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.

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 live.

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.

Wireframe of a Na'vi

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)

ZBrush study

And here are the main software used:

• Autodesk Maya
• Pixar Renderman for Maya
• Autodesk SoftImage XSI
• Luxology Modo (model design, e.g. the Scorpion)
• Lightwave (low-res realtime environments)
• Houdini (unknown area)
• ZBrush (creature design)
• Auodesk 3ds 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.

Setting it up

1. Open Edit –> Preferences –> Guides, Grid and Slices
2. Edit Gridline every… 100 percent
3. Subdivisions… 3
4. Click OK

That’s it!

Now to show or hide the grid, just press CTRL+’ or select View –> Show –> Grid

Image with visible grid

What is this Rule of Thirds anyway?

Just in case you never heard of this “rule”, let me give you some points:

Beginners in photography tend to frame everything dead in the center. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. There are many rules that can be used to achieve a more pleasing composition and this is one of them.

The Rule of Thirds states that you can achieve better composition balance if you place the interesting features of your photos along horizontal and/or vertical lines that divide your picture in thirds, or at the intersection points.

To illustrate my point, have a look at the pictures below:

Horizon and tower aligned to the lines

Eye at the intersection

As with any photography “rule”, you shouldn’t get obsessed with it. Not everything has to be framed according to it. Understand it, learn it, try it – then break it!

Updated on January 4, 2010 with the final release of Bibble 5.

The lineup

For this test I selected:

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta;
• Bibble 5 Pro;
• Capture One 5 Pro;
• DXO Optics Pro 6.

Notable absents would be Apple Aperture and Silky Pix.

I did not select Aperture for this review because it’s older (apart from updates and patches it’s still a 2008 product) and it’s also the only Mac-only product (all the programs in this test are available for both PC and Mac; Bibble is also available for Linux). In the case of Silky Pix, I started testing it, but I felt it’s not in the same league as the others, so a direct comparison would not be fair.

Also, in the case of Lightroom 3, it is still beta software; I decided that it’s stable enough to be used in production, so it wouldn’t be unfair to it. It’s good to keep in mind however that it may add features and/or improve image quality before it is released.

Originally, this article presented the beta version of Bibble 5, once it was released I retested and included new results from it.

Test images

For this test I found myself in the difficult position of not having enough test images. I made a habit years ago to convert all my pics to DNG. Unfortunately, DXO and Bibble don’t support DNG, so for this test I had to find some RAWs. If you think that would be easy, well, I actually had to run a program to recover some pics from my cards.

Second of all, I initially had some nice architectural pictures from Milan and Paris that were taken with a compact camera (a perfect test for noise reduction, chromatic aberrations and so on). Again, some programs (DXO and Capture One) did not support it.

Third, I wanted flawed images. I believe that test images should not be perfect – how would I be able to check chromatic aberrations if the image was taken with a razor-sharp, $2000 lens? Or how could I evaluate highlight recovery for a perfectly-exposed scene? Or noise at low ISO? or… you get the picture.

So if you look at the images in the test and wonder why they’re not so good – it’s because I selected them to be like that.

Interface

All four programs have remarkably similar interfaces: dark/gray color schemes, tabs and sliders.

All interfaces look similar, but there are differences in organization and workflow

I absolutely love Capture One’s interface. It’s polished, simple and logical. It’s very easy to find the tools and the tabs are arranged in the proper order – from capture to details.

Lightroom comes very close, but for it the keyword would be ‘customization’. You can easily customize the interface to fit your own workflow, turn panels off, even customize the “nameplate” to your company name – a nice touch for when you’re working with a client.

Bibble is more of a mixed bag. They changed the UI completely from version 4 and copied many concepts from their competitors, but it’s still a bit confusing as buttons are all over the place.

DXO suffers from the same problems as Bibble – a rather confusing interface, with options arranged not very intuitively; for example, why is White Balance (a basic setting) placed after DXO Lighting (an advanced feature)? Still, in terms of speed and stability, it’s a huge improvement over DXO5.

Import and export

Lightroom has probably the widest camera support – it can read all camera formats under then sun and it also supports DNG (obviously, they invented it). Lightroom also goes beyond the typical RAW processor, as it aims to be a full DAM (Digital Asset Manager). In two years, it still hasn’t convinced me to use it exclusively, but it’s simple enough to import photos in its database and process them. It can also handle variations, has an unlimited history, snapshots and more. New in version 3 is the export system – you can publish from it directly to a service like Flikr. For me, it would be incredible to output directly to iStock, so I can only hope a plugin will come.

Bibble also has a wide camera support, but they don’t support DNG (despite numerous customers requesting it, I might add). Import and export are very easy and I like how printing is also treated like an output option and how easy it’s to define your own presets.

