Random thoughts and pics from ProgPower

[Dustin]

Hey everyone! I've been trying to get to this for three damn weeks and everytime I try to do it, I get: a.) Inturpted by the phone b.) hit the back button and it deletes my post instead of moving the cursor back before I submit it c.) get stuck doing honey-do's :Smug:

So... here we go...

We had a great time at the festival and I think most of the guys in the band (especially Lynn) found it to be not only a fun experiance but educational as well.

Some of my personal favorites of the weekend were RAGE, who I've waited 13 years to see live! MERCENARY, NIGHTWISH, CIRCLE II CIRCLE and PAGANS MIND. all the bands that played taht weekend were amazing, and mindblowing! I frimly belive there is no U.S. metal festival that can beat Progpower!

Athough I can't speak for everyone in the band I know Lynn's faves were NIGHTWISH and PAGANS MIND and everyone inthe band seemed to lean towards CIRCLE II CIRCLE as their main band live.... possibly becasue we hung out with 2/6th's of the band the whole weekend, as well as "Unlce" John Oliva.


Everyone drank heavy (Matt and Trevor resectivly) and I had a balst meeting all our freinds that I've seen the previous years that attend.

now... for some random pictures! If you'v got some feel free to post them!

Me and Nick "Nickholio" Van Dyke from Redemption (picture taken by our boy Krusty of ANTITHESIS)

Trevor, Matt (Cirlce II Circle), Matt and John "Uncle John" Oliva of Savatage

Ruined Luna, Matt & Matt and John

Me and my brotha' Troy from ZERO HOUR (hey where's Jasun!!!)

The wife (Prog2112) and Dave from SHOCK OPERA

Sheri and Circle II Circle

Sheri & MERCENARY!

Sheri & andy from VANDEN PLAS

\m/
Dustin

 

[Mr Toast]

Great shots. I really need to get that quick and dirty photoshop editing guide up soon!!!

In the meantime, I'll try to explain this quickly...

Mr Toast's really short photo editing guide!

Many times when taking photos, you may notice a resulting 'haze', especially in nightclub shots. Here is a quick way to really bring out the colors in these photos while losing the hazy quality!

Open up the image in Photoshop. Go under the Image menu and select curves.

Now, notice the three eyedroppers at the lower right corner of the window that popped up? These will recalibrate the color based on what you sample for black (black eyedropper), gray (gray eyedropper) and white (white eyedropper).

Click on the black eyedropper and then find a point in the photo that looks most black (upper corners are usually a good place for starters). Click on that point in the photo and see the change. If you aren't happy with the change (too extreme), then simply undo (ctrl +z) to change it back and try a different area in the photo until you are happy with the change.

Make sure the preview box is checked so you can see the changes. You can compare your changes versus the original photo by clicking and unclicking the preview box btw...

Once you are happy with the resampled black, do the same with the gray. Click the gray eyedropper, choose a point in the photo that you think should be a fairly dark gray (50% or so) and click on that. This will quite often alter a lot of color in the process (often with undesired results), so you may have to undo (ctrl + z) and try again (sampling in different areas of the photo)several times to get the desired effect. I find that selecting darker grays (sometimes lighter blacks) really brings out the color in nightclub shots.

The white eyedropper resamples the whites, but be very careful as you can wash out skin tones and such very easily. Many times I do not resample the white at all (the gray and black are sufficient).

Sometimes the eyedroppers will end up taking out too much detail in the process (i.e. pants will blend in with the background and such), so watch for this. The eydropper trick works well about 90% of the time but not always... don't be afraid to give up on the eydropper for those really tough shots.

Also, remember this is a process of tradeoffs (you are in many cases sacrificing some color details to help bring out the others better) so if you lose a little detail in unimportant areas to get great color/skin tone/etc., and can live with it, be happy.

NOW, if you still want to tweak a bit more, you can tweak the line on the grid. Grab the line in the middle of the grid and move it to the lower right or upper left gently and see how the photo changes. bump it back and forth until you are fairly happy. Now grab the line at the 1/4 or 3/4 point and bump it back and forth again a bit to further tweak the color levels. I find that grabbing the line at the 3/4 point at the right and pulling it down to the right helps bring back skin detail that is washed out by the flash for example. You can actually grab the line at multiple points and get a pretty wiggly snake thing going, but usually the middle and towards each end will do the trick fine.

If you have a particular color that is rich or too light, you can select red, green, or blue on the same curves screeen and tweak the curves to adjust these colors, but I usually don't have to edit these (the master curve and eyedroppers usually do enough).

Once you are happy with the changes, click the OK box. If not, simply hit cancel. BTW, if you accidentally sampled twice or something and really messed up the color (and a simple undo won't fix it), cancelling and starting over may be the best thing to do at that point.

Hope you people find this helpful!

So, you can take this photo:

And make it look like this with very little effort (once you know what to do)
:

Note that I selected the curtains (upper right) for my black (see how they are now completely black), and the dark blue/gray in the light/dark blue thingie just to the right of the Circle2Circle poster to bring out the color a bit better. Then I tweaked the Master curves slightly (at the midde and to the lower left) to fine tune the colors.

I probably went a little overboard on the black (I started over, getting my black sample at the very corner edge at the upper right, which is ever so slightly darker in the original photo, and was able to hold some curtain detail a little better), but this should help you get the idea...

 

[Bruce Chickinson]

Cool tip!



Things are getting Darrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrker!

Moohahahahahahaha.

 

[Dustin]

aaahhhhhhh... grasshoppaaaahh....

I think I'll have to practice this technuiqe a bit!

\m/

Dustin

 

[JazzMX5]

A shame it adds to the already overdone compression...

*runs*