Just when you thought it was safe to go out….that the curves were fully covered.…it turns out there are more curves to have a look at. And once again they are of a type that is very unique to 3D LUT Creator. These curves are quite powerful tools, but you won’t find them in Photoshop. They are a 3D LUT Creator tool used for further adventures into color grading an image. Here’s how to use them!

If you subscribe to the blog by email, the video won’t come along with the email, but you can view it here: https://youtu.be/-Y_0PDN7YVs

I was looking through old photos that I had never processed (of which I literally have thousands) and ran across this one. Clouds, yes, but when I looked at it I saw birds. A flock of birds flying across the sky (it actually made me think of the ‘80s band ‘Flock of Seagulls’).

I initially tried processing the image in color, but that seemed to detract from the feeling that the clouds were birds. However, when I tried converting the photo to black and white it gave the image the focus I was looking for. A bit of tinting finished it off.

If you are a Photoshop or Lightroom user, you more than likely have some familiarity with curves. But are the ones in Photoshop and Lightroom the only curves out there? Are there other types of curves that can be used to adjust different image parameters? As you might have guessed from the question, there are indeed other curve types. 3D LUT Creator not only has the type of curve that Photoshop and Lightroom users are familiar with, but other ones as well:

There are curves in the software that allow you to:

• adjust brightness without affecting color

• adjust saturation based on the underlying brightness

• adjust brightness based on the underlying saturation and

• adjust saturation based on the underlying saturation

How and why might these types of adjustments be used? That, and more, is the topic of this video! I also start out with a brief review of how Photoshop and Lightroom curves work.

If you subscribe to the blog by email, the video will not come along in the email….but you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/QdjsX5v60dA

I recently went out to do some winter shooting (I am making a concerted effort to do that) and took this photo, which I felt looked best when converted to black and white. I took the photo at a marsh I have photographed many times. While keywording the photos from that outing, I had the opportunity to look through some of the images I had taken of the same area in the past.

While I was looking them over I noticed this photograph that I had taken of the same part of the marsh back in 2006.

What I found interesting was that they were taken in different seasons and 16 years apart, and yet the composition of the two photos is remarkably similar. My eyes were drawn to the exact same set of trees and I had framed them in a very similar way, just using a longer focal length this time around. Consistency over 16 years. Good? Bad? I’m not sure….but definitely interesting.

Do you find that when you return to the same area you sometimes make photos that are similar to ones you have made in the past?

Color grading is very different from color correction. It isn’t about making the colors ‘right’, it’s about making your image convey a feeling. We now have the ability to color grade in Lightroom by tinting the shadows, mid-tones, and highlights using the color grading tool in the Develop Panel.

But there are other methods of color grading besides separate shadows, mid-tones, and highlight tinting. In this video I talk about that Lightroom method, but also about a method direct from the video world that uses offset, gamma, and gain for color grading. Weird, huh? Who does that in still photography? Well, we can in 3D LUT Creator and I explain how in the video.

If you subscribe to the blog by email, the video won’t come along. But you can view it here: https://youtu.be/1BAsHle-CEk

I am very pleased that my photograph entitled “Yellow Morning” was selected for inclusion in the 2021 LensWork publication “ Our Magnificent Planet”.

The image is of sunrise over Pete’s Lake in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a beautiful location that I have been to several times and hope to return to again.

In this week’s installation of my series on learning 3D LUT Creator (a really amazing piece of software if you work with color), I review the ‘Volume Tab’. This control compliments and is best used in conjunction with the Channel Mixer. I also compare it to Photoshop’s Channel Mixer adjustment

If you subscribe to the blog by email, the video will not come along, but you can view it here: https://youtu.be/1BAsHle-CEk

A week or so ago, I posted a video I made about self-motivation to get out and photograph in winter. I do realize that one outing is hardly enough to declare success…..but still, it certainly is a start!

In this installment of my series on learning how to use 3D LUT Creator, I go over the 3D LUT Creator version of the channel mixer. It is far easier to use and understand than the one in Photoshop.

If you don’t use 3D LUT Creator, this video should still be useful in helping you understand what is going on with the Channel Mixer adjustment layer in Photoshop and how to use it. You can get a lot of interesting color effects and do some interesting color grading with it.

If you subscribe to the blog by email the video won’t come along, but you can view it here: https://youtu.be/icI1Wz1CV5M

I have always found it quite difficult to get out and photograph during the winter. This is mainly because I truly dislike the cold, but also because I likely have some mild degree of Seasonal Affective Disorder as well. So I made a list of ways to motivate myself to get out and photograph in the winter, and I share them in this video. I have already gotten myself out to shoot in 20-degree weather, so something seems to be working.

By the way, friend and fellow blogger Mark Graf has come up with yet another reason to get out and photograph in the cold. It’s Rembrandt season! Check it out on his blog.

I am very pleased that my photograph entitled “Cactus Spine” was selected for publication in this month’s Black & White Magazine (Issue 151), as one of the 2021 Single Image Contest winners in the Flowers/Plants/Fruit category. It is a photo that I made at Phipps Conservatory, just a few blocks from my home.

