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Posts Tagged ‘technique’

Photography, Technology | 0 comment

Photomerge using Photoshop CS5 – Tech Thursday

Pier Panorama of 14 combined images - ©TimeLine Media

From readers, I have received a lot of feedback and questions about the panoramic images I have posted. The added feature to smartphone camera apps and having it built into some digital cameras has made the practice of stitching photos more popular. It is now possible to expand the dimensions of images using multiple angles of the same scene. There are products that you can add to a tripod mount to make your panoramas more precise, and there are even robot controllers that can make multiple images for you to make stitched GIGA-pixel images.  

Photoshop Stitching

14 images opened in Photoshop
14 images opened in Photoshop

Since I am doing all of these hand held, I need to rely on the Photomerge function in Photoshop CS5. The first step was to open the 14 images that I intended to stitch together. There were taken in portrait orientation so that I could get more room to crop than if taken in landscape. Then, go to File > Automate > Photomerge:

Photomerge dialog box in Photoshop CS5
Photomerge dialog box in Photoshop CS5

The result shows all the work that Photoshop does for you! It blends the images using the overlapping elements that were in each frame. The more information that it has to work with, the better the blending. I was happy with how the combination of the images turned out except for one section where the horizon dips a little in front of the middle pier. That area would have to be corrected manually – maybe in a future blog post!

Images stitched together - ©TimeLine Media
Images stitched together – ©TimeLine Media 

To finish the image, I make a new layer above these with all the lower layers flattened into one. Now I can work with all of these merged, but I still have the previous work still available so I can work without destroying the previous step.

Images stitched together - ©TimeLine Media
Images stitched together – ©TimeLine Media

Now I just use the spot healing brush, and run it over the blank spots in the cropped image. This tool works really well for this image because of the large expanse of cloudless sky. You may have more trouble if the images you are using are busier, but you would be surprised at how good the math is with this tool!

Pier Panorama of 14 combined images - ©TimeLine Media
Pier Panorama of 14 combined images – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Personal, Photography, Technology | 0 comment

Rule of Thirds – Part 2

A cappella singer performing - ©TimeLine Media

We just watched the new motion picture, “American Hustle” which was a movie heavily focused on character development, and character interaction. In movies, the examples of the rule of thirds is used during scenes of dialog, and other half or close up shots of the actor’s faces. When there is only one face on the screen at a time, the extra space that the other third of the frame gives the audience a space to place themselves, or to place the other character that is not on screen.

Having this space really places you in the scene making the viewer more engaged in the film. If this space was not there, it will be jarring to viewers, and will create a tension – like something is not right. This can be used as a compositional element too whether in still or motion pictures. In these photos, the subject is placed on a third, looking through the long side of the frame.

Event Photography

A cappella singer performing - ©TimeLine Media
A cappella singer performing – ©TimeLine Media
Salsa Bachata Throwdown - ©TimeLine Media
Salsa Bachata Throwdown – ©TimeLine Media

This composition will also work for landscape or still life photos. Placing objects along the grids or having objects “face” the open part of the frame creates a better composition. It works for many situations. Additionally, it can make a great starting point. When presented by a tricky scene try this to make your photos better with your new camera.

Frames Divided into Thirds

Still Life Rule of Thirds example - ©TimeLine Media
Still Life Rule of Thirds example – ©TimeLine Media
Still Life Rule of Thirds example - ©TimeLine Media
Still Life Rule of Thirds example – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Personal, Photography | 0 comment

New Camera – Rule of Thirds

Rule of Thirds - ©TimeLine Media

Composition Rules

Have you taken a few hundred photos with your new camera yet? Well it has been almost three days since Christmas – what are you waiting for? Keep taking all the photos you can with it to get more comfortable with how it works. You want to be able to pick it up and have it fire off a photograph quickly so you do not miss anything unexpected that may come along. But as you it becomes apparent that everything works, you may start think how to make your photos better. I still would not even change any of the settings on the camera. I would first concentrate on composition. This is something I have to do at every shoot, and it changes with each subject, each scenario, and each scene. No matter how good you are technically at making photographs, if the composition of the image is poor, then you do not have an image that you will like, or that other people will want to view and share.

Restaurant portrait - ©TimeLine Media
Restaurant portrait – ©TimeLine Media

Rule of Thirds

One of the first composition rules that photography students study is the “Rule of Thirds”. Using the viewfinder camera as your boundary, divide the frame into 3 parts both horizontally and vertically. You end up with a grid that looks like this:

Rule of Thirds grid on a 4x6 frame
Rule of Thirds grid on a 4×6 frame

According to the Rule of Thirds, objects of interest should be placed along the lines that divide the frame into three parts. This includes horizon lines, faces of people, or other objects of interest. Usually they are the main subject of the photograph. You can see here in this photo that I did not follow this rule, and put my main subject right in the middle of the frame. This is one of the reasons that this photo looks more like a snap shot from vacation rather than a professionally setup image.

Restaurant portrait with grid - ©TimeLine Media
Restaurant portrait with grid – ©TimeLine Media

You can see the rule of thirds in many professional photographed still and video images. The news anchors on television may start in the middle of the screen, but they are quickly moved to the left or right third of the screen. This makes for a more pleasing image to the eye – giving the subject more room to breathe in the frame, and more room for your eye to travel in the frame putting your subject in context. These are with people images, but it can work with images of inanimate objects, or in landscape photography as well.

Rule of Thirds - ©TimeLine Media
Rule of Thirds – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

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