Lessons

Lesson Info

Thinking Outside the Box Part 2 with Joel Grimes

I wanted to start by talking about bit depth, and I remember when Digital was first being explained to me and they kept throwing out all these terms. And I was like, What in the heck are they talking about? And so we don't megapixels. That's how many little sensors air whatever. Picking up the light and transfer putting into an image. So, um, maybe pickles are getting more and more. You know, the files are getting bigger. We talked about that, but bit depth is how many values are represented. Four really each color. So I had a chart, and I and I, uh, pick it up off the Internet and you guys can just google it really easily. But you can see how Maney colors are represented with eight bit well used to be 12 better cameras. When it first, the digitals were 12 bit there. Now, most of our bit the medium format cameras a lot of our 16 bit, but that's the most you can get that I know of. Out of a camera. There may be a camera on the market that could that, you know, maybe cost half a $1,000,...

but really it's 14 bit is we're capturing in now. Photoshopped gives you an option to work in either, UM, a bit are 16 bit. So when you capture a image, say my five d mark three, it is a 14 14 bit file, and when I open it up it and push up, I can actually work in 16 bit. But it's a 16 bit environment, so it represents, and I don't know exactly how many colors millions, but when you look at, I think it's a bit is 256. I believe colors, and you start going up mathematically and you increase the amount of colors are our information that represents the color. So the more information you have, the smoother the great Asian transitions and the colors you're gonna have the better quality. So if you send your image off to a lab, typically, if it's like Costco or whatever, they're gonna actually print it in a bit a lot to do. So they're gonna put it make of J pay a bit J pic. Now J. Peg is one of the most amazing, I guess you know, discoveries or, you know, inventions in an image handling That's everybody. J pegs. Amazing thing some J Peg takes. It's like a pillow. Have this pillow size of fluffy and you say, I want to send that pillow in the mail and you crunch it all up. Put in a box of Senate to someone and they get it. Pops back up. Fill it there. So Jay Peg is basically taking and reducing the amount of value it takes. The say there's a blue. It will say, there's, let's say there's, um, pixels that represent that blew it will actually take and only keep one of them and then it compresses it. And then when it goes to the other end, it opens back up and it re renders it again as best as it can, and actually pretty darn good. But you ever you ever see a J. P gets a little, especially like in the skies. You get a little stair step of values, you know, transitions. Um, so J peg is an amazing thing, but it has a limit to what you can do when it comes to manipulating it in photo shop. And so, um, but let me explain how Photoshopped works when you take and do something in photo shop. You say you do levels, you know, brighten or were darkened. You are actually throwing away pixels. So I had people say, Look, if you send it to a magazine, they're gonna print it and they're gonna use a bit technology. So why even go to 60 bits? Doubles the size your file slows your computer down. Why started 16 bit environment? Well, think about this. So if you have a bucket I used to paint houses in college, so I used to have a five gallon bucket. You fill it with your colored marbles that represent a bit, and you have another five gallon bucket and you feel it Say 3/4 full, which represents 14 bit. So you take a picture, you have that money marbles, and then you go and start manipulated photo shop. Every time you do something, you throwing marbles away, throwing marbles away. And so when you get done, you typically don't have all your marbles you got you know, you feel if you I don't think I have all my marbles either, but you throwing information away. And so if you go to have it printed say for a newspaper or a magazine, and they're using or offset printing process. They're using a bit. If you start in a bit, you probably end up with seven bitter air six bit. But if you start with, say 14 bit and start throwing away information, you're gonna have a full eight bit by time. It goes out the door to your client so you want to start working a 16 bit? Um so, uh, we have a couple ways of minimising destruction. So I had this one had a re toucher. Does movie posters for Hollywood. You know, the big, big posters Spider Man Daniela Cough And he came in and he sat down. He wanted to see how I work. I'm thinking this guy's like, you know, Photoshopped, Goober. Why is he coming to my studio? But so he saw me. He said he was going to see how you work, So I started working and I was actually working too smart objects the time. But hey said something to me that kind of stuck, he said. When I work out a file, I do everything I can to minimize destruction, says That's my number one goal is because if if you aren't careful, you're gonna be ended up destroying that image. And by time it gets blown up on a poster. It's gonna look terrible. So you want to minimize destruction is most you can't. So there's two ways that we do three ways, actually. But I will tell you, the first of all two ways is smart objects. And when you watch what I do in my retouching, all my images, I open him up as a smart object. I do some manipulation and then I move on. But I start in smart objects and I also use adjustment layers for levels. You know, for the my black and whites for curves, all that's adjustment layer of the levels. So when you do an adjustment level, you are basically only throwing away marbles once. So if you go and do levels and you go and you know 10 minutes later you go Haas. Too bright, dark in a new view, and you always too dark and lighten it. You're not throwing away models every time. Adjustment layer only throws it away once, so smart objects adjustment layers are a good way to minimized destruction. Now There's now another way that helps us, um, start with more marbles, then our cameras can produce. And so when you when I should've HDR people say, Why do you in tradition, you know, especially on a soft, overcast