Basic (very) photography tutorial

[dpastern]

For anyone that's interested...

http://david.dia.net.au/potn/basic_photography_tutorial.pdf

Dave

[gparvan]

Thanks for putting this together. What is your vision for this document?

[dpastern]

No real vision, was meant to be a quick knockup tutorial for a friend who's just starting in photography. Took me a few hours to put it together last night. It's only very basic, so it's not a definitive guide to photography. Knowing me, I'll probably end up fleshing it out and making it more extensive. Would anyone be interested in this? It'll take me a while, cos it's not a high priority document to be honest, but I'd probably regularly update it and improve it if people want it.

Dave

[red hot sheep]

Link doesn't work for me I'm afraid.

[neil_r]

Link doesn't work for me I'm afraid.

Nor I

[dpastern]

mmm. Our ISP is very erratic, I suspect when the ISP connection screws up, it then affects being able to d/l it. I've checked with a mate just now, he can d/l it fine. It is there. Give it a few minutes, refresh page and try again.

Dave

edit: Our ISP is useless, but since it's not my connection, and I'm not directly paying for it, I don't get a say. I simply board a room and get to use the internet via the LAN where I live. I'm not going to be happy if I have to get my own connection, the owners like this connection cos it's the only plan that allows a 80gb limit, and they d/l lots of pirate movies/music (hence liking big d/l limit). Pretty much all of the other ISPs in Australia only allow you to d/l 30-40gb per month, if you go over that, they either chop your connection off for the month, charge very high prices for excess downloading, or shape the speed of the connection to around 128k. Australia pretty much has the worst ISP setup of any developed country in the world and a government that doesn't care.

[neil_r]

Safari can’t open the page.
Safari can’t open the page “http://david.dia.net.au/potn/basic_photography_tutorial.pdf”. The error was: “lost network connection” (NSURLErrorDomain:-1005)

[DiscoLizard]

Works just fine for me... North Island, South Island and West Island all seem to be able to access it.

[dpastern]

Neil - our connection is very bad at the moment, I'm having massive troubles with just surfing the web - this page took 3 minutes to load!!! It comes and goes...

Dave

[Wilt]

Neil - our connection is very bad at the moment, I'm having massive troubles with just surfing the web - this page took 3 minutes to load!!! It comes and goes...



...and it got up and had left, when I just tried!

[JWright]

I was able to get it after two tries...

This document is good for a start. Something I've noticed in reading the posts on these forums is a lack of understanding of the basics of photography, such as exposure, depth of field, composition, etc. One of the things a person needs when moving from a fully automatic point and shoot camera to a DSLR is a good grounding in the principles of photography. They eventually are going to want to move beyond the pre-programmed automatic modes of their camera and try more creative settings. Without the proper knowledge base, this can get very frustrating and possibly lead to giving up altogether.

Many of the questions I see posed here indicate a lack of photography knowledge. The single greatest recommendation I can make to anyone starting out is to take a class in photography. If this isn't feasible, then use the resources at hand (the internet, clubs) to learn.

One of the best interactive resources I have found is the Canon Photography Workshop CD. This tutorial mimics how a camera operates so the student can actually see how changing settings will effect the resulting image. This is an excellent resource that I use when I teach photography to beginners.

http://www.m-2k.com/pages/ProductDetail.asp?action=add&count=1&item=477

[gparvan]

Yup, it appears it is not opening but it is! Hit the page advance button and go to page 2. You will see the document. Then page back and it will load page 1.

[dpastern]

If anyone wants to contribute to the article, let me know. I'm either happy to include any additions into the document, and credit the respective author, or I'm happy to send you the .sla file (I'm using Scribus to create the document) if you wish. I haven't given any real thought about releasing the document under any licenses, but I'd probably release it under the GPL v2 document license if I did - I'm still waiting on the release of GPL v3 in any case.

Dave

[troypiggo]

Dave, been looking through this great tutorial in detail because I use GIMP instead of Photoshop, so needed to understand what it is you are doing in case there are subtle differences between the two. There are, of course!

Anyway, if you are happy for some critique, I've got some! Just some notes I made during my first follow of your workflow.

Page 1, paragraphs 2 and 3 seem to be saying pretty much the same thing? "first thing is to set up auto colour correction" etc. Maybe they can be combined? I know it's nitpicky, but it just read a little awkward to me.

That first section on setting up auto colour correction is good, but in the actual tutorial I can't see where you implement it. I'm actually trying to figure out how to set that auto colour correction in GIMP. It has the "auto" button in the levels dialog, but can't find the options setting. I'm researching that for my own purpose.

Page 14 where you talk about adding some contrast to the image. You "apply a Gaussian blur of 10.5%", but in the screenshot it shows "Radius: 10.5 pixels". Which is it? I'd just check the other times you mention pixels/percentages and make sure similar typos aren't there also.

That got me thinking. If it is pixels you mean, image size may be a factor. I mean 10 pixels on a 1200px wide image is different impact to a 3500px wide image, if that makes sense. Maybe percentages is what you mean?

