Snapshots and modern expectations

[Monica Dream]

For SL I very rarely use post processing, I don't really use it for RL photography either. If an image needs lots of post processing to make it look good, it probably wasn't a great composition in the first place. If you want good snaps in SL I think it can help to look at tutorials about composition in photography, give yourself some ideas of stuff you can try in SL.

Great idea. I do photography IRL too (not as much as I used to, but still) but I'm not sure I have great chops there either. It's something I want to learn and I do look for and read guides from time to time.

Be aware of what excites you about a location, or about a subject or an outfit you're taking a picture of. That might turn out to be your focal point, or where you want the viewer to look. You might find more possible focal areas as you explore, but the things that jump out at you first are worth remembering.

Look around a scene or location for a few minutes before you take any pictures. Look at things from different angles, heights etc. You can also play with 'framing' images eg aiming the camera through the branches of a tree/some flowers, or down a narrow street etc. I'd do all that before I start working with the lighting settings, or spend too long on an outfit or props. Give yourself time to find ideas of what you want to do with the image or what you're trying to say. Even if it is just "look at this cool outfit!" if you know what the focus is and you've selected some good viewpoints, you can then play with lighting and inventory items to really bring that out.

I find SL photography a lot like in RL - it takes practice learning to use the camera and the settings you have available, but it's worth spending time to learn that so you're not dependent on filters and post. Post can make some things that extra bit sexier, and sometimes you can't do what you need without it. But I don't think it should be the main feature of a picture. Also, it can be a time consuming pain in the backside, which is why I really avoid it wherever possible

Post is a complete pain in the rear -and given how many tools we have in the viewer I kinda resent the need for it.

Thank you for the advice -those are some great tips. A couple I already knew but I hadn't quite thought out as well as you explained (I could be better with framing, basically).

Thank you so much!

 

[Monica Dream]

I pretty much always do a bit of color correction fiddling on RL photographs, simply because neither film nor digital camera sensors seem to match the colors I see.

I'm not even sure what to make of this. My vision IRL is getting sketchy so I'm finding that I trust the camera more than I trust myself.

It's a legit problem that I'm not sure how to fix.

The flip side of that -and I suspect that this applies to you, is I have no idea about color pallettes etc. I'm guessing you have more indepth knowlege of that and/or a better idea of how that works. For the most part I just tend to trust what I see on the photograph unless it's wildly different from what I know something should look like (that mostly applies inworld, and with windlight).

 

[Kalel]

I half agree with you. Probably 80% of my snapshots are intended more for blogging (kinda) than for being artistic. I'm showing what I'm doing (because my memory is shit), or I'm showing off an event ("hey! look! more than 3 people in opensim! woot!"). In those cases I'm totally fine with simply taking the shot and moving on.

I'm asking because I look at the various groups on flickr and realize that I don't quite have the chops, my photos aren't good enough to post. In those cases; where I want to participate in the different groups, I think it's necessary to know and to do some post-work. To avoid looking dated, if nothing else.

don't be so hard on yourself.... Your not alone.. I'd love to be able to pull off those amazing pictures you see on flickr. it can be quite a drool fest. youtube only gets you so far. theres definitely elements you won't find in a sl tutorial, it just takes alot of practice and playing with the tools you have.....Some of those that i spoke to have a dedicated artist bakground and easily spend 5 hours in photoshop on a single snapshot. Theres is quite a few people on flickr who enjoy posting raw shots without editing. practice groups that sometimes share how they do edits, green screens and various other techniques..

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

I'm not even sure what to make of this.

I just took a picture of my cubicle wall. My phone camera decided it was a pretty much pure grey, like the left side, but what I see with my eye is slightly yellow with maybe a hint of green, like on the right side which I tweaked a little to match.

 

[Ailsa Muliaina]

I pretty much always do a bit of color correction fiddling on RL photographs, simply because neither film nor digital camera sensors seem to match the colors I see.

That's always a pain to deal with. I'm not sure how the newest cameras are, but I know we had 3 cameras until recently and they all had their weaknesses with sensors. If the camera has some manual controls it's sometimes possible to tweak it to compensate, but we've had a few that were just better suited to indoors or outdoors. Current camera isn't as good indoors and has a slight issue with yellow flowers, but I don't really have to correct it otherwise.

 

[Monica Dream]

don't be so hard on yourself.... Your not alone.. I'd love to be able to pull off those amazing pictures you see on flickr. it can be quite a drool fest. youtube only gets you so far. theres definitely elements you won't find in a sl tutorial, it just takes alot of practice and playing with the tools you have.....Some of those that i spoke to have a dedicated artist bakground and easily spend 5 hours in photoshop on a single snapshot. Theres is quite a few people on flickr who enjoy posting raw shots without editing. practice groups that sometimes share how they do edits, green screens and various other techniques..