If you have been following my series on how to use 3D LUT Creator, this installment teaches how to use the C/L Grid to make adjustments to the color in your images. If you are not a 3D LUT Creator user, I have another video coming up that has nothing to do with the software :)

If you subscribe to the blog by email, the video will not come in the email but it can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/o5vvdnT5PUk

In my post from a week ago, I said that I wanted to get at least a dozen images for my project of multiple exposure flowers that I started some time ago. This is number 11, so I am almost there. I should point out that this isn’t a redo of the image that I described deleting in that post. That deleted image remains to be worked on. However, the deleted one was of the same flowers, only with more of them in the vase. Slow progress, but I am getting there.

In this video chapter of my series on learning 3D LUT Creator, I explain what the C/L grid actually represents. Readers might find this interesting even if they don’t use 3D LUT Creator, as it offers some insight into what color spaces are and how they are represented.

I know some readers might find these videos a bit esoteric, but I am having fun making them and, more importantly, when I teach it actually helps to cement my own knowledge.

I hope you find this tutorial helpful.

If you subscribe to the blog by email, the video, unfortunately, will not come along with the email. But it can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/JJYr1RI_bss

Constructing the images for my multiple exposure flower series can be both incredibly satisfying and incredibly frustrating. I am trying to assemble a small portfolio of perhaps a dozen of them.

About a week ago I shot three sets of them. I could tell that there was something good to be had within the first series. But I worked on it a good hour or two a day for about a week and I knew that I still hadn’t brought forward its potential. Each day I tried to shift some things around to get it there, moving layers, changing their opacities and blend modes, and cloning bits here and there. But, by the end of the week, I knew this was just going off in the wrong direction and I completely deleted my work. Not the source images, just the final piece. I knew that I would have to start over. And, in order to give that particular piece a rest, I moved on to a completely different flower grouping, knowing I would eventually return to the prior one to give it another try.

And then with this piece, the exact opposite happened. Within an hour I knew I had something, and it only took another two hours or so to get it 98% there (and then a couple more to tweak it). But the point is that I very rapidly knew that I was on the right track. I find it interesting that sometimes work just ‘clicks’ and at other times it can be quite difficult to pull out of an image the potential that you feel it has.

Have you had that same experience? The one where some images just come together rapidly and others you just can’t seem to get right.

In this video chapter of my series on learning 3D LUT Creator, I explain how to adjust the colors in the shadows and highlights separately from each other and also discuss how to use the points on the AB grid. The software really is a very powerful way to work with color in your images whether you are trying to make minor adjustments or do major color grading.

I hope you find this tutorial helpful if you either have, or are thinking of getting, 3D LUT Creator.

If you subscribe to the blog by email, the video, unfortunately, will not come along with the email. But it can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/SfxjLfPZluk

For some time I have liked this image that I took many years ago at the Oregon Dunes, near Florence, Oregon. I knew it was because of the juxtaposition of the cool tones of the sky and the warm tones of the sand. But I later realized that it goes beyond that. The colors are also complementary, meaning they lie on opposite sides of the color wheel, which generally forms a relationship that humans find pleasing. In this original image, the colors were on opposite sides of the color wheel but not exactly at 180 degrees.

I decided to ‘‘play around’ a little bit and see what would happen if I brought the colors closer to being truly complementary. I ended up with the image below.

The image is obviously very similar, but the sand is a little redder and the sky slightly purpler (is purpler a word?). Interestingly, I prefer the second image, but then again, that could simply be confirmation bias. What do you think?

Just a little experiment I decided to try as I learn more about color and controlling it!

This third video in my series on learning how to use 3D LUT Creator, the most powerful software around for working with color, is the first of two that will demonstrate how to use the software’s A/B Grid. The A/B Grid is one of the more intuitive portions of the software for making color changes. The changes can be major shifts or minor adjustments, they are easy to make, and they look completely natural. Digging deeper into the grid you discover so many things that can be done with it!

I hope you find this tutorial helpful if you either have, or are thinking of getting, 3D LUT Creator.

If you subscribe to this blog by email, the video, unfortunately, won’t come along with the email. But you can view it here: https://youtu.be/gcnRbUmArqM

My friends and I have a Zoom meeting every week to show each other our most recent work and discuss all things photographic. I showed them my multiple exposure leaf image that I posted a few days back (and will show again at the bottom of this post). After enduring all sorts of comments about cleaning up my driveway (though the photo wasn’t actually taken at my home), I realized that my Photoshop ‘rule of thirds grid’ was on. After I turned it off, one of my buddies said that it might be interesting to cut the photo up into the nine images that the grid made and then scramble them, since they were already multiple exposures anyway. I gave it a try and liked it!

Sometimes other people can come up with good ideas about your art that are worth listening to. Many times, in fact. Keep your ears open!

And here is the original:

OK, so software preference settings aren’t the most exciting thing in the world. At least not until you’ve spent days trying to figure out why a program like Photoshop isn’t working, only to find out it was a preference setting (you’ve done that, right?!). So let’s spend a few minutes with the preferences and get them right so that we don’t have problems down the line. That’s what I cover in this second video in the series on learning to use 3D LUT Creator.

For those that are unfamiliar with the program, it is a very powerful piece of software for working with color that integrates very nicely with Photoshop. It can be used for both relatively small color adjustments/corrections as well as for larger changes, such as color grading. However, I feel its documentation could be improved upon, which is what I am trying to do with this series.

For those who subscribe to this blog by email, the video will not come along with the email, but you can view it here: https://youtu.be/_fa3u5Fp3pY