Photomerge

Or something like that. You see this episode begins with a peek into the author/editor process. How, in Amsterdam, under the influence of a small amount of Jenver, the glowing light of Deke's iPhone, and a hefty dose of denial, we hatched a plan about how it would be great to create a new chapter to the fifth version of Deke's book, Adobe Photoshop CS5 One-on-One. The theme of the new chapter is Pro Photography tools, and it includes exercises on HDR Pro and Photomerge.

Flash forward: chapter complete (after time and pain spent), beautiful book on the shelf, and we once again decide to take a swim in our bottomless pail of optimism regarding what we can accomplish in a given amount of time. Under the influence of a small amount of gin, the glowing lights of the dekeLounge, and a hefty dose of denial, we decide to do a show about Photomerge and HDR Pro. And of course, we really only get halfway through. (Because we're not supposed to take the "hour" in our show's title literally.) Thus, this week's show is really all about stitching panoramas in Photomerge. Don't let it tell you otherwise.

Turns out, as automated as the photostiching phase of the process is, there was quite a bit to talk about: Read more » 

I celebrated the New Year with a winter sports vacation through Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Big Sky, Montana. Folks call it Big Sky Country, but between you and me, the tall mountains leave a narrower-than-average glimpse of the sky. (Pancake-flat Nebraska, now that's some big sky.) But the land is huge. Vast and sparse. Peopled but underpopulated. Earth on an almost antique and undeniably humbling scale. And the sky aside, ultimately enormous.

In this post, I present you with 13 black-and-white images, all but one captured with an Olympus E-30 or Stylus 1030. Some might call it a travelogue, but I see it more as an experimental portrait of space. I say “experimental” because many of these images exhibit flaws. Beautiful and purposeful flaws. My idea is that a digital image, like a painting, tells a story beyond that of its subject matter. A story of process and approach, one of development and media, a documentation of the power and limitations of tools.

Consider the Grand Tetons below. Comprising 11 vertically oriented telephoto photographs, this 500MB composition is a testament to the power of Photoshop’s Photomerge command. But the moment I attacked the image with the Color Range command--with the sole intention of enhancing that big sky--I revealed a series of striations across the clouds and foreground snow. (Click the thumbnail below to reveal the image in detail.) Normally, I would retry the effect to avoid these artifacts, but this time, I added Levels, Black & White, and Smart Sharpen with an eye toward exaggerating the effect. I did everything with layers--nondestructively, as it were--and yet plainly the image is stressed.

That said, I for one like the results. Read more »