These image are not the best in composition nor of great artistry. Just a simple illustration on what can be done and how I do it. But always remember, a good image never need a lot of manipulation or processing.

Also, there are many ways to come to the final end product and this is just one of the ways.

Images shot in jpeg will still be able to be processed in this manner but it is subjective to the dynamic range of the data embedded in the file. Shooting in RAW gives you more flexibility.

This image was shot in RAW.

Step 1

This is an image shot under canopy with low light and relatively slow shutter speed just enough to get a sharp pic from handholding the lens. You should notice that this shot is underexposed but the white feathers on its breast still holds acceptable details. Anyway, I opened this image into my CS2 and placed this image as an individual layer.

Step 2

Next, from my raw convertor, with the same raw image, I pushed up the exposure compensation by 2 stops to get better details of the underexposed areas and send this image into CS2. Notice that the breast area is overexposed in this one but the surrounding is well lighted.

Step 3

Drag the image02 into the image01 on CS2 and this will create a another layer. Image01 is ‘layer 1′ while image02 is ‘layer 2′.

Step 4

Align the images exactly ontop of each other using the align tool and select layer 2.

Step 5

I am now going to erase the underexposed parts off layer 2 (in this case, everything except the KF breast). Click on the eraser tool. Change the brush setting to 0 hardness. Brush size is depending on the image size but I always prefer a huge brush. Larger brush gives better anti-aliasing effect while the smaller brush are used on the tighter areas.

Step 6

Using the eraser, paint off the underexposed layer except the KF breast area. Image outcome should somewhat looked like this. Exposure of the breast of KF and surrounding are now more properly balanced in the image. Now, merge the 2 layers together into 1.

Ok, next, lets try to enhance this image further by blurring the background abit and also removing the surrounding noise.

Step 7

Create a duplicate layer for this image (2 similar image layers). Then select the bottom layer.

Step 8

Select gaussian blur and blur off the bottom layer like this. Toggle the eye switch on the layers to see the images.

==Step 9== Select the top layer. Using the eraser tool once again with the brush set to 0 hardness with adequate brush size and start painting (erasing) off the surrounding that will make the image looked to have a better bokeh. Outcome of image should look like this

Step 10

Lastly, final touches. Tune the saturation, curves, etc. to your liking. If displaying the pic on web, resize to appropriate web size, and do smart sharpening. Amount: 50%-150%, Radius: 0.3pixels, Remove: Lens blur. Save and WALAH……..

 
Hope my explanation is simple enough for you guys to understand.

Cheers.

Roger
Photographs and article are copyright of Roger Deng

Double exposures in a photographic film term is basically shooting 2 exposure on a same piece of film/slide. If you use a film camera, simply take 2 shots without winding. If you have a DSLR with a multiple exposure setting (eg., Nikon D2x, D300), you could try playing around with it from the menu settings.

For me here, I will simply use Photoshop by using the tools; layer opacity/fill and blurring filters, I can merge the following 2 images into a rather more dramatic output.
1) An Egret taken on a flat colored white sky but somehow I like its flight pose. 
2) At the same time, I turn towards the sun and took this sunsetting shot. It will be nice if its a round yoke but for demonstration sake, this is good enough. 
3) To perfect the background, you need a little bit of visualisation skills and common sense. Here, I try to emulate the shallow depth of field of the 400mm lens as if I was focusing on the Egret as if it was there. In this case, I use the Photoshop’s lens blur function. You could use guassian blur or whichever blurring function you like as ultimately the objective is to make the final merged image believable. 
4) Pull both images into a single file creating 2 layers, one stacked ontop of each other directly. Then, decrease the opacity or fill slider to a desired level where you could see both images are balancely merged. With the Egret’s flat colored background, it actually makes the job easier.
5) Next, merged the 2 images together by highlighting them and pressing Ctrl-E. From here, adjust your curves, levels, saturation, etc. to your desired liking. Now, I did also dodge some lighted parts of the egret off to make the back lighting more believable. So here is my humble attempt.
Now, I believe photography purist will dislike or disagree with what I do but all I can say is this is more of an art and creativity on my part. Even in the good old days of darkroom, one does all the manupilations there anyway. But this is for sure, I do not cut down a tree or disrupt the livelihood of a subject by doing this.

Hope this is helpful and broadens your creativity after clicking the shutter button.
Cheers, Roger Deng

This article touch on simple method of using noise ninja to minimise noise in a image.

Technique

This image is resize to web size posting and no noise reduction is applied.

