Digital UK Design Blog
Bokeh is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field. Different lens bokeh produces different aesthetic qualities in out-of-focus backgrounds, which are often used to reduce distractions and emphasize the primary subject.
How to make that cardboard hood to assist you in making your own custom bokeh when shooting images. More info here >
DIY bokeh from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.
You’ve seen them before, funny motivational posters that make you ‘ROFL’, ‘LOL’ or erm…. just giggle… yeah well here is your chance to make your own. This easy Photoshop
This is one I created earlier of my partner Zoe.
Credit to Action creator: Bellorinna on DeviantArt
This tutorial will teach you how to use actions in Photoshop
Depending on the action you can achieve results automatically by doing little or nothing yourself. Photoshop comes with a default set of actions that you can start to experiment with but you can download others from the web by performing an appropriate search for them.
To open the actions palette, go to Window and click on Actions or press Alt + F9. This will open a new palette.
Above you can see the Actions palette. Mine doesn’t have the standard set but yours probably will if this is the first time you have opened it.
Actions are organised in folders, each folder can contain multiple actions. To see what’s inside a folder you click on the arrow in front of the folder icon. A list will drop down showing all the Actions.
To execute an Action you must first select it in the list of Actions. Then you click the Play button and the action will be executed. Make sure to use a copy of your image before trying out an Action.
So you have downloaded some new Action sets but now you need to get them into Photoshop
If you want to load Actions you have to click on the little blue round button with the arrow in the Actions palette itself. Now you are shown a drop down menu like the one on the right. From this list select Load Actions.
A navigator window will pop up where you can select the downloaded Actions from the download location. A Photoshop
Once you have down this a new folder will appear in your Actions palette which you can select and use. That’s all folks, enjoy!
Want a powerful font management application that works on both Mac and PC? An app that allows you to manage, store, shop and discover new fonts? A font management app that’s FREE? Then Linotype FontExplorer® X is for you! The PC version has been available for a few years now but the MAC version has just been released this year. I have tested it over several months now on MAC OS X and I’m more than happy to recommend it.
Yahoo! launched this FREE website tool a little over 3 years ago in September 2005, enabling webmasters to explore their own website with data they may have never had access to before. Yahoo! Site Explorer provides information about a site’s visibility in the Yahoo! search engine, what pages have been indexed and which websites are linking to yours.
If you’re not yet familiar with Yahoo! Site Explorer, then I would recommend using it on your web site. It’s a good resource for web site owners to gain insight into their site’s presence in Yahoo!. The tool shows which of the site’s pages are indexed and which pages are linking to the site (inbound links). If you go through the process of verifying that you are the site owner (authentication), then additional information is available, including what subdomains of the site are indexed by Yahoo!, when the Yahoo! web crawler last visited the site, and additional site metadata such as language. Detailed information about Site Explorer can be found in the Yahoo! help area. Note that Yahoo! also recently announced that normal queries on their search engine using ’site:’, ‘link:’, ‘linkdomain:’ will be redirected to the Site Explorer results page.
Website managers should take every opportunity they can to ensure their site content is well represented in the major search engines. Site Explorer is a useful tool that provides insight into a website’s visibility in Yahoo!. Considering the fact that use of Site Explorer is free, it’s well worth the time spent to authenticate your web site with Yahoo! and put this valuable tool to use.
For those people who have been on Planet HD 189733 b for the past two years and have never heard of a website called Twitter then this post may pass you by…
Twitterfox is a very useful Firefox Add-on that allows you to use Twitter without you having to visit the website.
This extension lets you know your twitter status.
The extension adds a tiny icon on the status bar that notifies you when your friends update their status. Also it has a small text input field to update your status.
If you have a problem with TwitterFox, follow and send a tweet on Twitter to @TwitterFox
If you’re in the web industry game and you’re looking at conferences to attend next year I recommend these SEO related events below. SEO is uncharted territory for many IT professionals, including myself, so here’s the perfect opportunity to book your place at these industry recognised events.
I’ll be attending Think Visibility on the 7th of March in Leeds. Industry respected guest speakers will be offering a unique insight into the industry, focusing on their own speciality. Tickets are limited to book yours today before the event is all sold out.
Leeds – Mar 7
London (Earls Court) – Apr 28-30
London (Holborn) – July 4th
London – Sept 22-23
London – Oct 14-15
Date unconfirmed but likely to be 1st week of Nov
Boston.com, the online newspaper of the Boston Globe, has a special advent calendar on their website on the moment, counting down the days till Christmas 2008. Every day they upload a picture of Space, taken from the Hubble Space Telescope. Now if you know me you’ll have noted at some point my passion for Astronomy, Space and Beyond (well had to finish the sentence off somehow).
