Post processing images - The final step to getting that awesome click

A thread to discuss post processing software and techniques. Post processing basically involves taking the image from the camera (jpeg/Raw) and adjusting various settings in a software like lightroom or photoshop. Often a specialist software like Photomatix for making HDR shots or Startrails for getting star trails is also used.

Post processing is almost necessary if you are shooting in RAW, but even if used with a jpeg it allows you to get a shot which has more details than the image that came directly from the camera and is more in line with what you saw or had in mind when taking the shot.

I guess that's a little too much text, so some visual examples of what postprocessing does

*farm4.staticflickr.com/3545/3407679277_3e7b1123f5.jpg
Post Processing - Before and After by marv117, on Flickr

*farm5.staticflickr.com/4126/4966399075_af1babe7eb_z.jpg

*www.oreillynet.com/digitalmedia/blog/images/HDR.jpg
An HDR shot, although similar effects can also be achieved by processing RAW files.

I guess a lot of people consider post processing, cheating since you are essentially using a computer to change what actually came out of the camera. However every camera will do quite a lot of postprocessing by itself and doing this in a computer just gives you more control over the process.

ok soo lets start ...I am waiting for your tutorial amlan

subscribed

Editing images

I understand that most of you would be more interested in the very basics of post processing. So a short video on what a typical post processing looks like.

*www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-Gh9LYrzp8

Copyright info and keywording

Starting with the slightly boring topic of copyright and key wording of images.

The basics: images store two types of information within the image file. one is your EXIF data, which is mainly the camera settings that were used for the click (ISO, aperture, shutter speed and all), this the camera fills out automatically.

The other part is the IPTC information, this includes things like copyright information, creator name, creator email address, keywords, title and caption. This is very important as it allows your images to be traced back to you if needed. For example, if someone comes across an image that you've allowed your friend to share on his blog, he likes the image and would like to have some more images from the same shoot. The IPTC will tell him who shot the image, whether they see it as a copyrighted thing and their contact details. Granted that for most of us this would be a very rare occurrence but you never know about the status 5-6 years from now.

A more practical use is the title, caption and keywords. Filling these out means that sites like flickr, 500px and all will automatically pick up this information. And even if the image is put up on a blog or a forum it is still searchable using the keywords.

How to do this in Lightroom

Keywording in lightroom : Adding & Editing keywords in Lightroom 4 - YouTube

Adding copyright and creator information to all imported files: Add copyright info in Lightroom - YouTube

youtube links

i want screen shots...ur screen shots

I'm sitting on a crashed hard disk plus I've been going a little easy on the PP for the past few weeks. Still here is the before and after for my latest flickr upload.

Changelist
- Histogram
- lens profile correction (the nex6 stock lens has a lot of distortion and vignetting)
- slight increase in clarity, vibrancy and saturation (to compensate for the increased lighting of the picture)
- Curves (changed it to a more S shape to lose the details in the background and have higher contrast in the image)

That's it I guess, will post a few more when I edit them out.

View attachment 12125

The main advantage of shooting raw is that you have more control over the processing that is normally done by the cam. I have the same issue that Raws are much noisier than the jpeg, but that is only because the camera automatically runs a noise reduction, color correction and saturation process on them when making a jpeg. I would rather do this myself on an image by image basis rather than a one size fits all.

Also raw files generally have a lot more color depth, 12bits compared to the 8 of a jpeg (will confirm the numbers), all that info is lost by the cam if a jpeg is made. And it can make all the difference when shooting a scene with a high range.

So raw is not necessary, i wouldn't want to process all images from a home function for example, but for artistic shots, it may be worth the effort.

when you have 100 RAW files to edit, I dont think you will ever have enough time to process RAW one by one...and converting RAW file with a created profile is just similar to in camera jpeg creation.
Also RAW file take lots of space ...if I would have saved the RAW file of 1.2 GB pics which I like it will sum up to 4-5GB easily...that too once edited I will never ever touch them again.
And lastly burst speed of RAW file buffer is too limited. my DSLR can take 3.5fps till 8 pics only but can take jpeg by 3.5fps unlimited ...what if I am shooting a bird and go out of buffer in RAW ...opportunity lost.
I agree most professionals shoot RAW to squeeze out max details from the pic...but JPEG are not that bad and retains 80-85% of details.

@sujoy: there is always the option of a batch process. Since all the images will be similar just post process one and batch process the others with the same settings. It's still much better than letting the camera run a default post process on all of them.

I guess most of us feel that as a computer saturated generation we are the first ones who manipulate images to make them better. Check out this like and see how post processing was done way way back in the ero of the film.

How Photos Were Edited in the Darkroom Days | Fstoppers

ok I will try next time and edit RAW ....lets see how much detail it can extract

Was going through some videos on how to edit raw files, basically bringing out the information that is present in the picture but does not show up untill proper post processing is done. I had this camel picture that I had shot quite some time back and decided to try it out on that. Now this was a bad picture to begin with (one that I would not plan on putting up) but it could be improved by a lot in post. So given a great picture to begin with you can make an amazing amount of difference to what the final image looks like.

*i.imgur.com/jMipabw.jpg

G

The only extra thing I prefer in RAW is the white balance correction that can be applied (if you got that wrong). Most other times I prefer to edit jpegs.

Today I will try to show my process flow of image editing . Guys please dont laugh at it..its too simple

This is the original file

*farm8.staticflickr.com/7454/9831894786_503a4de304_z.jpg
DSC_9088 by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

1.Now I first use Picasa to crop the pic and rectify any tilt in the pic.

*farm4.staticflickr.com/3771/9831841536_53ea9c965d_o.jpg
picasa resize by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

Crop according to ur style, and composition. Dont crop too much or the image will become noisy.

Rectify the tilt
*farm8.staticflickr.com/7290/9831841946_ba80108265_o.jpg
picasa tilt by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

Correcting the tilt reduces the sharpness. It's better to use it with landscape.

2. Use photoshop to remove any un-necessary things from the image.

*farm6.staticflickr.com/5330/9831842626_2b2a4f515a_o.jpg
photoshop by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

use clone tools to smoothly remove.

Image after removing spider web
*farm4.staticflickr.com/3821/9831853176_9cb07fee45_z.jpg
pic after photoshop by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

3. Now open lightroom and import the pic.

*farm4.staticflickr.com/3666/9831794214_0b5c5329fe_o.jpg
lightroom by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

Go to develop section. And change according to your taste
*farm8.staticflickr.com/7293/9831824895_fd5d3d7fe4_o.jpg
light sett1 by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

I love warmish looks soo move slider towards yellow temp.
Clarity option is awesome and it really improves the clarity...but notice that it also displays more mistakes in ur pic like bad focussing etc...decreasing clarity make the pic look more dreamy...maybe landscapes will use that.

*farm4.staticflickr.com/3744/9831842476_05708e6682_o.jpg
light set2 by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

Increase the sharpness with caution...sharpness dont make up for poor focusing...and increases the noise.
Now, export the pic from light room . And upload it on flickr, facebook, picasa webalbum, copy.com (my backup of original).

Final Image

*farm8.staticflickr.com/7419/9833573465_e915b8983d_z.jpg
RedGreen by sujoyp, on Flickr
Hope you enjoyed it

here is the pic for comparision

*farm8.staticflickr.com/7305/9832240734_d51858d991_c.jpg
collage by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

Thanks for sharing what you do in PP Amlan and Sujoy.

I guess you have compared with RAW and PP image. I would also like to see a comparison of camera processed jpeg with PPed RAW image.

I shoot in jpeg nac ...I dont shoot in RAW ...for your sake I will shoot something in RAW and compare

nac said:
I guess you have compared with RAW and PP image. I would also like to see a comparison of camera processed jpeg with PPed RAW image.

For my cam the raw file itself looks pretty decent straight out of the camera. Quite unlike my CHDK modded Sx120 and some of the DSLRs I've seen. I'm not sure that there is a way to do a 1:1 compare of the camera processed jpeg and a PPed raw, will give it a shot though.

Found two articles that I though you all might like. They tell you the advantages of a Raw file over a normal jpeg with some actual examples

Understanding RAW Files Explained
RAW vs JPEG

R

If you are only looking to compare an out-of-camera JPG with a processed RAW, there is quite a simple way. As a Canon user I just need to open the RAW file in DPP and load the camera's standard picture style. The result is the same as when the camera bakes the JPG using the same picture style. I can try out any of the 120+ picture styles I have to see how the image would have been if I shot a JPG with that picture style loaded in the camera. I assume that there must be a similar process for other brands.

I would post an example but I would have thought that the camel picture made the same point.

izzikio_rage said:
For my cam the raw file itself looks pretty decent straight out of the camera. Quite unlike my CHDK modded Sx120 and some of the DSLRs I've seen. I'm not sure that there is a way to do a 1:1 compare of the camera processed jpeg and a PPed raw, will give it a shot though.

We can put them both jpeg processed and RAW processed next to each other in PS or Gimp.

sujoyp said:
I shoot in jpeg nac ...I dont shoot in RAW ...for your sake I will shoot something in RAW and compare

We need to compare RAW processed image vs Jpeg processed image to realize how much we are missing. It would help us to decide whether the extra time you put to process RAW is worth it or not.

I watched few videos around the time I started trying RAW for the first time. I am still trying to mimic what he did in this video to almost all of the photographs (If I do PP in LR) irrespective of the genre.

Comparing Raw and jpeg after post processing

*farm4.staticflickr.com/3722/10001796633_cf9f205842_c.jpg
RAW vs jpeg example by Amlan Mathur, on Flickr

A comparison of what Raw files offer over the normal jpeg file.

Notice the bands formed in the blue of the sky, this is since the jpeg captures less shades of the same color. Similarly there is loss of detail in the clouds on the left and on the details of the stones. This gives a fair idea of the advantage of Raw over jpeg if post processing in going to be done.

I took this shot with the RAW + jpeg option, post processed the Raw to match the processing that the camera normally does and then processed both RAW and jpeg similarly (synced in Light room)

Top Jpeg - PPed Jpeg
2nd Top - PPed RAW
3rd Top - SOOC Jpeg
4th Top - SOOC RAW

Am I correct here?

And even after the 4th Top, I see few more layers (If I am right, 3 layers), what are they?

No sooc image bands, just alternating layers of PPed jpeg and PPed raw. Just wanted to show how on extensive Post processing, raw gives better final image. Straight out of camera raw are useless and if that is what you want to use then makes sense to go for jpeg

^ Ok... It's a processed jpeg and RAW...

Amlan can you provide me that jpeg out of the camera image ...I really want to see if the jpeg is that poor or is it poor post processing by you....just to confirm myself

G

To be fair I think izzikio_rage or someone needs to post a decent straight out of camera jpeg & the RAW file & then have TDF members post process them both to see if actually one of it can be better pped than the other.

From my experience, I haven't been able to get a better output from a RAW file then I 've from the jpeg.
On the other hand a post processed RAW file still needs to be saved as a jpeg & some more processing needs to be done on the jpeg (via layers) which can't be done on the RAW. Example - shot having a slightly blown out sky.

Am pretty sure that there are ways to post process this image that would not bring out the flaws that the jpeg inherently has. This experiment was just to show that under the same post processing a raw will hold up much better than a jpeg.

But since I would love to have one of my images worked by an expert :))

attaching the jpeg file (resampled, sorry but my net connection is going mad these days).

P.S: someone please download this attachment within an hour, otherwise apparently it is deleted by the forum

Why would you save as jpeg after PPing RAW ? IMO makes sense to save as PNG.

Gen.Libeb said:
To be fair I think izzikio_rage or someone needs to post a decent straight out of camera jpeg & the RAW file & then have TDF members post process them both to see if actually one of it can be better pped than the other.

Good to know a like minded people...

I thought of this few weeks ago, almost I was about to post it but finally thought it is not the time... It has to wait.

It should be your forte. It's been three weeks since this thread started I haven't seen a single tutorial/your PP work post. Come on, bhai...

I'm very very surprised that you people actually want to read through my tutorial over all the amazing, very professional tutorials. Anyhow, here goes.

1. I usually copy paste the files into my photographs folder. I love my folder structure, plus this allows me to separate casual pics (family, friends, events) from the so called artistic ones. Usually casual pics are shot in jpeg while I am making an effort to shoot the more art oriented ones in Raw + jpeg

2. I do all my post processing in Lightroom and have picasa only for the purposes of indexing files. Picasa is awesome for sorting images by date and going through them quickly.

3. I have usually apply a set of keywords and copyright stuff during import. For copyright stuff, author name and email and all I've made a preset. Shown on the right under the "apply during import". This way these basic things get applied to all the images that I import.

*i.imgur.com/ufmurbW.jpg

4. Now comes the hard part, choosing which image you are going to waste time post processing :))

. If you have a bunch of similar images it helps to use the "compare tool" just hit "c" to use this. It allows you to compare two images side by side.

*i.imgur.com/YAYmwm2.jpg

5. I usually start developing an image by moving the histogram. In this case I mostly pushed the "exposure" (the middle part of the histogram) toward to right to make the image brighter. This image requires a HDR so I also push in some of the details lost in the shadows and highlights.

6. I increase the temperature slightly to give it that orange sunset feel (people seem to find warmer tones more nostalgic and emotional). I also increase the clarity, vibrance and saturation, this adds quite a lot of pop to the image but has to be used with caution so that it does not make the image unnatural.

7. I also fix the any tilt of the image or crop out unwanted stuff using the cropping tool

*i.imgur.com/c9IYQYZ.jpg

8. next is the tone curve, I'm not really a fan of this unless you want some high contrast images (like black and white art shots). If that is the case I'll make it into an S shape, however for this image I've made the S very very slight.

*i.imgur.com/gQZ9hmX.jpg

9. HSL is another amazing tab that allows you to change the saturation or luminescence (brightness) on a color by color basis. Not touching it here but you can always increase the saturation of the orange.

*i.imgur.com/c9IYQYZ.jpg

10. Since I'm editing out a raw file I need to apply some amount of noise reduction, which is under the detail tab. Need to read up on what all these are I mostly end up applying the luminance noise reduction and at times the color one.

*i.imgur.com/IGxd5md.jpg

11. Finally, since the sony lenses have a large amount of distortion and vignetting (which jpeg automatically corrects) I apply the lens profile correction.

*i.imgur.com/AHaKoB2.jpg

12. voila! I tend to hit "y" multiple times during the process to compare the original and post processed images side by side.

*i.imgur.com/kn3vZb5.jpg

13. My final step is file>export where i resize it if needed and export this as a jpeg.

In case any of you want to post process and compare the Raw vs Jpeg file for this image you can get it here. Should be pretty useful if you just want to give my workflow a try.

Sunset pics for tutorial.zip - GigaSize.com: Host and Share your files

G

How do you open those ARW Files? Adobe camera Raw cannot open them.

Gen.Libeb said:
How do you open those ARW Files? Adobe camera Raw cannot open them.

Straight out of camera raw files for the sony. Lightroom will open them directly

Thanks amlan...I will try ur style for landscape next time

I've attached the raw and the jpeg files from the tutorial image. Someone please try out the comparing raw and jpeg thing. Even i would love to know how it compares

G

izzikio_rage said:
I've attached the raw and the jpeg files from the tutorial image. Someone please try out the comparing raw and jpeg thing. Even i would love to know how it compares

If I have your permission, I will edit your jpeg image & post the steps & final image online.

btw do you keep those ARW file formats. what format do you finally save it to ?
Isn't there a universal format for RAW?
Don't have lightroom so still didn't manage to open it. May be I'll need some sort of convertor.

Faun said:
Why would you save as jpeg after PPing RAW ? IMO makes sense to save as PNG.

On saving jpeg at high options, I do not see any difference between both at 1920*1080.

I will try it after my office...yesterday I tried a RAW from my dslr and I felt its gives quit an accurate colors easily..where jpeg needs more processing ...will check amlan's raw

Gen, You can use DNG converter and from there you can develop in PS.

Here is my attempt...
Left is PPed-JPEG and right is PPed-RAW

*img43.imageshack.us/img43/1790/ia44.png

*lh6.googleusercontent.com/-HK12aNn3-OI/UksQ3FqnuRI/AAAAAAAAJW0/ia1ACE-XLqo/w1028-h685-no/Desktop1.jpg

left side ones are PP-RAW and below original RAW
Right PP-JPEG and below original JPEG

Soo I have done the experiment and found RAW easier to edit and handle using Lightroom..I got the colors faster in post processing then JPEG...but file size is big a 3MB JPEG to a 14MB RAW is 5 times size increase
all lens issues like vignetting, distortions are visible and had to be removed manually

I have decided to try RAW in some of the photography type which dont involve huge number of files specially those tabletop photography

G

@nac,@sujoyp - You guys mind posting high res versions ? Its impossible to tell details looking at those.

ok ..will do it in the evening

Gen,
High quality original resolution RAW>TIFF is too big to upload (82MB). So I am uploading 1600px (long edge) image...

*www.filedropper.com/sunset

Gen.Libeb said:
If I have your permission, I will edit your jpeg image & post the steps & final image online.

btw do you keep those ARW file formats. what format do you finally save it to ?
Isn't there a universal format for RAW?
Don't have lightroom so still didn't manage to open it. May be I'll need some sort of convertor.

On saving jpeg at high options, I do not see any difference between both at 1920*1080.

Do give post processing these a try. It'll help the rest of us decide too what format we should be shooting in.

Raw files do not have a universal format, that is one of the greatest points against it. 20 years from now there is a high chance that I'll still be able to open and edit out the jpeg images that I have, perhaps in even better ways since the tech will have evolved. But support for my raw files will die the moment sony moves on to some other format for raw.

The other problem is that a universal format is just not possible. Raw by definition means that it's an almost direct data dump on what the sensor captured. bringing this to a universal set of rules would mean processing this in some way (which is what jpeg is for). So different sensor sizes, arrangements, and technologies will give you different types of data dumps which the camera saves as a raw file without touching it.

After all the processing I tend to save it as a full high quality jpeg (almost a 12 mb file itself, makes you wonder what all data you lost when the camera compressed the file to 3mb :))

) I'm yet to start using png and tiff file formats for photos.

sujoyp said:
all lens issues like vignetting, distortions are visible and had to be removed manually

This atleast does not have to be done manually, you can use lens profiles to do this automatically even for lenses mounted via adapters and all. Most lens profiles are already a part of lightroom but incase you have one that is not available. You'll need to install Adobe air and then Adobe lens profile down loader (both are free on the adobe site). In that just search the name of your camera, lens and all and download the profile.

izzikio_rage said:
Most lens profiles are already a part of lightroom but incase you have one that is not available.

My lens profile is not available

ooh I didnt know that lens profiles are available...

links - > from ARW->TIFF->JPEG *copy.com/9PLqV4Cm9aHG

Jpeg->JPEG *copy.com/BFTs6BTl7mmQ

G

Here's my attempt with the steps:

Step 1
-Fixed the tilt by rotating the image. Then cropped off the unwanted portions.
-My first thoughts are the sky looks great but the buildings and foreground is a bit too dark. The buildings & sky needs different treatment. So I got 2 layers there.

