One of the most valuable apps for photo editing available on the App Store is Snapseed. Created by Nik Software, the simple app utilizes the iPad’s expansive screen and its touch capabilities. The app offers 11 different editing categories, ranging from selective adjust to organic frames. Within each category, a set of options is available to allow for an extensive editing suite being available to both professionals and amateurs.

Color Splash is one of the simplest and most fun apps currently available for the iPad. The app automatically imports all photos as black and white, and simply allows users to paint colors back onto part of the picture using your finger as a brush. A host of brushes, along with undo buttons, are available within the app. Exporting the photo to Facebook, a wireless printer, or into MMS or email is a breeze.

100 Cameras in 1, a recent addition to the iPad app store, offers a unique take upon the iPhone camera. A picture taken from an iPad camera or imported onto the iPad is subjected to one of many “camera” options. After choosing a filter, a set of overlays is available. The contrast of the image can be adjusted, as can the brightness. Several more advanced effects, such as adding a vignette, can be done easily with the app. The app further supports exporting pictures to social media websites with the touch of a button. This app accommodates photographers  in the same way   http://www.directstartv.com/ accommodates satellite TV viewers.

Photosync offers the most comprehensive and extensive set of editing tools available on the App store. Wireless options to transfer pictures are an absolute breeze, and the app allows for direct transfer from an iPhone to an iPad, further increasing its convenience. A host of editing features makes this app extremely well-rounded, and one of the best apps for those serious about entering the iPad photo-editing market with a comprehensive app with a slew of handy features.

I would like you to open Photoshop and to follow the tutorial and you will see it will take only a minute to complete it. Why? You’re smart, that’s why.

Once you have opened a photograph that would like work on, let’s begin.

Refine Edge is a tool that is very useful for photographers as well as for home users. What does it do? Refine Edge helps you replace tricky backgrounds and fine details (soft edges and hair) from a photo with ease.

Enough talking, I want to show you how to get it done.

1. Begin! Select the subject from your photograph using Quick Selection Tool (W). Use the Add tor Selection and Subtract from Selection buttons to make sure you select your subject nicely. When you get to hair and soft areas, it’s better to select less.

Should look something like in the image above.

2. Open the Refine Edge dialog. First stop: View Mode; most of the times I’ll use the black background, depends on photo. Second, Edge Detection. Here you need a small radius number, not too high and you’ll see why. Third, Adjust Edge. How about experimenting what works for you? Never forget of the smooth setting, very useful. Fourth and last, is how we save the photo we worked on (Output to), and you’ll have a list to choose from. Above that there’s a box unticked saying “Decontaminate colors” which you should keep ticked at all times, and of course the amount at 100%. It’s very useful when there’s color “spill” from background to your subject.

Remember settings is a good one to have ticked too. That’s all the ticking work that is needed. I always choose to save the photo as a new document with a layer mask.

3. The most interesting things about these settings are the tricks you can do, it’s Photoshop after all. On the left of the settings box you can see three objects: a magnifier(zooming), a hand(moving if you zoom in a bit), and a brush. Click right on the brush and you have a list there.

Using this tool you draw over the “tricky” edges. Keep the brush small enough to  not select too much, just the area containing fine detail. Photoshop will treat that as “transition” area between inside and outside selection and will do its best to figure out what to keep.

Final Result

Mastering the Refine Edge takes time, but then again, practice makes perfect, isn’t it ?

To reward our readers, we’ve teamed up with Pixmac Picture Market to give away 3 one-month subscriptions to Pixmac premium service, worth $199 each!

To enter the competition, simply “Like” Twin-Pixels on Facebook (see below) and write on the wall what are you using stock images for.

The competition will end on July 27, 2011, midnight GMT. The three lucky winners will be contacted via Facebook and will also be listed here. Good luck everyone!

Update July 28: The competition is now closed! Winners are being notified.

About PixMac

PixMac is a leading microstock image agency with over 12 million images (photo and vector) and prices starting at $0.30. They also have a “premium” selection of images that can satisfy even the most strict requirements and a “Celebrity” offering for editorial images, perfect for news sites, magazines and blogs. Their site is very well done and it’s easy to navigate and search. Next time you’re looking for a stop photo, stop by them; chances are they’ll have what you’re looking for.

