It’s really not too hard!  Hit the jump for the whole walkthrough!

Alright – first, credit where credit is due.  I learned basically everything here from the (often) wonderful Photojojo, so check them out.  so I started with this panorama from a couple posts back.  It had a few good things going on:

1. It’s a panorama.
2. Both the sky and the foreground have little going on.  I’ll say right here that the sky is most important – there was a dock in the foreground that I wish wasn’t there, but you can get around it.
3. They had a horizon line which was about even on both the right and left.

There were a few small problems though, and first thing is sorting them out:

1. Things weren’t perfectly level.  There are plenty of ways to do it, but what you’re shooting for are features that are the same height where they touch the right and left edges of your image.  One way to sort this out is to use the grid (View -> Show -> Grid in Photoshop) to see how far off you are, and then Edit -> Free Transform or Edit -> Transform -> Rotate to make it so the right and left sides are even.  After that crop your rectangle.
2. Things were darker on one side than the other.  This can be sort of subtle in the original panorama, but since in our new planet the edges are going to touch, you need to sort this out.  There are also plenty of techniques to do this but what I did was us an curves adjustment layer to lighten up the dark bits, then use a gradient set to lighten over the top to apply it to the left side more than the right.  This doesn’t have to be exact.  It should be, but hey – I didn’t get it right, so good enough!  On to the actual steps:

Once you have your panorama with even edges, left and right brightness roughly the same, and a plain fore and background, you’re ready to go!

1. Turn it into a square.  Do Image -> Image Size and uncheck the Constrain Proportions box.  Now you can resize (and stretch) your rectangle into a square.  Make your height equal to whatever your width is and hit ok.
2. Flip it over.  This is kinda weird, but unless you want an inside out planet, you need to start with things upside down.  Hit Image -> Image Rotation -> 180º.
3. Make the magic happen.  Select Filter -> Distort -> Polar Coordinates, then select Rectangular to Polar and hit ok.
   
4. Magic, eh?  Last little tweaking step.  Most images have a part that is more interesting than others.  I like to throw that at the top.  In this case, I liked the buildings as they stand out from the trees.  I used Edit -> Free Transform and rotated, then cropped the image to the way you see it here.

Pretty good, eh?  I really like how this looks with a gray sky and water in the foreground but it would be interesting to see what other subjects could be used.  Maybe something with a big chunk of blacktop in the front?  a bunch of desert sand?  I’ve been watching for the right place to shoot something I could use for this for probably 6 months.  Keep your eyes peeled too.

Make Your Own Planet is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

That wasn’t really how things started.  If you want to see the original and hear a little more, hit the jump.

I saw this sign down in SoDo/Georgetown and I knew I had to come back.  When I got there I found road construction, muddy puddles, and power lines.  Basically, I got this:

I came mid-morning and although the light was bright enough, the sun was up pretty high, making it hard for my little S90 to accurately capture the part of the scene I cared about.  Especially when you’re trying to draw out colors in harsh light, HDR is a great choice, so I immediately switch to auto-bracket and tried to hold my hands still while I got three shots.  Once I got home, I pulled everything together with Photomatix Pro (my HDR software of choice) but didn’t sharpen or otherwise correct, yet.  I decided that I really needed to get rid of the power lines.  I’m no Photoshop wiz, so I actually try not to do this kind of editing except when I have to and only when the things I want to get rid of don’t involve anything elaborate or man-made.  I used the Photoshop healing brush to get rid of the powerlines and it only took about 20 minutes.  If this had been over the building, it would have been much harder and I probably would have needed to stamp and clone.  I also thought about taking the rusty metal plates off the side of the building.  The upside is it would clean up that corner and leave more attention for the sign, but I liked the grit, I liked less editing, and I liked how it balanced out the lower edge of the frame.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with it.  I knew I was coming back as soon as I saw the sign, but the actual situation – the cars, the poles and lines – make it harder to produce the picture I had in my mind.  I’m glad I tried!

