Ann-alog, a Pixel Remix, where Ann Torrence blogs about photographing for a book on U.S. Highway 89, the greatest road trip route in America. Photography tips, locations, trip reports, and real life.

Hoback Canyon, Wyoming

I grabbed this shot of a working windmill on our drive to Jackson last September. The Hoback River valley has some of the most consistently beautiful autumnal aspen, and we look forward to the drive from Salt Lake City nearly as much as our time in Grand Tetons and Yellowstone each year. I noticed the sunlight glinting off windmill-it may be new or have been there forever, I just don't know. The windmill vane says Dempster, Beatrice, Nebr, USA. The company is still in business.

I used two adjustment layers in Photoshop to get the sepia effect. First, from a plethora of choices, I use my favorite (and thus most comfortable) method for B&W conversion: a channel mixer layer set to monochrome. Then I add a second adjustment to add the sepia toning. After trying out a number of variations, I decided I like the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer set around Hue:40 and Saturation:20. Then I set the Hue/Saturation layer blending mode to Color instead of Normal. The Color blending mode changes hue and saturation, but preserves the luminosity values I set in my B&W conversion.

Later on, I'll post the full color image, which has a completely different feel with the yellow aspen glow and the blue tones of the steel weather vane. But I'm in another sepia mood today.

A JPG and unprocessed RAW file saved on the D70 chip

I was asked if I shot my digital files in RAW or JPG, and how to explain the power of RAW files to a beginner. I remember when I first got my D70 and looked at the RAW files. I thought they looked pretty crummy compared the JPGs. But I knew the "pros" were shooting RAW and I wanted to figure out what I was missing. So I went to work.

North Star: Spring Remix

Here's a fun spring makeover - I like the cheerful colors, not at all like the cold autumn day I made the original. How I did it follows:

Photoshop screenshot, 100% opacity, 100% fill

In my discussion on the color burn/dodge and linear burn/dodge blending modes, I showed how those modes exhibited different behavior based on whether the regular opacity or fill opacity was reduced. That oddity, however, is not the primary purpose of the fill opacity slider. Why have two opacity sliders in the first place?

Reed Thomas's Quarter Horses, Mount Pleasant, Utah

In previous posts, I discussed the use of Photoshop's some blending modes for image adjustments: darken/lighten and multiply/screen. Today I am comparing four more blending modes: Color Burn vs Linear Burn and Color Dodge vs Linear Dodge (Add).

Sky adjusted in original image using the darken blending mode to apply a second version of the same image, opened in Adobe Camera Raw with a negative exposure value. Masks and blending sliders to limit blend to sky.

I think a lot about color, maybe because I was severely near-sighted as a child, and pools of inditinct color dominated my visual world until I got glasses. I like to play with color contrasts in my choice of subjects and in post-processing effects. A basic understanding of how Photosop works with colors is the first step toward predictable (and desirable) results, even with seemingly the unrelated blending modes darken and lighten.

Drawing from our grade school color mixing experiments, it would stand to reason that lighten means "add white" and darken means "add black." So how might Photoshop do that? It's not so simple as it sounds.

Defunct neon, Van Buren Drive, Phoenix Arizona

In my Photoshop workshop on Saturday for the Photowalking Utah group, I explained how to use the multiply and screen blending modes to adjust brightness in an image, but I didn't have time to go into details about the underlying principles. Here's the bigger picture story.

Wedding mehndi in black and white

Mehndi images have been very popular in searches of my site of late, especially from google.co.uk. Here's the color version of same image. Let me tell you, the hot gold, magenta robes, and brown tones of the mehndi itself sent me deep into the toolbox to get this B&W conversion to look right.

This morning, I had a moment where I questioned my assertion in yesterday's post - do I really know a dozen ways to convert from color to black and white? I don't usually exaggerate my knowledge, but I hadn't really counted. So this morning, in between more conversions, I started a list:

Santa cruising Route 66/US 89

I spent the better part of today making B&W conversions of some Highway 89 project photos. Usually I start by inspecting each color channel in my image for clues on how a particular image will convert. This preview works much better if you unclick the preference to display the channels in color (in CS2 for Mac that's in the Display and Cursors preference panel.) Then I use a channel mixer adjustment layer in Photoshop, starting with settings around 60% red, 30% green, 10% blue and checking the monochrome box. Sometimes my preview of the channels will suggest different starting numbers, even 100% from one channel only. I try to make the percentages add up to around 100%, but I'm not dogmatically exact on that nuance.

