Coho Mast Edits
More photos from the Coho Ferry, taken on the way to Port Angeles and the Olympic Peninsula in July.
Today I show a variety of edits made using Topaz B&W Effects software, just to give a sense of a few, very few, of the preset edits possible. I use the Topaz software as a plugin to Lightroom 4. One example in the gallery is the original image, unmodified. Another example is a black and white conversion done only in LR4. The remainder are made using various presets in B&W Effects, and most then have two dust spots cloned out in LR4 as I forgot to do this in original before exporting to Topaz.
I have used this software a bit over the past month or so, and other examples of edits made with one or another of these presets can be found here and here and here, all of which I think are very successful conversions.
All of these presets are found in the Stylised Collection which has 49 effects and is one of 8 such collections of effects. You can tell that there are a lot of options. Of course, one can also customise the presets in one of several broad areas, and the adjustment controls are very finely tuned to allow a lot of control. The only one of these presets that I fine tuned is the Infrared IV picture.
What I would do differently next time is a very fine crop and straightening as can be seen in the LR4 version below in the gallery, and also the lens profile correction which took out a lot of subtle vignetting that is emphasized in some of the treatment, as well as cloning the two dust spots (though you can’t see them in the original version, they do show up in some of the treatments). Perhaps also a few contrast and brightness adjustments in LR4 prior to opening the image in Topaz.
I put about 20 minutes into the LR4 B&W conversion, and I think that effort shows. The Topaz conversions are all just a matter of exporting the image, applying the preset and saving the file, maybe 1 minute each. A bit more experimentation and effort and time per image and I think that much more could be achieved with any of these presets, and that it could be done with less effort than the LR4 edits required.
Generally I am very pleased with this software, and certainly with what it can bring to an image like this one. I am sure to be using it often in the future, especially for toned B&W conversions.
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To open the gallery below click on any thumbnail, navigate with the arrows and escape to return to this page.
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- Original image, unmodified
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- Lightroom 4 conversion to B&W
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- Topaz B&W effects, Detailed Grunge
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- Topaz B&W effects, quad tone yellow
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- Topaz B&W effects, quad tone redscale III dynamic
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- Topaz B&W effects, quad tone redscale I dynamic
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- Topaz B&W effects, infrared IV custom
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Canon 5Dii, Canon 100/f2.8 macro lens, ISO100, f2.8, 1/5000th
burnt embers 
Another really interesting composition. As you move down the photos it looks less and less like a boat and more like an oil rig!
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It is an interesting feature of this ferry. Most of the BC Ferries fleet don’t have this symmetry, or if they do you can’t get close enough for a shot.
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Yes it is very. I should not have called it a boat. I am friends with a man who worked at sea most of his life and he is very particular about these things! Security on ferries is very tight I understand just like on aeroplanes these days. I imagine that will be why you couldn’t get close?
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I know those kinds of nautical language police as well. I think they are in a very old tradition. I grew up next to an old man, Capt Royal Navy ret’d who had trained as a child (as they did in those days) on a naval tall ship, and he was a bit like that. He did however show me how to coil a hose without a mess, something he learned with hemp rope. I mean line.
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Seriously, hemp line? He sounds like a fantastic person to have grown up so close to! I bet you appreciate what you learned from him more now, in many ways, than you did when you’re a child.
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I do appreciate him even now. But as a child, or more accurately teenager, I was fascinated by him. He had been a captain of a corvette on the Atlantic convoys and had a brass u-boat model on his desk, with his 4 “kills” stamped on the side. He was a godson of Rudyard Kipling. And he grew up on a remote ranch in British Columbia. Fought in a mounted (ie horses) unit in Turkey sometime just after WWI (must have been one of the last mounted units in battle). He had a monocle!! And he told a great story of being piped aboard his ship to find all the men assembled to greet him wearing monocles. He promptly fell to his face and got up, monocle in place, and ordered them all to do the same. If they could keep it in, they could go on wearing it. Nobody passed the test. You can imagine the fascination for a teenage boy…
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My god! He sounds amazing! Especially like the bit about him having his kills on the ornament. I’m presuming that means four boats that he blew up?
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Yes that’s it – u-boats that never came to the surface again. He was instrumental in the RCN anti submarine role in the North Atlantic. Which ties to my family because not only did we buy his house from him when moved to a new one next door, but my father was evacuated from Britain to Canada during the war on an aircraft carrier. The next ship with kids was torpedoed, so my father was on the last successful export of British kids to safety in Canada.
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I’m not sure if you got my reply. It said it didn’t send. I will try again later if it hasn’t turned up.😱
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No sign of it, this being the only reply so far!
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I’m using my iPad and sometimes it does weird things telling me comments haven’t posted when they have and have posted when they haven’t. Now I can’t remember what I was going to say but I think it was about your father’s arrival in Canada and the torpedoing of a boat full of children. So many horrors of war, and so many lives turned upside down but for those who made it , some fantastic new opportunities and some great stories to tell.
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Yes. My father returned to UK near end of war. But he emigrated back as soon as he could.
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Funnily enough I am now living next door to an ex submarine naval guy. I know very little of what he got up to , except that it was not during active war time. However there was quite a bit of spying that went on during his era. Covert ops as they say! He’s only in his early 70s so Of quite a different era to your neighbour.
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The Topaz tools are my favorites in my post-processing, and this is a great example of why Ehpem.
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Thank you Toad! It was fun to sample just a few of them. The software displays a quite large preview and mostly I just hovered over the options, but every now and then I clicked on an option to see a larger view, and of those I sometimes saved them and started a new one.
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I agree with Melinda, the quad tone redscale 1 dynamic really has something special about it. There is so much to play with in Topaz, isn’t there. Not everything works with every image but you’ve identified some presets that really do work with this very simple graphic.
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Andy, there IS a great deal to play with, and some wonderful results too. It has broadened my horizons, though I don’t think I have internalised any of it enough yet that I can think of it while framing a shot, but that will come if I use these effects enough.
I very much like the simplicity of this graphic, it is a good one to experiment with I think.
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I guess that it’t time for me to get Topaz, and they probably should pay you a commission! My favorite of these is the quad tone redscale I dynamic, though I can’t quite articulate why.
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Thanks Melinda. I like that one best too, and can’t really say why. It is wonderfully warm, which is part of it, and quite like a natural sunset, which could also be part of it. But… Topaz has a package called DeJpeg, which works to get jpegs into a more fully editable mode – I mention this because of something you said recently to me about older images from your jpeg shooting days. I have not experimented too much with it, but would like to. I can let you know more if you like.
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I spent some time today looking at the various Topaz packages, but had to quit when I started to want ALL of them….
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You should keep on entering the competition, shortlisted twice! It is your turn to win coming up soon.
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There is no doubt about it, the Topaz package is very versatile. There are so many presets it’s difficult to pick just one. I’ve purchased the package when it was first introduced and joyfully spent hours experimented with it. Over the months I’ve settled on a few of the presets as my favorites and I’m sure you will, too. I like the customization tools and have saved my own presets with the idea of using them to apply effects consistently. Of these photos, my favorite is the QUAD TONE REDSCALE I DYNAMIC.
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Hi Ken. I am looking forward to getting some presets made and stored as well. I have tried out a number of their products – I too bought the bundlee when it was on special a few months ago, and a couple of other products as well. Topaz has kindly offered to infill the remaining software from their catalogue as my prize for winning their competition recently, so I will have another couple to experiment with. Now, all I need is more time…
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