Thanks - and yes it is.

I know there's a lot of folks with a formal art background -meaning degrees who have taken classes in theory and such. I haven't and I don't worry too much about them.

I need to find some of the group you're talking about! I know a woman who has a corporate background and I think knows some theory but I am not sure if she has the whole degree or not. She's done some great virtual photographs -very artistic, and we had a conversation on flickr and she said she does no post-work either.

Green screens are another thing I didn't think about. I know the theory and what they're for (I even did something similar for an exhibit where I made cut-outs; that woulda gone easier if I'd have remembered how to do them the right way) but never thought of applying them to virtual photography.

Thanks!

 

[Tiffy Vella]

Pre mesh head, I used to photoshop alllll my nostrils to make them a normal plump shape rather than the squishy triangles of the system avatar. Liquefy can be so useful for small distractions like that. Thank god those days are over and i have beeyootiful shame-free nostrils now.
I tend to use print screen rather than use the snapshot tool, but this is perhaps because 99% of the images I make are for vendors, and so a very specific composition is needed. I'll use 2 avatars- one to set up the items to be photographed, and a second one to sit on a box with graphics turned up. The second one is really acting as the shot cam, and she keeps the shot consistent. So on one monitor, I'll be setting everything up, and on the other is just the scene to be copied to Photoshop. I tend to stick to default windlight and don't do a lot in post for this type of photography as it needs to be representational rather than aspirational.
One thing i will do in post for vendor shots is composition, and sometimes mock ups of DoF so that backgrounds are muted and don't distract from the subject. (I'll take the photo in layers inworld so that they can selectively be blurred in post, keeping the subject sharp.)
Vanity shots and pretty SL landscapes are different, and i don't do may of those as i tend to get bogged down in otgher things. It would be fun to take the time one day to learn to do more of that style, as i really enjoy playing with images. What i see on Flickr can be very impressive.

 

[Tiffy Vella]

Ok, just had a bit of a play in SL and here's some highlights of my process.

.....

All in all i feel i've improved the image without taking too much out of the instant version of the image. Feel free to comment - good or bad.

Thanks so much for posting this! I really appreciate the clear explanation. I've always promised myself that one day I'll an inworld photography/image manipulation course, but time gets away from me.

 

[Ashiri]

I just took a picture of my cubicle wall. My phone camera decided it was a pretty much pure grey, like the left side, but what I see with my eye is slightly yellow with maybe a hint of green, like on the right side which I tweaked a little to match.

It looks like the camera is automatically changing the colour balance to what it thinks is correct. Our brains do the same.

 

[Essence Lumin]

A thread such as this makes me very nervous about returning to SL. I understand appearance is important for a lot of people but worry I just look ridiculous, so don't return.

 

[OrinB]

A thread such as this makes me very nervous about returning to SL. I understand appearance is important for a lot of people but worry I just look ridiculous, so don't return.

I think looking how you want is one of the easiest things in SL to keep doing. Don't let others perceptions interfere.

Most of SL is still a haven for people making the most of what they have. The other stuff is incredibly superficial.

 

[Clara D.]

A thread such as this makes me very nervous about returning to SL. I understand appearance is important for a lot of people but worry I just look ridiculous, so don't return.

Eh, to Hell with em

Unless you hang out with the Fashionista "frenemy" crowd it's not that big a deal.

(This is from a rubberized/feminized "doll" squirrel whose alt is either a furry dragon-demon-thing or a grubby-as-hell-mutant )

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Eh, to Hell with em

Unless you hang out with the Fashionista "frenemy" crowd it's not that big a deal.

(This is from a rubberized/feminized "doll" squirrel whose alt is either a furry dragon-demon-thing or a grubby-as-hell-mutant )

Having a Fuck Off handy is a very useful tool.

And after using it and you get banned? This is a desirable result. And after using it you do the banning? This is also a desirable result, fun too!

 

[Da5id Weatherwax]

I just took a picture of my cubicle wall. My phone camera decided it was a pretty much pure grey, like the left side, but what I see with my eye is slightly yellow with maybe a hint of green, like on the right side which I tweaked a little to match.

There is absolutely no substitute for getting the white balance on your camera right for RL digital photography.

I'm going to date myself horribly here but back in the early 80s I was engineering boss for the student TV station at my college. Our campus - and studio - was literally a hundred yards down the road from the BBC's Manchester studios and we were lucky enough to get both mentoring from old-school broadcast engineers AND a lot of their cast-off equipment - something that was perfectly serviceable for a student station could well have degraded in regular use to no longer be up to "broadcast quality" from their point of view.

