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Articles, Misc

Working on a smaller monitor

July 21, 2019 No Comments

Broken monitor

About a month or two ago, my big 34-inch monitor broke and I went from 34-inch + 24-inch monitor setup to a single 24-inch monitor. At first, it was such a big change to my PC setup, that I thought I will buy a new monitor very quickly. but now, that I have been working on the smaller one for a while, I don’t feel the need to get a new one. And I thought about, why is that?

Working on a smaller monitor

One get’s used to many things really quickly, but here are a few points, why a smaller monitor is good enough.

I have nothing to compare – when I had a 34 inch and a 24-inch monitor on my desk, the 24 felt really small. The reason is, our brain does not work in absolutes, it compares stuff. So now, when there is only one, there is nothing to compare it to, so it’s suddenly big enough.
It’s easier to focus on one task – I used to have different programs open on each monitor. Now with only one, when I open Photoshop, it’s full screen. I see nothing else and I focus solely on the one task. I find, that now I finish my editing quicker, free from distractions.
It’s big enough for Photoshop – recently I have been using almost exclusively only Photoshop to edit my photos. The monitor I use now is perfectly big enough for the tools I have open and to get an overview of the photo. If I did 3D modeling or video editing, this would probably be not the case, but with photos, it is so.

I don’t know if I will get another big monitor again. When I got the other one, it was when I still used to play games on the PC. But I don’t anymore, so that’s one less reason to get it. And for work, I’m actually thinking of going the other way and replacing my PC with a notebook. For what I use it for, the difference would be minimal.

What size monitor do you use? And is it big enough? :)

Articles, Misc

Super ultra-wide wallpapers from Bratislava

July 20, 2019 No Comments

More new wallpapers

Let’s do even more super ultra-wide wallpapers today. As always, they are all at 5120×1440, so if you have a monitor of that size, they would perfectly fit it. Or if you have two at 2560×1440, these will also work perfetly for you.

Don’t forget to check out other available wallpapers:

4K wallpapers – Single Screen – Surface, 21:9 and dual-screen – Super ultra-wide – Mobile wallpapers

Super ultra-wide wallpapers from Bratislava

Today all the new wallpapers are from the center of Bratislava, with the SNP bridge and the Bratislava castle.

France, Paris

Night in the modern Paris

July 19, 2019 No Comments

Night in the modern Paris

Most of mine photos of Paris are from the older parts of the city. But there is something beautiful also in modern architecture. So each time I’m there I try to go at least one day to the La Defense area, to capture the modern Paris.

A tilt-shift lens really works great in places like this one. You have tall buildings and pointing up will create so much lens distortion. It will all look like falling down. Check out my article on using the tilt-shift lens here, for more info about this.

This photo is actually a three shot vertorama, taken with a Sony a7R together with the Canon 17 TSE lens. Edited and combined in Photoshop.

Astana, Kazakhstan

Early morning at the Ramstore Bridge in Nur-Sultan

July 18, 2019 No Comments

Early morning at the Ramstore Bridge in Nur-Sultan

I still find it strange that Astana is now called Nur-Sultan. Not really a usual thing to see a whole city being renamed. But it was. This is one of the photos I took there last year around this time, at the Ramstore Bridge. It was very early in the morning, around 4 AM. But as I did not go to bed during the night, it was easy to go out to take photos. And this one was at a walking distance from the hotel.

As you can see, this was after quite a strong rain, that create all the puddles that I like to use for reflection. But you may have noticed, that often if you take photos after a rain, they are not as sharp. This is due to the huge amount of moisture in the atmosphere. We do not notice it that much, but it creates a bit of haze, and that prevents one from getting a sharp image of faraway objects. Here I did not have that problem, as I was shooting with the 12mm lens, so I was quite close to the bridge.

This is a blend of three exposures, done in Photoshop.

Early morning at the Ramstore Bridge in Nur-Sultan

Articles, Guides

Sharpening photos for web with Raya Pro 4

July 17, 2019 No Comments

Sharpening photos

I got a question recently, how I sharpen my photos. And as this changed a lot over the years, today I will show you how I sharpen them right now. Maybe next week I will use something else. I always look for the best. But right now I use Raya Pro 4 panel for Photoshop, and I will show you how easy it is to sharpen using it.

Btw. for the next 24 hours, you can still get Raya Pro 4 panel with a huge 50% discount, that is only 22.50 USD for this great tool. Check it out on the official site here.

Sharpening with Raya Pro 4

Sharpening with Raya Pro 4 is very easy, and the whole procedure is only in few steps. Of course, you have to have Raya Pro 4 installed before you can do that. Please note, that this also resizes the image. The thing is, if you post images to the web, you should first resize it to the desired dimensions, and only then sharpen it. This will give you the best results.

Open the image you want to sharpen
Open the RP4 Actions And Filters panel. To do so go to Window/Extensions and select RP4 Actions And Filters
Now in this window, you have a section named Sharpen And Resize For The Web. Under this, there are two buttons, By Width and By Height. You can use any of these to do the sharpening
If you choose By Width, the number you put into the next window, will determine the width of the resized photo. If By Height, it will determine the height. I personally use height and the size I use is 1050px.

Sharpening photos for web with Raya Pro 4

A new file is created and you will be asked if you want to change the color space to sRGB. If the photo is for web, you should do that. On the web sRGB defaults to safe colors, and like that the photo will be properly shown in all web browsers.
In this new file, you will have 4 layers. The base is not sharpened, and the three on top are Sharpened, Sharpened More and Extra Sharp for Larger Images. By turning the visibility of these layers on/off and changing their opacity, you can change how much sharpening you applied to your image.

I tent to leave the Sharpen layer and Sharpen more visible, then change the opacity of the Sharpen more to about 50-70%. In a few cases, I also used the mask to remove sharpness from a few areas, where it was just not needed.

And that’s it, your photo is ready to be saved and shared on the web.

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