Category Archive: Photo Post-processing

First Round 4 Title Stories voting reminder plus Photoshop Mix and Paper Artist Stuff

Frenzy

The Round 4 stories went live this past Tuesday. As a reminder, Round 4 of the Title Writing Prompt challenge closes at Noon, Tuesday, July 19th. You can find the poll and stories links in THIS post.

Now, then . . . . Photoshop Mix. As previously mentioned, the app was retired, but if you have on your phone, it will keep working. However, if Adobe takes their clues from Google, at some point they will deprecate it and make it unusable. Since I don’t know long it will keep working, I’m playing around with it a fair amount and generating stuff I can use in the future (saving the output as JPGs).

For this post, I’m using the combination of three photos; my backyard, a shot of some winter Aspens, and a photo I now don’t recall blended together to generate this . . .

Then, I sent the above to my Paper Artist app . . . another app that’s no longer available but that’s hanging on to life on my phone.

I have a few favorite effects, so I keep using them and then, but I should try to blend them to see that I get . . . maybe next time, but for now . . .

Continue reading →

Topaz Legacy Plugins — Birds

Galactic Worms

On a recent comment, oneowner and I discussed Topaz’s Legacy plugins . . . which prompted me to play with a few I haven’t used in a while. The photos I used to play with the plugins were those of the recent bird post (HERE).

The first candidate was the Gray Catbird . . .

My aim was to transform photos into drawings. I think the above is me using Impression 2. I liked the results, so I continued.

Continue reading →

February 2022 Monochrome Ice Storm Macros

Pressure Points

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post, namely, the monochrome versions of those shots. Typically, I would lump those photos together — color and monochrome — in one post, plus add a bunch more semi-related photos.

Unfortunately, all that takes time to compose and read, as can be experienced by reading THIS post.

Anyway, let me recreate the previous post in monochrome, starting with . . .

I vacillate between thinking chromatic is the better choice and monochromatic as the way to go. Of course, it depends on the subject, one’s preference, the skill of the photographer in processing each version, the preference of the reader (typically fickle and affected by their mood), and, obviously, the current moon phase.

Continue reading →

The SDS Challenge — Results of “Sloth” Voting Round

The SDS “Sloth” voting round has come to an end.

Here’s the updated logo . . .

If you want to know more about the SDS challenge, THIS Post <<link explains it.

If you want to read the Seven Deadly Sins stories submitted for the Sin of Sloth and see the results of the vote, THIS POST <<link is what you want to visit.

Continue reading →

December 2021 Moon

On December 11, 2021, I shot this image of the moon with the Nikon P900. I cropped the sides a bit, and output the image with a maximum dimension of 1200 pixels (for the purpose of what I’m posting, there’s no advantage in viewing the original size).

This has no processing other than mentioned above.

Yes, the sky was blue because I shot this a little after 4:00 pm, when it was still light. Let me show you two versions, one post-processed with Topaz DeNoise AI, the other with Topaz Sharpen AI, and then both processed using Lightroom to turn them into Monochrome images.

Continue reading →

Ice Disks

For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS<<link SmugMug Gallery.  

For a SmugMug slideshow, click HERE<<link. When you click the link, it will open in a new window, and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos.
2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos (this will pause the slideshow).

If you want the full experience, keep reading.

That’s yet another ice disk I pulled from one of my birdbaths following a partial thaw of the ice contained therein. I’ve shared such disks before, like, for instance in THIS post.

That was from two years ago, and I then had only one birdbath . . . I now have four, and I’m sharing the discs from three of them. The fourth birdbath is roughly heart-shaped, and I broke the ice before it dawned on me to photograph it.

Continue reading →

The SDS Challenge — Results of “Pride” Voting Round

The SDS “Pride” voting round has come to an end.

Here’s the updated logo . . .

If you want to know more about the SDS challenge, THIS Post <<link explains it.

If you want to read the Seven Deadly Sins stories submitted for the Sin of Pride and see the results of the vote, THIS POST <<link is what you want to visit.

Continue reading →

The SDS Challenge — Second Pride Voting Reminder

This is a quick reminder that the voting for the SDS Challenge Pride Stories ends at Noon, January 6, 2022. We had a quick flurry of votes before it came to a screeching halt well short of our typical volume for this challenge . . . but, then, we still have seven days (six if you don’t count today) to pick up the slack.

If you are new to the SDS Challenge, a little background.

Three writers will each write one story a month, going down the list of deadly sins. The stories can be anywhere from 666 words to 6,666 words in length, although those numbers are not set in stone (and Perry has blown them out of the water and into orbit). If ambitious, the writers will provide accompanying graphics. These stories will not be anonymous because some writers may want to use the same characters for each story and write a series — or book — encompassing all seven sins. Finally, interpretation of the titular sin is up to the writer. Meaning, each ‘sin’ can take multiple forms.

