How to Blur the Background

Note:  Kirk is "the Affordable Full time Professional Wedding Photographer Winsdor,  Ontario".  Here is the Link to KW Masters Photography.

Introduction:

One of the things that "pops" your subject off of the photograph is when the background is out of focus of blurred.  It helps to show that you have a better understanding of how to use the features of your camera.  It also helps to hide unwanted objects in the background from detracting from the point of focus of the image.

http://kwmastersphoto.com/Professional-wedding-photographer-Sarnia-Ontario.html

Background Focus with various F-Stops

How to Blur the Background:

1. Turn your camera from  "P" mode for professional (joke), to Av or Aperture Priority.

2. Select the lowest F-Stop that your lens has.

3. If you have a normal quality kit lens, this may only be F 5.6 or so.  You don't have to have F 1.2 lenses

4. If you don't have a low F-Stop lens, consider purchasing the Canon 50 mm, F 1.4 or F1.8 lens (the low cost one).  You will then have a tool that can help you take great photos.

5. Rack out your lens as far as possible.  This may mean moving farther back, but you will compress your background.

DOF - Use this Reminder When Choosing your F-Stop (depth of field)

Caution: When shooting groups of people at various depths it is more important to get the subjects in focus than to blur the background.

Masters-Tip: Use low F-Stops to blur the background when shooting 1 or 2 subjects

Masters-Tip: Rack out the telephoto to compress the background

Masters-Tip: The 50 mm lens will be your best low cost low F-Stop lens

Remember:  Masters-Tip:  Get the shot (in focus and with proper exposure) Period!  You can always fix it in Photoshop.

Summary:

We always teach, Get it Right in the Camera as much as possible.  When using low F-Stops, DOF plays a big role.  You must be able to still your body by pressing your elbows against your chest and breathing slowly.  We have many tools to fix it later, like DXO and the bokeh slider.  In PS, you can blur the background in multiple ways.

Kirk is  a Professional Wedding Photographer in Windsor Ontario Canada.   In appreciation if you would be so kind as to give a G+ and a Facebook Like KW Masters Photography on his Facebook page.  

View Kirk Masters Profile

Photoshop Tuesday:- How to Whiten Teeth

Note:  Kirk is "the Affordable Full time Professional Wedding Photographer Winsdor,  Ontario".  Here is the Link to KW Masters Photography.

Introduction:

At first glance, one would think that whitening teeth should be simple.  It is but the first route that comes to mind is not the best method and should not be used.

Paint them White:

If the teeth are not white, you might think that by using the select tool and the paint brush with a white color would solve the problem.  This solution works somewhat but should be ignored at all costs.

Teeth are more than white pieces of enamel in one's mouth.  They have structure, features that give identity to each and everyone of us.  There are shadows and highlights, shape and contours which give character to each tooth and it is imperative that we keep them that way.

I am about to give you one of my secrets.  I never read anywhere to do it this way, but it makes the best sense and the best method that I know of.  Yes, you could buy the PS plugin for whitening teeth, but that seems a bit expensive and may not save a lot of time in this case.

I am going to pull a trick that my mother used to do to whiten the whites in the laundry. This is the first of two methods that I use.  My mother used to add bluing agent to the wash.  The reason is simple.  Most teeth have yellow coloring and by adding just the right amount of blue, yellow turns to white.

Select the teeth of a single person or group if all seem to be the same amount of yellow.  Now select the curves, click with the eye dropper and also select the Blue channel.  You should see a rather weak histogram with a peak.  Now increase the blue channel until the yellow goes away.  It is very critical that you don't turn the teeth blue.  I get it close and manually type in the adjustment.  It is amazing how 1 or 2 points can make a big change.

Masters-Tip: Use the blue channel of the curves tool to add blue to yellow to make white.

Now I have a second method, which I also happen to like.  It is again something that I discovered in PS.  Again, select your teeth being as careful as possible.  This time go to the Image, Adjustment, Hue/Saturation tool.  Reduce the saturation of the image until the yellow disappears.

Masters-Tip:http://kwmastersphoto.com/London-Wedding-Photographer.html Reduce the yellowing of teeth by using the saturation tool and reducing the color saturation until the yellow disappears.

