Single-Serving Photo

You remember the National Association of Photoshop Professionals? NAPP? Their president, Scott Kelby, is like the Photoshop guy, he teaches Photoshop and Lightroom and travels all around the world doing seminars and evangelizing for Adobe (in an indirect way, as a representative of over 30,000 people who use Photoshop professionally). He’s as close to a Photoshop guru as you can realistically get before you become Thomas Knoll or Russell Brown.

What I’m trying to say here is that you really couldn’t learn Photoshop (or Lightroom) from any better folks than Scott Kelby and his Photoshop crew (Corey Barker, Pete Collins, RC Concepcion, and of course Matt Kloskowski). Normally this type of instruction costs a few bucks or at least a trip somewhere. But not this week.

This week only, presented in a live format, Scott and his crew (he calls them “The Photoshop Guys”) are doing a series of retouching presentations that you can watch for free. This starts tonight at 6 PM EST. The presentations are, in order:

• Wedding Retouching (tonight, Dec. 5)
• Digital Makeup (Dec. 6)
• The Next Level of Retouching (Dec. 7)
• LIVE Show – Audience Participation in Q&A (Dec. 8)
• Tips from the Industry (Dec. 9)

My understanding is that the fourth presentation is the only time that The Photoshop Guys will take any questions directly from the digital audience, but all five presentations will be streamed live.

To tune in, just visit Retouching Week on Photoshop User. It looks like the video and chat feeds are having some problems at the moment, but since the event has not yet started I’m sure the IT screw at Photoshop User will be able to work out all the bugs before it gets underway tonight at 6.

I don’t know about you guys but I’ll be tuned in!

A while back I posted that cool video of how a Leica lens is hand-assembled. At the time I mentioned that I’ve never owned nor even used a Leica lens but that I respected the craftsmanship and care with which they are put together.

It occurred to me back then that I had, indeed, seen videos of Canon lenses being assembled (specifically their “L” series; I am not sure if the non-L lenses are hand-assembled or not) but I didn’t have the presence of mind to go find them.

Because I’m still mostly a Canon devotee I thought it wise to catch up with that thought and post these behind-the-scenes videos of a Canon “L” lens being assembled, yes, by hand. Truly it is a marvel of engineering and of manual dexterity at some points. Hopefully if you, too, are a Canon shooter, these videos will give you even more respect for the product you likely hold in such high regard.

This is a three-part series and takes you all the way from “how do we make sand into a lens” to “this is how we put the barrel together.”

You guys are going to love this video of the making of a Leica lens. Admittedly, I have never owned a Leica camera or lens, but their reputation is world-renowned and it’s worth seeing the care that they do put into their products. For what it’s worth, many Canon lenses are hand-assembled as well (certainly the “L” lenses are) and the effort pays off.

Leica Lenses (English) from leica camera on Vimeo.

Continuing down this path we’re on, looking into the inner workings of our photographic equipment, here is yet another fabulous video from the folks at Camera Technica showing you what the Canon 18-55mm aperture looks like when it opens and closes in slow motion. Well, somewhat slow motion. The aperture actually opens and closes so quickly that even in this high-speed video it’s still a very brief movement.

Check out Camera Technica for more about photographic technology.

The best thing about shooting in RAW is that you can “develop” the file to adjust exposure, white balance, and scores of other settings without losing much image detail. I’ve seen people do some pretty cool stuff with that ability, but those people don’t have an equally cool name, like Calvin Hollywood.

Calvin Hollywood—and yes, that’s his real name—is a prolific photographer and digital darkroom master from Heidelberg, Germany. Maybe you’ve heard of him, but I hadn’t until this morning when I ran across this tutorial he made about “double RAW conversion” wherein he loads the same RAW file processed in two different ways into Photoshop to boost image detail.

Now, this style might not be your particular cup of tea (or stein of beer, to put a German twist on it), but check out the video below, I think it’s pretty cool!