Well… apparently not all paper backgrounds are made equal!

I don’t remember who made the paper background we initially tested. But it was awful. Very reflective and prone to hot spots. We figured all paper would have the same problems. After listening to a talk by another company that does greenscreen software, I decided to revisit this and give Savage Paper’s ‘tech green #46′ a try.

So how’d it fare vs. the foam materail we’ve been recommending since day 1?

Excellent! I was very impressed with how evenly it lit. The paper has a very flat finish on it, meaning very little reflection and easy lighting. Of course, we lit everything with two big softboxes, so that helped I’m sure.

I’m going back on my opinion that paper won’t work for greenscreen backgrounds, and give a solid recommendation to the Savage #46 paper. I DO NOT think that all paper will work as well. As in our initial test, some papers are glossy and not suitable for chromakey. Also, Savage just released vinyl backgrounds that come in green and I’m highly skeptical that it’ll work for greenscreen. It’s got a pretty glossy finish, which is usually a disaster for chromakey.

We still recommend the foam material as well. But I think the Savage paper is on par with it, except in terms of reusability. I think the foam material generally works well, it’s easy to transport, and you can easily clean and reuse it.

For full length in a studio, I would give the nod to the paper. I think you’re likely to get a little less spill around the feet, but I don’t think the difference is that significant. You can take a look at the results with the two materials:

There are other materials out there… paint, canvas, etc. The important part with any material is a very flat finish on the surface. If you have that, it should work fine as a greenscreen.

If there are any other manufacturers of greenscreen backgrounds reading this that would like our recommendation on their product, please feel free to contact us to send us a sample. However, right now, the only materials we’re recommending is the Savage #46 paper and foam-backed material made by velcro.

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I asked Ross about his work. He said, “My history is around AE but I’m using FCP for this. The footage is owned by me, shot on a canon 7D. It’s glamour and the model had really bad scarring on her face.”

Thanks Ross. We wish great success to your project. And continued success to our skin smoothing product, for which you can see examples here.

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However the Financial Times reports a new wrinkle. DSLR sales have slowed significantly less than point-and-shoot sales, meaning the DSLRs are making up a larger share of the digital camera market. Over 8 million DSLRs will be sold in 2009.

What does this mean? How does it affect photographers?

Well, for sure, part of it is just a wrinkle in the numbers. You would expect pros to have a little less discretion about whether to buy a new camera or not than your mom and dad. So the fact that the sale of DSLRs is slowing less rapidly may not be that surprising.

However, part of it is that more and more folks are discovering the joys of photography, the instant gratification that digital brings, and the limitations of point-and-shoots. So I think you’re seeing some of these people opt to buy a DSLR instead of another point-and-shoot when they feel it’s time to replace the camera they bought a year or three ago.

This is something that was discussed at the InfoTrends conference I attended awhile back. It’s definitely a trend that’s occurring and the ability to shoot HD video with the 5D Mark II and especially the 7D, are just accelerating this trend. Also, some limitations of P&Ss, like long lag times when taking a picture, are frustrating some people enough to move up.

Ultimately, I don’t think it affects pro photographers all that much. Some folks doing microstock will be affected by images uploaded to free stock sites like the Stock Exchange (www.sxc.hu). And on the very low end, some overly budget conscious folks may have Uncle Joe shoot their wedding rather than a pro.

It does open up some new opportunities for those of us that make software or training for photographers. Web sites that cater to new photographers, like SmugMug, will also benefit. If you’re a photographer that does seminars and workshops, this is a big new group of folks that are going to be looking for info on how to take advantage of these big, new-fangled cameras. It’s definitely a trend that’s worth paying attention to. The digital camera market is huge, and if camera makers are shipping 8-9 million DSLRs, there are probably some opportunities there.

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Michael Maller emailed us regarding his recent purchase of Beauty Box. This is our new skin retouching software for video footage in After Effects and Final Cut Pro. Michael had some great things to say about the subtle effect that Beauty Box provides when smoothing away wrinkles, blemishes and other skin issues.

Michael didn’t realize he’d become an ‘anarchist in training’, replete with an official t-shirt, from giving the compliment. We really appreciate hearing from him (and you) because comments, questions and even complaints are what improve our products.

