What Is Golden Hour?

Golden hour is the window of time right before sunset and after sunrise.

The golden hour in photography is also considered by many to be the magic hour. And if you’ve ever had an opportunity to witness one, you’d know the reason why.

When the sun is low, it’s the longer wavelengths of light (orange and red) that have the strongest presence. Anything that the light touches then appear to have a golden glow to them. This is what makes it desirable for the photographers to work during golden hour.

And don’t be fooled by the term “hour” as the golden hour doesn’t last precisely for an hour. Based on where you are and the weather conditions there, the time and duration will vary drastically.

However, as a general “rule” you can consider that the golden hour in your locality will occur an hour before sunset, and an hour after sunrise.

The Importance of Golden Hour in Photography

Golden hour in photography has its own special place. Photographers of any genre and any level of experience just love being outside and taking photos during golden hour.

There are a couple of reasons for this:

• As the sun is low during the golden hours, any shadows formed on the ground are thus long and won’t appear in the image
  
• The light during golden hour is highly diffused and thereby soft – perfect for any sort of photoshoot
  
• Thanks to the longer wavelengths, the light adds a golden glow to whatever it falls on; subjects thus have a happy and warm feeling to them

Top 5 Tips to Photograph During Golden Hour

The lighting during golden hour is probably the best light you can shoot in. And the best part is that it’s absolutely free. So, what are you waiting for? Head out and make the most out of it.

If you’re unsure about how to benefit your photography using golden hour, here are our top 5 tips to get you started:

1. Plan for Golden Hour

When planning for golden hour photography, the first thing you’d want to know is the time of its occurrence. While taking the local sunrise and sunset time as a reference is a good idea, there are other apps and online golden hour calculators that’ll help you do this more precisely.

Some popular tools include Goldenhour.One, Photopills, and Photo Ephemeris.

Once you know when the golden hour is happening, make sure that you reach there ahead of time. This way you will get ample time to scout the location and work out your composition beforehand.

Remember, you have a very narrow window of time to take photos in the golden hour. Also, the light changes very quickly when the sun is low. So, whether you’re shooting portraits or landscapes, be sure to work quickly.

2. Set Correct White Balance

When the camera is set to auto white balance (AWB), it’ll always adjust the white balance in a way that the white will appear white. But this is not something that we want during golden hour photography.

Since the light itself carries a rich yellowish tone, even white will appear golden during the magic hour. It is thus best that you either set your white balance manually or use the Shade or Cloudy white balance setting.

If you have a raw file, you can easily adjust the white balance using the White balance dropdown menu, or the Temperature and Tint sliders in software like Photoshop or Lightroom.

While jpeg files are not so flexible as far as white balance adjustment is concerned, you can still do it in Colorcinch or any other photo editing tool.

To adjust the white balance using Colorcinch, simply follow these steps:

Step 1: Upload the file to Colorcinch

Step 2: Navigate to Edit – Color

Step 3: Push the Temperature slider towards the right to give a warmer look to the image and press Apply

Here’s a before/after of an image after adjusting its white balance using Colorcinch:

5. Shoot Silhouettes During Golden Hour

The golden hour gives you a great opportunity to photograph silhouettes. By underexposing the foreground, you can accentuate the glow in the surroundings which makes the golden hour appear even more magical.

Moreover, if your position is just right, you can even capture the highlights on the edges of the subjects which creates a clean separation between the subject and the surroundings.

To Sum It Up

Golden hour in photography is indeed a golden opportunity for every one of us to create magical photos. And the great thing is that it comes around twice every day.

However, do keep in mind that depending on weather conditions, the magic of the golden light in those hours can vary. Nonetheless, if you’re looking to capture a beautiful soft contrast image in any genre, the golden hour will not fail you.

The post Top 5 Tips to Make the Most Out of Golden Hour in Photography appeared first on Photo to Cartoon – Cartoonize Yourself & Create Avatar Characters for Free.

Light painting photography is a type of long exposure photography where you use your environment as your canvas and a light source as your brush.

A major difference between painting and photography is how you’re self-reliant in painting whereas in photography a lot of external factors can affect your work. Painting thus has a marginal advantage as far as creative expression is concerned.

As a photographer, if you really want to express your creative self, light painting photography may be something that you’d want to explore. As the name suggests, you could consider it to be a fusion of photography and painting.

