc.) as Rejects, then hiding them using the Attributes function, so I don’t have to keep looking at them.
Taking a second pass to flag my edit candidates as Picks, making heavy use of the Compare View and Survey View as I need to, and flagging more Rejects as necessary. (I’ll often leave images as unflagged if I can’t decide or think I might find a use for them later.)
Develop the Picks in the Develop module, going from there into Photoshop as needed (for masks, brushes, etc.—things Lightroom can’t do yet).
Creating virtual copies to enable me to try different editing approaches and styles.
Creating Collections as necessary as I go along.
Taking a last pass through the images flagged as Picks or unflagged to see if I’ve missed anything.
Exporting the Picks as necessary to display or deliver to the client.
Backing up the shoot (before throwing away the Rejects—you just never know).

It seems like more steps, but once you get into the Lightroom philosophy, it’s a much more natural and sensible workflow. Once I got used to doing it this way and adopted it fully, my production times were cut in about half.

For me, the benefits of a Lightroom workflow are:

Far superior editing capabilities between Lightroom and Photoshop than I ever had with Capture NX or Photoshop alone
Freedom from having to manage all those files manually
Not having to take up disk space with a collection of matching “finished” JPEGs. I simply export finished files in whatever format I need, whenever I need them.
The ability to go back and try different ideas on a photo without taking up disk space with multiple copies, since all the edits are recorded in the catalogs.

A few caveats:

I do not convert my RAW files to the Adobe Digital Negative (DNG) file format. I’ve heard all the arguments in favor of doing this and none of them are compelling enough for me to incorporate the extra step… yet. (Now, if the Lightroom developers ever announced that they will no longer support one of my RAW formats, that would be compelling enough.)
I have Lightroom set to write all my changes to XMP sidecar files, so that I have the freedom to use other programs to work with the files if necessary. For this reason, I have Camera RAW set to use its own database rather than disturbing the sidecar files, so I don’t inadvertently mess up any delicate edits when I’m in there (which is rare).
When I first converted my old manual file management system to Lightroom, I took the time to rename all my finished PSD files to conform to the “-edit” format Lightroom uses, just to be consistent, and then I manually stacked them with the original RAW files, as I would with any new files today.

I’d be interested in hearing about your workflows. We develop them to suit our own capabilities and styles, but it’s always good to get a different perspective.

Filed Under: Lightroom, Photoshop, Tutorials Tagged With: Lightroom, workflow

One Big Reason To Upgrade To Photoshop CS4

April 4, 2009 By Peter Liu Leave a Comment

With every new release of Adobe Photoshop, there’s a period where people sit on the fence pondering whether or not they should upgrade.

“Is it worth the money?” “Are the new features really that good?” Sound familiar?

The past few releases have brought revolutionary features that have changed the landscape of how people do digital photography and imaging. In CS2, we saw the File Browser become Bridge, the emergence of Vanishing Point, Image Warping, Smart Objects and Lens Correction.

CS3 brought us non-destructive Smart Filters, the Quick Selection tool and Refine Edge, Photomerge with Auto-Align and Auto-Blend Layers, and a non-destructive Brightness/Contrast adjustment, making it possible to take that tool off the “do-not-use” list.

CS4 is a little different. It has its share of features, but its main strength lies in its ability to save you time and increase the productivity of your workflow.

The first thing I noticed about Photoshop CS4 was that the interface has been streamlined so that it takes fewer clicks to get things done, and your cursor doesn’t have to travel as far between points.

In addition, Adobe now has a new open source Configurator utility that makes it easier to customize the panels to suit the individual user.

The next thing I noticed was I wasn’t hearing the CPU fan in my computer kick in as much. That’s because this release actually uses my graphics card to render the images, freeing up my CPU to do the work it was designed to do.

This use of OpenGL and the GPU is probably the biggest improvement to come with the new release.

Previous versions often drove computer upgrades to deal with the load generated by the newer features, but this one uses something that many computers already have.

Another new feature is the Adjustments Panel, where the most commonly used adjustments now live, along with some convenient presets.

In previous versions, when you clicked on the Adjustment Layers icon or navigated to Image > Adjustments, it would bring up a dialog right in front of your image that you had to move out of the way, then while you were making your adjustments, Photoshop would be completely locked up and you couldn’t do anything else with the product until you were done.

The new Adjustments Panel puts them in one place and automatically creates Adjustment Layers with masks, so your edits are non-destructive and you can go back and change them whenever you need to. Best of all, the product remains available while you’re making adjustments, so you can pan, zoom or do anything else you need to.

Some of the adjustments now have on-image controls, such as Curves and Hue/Saturation, so instead of trying to figure out where a particular shade falls on a curve or whether a color is a shade of yellow or green, you can click and drag your cursor over it and watch it change.

Where this new release of Photoshop excels is in saving the user time, and that is a big reason to upgrade. A few seconds here, a few minutes there, fewer clicks to do this or that, quicker rendering of an image after a major adjustment, less burden on the CPU… it’s all about streamlining, and it all adds up.

Whether you’re an amateur trying to get last week’s vacation shots posted to Flickr, or a professional under deadline to deliver a shoot, those extra seconds matter a great deal.

Filed Under: Photograph, Photoshop, Tutorials Tagged With: adobe, Photoshop

Getting The Focus You Want Using Photoshop CS4

April 3, 2009 By Peter Liu Leave a Comment

When I’m shooting florals, my weapon of choice is my old Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8D macro lens (now superceded by the 105mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR).
Whenever possible, I like to shoot them wide open to accentuate the flower by creating as much bokeh as possible, blurring the background to minimize distractions in the frame.

This works well with some flowers, but with others, such as a hibiscus, it’s impossible to get the whole flower (or all the parts you want) in focus without stopping down the aperture to get better depth of field… which compromises the nice, smooth, blurred background you’re trying to achieve.

One of the tricks I’ve used in the past involved shooting several frames, each with a different part of the flower in focus, then using Photoshop to blend them together by loading the images as separate layers and carefully brushing away the blurry parts with layer masks, creating a single, in-focus image as a result.

This can be easy or hard, depending on the conditions you’re shooting in. If there’s any kind of wind, you’re chasing the flower around, trying to get it composed the way you want it. (This of course assumes you’re unable to clip the flower and take it inside—a great solution in your backyard, but botanical gardens tend to frown on that sort of thing.)

What this means in Photoshop is you need to align the layers exactly before blending them, which can be time consuming and frustrating, and may even require using Free Transform to bend parts of the flower into submission.

Enter Photoshop CS4 with the new and improved Auto-Align Layers and Auto-Blend Layers features. I’d heard a lot of hype around these new features and decided to take a little time to try them out. The results exceeded my expectations.

Here’s how you do it:

Shoot several frames, manually focusing on different parts of the flower. Use a tripod if you can to maximize your chances of getting the best results. Auto-Blend Layers does a good job, but my policy is to do what I can to help out the software whenever possible.

Load the images in Photoshop as separate layers. (If you’re using Lightroom 2, it has a convenient option to Open as Layers in Photoshop).

Select all the layers by clicking on the first one, then shift-clicking on the last one.

Go to the Edit menu and select Auto-Align Layers. When the dialog comes up, just leave it on Auto Projection setting, and click OK.

After it’s done, go to the Edit menu again and select Auto-Blend Layers. When that dialog comes up, select the Stack Images setting for the Blend Method and let ‘er rip.

That’s it! The results I got were amazing, and definitely worth the price of admission. I didn’t have to tweak the masks Photoshop created at all.

I’d be interested in hearing about your results with the new features. Feel free to leave me comments about how your images turned out using this method.

Aloha…