Summary:

Most people like to have their teeth whitened in PS.  Check first with your client when doing any touch-ups to get their approval or you may end-up re-doing your work.  Each PS touch-ups should be small in nature, normally not more than 15% difference.  By using one of these two techniques, you significantly enhance your images, especially on head shots.  Avoid just painting away the yellow and features of the teeth.  Enjoy.

Kirk is  a Professional Wedding Photographer in Windsor Ontario Canada.   In appreciation if you would be so kind as to give a G+ and a Facebook Like KW Masters Photography on his Facebook page.  

View Kirk Masters Profile

KW Masters Photography | Wedding Photographer Windsor Ontario | Blog: Using Your On Camera Flash Part III

KW Masters Photography | Wedding Photographer Windsor Ontario | Blog: Using Your On Camera Flash Part III: Note:  Kirk is  " the   Affordable Full time Professional Wedding Photographer Winsdor,  Ontario" .   Here is the Link to  KW Masters Phot...

Using Your On Camera Flash Part III

Note:  Kirk is "the Affordable Full time Professional Wedding Photographer Winsdor,  Ontario".  Here is the Link to KW Masters Photography.

Introduction:

In parts 1 and 2 we looked at using your flash in TTL or though the lens mode.  Today we will take a quick look at using the flash in the manual mode.  Again, when I discuss your on Camera Flash, I am referring to your Flash Gun or a Canon 580 EX-II or similar type of flash.  Don't over look using your flash in manual mode.  It may be exactly what the situation calls for.

Why Manual Mode?

Manual mode gives us a constant light output for a given ambient light setup.  It is great for studio work or shots in a location where the ambient light is constant.  Your TTL exposure can be fooled depending on the spot that you meter on.  Change people and clothing and you just might find that the flash also changes.

How to use Manuel Flash Mode:

Using the mode button found on the back of your flash, press it until manual (M) is seen.  Set up your camera in Manual mode also, under exposing for the room light.  For precise studio work, you can set up you lights using a Light meter.  For a light meter, we use the SEKONIC Model L-358 which we got from Vistek.  You first setup the light meter with your ISO and take a shot with your on camera flash or studio lights at that distance.  You can then adjust your camera accordingly.

For most work, we use the camera's built in light meter, the histogram and the view screen.  Estimate the power output that you might need for a shot.  Don't know?  Guess.  Start at full power if you are shooting a large church scene or 1/2 to 1/4 power for other shots.  Take the shot, quickly check you view screen for the blinkies, the histogram and how the image looks.  You will be surprised just how fast you can narrow down the power  range.  That is what we have to do with TTL anyway.  You will have better control in manual mode.  With ETTL I normally have to reduce the output in 1/3 stop increments.  That is more or less what you do in manual mode to get it right in the camera.

Masters-Tip:  Try using your flash in manual mode for studio work and constant light situations where the distance to the subject is constant.

Masters-Tip: We don't imply any guarantee that this will work on your equipment but don't be surprised if it does.  We have a personal use camera, an Olympus E-510 that takes great photos.  I sold the TTL flash for this years ago as we have two Canon 580 EX-II's.  By using the Canon flash on the Olympus in manual mode, we get great fill flash photos and I might add with almost 20% more power from the flash.  What we sold the  Olympus flash for, almost bought us the Canon Flash.  We also have an 8 mm Fisheye lens for the Oly which we use with the Canon Flash also.

Summary:

Many photographers have gotten away from using their equipment in manual mode, relying on the automatic settings.  The ability to quickly use your flash in manual mode is a great tool set to have.  Practice with your flash and camera in manual mode and you might just be surprised.  We are so lucky today.  In years past, everything was manual.  Worst yet, after setting up the flash in manual based on a chart, ASA, etc, you didn't get the result, sometimes for weeks and your would forget what setting you used.  Today, you get near instant feedback and can make adjustments immediately.

Kirk is  a Professional Wedding Photographer in Windsor Ontario Canada.   In appreciation if you would be so kind as to give a G+ and a Facebook Like KW Masters Photography on his Facebook page.  

View Kirk Masters Profile

When should you be sharpening your Digital Photos|

Note:  Kirk is "the Affordable Full time Professional Wedding Photographer Winsdor,  Ontario".  Here is the Link to KW Masters Photography and home of the blog.

Introduction:

The question of when to sharpen you digital images is an important one.  We will examine when and how often you should sharpen your digital images before you print them.

