I have been a Lightroom user for many years as an editing app. In all that time, I’ve only used Photoshop for a couple of minor little things when needed. With all the down time since the pandemic began, I have worked on learning some of it. I just thought it would be fun to explore some of the artistic things that can be done. This photo is one of the subjects I played around with. Colin James
Photo of the Week #153......
My wife and I have spent a great deal of time in Nova Scotia and it shows in the volume of photos from there in my catalog. Those of you who recognize The Cabot Trail will know this place, just north of Cheticamp. I love how the road snakes it’s way through the trees as it makes it’s way up the coast on the western side of Cape Breton. Some world famous beauty for sure. Along the way, you may see pilot whales or seals, or a fishing boat working along the shore.
Cabot Trail. Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.
Photo of the Week #152
This image was inspired by a speaker who spoke at one our online photography club meetings this season, Wayne Fisher. I was a little intrigued by the work he showed and played around with some on my own. Wayne sent me looking in places I would never have thought to look for images. This is called “All Aboard”, I thought it looks like some sort of space ship maybe. I entered the image in the club contest for the first round of the year and it won first place in Creative Experimental. It is kind of funny but I totally lost interest in competing for a long time and just decided to test the waters once again since we have completely over hauled how judging is done, being online due to the health concerns these days.
Photo of the Week #151
This photo of the Queensport Light was made a couple of years ago with my 300mm prime. I got the lens for shooting concerts originally but have found some other uses for it. I published another shot of this lighthouse here but I prefer this one using a longer focal length.
Sky Replacement and AI Software
Lately, we have seen the release of several pieces of software which automates procedures that would have otherwise taken much longer to achieve. Replacing a sky has been possible for some time in several apps but Luminar and Adobe have made it faster than ever with recent releases. You can now replace a sky in a click or two, the software does all the masking and heavy lifting for you. This has been received with mixed feelings, the landscape photographers don’t like it, they like to chase their subjects using only what the scene offered to them at the time of capture. For them swapping a sky would be unacceptable. More artistically minded photographers seem to like it. I guess it depends on what philosophy you subscribe to.
Topaz has also released new versions of Sharpen, Gigapixel and Denoise that all use Artificial Intelligence to achieve their goal. Again, some people shied away in favour of established plugins found in Photoshop but after more reviews, many have endorsed the Topaz software as being superior to Photoshop. I have used the Sharpen app myself and found it to be an extremely good product.
I think that often we forget there are other apps out there other than the ones we use. We need to keep an open mind, we love our favourite editing software but you never know, there might be a better one around the corner, we shouldn’t be afraid to take a look. If something isn’t our thing then at least we know.