West Haddon Photo Club
Adding a watermark to your pictures may be desirable for a number of reasons. It can be your signature, so the person viewing the picture knows who took it and act as a deterrent to the theft of your image - stopping those who would copy it without crediting you.
Click on the video on the right or go to YouTube to see how Kevan Brassington uses Photoshop to add a logo to an image.
This page contains links to tutorials produced by Club members, sometimes in response to a 'how do you do that?' question asked at a monthly meeting, but often to demonstrate techniques covered in one of the Technical Meetings.
We hope to gradually increase the number of tutorials in the months to come. If you would like a tutorial on a particular subject, check to see if it will be covered in one of our forthcoming Technical Meetings or, if not, let us know what you would like to see.
You may have seen black and white photos with one or more elements, usually the main subject, in colour and wondered how that effect was created.
This is called spot colour and starts with the entire photograph being in colour, then using photo editing software, such as Photoshop, to desaturate the colours.
When Kevan Brassington showed an image created this way at a Club meeting it created so much interest that he recorded the steps in a movie which you can see by clicking on the video on the right or by going to YouTube.
Ever taken a photograph which was spoiled by telephone wires? Or traffic cones? Frustrated that the only advice you get is to choose another viewpoint?
For our November 2018 Technical Meeting, Kevan demonstrated how to remove unwanted objects in images, using Lightroom and Photoshop, and he very kindly recorded four videos to show how he did it.
You can view the first of the videos by clicking on the picture on the right. To see them all in YouTube click on the following links:
With the ever-increasing megapixel sizes of image sensors in digital cameras, the file sizes they generate are increasing too. If you save your images in Raw format then these files can be over 40Mb in size and will increase further if edited in Photoshop. You may wish to reduce their sizes in order to email or archive them, or to upload to photo sharing sites.
There are many ways to reduce image file sizes that have little or no perceptible impact on the image quality - most image editing programs have these as options when saving files.
In the video opposite Kevan demonstrates using another method - JPEG-Optimizer - a web-based program that doesn't require installation on your computer.
Click on a topic listed below to be taken to that tutorial:
Adding a Watermark to an Image
Astrophotography - A Brief Guide
Create a Fully Black (or White) Background
Creating Spot Colour in a Monochrome Image
Lightroom: Creating Monochrome Images
Removing Objects From Images With Lightroom and/or Photoshop
Reducing Image File Sizes with JPEG-Optimizer
There are many ways to sharpen images - all image editing software offers at least one. Many photographers use the tool within Lightroom, others rely on those offered by Photoshop. This software provides many ways of sharpening photos: Smart Sharpen, Unsharp Mask etc., but the High Pass filter is a great way to target sharpening a bit more precisely and it is a subtle, powerful and effective method.
David Kallmeier has written a brief illustrated guide to applying High Pass sharpening using Smart Objects in Photoshop which is available as a pdf file.
Telephoto lenses are an essential tool for wildlife photography; few animals are considerate enough to allow us to come close enough with non-telephoto lenses. And there are some animals where it's prudent to maintain a healthy distance. This type of lens is also widely used for motorsport photography and they have their place in landscape photography too.
However, telephoto lenses have a number of properties, advantages and disadvantages that are worth understanding in order to maximise their use and help achieve the image you're after.
Recently Chris Bowers presented a well-attended Technical Meeting on the theory behind, and use of, telephoto lenses and a copy of his presentation is downloadable as a pdf.
When first starting photography the number of names and terms can be bewildering and daunting. Even those of us who have been doing this hobby for years don't know everything, or, more embarrassingly, may have been misusing a term due to a misunderstanding of what it actually means.
Luckily David Kallmeier has written a comprehensive glossary of photography terms, so if you don't know your IBIS from your ISO or think Red Eye is caused by excessive drinking the night before, download a copy of the pdf.
Macro photography, sometimes referred to as close-up photography, is generally defined as capturing images of objects at close range so that they appear at life size (i.e. a ratio of 1:1) or greater.
This is often used to great affect by natural history programmes, especially those about insects and other invertebrates, to reveal a hidden world that's usually unseen. Macro photography should not be mistaken for photomicrography which utilises microscopes to image the truly, er, microscopic.
