Marriage on photo and video — how to recognize and remove | Articles | Photo, video, optics

What is the dif­fer­ence between mar­riage and artis­tic recep­tion? This top­ic is the cause of much con­tro­ver­sy. Some­one is sure that blur­ring and dis­tor­tion are unac­cept­able. And some­one skill­ful­ly uses them to con­vey their own vision of the world. Today we will talk about pop­u­lar types of mar­riage in pho­tographs and videos, and reflect on how they dif­fer from artis­tic tech­niques. Have some­thing to say on this top­ic? Write in the com­ments.

For some — an unac­cept­able dis­tor­tion, and for oth­ers — an inter­est­ing tech­nique and an unusu­al solu­tion. Pho­to: publico.pt

Mar­riage in pic­tures
lit­tered hori­zon
Shake in pho­tog­ra­phy
Noise
Opti­cal dis­tor­tion
Vignetting
Video dis­tor­tion
lit­tered hori­zon
Rolling shut­ter (rolling shut­ter)
Flick­er
Comb effect

Marriage in pictures

littered horizon

One of the most com­mon begin­ner mis­takes. Accord­ing to the rules, the hori­zon should be flat (par­al­lel to the edge of the pic­ture) and not be in the cen­ter of the frame. The line can be moved slight­ly above or below the cen­ter.

How to pre­vent:

• use the grid. You can enable it in the cam­era set­tings. It will be dis­played on the screen and help to shoot with­out dis­tor­tion;
• buy a lev­el. This is a small flask with liq­uid and an air bub­ble that is attached to the shoe of the cam­era. The cham­ber must be rotat­ed so that the air bub­ble coin­cides with the mark on the flask. This means that the hori­zon is lev­el.

An exam­ple of a land­scape with a lit­tered hori­zon. Pho­to: www.pxhere.com

How to Fix a Blurred Hori­zon in Pho­to­shop:

• open snap­shot;
• select the menu item “View” (View) — “Rulers” (Rulers). If there is a ruler at the top of the work­space, this item is not need­ed;
• move the mouse over the top ruler (above the pho­to), click the left mouse but­ton and hold it down. A blue line will appear;
• drag the mouse but­ton down. Where the hori­zon should be
• go to the tab “Edit­ing” (Edit) – “Free Trans­for­ma­tion” (Free Trans­form), hotkeys Ctrl + T;
• move the mouse over the cor­ner of the pho­to, move it a lit­tle fur­ther so that the cur­sor icon turns into an arc with arrows at the ends;
• hold down the mouse but­ton and start tilt­ing the pho­to so that the hori­zon becomes par­al­lel to the guide line we’ve built.

The pic­ture is aligned. But there are white gaps on the sides due to image rota­tion. There are two ways to get rid of them:

• enlarge the frame and crop it;
• or select the Rec­tan­gu­lar Mar­quee Tool, select the white pieces. Go to the “Edit­ing” tab and fill. In the win­dow that opens, select “con­tent-aware”. It remains to can­cel the selec­tion and save the fin­ished image.

Cre­ative use:

• when you need to show the dis­com­fort of the hero, the sit­u­a­tion and influ­ence the view­er;
• to demon­strate dynam­ics, move­ment — this tech­nique is called the “Dutch cor­ner”;
• when the main sub­ject of the frame is ver­ti­cal. And every­thing around needs to be shown as mean­ing­less, unnat­ur­al and dis­tort­ed.

Exam­ples of delib­er­ate­ly lit­tered hori­zon. Pho­to: blogger.com, photographer.ru, virilejournal.com

Impor­tant: You can “fill up” the hori­zon not only when shoot­ing a land­scape, where the line between heav­en and earth is clear­ly vis­i­ble. And, for exam­ple, dur­ing a food shoot. When you have to take pic­tures at 45 degrees and there is only a low­er back­ground in the frame. If the cam­era is tilt­ed and/or the hori­zon is lit­tered, the pro­por­tions of objects will be dis­tort­ed. The only way to fix this is by reshoot­ing the frame.

Read also:

Dutch cor­ner: what is it and how to use it

How to crop a pho­to: crop in Pho­to­shop on a com­put­er and online

Shake in photography

A com­mon defect when part of the image (or all) is blurred. The rea­sons may be dif­fer­ent. For exam­ple: trem­bling in the hands or long expo­sure.

