PHOTOGRAPHY EXPOSED
PHOTOGRAPHY EXPOSED
by John Peters A.R.P.S.
PAINT.NET
REPLACE A SKY
The fourth function in our list.
W-I-P WORK IN PROGRESS - UPDATE SCREENSHOTS TO REFLECT PROPER/ORIG USE OF PAINT.NET
Yes there are many software products and even smartphones with AI technology that can do this but not for free, that's the difference. These products may do a satisfactory job when looking at the final result at fairly low resolution or at a small size e.g. on a phone or a social media device, but try examing the joins between the original material and the new, generated material where the two photos are combined. Do this at high resolution, - hmm, not so hot in some cases. AI technology or similar is available in many products, but you tend to get what you pay for. At low resolutions e.g. Facebook, Instagram or on Smartphone apps, many composites look OK until you enlarge an image or try to produce a large print. I tend to edit at 400 % which highlights any flaws and ensures blending or composites are accurate enough when producing large prints that survive close scrutiny. You can use Faststone or Paint.net for free and you have the satisfation of doing a composite or blended image at 300% or 400% knowing your final image can stand enlargement or scrutiny. Beware, Some judges may enlarge a digital file to inspect it in more detail, it's very easy to do. Some judges may be old but in some cases, they may have a wealth of experience too, don't dismiss them as a matter of course.
The first thing to do is load PAINT.NET if it's not loaded, my configuration of PAINT.NET is shown next, this may differ from the standard layout.
First, to use this image in the demo, we should download it, it will likely be stored in your DOWNLOADS folder.
Download the image or BACKGROUND image file.
With our starting image downloaded, we should then load our photo into PAINT.NET
This isn't actually my photograph, I can't actually remember who should be credited, but it serves as a fine example in this demo. So, in this example, we shall use Paint.net (which supports layers) to replace the current sky with a slightly better sky showing more detail. We will also crop the resulting image to improve the composition.
Once downloaded, we first open the image as the background or main image. Load PAINT.NET, then using the menu at the top left: FILE / OPEN, select your downloaded file from your folder designated as the DOWNLOAD folder, and open it. Notice how Paint.net names the image or first layer as 'background', see the bottom right of Paint.net. The image is shown below for reference.
In the image below, we selected the tool 'MAGIC WAND' as highlighted, the TOLERANCE (middle of Paint.net) defaulted to 50% which is OK in this example, but you might have to change this for different attempts of your own.
The small area between the legs should also be selected (as shown below) and to do this, first click the icon (top leftish of PAINT.NET) to ADD mode for the MAGIC WAND tool in the selection. See the next screen image. Remember to actually press the ADD mode icon. The image has been enlarged to make selection easier, I'll describe this next.
Remember you can add or subtract whilst in the selection process. The next screen image shows ADD mode selected when SELECTING (Clicking) the small area between the knees. A handy wee trick is to ENLARGE an image or make an image SMALLER by pressing the CNTRL and '+' symbol to enlarge the image (to make some editing jobs easier and more accurate), or CTRL and the'-' to make an image smaller. Each press of CNTRL and the '+' keys together will enlarge our image - try it. I enlarged this image by pressing CTRL and '+' about 4 times.
Now select the area between the legs and it will be added to our selection as shown in the screenshot below.
Next, with our selected area depicted by 'marching ants', we DELETE this selected area by pressing the DELETE key. See how 'Erase Selection' appears in the HISTORY shown top right in the screenshot below. Our image is now ready to have a new sky added to REPLACE the original sky area now depicted as transparent, a checkerboard area of grey and white.
So we have to add in a more interesting sky. We ADD this as a LAYER using the menu at the top LAYERS / IMPORT FROM FILE
The first step is to DOWNLOAD the image we will use in this example.
Download the image as LAYER1
The image below is DOWNLOADED and we will use this sky to REPLACE the old sky. The new image can be found in our folder used for holding our downloads.
We then IMPORT the new image of the sky using FILE / LAYERS/ IMPORT FROM FILE Look at the image below, this is what should be on your screen immediatly prior to IMPORTing the image in PAINT.NET
If you have imported the new image (40newsky) correctly, your screen should be similar to the one above. Its easier at this point, if both images are the same physical size with the same number of pixels.
The only clue within PAINT.NET that we have download the sky correctly is that PAINT.NET shows a representation of our two layers in the bottom right window headed LAYERS, with the most recent layer (40newsky) on top and the other (40background) layer underneath.
Dont worry, we can DRAG to use the part of the image we think is best to combine with the BACKGROUND image, and to cope with the different size. You may have to SELECT the MOVE tool (top rightish on PAINT.NET), one tool moves the selected pixels, the other tool moves your current selection. Make sure you pick the top icon (you may have to left/click on the image to show the drag handles ).
If you plan to change the size of your image by dragging as opposed to some other means, just SELECT the circular handles at the outline of the image to DRAG it or MOVE it accordingly. You can even change the format of the image, make one edge bigger if neccessary.
5. REPLACE A BACKGROUND
6. MAKE AND USE PAINT.NET TO CREATE THE EFFECTS OF AN 'ND' (NEUTRAL DENSITY) FILTER
7. MAKE AND USE PAINT.NET TO ADD A GRADUATED LAYER OF COLOUR OR GREY (ND)
8. SELECT A SPECIFIC AREA TO APPLY AN EDITING FUNCTION
9. ADD MOTION BLUR
10. ADD A VIGNETTE