Capture One has a very straightforward way for import and export, focusing on simplicity. I might add that tethered shooting is perfectly integrated in the interface, a bonus for studio photographers. Capture One is more picky about direct camera support, but it does support DNG, so you can always convert to DNG first and then import.

DXO is the most cumbersome in this regard. First you must drag-and-drop files from the file system to a project, edit them and then drag and drop files from the project to the output queue. It just feels tedious for me, without enabling any advanced behaviour. DXO is also very picky about camera support and adds lenses into equation as it provides automatic correction for known camera-lens combinations. It also doesn’t import DNG (why oh why); it can output linear DNG, a feature I never used.

Unique features

As mentioned above, Lightroom is not only a RAW converter but a complete DAM, which comes in handy when you have tens of thousands of images (I have about 16,000 DNGs since 2003). You can easily filter by multiple criteria – tip: it really helps to use keywords for all images. The unlimited history, snapshots, virtual copies help you play creatively with photos, trying different looks. On the other hand, it’s the only program in this test that does not posses any sort of lens distortion correction, which is very disappointing (I still have hopes for the final version). Since version 2, LR also has some localized corrections (color, sharpness, exposure) via a brush or a gradient.

DXO is the unchallenged master in optical corrections. If you have a supported camera and lens, the precise corrections are great, and even if the lens is not recognized, you can still apply most of the corrections – sharpness falloff, light falloff, distortion corrections, even fish-eye corrections. The most impressive feature would be the keystoning, which lets you easily correct perspective distortions – a must-have for architectural shots (not everyone has a tilt-shift lens). It also has a built-in color rendering for emulating different film looks and more.

Capture One has the best support for tethered shooting  and a very useful focus checker – it will overlay the areas that are in focus, a great way to quickly asses a collection of images without zooming in, making it almost perfect for studio work.

Bibble has an incredibly powerful feature: layers. You can make a selection on the image and make any and all settings apply only to it. You can have an image with two or more different WB settings if you want. Areas can be defined using some tools or brushes and you can easily set/change the feathering. The system goes way beyond what Lightroom can offer. Bibble also has some interesting features licensed from other companies –  Noise Ninja for image reduction and a lens distortion database from PT Lens.

Processing Quality

This is where the fun begins.

Color rendition – portraits

With each program, I did not rely on defaults, but tried to achieve the best look. Looking at the image below, you can still see that each one has a different philosophy:

I think B5 nails it best with Lr3 second; though many will prefer C1's more natural look or even DXO's vividness

White balance was set for the black+white dress. I did not enable any “creative” color settings or film emulations.

Capture One really likes to stay neutral and true to the ‘real’ colors. Besides the WB tool, it also has a ’skin color tool’ for achieving a pleasant skin color.

Lightroom throws more contrast; at least for my camera it has the tendency for more reddish skin, which I dislike. I know I can make my own color profiles (and I have), but how many users will?

Even with the Portrait contrast setting, Bibble generated a more contrasty image, while DXO created a very punchy result – very contasty, more yellowish skin and lipstick.

DXO6 makes gets too much contrast and C1 too little.

Four programs – four interpretations of the same scene with WB set for the eye white. What’s not to love?

Capture One again favors a very bland/neutral look, while DXO goes “a little” overboard with contrast. I think I like Bibble best.

Color rendition – landscapes

I really like the way Lr3 renders colors; DXO is over the top

For this image I also used a little Fill Light to open the shadows in the flowers and fruits. WB was adjusted for the white wall. Both Lightroom and DXO produce beautiful colors – Lightroom with a great blue sky (not very realistic since it was overcast, but beautiful nevertheless); DXO has a bit unnatural grass, but I’ve seen the color in magazines and ads a thousand times. Lightroom also gets the purples right but gets the orange walls a bit wrong. But this is just nitpicking.

Capture One misses it – the grass seems dirty/muddy and the Fill Light doesn’t work nearly as well. Bibble fares better but the colors are off and the contrast and shadow/highlight details are not that great.

Dynamic Range

You could get a taste of how well Fill Light & Highlight recovery work from the previous test, but now lets try something extreme:

DXO6 obtains the best results, followed by Lr3

DXO is really amazing with this image. Beautiful colors and look how detailed the dark, shadowed part of the building looks. Lightroom comes in close.

Initially, Bibble generated a rather poor image in the Preview release 3, but in the final version I managed to get better results.

As for Capture One, it just can’t.

Detail extraction

Let’s see now how much detail vs. noise can our four contestants extract from an image (100% crop):

Excellent detail in Capture One and Lr3

DXO produces a clean but not very detailed image, with some speckles here and there. Capture One removed too much chroma and has a quite speckled look (but note how natural the skin looks). Bibble 5 puts Noise Ninja to good use, leaving a pleasing image in terms of noise and details. Lightroom 3 renders the best image in terms of details, even though it’s slightly noisier.