In January 2002, a dull star in an obscure constellation suddenly became 600,000 times more luminous than our Sun, temporarily making it the brightest star in our galaxy. The star, called V838 Monocerotis, has long since faded back to obscurity, but observations of a phenomenon called a “light echo” around the star have uncovered remarkable new features over the following years (this animation covers two years’ time). The light echo is light from the earlier explosion echoing off dust surrounding the star. Light from the outburst traveled to the dust and then was reflected to Earth. Because of this indirect path, the light arrived at Earth months after light from the star that traveled directly from the star. (NASA, ESA) More (see this on Google Sky)
In early January of 2000, Hubble took this image of Galaxy Cluster Abell 2218, and its massive amount of “gravitational lensing”. Abell 2218 lies some 2 billion light-years away in the Draco constellation and is so massive that its enormous gravitational field deflects light rays passing through it, much as an optical lens bends light to form an image. These magnifying powers provides a powerful “zoom lens” for viewing distant galaxies that could not normally be observed with the largest telescopes. The visible “arcs” are the distorted images of very distant galaxies, which lie 5 to 10 times farther away than the lensing cluster itself. (NASA, Andrew Fruchter and the ERO Team, STScI) More (see this on Google Sky)
All images copyright Boston.com
HDR photography, people seem to either love it or hate it, a real Marmite subject.
We’d love to get your opinion on HDR photography so please cast your vote in the opinion poll to the left.
If you have never seen or heard of HDR before, please browse through these examples first.
It is incredible to think that Jeff has been at this hobby for less than a year, the quality and craftmanship he demonstrates belies his limited time at this game. Thankfully he caught the FLICKR bug and uploads his work there for all to follow.
You would be hard pressed to find a more accomplished portfolio on professional HDR, B&W and wide angled photography. Enjoy this small collection from Jeff’s meteoric collection:
Jeff doesn’t give away his secrets on how he captures his shots, but one can make calculated assumptions as to the processes (pre/post capture) he adopts in his workflow. This shot is one of my favourites, see how he has captured the child’s amazement. The stillness is highlighted further by the long exposure Jeff has used, around a second, with the blurred shape of the adult walking behind the boy demonstrating the technique perfectly. A long exposure enabled a lovely bokeh from the lights on the steam engine, the black steam to feather off into the sky as dawn hits. The composition is perfect and you get a real sense of scale from the capture from the small children standing next to the steam engine. Every capture should tell a story, with the title ‘generations’ Jeff has certainly done that.
Jeff demonstrates how sometimes a single shot can capture more than one view, and with selective cropping you can see what he means.
Jeff: Sometimes an image can present an alternative view. I don’t remember doing this before but it is always good to try something new. A half frame crop which I thinks adds character to the lighthouse and house below.
Light in photography is arguably the most important element. The Golden Hour is a great time to photograph a scene, below is an example of a simple composition brought to life by the light. Jeff cleverly introduces a Neutral Density Gradient Filter to limit the amount of light captured over a gradient through the picture and to give the sky a deeper shade of blue.
Jeff: A quarryman’s hut in Portland bathed in a dawn glow. One of the first times I used an ND Grad filter coupled with multi exposures. The composition is set at ninety degrees to the rising sun and a halo has been reflected in the sky. Thought about removing it but it is not that obvious that it detracts from the image. Love the horizon and cloud formation here.
Jeff demonstrates how for he has come since first starting out in HDR. He uses a specialist piece of software called Photomatix to combine his multiple exposures of the same scene to generate a full HDR image with Tone Mapping.
See how far Jeff has developed.
HDR here has been expertly accompanied again by the right mix of composition and light.
Finding leading lines in a composition can help lead the viewers eye to the Point of Focus (POF). See below how Jeff uses three leading lines to guide the viewers eyes to the boat, the POF. You have the edge of the pebbles, the Horizon and the clouds all leading the eye.
A good technique for achieving balance in photography is to take advantage of water and reflections. A calm, crisp surface will help you achieve a sharpe, bright and balanced composition. Rough surfaces with ripples and waves limit the scope on balance in a shot, but allowing an extended exposure time can soften the surface, giving a successfully balanced shot with a different feel.
HDR in B&W photographs can add drama to a shot.
Today’s moral. Photography combines many techniques, requires years of practice and requires an end objective, a story. HDR is a wonderful technique used in your digital post processing, but don’t forget about the basics and don’t over use it. To make a successful HDR photograph still requires the professional execution as a standard shot does, composition, light, the right equipment and of course the right moment. Good luck.
©2006 - 2009 The Floating Frog