With the camera set to shoot at a slow shutter speed, you can record the light trails to put together creative art as if you’re painting with light.

How To Do Light Painting Photography

When light painting, we need to expose the sensor for a long time. This makes the workflow a little tricky and technical. So, let’s see some of the aspects that you must be careful about during a session of light painting photography.

Equipment For Light Painting Photography

We need to have a fine control over the time period for which the sensor remains exposed. It’s therefore important that the camera you use has manual mode available. If you’re using an iPhone or an Android, you can download camera apps that have a manual mode.

When shooting long exposures, the camera needs to be stable as a rock. Otherwise, images will turn out blurry and useless. Get yourself a sturdy tripod to mount your camera. If there’s a stable surface where you can put your camera, you can use that too.

You’ll also need a small light source that’ll act as your paintbrush. You could use a flashlight, small LED lights, or even specialized lighting tools designed for light painting.

If you want colorful results without the use of complicated equipment, look for an RGB LED flashlight, or simply cover up your regular flashlight using a color gel.

You’ll also need a remote shutter release to engage and control the shutter duration when using bulb mode (more on this later). If you don’t have it, no need to worry. We’ll see how using a timer will work just fine.

Camera Settings For Light Painting Photography

Camera mode: Since we’ll need to have fine control over the camera settings, switch the camera to manual mode. This way, we’ll be able to dial in the required aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.

Camera settings: While the exact camera settings for light painting will vary based on the shooting conditions, you can use this as a base to start:

• Aperture: Set the f-value in the range of f/8-f/13 for a greater depth of field but feel free to play around with this if the exposure doesn’t turn out quite right
  
• ISO: Since we’ll be working in dark conditions with a long exposure, set the ISO to 100 to avoid camera noise
  
• Shutter speed: This will widely depend on how long it will take for you to “paint” so if you use bulb mode, you can start and stop the exposure at your will, otherwise, 20-30 seconds can be a good starting point

Step-By-Step Guide For Light Painting Photography

Step 1: Start by finding a dark spot with ample space for you to move. If you plan to work inside a room, turn the lights off and be extra careful not to break anything.

Step 2: Set the camera on a tripod, dial in the test exposure settings like we discussed above, and focus manually on the subject or area where you will be light painting. Be sure to leave the focusing mode in manual mode.

Step 3: If you don’t have a remote shutter release, enable the 5-second timer in the camera, press the shutter release button, and start the light painting process.

If you use a remote shutter release, move the shutter speed dial to bulb mode, press the shutter release button, and start the light painting process. Once done, press the shutter release button again to close the shutter.

In both cases, make sure that you review the final images to ensure that the composition and exposure are acceptable.

9 Creative Light Painting Ideas

When you have the light source in your control, what you want to create is up to you. So, put on your thinking hat and come up with creative light painting ideas.

In case you’re feeling stuck, here are 9 creative light painting ideas to help you get started.

1. Use a Drone For Light Painting

You’ll need to be a skillful drone pilot to pull this neat trick off. Otherwise, ask someone who’s actually good at it. This’ll ensure that your results come out clean and stunning.

Mount small portable lights on your drone while making sure that they don’t interfere with the drone’s blades. Voila! your drone is your light painting brush now.

You can use this concept to light paint over landscapes, a vehicle, a building, or even a person.

2. Light Writing

Light writing is when you use the light painting technique to write words or draw various symbols to convey messages. You can use flashlights, colored LED lights, or even sparklers for this purpose.

When writing, keep in mind that you will need to mirror the texts for them to be readable. Otherwise, you will need to flip the image horizontally in post.

3. Creative Light Painting Portrait

Combining light painting with portrait photography is a great way to take a creative portrait photo. Using this technique can be a great way to express a certain mood or emotion.

The lighting and the patterns you draw will be the key along with the body language of the subject. Using specialized light painting sticks can be a good choice for this purpose.

You can either draw along the edges of the subject’s body, compose with the face as the prime focus and take the photos, or even paint on the subject’s face with light.

4. Use Specialized Light Painting Tools

Using light sticks and other specialized modifiers designed just for the purpose of light painting are great ways to spice up your photos with light painting.

Once you get a hang of using them, you can go wild with your creativity and take your light painting photos to the next level.

5. Add Drama To a Still Life Photo

Still life photography in itself is a very creative genre of photo that pushes the photographers to their creative limits. A cool idea thus can be to light paint around the subject and add an extra zing to the image.

