now delivering watermarked images

design by Broadleaf Architecture / photo by jenerik images photographyI'm now delivering watermarked images for my architectural / builder client projects, like the one above. The watermarked images are for online use outside of clients' website domains, specifically for social media like Facebook or houzz.com. Additionally, because of the ease in which images posted to social media can be used without authorization from me or my clients, I have created a new Third Party for my pricing categories ("social media use").

As you can see, the watermark identifies who commissioned the image (my client) as well as me as its creator. While it's true that anyone with a modicum of Photoshop skills can remove the watermark, the edit would take time to do correctly. The casual image thief won't bother. And if the image is hotlinked from houzz.com or Facebook, the double watermark gives both my client and me some measure of attribution. Hotlinking, by the way, is a way of embedding the location for an image rather than the image itself. If someone doesn't have a nice looking picture on his website, hotlinking allows a user to simply point to a place where it exists on the web.

Houzz.com is a prime example of how hotlinking works. The image below is one of my commissioned images hotlinked to my client's houzz.com profile. I didn't upload the image to this post. I simply linked to it. I'm not objecting to my client's use; not at all. But the way the image can be used does change my business a bit.

traditional bathroom design by other metros design-build Henderer Design + Build

To clarify: I have no intention of preventing my clients from using whatever social media they wish for creating business. I will simply pass the cost for inadvertent and potentially unauthorized use onto my clients. The actual amount depends upon the number of social media sites intended for use, but I estimate adding 20-30% of the base price. I'd like to reiterate that this use is only for social media sites external to my clients' own domains. If you've got a blog on your own website, that's covered under First Party use. All I ask is that clients use the watermarked image in those cases (or use a caption like the one in the image at the top of this post). And, of course, using the watermarked image is not required for clients' own online portfolios.

What Photoshop Can Fix #2

Correcting slight parallax

Sometimes the ideal camera placement isn't possible, so we make do and fix the result in post.  That's the lesson from a recent twilight shoot with Annette Sievert of Coldwell Banker Valley Brokers.  Our subject was 4,000 square foot home in Corvallis and Annette had chosen straight on towards the front door for her preferred composition.  But the best spot directly across the street was blocked by a large tree.  After some scouting in the neighbor’s yard, Annette and I found a suitable location with an unobstructed view of the subject’s front doors.  But instead of straight on, this composition turned the camera slightly to the right towards the home, creating a shallow angle.  Now the house looked slightly of proportion, like the roofline was slanting downwards.  

The technical term for this distortion is “parallax”, which means the direction of the subject appears different when viewed from an angle.  Or to put it another way, the end of the house furthest away from the camera appears to be smaller.  Most viewers accept the parallax from an angle like 45 degrees because the horizontal lines in the image slant towards each other in an equal fashion as they converge.  But when the camera is slightly turned away from a subject the convergence isn't as obvious.  Viewers notice something is a bit off.

The solution is to fix the parallax with Photoshop, using a filter which evens out the perspective to appear as if it were straight-on.  Click through the slideshow below to see the change (hover for controls).

my twitter debut

I shot a twilight exterior for Dava Behrens of Coldwell Banker Valley Brokers earlier this week.  She contacted me via a referral from Janel Hoffmann, also of Coldwell Banker.  We made the best of our recent clear weather for a home in SW Corvallis.  After the lights were set up and the home’s front facade staged, I began the exposure process while Dava sent updates to Facebook and twitter.  I later visited her twitter feed to see what she had captured.  Kinda interesting to see what I look like when working.  I look cold.  Nice composition to her picture.

Here's the completed shot for the Willamette Valley Multiple Listing Service (WVMLS).  

Another iPhone sunset

The skies are usually grey and overcast in western Oregon during non-summer months, a long stretch to go without routine sunlight.  Grey can get very dreary.  But sometimes we do get short sunbreaks (coming this rainy season near sunset), which has made for pretty colors. So here's another iPhone sunset, this one from my backyard.

What Photoshop Can Fix #1

When it comes to images, most viewers today would accept the notion that Photoshop can do anything.  Right?  You just press a button and voila.  Would that were the case.  Photoshop can do many things to and for visual images, but like anything else, getting effective results takes effort and expertise.  The program is precise as a razor blade but not easy to learn.  So in the first of a casual series, I’ll show an example of What Photoshop Can Fix.

This is a kitchen I captured for Henderer Design + Build of Corvallis last October.  For this traditional Arts & Crafts style home close to the OSU campus, Henderer had maximized the space available to create an attractive and functional kitchen.

 

The open door on the right side shows the view through the dining room and living room, complete with an interesting carpet color.  Let’s call it spicy brown mustard.  After looking at the proof, Lainey Dyer at the Henderer office asked if there was something I could do to change the carpet's color.  It really draws the eye, but that’s not the direction we want viewers to look.

The color replacement tool in Photoshop took care of this, changing the yellow to a subdued brown without altering the texture of the carpet.  I won’t go into detail about how to use the color replacement tool (there are plenty of tutorials online), but I’ll just say the fix works best when the original color and the replacement color are close in hue and brightness.  I sampled the putty-colored doorway for my new color but the difference between the two was too great for Ps to replace completely.  But I did get an effective change from the mustard, and Lainey said the result was acceptable.