ImageZ Club Night – Mono Processing Live! – Guest Speaker Joe Houghton
Tuesday November 8, 2022, Attendees 38
This evening at ImageZ we had a guest speaker Joe Houghton who post processed a number of images (including landscapes and two portrait images) into monochrome live in the call. Joe worked in a methodical way explaining as he went the shortcut keys, tools and processes to refine and improve each image.
He surveyed each image analytically and explained what he felt needed improvement and how to achieve this. Joe used multiple tools including crop, a range of selection tools for masking as well as a full range of tone and “colour” tools to produce monochrome “images that pop.”
Alongside guiding members in techniques for making monochrome images (very useful for the upcoming Monochrome theme competition of course), the importance of much of Joe’s guidance was to show members how to improve their images by focusing processing on individual parts of the image, and not just applying changes to the whole of the picture. For example, on a portrait image Joe showed how using Masks for each part of the face meant he could work on these parts systematically, improving the lights in the eyes, the skin tones and then carefully improving skin quality without impacting other parts of the image.
The clear takeaway (which is true for a lot of post processing) was to look at the individual components of an image and work on what needed improvement like light, texture and tone. In one portrait image Joe showed us how to work on the models face but also the background which could be darkened or lightened. We are able to improve our images greatly by taking time and patience to look at each part of the image and ask “does that work?”
The evening passed quickly and Joe explained that Adobe Lightroom had a number of new updates, especially to the selection tools that could be used. He explained that while he was demonstrating the techniques in Lightroom, these exact same tools are also available in the Adobe Camera Raw (and consequently Adobe Photoshop). Equivalent tools also exist in Affinity and other post processing software but perhaps under slightly different names and keystrokes.
The evening passed quickly, and questions were answered very succinctly.
A very informative and interesting evening .Thank you to Joe who made it all look so easy. A recording will be made available on website in the member’s area.
Next Week :NW Fed Competition – Imagez Hosting In the Hall
I would like to thank Chris Andrews for helping me with this blog, as I found the subject difficult to record, and Brian for the use of his image to show the kind of processing Joe explained although Brian processed these images.
Well done! I thought what a difficult evening it would be to blog on! Excellent evening, and excellent blog.
Thank you Tami.