Nikon has two new cameras coming this October and we’re finally getting confirmation of what was basically just a set of rumors a couple of weeks back.

The full-frame mirrorless Nikon Z6 II and Z7 II will arrive on October 14 and, as PetaPixel reports, the two models are expected to basically be “incremental” updates over the current models. That said, we do have some idea of what kinds of features to expect.

Nikon Rumors has found that the new Z6 II and Z7 II will have one CFexpress and one SD card slot and improved autofocus for face, eye, and animal detection. We’ve also got dual EXPEED processors, better max frame rates, larger buffer, and 4K/60p video.

The website dedicated to everything Nikon also reported that the Z6 II will be the last camera to use the 24MP sensor from Sony. That’s not really much of a shocker to anyone that has paid attention to the camera market of late.

So far we don’t have any idea on what kind of pricing these models are looking at but best estimates place them within the ballpark of current models and within range of competing cameras. Of course, we won’t have to wait for very long to find out what’s going on with these two cameras as the October reveal date is just around the corner. One thing is sure, even though COVID-19 has slowed down the industry considerably this year, it doesn’t seem to have put a dent into the product reveal schedule.

Are you excited about the Nikon Z6 II and Z7 II? Let us know your thoughts on this in the comments section below if you like.

Be sure to check out our other photography news on Light Stalking by clicking this link right here.

[PetaPixel]

The ongoing protests against the government in Belarus are some of the most powerful photographic and video images from 2020 and that’s saying a lot given how this year has gone.

Mobilized against long-time President Aleksander Lukashenko, protestors in Belarus want free and open elections as well as for the man many call Europe’s “last dictator” to step down, among other things.

Situations like this can’t help but divide the public between those that are loyal to the regime and those that support the protests. On top of that, it is hard to deny the much larger resources one group has over the other in a fight like this. After all, it isn’t like the protestors themselves have the powers of the state behind them.

Yet some in the movement against Lukashenko are using technology to even the odds and this just happens to be AI that can identify a riot police officer using nothing more than the person’s eyes.

Belarussian artist Andrew Maximov became famous after posting a video to YouTube showing how to do just this.

Using the same principles as the technology that police use to identify protestors and “rioters,” PetaPixel points out that civil rights groups often criticize authorities for the tech’s inaccuracies. We could only assume that those same errors are present in the version Maximov is encouraging protestors to use nonetheless it is hard to deny that this is basically tit for tat.

What do you think of this novel use of AI by protestors in Belarus? Let us know your thoughts on this story in the comments section below if you like.

Be sure to check out our other photography news on Light Stalking by clicking this link right here.

[PetaPixel]

We’ve got some more advances from the world of AI and photography. This time it is artificial intelligence capable of generating an image from a simple text caption.

As the DPReview article notes, these images don’t always make sense. Nonetheless, it is seen as a huge leap for AI tech.

Developed and studied by the Allen Institute for AI (AI2) (created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen), the study looked at how the AI would handle missing information or interpret text information to discover that missing element in the photo. Using OpenAI with its GPT-3 system, researchers would teach it how to interpret data and extrapolate it based upon inferences drawn from the AI’s previous work. One example demonstrated a clocktower and buildings around it. All of them were quite crudely composed as they were generated by the artificial intelligence itself but the image demonstrates the AI’s connection of clock towers with urban or populated areas.

From the engineers’ own study:

“Interestingly, our analysis leads us to the conclusion that LXMERT in its current form does not possess the ability to paint – it produces images that have little resemblance to natural images.

We introduce X-LXMERT that builds upon LXMERT and enables it to effectively perform discriminative as well as generative tasks … When coupled with our proposed image generator, X-LXMERT is able to generate rich imagery that is semantically consistent with the input captions. Importantly, X-LXMERT’s image generation capabilities rival state-of-the-art image generation models (designed only for generation), while its question-answering capabilities show little degradation compared to LXMERT.”

As DPReview notes (and as we have reported on multiple occasions), AI can already generate images on its own but what makes this novel is that it is taking text and then referencing that back to concepts within an image. That’s a whole new ballgame and one that makes you wonder what this kind of technology will be able to do in the future.

You can check out the study for yourself by clicking here.

Is AI the future of everything, including photography? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below if you like.

Be sure to check out some of our other photography news on Light Stalking by clicking this link right here.

[DPReview]

Photography is fraught with danger no matter what you’re capturing.

That maxim was proven true when a couple and their photographer had the whole thing wrecked – literally – by a passing cyclist zooming by them while on the Brooklyn Bridge.

To be fair, you probably shouldn’t take pictures in the middle of any thoroughfare but, then again, it’s always incumbent upon the person in a vehicle to be cognizant of pedestrians in front of and around them.