Step 2,3
The sky Layer

- Up the contrast.
- Adjust Curves
- using selective colouring, make the reds redder & the yellows yellower. This can be done by increasing the saturation too, but I prefer it this way for selected colours.

*www.thinkdigit.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=12319&d=1380709242

Step 4
The Buildings Layer - It look underexposed.
- so increase the brightness
- Again use selective couring in the most prominient colours of the foreground. Whites, greens, blues

*www.thinkdigit.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=12320&d=1380709334

Step 5
Finally - Add a layer mask over the buildings. Take a soft black brush & paint over the sky to make it visible, make sure the brush is soft & paint over several times. or you'll see brush marks over the photo.

I didn't work on the edges correctly, you see the brush marks

*www.thinkdigit.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=12321&d=1380709343

Here's the final jpeg edit.

*farm3.staticflickr.com/2829/10049458406_0ac17d3e7d_b.jpg

View attachment 12319
View attachment 12320
View attachment 12321

nac said:
My lens profile is not available

I think the profiles of all the CHDK cameras are available. Or perhaps you can get hold of one un officially.

@gen : that is some really through post processing. I didn't think about doing the sky and buildings separately and if you want to then photoshop or gimp is the best way. Although you can do a juugad in lightroom using the neutral density (ND) filter too.

I have applied some grad filter effect from picasa too

G

Big thanks to izzikio_rage for letting us edit & post your photo.

@Sujoyp - Noob question. Why did you save it to tiff & then to jpeg ?
"by shooting RAW" Does it mean to first apply the post process on the RAW file & then save it to the regular jpeg format.

back to the main point, did you guys observe difference in final output : pped jpg v/s pped Raw saved to jpeg ?
Something more you can do with one that you can't do with the other ?

izzikio_rage said:
@gen : that is some really through post processing. I didn't think about doing the sky and buildings separately and if you want to then photoshop or gimp is the best way. Although you can do a juugad in lightroom using the neutral density (ND) filter too.

I almost use this kind of layer masking on most of my photos. (including people shots : darken clothes & hair, smooth the skin , sharpen eyes )
Actually this is really quite simple, This hardly took 15 mins.

tbh I feel handicapped editing RAW because I cannot use layers & I'm randomly moving sliders. I focus on the sky & lose track of what's happening on the buildings & vice versa.
This may be because I don't know how to get the full potential out of Raw.

Here's the edited RAW saved to jpeg.
*farm4.staticflickr.com/3713/10055127884_04730bf44e_b.jpg

@gen I had to do ARW->TIFF coz my lightroom was not supporting ARW directly ...soo downlaoded a convertor and then edited ...And yes I apply the PP on RAW directly and saving it to JPEG ....

R

izzikio_rage said:
Raw files do not have a universal format, that is one of the greatest points against it. 20 years from now there is a high chance that I'll still be able to open and edit out the jpeg images that I have, perhaps in even better ways since the tech will have evolved. But support for my raw files will die the moment sony moves on to some other format for raw.

The counter to this is that you can go back and work on your raw files years later as your processing skills and raw developers, improve, getting much better results; the original raw data is still available for you to dive into. With JPEG you only have a file that has had the effects of many settings baked into it and a lot of data discarded.

It has been about 10 years (I think) since Canon switched over from CRW to CR2 but there is no shortage of support for CRW including from Canon. It is possible that raw file format support could be a problem in the future especially if you are not using a brand or model that is popular, but that is precisely why dcraw was developed. I don't see this is a risk that outweighs the significant benefits of using raw, especially when you consider that storage is really cheap and storing both raw and other converted formats isn't an expensive option (compared to many other costs associated with photography).

I have also heard of technical issues that cause errors when rewriting JPEG and TIFF that is not found in raw (at least in Canon raw) but I don't know enough about this to comment.

Have actually had this happen to me. I had shot in RAW for sometime using CHDK on my canon. At that time lightroom was a black art to me and i edited only in irfanview.

Anyhow, pulled some of those files out now. Was able to PP them quite a lot.

Why one should shoot in RAW ?

Raw File

Before:
*i.imgur.com/SRlhpcD.png

After:
*farm6.staticflickr.com/5492/9915149693_f6bf9702b0_b.jpg

R

izzikio_rage said:
Have actually had this happen to me. I had shot in RAW for sometime using CHDK on my canon. At that time lightroom was a black art to me and i edited only in irfanview.

Anyhow, pulled some of those files out now. Was able to PP them quite a lot.

If I remember correctly, Irfanview only accesses the embedded JPG within the raw file and not the raw data itself. You must have been editing just the JPG without getting the benefit of additional data.

I didn't know that. But it did open up a very faded, dull version of the file, compared to the jpeg. So i always assumed that it was editing the raw

BTW, if there are still people who are on the fence about the whole RAW vs Jpeg debate then here is something that iStock (Getty images) publishes for it's contributors.

It's a little long so take your time to read it

Articles - Shooting in the RAW - iStock

Nice article amlan...but still for birding I cant use RAW...it will slow down the burst rate and take 10 shots I think...where jpeg can take unlimited in burst.

Ok so I have done enough research on RAW vs JPEG and decided to shoot all general party and get togather shots in JPEG which is unnecessary waste of time editing...and will take all the creative shots including birding in RAW...just that when shooting Bird in flight I will use JPEG .

I edited RAW in lightroom and it took same amount of time editing ...

RAW files are exactly double the size of JPEG but luckily my RAW are only 11 MB-15MB ...I can handle that...not something like 25MB in canon 18 MP DSLR.

G

sujoyp said:
Ok so I have done enough research on RAW vs JPEG and decided to shoot all general party and get togather shots in JPEG which is unnecessary waste of time editing...and will take all the creative shots including birding in RAW...just that when shooting Bird in flight I will use JPEG .

I edited RAW in lightroom and it took same amount of time editing ...

RAW files are exactly double the size of JPEG but luckily my RAW are only 11 MB-15MB ...I can handle that...not something like 25MB in canon 18 MP DSLR.

Do you have Jpeg + Raw option in camera ? I used that this week. Sure it takes extra space , but you can delete one of it later.

Another thing I noticed, Even If the aspect ratio is set to 16:9, (thats what you see on the LCD) the raw output is always 4:3. It captures extra details at the top & bottom. (or may be you can say it crops the Jpeg to 16:9)

posting after a long time
@izzikio_rage : thnx for sharing u r rwa photo

i tried to edit it but didnt got any significant advantage of raw over jpeg.
*farm8.staticflickr.com/7414/10325793064_b586f31c23_b.jpg

full res

@Gen.Libeb: i have used chkd on sx150is and even when i set the image size to vga its raw is full 14mp, also digital zooming works only on jpeg,. Also no fancy effects like tiltshift etc work with raw. I think we have a common issue here even if chdk is a hack.

@sujoyp : raw files made in the dslrs are compressed losslessly mostly DCT along with huffmann(some times) so only 11to 15mb for 12 bit raw and 25 to 26 mb for 14 bit.

@gen ...RAW+JPEG is not useful if u are ultimately going to edit the RAW ...in my 8GB memory card I can store 500RAW files or 300 RAW+JPEG ...umm I better shoot RAW only and when required in burst I will shoot JPEG.

@IM2K ...how is it possible that a 12MP DSLR and a 18MP DSLR have same RAW file size ... my fine JPEG size is just 4-5 MB and an 18MP JPEG must be at lest 8MB in size

sujoyp said:
@IM2K ...how is it possible that a 12MP DSLR and a 18MP DSLR have same RAW file size ... my fine JPEG size is just 4-5 MB and an 18MP JPEG must be at lest 8MB in size

Err i just meant to say that DSLR and other cameras supporting raw by default tend to do some lossless compression on the raw files the give out. and it may increase with bits per sample they contain and also amount of noise and no doubt it will increase with amount of megapixels. sorry if my previous post was missleading

I had tried some shots with 60D jpeg was around 2.4mb in normal mode(normal jpeg compression).

some more examples of jpeg vs raw

*farm4.staticflickr.com/3788/9713022233_443d37b968_z.jpg

Fullres(*farm4.staticflickr.com/3788/9713022233_202d3cd0d0_o.jpg)
Left one is Jpeg processed and right one is raw processed using ACR.

*farm3.staticflickr.com/2874/9151620579_e8c3b179cb.jpg
Left is raw file SOC(just applied lens correction) right is jpeg SOC
Full res(*farm3.staticflickr.com/2874/9151620579_eff3cb4f86_o.jpg)

*farm8.staticflickr.com/7312/9236512911_0719dd4818_z.jpg
Left is RAW SOC right is jpe SOC , this one i used to test comparative field of view in RAW after applying lens profile with camera processed jpeg when profilin my cam. somewhat raw is wider.
Full res(*farm8.staticflickr.com/7312/9236512911_a353faed9f_o.jpg)

all above shot with sx150is chdk.

wow ur SX150 RAW can make some good improvements vs JPEG ...nice

Lm2k, Lens profile? Something like a downloadable file. If yes, please share us your lens profile of SX150. I can use it with my camera SX130. (Both are pretty much the same camera)

LCP Canon PowerShot SX150 IS (5.0-60.0 mm f3.4-5.6) - RAW
I had made this one long time back. 14 focal lengths are included . it replicates the in camera jpeg distortoin correction faithfully to a large extent .
I hope u kno how to install and use in in acr and lr. I still think there is some room for improvement .

nac said:
Lm2k, Lens profile? Something like a downloadable file. If yes, please share us your lens profile of SX150. I can use it with my camera SX130. (Both are pretty much the same camera)

Thank you Lm2k.

I've just recovered from a serious case of "post process the hell out of everything" . Got flamed at forums and a number of sites due to that. So like an addict limping towards recovery I guess I can start touching this thread again

Ha ha ha ...we new days photo enthusiast PP all the time ...there is a thin line between overdone PP and natural looking PP

I could use some tips in PP. I would like to get shallow depth of field as good as a DSLR can with my compact for a portrait work. We all know that it's not possible with small sensor compact. So I tried to get "the blur" in PP. I don't know I could clearly explain it, so with the help of photograph I hope you guys will get what I am trying to ask.

*media.digitalcameraworld.com/files/2012/09/Outdoor_portraits_camera_tips_DCM128.feature.spread3_dof_1.jpg

In this picture, the focus is on her left eye. Things gradually started to blur as the distance from the camera increases. Her right eye is blurred and her hair is blurred even more and the background is creamy. If the same was taken with compact everything (the girl and the background) will be in focus and my editing was selecting the girl (including hair) and just end up blurring the background.

Is this possible to get "the dslr" effect in PP without working for hours in editing

Note: Picture is not mine. Courtesy: Google search.

nac said:
I could use some tips in PP. I would like to get shallow depth of field as good as a DSLR can with my compact for a portrait work. We all know that it's not possible with small sensor compact. So I tried to get "the blur" in PP. I don't know I could clearly explain it, so with the help of photograph I hope you guys will get what I am trying to ask.

*media.digitalcameraworld.com/files/2012/09/Outdoor_portraits_camera_tips_DCM128.feature.spread3_dof_1.jpg

In this picture, the focus is on her left eye. Things gradually started to blur as the distance from the camera increases. Her right eye is blurred and her hair is blurred even more and the background is creamy. If the same was taken with compact everything (the girl and the background) will be in focus and my editing was selecting the girl (including hair) and just end up blurring the background.

Is this possible to get "the dslr" effect in PP without working for hours in editing

Note: Picture is not mine. Courtesy: Google search.

Bhai. Its a time consuming effort to do this and not worth your time as one can still figure out lens blur from gaussian blur. It requires constant zooming in and lassoing only the part you want in focus and then unselecting the rest of the parts and applying gaussian blur to it. Here is one of my efforts. *500px.com/photo/8742413

At the end of the day, its a "fake" photo and enthusiasts can easily make it out. Better to invest in a cheap system like used dslr + 50mm prime than wasting time on this IMO.

G

nac said:
In this picture, the focus is on her left eye. Things gradually started to blur as the distance from the camera increases. Her right eye is blurred and her hair is blurred even more and the background is creamy. If the same was taken with compact everything (the girl and the background) will be in focus and my editing was selecting the girl (including hair) and just end up blurring the background.

Is this possible to get "the dslr" effect in PP without working for hours in editing

Note: Picture is not mine. Courtesy: Google search.

Take a look at alienskin Bokeh.

You will still need to put in a lot of time carefully selecting the person (to make sure blur is applied only to the right places)
You might still need to use a layer mask with a b/w gradient to make the further most portions have max blur & less on the closest portions.

Did you edit that picture? I never get so much eye detail on my compacts.

I donno how people get soo much details in eyes...I find eyes all same...maybe coz we indians have black and dark brown eyes mostly..

Nac the pic looks like taken with f1.4 lens ...as people suggested u have to recreate the thing in PP

I can answer the eye detail question: one of the most post processed part is the eyes. The shot is usually taken with softboxes or ring lights that show up as attractive catchlights in the subjects eyes. This is further improved in post by dodging the eye (to lighten it), making the catchlight brighter (to give it that nice shine) and finally by sharpening it to get the details out

There are plenty of plugins that allow you to create a fake bokeh effect (I liked topaz lens effects the best). But you'll still have to spend a lot of time telling it how far different parts of the image were with respect to each other.

Thanks amlan ...but all that setup need a proper studio

I took this shot of my eye with macro lens

*farm9.staticflickr.com/8388/8600295262_0b8e01d0c4_c.jpg
Eyes of the devil by sujoyp, on Flickr

but had to do selective coloring coz some red lines where in eyes which didnt look good

any tips to improve on this ...I mean when we shoot somebodies eye our reflection is bound to seen on the eye ...

Okay then, I drop that idea. I will look into those plugins topaz, alienskin bokeh... But it seems like there is no simple way to get what I wanted.

Gen, Did you edit that picture? I never get so much eye detail on my compacts.
Nope I didn't edit anything, directly pasting the link here

Better to invest in a cheap system like used dslr + 50mm prime than wasting time on this IMO
Sure, one day I will buy a dslr with prime lens. But I don't don't when that's gonna happen

nac said:
Sure, one day I will buy a dslr with prime lens. But I don't don't when that's gonna happen

Are you in college?

G

nac said:
Okay then, I drop that idea. I will look into those plugins topaz, alienskin bokeh... But it seems like there is no simple way to get what I wanted.

You don't have to drop the idea, its not that difficult either. I've done that often on the portraits I shot.
If the background is contrasting to the subject, the selection is easy. Most of the times you will have to take the photo keeping in mind you are going to do this later & if there aren't much distracting items in the back it looks natural.
btw what are you using for pp ?

I asked about the eye because atleast for me most of the portraits I shoot are waist up & while defocussing the background I keep the entire person in focus rather than just the eye as you posted (too much close up).

Wasnt aware of this thread! Looks like lots of useful info. Will go thro it over next few days.

srkmish said:
Are you in college?

Gen.Libeb said:
You don't have to drop the idea, its not that difficult either. I've done that often on the portraits I shot.
If the background is contrasting to the subject, the selection is easy. Most of the times you will have to take the photo keeping in mind you are going to do this later & if there aren't much distracting items in the back it looks natural.
btw what are you using for pp ?

I asked about the eye because atleast for me most of the portraits I shoot are waist up & while defocussing the background I keep the entire person in focus rather than just the eye as you posted (too much close up).

I am not finding "selection" tough. Just that I am getting hard edges around the selection and makes it look it's PPed heavily to the blur/bokeh. No, hard edge doesn't looks natural. I will work on a photograph and will show you guys. Then we will all get to a nice learning discussion I hope.

The tips I asked you guys for to work on PS.

With my camera, all I got is just center focus. The picture I posted was not mine and googled to show you guys a sample (you may know this, just I am saying it again). I checked that article, it was shot with 85mm lens @ f/2. I guess almost all the dslr (atleast those whose launched in the recent past) have some choice when it comes to pick AF points when shooting. So they have a luxury of focusing on the eye of the subject. There may be some enhancement, but sure "eye" focus can be obtainable with appropriate camera and lens, I believe.

----------------------------------

Here is what I could I get.
Top is original and bottom is edited. (applied lens blur)
*imageshack.us/a/img20/8632/h809.jpg

*imageshack.us/a/img822/4658/uh15.jpg

Image Source: Canon. It was shot with Canon compact camera.

See the hard edge? That's what I feel looks not natural.

no way nac ...its looking completely unnatural ....and why is that shaded line around the girl ...

u can perform this edit with a pic where there is slight blurry background and you want to increase the blurriness...but not where things are sharp and u want to blur them.

Sujoy, eye macros are really hard to shoot. I was reading up on a couple of shots of eyes and it seems the most important thing is to get plenty of light into the eye for the shot. I can see that you used two lights, you could have used your softbox (or umbrella setup) to get a single big highlight. A large amount of light would also have brought out the details in the brown portion of the eye and you could have used a fast shutter speed (the eye moves really fast, so you get blurs if the speed is low)

For post, you'll need to clone out all the red lines (all celebs have them, and unless you are shooting sunny deol types, the photographers remove them), Dodge the brown part to make it lighter and bring out the details.

If you are home do give it a shot. would like to see how a pro shoots it

*www.lightstalking.com/amazing-close-up-photographs-of-the-human-eye-and-how-to-make-them-yourself

Nac: You might want to blur the edges too (you use a feather setting when selecting). But even then it's really hard to get the same level of professional feel as you can get with a good lens.

G

nac said:
There may be some enhancement, but sure "eye" focus can be obtainable with appropriate camera and lens, I believe.

Also with our compacts ?

nac said:
I am not finding "selection" tough. Just that I am getting hard edges around the selection and makes it look it's PPed heavily to the blur/bokeh. No, hard edge doesn't looks natural. I will work on a photograph and will show you guys. Then we will all get to a nice learning discussion I hope.

See the hard edge? That's what I feel looks not natural.

Yeah the hard edge isn't looking good. How did you do this , Did you blur the entire image including the girl or blurred just the selection that does not include the girl ?

The table blur is looking fake too, its too close to the girl to be blurred like that.
One of the other things with this image is the sofa, it is much closer to the girl (in focus) than the wall. so you can't put the same amount of blur on it. Either that or plan your images in a way to avoid these kind of situations.

Here's a quick attempt.
*imageshack.us/a/img513/8884/0d47.jpg

nac this one is looking much much better then previous one.

@amlan thanks for the input...I will really try ....do you know I shot my eyes by looking in the mirror and shooting with one hand ...and those lights are mobile led and cfl

.....

sujoyp said:
no way nac ...its looking completely unnatural ....and why is that shaded line around the girl ...
u can perform this edit with a pic where there is slight blurry background and you want to increase the blurriness...but not where things are sharp and u want to blur them.

I guess it's because I don't know much about PP

Checking videos and trying to mimic what they do.
You with compact almost all the time, we get everything in focus and all are sharp.

izzikio_rage said:
Nac: You might want to blur the edges too (you use a feather setting when selecting).
But even then it's really hard to get the same level of professional feel as you can get with a good lens.

I guess that grey halo is because of improper use of feathering

Yes, even if it is possible it will be a time consuming work and with my expertise.........????

Gen, Sure better than mine. She was sitting comfortably on the sofa, for our convenience now she is sitting on stool.

