Photo Enhancement: Sunsets

I'm about to start a new series in my blog called "Photo Enhancement", which is designed to give you tips and tricks how to make your photos look better and how to avoid common pitfalls. I'll focus on the common subjects first, and today we'll take a look at sunset shots.

The picture on the left is my sample image (found at sxc.hu; feel free to download it and try out the steps below with the actual photo).

One major flaw is the crooked horizon, which can be found in many sunset photos (and landscape photos in general). However, it's easy to correct. In Photoshop, click on Image > Image Rotation > Arbitrary and rotate it 0.8 degrees counter-clockwise (CCW). After the rotation process you'll see the white canvas at the edges, so we also have to crop the image a bit. According to the eye-pleasing golden mean, the best crop ratio is 1.6:1, which means the longer side should be 1.6 times the shorter side. Therefore, I cropped it like this:



Cropping the image like this has another advantage, which again is due to the golden mean: The horizon is not in the center (a 50:50 ratio of sky and ocean looks static and boring) but it divides the line from top to bottom roughly in the ratio of 1 (sky) : 1.6 (ocean). A mathematically and aesthetically perfect composition.

So, we've solved the first problem of the crooked horizon. Another flaw of the image is the washed out colors. In order to fix this, I added a vibrance adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Vibrance) and increased the vibrance to +100. The result looks like this:



However, the contrast remains dull and the colors are still not vivid enough. Thus, I added a curve adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves) and modified the curves like this:



Simply grab the curve in the middle and drag it down until you get the desired effect.
The picture now looks like this:



Not bad, but in order to make it perfect we also have to reduce the noise (this is especially important for low-level shots at high ISO speeds). I used the NoiseNinja plug-in to do the job, which also sharpens the image a little more to give it that professional finish:



Finally, you might like to remove the distracting branches on the right side of the image. This is easily done with the clone stamp tool (hotkey: S) and the spot healing brush tool (J), so that the enhanced image looks like this:

Home for the Elderly

What associations do you have with the word 'home'?

I took this picture today at a home for the elderly in Bangkok. An old woman, apathetic despite the presence of the camera, sitting on a thin plastic mattress in a dark cell, which is not larger than maybe two square meters, looking through the net into the other empty cell, shielded from the light of a bright sunny day, grunts of other people and the smell of warm urine in the air. The floor is relatively clean, but this is an old building, the decayed walls tell. It looks cold although it is thirty-one degrees; there is no air-conditioner. The heavy sliding door is open, but the woman won't come out and take a walk, or just talk. All she does is clap and sing the Thai national anthem with a smile on her face, over and over again. The woman is suffering from Alzheimer's disease and will spend the rest of her life in this cell, because there is no family to take care of her. She was put into the hands of strangers, and what's even more striking: She doesn't even realize because of her disease. Maybe that's the reason why the inmates in this ward receive only minimal attention.

The woman once had a family. She worked. She was someone. She lived. Now the circle of life closes, she needs care like a baby because she can't do anything herself, just like all the other elderly in this department. Her whole life is now restricted to two square meters. Eating, sleeping, washing, defecating, all in this cell. Her home.

Not only is this picture iconic for the way our society changes. The younger generation loses their connection with the senior members of our society. What's almost the norm in Western countries becomes more and more apparent in Asia as well, which therefore sees the stereotype of a caring extended family being weakened.

This image is also look into your future, which makes you think once you leave the state of speechlessness. Anyone could end up like her. There is no guarantee that someone will take care of you later. And what have you done?

Website Changes

We've simplified our home page and focused on what's important--by getting rid of the ads and cutting the text into half. Now you can see at a glance what we do and what the site has to offer.

We also added some new wallpapers to our wallpaper section.




Enjoy :)