Replacing Or Adding New Skies With Photoshop
Skies can make or break a landscape/seascape. Skies can dramatically alter the mood of any composition. In this video I show several variations of one composition and demonstrate how to replace an old sky or add a new sky.
Learn more in my DVD Atmospheric FX.
8 Favorite Quotes Selected By Sean Kernan
Find an insightful collection of 8 quotes selected by Sean Kernan – and the stories behind them.
Here’s my favorite quote from his selection.
“I’m not trying to make paintings, I’m trying to find something out.” – Piet Mondrian
Which is your favorite quote?
Find 7 more quotes here.
Find a quick Q&A with Sean Kernan here.
Find an extended conversation with Sean Kernan here.
Learn more about Sean Kernan here.
Dual Apps Render Sophisticated Light FX – Lens Flare & Lens Light
When it comes to photography, you can do a lot with a little light. Adding light into your images offers many creative possibilities: add a sparkle to someone’s eyes, make highlights shine, enhance an atmospheric effect, trace a constellation in the sky, render a cinematic special effect, and much, much more. In short, you can enhance the center of attention in any image or create a new one.
Adding light into your photographs after exposure just got easier on your iPhone. Brain Fever Media makes two apps that can add light fx to your images: Lens Flare and Lens Light.
Lens Flare offers 45 different effects — mostly star patterns, some edge flares, and a few linear streaks.
Lens Light offers 54 different effects including rays, spotlights, streaks, scratches, and even suns, moons, and lightning.
Read more on The Huffington Post.
A Primer On 3D Printing – Lisa Harouni
2012 may be the year of 3D printing, when this three-decade-old technology finally becomes accessible and even commonplace. Lisa Harouni gives a useful introduction to this fascinating way of making things – including intricate objects once impossible to create.
Find more Creativity videos here.
32 Apps I Use – On Pinterest
You’ll find a virtual pin-up board with links to 32 iphone photo apps I use regularly on Pinterest.
Find it here.
Read more about cell phone photography on the Huffington Post.
18 Favorite Quotes Selected By Sean Duggan
Find an insightful collection of 18 quotes selected by Sean Duggan.
Here’s my favorite quote from his selection.
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau
Which is your favorite quote?
Find 17 more quotes here.
Find more Photographer’s Favorite Quotes here.
Learn more about Sean Duggan here.
Photoshop CS6 Sneak Peek 4
Bryan O’Neil Hughes demonstrates Photoshop CS6’s improvements to content aware technology.
This game-changing technology just got better and easier.
Find more Photoshop CS6 Sneak Peek’s here.
Reduce, Modify, Or Combine App Effects With Image Blender
Do you ever wish you could reduce the intensity of an effect? Do you ever wish you could combine the effects of multiple Apps with more control? You can, with the App Image Blender.
Image Blender is extremely quick and easy to use. Simply launch Image Blender, load one version of an image and then load another version of the same image (or another image). To reduce an effect, use the opacity slider. To modify the way an effect is applied to an image, change the blend mode of one image and change the combined effect. To rotate or scale an image double tap on the screen, then pinch and twirl to align one image with another. Finally, save a new image with the combined effect of your choice.
Blend Modes
Blend modes can be used to generate many creative effects. Image Blender offers most of the standard blend modes; Normal (for no special effect), Lighten and Screen (to lighten), Darken and Multiply (to darken), Overlay and Soft Light and Hard Light (for contrast effects), Luminosity and Hue and Saturation and Color (for color effects), Color Dodge and Color Burn (for combined contrast and color effects), Difference and Exclusion (for special effects), and two others Plus Darker and Plus Lighter (with self-explanatory titles).
Image Blender Provides Global Not Selective Control
Image Blender doesn’t allow you to blend images selectively with masks – i.e. in or not in one spot or from side to side or top to bottom. (To do this try PhotoForge 2.) In some cases, you can achieve similar effects by photographing subjects on black or white or painting areas of an image black or white and using blend modes like Darken or Lighten to drop out either the darkest or lightest values.
Multiple Exposures
Image Blender can be used to combine two different images. When you create multiple exposures with Image Blender a few strategies are particularly useful for creating multiple exposures with Image Blender. One, make exposures that have the same background but contain moving objects for futurist motion and/or ghostly transparent effects; keep your camera still; consider using a tripod. Two, use images that have dark objects on a light background or light objects on a dark background; you can make background lighter or darker by processing them with other Apps; then you can use the blend modes Lighten or Darken to make the background disappear.
Creative Enhancements
There are many things you can do to creatively enhance an image by modifying App effects. Here are six.
1 Partially restore the original state of an image.
2 Modify the way an effect adjusts an image.
3 Overlay text or graphics onto an image.
4 Add a transparent texture to an image.
5 Make moving objects transparent.
6 Merge two images into a surreal composite
Isn’t it nice to know that when it comes to the effects Apps have on your image, it’s not an all or nothing take it or leave it proposition? You can get more control, with Image Blender.
Find Image Blender here.
Find more iPhone app reviews on the Huffington Post.
New Images – Skogafoss, Iceland
These images came together quickly – after a lot of gestation. I sketched the idea several years ago during a workshop with Focus On Nature. I made the shots last summer, scouting for another workshop with Ragnar th Sigurdsson and Arthur Meyerson. The first time I visited this location, (Skogafoss, Iceland) I took a few shots in less than half an hour, looking for major compositional variations. After looked at those shots and identified this idea, I shot very differently the next time, standing still for the better part of an hour and watching the water for significant variations within just a few compositions.
I wasn’t certain, but I suspected I’d want to add an accent to the abstract composition, deciding on smoke during processing. While I processed the files, I also sketched out a number of significant variations to test location of symmetry/assymetry, positive/negative space, light/dark, and location/angle/value of smoke. Doing this revealed more options than I had initially pre-visualized. And that means there are more related images to make. It also clarified a few outstanding ideas and connections to other images, some made and some still in development. That means I have some ideas about how they’ll can be integrated into existing projects and new things that will come out of them. I find the seeds of future work are usually planted in current work and if tended will yield more fruit.
I think about and plan series of images, often for quite some time before and over an extended period of time during their development. While I’m focussed, I look for surprises and modify my plans based on the new insights they introduce at every creative stage – planning, exposure, development, reflection, redevelopment, metamorphosis.
Find more images here.
Find out about my Iceland workshops here.