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A pretty standard support email that we receive is from folks who can’t find their serial numbers and need that information resent. Super simple. Occasionally I receive a support email from someone who we can’t find in our serial number database. This generally turns out to be a bogus request but every once in a while, I am positive that the customer is sincere and we bend the rules.

In John’s case, he had bought version 2.0 of our popular Primatte Chromakey, an Adobe Photoshop plugin that masks out greenscreen photographs. He contacted us asking for a resend of the product and serial number, but I couldn’t find him in our Primatte database. He was so cool and patient and sincere that after some back & forth, I decided the mistake was on Digital Anarchy and issued him a new Primatte serial number.

This was his response:

I asked John a little about himself. He is is a photographer who shoots primarily portrait & portfolio without the benefit of a studio. He uses our Primatte software because “I can set-up stands and a green screen background at a park or other location and then using Primatte, I can put the model anywhere in the world or use any background that I want without having to transport everything with me.”

Thanks John Gunmann. You’re a great memory to end the year with, and exactly why I work here at Digital Anarchy. ;)

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The blog roundup lists 3D Invigorator, our 3D logo creator for Photoshop.This plugin gives instant 3D gratification by turning text and shapes and even Illustrator imports into extruded 3D graphics. Try out the demo here.

The list also includes Backdrop Designer (a personal favorite of mine) which digitally simulates muslin material backgrounds. It’s especially fun to use if you are posing a pretty girl in front of the digital drapery. Try out the demo here.

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Before the models arrived, Digital Anarchy spent the morning preparing the shoot area. We decided to convert the living room of our Chief Executive Anarchist, Jim Tierney, rather than renting a space. His purple velvet couch made a terrific rich backdrop and we hung black striped curtains to frame the shots. Some of the footage was shot outside; luckily the weather held. San Francisco in December can be very cold or very warm, often within the same three hour period.

Sitting in for the models before they arrive:

We shot both video footage and still photographs for the Beauty Box examples. Because of the video, we needed continuous lights. We used two 750W Lowel Totas for main and fill lights, a Lowel Pro for the hair light, and a 32″ reflector. For the photos, we added a Canon 580EX flash and used a Canon 5D. We used the Canon 5D Mark II to shoot the HD video and a Panasonic DVX100 for the SD footage.

Outside with our model, just before the SF weather turned from 70 to 60 degrees.

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Potential 3D content?

I sat next to the manager of the CBS station on a recent flight. Among other things we chatted about 3D TV and it’s purpose (if any) and whether it was just a fad. Particularly since everyone has just upgraded to HD.

HD is the type of technology that lots of people can understand and get behind. It’s ‘un-intrusive’, meaning it just makes everything look better. You don’t notice the technology after viewing it a few times (or until you see an SD show). People watching just see a better picture, so they’re happy, and producers don’t have to dramatically change how they shoot and tell stories, so they’re happy (except for the make-up artists who now really need to cover up those unsightly blemishes and removed tattoos… or they can use Beauty Box :-). Everyone has to buy some new equipment, but otherwise the changes are minimal.

3D is very intrusive. And does anyone really want it?

3D requires both the viewer change the way they view content, and it certainly causes producers to create shows that cater to the technology (which is expensive). Usually using the technology for the sake of the technology, not because it helps them tell better stories. We’ve already seen this ad nauseum in 3D movies, where there are things constantly being thrown at the screen or other visual gimmicks that really add nothing to the story or experience. Once the novelty of having things thrown at you wears off, where will 3D be? Probably where web3D is. Nowhere.

Back in 2000 I was part of a company that developed a web3D solution (Cycore’s Cult 3D). Web3D was going to be the next big thing. Everyone wanted to see cars, shoes, mp3 players, and whatever else in 3D. As it turns out… they didn’t. And because 3D is expensive to produce, web designers didn’t want to use it. 8 photos of a shoe is a lot cheaper than creating a 3D model. And for viewers, photos have about the save effect as 3D. Neither gets you closer to actually trying the shoe on. Which is the problem with 3D TV.

3D TV doesn’t really get you closer to feeling like you’re part of the environment. You’re sort of in the scene (and junk is flying at you), but the technology isn’t anywhere close to being good enough to really suspend disbelief. So it just becomes a distraction to the story you’re trying to tell.