Diesel – A Reason To Advertise is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

See that shot?  Not too bad, right?  The real magic however, is twofold.  First off,  I shot that hand-held.  Yes, it was in fairly bright sun so the exposure was easy, but it includes a beach scene and rolling waves are just about the hardest thing to put in a panorama.  The real beauty behind it all is Adobe Photoshop CS4.  Whereas before I told you to use Panorama Factory or Autostitch, which are still fine, I just need to spread the word that the built-in panorama creation tool in CS4 beats them all.  In fully auto mode, it stitched together 6 individual shots to create this without any manual intervention.  Without much if any moire, and without totally barfing when it came to the water.  The original shot is 10,000 and some pixels wide and I think it’s beautiful.  If anyone is really interested, I can post a larger version too.

The moral of the story is this: go shoot some panoramas.  Certainly a tripod and level will help and for night shots it might be the only way, but don’t limit yourself!  Software is constantly improving and even if you don’t have Photoshop CS4 right now, you might get it down the road (or you might get this feature in something free or low cost in 6 months).  Things change!  The only thing you can’t change is the fact that you might not take pictures today.  I’ve certainly regretted the things I’ve not captured.  Do yourself a favor.  Digital is cheap.  Go take pictures.

The Evolution Of Panorama is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

Wanna see how this picture gets at least marginally more interesting?  Click the jump for more.  I promise it’s easy!

Alright – here are the caveats.  Look at the picture.  It’s… lacking, but not lacking everything.  The focus is pretty good.  It has some colors in it and the subject is at least kinda separate from the background.  These things help.  Using pictures of people works great with this technique, but I don’t like putting people on the internets without their say-so, so you get newspaper boxes.  Second caveat – I don’t know how to do anything in Photoshop, but I know where to find people who do.  This technique is courtesy of the Photoshop Hero (who is what he says).  Got that out of the way?  Onward!

0.  Ok… so the first thing wrong with this puppy is that the contrast is just horrible.  In Photoshop, Image -> Auto Contrast. Let’s call that step 0 – barely even counts.

1.  Here’s the magic.  First make sure our colors are black and white.  Do this by hitting D on your keyboard.  Now it’s time to add a Gradient Map Layer.  You do this by either clicking Layer -> Adjustment Layer -> Gradient Map -> Ok or by clicking the little half black, half white circle on the bottom of the Layers panel and then choosing Gradient Map.  I know your image just got all black and white on you – don’t sweat it!

2.  With the Gradient Map layer selected, change the Layer Blend Mode to Overlay and the Opacity to 50%.  Starting to look good.

3.  Last step is to sharpen.  Click back on your background layer and choose your sharpening method of choice.  In the newest versions of Photoshop, that would probably be Filter -> Sharpen -> Smart Sharpen. Older versions will probably be stuck with Unsharp Mask which takes a little more work.  Inside Smart Sharpen, just play around until you’re happy.  Depending on the image, you’re probably talking about 1-2 pixels and 100-150%, but it all depends.  If you’re happy, I’m happy!

All done!  How’d we do?

Ok… that’s three steps plus step zero, but it is essentially two.  I swear.  I think that looks a lot better, and once you’ve done it once or twice, you can bust it out in about 30 seconds, so there isn’t much of a reason not to experiment and see what looks good.

2 Steps to Snappy Pictures is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

• Image -> Adjustments -> Desaturate
• Image -> Mode -> Grayscale

Want to learn about a few more choices, by all means, click for the rest of the post.

If you are staring down the barrel of a copy of Photoshop CS4, you’ve got a brand new option which used to take a whole lot of screwing around.  Do you know how to use the Channel Mixer? I can muddle through, but I’m not happy about it. I’ll attempt to show you how to use that one at the bottom. Those of you who recently “upgraded”, welcome to the dedicated Black and White tool! To get here, you’re going to want to hit Image -> Adjustments -> Black & White…. Oh wait… maybe we want to be a little careful first. Let’s do this in a new layer. Layer -> Duplicate Layer…. Give it a name. How about “Layer for Black And White Stuff. Which will be in here.” Or something shorter – up to you. After you’ve got your new layer, Start up that Black & White tool like I showed you before.

Now you have to decide what you want to emphasize in the image. The Black & White tool lets you either select using the sliders or choose using a bunch of presets. If you’re new to this, I’d just look through them until you found something that makes you happy. Pretty nice, right? Very flexible. If you want to play around a bit more, it’s time to adjust sliders. If you’ve never done too much B&W, remember that the higher percentage of a certain color, the lighter the area that was originally that color will get.