I take this is the best one could get. With my observation/interaction, this is what I get. It's pretty much impossible to get the effect of a quality of glass or it's a time consuming work.

It's not like I'm all that good at eye photos ... here's my attempt

*farm9.staticflickr.com/8062/8269942104_91ec5d0fdb_c.jpg
I can see myself in your eyes by Amlan Mathur, on Flickr

amlan I can see u completely in those eyes...you and ur lens should not be visible in the eyes in any case...try again

I have done some PP on an old portrait shot of mine ...tell me if its looking good or its not worth it

*farm3.staticflickr.com/2813/11753518416_b86979cffc_c.jpg
DSC_5216 by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

after PP

*farm4.staticflickr.com/3787/11753171274_8a405f4d15_c.jpg
DSC_5216_pp-2 by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

^ Very subtle enhancement.

Guys any idea about what's the equivalent of clarity (LR) in PS.

G

sujoyp said:
I have done some PP on an old portrait shot of mine ...tell me if its looking good or its not worth it

Definitely better.
Is the first one straight out of camera ?

I dont remember actually..I was just passing time doing PP

Guys, Is this possible to move edited image from PS to LR directly without changing edited work?

I saw this 1-2 weeks ago.
Lightroom and Photoshop Photo Workflow - YouTube

hope it helps nac

Thank you Kaz. That's pretty good...

It's almost impossible to get bokeh with my camera for portrait work. I thought I could try this tutorial...

Here is my attempt.

*img35.imageshack.us/img35/2200/ioq4.jpg

Photo: Gen. Libeb

looks good

nac its looking good....but I would like this type of bokeh with a subject in front...

Soon smartphone will help taking bokeh.. All because of the new Snapdragon 805 Processor

G

nac said:
Guys, Is this possible to move edited image from PS to LR directly without changing edited work?

Don't have an answer to this, but out of curiosity is there anything you can do in LR that you can't in PS regarding to just photo editing. ?

LR applies editing to whole pic and in PS we can apply selective editing...a biggg difference

G

sujoyp said:
LR applies editing to whole pic and in PS we can apply selective editing...a biggg difference

Yeah, but you can edit the whole pic in PS too.
I was asking if there is something you can do in LR that is not possible in PS (about photo editing)

I know the reverse is true, there are things you can do in PS that are not possible in LR.

I think you can manage files better in LR, but that's another thing.

Nac : there is an 'edit in photoshop' option somewhere in LR, so yes you can seamlessly move images between them. Never done it though

Sujoy: with LR 5.2 you can apply selective editing using brush, gradient tool, radial mask and all. It's still nowhere near what photoshop can do, but it allows you to do basic stuff without leaving LR.

As for the original question, even though there is a huge overlap between what LR and PS do, LR is more geared towards managing and editing photos, so it has collections, support for batch editing of metadata, options for backing up stuff on drives yet maintaining indexes, maintaining smart previews. So if you have hundreds of images on your drive, on your cloud, on external disks and all, then LR is the way to go

Photoshop is hardcore image manipulation, if you want to convert a selfie into a pic where you are leaning on the hood of a ferrari while Megan fox seranades you then you use PS. You have support for layers, masks, some amazing filters, all geared towards manipulating that one image to perfection.

Amlan, Video link posted by kaz explains everything clearly how things can moved from/to LR/PS.

Sujoy, Here is an attempt for you...

*img600.imageshack.us/img600/9313/8lny.jpg

It's obvious, image is not mine. Image courtesy: Google search.

Nac its looking awesome actually

G

@nac - well done on that, esp on the hair.

Very neat edit nac, i liked it

hey guys did u see the giveawayoftheday they are giving zonerphotostudio pro today, looks somewhat similar to LR.

Thanks guys...

Gen.Libeb said:
esp on the hair.

Credit goes to PS and plain/easy background...

lm2k said:
hey guys did u see the giveawayoftheday they are giving zonerphotostudio pro today, looks somewhat similar to LR.

It seems similar to LR but I don't think I can give it a try. Already I have too heavy s/w in my low config. desktop. Trying too many things will be a overkill and will sure slow down the system performance.

R

Gen.Libeb said:
I was asking if there is something you can do in LR that is not possible in PS (about photo editing)

I am not a LR user, but I vaguely remember reading somewhere that is you are using raw in LR it is only a TIFF that gets transferred to Photoshop.

^ Even LR just reads the RAW and copy it as DNG format (correct me if I am wrong, is DNG, RAW?) to work on the platform. PS users can do the same with ACR to read the RAW and adjust and send the image to PS for further editing if any.

nac said:
Thanks guys...

Credit goes to PS and plain/easy background...

It seems similar to LR but I don't think I can give it a try. Already I have too heavy s/w in my low config. desktop. Trying too many things will be a overkill and will sure slow down the system performance.

i just downloaded it and saved the setup(extracted), may be i would like to try it, we get a genuine version to use as our own.

Raja Manuel said:
I am not a LR user, but I vaguely remember reading somewhere that is you are using raw in LR it is only a TIFF that gets transferred to Photoshop.

One more difference ,In LR the splittonning shows a dropper to select the colour but in ACR it is just sliders to work with.

The basic raw file from the camera is never edited as far as I know. LR will usually save the changes that you make to the raw as a .xmp file (called a sidecar file) or to its catalog, it's basically a list of modifications that are applied to the associated raw file.

The problem with editing a raw/jpeg is that it's easy to go overboard with it. We've all seen very highly processed files that immediately look fake and appear blurry and noisy due to all the stuff that has been done to it (like some of my files from mid last year) :))

It happens that when we edit a file we sometimes over do to get the result we wanted ...and those fake things we hide by sharing small size of that pic

I have done that ...its ok as long as it doesnt look complete fake

^ Two samples...

nac cant see anything

^ My mistake, wrongly tagged the links as youtube instead of Video.

The last 7 pictures I posted was developed from RAW. Am I preferring to shoot RAW??? I don't know. But I could get more details out of RAW, including blown out highlights and shadows. Could add more punch, including colours... Just need to learn "how to reduce noise". Jpeg are good in this regard.

yup jpeg are good at noise...raw contain too much noise to reduce

Noise and lens distortion/vignetting bugging me a lot.

I tried to get lens profile for my camera, but couldn't find a good one. Two profile I found in CHDK forum not at all working. The one I downloaded (SX150) here in this forum (thanks to that generous man to share his work) and the one I got from adobe (SX230) are the one's close to good but still not close to perfect like the jpeg.

If you guys found any .lcp for SX130, please let me know.

-------------------------------------------

I have few doubts in lightroom.

1. Is this possible to undo a particular adjustment made (which happened to be in the middle of the development process)?

2. I removed one of the file from LR (let's say the file name is CRW_1000.cr2 copied as dng). But later I thought of developing it, so I imported. But now the files is getting copied as CRW_1000-2.dng. I thought there is some error so I removed and imported again, now it copied as CRW_1000-3.dng.
How can I erase the memory of this files previous import or tell LR that the file is the same one, please :pray:

leave the file name as it is?

@Nac; there is a history tab to the left (above the folders and collections) you can pretty much go back to any step in the process.

I'm not really sure about the second, but is it really hindering your work?

Even I need to figure out some good way to reduce noise in the RAW file. It seems that the camera is better at removing it than lightroom. I guess this will need some research

I am using photoshop and selectively reducing the noise...tried in 3-4 pics and its working fine on birds

izzikio_rage said:
@Nac; there is a history tab to the left (above the folders and collections) you can pretty much go back to any step in the process.

The history is useful when I want to go back to that particular adjustment and correct it. But the editing I did after that adjustment will vanish after I corrected that adjustment, right?
Uh... I think now it seems silly. It's LR, we can reset the particular adjustment at anytime, right?
I think I am kinda confused now.

I think I tried to remove a particular adjustment but couldn't do it by resetting or something, so the reason I asked. But now I don't remember what was that adjustment. or May be resetting option didn't strike my mind when I asked that query. I don't know... Totally confused. :crazy:

Really sorry for the confusion. And thanks for the response.

izzikio_rage said:
I'm not really sure about the second, but is it really hindering your work?

It's not hindering, just wanted to know what I am doing wrong.
------------------------------------------------------------

Guys, please don't mind. I thought this will be the appropriate thread to continue our discussion.

izzikio_rage said:
@nac: here is my attempt. A little noisy, but I guess that was given considering how much I tried to push the exposure in PP.

Already RAW files are noisy (and that too from a tiny sensor compact camera) and to pull details from underexposed image will lead even more noisier. @ 100% crop, we can see water-paint like image (esp, the greeny area). The image I posted was noisy too, it was not that apparent because of the small size of the image.

G

Several attempts after trying RAW, I keep switching between RAW & Jpeg, not because one is better than the other. Personally after PP, I can't tell if it was shot RAW or JPEG.

I have posted a few photos this week in the Photography thread, both posts have some RAW & some Jpeg. Can you guys make a guess which one is which. ? See posts #8770 & #8782.

@gen we definitely cant tell.....only u can tell...What i noticed is when shooting family and friends shoot jpeg and only when shooting something photographic or artistic shoot which you may need lot of editing then shoot RAW

shooting raw pics of family member is useless coz sometimes they want those pic to be transfered to pendrive instantly to show someone...then RAW pics become dull and grainy pics and then it need to be converted to jpeg before transferring

No, I couldn't find the difference. It's really good that you made very similar effect from both RAW and Jpeg and that too consistently with about a dozen images. My edits would have gone little erratic and would be so different from one to another even if all the images are shot in the same lighting and environment.

If I can take a wild guess, celebrity shots are RAW. Because you said, you missed Salman and Jaq. S110 is capable of 10fps burst if you were shooting jpeg and wouldn't have missed them if jpeg is opted. It's just a theory...

You can pat me on my shoulder (if I am right?

)

From the first series 1,3 & last are RAW. Just guessing...

G

nac said:
No, I couldn't find the difference. It's really good that you made very similar effect from both RAW and Jpeg and that too consistently with about a dozen images. My edits would have gone little erratic and would be so different from one to another even if all the images are shot in the same lighting and environment.

If I can take a wild guess, celebrity shots are RAW. Because you said, you missed Salman and Jaq. S110 is capable of 10fps burst if you were shooting jpeg and wouldn't have missed them if jpeg is opted. It's just a theory... You can pat me on my shoulder (if I am right? )

From the first series 1,3 & last are RAW. Just guessing...

sujoyp said:
@gen we definitely cant tell.....only u can tell.

lol , even I can't tell. I'll have to go home & check which .CR2 I have.
What I meant was then whats the point. I'd rather shoot jpeg if no one can tell the difference.

I agree for jpeg with family pics. Also the camera does a better job than me to remove noise in people's faces.

I read on some other forum there are some settings in PS/Lightroom to make adjust the raw file sliders same as the jpeg output of the camera or something like that, now if that's true it can be a great starting point.

yes in some software there is a setting which will export a pic same as taken on jpeg format...but then y did we took it in raw at the 1st place

^ He is saying that, that will be good starting point and we can develop from there.

Gen, That guessing part was for fun...

G

nac said:
Gen, That guessing part was for fun...

Yeah, you got one right.
2,3 & 4 from the first are RAW , everything else is jpeg.

It was interesting to edit Nac's sun photo & see different versions by everyone.
I was going to begin editing the other photos I have, so I'm sharing a Raw file here, it'd be nice if you guys can give it a try & we can see different results by everyone. Feel free to post result on your image sharing sites.

New Photo Here

yaah its fun to edit and see different versions of same file

*farm8.staticflickr.com/7431/12247728825_b76a735eb6_z.jpg
IMG_4183 by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

G

@ sujoyp - Nice one. One thing I don't like is the sun circles throughout the sky but I got those in mine too.

Here's my result.

*farm6.staticflickr.com/5548/12257148846_31f8b83ebb_b.jpg

People, can we also list out the major steps we took in our post processing. That way we can all learn from it

yup thats a good idea amlan ...but from next time please...I dont remember now

Gen, The original itself nicely exposed. And comparatively noise level is not as much as mine. Files size is much smaller...

Nice editing Gen. I was stuck whether to leave the aspect ratio as shot or crop or keep it at original. After a little thought I cropped.

*imageshack.com/a/img199/5988/1pat.jpg

G

nac said:
Nice editing Gen. I was stuck whether to leave the aspect ratio as shot or crop or keep it at original. After a little thought I cropped.

Now that is a cool perspective. lol bird reached ahead, looks nice.

izzikio_rage said:
People, can we also list out the major steps we took in our post processing. That way we can all learn from it

Yeah, that's nice idea. But I guess there isn't any special treatment in this one.
I tried to redo it going a little overboard this time. I'll list out the steps in this one (I'm doing the same recently).

Start out with Adobe Camera Raw
- bring up the shadows & down the highlights, adjust black,whites & increase contrast.
- adjust the tone curve for contrast (I don't completely understand it though)
- Increase clarity, sharpening amount , & sharpening masking & some luminance noise reduction.
- split toning for bluish/green shadows & yellow/orange highlights.

Open in PS & repeat all these with layer mask.
- sharpening using unsharp mask, split toning by color balance mostly (sometimes gradient map, didn't work this time)
- reduced vibrance/saturation
- Straighten horizon
- cropped more this time to a wider aspect ratio.

*imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/1024x768q90/827/8nf1.jpg

@gen: I think you pushed it a little too hard, you can see the circular bands around the sun

Ok my attempt at the post process. Was trying to give it a night time look, didn't come out all that well though. My changes were

All in lightroom
1. Cropped and corrected the tilt of the horizon
2. reduced temperature to give it that blue effect
3. Put a gradient filter from top and bottom to darken the edges of the image, could have used vignette but that gives a round effect, that was not what I was after
4. Reduced saturation to make it more black and white, giving it what our eyes perceive as a night effect. Also this gets rid of chromatic aberration which happens in P&S cams
5. made an S shape of the tone curve, gives better contrast
6. Slight noise reduction
7. Slight sharpening, while giving it some masking (hold alt key while moving the mask slider) to ensure that only the edges get the sharpening effect
8. Lens correction, barrel distortion, because my eyes have gone mad and everything seems distorted these days ... grrrr...

That's about it, here is the final image

*i.imgur.com/XmP1nLX.jpg

All these images look like they are from assassins creed black flag...good job :thumbs:

Amlan, Me too tried that night effect.

Gen, First is better...

Major steps in PP.
My flow is pretty much same as LR's.
1. Cropping (including aspect ratio, straightening), lens correction (If RAW)
2. Then BASIC
3. I don't do TONAL CURVE in LR (mostly), so I do the next one COLOUR
4. Again I will skip SPLIT TONING (something I don't know, and never thought of knowing it until now). Finishing with DETAIL

Depends on the image, I use GND, adjustment brushes and all. I try to do subtle adjustment. But most of the time, it goes beyond that. To add some punch, I overlay the duplicated layer (in PS).

I think everyone here know about those software well and do much better processing than me, so I didn't spell out each and every little things.

I too want to try this night thing...will not post here ...just experiment

Give it a shot, the best thing about RAW is that the white balance is completely nuteral. So you can change it to any level that is needed as many times as you want. For example, if you took a shot for the golden hour project in the other thread and remembered later that you took all the shots at auto WB, which killed the whole golden effect. If you shot in Raw you can always change it to any setting (cloudy, fluorescent for a night look etc) with almost no loss in quality.

Post the results here, let's all learn from what you do

@amlan..u talking to me

I am not that good in landscapes ...or PP

I am a novice in that area

sujoyp said:
@amlan..u talking to me

So funny...

Nac you are making fun of me :wwe:

Sujoy, of course I'm talking to you ..... if all the super pros don't teach us newbies who will ....

@amlan ...I am just as good in photography as all of you..

you know my 150-500 is attached to my dslr and kept without any cap near my window...its ready to shoot just like a loaded gun

problem is self learned people like me have difficulty explaining things...I edit as per my mood and imagination..

When summer arrives in some days ,birding will be over...it will be time for tabletop photography like splash, smoke, product etc..

G

Yesterday I posted a photo of a Ship in the photography thread - #8904. I don't know if it looks good, bad .. whatever.

So I'll post the RAW file here. If anyone is interested, it'd be great if you guys give it a go & we see the different edits that can be achieved just for fun. It was nice to see your edits the last time.

Ship Photo Link

will try gen

Ship

*i.imgur.com/NQf8KLy.jpg?1

Nac I too tried but didnt get any good picture out of it...soo didnt post

I think I will try again

I am just seeing this as an opportunity to learn to be proficient in developing RAW files. If everyone here (active members), share one image a week. That will keep me engaged throughout the week.

Ok I will share a 14-bit RAW file to edit...donno what that 14-bit means but people say its better then my 12-bit RAW let me shoot something good first

14 bit basically means that it uses 14 bits to store one pixel's brightness/color value. So there can be 2 to the power 14 different levels of brightness for one pixel. Compare that to a jpeg which is 8 bit (2^8 levels) and you can understand why it is said that raw files contain much more information.

Practically this means that in areas where your camera would have clipped the image (shown it as either pure black or pure white) a raw can still contain details. Also for smooth shade gradations a raw will be much smoother than a jpeg (which becomes apparent when you process it and bands appear in jpeg)

8 bit, 12 bit, 14 bit, 16 bit — What Does It Really Mean to Digital Photographers? | Laura Shoe's Lightroom Training, Tutorials and Tips for more gyan.

I'm also trying to get some really high dynamic range pics, will share their raws here then

Thanks amlan ....theoretically they mean soo much...practically none

R

Yeah, practically the difference between 12 bit and 14 bit doesn't mean much unless the sensor itself is capable of giving that kind of output, otherwise the noise will drown out the extra info. I remember a famous blog post by a Nikon photographer who tested this and concluded it is better to stick to 12 bit RAW with lossy compression, and convinced several D800 owners to use that setting.

@raja you mean its much grainier at 14-bit ...really is it that reason that I see grains even at ISO 800

@raja: i didn't know that. would love to read about it though. Also read an interesting article about how some of the newer cameras can apply selective noise reduction and sharpening to an image. Is there some software that will allow me to do this to the RAW files I develop. It always seems that my post processing noise reduction leaves the files more soft/blurred than what the camera does

I am using photoshop for selective noise reduction ...it gives better quality images

R

sujoyp said:
@raja you mean its much grainier at 14-bit ...really is it that reason that I see grains even at ISO 800

izzikio_rage said:
@raja: i didn't know that. would love to read about it though.

Here is the post. There could be a lot of arguing over his methods and results but I think he has made a good case for using 12-bit lossy compression in the field, particularly if you want a deeper RAW buffer.

The question of noise, especially with reference to ISO settings, is clearly complex. The standard advice we receive on the internet (higher ISO equals more noise) is clearly incorrect (or rather not always correct). Doing as much research as time permits, but it clearly needs more.

As far as software that can develop RAW files with selective noise reduction, I am not aware of any software that can do that at the RAW development stage itself. It can be done once the developed image is passed onto an image editing process - I think Photoshop has noise reduction brushes, but it should be possible to do it with layers in any suitable image editing application. It should also be noted here that noise makes images look sharper than they actually are, so removing a lot of noise could give the impression that the image is softer when it actually isn't.

