The Photography Knowledge Hub Blog
About Photography Color Correction and Pre-press
Contrast Enhancement Evolution. From Alce to Next, to Shape
SHAPE allowed us to add key functions that were difficult, if not impossible, to implement in NEXT. We designed SHAPE using NEXT as a starting point, and improve it in five areas.
1. Introducing the multiple contrast mode. 2. Fixing the halos issue. 3. Adding a sharpening slider. 4. Adding Color boost control. 5. Allowing full customization.
Celebrating Photoshop’s 30th Anniversary and Beyond
Thirty years ago Adobe released Photoshop 1.0, which revolutionized the photo editing business. But how did they get there? What’s happened before?
Let me tell you the history of those who laid the groundwork for this revolution.
An even better b&w combining VitaminBW 2 and Shape
This is the very first tutorial of the new instructional and training system with a mix of text, images, and quick video contents for an effective learning experience.
NEXT Vs ALCE. What’s New In NEXT Local Contrast Enhancer
ALCE has been our bestselling product for many years and, since the release of ALCE2, its core functionality has not changed significantly. Recently, thanks to the know-how achieved developing plugins such as Wow! and Mask Equalizer, we set out to make this...
Frequency Separation Made Easy
To put it as easily as possible, frequency separation is a Photoshop technique which separates the texture of an image from its shape creating two layers, one storing color and luminosity information and the other one, storing the detail. Activating a curve adjustment layer, restricted to operate on the high frequency layer, you can change the detail level of the image by steepening or flattening the curve. You will also be able to easily clone over defective parts with no visible side-effects.
Spatial Frequency Separation in Theory
Usually one encounters spatial frequency separation for the first time in the field of beauty retouch. To put it as easily as possible, it is a technique which separates the texture of an image from its shape, allowing the retoucher to easily clone over defective parts with no visible side-effects.
Behind the Scenes of a Professional Photoshoot
After many, many years as a photographer, I’m still fascinated by magic that happens behind the camera. Join me, for some of my favorite photoshoots.
Black&White Conversion. Triple Tone Boosts Your Creativity
The Triple Tone feature by VitaminBW dramatically changes the approach to black & white conversion. It’s a triple jump forward. This article explains why.
Marco Olivotto Color Seminars at Fespa Munich 2014
These videos deal with color management and correction in textile printing. However we do think that they may be very interesting for a generic audience.
These are five seminars delivered in Germany at FESPA Digital 2014 for a total of two-and-a-half hours.
VitaminBW: a Steady Path to Black-and-White
Black-and-white is pleasure and pain for any photographer – even those who don’t actually use it. About six months ago I stumbled into an interesting technique to convert a color image to B&W and wrote an article about it: it was Gorman-Holbert’s method. Such article spawned two more, one of which further expanded this technique.
ALCE and 360° panoramic images
Two suggestion for ALCE processing of equirectangular images to be used building 360 degree panoramas. By Davide Barranca Equirectangular images, the ones used to build those beautiful, immersive, 360 degrees panoramas, may require some extra attention...
In-a-Gamma-da-Vida
A false profile (that is, a profile with a non-standard gamma value) can be expressed as pencil-drawn curves generated by Photoshop. While this has little practical relevance, it allows us to understand what assigning a false profile actually does to an image by simply inspecting the shape of a curve.
The False Profile – Multiply Technique
The False Profile – Multiply TechniqueAdvance techniques combining False Profile with Multiply Blend Mode in Photoshop: the False Profiles technique, the Multiply technique, Multiply + False Profile combined, mask options and more
Dan Margulis on Italy and RBG
The truth is that it is a land of love and great beauty, made all the more beautiful professionally by seeing the new and sophisticated imaging algorithms being developed by Davide with Marco Olivotto, and by seeing how Alessandro, Daniele Di Stanio, Tiziano Fruet and others have brought first-class color instruction into a country where it was rarely found previously.
Larry Lourcey on ALCE: New Way To Enhance Contrast
ALCE2 is a deceptively easy tool that enhances the contrast of an image to really give it some punch. Unlike some filters that have hundreds of options and boxes to click – this one is simple: just one slider. You dial in the amount of effect you want and off it goes. Best of all, it records the setting you used – right in the layer name – so you can actually recreate the look later. This was a huge plus for me!
Better Digital Camera Magazine: A Local Contrast Enhancer | By Nick Rains
I use ALCE as part of my main workflow. Very few images will not benefit from a bit of a boost and, remember, what you see on your screen will be much more contrasty than a print. Giving an image a quick once over with ALCE will lift your print quality without a shadow of a doubt. Nick Rains ***Highly recommended.
3F | The revolutionary professional scan system by Hasselblad
In 2000 Imacon, now Hasselblad, created a new proprietary format for the Flextight scanners, the Flexible File Format or fff. 3F has determined the biggest revolution in the field of original analog scanning since the introduction of the drum scanner. A 3F allows one to obtain a file similar to a raw file from analog original.
Notes on Sharpening
Sharpening with Gaussian and edge-aware blurring kernels; a new experimental approach on High-Radius Low-Amount sharpening; how to separately target edges and texture in the same high frequency range. Gaussian, Bilateral and Mixed pyramid decompositions, efficient platforms on the top of which new sharpening strategies can be developed.