This week, Julie Powell kicked things off with a review of the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 for Sony cameras. Then, Bryan Esler talked with Will Allen about the Content Authenticity Initiative, while Levi Sim gave a first look into the new Color Grading tool in Lightroom.
Ken Lee provided a comparison between Photoshop and Luminar when it comes to sky replacement, and Scott Wyden Kivowitz sat down with Dave Cross about the Photoshop Virtual Summit II. Finally, Michèle Grenier wrote about her experience hanging a ginormous print for her client.
Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 a great all-rounder for Sony photographers - When I first switched over to my Sony system, I had a basic kit lens which I bought with it. It was great, but had a variable f/3.5-5.6 aperture. I wanted something that would do f/2.8 without breaking the bank. After talking to a few photographer friends and doing a bit of research I bought the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 A036 lens (B&H | Amazon). It was lightweight and fast, which was just what I wanted for studio portraits. I wanted something that would perform well in low light as well as with the studio lights. It quickly became my go-to workhorse for nature, landscapes, as well as portraits. I regularly put it through its paces with my Sony a7R III. Beautiful portraits I wanted something that would give me a gorgeous portrait with studio strobes and natural light, lovely detail and some really nice bokeh. I was not disappointed. This lens was to become a fairly standard performer and my go-to. I have other Zeiss primes lenses, but they can only offer a close up in my smaller studio space. The 28-75mm zoom allows me to obtain full body shots (with minimal distortion) from the 28mm wide-angle through to 75mm for close-ups with minimal compression that you can often get with a zoom. Not that I am against compression from a larger zoom … just not in my small studio. Great for still life OK, so it’s no macro lens, but I knew that when I bought it (I already have a macro lens). But it does allow you to get up pretty close on the 75mm (15.3 inches) and an image magnification of 1:4, so you can shoot fairly up close and get a nice blur like a macro. At 28mm it has a working distance of just 2.24 inches, which can give you some unique perspectives. Great for nature photography Like I said, this lens has become my go-to workhorse. I usually have it on my camera when I go to the local nature reserve and park. Throw my extension tubes in my pocket and I can capture everything from extreme macro to lovely landscapes. Autofocus is fast and super quiet, another positive when it comes to nature photography. It also works well with the Sony AF-C mode, too. I found the zoom to be rather inadequate for shooting birds, as I had to get in fairly close. A longer zoom — say 200-300mm — would perform much better at a distance. But then again, I am not really much of a bird photographer. Handles landscapes well, too The 28mm does a fairly good job as a midrange wide-angle, and works perfectly fine with the Sony bracketing system. I get a lovely bokeh and good dynamic range on a basic landscape. Specs Focal length: 28-75mm Aperture range: f/2.8-f/22 Aperture blades: 9 circular Filter size: 67mm (max diameter 73mm) Length: 4.6 inches Weight: 550 grams (19.4 oz.) Mount: E-mount; designed for full-frame. Will also work with APS-C. The body is lightweight and compact, smooth and easy to keep clean, the lens is moisture-resistant and has fluorine coating for protection against weather and oily fingerprints. The manual focus ring is smooth in its transition and zoom ring is ridged for grip (without being too much) and also smooth. A good all-rounder If you mostly do studio work — say still life or portraits — and want a really fast, quiet lens that is a good performer without breaking the bank, then the Tamron A036 might be a great option for you. As an everyday workhorse, I have found it performs well in most scenarios and perfect for studio portraits but works wonders in natural light, too. It’s perfect for an afternoon at the park, and some basic landscapes and nature shots. Granted it is larger and heavier (295 grams, 3.3/8 inches long) and more expensive than the standard Sony kit lens, but I believe it packs more punch and has the faster aperture I was after. If you are after a good all-rounder, I think the Tamron 28-75mm (B&H | Amazon) is a great lens to have in your kit.
