Pencil Drawn Photos

We’re creating panels for a graphic novel using photographic backgrounds and hand drawn characters. Being comic-bookish, straight photographic backgrounds don’t cut it. There’s an easy way to make your photographs look like drawings that only takes a few seconds to do. We’re doing the panels using Pixelmator on a Mac, but you can do it with the same steps in Photoshop or GIMP.

Here’s the original image:

First, make a duplicate layer.

Second, in the Blending drop down menu in the Layers panel select Color Dodge.

Third, press command i to invert the image.

Fourth, from the effects panel, select Gaussian Blur and adjust the image to your preference.

Here’s the final image, which took less than 30 seconds to create.

This, along with half-toning is a decent effect to use for graphic novels or comics.

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The DSLR Artist is on promotion as a free download on Amazon.com today through Wednesday, September 18th.

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Minimum Cost DSLR Photography

You don’t need to spend a ton of money to venture into the world of DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) photography. A while ago I bought a refurbished Canon 10D for around s hundred dollars.

It still has a few fine grains of sand on it from the sand dunes near Lake Michigan.

So what did I get for for less than the cost of a low-end point and shoot? A solid magnesium body with the exposure modes I need (apeture priority, shutter priority and manual), among other useful features. Plus, it’s compatible with E-TTL Canon speedlights which I use a lot. It also sports 17 custom functions that allow you to mix and match controls and features for 61 possible combinations. It also supports RAW mode.

The downside? The LCD screen is small and image rendering is slow. It’s not full frame and it has a 6.3 megapixel sensor. Is this a problem? Not really, unless the intent is to produce massive prints. For that I’d use a different camera with a higher resolution sensor.

Along with the camera body I bought a new Canon 50mm 1.8 lens for 110 dollars. For approximately 210 dollars I have a solid, respectable and durable DSLR outfit that I’m really growing to love.

The three shots below are of a restored locomotive in Grand Haven, Michigan. All were taken with the Canon 10D. The first shot was converted from color to black and white using GIMP, the open source Photoshop alternative.

I wanted a shiny, high contrast look on the reflecting surface of the locomotive and coal car. I could not have achieved this effect using GIMP’s Desaturation tool. I used the Decompose tool and will have a blog post on how to use this in the near future.

The next two images are in color that I enhanced by only using the Curves tool.

I wanted to bring out the richness of the dull silver paint, deepen the shadows and expose the subtle hints of rust around the bolts. A few simple adjustments using the Curves tool accomplished this. Like the Decompose tool, I’ll also have a blog post on this in the near future.

GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) is freely available on the Web and is a first rate application.

The bottom line is you can enter the world of DSLR photography and produce high quality images for very little money.

Grand Haven

We were lucky with the weather this week in Grand Haven, Michigan.  Spent a lot of time shooting, especially at the Silver Lake sand dunes. These dunes are much smaller than Sleeping Bear, but far less touristy and traveled.

As with most photographers, it’s a labor of love lugging camera bags and tripods up these steep sand hills that seem like mountains.

I decided to process the dunes shoot primarily in black and white. There’s an isolated, otherworldly feel to these dunes, and for me the only way to capture that was in black and white.

The shot above and below were taken with a nine stop neutral density filter. I really like these filters and long exposures. To me, they expose a hidden world of latent light that would otherwise be invisible. All of the photos were taken with a T2i.

I post-processed the images in GIMP. The original RAW files were in color. I usually shoot black and white in-camera but I wanted to keep the color option open. I shot everything at the dunes using a Tokina 11-16mm wide angle lens (one of my favorites) and a 75-255mm Canon zoom. I used a polarizer on the Tokina and the ND filter on the Canon.

This is an HDR image processes with Luminance HDR, taken with the Tokina and the polarizer.

 

Here’s another straight shot with the Tokina 11-16 processed with GIMP.

On the way back from the dunes to Grand Haven we saw an apple orchard with these boxes stacked.

This was taken with a Canon 50mm fixed focal length, which is one of my other favorite lenses. I have a lot shots of the boxes to process.

 

I just used my iPhone around town. Here’s one taken on the Grand Haven pier.

 

 

I have a lot of images to process and will post an update soon.

 

 

GIMP Clone Stamp Issues

GIMP users, are you having trouble with the clone stamp tool? It seems to have a mind of its own and sometimes it works, sometimes not. Here’s a sure-fire way to have the clone stamp tool work consistently. Use the rectangle or ellipse select tool to bound the area where you want to use the tool. Take your sample and clone away. I have never had the clone tool fail using this method.

 

ColorStrokes Review

ColorStrokes Review

I saw a tweet about ColorStrokes, a simple photo coloring application so I thought I would check it out. It costs four bucks on the iTunes AppStore, so I wasn’t out much if I didn’t like it. I was attracted to is since I used to do a lot of hand colored black and white prints back in the days of film.

Here’s a snap taken with a little Nikon 3100:

 

The guy on the scooter waiting at the stoplight is really the subject, and the color helps bring him out and adds depth.

There are some issues with ColorStrokes that make it unusable for a serious tool. It’s crashed several times on my iMac. When saving a file sometimes the colors aren’t saved, so all your work is lost. When you pull an image back in, all of the colors are gone. This means that you have to color a photo in one session. Also, the undo function is kippy- it will sometimes undo something you colored two steps back.

Faults aside, ColorStrokes is worth four dollars and is useful for very small jobs, but is it a tool serious photographers can rely on?

Not a chance.