Good stories is what makes good content. That’s what people want to watch. 3D in it’s current state (and for the foreseeable future), just doesn’t add that much. And into this you have to consider changing viewing habits with more people watching shows on computer monitors and mobile devices. Yes, IF you’re watching on a regular TV, there are some movies, particularly kids movies, that benefit. Games will probably benefit, and maybe there’s some uses in sports (assuming you’re willing to hang out with your buddies wearing 3D glasses). But mostly it’s a gimmick and I think it’s going to be a very hard sell to get people to care about it beyond the occassional kid movie or game.

If you weren’t able to hire a makeup artists for your shoot, or you just have regular people who look, well… regular, then Beauty Box allows you to do skin retouching without having to go frame by frame. It’s a powerful new plugin that uses face detection and an advanced smoothing algorithms to smooth out the skin while keeping all the other details sharp and in focus.

Of course, we have the privilege of working with beautiful models. But Beauty Box will make everyone look beautiful! Ok, well, maybe not everyone. But if it’s possible, Beauty Box makes it easier to get them there.

From our official Press Release:

“Digital Anarchy, a leading provider of cost-effective special effects software for Adobe and Apple products, has today announced the release of a new product for Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere, and Apple’s Final Cut Pro. The Beauty Box 1.0 provides editors and visual effects artists working with film and video an easy and powerful way of smoothing out skin and removing blemishes. Regardless of whether it is used for a feature film, reality TV show, or just a corporate talking head, Beauty Box provides best-of-class skin beautification. Beauty Box 1.0 marks Digital Anarchy’s return to making expert products for the film/video market.” (full release)

Now when someone says ‘fix her in post’, perhaps you really can. Try out the free demo on our website.

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You get very use to AF on traditional camcorders and not having really affects how you shoot. You definitely can’t move around as much as you would with a normal camcorder. It is possible to hit the AF-ON button and get it to re-focus, but this is quite a bit different than dynamic, I-don’t-have-to-think-about-it Autofocus.

So it has it’s shortcomings, but this is partially made up for by the absolutely beautiful video.  So my top 10 observations about it…

1. Beautiful, HD video. If you’re use to seeing SD, it’s amazing.

2. No AutoFocus. Biggest downer and limits the types of shooting you can do.

3. Being able to manually set aperture and shutter speed is awesome. This requires the camera firmware upgrade. But it really adds a new dimension to the videography capabilities.

4.The ability to changes lens, especially to a nice, big aperture lens, is very cool. However, this is offset by the AF issue. When you have really shallow depth of field it’s difficult (and sometimes impossible) to keep things in focus.

5. It’s tricky editing it. It’s only 30 fps, so keeping audio in sync and mixing it with regular 24p or 29.97 footage is difficult.

6. Being able to shoot images while you’re shooting video is a great workflow thing. You don’t have to switch modes to get a still shot.

7. The quality is impressive, given the amount of compression. Shooting uninterrupted for 12 minutes is great and somewhat surprising considering the quality.

8. No tapes! Hooray for solid state!

9. No tapes! part 2: copying the Quicktime movie off of the compact flash card is sooo much easier than digitizing tapes.

10. It’s awkward shooting with a mic on top of the camera. Again, this is really not a camera that’s designed to shoot video while moving around. Lock it down though, and you’ve got one hell of a video camera.

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HDR Gone Bad

It’s a novelty look and I’m over it. It was cool for a very short time, then everyone decided they wanted to have surreal images. It’s not that hard of a look to achieve, so it’s not that impressive. Get over it.  :-) I much prefer to use HDR for what it was meant for… which is giving a slightly wider dynamic range to create a shot that has similar contrast and color range to what your eye actually sees. No one has seen colors like the photo above has. Alright, well, yeah I’ve taken mushrooms too, so maybe then… but not normally.

The better use for HDR…

Given the normal photo below:

We can use multiple exposures to create the wider dynamic range we’d like to see in a single photo, but can rarely achieve due to the limitations of sensors, file formats, etc. Even when used properly, HDR isn’t without its problems. However, you can frequently get beautifully life like photos that would be difficult to achieve normal. The example below gets the point across (although I’m not holding it up as a shining example of photography, it is good enough to get my point across though):

What you get is more detail in the shadows and highlights than what you’d normally see. You can tease some of this detail out when working with RAW files, but not to the extent you can when you have multiple photos. Of course, multiple photos means you can have ghosting and other artifacts to deal with, so that’s always a consideration.