Adobe unveils prototype of content attribution tool - After being announced during Adobe MAX 2019, this morning Adobe unveiled a first look at its content attribution tool, as a part of the Content Authenticity Initiative. The tool, which aims to develop an industry standard when it comes to content attribution on the web, hopes to resolve the challenges of manipulated content and deepfakes. It will be available to select customers in a beta release of Photoshop and Behance in the coming weeks. But even if you aren’t a part of that selected customer group, you’ll be able to see the front-end information on the Behance website. “It’s gonna be really interesting. Just right off the bat to start to get this real feedback in the hands of real users. We’ve done a lot of user testing and a lot of research, but having it sort of truly be out in the wild is a whole different ballgame,” said Will Allen, Adobe’s Vice President of Community Products. Built upon an open standard that provides a secure layer of tamper-evident attribution data to photos, the content attribution tool will allow photographers and digital artists to control what data is displayed on the web. When a person downloads that image, any changes that are made are recorded — and the original data isn’t removed. For photographers, this means getting exposure and credit for your original work. While the CAI is focusing on photos for now, the possibilities are endless — illustrations, video and other media are already on the team’s radar. How it works By watching the demo video below, you can see a quick glimpse into how the content attribution tool works in Photoshop and Behance. When a photographer exports out of Photoshop, they have the ability to attach data to their finished image. For now, this works with JPEGs, but other file formats will follow close behind. You can attach things like a thumbnail, producer (creator) information, edits and activity, as well as any assets used. It is able to tell what types of edits you do — for example, while it will tell you if an image was “AI Assisted” through things like Photoshop’s new Sky Replacement tool, it’ll also show you the original sky image used. Not only that — it will also show the original image you started from. As the creator of the finished image, you remain in complete control over how much data and information you give. But Allen states that this is high on his team’s list to tweak during the beta process, based on feedback from users. “The possibility is you could attach everything. Some of our early testing said, when you show it to a consumer, not the creative, it’s very overwhelming. It’s like watching the credits at the end of the movie. The cost is there is too much to process. “That’s an active thing we’re thinking about, and that’ll probably changed depending on the app. That level of granularity that you see in Photoshop? It will be different within Premiere Pro or Lightroom. Or a different editor, because they’re going to have different frameworks and different ways to think about it,” Allen said. Adobe outlines a lot of its workflows for creatives in its recent white paper, released this summer. Looking toward the future For now, the content attribution tool only works with Photoshop and Behance, but it is certainly in Adobe’s plans to work with its other photography and creative apps, including Lightroom, Lightroom Classic as well as third-party applications. “Our goal is to make this work across the Creative Cloud and all the apps there. But we’re also working with our collaborators to figure out how does this exist, and work on a much larger adoption too, right?” Allen added. And while a rollout of the tool is certainly a short-term goal that Allen is driving his team to achieve, he has a bigger picture sort of vision when it comes to the future of the CAI. “If you look at it, I think there are two primary goals. There’s the creative getting credit. And so a really important one is how do you give them attribution? I hope to really solve that problem, or make a huge dent in it. “The second one is, how do you reestablish a shared perspective on what’s happening across when you see something online, any piece of content … a photo, video or audio file. Right now, we don’t have a shared objective understanding of what actually happened to it. And so our subjective interpretations just diverged completely, at least with this,” said Allen. Agreeing on that shared perspective is ultimately what Allen hopes the CAI can do for creatives and the public viewing the pieces in question. “If we get it to ubiquity — which we really believe in — we’ll be able to refurbish that shared understanding of at least the objective part to say, you took this photo at this date, at this time. You did these edits. When it’s just sort of for fun, or maybe it’s a photojournalism sort of use case. You can say, ‘Yes, I was actually there, in-person, within this time frame and get it to be out there.’ Then that shared objective understanding, I think, hopefully, on a societal level, can help us sort of converge again, at least on the subjective interpretations.”
