GT5 Photo-mode shoots

Most of you may know the video game racing simulator Gran Turismo 5 on the PS3 as just that; a game. What you might not know is that beneath this great game lies a special mode reserved entirely to taking pictures of the cars in your virtual garage and in high definition, it is hard to tell that the pictures are from a game.

There are many different locales to choose from and more to unlock as the game progresses in “Photo travel” mode.

In this mode, you can place your car in any of the available surroundings and use the feature rich camera to achieve some great magazine worthy shots.

Another way to take pictures is by viewing a replay of a race and hitting pause when you see an interesting action pose such as the car doing a jump. Then you can walk around in photo mode around the frozen scene and get the perfect shot.

When I say the camera is feature rich, it is no exageration. All the features of a DSLR are present here: aperture value, focal distance, exposure compensation, shutter speed, you name it.

On this post, you will find updates of different shoots I did with cars from my garage.

Ferrari 458 Italia (click image to see more):

Cinemagraphy: A new approach to photography

I was trying to find something new to pursue in terms of photography when one of my friends suggested a new technique in photography called “cinemagraphy”.

I was curious to know what it was and what I learned blew me away!!

Here is a link to a website that inspired me to try out cinemagraphy:

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/cinemagraph/

What is cinemagraphy?

Cinemagraphy is a technique that allows you to introduce subtle movement to your photograph. 

I think this will revolutionize the way photographs appear online.

On this link: http://cinemagraphs.com/food/ , we can see examples of different food items shot with this technique.

I saw some tutorials that were using Photoshop but I will try this with GIMP and post the results on this post. The images are in GIF format. They look great on a Web Browser from a desktop or a laptop but when loading these images on my iPhone, it tends to show the movement with slight frame skip.

In the meantime, visit the link above which gives you an idea of what can be achieved with cinemagraphy; I’m sure you all will be inspired.

How to add copyright to images using RawTherapee

In my last post, i reviewed the amazing software Photivo which lets you edit Raw files and export to Tiff, Jpeg and other formats.

What Photivo lacks though is a way to edit metadata of the exported image file.

You would want to edit this metadata to add copyright info to the image file.

To achieve this, we can use another open source software called Raw Therapee.

Raw Therapee can do much more than just edit metadata as it is yet another alternative to Lightroom.

Personally, I was not too pleased with this software as an editor. Every time i had finished editing an image, the exported result would always differ from what the Raw Therappe interface showed me (image would be darker sometimes even too dark).

For now, I use it exclusively to add my copyright info. I just saw that they updated the Mac version of this software yesterday so I might update and see if it’s better now.

I will try and post a review of Raw Therapee soon.

Now let’s get on with the copyright tutorial:

– Once in Raw Therapee, open the image file you just exported from Photivo (be sure to export to  TIFF 16bit in Photivo).

– On the right side of the screen you can see different develop options.

– Click on the right arrow to cycle through the options until you reach the Metadata panel.

– You will see the copyright field at the bottom. Double clicking it will let you edit the field and add you copyright info.

TIP:
To add the copyright symbol before your name:
On Mac: Option/Alt key + G.
On Windows: Alt+0169 (keypad only)

There you have it, all you have to do next is export this TIFF image file to any format from Raw Therapee and your copyright info will be embedded.

Photivo (Mac version) review (open source alternative to Adobe Lightroom)

I had been searching for a free alternative to the much beloved Adobe Lightroom software for a while now. I had tried the Lightroom 3 Demo and instantly got hooked to all it had to offer in terms of organizing,editing and developing RAW image files.

One thing that made me cringe was the price: at 300$ for the full version, it was not too inviting for someone who just wants to showcase images online. I can understand the research and development has a lot to do behind the price but it was just not for me.

I decided to look to open source applications on MAC that would allow me to output RAW images as close as possible to Lightroom without much fuss.I stumbled across this great software a few weeks ago and was relly surprised at what it could accomplish.

That software was Photivo. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux (although Windows version gets more updates). The latest Mac version is from September 2011. The Windows version, as of writing, was updated on November 28 2011.

In the beginning, I felt a little lost with the user interface provided. it was a completely different beast compared to Lightroom.

The left side of the screen is where all of the main develop tools are located (exposure, contrast,saturation..etc).

The right side displays your RAW image once opened. there is even a histogram to help you just like most RAW editors.

At first, it is easy to get overwhelmed with this new interface but once you learn to use it, it makes a lot of sense. Personally, I find the interface to be quite clean and simple.

There is a search bar on the top of the develop section. Here, you can type anything pertaining to image editing and without even having to navigate countless menus, you will be provided with the  tool you requested.

For example, if I want to convert the city skyline image to black and white, I start typing “black” in the search bar and right away it will give me the tool i need. All I have to do is turn up the opacity value from 0 to 1 using the slider.

There are many more actions that can be accessed either from the navigation menu or the search bar but I suggest you explore them once you have installed this great software. (for more in-depth information on different features, please read the online manual).

In conclusion, I recommend this software to all photographers who do not have the budget to purchase the full Lightroom license and who do not want to sacrifice quality because even though this software is open source, it has the potential of outputting final images worthy of top image editors.

All the pictures found on this blog are edited using this great Software.

Here is a link to the official Flickr group for Photivo where you can find many different images edited using this software.

If you have any questions regarding Photivo, please leave a comment below and I will be happy to respond.

Enjoy this software and looking forward to seeing different pictures from you guys. You can post the link to an image you edited using Photivo in the comments section below.

Montreal Old Port Photo Shoot (Oct 8 2011)

Here are some pictures from a photo shoot i had done back in october.
I shall be adding more shoots in the coming days.

 

This is the first shot of the shoot. the rest of the pictures in this post will not necessarily be in chronological order but because the sign on this building says “Bienvenue” (Welcome in French), I decided that it made sense to put this as a “welcome” to the post.

 

This is one of my favorite shots of the day. It’s the Montreal city skyline as seen from the banks of the old port. I wish the river would have been still so i could have a reflection of the city in the water but that day, it was really windy.