onOne Software: Plug-in Suite 6 "II"

This evening, I spent a little more time testing out the latest offering from onOne Software.  I know that I praised it highly in my last post, and I was curious to see if I would still come away with the same impression.  Well, the short version is that I did.  In fact I only spent a few minutes working on the photo below.  Time is money, and I look forward to using these tools on my next project.  The fact that you can finish off some pretty amazing edits quickly almost makes you feel guilty.  OnOne’s entire goal is to get you back to shooting, and in this they succeed.

While the suite can be used from start to finish on an image, I would make the following recommendations on how to fit it into your workflow.

Still perform your general/basic edits (eg. white balance/cropping) in your editor of choice.  Use this part of the process to start coming up with ideas about what you would like to do with the image.  This is important as the “basic edits” that you are doing will directly affect the outcome of how the effects and other tools apply.  As much as the process here is meant to be creative, there is a very logical and stepwise method to approaching the editing.  Most of the time, these types of process are second nature, and I would assert that most people won’t realize that they are doing it.

Well for now, here is this evening’s photo.  I hope that you enjoy it.

onOne Software: Plug-in Suite 6

I have been a pretty big fan of onOne Software’s products over the years. I’ve used their plug-in suite through the past versions. When I heard that version 6 was on it’s way, I was pretty excited and curious as it seemed as version 5 had just been released. In any event, version 6 is definitely here and I’ve got to say that I’ve been thoroughly enjoying this version so far.

The fact that it is a stand alone product which can act solo or accept exports from Lightroom, Photoshop or Aperture. Though I have/use all three for different things, Lightroom is really the application that is the start and finish for most of my work. Exporting and re-importing from and back to Lightroom is seamless and is easy to use. Once in the Plug-in Suite, you are treated to a well thought out layout for each of the different components. The ease of use really does speed up work flow, and their presets stimulate the creative process.

Here are a couple of the photos that I quickly worked on which touched several of the new and improve products. I will be sharing more as I use the suite.

~Jared

When Things Come Together

Click to EnlargeLook at this photo.  Take your time and note some of the things that you like and dislike about it.  Is there anything that really stands out to you?  Does it make you think or feel anything?  Does it tell a story?

To me there are several things that stand out.  There is a story, and yes it does make me think and feel about some very specific things.  Is it a success?  To me the answer is yes, now that I’ve seen the image transform from where it started to the final product.  Perhaps when you see the photo transform you too will have a different appreciation.

Here is the base original photo.  It was shot at 1/800, f5.6, ISO 100, 300mm, Click to Enlargeand what you see here is the file as it looked after being converted to DNG with the standard preview.  Looks kind of blah, and that’s what I was thinking when I started to work with it.  To be honest I started playing around with it to test out Lightroom 3, but that changed when I realized that I also hadn’t really tested some of the updated onOne plugin’s that I use.  They are fantastic and utilize the power of Photoshop (CS5 in my case) to perform operations that while doable, may take a lot more time to perform manually.

Just to get it out of the way, let me just say that I am incredibly impressed when things come together.  The experience of starting an edit in Lightroom performing advanced processing in Photoshop and then bringing that edited file back into Lightroom to finish it off is fantastic.  Now with the combination of Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5, that process is that much better.  Throw in the ability to run everything in 64bit, and I’d say it is exactly what I’ve been waiting for since Lightroom 1 and Photoshop CS3.

Click to EnlargeHere is the photo cropped to create a composition that I thought suited the image.  Over the past little while, I have been checking out a variety of photographers that utilize negative space in their images exceptionally well.  This is definitely something that I feel that I need work on.  This may sound odd, but getting used to not having things in a composition can be both rather disconcerting and liberating at the same time.

In this next photo, I did some preliminary corrective work. This included adjusting the exposure, blacks, clarity and contrast.  I also performed a very slight “S” curve adjustment, followed by some very slight Saturation/Luminance adjustments to affect the blues and red tones.  In this photo, (and most photos in general) utilizing a “S” curve or some curve variant, tends to act as a good starting point when dealing with colour, versus going directly to Hue, Saturation or Luminance.  When I do use H/S/L, I try to keep those changes to be as subtle as possible.  If you do not use curves now in either Lightroom or Photoshop, I would really encourage you to try them.  The will change your workflow and approach to editing.  

