Friday Image No.220
Over the past week, I’ve restarted work on a new edition of my Essential Photoshop book. When I wrote the original book, I wanted it to be version independent and work with old and new versions of Photoshop alike. I even illustrated it using Photoshop CS5. Following a few requests, I’ve decided to revise the book to create Essential Photoshop CC, based on the 2019 version. Importantly, I’m creating a print version of the book as well.
One of the difficulties in creating a print edition and even a new eBook version for that matter is image resolution. What used to be the maximum eBook image resolution on Amazon doesn’t satisfy customers just a few years later. It’s also too low a resolution to print. This means I need to recreate many of the original screenshots which involves a lot of reprocessing. And that’s where I found this week’s Friday Image.
This is the image I use to demonstrate tonal correction using Photoshop Curves, although it’s a colour image in the book. As I processed the scene I thought “I bet that looks great in black and white and so I ran it through Nik Silver Efex Pro. I don’t think I’ve created a masterpiece, but I do like it and there’s potential when I have more time.
I can’t tell you too much about taking the shot other than it was Zabriskie Point in Death Valley one afternoon in March. The weather was dull and a little hazy which created a low contrast scene. I know from the camera data that I used a Panasonic GX1 with a Panasonic 14-45mm lens at 45mm. Given the weather conditions and composition, I doubt I used any filters and I would have shot it handheld.
What I do remember very clearly though were the large groups of photographers travelling around the park, shooting locations like this. They all had huge cameras, tripods and lenses and on more than a few occasions would push straight past, even standing directly in front of me to set up. I even had a few ask me about my “quaint little camera” and suggest upgrading it to something better (bigger).
I really miss that little camera and lens.
Have a great weekend.
The Lightweight Photographer 
The 14-45 was only sold with the first models of Panasonic cameras, replaced a a 14-42 lens. Don’t know why, but talk in forums (which could be bogus) said that it was more expensive to build than its replacement, but that the original was sharper.
I still have mine, along with my G1. I found it okay but thought that the built-in lens of my LX100 was just as good.
This lens was from a used GF1 I bought and was a very good example. I found it sharp across the focal range and into the corners. It made a great little kit with the GX1 but the GX1 was a little too noisy for my liking. I do believe Panasonic invested a lot into the lens because they wanted to create a great launch for the GF1 with this as the kit lens.
Gorgeous image and nice story about the little camera – properly used, by the way. Greetings from Brazil.
Thank you.