Entries Tagged as 'Photo Editing'
Blurb Booksmart software is probably one of the easiest and cheapest ways out there to create a book for yourself. I’ve talked about it extensively before. A minor gripe I have about blurb, is in it’s ease of use, you have to constrain yourself to certain templates that they provide to layout your text and photos.
But, if you want a greater degree of freedom in your blurb layouts, and are willing to put in a little extra effort, you can always make your own pages using a photo editor such as Photoshop, Paint.net or the Gimp
Just layout the page they way you want it to appear, add your text right on the image, use overlays, rotate images, drop shadows, do whatever you want in your editor.
Then add that image to the Blurb library and place it on a full-bleed photo layout page in Blurb.
That’s it. An easy way to break out of the templates that are provided with blurb, but still dead-simple upload and publishing.
Do you have another way to do layout free hardcover publishing on demand? let me know in the comments.
Tags: Blurb · Photo Editing · Uncategorized
January 31st, 2007 · 1 Comment
In Part 1 of this series, we examined how to set up your camera to take effective source photos to create a panorama.
Update: fixed some bad HTML markup
All-righty, then. Now that you have your pictures that you want to stitch together, move them from your camera an into your computer. I find that it is much easier to create a separate folder for each Panorama you took.
Now, go and get yourself a copy of Autostitch. This program is free, although it is not Open Source. Read the license agreement for what you can and cannot do with pictures stitched together with Autostitch (short version: if your are making images for personal use, you’re all good.)
Unzip the files to a folder on your computer. Autostitch requires no installation, once you are unzipped, you are ready to go.
Create your First Panorama.
Ok, here we go. Start Autostitch by double clicking the autostitch.exe file. You’ll see Autostich’s rather minimal interface:
Just Select “open” from the “File” menu. Navigate to the folder you created with the Images for the Panorama, and select all those images. (CTRL+click to select multiple images)
Once you click the “Open” button on the dialog box, Autostich will get busy creating the Panorama. Depending on how many images you have, and the speed of your computer this assembly can take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes. A small window with a progress bar will let you know that Autostitch is doing it’s thing.
When the progress bar disappears, your panorama has been created. You will find a new file in the folder where your source images were called “Pano.jpg” Open that picture to see what you have created.
By default, Autostitch makes pretty small images. This is to keep rendering time down, so you can see what it will look like in a minimum amount of time.
If you are pleased with the result, you can have autostitch create a high-resolution version. Just go to “Edit” then “options”
Look for the “Output size” in the upper left hand corner. Select the “Scale%” radio button, and change the value to say 100%. Click OK, then repeat the steps to create the panorama. This will take MUCH longer to create. Have patience.
Here you can see the source images, and resulting panorama using autostitch.
If your panorama needs any adjustments, you can always follow this tutorial using Picasa.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.
Have you created a panorama using this technique? Link to it in the comments, I’d love to see.
I know there are a whole mess of other panorama-creating programs out there, are there any easier / better than Autostitch?
[tags]Autostitch, Panorama, Picasa, tutorial[/tags]
Tags: Photo Editing · Technique
January 31st, 2007 · 1 Comment
Update: Fixed some bad HTML markup.
In Part 1, we’ll look at how to set your camera up to get a good series of pictures to make a panorama.
I really like creating panoramic images with my camera. A Panoramic image is a series of pictures taken with your regular camera, then stitched together using software on your computer to make one complete image.
Unfortunately, when I have tried to create them before, I have ended up with long pictures that look like they have been just kinda stuck together. The result are pictures with seams, or portions of the picture that just sort of dissolve away into thin air. Something like this detail from a larger Panorama.
< Thankfully there is a free software package that will greatly assist in creating panoramic images.
But first, I'll also share a couple few techniques I have found that make the final result a little better.
1a. If your camera has Panorama Assist, use it.
Many point and shoot digital cameras have a setting that will help you create you panoramas. For example, when using the Panorama Assist on my Nikon point and shoot after each shot, the LCD will display the left third of the image in the right third of the window. The idea being that as you rotate the camera, you simply overlap that bit in the next photo and the stitching will go much easier.
1b. If you don’t have Pano assist, Overlap your images by half a frame.
This may seem like overkill, but it will give the stitching software a better change to match the images up properly.
2. If you have a tripod, use it. Using a tripod to set up your shot and rotate camera will make lining up the shots much easier. If you try and hand hold the camera as you take pictures, you’ll want to overlap the images quite a bit so that the stitching software has a better chance of success. If you don’t, just try your best to keep the camera level and overlap the shots the best you can. Just plant your feet in one spot and put the camera up to you face and swivel your shoulders.
3a. If you can, set the Aperture, shutter speed, and focus ONCE (i.e. use the manual mode on your camera) for ALL the shots in the Panorama.