Remember, one of the greatest things about using Lightroom is that it is a non-destructive environment, and you can simply “reset” your image if you don’t like the way it looks.  Go ahead and play, the worst thing that will happen is that you’ll learn something, and that something will probably be really cool!

Click to EnlargeDo you recognize this photo?  I bet it looks very similar to the one that you saw at the top of this Journal entry.  So what has gone on here?  Well, it was edited using onOne’s Focal Point 2 plug in.  This helped to control where the focus of the shot was and helped to control the out of focus areas.  After this had been applied, the photo was brought back into Lightroom 3, and received another round of slight tweaking using some of the same methods listed above.  

Finally, to finish things off, I touched up the sharpening slightly using onOne’s Genuine Fractals Professional 6 plug in.  After applying that small change the photo returned to Lightroom and was then considered done.

To wrap up this meandering post, I really like when all of the tools that I have at my disposal come together seamlessly.  Even in working on this photo, you could feel the amount of research and development that both Adobe and onOne has put into their current products.  In total, I spent about twenty minutes working on this image trying different things.  By the time I was done, I just wanted to start on another one, and to be honest, that’s probably what I’d still be doing if it weren’t for wanting to write this journal entry!

Thanks for reading. ~ Jared

Tools that I Use

It’s been a little while since I’ve written about some of the tools and techniques that I use when editing photos.  Part of this has been that I’ve been working on changing how I approach editing workflow, to make it more enjoyable for myself.  I find that the more that I learn about photography, the more I want to continue expanding my (in my opinion) novice skill set when it comes to editing and retouching my images into a final product.  The goal that I aspire towards is to be a well balanced and consistent visual artist.

As some of you know, my day job takes me out of town for extended periods of time and I live in an environment where I cannot bring my camera.  What I do bring with me is my laptop, and as much of my photographic collection as possible.  It is during these times I work on images and do most of my blogging.  

The image below was taken during my last shoot with my friend Graham, that was the subject of my last journal post.  To be a bit more specific, the image below is actually a HDR composite of five images ranging from -2 EV to +2 EV in one stop increments.  After exporting the images from Lightroom 3 beta to Photomatix Pro to do the blending and tone mapping, I discovered  the good and bad about the image.  The good was that I love the golden sunlight that was brought out; and the bad was that it was very obvious how windy that day was, especially with the trees in the foreground.

At first I thought that the image was a lost cause, but then decided to work at it using some of the other tools that I employ from time to time.  I opened the image in Photoshop CS4 and first went to the Phototools plugin by onOne Software.  With it I did a very basic adjustment to adjust the orange/yellow saturation slightly across the image.  I followed this with opening Focal Point 2, also by onOne Software, and proceeded to create the blurring, and vignette on the image.  After this I brought the image back into LR3b where i adjusted the sharpness slightly.  The thing to note about the onOne Software plugins is that they use Photoshop’s resources to provide the edits.  Yes, you could do all of the same edits by just using Photoshop, but onOne’s plugins are very intuitive and natural feeling to use.  

In any event, here is the final product that I came up with.  As always, thanks for reading!

Looking across the Edmonton river valley to the U of A Campus

onOne Plug-in Software

Over the last couple of months I have been using the Plug-In Suite 4.5 from onOne Software.  At first I wasn’t sure how I would use some of the tools, or if I’d use them effectively at all.  A couple months in, and upgrading the tools to the latest release, I have to say that I’ve been extremely impressed by each of the tools in different ways. The tools that I have used most consistantly have been PhotoTools 2 and FocalPoint 1.1.  Both tools are fantastic, easy to use and provide great looking results while speeding up workflow. 

It wasn’t until I started to work on a picture of a flower girl from a wedding I shot last fall that I saw the power of Mask Pro 4.1.  The problem was that I needed to put the flower girl on on her own layer so that I could adjust her separately from the background.  The issue came when I went to create the layer mask, as zooming in on her hair made me realize that the procedure would be very difficult.  I thought this would be a good test for Mask Pro 4.1 and I wasn’t disapointed.  By working with Mask Pro’s easy to use tools and tutorials, I was able to create the layer that I didn’t would be possible.

Overall, if I had to pick one word to describe onOne’s Software it would be “inspiring.”  I would recommend these plug-in tools highly, and would encourage you to download the demo to try them out for yourself.

Thanks for reading.