They drilled us like sergeant-majors on getting two things right for feeding a decent video signal from our cameras - both of which are equally applicable to digital photography today. No matter what you do down the line, it will look like shit if the black level on any color channel is out of whack. Once the zero level is right you have to balance the gain on each color channel so that white is genuinely white and no channel is overloaded by a uniform white field.

Now, back then you actually had to do all those adjustments yourself, although the camera would usually help you out by having a white-balance preset that you could trigger by pointing it at a white sheet of paper and telling it "this is 100% white" but that would only get you close. Doing these adjustments manually was a royal pain, but at least it meant that you could. On today's digital cameras, both still and video, you can't. They come loaded with presets for the color temp of the lighting, which are "tweaked" to account for the different sensitivities to different wavelengths between the eye and the camera's CCD, but you cannot adjust those settings when they get it slightly wrong.

And I don't mind admitting it bugs the snot out of me when I have to do those adjustments in post on my RL digital photos rather than being able to set up my camera right.

 

[Tiffy Vella]

A thread such as this makes me very nervous about returning to SL. I understand appearance is important for a lot of people but worry I just look ridiculous, so don't return.

Essence, I tried to post a piccy of my bogan avatar so you know we don't have to be on point at all times, but Flickr isn't having any of that. Just do you.

 

[Maitimo]

I don't do a lot of post-processing on my pics but I do spend a lot of time finding the right location, setting up the pose and composition, windlight and sometimes attached lights to get the best effect. On Firestorm I used the Animare hud to adjust poses but in Black Dragon it's much easier with the built-in poser. I reckon my ratio is about 75% setting up and 25% post-processing.

Post-processing, I usually find that I need to raise the brightness, contrast and saturation at least a little. I use Paintshop Pro which has a tool called "Smart Photo Fix" which is effectively these tools, plus sharpness, all together in one window, and I find that very quick. Sometimes I need to do some "repairs", if hair is clipping through a collar or there's an alpha glitch. I use the Warp tool (PSP's equivalent of Liquify) and Clone a lot for that sort of fix.

Occasionally I'll add some graininess or a vignette, and very occasionally I'll use the snapshot "depth" option to mark areas for masking if I want to treat some areas of the pic different from others.

Here's an example I used that for. This is the raw snapshot:

I took a Depth shot as well (the black and white one, can't show you it here because I deleted it) and pasted it as a layer over the original, and used that to mask out the foreground (me, the railing and the deck I'm standing on). Then I raised the brightness, saturation and contrast on both areas, but did so to a greater degree on the unmasked background.

This is the final result:

The slight lens flare on the left isn't post-processing, that's from a setting in Black Dragon, but I liked it so I kept it in.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

If that was a RL photo you'd have to photoshop the duck out of it to make it look that good. The person would just be a dark blob with the sun behind.

 

[Maitimo]

If that was a RL photo you'd have to photoshop the duck out of it to make it look that good. The person would just be a dark blob with the sun behind.

Indeed. I actually took another shot (well I took several, but kept two) and on that one I darkened the foreground instead of brightening it, to get that exact effect. Added depth of field to that one too (forgot it on the first one).

 

[Val]

I have to admit I have a superpower - my eyes are so out of alignment that I see sun rays and flares thus ... can take cool photos with them. That is the extent of my superpowers because I had been overediting photos and SL snapshots all my life because I just like editing. My blacks always were a bit off and never was satisfied with them ... and I had learned that I somehow gotten one daltonic eye as an adult. Not that knowing that helps as cameras and lighting are tricky and I have loads of different sensors on them. My tip is to edit anything just so you are pleased not how you compare to others and if you like someone else's work - try replicating the effect as a sort of exercise to learn the process (but probably not for upload ). Cass, you mentioned, is probably not the best person to compare as she loves Photoshop as much as I do and I recall her once doing a speed-edit on her channel which had been a process that would take hours (I do similar stuff to her and takes me that long, however she is much, much better than me). Ironically, same as people in thread, she is also a professional photographer. However, it is more amusing a lot of BBC media editors / producers ended in SL (*raises hand for BBC Glasgow*) but my little nook had equipment issues so we never got to use the more manual cameras (they got stolen :|) . I think it is possible to adjust white balance in few modern cameras but the mirrorless ones are ... quite automated and not micro-adjustable unlike mirror ones. However, I found the last none-online Lightroom does the job with colours well both for raws and SL .

 

[lucagrabacr]

It depends on what you define as modern. If graphical fidelity is your aim, then decent graphics settings coupled with good composition and good editing will just do the trick. If what you mean by modern is what the art or photograph itself project or convey, then that depends on whether or not the overall art resonates with certain modern sensibilities and is subjective to the evaluation of certain modern viewers and views

Here's one that I made recently and uploaded to my dA page, in my subjective point of view it is modern both in term of graphical fidelity and overall construct