On the edge

Apologies for my absence - blame it on the horrible weather!
Today I would like to show you how to use a method of sharpening an image that is a little different.
You may possibly have heard about it before - especially if you read magazines and seek out tutorials.
This method is for those of you who use either Photoshop (most versions) or Photoshop Elements. These are the two programs I am most familiar with so are the ones I can help you understand.
To find something to demonstrate the sharpening I first needed a photograph so leaned over the veranda railing and took an shot of the fruiting body of a large Cycad, it erupts from the surrounding leaves like a botanical volcano, rising in a large dome of leaf shaped florets which will go on to open out to eject large chestnut ("conker") sized seeds.
First duplicate your picture to be sharpened by holding down the Ctrl key and tapping the J key once. Look over into the Layers Palette - you will now have a background and a copy of it that has been called "Layer 1"
Now click on Filter then on Other and High Pass

A pop up box with a slider will appear and at the same time the picture will alter to look like embossed pewter. This appearance makes it so much easier to see the edges, Move the slider so that those edges look well defined.

As a rough guide, try moving the slider between 9 and 14. Don't worry that you will make the edges artificially sharp, you can tone that down later. You need to experiment first to discover what this effect will do.
Click OK and go to the Layers Palette at the right of your screen. Click on the word "Normal" we shall now change the blending mode. When the drop down box of possible choices appears, click on "Overlay".

The picture does look more "Normal" now - but if you chose a large number for your sharpening it could look a bit too corrected and "hard". Now you can modify the strength of the sharpening you have applied. But before you do. . . .
Can you see the "eye" to the left of the "Layer 1" thumbnail? That is the visibility eye - open and you can see the layer, closed and it does not show. Click on the eye - it doesn't close, it actually disappears, click in the empty space where it was and the eye will return.
Now do that again and look at the picture you are working on. Click the eye on and off and see the difference.
Is the sharpening too much? My sharpening was. If you sharpening is too much, reduce the opacity of the layer - this you can do by hovering the mouse over the word "Opacity", and left clicking and dragging to the left when the double arrows appear - OR - you can click on the down arrow beside the word "Opacity" and drag the slider to the left. While you are making changes keep a watch on the picture, not on the slider.

(All the pictures in this article can be seen larger by clicking on them.)
When you have the amount of sharpening that you feel is right You can do one of two things.
You can

1. Flatten the image (right click on either the layer or the background in the Layers Palette and click on "Flatten" and save the image.
   or
2. Erase the background around your main subject - so that the sharpening is only applied to the main subject, then flatten the image.

The other way of sharpening a picture is to use one of the Sharpen Image options in the program. Here is a comparison between the Sharpen and the High Pass method of sharpening.

When I sharpened the rose with High Pass I deleted the sharpening effect from the background. Click to enlarge the picture and you will really see the difference.
I am not going to say that one way is better than the other. You sharpen your images in a way that you feel comfortable - but never shut your mind to other suggestions - always give them a try and make up your mind after experimenting.
AJ

Laughter in the air

Yesterday when walking with my dogs, one of them pounced on a baby lorikeet that had crash landed on the ground. (I rescued it and took it to a wildlife hospital where it is doing well - no injuries!) So I should not have been surprised when, on hearing the tell-tale sound of a Kookaburra throatily telling the other birds to leave him alone from his perch on a tree root that my faithful black retriever dashed to my rescue in the frantic hope that this time he would be allowed to keep his catch. However I had staggered out there with tripod, camera and long lens so was not exactly pleased with his helpfulness!
The Kookaburra was not an injured bird so it was able to fly up into a branch of the fire-wheel tree - Samson was hot on his heels so before I could even call the dog to leave it alone, the bird had flown! Kookaburras are actually a bird that will allow you to get quite close to them, usually. I followed my feathered quarry into a fenced area - being sure to close the gate with Samson on the other side! Unfortunately  now the bird was quite sure that I wanted to catch it and only very briefly did it sit in range of the camera. Luckily for me that one photograph turned out quite reasonable - except that it was a tad dark.