If in case, you have a still life image (or as a matter of fact, any image) that you’ve already taken in dark conditions to which you want to add the light painting effect afterwards, then you can easily do so using Colorcinch.

Simply follow these steps:

Step 1: Upload the image to Colorcinch

Step 2: Navigate to Overlays – Light Leaks

Step 3: Choose from a variety of light leaks overlays that are available and make any adjustments if necessary and click on Apply

Here’s a before/after of an image for reference:

6. Use Your Smartphone Screen as a Light Source

If you’re struggling to find colorful lights for your light painting, or if you don’t want to spend too much, then this is an awesome trick you can use.

You can either simply put up solid colored images on your mobile screen, or use apps that can put up color splashes on your mobile screen. Then, use your mobile screen as your light source and paint away.

7. Do Light Painting And Astrophotography Together

Shooting astrophotos also require the use of long exposure which is a great opportunity for light painting as well.

Combining light painting with astrophotography ensures that you not only have an interesting background but an intriguing foreground as well.

8. Do Light Painting and Landscape Photography Together

If you’re someone who loves to take landscape photos during low light, light painting can be a great way to illuminate your landscape subjects.

This definitely will not work with something like large mountains, but you can definitely use a large enough light source to paint the foreground with light.

Or, you could even draw patterns around the foreground elements, or even pose for a light painting portrait beside a lake for a cool-looking reflection.

9. Let Your Creativity Go Wild

Like with painting, you have the freedom to express yourself when doing light painting photography. So, whatever ideas that you may have in your mind, go for them.

Use different colored lights, use various light painting tools, even make your own if you’d like and experiment. Whatever you can think of, give it a try.

To Sum It Up

Light painting photography is indeed a genre of photography that has a much greater scope of creative freedom than other genres of photography.

If you’ve always felt that the world around you is incomplete and that you could add something more to it, you should definitely give light painting photography a shot.

The post 9 Creative Ideas for Awesome Light Painting Photography appeared first on Photo to Cartoon – Cartoonize Yourself & Create Avatar Characters for Free.

Colorcinch offers a ton of great conversion and enhancement tools that can put the “wow” back into your pictures.

One of those tools is the photo editor. It has a set of robust but simple features to enhance the color and vibrance of an image. We’ll show you how this is done.

The Thing With Color

Color is one of the most vital elements of an image. That is because color attracts interest and stirs emotions.

However, we do not take perfect pictures all the time. Some end up dull with flat colors.

Fortunately, photos can be enhanced in Colorcinch with regard to important color attributes. These include hue, saturation, temperature, and vibrance.

Hue

Hue refers to the base color in the color spectrum. These are the primary (blue, yellow, red) and secondary colors (green, orange, violet).

There is a dominant hue in every color. For instance, for magenta the base color is violet. For ruby, it’s red and so forth.

Why should you use the Hue tool? To change the colors in photos (radical adjustments) and to correct white balance or reduce color cast (finer adjustments).

Let’s see the effect of tweaking the Hue slider.

Step 1

Upload image. Edit menu appears on the left panel. Under Enhance click Color.

Step 2

Sliders for Hue, Saturation, and Temperature appear. Move Hue slider -30° to the left and see the shift in colors. On the other hand, if you move the Hue slider to the right by 30° this also results in dramatic color change.

Step 3

An incremental adjustment of just -5° reduces the dominant green and reveals more reddish-brown. Base colors have become much more natural and balanced.

Step 4

If satisfied with the results click Apply and then Save the image (see photo in Step 3) to your computer or Colorcinch account. If you need to make other adjustments, simply go back to the Edit menu.

Saturation

Saturation deals with color intensity. When saturation is pushed up, it uniformly increases the vividness of all the colors in a picture.

How do you know if an image needs a saturation boost? If it has drab colors or looks somewhat grayish, a saturation tweak can help.

Let’s enhance an image using the saturation tool.

Step 1

Upload image. Edit menu appears on the left panel. Under Enhance click Color to get to the Hue, Saturation, and Temperature sliders.

Step 2

Move the Saturation slider by 50 to the right. Notice the immediate color boost.

Step 3

Now see what happens when the slider is moved to the left by -50. Colors have been drastically muted. Moving the slider all the way down to -100 will remove colors altogether.

Step 4

If satisfied with the color saturation in Step 2, click Apply and Save the image.