day, you don't have problems with highlights blowing out or shadows not having detail. Why would you shoot HDR? Because when I shoot HDR, I get a true 16 bit file, get up to full buckets of marbles to start with, and then I can start doing stuff and I my images, I'd beat him up. I do some really whacked out stuff. I mean, I'm pushing, getting the skin tones to do some really weird stuff. And so for years, I'm no, I've known this. I mean, I'm destroying my files quite a bit. And so when I shoot with HDR backgrounds, I now have a true 16 before start with. And that's what I've been doing for a long time now. Um, photo Matics. I've never gotten it to work in 32 bit, and I used to put a minutes a lot. It's a great little cheap program that does HDR for you, probably most popular out there mixed software is a great one, and I've used that and they allow you to do and save a file on 32 bit. But for a while, I really didn't understand. I mean, I was thinking, Why go to 30 bit when I could only working 16 dead? You can't even open it up. Photo shop. And so then I saw Julian cost photo shop world do a demonstration with 32 bit and my jaw hit the floor and I was like, You have got to be kidding. So CS six allows us toe open up a file. We'll create a file on HDR file in 32 bit. But open it up in the raw converter that the when you go to bridge have raw converter. I don't use light room. I know there's a lot of light room people in here or it's building, but, um, but I can now working 32 bit before I bring it over to photo shop. So I did some tests. I'm show you what That 32 bit files and looked like, and I think you're gonna be blown away by this. So I want to start with that So let's take Here's my Golden Gate Bridge. Not an exciting shot. I know that, folks. Um but it's in front of me when you use it for the other stuff. So I What I do is I just open it up. Here's the HDR. So we have the dark two stops under the normal two stops over. So let's open up. Open up this this file and I'm gonna go into rock inverter. So to do the shortcut, I just do Command are on. It'll open it up in, uh, bridge. And so there it is. Now, I want to show you real quick before and if you, uh, load Photoshopped for the very first time and I don't know why Adobe does this. I'd like to talk to about it, but they defaulted to a bit, and I believe they default. It s RGB. That's the least amount of color space out there. Um, so you want when you first get Photoshopped, you want to go toe at least adobe rgb and you want to go to 16 bit. So every time you open a file up, its 16 bit, not a bit, and, uh, I always check right here, open in Photoshop as a smart object. I want every image I open up to be a smart object because that's how I work. And I that's a whole other thing. But if you don't have a check, you hold down the shift key and say, Open it, open it as a smart object. So you don't have every time. But he weighs just one other me remind you that this this window is important. Okay. All right. So if I convert, I'm gonna do something here that shows you how destructive. Um, I get with my files. Okay. Now, for the most part working Raws, nondestructive. That's why you want to keep it in a smart object. So you go back and forth, but there's a limit. So there's no information in there. If there's no, you're not throwing away files or pixels information, but there's not there, so we'll show you how I can prove it to you. That's not there. So this is a 14 bit file. This is the one capture, 14 bit file, and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go over here to my black and white converter, and I'm gonna do. The old Ansel Adams would put a red filter, which is actually blue here. Don't tell me why that is. But but as Asil Adams used to do, he's gonna make his, Ah, skies Black Day. And I'm gonna show you that in 16 bit, which is actually 14 big capture. There's a limit how far I can push this. Just like there's a limit how far I can go with my shadows before it starts to get. There's no deep. There's just no detail, right? So it starts to get pixellated to do some weird things, but eso let's do that. Well, well, give us just a little bit of adjustment and I'm gonna say open. Okay, Now, let's take a look at that final blow it up, and we're gonna compare that file with some other options. Um, so it's opening them up here, reading the raw, you just taking his time because, you know, you guys were sitting here watching me. That's why I don't like doing photo shop in front of people because it's always seems to be slower. Okay, so let's do this. Let's go. And I'm gonna blow this up to 100% and my monetary is a little bit smaller here, Um, so I can see the bottom here. We had to change the resolution and so I can't even see the Let's do this. There goes 66. Okay, now we're 100%. So I'm gonna show you. Look at underneath the bridge here. See how greedy that is. It's having a hard time finding stuff. And look over here. Look at the sky. Um, it's got some really weird, grainy stuff. They're not very good folks. All right, so let's do this. Let's go back out and we're gonna now open. Let's see if I could do this. We have, um I've got the nick listening 16 bit. Let's do 16 bit photo Matics. I've done it in both the the Fusion version and let's do the fault. This is what I've done for five years. Right here. This file right here. So let's open it up. I would apply the same settings and we're going over here and say, previous conversion. Okay, open up. I guess I don't need open. It is a smart object, but if do that automatically so let's look at the difference. So This is what I've been doing for five years. 