kyleweems

<p>If you're going to emulate film, you need to be specific with what 'type' of film you're emulating.. there are huge variances from one to another.</p>

<p>In addition to the above comments, I did want to point one thing out.</p>

<p>Many plugins do -not- duplicate the functionality of photoshop, they improve upon it using custom written, purposes specific algorithms. Silver Efex Pro is a good example here, as it does things with black and white that photoshop can not duplicate exactly. Can you get a good result with PS? absolutely. Will it be the same as SEP? no.</p>

<p>Noise reduction is another example.. noiseware, dfine, noise ninja, etc. all have their own methods for reducing noise, and they're all almost always better than photoshop at doing so.</p>

<p>So it really depends on what software you're looking at.. some of it is there to do things more quickly, some of it really improves upon what PS does.</p>

<p>Anyway, you'll be fine learning to use photoshop well and that will take care of the vast majority of what you want to do. This will help you if you ever decide to use plugins later on, as you'll actually understand what they're doing and how to better control them for your purposes.</p>

<p>are you sure the printer is capable of printing boarderless on 11x14 paper? Just because it's capable on one size doesn't mean it is on others.</p>

<p>You need to sharpen at the final size, that's the only answer really. Do your resizing, then sharpen with whatever method you prefer. (lots of sharpening plugins have presets for this type of thing, such as nik sharpener pro)</p>

<p>On this particular image, some localized contrast adjustment and sharpening should take care of most of it.. it doesn't seem to be distorting anything, just making it too soft.</p>

<p>Just wanted to note that the fade tool works with anything you do.. you just have to do it immediately after whatever you want to fade. If you do something else first, the option will go away.. but it's very useful in many cases.</p>

<p>Save the date stuff usually isn't very large.. typically about the size of a business card, sometimes a largish postcard, so you might want to find out how big it really is. That much enlargement seems very excessive.</p>

<p>I'm sure there is a keyboard command for it, but you can also install a program called Shiftit</p>

<p>http://code.google.com/p/shiftit/downloads/list</p>

<p>It's free and small.. it gives you keyboard command over all of your windows. It will appear in your top bar and give you the option to move the lightroom window around, or you can use the keyboard and hit cmd+opt+f and make it snap to fullscreen.</p>

<p>a bit more desolate..</p><div></div>

<p>Google was hard to get when it went public because it was so highly anticipated.. which also made it very expensive. Because they were so big before going public they weren't really one of those magical investments that you got cheap and later went crazy.</p>

<p>Some quick adjustments to color/contrast/etc. I like this image quite a bit, has nice color.</p><div></div>

<p>It's a feature useful for the vast majority of the population.. not sure why people are surprised that this is who most manufactures aim to please. You can probably turn it off quite easily, not a big deal.</p>

<p>I have a 27" iMac.. I actually use a program called Flux that adjusts my monitor based on the time of day and the type of lighting I have at night.. it helps save my eyes from blindingly bright screens at night. If I want to do photo work, I simply disable it and it goes back to my normal calibrated settings. Since photo work is not the only thing I do all day/night on this computer, it's extremely useful (and free).</p>

<p>I used SMC on my macbook pro for quite a while, works well but beware that it can cause fans to loose some of their life expectancy since it works them harder.</p>

<p>Also.. we get mac problem questions here because I'd imagine a larger than average percentage of the people coming here are using macs.. they're rather common in our photo world.</p>

<p>The thread I linked has my opinions of Nik products.. I have a -lot- of experience with them.</p>

<p>They're all getting 64-bit upgrades for free in the near future.</p>

<p>There is very little they can't do very quickly.. you just have to spend some time figuring out what everything does and making a mental list of ways to fix problems. Once you have that (it will probably take a few days of fiddling) you'll probably find your workflow starts going a lot faster. Typically within a single shoot I can use the exact same sequence of processing and get everything done pretty quickly.</p>

<p>Just a note on RAM.. the mac's use ddr3 which should be set up in multiples of 3 rather than 2 for greatest efficiency. For example 14gb will perform about as well as 12gb but cost more.. and I imagine a similar situation exists for 8gb vs 6gb.. you'll pay more, but won't see the boost.</p>

<p>This makes the apple decision to put in 4 bays and offer mostly even numbers of RAM a very odd one.</p>

<p>Also, buying RAM upgrades from Apple is ludicrous.. it's -insanely- over priced. It's the pricing you'd expect if they bought it at full retail price themselves, then marked it up again to sell to you. Try other world computing for a much better deal. RAM upgrades are brain-dead simple to do yourself so no worries there either.</p>

<p>Please see my post here</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00WbKc</p>

<p>for a breakdown of the Nik products.</p>

<p>They are not currently 64-bit, but they will be very soon. The upgrade to 64-bit will be free to everybody.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>That's like saying owners of Mercedes have it easier than Honda owners for service, repairs and parts.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>So you're saying mac's are mercedes and pc's are hondas? Yea, I'm good with that. </p>

<p>powerful processors = lots of heat.. it's normal, not a big deal.</p>

<p>I used SMC Fan Control on my macbook pro for years, mainly to keep it from burning my legs when I couldn't put it on a desk.. but it kills you fans faster (they still last a long time) since it forces them to run more.</p>

<p>I'd just trust the design and parameters Apple designed, a hot case is ok.</p>

