[EdMak]

Some days your the dog, other days, the tree. Ed.

[Jocko]

A lovely little phrase. I'll write it down and use it in the future sometime.

[caveman]

Some days your the dog, other days, the tree. Ed.

how true

[EdMak]

Lady's version.

Some days you're the fly, other days, the windscreen. Ed.

[Jocko]

For my Christmas my better half bought me the Google/Nik software collection. I had previously downloaded the 30 day free trial and was suitably impressed. I found some good tutorial videos on YouTube especially those by Anthony Morganti.
Since Christmas I have been using their noise reduction, sharpening and Viveza, a great manipulation program. I bought Robin Whalley's collection of ebooks and they gave me a good insight as well.
Today I decided to try Color Efex Pro just to see if it can be of any use to my photography. It is a collection of customisable filters that you can use alone, or in combination, to manipulate images. I am working on one image, trying each filter to get an idea what, if anything, they can do for me.
Here are my first images.

Bi Colour Filter.
   

Bleach Bypass Filter.
   

Brilliance/Warmth Filter.
   

Classic Soft Focus Filter.
   

Colour Styliser Filter.
   

[Jocko]

I have been carrying on experimenting with Color Efex Pro but without a lot of success. I believe the software may have a purpose if you are into "arty" effects, but limited for my mainly landscape work. Here are some more examples.

   
Colour Contrast Range Filter (allows you to select what colour range you want to adjust the contrast of).

   
Contrast Only Filter. (Supposed not to alter saturation)

   
Dark Contrasts Filter. Very HDR like. good if you want to then convert to Monochrome.
   

[Jocko]

Saw a most amazing image tonight and I was not in a position to capture it. As I went to pick up my wife, from work, just before 8pm I have to drive down onto the Esplanade. There was a coaster lying off the front with its running lights on (not just the deck lights) but the full moon was behind it lighting up the waves. You could see the black shore of the south side of the firth behind it. It would not have been an easy image to make the most of, but I would have loved the opportunity to try.
With regards to my Color Efex Pro, I downloaded and watched a great video on portrait processing with Nik Software, today, and the guy used Color Efex Pro for nearly everything. It was great to see what a professional could do with it. Amazing bit of software.

[Jocko]

Had a shot at a portrait using Color Efex Pro 4. I don't normally take portraits, so this is a crop from a birthday group, of my step-daughter, Sharon. I think the processing turned out quite well.

   
Fuji S9500, 1/210 sec, f3.7, ISO 100.

What I did spot with this image, being as it was taken on a birthday, was that the EXIF date was wrong. Turns out I had made a schoolboy error of setting the camera time (12 hour clock) to PM instead of AM. Therefore pictures, taken between noon and midnight, showed the wrong day. It has been like that for years!
That prompted me to check all my cameras and I found both Nikons had Daylight Saving set ON, so they have been an hour out too. What a clown.

[caveman]

hope you don't mind John had a go at a little re=touch
just to soften it a bit

[EdMak]

Another outlook. Ed.

[Jocko]

Like the effects guys. The out of focus background is a must, but I was concentrating on what I learned yesterday, so didn't go down the Photoshop route. I'll have a go at the full bhuna this evening!

[caveman]

[caveman]

Hi guys,dont know how to remove background's yet!
king of technology-NOT!

[Jocko]

Here is this morning's work, a portrait of my good lady wife. This was taken last year, so started as a raw file and did not require a mammoth amount of enlarging. Only real drawback to the original photograph was it was taken with the camera's onboard flash.

   
Nikon D80, 1/60 sec, f5.3, ISO 200, 93mm lens equivalent.

[Jocko]

Beautiful (if cold) day here today, so I went for a wander, just before tea time. I decided to take a load of High ISO shots, to try and find the limitations of my system.
Here is the first.

