The Art of Photography: I Can’t Take All the Credit, Perfectly Clear Shares It With Me.

Written by USTimes, 2017-05-07

(Las Vegas, NV, May 4, 2017, by Cirina Catania) So there I was a week into the most hectic of conventions, NAB (National Association of Broadcasting).  I was shooting video and stills for clients and had a crew for USTimes.biz covering as well. For those of you who have never been to an NAB week, all I can say is … whew!  You’ll need a few days to recuperate when you get back.  It’s not just the 98,000  plus delegates from 159 countries roaming the Las Vegas Convention Center to soak up information from over 1,700 exhibitors, it’s also the seminars, meetings, evening events, press conferences, presentations and..well, you get my drift, right?

All was going absolutely fine and my clients were happy and so was I. We were packing out to return home. Then, the moment of truth.  The CEO of a major company and an awesome client asked if I could send him some “selects” from the week’s coverage so he could look at them while he was on the plane.

If you shoot, you know that it takes quite a bit of time to edit your coverage and once the selects are made, another chunk of time to post-produce the stills so they are presentable.  Advice: NEVER give a client any pictures until they are “ready.”  I mean that…it doesn’t matter how busy you are, take the time to polish, post-process and organize them first.  Have you ever sent your client a photo and said, “This is raw. It is just for your information. I’ll tweak it when you approve the use of the image?” Oops…nine times out of ten they didn’t read that and there it goes out into the world looking less than desirable!

But, back to the story at hand. What did I do to satisfy the client’s request?  I brought all the coverage into Lightroom and processed the photos using the Perfectly Clear v3 filters. They looked great, the client was happy, and I got some sleep.

Here’s an example of a before and after from one of our recent shoots. I also use the software to help us process screen grabs off video that has been shot in Film Mode (no color processing). This clip was shot with Rec709 and the drone, but most times, I’m shooting raw:

Before (screen grab from our drone coverage) and After (processed with Perfectly Clear):

Screen grab from a drone shot straight out of camera with no post-processing. It is “passable,” but is “passable” enough? Nope.
Screen grab from drone video coverage pulled for a client and post-processed quickly using Perfectly Clear v3 from Athentec.

I’ll be publishing an interview with the great folks at Perfectly Clear shortly, so watch for it.

For more information about this software and a free trial, go to Perfectly Clear v3