With the darkness corrected.
Since many people do take photographs with the main subject either silhouetted or a bit darker than liked, I will show you what I did to end up with this picture so that you too can fool everyone into thinking you take wonderful shots every time!
To begin with I used the quick selection tool in Photoshop Elements and dragged it over the branch and the bird.

You can see from the red arrows how I dragged the tool down and across the bird and the branch, Some of the background was selected too but I then held down the ALT key and with the same tool slowly and carefully dragged over those areas to de-select them.
Now I needed to brighten the bird and branch (You can now see that they do look a bit dull and need a "lift")
I then opened Levels (Ctrl + L) and moved the mid tones and the highlights sliders. The mid tones (centre slider) was moved the most.

The bird's eye looks way too dark so I zoomed in and I could see that there were catch lights there but quite faint. I took the Dodge tool and gave one smooth brush stroke over the lighter part of the eye just to brighten it a little. I didn't want to over do it or it would have looked as if the picture had been taken with a flash.
There was one more thing to do before I flattened the image and that was to add a little sharpening. I usually use Smart Sharpen and these are the settings that worked for this image (each image needs a different amount).

You can tell by the enlarged image in the sharpen window that the Kookaburra is still on a separate layer, this is why there is that grey mesh all around the bird. The background image does not show up in the sharpen window. From the closer shot you can see the bright bit in the eye that I had made a little brighter.
The image was then flattened and my hand written signature put on the bottom - and a simple "Stroke" that makes a bit of a border. Then it was saved with a new name.
I always keep my original photographs in a folder that is saved not only to my computer but also to an external hard drive. The originals are like my "negatives" I will be able to return to them in years to come and with my newly acquired skills make and even better job of readying them for printing. I do keep the corrected ones on the external drive too - but separate from the originals.
AJ

A hand written signature for your photos.

I was recently asked how to make a signature in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements (any version), I am sharing the instructions I gave. 

On a white piece of paper and using a reasonably thick ballpoint or gel pen, write your signature that you wish to use on your photos as your watermark.

Either use your camera to take a photograph of the signature or use a scanner.

Open the photograph or scan in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

Increase the contrast to make the white and black very definite and clean up any spots or marks.

Crop the image to leave hardly any space around the signature.

Resize so the largest side is 2000 pixels (doesn't matter what the resolution is)

Click on Edit then on Define brush

In the pop up window, give the brush a name.

 The brush has now been created and is ready to be used.

Open a picture.

Click on the brush tool and using the scroll besides the illustrations of the brush shapes, scroll right down to the very bottom.

To begin with your brush will be much too large so use the slider to change the size then, when hovering over the image to be signed, use the left square bracket key on the keyboard to reduce the size further.

Select the colour with which you are to sign your picture and click in an appropriate spot to imprint your signature.

 Be consistent about where you sign your images.

AJ

Focus and Bokeh

While exercising the dogs in the back garden this morning I amused myself by taking a few photographs. Once able to view the results on the computer I found the topic to discuss here - focus and bokeh. It does seem a bit strange to give "out of focus" a special name, but that is exactly what "Bokeh" is. A few people have adopted the name to mean circles of colours created by shooting a near subject and getting Christmas lights dramatically out of focus, however Bokeh covers much more than just that. one of my shots from this morning almost gives those circles of light. The shot was taken with glimpses of sky showing through leaves that were behind my subject.

F4.5       1/200sec     ISO 640     44mm

When taking any photograph you need to "simplify" it. Always try to determine what it is that you are wanting to show. "What is it that caught my eye?" When you look through the viewfinder or at the LCD screen you can tell that the camera does not necessarily see what YOU see! Then it is time to do a little tweaking of the settings so that it really is you that controls the image. With a point and shoot camera there is not much in the way of tweaking that can be done (without getting hopelessly confused) but by altering the pattern of focus to "Spot" focus and getting closer to the subject, you will be surprised at the difference you can make to your shots. (There is usually a menu setting to change the focus pattern)