G

@nac - Nicely done on the ship, whats up with that thick black border, do you run some action ?

Here's another attempt.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/IMG_4166_01_zps0f132b12.jpg

Both the sky colour and our forum colours are very much similar. They would get blend together and we have to look hard to find the border of the photograph. So the reason for adding border (and that's the border I am mostly using).

Darktable vs Lightroom - Does it measure up?

R

kaz said:
Darktable vs Lightroom - Does it measure up?

Thanks for the link; the comments were far more informative than the article itself. Two interesting bits of info:
1) As suspected, Lightroom converts RAW to TIFF at a very early stage of processing, and therefore loses out on processing latitude.
2) Apparently Darktable can perform local edits using paths, which I think is what izzikio_rage was asking about.

No support for windows though is a pain..

@ Raja: So I guess the bottom line is that all alternatives need to be tried out and then you select the one that is best for your camera

. "Noise makes an image look sharp" - I agree on this, however my problem is that any kind of noise reduction makes the image look very soft. I though the perhaps it was my cam (sony NEX 6) which was the culprit but I've been checking out the raws posted here and 100% crops that websites show and that is not my problem. So I guess it has to do with my settings/shooting technique or my post processing technique.

@Kaz: Read through the comments and there seem to be plenty of free alternatives to lightroom for windows too (lightzone is a often mentioned name). If someone is using any of these post your observations here and let us know if it's worth trying out.

@Gen: The PP on this is pretty good, however I think the image itself is not one that you would want to PP a lot. I think if you really wanted to make it amazing in post processing then the way would be to add a dramatic sky to the image.

Add Dramatic Skies To Your Photos With Photoshop Touch's Fade Tool [How To]

I've never done this before but seems like it's worth giving a shot

R

izzikio_rage said:
@ Raja: So I guess the bottom line is that all alternatives need to be tried out and then you select the one that is best for your camera . "Noise makes an image look sharp" - I agree on this, however my problem is that any kind of noise reduction makes the image look very soft. I though the perhaps it was my cam (sony NEX 6) which was the culprit but I've been checking out the raws posted here and 100% crops that websites show and that is not my problem. So I guess it has to do with my settings/shooting technique or my post processing technique.

@Kaz: Read through the comments and there seem to be plenty of free alternatives to lightroom for windows too (lightzone is a often mentioned name). If someone is using any of these post your observations here and let us know if it's worth trying out.

I use RawTherapee. The software has a lot of features, and you might be interested in the ability to choose from 9 demosaicing algorithms to see if one can give better results with either noise reduction method. Plus lots and lots of other stuff to play around with as well - the software is known for giving slider shock to newbies. It is more than just a RAW tool, though; I have been scanning some old family photos and sending the JPGs to RawTherapee to bring back the colours and detail, and the results are stunning.

I am also figuring out how to move to Linux because, as has been pointed out by many geek photographers, the best tools are available there.

Raja Manuel said:
I am also figuring out how to move to Linux because, as has been pointed out by many geek photographers, the best tools are available there.

I will suggest VMWARE..Installing Linux alongside Windows is cool (I always have Linux installed) but I don't think just for using one tool you should switch OS..

R

kaz said:
I will suggest VMWARE..Installing Linux alongside Windows is cool (I always have Linux installed) but I don't think just for using one tool you should switch OS..

Not switching entirely, at least not yet. I already run Linux from a live USB, just need to figure out how to have it on my hard disk without losing all the other stuff that is there.

Raja Manuel said:
Not switching entirely, at least not yet. I already run Linux from a live USB, just need to figure out how to have it on my hard disk without losing all the other stuff that is there.

Just shrink and create a 5-10GB of partition using Windows Disk Management and install in that

One problem whenever I use save metadata to file in Lightroom it doesn't work

Here is my attempt at the ship with a sky replacement. Did not go as well as I planned, doesn't look as clean as I had hoped

*i.imgur.com/2ZDszpj.jpg

Nice editing Amlan..

Thanks, but it doesn't feel as good as what I could have done if I spent more time on this.

The fact is that once you start getting into photoshop there is no saying where the manipulation should end. I just added a cloudy sky, I could have added a stormy sky, a hurricane, rain, lightening or even a kraken.... at what point does it stop becoming a great photograph and become a marvel of photoshop.

you are right amlan...there is huge scope of editing with photoshop

R

izzikio_rage said:
The fact is that once you start getting into photoshop there is no saying where the manipulation should end. I just added a cloudy sky, I could have added a stormy sky, a hurricane, rain, lightening or even a kraken.... at what point does it stop becoming a great photograph and become a marvel of photoshop.

You mean you could have added a kraken but chose to go with a cloudy sky? There's just no explaining some people…

What happened people, have we all decided not to post process stuff?

People who shoot more often can share one of your original photo (preferably RAW). Couch potato like me can get an opportunity to try them in PP

G

nac said:
People who shoot more often can share one of your original photo (preferably RAW).

Last 2 months I been shooting jpeg only. So here's one RAW pic from Jan I found that I did not edit yet.
So if interested, give it a try.

*www.dropbox.com/s/gv2labyuuibg33f/IMG_4370.CR2

Thanks Gen,
*i.imgur.com/FTukxNS.jpg

G

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION]- Nicely done, but the sky looks a little odd.

Here's an attempt.
*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/Gandhi_zpsaa736805.jpg

I liked Nac's PP more...Gen your pic have poor contrast..why not increase the contrast a bit more

- - - Updated - - -

my edit

*farm4.staticflickr.com/3698/13556901045_f191c29600_z.jpg

I tried to remove the shadows but it was looking out of contrast...not good

I was trawling through some of my old shots yesterday, will try to upload the raw of a shot that has good dynamic range. Also I need tips from you all on noise reduction, it seems that after post processing either my shots have high noise or they turn out very soft.

[MENTION=154968]Gen.Libeb[/MENTION] good that you cleaned the head

kaz I didnt even noticed that gen have cleaned some part of head

but that messy head tells us a story which clean one dont

what story?

ooh kaz you forgot...street photography is all about stories....the story can be a poor administration , long lost respect of gandhiji, ignorence of people who fought for independence, bad state of gandhiji's congress

^ So you suggest that Gen trying to cover the fact by his PP skill?

- - - Updated - - -

Gen, Even I didn't notice that.

Self criticism:
I forgot to apply lens correction. The yellow brick wall and the trees drawing some attention. I think it's better if the frame fills just with the subject avoiding the above like Gen did (kudos to Gen :thumbs:

) When trying to get some blue in the sky, I messed by getting blue in wires, towers and grill holding the hoardings. As Sujoy pointed out, making the things perfect may be fine with portraits in fashion photography but in street its good to depict the things as it is (kudos to Sujoy :thumbs:

).

*i.imgur.com/S5FPnuR.jpg

G

I lost contrast while getting up the shadows otherwise some of the blacks were getting too black. [MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] - The b/w version works good for this one.

I am fine with editing jpeg's too if you guys don't have RAW & want to post jpeg.

I too like the bw version of the image, i think even a vintage look would suit this. Will give it a shot this weekend

more raw images please. Or even jpegs

G

marvelousprashant said:
more raw images please. Or even jpegs

Here you go. Three RAW files for HDR this time.
The beach is a little dirty. If some one attempts to clean and clone it up it'll be an added bonus.

*www.dropbox.com/s/iw9ypdsm5a3vytt/IMG_2550.dng

*www.dropbox.com/s/twvlc7o6grayayb/IMG_2551.dng

*www.dropbox.com/s/ophn14pabs2gxbp/IMG_2552.dng

Sharing one of my edits... as everyone liked the end result

Step 1: Planning
I wanted to do a realistic looking HDR Panorama

Step 2: Shooting
As expected, shot 3 images per frame and 2 frames in total

Frame 1

*i.imgur.com/hNdPbNIl.jpg

*i.imgur.com/oe8S1EWl.jpg

*i.imgur.com/8beRyvAl.jpg

Frame 2

*i.imgur.com/7RqKgoml.jpg

*i.imgur.com/i3E5mHhl.jpg

*i.imgur.com/sEyINjpl.jpg

HDR 1: Done using Photomatrix Natural Preset

*i.imgur.com/drpfb6il.jpg

HDR 2

*i.imgur.com/9zTTTOPl.jpg

Panorama: Stitched using Microsoft ICE

*i.imgur.com/kyYCuv3l.jpg

FINAL: Using Lightroom

*farm8.staticflickr.com/7308/12384117223_51d7387417.jpg

Prashant, Nice one... Your favourite spot? Feels like dejavu...

Gen, People are walking....there will be ghosting if 3 images are stacked for HDR.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't think I am smart enough to avoid ghosting, so I didn't opt for 3 picture HDR. I picked the 0EV photo and photomatix made single photo HDR.

*i.imgur.com/N37f8dG.jpg

The same photo, but my usual PP.

*i.imgur.com/97rIZQW.jpg

How did you turn the sky blue while retaining the gold hue of the beach.

Very cool shots both of you

G

[MENTION=117627]marvelousprashant[/MENTION] - Thats nicely done, The result looks awesome. Thanks for sharing.

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] I like the 2nd one. Don't like black and white border.
Is a single photo HDR really an HDR ? Does this question even make sense ?

I see you guys are using Photomatix. How is it ? I mean do you get what you want out of it ?

Here's my attempt using 3 photos and layer masking in photoshop but its boring and took me over an hour & now I think I overdid it on the contrast and the blacks.
I didn't see any advantage of using RAW files for HDR. Making the most out of it will be even more time consuming.

*farm6.staticflickr.com/5337/13709485143_f4df18ea45_b.jpg

Photomatrix presets are decent. I usually choose between default and natural presets. For any kind of editing I prefer LR. Oloneo is another option for HDR

Gen, You're the second one (in the recent times) to point that the black and white border is not good.

Guys, is it "that bad" :cryeyesout:

Our forum background is light colour, and I liked and noticed that viewing the photographs in dark background is better. So the reason for black border. (most of my flickr images don't have any kinda border) The thin white line I put (usually) to make it clear to see the edge of the photographs (don't want black border and photograph merging and make it little hard to notice where the edge of the photograph is). May be these two photographs I posted don't need that white border.

After all, taking photographs is not the only thing, as an amateur/enthusiast we do PP and all... Presenting the photographs is also matters, I believe (or am I wrong?). Since this border doesn't seem appealing, any suggestion what I should do with regards to border. Should I add border or get rid of that.

I don't get that "Is a single photo HDR really an HDR ? Does this question even make sense?"
If that means, "that doesn't even look like HDR", then that's me

If that means, "how can you make HDR with single exposure", then it's YES. It's possible. After all it's RAW, what we feed to those software is +1/0/-1 exposure. If we just feed one exposure, photomatix push +1 and -1 to get the other two exposure for HDR.

izzikio_rage said:
How did you turn the sky blue while retaining the gold hue of the beach.
Very cool shots both of you

Is that me or Prashant?

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] you must have seen it on my flickr. it is an old shot.
Anyway , my attempt at HDR
*i.imgur.com/sTIx4Lbl.jpg

- - - Updated - - -
[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] you could have used 'reduce ghosts' setting in photomatrix. Method 'automatic' and detection 'high' did it for me

nac said:
Is that me or Prashant?

Was asking you only

izzikio_rage said:
Was asking you only

Confused...
Used GND (added blue) in LR

Prashant, I will try that in Photomatix. There is no ghosting in yours...

G

nac said:
After all, taking photographs is not the only thing, as an amateur/enthusiast we do PP and all... Presenting the photographs is also matters, I believe (or am I wrong?). Since this border doesn't seem appealing, any suggestion what I should do with regards to border. Should I add border or get rid of that.

Keep the border - 0
Get rid of it - 1

nac said:
I don't get that "Is a single photo HDR really an HDR ? Does this question even make sense?"
If that means, "that doesn't even look like HDR", then that's me
If that means, "how can you make HDR with single exposure", then it's YES. It's possible. After all it's RAW, what we feed to those software is +1/0/-1 exposure. If we just feed one exposure, photomatix push +1 and -1 to get the other two exposure for HDR.

So by that way more images will mean even more HDR.

[MENTION=117627]marvelousprashant[/MENTION] - Now that looks like a sunrise.

^ lol... Should I start poll or what

I have seen pictures that are composite of many pictures (one was, set of 20 (20 x 3) to make one HDR photograph.

I have done composite of 3-4 images using 5 images for HDR (4x5)

- - - Updated - - -

a good way to use this thread will be to upload your unedited pics [raw or jpegs] and let others play with it either according to the demand of the uploader or their own imagination

Yeah, Gen is most generous so far (so the reason he picked his ID as Gen

).

This is the same photograph I just posted in photography thread. Here I am posting it along with jpeg version to see if there any difference we could see without a magnifying glass.

I am sure your eyes are trained enough to spot which one is RAW and jpeg or at least the one I am gonna share... The point is, it's not the evident RAW was better here as far as details, colours, sharpness etc. when viewing the whole picture (not the crop).

I don't think I will have to say which one is RAW and which one is jpeg.

*i.imgur.com/TvkIuo4.jpg

*i.imgur.com/YMkcw6S.jpg

For those who couldn't find it. Here are 100% crop and few clues...

*i.imgur.com/vij31ii.jpg

*i.imgur.com/mKomdHe.jpg

1. Recently, I think it was Gen said something about FOV of RAW and jpeg.
2. Noise level and sharpness.
3. Shadow details.

RAW is never better than jpeg. Common misconception. RAW just contains more data than jpeg so that you can pull out details from blown highlights and shadows. Also RAW responds better to noise reduction and sharpness

ok soo in picture 2nd one is RAW and in spoiler right one with less exposure, more grains is RAW

In any case as a picture its looking great...or else people will complain me of pixelpeeping

Sujoy, 10 out of 10

Prashant, That's something new. Will see how RAW/jpeg responds to NR and sharpness.

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] thats definitely true that as RAW dont have any in-camera sharpness or NR done...you can have a better control on it...
JPEG have everything done in-camera then you will do again soo it may just get spoiled..even if you dont set anything in the camera it will do something to make the picture beautiful

Here is a raw image of a shot I took from a plane, I've seen some amazing plane pics from people on flickr and 500px. But the only way I could get anything was to boost ISO to 6400 which makes this very grainy. People, would you be willing to give this a shot ?

*www.dropbox.com/s/450y3zj4mx9i5lv/DSC03060.ARW

Update: just spent quite some time trying to get anything usable from this image and i guess it might be better to abandon it

G

izzikio_rage said:
People, would you be willing to give this a shot ?

Didn't really go as expected.
I tried to get some colours in the sky but it was getting blotchy , so didn't do much except for noise reduction.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/Night_zps99b6b183.jpg

wow, gen that's a pretty good edit. Yesterday when I was trying I tried to get the wing to show, however that was giving me a strange purplish tint all over the pic. And any attempts at noise reduction were making it very soft and blotchy as you put it. Will give it another go today

May be I don't mind as much as you guys with regards to noise. I guess I seen more noise with my camera

That's a nice click, Amlan. :thumbs:

Not every one could get this shot.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/DSC03060-2_zps862c8475.jpg

In fact, the grains adds some touch when it's black and white.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/DSC03060-3_zps65c4a484.jpg

Thanks nac. Btw black and white, i never thought of trying that. Will give this shot a go with this too

I liked Gen's editing better then nac ....looks more natural

G

sujoyp said:
I liked Gen's editing better then nac ....looks more natural

Thanks. Here's a gift for you ....
Sorry I had to do this without your permission, I'll take this off soon I promise.

*www.thinkdigit.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=14173&d=1397399679

Hey!!! Put that in English too... So that we illiterate can understand that

that poster looks more like a gundagardi pic rather then a request to vote

- - - Updated - - -

And no need to take it off ...with kamal in my heart and rahul gandhi besides me ...who can dare me

I see Sujoy likes when its life like. Not saturated ones. I have saturated little more (just my taste), to see how they will look when it is saturated. Please comment whether it's too much or not. If it's too much I try and keep it little down.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/sujoy13apr2-Edit_zps68b0d11b.jpg

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/sujoy13apr1-Edit_zps4dd686d9.jpg

Nac its summer time and its not soo green in the jungle...thats why I edited like what I saw there....your 1st one although looks great but not the original

...I can upload the original if you want...you can edit that...and decide how much to edit

wait till afternoon...I will upload both the file RAW ...u can edit it

G

nac said:
I see Sujoy likes when its life like. Not saturated ones. I have saturated little more (just my taste), to see how they will look when it is saturated. Please comment whether it's too much or not. If it's too much I try and keep it little down.

Those look good too. I don't think its too much.

Tried a bit of processing with PS CS6...
*farm8.staticflickr.com/7125/13842679984_a093dda7e5.jpgRed_Blossom by sharma.hrishikesh, on Flickr

here is the link to two original files nac edited

you can try what ever u like

*1drv.ms/1gurQxE

*1drv.ms/1gus8o3

^

I tried the RAW one. It's different than my usual editing. Please comment and critique

I know it's not my photograph.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/DSC_3433sujoy-Edit-2_zps278ad51e.jpg

- - - Updated - - -

Sujoy, That's a good work you did on that RAW. Not a lot of contrast (may be no contrast at all (no offense), kinda hazy/misty look, slightly over exposed feel and dull.

I told you 150-500 have some contrast issue ....even after my PP it just looked as good as I saw actually ...

this time your editing looks like hot summer afternoon...and all dry ....I wish there could be a tiger in the scene

will look like africa

G

I liked nac's first attempt #211. The 2nd reddish one, I don't like it much.

sujoyp said:
here is the link to two original files nac edited you can try what ever u like

This is my attempt at the RAW file.
*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/DSC_3433_2_zps538103cd.jpg

sujoyp said:
I wish there could be a tiger in the scene

Be careful what you wish for.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/Lake-Tiger_zps5eafd1f8.gif

Gen nice try .....and that tiger is amazing...full 3D

Better late than never
*i.imgur.com/tUidxaEl.jpg

prashant's editing is the closest to reality ...good

G

[MENTION=39722]sujoyp[/MENTION]- Glad you liked the tiger.
I like marvelousprashant's version too. Somehow reminds me of ArmA.

I'm gonna post a out of camera jpeg here for you guys to give it a shot.
I wanted to have a gloomy & dark mood look on this photo, I made an attempt and posted it on the photography thread #9483.

So instead of keeping it simple, can you guys try out a couple of things
1 - Please try a gloomy & dark mood effect.
2- Try something you think will look the best on this photo OR a natural look.

*www.dropbox.com/s/o592nz7m2ei2f6i/IMG_4967.JPG

Here's my edit Gen:
*i.imgur.com/m8xNPAA.jpg

not a good attempt by me but still posting
*i.imgur.com/LtaEoY2l.jpg

^^ I will take little time and try if I can get something new, something I haven't tried before.

Holy **** prashant.... That is an amazing edit

You'll need to share how you did this

marvelousprashant said:
not a good attempt by me but still posting
*i.imgur.com/LtaEoY2l.jpg

dayum! what a click.!!!!

