[Zig]

After lamely trying to move on from the caressing stage with my new guitar, I've been trying to photo it a few times. I thought I'd share with you some of the ways I got from raw to finished product.
First is the raw-to-jpeg: lighting= desk lamp and tungsten room lights; I threw my denims over the guitar stands for a bluesy theme(just); I used the Canon 10-20mm at 20mm, going for my sharpest aperture of f8; tripod needed, as exposure was around 2 seconds( I had a polariser on...not for any reason...just couldn't be bothered to take it off).
Now, as I don't have patience for set-up shots and prefer pacing around outdoors, I'm aware of how much I stacked against myself here.



That was painful, wasn't it? No sharpening, no treatment of anything at all.

OK, in the finished product I did the following:
1.converted to a tiff, desaturating slightly, increasing gamma a bit and exposure .2; I kept the conversion low contrast as to retain detail; I tried to keep things as 16-bit for as long as possible to retain detail;
2. ran smart sharpen a couple of times at 0.1x500; cropped roughly;
3. smart sharpened again, x100 or so;
4. resized for possible print output size; smart-sharpened again: note the progressive smart-sharpening throughout.
5. dodged (highlight) and burnt (shadow): I had much dodging to do to bring up colour, as I had a few hotspots...I didn't want to blow these out too early, hence the low-contrast start.
Forgot: I increased saturation of blue and cyan by around 20 to bring up me denims!
6. Used a big soft black brush to take out background, distractions and try to con people into thinking this is not Zig's scabby front-room.
7. Used blur tool to smooth out any background; I liked the interesting diffused effect, so worked at keeping it.
8. Used the diffuse glow filter after making sure I didn't need to do anything else major: in other words, I had to get to 8-bit in order to use it(I don't know if you can use it at 16-bit with latest version of PS?)
9. Burnt in a bit of detail around pickups and neck.
10. Did me frame for that poncy torn paper look; added text in 2 layers to get my sig/logo; merged or combined or whatever you call it..."made as one", anyway...
11. Saved a copy for web, resizing and resharpening beforehand(always check for sharpening after resizing, is my motto. One of them anyway.)

[wulinka]

wow!

I'm impressed, what a great use of a RAW file. You are one of few (if any) people I know who use the dogde tool so skillfully and produce such great results.

Uli

[Irma]

Beautiful work Zig...

I really like your work with dodge and burn... I know you know that, but I have to say this every time I see how skillful you are with this technique and think about me going nowhere with these tools...

Just a question...

4. resized for possible print output size; smart-sharpened again: note the progressive smart-sharpening throughout.

Why and how do you resize for possible prints?

[aine-caitlin]

Fantastic transformation Zig. Your love of guitars and photography really shows here in this great composition.

[NT73]

Great PP.
Now tell me. Two strats (apart from rosewood neck and maple? neck and colour difference,) they look identical (almost) Do they sound different to anyone except yourself.?

[Zig]

Bless you gang.
NT: spot on with the neck woods, top of the class! The "natural" one is ash-bodied, the white one=alder: yes, very different indeed: the ash one is very bright, whilst the white one is warmer and rounded; and yes, the difference would be easily aurally discerned.
Irma: I mean, if I want a final print of 8x10 inches, then I work and sharpen accordingly at that size(at 300dpi) in Photoshop. Let's say I then want a few 6x4 inch prints later: I then make a copy, resizing the document to this size. It then needs resharpening...not much, and at a sub-pixel level only, but it's there nontheless.
Of course, I then need a websized copy too: so I do another duplicate about 600-680 pixels high...this also needs resharpening. Basically, I check sharpness at each resize/downsampling...it normally needs a tweak...

[Wedding Shooter]

Lovely work Zig - great to see your passion for photography combined with your love of guitars.

[Toad]

Great stuff Zig - the jeans are a good touch as well.