Disclaimer: The writing challenge has no restrictions, and the stories will likely span a wide gamut of genres. Most of the stories fall in the PG-rating range, with a few perhaps pushing into the soft R-rating. Some readers might find a few of the stories disturbing because of the topics, language, and/or plot points, and if so, stop reading and move on.

If you want to read the Seven Deadly Sins submissions for the Sin of Pride, and then vote, your gateway is THIS POST <<link. There, you’ll find links to each of the three stories and a poll for you to vote after you finish them (if you be so moved).

Continue reading →

The SDS Challenge — First Pride Voting Reminder

This is a quick reminder that the voting for the SDS Challenge Pride Stories is underway.

If you are new to the SDS Challenge, a little background.

Three writers will each write one story a month, going down the list of deadly sins. The stories can be anywhere from 666 words to 6,666 words in length, although those numbers are not set in stone (and Perry has blown them out of the water and into orbit). If ambitious, the writers will provide accompanying graphics. These stories will not be anonymous because some writers may want to use the same characters for each story and write a series — or book — encompassing all seven sins. Finally, interpretation of the titular sin is up to the writer. Meaning, each ‘sin’ can take multiple forms.

Disclaimer: The writing challenge has no restrictions, and the stories will likely span a wide gamut of genres. Most of the stories fall in the PG-rating range, with a few perhaps pushing into the soft R-rating. Some readers might find a few of the stories disturbing because of the topics, language, and/or plot points, and if so, stop reading and move on.

If you want to read the Seven Deadly Sins submissions for the Sin of Pride, and then vote, your gateway is THIS POST <<link. There, you’ll find links to each of the three stories and a poll for you to vote after you finish them (if you be so moved).

Continue reading →

The SDS Challenge — Results of “Envy” Voting Round

The SDS “Wrath” voting round has come to an end.

Here’s the updated logo . . .

If you want to know more about the SDS challenge, THIS Post <<link explains it.

If you want to read the Seven Deadly Sins stories submitted for the Sin of Envy and see the results of the vote, THIS POST <<link is what you want to visit.

Continue reading →

The SDS Challenge — Last “Envy” Voting Reminder in monochome

Can you believe it’s been almost four weeks? That’s right; you have less than two days before the voting closes. I wouldn’t wait until the turkey is in the oven, but that’s up to you.

If you are new to the SDS Challenge, a little background.

Three writers will each write one story a month going down the list of deadly sins. The stories can be anywhere from 666 words to 6,666 words in length, although those numbers are not set in stone. If ambitious, the writers will provide accompanying graphics. These stories will not be anonymous because some writers may want to use the same characters for each story and write a series — or book — encompassing all seven sins. Finally, interpretation of the titular sin is up to the writer. Meaning, each ‘sin’ can take multiple forms.

Disclaimer: The writing challenge has no restrictions and the stories will likely span a wide gamut of genres. The majority of the stories fall in the PG-rating range with a few perhaps pushing into the soft R-rating. Some readers might find a few of the stories disturbing because of the topics, language, and/or plot points, and if so, stop reading and move on.

If you want to read the Seven Deadly Sins submissions for the Sin of Envy, and then vote, your gateway is THIS POST <<link. There, you’ll find links to each of the three stories and a poll for you to vote after you finish them (if you be so moved).

Continue reading →

Old Hawk Photos Reworked 002

For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS<<link SmugMug Gallery.  

For a SmugMug slideshow click HERE<<link  When you click the link, it will open in a new window and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos.
2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button/symbol at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos as this will pause the slideshow.

The first post in this two posts series is at this LINK. In that post, I specified that the photos in the SmugMug Gallery are the same size as what was in the blog post.

Well, no longer . . . these reworked photos were run through Topaz Lab Gigapixels AI to double their size. That means that even a crop of the photo is still substantial For example, this photo (JPG output of the RAW file as it came out of the D7000 camera) . . . .

Turns into this cropped, cleaned, enlarged, and processed photo . . .

Continue reading →

DxO PhotoLab samples

Edited to Add: I figure I should include a link to the SmugMug Gallery (LINK) for them inclined to visit it and see the full-size photos.

I’ve been using DxO’s PureRAW as a pre-processor for many of my latest photos and I wanted to do a quick test with DxO PhotoLab to compare the two.

With PhotoLab, the output is used pretty much as is, while PureRAW has to be further processed in Lightroom. Well, “has to” is a bit strong. I usually process it because the output is a bit too aggressive and contrasty for my tastes, but it’s a good starting point.

Remember this panorama?

That’s six photos processed in PureRAW and then tweaked in Lightroom. Here’s the photos processed in PhotoLab, also stitched into a panorama.

Continue reading →