Noise reduction

I don’t shoot usually at high ISO, but I have for this test- a boring detail of my keyboard.

It's B5's turn to show what it can do

The image above was shot at ISO6400.

Thanks to Noise Ninja, Bibble gets the crown. Lightroom 3 has the luminance noise reduction disabled in the beta, so the final version may look different. Although very noisy, it’s not that bad – I prefer Lr3 over C1. DXO cleans the luminance nicely but leaves some coarse chroma noise. With Capture One I tried 2 different approaches but the results are still very poor. The one shown above has luminance noise reduction very low, chroma to max; also reduced sharpening to zero.

Optical corrections

Unfortunately I did not have any RAW picture to really have a need to correct the chromatic abberations or barrel/pincushion. As I mentioned in the beginning, almost all of my pictures are DNG.

Having said that, based on my past experience I can safely say that DXO is unmatched in optical corrections – especially with a supported lens, whereas Lightroom comes in last since it has no distortion correction.

Here’s something from a previous test in 2007:

DXO Keystoning in action

I was able to test for purple fringing:

DXO really saves this image

Bibble has the least effective fringing correction (I couldn’t actually see it making any difference, although the Fringing option was set to Standard). Lightroom is also largely ineffective in this area (Purple fringing was set to All Edges). Capture One corrects the purple fringing but leaves a glow. DXO corrects both the color and the luminance in the affected area, leaving a sharp image.

It’s also worth mentioning the noise – Lightroom image is noisy but detailed (look at the black lace), while Capture One’s looks clean but speckled.

Speed

Speed comparisons are not very fair, as we’re comparing apples and oranges – some programs offer more advanced corrections so it wouldn’t be fair to say that they are slow when they also offer superior quality. Also, speed is dependent on many factors and will vary greatly from image to image.

As a general statement, Bibble is the fastest, followed by Lightroom and Capture One and unsurprisingly DXO comes at the end.

Pricing

Quality is not the only factor in making a decision. Let’s see how competitive are the prices:

• Adobe Lightroom 2: $300 USD (I can only assume version 3 will be priced the same)
• Bibble 5 Pro: $200 USD
• Capture One 5 Pro: $400 USD ($130 for the standard version)
• DXO Optics Pro 6 – Elite Edition : $200 USD ($109 for Standard edition)

Some notes:

• Capture One 5 standard does not offer optical correction and tethered shooting.
• DXO differentiates Stardard and Elite based on the supported camera bodies. High-end (full frame) digital SLRs require the Elite edition.

Updates

I intend to update this article when the final versions of Lightroom 3 and Bibble 5 are released and to also add more tests – so please come back.

I will also gladly correct any factual errors that may have slipped in this review (I worked for a week on it).

Updated on January 4, 2010 with the final release of Bibble 5. I changed some three of the Bibble results and used the new sales price.

Conclusions

It should come to no surprise that there’s no “perfect” program – each one has its strengths and weaknesses and your decision on which one is better for you should be based on the type of photography you do.

Having said that, I have a hard time recommending Capture One. I really wanted to like it and I know it has its fans, but I just can’t justify its price tag vs the output quality or the workflow. The interface is nice and clean, but it has nothing worth 4 times the price of DXO or the quality and workflow offered by Lightroom. It may work well for studio photographers because of its tethered shooting features and focus checker but even then it might be worth testing it along with Lightroom.

In terms of features and quality over price, DXO 6 is an absolute steal. If your camera and lenses are supported, $110 is nothing, even if you also use a different RAW converter. If you shoot landscapes or architectural elements, HDR, ultra-wide and so on DXO is a must. DXO 5 used to be a nightmare, with frequent crashes and a very slow interface, but DXO 6 is nothing like that – it offers a solid experience and in many cases it produces beautiful results.

Bibble 5 has great potential – it’s very fast and its adjustement layers feature is truly powerful. It supports more camera models than DXO and Noise Ninja does wonders for high-ISO images (obviously, you can always purchase Noise Ninja or Neat Image separately).

Lightroom is a very good all-round program. Its image management and workflow features are very useful for professional photographers. On the other hand, it’s relatively more expensive and lacks more advanced optical corrections. Adobe has included optical corrections settings in the latest DNG standard I hopefully support will be added in Lightroom 3.

So which one is best for you?

If you’re an amateur with a compact camera that supports RAW and want to get creative, go with Bibble. It will correct noise problems and optical distortions and will let you get creative.

Landscape and architectural photographers will benefit from DXO advanced corrections.