HDR is a cool technique and can produce some amazing photography work. The surreal look does, I’m sure, have a time and place, but realize that’s not what HDR was designed for.

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See if you can figure which link is ours.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitalanarchy/sets/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/sets/

On the White House Flickr stream, the photos that I am digging are decidedly non-presidential. They show Obama as a eprson, not a politician, which I would guess is the point of having a stream. Hopefully, you can enjoy seeing a photo of the US president playing hoops, and playing pretty well, no matter what your politics are.

On the Digital Anarchy Flickr stream, I am digging being able to add in photos that don’t have a proper home on our DigitalAnarchy.com website. There is more flexibility in posting a string of fun, related photos on Flickr then adding similar (= repetative)  images to the website.

Wired magazine did an interesting piece on the president’s Flickr stream a few months ago. It covers a bit of the history of photo documenting the less rigid side of presidency. Wired hasn’t covered Digital Anarchy’s stream yet but there’s still time…

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Your info. Your techniques. Tips and tricks. I had an interesting tech support call yesterday with one of our users. He’s a photographer that’s been using Primatte for some time. He related an encounter he had with a fellow photographer in his area. She asked him what he was using to create his greenscreen shots, and he told her to go buy one of our competitor’s products! His logic was that he wasn’t going to share info with someone in the same market. He was quite pleased that she was unable to get the same results and was frustrated by the whole thing.

So my question to you is… do you share?

Personally, for me the answer is yes. Sort of. We are not an open source company, so our code is safely behind walls. But I have no problem telling folks what we’re doing from a marketing and support standpoint. There’s definitely some types of info that it benefits everyone, even if you’re competitors, to share. But if it’s mission critical to your success (like our code), then sharing may not be a hot idea. Then again, it may not make any difference because there are so many things that go into a successful company. When you go to ImagingUSA or WPPI there are certainly lots of folks sharing info, who’ve been doing it for quite some time and don’t seem adversely affected by it. But maybe showing off at big national conference is a bit different than showing off at your local photography club that’s filled with potential competitors.

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This does not mean the Flash player is available on the iPhone. Only that the Flash development environment can now build iPhone apps.

Apple of course does not want the Flash player on the iPhone. Why? If you can build iPhone apps that are usable through a browser, who’s going to buy them through the Apple App Store? We’ll see how badly Apple cripples support of HTML 5 in Safari since HTML 5, in some cases, will allow you to build rich internet apps and theoretically get around the App store as well.

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Anyways, pick up the latest issue of Photoshop User to read the full review. In honor of the review, we’ve recreated their Hot Pick logo in 3D.

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Click here for the full story

A tech side note… I saw this photo in a newspaper and started searching around online for it. Google Images completely failed. Microsoft’s Bing found it on the second try. At least for image searching, it would appear Google has some competition.

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In part 1 I discussed some of the habits that may or may not develop. Now I’m going to talk technology. While at the Digital Imaging conference a few technology things kept coming up… Cameraphones, the cloud, and social networks. Not exactly unexpected.

The interesting thing about cameraphones is 1) how they will evolve and affect point and shoot cameras and 2) how are users storing and managing their photos.

This little piece of work from Samsung not only has a 5mp camera, but shoots decent HD video as well.

As for the first point, it’s expected that camera phones will more or less replace point and shoot cameras over the next five years or so. The only standalone cameras that will be left will be the more professional DSLRs. This makes some sense. We’re already seeing a merging of functionality into smartphones. The PDA is pretty much history, despite being an important device to many people just 4 or 5 years ago (see any PDAs on palm.com?). The MP3 player may go the same way. The smaller mp3 players merge with smartphones, and the larger ones merge with gaming machines. People are leaning towards less devices, not more. Who the hell needs the headache of carrying around all those devices, power cords, batteries, etc.

As Moore’s law continues with cameras, we’ll get better optics and sensors on cameraphones until the quality is so good that, unless you need to change lenses or want RAW files, there’s no point in a separate camera. The general consensus was the point and shoot will be mostly gone in 5 years.