The Digital Capture Process:

In my previous post I discussed the excellent sharpness of the Canon 70-200 mm F4 lens.  Guess what, during the digital processing of your image, the image is actually Blurred and then re-sharpened.  Olympus has gotten away from this in their latest E-5 camera and it looks like Nikon is also following suit.  I have not yet heard that Canon has adopted this image processing path.  You can imagine my horror after paying thousands of dollars for sharp lenses to find this out!  Actually, I have known about this for years and years.  The simply fact is that you must or should sharpen your images twice.

About 5-6 years ago there was an expert in this field who was working with Adobe camera raw on this very subject.  He has since passed.  That is why you will find the clarity and sharpening tools in Adobe Camera Raw.  It is because of his efforts and expertise.  Adobe Camera Raw also has an excellent masking tool that you can use when you first sharpen your images.  It is also his recommendation that you sharpen your images a second time just before printing.  DXO also has presharpening tools that you can use along with lens distortion and sharpening.

But how much sharpening you should apply is a difficult one.  Normally if you see small sharpening halos on your monitor, they normally do not show up in the final print.  That is what you should use as your guide when you sharpen your images prior to printing.

How do you sharpen your images prior to printing?

I see two ways to do it.  You could use the sharpening tools in Photoshop.  I am referring to the menu, sharpen, more sharpen, smart sharping.  You can also sharpen desirable areas of your images, like the eyes, rings, etc with the sharpening tool found in the Tools section.

I use a combination of the above PLUS NIK Output Sharpening Pro plugin.  Again, you can easily over sharpen and that is something that you don't want to do.  With the NIK plugin, I over sharpen and pull it back with the opacity slider to where I can see the small halos.  That normally works well.  If you you save your file in Tiff or PSD layers, you can go back and adjust the file if necessary.  The NIK plugin allows you to sharpen for different output papers.  Like Silver Halide process or Ink Jet printing.

Masters-Tip: Presharpen your images before working on them

Masters-Tip:  Sharpen your images a second time just before printing.  I recommend the NIK Sharpener Pro here but the choice is yours.

Kirk is  a Professional Wedding Photographer in Windsor Ontario Canada.   In appreciation if you would be so kind as to give a G+ and a Facebook Like KW Masters Photography on his Facebook page.  

View Kirk Masters Profile

Review of Canon EF 70-200 mm Lens F 4

Note:  Kirk is "the Affordable Full time Professional Wedding Photographer Winsdor,  Ontario".  Here is the Link to KW Masters Photography.

Introduction:

The two most common zoom lenses that we use are the trusty 24 - 105 mm and the 70-200 mm.  Both are constant aperture F -4 .  What this means is that as you zoom in and out, the F-Stop and your exposure will stay the same.  Where ever possible that is something to look for in a lens.  Both are classified as Canon "L" lenses which implies build quality and weather proofing.

Lens controls IS and AF - Notice the different settings for distance to object

What to Look for in a Lens:

With a telephoto lens, you can compress the background and with lower F-Stops you get a tighter depth of field.  You also look for bokeh of the lens.  You also look at things like the sharpness of the image, what is the barrel distortions, how does it perform at it's widest F-Stop and racked fully out.  When we purchased this lens, the F 2.8 model at twice the price was not nearly as sharp as this lens.  The revised F 2.8 is now an excellent lens.  Both make for an excellent portrait lens.  IMHO, there is only a slight difference with the out of focus depth of field between F 4 and F 2.8.  The winner here would be the F 2.8 but at twice the price you could buy another quality lens for your kit.  But that is out of the camera.  Tweak the bokeh slider in DXO and now you have the same, or if not much better bokeh than the F 2.8.  The bokeh is rated as neutral.  The F 4.0 is also much smaller and lighter.  You also run a much better chance of getting your couple in focus as the DOF is not as tight as with a F 2.8.  That is the most important thing when photographing anything.  Another important thing to look at is the IS - Image Stabilization.  How many stops do you get and what is the slowest speed that you can shoot at.

The Canon 70-200 IS F 4 is considered to be one of the sharpest zooms that Canon makes.

