Guy Gowan Event

leinsterman

Ok ... we have plenty of people for the Goy Gowan photoshop event ... but I figured I'd make one last post to see if there is anyone else out there who is interested.

The event is a full day workshop similar to this one -
http://web.mac.com/etnt.ie/iWeb/etnt.ie/Retouching%20Workshop.html

Cost per person is €85 for a full day
Date will be next Saturday 23rd June
Venue is DCU

There are only a few places remaining ... so be quick ... also I'm restricting it to only regular boards posters at this stage since it is a private event ...

PM me if you are interested in attending ...

leinsterman

bump...

Morlar

Hi - where exactly in DCU is this on ? What time is it starting at ?

Covey

Registration (09:00 - 09:30 sharp the session will commence at 09:30)

Location/Name of Building - Building C

T

mikeanywhere

I cant find the link that was given in another thread with the DCU map etc, anyone got it?

Paulw

http://www.dcu.ie/info/campus.shtml

Morlar

Covey wrote:

Registration (09:00 - 09:30 sharp the session will commence at 09:30)

Location/Name of Building - Building C

T

Cheers Covey - where did you get that from ? I went back through the photography posts for 7 pages and couldn't find the gowan thread anywhere.

Just saw this on the dcu site

http://www.dcu.ie/info/location/c0.shtml

That looks like the C Building.

mikeanywhere

Dito!!

Valentia

Covey wrote:

Registration (09:00 - 09:30 sharp the session will commence at 09:30)

Location/Name of Building - Building C

T

Room CG 20

Covey

Got it from the email sent by L.man.

T.

Morlar

Covey wrote:

Got it from the email sent by L.man.

T.

Could you forward me a copy of that ? (I just pinged you my email address).

leinsterman

Information you need to know -

1. Location DCU on Collins Ave - http://www.dcu.ie/info/campus.shtml
2. Location/Name of Building - Building C
3. Room number - CG20 Ground floor (the room will be configured class room style, note depending on availability we may move to a nearby lecture theatre ... please keep an eye out for signs).
4. Location of Room - http://www.dcu.ie/info/location/c0.shtml
5. Transport to DCU - http://www.dcu.ie/info/get_to.shtml
6. Parking - Is provided in a multistory car park with pay stations or free on Collins Avenue or Ballymun road
7. Access on the day - Campus security have been pre-warned. If there are any problems then give either myself (087 6837204) or Seb (086 3322033) a call.
8. Facilities / Refreshments at the event during short breaks - Vending machines are located in the same building serving coffee/tea/soft drinks/chocolate/etc... there is a common area near the room where people can stretch their legs, eat, take mobile calls etc.
9. Lunch - We recommend you bring your own as we will only have 1 hour for lunch so very little time to go out. Shops are 5-10 minutes walk away.
10. PC's - Don't Bring 'em ... we won't be needing 'em
11. Notepads - Very important: Bring one (with a pen)
12. Mobile Phones - As a courtesy to others please switch off mobile phones during the sessions. You can take and make calls during the breaks.
13. Schedule - we intend to be strict about it so if you arrive late you will miss out.
14. Please note Seb has gone to great lengths to get us this excellent venue at no cost. Please be respectful to security staff and treat the facilities as if they were you own home.

For those who have not paid or only partially paid, please note that you will not be permitted to attend any part of the event unless you have paid €85 in cash, in full, prior to kick off.

Paulw

Not long home from the event.

WOW, what a day. A long day, but my mind is full of new ideas and things to try. I'm sure it'll take me a few days to start working through the bits. I can't wait to start building some of the actions and then use them.

Well worth it and I'd recommend it to anyone.

leinsterman

Yeah what an amazing day ... Guy has a great way of making things so easy to understand ... I only hope I can remember everything ...

I plan to type my notes up and cross reference them with Elven and one or two others ... once they are ready I'll post the techniques in the digital darkroom ...


I spoke to Guy about doing a follow up session in a few months ... this time it would be a refresher followed by a session on our own images ... I'll keep in touch about this ...


Thanks to Guy for an amazing session ...

Valentia

Thanks Simon for organising everything and thanks Guy for being so giving with your time.

My brain is mashed potatoes but I'm just going to have a go on a few images to see if anything stuck. Oh! And lovely camera Si!!!!!!:o (envy).

Borderfox

I can only remember snippets of everything, excellent day and I got one of his dvd's so should have a watch of this and it should fall into place. Nice to meet everyone else too and meet the 1D Mk 3

GristlyEnd

Well done to Simon on organisation and Sebzy for the hosting it. It sure was a great day but I have to admit my head went into meltdown towards the end.

I've successfully setup my retouch action button and the different percentages to use. Going to start on colour clean and boost now.