Click on Profile Image to let noise ninja decide on which area of the image to denoise. After Noise ninja profile an image it show square box in the image where noise is detected. Sometime it detect noise on the subject which in this case is the owl. However it is not desirable to denoise the subject which will result in loss of detail. Press Control/Command and use mouse to click on the yellow square box to remove it so noise ninja would not denoise that portion.

Noise ninja allow the option to sharpen image after it denoise. I usually set the USM Amount: 0 and USM Radius: 0.4because i prefer to use other method of shapening provide by photoshop.

End result is a cleaner image and hopefully the subject remain as sharp as original. After denoise you could apply exposeure level, saturation control and image shapening depend on your preference.

Photographs and article are copyright of Ender Tey

In this multi-part article I will present some of DPP’s feature that I found very useful. Any inputs are welcome to make this a better article.

DPP stand for Digital Photo Professional made by Canon targeted for Professional Use. The latest version can be download from Canon website but you will need to install the base software from Canon CD supplied along with your camera. Introduction

Part 1 Quick Check Tool

This part 1, I will cover this useful feature call “Quick Check Tool”. I’m using this feature very often as the initial stage of my digital work flow, along with that I will also explain simple tagging feature offered by this software too.

After a long day shooting, of course the first thing you will do once you reach home is to download all your photo into your hard disk. Often photo taken are in hundreds, might be thousands for some. I will normally organized them in folders if its too many shots taken.

Step 1 Select All Photos

First thing I will do after that is to select all in DPP.

Step 2 Quick Check Tool

Go to menu Tools > Quick Check Tool, a new window will popup.

Step 3 Review your photos

You will see new window popup, and you can now start to review your photo sharpness and tag the photo accordingly. I will normally toggle the ‘50% view’ button on and off, this will allow me to see if the sharpness is there. To navigate the photo easily, i use left and right arrow to move between photos, I find it faster that way.

Below the ‘50% view’ and ‘Full screen’ button you can see there are 1, 2, 3 button. This will allow you to tag the photo in 1, 2, 3. I will normally tag the photo i want to process with 1, then the photo I want to throw away, I will tag it with 2. Once my review is completed, I will just select all photos tagged with ‘2′ and delete it.

The next thing I will do is fine tune photo tagged with 1, then process it.

Voila… Hope you find it useful.
Photographs and article are copyright of Sonix

This article describes the basic RGB workflow required for various consumer printers available in the market.

The most important aspect of getting good prints out of your printer is a well calibrated monitor. I used the Pantone Colorvision’s Colorplus calibrator (cheapo one) for my monitor calibration. To me, this is the quickest and effective way to do it. Alternatively, you can do visual calibration (using eyes) using various softwares but those are not preferred as your eyes have different judgement under different lighting conditions. That said, without calibration, your printer is still as good as a colorblind machine.

Setup

The following are the workflow for setting up Photoshop CS2 for printing.

Color setup

1. In Photoshop CS2, Select Edit > Color setting.
2. Select Europe Prepress2 and its default setting
3. Select OK

Image setup

Open you image in CS2 and assign Adobe RGB (1998) as the working profile.

Soft Proofing

1. Select View > Proof Setup > Custom
2. On the pull down tab of ‘Device to Simulate’, select the profile best suited to the media (paper type)you are going to use on your printer.
3. Untick Preserve RGB Number.
4. On Rendering Intent, select Perceptual. ( Experiment between Perceptual and Relative Colorimetric for best results)
5. Tick Black Point Compensation
6. Untick Simulate Paper color and Simulate Black ink
7. Select OK
8. Using CTRL-Y to toggle simulation for the soft proofing

Printing

1. Select File > Print with Preview
2. Under options,
   1. For Color Handling, select Let Photoshop Determine Colors
   2. For Printer Profile, select the profile that was used in the Soft Proofing, ‘Device to Simulate’.
   3. For Rendering Intent, select the Rendering Intent as was selected in Soft Proofing.
3. Select Print.
4. In the Print dialog box, select the printer you are going to print with then select Properties
5. In your printer setting, set the print size and select the right paper type according to what you selected in CS2
6. Set the ICM and all color management to off. In short, no color mangament from the printer is to be activated.
7. Once these settings are done, select OK.
8. Print the photo

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Do a few test prints on a 4R size glossy photographic paper first before moving on to print it in larger sizes.

Hope this article is of some help to you.

If however you believe there is a better or more suitable way to print your images, you are most welcome to post here and correct me, if any. ;)

Cheers.
Article is copyright of Roger Deng