At F 4

F4 at 200 mm

Distortions

Summary:

This is an outstanding sharp telephoto lens and one of Canon`s best buys.  It does have some barrel distortion at 200 mm which can be corrected in DXO or PS.   Buyers rate this at 9.9 so who can argue with that. You just might want to add this to your none FF bodies like the 50 D and get a 100 - 320 mm range out of it.  And you might want to add a multiplier, like the 2.0 to boost this from 1.4 to 2 x`s more.  At 640 mm, I would suggest that you use a tripod but the IS is highly rated.  We even have gotten 200 mm shots at 1/10 of second, but recommend when shooting people to keep it above 1/50 second.  As the F 2.8 weighs about 3 lbs and this one about 1 1/2 lbs, keeping on your belt is much nicer at the lower weight.  As I have mentioned in the past, low light work is now not the issue that it was several years ago and the need to have a F 2.8 lens to work in these low light situations is not necessary.

Masters-Tip: Consider the F 4 for your telephoto work.  Price, sharpness, lightness, performance is all tops.   We do recommend the IS model, so watch out.  IS should give you about 2+ stops or don't shoot slower than 1/50 second as a guide.  It is currently on sale at Vistek.  Price is approximately $1199. cdn + taxes.  Ask for price match to Hen...

Masters-Tip:  Use DXO to remove the distortions that all lens have and sharpen this even more.  And don't forget the bokeh slider.

Our rating:  Highly Recommended

You can buy it here at Vistek. 

Kirk is  a Professional Wedding Photographer in Windsor Ontario Canada.   In appreciation if you would be so kind as to give a G+ and a Facebook Like KW Masters Photography on his Facebook page.  

View Kirk Masters Profile

KW Masters Photography | Wedding Photographer Windsor Ontario | Blog: Photoshop Tuesday - How to remove Flash Shine from...

KW Masters Photography | Wedding Photographer Windsor Ontario | Blog: Photoshop Tuesday - How to remove Flash Shine from...: Note:  Kirk is   " the   Affordable Full time Professional Wedding Photographer Windsor,  Ontario" . Introduction: Where do you start ...

Photoshop Tuesday - How to remove Flash Shine from faces quickly

Note:  Kirk is "the Affordable Full time Professional Wedding Photographer Windsor,  Ontario".

Introduction:

Where do you start when processing your images?  I will give your my work flow with an important tip.

Work Flow:

1. Save images on Raid 1 Hard drive array

2. Process images in DXO for numerous corrections and enhancements.  See DXO for list.  This also includes sharpening and WB +

3. Time for Lightroom to review and cull

4. Time to process in Photoshop.

Photoshop Processing:

1. Crop image.  Use content-aware fill to remove or enhance image composition

2. Remove flash shine on faces.  Sometime you can't bounce the flash and even with bouncing and umbrellas, the oils and sweat on faces can leave a shine.  This does NOT look good and must be removed.

How to remove flash shine:

1. You can use the adjustment brush in Lightroom, or

2. The healing brush in Photoshop to each image.

All of the above can be very time consuming.  Here is a faster and easier way.

3. You can use the plugin: Shine off.  This plugin does two things.  It removes the shine and gives a better skin tone to the faces.  It also removes some shine from spill flash onto shiny objects.  On the hidden side, it helps to correct your histogram posterization.

Posterization occurs or is seen when you have white gaps and peaks in your histogram.  We have a plugin to help heal this also, but this plugin works a bit better.  Posterization normally occurs from 8 bit tools.  We recommend using 16 bit tools when ever possible to avoid this.

Masters-Tip:  Use Shine-Off to remove the flash shine on faces to speed up your image processing time

Masters-Tip: We have prepared an E-Book on how to photograph people to look their best with studio lighting and off camera lighting.  Email us.  Cost is $10 via Paypal.  This will give you professional directional lighting tips which is element 1 of taking super looking photos.  We discuss the basic lighting methods and how to achieve them. Use our website email link.

Kirk is  a Professional Wedding Photographer in Windsor Ontario Canada.   In appreciation if you would be so kind as to give a G+ and a Facebook Like KW Masters Photography on his Facebook page..... thanks

View Kirk Masters Profile

Shooting Better Photographs - Rules of Composition

Note:  Kirk is "the Affordable Full time Professional Wedding Photographer Windsor,  Ontario".

Introduction:

If there is one rule that will give you superior looking photographs, today's post is it. You will find this rule or see it rather on almost all great looking photos and for that matter when you and if you, watch TV or movies or in our photographs.

