bernard_graham

<p>I just did a google search and here's another discussion which links to some other handy articles. http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1653201<br /><br />Essentially, as of 2011 the Canon cameras tested benefited from boosting ISO in camera. Certain Pentax cameras (Sony sensor) show very little improvement in signal to noise ratio between boosting ISO in camera or boosting exposure in raw converter. It's my understanding that as of 2014 or so, a number of Nikon cameras (notably the d810, which I have) can be considered nearly "ISO-less". That is, there's not much benefit to raising ISO for signal to noise purposes (there obviously is for situations that need a faster shutter speed). From memory of the other article I read that I can't find any more, their is no point going past ISO800 or so on the D810.</p>

<p>I've recently become aware that there is a difference in ISO implementation in the some of the Sony sensors (eg Sony and Nikon) vs the Canon sensors. There's a technical argument associated with this that suggests on the Sony sensors there isn't any benefit to be gained by raising ISO past a certain point (it's not the "High" settings point, it's well before that - 800-1600 iso). To be honest, I haven't bothered to dive into the technical details of this, so I can't summarise it for you. From an article I read somewhere, it linked to this - http://blog.kasson.com/?p=8115 - which I've yet to read, but it apparently explains what is going on. He has a series of follow up posts regarding specific cameras. Might be worth a read.</p>

<p>Ok, here's the blurred and darkened background.</p><div></div>

<p>You could make the whole background black (using the masking technique I did), but I'm not sure a newspaper will like to accept that heavily edited image. You might want to check first.</p>

<p>here's my layer stack to give you an idea of what I did.</p><div></div>

<p>Here's another quick go, drawing the mask around the player. After he was masked out I darkened around him and blurred the background a bit using a combination of the mask and a new gradient mask. It's not perfect, as I did the mask quickly. But if you took your time, it would work out ok.</p> <p>edit: sorry, I ballsed up the images. I posted the same one as above. I'll have to redo it (because I was too lazy to save a psd copy) and post below. I've got serious morning zombie brain at the moment... :/</p>

<p>Sorry, here's the image.</p> <div></div>

<p>Here's a slightly better effort. I darkened the background more and dropped the brightness of that distracting white bit through the fence in the top left corner. By the way, I made a mistake in my description above. I didn't use the Blue channel, I used the red channel and inverted it.</p>

<p>Here's the image. In photosphop I could see a clear difference, but here spread out on the page, the difference isn't so strong. You could of course reduce the background further.</p><div></div>

<p>I wasn't able to do much with it. I just grabbed the blue channel (because the background is mainly blue) and used it as a mask isolate him a bit from the background. Then reduced the brightness of the background and dropped the saturation just a tad. Not much different, but it does make him stand out from the background a little bit more.</p>

<p>Pretty much every site I looked into for a portfolio website does this. It's a very common and easy web design feature. I would be really surprised if any half serious CMS/template type site didn't have this feature.</p>

<p>Yeah, I have my mouse movement slowed right down, so the mouse doesn't cover as much distance with each move, and I also use the left/right arrows when the cursor is over the slider. But as you say, on some sliders they increment in large amounts. (but on others they only increment in singles).</p>

<p>Have a look at the image with the "info" panel in photopshop. Move your cursor around the image and see what's going on. You can see the highlights and maybe the mid-tones are desaturated in the blue channel, and in the dark tones of her hair and eyes the blue channel dominates. That might give you something to start from.</p>