PP asked me this question the other day. Which color space should he use to process his photographs? Lets start by understanding what color space is. Color Space is the way Photoshop defines Red, Green and Blue. It’s the RGB model that defines what the values of a specific color are represented. For example, at white, R is 255, G is 255 and B is 255.

Usually people who are new to color management would use sRGB. Adobe RGB contains much more control when you’re using advanced color management techniques like printing with profiles and soft proofing.

Unless you’re experienced in these techniques, sRGB is the one you should use. One more thing that you have to take note is that with Adobe RGB, you won’t be able to make use of your color profile in other softwares that are non Adobe product.

Do you like to shoot sunset? However you do not have time to go to beach or mountain? Not a problem, sunsets are ubiquitous. No matter where you live, you get one every day. You can also shoot sunset at your door step or through your high rise office windows.

Here are some of the techniques I used to shoot sunset:

1. Stable Your Camera – The best way to stable your camera is mount your camera on tripod. Nothing beat this option. Beside that, use remote release cable or IR remote release to trigger the shutter in order to prevent camera shake.

2. Camera Setting – I always use Aperture Priority mode and use the lowest ISO. If your camera have Sunset scene mode, use it, camera will decide the optimum setting for you. The most important is turning your camera flash OFF.

3. Light Metering – Try to having a bit of under-exposure will allow you to get more vivid colors of the setting sun. There are two ways to achieve correct exposure when shooting the sunset:
   1. Use Spot Meter - Set your camera on the spot metering mode and take your meter to the bright area but not the sun directly.
   2. Use Negative Exposure Compensation - you can set your camera for negative compensation of 2/3 to 2 stops.

4. Focusing - Use manual focus because sometimes when shooting in extreme lighting conditions some cameras can have trouble focusing. Therefore switching to manual focus to ensure you get nice crisp shots.

5. Composition - Positioning the horizon away from the center of your photo can bring more life to your sunset photos. Instead, keep it near the bottom of the shot to dramatically highlight the sky. In combination with this, leaving some foreground in the shot, such as a person, building or a tree, will give greater interest and give you a great opportunity to work on silhouette photographs.

6. White Balance – Turn off the Auto White balance mode because when you set your camera to ‘Auto’ in it’s white balance mode you run the risk of losing some of the warm golden tones of a sunrise or sunset. Instead try shooting in ‘cloudy’ or ’shade’ to get more warm which sunset suppose to be.

WARNING !!!

No matter what, DO NOT look directly at the sun! Not with your bear bare eyes, and not through the eyepiece, it can cause irreversible damage to your eyes.

Converging verticals problem is common when you are taking photos of buildings, especially with wide angle lens. This happens when you point the camera upwards to include the top of the building.

Some likes this distorting effect to create striking building images. To get this effect, all you need to do is to get closer to the building and point your camera upwards to make an extreme viewpoint.

For those who don’t like this effect, there are ways to correct the distortion. In this tutorial, I’m going to fix it by using Adobe Photoshop.

You can use the transform tool to correct it. Press Ctrl + ‘ to turn on the gridlines. This will help when you’re transforming the photo. Press Ctrl + T to transform the image.

Next, you’ll need to press Ctrl + Shift and click on the point at the bottom right. Move the point inwards, until the building is in a straight line as the gridlines. Repeat the same to the point at the bottom left. Press Enter to confirm your changes.

You may then crop out the photo by pressing C and select the area. Shown below is the comparison of before and after transformation.

There are some other ways apart from transforming your photo in Photoshop. You can buy shift or perspective control lenses. These specialized lenses uses a mechanism to move the position of the lens independent of the camera. It allows you to keep the camera vertical but stil include much more of the top of the building. Bear in mind that these things don’t come cheap.

Other than that, you can also try to take the building from further away. By moving further away, you also have more obstacles in front of you and you’ll tend to include more unwanted items in your foreground. Hence, a better and cheaper solution would still be using Photoshop to transform your image.