Work flashlight can aid aiming speedlights in studio settings

     When you start using off-camera flashes, usually the first lights you're going to use are your speed lights.

    One drawback with they have, compared to their larger, brighter studio cousins, is the lack of a modeling light.

    A modeling light is a small lamp, incandescent or now, LED, that shows the photographer where the light from the flash will fall, especially if it's used with a modifier. You likely saw these if you ever went to a photo studio for a portrait, or when you had photos taken at school; it's that glow you see coming from the umbrellas or softboxes before the picture's taken.

    Modeling lights are helpful if you're trying to set up a Rembrandt lighting (that's when one side of the face is illuminated more than the other side, but you have that triangle of light on the cheek on the darker side), or trying to adjust a rim light.

    You can still work without a modeling light, but that can involve quite a bit of trial and error, which might not go over well with some subjects who might question your competence behind the camera.

    But there is a way to at least get a similar effect and get your lighting within the ballpark, and just require a little bit of fine-tuning.

    Remember the flashlights I mentioned earlier as a night-photography light? You can use that as a makeshift modeling light.

    And it will only set you back 99 cents at Harbor Freight, unless you catch one of their free giveaways.

    For this to work, you make sure the main light is on, and center it over your flash head, or the center of your softbox. This will show you where the light is generally falling, and you can adjust the light's position as needed.

    It won't be as WYSIWYG* as a modeling light, but it will give you the general idea of where your light is going to go, and that should mean fewer adjustments when you start shooting.

    

    *What you see is what you get. It's a term first coined when word processors began to show you how your document would actually look with the chosen fonts and text styles.

Darktable provides a satisfactory, free alternative to Adobe Lightroom Classic

    Years ago, I used to consider Adobe Lightroom (now Adobe Lightroom Classic) as Photoshop with training wheels.

    My thinking was that Photoshop was a much more powerful editor, so why waste time on Lightroom.

     But I decided to give it a try, and found it to be a versatile program, becoming my go-to for editing, as well as an excellent digital asset manager, allowing me to easily organize a catalog of more than 50,000 images.

    While it's a great program, it also comes with a high price, and with Adobe embracing the shakedown subscription plan, you pay for it monthly.

    There are "Jack Sparrow" versions out there, but there is one free, open-source program that is a rather acceptable alternative to Lightroom. In fact, I use it for my work, since we are only allowed so many software licenses and they're already in use and my bosses don't want a visit from the software police.

    I had tried earlier versions of darktable before when I needed a RAW file editor that I could install on a work computer without running afoul of the IT department. While it was a good editor, it lacked the ability to catalog, keyword, geotag and impose order on the chaos of picture files.

    But since version 4 has come out, darktable is giving Lightroom a run for its money. It has become a true DAM, allowing you to actually import photos to a specific location, add keyword tags, geotag them using a GPX tracklog, as well as edit them and export.

    I've been especially impressed with the noise-reduction algorithms, which I find give great results just by activating them. There's also an option to go in and further refine it.

    The control layout is not as intuitive as Lightroom's, but you have the option to search for the tool you are looking for.

    In addition to editing RAW files, darkroom can also handle jpg, tif and even the dreaded WebP file format.

    (That's Google's new image format that web developers are now using just because Google says it's cool, even though it's a departure from the company's motto "Don't Be Evil.")

    It's free, and if you can write code, it's open source so you can modify it if you so choose. It's available on Mac, Windows and Linux, and it can interface with GIMP, the open-source version of Photoshop.

Hack lets you use photo editor to get full-resolution AI colorized photos

     In an earlier post, I talked about Vertexshare's Picture Colorizer, which does a reasonably good job of turning black-and-white photos into color pictures.

    But the site has some limitation, in that you can only submit a photo that has been resized to no more than 3,000 pixels on the long edge. That can be a pain in the butt.

    However, there is a way to get a full-resolution AI-colored photo for no cost, and it will work with any photo editor that uses layers.

