Photo Manipulation

Photographic Society of New Zealand Convention 2011

Trevor Dennis is a group moderator Trevor Dennis says:

I am currently on my way home from a photographic convention in Auckland. In fact the National Convention of the Photographic Society of New Zealand. We had some pretty damn cool speakers including landscape photographer Charlie Waite who was flown all the way from UK just to speak to us, but among the most impressive stuff at the convention was a workshop by Ian Handricks, who is the man who started the company now called Photowonders - the world's largest photo restoration business.

Ian demonstrated some interesting techniques, like fixing a B&W print that had been drawn on with a blue felt tip. The simple trick of using just the blue channel made the blue disapear. He is a lateral thinker because when presented with an old coloured print that had gone almost completely silver, and told it could not be fixed, he agreed that RGB channels would help, but converted to CMYK, and showed that the magenta channel did the trick.

But what blew me away was a very clever technique that removed a regular patern from a scanned image using Fourier Curves to detect the pattern, then applying complex math to create a mask which completely removed it. He has promised those attending a copy of the software, and I can't wait to get home to try it.

He has an interesting website with a lot of little tricks and tips that were completely new to me.

BTW I ran two HDR workshops at the convention and had a nightmare trying to control twenty people of varing abilities, in a large room with twenty computers. I spent most of the time rushing about trying to help out the stragglers, and did not complete the program. Ian used the same room with some obvious Photoshop beginners, but managed to control the room with a huge voice and forceful manner