With an SLR camera set the controls to Aperture priority and a low "F" number (5.6 or less). Get reasonably close to your small subject and use the lens at the full zoom - Since I was using the 18-55 mm lens I zoomed in. The viewfinder reveals the magic of the wide aperture, throwing the background completely out of focus.
The morning was quite dull so to allow the camera to enable a faster shutter speed I increased the ISO - but being aware of the many writings about taking care not to get "Noise" into the image I (so far) have not taken the ISO past the 800 mark. Today I used 640 and it seemed to allow me to take hand held shots with clarity. (Click on the pictures to see them larger).
This next image is of the unusual flowering tree the "Firewheel" the flowers grow inside the canopy and can only be seen by peering into the branches.

F/5.6        1/80sec     ISO 640    55mm

Again I have focused on the flowers and tried to throw the rest of the tree out of focus while still keeping an idea of where the flowers are growing. If you take note of the F stop that has been used, (F/5.6) it is a little bit narrow than for the previous picture (F/4.5) - this allows a greater depth of focus - the bigger the F stop number the bigger the range of focus. Because I am using Aperture priority, the camera decides the shutter speed. It is only just fast enough for hand held shots - I have a very shaky hand and would need a tripod for any speed slower than this. A tripod in  this situation (aiming up into the tree) would have been very difficult to set up - especially since I needed to be close to the flowers which were quite a reach!
My next picture is of a head of not yet open flowers on the Golden Curl  Tree, this time the bokeh is not in circles of light but just of blurred colour.

F/5.6    1/50    ISO 640    1.12m

The blurred background is still called "Bokeh" and yet you can make out the big branched leaves of a tropical plant and some smaller almost heart shaped leaves behind them. The reason the background leaves are easier to define is because I could not get close to this branch to get the framing I wanted. This time I am over a metre away from the main subject. (I just proved myself wrong about the shaky hand - check out the shutter speed!)
My final shot also shows off some lovely "Bokeh". The Grevillea has an unusual flower that is a joy to photograph! There are many variations of the plant with lots of different colours to the flowers as well as flower size and shape but all have these curving long tubular florets like the antennae on a butterfly.

F/5.6    1/125sec    ISO 640     55mm

This time the camera is pointed down to include the lawn beneath the flower and since it is close to the flower and the lawn some meter and half away, the flower is the main feature of the image and the bokeh provides the background canvas. Since this shot was taken out where it was brighter the shutter speed is quite a lot faster than in the previous image where I was under the dark shade of trees. The Aperture setting is the same as in the last picture - I set that - the shutter speed is determined by the computer in the camera.
Sometimes it is not possible to use the autofocus - especially when the subject is very thin, such as when taking the flower head of a stalk of grass. Then it is necessary to switch to manual focus.
AJ

The fruits of our labour

This morning I spent time picking up macadamia nuts from the lawn. In previous years the sulphur crested cockatoos have left us only a handful of nuts but this year there are enough to warrant gathering them - they are not ripe until they fall from the trees. Only a few are left on the tree and this is how they look
(Click on the pictures to enlarge)

F5.6  1/100  55mm  ISO 200

Of course you can recognise the nuts more easily from this picture.

F10  1/50  55mm  ISO 200

I deliberately left the outer casing on a couple of them so that you can see how they develop inside a tough inedible fruit. The shell around the nut is so hard to crack that only a vice will do it - using a hammer results in the nut shooting off in one direction or another unscathed or else the edible part of the nut is crushed between shards of smashed shell! How the cockatoos manage to bore holes into the casing and get at the inner soft nut, I really do not know - but they manage very well indeed! There were plenty of macadamia nuts on the ground with round holes in them and no soft flesh in the middle.
Living in the subtropics the climate is not suitable for apples and pears - however we did manage to find a "tropical pear" which we planted many years ago and has borne up to six pear shaped fruit each year - but full of Coddling moth grubs so we haven't managed to taste them.
This year, for some unknown reason, the tree is absolutely laden with fruit.

F10  1/50  40mm  ISO 200

As you can see there are quite a few pears on the lawn under the tree. to begin with I picked up and started to prepare the fruit from under the tree, thinking that they would be riper than those still hanging - but all but one were bruised inside from the invasion of little hatched coddling moth grubs. Back I went to the tree again and this time picked a bucket full from there.