Portrait Tips: Using the new Color Grading tool in Lightroom - Now, I’m not a huge fan of Instagram filters and most Lightroom preset packs. The reason I don’t like them is that they try to mask mediocrity with fad color tones. Using a celebrity’s preset won’t make your picture look like theirs — it’ll just make your shadows look as colorful as theirs. Hate me if you like, but your “style” should not be based on someone else’s color tones. Your style should be based on your vision, both in the camera and on the computer. Make your own color tones You can get great looking color tones that are all your own in Lightroom, and since yesterday’s update to Lightroom Classic, you’ve got even more control. Lightroom now has a panel for Color Grading. In the movie industry, color grading is what you and I would call color and tone adjustments. Unfortunately, Lightroom’s Color Grading panel is not nearly as powerful as the color grading tools in video editing software. It’s really just an update to the previous Split Toning panel. It now adds a Midtone adjustment to the Shadow and highlight sliders, as well as Luminance and Blending for each tone. These controls let you choose a Hue (color), a Saturation level and a Luminance level. Then you can use the blending to adjust how it mixes with the other tones. Above are the settings I used to make the changes to the photo below. When you’ve got a look you like, save it as a preset so you can use it again. Next time, you might tweak it a little and update the preset. Pretty soon, you’ll have it dialed in and you’ll be on your way to building your own color tone style. WAIT! DO THIS FIRST! The most important thing is that you need to get good color first. That’s the problem with someone else’s presets: Their picture isn’t the same color as yours. The camera model you use, the light at the scene and even the brand of lens you have all affect the color and contrast of your photo. You need to make that look great first before you start washing it over with color gradients. I highly recommend using the X-Rite ColorChecker to get things looking great. Many people use this for a gray card to set white balance, but when you use it with Lightroom and other editors to build a custom camera profile, then you can get great looking color, which will give you a baseline for your grading. During this shoot, the sun went down. The light after the sun was gone was completely different, and I shot the ColorChecker again and made a new camera profile for those pictures. That gave me consistently good color even in different lighting conditions. Color Grading with B&W The sliders in the Color Grading panel will be applied on top of black and white settings. This is how you make a sepia-toned photo, and Lightroom has presets for that (which are terrible). Too bad they didn’t update the presets with the new tool. Although the included presets are terrible, the tool is terrific for toning your black and whites. Below, the Before is a black and white with the color tones I used above. The After is my current favorite blue tone (school colors at my University) adjusted with the new Color Grading tools. Start well, make it yours Coloring the tones in your photo can help define your style. The key is to get great-looking color first. Get excellent white balance as well as excellent saturation and contrast using the X-Rite Color Checker. Once you’ve got a solid starting point, you can mess around to your heart’s content with Lightroom Classic’s new Color Grading panel. You’ll adjust the settings each time you use it until your personal presets work to help you show the mood and feeling you intend for your own photos, not that which was fitting for someone else’s. Portrait Tips come out each week, and you can see them all right here.
The battle of sky replacement: Photoshop vs. Luminar 4 - Recently, in conjunction with the Adobe MAX Creativity Conference, Adobe released the eagerly awaited version of Photoshop version 22, which comes with quite a few new features, many of which are powered by AI. Sky replacement One of the most anticipated features in Photoshop is their AI-powered Sky Replacement. Personally, I am not so interested in replacing my skies with a sky from somewhere else. However, I take low-ISO night or “blue hour” twilight photos of the foreground, then take successive “stacked” photos of the night sky, and then blend them together. In other words, I am interested in this for creating a mask my own skies. This can be time-consuming, so I am always interested in ways to quicken the process. Luminar 4 AI Sky Replacement vs. Photoshop Sky Replacement I’ve used Luminar 4’s AI Sky Replacement to “drop in” my own sky before. I was curious as to how it would compare with Photoshop Sky Replacement. Luminar 4 can only use skies that are JPEG and TIFF files. There is no such limitation with Adobe. When used as a plugin with Photoshop, Luminar 4 will create another layer. Photoshop offers the choice of creating another layer or a duplicate layer, including all the masks and the layer of the sky that come with it. Another difference is that Photoshop version 22 has so far been absurdly slow for almost every function on my 2017 iMac with 40 GB of RAM. Photoshop 2020 was also very slow. Luminar 4, and for that matter, Photoshop 2019, run very quickly. Not everyone experiences this, but it’s worth mentioning. First