This may result in some too-dark areas, ans some too-light areas — but it will more closely resemble what you actually saw. If you don’t do this your panorama will probably come out with stripes for each photo where the exposure settings are a little different. So how do you know what to set? Look for the brightest area in your panorama — say towards the sun if you are outside, and set the camera to the Auto setting. Press the shutter button halfway down and see what the readings are — say for example it is Shutter of 200, Aperture of 5.6. . Switch back to Manual mode and dial those settings in.
3b. If you can’t change all those settings you can try the following:
- Using the “A” or aperture Priority mode, and setting the Aperture for all the pictures to be the same. At least the depth of field will stay the same. Also set the Focus at one spot (infinity is a good choice for landscapes)
- Using the “Landscape” auto setting in your camera. This will be a little icon or dial setting that looks like a mountain. That will try to set the focus at infinity and use a small aperture.
4. Shoot the Panorama Multiple Times.
If you are just not sure how to set the camera, then try shooting the panorama a few times using different settings. Use the “Exposure Compensation” feature of your camera. This is a little +/- gauge somewhere on your readout. If you set the camera to always use a -1, for example, then all of your pictures will come out a little under exposed. This is OK because you can use Picasa or another program to make it look better. Try taking the panorama with different amount of overlap.
So lets look at an example, call this the “Worst Case Scenario:
Click the picture to see a larger version on Flickr
In this picture, I just set the camera on “P” and did not use a tripod, I did try to overlap the pictures by about 1/3 of a frame. You can see a bit of striping in the picture where the exposure of the different frames were a little bit different.
See how the top border is not level, that’s because I did not use a tripod and did not keep the camera moving on one plane. With some cropping, you can get rid of those curvy borders.
Here is how a panorama will look if you use the Panorama Assist feature of your Camera, and a tripod.
Click the picture to see a larger version on Flickr
You can see all the pictures used to create this Panorama in my Web Album:
A Panorama does not Have to be a full circle. You can stitch together just a few pictures to simulate a wider angle lens than your camera has.
Here are the individual shots for this Panorama:
Next, we’ll look at how to assemble these pictures into one great looking Panorama.
Please comment if you have any other techniques for getting better photographs to use in a panorama.
[tags]Autostitch, Panorama, Picasa, tutorial[/tags]
Tags: Photo Editing · Technique
Picasa has a very convenient one-click effect to create a Sepia tone image. Sepia tone images are great for creating an “old-time” photo effect. It is also nice to use Sepia tone as an alternative to pure black and white images.
You’ll need to get Picasa the photo editing software from Google to complete this tutorial.
In my opinion, the one-click version of Sepia that Picasa creates isn’t perfect.
Here is the one-click Sepia.
The images are too low on contrast, and the Sepia tone isn’t quite right for me. The one-click version is sort of a works-pretty-good-in-most-situations type deal. However, with a little tuning I think we can do better.
Here is the Sepia Tone image we want to get to:
Follow these steps to a better Sepia tone image:
- First Start with the image you want to sepia tone.
- Use Filtered B&W to create a pleasant B&W image. If there are people in the picture you might choose a yellow or Orange filter to improve skin tones.
- Then apply the sepia filter.
- Switch to the tuning tab, slide the highlights up one quarter of the way, and the shadows up to the mid point — these are approximate. The idea is to have a nice range of tones from deep rich darks to nice bright highlights.
- Switch back to the Effects tab, choose the Saturation effect and slide to the right approximately halfway between full desaturation and the midpoint.
Here is a comparison of before and after:
So, My parting questions for you are:
Do you like this kind of higher contrast “sepia”, or is the one-click better?
Can you think of where this kind of effect would work?
[tags]Mike DelGaudio, Picasa, Sepia, photo editing[/tags]
Tags: Photo Editing · Picasa · Technique
January 17th, 2007 · 3 Comments
Another great technique in for livening up your pictures is to use Focal Back and White. This is a simple technique thanks to the simplicity of Picasa.
You’ll need Picasa, the photo editing and management software from Google to do this.
This is so easy, and such a great effect.
Here is the before picture:
And After
Here are some other examples:
Tips to consider when applying the Focal Black and White Filter:
- Use the Saturation Effect before the Focal Black and White to desaturate your image. This makes the transition between color and b&w more subtle
- Think about applying the effect to non-circular items, using large soft focal areas.
[tags]Mike Delgaudio, Picasa, technique, photo editing, black and white, photo[/tags]
Tags: Photo Editing · Picasa · Technique
Photojojo has a great project where you take a picture and make a mailable mosaic. Essentially this project takes one picture, blows it up to poster size then prints out a bunch of pages that get cut up into postcard size chunks.
