wrote in message
On Mar 29, 1:38 pm, "KatWoman"
wrote:
I will DL the demo soon and check it out.
So far everything I need and use (and more) is in CS
But I like to keep current and I never used CS2 so I’m sure it will be a bit
of a change (not my fave when I am in a hurry)
As an experienced professional you know what you need. Since, as a student, I am not sure what I will need I have decided to rely on Adobe’s relationship with its users to guide me. In other words, if Adobe thinks I need it I think I need it too – for now.
the idea of the sharpening being non destructive is very attractive and maybe the idea of smart objects will become clearer upon using it.
Almost all of my Photoshop files begin by ‘placing’ a raw image or an AI vector file from Bridge. Just try that next time you work on a project, I bet you will never not do it again. Having that raw there to go back to any time and recrop, rewhite balance, resize, recurve etc. is invaluable. It is even more important when you start ‘placing’ your vectors. And once you start nesting them your workflow will never be the same. Plus you can add masks and styles to them.
The trick for me has been getting the relative sizes right.
I am going to put a up a crappy photo I had to fix.
I like what you did with Spa. The glow from the chandelier and the light reflected from the ceiling is fantastic. I’m sure you could have done as well by using styles if you wanted. And natural or not the increased saturation is a great improvement. The thing I have noticed from TV and movies is that for human perception two things are most important; saturation and contrast. Just watch ‘Sin City’, not my favorite movie but a good argument for the idea that drama equals saturation and contrast. That is why I lost interest in HDR. I have yet to see an HDR image that does not dilute saturation and contrast.
I found the object between the mouths of the couple in Barshot to be distracting but otherwise I think your edits are subtle but tasteful and make the shot much better – especially changing the color and fit of the dress. She might not mind if you added a catch light to her near eye and push her tummy in just a bit.
I am thankful that I work with a talented photographer and rarely have to start from bad images.
Most of my photo sourcing is "in-house" on my hard drives. I also work with my own photos and only learned PS because of photography.
Same reason I learned makeup arts. With PS I can take that to the next level.
I have never been interested in making journalistic or realistic, every pore
showing, images (although I like them and "get it") I guess like the Greek
artists I am interested in the idea of perfection of the human form, not reality. So for work I fix hubby pics of people, and for myself I shoot flowers and some landscapes, behind the scenes snapshots and candid portraits.
It is much more interesting to me to start with a good image and make it great.
For so many years we were not able to control this part of image making***,
so it has made me feel fresh about being creative again.
When I started out in photography I embraced the old school idea of doing everything possible inside the camera with a premium on minimizing post processing. I think that if I had not been so stubbornly attached to the idea of shooting everything in raw I would still be in that mode today and never realized the value of post processing. But since I did shoot raw that meant conversion and conversion led to correction and from correction to editing and what editor does not want to apply special effects now and then. I still think the proper mindset for the photographer is to minimize post, like you said, I "get it", but I have been seduced by graphics away from photography and no longer consider myself an aspiring photographer. I have lost interest in producing accurate images and now I want to produce satisfying images.
** had to send out for expensive dye transfers or airbrush or scrape off the
silver on BW papers with a razor knife (etching)
Boring
I have never used PLACE
except in ILLY which I rarely use
I also use vector very very rarely
I am mostly dealing with photos in JPG to start (file >open) I always keep a copy of my original image as the background, that way I can always refer to it as it is there in the same file (saved in layers as psd) with all adjustments above in layers
For finished work I flatten and save as tiff with crop I want I keep the layered psd file for any further edits and in case different crop is required I have the full original there
I make a new jpg file for sharing over internet or email of the finished piece
I keep the original file untouched as archive or reference
I do not understand how you think I could use layer style to get the lights on
I saw a couple of features in CS3 that look worth getting for my work style the new selection dialog, where you can see the feather effect on the mask before saying OK is great!
the BW conversion dialog also will save time and reduce amount of clicks and layers needed
I think the steps in creating visuals are very individual, how to combine in camera capture and after processes. I prefer to judge the work visually not by techniques used to make it. But if I like a piece I am always curious about "how did they do that?" If you are a technical photographer documenting something yes realism and accuracy as you say may be the goal, I am not very technical I was a painter, I prefer a looser style.
In the real world as a photographer you are not always hired for both parts. Still on a lot of jobs we hand over "as is" images straight from camera for someone else’s art department to alter. I always hold my breath and am disappointed frequently. Some jobs are for making money which makes it more palatable.