G

[MENTION=121890]kaz[/MENTION], [MENTION=117627]marvelousprashant[/MENTION] - Great edits from both. The clouds and lightning one is insane.

marvelousprashant said:
not a good attempt by me but still posting
*i.imgur.com/LtaEoY2l.jpg

Welcome to the Zone, STALKER.

I was working for this one "dark and gloomy" last night. Suddenly this short film came to my mind. Kinda a felt like the tone I am working (and the genre suggested by gen) are similar to this movie (or atleast that is what I was thinking

)

Some may feel that the link doesn't fit the thread. So I am putting it in spoiler.

There is English sub. So don't worry that you won't understand the language).

- - - Updated - - -

Did any of you guys watch it?? :blink:

- - - Updated - - -

I am almost complete.

It's kinda little overdone. :blink:

It was fun doing it.

Checking tutorials how to do the things and ditching it in the mid way as it was beyond my expertise :pullhair:

and continue from where I left the things I know. :unsure:

It was a loooong ~~processing~~ should I say manipulation??? :unsure:

It's a crazy editing. :crazy:

I will post it in an hour or so...

- - - Updated - - -

There is not lot of light in the picture. It's better to view in TDF dark skin (theme).

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/IMG_4967gen-final-4_zps00be1d12.jpg

Wow nac, this looks straight out of a batman/van helsing movie

[MENTION=121890]kaz[/MENTION]
Lovely.... Nicely edited

[MENTION=132251]prashant[/MENTION] [MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION]
You guys did really nice work...
Final image looks awesome...
But I would say it image manipulation and not post processing.

Photo captured well... Nice composition..

whoa

you guys have done soo good manupulation with the pic that I am not even going to try ...great work [MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] and [MENTION=132251]prashant[/MENTION]

G

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] - That's an awesome edit.
ha ha ha sujoyp is there too being chased by ghosts, lol looks like he will handle all 3 of them there (may be make him a little smaller).
Broken building effect looks cool too. The overall tone of them pic is totally super..

hey I didnt notice that ....I am also in the picture

My bazooka will handle them

[MENTION=39722]sujoyp[/MENTION] haunting the pic.

you guys are making me ghostburster

or ghost itself

G

Here's a realistic looking attempt.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/IMG_4967_zps0f595053.jpg

^ And you did suggest "dark and gloomy effect"???

G

nac said:
^ And you did suggest "dark and gloomy effect"???

Well, I did suggest 2 things in #222, a dark one & a natural one. I already posted my dark mood effect in the photography thread #9483, but you guys raised the level much higher on this one.

just noticed that sujoy is in the picture too

that is just awesome. love the edits, I just hope this thread doesn't turn into a photoshop battle ground

.

G

Come On People .. Some one upload the next Jpeg or RAW.

I will upload a RAW in evening...one of my friends photoshoot pic...

Here is a RAW pic...lets see the PP on fashion photographs

*copy.com/nOwMMg0V7mig

G

sujoyp said:
Here is a RAW pic...lets see the PP on fashion photographs

*copy.com/nOwMMg0V7mig

Cool. I've PPed people but never on fashion photos so this ones gonna be difficult. I'll try now & post soon.

- - - Updated - - -

After last times nac & marvelousprashant's awesome PP, I was not sure what to do with this.
Here's an attempt. Posting low res version.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/DSC_3555_1600_zps098c9813.jpg

quit good gen ...While PPing I removed the black background completely and it was looking very bad...yours is much better

I worked little more than an hour on this picture. And then, PS crashed :cryeyesout:

You guys should have seen my face then. My face was almost like this... :wah:

Luckily, when I opened PS after a while there was this PSD file (recovered) - auto I guess. :hyper:

Thought and tried liquify tool... And it didn't come out good.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/DSC_3555_zpsd9afd22c.jpg

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] this time ur editing went wrong ..or that maybe my perspective but as always I will go with the close to real picture....yours editing have too much pink tint

That's intentional. I was trying different tones, and finally I locked this one. You know I don't try to get close to real picture

. And this is a studio portrait. If my proficiency in PP is more, I would have tried similar to "dove evolution" kind.

Even you and the girl wouldn't figure out that the picture is of her's :rofl:

You can see two other versions here.

This one is with yellow tone
*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/DSC_3555-3_zps53fb2610.jpg

This one is with tone turned off
*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/DSC_3555-2_zps05138b8d.jpg

yellow tone is good

G

sujoyp said:
quit good gen ...While PPing I removed the black background completely and it was looking very bad...yours is much better

Glad you like it. It was a great picture to start with, Didn't had to worry about noise at all. Cheers to the photographer (sujooyp) for that.

Not sure if I overdid the skin softening, but looking at nac's version, IMO you might want do do some more softening on the face .
It's great that you added curtains on the left so it looks more balanced. You could probably try to darken the background behind her. Yeah' the yellow one looks better than the pink one.

Most (I mean almost all) of the editing I did are based on some tutorials and to my convenience added/left some of the things they said. One of the tutorial suggested that it's better to leave some pore details when softening skin. And I followed. Even the little softening wasn't good in my view, so I pulled down a little to my taste. It won't be obvious those who haven't seen the original or to the untrained eyes, if it is over-softened.

oops I forgot to smoothen the skin in all of my pics

...thanks for reminding

gen's edit is the best. I couldn't achieve half of what he did. [MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] i dont like the prominent hair strands in your pic.

G

marvelousprashant said:
gen's edit is the best. I couldn't achieve half of what he did. [MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] i dont like the prominent hair strands in your pic.

Thanks.

I usually edit a lot of people shots, I mostly use this:

Topaz Denoise: This thing is freaking awesome. (This time sujoyp's pic was great so I didn't need to use it)

Alienskin Bokeh: For artificial bokeh (not needed in this one) & vignette.

Nik Software : There are lots of presets for portraits, While you can easily do what it does using photoshop, it definitely makes things easier/faster & gives you a good start to go ahead.

You can plug all 3 into photoshop.

that's a pretty well shot picture, even with the raw I was having doubts about whether my touching would make it worse rather than improve it

. Then comes gen with that very professional edit

Waise, wouldn't skin softening and all make more sense for portraits and all, I was checking out a few tutorials and it seems that for full body fashion photos the most often used tool is the liquefy tool, along with a dodge tool for making skin lighter. teeth brighter etc. Mostly it was about shooting it right with multiple lights and reflectors and mirrors and props. There was an overview video also, let me search for it

got it, check this out

portrait images requires softening and then recreating skin texture using dedicated sofwares

Guys it is too hot to do photography so please upload some raw files so we can kill time

this time I am going to upload a real RAW file...of smoke ...now you have to do some editing and produce something beautiful

let me select a nice one for you ...wait

*copy.com/CIOiMo2qX7Lp

- - - Updated - - -

Here is my PP of thar RAW image...I have lots of smoke patterns ...difficult to select

*farm3.staticflickr.com/2906/14095660603_99f25c7d18_z.jpgDSC_4037 by sujoyp, on Flickr

That's a nice editing Sujoy. :thumbs:

Comparing it with the original you have done a great job. As soon as I saw the photography, I thought I have seen this one before with D3100. So guessed you're posting that one, but learned that this is a new one with D7000.

I really need to learn how to edit out these types of files. Sujoy, please give an overview of the editing you did

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] I have done this before and result were satisfactory...just for you guys...try to edit these new ones

@amlan ...its simple
1. Increase the contrast soo much that all faint smoke mark disapperes ...
2. open it in photoshop
3. create a new duplicate layer
4. add a gradient layer on the background layer from layer menu
5. select the background layer and just beside that these you will find a list with normal selected...select color
6. paint other parts black

Amlan, He said and made it sound so simple. But it took me more than half an hour.

All the tutorials are pretty much the same. Didn't seem like I can pull something too different from what Sujoy have already done.

Here are the two versions I tried.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/Image00001_zps34bfb8c7.jpg

most of this sounds doable, am just worried about the "paint everything black". Any use of the brush tool usually ruins the image

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] white one is not useful nac...I think it need darker smoke ...colored version is good

@amlan...you have to paint it black or else see what I posted...it may look good in some cases and not in some others

G

There' isn't anything different I could do with it. I'll leave it.

What abt the pm..which pic

This one is a landscape, shot last week. It's shot exclusively for PP thread.

I was hoping I would reach the spot before sun disappears, but

my bad I went there little late.

The reason for underexposing the image,
1. I didn't want trails of the vehicles passing by, and
2. Expecting under exposing would make the sky colour pop out a little.

May be I have gone little over board, but hoped I could get the details in PP. May be I was wrong, may be not. But for now, this is what I am end up with. If you think you guys have spare time, and the picture is worth spending them on, I will be happy to see your PP work.

And one more request, Amlan asked to share how/what people do in PP at the start of this thread. When posting your PP work, write briefly how/what you did in PP. Just we can learn/correct our workflow.

*www.4shared.com/file/P3tmSyHdce/CRW_3919.html

*i.imgur.com/go5E2Fd.jpg

1. Imported photo in LR
2. photo was underexposed so I tried increasing exposure. But that turned the sky white. So I increased exposure very little and only exposed the shadows (greenery etc) without changing highlights (sky) much
3. Added +30 clarity for more crisp look
4. Exported image to topaz denoise and removed grain
5. Back to LR, removed some chromatic noise
6. Added purplish tone to highlights
7. Corrected vignetting. (Forgot to crop the lower portion

)
Used selective color tone in LR to change the green color tone from warm (yellowish green) to present cool green
8. Exported image to PS and downsampled image to 2000 by 1500 to further kill noise
9. Posted to TDF
10. Waiting for comments

^ 9 and 10 :lol:

Wow!!!

That's an excellent work :thumbs:

You would have made it even better if the image was properly exposed

Is there any preset option in LR to choose cool green/warm green or any other color from/to cool/warm? or we have move the slider and identify the cooler/warmer tone?

wow prashant thats awesome PP ...great work

I too tried but it just looks as under exposed as original one so not sharing

nac said:
^ 9 and 10

Wow!!! That's an excellent work You would have made it even better if the image was properly exposed

Is there any preset option in LR to choose cool green/warm green or any other color from/to cool/warm? or we have move the slider and identify the cooler/warmer tone?

No preset. Just sliders. For all colours

G

[MENTION=117627]marvelousprashant[/MENTION] - You are the pro of landscape photos. I saw the pic and I could guess you edited it just by looking at that purple sky.

Not sure what I wanted to achieve with this, but here is my try.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/nac1_zps85574cc9.jpg

Thats an awesome edit prashant. Will need to learn this highlight tone and selective color thing.

@gen good edit, reminds me of a tarantino movie

I like your edit more than minie gen. Probably because of wide aspect ratio. I love 16:9

nice edit gen...looks like a scene from retro movies of 70's

sujoyp said:
I too tried but it just looks as under exposed as original one so not sharing

Gen, You're so modest...

Great filmy look. :thumbs:

Even with the dark picture you guys have done a great job.

G

Here's what I did apart from the basic things in RAW (exposure, contrast, whites, black... )

- Split Toning in ACR - to get slight purple shadows Then opened in PS
- Stretched it to be wide.
- Made sky darker in PS using layer mask (well that didn't get as dark as I wanted)
- Added a few Gradient Map layers
- Purple - Orange (most opacity)
- orange - black
- Black - white (least opacity)
- White layer (10% opacity)
- Black Borders & Text (I had to look at several colors for the text before deciding on this one).

My attempt at sujoy's smoke pic ... wasn't all that hard since he had mentioned out all the steps. Awesome fun though ...will try to shoot smoke on my own too now

*i.imgur.com/fN0e3TC.jpg

also posting a raw file. again my problem is the noisy raw files that my cam gives at high ISO. Can any of you give it a shot with topaz denoise and other stuff

*www.dropbox.com/s/nu9yazndx7e4p79/DSC02953.ARW

My edit of this

*i.imgur.com/gGplZhq.jpg

amlan nice attempt ...oops it seems I have told my secret steps for smoke

remember when shooting...use black background, try not to put any light on the background....put light on the smoke from sidewise...and lastly use f8 or smaller

What I had in my mind was turning this photograph into black and white as it's already too dark. Getting details from this would definitely introduce lots of noise. And those noise would add some touch to black and white. To get some idea, I did a sample in photomatx - Single photo HDR and chose B&W-Natural Preset. This is the result.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/CRW_3919-Photomatix_zps23286163.jpg

With that reference I did this one.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/CRW_3919_zpsc649a974.jpg

I didn't even think of bringing up lot of light in the picture and definitely didn't think of color version. But after seeing Prashant's and Gen's thought of giving it a try in colour. And this is the result.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/CRW_3919_zpsdb1c18f8.jpg

Among the three, I like Photomatix version. Lot's of details, contrast (and it made me to think of medico's work

- not the recent ones), sharper and needed less work

- - - Updated - - -

PP Workflow for the above edits.

Photomatix version - Pretty much everything automatic. It's a single photo HDR, increased WB little more and clicked OK. After photomatix done it's work I chose B/W - Natural preset and saved. And used spot removal and patch tool to remove garbage in PS.

My black and white version
Started in LR, applied lens correction... I will better post the snap - that will show how much I pushed things to get what I get. This way you can correct me if I am over doing anything. You may ask why I applied everything (esp. vibrance, colour etc...) if I am gonna change it into b/w. There was a video where the blogger suggested to get everything correct in colour before turning it into b/w. So the reason I did...

I should have avoided two of the things,
1. Selective color tone (which I started trying in PP for the last few weeks).
2. Reducing noise
Finally, in PS removed those garbage using spot removal and patch tool.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/edit_zpse33d98ce.png

Colour version - Started in LR, applied lens correction and the following adjustments before moving to PS

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/edit2_zps78a9e0c3.png

Using spot removal and patch tool, removed those garbage.
To add some punch, clarity, contrast I duplicated the layer and changed the blending mode to overlay and reduced opacity to my taste, in this case it's 25%. Still it was little noisy, so again applied noise reduction.

My system is too slow to process heavy files like this RAW. So I usually downsample and edit in PS.

Any opinion/suggestion/advice are welcome with regards to my PP.

nac those are some pretty cool edits. I like the black and white version too (first one) seems very contrasty and feels like a good night image. The second one is more like an old sepeia image, which in my opinion does not suit the subject. The last one is pretty good, and the biggest advantage of retaining colour is how amazing the sky looks when you push the saturation a bit.

just one question on your edit, when making a black and white why did you not reduce saturation to zero in lightroom. That would have directly made it BW and then you could have pushed the contrast to give it that punch.

^ It seems like I have very sincerely followed the blogger's instructions

G

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] - Of the 3 , I like the colour one the most. The 1st one has just too much noise.

[MENTION=8593]izzikio_rage[/MENTION]- The smoke one is cool but to be honest I'm sorry but I don't really like the other night pic.

I tried but can't really get much out of it.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/Rage_zps03c5dd35.jpg

@gen: I know, I had tried really hard with this image but couldn't really get much out of it. I've seen people use similar settings getting really nice images. just wanted to know if there was a way to make it better during post processing. Thanks for giving it a shot

Amlan, Only after seeing Gen's post, I knew that you have posted a RAW photograph. I didn't notice that.

- - - Updated - - -

If it's noisy, make it black and white

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/DSC02953_zpsa7fe0a64.jpg

I tried amlan but results were not satisfactory

marvelousprashant said:
I tried amlan but results were not satisfactory

So, so i guess this set of settings does not work. No matter how good you are at PPing it

izzikio_rage said:
So, so i guess this set of settings does not work. No matter how good you are at PPing it

idk. you can decide
*i.imgur.com/6BWDKGQ.jpg

izzikio_rage said:
So, so i guess this set of settings does not work. No matter how good you are at PPing it

I like that black and white version.

If he wasn't little hurry, that image would be little more neater...

Prashant, your version looks pretty good... What all did you do?

thanks amlan

1. main edit
*i.imgur.com/B44xzX9l.jpg

2. Graduated filter for sky
*i.imgur.com/sajXKVEl.jpg

3. Graduated filter for ground
*i.imgur.com/ktSUFBhl.jpg

sujoyp said:
Here goes my tadoba series 1

I am asking everyone, not Sujoy alone

The image quality of the first two and the last one seems much better than the others (esp 3rd and 4th). Is it because of lighting or PP?

Note: You can navigate to the quoted post by clicking the arrow.

nac its very clear...first two and last one are taken in sunrise and sunset time...when sunlight is not harsh ...others are taken in daylight when sun is bright ...light effect is important

So the reason people suggesting "golden hour" to take photographs...

Just wanted to try this shot - "Central Road" from your Tadoba Series I

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/Sujoylandscape_zps72e37575.jpg

soo you increased the contrast.....looking good but its not the scene I saw there

Prashant: very nice use of the gradient filter, I was also trying to keep the sky dark, but that would make the shacks too dark, though of dodging it, gave up because it would involve loads of work. This seems like a great way to do it. Making it black and white is the other way to go, however we end up losing all the pretty colors.
[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION]: The pictures shot during the golden hour are more interesting due to the softer warmer light, also the lower height of the sun means that you'll have longer shadows and more interplay of light and shade. Add to this the fact that (as you see in the first few pics) there will be some beautiful colors in the sky and you have some really amazing pics

G

nac said:
Just wanted to try this shot - "Central Road" from your Tadoba Series

I like the sujoyp's original version than this one.
Sujoyp's one looks like a place I'd like to be, this one looks its super red hot there & in this summer... no thanks.
you made it too red imo.

I made an attempt here, making it too green/blue.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/Central-Road-1_zps98c886db.jpg

With golden hour effect.
Now it looks like camera with sunglasses.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/Central-Road-2_zps41234820.jpg

I like my first version better than my 2nd, I guess I like sujoyp's orignal

I would prefer to see a Darkened version of this as well.....something scary...like a lonely road with darkness prevailing!!!!!

good attempt gen...1st one look like rainy season pic...very green

G

Rishi. said:
I would prefer to see a Darkened version of this as well.....something scary...like a lonely road with darkness prevailing!!!!!

Here you go.
I'd like to see something by nac & marvelousprashant on this topic. They both did awesome last time.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/DarkCentral_zps433fba81.jpg

Nice, you've even given a fog type ghostly effect.

^ This I would call "dark and gloomy"

Gen.Libeb said:
Here you go.
I'd like to see something by nac & marvelousprashant on this topic. They both did awesome last time.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/DarkCentral_zps433fba81.jpg

Wow , one wouldn't dare to walk these paths , that once used to to appealing initially (for a sweet ride.).... lol...it's scary as hell. Good job there at editing.

Gen.Libeb said:
Here you go.
I'd like to see something by nac & marvelousprashant on this topic. They both did awesome last time.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/DarkCentral_zps433fba81.jpg

looks like a scene from horror movie. The light is somewhat amber. A cool white light would give moonlight effect

mere beautiful picture ka kya haal bana diya :punch:

but thats a good editing gen

sujoyp said:
mere beautiful picture ka kya haal bana diya but thats a good editing gen

:hahahahaha: , I asked for it.

G

I am posting a new RAW file for a landscape photo here.
Looking forward to seeing your edits on this.

*www.dropbox.com/s/5svhzg4gs7t8psd/IMG_4193.CR2?m=

Who did this PP?

