Corrugata, Red Mallee and Redwood Burl Lace

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Tanner

Member
Joined
May 17, 2006
Messages
2,307
Location
Peoria, Arizona, USA.
Nothing real special here, just a couple pens I finished lately. The first is a Closed End Ti Gold Sedona dressed in Corrugata Burl. The next is my first Fountain Pen. It's a Cambridge dressed in Redwood Burl Lace. The last is an El Grande Roller Ball dressed in Red Mallee. I really have to spend some more time in the Photography forum, the pictures are alright. I just see some of the pictures you people take and I'm thinking what the heck, are these people photographers for National Geographic. Anyway, blast away.


200831873850_Sedona%20TG%20Corragata%20Burl.jpg




0_Cambridge%20TG%20SS%20FP%20Redwood%20Burl%20Lace.jpg




200831873958_El%20Grande%20TG%20Red%20Mallee.jpg
 
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karlkuehn

Banned
Joined
Aug 7, 2007
Messages
1,848
Location
Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA.
Holy crap, great looking pens! Your photos are great, just a little washed and could be a little sharper, but overall you're in the 90th percentile I'd say!

I monkeyed around with your photos a little bit in Paint Shop Pro. They're all very different in color balance; the ultimate goal is obviously to keep your white background as white as you can. When needed, I mess around with the color balance until I get the white as close as I can to looking gray scale at least.

It's a bit rough working on images that have been compressed already because there's a couple of steps that I do before I reduce, but here's some options that you have using software to adjust color balance, brightness, contrast and sharpness. They get a bit grainy trying to sharpen them when they're this small, but you get the idea:

Original:
200831873850_Sedona%20TG%20Corragata%20Burl.jpg

Edited:
Tanner1.jpg

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Original:
0_Cambridge%20TG%20SS%20FP%20Redwood%20Burl%20Lace.jpg

Edited:
Tanner2.jpg

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Original:
200831873958_El%20Grande%20TG%20Red%20Mallee.jpg

Edited:
Tanner3.jpg


I'm no expert, but I'm learning. So far, I've been sticking to a set of rules that help me get faster at editing because I always follow the same formula. It's easy for me to get kind of confused if I just start editing the bazillion things you can do without a plan of action. The steps I take when I have to use software to adjust a photo are in this order, although I don't always do every one of them, just those that I think it needs:

1) Crop to frame without compressing/reducing image size
2) Adjust brightness/contrast as desired - doing this now gives you the best blend of any color changes, as there's more pixels to work with between color changes
3) Adjust color balance as needed
4) Adjust to final image size - this is where it blurs the picture a little bit, which seems to help with blending any color changes from the last step
5) Adjust sharpness to bring focus back to the redrawn lines and colors

One thing I can see that you can try straightaway, if you've got the room in the booth to do it - bring your pen and prop farther forward to get some longer depth of field between your pen and the background. This should make it easier for the camera to focus on the foreground (your pen) instead of picking up texture from the background.

Hope that helps a little! :)
 

Tanner

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Joined
May 17, 2006
Messages
2,307
Location
Peoria, Arizona, USA.
Thanks for the comments, and Karl, thanks for the photo help. I do have Photoshop 6, however I have not been playing with the color balance or sharpness. It looks like I need to. I play with the shutter speed as I'm looking at the viewfinder and it ends up somewhere between 13 and 30. It's set to macro. The aperture value is at 7.1. Mine only goes to 8 on this camera. It's a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H5. ISO and white balance are set to auto. Light is set to daylight. I have a gray card, I did not use it for these photos. My background is nothing more than a piece of paper that I printed white to dark gray gradient.
 

jhs494

Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2006
Messages
566
Location
Ohio, USA.
Very nice group of pens. The first is a real eye catcher. That it a really pretty blank. Awesome job on all three.
Keep up the great work and thank you for sharing them with us.
 

constamj

Member
Joined
Feb 18, 2008
Messages
129
Location
Ashburn, Virginia, USA.
Really nice pens. I really like the closed end.

As for photo editing that is really cheap (i.e. FREE), check out Picasa2. There are some great features in the product and it makes these type of changes really easy. I have the entire Creative Suite v3, but I regularly use Picasa2 to perform basic photo work. It does a great job.
 
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