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Photoshop Snapshot Layers





Here's a tip for one of the quickest ways to edit in Photoshop. It's called Snapshot Layers and is based in the History Panel and uses the History Brush. Load a photo into Photoshop and make sure you have the History Panel displayed, if not, got to the Windows drop-down menu and make sure there's a tick next to History.

For the photo above, I went to Filter then Blur and then Radial Blur. Click Ok and the Radial Blur will be applied to the full image. Now click on the small Camera icon at the bottom of the History Panel to make a snapshot. Make sure the new Snapshot is highlighted (it's the one at the bottom). Now you need to select a source in the history that you want to brush back onto the image. Click the small box to the left of the original Snapshot and a History Brush icon will be displayed in it. Select the History Brush from the left hand Tools Panel. Now paint in a circular motion in the centre of the photo and if you have chosen the right source and destination, the original photo should start to show through the blurred image (like the image above.
To darken a sky, adjust the Levels or the Bightness/Contrast for the full image and then use the History Brush to bring back the foreground. Or why not change the image to Black & White and use the History Brush to bring back selective color (color popping).
The best way to see the full potential of Snapshot Layers is to mess around with it. It's a quick and easy way to do most jobs in Photoshop. Remember to click on the Camera icon each time you make a change to the image, that way, you can bring back pixels from any point in the history of your editing.

Two Websites For Great Photos


Photography Served is the place to go if you like project based photography. you can loose track of time going from one project to the next, each one different from the last. At the foot of every page you will find a link to three more projects and before you know it, it will be way past your bed time. Click here to go to the site.
The Big Picture is part of the Boston Globe's website which posts a collection of pictures from a different photographer every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The images are chosen from all around the world. Click on each photo to view the full set. Click here to go to the site.

New Nikon D3s Out In November, But Don't Buy It….Yet


The D3 has had it's 's' update and is now available for pre-order from the usual outlets. If you are in the market for the D3s, I strongly advise not buying one for at least two months. I pre-ordered a D300s as a back-up from Calumet and was very unhappy when the price dropped drastically within a few of weeks. It's sad when you get screwed for being the kind of loyal customer that the camera manufacturers want.

The D3s has had a similar make-over to the D300s. 720p HD video is the obvious big addition, but the on line photographic community are already saying "why no 1080p?". The dedicated Live View button is a handy new feature, not just for video (see my Live View/White Balance tip here). The D3s also gets the quiet mode and Integrated Dust Reduction System. For a full list of the new features go to the Nikon site here.

How To See Your White Balance Live

White balance is very important, especially if you're shooting in jpeg. But it tends to be a bit of guess work and you're never sure of exactly how it's going to look. Well guess what...you can see it in the screen on the back of your camera.

Just put your DSLR into live view mode and move through the various WB settings. You can use the usual suspects, like Cloudy, Tungsten, Florissant, but it's really helpful when you start to tweak the Kelvin settings to get exactly what you need. When you get what you want, switch off live view and you're good to go

The Best Camera:: iPhone App

I've been using 'The Best Camera' iPhone app for a couple of weeks now and I have to say that it's the best photography app that I've came across.

The app is by photographer Chase Jarvis, who is one of the online photographic communities most prolific contributors. Chase has also put out a book of his iPhone photos called 'The Best Camera Is The One That's With You', and put up a website that ties in with the app. Here's how it works:
You take a photo with your iPhone or use one that's already in your Camera Roll folder. Then you apply any of the cool filters that do things like - add saturation, desaturate, darken, warm-up, cool-down, add vignette....etc. You can also crop the photo into a square and add a white border. The filters can be moved into a different order to change how they effect the photo, or you can remove the ones you don't like.
After you're done with the editing side, you click on the Share button and you can save it back to your Camera Roll, send as an email, send to Facebook and Twitter (adding text to your tweet too) and even upload it to thebestcamera.com to be displayed on the site. Tap on the Globe icon and it will take you to a viewing wall (see the photo above). This is the view from the Best Camera website and is constantly changing. Now you can see your newly uploaded photo and you can click on a thumbs up icon if you like other peoples photos. Warning it's addictive...but it's cheap!

The UK:: More Afraid Of Photographers Than Terrorists?

I was in Aberdeen at the weekend and woke-up early with the sun projecting a nice orange glow on the hotel room wall. I got dressed quickly, grabbed my camera and headed out for the golden hour. After a session photographing down at the docks, I passed by The Mall on my way back to the hotel. The side entrance has lots of stairs that go from street level to shop level, which I thought might make some interesting black and white shots.

Ten shots later, and with no-one about, I was done. I headed up the stairs toward the shops, but before I reached the top, I was confronted by a security guard who asked why I was taking photographs. He told me that I needed permission and a permit to photograph in the mall. I pointed out that if it was for terrorism reasons, I don't think that terrorists would be standing their with a full sized pro body DSLR and a big Nikon 17-55mm lens. The security guard shrugged his shoulders and I left The Mall, never to return...ever!
How many people do you think take photographs in that mall every day with point and shoots and mobile phone cameras? I would think plenty, just like every-other shopping mall in the UK. I'm no terrorist, but if I was, I would use a point and shoot with a subject strategically placed so that I got whatever I wanted in the background. I would not walk in with a few kilo's worth of Nikon gear and a jacket that has derekclarkphotography.com embroidered on the front and back. The Mall does conveniently display a floor plan on their website for all your terrorist needs Click Here , but I didn't want to infringe on their copyright by posting the plan here.
Photographers are not the enemy! I personally don't even think the enemy are who we're told they are. I don't remember Afghanistan invading another country. I did notice that the UK and US did invade two countries lately though. I suppose it's different from when Hitler did it???
Sorry if this is a bit heavy for a photography blog, but we're losing all our rights, and worse than that, people are losing their lives! I'd rather be squeezing a shutter than squeezing a trigger!

Rules Are Made To Be Broken

There are lots of rules in photography, like don’t have your horizon in the centre of the frame, don’t have converging verticals and use a telephoto, not a wide angle lens for portraits. All good advice and worth keeping in mind most of the time.

On the other hand; sometimes you can get fantastic results from bending or breaking the rules. Take the above photo. Mark is a fantastic piano player who comes across as a very serious guy when you first meet him. But under the serious exterior, he has a terrific sense of humour. A medium telephoto lens, say 80mm or 105mm would have been fine for this backstage shot, but the 10mm f2.8 fisheye really helps to show you that Mark isn’t so serious after all. If a rule’s worth breaking, it’s worth breaking to the extreme.

Nikon Speedlights:: Part 3 – The Nikon Creative Lighting System


To round off this week’s Speedlight posts, I thought I would recommend a great book to help you master the Nikon Creative Speedlight system (CLS). The book is from Nikonians Press and is written by Mike Hagen.
Although it comes in at 153 pages, Mike Hagen’s book is split into sixteen chapters, four of which are optional. These are the chapters on the individual models, SB-600, SB-800, SB-900 and one chapter on the SU-800 SB-R200 and R1C1. The former three are pretty much identical and take you through all the controls of each flashgun. You can read the chapter for your model and leave the rest out until the day when you splash out the cash for the other toys. The rest of the book is made up of examples, accessories, camera set-ups, flash theory, CLS background and much more.
If you are new to the CLS system or if you just picked-up enough from the first few pages of the manual to get you by, this is the book for you. In a very short time you will know your model of Speedlight inside-out and be ready to rock in a full blown wireless system. This is the book that you should read before moving on to The Hot Shoe Diaries by Joe McNally.

Nikon Speedlights:: Part 2 – High Speed Sync





Scenario 1: You’re taking someone’s photo outdoors with the sun behind them. Or maybe you’re subject is indoors, a window behind them with bright daylight outside. Easy, just pop a bit of fill flash in to light the subject. But the background is too bright; the sky is a washed out blue and too bright in general.


Scenario 2: You’re using flash outside, but want a nice shallow depth of field. You’re in aperture priority mode at ISO 200 and the widest aperture you can use is around f18 at 125sec), but you need f1.8 or f2.8 to get that blurred background you’re looking for.


Solution and Set-up: Use high speed sync! For this (the tip you never see in books), you will need to set-up your camera first. Go to your camera Custom Settings Menu > Bracketing & Flash > Flash Sync Speed. Now choose either1/320s (Auto FP) or 1/250s (Auto FP). I use the former, but any one will do (the important thing is the Auto FP). That’s it, you can leave it set that way forever.


Here comes the science bit: When you use a shutter speed of 250th or slower, the front curtain moves across to the end of the frame, and then the rear curtain follows. This leaves a point in the middle where the curtain is fully open allowing one big pop of flash light to expose the whole frame. If you use a very fast shutter speed though, the rear curtain follows the front one so soon that there is only a thin slit moving across the frame. But in high speed sync mode the flash will fire rapid bursts of light that will expose the full frame in stages.


Aperture priority mode will give you nice even results, but try using the camera’s manual mode and you can up the shutter speed as high as you like (8000th of a sec if you like) which will darken the background, still keeping your subject evenly exposed. You can almost change your background from day into night. Try experimenting with a combination of shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation and flash compensation. You won’t always get the result you expect.