Fajitas!

And none of ye have gone out on the piss?

If I was there, I woulda shown ye how to celebrate a days photoshopping.

Borderfox

DarrenG wrote:

Well done to Simon on organisation and Sebzy for the hosting it. It sure was a great day but I have to admit my head went into meltdown towards the end.

I've successfully setup my retouch action button and the different percentages to use. Going to start on colour clean and boost now.

Fair play to you for remembering, I got home plugged my tablet into the laptop and collapsed on the couch!!

Morlar

Excellent event - would be well interested in the follow up event too.

mikeanywhere

I will just reiterate everything been said so far and say thanks to Si & Seb. Big kudos to Guy for taking time out of his schedule to deal with us reprebates.

Apologies for not speaking to everyone there either (Keith and one or two others, next time, I promise)!!!

Valentia

Sorry, meant to thank Seb too. The venue was excellent.

Dara Robinson

Thanks Simon and Seb. Great day. Soooooooooooooooooooooo much information. brain overloading lol

Cant wait for the next one. Need to get my hands on his DVD's

Covey

Ye big thank you to Si and Sebzy. Big thanks to Guy too who seemed to enjoy it as much as we did.

Very well organised and what a session. I've wasted my time for the last couple of years. For anyone not there, this was de BIZ.

Nice to meet some of you also.

T.

Borderfox

We should have another laptop evening in someones house with photoshop and Guy Gowan dvds for the people at the event as a beginneer refresher. I know I could do with it as me head is melted! I am going to watch the cosmetic retouch dvd today and get my head into the mindset. Also one other thing I tried the actions on some older pictures I have and if I am not careful with the RAW conversion in terms of exposure it can lead to quite noisy pictures from my point of view, but I have found if you overexpose in the RAW converter if turns out great. I will post up some examples. Again cheers to Simon and Seb for organising and Guy Gowan for taking time out and blowing us away with his techniques!!

Dara Robinson

Actually if anyone was in a position to lend me his DVD's for a day I've love to watch them. In the near future there is no way I can aford them. But I will have to get them at some stage

Fajitas!

Borderfox wrote:

I tried the actions on some older pictures I have and if I am not careful with the RAW conversion in terms of exposure it can lead to quite noisy pictures from my point of view

That's his sharpening technique... Something to be a wee bit wary of...

Paulw

I have to admit, looking at the images on screen (using his sharpening technique) they do look very noisy. However, as he said himself, his technique is designed for print quality.

Today I tried it. Using a few images. They look very noisy, however, when printed A4 photo paper (on my Epson R300) they look pin sharp and no noise.

Just something to be aware of.

Valentia

Here is an example. This was taken with the 10D. I did auto levels with the settings Guy showed us and colour corrected the image. Then I ran Guys actions. Pretty impressive eh?

Original:



With Guy's help:

311

That looks a brilliant method ,I wish I could of been there :mad:
I still have to buy a copy of cs3 though ,so there wasn't much point:(

Dara Robinson

Looks great, good work

Hey simon, u got those actions yet? lol

bovril

cheers Simon and Sebzy for all the organising, I picked up lots of tips on the day including how to apply eye liner correctly and also how to clean a trumpet effectively!!!

I tried a few things out today and am very happy with the results. I still don't fully understand what calculations does but will have a play around over the next few days and try learn.

GristlyEnd

Here's one of mine that was exposed for the sky. I've printed it off and will check tomorrow when its completely dry if I'm happy. The masks on the blue channels did do wonders in brining back the foreground.

bovril

_Brian_ wrote:

I still have to buy a copy of cs3 though ,so there wasn't much point:(

Hate to make you madder but pretty much everything he did was doable on CS2.

311

It's cool ,I don't have any software at the moment . I bought a new pc with Vista ,so I'm going for cs3.

I had to work anyways

elven

That was some day... I woke up this morning thinking about channels and calculations!!!

Excellent stuff, big thanks to simon, sebzy, guy and of course roen too

It's going to take a couple of weeks to get the whole theory to sink in I think, and see how to put it to work on my own stuff. Don't have many small aperture/clearly defined land & sky type shots, it'll be interesting to see how the techniques work with shallow DoF flower/greenery type pics.

Also good to know how to clean a trumpet effectively, as bovril says...

GristlyEnd

Just in case anyone liked the 'song' (definitely not the video) it's Alex Gaudino - Destination Calabria. Just in case now!

rymus

ahh Darren you're a legend! Was trying to think of that all night last night

Great day's learning, even if I was feeling rather comatose for most of it. Cheers Simon & Seb for all the effort put into it.

elven

Yes, indeed, I remember you having a thing for girls in skirts with brass instruments...!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gristlyend/427385980/in/set-72157600006831368/

bovril

there's a pair of yous in it. Sure you asked for the video to be shown again Elven..

