Concert photos, both for beginners and slightly more experienced

So, next post. First off, thanks to the subscribing and reading people so far - especially Danny for the encouragement that directly lead me to starting the blog  ^^,

What i will be going through in this entry is quite simply how i like to work with my concert pictures, then how i tend to edit normal concerts (by that i mean concerts that aren't extreme metal, symphonies or anything of that sort).

The first, and possibly the most central, part of getting a good batch (at least for me)  is to show up really early, get to the front row early, and stay there. Being rather short, i also like my platform boots as they give me enough height to avoid looking completely up the band's nostrils (after all, who really wants a picture of their nose hairs?) and at the same time keep people from stomping all over my toes. Sudden jumping around after a harder stomp does, in most of the cases, not produce a very sharp picture.

One thing though about the selection process that can possibly be a challenge is giving the overexposed and underexposed photos just as much of a chance as the correct ones, but i'll show why i think they're important to include further down. You may like it or you may not - both possible outcomes are fine.

Another thing you might have noticed in concerts is the smoke that just looks absolutely [censored, for the love of most things good] awesome as it drifts around the stage making different coloured flames and mist surround the band - and, when looking at the photos, the disappointment of seeing how it's not showing nearly as well as you had hoped no matter how you set your curves. But fear not - this is the first thing i'm going to go through.

Here's how the picture looks before starting to bring the smoke out. What i've done so far is quite simply some recovery and exposure correction in the raw converter, fixed the lens vignetting and done some basic retouch (larger "isoballs", unwanted dust in the air).

Not a complete disaster, but it could be better. A lot better. First, let's copy the layer and change the blending mode to overlay. Then it looks about like this:

This is kind of needless to say, but obviously this is way more than what we're looking for. The contrast is nice, but the saturation is way too much - so what we're going to do is to make a copy of our merged layers (ctrl+alt+shift+e on pc, cmd+alt+shift+e on mac) and set that to luminousity, then hide or delete the overlay layer. 1 mask later and it looks like this:

And that's how it looks. Now, i'm not too keen on the extremely bright colour the face ended up with, so i'm going to open up another version of it, try to fix it with the white balance and mask that in on top. After that i'll goof around with curves and satauration until i have what i want, then sharpen the face a little. Here's the final result:

Ta-daaaah. The band is Kakke og DeMonica.

Now, another thing i'm going to add is what to do with brutally under- and overexposed shots that some would probably write off as useless. Since i use pretty much the same technique as the previous, i will only show the result this time. (If someone wants more details though i could add that in a later post, although it would pretty much be a copy/summary of this.)

Got yourself a mighty lensflare and an overexposed picture? Fear not, pretend this is precisely what you intended, call it art if you need, and assume people believe you. If you don't express that this is what you intended in the first place, nobody else will either.

'

There. Anything else you'd like to see covered? Just tell in a comment and i'll see what i can do.

Useful upgrades

For a long time it has been bothering me how my mouse didn't quite respond as i wanted it to, that the mousepad was neither steady nor precise, how the keyboard shortcuts are often not as short and reachable as i'd like them to be, how the wrist starts to ache after a while... Then later how the cable on the drawing board kept breaking and the pen is always at the bottom of the sofa at any given time. I'm sure you can relate to that in one way or another. So, i decided to settle this once and for all with the mouse. I gave away the old mouse and mousepad to my mother, then proceeded to the electronics store for a nice upgrade. Here's what came out of it:

Gaming mouse, steelpad. And, to ease up the wrist pressure, a bike glove (as i couldn't find proper gaming gloves). Logitech MX518, s&s steelpad. Although it's marketed mainly towards gamers, this comes in handy for photoshoppers as well. Let's take a closer look at the mouse.

As you can tell from the picture, the buttons are customizable, which reduces the need to use the keyboard or sidebar menus as often. It's also more ergonomic and precise than the regular mouse.

Next out, the steelpad. For those who have never heard of such thing, it's a more advanced mousepad. It's stiffer, so if needed you can keep it in your lap and still have a relatively straight surface to work on. The grip to the table is an awful lot better than the average ones (i've even tried to move it with the "dj-scratching" method, and it didn't move a millimetre). Included are some little dots called padsurfers, that make the mouse (when attached under it)  move even smoother across it. It also boosts the preciseness of the mouse.

Last there's the gaming glove. As a biking glove is relatively similar in its construction, this is my temporary solution and what i will be basing this section on. It eases tension on the wrist, which is one of the first things to tire in a longer photoshop session - at least it is for me. It also gives some more grip on the mouse, which of course is useful as you tire and would otherwise keep sliding down until you hardly reach the buttons.

All in all, these will improve both the stamina, efficiency and preciseness - and, as a bonus, it looks awesome.

Questions are more than welcome.

Until next time, live long and prosper.

- Gunn