Portrait and studio photographers who work closely with their clients and shoot thousands of photos will be best suited by Lightroom.

Capture One has its fans too. It has some very professional features but its scope is limited. I would recommend it for professional studio photographers who worry more about correct colors than high ISO performance.

Ethics? What ethics?

Without trying to justify the abuses of retouching, it does has its uses. Acne for example is something transitory, I’ve had models with a few spots now and a perfect skin a week later – what should have I done, postpone the shoot? Ask her to put a thicker layer of makeup? (have you seen how much makeup is used in film/tv?) Moreover, the camera and studio lights are unforgiving. Stuff you’ll never notice in real life, like small wrinkles, shine and so on, become painfully obvious at when captured in full 25 Mp resolution. And even before Photoshop, people were using makeup and airbrushing and favourable angles to get the most flattering look.

The moral dilemma is, obviously, where to draw the line?

Portrait Professional 9 from Anthropics is definitely not going to make the previous question any simpler because, if anything, it pushes the boundaries further, allowing one to enhance portraits so easily it’s almost ridiculous.

How it works

At a glance, it’s a stand-alone program (not a Photoshop plugin) that does face sculpting, eye recoloring, skin repair, hair repair, teeth whitening and more. What’s really cool about it is that it creates some sort of a 3D model of the face, so after you set the control points, most adjustments are fully automatic.

You start by loading a picture and choosing the gender. You then click to indicate the corners of the eyes, the tip of the nose and the mouth. After that the program will build something like a wireframe model of the head, which you can fine-tune. I found that this is the most important stage; misplacing control points can lead to poor results.

In this screen you align the wireframe model with the facial features

After the model is built, the fun begins. The program has a very simple interface based on sliders.

The main slider areas are:

• Face sculpt (head, jaw, nose, neck, eyes, mouth);
• Skin controls (spots, wrinkles, shadows, hue, shine, texture);
• Eyes (whiten &brighten, sharpen, eye color, darken pupil, remove reflections);
• Mouth (whiten & brighten teeth, lip saturation and colour);
• Hair (shine, tidy, vibrance);
• Skin lighting (shadows, relight, contrast, highlights).

Overall, there are enough sliders to keep you happy for hours.

Almost anything can be ajusted via sliders

There are some mask-painting features to restrict the skin and hair areas. The skin controls even feature a Texture selection that allows you to retexture the skin so it doesn’t appear unnaturally smooth. The Skin lighting controls seemed the least useful, at least for me, but I think it can help in bad lighting situations.

Enough theory, let’s see it in action

Scenario 1 – spots

This is an all-time favorite. So ephemeral yet so low-esteem-inducing, they appear exactly when you want them the least – like before a photo session.

Removing spots and wrinkles is a one-click process

In the original, the acne was visible even with the makeup. The image on right is the result of automatic processing in Portrait Professional. Perfect skin yet not plastic-like.

Scenario 2 – Skin shine, teeth and eyes

Here I had a beautiful model with a different – it was very hot and the lighting was pretty crappy (indoors, available light – tungsten – yuk!).

With one click, skin was cleaned up, shine removed, teeth whitened and just for fun I recolored the eyes too

Sweat on makeup is always an issue, but Portrait Professional managed to clean it nicely. Also note some subtle teeth whitening (not really needed). Just for kicks, I made the eyes wider and changed their color.

Scenario 3 – Playing God with Face Sculpting

This is THE feature that sets Portrait Professional apart from competition. In short, it uses some internal algorithms to determine the facial structure and “push” them towards an ideal. Obviously, not everyone is going to like it. I tried some face sculpting on a photo of my wife and she hated it; others have loved the results.

This is understandable because, as the program tries to alter the photo to perfection, it also destroys one’s uniqueness (as an example, look at a beauty pageant – the contestants tend to look all the same) and I mean it when I say “perfection is boring“.

There’s something disturbingly fascinating in reshaping someone’s body to fit an idealized fantasy. Perhaps Photoshop (and plastic surgery) has made us all into little Frankensteins or Doctors Moreau, always trying to undo God’s / Nature’s work. But I digress.

For the final example I chose someone with a great attitude and a small flaw. She had a rather big jaw compared with the rest of her hear. I did not have Portrait Professional when I took the photos, but decided to try it now for this review and see what would the program do in her case.

Since there are many subtle changes difficult to notice side-by-side, I included a flash animation for the Before and After.

Conclusions

It took me a while to realize it, but the makers of Portrait Professional want it to be seen as an alternative to Photoshop (one of the reasons it’s a standalone app and not a plugin) and at $69 it’s quite tempting. It can definitely turn a few hours of retouching into a 10 minute play time and if used sparingly it can do wonders.