16 Actually, it's 16 bit. Okay, so let's go again. Up to 100%. Just dive in there, okay? The blacks look pretty good there. Um, I've got a little bit more smoothness there. Who? But look down here. Not real good. The files trying to work it, But I pushed way beyond the pure Black looks good, but in that transition right here, it doesn't look good at all. So that's 16 bit the way I've been shooting for a long time. Now, let's go with 32 bit in photo shop. Okay, so let's go double click. Oh, wait. I should have done that. I should have opened it. We're going to back out of that because I want to open it in. A smart object is gonna open just in voter shop. So now I'm gonna show you how old I did. So here I am. This is 32 bit hdr created in photo shop. I'll do one for you in a minute. Let's apply the same thing, okay? And I don't need a 32 pitch. Let's just go here and go shift there. We go. It doesn't have to be a smart object, cause I'm not gonna open it up again and I'm gonna show you how smooth file gets. It's not perfect, but it's a lot smoother. And so this tells you right away that 32 bit has so much more information and it's at our fingertips now. So let's go to 100%. Look how smooth the file is. Look at the difference in here. Look down here again. It's not perfect, but it's a lot smoother than here's 16 bit and and here's 14 pit. Let's get back over here. And if I had a J peg Oh, he'd be even worse. So look out, look at the difference. So so what file do you want to start with? Big difference. So now I can't work in 32 bit in Photoshop? Not yet. There may be one or two things I could do. I think it was sharpening or something, but But basically I can start in 32 bit, do my adjustments and then send it over to photo shop now that it converts it to 16 bit. But I've done the bulk of the beaten up in the raw converter. So what this does is this gives me a super clean file, but after this is a shooting HDR. So let's let me show you. Oh, and also, just to be fair, Nik software does do 32 bit, and when I compare it, it looks pretty good. But I think the photo shop still better. So I have to still do some experiment on that. And I You know, at this point, I want to be fair with Nick because you can't do 32 bit and Nick on their great people, and I use their stuff all the time. So let's go back and I'm going to now I'm gonna actually living do this. I'm gonna reset this to it's default because it converted to black and white. So let's go to down here. Reset. Done. Now I'm gonna show you how I do the 32 bit in Photoshopped. Okay? How you achieve that file. So there it is, cleared out. So here's my three exposures, and I'm going to select him. Highlight. Um, you can also do this from light room, but since I'm not like room guy, I'm just gonna stick with what I know and we go to tools. I'm gonna go away down a photo shop and I'm gonna merge to HDR Pro. And then now it's gonna go in there and gonna merge these, and it's gonna ask me if I want to keep it in 32 bit. I'm going to say yes. And then I'm gonna say what? It comes up and opens up in photo shop, and I want to save it as a tiff because I want to go back into the rock inverter and be able to open it up in bridge or in the rock inverter through bridge. So, um, this is how simple it is and it still do this thing. It takes a little while, Uh, photo Mannix is a very fast program. And so I've always been sort of drawn to photo manic because I got all these East ers to do. But after doing my test here, I'm pretty convinced that if I want to get the cleanest file I want, I want to do it and keep it in 32 bit to start with. So, um, you could see that the 32 bit is taking a while. So you have You go out in the field, you have 50 images, you come back, takes a while. But do you want the best image possible? So here's my options. You got your 16 and a bit options, but you keep it on 32 bit. If you have something moving in the scene like a personal walking, whatever you could say remove ghost and will automatically do that for you 100% perfect. But it does a pretty good job. So here it shows my my values over here, and I haven't played with this whole lot. But what I've done the past this slide it over to the end over here toe where the the hissed a gram comes to an end and someone out there may have more information on how this little slider works here. But that's what I've been doing. So now you say OK, it's now going to process this file and then I'm gonna save it as a tiff. That's how simple news. So then I had that 32 bit file. There is gonna be twice the file size than a 16 bit, so that goes back to you. What you were saying earlier is you get these huge files and they start to eat up your hard drive. Um, but we are in a age where this is possible because it doesn't fit every scenario. No, HDR doesn't fit every scenario. So let me explain what this is happy. Why do I shoot HDR other than now? I could do 32 bit or even 60 bit is HDR allows me to get detail in the highlights and details us in the shadows that I can't get one capture So normally I have to make I have to pick Do I want the highlights have detail that I lose detail The shadow. There's nothing there, don't want details shadows in the highlights of blown out. So HDR gives me that option to get that range. So even in some of my images, where I blow the image out like some fashion stuff, I'll shoot the background in HDR. I don't know how many use it later, so I put on my little Medicare, so I'll say, you know, HDR background, whatever and people email there. Well, why the heck to do hdr when you blow it out Well, because I didn't know Number one. How is going to use it? Number two. I still have a cleaner file. Even though I blow it out a little bit. I have itself. It's got that white look. You know, some of the pictures ideas she's really miles really blown out. I still have. If I have a 16 bit file or 32 bit file, I'm gonna have more information and that those whites than if I did with a straight one capture, you know, image. So that's one advantage, and I do let it I do some HDR Portrait's too. So So here's my file and let's go. And I've already saved it before, so we're not gonna save it now. But I want to show you something else. If I open up, um, this file Enbridge. I have all these sliders over here. Let's go back to default. And I did a little bit of the shadows. But when when I work on an image, Look at look at that. Look how the bridge here has no detail. See that I can now and I do this on almost every image I do. I slide the shadows to the right. Even my portrait. You get that kind of that, Joe Grams gritty. Look, this is how we do it. And I take the highlights of the left a little bit. I usually flatten the image out just a tad. Sometimes I'll bring clarity. And now we don't have your hardly any clouds in here. But all these sliders I'm doing right now in 32 bit give me a cleaner file that in 16. So, um, that's why you want to do it If you have the