   
Dysart foreshore
Nikon D80, Manual mode, 1/4000 sec, f16, ISO 3200, 72mm lens equivalent.
I have High ISO Noise Reduction switched off in camera.

[EdMak]

Looks good, as taken,or titavated. Ed.

[Jocko]

Looks good, as taken,or titavated. Ed.

Just my usual workstream. Raw capture (all sharpening and noise reduction switched off in camera), converted in Lightroom, Dfine 2 for noise reduction, Sharpener Pro 3:Raw Presharpener to replace that switched off in camera (corrects for the filter on the sensor), then finish off with Sharpener Pro 3: Output Sharpener which sharpens for output method, in this case for Display (this was much reduced because of the noisy image, compared with that for a smooth image).

[Jocko]

Completed the 30 Hi ISO images I took on Tuesday. Camera is not too bad for high contrast shots but less so for low contrast.
Here is one image from the set.

   
Nikon D80, Manual mode, 1/1000 sec, f11, ISO 1250, 69mm lens equivalent.

[Jocko]

More laptop misery today. Every so often, I backup my images from the computer to CD and eventually DVD. I make two discs (an archive disc and a backup or working disc) and these are stored separately. The CDs are camera specific (today it was the turn of Nikon D80 Vol 21) then all the images are lumped into a folder until I have enough to fill a DVD (Digital Images Vol6 today).
I started to burn a DVD, but halfway through it failed. I thought it was the disc, but on sticking a fresh disc in, the drive doesn't see it. The computer recognises the Optical drive is there, it is just the drive which doesn't see the disc. I tried it with several, bought, CDs and DVDs but no go.
I have ordered a replacement drive from the US, so I will see how I get on fitting that. My next computer will go back to a desktop model. I could have had a replacement DVD RW tomorrow for about £15 for a desktop machine!
I have ended up using my external drive but for some reason it does not verify, though the discs produced read perfectly well.

[caveman]

More laptop misery today. Every so often, I backup my images from the computer to CD and eventually DVD. I make two discs (an archive disc and a backup or working disc) and these are stored separately. The CDs are camera specific (today it was the turn of Nikon D80 Vol 21) then all the images are lumped into a folder until I have enough to fill a DVD (Digital Images Vol6 today).
I started to burn a DVD, but halfway through it failed. I thought it was the disc, but on sticking a fresh disc in, the drive doesn't see it. The computer recognises the Optical drive is there, it is just the drive which doesn't see the disc. I tried it with several, bought, CDs and DVDs but no go.
I have ordered a replacement drive from the US, so I will see how I get on fitting that. My next computer will go back to a desktop model. I could have had a replacement DVD RW tomorrow for about £15 for a desktop machine!
I have ended up using my external drive but for some reason it does not verify, though the discs produced read perfectly well.

May I refer you to ed's previous statement top of this page
good luck with it John.

[Jocko]

As far as computers are concerned I think I am always the tree!

[caveman]

As far as computers are concerned I think I am always the tree!

I know the feeling!

caveman by name
caveman by nature

[EdMak]

John, some days your the pigeon, other days, the statue!!!!! Ed.

[caveman]

John, some days your the pigeon, other days, the statue!!!!! Ed.

Some days your cruisin'
Some days your on the hard shoulder

[Jocko]

Found an interesting little quirk today (well interesting to me at any rate). I always work in TIFF right up until the death, then I convert to JPEG for final output.
I found that if I convert to JPEG, then resize for posting here, the file size is below the 1024 limit. However, if I resize, THEN convert to JPEG the size is about twice that of doing it the other way round. If I then resize the JPEG, 1 pixel smaller on any side, it halves the file size, making it acceptable for the forum.
I had been sharpening then resizing, and that is the wrong way to do it. The correct way is to resize for output, THEN to sharpen, and that is when I found the file size anomaly. I can understand why doing things the other way round results in a variation in file size, but why making such a tiny difference to final image size makes such a huge difference to file size. Perhaps someone can tell me?