The downsides? Well, if everybody get their hand on it, no Facebook pic will remain untouched. God help us all.

Do you know what you are getting?

A dSLR is something many hobbyists are secretly lusting for, but they don’t know exactly what it is, except a vague notion similar to “it’s like my compact, only better”.

Make sure you know the available options

If I had to describe a dSLR in one word, that would be “versatile“. A dSLR can be used for almost anything you want – from taking pictures of insects to weddings, landscapes or astronomy.

Advantages:

• interchangeable lens – depending on the type of photography you want, you can buy lenses optimized for that task, instead of the one-size-fit-all lens of a compact.
• optical viewfinder that goes through the lens via a mirror or prism – you can look through the camera lens for perfect framing and see much more detail than using the LCD screen.
• faster autofocus – the camera will focus much faster and with better accuracy.
• no shutter lag – there’s no delay in between pressing the shutter release button and taking the actual picture – you won’t miss that perfect moment.
• no delay in between pictures – you can shoot at least 3 frames per second (depending on the camera model it can be eve 8 frames per second), perfect for action shots.
• less noise in low light – you can shoot in low light and still get usable image.

Disadvantages:

• size – you can’t fit a dSLR in your shirt pocket and if you get more than one lens, be prepared for a camera bag or even backpack.
• less beginner-friendly – compacts are designed for simplicity and instant gratification, while dSLR require some learning in order to be used effectively.
• no live view – not all cameras have a live view mode, and even those that do are not optimized for it, resulting in some compromises in terms of autofocus,optical viewfinder size and so on.
• no movie mode – not all cameras have a movie mode, and even those that do have significant limitations.

The disadvantages are getting fewer with each generation as more cameras come with usable live view and movie mode and even built-in help screens.

Forget about brand

This is something guaranteed to cause controversy. When it comes to camera brands, people get religious. For some reason, people don’t argue about HP vs. Dell or Audi vs. BMW or Toyota vs. Honda, but when it comes to Canon vs. Nikon, people will defend their favorite brand to the death; if some poor soul dares to suggest another brand, like Sony or Pentax, murder ensures. I heard people saying “Nikons have the best quality“, “I trust Sony to make good electronics“, “I’m a die-hard Oly fan“, “Annie Leibovitz uses Canon“, “Pentax means value for money” and so on.

Choosing a camera based solely on brand is great if you want to show it off, but not if you intend to actually use it

There are five main dSLR manufactures (I list them alphabetically): Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Sony and a few smaller ones of which I will only mention Sigma because of its unique Foveon sensor. Let get this straight: in terms of quality, all of them are great. Sony got into dSLR business by buying everything from Minolta, so all of these brands have a lot of history behind them. Each of these can list innovations, awards and achievements.

When you compare two cameras in the same range (entry-level, advanced amateur, etc.) the differences in terms of quality or features are very small. I won’t attempt to debunk any myths (there are too many of them), but all manufacturers produce cameras with great reliability.

Don’t buy a camera, invest in a system

With compacts, most people would just buy the camera and that’s it. You could buy a Panasonic now and a Fuji two years later.

Choose wisely as you’ll be stuck with it

Remember how I said that the keyword for dSLR is “versatility”? It’s quite possible that in the beginning you won’t even know what type of photography you’ll want to do. As you gain more experience, chances are you’ll want to buy more stuff for it, so the system will grow with you.

A likely scenario: At first you’ll get the camera body and the included kit lens. Then you’ll buy a telephoto lens; then a flash; then a wide-angle zoom; then a polarizing filter; another flash; a remote release; a vertical grip; a prime lens; and so on. Myself, in 8 years I got 6 lenses, 3 filters, 2 flashes and a wireless flash/remote release.

So in time you’ll most likely buy new camera bodies but will want to keep the lenses and other accessories. Because of that, you’ll be less likely to “jump ship” from one brand to the other (technically you can, but you’d be wasting money).

Think ecosystem

By ecosystem I mean everything that’s available for a brand: camera bodies, lenses, third-party lenses, accessories, stuff you find on eBay, tutorials, seminars, and more.

Canon and Nikon are competitive and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, with Sony being a strong contender

While the brand may not matter, the market share does. Why? If you want just the camera and the kit lens, market share doesn’t affect you. However, if you intend to keep investing, choosing a big brand means that you can easily find all kinds of accessories for it, whereas for a small brand, you’ll have to hunt to find what you need.

Global market share data for 2008 show both Canon and Nikon at approximately 37% of the market each, with Sony coming strong at 13% (up from 7% in 2007). Source is IDC, but no link is available as official reports require hefty fees.

