Author Archive



Camera Color Profiles

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

color checker

Colors are important in photography. But with digital photography, it is a long path from the light of this world to the computer. At the heart of the digital camera is the image sensor which records the image. Almost all digital cameras actually record image data with a complicated array of colored filters over tiny light-sensitive photosensors (more detailed information on Bayer filters is on wikipedia. Foveon sensors use a different technology but they have their own set of issues). At this point, more advanced models of cameras allow this image to be recorded in this “raw” format (we recommend always shooting in raw format over jpeg, but that’s another discussion).

Now, in its raw format, a photo would be unrecognizable. Complicated algorithms can process—the digital equivalent of darkroom developing—the raw file to create a jpeg file which is viewable by web browsers and printers alike. Part of the raw processing is determining the colors of individual pixels, or points, in the picture. Although engineers at companies such as Adobe have camera color profiles for most models of cameras, each specific camera may handle colors a little differently due to manufacturing tolerances. To ensure the best accuracy in the colors coming out of the camera, a standard color chart can be used. A popular color chart is the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport, which a friend generously let me use on a recent shoot. This contains a number of colors which are very accurately printed.

After taking a picture of this chart, you have to tell the computer to analyze these colors. In the past, people used slow, complicated Photoshop scripts. I found that Adobe now provides a DNG Profile editor which will create a camera profile. I followed the directions on their tutorial, though I had to convert my Canon raw file to a DNG file (Adobe also provides a free converter program but you can also do this when importing photos with Lightroom).  This quickly and easily created a profile for my camera.  The last step was to move this profile into a location for Adobe programs to use, which on a mac is /Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles . That’s it! Now you can use the new profile in Lightroom or Photoshop as a starting point for your editing.

Shalom Center

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

I recently volunteered at the Shalom Center, a non-profit social service organization in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  They were in the process of renovating an old building to become their new food pantry.  This building was much larger than what they had currently, and when it would be completed, it could serve over 700 households per month by supplying a total of 20 – 25 tons of donated food per month to these households!  We painted the outside, removed some old tile, and seal coated the driveway.  It’s a good feeling to see the results of your labor at the end of the day and know that it is impacting others.

painting the outside walls

blowing debris

shoveling the floor

WordPress 3.0

Saturday, June 19th, 2010

We recently moved our website to a new hosting company StableHost (fyi, that’s an affiliate link) because we found a good deal.  We were at nearlyfreespeech.net before, which was affordable, but the performance was sometimes a little slow.  Hopefully you’ll notice a speedup in browsing our site!  Also, I had problems with updating the WordPress software and the plugins

Speaking of updates, we updated this blog to WordPress 3.0 (Theolonius) as well.  There are a host of nice improvements, though I’m not sure what we’ll implement yet.  I think we might do something with custom menus, depending which theme we go with.  And the bulk updating of plugins will be nice too.

Also, I’ve been playing around with Facebook connect.  If you’re logged into Facebook, you can “Like” any of our posts now!  I might add Facebook commenting, but then it doesn’t work for those few people not on Facebook :)  As always, stop by our Facebook page sometime!

Improvement

Saturday, May 29th, 2010

People sometimes ask me, “How can I improve my photography?”  There are, of course, many answers, depending on the questioner’s current skill set.  However, one tip can usually be followed: take more photos!

Sometimes, a little direction can help.  For instance, one of my friends regularly holds photo challenges.   The most recent challenge was “The first signs of spring” (yeah, this was a few weeks ago!)  The reason this was a good idea for me is that I might not have taken spring-themed photos otherwise!

spring buds Here’s the photo that I submitted.  One of the restrictions was that we tried to get the photo as good in the camera.  This is difficult for me because I’m used to doing some post-processing on all of my photos (I could write another entry about post processing!) but actually this is another good exercise.  Though it may seem counter-intuitive, restrictions can be helpful.  They can force you to try something new, another angle or way of seeing things.

Here are some other photos from my spring outing (post-editing… I can’t switch all my processing style at once!)

blue flower zoom

white tree against blue sky

 

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