<p>I'm absolutely with Patrick, the 27" i7 imac with as much ram as you care to pay for is definitely the way to go. For photoshop and such, it performs as well or better than the current mac pro line. (the mac pro will get updated at some point of course and once again take a lead)</p>

<p>The built in monitor is quite good, albeit not infinitely controllable.. but it can be calibrated quite well. My only issue with it is that it's too shiny for me, it tends to throw off glare pretty easily, but that's easily fixed by adjusting your lighting in the room.</p>

<p>As for a secondary monitor, I'm a big fan of NEC (and to whomever is against them, get over it, they're good and lots of professionals agree on this point). They tend to be pricey, especially in larger sizes, but combined with spectraview they offer some seriously good color.</p>

<p>The look is super common these days.. it's mostly lighting, as mentioned above. I most commonly see it called 'the dave hill look' or some variation on it.</p>

<p>Very strong side lights, sometimes an overhead or down low and a ring flash.. flag the side lights so they don't interfere with your shot and just light the subject.</p>

<p>That really does take care of most of it.. the rest is some local contrast and saturation adjustments.</p>

<p>Dan</p>

<p>Be sure to check out their webinars, they do some great educational stuff. There is one going on right now actually that covers their whole collection.</p>

<p>They are extremely good at what they do. I'll break them down for you a bit so you can see what you really need, you might not need/want all of them.</p>

<p>U-Point Technology - Not a product, but a feature. This is found in all Nik products, and it's the key to their usefulness. What u-point does is basically take information about where you place a 'control point' and try to figure out what the constraints of that object are. It's an intelligent masking algorithm, and it really works well. The 'circle' you see is really only a representation of the area you want it to look in, not what it's doing.. when you start to play with control points, be sure to turn on the show mask feature so you can get a better idea of what it's doing. If the control point starts bleeding into areas you don't want, simply place a blank point in that area to constrain it.. it learns from itself as you place more points.</p>

<p>Dfine - great noise reduction, very intelligent. The ability to fine tune your noise reduction based on object/area very quickly is great. As noise reduction goes, it's as good or better than anything else out there, but you don't have the ability to infinitely fine tune every technical aspect (which really, most people don't want anyway since they don't understand the technical side of it). So unless you're a huge tech geek, it's perfect for you.</p>

<p>Viveza - Color, color, and more color. The quickest way to adjust your images. The default workspace here is very straightforward, but you can hit the expand menu and do all sorts of nifty things with it like adjusting specific colors, adjusting warmth, tone, etc.</p>

<p>Color Efex Pro - At it's base, a large collection of filters.. but each has its set of controls to fine tune it, plus the u-point technology you find in all Nik products. Some are awesome, some aren't.. it will take some time experimenting to find what works for you. Specific ones to look at.. sunshine, skylight, tonal contrast, all the contrast variations, dynamic skin softner (beware, use very lightly).. those are probably the easiest to find use for, but I'm sure you'll find others.</p>

<p>Silver Efex Pro - THE way to do black and white, period. Not even photoshop can keep up here. Extremely intelligent, extremely flexible. If black and white is something you do, or want to do, this is the way to do it. It can do everything from traditional conversion to film simulation (with realistic grain patterns based on the film type you choose to simulate).. and everything in-between.</p>

<p>Sharpener Pro - Great sharpening tool, easy to go too far. I mainly use it for output sharpening as it has presets for various resolutions and paper types.. but it works all around once you adjust to using it.</p>

<p>As to the person above who said the plugins can't do anything photoshop can't... that simply isn't true. This is an archaic view of plug-ins. No longer are they simply sets of actions like they were years ago.. they use their own custom algorithms to do things photoshop simply isn't as good at. PS is great at a lot of things, but because it does a lot of things, it isn't spectacular at everything.. that's where plugins come into play. Silver Efex Pro for example goes far beyond what photoshop can do.. it's a purpose built product, which will almost always beat out something built for everything. Can you get good results in photoshop alone? absolutely.. but will they be -as good-, nope.. will they be as fast to get? not even close.</p>

<p>Hopefully the above will give you some guidance as to what will work for you.</p>

<p>Ok, had to.. this is the same exact edit, but with the opacity pushed up to around 75% to show a stronger adjustment.</p>

<p>Edit: weird.. they are displaying exactly the same in this thread, but if you open them in a new window you see the change.</p><div></div>

<p>Yea sorry, forgot to actually attach the image :) It's not a 'drastic' adjustment, just pushes it enough to make things stand out more. You could up the opacity on the overlay layer to make the contrast more extreme. Doing it again I'd probably go for a stronger adjustment.. but you can play with that if you follow the above steps.</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

<p>I like the shot, but personally I'd like to see the couple stand out more, while keeping color.</p>

<p>I hope you don't mind, but I downloaded the image and played with it for a couple minutes. Try creating a new layer, using apply image to apply the green channel, then set it to overlay. It washes out the walls and some of the foreground 'distraction' a bit.. adjust opacity to taste (I liked it around 55%) then mask out the couple as well as the walls they are leaning on.</p>

<p>The washed out walls focus you more, while keeping the mood of the image. I also cloned out the spot on the guy's head in the foreground because it's distracting in such a dark area.</p>

<p>Cool shot</p>