opportunity to try to do it in 32 bit and you're gonna have a better file So that's how we do that. There's mortal. Probably learned on this whole thing when it comes to, like I said, covering the black and white, Um, I do for all my portrait's. And it's not a secret, but the whole Joel Grimes look is I take a color version of the background and the portrait, and I opened a smart objects in photo shop. Then I take and I duplicate that as a V, a smart object. So then I have a duplicate and I going to convert that one to black and white. So every picture you see when I say every picture I mean every picture that you see in the last five years I have done where I have a color version of it and a black and white version of it. And I blend the two together in soft light. Why don't do that? Because it didn't want number one a. D saturates. But when I'm working in on my black of white, so have the color version of the black and white version of Mirrored. But they're separate in terms of their both in smart objects, I am able to just the skin tones in the black and white right here. Now, this is just the background. But I take these. I take these sliders here, and I just all my you know, the greedy portrait's that I do with the athletes. I'm pushing the orange and the yellow to the left. I've given it away here, but or in the models I push it to the right, smoother skin out. Then I go back and blending together, and I have a smoother or grittier file that I would have for just one color image. And so How did you discover this? Well, I took an image and open it up over 100 times, and I practiced. It worked in practice until I got it came together, and that's how I do it. I work and I discovered things. And so, um, but anyways, now that I know I could do 32 bit, I'm going to be able to take that black and white file. Now it's a It's a portrait. It's not shot HDR, so I can't unless a shot hdr. But if I had the option, I can now shoot and and do like even those Those were soft water Seascapes. I know I can adjust my black and white in 32 bit, and then I can push that life I want to do. There's a lot of black sky I can push that blue always on the left, and there's smoother tones. And if I did in 16 so that's the beauty of this, and I wanted to just make sure that you guys sort of get the sense of how that's all working, but it's it's trying to preserve in minimized destruction as best you can. Megapixels is one thing by bit depth. It's a whole another thing. And so, like I said, there's other people that know more about this than I do. But at least at this point, you get a sense that that 32 bit does make a big difference. So let's move on. We're going Teoh. Now get my glasses on here. We're going to Let's do I'm gonna do some stacking. I'm gonna show you the stacking that I did the golden See, That's the golden Gate we're gonna do. Remember the 17 images I did that were 32nd exposures and I did a total of eight point 5.5 minutes of of of blending them together. So let's do that right now. I'm gonna show you how I do that in the Russell Brown stigmatic. If you don't know what Russell Brown russell brown dot com Isa Great guy has been around a long time, represents Adobe, and he's a character. I photographed him a lot and, um, I got this picture. I don't have it. I want it for approval because he was in my studio and hey was doing all these expressions and he's got one where he's crying and I really grunted it up. It looks incredible, but I thought I might as well make sure he approves it before I put it on the net. But I got some great stuff of him. So here's my 17 exposures. I'm gonna do it. J. Peg. And so the reason why we do it, Jim, because it takes a long time to process. But one of the things that I do with my cameras, I said it on Raw and Jay Peak. And so take a little bit more memory. But if I want to test a stack a Matic, I don't have the room me, Ross, because Ross take a long time. It's still gonna take a little bit time because it's seventeen's a lot, but let's select or okay? And then I'm gonna go over here to Tools. I loaded the script called Dr Brown's Oh, actually, yeah, services, that that's the script, and I gave you guys Russell Brown's The Russell Brown Show website earlier, but just go to scripts and download. It's a little confusing because I sometimes I didn't at first I didn't work. Then I've got to work, so I want to go to Dr Brown Stack a Matic So let go And it comes with a little dialogue box And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna I want to click on, create smart objects, stack very important. And you have all these options here, most these names. I don't even know how to pronounce. They'll do all sorts of different things, but you want to set it on mean And so let me real quick. I would explain some of the options I get. I don't know all the names, but I went to I was teaching a workshop was in Kansas kids of City and I was I was Roman cause I was like to walk the streets and I fell. This tree was like in the spring and ahead all these blossoms on it and the wind is blowing. I was like, That's cool tree, but the winds blowing And I just kind of learned a little bit about this stacking stuff. So what I did is I shot 10 frames. Click, click, click, click. Then I went back to my hotel on a random and I found a camera. Which one? It is. It might be medium where it. It's so mean, took and stacked all the movement to one. So what happened was that tree was in blooms looked like a big snowball. And the other one, what you think is maximum. It actually froze it. It took everything. It was not moving and built it up, and it looked like that tree. There was no wind. So you have some options and stacking that are just not blending, you know, clouds and whatever. And there's again. I think there's I've said this for about a year. This is one of the most under used features in Photoshopped right now. The ability to take and Russell Amy shows you a freeway and he's shot the cars coming, you know? And he shot enough frames that when he ran it through, it took out all the cars. So you do that with people. So you're shooting, you know, Big monument. There's people, you know, walking around. Don't worry. Street 10 frames and go back and boom! Take all the people right out. Do you think of the movie? Will be