My blog, although I don’t see myself as a blogger but as a Photographer I will try to blog some interesting material during the weeks.
Expect at least 2 updates a week.

Skin with Topaz

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Retouching skin is always a “problem” you can do it with dodge and burn but that takes a long time or you can use a plugin. I’ve been using Imagenomic Portraiture for a while and have been very happy. However the last few weeks I’ve been playing more and more with Topaz Clean and made the switch for 90% of our skin this week.
Enclosed two examples of before and after, this is PRE-RETOUCH, in other words, straight out of the camera and with Topaz, in final re-touch there will still be changes of course. But to be honest it already looks pretty good.

 

You can change settings yourself like structure and the way it does the smoothing, very nice. If you don’t know Topaz yet, check them out, otherwise, make sure you get Clean3 you’re gonna love it.

 

Link to their webstore : http://www.topazlabs.com/716.html and indeed we do have an affiliate relation, but I wouldn’t promote it if I didn’t think it rocked 😀
Click on the images for a 1:1 view.


 skin before

skin after

 

Congrats to Annewiek

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Today it’s exactly 16 years ago that Annewiek said “Yes”…..
On 7-7-1997 we got married, so today a big congrats to Annewiek my wife, manager, soulmate, VAL (Voice Activated Lightstand), camera man, best friend etc. for keeping up with me all this time 😀

Photokina 23 Sept 2012 - September 23, 2012 - 6-Edit

 

And an image from the 2 of us 😀

Frank en Annewiek Juni 28 2013-24-Edit

Webinar Topaz plus discount

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A bit early for the blogpost but I did not want to let you wait till tomorrow.
In this blogpost you can see the webinar I did for Topaz (feel free to leave a comment on YouTube) with loads of tips plus a demo of the bundle from Topaz (and Clarity of course), the reason I post this so quickly is the following :

 

I Just got a notice that our friends from Topaz are running a deal till Sunday with $100.00 off on their bundle. Use the code july4 on http://www.topazlabs.com/716.html to get the discount. The bundle is great of course, but also check out clarity, it’s the one plugin that totally took me by surprise and is now part of my workflow 🙂

Scanning

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Last week we talked a lot about vintage cameras and having fun with these.
Well one thing that’s very important when shooting with film is getting it into the computer, right?
Otherwise we won’t have any results to show.

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Now one could of course hold up a negative to the sun and make a picture with your iPhone, and although that sounds like a lot of fun (it actually is), it won’t give you the results you want. If you want to get the files in your PC/Mac you will need something else… a scanner. Now I’m not a scanner expert, let me put that first, so everything you read are my experiences and my opinions, feel free to add and say if something’s wrong, you won’t hurt my feelings 😀

 

Different types of scanners
There are many different types of scanners you can use, some you can already buy for below 100.00 but to be honest I think it’s a shame to scan with those the results are subpar and don’t really offer more than maybe webuse. A step up are the flatbed scanners, these are often a lot better and resolve more detail. Personally I love the Epson V700/V750 but later more on these. Another step up are the dedicated negative/film scanners like the highly recommended Nikon Coolscan series. If you really want to re mortgage your house you can also go for a drum scanner, but these are very expensive and require a lot of experience. For me the Epson V700 is the weapon of choice, it retails for a nice price and it does it work very well.

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