Grant Kaye came to us for a One-On-One image mastering session . It is essentially a way for any photographer out there to get to spend an hour or more working on their images with Jay from their computer to his. Grant is a photographer from Truckee, California visit his website to see more of his amazing work. Here is an email from him regarding his experience.

Lahontan Lake State Recreational Raw © Grant Kaye

I recently discovered a unique and affordable educational opportunity offered by renowned nature and architectural photographer Jay Goodrich. Using  Skype or iChat, Jay will work with you step by step in mastering one of your own images for only $95. The day before our session, I sent Jay a gallery of images from my last two weeks of shooting, and he picked one that he thought would benefit the most from his expertise and approach to processing. The image, was a long exposure shot at dusk after a heavy rain at an eroded shoreline of Lahontan Lake State Recreational area outside of Fallon, NV. While pleased with the composition, I wasn’t quite able to get it to “pop” in a way that conveyed the gloomy, melancholy – yet beautiful – feelings I experienced when making the exposure.

We decided to use my preferred editing suite of Camera Raw in Photoshop (he prefers Lightroom), and after working through some technical difficulties due to my internet connection, Jay brought up my image on his screen, shared it with me on mine, and began to tailor the lesson specifically to my needs. While I have a solid understanding of the fundamentals of digital image processing, I could tell after a few minutes of watching Jay’s workflow on my image that I stood to learn a great deal by observing a master of his craft attack an image of mine. After going through the standards and basic techniques of white balancing and subtle exposure adjustments in Camera Raw, the real performance began in Photoshop as Jay deftly removed dust and then selectively enhanced color and contrast, all via curves adjustment layers expertly applied through selectively shaped masks. As he worked, Jay shared the reasoning behind his adjustments as he made them, answered my many questions, and gently reiterated his objective of utilizing the different processing techniques with the overarching goal of keeping the “statement” of my image in mind. We discussed what I was trying to say with my image, how I wanted the viewer to view it, and how he could tailor his processing steps to best meet those goals.

Lahontan Lake State Recreational Mastered in Photoshop CS5 © Grant Kaye

As the session drew to a close, I was extremely pleased with Jay’s processing. I felt the resulting image spoke clearly and powerfully in ways that my original attempt did not. Jay sent along the PSD file with his adjustments intact so I can examine them more closely at my leisure.  In the end, I gained invaluable knowledge that I will now have in my toolset to apply to future images, and I even learned a few incredibly useful new keyboard shortcuts. We can all use more of those!

Screen Shot of Layers in Photoshop CS5 CLICK TO ENLARGE

The Thermal Waters of Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone NP, © Jay Goodrich

Continuing my exploration of Adobe’s new CS5 Master Collection from a recent first post of ours, I have discovered a newly reinvented friend in Photoshop CS5. The Spot Healing Brush Tool has, up until now, never been my favorite tool to fix and remove dust, branches, etc. from an image. It just never seemed to get it right, unless I was using it to clone dust out of a clear blue sky. Now Adobe has brought this tool back from the “Darkside” and in the process made my job of cloning things out of an image almost too easy. If you roll over the above image you will see what I am talking about. In the past cleaning up an image like the above one would have taken hours and the use of multiple tools and possibly layers to get everything right. This morning it was about a 15 minute project and the new image looks almost perfect.

The key to the Spot Healing Brush is in one of the dialogs at the tool’s top menu named Type. In this dialog, a new option has surfaced and it is aptly named Content-Aware. I have to tell you that it works like magic. I don’t know how those brainiac people at Adobe came up with this one, but it is truly amazing to work with on an image.

A simple click and drag is all it took to remove all of the unwanted items in the above photograph. The image above is about color, texture, and lines. With the Content-Aware option for the Spot Healing Brush Tool I was able to make the image solely about that and not about the sticks that have made their way into the waters over time. Soon I will discuss using another tool where this option exists and works just as amazingly–Content-Aware Fill. It allows you to fill any selection and it works like magic too!