Composition:

In my 3 elements that make up a great photograph, found on our website, composition is element number 2.  What is composition?  Composition is how and where we frame the subject in the background of the image.  Obviously, it is desirable to have or find beautiful backgrounds to use.  There are no absolutes when it comes to composition. Generally the scene and subject drive the composition

Masters-Tip: Use the Rule of Thirds when composing your photographs as your starting point.  Vary the nodal point location of the subject.

Divide your canvas into equal thirds as shown

Memorize this layout.  You will see what are called the 4 nodal points. By varying the location of your subjects using this rule, your eyes are immediately drawn to the subject.

Try now to image how this would look if you put the bird in the middle like grandma would.  Not so nice.

Let us look at some examples:

Notice how your eyes are drawn towards the subject.

 Summary:

Composition is something that you have a great deal of control over.  As you develop your photographic "eye", the positioning of your subject will become natural.  I can go to a new location and withing minutes pick good locations to shoot the subjects.  Sometimes these are great locations that are over looked by other photographers.

Practice using this rule every time you use your camera.  It doesn't mean that at time, Grama was wrong.  Sometimes the center position is best, but not too often.

Enjoy.

Note: We have prepared an E-Book on how to photograph people to look their best with studio lighting and off camera lighting.  Email us.  Cost is $10 via Paypal.  This will give you professional directional lighting tips which is element 1.  We discuss the basic lighting methods and how to achieve them. Use our website email link.

Kirk is  a Professional Wedding Photographer in Windsor Ontario Canada.   In appreciation if you would be so kind as to give a G+ and a Facebook Like KW Masters Photography on his Facebook page..... thanks

View Kirk Masters Profile

How to use your on Camera Flash - Part II

Note:  Kirk is "the Affordable Full time Professional Wedding Photographer Windsor,  Ontario".

Introduction:

When I am speaking about your on camera flash I am NOT referring to your built in flash.  My Canon 5D Mark II just doesn't have a built in flash.  I am basically referring to the Canon 580 EXII or if you have it the 600 EX-RT or equivalent.

Now let us move to an advance technique.  This is not difficult but if scares a lot of photographers.  We are going to change the Color of our flash.

What you need:

1. Sheet of photo gel - CTS (Color Temperature Straw)  There is also a CTO (color  temperature Orange, but CTS is the preferred one).  We have one big sheet that I am sure will last to the end of days.  We also bought green, blue and red sheets.  Now carefully cut the sheet into small strips that will just cover your Canon Flash.  Flip out the wide angle flash deflector (that plastic thing with the cloudy cover).  At the same time you cut circular filters for your Quantum and or other flashes.  If you bought 1/2 CTS, then you will need two filters to give you CTS.  We got ours from Vistek.

2 Your camera

3. Your Canon 580 EX-II or equivalent

4. A room with incandescent or florescent lights at around 2800 deg K.

Scenario: 

You recon the church and reception hall to check out the best locations to shoot the happy couple.

You pay close attention to the color and type of lighting in the room.

You do this at or about the same time that your wedding will be occurring.

You take a few shoots to check out the amount of light and to get a ball park exposure setting

You find out that the church has those beautiful incandescent yellow lights.

A.Now you go into your white balance setting and turn it to 2800 K.

B. Gel your flash by putting the strip over the flash and holding in place with the plastic dispersion cover.  You may also want to have some black tape on hand just in case you need a bit more force to hold things into place.

Now take your photo of your assistant as discussed in Part I.  Notice how the image looks perfect.  You are now not fighting with different color lights.  It was a bit too much work for me to get a ladder and gel the incandescent lights with a blue gel so I chose the easier path.  I mention this because you might run into a Photoshop trick of adding blue filters to remove that orange color caused by conflicting lights.

Summary:

Your digital camera is an amazing tool.  The White Balance settings have a large number of different settings that you can use.  These are equivalent to adding different gel filters to your camera like we used to do with film.  The cost is right where we like it - free.  There is another way to deal with different color lights.  That is to over power it with flash.  You set your camera exposure to use a high shutter speed to diminish the effects of the ambient lights.  I prefer to gel our flash as it removes all conflicts with the ambient lighting.  There are of course other light sources which you may have to contend with.  This is the most common one that I run across.

