Camera settings for Butterflies. ( Nikon )
(1) White balance – Auto.
(2) Iso – Auto – Set for Min. shutter speed 600 – Max Iso 3200
(3) Single point focus – Continuous servo mode – Back button focus. ( AF – ON ).
(4) Exposure – Spot metering. Aperature priority setting at f 11- Raw.
(5) Motor drive / Continuous release mode. – low speed.
(6) Exposure compensation – set to under expose by 1.7
(7) Lens Nikon 105mm macro – plus 2x convertor.
Print mounting mb v1.3 23 Oct 2011
Make sure you read the above as this gives the EAF specification for print competitions which we adhere to.
There are lots of You Tube videos on how to do Mounting and Matting also.
A few examples here:
For those of you new to this. The Mount Board is the board the photo is mounted on. The Mat is the board with the window that sits on top of the photo.
Admin
Setting up a Members Gallery.
What do you need to do.
use this URL:
http://imapflickr.com/helpers/how-to.aspx?t=flickrUsername
another method:-
( Windows Only – there does not appear to be a Mac Version of this ) On you Flickr Home page you have a buddy Icon. This is located at the top right hand side of the screen and by default it is a camera. (You can change this in your settings) . Position your mouse pointer over the icon and Right click. A popup screen will appear with a lot of options. Click the option View Image Info. it will look similar to this :
This brings up another popup showing a lot of information regarding the Icon. E.g.
The line that is highlighted contains your User ID it is the Number sequence at the end after the # i.e. 35417897@N02. If you right click on the highlighted line and then copy you can paste the line into another document for later reference.
OR
visit :
OK that it for the User ID.
This brings up a screen where you can organize the photos and edit some information. At the bottom of the screen there will be all the thumbnails of your photos. Drag the ones you want to be in the gallery onto the main screen. Then click Add Tags :
Another pop up appears
Type in the Tag you wish to be on all the photos in the Gallery. A Tag is just a name. Single words are best. If you want more than one word and the words have a space between them then you need to enclose them in Quote Marks e.g. “My photos” otherwise it appears as two separate tags. Click the ADD TAGS button and that is it.
http://www.welwynphotoclub.org.uk/gallery-choices
Now you need to send us the following information. Your User ID. The Tag you have put on all your photos. The Gallery Choice you made (1, 2, 3 or 4) once you have made a choice it cannot be changed for a minimum of 3 months.
Go here to send the information:
http://www.welwynphotoclub.org.uk/member-gallery-request
Your Gallery will be verified and should be visible in about a week.
NOTES
You are limited to 20 photos in the Club Gallery. This is partly due to Flickr restrictions. However you can have as many photos as you like with your club website TAG. You can make changes to the tagged photos at any time so you are in complete control of which photos appear on the Club Gallery. If for example you have 20 photos tagged and you remove the tags from 5 photos and then add 5 other photos with the Club Gallery Tag the new photos will appear in your gallery.
Galleries 2, 3 and 4 are sorted by your Flickr photo description. This means you can give your photos a description in Flickr and they will appear in that order on the club website. e.g. You could use as the description 1 My photo , 2 My next photo etc. etc. The description does not appear on the club website but may on Flickr.
.
New photos or any changes can take up to 12 hours to appear due to Flickr caching.
We reserve the right to remove Members Galleries.
Galleries from members who leave the club will be removed. ( with certain exceptions)
The EAF have changed the size of images for submission to 1600 pixels wide by 1200 pixels tall. The club have adopted this size for all our digitally projected competitions.
Un-cropped landscape images are the easiest to resize using Photoshop’s Image Size command. Make sure that you switch on Constrain Proportions and Resample Image and then enter the new width of 1600 pixels and the height should change to a value less than 1200 pixels, this will depend on the aspect ratio of your camera’s sensor.
Portrait images are a little more complex, you still have to fit your image within the EAF size which means that the height of your image must not exceed 1200 pixels.
Using Photoshop’s Image Size command and making sure that you have Constrain Proportions and Resample Image turned on, enter the height of 1200 pixels and the width will adjust itself to a value less than 1600 pixels.
Other non-standard sizes are just as easy to deal with, they must still fit within the EAF size, the following is a panoramic image and as you can see it is wider than it is tall so all you need to do is resize it so that the width equals 1600 pixels and the height will adjust itself to a value less than 1200 pixels.
Square images should have their height adjusted so that they equal 1200 pixels, the width will adjust itself to a value less than 1600 pixels.
To sum up, regardless whether your image is landscape or portrait you need to make sure that the longest side does not exceed 1600 pixels if it is a landscape image or 1200 pixels if it is a portrait image.
To create a Flickr account and populate your gallery
This document is to help you with setting up a Flickr account with a view to using the account as a gallery on the club website.
So First off I suggest creating some images for you to use once the account is setup. You can have a huge number of images on your Flickr account (up to 1TB) however the galleries on the club website generally support 20 images.