Macro photography doesn't need any specialist equipment - a telephoto lens can achieve suitable magnifications, but to really unlock this subject you will need additional hardware. This can range from cheap reversing rings to ring flashes and studio lighting rigs.
To help guide you through this fascinating subject David Kallmeier has kindly supplied the slides he used for his presentation, together with a useful and informative leaflet explaining the use of flash. Click on the links to download the pdfs.
Lens filters have been part of some photographers' equipment for many years, but relative to the number of people who take photographs their use is quite niche. You don't need one to take a good photo and, arguably, many of the effects that filters create can be replicated in photo editing software.
However there is still a role for filters to play in modern photography, especially, but not exclusively, in landscape photography. For example, neutral density filters to create dreamy, silky water effects and polarising filters for rich, saturated colours.
David Kallmeier gave an illustrated talk about filters to club members, describing the types available, how to fix them to your lenses and explaining their use. To accompany this he produced a useful guide - Lens Filters Explained - that you can view and download by clicking on the link.
Black and White and Monochrome are themes that are visited as themes in West Haddon Photo Club's calendar nearly every year. Some photos are greatly enhanced by converting to black and white - it helps to focus attention on the subject (desirable in reportage and street photography) and lends itself to images with geometric shapes, for example buildings.
Many cameras and phones have settings that produce black and white images within the device. However how do you convert a colour image to black and white?
To help our members with this WHPC held an online technical session in which basic photo processing was demonstrated, together with some techniques to convert and edit black and white images. This session was recorded in two parts and they are available by clicking on the following links:
Astrophotography is a huge topic and can produce some breathtaking images of deep sky objects (like nebulae), using equipment costing equally breathtaking sums of money. Luckily it's possible to produce good images with just a DSLR, a tripod, a cable release, some practice and patience.
This pdf guide provides some bullet points of what you need to consider and how to go about taking pictures of simple to find deep sky images, like the Orion Nebula or the Andromeda galaxy.
When photographing objects indoors it's often desirable to do this with them in front of a plain background to give them a degree of separation and help focus attention on them.
Creating a dense black background, even when starting with something like a plain black sheet of fabric or paper, can prove troublesome as it nearly always shows up as a shade of dark grey or dark blue. But this method of post processing using Photoshop can help you deal with that.
Modern digital cameras, especially those in mobile phones, are packed with processing power and sophisticated software. You can often leave the speed and aperture decisions to the camera - just point and shoot and a beautifully exposed image is produced...
But sometimes the photo you see is not quite what you wanted. It is when you want to take more control over how you want the final image to appear that you have to understand how to alter your camera's settings.
For one of our Technical Sessions we had an informal chat about how to make our cameras do what we want. This pdf guide was handed out to all those attending to give an overview of the more basic, but nonetheless powerful, settings available on most cameras and mobile phone camera apps that will allow you to take more creative control over your images.
There's something special about aerial photography - the way it can show the normal or mundane from a unique and unusual angle always engages our interest. In recent years the availability of drones has made this type of photography much more achievable.
But how easy is it to fly a drone and what types are available? More importantly where can you use them and what hoops do you need to jump through to fly them legally?
David Moorhouse, a keen drone owner, gave a us a presentation and demonstration at one of our Creative Sessions. He has kindly allowed us to make his presentation available - click here to download (it's quite a large file).
Photographers are always reliant on light to be able to produce images. The quality of light, like an epic sunset, can make or break a photo and in that respect painters have an advantage - they can create any light they choose, limited only by their skill and imagination.
Light painting offers photographers a way to have the best of both worlds. By using our own light (torches, flashguns, strobes, lasers, etc.) we can light our subjects however we want, in ways that would not normally happen naturally, limited only by our imagination.
For one of our Knowledge Nights we held a session for our members in the local church, which was suitably dark with the lights out and had plenty of interesting things to photograph. To help those attending a handout was prepared that covered some key points about equipment required and suggested camera settings to obtain the best results. A copy of the handout is available to download if you fancy trying out this technique for yourself.
It's worth saying that all those attending the session had a great time and were surprised at the results they achieved.