November 4, 2023

5

special effects

Social media is anti-social and photographers need Alternatives to Instagram and social sites.

Do you NOT post because you’re unsure? What, where, and is this OK?

We have a major social media problem in Photography.

Remember the days when Instagram was for photos and you saw what people you followed shared instead of being spammed with video reels meant to generate clicks?

Facebook was the same. You posted and your friends and fans saw. Instantly. Not anymore! People don’t really follow you. They join a platform to be cleverly spammed by algorithms.

Social media has become a scam perpetrated by the biggest media companies on the planet. They create no content and you are the merchandise!

Share your photos. Get get on both groups gearted to real photo talk…

Join the Facebook group here – Join the Flickr Group here.

As photographers we capture history and we tell stories that will never be told again- Mexico City 2023

We need to stop being only in ONE place.

Does this fit my audience, Does it break any rules? Does it fit my grid? Am I allowed to express this? Will it get ignored for videos of girls shaking booty? Yes, it will!

If you were in business around 2008 you probably invested a lot on your Facebook page. Because it worked People followed and saw your effort. Then Facebook took that away and made pages nothing more than a place to run ads.

These sites are about profit now so they will show whatever the algorithm thinks it can squeeze the most from. This sucks as artists. But photographers are also journalists.

We have important stories and messages. Censoring artists and journalists will change the world in a very bad way!

Portra 400 look from Filmist film presets.

But you have to be sensational Gav.

I don’t use that word in a good way. If you post something it has to outrage or amaze. Mocking comments and toxic posts are rewarded while thoughtful ones are ignored. You’ve no doubt seen this in many photo groups that are essentially driven by trolls.

“Platforms know that anger and sesnatislism keep us glued to the set. They mad it work this way to keep us enagdged, angry, commenting, and coming back.“

I still have Instagram. But the truth is unless you play the algorithm game, it’s dead. That game mostly means short videos or sensationalized photos that go viral and have no relation to why we signed up. To share our ideas.

We need alternatives to Instagram and Facebook for photographers. We need places without constant censoring. We need a place to share with each other as photographers and learn and have real conversations.

Yellowstone National Park. 10 Second exposure.
Yellowstone National Park. 10 Second exposure.

They censor you but not to protect you!

The algorithm demands you do things to get attention. But if you do it wrong or policies change you are punished. Often in ways that make no sense and with no recourse. Your invenstment lost.

This is happening every day to creators on YouTube, Facebook, and beyond who did nothing wrong. And the censorship is not to protect. It’s to protect the bottom line. The money.

If filtering was there to protect you, censoring would be settings on YOUR account that told the platform what YOU want to see. Everything, disturbing new, naked people, etc.

I often take photos I love but don’t share them because of how sites might punish me. I edited this with a platinum look in Emulsion 4 and used Naked Darkroom to finish the texture.

For now 2 places I made to share your photos and Shadow talk.

Shadow Hunter Facebook group.

Facebook pages are pretty much uselessyou pay now but groups can still be a great place to share and talk among other photographers.

Groups come with all the downsides of Facebook but the upside is everyone is there so it’s still a good place to share among each other even if it’s not a great place to share work publicly.

Flickr Shadow Hunters Flickr Group.

Flickr used to be the place to share photos. Then came Instagram which now sucks. So Flickr has made a comeback as a place not to be influencers but just to share our work, explore new photos, and talk about the craft.

We had a very active group back in the early Pro Photo Podcast days before the other platforms took over and I’ve brought it back so go join.

Flickr is also a bit less restrictive than Facebook so you can safely post boudoir work and such in this group, just keep it classy and maintain a good mix. Plus it works amazing on a desktop browser. Most try and force us to use mobile because they better control us there.

Fixing the bigger problem means people, not platforms.

We should never trust our life’s work to a corporate platform. We need to de-centralize. This is not my idea and is a growing sentiment. Here’s a recent Engadget video on the topic.

There are start-ups like Vero. I’m on there. But it’s inactive, discovery is terrible and you can’t use it from the desktop which is the same as saying they don’t take professionals seriously.

The internet was supposed to make us more free. But now we live in a world of near-constant censorship where platforms control our voices and even the news.

This is true of Facebook, YouTube, and nearly every major platform. We always have to worry about expressing ourselves for fear of being banned, not because we did something wrong but because we trigger a corporate algorithm that could affect profits.

I think that social media needs to be more decentralized. That is you post in the app you like, but people follow you on a decentralized app where they are still following you even if you are no longer on that app or platform. It takes the power away from corporate interests and puts it back with us.

RSS for example does this which is why podcasts like Pro Photography Podcast don’t have to bow to algorithms. But we need tools that go beyond that. It’s being talked about but I have yet to see a large-scale solution to this problem and I hope we will all keep fighting for it.

Our voices are at stake.

The streets of Mexico City were edited with the Ultra 400 preset from Filmist. But on some platforms, this could be censored even though it’s a part of the city.

For now, the solution is to diversify.

You’ve seen me doing this in the past year.

I use my email list. I blog. I re-started the Pro Photography Podcast because I saw the way YouTube has zero respect for creators and realized I should to NOT make it my entire focus.