Temperature

Temperature pertains to the color of light. This can be warm (red, yellow, orange) or cool colors (blue, green, magenta).

Color temperature is associated with white balance. Our eyes can accurately perceive white and automatically adjust even under varied light sources. The camera cannot.

Hence, the camera may produce an image that has a tint or color cast. The Temperature tool corrects white balance so that white appears as such and is not tinted.

This is how it works: 

Step 1

Upload image. Edit menu > Enhance set > Color tool > Temperature slider set at 0 in the middle. Observe the bluish tint that surrounds the flamingos.

Step 2

Move the Temperature slider to the right by 30. The bluish haze disappears and the image gets just a bit lighter and warmer. This could be a more ideal color temperature since flamingos thrive in tropical regions.

Step 3

If results are to your liking click Apply and then Save image.

Vibrance

Vibrance lets you intensify muted colors while keeping saturated colors unaffected. It gives you similar results to that of Saturation – richer and more vivid images.

However, unlike Saturation, boosting Vibrance all the way up won’t give you an oversaturated effect. It works selectively by enhancing more the lower intensity colors. You can consider Vibrance as a subtler version of Saturation.

Here’s how to use this tool.

Step 1

Upload image. Edit > Enhance > Click Vibrance.

Step 2

The Vibrance slider is normally set at 30%. Crank the slider to the right up to 80% and you see a discreet but discernible  improvement in colors.

Step 3

Click Apply then Save image. If you need to make more adjustments, go back to Edit.

In Summary

Play and experiment with Hue, Saturation, Temperature, and Vibrance. It’s so easy to get full, deep colors that pop out.

The photo editor makes it fun and stress-free while giving you professional-level results. But don’t just take our word for it. Go for a test drive. Try Colorcinch now. It’s free!

We hope you were enlightened by this tutorial. Watch out for more guided tours of Colorcinch features in our next post.

The post Working with Color and Vibrance appeared first on Photo to Cartoon – Cartoonize Yourself & Create Avatar Characters for Free.

How cool would it be if you could turn your photos into a sketch, or even an oil painting!?

The great news is that you can do just that in a few simple clicks!

But, before take a look at these sketch Photoshop actions and amaze yourself.

In this quick tutorial, I’m going to showcase some of my favorite features and effects using Colorcinch to transform my photos into art. And when all is said and done, be sure to also check out the beautiful collection of sketch Photoshop actions for true inspiration.

Let’s get right to it!

How to Turn any Photo to Sketch

Step 1: Upload an Image

Click on Upload and select an image.

Step 2: Select an Effect

On the left-hand column, select Effects, followed by Sketcher.

After selecting Sketcher, you will see a whole range of different sketch-based designs to choose from. We offer both free effects, as well as many additional Plus Feature Effects, which are part of our Colorcinch Plus Subscription Plans. (This provides access to all of our premium features and effects!) 

However, for this example, I’ll be using one of our free sketch effects. Effect IC221.

And now for the magic!

All that you need to do is to click once on one of our sketch effects. Boom!

Easy enough, right!?

Now, while some effects might look great right away, I always like to make tiny adjustments to my effects.

In the next section, I will show you how to further customize your sketch effects.

Step 3: Customize your Sketch

Part 1: Using the Effect Slider

The first thing to do is to adjust the Effect slider.

By default, it will apply the effect at 100%. The further you move the slider to the left, the less intense the effect will be.

If you move the slider all of the way to the left, the effect will not be displayed at all.

Below you can see this effect applied at 100%.

Here’s what the effect would look like at 50%.

Now, this is all down to personal taste, so have fun with it and play around with the slider until you find the look that you’re after!

Part 2: Using Effect Settings

To customize the effect further, simply click on the Settings button.

Here we have 3 additional options: Detail, Color Range, and Hue.

• Detail: This slider essentially adds more texture/sharpness to the effect
• Color Range: If the chosen effect has color, you will be able to add additional saturation to the image by moving the slider to the right
• Hue: This will shift the color/tones within the image

In my example, I added 9 to Detail, 35 to Color Range, and 3 to Hue.

Seriously, how cool is that!?

Conclusion:

Whether you’re looking to create sketches out of your photos for Instagram, get them printed, or make an infographic, Colorcinch is a one-stop-shop for achieving your editing goals.

As you can see, with a simple click or two of a button, you can turn any photo to sketch, or an oil painting with ease. It doesn’t get easier than that!

