… or how not to run an online shop.

To start of with, I have downloaded the trial version and have worked with the software for 15 days. It is very good and a welcome upgrade to Theimagingfactory’s B/W converter, which I have been using happily for quite some years  now. I will write a review about Silver Efex, provided I can manage to upgrade to the full version any time soon. Namibians and their credit cards seem to be ignored by Nik Software, together with the entire country as such …  for some strange reason.

Support staff at Nik Software – or rather your Payment Gateway providers (as they are likely to be the culprits):

• Namibia is not in your country list … full stop!
• The list I am looking at has South Africa and Angola in it – meaning I should be looking at the correct list, yes? The list of African countries, yes?
• South Africa and Angola – which are on the list – are on the same continent as Namibia, so are many more African countries.
• Your instructions to switch to the UK shop, by using the “choose country” function, not only doesn’t make any sense (as above), but D O E S  N O T  W O R K … yes, really!
• In fact, your “choose country” GoodieMcGaffter doesn’t seem to give a hoot about choices at all – and this has been tried by various web developers in our company – one ends up with the same country list every time, which should prove that (again as above) we are in the right shop already – you tell me … pretty please!
• The phenomenon that I cannot use my German credit card either, whilst “seemingly” hovering around in the German shop, indicates that user location is probably established by some other means and choices ignored from then on forward.

Guys, get an atlas and have a look at the African continent. Whilst at it, you may want to let your gaze sway a bit left and right (ignore the blue stuff). Apart from the incomplete list of African countries, there are definitely more than 50-60 countries on this planet … trust me!

Kindly notify me as soon as Namibia becomes eligible to shop at Nik Software.

All the best

Tommy Kellner (just wants to buy the software and continue working – wasted 5 days already)

The Mirror Conspiracy or Am I on To Something?

The Mask

Playing around with HDR and Tonal Mapping lately, I am revisiting many of my Namib Desert and Namib Naukluft images, which never made it to the digital darkroom. Not because they are just plain bad, but because mostly there is at least one thing wrong with them – exposure, tonality, contrast or the likes.

There is an interesting thing happening lately, I am suddenly “seeing things”. Playing around in HDR, enhancing contrast and increasing dynamic range, some of these images literally start coming alive. I love textures and “seeing things” is not new to me – the Boogie Man was all too real to me during my childhood, mind you. I am wondering, whether what I’m seeing in these enhanced images, is what made me take the picture in the first place.

The Aviator

Anyway, playing around with these images I had to think about Amy Schoeman and one of her exhibitions. Amy is a photographic artist, who inspired me ever since I encountered her and her images for the first time – thank you Amy, you are an angel. One particular exhibition was about images flipped and mirrored and blended in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways, I remember staring at them for ever and ever, seeing all sorts of things only to eventually read the caption, revealing what she saw in it or meant to say through it. It was a wonderful journey through Fantasia and a welcome break from every day’s banalities and platitudes. I have to admit here – sorry Amy – that the very first thought that struck me was something to the extend of “c’mon Amy, you can do better than just flipping and mirroring”, a thought which went astray quickly though, making place for arrested admiration.

The Warrior

At some later stage and purely out of curiosity I had to give it a try myself, only to find out that there is much more to this technique than meets the eye. I realised that choosing and/or taking the right picture is only the start, I never really bothered again … until now.

Here I am, flipping, mirroring and blending tone mapped images … and I’m calling it the “Mirror Conspiracy” … I hope you enjoy and let me know what you think of it.

So long

Tommy

Exposure Blending - All 4 Images

More often than not – and more often than we appreciate – we run out of contrast latitude or dynamic range, especially with smaller digital sensors. To help the issue doesn’t always warrant a full blown HDR and/or Tonal Mapping exercise, for which we would want 2-3 properly over- and under-exposed images anyway.

I would like to show you a simple technique, which has become one of my favorites and most used Photoshop actions over the past years. In fact, I have been using this for so long, I cannot recall where or from who I learned about it – very likely that it was Mark Galer. If not, thank you mystery contributor, I will credit you as soon as my Altzheimer Lite subsides.

Before I start, this cannot be done with a JPEG, as non-existing information cannot be retrieved.

Simple Exposure Blending - Before

What you see here is the point of departure, clearly out of dynamic range. The clouds and some of the highlights of the rocks at the bottom are blown and without detail, whilst some some of the rock crevices appear as just black holes.

Assuming that you do not have 2-3 over-under-exposed images, but at least a RAW file, develop one underexposed to the extend where your blown highlights start showing detail and another one overexposed to the extend where the shadows start showing details. Always use the histogram as a reference, your screen is not good enough, neither are your eyes – trust me.

Open both images in Photoshop and paste the darker version onto the lighter one, which should look something like this:

Simple Exposure Blending - Step1

Please bear with me here: Click on the bottom layer and select all (ctrl+a), then copy that selection to your clipboard (ctrl+c). Click on the top layer and create a layer mask for that top layer. Alt+click on that layer mask which will turn the entire image white (don’t panic) and paste the copied layer from your clipboard into that mask(ctrl+v) … you should now be looking at something like this – no worries, you did not just convert your image to black and white:

Simple Exposure Blending - Step2

The image looks black and white, because you pasted into a mask. Masks cannot contain colour.

With the mask still selected and looking at the “black and white image”, go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and select a value of about 10 to blur the mask. Depending on your image and its details, you may want to try different values, where high values may produce halos and low values may cause unnaturally sharp edges.

Simple Exposure Blending - Step3

Now, simply select the bottom layer and you are done … yup, that’s it – easy, isn’t it?

Simple Exposure Blending - Finished

From here you can do your normal image editing process, starting of with a much better image, balanced tonality and a healthy histogram.

So what just happened? In essence we created a luminosity mask by using the actual image, hiding and/or revealing wanted and unwanted areas respectively. How? Masks hide areas which are black, reveal areas which are white and partially reveal/hide areas more or less depending on the shade of gray. The darker areas of the top layer are hidden, or tuned down, by its very own dark areas created in the mask – thus revealing the lighter shadow areas of the bottom layer. Same goes for the highlights, where in turn more of the top layer is revealed, thus hiding the blown highlights of the bottom layer and showing the details of the top layer.

Feel free to comment, ask, critique, but mainly, enjoy … until next time …

All the best

Tommy