Canon EOS 550D

Playing with Blurb

eos550d — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 09:03:56 +0000

What is Blurb? Blurb is an online publishing company that allows you to make your own book and if you want to “publish” the book you just need to pay the printing price to Blurb. In particular you may create a unique photo book instead of the traditional photo album to preserve your precious memory.

Right now I am just trying to playing around with the software provided by Blurb. So far, the provided software works very well and intuitive to use. I haven’t try to print the book though. If any of you have tried to use the printing service from Blurb, please let me know your experience especially about the quality of the printing.

Below is a flash book that I created using Blurb (click the full screen to get the best view). One thing that I notice is that quality of some pictures are greatly reduced from what I see on my computer. Let me know what you think about it.

Lia & Jordan by Aleams Barra | Make Your Own Book

T2i and 50mm f/1.8 II

eos550d — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 21:01:38 +0000

Here are samples of pictures taken by the eos 550d /T2i camera with the prime lens 50mm f/1.8 II. It is a very good budget lens. You may get this lens for around $100. The lens is a little bit slow in focusing, especially indoor. But if your object can be posed or not moving a lot this camera will deliver great pictures.

T2i and 50mm f/1.4

eos550d — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 19:11:44 +0000

Here are samples of pictures taken by the eos 550d /T2i camera with the prime lens 50mm f/1.4. Most of the pictures are post processed in Lightrooom. In general this lens is a great lens to take portrait. The color rendering is beautiful and it has a decent sharpness. If you are considering to get one for yourself, just buy it! .

Red River Gorge(ous)

eos550d — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 00:41:52 +0000

First Wedding

eos550d — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 08:34:24 +0000

I just want to share with everybody my first wedding shoot .
Thanks for Lia and Jordan to allow me to be part of your special day.

Here is a slideshow of some pictures I took.

The Log

eos550d — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:02:50 +0000

Layer Mask and Selective Color

eos550d — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:10:22 +0000

In this tutorial we will discuss the importance of layer mask and some of its application. Using layer mask enable us to treat part of the image locally. The idea is that we have two version of the same images, lets call them the foreground and the background image and we put a mask layer to the foreground image. We put the foreground image on top of the background image. Painting the foreground image with black paint is as if we make a hole to reveal the background image. Painting the part that is already painted with black paint with white paint, will reveal back the foreground image.

One of the application of this concept is to create a selective color image. To do so we need to have a black white and the color version of the same image. We will use the following images in our tutorial

Suppose we just want to have color locally on the flag only. Here is the plan: put the black white image on top of the the color version. Put a mask layer to the black white one, and color the flag with a black paint the flag with the black paint to reveal the color version of the flag so that we get something like this

Selective Color

Ok, now we will do this step by step using GIMP, a free image editor that you can downlaod from here

Here are the steps:
(we assume here that you only have the color version only of the image)
1) Open the color version and duplicate the layer. To do so, right click the background layer and select Duplicate Layer.

Duplicate Layer

2) We will make the duplicate into a black white image by desaturate the color.

Desaturate

3) Next we create a mask layer on the black white version. By right clicking the black white layer and select Add Layer Mask. When a little window pop up, choose Intialize Layer Mask to White (full opacity).

Add Layer Mask

4) Now we want to punch a whole on the flag the reveal the color version of the flag. In order to do so we need to paint the flag with brush using the black color (make sure that the black color is on top of the white color as the arrow indicated)

Brush

5) Carefully color the flag by using the brush. You may need to zoom in and out the image by using the + and – button and also you may need to change the size of the brush by using the keyboard button [ (to make it smaller) and ] (to make it larger)

Color the Flag

6) Even if we are very careful, sometimes we go overboard an painting the area that are not suppose to be painted. In picture below we see that we go a little overboard. Don’t worry about that, to fix it we just need to color the head and the blue cast on the side of the flag with a brush of white color to reveal back the foreground.

Paint with White

7)When we are happy with the result we can merge down the layers, by right clicking the top layer and select Merge Down. Now we only have one layer. Right click this layer and Flatten the Image. Then save the image and we are done!

Merge Down

If you want to practice the techinque you can use the above image. Right click the image in firefox and copy the link of the image to find the bigger version of the image and save it for your practice.

Adding Texture to Your Picture

eos550d — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 15:00:27 +0000

In this tutorial we will discuss a free solution to add texture to your image like in this picture.

Texturized Picture

In this tutorial we will use GIMP, a free image editor program that you can download from here. You’ll also need to get a texture image, for the start you can download from apfotodesign (or any other internet resource).

Lets get started!

Open your image file and texture file on Gimp
Locate your texture file, through Windows -> filename
Resize your texture file so it matches the size of the other file. To do so, go to Image->Scale Image click the chain icon and adjust the width and the height of your texture.
Copy the texture by pressing [CTRL]+ C or go to Edit -> Copy.
Paste your texture file on top of your other image (non-texture one) by doing Edit -> Paste or [CTRL]+V
Go to Windows -> Dockable Dialogs -> Layers
Change the mode to overlay and set the opacity into your liking
Click the anchor icon and flatten the image
Save your work and done!

Lovely Couple

eos550d — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 03:56:36 +0000

Fun at the Japanese Garden

eos550d — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:09:31 +0000

Yesterday, I and my friend went to the Japenese garden to check out the location for his pre wedding shoot. While we were there trying to figure out which spots that will work best, we found a couple and asked them to be our model. I had a lot of fun to work with with them (thanks Stacie and Layne!). Another fun part is that my friend from Diverse Photographer allowed me to use his lenses. I got a chance to try the 10-22mm, the 17-55 mm L, and the 70-200 f/2.8 IS USM (I wish I have all of those).

So here are some shots from yesterday

Canon EOS REBEL T2i, ISO 200, EF50mm f/1.4 USM @ 50 mm, 1/1000, f/1.4

Canon EOS REBEL T2i, ISO 100, EF50mm f/1.4 USM @ 50 mm, 1/80, f/2.8

Canon EOS REBEL T2i, ISO 100, EF50mm f/1.4 USM @ 50 mm, 1/60, f/2.8

Canon EOS REBEL T2i, ISO 400, EF-S17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM @ 38 mm, 1/160, f/2.8

More pictures from the same session can be seen here: http://www.eos550d.com/recent-photo-session/