Underwater Photography and Videography, News, Forums, Trips, Photo Contests :: Wetpixel.com

Steve Douglas reviews CrumplePop’s ToneGrade plug-in for Final Cut Pro X. This color correction app uses a processing technique similar to that used in high dynamic range photography, allowing the user to add tone mapping to the image, increasing or maintaining details in both shadows and highlights.

The plug-in is specifically designed to work with Apple’s Final Cut Pro X.

Wetpixel Senior Moderator Mike Veitch presents a review of the recently announced tutorial DVD, Lightroom 3 for the Underwater Photographer. Lightroom is increasingly the tool of choice for photographers in general, and although there is a lot of information available on it, there is little specific to using it with underwater photography. Mike comments:

"With general Lightroom tutorials, there are no examples of getting rid of unsightly backscatter or dealing with blue tints and hues that are common in underwater photography. By showing samples of both macro and wide-angle scenes, Doug really brings to light what we can do with this program in conjunction with our very specialized field."

Many of the video capable SLRs output video with an AVCHD file-based format. Older NLE programs like Apples's Final Cut Pro 7 could not handle these files natively, and the footage needs to be transcoded. In this review, Steve Douglas presents one product that is designed to do this job: Divergent Media's ClipWrap. Put simply, ClipWrap converts the MTS files produced in AVCHD to Quicktime.

Steve comments:

"In this day of expensive applications and 3rd party plug-ins that are often used infrequently, it is nice to find an application that not only is very inexpensive but, with the advent of more camcorders creating files not conducive to Macs, an app that really can save the day for both you and your client."

Wetpixel moderator Drew Wohl presents his impressions of Digital Film Tools Photocopy plug-in. This integrates into most popular photographic and video editing platforms, and provides over 200 preset style or looks. These have been derived from a study of popular movies, paintings. photographs and processes. Drew concludes:

"I quickly found many favorites that I would use for photos and video. The ease and interface of PhotoCopy make it a pleasure to work with and ultimately it is a nice plug-in to have on hand."

Steve Douglas presents a review of the Eizo CG245W Self-Calibrating Computer Monitor. This large screen 24.1" monitor is equipped with a spectroradiometer and software that allows the creation of custom color presets without any additional hardware or software. Eizio claim that:

"While the Apple Cinema Display and many other monitors on the market try to achieve 92% of the Adobe RGB, the Eizo CG245W ColorEdge series monitor, with its proprietary sensor achieves 98% of the Adobe RGB which translates into a wider color gamut and coverage. "

A review of Nik Software Silver Efex Pro version 2. It's predecessor was the industry standard in black and white conversion software, so we take a look at the latest version to see how it stacks up:

"Most pro photographers use different techniques, software or workflows to achieve their creative objectives. However, when talking about black and white or mono conversions, there seems to be a degree of unanimity. Although most image processing software contains mono options, if you pick most of the mono images you see around and ask how they were processed, the majority of answers will include reference to Nik Software Silver Efex Pro."

A review of RE:Vision Effects' Twixtor plug-in by Steve Douglas. This plug-in for Apple's Final Cut Pro and Adobe Creative Suite 5 allows for the time remapping of footage, or in simpler terms: Slow or fast motion.

"With the majority of test clips I used, the results when speeding up a clip produced far less stutter and considerably smoother motion, for slow motion the results can be just stunning."

A mini review of Lightroom Plugins SoftProof plug-in. Soft proofing is a process that allows you to view images on your computer screen, with the same profile applied to them that will be used during printing. The idea is that in a color-managed workflow, this should give the user a pretty clear idea of how the image will eventually look printed on paper using an ICC profile. This plug-in allows the soft proofing of images from within Adobe Lightroom.

Underwater Photography Magazine (UwP), a free PDF magazine, has published a review of MarineLife Keywords written by marine biologist and award-winning photographer Alexander Mustard. The review can be found in their 50th issue, which is available as a free download from their website. Alex says:

The list includes the genus and species of 12,000 species, including over 4,000 fish, 4,000 invertebrates, and all known marine turtles, rays, skates, marine reptiles, and marine mammals… The first thing I did was to try to find any absentees. It is not easy. The coverage is fantastic…

... keywording is an essential part of workflow for anyone who supplies their images to photo stock libraries. MLKL was built for these tasks and having tasted it I could never give it up.

It is often said that time is money. I can’t think of many other products, designed for underwater photographers, which will save you as much time for so little money. A highly recommended purchase.

Alex likes it! :)

Wetpixel video moderator Paul Wags (wagsy) has written a review of his impressions of Canopus’ EDIUS Pro 4. EDIUS is a Windows PC-based nonlinear video editing program that can edit both DV and HDV.

The main reason for switching [from Premiere Pro and Aspect HD] is that I can do realtime-on-the-fly conversion to the Canopus HQ codec, and the keyframeable color correction and slow-motion in real-time is perfect for our underwater footage.

Continue reading for Paul’s review of the EDIUS software package...