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/GenIMG_4193-Edit_zps8c81839d.jpg

G

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION]- That's nice.

I was bothered about the tilted horizon & I can't fix it without making the building go slanted.
Now that I look at it the RAW is more out of shape than the out of camera jpg.

*farm6.staticflickr.com/5463/14143794982_a84c6f76e7_b.jpg

Nice pp guys the reflection and light have really come out well. The click itself is pretty good too, so that helps.

Btw, to make the horizon straight and ywt not tilt the buildings use lightroom>lens correction> perspective correction or upright (or a similar name)

my attempt at editing the gateway of india pic by gen

*i.imgur.com/4QfbgFu.jpg

sorry about the watermark ..... was using my old laptop to edit this.

my attempt
*i.imgur.com/PO5yEAQ.jpg

Among all there edits I liked the Gen's edit most...
Nac is under exposed
amlan have halo around building and overexposed sun
prashant have oversaturated sun

I like the colors in the water in prashant's edit... I guess someone could mix the best of all the edits

more raw/jpeg images please

G

[MENTION=8593]izzikio_rage[/MENTION] & [MENTION=117627]marvelousprashant[/MENTION] - Nice.. both of yours looks much sharper. Everyone has something unique in their attempts.
I thought one of the problem in everyone's pics is the tilted horizon or the tilted building.

This is what I do for photos like these.

- The usual basic adjustment in ACR (but never do anything extreme here)
- Open in photoshop & focus on each part separately (sky, sun, water, buildings, boats, background)
- Create a duplicate layer .. Hide the top layer for now.
- Start with the sky. On the bottom layer do all your edits to get the perfect sky. Don't bother if the rest of the photo is ruined here, only focus on the sky.
- Show the top layer & create a layer mask. Using a black brush at 15-20% opacity paint over the sky to reveal the bottom layer, you will need to move the brush several times. The important thing is to keep the opacity low to avoid hard edges / brush marks.
- Once happy with it merge layers & start again creating a duplicate layer for the next part (buildings, water ... whatever) .

This does takes more time but I've gotten used to it. I know you can do selective editing in RAW but I find it smoother this way.

I applied lens correction for Canon S100 in LR and applied manual rotation for horizon. Still some distortion is there

G

Perfect Effects 8 is free only for a day. Any one interested check out this link & get the serial.
Although it says 12th, I guess they are following US calendar so it might last for some more time.

*www.ononesoftware.com/landing/pe8offer

S

View attachment 14360
Just started to work with lightroom. Hows this pic look guys..?

Gen.Libeb said:
Perfect Effects 8 is free only for a day. Any one interested check out this link & get the serial.
Although it says 12th, I guess they are following US calendar so it might last for some more time.

*www.ononesoftware.com/landing/pe8offer

It is not at all smooth on my laptop (i7 4GB RAM) Tried using it but too much lag. Another software by the same company "perfect resize" is good though for enlarging images.

[MENTION=136027]swaggvc [/MENTION] image looks good. Needs some spot healing in left upper side. And clone the wire in corner

izzikio_rage said:
I like the colors in the water in prashant's edit... I guess someone could mix the best of all the edits

In the next photomatix update, there will be a preset called TDF

we can easily pull the best of all

marvelousprashant said:
more raw/jpeg images please

*www.4shared.com/file/v4AZokXBce/CRW_3860.html

Gen, I wanted to ask you this for quite sometime but somehow missed it. There seems to be spots on your pictures. I assume it's on the lens. They were there on "dark and gloomy" picture and I could see in the last one too...

marvelousprashant said:
It is not at all smooth on my laptop (i7 4GB RAM) Tried using it but too much lag. Another software by the same company "perfect resize" is good though for enlarging images.
@swaggvc image looks good. Needs some spot healing in left upper side. And clone the wire in corner

If even i7 can't run it smooth, I don't think PDC will... :chinscratch:

Swag, ditto on what Prashant said. You may have made some adjustments but it didn't seem so as there are some spots, wires...

swag it seems you have shot behind a glass window

The above photograph was shot when I was shooting for a challenge. You guys have seen few of the photographs in that series before in photography thread (?).

I tried to fix the two issues "distortion and underexposure".
Tried to correct the distortion as Amlan suggested. I haven't tried this technique much before. May be few tutorials would throw some light on it.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/GenIMG_4193-Edit-2_zpsc9a3f9b8.jpg

need more challenging images. Also we are doing landscapes only? No one shoots people/pets?

*i.imgur.com/5MWNw8Yl.jpg

you guys want some other subject...let me go back home.. I can share some animal shots from tadoba which you can edit

G

swaggvc said:
View attachment 14360
Just started to work with lightroom. Hows this pic look guys..?

Its too blue. Need more colours.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/CRW_3860_zps2a3912e5.jpg

- - - Updated - - -

As Prashant suggested, it may be boring to do landscape back to back. Not many of us posts portrait photographs. When I google if there is any site where they let us download original RAW files for practicing PP work. There are few sites I came across in the very first google search. So I guess there would be tons of sites like that. We can try that too... right?

Here are couple of the sites...

Free RAW
Free RAW files for retouchers

nac I am there na

just tell me what type of shot you want...in anycase you guys are taking PP to next level (unreal) I can share some pics ...let me share animal shot at night

Or people can upload JPEGs too. Ofcourse RAW is more flexible but JPEG is more challenging. The more we practice the more we learn

nac said:
it may be boring to do landscape back to back. Not many of us posts portrait photographs.

I'm pretty sure quite a few of us shoot portraits and stuff, but usually are hesitant to post it to the internet. I know a couple of people who would throw a fit if they saw their picture here

We could do street photography and macros. Will try to post a couple of good ones. Also people do post the jpeg of of the raw when you post the link, that way we have something to compare the final edits to

^ Yeah, many hesitate to post.

Did you post their picture here?

sharing two shots from my recent trip which I think could look much better

*copy.com/gWX0fE789eIO

*copy.com/SSyuNa4MQDg3

G

nac said:
Gen, I wanted to ask you this for quite sometime but somehow missed it. There seems to be spots on your pictures. I assume it's on the lens. They were there on "dark and gloomy" picture and I could see in the last one too...

Thanks. I never really noticed before. I'll check out my other pics.

nac said:
I tried to fix the two issues "distortion and underexposure".
Tried to correct the distortion as Amlan suggested. I haven't tried this technique much before. May be few tutorials would throw some light on it.

You really fixed the distortion on this one. Looks much better than your first attempt.

nac said:
*www.4shared.com/file/v4AZokXBce/CRW_3860.html

Your attempt in #331 is nice but I think you overexposed the ground.

Couldn't really do much with it. Still need to do something to make it look special.

This is just for fun, I guess it does not look natural.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/nacland_zpsba5a18ce.jpg

This is the first attempt.
*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/naclandoriginal_zps734b5242.jpg

My internet sucks today, I'll try Sujoyp's RAW file tomorrow may be.

S

sujoyp said:
swag it seems you have shot behind a glass window

No i have not shot behind a window. I m using a very old minolta lens with sony a57.

Gen, That's good :thumbs:

Nicely added the green field.

G

nac said:
Gen, That's good Nicely added the green field.

Thanks. I think it looks kind of fake.

No one tried sujoyp's deer yet ??
Here's the first one. The pic is nice, only if the deer was a little less blurry.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/sujoyp_Deer_zpsc32ced1a.jpg

ooh the deer is blurry...I didnt knew that...

Gen.Libeb said:
Thanks. I think it looks kind of fake.

No one tried sujoyp's deer yet ??
Here's the first one. The pic is nice, only if the deer was a little less blurry was less.

I tried. I m waiting for new topaz toolkit download to finish so that I can try their deblur tool before posting.

BTW anyone knows how to use White Balance Selector in Lightroom?

^ So far I either move the slider left/right (if it is RAW, I use preset) or pick the pen like thing and click on the image where I think the tone is neutral.

- - - Updated - - -

^^ Gen, Thinking of "I am legend" kind... Will see whether I will give it a try or not? Most likely by the weekend.

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] What do you mean by neutral tone. I am having problem with that only

Something close to what they call "white balance card" i.e. 18% grey. Yeah, we can't find grey in every picture. Just click it where you think that is close to grey and keep it as a starting point. From there you can move the sliders and lock the one you feel right.

Posting 3 versions
*i.imgur.com/yhzKRYMl.jpg

*i.imgur.com/WQFsZNcl.jpg

*i.imgur.com/pNy6qoul.jpg

I cropped the image to get the eye of deer on the intersection point acc to rule of thirds B-)

prashant the difference between your 1st and second editing is ..in first it seems that light is harsh as its afternoon sun...and in 2nd its seems softer light and its morning ..now I could not select from them

I liked the details of 1st but like the light of 2nd

more pics?

here is a pic of flower ...try to make it beautiful...I think details are good but its bit underexposed
*copy.com/Rvu2ch3YQCqI

*i.imgur.com/6vfok6e.jpg

no way prashant ...very poor PP I would say ...you have overexposed background ...lost details of flower...colors and contrast level is bad

here is mine

*farm3.staticflickr.com/2936/14036175387_4c44e898b2_c.jpgDSC_0095 by sujoyp, on Flickr

G

I was still doing the other 3 deer pic, here it is. I will try the flower soon.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/Sujoyp3Deers_zps8ee056e2.jpg

I don't know sujoy, in your pic, the color of petals is so deep that the texture is not visible, I tried to bring that out by decreasing saturation and contrast

I think it is a matter of taste

thats true prashant...but you lost all details from the center of flower

Attempt #2
Extra clarity at centre using radial filter in LR5
*i.imgur.com/f41QCIg.jpg?1

Now i look at my picture from yesterday n think... what did i do

now its looking good prashant

I now find that shooting macros in the afternoon, when there is the most amount of light, is a smarter choice. It seems to need a crazy amount of light for a good shot

you are learning right way amlan

macro need to shoot at f8 and below and that need lots of light to keep stable at 1/125-1/150 SS ...soo we use flash...

RAW file attached

ok got one of my friends to pose for a decent silhouette. Posting the raw here, lets see what can be done with it. Added the big bold letters so that the link does not get lost

*www.dropbox.com/s/kavvi0n2mhns9rz/DSC03194.ARW

here is my attempt to amlan's pic ...btw thats a superb shot...sky is very beautiful there

*farm6.staticflickr.com/5036/14043906848_79fff671e1_c.jpgDSC031914 by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

Thought of trying something different. But couldn't find time... So the usual PP...

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/SujoyDSC_4223_zps17e5bbe9.jpg

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/SujoyDSC_0095_zps18949c8b.jpg

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/SujoyDSC_4221_zps0cd8f08a.jpg

good PP nac ...liked all of them

G

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION]- Great edits. Yours looks much sharper. I like your first 2 better than everyone's.
I can't tell whats it with the 3rd one but it looks a little odd to me although you got it to be much sharper.

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION], seriously, your images look much sharper and somehow the light seems better.
[MENTION=39722]sujoyp[/MENTION], nice edit, i like how you've cropped out the bush on the left side. The colors seem much richer in this too

nac your editing is great...but I saw those yesterday..where is the pic today...you removed them

thanks amlan

^

No, I didn't remove them. I guess, your browser didn't load them...

^he is seeing nothing except Mumbai for the time being :twisted:

[MENTION=121890]kaz[/MENTION] I need to buy big big stuff for that need big big money and for that need to get big money job

I want to shoot super sharp pics right out of camera with out increasing the sharpness twice and reducing ISO grains

G

Tried sujoyp's flower.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/flowersujoyp_zps7631bfc8.jpg

Looking at it, I feel photobucket is reducing the IQ. Posting the same flower on flickr

*farm6.staticflickr.com/5118/14232397241_e5ed3f4268_b.jpg

Just uploaded that flower on 500px for comparison.
*ppcdn.500px.org/71203015/eb91594463ea432b02246940315d028fd264a0e6/4.jpg

^ Is it?
How many sites I have to jump? *www.sherv.net/cm/emo/angry/raged-smiley-emoticon.gif Imageshack made it paid site, imgur strips exif info, and now photobucket reduces IQ *www.sherv.net/cm/emoticons/sleep/sleepy-smiley.gif

but y dont you guys just use 500px and flicker ...they are good

G

nac said:
^ Is it?

I am seeing some difference in the 2 pics I posted. Do you see ?
Photobucket one looks a little blurry.

I haven't tried imgur yet. Or else I'll just make another flickr account.

sujoyp said:
but y dont you guys just use 500px and flicker ...they are good

Not tried 500px yet. I usually use flickr for my own photos. I put experimental stuff on photobucket.

Here is mine
*i.imgur.com/x8TakoPl.jpg

Edit: I think it is a bit oversaturaed esp orange. Its because my laptop display sucks

Yeah, I see the difference between the two pictures from your post. But I don't see the difference either in my pictures or the full version of your picture. I think it's the size... TDF automatically compress the size to fit the page, so the drop in IQ, I think.

alrght guys..here's a challenge..(is it?) lets see who does the best..

*farm6.staticflickr.com/5274/14050824510_43d1a3d188_b.jpg

Original size in here
*farm6.staticflickr.com/5274/14050824510_320b483223_o.jpg

G

marvelousprashant said:
Edit: I think it is a bit oversaturaed esp orange. Its because my laptop display sucks

Looks fine to me. I like it.

izzikio_rage said:
RAW file attached
ok got one of my friends to pose for a decent silhouette. Posting the raw here, lets see what can be done with it. Added the big bold letters so that the link does not get lost

Looking at sujoyp & marvelousprashant's versions, mine doesn't look that good.
So not going for the natural look with this one.

*ppcdn.500px.org/71225063/fa3b45bc7e4bfdf2d7104c743b745e25d715ff90/4.jpg

axelzdly1 said:
alrght guys..here's a challenge..(is it?) lets see who does the best..

Nice.. I'll try this soon.

my try on that new picture

*farm3.staticflickr.com/2911/14238861674_4e838d3007_c.jpg14050824510_320b483223_og by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

nice going [MENTION=39722]sujoyp[/MENTION]! was the remaining part distracting?

G

Nice one sujoyp. I like it how you got that orange part to show out there.

I don't really feel like doing a natural edit today.
On similar lines of my last edit for axelzdly1's pic.

*ppcdn.500px.org/71244067/c98e696ef3af4c57d90506f653861f332845ace3/4.jpg

[MENTION=132251]prashant[/MENTION] doesn't look over saturated. It's a very good edit with both the person and the sky showing clearly.

@gen that looks like a thumbs up ad, taste the thunder types

The panorama is nice, will give it a shot

[MENTION=143631]axelzdly1[/MENTION] yes remaining part was very underexposed compared to this half and there was not much to see there...those buildings and tower does not add any value to beautiful landscape..also the cloud was plain in that part...soo I decided to crop that off

*i.imgur.com/tVuIltM.jpg

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/AmlanDSC03194-Edit-2_zpscdc167f8.jpg

Duplicate

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/Amlan_zps7a10a6d1.jpg

*farm6.staticflickr.com/5496/14263551313_40c8d78c2a_z.jpg

I badly wanna learn photoshop now.... :-x

kaz said:
I badly wanna learn photoshop now....

Photoshop is vast as ocean.

eeh I know only 4-5 things in photoshop...there are userfriendly softwares like lightroom,picasa,ACDsee which can be used for editing

101gamzer said:
Photoshop is vast as ocean.

And I haven't stepped on the shore yet

- - - Updated - - -

sujoyp said:
eeh I know only 4-5 things in photoshop...there are userfriendly softwares like lightroom,picasa,ACDsee which can be used for editing

Lightroom is cool....But layers in Photoshop takes editing to a whole new level.... Have installed Photoshop after formatting my laptop and installing Windows 8.1.... Time to watch the gigs of tuts which have downloaded, no more laziness

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] I'm still laughing after seeing the duplicate version

Axel, That's a nice idea :doublethumb:

Axel, That's a nice idea

with great boredom comes great creativity :meditate:

If you don't know photoshop, there are other tools like
- DxO optics pro for basic RAW corrections
- LR for image adjustments
- Photomatrix for HDR
- Microsoft ICE for panorama
- Topaz plugins for some very cool advanced image editing
- Nik collection
- Oloneo Photoengine

Axel,

Now I am googling how to get reflection effect

Prashant, Though you have mentioned those software before, now it look like a lengthy list.

The above panorama I did was with Photoshop.. File>Automate>Merge , Hugin is an advanced panorama tool..the best!

Photoshop is a plethora of image editing tools. Lightroom is the set of useful image-adjustment-only tools in Photoshop.
For mastering the pp one can start with Picasa? to experience swift-basics, and then to Lightroom, which is more advanced and extensive.. All the special effects like text effects, HDR and creative edits are done best in Photoshop, although Lightroom has pLugins for every sort, but not very flexible in adjusting various elements.

also Lightroom is a NDE software, non destructive editing and very useful for sorting out our messy photography folders..

I'm surprised you don't add gimp to these lists. It's has similar features to Photoshop, has some amazing scripts for some really cool effects, and best of all its free

marvelousprashant said:
If you don't know photoshop, there are other tools like
- DxO optics pro for basic RAW corrections
- LR for image adjustments
- Photomatrix for HDR
- Microsoft ICE for panorama

I have these

- Topaz plugins for some very cool advanced image editing
- Nik collection
- Oloneo Photoengine

Downloading

Any place where I can get photoshop layers for free? Something like light coming from sky/windows, flares etc...

I have slightly different set
Photoshop
Lightroom
Acdsee ...I like its simple interface
Picasa for cropping
Neat image for removing noise
Microsoft ICE for panorama
Photomatrix when I dont feel editing landscape

kaz said:
Any place where I can get photoshop layers for free? Something like light coming from sky/windows, flares etc...

Gimp can do this to some extent, plus there are a couple of specialized software that allow you to do this too.

Also surprised that people here are not using irfanview (for super quick editing, resizing, cropping etc - super small program that is really fast. Plus it has a really good batch mode) or even instagram (the filters might be irritating but it does have some really cool presets)

Ooh you are right amlan ...I use irfan view too....its my default image viewer for last 10 years ...and soo I forgot to mention it ...I use its batch mode regularly for reducing the size of pics to be uploaded online..

Link to the RAW file of a flower shot.
CRW_4119_01 - Download - 4shared

If you guys want to try few flower shots, I can share few more. I want to do it, but couldn't...

Here is your pic [MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] edited

*farm3.staticflickr.com/2900/14338315323_12fc3d8873_c.jpgCRW_4119_01 by sujoypackrasy, on Flickr

it may look very similier to your posted in other thread

Sujoy, That's nice one. Lot more details than mine... :thumbs:

Thanks [MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION]

*i.imgur.com/9MNb8aF.jpg

Nice edit Prashant, as usual...Liked your fb page...Nice uploads on insta too

Prashant, Good

drawing all the attention of the viewer to the center.