Chris Vigo was proposing to his girlfriend Angelina Rivera and, just as he was about to ask the big question, the photographer friend on hand stepped into an active bike lane and got run over, PetaPixel reports.

Everyone walked away from the incident unscathed and now the proposal is part of the larger library of viral clips. And, just in case anyone was wondering, Angelina said “Yes” to Chris’ proposal. For what it’s worth, most proposals don’t go viral for this kind of reason so, all in all, a pretty wholesome transaction since no one got hurt in the end.

You can watch the video from Inside Edition by clicking here.

It is sort of similar to that story we brought you a while back except for sans wedding proposal and in the middle of a railroad track instead. You can check that story out here in case you missed it.

Have you ever had something like this happen to you while you were on a shoot? Let us know your story (and your thoughts on this story) in the comments section below.

Be sure to check out our other photography news articles on Light Stalking by clicking this link right here.

[PetaPixel]

Any work that we process is completed following a particular methodology in order to achieve perfection. You actually follow a workflow from start to finish, completing various steps in between. In this article, we will look at the “Photoshop Workflow” for efficient post processing.

So, What Is A Workflow?

It is a sequence of processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion. This applies to almost anything we do and the same applies to photography and post processing.

Not everyone sticks to a particular workflow when it comes to photography and there is no standard workflow. Each photographer develops their own depending on how they work and what works best for them.

When it comes to digital photography, the workflow is the process from creation of the image to the end product and it has many steps involved, such as:

Our main focus here is the post processing stage which also has its own workflow. Whatever is your workflow, consistency is an important factor that needs to be considered with regards to post processing.

Once you have created an effective workflow that works best for you, stick with it! This will ensure that you handle your images the same way each time.

A workflow that is convenient for another person or myself, might not work for you or another photographer. So create your own! But, you can pick up ideas from others.

One also needs to consider the fact that there are various types of software used by different photographers to post process images. The one that we will be focusing on today is Adobe Photoshop.

When it comes to post processing, you do not randomly drag sliders to achieve the effects that you need, but follow a neat workflow.

Also, when post processing, you do not randomly select images – you go through the process of backing up, culling, rating, tagging, keywording, copyrighting, then post processing and exporting. So all these come under the post processing workflow!

Here Is The General Photography Workflow

A general photography workflow that most photographers follow is similar to the one below. Depending on projects, tasks or client requests, the workflow may slightly vary for each photographer and genre.

You need to focus on the following:

• Camera settings
• Gear setup
• Capturing the images
• File transfer or backing up the images

Camera settings, gear setup and capturing the images

When shooting images, at least try to choose the right exposure settings, metering modes and temperature. You can otherwise get them right in post, if you shoot raw. Adobe has a powerful Camera Raw option that can be used to efficiently post process the images. So the best bet would be to shoot raw, to be on the safe side. Raw images have so much information in them that you can pull out many details.

File transfer / backing up

Once the photographing part is done you need to transfer your images and back them up. Transferring files to the computer can be done efficiently / easily with the use of a card reader. Some people may connect the camera directly to the computer, but this is a slow process and it can drain your camera’s battery.

Quick tip: Always safely remove/eject the card to avoid errors or your card getting corrupted.

The next process after copying is backing up the images you have carefully composed and captured. Everyone has their own way of doing this. Some people have a back up on DVDs, some on external Hard Disks and some on cloud storage. Whatever be your method, just do it before you format your memory card.

Once all the above processes are complete, you can focus on the post processing part and here is where the actual workflow starts!

Photoshop Post Processing Workflow

For a photoshop post processing workflow, it is about how we go from a raw file to a final edited image. You need to have a clear structure in mind about how you want to go about the whole process, and this will allow you to be more creative. You need to think about what you need to do first, for example contrast adjustments or colour correction.

A complete workflow comprises of a few stages that involve a bunch of tasks to be performed at each stage.

Importing, culling and rating images

This is a very important step and crucial for an efficient workflow, especially if you shoot a bunch of images (few hundreds to thousands). Import your images into your post processing software to get them ready to be processed.

For Photoshop, import the images in Adobe Bridge. Delete the images that you think are not usable; for example out of focus, under or overexposed, badly composed, etc.

Now that you have a set of images that are useful you can rate them. You can either use star rating or use different colours to flag the images depending on purpose.

To rate the images: While you are in Adobe Bridge, in the folder which is ready for culling -> Hit Spacebar -> and tap any number between 1 to 5 for rating.

If you are ready to go straight to post processing from here, then hit spacebar -> Hit Enter to take these images to Photoshop or Camera Raw.