Check out the video below:

Pretty impressive.

Lightroom 3 and ACR will ship with a selection of lenses for automatic correction of distortions, chromatic aberrations and vignetting but the really powerful feature is the profile editor, which will allow the creation of profiles for any camera/lens combination, very useful when dealing with third-party lenses or old models.

My only complain is that the perspective correction is not good enough; having three sliders for X, Y and Z-axis rotation is cumbersome compared to DXO keytoning feature.

Overall, it’s a very important upgrade.

New Painting engine

This is something directly aimed at Corel Painter and its ‘natural media’ painting. It’s still not quite there in terms of sophistication as Painter but it’s a big improvement.

Color picker and painting

Puppet Warp

This has been present in After Effects and Flash for quite some time, but it’s nice to have in Photoshop when the Liquify doesn’t cut it. I’m especially thrilled about using the ‘pins’ for controlled image distortions as they illustrate at the end of the video:

New smart selection tools

The selection is getting smarter when there are fine details like fur over complex backgrounds. This stuff has been possible for some time via plugins, but it’s nice to see it integrated (not to mention that it forces the plugin makers to innovate).

Content-aware fill

Remember the healing brush and the patch tool? How amazed you were when you discovered them? Then prepare to be amazed once more:

Overall, Photoshop CS5 is shaping as a solid release, well worth the upgrade.
Of course, we’ll have to wait for the official announcement, but these features are pretty much confirmed.

What follows is the official announcement for the availability of Lightroom 3 beta 2. I’ll start playing with it right away and report my findings. I am a bit disappointed that there’s no word on any optical corrections, but I won’t judge anything for now.

Update: There is a new article on the subject that uses the final release of Lightroom 3 and compares it with other similar programs. Read all about the newest RAW converters here.

Adobe today released an update to its Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta software, available immediately through Adobe Labs. Building on the success of the first Lightroom 3 beta, which was downloaded by more than 350,000 photographers, Lightroom 3 beta 2 incorporates feedback from the first iteration of the beta while offering users several new features and greatly improved performance throughout the application.

New features in this release include tethered shooting support for select Nikon and Canon cameras, the ability to import and manage video files from DSLR cameras for a streamlined workflow and additional behind-the-scenes architecture enhancements for faster importing and loading of images. The addition of luminance noise reduction to the color noise reduction options already available in the beta helps photographers achieve overall exceptional image quality from high ISO images. The import experience and watermarking functionality have also been modified to reflect feedback received from the Lightroom community during the first beta period.

The input from the photography community has been extremely valuable and Adobe would like to thank everyone who has participated in the beta program. Adobe encourages photographers to test this new selection of features and provide the product team with feedback so they can produce the highest quality final product.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom is the essential digital photography workflow solution, helping serious amateur and professional photographers quickly import, manage, perfect and showcase all their images in one intuitive application.

Pricing and Availability
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta 2 is available as a free download to anyone on a Macintosh or Windows platform and is available in 12 languages. Visitlabs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/ to learn more and download the second beta. Feedback can be submitted on the Lightroom forums:forums.adobe.com/community/labs/lightroom3/.

The good news is that Apple just released Aperture 3 – and not a moment too soon, considering how many users were tempted to ‘jump ship’.

Aperture 3 brings a number of improvements across the board, most notably:

• better library organization, with easy catalog switching, searching and filtering; GPS integration; face detection;
• support for video;
• non-destructive brushes.

It’s still hard for me not to see it as Apple trying to catch up with other products. Non-destructive brushes have been available in Lightroom for an year and more recently in Bibble. Same with almost all other features like fullscreen support, import options, image attributes such as color labels and so on.

Other features seem more geared at the casual photographers rather than the pros (not that this is bad thing), like export to Flickr or Facebook.

Overall, I believe Aperture is not about bringing new users rather than keeping the existing ones, but Apple’s commitment is important not only to reassure the users but also to keep the pressure on competition (Adobe, I’m looking at you).

You can see the full list of new and improved features on Apple’s site.

Aperture 3 is priced at $199 for the full version and $99 for an upgrade.