A wide selection of lenses always helps

In terms of market share, the safest choice would be Canon or Nikon. Both companies are widely supported and have a ton of lenses and all kinds of accessories (including many from third parties) available for them. After buying the business from Konica-Minolta, Sony invested massively, taking a bit of market share from Canon and Nikon and squeezing Pentax and Olympus into a corner. There is very high quality stuff available for Sony (does Zeiss ring any bell?), but you won’t find everything you can think of for them. Pentax and Olympus manage to bring out absolutely wonderful cameras but their future is uncertain.

A few quick searches on eBay to illustrate my point:

• “Olympus lens“: 3,085 results;
• “Pentax lens“: 3,689 results;
• “Sony lens” + “Minolta lens” : 12,030 results;
• “Nikon lens“: 14,961 results;
• “Canon lens“:19,508 results.

What features to look for

Get an entry level camera, save your money for quality glass (lenses)

All cameras boast lots of features; sometimes they offer the same thing under a different name.

Generally speaking, I advise you against buying a high-end camera as your first. The best camera money can buy will not automatically make beautiful pictures for you – if anything, the multitude of options will only confuse you. The forums are filled with people with Sony A900, Canon 5D or Nikon D3, all complaining that their cameras are crap or broken because they can’t get a decent picture out of them. Further, an entry level camera with a good lens will produce better images than a high-end camera with a crappy one.

Resolution

Megapixels. We all know bigger is better, right? Well, like all things in life, it’s not that simple. Bigger resolution is great, but the final image quality depends a lot on the sensor size. Most dSLR sensors are about 24×16 mm (APS-C size). For them, as resolution increases, noise increases too. I’d say that with the current technology, 12 Mp is the right balance. Of course, the so-called “full-frame” sensors present in high-end cameras, with a size of 36×24 mm can achieve resolutions of 24 Mp – but we’re talking about your first dSLR, right? A 12 Mp sensor can give you a 12″x16″ (approx. A3 size) picture at the highest detail and much more if you don’t need to get very close; I made a 10 feet (3m) billboard from a 6 Mp image. 15 Mpixels will give you a fraction more resolution but more noise.

Live view

A tiltable LCD may come in handy

With compact cameras, you pretty much rely on the back LCD to show what you’re doing in a WYSIWYG fashion, with the optical viewfinder (if it existed at all) being nearly unusable. Until recently, dSLRs did not have a live view on LCD at all.

LCDs can be useful, but they do lead to drawbacks in design and performance; most notably, if you use Live View, the autofocus will be again slow, negating the speed advantages of SLRs over compacts. If you feel you must have it, make sure the LCD can be tilted, so you can look at it with camera over head or very close to the ground.

Movie mode

Another feature adopted from compacts, some newer dSLRs have a movie mode, usually HD. Currently, like all first-generation features, movies on dSLR is a mixed bag. On one hand, it can get you a beautiful, film-like look; on the other hand it’s severely limited in terms of autofocus and exposure, making it useful only for controlled environments with little motion. I wouldn’t try to use a dSLR to record any fast/sports action. Personally, I’d wait for the next generation of cameras before considering it.

Optical stabilization

Shooting in low light and/or with telephoto lenses can be tricky without a tripod. Almost all dSLR cameras have some sort of stabilization. There is a trick though: Canon and Nikon provide stabilization in their lenses (“IS” lenses for Canon and “VR” lenses for Nikon), while Sony, Pentax and Olympus have the stabilization feature in camera body. The difference is very important because for Canon and Nikon you need to buy IS/VR lenses, which are quite more expensive than ‘normal’ lenses, while with the other manufacturers the stabilization will work with any lens. The effectiveness of stabilization is about the same in both philosophies (3-4 stops); the stabilized lenses have the advantage of you seeing the actual stabilized image in the optical viewfinder, while stabilized bodies enable you to save money on lenses.

In-body motor

Some Nikons do not have an in-body autofocus lens motor. This means that although the camera itself is relatively inexpensive and small, you need to spend extra on lenses with built-in motors.

Other features

Most cameras have similar features in terms of flash options, autofocus, focus points, light metering and so on. Some of them have some unique features, like in-camera image processing, HDR mode and more. If you must have any of these features, then an entry-level camera is not what you need.

Hold it in your hand

Actually holding the camera in your hand can help you decide

Even if you plan on buying your camera online, I still recommend you to actually walk into a store and hold the camera in your hand and take a few pictures. All the features in the world don’t matter one bit if you hate the way it looks or it’s not comfortable in your hand or you find the layout of the buttons cumbersome. When I bought my first dSLR (after years of using a film one), I had my eyes on a certain camera based on reviews and pictures, but in my hand it felt cheap and uncomfortable.

Don’t bother asking the salesperson for advice on what to buy; chances are they are either clueless or biased toward a brand or will try to steer you to an expensive model.