example: Night photo I began with a photo that I took of an unprocessed 3-minute low-ISO photo of a radio telescope taken at night. Luminar 4 struggled with identifying the night sky. How would Adobe fare? Adobe recognized the night sky as being a sky, but struggled to determine what was sky and what was not. And as previously mentioned, I had the choice of creating a duplicate layer, which would allow me to tweak the layer further in a nondestructive manner. In this example, I chose one of Adobe’s skies, as numerous skies come with the program. Above, you can see that Luminar’s Sky Replacement feature is ghosted. It could not recognize the night sky at all. Second example: Blue hour photo I chose a “blue hour” photo of a lake in the Eastern Sierras, taken not long after the sun had set. I decided that this time, I would “drop in” one of my skies, a “stacked” Milky Way photo taken with the same setup later that evening. Adobe performed quite admirably here, dropping in the sky, although I did have to adjust the size slightly to get it to match. This was easily done. Next was Luminar 4. Luminar recognized the sky but struggled with both the blending of the sky itself as well as the horizon. Luminar struggles with darker skies. If I had increased the brightness of the Eastern Sierras photos by a stop or two, it would have been fine. Third example: Day photo with lots of trees All examples of both programs use day photos for sky replacement. And for good reason. Both their AI recognize it very well. But how would they recognize something complicated such as trees with lots of fine leaves? I used a bright day photo of the forest in Mount Pinos in the mountains north of Los Angeles as the base photo. I decided to use the same Milky Way photo as the previous attempt. This would look incredibly fake. However, I felt the darkness would create greater contrast. We could then examine the blend by zooming in close to see what was happening with the leaves of the trees. Adobe’s Sky Replacement didn’t struggle to determine where the sky was here. First appearances looked good. Next was Luminar 4. This also performed admirably. Although a little darker than the Adobe version, this could have been easily adjusted by using a slider. First appearances also looked good! I’m ready for my close-up! For Instagram or Facebook, either sky replacement would look good. But what if we zoomed in? What if we printed this at 100%? For this, I zoomed in to 200% so you could see the masking in detail. Looking closely at the details of the leaves and branches in the Photoshop version above, we can see that it’s generally quite good, but that some of the branches and leaves are missing. Examining Luminar 4’s version above, we can see that the leaves and branches are noticeably more intact. The mask, even zoomed in at 200%, is quite good. Are they easy to use? In a word, yes. Both Photoshop Sky Replacement and Luminar 4 AI Sky Replacement work similarly. Although I have not gone over their functions, both allow you to select preset skies or your own skies with ease. You can flip, adjust, resize, relight, brighten, darken, adjust the edge and control the temperature via simple-to-use sliders. You can see most of the controls in my screenshots. The controls on both are intuitive and straightforward. I am quite curious about how the functionality will be in LuminarAI. This promises to not only control skies in a more powerful manner, but also create reflections. Which one is better? I don’t know that there is a clear, definitive winner here. We all love “bottom line” answers, and I would give you one if I had one. For day photos, Luminar 4 created a better mask. It requires skies that are JPEGs or TIFFs, although in practice, I doubt this will matter with almost anyone. However, for night photos, Luminar 4 struggled immensely. Photoshop was able to create a mask even with the very dark night photo of the radio telescope, no easy feat. And with the ability to duplicate layers, one could work on the mask some more to get it to blend better. I for one am
What you’ll learn at, and why you should attend Photoshop Virtual Summit II - Photoshop educator Dave Cross is at it again with the second Photoshop Virtual Summit or as he likes to call it, the sequel. I spoke with Dave about the summit to find out what’s in it for the Photofocus community, what it is exactly and why people should attend. This is the second Photoshop Virtual Summit you’re hosting. How did the first one go? It was a great success! We had many thousands of people register from around the world, and received amazing feedback — and heartfelt thank yous. Was there a favorite session from attendees from the first summit? It’s really hard to pinpoint one favorite: I received hundreds of emails and comments from people who said things like “I loved the class from …”, “That class will change my workflow forever” and “That one class was worth the price of the VIP pass.” And interestingly, the people who made that last comment all mentioned classes from different instructors. What prompted you to do a second summit? First, as soon as the April summit ended I was swamped with emails asking “when is the next one?” I also received some incredible, touching messages from people who were so appreciative of the information they learned while watching for free. It just made sense to do another one. How does this