Welcome to a brand new feature — the Weekly Wrap-Up — a compendium of some of the articles published this week on Photofocus.
How to apply haze removal tool selectively in Affinity Photo - In this article, I am going to show you how I use the masks and the Haze Tool in Affinity Photo to apply it selectively. The above panorama consists of six photographs shot with my DJI Inspire 2 drone using the X5S camera and an Olympus 12mm f/2 lens. I corrected each photograph in Capture One Pro using the Lutify LM-RAW-CL-Chiara-25 LUT and then made further adjustments. I then exported the six photographs as 16-bit TIFF files to AutoPano Pro, stitched them together and exported the final result as a 16-bit TIFF. The next step is to take it into Affinity Photo and apply the Haze Filter using a mask so I can apply it selectively rather than to the entire image. I want to thank toltec on the Affinity Forum for their help in my understanding of this process in Affinity Photo. See the video below for how to do this. You’ll find a trial version for Affinity Photo here. You’ll find the Capture One Page for Lutify LUTs here. You’ll find a trial version of Capture One Pro 11 here. Watch the video Conclusion Now that you know how to do this with the Haze Removal tool, try it with other tools as well. Fly safe and have fun! DJI Mavic Air at B&H DJI Mavic Pro at B&H DJI Mavic Pro 2 at B&H DJI Mavic Pro Zoom DJI Phantom 4 Pro at B&H DJI Inspire 2 at B&H All Drones at B&H
Big, fast protected storage! Drobo introduces the 8D - Pictures and videos are getting larger and people are creating more and more of them. As the size and number of photos — moving or still — grows, the need for fast, protected storage does as well. Drobo 8D — big, fast, protected storage available today While size certainly matters when it comes to holding the terabytes of photos and videos that seem to increase all on their own, it’s critical to have all of those memories or work product for that matter, stored in a way that when (not if) a hard drive fails the data is protected and available. That’s what Drobos have always done. They are protected storage that keeps data safe and available when a drive fails and is replaced in the unit. As the need for more and more space on a single volume increases, Drobo has added to its product line. Today the StorCentric company is releasing the Drobo 8D a desktop attached storage (DAS) behemoth that offers a single volume of 128 terabytes and, with Thunderbolt™ 3 blazing fast read/write speeds. 8D overview Photofocus publisher Rich Harrington sat down with StorCentric V.P. of Engineering Rod Harrison at a private briefing in New York City. Drobo style The Drobo 8D shares the same look and physical characteristics as the other three 8-bay devices in the line — the B810n (network attached storage or NAS), the B810i (iSCSI device) and the iSCSI highly popular DroboPro. The black metal case and dark drive cover with drive and capacity indicators carry the Drobo logo and nothing else. Features 8 bays for hard drives Two Thunderbolt™ 3ports 128 TB volume support First Drobo with NEW Intelligent Volume Management Supports two 4K monitors or one 5K monitor First 8-bay with Rear Slot Accelerator Bay for 2.5″ SSD Dual fans for cooling efficiency Internal power supply The flip side The back of the Drobo 8D shows two powerful but practically silent fans to keep the drives and the internal processor cool running. The power supply is integrated into the case. A 2.5″ SSD slot sits between the two fans. An SSD inserted in the slot serves as a high-speed cache to make file access remarkably fast. Dual Thunderbolt™ 3 ports support up to two 4K or one 5K monitor downstream from the 8D. Finally in the lower right corner is the power button. Free SSD 2.5″ drive with purchase (limited time) The Drobo 8D is available now from the Drobo Store. Units purchased through 11/27/2018 will receive a free 250GB SSD for the accelerator bay. The suggested MSRP is $1,299.00.
First Look: Lume Cube AIR - The new Lume Cube AIR is even more compact than the original and with a longer battery life. It has a powerful magnet on the back for mounting to any ferrous surface and it includes two diffusions domes (one white and one for tungsten lights (CTO)). You can control all its features from the LumeX app, which is a free download from your mobile device’s app store. The video below expounds on how to get started using it. We’ll have more reviews and use cases coming soon, but for now, go pick up the new Lume Cube AIR and start creating. It’s available today for $69.95.
A glimpse into ACDSee’s new Color EQ Contrast tool - I recently got the chance to check out the new ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2019, which features a wide array of upgrades over the previous version. One of those is with the program’s Color EQ pane. Being used to Adobe Lightroom, adjusting things like Saturation, Brightness and Hue were all familiar to me. But adjusting the color contrast? That’s something that sets ACDSee apart. Edit the contrast of specific colors with Color EQ Color EQ is familiar if you’re coming from a program like Lightroom. But the ability to increase and decrease the contrast in each color is something unique to ACDSee’s program. This allows you to target exact colors and brightness ranges to bring out contrast details in your photograph. Here’s how it works. You get started in the Develop module. Here you’ll see your typical adjustment panes — General, White Balance, Light EQ, Color EQ, etc. When you select High Quality from the Mode drop-down in Color EQ, you’ll see four tabs — Saturation, Brightness, Hue and Contrast. I took a photograph I shot last weekend during a football game, and did my normal edits, increasing things like exposure, highlight enhancement, fill light, contrast and more. It was headed in the right direction, but I felt like certain areas of the image were flat. Two areas in particular — the turf and player’s jersey looked really flat. Once my basic edits were complete, I went to the Contrast tab in Color EQ. To add some contrast to the player’s jersey, I bumped up the Red slider. To add some contrast to the turf, I increased the Green slider. I made a few other tweaks to get it exactly how I wanted. Here’s the before and after: Brush in Color EQ While you’re able to edit Color EQ settings straight from the Develop module, you have even more control over it in the Edit module. This allows you to selectively brush over areas of the image where you’d like to see the Color EQ settings take place. For me, I wanted to add a bit more contrast to the player’s jersey, but didn’t want to affect the rest of the photograph. I was able to brush in Color EQ and then apply my contrast settings to just the jersey part of the photograph. You have ultimate control here, controlling the size of the brush, feathering, pressure and tolerance. It works really well, and is very precise. Taking contrast to the next level I always like to add some contrast to my photographs. And with the new Color EQ Contrast tool, I can easily affect either my entire image or just specific portions of it with ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2019. Learn more about ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2019, and download a free trial today!