    Unmesh Dinda, who does some of the best Photoshop tutorials over at Piximperfect on Youtube, unveiled this hack involving Palette.fm, an AI-based photo colorization site that he said is better than Photoshop's neural filter.

    Palette gives you several options, and you can edit it by changing the word prompt for the AI.

    But it won't let you download the full resolution image that you uploaded, unless you are willing to pay either 65 cents per image or sign up for a subscription plan. The free option gives you essentially a file slightly bigger than a thumbnail.

    Dinda, in his video, demonstrates how to take that tiny picture and use it to make a full-resolution colorized photo. The secret is in layers and blending modes.

    As you'll see in his video, Dinda will add the colorized download as a layer over the original photo, and then use the transform tool to stretch it to the same size as the original, lining it up perfectly. You can turn down the opacity to make sure you're getting it straight.

    At this point, it's going to look terrible with pixelated artifacts all over the place. But, by using the color blend mode, the color patterns will be transferred to the full-resolution image, giving you a high-quality colorized picture.

    I again called the photo of Ulysses S. Grant at Cold Harbor into service to demonstrate this. This is the final result, following Dinda's steps. I did this in Photoshop, but I also tried it in GIMP, a free, open-source photo image editor that is comparable to Photoshop.   

    This is straight out of Photoshop. I would likely go back and touch up Grant's uniform and maybe his chair. But if you need or want to colorize a photo, this gives you a good starting point that can be tweaked.

    Dinda said it can also be used for correcting extreme color casts, as he shows in the video below, where he compares the results with Photoshop and MyHeritage.com.   

Strobist provides free training in using flash

    If one of your New Year's resolutions is to up your flash photography game, a great place to start is the Strobist website.

    The website was founded in 2006 by David Hobby, a photojournalist with The Baltimore Sun. It started when he wrote about how he lit up a photo he did of a wind-tunnel turbine.

    The site covers the full spectrum of flash photography, from simple speed lights to studio flashes, with free lessons and a gear guide. There are even some tips for DIY modifiers.

    

DIY "Paniel" lets you try out beauty dish lighting at minimal cost

    One of the virtues of do-it-yourself photo gear is that you can try out a particular lighting modifier or other equipment at little cost.

    This is especially true if you use simple materials just for the experiment with a piece of gear or a technique.

    For example, when I was making a flash modifier, I chose to use cardstock first as a "proof of concept" to see if it was something that would work for me. I have since made a second one using craft foam.

    Daniel Norton, a New York photographer and one of Adorama's regular hosts on its Youtube channel demonstrates a way to make an absolutely cheap beauty dish lighting modifier, which his model and mentee, Marisa Roper, dubbed the "Paniel."

    If you're not familiar with a beauty dish, it mounts on a flash, which then discharges into a reflector that is right in front of the flash head, bouncing it into the large dish portion of the reflector and out toward the subject. It produces a not-so-soft light that sculpts the facial features.

    It also leaves a distinct halo-like catch light in the eyes.

    Commercial dishes can run you $70 or more, depending on where you shop.

    There are plenty of Youtube tutorials showing you how to make them from woks, flower pots and other items. But if you want to just try one out to see if its something you want to invest a bit more time and money in, or you forgot to pack one and need it, the Paniel provides a low-cost option,

    You get two aluminum foil pans at either your big box store or, if you want to keep the price point really low, go to your local dollar store. One has to be a roasting pan, while the other is a pie pan or smaller. 

    The first step is measuring a hole in the back for your flash unit and cutting that out of the roasting pan. Depending on how long-lasting you want this to be, you can either use pencils or straws to hold the pie tin in place over that center hole.

    In this video, Norton demonstrates live how well this jerry-rigged device works. I like the fact that he does it live with a tethered camera because you see in real time how well it works.

   

    Norton demonstrates that you don't have to spend a lot to make good looking pictures. And if you like the results, you can now build a more lasting version of the light.