Final thoughts

I tried to keep this guide as unbiased as possible and provide you with information to help you make a decision, rather than make a decision for you. Below, I’m listing some cameras on Amazon that at this time (July 2009) I believe would be good choices for you:

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Below you can see the ‘before’ and ‘after’:

Day to night conversion: before and after

The original, straight from the camera image is mind-numbingly dull; it’s the very definition of dullness. It was shot in a overcast February afternoon. As boring as it is, it was perfect for my purposes. I wanted to convey a sense of ‘out of place’, of a person that doesn’t really belong there, forcing the viewer to create a story – who is this young and attractive woman and what is she doing in this miserable street?

The overcast day had the advantage of decreased contrast and a complete lack of shadows, allowing me a wide range of editing.

Creating the light/dark versions

First thing, I created two Virtual Copies in Lightroom:

Original, with default contrast. Slightly overexposed too.

The “lit” version, Contrast was set to 100, also Clarity was was to max, increased vibrance. White Balance was set to Cloudy

The “unlit” version. The image was underexposed by 2 stops. White Balance was set to Tungsten.

Same image with different WB settings

As you can see above, the altered versions are already better — especially the “night” one, dark and moody. However, the street lamp gave me the opportunity to go the extra mile in creating something realistic.

Mixing light and dark

Having exported the two versions as 16bit TIFF (for maximum quality), I opened both of them in Photoshop. I then copied the “dark” one and pasted as a layer over the “lit” version.

Creating a new layer mask

It was pretty clear already that quite a lot of trial-and-error was to be expected, so instead of simply using the Eraser to remove parts of the “dark” layer, I decided to use a mask instead.

I selected the Dark layer and from the Masks panel, I clicked on the Pixel Mask button to create a new mask.

A Pixel Mask works just like an alpha channel for the layer – it’s a grayscale bitmap where white is opaque and black is completely transparent. What’s cool about it is that you can alter the opacity of the layer by painting on the mask.

The effect of the layer mask in mixing the lit/unlit areas

You can see on the left how the mask affects the mix between lit and unlit areas.

I clicked on the mask in the Layers panel to select it and then I simply used a semi-transparent, highly feathered black brush to create transparent areas.

There are three main lit areas: the light on the wall, faing out, the light on the pavement the light spill on the roof. You can notice that I preferred to paint everything instead of using gradients, to avoid the artificial “perfect” look.

Adjusting the exposure

The light was still too even in the lit area; close the the light source I needed something much more powerful (remember that light falls off exponentially). To improve the realism, I added an Adjustment Layer just above the Lit layer.

The Exposure Adjustment Layer

The Adjustment Layer was set to Exposure (Layer –> New Adjustment Layer –> Exposure). I added a simple radial gradient as a mask for this layer the same way as previously and then I tweaked it to get a slightly overexposed look.

Adding the glow

By now I had the light on the wall and pavement pretty much in place; it was time to turn to the light bulb. For this, I simply used the Lasso tool to select the visible area of the bulb and then copied and pasted it as new layer. I then used the Curves to make the bulb much brighter. Finally, from Layer –> Layer Style –> Outer Glow I created a nice amber glow around the bulb.

Setting the glow on the light bulb

Below you can see the exact settings for the glow:

Light bulb glow settings

I still wanted to add some nice touches: the glow should not be that strong in the upper area. Can you guess what I used? Yep, another Layer Mask.

Please note: By default, layer masks do not affect the layer effects. To make a layer mask hide the effect, open the Layer Style window and go to Blending Options section. From there, check the “Layer mask hides effects” option.

In the layer mask, I painted in black the areas I wanted the glow to be weak. Below you can see the result:

Glowing behind the edges

As you can see, I did not eliminate the glow completely, but created a glow-behind-the-edges effect that is seen in high-contrast situations.

Lens flare

A simple lens flare

Most designers, upon hearing the words “lens flare” run away screaming. They are very often overused and cheesy. Even the new JJ Abrams’ Star Trek features some lens flares annoying as hell. Still, they an unavoidable part of photography and can add some realism if used wisely.

Subtle lens flare applied

Unfortunately, Photoshop’s Lens Flare effect is laughable. I think it’s the same effect as 15 years ago. I only know of two decent lens effects – one in the old plugin Kai Power Tools 6, the other is Corel Photo-Paint. Both of them allow you to control the size, glow, ring, stars, streaks and reflection trail. This is not a tutorial on lens flares, but modern, good lenses don’t create reflection trails, but only a nice star pattern with minimal interference or random streaks.

For this photo I created a very simple star pattern on black background and I put it as a layer with blending mode set to Linear Dodge (Add) at 33% opacity. You can see that the effect is barely there; its purpose is to enhance the scene in a minimal way, not to overpower it.

