I have become increasingly reliant upon Adobe Lightroom to manage my photo shoots and perform basic edits.  Lately I acquired the Nik Complete Collection for Lightroom, having previously used Nik Color Efex Pro and Viveza in Photoshop.  Wow, it’s made a big difference in my workflow.  I now find myself doing much more work in Lightroom and sometimes not even really needing to go to Photoshop, even for final touchups.

This video demonstrates how quick and easy it is to take a problem photograph and spruce it up right in Ligthroom, with the help of Nik Viveza, which is my favorite of their plugins.

Imagine that you are a wedding photographer and are preparing a large batch of images for the happy couple to review.  Bring everything into Lightroom, sort and select candidates…then have the firepower to make those candidates look very good very quickly.  With Viveza, I can do things I would normally do using masking techniques in Photoshop.  Sure, I may not have pinpoint control over everything, as in Photoshop; but, again, in many cases this combo will work very well and, most importantly, save a bunch of time.  And I can do it using the mouse, not a tablet.

I am not a huge fan of plugins, but I have to confess that I do like the Nik stuff…very high quality and their software does pretty minimal pixel damage.  Awesome.

So here’s the quick video.  It’s sped up…but in real time I had to spend only a couple minutes of my life turning an underexposed self-portrait into something usable.

We hope you have a Happy Christmas and New Year!

You might remember this sweet couple from their engagement photos (seen here) well in early September this couple along with the love & support of all of their family & friends tied the knot!  They chose the gorgeous Sorrento Hotel & Penthouse as their venue and as the sun went down the candle lit room glowed as they exchanged their vows & partied the night away.  I continue to be amazed with the style and design – Corey & Nik, you did an AMAZING job with all of the little details!  Thank you for letting me & Lily be a part of your big day!

Here are a few of my favorite images from the day:

This sweet couple picked a ROCKSTAR crew to help with their wedding:

DJ – Austin Beaver, Nitelite Entertainment

Flowers – Julie Borrud, Bella Rugosa

Video – Jeremy Almeda, Endless Love Productions

Photo – Barbie Hull & The fabulous Lily West

Venue – Kristin Shea, The Sorrento Hotel

Surat Tanda Nomor Kendaraan, atau disingkat STNK, adalah tanda bukti pendaftaran dan pengesahan suatu kendaraan bermotor berdasarkan identitas dan kepemilikannya yang telah didaftar. Di Indonesia, STNK diterbitkan oleh SAMSAT, yakni tempat pelayanan penerbitan/pengesahan STNK oleh 3 instansi: Polri, Dinas Pendapatan Provinsi, dan PT Jasa Raharja. STNK merupakan titik tolak kepemilikan yang sah atas sebuah kendaraan bermotor.

STNK berisi identitas kepemilikan (nomor polisi, nama pemilik, alamat pemilik) dan identitas kendaraan bermotor (merk/tipe, jenis/model, tahun pembuatan, tahun perakitan, isi silinder, warna, nomor rangka/NIK, nomor mesin, nomor BPKB, warna TNKB, bahan bakar, kode lokasi, dsb). Nomor polisi dan masa berlaku yang tertera dalam STNK kemudian dicetak pada plat nomor untuk dipasang pada kendaraan bermotor bersangkutan.

Masa berlaku STNK adalah 5 tahun, dan setiap perpanjangan STNK, kendaraan diharuskan untuk cek fisik, yakni pengecekan nomor rangka dan nomor mesin kendaraan yang dikeluarkan Satuan Lalu Lintas Polri.

Apabila sebuah kendaraan bermotor berganti nama pemilik pada STNK, maka dikenakan BBN-KB (Bea Balik Nama Kendaraan Bermotor).

Studio J was the scene of the most recent ASMP San Diego program, Power Workflow Techniques. Noted photographic educator Tony Corbell, representing NIK Software, demonstrated a variety of software tools and techniques to quickly and dramatically enhance photos.  A total of 58 people attended, keeping Tony late as they queried him on alternate strategies to employ in their images. NIK Software donated a complete Collection of their software as the grand raffle prize, much to the joy of the lucky ticket-holder. Kudos to ASMP-SD for pulling this event together, and for Tony and NIK for exciting and encouraging many local photographers!

Full house at Studio J
Tony Corbell answers crowd questions	Tony Corbell demonstrates NIK Software

This past Monday, Brandon, Nik and myself got dirty.

We did actually do some work too…

This is not a truck.

Tie down straps are overrated anyway.

He’s scheduled to appear on America’s Next Top Model 2010!

Poop.

Although we have a number of different methods, plug-ins and applications to do “quick” skin softening for portraits, some are better than others. I am making a quick comparison of several of the quickest, most popular methods and plug-ins.

First off, here is our test image. If you watched my recent video on “10 second Teeth Whitening”, you may already recognize this image. With the level of clarity captured by modern digital cameras and lenses, this opens up a new problem, TOO MUCH detail. But how to deal with it…

Please note that the resampled images shown here are not sharp and do not clearly represent the image quality. Please click each image to see a 100% crop in a new window.

The first sample is a crop of the file before any skin retouching. And although she does not have an acne problem or other major blemishes, her pores are clear as day and their are some areas of slight discoloration.

No Skin Softening - Click for 100% Crop

Next is a version as processed in Lightroom 2.5 and softened with the “Soften Skin” brush using default settings. (-100 Clarity, +25 Sharpening) The brush was applied to the skin only around the features. The Lightroom Soften Skin brush is a very simple, non-destructive way to edit RAW captures without causing actual pixels to be edited. (This IS the future of image editing.)

Lightroom Skin Softening Brush - Click for 100% Crop

Also starting with the base file, this version was processed through Imagenomic Portraiture 2. This is a very powerful plug-in for Photoshop with many advanced features but it can be somewhat overwhelming. In Portraiture, I used the following settings (only these settings were changed from zero): Fine Details +1, Medium +3, Large +5, Threshold 20. The image mask was set to select the majority of her skin tone.

Portraiture 2 - Click for 100% Crop

Last on the list tested for plug-in software is the Nik Color Efex Pro 3 “Dynamic Skin Softener”. This also has a fairly customizable smoothing interface similar to Portraiture but much simpler. The following settings were used in Nik CEP3: Small Details 15%, Medium 25%, Large 35%, Color Reach 15%.

Nik Color Efex Pro 3 - Click for 100% Crop

In the end, the best option is the one that is available to you and suits the image you are working on. And of course the effect of any of the above options can be toned down or even ran with a higher level of softening applied if desired. The settings chosen were roughly the same level of softening for comparison sake. Any of the above options CAN and WILL “plasticize” a person if used at too high of a level.

Their are a few other software solutions available and a number of different manual techniques to do skin softening but I do believe these are the most popular three options as far as software and any manual technique would have differing results based on skill level and would take much more time; this is a comparison of quick retouching methods.