Tagging, keywording and copyrighting

Once you have culled and rated your images, the next step is to apply your copyright information and keyword search information to your images. Since the images are yours, just create a metadata template which has your copyright information.

To create a metadata template,

File -> File info -> Metadata dialogue box opens.

Add copyright information and any additional metadata information that you want to apply to the image and click “OK”.

To apply your copyright information,

Select the images in Adobe Bridge -> Go to Tools -> Append Metadata. This will apply your copyright information to the image.

If you want to replace metadata, “Replace Metadata” option will help you accomplish that.

A quick Tip: Adobe Bridge can be very slow when loading thumbnails and metadata information from a folder that has many RAW files. Here is something that you can do during the first import, to save time. It is the “Export Cache” option.

Tools -> Cache -> Export Cache and save this information in the folder.

Next time you open up this folder in Adobe Bridge, it will be much quicker as it will collect information from the saved cache file.

Pre-visualisation

Do you wish to speed up your post processing and save time? Well, then pre-visualisation is something that will help you although not always possible.

If you have captured something on purpose, with an idea in mind and know what you want out of your images, then you can quickly make these adjustments while post processing. Pre-visualise the colours you wish to have, exposure, contrast, mood and sharpness settings and anything you wish to change in the image. Just work through them quickly when post processing.

In the process below, you can see how an image can be improved with a few adjustments in Camera Raw within 5 minutes.

Post Processing

A normal post processing workflow should look something like below:

The post processing part is the major step, where you will be fine tuning your images and getting them ready for export or to be printed. Open up or import the images based upon your rating into Adobe Camera RAW.

Note: If you are not shooting raw, then you should start doing it because raw files contain all the information you can work with so you can get the best output. Also, you need to make the basic adjustments in Camera Raw before importing the images into Photoshop because it gives you all the necessary sliders that you can easily work with!

The first step would be to straighten the image if required and crop to get the right composition. Also clean up any distracting spots, elements, dust specks, etc. in the image.

Adjust the colour temperature and tint if they seem incorrect or awkward.

Next, adjust the exposure, highlights, shadows, whites and blacks. Adjust the clarity if required and then work with the vibrance and saturation sliders. Making these basic adjustments will itself bring a huge improvement to your images.

Next adjustment would be using the tone curve especially for landscapes, where you can adjust the highlights and shadows to bring some contrast and depth to the image.

Again, if you are working with landscape images, your next step should be using graduated filters so that you can bring out details and colours in the sky.

Or if the foreground looks dark and dull, you can bring out details in the foreground using this filter and then make changes to basic adjustments like exposure, shadows, highlights, vibrance, etc.

If there are specific areas that need local adjustments, use the brush tool.

If you do not want to make these adjustments here, you can also do it after you open the image in Photoshop with the help of layer masks.

Use the HSL panel to fine tune colours in the image. Using the lens correction panel you can make adjustments to distortions and also remove or add vignetting. This depends on what you have visualised for your final image.

Note: Camera RAW has all these basic panels discussed above with sliders that can be applied to the image, but if you wish to make basic adjustments in Lightroom, do that and then import your images to Photoshop.

Once all the adjustments are made in Camera Raw, click on “Open Image” and it should open the image in Photoshop.

As much as possible, use layers and Adjustment Layers while working on Curves and HSL, dodging, burning, etc. There is a whole lot you can do with adjustment layers.

Curves are very important tool that can help get the correct tonal range in your images. You can also apply curve settings to specific areas of the image using layer masks. And of course you have the option to play around with individual colour channels here.

Experiment with different Blending Modes for different moods in the images. These modes have control over how the current layer blends with the layers beneath it.

Adjust the opacity of layers to fine tune the effects of layers and get the right look/feel in the images.

Once the adjustments are done, finishing touches like sharpening and removing noise can be applied. Also, crop the image to the desired composition if you haven't done it and remove unwanted distracting elements and dust specks. Photoshop has highly efficient tools that will help you remove unwanted elements from a scene.

Before exporting your image, zoom in to 100% and check every part of the image for any errors, distractions or other issues as these can show up and look awkward in the final image or print.

Exporting, printing and delivering

The images then need to be exported in the required size, ready for delivery to the clients or for printing purposes. You have to be careful with the colour profiles and formats when you export for various purposes like online sharing, printing, etc.

Also, do not forget to back up your exported files!

When you are a beginner in post processing, it can take a lot of time to fully understand the various steps involved in it and it can feel quite daunting. With experience, your focus should shift to creating your own workflow, saving time and enjoying more time behind the camera and not in front of the screen.

Do you have a particular post processing workflow that you follow and find it efficient? Share it with us in the comments section below!

Further Resources: