Photoshop & Image Processing – Brandon Jackson Photography

05/07/2023

Time-Saving Photoshop Tip – Match All

In this video I’m going to demonstrate a time-saving feature in Adobe Photoshop, Match – All. Found under Window, Arrange, Match-All, this workspace organizing feature has been around for a long time, but many users may have never seen it or if they did, never tried it out to see what it does and that’s what I’m going to demonstrate here.

You will notice in the close-up shot of the menu item “Match All”, there is a shortcut option. This is not a standard Adobe Photoshop shortcut combination, but rather one I created for myself. I have a button on my TourBox controller assigned to this shortcut for super-quick access when I need it.

Demo created on Adobe Photoshop version 24.1
Video created using DaVinci Resolve 18
Music licensed through Soundstripe

If you found this video useful, please consider supporting future content by Buying Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/brandonjackson

25/06/2023

Photoshop Quick Fix: Shiny Foreheads

Here’s a quick fix that I use to reduce shiny foreheads in headshots (and portraits) using Adobe Photoshop.

Step 1 – Create a new layer above the background layer by clicking the New Layer Button (or CTRL+SHIFT+N on Win / CMD+SHIFT+N on Mac)

Step 2 – Set the new layer’s opacity to 30%

Step 3 – Select the Brush tool

24/04/2023

Lab Color Series: What is Lab Color?(And why you should care)

Welcome to the first entry in my Lab Color series of articles (and videos) on Lab Color. It only seems appropriate to begin the series with an introduction to, and explanation of, Lab color. The Lab (pronounced L – A – B, not “Lab”) color space is formally referred to as CIELAB and is a color space that device independent, which means it is not based on the color reproduction capabilities of specific output devices such as monitors and printers like the sRGB or Adobe1998 color spaces.

Despite having one channel defining lightness and only two channels that define the color, Lab contains an extremely broad gamut of colors and not only exceeds the gamut of RGB color spaces like Adobe 1998 and sRGB, but it can define colors that can’t be reproduced or in even imagined. How is this possible?

It would seem, since Lab employs only two channels to define a color, it would be at a disadvantage compared to RGB or CMYK. Both RGB and CMYK use three channels to define color, with the latter employing a “K”, or black channel in addition to the cyan, magenta, and yellow channels and seems that they would be able to define a wider gamut of colors. To understand how Lab can define a wider range of colors, let’s first take a look at how RGB works.

Note: I want to point out that the ProPhoto RGB space, developed by Kodak, also contains within its gamut colors that are “imaginary” or not visible to human vision. However, it is still based on the RGB color definition principle and as such doesn’t offer some of the unique abilities as Lab.

06/03/2023

Glam-Rock Session with Mandy Berry

In this article, I’m going to lay out the details of my David Bowie inspired shoot that I did with Nashville artist Mandy Berry back in 2019. I want to share the details of this session because of the multiple layers of detail that had to come together for this shoot. To produce the results we were looking required very specific lighting, makeup, raw processing, and some image compositing.

The idea for this shoot came from Mandy texting me that she’d like to do a shoot inspired by David Bowie, specifically the Heroes album cover and session photos. I leapt at the chance to create with her on this project because (A), I’m a huge fan of David Bowie and (B), I’d shot with Mandy before, and she’s a superstar in front of the camera.

Below are a couple of the contact sheets from Masayoshi Sukita’s shoot with David Bowie for the Heroes album cover. In the upper right corner of the first sheet, you can see the image that was finally chosen for the album cover. Head to this link to see more of the work Sukita did with Bowie. It’s worth the look!

Contact sheet from Heroes album cover shoot

The setup for the BLJ (black leather jacket) series was fairly straightforward. We set up a table and chair where she could sit and rest her elbows. The background is a Savage Light Gray Washed Muslin which received only some incidental light, making it appear much darker than it looks in person. Lighting was simple with a 22″ beauty dish with grid above and to camera left and the background was lit using a 7″ reflector with a grid. The strobes used were Interfit Honeybadger units.

04/07/2018

Just Backup for a Second!

Backing up your images.

I see a lot of discussion across various forums and Facebook groups about backups. Usually in the form of “What backup system/strategy/etc. does everyone here use”. As with a lot of topics on the technical side of digital photography there is rarely a single answer that is best for everyone. However, there is one thing that I feel should be implemented in any backup strategy and that’s redundancy. To illustrate this I wanted to discuss my backup strategy and how it works.

My backup plan includes three backup locations with two if them updated daily and the third updated each week. First, I have a NAS (network attached storage) device on my local network at home. A NAS a dedicated network device that contains a hard drive (or drives) where files can be written to or read from over my home network. While it is nearby in my home, it is not physically connected to my PC. If something were to happen to the computer itself I would still be able to access the backup data from my home network. This backup runs everyday when the computer is idle.

01/08/2016

Photoshop Scrubby Slider Fix for Windows 10 and Wacom Pen

scrubbyslider Over the past year or so I have noticed an issue with using scrubby sliders when using Wacom pens in Windows 10. Trying to drag a scrubby slider will result in the pointer snapping back where it started depending on how much you move the scrubby slider. This behavior is very annoying and causes one to switch to the mouse or type in the values needed. Either way it slows down the workflow when using a pen.

14/08/2014

DPI Why?

imageresize I was asked recently by the editor of a website I write for to please make sure the images I send him are saved at 72 DPI. As soon as I saw this I thought “uh-oh, here we go..”. I politely agreed to make the change to the setting (it’s easy enough) but asked what the reasoning behind this would be. I had a pretty good idea what the response would be, but I wanted to make sure. A few minutes later I received the response that I feared. He said it would help the images load faster when viewed on the web site.

I was correct in my guess. The editor was under the impression that a reduced DPI setting would decrease the image file size which in turn would facilitate faster loading times for images from his web site. This is not an uncommon misconception but one I felt I would like to clarify. This editor is intelligent and a great guy to work with so I wanted to help him understand. This setting would not affect the images in the way he thought they would and while it would not harm anything being set differently, it adds an extra step in his workflow at times that he doesn’t have to take.

Backing up your images.

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