How to pre­vent:

• use a tri­pod, mono­pod, to steadi­ly fix the cam­era;
• buy a lens with opti­cal sta­bi­liza­tion (com­pen­sates for cam­era move­ment). For exam­ple: Canon RF 24–240mm f/4–6.3 IS USM, Tam­ron AF 18–200mm f/3.5–6.3;
• shoot at a fast shut­ter speed (slow motion — 1/100, run — 1/500).

Read also:

Why pho­tos turn out blur­ry and how to get rid of it once and for all

How to choose a tri­pod: types, rec­om­men­da­tions, char­ac­ter­is­tics

How to fix:

• open a dis­tort­ed pho­to in an edi­tor (for exam­ple, Pho­to­shop);
• select the menu item “Fil­ter” (Fil­ter) — “Sharp­en­ing” (Sharp­en) — “Smart Sharp­en” (Smart Sharp­en). Adjust the lev­el of sharp­ness you want.

But this method will not always help. If there are a lot of objects in the pho­to, some are blur­ry, and some are not, then it prob­a­bly won’t work to cor­rect the pic­ture. How to remove the hair in this case? No way. I’ll have to redo the pic­ture.

Cre­ative use:

• show apa­thy, hope­less­ness, depres­sive moods;
• show dynam­ics and move­ment;
• make the frame warmer, soft­er.

Read also:

Blurred pho­to as an artis­tic tech­nique: how to make it beau­ti­ful

A blur­ry pic­ture that is dif­fi­cult to fix in the edi­tor. Pho­to: www.pxhere.com

Noise

A dis­tinc­tive fea­ture of the defect is that there are many chaot­ic pix­els on the sur­face of the image. Because of them, there is a feel­ing of fuzzi­ness and “rough­ness” of the frame. Noise can be col­ored (pix­els are col­ored in dif­fer­ent shades), bright­ness (pix­el bright­ness dif­fers).

Caus­es of occur­rence:

• too high ISO val­ue (for exam­ple, when shoot­ing in a dark room);
• dam­aged cam­era matrix;
• incor­rect post-pro­cess­ing (too high sharp­ness, rad­i­cal light­en­ing of dark areas).

Grain­i­ness — a mar­riage or an artis­tic tech­nique? Pho­to: medium.com

How to remove noise from a pho­to online in Light­room:

• open the image and go to the tab “Devel­op­ment” (Devel­op);
• on the right, open the tab “Detail” (Detail) — “Noise Reduc­tion” (Noise Reduc­tion);
• Lumi­nance noise can be cor­rect­ed using the Lumi­nance slid­er, and col­or noise can be cor­rect­ed using the Col­or slid­er.

Cre­ative use:

• show the tex­ture of the object;
• film vibe;
• forc­ing the atmos­phere (for exam­ple, when shoot­ing an over­cast sky);
• cre­at­ing an atmos­phere of mys­tery.

Read also:

Noise in the pho­to: what is it, why does it appear, how to remove it

Les­son “Pro­cess­ing pho­tos under film in Pho­to­shop”: we do it togeth­er

Optical distortion

Anoth­er defect that may occur dur­ing shoot­ing. Dis­tor­tions are dif­fer­ent. For exam­ple:

- dis­tor­tion — bar­rel-shaped (the frame is stretched) or pin­cush­ion (the frame is com­pressed in the cen­ter) pho­to dis­tor­tion. The phe­nom­e­non affects super­zooms (when chang­ing the focal length), wide-angle lens­es (“bar­rel” at the min­i­mum focal length), tele­pho­to lens­es (“cush­ion” at the max­i­mum dis­tance);

- per­spec­tive dis­tor­tions, defor­ma­tion of objects. For exam­ple, if you shoot a tall build­ing with a reg­u­lar lens, you will have to point the cam­era from the bot­tom up. As a result, the build­ing in the pic­ture will not be lev­el. Its walls will be wider at the bot­tom and nar­row­er at the top.

An exam­ple of a bar­rel. Pho­to: www.stackoverflow.com

How to pre­vent:

• use ortho­scop­ic lens­es that are free from dis­tor­tion. For exam­ple: Nikon AF NIKKOR 20mm f/2.8D, Laowa 9mm f/5.6 FF RL Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM, Samyang XP 10mm F3.5;
• use a tilt-shift lens. With it, you can move or tilt the plane of focus. The lens­es that are installed in the lens can be shift­ed rel­a­tive to the cam­era matrix. You can cap­ture a build­ing, columns, and oth­er elon­gat­ed objects with­out dis­tor­tion.

