Christina Keddie

Also, while you're here -- make sure you're working in the correct color space. You've got a setting wrong somewhere. http://www.damiensymonds.net/art_tscs000.html

For what reason do you usually convert your raw files into DNGs? If you're just doing it "because," then nope, there will be zero effect on the final product. More reading on the difference between DNG and CR2 files: http://www.damiensymonds.net/2012/02/to-dng-or-not-to-dng.html

Yeah, um, that looks like a failure of HSS, not a reflector issue. I'm assuming you're asking about the giant black bar across the photo you took at 1/640? Which wasn't there when you took it at 1/60?

How did you get the file from one computer onto the other? Did you email it to yourself? Also, are you aware that the file as opened on your 15" is untagged? (Can't tell about the 13" since you didn't include the title bar in your screenshot, but definitely check the color space of both!)

The blue bars at the bottom of the troubleshooter are links. Right now, your LR settings are ALL WRONG, I'm afraid.

Though I should also ask: what's your workflow here? How did you get this image from LR into PS, and what are you planning to do with this image next? There's a whole LR section of this site, and I've gone in great detail on how you should set up your LR-PS workflow for best results. So do check out that section. (Damien would tell you to stop using LR altogether and just switch to Bridge...)

First, you're definitely in the wrong color space. Fix it by going through every step of this: http://www.damiensymonds.net/art_tscs000.html Second, you don't need to export out of Bridge or PS. Simply save and you're set.

I can't tell you if you're in the class or not (only Damien has access to those lists), but I can tell you that if you're in it, the Classes section shows up on the home page of this site, right under the Ask Brian section. Make sure you're not looking for the class in the Ask Damien section, which is the section you're currently reading and posting in.

Hi Lisa, Have you had a chance to read this subforum's posting guidelines yet?

ProPhotoRGB is BAD. Go through the troubleshooter I linked, every single step, until this is fixed.

Were you at least using this trick? http://www.damiensymonds.net/2010/10/shift-while-brushing.html

Can you just check really quick to make sure you're working in the right color space? This has the desaturated gray look of a color space problem... http://www.damiensymonds.net/art_tscs000.html

The darker gray background color of your ACR is just because of the latest update they rolled out, so that's not related. I'd worry that this is because these files are corrupted -- have you checked with old raw files that you know didn't behave like this before? Does this happen with them, or just with these files you've got screenshotted here?

That's just the nature of getting a split second of a screen's light captured in a photo. Try taking a photo of a TV and you'll see what I mean. Screens work by emitting continuous light in waves, and the waves blend together way too quickly for the human eye to discern the color patterns, but taking a photo of it means you capture it mid-wave. If you want to get highly technical to figure out how not to get this effect in photos, you'd have to know what kind of projector was being used, and find out the right sync speed to sync your shutter speed up to. (You get a similar effect when shooting fluorescent light, with having to shoot with the right shutter speed to avoid off colors from the funkiness of the light waves.)

This is just one person's opinion, but -- I think you're currently in the uncanny valley of it being too close to real. I think these in memoriam shots tend to work better when it's very clear that the person has been added in as a memorial -- I'd want him to be more transparent than you've currently got him. And reducing the opacity would, I think, obviate the need for realistic shadows by his feet. I'm so sorry for your loss, and I think it's lovely that you want to create something like this to honor his memory.

The + sign goes exactly where you tell it to go. You alt+click (or opt+click on a Mac) to set the location of the sample. Then the first time you click to start cloning, that sets the relative position of your sample source. If you go up and click to clone, the sample source will go up the exact same amount. If you go left 20 pixels, the sample source will go left 20 pixels. And so on. If your sample source is starting to pick up things you don't want it to, then you have to alt+click again to reset its location. This is why I said you have to constantly resample while you're cloning.

For what purpose are you exporting these files? What sizes do you need these output JPGs to be?

You have total control over your notifications here -- this isn't FB. Here's how you can set them up: And I'd encourage you to read through that whole "getting started" thread to learn the features of this site, if you haven't already!

@ShannonJoy, Damien was just waiting to hear if you liked it. Give him a few more hours to wake up (it's like 4am in Brisbane now), and when he sees it, I'm sure he'll upload the PSD file for you to examine. Of course, he worked on the tiny file you uploaded here, so you wouldn't be able to use it in anything other than a tiny web application -- the whole point is for you to learn how he does things. He's not taking on paid editing jobs at the moment.

PPI is simply a ratio: pixels per inch. So you can multiply 300 by the inch dimensions of your final printed product (height and width) to get the final pixel dimensions. And you get the file sized properly by using your crop tool and filling in width, height, and resolution, then cropping to that size.

http://bfy.tw/5PQA (But seriously: google will tell you how.)

That's the whole point of cloning -- you're literally cloning (copying) the section from which you're sampling. So if you move your brush up, your sample source will move up commensurately. That's what makes the cloning look natural, as long as you're choosing good sample sources.

You know that your sample source moves as you clone, right? Watch the little plus sign that appears where you sampled from, and see how it moves with you as you use the clone brush. This is why you have to constantly resample, and why trying to clone blue towel over the blank spot would pick up the dark wood -- the blue towel is such a small area to sample from. Choose a much larger, cleaner sample source and you'll have better results.

http://www.damiensymonds.net/what2buy_cal.html

Have you read this article on cloning? It's got some basic tips in it that might help you. You've got to constantly resample, so you don't start cloning unwanted objects onto your blanket. And if a single clone stamp is pulling in unwanted items, that means your clone brush is too large (and/or your sample area is too small -- draw from clean sections of blanket when you're sampling). Always leave your clone tool brush hardness at 0% -- vary the size as you need, but always a soft brush. Also, why are you selecting the blue towel? Do you want that whole corner of the image to be blue?