However, in the project they use Photoshop and a whole mess of steps to get the picture divided up into a bunch of sections that make up the individual postcards. I don’t know about you but I don’t have the manual dexterity to create a grid of perfect 4×6 prints using the Photoshop grid lines. I guarantee I won’t get it right the first time — and ink ain’t cheap, y’know?
If they only knew that this is a drop dead simple operation in Picasa. Oh well, it’ll just be our little secret.
Here is all you need to do:
- Select your photo.
- Click “Create” then “poster”
- Set to 400% (or larger for more prints) on 4×6 paper
- Picasa will create 16 (or more) prints, conveniently numbered with row and column in the File name
- Select the images and Print.
Viola! 16 postcards that just need a stamp, address and a nice little message to have a great project with lots of anticipation.
Even if you have Photoshop, It’s still worth it to use Picasa to create your mosaic, if only for simplicity’s sake!
[tags]Mike DelGaudio, Picasa, Poster, Photojojo[/tags]
Tags: Photo Editing · Picasa · Technique
Have you ever seen that “Marilyn” poster by Andy Warhol?
I like the pop-art feel of this poster and wanted to see if I could do it myself. Here is what I created:
Turns out, with Picasa — the photo editing software from Google — this is pretty doggone easy.
If you don’t have Picasa, you should.
Lets see how to do this!
First we’ll start with a portrait. Here is one of my daughter, that would otherwise be a throwaway pic.
First thing we do, is crop it to a square, in true Andy Warhol style.
Then we start creating our different quadrants. This is the fun part.
Take your cropped image and go to the tuning tab. Crank up the highlights and shadows slider. Then, slide up the Fill Light slider until you have something like this:
If you like the way this looks, choose “File” then “Save a copy”. This will make a copy of the picture into the same folder. This is your first quadrant:
Next, Apply a tint to the picture.
Go to the Effects Tab, then Click Tint. In the color chooser, choose a color that you like, then slide the Color Preservation slider all the way to the right. Like this:
Again, do a File | Save a copy. This is your second quadrant.
Ok, Undo All those changes except the crop. Once you are back to the image, change it to a black and white picture. (Effects tab, B&W)
Go back to the tuning tab and again, drag Highlights and Shadows all the way to the right. Drag Fill Light up until it looks good. Go back to the Effects Tab and Tint it again. Do a “File” then “Save a Copy”. This is your third quadrant.
One more time, undo all those changes except Crop.
This time Go to the Effects tab and go To “Saturation” then slide the Saturation slider all the way to the left. Switch over to tuning and slide those sliders the same way again. Repeat the tint effect with another color.
Do a final “File” | “Save a Copy” and you should now have four images in your folder that we created.
Select each of the 4 images, CTRL + CLICK each one. The four images should appear in the photo tray in the lower left hand corner of Picasa. Now we will create a Picture Grid Collage:
Go to “Create” then “Picture Collage”. In the “type” pull down menu, choose “Picture Grid”.
If you want to rearrange the pictures in the grid then click the Thumbnail of the image.
Voila, as they say. You have you’re very own pop art! Why not upload yours to Flickr and show us what you created!
Here is another version:
[tags]Mike DelGaudio, Picasa, photo editing, technique, warhol[/tags]
Tags: Photo Editing · Picasa · Technique
Picasa offers a whole bunch of one-click edits to pictures.
Picasa also allows you to apply those same effects to a whole batch of pictures at the same time
To select multiple pictures in Picasa you can click and drag a box around a group of adjacent pictures in the library, CTRL+click several non-adjacent pictures or hold SHIFT and click two pictures to select those and all the pictures in between.
You can perform the following basic Fixes effects in batch:
- Auto Contrast
- Auto Color
- I’m Feeling Lucky
And the following Effects
- Rename
- Rotate clockwise
- Rotate counterclockwise
You can also resize images in Batch using the “Export Picture to Folder” function found in the File Menu
[tags]Mike DelGaudio, Picasa, Photo Editing, Batch Editing[/tags]
Tags: Photo Editing · Picasa
Sometimes a picture just lends itself to being cropped in a a square. With Picasa, it’s easy.
- Select and image.
- Click “Crop” from the Basic Fixes Tab
- Press and hold the Shift Key
- Drag your perfect Square.
This method guarantees a perfect square aspect ratio to your crop.
Tags: Photo Editing · Picasa · Quick Tips
- I cropped the picture using the Perfect Square Cropping methods (which is holding down Shift while you drag a cropping box)
- I brought up the saturation just a bit to enhance the separation between the sky and clouds.
- I sharpened once to enhance the tips of the tree.
- I added a little soft focus around the tree. This smoothed out some camera noise and some artifacts from the sharpening.
So there you have it, a few subtle changes, and the picture as a whole is better.
[tags]Mike DelGaudio, Photo, Editing[/tags]
Tags: Photo · Photo Editing · Picasa · Technique