Read also:

Tilt-shift lens: what is it and why is it need­ed

What is lens dis­tor­tion and what to do about it

In the first pho­to, a tilt-shift lens is used, the columns are even. In the sec­ond pic­ture, a reg­u­lar lens is used, the columns are dis­tort­ed. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel LensPro­To­Go

Cre­ative use—intentionally dis­tort­ing a frame—is com­mon. For exam­ple, you can take an unusu­al pic­ture using a fish­eye lens.

An exam­ple of inten­tion­al dis­tor­tion with a fish­eye lens. Pho­to: wallhere.com

Read also:

3 easy ways to fix per­spec­tive in Pho­to­shop

Bud­get Fish­eye for Mir­ror­less: Meike 6.5mm f/2.0 Lens Review

Vignetting

Such dis­tor­tion occurs due to a defect in the cam­era, skewed lens­es, the pres­ence of attach­ments and fil­ters. Also, the rea­son may be in low-qual­i­ty optics.

How to pre­vent:

• buy high-qual­i­ty equip­ment;
• install hoods and fil­ters with low sides;
• use the Periph­er­al Illu­mi­na­tion Con­trol option (avail­able from Nikon and Canon). It con­trols the dark­en­ing of the periph­er­al areas of the frame.

How to fix in Light­room:

• open pho­to;
• go to the item “Pro­cess­ing” (Devel­op) – “Lens Cor­rec­tions” (Lens Cor­rec­tions);
• Check the box next to Enable Pro­file Cor­rec­tion. This is an easy way to remove vignetting.

Cre­ative use:

• you can take atmos­pher­ic black and white pho­tos;
• add mys­tery to the frame.

An exam­ple of vignetting. Pho­to: forums.bohemia.net

Video distortion

Mar­riage hap­pens not only in pho­tographs, but also on video. Now let’s talk about some defects and how to pre­vent them.

littered horizon

This dis­tor­tion is rel­e­vant not only for pho­tographs. When shoot­ing videos, the hori­zon is also some­times filled up.

How to pre­vent? Use tri­pod, grid and lev­el.

How to fix a bro­ken hori­zon? You can do this, for exam­ple, in Adobe Pre­miere Pro:

• you need to click on the frame;
• in the “Video Effects” menu, select “Motion”;
• find the items “Rotate” and “Scale”;
• in the col­umn “Rota­tion” you need to enter a num­ber. This is the num­ber of degrees the frame will tilt to one side or the oth­er. But now there are black gaps on the sides (as in pho­to edit­ing);
• You can fix this by zoom­ing in. Usu­al­ly it is enough to increase from 100 to 105–107% for the gaps to dis­ap­pear.

How to fix a lit­tered hori­zon in a video. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Alex Chap­lin­sky

Cre­ative use. Inten­tion­al dis­tor­tion is a non-stan­dard visu­al tech­nique called the “Dutch cor­ner”. Most often used in thrillers, hor­ror films. The scene becomes more dynam­ic, dis­turb­ing. About what a Dutch angle is and how to use this tech­nique, they told in the blog.

Rolling shutter (rolling shutter)

The effect occurs due to the fact that the proces­sor of the video cam­era does not take the image from the entire matrix at once, but line by line. As a result, dif­fer­ent parts of a mov­ing (most often) object are cap­tured in pieces. The effect can man­i­fest itself in dif­fer­ent ways:

• tilt of objects in the frame;
• “Jel­ly” — the pic­ture is unsta­ble, as if filmed through jel­ly;
• hor­i­zon­tal stripes in the frame (appear when the flash fires).

Effect exam­ple. Pho­to: www.wikizero.com

Most often, this effect appears when shoot­ing mov­ing objects, when pan­ning quick­ly, mov­ing the cam­era from one object to anoth­er.

How to pre­vent? Give pref­er­ence to staged shoot­ing. For exam­ple: the loca­tion is thought out, the light is set, the oper­a­tor moves along a giv­en tra­jec­to­ry, and does not ran­dom­ly swing the cam­era.

