Photos & Photoshop

Archive for Photos & Photoshop

OpenTube | June 9, 2009

17 Top star trail photography ever

A camera fixed on a Tripod with shutter open for a long duration can take wonderful pictures! As the Earth rotates on its axis, stars appear rotating and these long exposure shots in the clear night, leaves behind beautiful trails! But, It is not that simple to take such nice photos. Here we have collected beautiful 17 such photos for your viewing pleasure.

Using a flashlight, wave it around inside a tent for about 30 seconds. (20-minute exposure)

(Death Valley, California, USA) – by Dan Heller

**Two Hour Exposure out a hotel room window (Alto Adige, Italy) – by Dan Heller**

A 3.5 hour shot on a night with no moon, 16,000 feet above Mt. Kilimanjaro

(Kilimanjaro, Tanzania) – by Dan Heller

Click on the image (opens in new page) for time-lapse movie

**(California, USA) – by Dan Heller**

Click on the image (opens in new page) for time-lapse movie

**(California, USA) – by Dan Heller**

Stars over Bodie house – by Dan Heller

Start Trails over Truck! by Dan Heller

11 hour star trail Credit & Copyright: Josch Hambsch

Star Trails by [email protected] (source)

20-minute exposure of star trails, with trees lit by faint ambient light from the campfire

**(Yosemite, California, USA) by Dan Heller**

Star Trails Over Vienna Credit & Copyright: Peter Wienerroither (U. Wien)

Star Trails over Halfdome, 25 minutes - copyright E.J. Peiker

Tufa Star Trail – Mono Lake California, 45 minutes - copyright E.J. Peiker

Sheep Shearing Shed and Star Trails Self Portrait, Kairuru Farm by Scott L. Robertson

Star Trails by Peter A. Suchsland O.D.

End of times? by Micah Lauer, photographer

Star Trails – Image Source

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Category: Photos & Photoshop | Tags: Night Photography, Star Trails

OpenTube | May 22, 2009

6 comments

Free High Dynamic Range (HDR) Software

We had presented 20 beautiful HDR photos in our earlier post. In this article we will take a look at some free software for creating HDR images.

1. Qtpfsgui

Qtpfsgui is an open source graphical user interface application that aims to provide a workflow for HDR imaging. Qtpfsgui is available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. Here are some the key features of Qtpfsgui:

Create an HDR file from a set of images (formats: JPEG, TIFF 8bit and 16bit, RAW) of the same scene taken at different exposure setting.
Save and load HDR images.
Rotate and resize HDR images.
Tonemap HDR images.
Copy exif data between sets of images.

It supports wide verity of formats like:

OpenEXR (extension: exr)
Radiance RGBE (extension: hdr)
Tiff formats: 16bit, 32bit (float) and LogLuv (extension: tiff)
Raw image formats (extension: various)
PFS native format (extension: pfs)

Discussions and images related to Qtpfsgui can be found on flickr.

2. pfstools

pfstools package is a set of command line programs for reading, writing and manipulating high-dynamic range (HDR) images and video frames. It includes also Qt and OpenGL HDR image viewers. pfstools can be integrated with GNU Octave or matlab, so that it can serve as a toolbox for reading and writing HDR images. If you are not comfortable with a command line interface or you want to save yourself compilation problems, you may want to check Qtpfsgui, which packages some functionality of pfstmo and pfscalibration in a nice GUI interface.

3. Picturenaut

Picturenaut was born in the German photo community. It has been in the works for almost two years, with consistent improvements according to user feedback. That’s why the first official release is already Version 2.1, marking a new milestone in making high quality HDR Imaging accessible and easy.

Some key features of Picturenaut are:

Image alignment
Exposure correction
Color balancing
Noise level compensation
Derivation of the camera curve from the source images

It supports various HDR formats like, PFM (Portable Float Map), HDR (Radiance), EXR (OpenEXR), TIFF (32-bit Floating Point), TIFF (LogLuv), LDR, JPEG
TIFF (only RGB color space) and TGA (Targa, no alpha channel).

4. FDRTools Basic

FDRTools Basic are a collection of capable tools for the ambitious shutterbug.

This software allows you to overcome the technical limitations of your digital camera and produce images with a contrast and dynamik range not considered possible so far.

The dynamic range enrichment is handled comfortable and far easier than with traditional methods. The performance characteristics outclass these methods.

Some of the key features are:

Combine several differently exposed photos of an exposure series into an HDR image
Prepare your HDR images for display or print with high quality tonal range compression (tone mapping)
Import the RAW images of your digital camera
Export and archive the optimised HDR image in a format of your choice

Try out some of the above software and you will see interesting results. If you are more serious about it then checkout the HDR Photography Techniques by Captain Kimo.

Technorati Tags: HDR,Free HDR Software,FDRTools Basic,Picturenaut,pfstools,Qtpfsgui,Free Alternatives

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Category: Alternatives, Photos & Photoshop, Tech Reviews | Tags: Alternatives, FDRTools Basic, Free HDR Software, HDR, pfstools, Picturenaut, Qtpfsgui

OpenTube | May 20, 2009

5 comments

20 Beautiful HDR Photos

HDR - High Dynamic Range photography is a technique by which several photos of the same scene that is shot with different exposure settings are combined into one photo. The details of dark areas (from a longer-duration exposure) are combined with the details of brightly lit areas (from a shorter-duration exposure) to form a single photo that is that is correctly exposed in both the dark and light areas.

source: http://www.hdrsoft.com

Here in this article we present a collection of 20 beautiful photos that were created after processing through HDR techniques. To create such beautiful photos, checkout our article on Free HDR Software .

1. Photo by Glauco Dattini

2. Photo by Glauco Dattini

3. Photo by Tony Hadley

4. Photo by Damir Sencar

5. Photo by Glauco Dattini

6. Photo by Scott Merola

7. Photo by Major williams

8. Photo by Brian Curran

9. Photo by Mallav Naik

10. Photo by Justin Setchell

11. Photo by Maria-Mihaela Sârbu

12. Photo by Hossein Mosaferi

13. Photo by Conte Oliver

14. Photo by Jim Crotty

15. Photo by Minh Nghia Le

16. Photo by Jonathan Piette

17. Photo by Enrique Torices

18. Photo by William Horton

19. Photo by Mattpug

20. Photo by Joep R

Technorati Tags: HDR,best HDR

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Category: Photos & Photoshop | Tags: best HDR, HDR

OpenTube | April 15, 2009

5 comments

20 Impressive Photoshop Photo Editing Tutorials

The various tutorials listed below demonstrates how one can pickup an amateur photo and make it look like a pro by using Photoshop image editing tools.

1. Creating a Touching Story Scene

In this tutorial, you are going to create a story scene using photo manipulation and a lot of color adjustments.

2. Creating or enhancing an explosion effect

This tutorial teaches you how to create and enhance a massive explosion in a photo.

3. Photo Cutout

This tutorial teaches you to create fun cutout effect that makes the subject look like it’s coming in or out of a printed photo

4. Beautiful Underwater Scene

This tutorial shows you how to create magical underwater scene. It uses the source image of Victoria Tulips contest to create this effect and the rest is done using filters, blending options, masking and some basic photo shop tools.