The other reason to suggest that this will happen is given by what people are doing with the photos they take. As mentioned in Part I of this blog post, folks are printing less, but emailing and posting photos to networking sites by the millions. The cameraphone obviously allows people to do this more seamlessly than a regular camera. There’s no need to download to yet another device to post the pictures. You can instantly send the photos to facebook, flickr, friend, family, etc. This is a huge advantage given that most photos have a short shelf-life. The value of the photo drops off rapidly, so immediacy is important. Yes, you could add a connection to the cameras (and I’m sure we’ll see that in some cameras), but I think it more likely the cameras will just get incorporated into the devices that already have a connection.

So lots of people are uploading photos to facebook and flickr. Hardly news. But do consumers really understand what they’re doing? Do they understand the ‘cloud’?

Some of the social networking sites, notably facebook, don’t keep high resolution files. They lower the resolution, so it’s not the original file that was uploaded. Some folks don’t fully understand this, nor do they understand all the implications of having their photos (hires or not) sitting around in a cloud somewhere.

So there was also a lot of discussion about getting consumers to understand their copyright/privacy rights when posting pictures to the cloud, what they should do about archiving their images, and how to manage them all wherever they are.

Many of the users posting pictures may not fully appreciate what it means to have a photo posted that may, potentially, never go away (if they even know that deleting something online doesn’t necessarily mean it’s deleted). Interestingly, the other side of the problem, archiving, is to deal with when images permanently (usually unexpectedly) go away.

There’s definitely some opportunities to provide services that deal with what users actually do vs. what they should do. A guy from SmugMug spoke at the DI conference, and they seem to know what they’re doing. Yes, users should manage their photos and know beforehand which photos are valuable, deleting ones that aren’t. In the real world, users upload everything, don’t manage them, and then two years later want to find that ‘one’ picture of granpa Joe. Further proof that human behavior is, well… wacky. But we all do it.

There’s also some opportunities that should arise from educating users about photo archiving. CD/DVDs don’t last forever (although a company called TuskerBlu claims that theirs do), cloud companies go out of business taking all their data with them (i.e. Digital Railroad), media cards die, and hard drives crash. So how to you educate folks on the need to backup their photos? It’s an important part of the digital imaging experience. Do non-techy families understand that a hard drive crash can wipe out years of photos? What can you do to make sure your customers don’t have a loss like that? It makes a good case for prints and photobooks, which last a lot longer than any of the other media mentioned.

And, of course, lastly… how do you manage all these photos with them spread all over the place? Eventually someone is going to come up with a good tagging system that will recognize everything in a photo and tag it. But that’s a ways off. In the meantime, better tools that make tagging easier are needed (along with, again, educating users why they want to tag).

So, lots of food for thought. But for other people. Because I KNOW you archive, tag, and properly manage your photos. Right?

cheers,

Jim

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One of the interesting observations at the conference was the way our picture taking habits are changing. We (as a society) are taking a LOT more pictures. However, these pictures tend to have a lower value on average, with a shorter shelf life so to speak. In the past, pictures were somewhat difficult to take and get printed so there was some value to them, even the crappy ones. Now we snap pictures everywhere, immediately send them around to our network of friends. We can immediately see our friends pictures who are doing the same thing. But a lot of these photos are ‘of the moment’. Pictures from very recent events that are not great photos, but are interesting because of their immediacy. Most are not pictures you’ll be looking at five years from now. There are a few things that can change the value of a picture immediately, for example, if someone passes away any pictures you have of them become more valuable.

Another interesting point was that the value of some pictures have a ‘V’ shaped curve over time. They are very valuable when first taken, but that value diminishes over time. However at some point along the timeline, because of the age of the photo, a death, or something else, the value of the photo starts to increase.

Ok, but why does this matter?

As a photographer, it matters because you may be asking yourself, “with all these cameras around, will there still be a need for me?”. So it’s important to understand why people are taking pictures and what they’re doing with them. Not only from the perspective of will you have a job, but are there products or services that you can sell to them that will incorporate their photos as well as the images you take of them.

The other reason it matters, is the industry as a whole (especially companies that make printers) is asking whether consumers will still want prints. Now that you can email photos around and view them on beautiful high resolution screens, why would you ever want to print?