How to fix in Adobe Pre­miere Pro CC:

• open the video in the pro­gram;
• in the “Effects” pan­el, select the “Video Effects” — “Dis­tor­tion” — “Remove Rolling Shut­ter Effect” fold­er;
• drag it to the video track, apply it to the clip;
• if the auto­mat­ic appli­ca­tion of the effect is not enough, you can go to the “Effect Con­trols” tab;
• you need to find the applied effect in the list and open its set­tings;
• Rolling shut­ter speed is the main set­ting you need. The default is 50%, but you can move the slid­er to select the best option;
• check the “Detailed analy­sis” box if you want the pro­gram to ana­lyze the image more thor­ough­ly.

cre­ative use - if you need to add creepy ele­ments to the video.

Rolling shut­ter elim­i­na­tion exam­ple in Adobe Pre­miere Pro CC. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Alex­ey Dne­prov

Flicker

Light flick­er­ing is anoth­er defect that can appear on video. This hap­pens due to the fact that the fre­quen­cy of the cur­rent and the record­ings of the cam­era do not match. Often faced with a prob­lem those who shoot using flu­o­res­cent and mer­cury lamps, LED strips.

In Rus­sia and Europe, the fre­quen­cy of the elec­tri­cal net­work is 50 Hz. There­fore, you need to shoot with mul­ti­ple val­ues: 1/50, 1/100, 1/150. If the fin­ished video still has flick­er, you can remove it using the Flick­er Free and DEFlick­er plu­g­ins for Pre­miere Pro. DEFlick­er is also avail­able for Davin­ci Resolve.

How to Fix in Adobe Pre­miere with Flick­er Free Plu­g­in:

• down­load the Flick­er plu­g­in (for exam­ple, on the offi­cial web­site) and install it. After that, it will auto­mat­i­cal­ly be added to the Adobe Pre­miere plu­g­ins;
• in the Effects menu, find the one you need, click on it and apply it to the video. The Effect Con­trols will open on the left. There are var­i­ous pre­sets (Pre­set) adapt­ed for dif­fer­ent types of videos (slow-mo, time-lapse and oth­ers). You can also change the Sen­si­tiv­i­ty to increase or decrease the inten­si­ty of the effect.

How to remove flick­er using the Flick­er plu­g­in. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Trav­el & Shoot

Comb effect

Oth­er­wise, this defect is called inter­lac­ing. These are hor­i­zon­tal stripes along the edges of all objects mov­ing in the frame.

Why do they appear? The rea­son is the inter­laced record­ing of frames, which is rel­e­vant for ana­log cam­eras. If such a video is played on a con­ven­tion­al CRT TV, then there will be no defect. But on pro­gres­sive scan devices (mod­ern TV, com­put­er mon­i­tor), when watch­ing a video, there will be a “comb” effect.

An exam­ple of a frame with inter­lac­ing. Pho­to: discussions.apple.com

Video dein­ter­lac­ing — what is it? This is the process of elim­i­nat­ing a defect, a method of com­bin­ing lines and cre­at­ing a clear pic­ture.

How to remove dein­ter­lac­ing in Adobe Pre­miere:

• open the video in the pro­gram;
• open “File” — “Export” — “Media Con­tent”. You will see a new win­dow with export set­tings;
• you need to give a name to the future file and go to the “Video” tab;
• in the “Video codec” col­umn, change the ini­tial val­ue to “Xvid Mpeg‑4 Codec”, click on “Codec set­tings”;
• in the first col­umn, you need to select the for­mat in which the video will be saved. Xvid HD 1080 is enough for YouTube videos;
• next to the first col­umn there is a but­ton “more” — you need to click on it. In the win­dow that opens, you need to find the “Inter­laced Encod­ing” col­umn and check the box next to it, click “OK” and return to the export set­tings;
• you need to go down to the “Frame rate” col­umn in the “Video” tab. Most like­ly, the val­ue 25 will be set there. Change it to 50. The codec and frame rate set­tings will be enough to elim­i­nate the defect;
• Click “Export” and wait for the video to save.

Instruc­tions — how to remove the “comb” effect. Part 1. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel VituS tV — Use­ful and inter­est­ing

Instruc­tion. Part 2. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel VituS tV — Use­ful and inter­est­ing

What can be con­sid­ered a mar­riage? The ques­tion is philo­soph­i­cal. Many of the defects described above can be used as an artis­tic device. It all depends on the idea of ​​the pho­tog­ra­ph­er, the oper­a­tor, the abil­i­ty to con­vey their mes­sage to the view­er. And every­one decides how to relate to such effects — con­sid­er them a mar­riage or fea­tures.