Ah no I heard exactly what you said. I need you on my side aganst all the preverts!!!

elven

Yes, that was entirely misconstrued... but there was no point trying to argue by that stage :rolleyes:

City-Exile

I heard about Guy Gowan DVD's before, but have never seen any available to buy. Has anyone here used them? Are they any good and can they be bought online?

rymus

elven wrote:

Yes, indeed, I remember you having a thing for girls in skirts with brass instruments...!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gristlyend/427385980/in/set-72157600006831368/

sweet merciful mcgillicuddy! :eek:

leinsterman

City-Exile wrote:

I heard about Guy Gowan DVD's before, but have never seen any available to buy. Has anyone here used them? Are they any good and can they be bought online?

They are pretty good ... MikeyA knows a bit more about them ... but it seems quite a few people have them ... and like 'em ... I can only say I've seen one of them once ... with the benefit of having a workshop with Guy beforehand ...

Here is the link -

http://web.mac.com/etnt.ie/iWeb/etnt.ie/dvds.html

City-Exile

Prices seem reasonable enough.
Would you need all 3 or is there one which gives you what you need?
I'd get more into landscape and architecture, if I could get some decent post production done, to make impressive prints.

rymus

I was hugely impressed with all the actions and methods from the course... until I tried them on a couple of high ISO 5D files. Now, not so impressed. Seems to bring noise out of the photo that wasn't previously visible. P'raps the actions need some tweaking for specific RAW files?!?

elven

I think it's down to the nature of the exposure - if you haven't exposed for shadows then you're going to end up with noise from trying to bring them up. Think that might be the case with yours?

My main problem seems to be that I don't have an obvious masking solution in a lot of my shots, because they don't have clearly defined sections like grass/trees vs sky - I tend to have trees and trees and trees... and in order to start exposing for shadows (in theory I back it all the way, but...) I'm going to have to get used to lugging a tripod about because my handholding usually gets me 1/200 @ f5.6 if I'm lucky

City-Exile

elven wrote:

I'm going to have to get used to lugging a tripod about because my handholding usually gets me 1/200 @ f5.6 if I'm lucky

You can get little lightweight tripods.
I have a small little monopod, that I never use, if that's any use to you?

Morlar

I think the entire session was excellent, v v impressive - learned loads (never knew you could do so much with adjusting through masks made from channels) but I am still not sold on the overexpose theory.

I think blown highlights are much more noticeable than missing shadow detail. Missing shadow detail can be burned or darkened further to hide - gone highlights are gone for ever. I think I might try it at some point but definitely not convinced that its a wise move even in moderation. Have to say I still laugh now at the thoughts of that bloke Guy Gowan was mentioning - the nutter who would overexpose his next wedding by 4 stops if he was asked to hehe.

Ps did anyone take good notes and care to share them ? Mine made perfect sense at the time but now seem to have a few gaps.

elven

Thanks Peadar, lovely offer but I'm going to be shopping around at some point this year, and I have a big tripod and a mini one to be recovered from storage in a couple of weeks time too

Morlar, the point isn't to overexpose and lose your highlights. The point is to overexpose to the point where you still have detail in the highlights, but overall it will look washed out. This means that your exposure of the darker areas has more range - you're still able to bring back the detail in the highlights, but the shadows aren't compressed and you aren't having to amplify what's recorded by the sensor, encouraging noise and lack of detail. Everyone knows what a mess you get when you under expose and try to bring back detail from the shadows. But as long as you haven't clipped the highlights, you can bring them down and it looks just fine.

Morlar

elven wrote:

Morlar, the point isn't to overexpose and lose your highlights. The point is to overexpose to the point where you still have detail in the highlights, but overall it will look washed out.

Yeah Julie, I actually understood what he had said too. Maybe I phrased my last post wrong to make you think I had completely missed his point like that.

I know he didnt say to deliberately blow out highlights in pictures.

He said his theory/working practice/recommendation whatever you want to call it - was a matter of intentionally overexposing by either a stop or a stop and a half. This was in order to keep as much shadow detail as was possible or as he said 'Expose for the shadow not for the highlight'.

My point is that I am not sold on the theory.

Doing that you will risk overexposing to the point where you blowout highlights (even though as established - this was not what mr gg was stating as the goal of the exercise).

Blown highlights are far more noticeable than lost shadow detail - is my point and I would rather lose some shadow detail than risk blowing highlights by intentionally overexposing by a stop or a stop and a third. As I said I will probably try it out for myself at some point - in moderation.