Shadows

Selecting the body shape

If you recall from the beginning of this tutorial, the original image had no shadows because of the overcast sky. Now, as I created a light source, I needed to create a shadow too.

Refining selection edges

With the background layer active, I started to make a simple selection on the girl using the Magnetic Lasso. I didn’t even needed to be very careful, but just to follow the contours.

Once this was done, I clicked on Refine Edge and increased Smoothness and Feathering. After that, I created a new layer and filled the inside of the selection with black.

Distorting the shadow

The next step was to convert the new layer into a Smart Object via Layer –> Smart Objects –> Convert to Smart Object. Why? It’s because a smart object’s original appearance is preserved so I could distort it any way I wanted without degrading its appearance on each step.

Finally, I set the layer’s blending to Multiply and its opacity down to 50%.

Final result

Here’s the final view with all the layers:

All layers

The following tips are geared toward pro or semi-pro photographers shooting commercial stuff, but most of them apply for cases when the model is also the client or even when it’s just for fun.

Everything starts with trust

Although we later became friends, this was strictly photojournalism - there's no connection between the subject and the camera

I can’t emphasize this enough. In other areas you may get away with a co-worker you don’t get along with, but if you don’t trust the model or they don’t trust you – it will show on pictures.

If possible, spend some time before the photo session to get to know who you’ll be working with. If it’s a location shoot, drive or walk together to the location. Break the ice. Explain your vision/plan for the session. Tell a little about yourself, why and how you got into photography, ask them why they model.

During the session, show how pics are coming along. This will further help in establishing trust (the model will see that you know what you’re doing) and will build confidence.

Be professional

Treat your model like a co-worker – you must work together to achieve the goals, so remember that your model is a human being, not like a prop. Don’t yell, don’t make inappropriate jokes, don’t be sloppy, don’t be annoying, don’t be loud, don’t be late.

Especially if you’re a man and your model a lady: don’t drool over her, don’t comment on her body, don’t ask her for a date. Things like “Yeah baby, show me what you got” will make you look like a third-rate sleazy low-budget porn flick director wannabe.

Handle with care

When you know your model, you can shoot based on her personality for a powerful effect

Keep your hands to yourself and only give verbal instructions. Don’t touch the model to fix anything (a curl in the hair, the position of hand or anything else) unless you get explicit permission. If you think it’s over the top, keep in mind that your model is your co-worker, not your lover, perhaps not even your friend.

Some photographers feel offended if the model comes in with a relative or significant other. This is usually a sign of missing trust and can be annoying especially if their companion keeps making comments on how they’d “improve” the shots. The trick is to “win” them over – ask them to help you with the lights for example; unless they’re really cranky, they’ll gladly do something useful instead of sitting in a corner.

When it comes to underage models or glamor/nude shots, my advice is to actually demand your model to be accompanied by a family member. Think of it as insurance and make sure they sign in the model release stating that they have no complains. You never want your reputation to be questioned – or worse.

Be flexible

As the photographer, you are in a position of power. Unless there’s a very important shoot with its own art director, you will be calling the shots: camera position, lighting, model’s body posture and expression.

Don’t abuse your power. Don’t yell, explain. Don’t demand, guide.

Think about it. Chances are your model likes to be in front of the camera as much as you like to be behind it. Even if they have no experience, they like it and usually they love to experiment. If your model says “let’s try this”, don’t frown. Megabytes are cheap; say “OK, let’s do this; but then we do my way too” (unless you’re photographing H.M. Queen Elizabeth II – she doesn’t like being asked to remove her crown)

Play around, experiment. Try to keep it fun.

Build empathy

You can't fake a smile like that

This is hard. The best photos are always about emotions. You can’t build emotions if there’s no connection between you and the model. Some celebrity photographers use tricks, intentionally pissing off the person in front of the camera to get an unusual look. Me? I prefer a warm, heartfelt smile.

This the advantage of working with the same model over the years – you get to really know each other to the point words are no longer needed.

Know when to stop

If the session takes more than one hour, include breaks in the schedule. Ten minute breaks go a long way in ensuring everyone (including you) stays sharp.

Fill in the paperwork

Don’t gloss over the legal aspects. It’s easy to say “just sign here, don’t worry about it” but the proper approach is to make sure that everyone (you, the client and the model) understand what they are getting into before the session. Who will own the copyright? Is this a work-for-hire? Will there be royalties? Does the model understand what’s involved in a Model Release?

Inexperienced people tend to either sign away without reading and comprehending or they tend to freak out and become suspicious.

Conclusion

I am not a professional photographer and this is not legal advice. Most of the above is just common sense that unfortunately is ignored in many cases.

Happy pictures!