F10  1/80  40mm  ISO 200

This time the fruit was free of grubs - but extremely hard and woody. I boiled the pears in sugar and water with half a teaspoon of cinnamon. It took forever for the fruit to soften. When I tasted the fruit all it tasted like was sugar and cinnamon! The pears have very little taste to them, I guess I will leave them to the coddling moths and the fruit bats! I will not remove the trees, at least they provide food for some creatures!
Our mangoes are just coming into season now. They have been in the fruit shops since before Christmas but the ones on our trees are not ripe yet.

F8  1/20  32mm  ISO 200

I did pick three of them and have put them on the window-sill to ripen. What happens when the fruit is close to ripe is that the fruit bats from all over South East Queensland come to my garden and demolish everything and finding a fruit that does not have a bite taken from it is very difficult.
There are also fruits that I will not be able to reach that are hanging over the creek at the bottom of the garden

F8  1/20  55mm  ISO 200

We may have to devise some way of putting a net onto a long pole to capture that fruit above the water!
Walking back to the house after checking the fruit trees (we live on a one acre block of land) I passed the last of our orange trees. Over the years there have been so many floods come through where the citrus are growing that only one tatty tree is left standing.

F8  1/50  35mm  ISO 200

Once again we do have trouble with the Sulphur Crested Cockatoos among the citrus - they know which of them have seeds - they loved the lemons so much that we only managed to pick a handful. While the fruit is as green as the orange in the picture above, the birds would fly into the tree and tear the fruit apart to get at the lemon pips! (Now you know why they have yellow feathers on the top of their head! Its from all the lemons they eat!)
So we only have one orange tree left where we once had eight. I shall purchase more but will have to plant them on higher ground since each year there is a deeper flood as more and more people put fill into their low ground to stop THEIR flooding - it is forcing the floods further and further back. If it raises much higher we will have to move the big shed!
Just one more fruit picture for luck!

F8  1/50  48mm  ISO 200

I doubt if we shall ever be self sufficient with our fruit growing but we do manage to keep a lot of the native wildlife happy!
AJ
joanren@gmail.com

On top of the world

It was the first time for me - to have a meal at the famous "St Bernard's Hotel" on Mt Tamborine. This was only the second time I have visited the place, the time before only for a quick look. This time I was able to explore the building and the surrounds, some of which I will share in pictures. The hotel has lots of atmosphere and is understandably very popular both for casual drinks as well as for meals. The staff go out of their way to make you feel welcome and by the time you leave you feel as if they are personal friends!
There has been a tradition to own a St Bernard dog since the doors first opened to the hotel years and years ago. (It acquired a liquor license in 1915) I was lucky enough to spot the youngest of the two dogs, one year old Molly. She was exhaustingly energetic, as you can tell from this picture.

The views from the out door tables is spectacular, the eating area hovers over a valley and looks down over tree covered hills. There are beautiful flower filled gardens with seats and easy pathways for the more energetic visitor to wander.

If the weather is fine a walk through the rainforest to see the waterfalls is a possibility. With a group of people patiently waiting for me to return to place my lunch order I only had time to take a few paces into the rainforest where I couldn't help but take photographs of the wonderful stag ferns in the trees, these ferns grow in the wild in the National Park on Mt Tamborine and in the trees that are much too tall for people to steal them so these specimens in this private piece of rainforest would have been placed here deliberately. They are absolutely magnificent.

(remember that if you click on the pictures you can enlarge them)
In yet another part of the garden the lawns have been mown so that the area can be used for open air weddings and functions. While I was there a small group of geese had claimed it as their own and honked angrily at me for disturbing them. They waddled off into yet another part of the property but no doubt returned as soon as I had left.

As you can tell, I was very impressed with my visit to St Bernard's Hotel. I took far more pictures which I would be happy to share - but every day I see something new that is worthy of a story so I will limit the number of my photos!
AJ
joanren@gmail.com