Growing a website is important. But creating content on that site beyond just a photo album, building lists that have people who care, and looking for a way to de-centralize matters.

For now I hope you’ll join me on not just Facebook but Flickr so we can NOT keep everything in one place and keep conversion going and these platforms like Facebook screw us over again and again as rules and politics change.

Gavin Seim

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October 22, 2023

0

capture one, lightroom, lightroom vs capture one, special effects

These are the secrets of Lightroom’s new color panel. Does it beat Capture One?

Lightroom 2024 brings this amazing new panel called Point Color and it’s really good. Today I’ll show you everything you need to know to master it.

Lightroom Point Color Secrets. Is it better than Capture One?

You can add spot color instantly within pre-made masks like Elegance Speed Masks. Also download my free film presets to play with the advanced color and see how it works beside balanced use of HSL sliders.

Use Point COlor when you need precision.

Much like the advanced color in Capture One. Lightroom point color lets you go beyond the HSL basic color sliders. Select a color spot and you’re in.

Don’t stop using HSL because the sliders we’ve been using for years are clean and you rarely get the artifacts or problems that can come from more precise selection and maks.

That sais point color seems to naturally work flawlessly. Only turn the range down as needed to avoid hard lines and don’t be afraid to use the advanced adjustments.

In the end, point color is not to replace HSL sliders but to give you more control when you need it including in masks like we’re doing here in the video.

Another level of masking.

The only real choice you have to make in point color is to decide whether to use it in global development settings, that is the selection you create based on color and tone will affect everything in the photo like here in the water of Thors Well.

Or do you want to be more specific? Then just ass your point color within a mask brush on, a portrait mask, AI background. You can use it anywhere and it works the same.

Now you may spend some time making these settings and I can’t find a practical way to copy the point color swatches you made into a mask from the main development, This would be useful. What we can do is add various mixes into presets which you’ll see in future updates of my preset packs.

Lightroom Point Color VS Capture One Advanced Color?

Objectively speaking yes I believe point color wins this battle. But they are both powerful and will achieve the same goal.

Lightroom Spot color is more visual, how more ways to adjust settings, and has a 3rd dimension in direct luminosity control in the selection that Capture One lacks.

Some will argue that because Cap[ture also has a skin panel it’s better. But in truth, the skin panel is more limited because it’s still just an advanced color selection.

Yes, capture one does shave have from uniformity sliders in the Skin panel, but the selection is not that precise. Lightroom on the other hand can make an instant subject mask and you can use point color to define the tone and balance of that color on the subject ONLY.

In the end, use what works for you/ Lightroom seems to have leaped ahead once again on one of the few features that Capture One still had as an advantage. Not capturing one is really only looking at a lead in tethering.

We’ll see more in our annual review of Lightroom VS Capture One in 2024 when both apps have new versions and Phase One has a chance to do something big.

Gavin Seim

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October 14, 2023

1

lightroom, lightroom vs capture one, special effects, video

Lightroom Spot Color is here. This Capture One style feature is what we’ve been waiting for.

2024 may be a year of reckoning for Phase One. But there’s no doubt Lightroom took this feature from their playbook after many years. What we do know is C1 just lost an edge with the new Lightroom Spot Color tool and I’ll show you how to use it today.

Lightroom Spot Color was only a Capture One feature before.

Play with Lightroom Spot Color. Grab the Free Filmist presets and play with spot color to enhance details. Also, check out the new Amber Presets pack as it does deep things with color and is a good example of the power of this.

Lens Blur is also cool, but do you need it like Lightroom Spot Color?

The new lens blur feature works pretty well and will doubtless get better. But do we need a mobile-style bokeh in Lightroom?

I can see this being good for enhancing existing bokeh. I would personally avoid it in images that have no bokeh as in our phones it does make mistakes. Unlike the new Lightroom Spot Color which is the game changer, lens blur in LR 24 is just a nice feature.

Blurs have long been limited in Lightroom and don’t really exist in Capture One. I think I’ll find myself using this as a general blut tool more than a bokeh tool. Sadly I don’t see a way to use this in presets thus far.

lightrooms new lens blur tool

Don’t use Lightroom Spot color on everything.

As I explain in the video you don’t need to open this feature up with every color. Most times I apply a preset from Filmist or Amber and it’s formulated just fine. Stay tuned to my channel because I I’ll be making more videos about when and where this tool is amazing.

What this does allow is fine-tuning if you feel a color is just not quite right. It also allows deeper and easier fine-tuning when creating presets so you can be sure I will be implementing it in future updates to mine.

Advanced Color in Capture One is really good, but the visual manner in which Lightroom Spot Color works lets you select colors and see the output and I might like that better. We’ll compare the two in the 2024 LR vs C1 review soon.

Lightroom spot color with visualize
Here I used Amber presets but selected just the dark oranges to adjust them to my liking. By activating the Visualize range you can see only the selected color much like in Capture one.

Using this tool in Lightroom masks is even better.

Ai Masks are amazing in Lightroom and many of you use my Elegance Speed Mask presets to apply them in fast groups. But until now we have had no HSL-style controls in masks and I have always had to find clunky workaround when making presets.

