Margie Thank you! My little joke.
Roman Czarny All love
Margie Glad you like it!
Michael Gatton Nicely done! Pretty realistic looking mug.
Margie Thank you! Michael, I am thinking I need to branch off into new directions and I love your B and W. Often when I do B and W, it comes out kinda muddy looking with little contrast. Do you shoot in B and W or alter it later? Any tips for me. You know how I respect your work. I just have a high end point and shoot camera but it has a lot of manual controls.
Michael Gatton Hey Margie, my black and white almost always looks "flat" straight out of the camera, at least in terms of what I want my B&W to look like. My G-15 has a small sensor, it's also a fancy point and shoot with a lot of controls. I prefer to shoot with my bigger cameras, but I prefer to carry the smaller one - dilemmas! I do shoot raw in color to start with, but I'm always thinking black and white. I COULD do most of what I want in lightroom, but I've been playing with NIK software plugins for a couple of years (free via google) and created a few presets that are my starting points. I like to boost up the blacks to increase contrast but save detail in the shadows when I can. There are sliders to help with global adjustments and I can also tweak locally with their control points. In hindsight I sometimes go to far with some of these tools, but once it's posted to tookapic that's the end of it. I do noise reduction or sharpening when needed back in lightroom. Lots of tools between NIK, lightroom, and PS to find a look that you like. Good luck and let me know if you need more info. :-)
Margie Thanks for all the good tips. I will use them! I don't have photoshop and my camera has a small sensor as well. But I haven't totally outgrown it, I hate to say! :))
bvphotosnap Fabulous vase! A lovely arrangement of fresh flowers to liven up a cold winter day! ☺
Margie Thank you!
Tomasz Dolata Quintessence of photographs :)