The Exposure Triangle.
This is one of the corner stones of a great image. In photography we have three immutable laws that we must abide by to get a good exposure. How we weigh the trinity is a blend of artistic decision, what you’re photographing and environmental constraints. It’s a careful balancing act and negotiating with physics to get the best deal for your image. Forget about one of the trinity and you’re likely to be tossing the image out. It’s the key three variables that can’t be changed in post work..
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In ACR the toolbar is always visible throughout the panels, sometimes they will interact with each other or allow you to access sub-panels. I will cover what each tool does and how to use it. I will cover the sub-panels and other features in later articles.
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This posting is going to be a multi-part overview of Adobe’s Camera RAW convertor also known as ACR. It’s the engine that powers Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The first part of these tutorials will cover what RAW is and give a general overview of why and when you should use it. Following postings I will break each section down and cover the basic of each panel. I’m primarily going to focus on ACR independently of any app so whilst the differences between Lightroom and Bridge are covered it’s not a tutorial on these applications.
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This session was shot recently with Burcu. It’s one of the test sessions I’ve been undertaking with the new Quadra pack to get a handle on how best to use it and also I was also testing another new piece of gear a Lastolite Skylite. The article thumbnail is a pull back from the session showing the set up I used to light the scene.
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The lighting diagram for C’est l’amour.
I’ve just got time for a new lighting diagram for this update. I’ve quickly put up this glamour shot of Cat taken a few months back. We wanted to created a retro glamour look reminiscent of the golden age of Hollywood in the 30s and 40s. It’s not a straight replica but more of a interpretation of that style. I’m a great fan of the low-key glamour style as it naturally creates an air of mystery and lends itself to creating stories out of light. It’s more difficult to light well but when you get the image then it’s worth the time and effort.
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As previously posted I got the new Quadra RX unit and quickly put it though it’s paces. The pack performed well for the test session and the new multi-purpose diffuser is an excellent addition to the head and works well. In addition I tested two of the new deflectors from Elinchrom. However not everything went to plan and I was left disappointed after the session. More about this at the end of this post. The title was supposed to read The Elinchrom Ranger Quadra RX but for some weird reason it breaks the formatting.
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I ordered a Elinchrom Quadra unit end of April however due to being out of stock I had to wait for new units to arrive. I received system this week and compared to the hire model there is some subtle and not so subtle changes to the new Quadra RX units. Elnchrom also have updated the transmitter with some welcome changes.
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The final image
This is the final instalment of this series. So far I’ve laid down the foundations for all portrait retouching and, to a degree, other genres. If you break your dark room processes down into steps then you will be able to edit and produce outstanding work rather than trying to do everything at once. In this post I’ll cover the LAB monochrome conversion method and how to improve the results. As you can see from the post thumbnail this is the look we are going for and as you will see fairly easy to pull off.
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I like to keep my numbering sequential for my RAW files for each camera. Since one camera is older than the other it makes for easy sorting of images, well until you put the wrong card into the camera! Restoring the numbering for the camera is easy; if sometimes time consuming as it doesn’t always work first time. Continue reading »
This post is all about skin retouching, what it is and common mistakes that people make. I will make it clear up front I will not be using any blur methods in this tutorial. The reasons for this come down to what these methods do. They destroy the fabric of your image. We have to step back and consider the complexities of the human face, whilst a blur method might be acceptable on the body it’s rarely so on a head shot or a close up of the human face. Human skin has texture, tonality and shape even within a small area you will see variations from the centre of the cheek to the other parts of it with pore size, look at how the shadows form and also the way make up and the skin tonality all blend together. We must retain these attributes if we want to remain faithful to the subject’s beauty.
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