Took way to long, only reinforcing the fact that I still need a book or something. But now I have my stock 450px template for photos. This is a cha hua, anyone know the name of it in English? I thought it was the camellia? They were on sale in Chuxiong, Yunnan last month, some for up to 100,000 RMB.
Photoshop CS3′s Photomerge feature is the best. No tripod needed. Auto-stretch option. Just set your camera to Manual mode, shoot RAW, get a reading of the sky and set shutter and f-stop accordingly, pan across the area you want to shoot, shoot 1 or 2 stops under 0, stitch it together in PS3, flatten layers, in Levels (RGB screen) move the top right slider over to the left to the “end” of the histogram, crop the shot, don’t fret if there are white spaces in the shot, once it’s cropped use the Transform tool and click the “warp” feature to move those white spots out of the shot and BOOOOOOOOOM, you got a panoramic like no one else.
I hiked up about 400 feet above where we were staying and got myself in (I believe) a little wheat field, set up the Italian tripod, manual setting, exposed for the sky, and shot six portrait shots.
PS CS3 stiches them together very well, much better than CS2. This is the result, just to give you an idea of what the rural part of China looks like.
I’ll be posting GPS coordinates soon.
After this latest trip to E Jia I took about 800 RAW format photos. Now I’m faced with the task of selecting a few, editing them, exporting, creating galleries, making prints, etc. I’ve found that by converting them to DNG format I can save space while keeping the RAW format options available.
Adobe DNG Coverter is a useful app to “compress” your RAW files down a little (but keep the RAW functionality) and at the same time is creating a standard for all those different camera types.
Some stats: DNG compressed (loseless) some NEFs down about 35%, and some CRW down about 18% (average of 800+ files).
I found a detailed web site explaining the benefits of DNG.
onOne’s Mask Pro 4.0 is hella cool. Masking software, I know, it’s been around forever, but I never used it until now (someone was showing it to me when it was still Extensis, and it was cool then.)
It has about a 5-minute learning curve, but if you watch their online tutorials, it’s very easy to use and works very well. Their tutorials are inline with what I would make if I were a developer trying to sell software. Anyway this app is very useful, well worth the $150+ USD.
I hope these two little apps will help me along with this major photo project.
See Photoshop CS3 Beta Bug Page
Maybe this is useful for PS developers at Adobe. Will keep it updated as I use PS.
Update: Get the latest news about the bugs in Photoshop at Adobe Labs.
You remember the PS CS2 tutorial I just finished? The same guy (Deke) teamed up with Lynda.com, an online training subscription website, and goes through most of the new features of CS3, step-by-step, in the same fashion as the tutorials I watched. I can’t believe they’re giving this away for free! I just watched the new Photomerge in CS3, coupled with the new Warp function, and yes, it is about 100 times better than even CS2.
VIEW FLASH PHOTO GALLERY – Click the “?” in the lower right corner for Captions
ADOBE
First, I’ve been studying Photoshop CS2 for a week and learned some useful stuff. Quality stuff, I’m impressed with CS2 and InDesign CS. My favorite new features are the Bridge, Smart Sharpen, Warp and HDR. Vanishing point, I haven’t used yet, but HDR and warp are great features of CS2. Color coding your menus is cool, and the custom keyboard shortcuts are easy to use. Also, I’ve created a bunch of homemade Actions, and while not a new feature, is a great one anyway. I’m loving my new look at the Levels and Hue/Sat commands and knowing what they do, and successfully manipulating layer masks for the first time.
I’m glad to see that there is a PS CS3 Intel beta. I heard it took Tom 2 minutes to download, well you’ll be happy to know it’ll take me another 13 hrs 22 mins to get the last 500 megs.
KUNMING
We made it back to Kunming to find that our internet was shut off. Official explanation? “The plug dropped.” Yeah I don’t remember the last time an RJ-45 cord “dropped” out of the snapped-in connection. Something smells fishy, but it’s back and slow, and that’s all that matters!
Just learned about Camera RAW, DNG, and HDR 32-bit mode in CS2. I have a lot of photos I’ve already shot at different exposures, some in RAW mode, so I’ll have to test this out on my own pictures later. I remember you guys talking about this like a year ago so… It must be cool.
If anyone knows how to export from Photoshop CS2 in web mode, using ‘save for web’ WITHOUT washing out all the colors, please advise. In Adobe it looks great, export for web, it looks like dog doo. Furthermore, ‘Save As…” then JPG takes way too long and only lets you export at ambiguous “Quality” levels, 1-12, not 0-100 like in Fireworks.
I just adjusted levels a bit, an ounce of curves, unsharp mask for the tower, and crop.
Details
Chuxiong, China, facing North
9/17/06 7:29 pm local
See me taking the picture! (almost…)
3072×2048 orig
1.0s shutter
f/5.6 (max)
ISO 100
200 mm focal (max)
with, of course, the Italian Tripod
There is no story, other than deleting things with masks.
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In other news, Jeremy Cohen’s Quartet San Francisco’s Latigo album was nominated for not one, but two Grammys – Best Classical Crossover CD and Best Engineered Classical CD. He recorded it at Skywalker Ranch.
Just FYI, last year the Turtle Island String Quartet won the Best Classical Crossover CD with their CD Four + 4, performing with the Ying Quartet, totalling eight performers playing classical and jazz compositions.
The fact that Jer got nominated for that AND Best Engineered Classical CD is simply amazing and I hope he wins.
VIEW PANORAMIC PHOTO OF DALI
ENLARGE
PREVIEW EXAMPLE
ENLARGE
ENLARGE
ENLARGE