So this weekend lets try out a couple of Golden hour shots or HDR shots. They are the ones that really seem to benefit from a good post processing

izzikio_rage said:
So this weekend lets try out a couple of Golden hour shots or HDR shots. They are the ones that really seem to benefit from a good post processing

I m stuck at home (Allahabad)

No good places to do any kind of photography

and i am new in mumbai..dont know where to go

Marine drive, fort area, bandstand, prithvi theater, hiranandani, powai lake.... Loads of stuff to check out in mumbai

You folks tried Gimpshop? How is it?

marvelousprashant said:
I m stuck at home (Allahabad) No good places to do any kind of photography

i was in Allahabad a few days ago.. the Camp area. its quite nice.

dunno if photography is allowed there..

- - - Updated - - -

marvelousprashant said:
*i.imgur.com/9MNb8aF.jpg

This looks faaaaar better than the original..

Posting RAW Since this place has fallen a little too silent, let me restart the discussion. Posting a pic that I shot at a live band performance some weeks back. Give editing this RAW file a shot

*www.dropbox.com/s/dy9g9009r3j7bj1/DSC03380.ARW

Where have all our expert PPers gone? [MENTION=39722]sujoyp[/MENTION], [MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION], @anirbandd, [MENTION=117627]marvelousprashant[/MENTION],

^ Until I do a clean installation of OS, there is no PP from me... I can do a little with MS paint and MS picture manager.

will have a look when i go home

grrr...i dont have a table to keep my lappy to edit the pic..I havent shot anything from last 1.5 month

...it will take me some time to get used to mumbai

sujoyp said:
grrr...i dont have a table to keep my lappy to edit the pic..I havent shot anything from last 1.5 month ...it will take me some time to get used to mumbai

wut ?? cant get a table ?

Well it is a "lap" top .... so ....

G

I can't get anything significantly better with a natural version.

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/izziko_zps3b59e87b.jpg

hrishi its only a week at my PG...gradually I will arrange for everything

Gen, looks a little over exposed especially the vignette. Will give this a shot today

*i.imgur.com/rlnIylm.jpg

Here is my attempt at this image ... I guess cropping it is needed.

G

^
Something about it hurts my eyes. Maybe tone down the brightness / saturation ?

I didnt like the violet line around the subject...I would rather prefer it in B&W then ruining the image itself

^ Hey!!! Someone likes to see a b/w version

The most beautiful shots I have seen of concerts are in B&W maybe this was one of the reasons

My biggest problem with this shot is that the lady seems to blend into the background. Maybe i should've waited till the background was dark again

I thought I missed more than one... :chinscratch:

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/DSC03380_zpsad622c81.jpg

Good edit nac, I guess most of our RAW posters are taking a break from photography. I've been doing a couple of clicks on and off but none of them would be really fun to post process. Would love some suggestions on things to click and post here

Thank you.

It's just that I am little bit busy during this time of the year. If I get some free time, I will sure try some...

@amlan

Learnt something new today, if you need to shoot at a high ISO then overexpose the image by some amount +0.7 or +1.3 types, then run a noise reduction on this followed by correcting the exposure. That will give you usable images even at high ISO. Am posting the raw of a shot at 26000 ISO. Not as overexposed as I'd like but still a bit. See if this can be made into a better image

Raw link *www.dropbox.com/s/ea2bnan9ntf5vs8/DSC03983.ARW

My really bad attempt at this

*i.imgur.com/bLEn5az.jpg

I tried but it gone softer...

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/DSC03983_zps8418c185.jpg

Nac, how did you remove the purple shade at the edges? That purple tint was my biggest problem

Me too tried to get rid of that purple tone and applied vignetting. But it's still there, may be it's not that apparent in the lighter background.

yup, that's my biggest problem, the moment I push the ISO up I get this crazy amount of purple tint. And no matter how hard I push lightroom it never seems to disappear completely. But still considering that this is ISO 26000 I still think the final image came out pretty decent, at least if you don't see it at full size

I guess the next project is to learn stacking to remove noise

But that requires a tripod and if I am using a tripod at night I might as well use a longer exposure

I have gone across a few B&W tuts for lightroom and found these helpful. Gave me a bit more insight on how to edit in LR.

Black&White Conversion Lightroom Tutorial -DIY Photography

How to Create High Impact Black and White Photos | Lightroom Tutorials

Although my choice of photos was poor, this was the best I could do..suggestions are most welcome.

*farm4.staticflickr.com/3906/14866866435_9d2461440c.jpg

*farm4.staticflickr.com/3918/14843897946_a670b2261c.jpg

This one would be better if the original was a bit sharp. and does the backdrop needs to be more dark?

*farm4.staticflickr.com/3901/14843897426_a327972ac1.jpg

The second one is a really interesting shot, and the portrait has come out really well too.... So good try

Ishan's click...

Everyone has liked this picture. Just that it's a different crop and PPed to my taste.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/Ishan-Edit_zpsf5c29d8c.jpg

I need little help here..

i have a pic but i am not able to fix it. As i am not that good at PP. can somebody help me, Specially fixing the blown out sky.

here is the link to download the pic.
Download

i am posting here as per suggestion given in photo projects thread.

I tried, but couldn't get details from the sky.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/IMG_2289_zps00da4dfa.gif

It's nice , better than my version. and yes sky detail is totally lost. what about patching with external sky?

Yeah, you can do that.
It looked little better against darker background.

Tip : Capture underexposed or use bracketing in those situations. Shadows can be brightened but highlight cant be.

- - - Updated - - -

*farm4.staticflickr.com/3913/14858834629_0b2f54753b_c.jpg

I m back... final exams are over... n there seems to be lots of images that need some PP B-)

Re purple tint: There is nothing purple in the image itself so you can safely reduce saturation of purple in LR I guess?

Any tutorials on this type of editing or what is it known as?

*144.142.232.60/frominsidethebox/supernatural-season-9-poster-dean.jpg

Dont need the light and the smoke, just the face texture etc

It doesn't seem like lot of PP have done in his face to get that texture.

that pic is similar to that of battlefield 3 poster PP.

google for: "battlefield 3 poster effect photoshop"

C

Took below pic while going to Pune (at Lonavala)

*screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/90922

My first attempt in post-processing (used picasa)

[MENTION=125148]Cyanide[/MENTION] looks nice

May be you should use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for post processing and upload it on flickr

Well actually I've seen a couple of people who have amazing images and use only picasa for editing. Its mostly about how you use it and of course how good the base image was

Awesome shot cyanide, waiting for some more and perhaps some raw files as well

C

Thank you [MENTION=121890]kaz[/MENTION] and [MENTION=8593]izzikio_rage[/MENTION].

I find picasa very easy to edit pics in short span of time.

@rage: raw as in original pic, right? I'll upload it soon.

just to revive this thread..here is by one of the butterfly shot...see what u can change to make it beautiful

*copy.com/A6mZisCq6NRqzQYd

Guys I am a super amateur to this post processing / editing stuffs, so which guide should I follow? I have Lightroom since I have started using computers but never ever opened it, LOL.
I don't need to know much, just some basic stuffs, mostly I need to know how to brighten up an image, I mean the areas which don't have much light or are in shadows. I have seen the YouTube video which is posted on first page, anything else?

TIA.

ithehappy I am using topaz editing package now...its much easier ...but truth is you can not learn editing with that...try it

ithehappy said:
Guys I am a super amateur to this post processing / editing stuffs, so which guide should I follow? I have Lightroom since I have started using computers but never ever opened it, LOL.
I don't need to know much, just some basic stuffs, mostly I need to know how to brighten up an image, I mean the areas which don't have much light or are in shadows. I have seen the YouTube video which is posted on first page, anything else?

TIA.

In Lightroom, increasing exposure will brighten the whole image, increasing shadows will brighten the darker parts, Try it

- - - Updated - - -

*i.imgur.com/ppi2stYl.jpg

- - - Updated - - -

2 raw images from my side...
*db.tt/cUbq2NWN
*db.tt/RbCweqTp

nice one prashant

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/DSC_5437_zps79543c9f.jpg

Wow!!! Both me and Prashant got the same crop.

I will try Prashant's after diwali holidays.

Happy and safe diwali guys...

cool shots... looking forward to some really cool shots from Diwali

Dragan Effect
Basically an effect that adds more impact to portraits. There is no particular way of doing this, and the final result depends on your own taste.

Other ways to do it is using dodge and burn tool and high pass filter
The only thing I feel is important is the eyes. Eyes should be in focus and if possible use polarising filter to cut of reflections

Nice, i guess we can all give this a shot.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/DSC_0019_zps5ca9865d.jpg

nice one [MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION]

nac said:
*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/DSC_0019_zps5ca9865d.jpg

Very nice!!!

marvelousprashant said:
nice one @nac

anirbandd said:
Very nice!!!

Thank you.

I think this should be posted here. So the reason for hijacking...

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/Anirban_zpsdccff94b.jpg

I [STRIKE]like[/STRIKE] love this one... Anyone else...
*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/Anirbanbw_zps92116a8c.jpg

Monkey Portraits by Sujoy

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/SujoyMonkey3-Edit_zps5571b19e.jpg

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/SujoyMonkey1-Edit_zps5234b6de.jpg

someone really needs to crop out the first monkey pic ...

amlan just do it man

C

PP
*i.imgur.com/QejTA7O.jpg
*i.imgur.com/8eWpPXI.jpg

Original
*i.imgur.com/pyql1Fu.jpg
*i.imgur.com/L9nWbaq.jpg

@pics : I find the original ones to be dull, this how it looked though.
what should have done to get a better pic in the first place? (i.e without PP)

G

[MENTION=125148]Cyanide[/MENTION] - Can't see the photos.

C

[MENTION=154968]Gen.Libeb[/MENTION] : uploaded to imgur and updated the post.

Seems like you had a warm white balance, Like cloudy or sunny. Using auto white balance or bulb would have given you more blue pics.

The rest just seems an increase in saturation, easily done by using the vibrant setting in that camera

- - - Updated - - -

Posting RAW file

seems this place has gotten a little too silent ... will post a couple of RAW files here if anyone wants to try their hand at editing

Was trying to get an HDR shot at sunset. Here's the RAW file

*www.dropbox.com/s/v4rlv6phro6p8xd/DSC07106.ARW?dl=0

This is the best edit that I could do on this, would love to see what all you can make of this..... and any tips for shooting this in future

*i.imgur.com/Tiej8gil.jpg

seems like this thread is dead

G

izzikio_rage said:
seems like this thread is dead

I downloaded the file but I can't open arw file format.

You should be able to open it in lightroom or irfanview.

Amlan that looks beautiful..I will give a try too

izzikio_rage said:
seems like this thread is dead 

You have done a good job with the image. I tried yours, wanted to manipulate the entire picture. So it's taking some time...

thanks everyone ... I got a good edit but somehow it does not have that high contrast HDR type feel. Like what you see in advertisements

G

izzikio_rage said:
thanks everyone ... I got a good edit but somehow it does not have that high contrast HDR type feel. Like what you see in advertisements

Don't have irfanview or Lightroom so I tried to edit your jpeg. I thought the car was looking a little too dark in your edit..

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/Tiej8gil_zpsb22dd630.jpg

Looks cool, very artistic.

Just to show the limitations of a jpeg. You can see the banding in the colors of the sunset. The raw file would've given much better performance

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/DSC07106_zpsgjwxlgxm.jpg
Doesn't it look like Prashant's editing? But not an intentional one.

Looks cool... And it's my car, so I'll anyhow praise it

anikkket said:
I don't have high end cameras like you guys but use my mobile camera to capture some pics when get time
Phone - Lg G2. Mode - Intelligent Auto

Not that these are excellent PP, just to give you a perception. I liked b/w, you try and post re-worked photographs.

nac said:
Not that these are excellent PP, just to give you a perception. I liked b/w, you try and post re-worked photographs.

heh? didnt get this.
misquote or something?

Edit-
Ok got it
I do PP but rarely

nac said:
Not that these are excellent PP, just to give you a perception. I liked b/w, you try and post re-worked photographs.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/aniket1_zpsoy8colbc.jpg

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/aniket2_zps5jzhsl7f.jpg

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/aniket3_zpsm3v5uyiq.jpg

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION]: very nicely done, specially the last one where the fibre/hair on the bud are visible.
[MENTION=265475]anikkket[/MENTION] : You'll find that a lot of people in these threads are using pretty basic cameras. It's more about how well you use it. Like in the above, just following the rule of thirds, using a BW mode, and looking for the proper lighting could have given you great photos right out of the cam. So keep shooting and posting and we'll give you all the help we can

anikkket said:
*www.digit.in/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15283&d=1426189417

*www.digit.in/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15284&d=1426189441

It's better if you upload in image hosting site and post the link here.

Check this link

When doing PP, just do it subtle. I don't know whether water draining on the lens or it's a PP (bicycle shot).
Your watermark doesn't have to pop out like in this photograph

Make sure focus is on the subject
Keep shooting and post here if you're interested in getting comments.

reviving this thread

*www.dropbox.com/s/pvd0xpra5svxdnh/_DSC3237.NEF?dl=0

I am almost close to posting my PP of Prashant's. But... He did an excellent job with PP of the photograph. I didn't do justice to the photograph. So I am not posting. Kudos to Prashant. You have done an excellent PP work, much more than photographing it (No offense and not that your photograph is any slouch). :doublethumb:

[MENTION=125321]nac[/MENTION] you should. PP is subjective to one's own taste.

marvelousprashant said:
@nac you should. PP is subjective to one's own taste.

Okay, then. As usual, I like b/w more.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/_DSC3237_zpsa24ketmy.jpg

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/_DSC3237-bw_zpst6wvu5lf.jpg

On a personal note i like the color more... The shades, the golden hue and all.

I think the bw could be given a blue tint to make it look like a night shot. That might make it look more awesome

izzikio_rage said:
I think the bw could be given a blue tint to make it look like a night shot. That might make it look more awesome

Why do you want it look like a night shot when the sun is up?

So I guess, your version is coming up with night shot look...

Anyone has experience with color grading. It really helps in giving a professional look to images. I am currently trying to learn it. I have seen several tutorials on another technique called frequency seperation which is again very good. What is does is seperates skin tone and skin texture into different layers so we can easily correct the uneven tones (natural or caused by lighting) without losing texture. It can also let you achieve a clean look if you are doing a magazine or wedding portrait.

Sounds cool... Post some pics with this and probably a tutorial as well

marvelousprashant said:
Anyone has experience with color grading. It really helps in giving a professional look to images. I am currently trying to learn it. I have seen several tutorials on another technique called frequency seperation which is again very good. What is does is seperates skin tone and skin texture into different layers so we can easily correct the uneven tones (natural or caused by lighting) without losing texture. It can also let you achieve a clean look if you are doing a magazine or wedding portrait.

I may have heard about colour grading (but I am not sure), but frequency separation... I don't think so. This is the first I am hearing about it. I will google and see if I can try it.

1

somebody please teach me or pm me how to post process beautiful sky. I mean which s/w to use & how to use it etc etc.

R

marvelousprashant said:
Anyone has experience with color grading. It really helps in giving a professional look to images. I am currently trying to learn it. I have seen several tutorials on another technique called frequency seperation which is again very good. What is does is seperates skin tone and skin texture into different layers so we can easily correct the uneven tones (natural or caused by lighting) without losing texture. It can also let you achieve a clean look if you are doing a magazine or wedding portrait.

Colour grading – If you mean the feature that is known as colour toning in Raw Therapee, yes I've been using it a lot of late. It is an amazing tool when used along with B&W conversion on high contrast images.

Frequency separation – Easily done in Gimp using the wavelet decomposition plugin - very powerful tool, use it a lot for portraits. Also available in RawTherapee as Contrast by Detail level but that is only for control of detail for now.

Is there some equivalent in Lightroom as well? Also what does it do?

izzikio_rage said:
Is there some equivalent in Lightroom as well? Also what does it do?

Color grading can be definitely done. But not frequency seperation. An easy way to edit faces in LR is by painting the face using brush tool and adjust clarity (-30 to -40) for soft skin look

Sharing the original files for the timeslice image I made. Not the complete set, removed a couple of really bad ones. Not very sure how I'll need to setup this app to get RAW files, so all I have are Jpegs.

*www.dropbox.com/sh/xcw6pj0juy3wshd/AADQtCSYz_l36DyDUNQ2HcSxa?dl=0

This is what I was able to pull out from this.

*c1.staticflickr.com/9/8768/18317632341_dce71c9eef_z.jpgPassing time by Amlan Mathur, on Flickr

amlan are these 8 different pics or just 2 of them ...why not try it with 2 pics first...day+night

R

Kindly someone please post step by step guide on how to get beautiful HDR skies.

Rowdy, Try photomatix.

Timelapse PP:

I downsampled to 640px and tried. I wanted to do small brick by brick time slice which needs looooottttt more photographs and it's a time consuming work without an automated script for that. So I did manually like Amalan did. As usual b/w and colour variant.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/Timelapse-colour_zpsswfaefwt.jpg

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/Timelapse-bw_zpsbcrsuwgr.jpg

rowdy said:
Kindly someone please post step by step guide on how to get beautiful HDR skies.

Photomatix, or shoot in raw and post process, should give you a good effect. Loads of tutorials online, just search for how to make HDR

nac said:
Timelapse PP:

I downsampled to 640px and tried. I wanted to do small brick by brick time slice which needs looooottttt more photographs and it's a time consuming work without an automated script for that. So I did manually like Amalan did. As usual b/w and colour variant.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/Timelapse-colour_zpsswfaefwt.jpg

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/Timelapse-bw_zpsbcrsuwgr.jpg

Wow, that's actually better than mine. Listing down my process, would love to hear yours

1. Photoshop - open the image using automate > import as layers
2. Select the top layer using the rectangular marquee tool, shift the selection and delete the top layer
3. drag to shift the selection and select the layer below the one you deleted, delete this
4. keep doing this till you go mad
5. you'll have a timeslice

The only issue is that your accuracy in dragging the selection determines the width of the slice, it might not be consistent if your judgement is not very good

izzikio_rage said:
...hear yours

Pretty much the same as yours. But you started from top and dragged your selection. I instead started from bottom and kept the selection's starting point at the same place and increased size of the selection as I move on to the next photograph. Here I could get more accuracy.

Again I tried to learn how to do this with the script you posted. That's not for photoshop, I guess. That's for a software called "R". I even tried to download and installed the software, up until this time I couldn't figure out how to do it. I googled but didn't get any ps scripts for this. Photograph will be more smooth if we use smaller width slices which needs more photographs.

I just figured out that you can use photoshop cc to edit videos. Plus it seems that all our processing skills are easily replicable with instagram filters

R

izzikio_rage said:
Plus it seems that all our processing skills are easily replicable with instagram filters

The cause of much heartache to people who label themselves 'photographers'. First taking a nice photograph itself became a lot easier with all the advances with camera technology, and then the (ahem) art of post-processing became very easy with a few cloud-based free filters. It's almost like art has been (gasp!) democratised! Any of the unwashed masses can do it!!

R

raja manuel said:
The cause of much heartache to people who label themselves 'photographers'. First taking a nice photograph itself became a lot easier with all the advances with camera technology, and then the (ahem) art of post-processing became very easy with a few cloud-based free filters. It's almost like art has been (gasp!) democratised! Any of the unwashed masses can do it!!

