Vacation

It's hot here at French Riviera, but sea is warm and nice :)




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Photo editing - how to reduce artifacts

Artifacting is a native issue of digital photography. It appears on nearly all digital photos - sometimes a little, sometimes strong. Microstock agencies don't like artifacts, istockphoto is particularly known for that.

Artifacts is something quite easy to address if you apply a systematic approach. I am getting nearly 0 rejects for artifacts for the last +/- 12 months if not longer:

• shoot exclusively in RAW , not too high ISO
• good exposure, particularly no underexposure, and no pulling shadows up
• very little or no sharpening when processing RAW
• if converting RAW to separate file before opening in photoshop use TIF not jpeg

in result you should see very little artifacting (BTW check on the edge of shadows at 400%-500% zoom).

What I am doing next with 100% of my pictures is applying TopazLabs DeJPEG filter (photoshop plugin). There is an old free version and there is up to date commercial one (which isn't expensive). The "official" purpose of the plugin is different, but it helps very nicely to remove that little artifacting. The key is to apply DeJPEG at very low settings, don't overdo it. I made several presets for different degree of artifacting/noise; and I am thinking about making a tutorial about that when I have some time.

When applied at minimal settings, DeJPEG filter smooths areas without detail while keeping details sharp, and adds a very little noise. This is an example (crop enlarged to 300%):


the version "more DeJpeg" not only smoothened stronger, but also has more noise added.




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CEPIC microstock conference in Dublin

I came back from microstock conference organized by CEPIC in Dublin on the 8th of June. Took some notes and some videos - will post after get them processed.




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16bit vs 8bit editing in photoshop

The question discussed many times and still often asked - whether to process RAW files in 16 bit or in 8 bit mode?

The answer depends on quality of the source file and the intended use of the image. When you work with well exposed photograph and don't edit it intensively, the difference between 8bit and 16bit isn't significant. However in case you need best possible quality there is a difference.

Even if you save the final result in 8-bit file (e.g. JPG only supports 8-bit mode), there is a difference depending how you edit your file.

Whether it's a big deal or not is rather subjective.... but the difference is pretty obvious.

I made a simple example - took a well exposed image, didn't apply very much editing, didn't have too many layers. There are 2 frames in the animated gif: one is the result of 16 bit editing, converted to 8 bit at the end; the other frame is result of 8-bit editing - i.e. same file was first converted to 8 bit, then editing applied. It enlarged to 400% to make the difference more visible.



In case you have underexposed image, in case you have higher ISO, in case you apply intensive editing - you will see much bigger difference between 8 and 16 bit. But even this example above is sufficient for me to do my editing in 16 bit.


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Internet upgrade at home

Got my Belgacom ADSL line upgraded today to VDSL. Download speed came from 4Mbps up to around 15Mbps, and more importantly the uplink went from 0.5Mbps up to 1.5Mbps - very helpful for uploading photos to retouching agency, and to stock agencies. (I am talking about real tested speed)

The nice thing that the upgrade was free to me (including VDSL modem), because Belgacom has improved their subscription plan that I was already using. But I had to ask for upgrade myself.

The only negative part is that the websites that were slow remain slow regardless the speed of my internet connection....



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