My takeaways from the conference:

I don’t think prints are going anywhere. People still live in boxes (houses, cubicles, etc) and they want to hang stuff on the walls of those boxes. Electronic photoframes are nifty, but what parents house would be complete without a Wall of Shame featuring their progeny? I find it unlikely that you’ll see tons of photoframes up on the wall displaying slideshows, if only because you would have to have 50 power outlets.

Consumers ARE printing less, taken as a percentage of the number of pictures they take. However, because they’re taking so many more pictures, the absolute number of prints being made is staying about the same. This makes sense. You no longer have to print out an entire roll of pictures to get the one or two you really want. Many of the cameras out there, especially camera phones, don’t take great pictures. They’re fine for posting on Facebook to let folks know what you did last Friday, but they aren’t exactly keepsake quality.

And speaking about Keepsakes… what about professional photographers? Again, I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. Photography is a skill and getting consistently good shots will continue to be valued. But the value of the experience of going to a pro photographer will go up. If someone is going to go to the trouble of getting a professional portrait, they’re going to expect it to be an experience worth remembering in and of itself. Many photographers already understand this, so its hardly news. But I’m guessing it’ll become even more important. This may involve stuff like shooting video from the moment they walk in and giving them a DVD of the photo shoot process, a sort of  ‘behind the scenes’ documentary. This becomes another selling point or thing to be sold. Creating a photo book of all the behind the scenes images, for example.

And in terms of what consumers want, photo books are way up there. It’s one of those things that can be difficult for them to create themselves, especially when you’re talking about high quality photo books. It’s really what people are looking for and there are tons of options out there. So as a photographer, you’re not just selling a print, you’re selling a multimedia experience that culminates in a great 16×20 photo, photo books, and even a DVD.

We’ll talk about cameras and other technology in part II.

Related posts:

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Here at Digital Anarchy, we are always available to find your old serial number or resend you an installer. Our records are quite good and typically we can go back seven years, to the company’s beginnings, to find your information. This customer service is especially important since we don’t ship our products on disk but instead provide digital download.

This week, I received an email from a customer who had purchased our Backdrop Designer product — a cool Adobe Photoshop plugin that makes muslin-esque textures for digital backgrounds — in 2005 and needed to reinstall. I located the customer in our Backdrop Designer database, updated his serial number through our new system, and sent off the info. I was extremely delighted to get this positive email back from Ron.

Better yet, I love the name of Ron’s company, Running Dog LOIC, and his title, which is Top Dog (of course). I’m always on the lookout for interesting people and names since everyone at our company takes on errr, evocative titles. Mine is Controller of Chaos and our president is the CEA, or Chief Executive Anarchist.

It’s great to see other people making a point to enjoy their working life. And it’s wonderful to get a compliment before I am through my morning coffee. Thanks Top Dog, oops, Ron. ;)

Have a great weekend! -debbie

ps: This post co-stars my dog, who I think is a Rottie-Chow mix.

Related posts:

 Filling orders is like eating cheesecake.Last week, we received an order for our Backdrop Designer plugin. On that same day, we received a request to resend a previous purchase of...  Final customer love of 2009I had a very nice email exchange with customer John Gunmann a few months ago. Meant to blog immediately about the talk but other conversations...  2010 is already a ‘beauty”.On the heels of a wonderful customer email from 2009, I’d like to show you my favorite email from 2010. Never mind that the year...

http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/03/news/economy/happy.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009080310

Smiley face courtesy of our 3D Photoshop plugin, called 3D Invigorator, which creates 3D objects and logos. Fun stuff.

This sort of goes along with my personal philosophy on success, which is some mixture of the following ingredients:

-Positive thinking and/or believing that whatever goal you’ve set can be accomplished
-Perseverance
-Creativity
-Laughter (or at least not taking yourself/work too seriously and stepping away from the computer occasionally to do something fun)

Related posts:

 Albert Einstein gets invigorated.Ron Kalstein, M.Ed. is a long-time customer of Digital Anarchy, and quite the accomplished digital professional. His degree acronym certainly conveys this and his job...  5 Stars and a Hot Pick From Photoshop User3D Invigorator, our Photoshop plugin for creating 3D logos and objects, just got 5 stars and a Hot Pick from Photoshop User. Dave Huss loved...  Creative Uses Of 3D TextWhen we first start selling 3D Invigorator there were some questions about when you would ever need such a tool. But for designers it can...