I also thought that, while you explain well your workflow, you don't explain everywhere the reason why. eg adding contrast, but not quite using the Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer/tool. Why do you do it more manually by duplicating layers, desaturating, inverting, blurring, overlaying etc.

Similarly with the saturation. Similarly with the clipping of layers top of page 17.

After the sharpening, and just before you apply noise reduction, do you flatten the image? I couldn't see where you did, but assumed you do/should?

I know you have the link to a working download URL in your sig, but what if you change your sig? Better to update the URLs in this thread so people can find the correct one?

Along those lines, the .doc format may not be read by everyone. Seems to me that .pdf document would be more universally readable. Also less chance of someone ripping off content I suppose.

That's all I have for now. I'm still working through it to find out how to achieve everything in GIMP. I'll post again if I have more, and if you don't tell me to get lost!

[dpastern]

Troy - at an Internet cafe at the moment, will reply in full later tonight when I'm home.

Dave

[dpastern]

Troy:

Page 1, paragraphs 2 and 3 seem to be saying pretty much the same thing? "first thing is to set up auto colour correction" etc. Maybe they can be combined? I know it's nitpicky, but it just read a little awkward to me.

Yes, you are correct, and this error is also present in the latest version of my tutorial (found on the URL that I sent you in my PM just now). I should fix this in version 1.01.

That first section on setting up auto colour correction is good, but in the actual tutorial I can't see where you implement it. I'm actually trying to figure out how to set that auto colour correction in GIMP. It has the "auto" button in the levels dialog, but can't find the options setting. I'm researching that for my own purpose.

Well - part of setting up the numbers via options is to faciliate the quick 'n' easy 'auto colour' option being more accurate (for the majority of images). Setting up the numbers in options also helps when doing a manual colour balance, as detailed in the rest of the tutorial.

Page 14 where you talk about adding some contrast to the image. You "apply a Gaussian blur of 10.5%", but in the screenshot it shows "Radius: 10.5 pixels". Which is it? I'd just check the other times you mention pixels/percentages and make sure similar typos aren't there also.

Now I suspect that you're referring to the new version of the tutorial document, and not this very old version - the old version doesn't mention using Gaussian blur for adjusting the contrast. It is pixels, not percent, error on my part. Again, should be fixed in v1.01.
That got me thinking. If it is pixels you mean, image size may be a factor. I mean 10 pixels on a 1200px wide image is different impact to a 3500px wide image, if that makes sense. Maybe percentages is what you mean?


Correct, for smaller images the number of pixels used for the blur should be reduced, another error on my part, which should be fixed in the new version.

I also thought that, while you explain well your workflow, you don't explain everywhere the reason why. eg adding contrast, but not quite using the Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer/tool. Why do you do it more manually by duplicating layers, desaturating, inverting, blurring, overlaying etc.

As I understand it - desaturating the image, and then blurring it allows a more accurate form of manipulating contrast. Desaturating the image removes colour, meaning you're only playing with the image content, not colour. Inverting it further highlights the areas that need adjusting for contrast, and adding the Gaussian blur helps as well. That's the way that I understand it.

Similarly with the saturation. Similarly with the clipping of layers top of page 17.

The same basic premise is for adjusting saturation as adjusting contrast. Blurring it, and then choosing the blend mode as colour means you're only adjusting the colour, and not the rest of the content of the image - that's as how I understand it.

I'm using logic here - the tutorials where I learnt these from didn't explain why you did it this way, so I've given it some thought and I think I'm right in explaining why it's done this way and how it benefits things doing it this way. If someone else has a better explanation, then go for it.

After the sharpening, and just before you apply noise reduction, do you flatten the image? I couldn't see where you did, but assumed you do/should?

Yes. Another thing to fix in v1.01.

I know you have the link to a working download URL in your sig, but what if you change your sig? Better to update the URLs in this thread so people can find the correct one?


I suspect that you have the wrong thread/tutorial ;-) This thread is an OLD version of the tutorial and is to be considered defunct. The latest version of the document is in my signature, but the URL for it is also on the thread where I posted the new tutorial about 5 weeks ago or so:



Along those lines, the .doc format may not be read by everyone. Seems to me that .pdf document would be more universally readable. Also less chance of someone ripping off content I suppose.


As I explained to you in my PM a week ago - PDF is not do-able. PDF documents are not easily editable by most people and the aim of this document was to allow others to edit it of their own free will, to suit their needs. Please bare in mind the license used for this - the GNU free document license. If you edit the document and publically post the new version, then you must give the changes back to me, or let me know of the new document and any changes that have been made. I initially wanted to use a completely open document format (ODF), but I felt that few people have access to ODF, whereas most do have access to the DOC format, and that it was unfair to make people download and install OpenOffice. That's my logic.

Dave

[troypiggo]

Thanks for the explanations Dave. I've printed out the latest one and will peruse when I get a chance - probably during my next photo PP :)

I'll try posting in the Macro forum "My Photoshop workflow (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=400230&highlight=workflow)" thread next time to avoid cross-threading confusion :)