summit differentiate from the first one? We have a different instructor team, made up of favorites from last time and wonderful new experts. And we’ve put together a brand-new schedule of classes, all about Photoshop. I’ve always been intrigued by Luminosity Masking and don’t use it nearly enough as I probably should. I see Matt Kloskowski is teaching it, which is fantastic. Is there one session you’re really looking forward to the most? Wow, that’s hard to say! There are so many instructors that I love to watch and learn from, so I’d say just a few examples are Ben Willmore teaching Advanced Selections and Masks, Frequency Separation with Lisa Carney, Color Management from Daniel Gregory, Matt Kloskowski’s class on Texture Blending … but honestly, I could list all the classes. I see my friend Blake Rudis is speaking, which is super exciting. Is there one speaker you cannot wait to learn from? Again, that’s pretty much impossible to answer. I invited these instructors because I have great respect for their knowledge and ability as teachers, so I’m looking forward to all their classes. Having said that, Glyn Dewis because of his wonderful British accent. What advice would you tell new summit attendees, that have never been to a virtual summit before? Take a look at the schedule and map out the topics that are of most interest to you. Remember, you don’t have to catch the class on its release date — you have 48 hours to watch sessions once they are released. What is your favorite Photoshop keyboard shortcut? I’m a keyboard shortcut junkie, so immediately my head is filled with many possible answers. My favorite shortcut? It’s probably all of the single letter shortcuts for choosing tools — those are an amazing time saver. What is your favorite Photoshop feature or tool? I work with making selections all the time, so Select Subject continues to impress, and it gets better with each new version of Photoshop. How much is it to attend the Photoshop Virtual Summit II, when is it and how can people sign up? The Photoshop Virtual Summit II runs from November 9-13, 2020 and it is free to register. All the details found at pssummit.com. As a free attendee, I know I do not get access to the recordings. If I wanted the sessions forever, how much does that cost? The VIP pass includes lifetime access to the recordings of all classes, plus audio recordings, instructor-provided notes, and downloadable files. The price is $147, with an Early Bird special of $97 available until November 9, 2020 at Noon ET. Will the speakers be wearing masks? Joking, not joking. OK, I’m joking. Thanks for putting this together, Dave. We cannot wait to learn! Anything you want to say as we wrap this up? Just to say that folks can expect a wide range of great courses from some of the top Photoshop instructors in the world — and they may be a few surprises along the way.
Hanging a gigantic print - Nothing compares to the satisfaction of seeing the result of your vision, your work in a print. What is it like to create a GIGANTIC multi-panel print for a client? Absolutely mind-blowing! Here’s my experience of hanging a 20-by-7 foot print in a gym! A gigantic print project A couple of months ago, Photofocus, Xpozer and I partnered up for an ambitious project. We wanted to create a very — VERY — big multi-panel print for one of my clients, Tonic CrossFit (one of the largest gyms in the city). After discussing many possibilities with Gabriel, the owner, we decided to create a large composite that would be printed on six 40-by-80 inch panels. This montage was to represent the gym’s community as well as enhance the decoration of the room. The wall The main reason why we wanted — and needed — to go that big is that the wall we chose to hang the print on was 32 feet wide and 20 feet high. Gabriel had a vision: A black and white composite with the red logo in the center that would gradually fade into black to create visual fusion into the wall. The hanging process I have to say, I was VERY glad qualified men took charge of the hanging process for this project. Why? Well … let me just show you. It took three hours, a Skyjack scissor lift and about two and a half people: Two competent men and myself. I count for a half since I was pretty much just hanging around taking pictures and handing them panels once in a while. (If you’re thinking there was no way I could’ve done it by myself, YOU ARE DAMN RIGHT.) The result! I am beyond excited about the result. Gabriel and his employee Willy did a tremendous job — and showed how they were truly trained for the unpredictable by perfectly hanging the gigantic panels. The print stands out in the middle of the black wall and looks amazing! The first thing that comes to my mind is to trust your client’s vision. They are the best placed to know what fits best their environment. Make sure you really understand their needs and that your concept matches theirs. That alone could save you many hours of work! This printing project was my biggest to this day and I’m glad I stepped out of my comfort zone. I am extremely pleased with the print’s quality and the overall result. I hope this artwork will make the gym and its members proud of what they achieve every day. Thank you Xpozer for this great opportunity and for the amazing help you’ve provided us all along the way! Thanks also to Gabriel for your confidence, your patience and your vision!