With all of the different effects that we offer, you can easily lose a few hours trying them all out while turning your photos into art. (At least I did!)

I really hope that you enjoyed this tutorial and were able to turn some of your images into digital art.

So until the next tutorial, have fun with these effects and let your imagination run wild! Start editing.

The post Turn Any Photo to Sketch or Oil Painting appeared first on Photo to Cartoon – Cartoonize Yourself & Create Avatar Characters for Free.

Size:

The most important slider of them all! You will find more often than not that you need to adjust this slider.

Simply increase or decrease the Size slider to fit your selection. If you need to reposition the mask after resizing, click on the mask and move it to your desired location.

So now that you have the tools to create a circle image, I’d like to show you how you can put your new skills to use!

In the next section, I’m going to create a business card using the circle crop. I’ll also be using some additional features in Colorcinch that can really help bring your designs to life!

Part 3: Putting it All Together – Using a Circle Image in Graphic Design

I’ve already uploaded my image into Colorcinch and the first two things to do are:

1. Resize the Circle Mask and reposition it
2. Set the background to be a solid color and change the color

Adding Text:

Next, I’d like to add some text to my business card.

Click on the Text tab in the left-hand column, followed by the Add Text button.

Once the Text Box appears, enter some text and drag it to the location you’d like. For this example, I’m the owner of a coffee house, so I’ll name it, “The ABC Coffee House”.

In the text column, there are quite a few options to play around with, including: Front, Font Size, and Color. In addition, we have quite a few other powerful options to really make your text stand out!

Below is a quick overview of the main text options.

• Letter Spacing – Controls how close or far apart the letters are from one another
• Line Height – If you have more than one row of text, you can control how big or small the gap (space) is between the text rows/lines
• Opacity – Controls how visible the text will appear
• Background – By enabling Background, you can add a padded box around your text as a solid color and even change that color
• Outline – Enabling Outline will outline your text with a selected color
• Shadow – Enabling Shadow can provide extra depth and really bring out that wow factor in your text

Keep in mind that the title is the first thing that people will see, so don’t be afraid to pull out all of the stops with the above tools!

In my example, I used the “dancing script” Font with a Font Size of 75. I’ll keep the text color black.

Now that I have my title text, I’d like to make it pop more. To do so, I’m going to use the Outline and Shadow features!

Outline Settings:

1. Enabled Outline
2. Set the Width to 37% (width controls how thick or thin the outline will be)
3. Selected an orange outline color

Shadows Settings:

1. Enabled Shadow
2. Changed the Intensity to 32 (the lower you set the intensity, the softer the shadow will be)
3. Set the Vertical Position to a value of 2 (this will move the shadow up or down)
4. Set the Horizontal Position to a value of 1 (this moves the shadow left or right)
5. The color I selected was black

Next, I added some additional text for my coffee business using the same steps as above. The only difference here is that I changed the Font to “cabin” and set the Font Size to 43.

Adding Graphics:

Now to add some final touches!

In this section, I’m going to Introduce a few graphic elements to add a little more interest to my design.

Firstly, you’ll need to click on the Graphics tab in the left-hand column.

Here you will have two options:

1. Upload your own graphics
2. Search our extensive selection of pre-installed graphics to save time

Since my theme here is Coffee, all I have to do is type “coffee” in the search bar and select the graphics that appeal to me.

To select a graphic, click on it once, and it will appear in the Your Graphics section. From the Your Graphics section, drag the icon onto your design and move it to your desired location.

You can also easily resize and rotate your graphics. 

• Pull down the bottom to enlarge, or push up to shrink the graphic
• To rotate, click the corner selector and rotate it in the direction that you would like

To quickly duplicate a graphic, click once on it, select Layer Properties, followed by Duplicate. Next, click and drag the duplicate graphic to its new location.

Now, I could finish here, but I’d like to add just one more finishing touch using the steps above!

Below I added another graphic from our wide range of existing graphics, which accentuates my lovely circle based image!

As you can see, the options are endless, so let your imagination run wild!

Conclusion:

Well, that’s it for this tutorial, but the good news is, we have plenty more tips and tricks on the way!

Stay tuned and we’ll see you in the next article!

The post How to Quickly Create a Circle Image appeared first on Photo to Cartoon – Cartoonize Yourself & Create Avatar Characters for Free.