Masters-Tip: Gel your on and off camera flashes to match the ambient light color temperature.

Masters-Tip: Try shooting using Blue, red or green gels to give a different effect during the reception.

I hope that you enjoyed today's post.  In part III we will explore using our Camera Flashes in manual mode.  Thanks for dropping by.

Kirk is  a Professional Wedding Photographer in Windsor Ontario Canada.   In appreciation if you would be so kind as to give a G+ and a Facebook Like KW Masters Photography on his Facebook page.  You only have to do this once and add your likes and G+ per post.

View Kirk Masters Profile

You may also view this blog here - Photography Blog.

Cruising the Web - Internet Browsers

Note:  Kirk is "the Affordable Full time Professional Wedding Photographer Winsdor,  Ontario".  Here is the Link to KW Masters Photography Wedding Photographer -Blog

Introduction:

I just picked up a new tip on internet  browsing.  Have you ever searched Google using Chrome and saw results that the same search results on another computer sitting just next to you doesn't?

Today, we have to be cautious are everything that we do on the web.  Why?  Because all of it is being recorded somewhere.  Why anyone would want to see what or where I was searching is way beyond me.

Web Browsing is Highly Manipulated:

A few years back, a student of mine showed me an article that he had found in a magazine. I did not like what I was reading.  When you search, say for sweaters, and then suddenly you find a lot of site on sweaters advertised on the right or left of your search results.  Some code picked up on what you were looking for and gave you a manipulated search result.  For that matter, all of these search engines manipulate the results.  That is what SEO or search engine optimization is all about.  Just because a site is on page one doesn't mean that it is the best.  There are many reasons for being on page 1 in Google.  One may be history.  The site has been there for a long time.

Many times I will search the web to look at my competitor sites.  To check out their photos and to see how good they are.  I am sure that they are doing the same to me.  Sometimes I find very good photography and my wife and I both agree.  Sometimes I find on page 1 Terrible photography.  The guy is proud of the fact that for 10 years he has been giving his customers the same s... photos, you know what I mean.  I am not here to train my competitors.

Einstein is famous for his quotation of insanity: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results".

The problem that I found is that Google was keeping a record of my searches.  What they think I liked and when I searched again, these results would show up.  That is NOT what I was looking for or wanted.  This is AFTER I had deleted the browser history. I have to delete my personal passwords and stuff.

I would go and use another browser and the results were different.  Then I returned to Chrome and the same things appeared again.  While I was clearing the history, one page at at a time Google gave me a message.  GO INCOGNITO press Ctrl -Shift -N

That solved the problem.  But it created other problems.  I went to my Wordpress bookmark to start writing about this.  You guessed it.  My auto login was missing because I was Incognito.  Well if you can't laugh at your self, who can you laugh at.

While we are on the subject of people spying on us, you just might want to Ghost you IP address at times.  Search TOR browser for more info.  Curiously, when using TOR I went to ahrefs to check our site stats, backlinks, dofollows/no follows, ect.  I logged into ahrefs twice in a row with two different IP addresses and they seem to remember who I was by telling me that I only had 2 free clicks left for the day.  How did they know it was me.  Perhaps there is little that we can do when Big Brother is watching.

There is also a problem and in the past a big problem showing your web page on the different browsers.  There are many out there.  We use Chrome, have IE and Firefox and TOR.  You can run into problems with Google if you run Flash on your site.  Google doesn't like Flash as I painfully found out a few years back.

Masters-Tip: Go INCOGNITO so that Google does know who you are and give you your hidden history.  Want to hide your IP - use the TOR browser, you might have heard them use this on the TV show Continuum.

While back to writing tomorrows post.

Kirk is  a Professional Wedding Photographer in Windsor Ontario Canada.   In appreciation if you would be so kind as to give a G+ and a Facebook Like KW Masters Photography on his Facebook page.  You only have to do this once and add your likes and G+ per post.

View Kirk Masters Profile

KW Masters Photography | Wedding Photographer Windsor Ontario | Blog: What you see is What your get - Is your monitor hi...

KW Masters Photography | Wedding Photographer Windsor Ontario | Blog: What you see is What your get - Is your monitor hi...: Note:  Kirk is  " the   Affordable Full time Professional Wedding Photographer serving Winsdor,  Ontario" .   Here is the Link to  KW Mast...