You can bet you’ll be seeing updates to my Ai presets that take advantage of LIghtroom Spot color in specific details. I can say from much experience that it will empower our masking to a new level like me you’ve probably been wanting this for a long time.

Using Lightroom spot color in an Ai mask to balance the color of a blue sky
The power of Lightroom Spot color with a mask is evident. I’ll show you this example in the video.

It will be interesting to see what competition from the likes of Affinity, Capture One and others will bring and we will all benefit from it.

Make sure you sub the Pro Photography Podcast because we will be talking more about all of this.

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October 1, 2023

0

lightroom, special effects

Speed-Masks and Lightroom’s new Object Masking take your edits to level 11.

Here’s how to Speed-Mask and why it changes everything.

But with the new object to select Lightroom Ai masks everything goes up a level. And with the new Elegance 4.7 Speed Mask update and with Ai masking coming to Capture One soon, who knows what’s next!

First, the video, and I’ll show you how to be a mask power user.

You can get Elegance 4 for LR here and there’s a great bundle combo with Natural HDR. If you have V4, just login and update. This also all works in Camera RAW masks and LR CC.

You don’t need to use object masking most of the time.

As you’ll see in the video using the extra time to add an object select mask on a thing the AI already has covered like a portrait project usually results in a worse selection.

So I’ll start with a Speed Mask and then add object select as an extra layer when needed. Honestly not that often, but when you need it it’s amazing.

Use the most specific mask for the job and the main list of Ai masks covers it. IE, subject mask, us that first because it can be used in a speed mask, copied and pasted to over images, and is more accurate.

I just used the POrtrait Glamor Speed Mask from Elegance 4.7. Here pushed to 200%. 11 Masks were added in a click and all adjusted with one slider. Good Speed-Masks should be optimes to turn up and down.

Watch how your masks combine.

As you build up all these masks much like layers in Photoshop, things can start to get strange.

This is why even with one or two mask edits, saving as a speed mask will not just be faster it will give better results if you optimize those mask layers to be versatile on all image types.

So… Develop, then Speed Mask, then Details.

I recommend starting with a base development process. That means I’ll use Filmist, Silver, etc then tweak the main process.

Aftet that I add my masks. Then copy all those finals to other images as needed and let it render. Then if needed use object selection masks.

You find specific speed masks across my preset packs like in Filmist but the important masks are all included in Elegance 4. If you want to make your own just keep the tips I give in the video in mind.

Doing masks last speeds you up because even when you’re not actively editing a mask having a mask on the photo uses more system resources and can really slow down the development module.

If you’re having speed problems check out my recent video about Making Lightroom Faster.

Have fun with this and I hope you like Elegance 4.7 to make it easier.

Gavin Seim

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September 22, 2023

0

HDR Photography, PPS Photography Tips, special effects

Low Dynamic Range and Why You need to start using LoFi Photography now!

We’re always talking about high dynamic range. But today’s videos are a keystone much like our = STOP using contrast from the last Masters Made Easy video. LoFi photography is actually fundamental to understanding your photos.

No LoFi Photography is not just a lomo camera or a filter on Instagram. It’s just as important to shadow hunting as the High Dynamic Range techniques as I explained in my recent video.

Many photographers no longer edit Low Dynamic Range.

You’ll find some free presets to make this easier inside my Film presets sampler and the Silver Black and White preset Sampler. Also there are some powerful LoFi tools in my Emulsion Photoshop Actions.

LoFi Photography goes way deeper than people think.

LoFi Photography is often played as low quality, pinhole camera, etc. While those can be included, it’s a really low dynamic range technique and it’s important when you plan a shoot.

I know I say it all the time but this LoFi photography fits in with Shadow Hacking 101 so make sure you come to a Shadow Hackers online photo workshop.

LoFi photos take what everyone else throwing out and it often creates better photos. You don’t need to do all LoFi or all HDR. A lot of photos fall in between. But don’t be afraid to push the methods I show in the video to refine your style.

Reverse the things they teach you in LoFi photography

We’re almost universally taught to push sliders right in the digital world. A more is more kind of approach. That’s why most photos look so bad and even good photographers are ediuting to death. We went deeper into this in my post about how to ground your edits by using filmic presets.

I’ve been doing this since the start of digital. I’ve watched the influencers and experts nearly always selling the same ideas and repeating ourselves because they came from film and all the digital stuff was new and like candy. Candy sometimes lacks perspective.

Slowly that’s changing as digital matures and photographers realize that we still have a lot to learn from the past.

Stop speaking in just digitally.

We live in an analog world. The advent of Ai photography is reminding us just how fake everything has become and that the real world is often more magical. LoFi photography is not every part of the puzzle. But you nee to know it.

You can still do amazing complex edits. But by knowing all the tools in your box you have control. Yes, your capture can be HDR and your final LDR, or vice versa. When you know to hunt shadows and look for the atmosphere and life in photos everything starts to change. There’s not just one way and you need to know them all to master this. The good news is, it’s not that complex.

Stay tuned for more in the Masters Made Easy series.

Gavin Seim

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