Digital Darkroom and Filter Equivalences

[jon_fernquest]

<p>

A critique of a

<a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/1269494">

photo</a>

I posted recently:

</p>

 

<blockquote><i>

"A bit palid. Presumably early morning.

A warm up filter would have given it more life."

</i></blockquote>

 

<p>

My question is whether I can achievev the same effect after the fact

with Photoshop.

...and more generally has anyone assembled

a list of Filter and Photoshop equivalences online or in book form?

</p>

 

<p>

I know using the channel mixer I can get something close

to using a red filter, but no doubt the equivalence could never

be exact. Whenever I transform an image in Photoshop I know,

for instance, that the image degrades a little,

the histogram becomes spiky and the image grainy or noisy.

</p>

 

<p>

A list of capture time versus post-processing (Photoshop, digital darkroom)

equivalences with notes on their differences would be a useful tool!

If no one has started a list yet, I might start one.

</p>

 

Cheers,

 

Jon Fernquest

bayinnaung@hotmail.com

[paul_sharratt]

I can't remember the website but there is a program called PhotoKit that emulates different filter combinations and also has toning and sharpening filter. It is a plugin that runs various actions in Photoshop. I tried it free for a period - found that it worked well but noticably increased the file size. I often use adjustment levels to tweak images and prefer not to flatten these, so for most of my images I didn't think the program would be useful but if you don't work this way it might be useful. Try it free for a while and watch the actions run - you can get good ideas from the various actions they developed - you have to pay close attention though, the actions run in a matter of seconds. Luminous-Landscape.com also had an article about sepia toning b&W images. You could run the same action on a color photograph and then adjust the blending to give the effect of the 81 series filters.

[continuity]

The photokit website is <a href="http://www.pixelgenius.com">Pixel Genius</a><p>

[ellis_vener_photography]

A third vote for the PhotoKit from <A HREF= http://www.pixelgenius.com>PixelGenius</A>

[frank_bomarius]

Hi,

 

the latest German Magazine "ColorFoto" featured a product named >>Nik Color Efex Pro<<. A google search brings up this URL:

http://www.abitz.com/Deskoppublishing/nikcolor.php3

 

cheers

-- Frank

[jon_fernquest]

Thanks for the links.

 

An experienced photographer told me yesterday that

traditional and digital photography are completely incommensurable

ways of thinking.

 

I found that a little discouraging because all the great books on photography I've seen are by photographers (e.g. Ansel Adams). I have yet to find a technically deep book on digital photography. I guess it would have to be steeped in physics and the mathematics of digital signal processing. Anyone know of technically deep books on digital imaging?

[emre]

The question is: what are you trying to do? Information is only a means...

 

Probably the closest thing to what you are looking for is a "how-to" book such as "Photoshop Wow!" (practical) or "Adobe Photoshop Master Class" (artistic).

[jon_fernquest]

Here's what I was looking for. Couldn't find it in any book. Found it in the Topica "Street Photography" mailing list:

 

http://www.topica.com/lists/streetphoto/read/message.html?mid=906739082&sort=d&start=31942

 

I quote:

 

> What's your channel mix brew? I like to try different recipes for B&W.

 

I usually start out with 50% red and 50% green for landscape stuff...

effectively a 'minus-blue' or yellow filter. From that I might crank

up the red if I want to darken the sky but usually that degrades the

image slightly.

 

If the subject has a dominant color, then I will usually try a 'filter'

of that color, which will produce maximum contrast in that subject. EG

for foliage I use a 'green' filter, (50% red and 50% blue).

 

For human skin tones it's worth trying a blue filter, or at least a

filter with a substantial amount of blue.

 

There is a super-sophisticated way of doing channel-mixing to

black-and-white which involves using two adjustment layers: the first

is a hue/saturation layer and the second is a channel mixer layer. By

rotating the hue of the underlying image using the first layer, and

selecting one or two channels only in the channel mixer, you can

produce a much wider theoretical range of effects. I've tried it a few

times and never come up with anything that was that great, but if you a

fiddler it might appeal to you. There's a tutorial on the web but I've

lost the link.

 

JB

[emre]

If this is the sort of stuff you are after then you should definitely grab a copy of the Paul Caponigro book (Photoshop Masterclass). The technique is hardly arcane...all he is saying is that prior to mixing the channels, you should "massage" the colors.

<p>

That "what is your channel mix brew?" question seems odd to me. My technique is simply deciding how I want desaturated version to look, and deciding what steps I need to take. The "brew" is different for every image.

<p>

...and if you add another Hue/saturation layer on top, you can get a nice toned print, <a href="http://www.ece.neu.edu/students/esafak/photos/photo.net/2002-46-34b.jpg">like so</a>.

[jon_fernquest]

Thanks for the book suggestion. Here's the link for the new edition

that should be coming out soon:

 

http://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com/store/books/apmc2.html

 

> The "brew" is different for every image.

 

For me the ideal Photoshop for photographers book would be loaded with interesting photos like photo.net and dissect the interesting things that were done to them with Photoshop analytically. A collection of useful case studies. There are a lot of books on taking photos of buildings, people, etc like this, but I have yet to find a Photoshop book like this.

 

Thanks again for the book suggestion.