Vegas As A Photo Editor

[budwzr]

I hope I'm not embarrassing myself for being the last person on earth to discover this, but I did a "baby shoot" the other day, and did some greenscreen shots too.

Well, as fate would have it, some of the shots had lighting issues and I couldn't pull a perfect mask on the green using my regular tools. So I got nervous thinking I might have to reshoot some material, and that would expose me as the amateur that I am, and the customer might get annoyed by the inconvenience, ask for a discount, and all hell could break loose.

So anyways, I remembered the excellent Secondary Color Corrector in Vegas and wished my Photo software worked as well, and then I realized, Hey! Vegas supports 4K images and I can render as a PNG!!!! Whoo-hoo!!!

So I did ALL the photo work in Vegas and it came out great.

P.S. Baby shoots are a tough gig, and this baby was "fuggly" too, if you get my meaning, so it was that much harder.

[intracube]

I do the same thing with Blender - but that's mainly down to the lacklustre development of The GIMP in recent years...

Blender's composite node system is great for complex colour correction.

[pepegot1]

Besides secondary color correction, are Levels-similar to Photoshop and an excellent tool

[budwzr]

Besides secondary color correction, are Levels-similar to Photoshop and an excellent tool

Yeah, and all the other FX too, including compositing. Unbelievable that I didn't think of this until now.

[edDV]

I also use Vegas for small still touch up. I still use Photoshop to crop and resize imagery from large stills.

[_Al_]

I also use Vegas for small still touch up. I still use Photoshop to crop and resize imagery from large stills.

Me too until I found out that it could be done wit free XnView, different flow but the same. I use XnView for manipulation with pictures, scan, print. You can sed e-mail with choice of yours and resize, couple of clicks and it sends it to Thunderbird.

That feature for resizing , pan and scan is not intuitive like in Photoshop but it is there. The trick is to set aspect ratio of target for selection tool > edit/set selection ratio, listed or custom. You choose area,crop,and then image/resize , you choose just one size then and you have pan and crop of your choice in your size. No need to fire up canon for things like that. I'm learning that free applications sometimes are what we need, like above mentioned Blender.

By the way is there some video tutorials for Blender how to work with pictures only?

[_Al_]

To stay on the subject, some tip for Vegas and images, it can quickly export resized and pan / crop image too.

Just project properties could be changed to particular size, pan/crop, export snap from timeline and then is project set back to original properties (or undo) it is effective and quick too.

[intracube]

By the way is there some video tutorials for Blender how to work with pictures only?

As you've probably noticed, most video tutorials cover features that aren't relevant to image colour correction. They also assume prior knowledge of the program - such as bringing up menus using keyboard shortcuts and not explaining what they are.

This video shows the compositing system and a few nodes, but it's not suitable for someone who's never used Blender as it skips over too many steps. I'll see if I can find some better videos tomorrow.

[_Al_]

This video shows the compositing system and a few nodes

thanks

[intracube]

I haven't found a tutorial specifically for working with pictures, but this video has a good explaination of nodes and much of the workflow still applies:
http://www.blenderguru.com/videos/introduction-to-the-compositor
0:00 - 5:52 basic introduction to nodes
5:52 - 8:10 not relevant
8:10 - working with nodes

If you want to give Blender a try, some additional info:
- immediately after switching to the compositor CTRL+left arrow (8:20) make sure 'Use nodes' is ticked in the toolbar or the node system won't be active
- click on the 'Render Layers' node and delete it: CTRL + x or just 'x' or the Delete key (not Backspace)
- to open an image: Shift + a ->Input->Image then click Open on the node to locate your image
- connect the Image node to the Output
- If you don't see a large preview of your image, press F12
- you will also need to set the output render size to be the same as your image. By default, Blender has it's own resolution and will crop or pad any image of a different size. Look for the 'Dimensions' area under the Scene properties to the right (it might be shaded/rolled up - if so click on the 'Dimensions' text) you should be able to change the X, Y resolution by CTRL + left mouse button over the X, Y boxes, entering a value, then pressing Enter to confirm.
- you can start adding nodes: Shift + a and placing them between the Image and Output nodes.
- to zoom the view of the nodes in or out, hover the mouse over the node area and use the mouse scroll wheel. Holding the middle mouse button/scroll wheel down while dragging will move the viewport around.
- you can also zoom/pan the preview
- to save an image, hover the mouse cursor over the large preview of your picture and press F3. There should be a drop down menu on the left under 'Save As Image' heading where you can change the export image format.

I've almost certainly missed something important... so if anything doesn't work as expected, ask away.

budwzr; sorry for taking your thread a bit off course

[budwzr]

Off course? Hahaha, It's exactly ON course. I should change the topic to "NLE as Photo Editor", not so much Vegas.

[budwzr]

I also use Vegas for small still touch up. I still use Photoshop to crop and resize imagery from large stills.

Yeah, me too. I want to know my exact pixel count, size in inches, and spi, when I crop. I don't want any stretching, that's for sure. Vegas, being "resolution independent", it's hard to know exactly what's going on sometimes.

Here's a sample I did, any comments are OK? These babies are tough because their skintones aren't even, they don't pose, and you have to futz with the light with one hand and shoot with the other, and you can't use a tripod unless it's a crib shot.

The parents, and Gram too, want to take different shots holding the baby, and you have to move around like a paparazzi trying to get the shot.

The upside is that the customer already loves the subject matter, so if you can get a "tender moment", that one becomes a "must have" no matter poor lighting or whatnot. This is one of those shots. A tender moment.

I thought of cropping this one more, but the elbows might get clipped, and the hands might appear odd, like coming from nowhere. This way it's clear that the baby is gazing into the eyes of the mother.

[intracube]

I should change the topic to "NLE as Photo Editor", not so much Vegas.

Blender isn't a NLE. It does have a basic integrated NLE, but this has virtually no colour controls - hence the use of the compositor.

Maybe - "NLE or Node Compositor as a photo editor".

[budwzr]

Yeah, that Blender is in a league of it's own, and you people that know it have so much creative freedom, that it's ridiculous.

[poisondeathray]

must be a different shooot , because that baby don't look so ugly to me

or did you photoshop someone else's baby in

[budwzr]

Hahaha, yeah, this is a different one. I can't post the other because it's too easy to recognize.

How does it look as far as contrast, tone, etc. I softened it from the original, which was too sharp. Does it look like a "studio" shot or homemade?

[intracube]

How does it look as far as contrast, tone, etc. I softened it from the original, which was too sharp. Does it look like a "studio" shot or homemade?

I'd go a bit brighter/warmer:

[budwzr]

Nah, too red. And baby's skin tone gets blotchy when you crank it up like that. Hahaha. I'm also trying to stay closer to a CMYK color palette because when printed, highlights tend to get dithered.

Thanks though

Edit: Forget what I wrote here. That's beyond the scope of this thread.