taken right out. So there's a lot of good options with this many ways for this. You want to set mean and I'm not. I'm not going to set Otto line because I was on a tripod, and I'm gonna say, OK, so let's let this thing run, run its course, and here it is going to run. But like I said, you could do this with focus. You can do that like, say, taking moving out trees. I had a friend of mine Who's the chutes? Uh, you know, landscapes and stuff. And he had this beautiful shot blown up is on a four by five. And I was asking in my surpassed Get all those leaves. Perfect. Yeah, I sat there for two hours, waiting for the little breezes to stop to give me my exposure, you know, probably was a two second explode or something. Well, now you could do that. You must shoot a serious run through, takes out all the moving leaves. So that's the beauty of we're at with photo shop on. All these new features is, there's an artist. There's a there's a creative way that you can apply it, solve a problem, and, um so you can see it's gonna take it. This is even the J pig. So this will take a little while. Now there's my laptops not as fast as my computer on my desk top, but here it is. It's blending these images. I can't pull this until it stops here and has taken thirties all those 32nd exposures and blamed him in tow. One final image. So the question we had was how many images? I don't know. I mean, everything is a guest work, you know, and you know it. Have you ever had grandma make like the best apple pie? And you say, Grandma, how did you make that? She said. Well, a little bit of this. A little bit of that little bit of this, right? That's the way it is sometimes a photo shop, a little bit of this, a little bit of that you don't really know. Sometimes sometimes you can't define it. People. They want a copy. When I do my grungy look and I'm moving sliders around, I have people want to copy every single little setting ideo. No, that's not the way it's done. It's Every person is different. And when I like a subject, there's no formula. There's a kind of a maybe a starting point, but there's no former because everyone's faces different. So, um, you know, some things have really deep set eyes. Summers have big heads. Some of us have no hair. You know, we just roll shaped differently. So when you go in light someone, it's every person's a little different. So try not to look at even Photoshopped as a formula. That perfect system perfect, you know, way of doing things, Jim. We're gonna say some. Oh, so right on topic Mary from the Internet ass and father was a pretty good question wanting toe. Let her know what you adjust for your grittier look. She understands that orange and yellow to make the grittier look. But what colors for softer skin? Um, well, the like said for And you look at some my model stuff of the girls, their skins really light. Okay. And that's because I like, for example, with you I would shifted to the left or started right, And it was because you already skins very light, and it was smooth it out. Um, I can make someone skin darker or lighter. So I've had one time I had this casting job and we're casting for a shoot we had. One of the athlete is a basketball player and they wanted to have this certain African American skin. But it could be too dark. Could be to light, but I would be this one and they were casting. You don't understand. With a slider, I can make that skin almost pure black or almost pure white. By just going like that, I want to spend three days casting for you know, someone, Um I can I can fix that. Boy, this thing is really doing his thing on on the time here. And I think you know, again why? Because we're, you know, live. It's still spending. I don't think it ever taken is long in his life. You know, the Gremlin just set in its stacking. All these it We'll see what is doing. This is making a smart object out of this thing. And that takes even mawr, you know, time and the J pegs are the largest J pegs to, So I probably wouldn't set those in my camera large. And I think since then I've reduced the size because I now have an eye fi card in there and zipping into my my I bet. So you don't want too big of a J pick, But this thing is really doing this number. So any other questions that we got since we're, like, you know, waiting for, uh, this thing, the process? Yeah. And on that on that same topic, when you're adjusting the sliders, Are you doing it in camera raw before you bring it? Yes. Okay, great. You want Kate? So you want to do the damage, so to speak, in the raw converter? Because, really, there's not a lot of damage. It's still because there's not like I said when we were talking about bit dip bit, depth. If there's no information there, you can't get it out. You can't drag detail out of shadows if it's not really there. But with the more bit depth, the more detail you can pull out. But, yes, you want to do it in wrong. That's why, with a smart object, So I open it up as a smart object. So let's say the portrait I do the portrait, his color. Then I go via a copy via smart object. Be a copy. Okay, now it's goes back. That copy goes to Ross to two copies Tight of raw and you know how to explain it. Raw is like Mama given birth to a baby as long as you have the umbilical cord connected to the baby life nutrients are being sent right, But you cut it, then it's on his own. So so long as you keep it in wrong, you can do things. And a smart object. That's what the whole smart up object is is that you have a T least in this case it's still tied to the mama and you going to go back and forth as many times you want. So I'm covered when the black and white going back, changing the sliders and then looking at it going, okay, Blending mode is set to soft light. I'm going over the skin is not gonna go back. Open raw. Change it now. I could do that in photo shop, but I did for the first year or two, and it was actually have put a plug in for Calvin Hollywood. He's the one that he said, Send me your workflow and you know he waas semi workflow and I don't see what you dio I'm like sure. So I sent It goes, you know, it is German accent. If you would do in a smart object, you have more control of minimizing destruction. On what? Meet Lee did it. I kind of heard about it, but I wasn't sure what smart object were. You know, it's like with Aaron. I was saying, he's blend If I'm like, What the heck is blended? If you hear that term and there usually is, there's people using, I think we got a problem here. Houston, this thing is ah is, um, still spending and never take this long. So there is a problem, and it may be, Let's see. Did I jump mixed up in all J pegs? So it should have been an easy fix here. Um, I can either restart this, which is really a bummer. Or we could take another question, See what happens. I made a couple questions on how how and if you use light room and your workflow Theo, I'll tell you why, OK, because I'm an old guy and I'm not 22 years old anymore and learning something new now The problem with light room and I understand like room watched enough. I've watched Julian costume presentation. She's just a riot. When she teaches is I want to know where my files are, Right? So I have this fear that if I did light room and the thing goes, yeah, your images over here in this hard drive And then on one day I'm like, Where's the originals? So that this fear as to where my files Well, she said, you know, don't worry. She showed me and I need to get it. I've got actually got lightning for and I need to start learning. I I think that if I had a week, I can learn it. So think of this. The bridge, a rock inverter from bridge is just a scale. That same engine, scaled down version of light room Life room just has all these more options, and it's amazing. Light room is just like, you know, amazing program Light room allows you to do you do some batch processing in raw the bridge. But, um, I'm not a wedding photographer or one that does lots of images of one thing. When I do a shoot, I'm ending up with the movie poster type one big picture, one ad campaign billboard, so I don't need to it. I say this now that I do a lot of backgrounds managing lots of images, and I'm starting to get to where I can't remember my backgrounds. I want a keyword him. So that's why I wanna learn light room. But light room is one of those things that just it's just it's a must and I'm behind the times todo it so much today list. But I'm I'm also trying to learn, Premier. Oh, my gosh. You know, um and I think we've got a problem here, so we're gonna have to probably do a force quit on photo shop, but it says it's still working here, but I'm gonna force quit it because I don't think, um, it's going. It's going, Let's do this. Let's run. Let's do this. Let's run a couple of them. It wasn't It's not rocket science here, But you do know I showed you Dr Brown Services thing. Go to stack a manic set it to go here. We're opens up again, said it to mean and let it do its thing and stacks them together. But, um when, uh, it has a work It's not a good thing. Let's go back here. Create stack mean Oh, I know why You know what I did? I'm forcing 16 bit channel mode because I was doing J pegs. There is my problem. I see. Well, yeah. I was trying to take a J Pagan, make a 16 bits that can't do it. So like I said, normally do my Ross. But a J. Peg Will will give you a preview. So it'll it'll happen here really quick. Any questions? Along here? We've got our in crowd. You're all happy. We're another quick question from the Internet. We have time. So someone has photo shop CS three. They know it's old. They tried smart objects and put the image in somewhere else. Not with the original images. It because it's just a old version. I don't know exactly what they're meaning, but I can tell you this. I have a lot of my friends. I mean, friends that are shooting commercial jobs, right as a living, and they're still in concedes three. I said why? And they go well because I don't want change. It's gonna learn something new, and there are some things like they changed interface a little bit. It's not really the money. Can't be that expensive right? Upgrade. It's a little bit, but if you use a program, I use a program. Probably this program, probably. You know what? How many hours in a week? What's a $180 upgrade? Not that much. So here's what I say. And here's the other thing. When someone's learning and they're still in CS three and everyone's teaching in CS six, you got a problem. So I would say, First thing, move, upgrade. Okay, Not everyone can afford everything. I know that, but so I'm not really sure what she's me, but because that goes back before I think I was doing smart objects or about when I started smart objects, and I'm not really sure if she what exactly what she was saying. But all right, so here, when it happened, um and this is only about this was only about half of the images, right? But you sell what happened way we had to cut it down a little bit, but there's my stacked streaky sky. It's given to this over here, and, um, and then what I want to do is I wanna When I do this, I want to save it, um, as a tiff and then reopen it in the raw or bridge through bridge and rock inversion. But that's how similar Stack O Matic again. Don't click if you're doing jpeg on that, uh, convert to 16 bit. So I think we're ready to move on from there. That's the stacking. Um, let's do some stitching. We'll show you how simple that is. So that was a little bit of a glitch. So let's go, Teoh stitching, and I'm gonna go to my ocean folder. All right, So here's three those three images I did before, right? So the left middle and right. I'm gonna still do these in J. Peg. You could still do it. It's gonna be a lot faster. Um, so I go to, um, tools for shop for emerge. What? Well, let me do that. I'm going to just sit on auto. You can on occasion. You have a problem image if you don't get your nodal point. Really good. Um, you can try some of the perspective and things like that, but 99% of time I do auto hit okay. It's not going to find where they all match up like a miracle, and it just It just is amazing. Now let's see holding us. Think it looks like it's going to do some weird things. I'm here. Um, you saw the one on the left is I just did Look what it did. It's never done this. Why does this happen to me? Front of people? Um well, let's do this since we're having fun, right? Let's get out of here. Let's see what it would dio. Let's go back. J Peg Tools, Photos. Job. Photoshopped Photo Merge Let's try. Try this one. See that? Fix it a little better. It might be also that I did that in this. The 16 millimeter land that's that's maybe was my 17 but it's wide. And so, like I said, if you don't have your nodal point perfect, it's gonna have problems long your lens, the easier it is to stench. So let's take a look at it. There goes, that's a little better. And, you know, I have a little bit of issue here. See, this middle one's a little darker, so you can always go in here and you can adjust that blended a little bit. Kind of That was the wrong one. Let's try it. It's this one. You can blend that a little bit better. Oops, that may be the wrong slider to use. Yeah, it's just not much their information, but it weighs. It gives you the three layers with the masks, and then I just flatten it. I just flatten it and then I move it and straight it up and I go in tow. I do a lot of free transform. So out there, select all apple tea and I can. I used the warp a lot of times, so I'll straighten things out a little bit here, you know, arise and things like that to get. And then I, you know, crop it square. So that's how I stitch, um, my landscapes, my backgrounds. So the more I do so if I have five as three fives really wide could be careful again would be like, you know, taking a picture from here. It over here on If you have a street, it'll do some funky things, but usually a landscaping pretty safe, so you'll learn those things that you get out Like I said when I first started doing my cactus Siri's, it took me, I would say, at least in a dozen times, out there with the strobes before it started to click. And same with HDR. It takes a while to sort of think in HDR. The more you do it, the better it is Now I have the same people. They'll email een else. They'll send me a picture of their composite and they'll say, Hey, this my first composite, What do you think? And please don't send me your pictures because I have so many pictures too respond to. I get 40,000 emails a year, so it's tough to do it. But I always say, Looks great. Now do another 300. That's how you learn. You can't just learn on one composite, you know, Sell a fake is a challenge and same thing with all this HDR and stitching all stuff it takes, you know, it takes a while Teoh to do to do the learning stuff. All right, so let's dio this is my my 16 millimeters are 70 millimeter tilt tilt shift. So I go over here I go full emerge and up There you go. Wait for this thing. Um, we're gonna murder. This is easy to merge because there's no parallax. I mean, it's just you're shifting the lens and you'll see this is seamless. Very, very. This is the raw files, but, um, so this is how we do a lot. I'll have my 17 tell ship, probably on about 80% of time. You from a backgrounds? Before it was all 16 millimeter. My 16 to 35 at 16 millimeter. Just leave it on it. You just walk the streets. So this is blending a left image on the right image. And again, this is the raw. And then I'm gonna dio, I'll show you the one of the stitching of the person. And again, this gives me a 36 megapixel capture and I'll trim the corners a little bit because keep in mind that when lens every lenses this way, it's gonna be sharper in the center, then on the corners. And so, um, this is going to have a little bit of softness on the very, very edge over here. And so and I also do the, um I'll let's do skew here, and I'll straighten up my lines like this. You know, this thing's a little tweaked here, so I might pull that down a little bit there, you know, to fix it. So I do this and you are You are stretching pixels here, but, um, it's worth it for me to clean it up. It's all right. So let's now stitch a portrait. I must cancel. We don't look at that. Okay, so let's go over here. Close this up. Don't save. Let's open up this guy. So here's the top middle and the bottom tools Photoshopped photo merge and let it do its thing. And these original files, too. So I was gonna take a little bit. The boy, this ends up what? I say 50 megapixel capture. So, um, and the sharpness is just unbelievable. So we've covered, I think, stacking, stitching, and we'll do this. And I think they will do some questions, Okay. And, you know, I know that many of you thought this was me here, you know, um, but no, it's not. Maybe in my better day, I have this slide out his show, and it's this athlete. He's major six pack, and I tell people I put this guy's head on my body, but, um, those days are gone. So and I was a gymnast, so I had a six pack at one point. But it's buried now. It's, uh, undercover. All right, so the stitches and again, this files big because I had a lot of gap between each one. A lot of my statement landscapes I don't go to I don't try to overlap. You want to get enough overlapping. So and this one ended up to be pretty good, uh, set here. So when I do this, there's ideo. I have my camera set up on that nodal point swinging like this, and so I get ready. So if you're ready 123 click, click, Click itself has to do it. Click, click, click. And you know if they blink. But I'm here. Don't matter. You think I like this so long, your whole body doesn't shift, it doesn't matter. And I've never had that I know of. I've never had a image not line up because it's it's going in there, and it's fixing them all. So here it iss you see the little, see the little lines on it in here seems little lines are here to blow us up. That's not in the original. That's just show you where the mask is to make sense. So it's telling you there's the mask right there comes across. That's where it's stitching it up. So what I do is I flatten it. And then I mean, look at this file and that's at no, I didn't like this screen. That's that 50% with that. That's unbelievable, right? So that's that's stitching a portrait. And then, obviously, Aiken, you know, I clean that all up. Actually, when I did him, I knocked. I think I at what I do a lot here in the flat. I did. That flatten is I will take, um And if I have to fix my my, uh, my sides here, I'll do this. Um, let's say I just do that. So I fix you know, instead of cloning and doing all that to it, it was just a great background. So great is the hardest color also to reproduce. And so when you do a lot of gray, I'm gonna get rid of this. Does anybody have noticed when you shoot on a grey background like a strobe, and you get this paper and you see every little wobble in