The last option you have at the bottom is the Tint checkbox. If you select that, you will be able to add a base tone other than black to your “black and white” image. Sepia toning, for example, is just a click away. You can make some great effects here, if that is what you’re after.  I’ve got a picture of a rusty can, so I’m going to keep it real.  Real black & white.

Not too shabby, right?  That’s what I thought.

Alright – so you’re saying “Hey Ari – I’ve got Photoshop CS2 or somesuch – how do I play Black & White games without having the new version?”  To you I say “Dammit!  Now I have to figure out how to use the Channel Mixer again?”  It goes a little something like this:

Instead of copying our background layer, let’s make a new adjustment layer.  Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Channel Mixer.  Give it a name.  On your side menu there, you should have a box that says Monochrome.  Check that bad boy.  Now you have a black and white image and a few colors to mix.  Bear in mind that you’re going to want things to add up to somewhere around 100%.  It’s just how it is.  I’ve been told by the good folks at Photojojo that 30% Red, 60% Green, and 10% Blue is a good place to start.  I tend to agree.  Use the Constant slider to adjust the overall brightness of the image.  That wasn’t too bad now, was it?

Black & White – So Many Choices is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

Hit the jump to read how it works.

I didn’t understand layer masks until recently.  If you want to understand, imagine you have a color picture and an identical version in black and white.  Put the black and white version on top and then tear a small hole through just the top layer – voila, color, right?  This is the same thing.  Let’s get started.

1.  Open your color image in Photoshop.

2.  Create a duplicate layer.  Lots of ways to do this, but using Layer -> New -> Layer… and clicking Ok works pretty well.

3.  Turn this new layer black and white.  There are a lot of ways to do this too, and depending on your Photoshop version you might not have them all.  My favorite is to select your new layer (probably called “background copy”) and then choosing Image -> Adjustments -> Black & White… You can twiddle with the levels a bit until it makes you happy, and then press ok.  If you don’t have a newer version of Photoshop, you’re probably going to want to use Image -> Adjustments -> Desaturate.

4.  Alright – now we’ve got our black and white layer on top of our color layer.  Time to make a hole for the color to shine through.  Photoshop uses Masks for this, so choose Layer -> Layer Mask -> Reveal All.

5.  Photoshop is ready for us to make that hole now, and we do it with a paintbrush.  Select something that has soft edges (you don’t want a harsh line between color and black and white, right?).  The brush size depends on your image size and how big the object you’re colorizing is.  Play around.  Now one last important thing: Make sure your foreground color is set to black.  Painting in black will bring the color through.  If you go too far, painting in white will bring the black and white back.  Do it till you like it.

Got any questions?  I definitely suck at Photoshop and I can handle this, so let me know!

Lots of B&W, A Little Color is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

I’m not going to get all specific about it’s world-class air scrubbing abilities or all the dual conveyer belt action enclosed within, but I do know that if you shoot it from the side, it looks pretty insane-assylum-like.  Good enough for me.  I’ve taken some other shots and panoramas from the side that show all the silos.  If people get interested or if I get desperate, maybe I’ll post more.

Grain Terminal Of The Damned is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

As always, click for larger image

I liked this picture.  From the same day of wandering as this and this.  Brass(ish) street letters in the sidewalk marking the names of streets are always something I’ve liked living up here.  The problem is the original shot looked like this:

It’s dull.  There is no contrast.  The subject doesn’t pop out at you and isn’t dramatic enough to stand on it’s own.  I’m not saying this is a great shot.  It’s just a shot I *wish* was great.  So it’s all about the Photoshop.  Let me stop to remind you that I don’t have any original ideas – this technique was almost entirely stolen from Blurbomat, and as such, I’m not going to go through it step-by-step here.  If you want to see some step-by-step stuff, let me know in the comments.  Really quickly, the transformation is a result of using a blurred layer blended with the main image, and then masking off the important parts (in this case, the letters in the sidewalk) so that they are brighter and stand out against the background.  After that, tweaking the curves, levels, and colors as you see fit.  I call it punchy.  You can call it whatever you want.  It’s my blog and I win.

Photographic Alchemy is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures

• ApertureValue: f/4
• DateTimeOriginal: 2008:12:22 21:09:21
• ExposureTime: 20 sec
• Flash: No Flash
• FocalLength: 24 mm
• ISOSpeedRatings: 100
• Model: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT

Night Snow and Photoshop is a post from: Ari Takes Pictures