AMEN AMEN! i COMPLETELY SUPPORT YOU. Some pretentious BStrs these days considers themselves are photographers.

Well art does get easier to execute and that's what causes the art to get better. Michaelangelo and all made their own paint using pigments from various sources. You and me can just stroll to the shop and get a million colors, made of the finest most durable material.

Ansel Adams kept a log to remember what he shot. And wouldn't know if the shot was good until a few hours had been spent in the darkroom. You and me chimp every shot. While the cam selects all the optimum settings for us.

The fact that art is easier should make us better at it since more time is spent in the value adding parts.

R

izzikio_rage said:
Well art does get easier to execute and that's what causes the art to get better. Michaelangelo and all made their own paint using pigments from various sources. You and me can just stroll to the shop and get a million colors, made of the finest most durable material.

Ansel Adams kept a log to remember what he shot. And wouldn't know if the shot was good until a few hours had been spent in the darkroom. You and me chimp every shot. While the cam selects all the optimum settings for us.

The fact that art is easier should make us better at it since more time is spent in the value adding parts.

I am not against you. I support you too. But what that person says is true too. By the way you take good pictures.

R

rowdy said:
AMEN AMEN! i COMPLETELY SUPPORT YOU. Some pretentious BStrs these days considers themselves are photographers.

I think that calling yourself a photographer automatically makes you pretentious (general you, not you specifically). For some reason the word is implied to mean something more than 'one who takes photagraphs' which is nowadays anyone and their grandmother.

izzikio_rage said:
Well art does get easier to execute and that's what causes the art to get better. Michaelangelo and all made their own paint using pigments from various sources. You and me can just stroll to the shop and get a million colors, made of the finest most durable material.

Ansel Adams kept a log to remember what he shot. And wouldn't know if the shot was good until a few hours had been spent in the darkroom. You and me chimp every shot. While the cam selects all the optimum settings for us.

The fact that art is easier should make us better at it since more time is spent in the value adding parts.

True. But there is a bit more to this disdain of democratic art than that. There was a time when many forms of art were expensive - either for the artist, or for the recipient. Artists either had to be wealthy or had to have wealthy sponsors. This meant that art was for the privileged members of society, and they could decide what art flourished and what withered by allocating wealth. Now technology makes art not just easier, but also cheaper. The privileged are mourning their loss of privilege. The guy with the expensive camera can no longer impress all the chicks when guys with cheap mobiles and free filters are churning out brilliantly evocative images. Their only resort is to scoff: 'That's not real photography' they'll sneer even as they upload mediocre images to Facebook with their name watermarked on the pic just in case anyone wanted to identify people who have more money than talent.

As far as the days when artists even made their own paints, you can still find that sort of spirit within the FOSS community where people come up with personal GIMP compilations with custom algorithms that they wrote to do something special.

So just a way to show ourselves above the rest of the masses. Makes sense since there is no clear wsy to say my art is better than yours. My awesome startrails image may just lose to a guy who used a app to add galaxies and a pic of saturn to his picnic image.

So what makes good art?

G

izzikio_rage said:
So just a way to show ourselves above the rest of the masses. Makes sense since there is no clear wsy to say my art is better than yours. My awesome startrails image may just lose to a guy who used a app to add galaxies and a pic of saturn to his picnic image.

So what makes good art?

For me, whatever looks good is good art. Don't really care about the source or whatever is done to it later. Don't see anything wrong with a photo with galaxy added by an app if that photo looks good.

- - - Updated - - -

izzikio_rage said:
Sharing the original files for the timeslice image I made.

Here's my attempt. Never tried anything like this before. What settings u used in cam for the multiple pics.
The images should get progressively darker, but some in the middle are brighter than the ones before. May be try having the sun to one of the sides, having it in the middle didn't really help;

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/TimeLapseFinal_zpsehyzn5wn.jpg

Gen.Libeb said:
Here's my attempt. Never tried anything like this before. What settings u used in cam for the multiple pics.
The images should get progressively darker, but some in the middle are brighter than the ones before. May be try having the sun to one of the sides, having it in the middle didn't really help;

*i1317.photobucket.com/albums/t627/GenLibeb/TimeLapseFinal_zpsehyzn5wn.jpg

Looks cool... I noticed that too. It seems to get dark, then lights up for a few min, then gets dark. Something to do with the angle of total internal reflection of the atmosphere.

Will try some more timelapses over the week. Lets see if they are better.

Btw what was your method to make this?

G

izzikio_rage said:
Btw what was your method to make this?

I guess the same as you and nac, Load up the 14 as layers & crop out the rectangles.
Then adjusted exposure/brightness/contrast/colour balance/selective colour for each layer starting from right & tried to get a smooth transition. But it doesn't always work as expected.

May be next time try on the east side. You see the buildings are underexposed when the sun is up and a little later they are brighter

R

izzikio_rage said:
So what makes good art?

As you said, there is no objective standard of art, and therefore art, like beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. In practise it means that the person with the most power (influence) can proclaim that A is art and B isn't, and that effectively becomes 'true'. Think of The Fountainhead, substituting any other art form in place of architecture.

So art is an acquired or taught taste?

But there has to be a limit to it. You find some kind of music/imagery/video moving. No matter how much you are taught it will still be that way. Its very instinctive

A whatsapp forward that explains this issue quite well

✅
It's Perception...

In Washington, DC, at a Metro Station, on a cold January morning in 2007, this man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After about 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed that there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds, and then he hurried on to meet his schedule.

About 4 minutes later:

The violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

At 6 minutes:

A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

At 10 minutes:

A 3-year old boy stopped, but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head the whole time. This action was repeated by several other children, but every parent — without exception — forced their children to move on quickly.

At 45 minutes:

The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

After 1 hour:

He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed and no one applauded. There was no recognition at all.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days earlier, Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged over $100 each to sit and listen to him play the same music.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell, playing incognito in the D.C. Metro Station, was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities.

This experiment raised several questions:

In a common-place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?

If so, do we stop to appreciate it?

Are we able to recognize talent in an unexpected context?

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made .

R

You must be really young if you first got that in a whatsapp forward

I wonder what that study actually proved. If you enjoy something you may not like to do it in a hurry. I like to eat but I enjoy it only when I am relaxed and can savour the flavour. I don't stop to photograph every beautiful scene I come across because I enjoy the process just as much the result (or perhaps even more than the result). This does not mean that I don't subconsciously register it as beautiful, but the conscience mind has other priorities.

As far as the nature vs. nurture debate on art, I think the inclination towards art is innate, but the critiquing of art is learned. E.g., before a guy gets a DSLR he sees a photo of a pretty girl and thinks 'Cute chick!' After he gets a DSLR and hangs out on internet forums listening to armchair experts brainlessly parrot stale advice, he will now look at a picture of a pretty girl and think 'Ugh! Horizon is tilted. Awful photo!'. There's nothing wrong in having subjective preferences, but I don't care for people trying to establish their preferences as an objective standard. They very badly need a history lesson.

Not that young, have read the story before

There is this whole school that ties art to our mind's craving for new experiences. So something that is unique will trigger pleasure, a unique view on a common subject (startrails), something that is not possible to see (macros) or even a common idea presented in a new way (humans of new York project)
That's why postprocessing does wonders. We've grown jaded with the normal pics and crave a newer look

R

And an escape from reality. People criticising 'unreal' looking photos don't seem to get the craving for fantasy (and the subjectiveness of reality).
I think there are various factors at play here. When something is new there is a tendency to emphasis it in the beginning, and the subtle treatment comes later e.g., the use of colours when colour cinema first came out, and the gratuitous use of 3D nowadays. Post processing might be in that stage as well. It will also vary by the user - they might also overuse it when they first use it and wield more subtle control later (similar to young singers performing vocal gymnastics while older singers are less technical but more expressive).

Usually I touch photograph and save for web viewing and don't keep psd files. One of the main reason for working in low res is coz of low config PC. After my friend made prints with the photographs from my compact, I have been thinking of sending some of mine too. So I touched few photographs but at full resolution. I know it's little hard to mimic to get the same result, but I was kinda fed up as my full res. (4000x3000 @ 300dpi) touched photos are not as sharp as the low resolution (800px long edge @ 72dpi) one which I touched some months back. After lot of trail, I saved the new one as low res, now it is as sharp as the old one. Nothing changed, but the resolution to 800px.

What's the problem here? I would really could use some help. I have been trying for hours now, looking at the time... oooohh... it's 2:30 in the morning. Those who make prints, those who were in my shoes sometime in the past... comment, help, reply... *2.bp.blogspot.com/_IT0Lbect4h0/SG0_HjrQuXI/AAAAAAAAA_8/9dP2zL7Osh8/s400/praying%2Bsmiley.gif

PS: My friend made the prints from the low res. I sent him (800px @ 72dpi) Print size 5x7. If he said he is gonna send it, I would have sent him full res. But to my surprise, prints are so good.

- - - Updated - - -

Problem seems to be with windows photo viewer (in other words, with software), not with the picture. But yet to find a solution "how to view high dpi images as sharp as it should be in a PC"?
PS - Not sharp
Windows photo viewer - Not sharp
MS Picture manager - not sharp
Paint - Right now this is the only thing shows sharp.

Really Nac?? thats some strange analysis... till now I thought we need to have a 300DPI to get a 8x10 sharp picture print. is it the software too.

When I had low config PC I didnt PP RAW file..it took lot of time. and then to convert again. I used JPEG only. Now I have high config lappy and I dont find much time to play with settings. What ever I shoot , I pp within minutes.

I never liked to much PP..but what I see is people do not appreciate true colors but they want more saturated colors. This time when I edited my friends pics I saturated the scene behind and edit the skit tone manually for each pic.. that why friend would look fair and less saturated and her dress will look more colorful (thats what they want).

S

I would not go against post processing. Although the only bit of post processing I usually do is adjusting the Monochrome output. Then again, when bored, I have used various other film filters from vsco or dxo. The point is that I don't care how people see my image, it's mostly how I see the image I have clicked.

sujoyp said:
Really Nac?? thats some strange analysis... till now I thought we need to have a 300DPI to get a 8x10 sharp picture print. is it the software too.

When I had low config PC I didnt PP RAW file..it took lot of time. and then to convert again. I used JPEG only. Now I have high config lappy and I dont find much time to play with settings. What ever I shoot , I pp within minutes.

I never liked to much PP..but what I see is people do not appreciate true colors but they want more saturated colors. This time when I edited my friends pics I saturated the scene behind and edit the skit tone manually for each pic.. that why friend would look fair and less saturated and her dress will look more colorful (thats what they want).

I vaguely remember I have bumped into something like this before as the things I read now seems to be little familiar but not sure.
Only your display would show it little blurry or less sharp, it wouldn't affect your print. Your print would be perfect. You're right, higher dpi would get you good quality prints.
Yes, me too thought that photographs has to be SOOC when I joined this photography world.

Now I am almost always touching my photographs to some extent.

Siddhartht said:
I would not go against post processing. Although the only bit of post processing I usually do is adjusting the Monochrome output. Then again, when bored, I have used various other film filters from vsco or dxo. The point is that I don't care how people see my image, it's mostly how I see the image I have clicked.

I guess to some extend (the degree may vary form person to person, but...)everyone cares, atleast those who expect some C&C.

I am kinda sure that this issue is nothing to do with PP. Here is a sample...
Photo sourced from google, copyrighted ©Following Splendor Images
It's a random pick from google to see the sharpness difference. If you can't view the whole image @ pixel level, zoom in 100%. Image size is not big, you can download too to see the difference.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/sharpness%20compare_zpscmepxlud.jpg

- - - Updated - - -

By the way, it's not PPed - neither this one nor the previous one. All are untouched other than changing dpi and resizing the image size.

Here is one more... In this picture it would be lot more evident.
Photo sourced from google.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/eye%20sharp_zpsbc45hjct.png

Left is original - 42mp photograph @ 300dpi
Right is downsampled to 800px height @ 72dpi

S

nac said:
I vaguely remember I have bumped into something like this before as the things I read now seems to be little familiar but not sure.
Only your display would show it little blurry or less sharp, it wouldn't affect your print. Your print would be perfect. You're right, higher dpi would get you good quality prints.
Yes, me too thought that photographs has to be SOOC when I joined this photography world. Now I am almost always touching my photographs to some extent.

I guess to some extend (the degree may vary form person to person, but...)everyone cares, atleast those who expect some C&C.

I am kinda sure that this issue is nothing to do with PP. Here is a sample...
Photo sourced from google, copyrighted ©Following Splendor Images
It's a random pick from google to see the sharpness difference. If you can't view the whole image @ pixel level, zoom in 100%. Image size is not big, you can download too to see the difference.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/sharpness%20compare_zpscmepxlud.jpg

- - - Updated - - -

By the way, it's not PPed - neither this one nor the previous one. All are untouched other than changing dpi and resizing the image size.

Here is one more... In this picture it would be lot more evident.
Photo sourced from google.

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/eye%20sharp_zpsbc45hjct.png

Left is original - 42mp photograph @ 300dpi
Right is downsampled to 800px height @ 72dpi

Maybe you are right, yup I do feel good when somebody praises my shot(and I do like when someone criticizes them in a rather down to earth manner), but I rarely accept criticism from those who rephrase lines from books or other photographers. There is no point in that. Honestly, I never care about minute details in my photographs. Many of you might have noticed that I have lots of negative space in pictures, the angles are not that great and stuff. But I can't wait for a perfect condition to brew in and present itself. The moments are rather instantaneous in nature, and if a person is able to capture them, then he/she is a good amateur photographer(which I'm still not).
And about the much debate on post-processing, I think people should switch to film cameras if they can't tolerate it(or buy a Fuji

). The whole point of making photography digital was convenience, whatever it might be, shooting many pictures, ease of storage etc etc. Even RAW conversion is a form of post-processing, so yeah....

Siddhartht said:
I think people should switch to film cameras if they can't tolerate it(or buy a Fuji ). The whole point of making photography digital was convenience, whatever it might be, shooting many pictures, ease of storage etc etc. Even RAW conversion is a form of post-processing, so yeah....

If there's no digital camera, probably many of us wouldn't have picked it up as a hobby...

BTW, what they can't "tolerate"?

x------x--------x

I don't know whether softer look is common for every PC or very few and I am being one among them

Microsoft page says something, but it seems like they are talking about blurred texts than pictures. I am not sure whether they are talking about the symptom I am talking about or something else. I am yet to find a solution, until I find one I gotta save one in small res to see if the things are alright.

I forgot to turn off "sharpen for screen" option for the previous portrait attempts. But that doesn't mean, it's sharper because of that. I downloaded a RAW sample from online and developed. Here is the full res, and low res comparo...

Photo sourced online; Copyrighted: Jakob K Rohrback
Camera: Canon G12

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/RAW_CANON_POWERSHOT_G12-1-3%20sharp%20compare_zpsoahhii7w.png

PS: Original dpi for G12 is 180 which I didn't know when processing.

S

nac said:
If there's no digital camera, probably many of us wouldn't have picked it up as a hobby... BTW, what they can't "tolerate"?

x------x--------x

I don't know whether softer look is common for every PC or very few and I am being one among them Microsoft page says something, but it seems like they are talking about blurred texts than pictures. I am not sure whether they are talking about the symptom I am talking about or something else. I am yet to find a solution, until I find one I gotta save one in small res to see if the things are alright.

I forgot to turn off "sharpen for screen" option for the previous portrait attempts. But that doesn't mean, it's sharper because of that. I downloaded a RAW sample from online and developed. Here is the full res, and low res comparo...

Photo sourced online; Copyrighted: Jakob K Rohrback
Camera: Canon G12

*i102.photobucket.com/albums/m108/tkphotos1/RAW_CANON_POWERSHOT_G12-1-3%20sharp%20compare_zpsoahhii7w.png

PS: Original dpi for G12 is 180 which I didn't know when processing.

Oh, I meant that people who can't tolerate post processing.

I am not against PP, I do PP on almost all pics...but thing is I have lost the charm of PPing RAW files and edting patiently...dont get soo much time.

Just last week I went to elephanta island and shot almost 300 pics...now I got only one evening+night to make them look good..what I did was
1. increase contrast
2. decrease highlights
3. give some shadow
4. increase the sharpness by a bit
5. increase vibrance
6. increase saturation by a bit
7. increase skin tone make them fairer and descrease the saturation on face slightly

did 200 pics like this in 3 hrs

by lightroom.

S

sujoyp said:
I am not against PP, I do PP on almost all pics...but thing is I have lost the charm of PPing RAW files and edting patiently...dont get soo much time.

Just last week I went to elephanta island and shot almost 300 pics...now I got only one evening+night to make them look good..what I did was
1. increase contrast
2. decrease highlights
3. give some shadow
4. increase the sharpness by a bit
5. increase vibrance
6. increase saturation by a bit
7. increase skin tone make them fairer and descrease the saturation on face slightly

did 200 pics like this in 3 hrs by lightroom.

I use Capture One mostly for RAW processing, and my workflow is:
-Check Exposure
-Noise Reduction
-Curve editing
-Selective editing of channels for monochromes.

my two cents on this ...

downsampling images hides a lot of flaws in the lens, so small imperfections in the sharpness etc. Also it hides small flaws like the minute movement of the lens or hand when taking the shot. So that's why it seems like downsampled images are sharper. Could also be due to the downsampling process itself. Photoshop I assume sharpens the image a bit when it reduces the resolution

On PPing, even film cam shots were PPed. It was just more time consuming that's all. Also there are ways to simulate the PP effects in the cam directly, for example using a polarizer to saturate colors or using a gradiated ND filter balance exposure between sky and ground. It is straight out of the cam but then it is again tampering with the actual shot, so people against PP should be against this too.

At then end of it all it comes down to how your image looks vs what you had in mind when you shot it. That's about all

S

izzikio_rage said:
my two cents on this ...

downsampling images hides a lot of flaws in the lens, so small imperfections in the sharpness etc. Also it hides small flaws like the minute movement of the lens or hand when taking the shot. So that's why it seems like downsampled images are sharper. Could also be due to the downsampling process itself. Photoshop I assume sharpens the image a bit when it reduces the resolution

On PPing, even film cam shots were PPed. It was just more time consuming that's all. Also there are ways to simulate the PP effects in the cam directly, for example using a polarizer to saturate colors or using a gradiated ND filter balance exposure between sky and ground. It is straight out of the cam but then it is again tampering with the actual shot, so people against PP should be against this too.

At then end of it all it comes down to how your image looks vs what you had in mind when you shot it. That's about all

I agree about films(but I have never seen people post processing films, just dust and scratch removal). The point is that some people hate it so much that they disregard post processed images even before looking them closely. And these are mostly same people which use Nikon/Canon fullframes(from my past experience). I remember a funny incident. I met this studio photographer who told me that he completely dislikes post processing and blah blah. Funny thing, he shoots in tethered mode via his computer. Now it's not even post processing, but rather per-processing.

As for downsampling, the results are only significant if one downsamples exponentially, i.e. going from 24MP to 16MP is significant, and it is good enough to make a subjectively blurry image look okay. But marginal decrements...I don't know, they are kind of hit or miss for me.