it. Because because graze at mid range and like white, you blow that out black ink and absorb it light. The grey shows everything. So it's a real pain and I use a wall light times. I'll paint a wall. You know, like you just It's all drywall, right? He's paid it. There's a wobble so or linoleum. You flip the moment and linoleum on the backside of paid a gray and then hang. It is a lot smoother, so let's do this. I think we've covered that. That's kind of the photo shop side. I'm just putting those things together, but really it comes down to this when I say explore, take a risk, dive in, have fun and just create a Siri's. Create a series of images repeated over and over again, and you become an expert in it. I'm you know, not an expert in all this stuff, somebody just starting. But I do it enough. I'll get fined, discover new things, and then I'll write a book on or something. The others. You become an expert. People think you know everything on it. Well, because I practice it over and over again. So let's do some questions. So we have a question from M. C for a debt. How often do you photo merge people? And what is the advantage of having such a huge pile just for printing? Large? Well, bigger. Always better? No. But yet it's like when a client comes to me and says, I need a big, big you know, file. I just did a job, and the it was eight tall by 14 feet, eight feet by 14 feet is what they wanted to bone up to. So in that situation, you just you got you know what? I need the best possible file like you end up with. So it was a sticks background, and the person was was not. But I you know, because I stitched the background and then put her end. Um, you know, it was probably a little better. I haven't seen it. They printed it for trade show. But the thing is, is here's another thing to keep in mind. We view something you don't view a 40 by 60 four inches away, do you? But as the Latins talked about this, you know, we step back, so if you have an eight by 10 on the wall, you come up close. So it's a lot of it's about how far you've you something, you know, so so you can get away with a lot. And, umm, you know, and also we have these monitors that are really high def, you know, And you're like, Oh, you see a little soft stuff and you go, Oh, my gosh. You make a print of it. Sometimes you don't even notice it. It really kind of could you put on the wall? You last beautiful. All right. Okay, Okay. S O s bridge would like to know. Do you use lens correction of a CR before your do your stitching? Um, you have to know. No, um, I would say, because what you want to do is that may not be an exact correction for each, You know, it's image, you know? So I would do it after, but you're gonna have a little bit of distortion and stuff, and you fix it. Um, yes. Do it after. Okay. Do we have any in studio questions? You guys okay? We have a question from Philly. It's just a question about the Golden Gate Bridge. If you could just confirm that was 17 images and each were 32nd exposure one after the other. Yes, yes. My goal was to get 10 minutes. But you gotta think about this. You know how you set up a new picture? Let's say you're still, you know, on a tripod, and you're serious photography. You go. OK, Golden Gate Bridge. You know, click, click, click. Then you move on to the next thing, right? Well, how long it takes? Maybe two minutes. Now you sit there and wait. And what, You have your camera process for 10 minutes. That's like change. Torture your there going? Oh, my God, Is this for ever? You know? And so what I would say is, you know, maybe have your IPhone, check your emails, whatever it is, just try toe because it is a long haul. 10 minutes is a long so they're still talking about the bringing in the image is a smart object to make the black and white print because she show a quick demo of that which ones that bringing in the two smart objects one black and white. Well, we can't do that now, Okay? But that is on, uh, no one of my tutorials school. And I mean, it's not a secret. And here let me when I teach it, especially when I do a live demonstration, you can't. And this is what creative lives all about. Two. You can watch it live. That's great. You can't absorb it all. The best way to learn is to be able to rewind it back and forth. Because I tell you what, especially at my age. I can't do it 30 times to remember how to do it. So I don't have time to do that right now. But if the idea is, I'm creating a smart object, a duplicate, not just command Jay. That's a duplicate layer. Copy. I'm doing a duplicate layer via copy, so it's actually a copy, but they're two separate files tied to Mama The raw you have to umbilical cord. We were question from clear about. How do you play stacking for Astro photography? Is there anything that you do differently to minimize the noise? Well, no, see, that's the beauty of doing it will say I want to do star trails. You know how you do The circle star trails? Well, the old days we shot, you know, Kodachrome 64. You leave it open for six hours all night long, and you'd reciprocity failure and all that. But all the stars were perfectly smooth. Now, with stacking, you can't do a six hour exposure. I don't think I'm digital. I mean, you might get 10 minutes, Might I don't know. I don't know what to put delimited. Every cameras probably be different. The beauty of Stack E is that I can minimize it by, say, short exposures that to be 30 seconds could be two minutes, two minutes, two minutes or five minutes, maybe five minutes. And then when you put it together, there's going to be, though however, a little teeny break where you stopped it started it. So I think there was some. There was some programs that were being written that would take and take out the little gap. I think Russell Brown and I were talking about Russell does that a lot with the stars trails. And I think, um um, I'm Scott Martin. They were trying to do and saw that little gap issue. But that's for the star trails like this, so I would keep it short exposures to minimize the noise. You do noise reduction in the camera. But also remember this when you run no noise to reduction, it's a it's a 10 a Tim and exposure. It takes 10 minutes to run the noise reduction. Just 20 minutes sitting there. More time to sit there and check. No kidding.