I use the standard club size images, with a resolution of 72dpi and I always watermark my image (this will be covered in a separate how to).
OK so you have now created a number of images that you wish to use in your member’s gallery.
So now we want to get on to Flickr:
First we go to the Flickr web site, which is located here
What we want to do here is to select the Sign up option.
Now we need to start filling out the registration information. This should only take a few minutes.
You will need to enter in the following details:
Your first and last name
You will need to choose a username to login with (this will be created as an email address). The system will suggest some possible options to you. Either choose one of the offered options or create your own. If the one you try to create is already used, then it will tell you and ask for something different.
Enter in a password (remember this).
Now you will need to enter in your mobile number (this is used as part of the password recovery if you do forget your password).
Next enter your age; this is done, as some images are considered adult only.
Now click on the Create Account option
Next you will be asked to enter a verification (this is a security thing to stop automated systems from abusing the site, in other words ARE YOU A HUMAN).
Enter the code (mine was 45MG4) and submit.
I now have a Flickr account.
I selected next
Take me to Flickr
And I arrive.
OK, first of all a VERY quick look around:
In the top right of my screen I have a camera icon with a little number 1.
If you click on this, you get the following
This information window pops up and show you how much of your available space you are using, where the settings are and how to logout out.
You also notice an option for FlickrMail, this is a way for people to contact you if they like (or in my case, don’t like) your images, or they know you in some other way.
Settings is where you can setup your personal setting, privacy and email settings. I won’t be covering these in this document, but please look at these and try and get an understanding of the impact of these.
OK, let’s get some images up to the site.
Along the top menu you will see this an option called ‘You’, click on this and you will be taken to your Photostream (Photostream is your collection of images).
Now as we have no Albums or images uploaded we are presented with the following:
Let’s get some images uploaded. Click on the upload now button.
As the windows above says, you can either drag-and-drop or choose to browse to the images you wish to upload.
I will on this occasion select the choose option.
You will now be presented with a browser window where you can select your images (as below shows)
Once you have selected your choice and clicked OK a new upload window will open.
This window allows you to add a description or save to an album or tag or pretty much whatever you need to do.
When you’re ready select the upload photos button (top right of screen).
My Photostream now has images and I’ve completed my Flickr setup
Stay tuned for part two, how to get your new Flickr gallery to work with the club website.
Converging Verticals
Load up Lightroom and select the image you wish to work on, I then usually copy this image as a virtual image ⌘’on the MAC and Ctrl’ on a Windows system.
Adjust WB, Exposure or other pre-adjustment setting (save Sharpening for later)
For the purpose of this demonstration I am going to use the fast pre-set tools in Lightroom rather than the development module.
Now we have got our image where we have performed out first round of development, we need to work on the verticals, which in this image are leaning inwards and backwards.
Select to edit the image in Photoshop
Copy image to another layer cmd J on the MAC and Ctrl J on the PC
We will now start to work on the verticals
First select the whole image (either choose select and the all from the menu or cmd A on the Mac or Ctrl A on the PC)
Now I then save this selection, choose select and the save selection.
Why we do this will become apparent latter.
Now we need to give ourselves some room to extend the image in to. So we are going to expand the canvas we are working on. This is very simple to do
Choose image from the menu and select canvas size
I leave the anchor points in their default settings. I then increase the width and height by around 20cm. Notice the file size increase as you modify the canvas size
Once you click OK you will see a large white border appear around the image
Now we are going to reload our selection. Choose select and then load selection and choose the selection you saved earlier.
You should now see what is known as the marching ants appear around your image
Now we can start to work on those columns. What we need to do is use either the distort or freeform transform tool.
I’m going to use the distort tool.
From the edit menu select the Transform option and from the drop-down select Distort.
You’ll notice that the “marching ants” now have control node at the corners
If you click on one of these control nodes and move it outwards you will see the image will expand. It may not only go left/right it may go up as well. If you don’t want this to happen then hold the shift key whilst moving. The movement will be locked to left/right only. If you make a mistake then cmd z or Ctrl z will take you back one step.
Now pull out the top edges until the vertical are straight. Bear in mind that when you pull out the second corner it may pull back the first corner a little.
Now one of the downside with this process is that the image may now appear squashed. So you may need to stretch up the image. To do this, select the control node at the top middle, hold the alt key and move upwards.
The image will not only expand upwards but down wards as well.
Now once you have straighten out the verticals and you are happy with the image, just hit enter and the transform with be applied.
Now we need to reload the selection we saved earlier
Now it’s possible that the earlier selection no longer suites the image you wish to create. You can change the select by selecting the select menu option and then transform selection. You can then resize the selection window by using the control nodes as you did before. When your happy with your proposed selection hit the enter new.
When you are happy with your selection, select image and crop
We now have an image where the verticals are straight and we can continue with our dark room workflow.
To get back to Lightroom, select to quit Photoshop, the software will prompt you to save your image, do so and it will be imported back into Lightroom.
You can now continue to work on the image.
