Wulf's Web-Den

This fiftytwo photo has what could be described as unrealistic colours. It shows my hand reaching out over loaf I baked on Thursday evening.

Both started on the same processing route, as I prepared to adjust the white balance. I use the levels tool for that, reducing the output levels from 0-255 to 7-248 and using the colour pickers to select white, black and grey points. The grey point is hardest to judge so I have found another technique to help with that. I create a copy of the image and then fill it with a mid-grey using the fill tool in difference mode. This compares every pixel to mid-grey; the closer it is, the darker the result. I then use the threshold tool to isolate the darkest pixels, select and delete the rest and the remaining white highlights show me the sections of the picture that are nearest to mid-grey.

That is the technique responsible for the vibrancy of the colour on the picture of the loaf. I did not get that far with my self-portrait - I filled the copied image with grey and was so struck by the colours that I decided to work to enhance them rather than seeking a realistic result. That is why this week's image is so psychedelic!

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I have finally finished working through the pictures I took on our recent walking holiday. I looked through the remaining pictures and decided to ditch all but one of them. How many landscape shots do I need to remind me of the fantastic views?

The image above is one I processed a few days earlier, showing some of the hills near the Long Mynd area. I can't remember exactly where I stood to take this but you can find most of the photos on a map. You may remember that this was the picture I was working on in last week's fiftytwo shot, which reminds me that I must press on and get the next picture in that series taken soon.

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A quick fiftytwo post this week, showing the digital artist in me. I had a late night at yesterday's school reunion and I'm getting picked up for Worship Central in about half an hour, so time to go and make my sandwiches!

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I have almost finished working on the pictures from our recent walking holiday. The one above shows Jane on the route down from the rugged heights of the Long Mynd hills.

I have 22 pictures left to sort through but I expect a smaller amount to remain after the winnowing. As time presses on, I am getting harsher with my choices about which ones to keep. Instead of asking "which is the best shot of this scene?" I am moving towards "is there enough merit in any of the shots to keep any reminder of the scene".

I want to get through the pictures now so I can then give attention to the other couple of sets I have lined up and to clear the way for taking more pictures; I like the sense of freedom that comes from being up to date with my photos.

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I have already posted several times in the past week about my new electric upright bass, so it is probably little surprise that this week's fiftytwo self portrait is me playing the new instrument.

I love the new bass but I am not entirely satisfied with the picture. If I had the time, I would have tried to find a hidden way of supporting the bass so I could take more control over composition, lighting and focus. Because I was using natural lighting and a long shutter speed this one is quite blurry due to movement - I couldn't hold completely still for over a second and the light changed making the room much brighter.

However, it serves to illustrate the trembling excitement of a new bass, so I was content to keep it.

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Above is the unmodified original of the view of Ludlow that I posted yesterday. It has become a completely different picture because of the work I did. I don't think my altered version has become the jewel in the crown of my portfolio but it has moved on from the snapshot appearance of what came out of the camera.

An obvious difference is the colour, enhanced with the velvia effect I was writing about. I have also made other decisions that contributed to the final result. The image has been rotated so that the church tower, the dominant vertical element, stands upright. I have cropped it to a 16:9 ratio, making the tower relatively larger in the frame and also dividing the image into three horizontal bands - sky, town and trees - that each fill about a third of the space. I even did a little bit of cloning to remove a cluster of leaves from the top of the ash tree on the left, which were awkwardly truncated by the cropping.

Lots of decisions but relatively little work for major improvements - that is the joy of the digital darkroom.

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I never got into film photography in a big way. My choice of film was determined by which one offered free processing. However, now that digital technology has given me a doorway into the art of photography, I am discovering a range of techniques that have been developed to simulate chemical effects in the digital darkroom.

One of those is recreating Velvia film, which was apparently a favourite of landscape photographers because of the way it acted to enhance the richness of the colours. Earlier this year I discovered a "recipe" which gave good results. For my tastes it was a bit too pronounced so I played with the settings and ended up with what I call my sub-velvia effect, seen on the picture of Ludlow shown above.

It uses the channel mixer tool. On The Gimp (version 2.4 and above) this is found by selecting Colors | Components from the menus associated with your image. This lets you adjust the red, green and blue balance in each of the RGB channels. I increase the selected channel to 123.5 and decrease each of the others to -8.7. This makes the red channel redder, the green channel greener and the blue channel bluer without increasing the overall brightness of the picture too much. I have saved those settings so I can load them easily.

Finished off with a tweak to the values curve (curves tool) and a spot of sharpening and many pictures are improved with minimal effort. The view of Ludlow was taken on a wet morning. The result of a quick spot of editing leaves it looking a touch artificial but a lot more welcoming.

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