Update: There is a new article that compares Aperture 3 with other similar programs. Read all about the newest RAW converters here.

While people think of visuals as being the biggest achievement of Avatar, it would be more appropriate to call it immersion – the feeling of being there, without any distracting clues that the world and its characters are computer-generated.

Bringing characters to life in a convincing manner is a daunting task. Final Fantasy – The Spirits Within was the first to try and they failed spectacularly. The reason is psychological: while the brain can interpret a simple stick figure as a human, as the complexity of the increases, perceived realism improves until a point where the character is almost – but not quite – alive. Such a character looks real but dead. This dread area is called the Uncanny Valley. After the Final Fantasy flop, few have ever attempted to cross the Uncanny Valley; although LoTR’s Gollum is often cited as a realistic digital character, he was supposed to look repulsive, so the challenge wasn’t that big.

Performance capture

James Cameron wanted to create beautiful, sexy characters you could fall in love with (and judging from various talks on forums, it seems that Neytiri had that effect) and for this, rough motion capture that is usually employed was not enough.

Cameron and his team coined the term performance capture – that is capturing all the nuances, body language and feelings of an actor and translate them on the digital counterpart. For this they used innovative solutions from Giant Studios (that company was responsible for all motion capture) and they added a helmet-mounted camera attached to a rod, that sit in front of the actors’ heads; this way, the facial expressions could be captured along with the whole body motion. The helmets also featured ears and braids, helping actors remain aware of them. In addition to that, they used up to 12 HD cameras to capture the actors from different angles in wide and closeups to preserve all the fine details.

This approach helped the animators at Weta  to concentrate only on bringing up every nuance of the original performance, like small winks, swaying of the hair or movement of the ears. It was also a boon for actors, now freed of tedious details like markers, lighting and costumes, now being able to concentrate on what they do best – conveying emotions.

They also used motion capture for creatures (using actors for stand-ins), and even for helicopters and banshees. This allowed for a better interaction with the actors and more natural motion paths (especially tricky for helicopters, which sway in their path in a way only a helicopter pilot can describe). The Weta animators still had to refine the motion and add all the necessary details, but the general motion path was already given to them in the way the filmakers wanted.

Real-Time feedback

Everybody has their own camera eye and sensibility and to translate that through an intermediary is very difficult

Another problem of working with CGI-heavy pictures is that the actors play in an empty space and when standing on the floor it’s difficult for everyone (actors, cameramen, director) to imagine how the end result will look like. So James Cameron and his team devised a “virtual camera” hooked to Motion Builder, allowing them to see the virtual environments in real-time.

“Everybody has their own camera eye and sensibility and to translate that through an intermediary is very difficult“, said Rob Legato, referring to the traditional workflow that required the animators to handle camera movement, with variations taking weeks to complete.

James Cameron holding the virtual camera

For Avatar, they would move the camera in the empty set and the virtual camera would do the same inside the simulated environment, all while actors movements were being captured and applied to their digital models. This way, instead of doing a scene with actors, having the motion interpreted later and receive an animation weeks later, the production team could see the results instantly, providing them with the essential feedback needed to refine the details. This approach allowed them to stop using storyboards and just experiment. For camera work alone, they could try 15-20 variations – wider, lower – to get the best look.

Viewfinder shows low-res CGI with real-time motion capture applied

We gave Weta what was essentially a rough videogame version of the scene

When a scene was ready, it was given to Weta and they replaced the low-res models with high-res ones, did the tweaks and small details and rendered it.

Another clever thing was the Simulcam – a rig that allowed them to do real-time compositing over green-screen. So they’d film actors in areas that required digital extensions (for example the hangar bay) and the image in the viewfinder would show the composited result, with the digital backgrounds instead of the green screen. Needless to say, this is a huge help for people behind the camera, now able to see how the scene is going to look like and how to frame it.

Low-res realtime footage

Attention to detail

The creatures started as sketches on paper and were then digitally sculpted with Z-Brush. Vehicles were modeled with Maya, XSI and 3ds max.

