Archive for October 2008
Old Photo Effect Using Adobe Photoshop
Actually I want to write this tutorial long time ago, but I think my previous technique isn’t very good so I postpone it – until now. I already collect some basic idea from other people in internet about old photo effect using Photoshop. There are some basics technique that many people used it – in this tutorial I tried to combine some ideas from many people. You also can combine many techniques depend on your needs – of course every people will have different needs.
There are some options how to create old photo effect:
1. Monochrome (B&W) or Old Color Photo: you need to choose what type of old photo do you want to create, some people like monochrome but other people maybe like old color photo.
2. Noise: some people maybe think that old photo must have noise – but I think it’s not always – I ever see old effect technique that does not need noise.
3. Blurry (soft) Effect: some people add blurry effect that make the photo not too sharp and a little bit soft.
4. Low Contrast or High Contrast: some people create low contrast old photo, but the other people also makes high contrast old photo.
Painting on Canvas Effect Using Photoshop CS 2 or CS 3
Last week (October 18th, 2008) I went to Green World Ecological Farm in 新竹 (Xin Zhu), 台灣 (Taiwan). The place is very nice – I think it’s like combination of zoo and botanical garden. If you are interesting to visit Taiwan and you wanna go to this place, you can see the detail here. I took many photos in Green World, one of animals that I like most is Macau – beautiful bird, like parrot and cockatoo but it bigger and more colourful.
Because it’s very beautiful, it’s natural if some painters try to paint it on canvas. i also want to paint it on canvas but I don’t have excellent drawing and painting skill on canvas. In this case, I just can use my camera to take the photo. Since I don’t have such excellent painting skill – I try to use some image editing techniques. First, I can show you the original photo (below).
Correcting Washout Photo Using Photoshop
Anyone have ever dealing washout photo problem? This problem is very annoying especially for day photography. December 12th, 2008 I went to 內灣 (nei wan) – and take some photos – I went there for refreshing after we going to pilgrimage. I am happy because that day is very nice – not rainy. But when I back to home and transfer photo to my notebook, I think that some photos are very bright – (washout). Of course there are many ways to correct this problem, I try some simple & basic processing and also try some modification technique.
Some people use auto level, auto contrast, and auto color to correct this problem. In general case maybe this way is faster than use level(manually), curve, and brightness & contrast control. I also read some issues about brightness & contrast effectiveness in Photoshop – you can see this link. He said no to brightness & contrast in Photoshop – but for Photoshop CS3 he said brightness & contrast are more effective ( you can see this link). Anyway I use Photoshop CS 2 – I don’t know about brightness & contrast effectiveness for Photoshop CS2. Honestly I seldom use brightness & contrast control, I think curve is professional tool that better than brightness & contrast control – but it’s not very comfortable to use. In many cases I prefer to use level and (layer + masking), but every person should have the most suitable way for him to improve or correct the photo.
I will take the photo above as example – and I will explain how to correct the photo. Of course you can try other way to correct the photo – like I said before: “everyone should have the most suitable way for him to improve or correct the photo”.
Make Action for Photoshop
I wrote this tutorial because my friend ask me how to resize many photos automatically. He uses Canon Kiss Digital X to take photo and save the photo in large size. Using large format setting is better than use small or medium size (large photo -> resize to small photo, photo quality not much change, small photo -> resize to larger photo, photo quality change much). When he wants to upload photo to friendster or facebook, he resize every photo and he thinks it is very boring and wasting the time – (photo size is important especially for webpage because it will influence uploading time and sometimes it’s not needed to put very large photo).
Actually to solve this problem is very easy – you can resize many photos with other simple program such as ACDSee. I use ACDSee as my photo browser – I think it’s better than windows image viewer, sometimes I also use ACDSee to automate batch resize or rename. The reason I use ACDSee to resize or rename because it takes less memory and faster than Photoshop. But for special case we can’t depend only on ACDsee – because sometimes you need other editing such as leveling, curve, color balance, contrast & brightness, etc. For example you need to do autolevel and change brightness & contrast for many photos – you don’t need to click every photo and doing it manually. You can do this by make an action or script and using automate batch for many photos.
Now in order to make an action, you need to click Window->Action, after that you will see action menu. In action menu you’ll only see Default Actions. You need to choose new action to make an action script (see below).
Present from Indonesia
Long time not write my blog because I back to Indonesia for two major reasons. First reason is to apply working visa, this visa is required for Taiwan government to work in Taiwan. Second reason is family gathering – almost one year I don’t see my parents, brothers so I am very happy when I see them. When I back to Indonesia, someone give my father super red arowana plus big aquarium, super red is one type of Asian arowana. Super red arowana is endangered species, actually in Indonesia some people eat arowana long time ago – but now because the price is expensive, almost no people eat arowana. Some people believe that arowana (especially super red arowana) will bring prosperity. I don’t think that’s true – I just happy see it “dancing” in front my eyes. The detail about Asian arowana can be seen here.
