Friday 28 March 2014

Photographer Recreates Classic Paintings with his 5-year Old Daughter

Australian photographer Bill Gekas draws inspiration from classical paintings from Rembrandt, Raphael and Velazquez. Gekas and his daughter worked together to recreate portraits from well-known paintings in a series of well-planned photos. Not only is the project creative, the level of details are amazing.

Click here to see all the photo series.







Wednesday 26 March 2014

Efficient Workflow to Enhance Blue Skies

There are several tools in PhotoDirector to enhance blue skies in your landscape photos, and choosing the right tool will save you a lot of time. In this tutorial we will explore the most efficient tools for the differently composed shots.

A.      A simplified landscape photo with a sky and foreground.
Notice that the only blue color in this image is in the sky, so there are two quick ways to enhance color of the sky:

1. Using Gradient Mask




2.  Adjusting the hue





B. In this image, blue color is in the sky, however there is a house in the foreground, so the gradient mask will not be appropriate because it will also darken the house.
In this scenario, you can:

1.      Adjust the hue since blue is only in the sky

 

2.     Select the sky using the intelligent edge detection.

C. There are trees in the foreground and selecting the sky takes up too much time.




Because, the color blue is only in the sky, the easiest way is to adjust the hue.



D. Now if there is blue in the foreground which we do not want to alter.




The quick way is to apply a gradient mask to enhance the sky.



New to PhotoDirector? Try it free for 30 days 
here. For technical support by email, contact ben_hall@cyberlink.com

Disclaimer: By using CyberLink software, you agree that you will not speak, publish, print, blog, or write negatively about CyberLink or its products in any forum. CyberLink reserves the right to share your personal information with our marketing partners. CyberLink is not responsible for lost data or damage to hardware. 
 


Friday 14 March 2014

Irish for a Day

Remember to wear something green next Monday.
Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

 
 
 
 
 

Wednesday 12 March 2014

How to Fix Partially Underexposed Landscape Photos

There are times (and quite often) when the contrast between the skies and land are so high, you can either capture the right exposure for the skies or for the land but not both in one photo. In this image, using a Gradient ND filter will not help either as the reflection in the river is also very bright.

In this case, it is better to underexpose the land and fix it later. It is more difficult to recover overexposed parts of the image. This is the original image:



First step, adjust the Dark and Darkest sliders to recover the underexposed trees.
And add Clarity, and Vibrance to recover details of the whole image.



The blue color is adjusted in this step. This is a matter of personal taste, I prefer a slightly darker shade of blue.




The last step is to increase the Sharpness and the Edge to bring out more details of the image.
 
 



The final image before and after:




 

New to PhotoDirector? Try it free for 30 days here.

Saturday 8 March 2014

Great Women Throughout History

March 8th is International Women's Day. I'd like to share an interesting photo series of a young girl dressed up in the great women throughout history.

When her daughter, Emma turned five, photographer Jaime C. Moore wanted to commemorate the event with a series of photos. Instead of going for the Disney Princess photos, she chose to pose her as the most influential women in history. The point is to convey to Emma that she could be anyone she chooses to be. These photos also reminds us of the value that these amazing women had fought for.


Click here to see all of the photo series.

Happy Women's Day!