ZBrush study

For the avatars, Stan Winston Studios built full-size models of generic Na’vi male and female characters that were laser-scanned and tweaked.  Incorporating features from the human characters was a challenge in itself as the avatars had to have some resemblance to their ‘operators’. Moreover, a face conformation too different from the actor’s face did not translate well for face performance capture, this is why the Na’vi ended up looking quite similar to the actors portraying them.

Direhorse muscle system

Speaking of performance capture, to fully retain all the nuances of the body language, the Weta artists had created all the face muscles, fat and tissue and used state-of-the-art shaders and light models to give the sense of depth beneath the skin, with the usual sub-surface scattering model replaced with a sub-surface absorption one.

The modeling and texturing of the models and characters had to go through several update cycles, because as the one character model was made more realistic, all other CGI near it started looking obviously fake and had to be improved as well.

Someone actually modeled all the stitches and tiny details

For the vegetation, Weta created a library of almost 3000 separate plants and tress, that enabled them to “decorate” the Pandora jungle in a realistic fashion. By the way, initially the vegetation was supposed to be cyan, but the jungle was too alien, so they bough back some green for a more familiar look.

Further reading

You can find out more about the companies and software involved in the making of Avatar. Weta did most of the work, but even they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of CG scenes, so received help from ILM for the animations involving humans’ aircraft and from Framestore for the Hell’s Gate compound.

PS: Congratulations on winning the Golden Globes Award. Despite its detractors, I believe Avatar is strong film both on technical and human level.

Updated on January 16 with more details. Also, in a new article I’m providing some details on the challenges and innovations involved in the making of Avatar.

Although usually only big names like Weta Digital or ILM are mentioned in the making of high-budget CGI, there are always tens of companies involved (possibly hundreds considering that work often gets outsourced), with thousands of digital artists, 3d modelers, animators and compositors working to bring the script to life.

It’s also too bad that many of the companies (the ones involved in the production and the ones making the software) do not promote their software more. Adobe was the quickest to show how their line of software was involved, even though it wasn’t really crucial to the project and this is why I decided to make a list and try to give proper credit to everyone involved.

For Avatar, these are the companies credited for the visual effects:

• Weta Digital, New Zealand (most of the work, character modeling, animation, rendering)
• Industrial Light and Magic, USA (180  non-character shots, mostly the human aircraft in the final battle)
• Stan Winston Studios (most of the props, including the Ampsuit and the Samson helicopter)
• Framestore, UK (70 shots of the Hell’s Gate)
• Hybride, Canada (graphics for the link room)
• Prime Focus, USA (design and compositing of the control room screens, HUDs, etc)
• Look Effects, USA (compositing)
• Hydraulx, USA  (digital extension shots of crematoria and cryovault)
• Giant Studios, USA (motion capture)
• Blur, USA (4 space shots of ISV Venture Star)
• Pixel Liberation Front, USA (screens and HUD design)
• BUF (the conscience-transfer tunnel)
• Lola VFX, USA (digital cosmetic)

And here are the main software used:

• Autodesk Maya (most shots)
• Pixar Renderman for Maya
• Autodesk SoftImage XSI
• Luxology Modo (model design, e.g. the Scorpion)
• Lightwave (low-res realtime environments)
• Houdini (Hell’s Gate scenes, interiors)
• ZBrush (creature design)
• Autodesk 3d design max (space shots, control room screens and HUD renderings)
• Autodesk MotionBuilder (for real-time 3d visualisations)
• Eyeon Fusion (image compositing)
• The Foundry Nuke Compositor (previz image compositing)
• Autodesk Smoke (color correction)
• Autodesk Combustion (compositing)
• Massive (vegetation simulation)
• Mudbox (floating mountains)
• Avid(video editing)
• Adobe After Effects (compositing, real-ime visualizations)
• PF Track (motion tracking, background replacement)
• Adobe Illustrator (HUD and screens layout)
• Adobe Photoshop (concept art, textures)
• Adobe Premiere (proofing, rough compositing with AE)
• many tools developed in-house
• countless plugins for each platform, some of them Ocula for Nuke, Ktakatoa for 3ds max, Sapphire for Combustion/AE.

The list of tools is not exhaustive and you can see there’s overlap in capabilities, depending on each company’s pipeline.