What you see is What your get - Is your monitor hiding something from you?

Note:  Kirk is "the Affordable Full time Professional Wedding Photographer serving Winsdor,  Ontario".  Here is the Link to KW Masters Photography Wedding Photographer.  You can also use the above link to see this post on our home site-click blog on the menu.  Enjoy.

Introduction:

Several years ago I went to purchase a 22 in Color Samsung monitor for my computer.  Having 15 in monitors, this was going to be a big change.  You check out the specification, compare brands and models and pick the one your like.  It cost around $300-400. at the time.  When we tried to view photographs on it we found that we were having problems.  The colors just didn't look right.

Today I am going to share with you what I found out and why buying a monitor was and still is a chancy thing.

Color Space:

Color space is the fancy term for showing the color distribution of an object, be it a photograph or a computer monitor.  The wider the color reach or space, the better. There are 3 color spaces that I know of and some other custom spaces.

These are:

1. sRGB - Standard Red - Green - Blue  This is the basic and smallest color space, many times used in printing your photographs.  In Canon camera's, it is the only color space that you can set for your auto setting JPEGS.  Another good reason for NOT shooting JPEGS with Canon.  Our Olympus camera allows us to use Adobe RGB.

2. Adobe -RGB (1998) This is the standard color space of your RAW images.  It is much larger than sRGB and you can get prints made using it at most places.

3. Pro-Photo - This is the largest color gamut available that I know of.  The main problem is getting things printed with the larger color range.  This is no problem for us, as we have a  large professional printer with an extended color gamut range.  So to use this, you will need to buy a professional color printer ($2-3000.) or have someone like us do it for you.

4. Custom color profiles for Offset Printing and silver halide process.  When you print to different types of paper, you need to have a color profile setup for each type of paper. We print Luster and sometimes matt.  When we have our Professional Photographic Art Wedding Albums printed, we have to process each image with the color space of the paper being used.  This is more work, but the result is: "What you see is what you get". That is the goal of your Color Management efforts.

Color Monitors:

You may have already guessed what the snag is.  The monitor sales people and their suppliers don't show you the color gamut of their monitors.  They deliberately HIDE this information from you.  You have to look and seek it out.

Our above monitor was costly, but it only has 72% of Adobe RGB.

And the rest of the story is...

This information is basically hidden on the Samsung Website.  We have a Samsung 24" and a Dell 24" monitors that do have a 97% and or 115% Adobe RGB color gamut.  So our display monitor shows us the true colors and the other, holds the Photoshop tools,  and miscellaneous items.  Did we mention the cost?  You can pay up to $2,000 for a photographic monitor.  Prices do vary and the last time that I checked, they were around $700 and up and up.  There are only a few manufactures in the world that make the LCD displays.  The rest just assemble the monitors.  I found that Dell do have sales and you can get fast delivery to your door which is a great thing.

Masters-Tip: If you want to work and adjust the colors of your photographs in a photo editing program like Photoshop, DXO, Lightroom, etc, you should buy a monitor that gives you around 100% Adobe RGB rating.  Check the web, some stores know about this, others don't.

Masters-Tip: Now you have to run a color calibration profile for your monitor

How do I do That?

You have the monitor which is a great start but you have to calibrate it.  We use Spyder 2 to run a color calibration profile which your computer and PS uses so that we can see accurate colors on our computer.  You can get the calibration tool for a steal of a price, around $400.  For those people inclined to do so, you just might be able to calibrate your TV with this tool also.

You install your software, carefully put the tool over the monitor, remove, hide lights from the room and window which can effect the calibration and run the program.  Remember to click once every 6 months or you will be reminded every time you start your computer.

Masters-Tip: Calibration is NOT a short cut for improving a poor quality monitor.  Do NOT waste your time trying to calibrate a monitor with a color gamut of 72%.  The pictures will still look like ...s  you know what I mean.

Masters-Tip: Calibrate you monitor before every big project.  The Dell doesn't drift much, so every 3-6 months should be okay.

Kirk is  a Professional Wedding Photographer in Windsor Ontario Canada.   In appreciation if you would be so kind as to give a G+ and a Facebook Like KW Masters Photography on his Facebook page.  You only have to do this once and add your likes and G+ per post.

View Kirk Masters Profile

Link to Spyder Monitor Calibrators 

U-Tube Link