Fixing your white balance: The ultimate solution - As I kept on playing with the Illuminati instruments incident and color light meter I’d been given a few weeks ago, I discovered that I love putting the color meter to the test. I am always in situations where colors in my camera can get a little crazy – whether I’m in a gym, outdoors or even in front of a white wall. In this article, I test different environments and lights, both with my camera’s automatic white balance and the Illuminati’s color meter. I also explain how to use the device to get a perfect read on color — every time. Unlike fashion photographers, I don’t have the absolute necessity to provide accurate colors in my images. So to me, owning a light/color meter was not a priority — even less considering it meant a $750+ investment for traditional incident meters and well over $1,500.00 for a color meter. I shoot RAW so I always have the possibility to fix my white balance in post-production if I didn’t get it right at the photo shoot. I shoot 90% of the time in ambient light. I make little use of strobes — as I don’t want to interfere with the athletes as they are training or competing. I was pretty curious to find how the Illuminati meter could help me with my daily workflow so I gave it a try. But first, I had to get back to my basics… Reflective light Vs. Incident light Our cameras read reflective light to calculate exposure and white balance. That means that it only sees the light that bounces from the subject to the camera’s sensor. Simply put, the camera sees the colors being reflected at it. If you are outdoors with a lot of leafy trees and your subject is standing on the grass, your camera thinks “Hmmm there is a lot of green in here, better put some magenta to make it right!”. Well… pink and pale and skin tones are not what we are looking for, thanks but no thanks! This problem is solved when you use a color meter: the biggest advantage of using the Illuminati meter is that it only reads the incident light. The incident light is the light that is falling on the subject. That way, I know exactly what the color temperature my light source is and that’s exactly what I put in my camera’s custom white balance setting. There’s no more guessing. I turn on the meter, point it at the light and I know instantly what my color temperature is. For example, with fluorescents, it could be something like 3450ºK or for outdoors on a sunny day in open shade it could be 10560ºK). The “K” is for the Kelvin scale used to measure color temperature. As I am not as nerdy-technician-enthusiast as my dear friend Bryan is, and knowing there are no risks for me to explode whatsoever, understanding the difference between reflective light (boo) and incident light (yay) is more than enough for me to grab that thing and get out there. Kevin Ames wrote an article explaining the difference between reflected and incident light. How to “correctly” use a light/color meter The main mistake is metering the light from where we are standing to take our picture. This will read the reflective light already influenced by the color of the subject (exactly the same as what our cameras do). The proper method is to aim the color meter at the source of light. It means that you have to stand close to your subject and direct the meter towards the main source of illumination. It is very simple… yet very important! A few examples Example 1 (aka gym lights + red walls) Who doesn’t like some “pretty” fluorescent lights? I don’t. But I have to live with it since I spend most of my time in gyms. I used to shoot everything in auto white-balance (AWB) and fix it later in post-production. Well, for all the gym rats out there, I’ve got some really exciting news for you. No more green/blue/magenta skin tone for your athletes ever again! And no more time wasted in post-production working to make them look human again. In this example, my camera had a double challenge: the fluorescents AND the red walls (the school made sure nobody would EVER fall asleep at their basketball games…). My camera’s AWB went for 3400K but the real white balance (as of my Illuminati metering) was 3600K. This saved me a LOT of time on my editing workflow. Example 2 (aka the white wall on a sunny day in open shade) This picture was taken outdoors with a white wall behind my model. 5950K was perfect according to the camera – if the wall was indeed perfectly white. But it wasn’t! It had a bluish tint. The actual reading with the Illuminati device was 360ºK cooler than my camera’s AWB. Can you see the huge difference in the athlete’s skin tone? The wall looks whiter too. Example 3 (aka fluorescents + dark floor + wood wall) Wood walls are pretty popular in CrossFit gyms. And it also makes my camera’s AWB go crazy. There was a whopping 1000ºK difference between my AWB and the actual real-life color temperature reading. 1000ºK! Can you imagine how the athletes would have looked — pale and sick?! Sometimes, a yellow wall is a yellow wall and the camera shouldn’t try to fix it for us. My wrap up I can definitely see differences – sometimes slightly, sometimes hugely – between my camera’s AWB and the Illuminati color meter. The main benefits of using the meter for me are consistency, accuracy and time-saving in post-production, which makes it the ultimate solution for fixing my white balance in any situation. If you’d like to know more about the Illuminati meter, here is my previous article where I share my thoughts on my first look on the device. You can buy one here.
The recipe for balancing natural light with flash - Balancing natural light with flash isn’t complicated — once you have the ingredients and know the recipe! 
