Photographer Documentary

Notan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nōtan is a Japanese design concept involving the play and placement of light and dark next to the other in art and imagery. This use of light and dark translates shape and form into flat shapes on a two-dimensional surface. Nōtan is traditionally presented in paint, ink, or cut paper, but it is relevant to a host of modern day image-making techniques, such as lithography in printmaking, and rotoscoping in animation.
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Today why I introduce about this is because I think we all can use this to apply in our photography when taking photos of the object that we want to focus on.

Notan is about placement of dark and light, in colours, in shade and etc..So in order to take a good photo that can greatly/obviously shown what or who is the main character in this photo.. you need to learn to play around with contrast or dark and light to lead the viewer's eye to your main subject.

Although I haven't really adapt this idea and apply it fully.. but I really think its useful to share with you all.

Meiji Nguyen Photographer

Raw File Format Photos

Today I want to introduce about advantages of using raw file format photos. Using Canon camera, the raw file format photo is called CR2 for Canon 400D. Using raw file format to take photos will need a large size Memory card/ CF.

The good thing about raw file format is you able to correct or edit the photos more flexible and lower chances of getting noise and yet greater changes can be made in colour mood.

I don't have Light House software which I can recommend you to use that too to view raw files and faster in edit and view too. But since I don't have, I use Adobe Bridge to view raw files in thumbnails and edit them in Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Once you double clicked the photo you chose to edit in Adobe Bridge, the photo will opened in Photoshop and there's colour adjust, clarity, brightness etc.. try to play with them, you will explore or learn more new things from there.

They also have function to reduce noise and sharpen image as well.
Have a nice day, enjoy!

Basic Tutorial

First, our computers need to install Monitor Callibration, to callibrate the colours and able to make it same colour tones with the print out photos compare with the one in monitors.

So, its important. Today I just want to share how to edit and change the colours to the quality you want and have to be aware of too big colours edit/contrast will cause image noise.

What's image noise?>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_noise

Anyway, today I just show how to edit a JPEG file format image. I just wanna share the basics since I'm still a learner, not professional.

Okay, first I opened an image of my sister with Adobe Photoshop CS4, then I go to Image> Adjustment> Curve.

A graph will be popped out and shown. Try to adjust the line on the graph to change the brightness, you can have more points added on the line to edit more detailed on the image quality that you wanna correct. To me, I usually will add one or two points on the line to adjust.

You also can try click "Auto" as they will auto correct for you, but might not get the adjustment you looking for. Same to the "Auto Contrast/Auto Tone/ Auto Colour" which can be found in "Image" on the top bar.
Then, here's a thing that sometimes I will do, go to Image> Adjustment> Vibrance.
Vibrance is a tool, to make your photo increase the contrast/saturation or vibrancy of your photo, make it more colourful in other words. But I usually won't increase too high vibrancy and too saturated, I usually keep is below or equal to 20 for Vibrancy, 10 more or less for Saturation.
Then, here's the nice part that I like. Edit the colours to adjust the colour mood of the image.
Goto Image>Adjustment> Colour Balance.
try to play around with it, u can adjust the color balance either on Midtones, Shadow, or Highlights (Tone Balance)
Then, this is something I seldom do, but I will share with you since I learnt it from someone. go to where I shown you in this image above, to create a new backup layer a.k.a. mask layer to adjust colours.

Okay, because I want the background to have more saturated colours but I don't want to affect the talent( model for photography called talent)'s skin colour, I don't her skin look very reddish or too vibrant. so I create a mask layer to edit the color balance.

So, here's the thing. after I edited that, then I used Brush Tool and chose black colour and start, colouring it on the part where you want to erase the mask layer.
Now, the brush with black colour works like erase at here.Thus, I erase her skin part where I wan to maintain back her skin colour less vibrant and saturated, so on the layer below the mask layer will be shown to the front once I erased the mask layer with Brush tool with Black Colour.

Sorry if I confused you with my explanation. Try experiment with it, then u will know what I mean =).

Then, this is something extra that I will do sometimes, not often. Which is adding some extra effects with Brush tool on a new layer. Normally I don't add these because it's better to keep it original and natural.
So, I added this light effect, not too heavy on this, I added some glow with blurry Brush type as the light shone from behind, some lights should be added around her lightly.
The Brush I change its mode to "Screen" and opacity changed to around 20% - 30% and the layer's mode is "Lighten" I painted with brush on .

so the end result is like this =), hope it helps a lot =)