Once in a while, an image that looks great in color just won't translate directly into a look I want. Then I will start all over with the original raw file. I'll change the color temperature sliders, open it as a new file, and apply the channel mixer adjustment layer to that. Less desirable, because now I've got to reinspect for dust, copy local adjustments from the color to the B&W file, but sometimes, that's what has to be done.

Now as self-proclaimed queen of Photoshop, I could probably list a dozen ways to get from color to B&W, but we humans tend to repeat behaviors if they generate results without too much pain. Possibly because I was bored with correlating the sliders in the channel mixer palette to the results in the histogram palette, possibly because my machine was bogging down with a huge file I needed open at the same time, I reached into toolkit for something different. In the Adobe Camera Raw dialog, I dragged the saturation slider to zero, and then played with the color temperature sliders until I liked the results. The technique relies on the same principle of blending color channels, just applied in different interface-one with the histogram front and center. I liked that.

If I had been really efficient, I would have recorded an action in Photoshop to apply a channel mixer layer preloaded with the 60/30/10 percentages along with a color balance layer I used for toning, bundled tidily into a layer group with a pithy title like "B&W", but I couldn't be bothered. Instead, I opened a blank 10x10 pixel file, and dragged into it the B&W adjustment group from a conversion I'd done earlier in the week. That's only a 300 byte image. Could have made it a 1x1 pixel, 3 byte image, but I wanted a target on the screen that I could see. So long as you aren't using masks, any sized image can work as a temporary parking place for an adjustment layer.

It's a little early for Santa Claus, but since Rich's cute post has crossed that pre-Thanksgiving barrier to Christmas-themed posts, I thought I'd give you this one. Besides, my Santa's in a 4th of July parade. He's apparently a year-round guy, that Mr. Claus. Riding a pretty mean cherry red trike, too.

The Vermillion Cliffs from the Hwy 89 viewpoint north of Bitter Springs

I spent this week alternating among book chapter edits, the shocking backlog of Photoshop work, and the downright appalling backlog of housework. Progress, but no completion on any of those task list items.

I found a parking spot with a broken meter at the library on Wednesday. Usually I have to run out every two hours to feed the meter, since the truck won't fit in the underground parking. Without fear of the parking enforcement golf cart, I spent hours tracking down facts I wanted to double-check. How many people drowned at Lee's Ferry before the Marble Canyon Bridge opened in 1929? (Eleven.) Interesting things like that.

I photographed the images for this view of the Vermillion Cliffs on my Tucson trip back in April on the way to Flagstaff in July. I had to check the dates on the original files--I've been so many places since April, I can't remember when I was where. The final image is a 6000x4000 pixel panorama stitched from three images. I use Photoshop's Photomerge to align the images, but I select the "keep as layers" option. Then I do my own masking to make seamless transitions. It makes a bigger, but better file. I could wrap my truck with a print from this file. I could turn the exterior of my house into a billboard with it.

Housework gives me a head-clearing break from my computer. Or so goes the theory. I did spent time this week with the vacuum, the mop, the scrub brush. But then Nikon and UPS surprised me yesterday with the early return of the repaired D2X. Broken aperature lever, an all-too-common, non-warranty repair. "Only" $400. When I approved the estimate on Wednesday, the technician said it would take 7-10 business days, so I was somewhat shocked to open the door yesterday (48 hours later) and find a box on my porch.

It's back, it works, and I have pictures to make. Those aspens are going to turn fall colors from Babb, Montana to Flagstaff, Arizona. Actually, all the way to the Santa Catalina mountains above Tucson, but that far south is over the top. Even for me. Time to get out the maps and plot my next course. With enough down time so Mr. Mop doesn't stay in the closet until November, so I can finish that chapter, so my friends will remember my name.