This week’s meeting had a strong ‘photo edit’ theme. Jim gave us a live demo, showing us how he creates impressive abstracts using Serif software. If you weren’t with us to watch, note it was Jim’s abstract image that Sally H used to create the widely seen flyer to this year’s successful club Exhibition summer.
Next up were four members showing their artistic and editing skills, editing other members’ images – with permission ! Each showed how they took an original image and created a final image presenting a particular artistic interpretation. Sally A worked with Lightroom, and occasionally Topaz Sharpener, with a light touch describing her workflow as rather a ‘quality control’ process – lens corrections, dust spot removal, global adjustments, straightening, dehaze and then any specific adjustments as necessary.
Norm gave us an introduction to Radiant Imaging and it’s remarkable AI capabilities to semi-automatically enhance various scenes. The end result showed benefits from sharpening, enhancements and cropping, in as little as five minutes editing work.
After the break – and reminders about the competition deadline (now passed), the need to keep your zoom software up to date, and the Christmas meal – Mickael T gave us his ‘Tales from the Darkroom’ and how that informs his own editing process. Dodging and Burning included. There was saturation, cropping, healing, catchlights, and the use of Photoshop’s Magic Wand tool. Michael’s approach was very much to describe and develop ‘feelings’ about the image.
Paul uses On1 software, and again used some AI capabilities to show what might be done – perhaps then stepping back to give a similar but more human result – maybe less saturation and sharpening than the AI suggested. Paul might spend up to half an hour on a worthy photo, including sky swapping where appropriate.