Post process this!

[fuzzybabybunny]

The point of post processing is to make things look prettier. Kindly write down what you did

Taken in a dark club with the flash bounced off of the ceiling.

Original Large: http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/191380245-L.jpg
Original Original: http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/191380245-O.jpg

Edited Large: http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/191380554-L.jpg
Edited Original: http://fuzzybabybunny.smugmug....photos/191380554-O.jpg

1. Auto Contrast
2. Used spot healing brush to remove wrinkles and bags under eyes and around face.
3. Used a regular coloring brush set at 100% softness and 15% opacity and set to the color of nearby skin to do some color correction of spot healed areas.
4. Used the Lighten tool to de-emphasize some deep lines in the faces.
5. Used the Blur tool to de-emphasize the aged skin of the right woman.
6. Used a quick mask and Gaussian Blur to blur out the background a bit more.
7. Gave the blues and bit more saturation.
8. USM with 40, 20, 10

*******************************************

This shot suffered from the usual camera-doesn't-have-enough-dynamic-range problem that plagues all cameras. I chose to retain detail in the clouds at the expense of underexposing the land. I figured I could always bring out some detail in the underexposed areas whereas blown out clouds are a lost cause.

Large
Original

I need some work on my processing skills.

My Attempt - Large (Looks too garish in this small version. Larger version is better.
My Attempt - Original

1. Used the shadow/highlight tool to bring out details in the shadows and bring out details in the highlights.

2. Upper the overall saturation a bit.

3. Smart Sharpen 40 2.0

4. Unsharp Mask 50 20 10

5. Applied a very light (magnitude 1) warming filter.

6. Noise reduction.

******************************

How would you post process this? And show how you did it!

Large

Original (fixed)

My attempt:

Large

Original

1. Selected the water with a marquee tools and upped the saturation to a nice deep blue.

2. Inversed the selection.

3. Lowered the saturation of the blue channel. Upped the saturation of the red channel, green channel, and yellow channel.

4. Opened up the levels adjustment and set the gray point to one of the dark mountainside shadows on the left of the picture.

5. Used the Shadow / Highlight filter to bring out details from the shadows, like in the cliff faces in the middle of the picture.

6. Deselected the selection.

7. Smart Sharpen 50 2.0

8. Unsharp Mask 40 20 10

 

[dug777]

I'd look at the pic, look at my shooting info, work out what i'd done wrong, and learn from it. Then i'd go out and try to take the photo as i wanted it

That's just me however, and i've plenty of respect for you post-processing wizards

My skills in this area are limited to some very basic fiddling in Picture Project, so i'm not pretending i could do a fraction of what you've done. That off my chest, as regards your effort, you've rather gone overboard with the colour saturation IMHO (there's now what looks like a patch of ocean in the cliffs!).

Instead of going for something that isn't quite believable, i'd crank it back a bit...it's amazing natural scenery and one thing about natural scenery is that it rarely comes in dayglo colours

EDIT: your first original link is broken.

 

[Jawo]

Incredible PS work....but then you are getting into the art/photography debate. I would try to retake the picture if I could, but that looks a little over the top. I take so many pictures that I very rarely do anything more than basic saturation / WB / Sharpness.

 

[troytime]

I think it looks good.
not over the top, nowhere near the art/photography debate.

I would have done similar things, but in a different way (not using selections)

 

[Grabo]

I'm just getting into postprocessing, and I find it strangely unrewarding to saturate colors beyond how my eyes perceived a scene. It does usually make a picture prettier, but what's the point of a pretty photograph that doesn't exactly look like how the human eyes perceives the original scene? Unless you label it 'art'. If I consider your updated original 'art', I think it is very nicely done.

Can't really answer your question yet, however :/ Need to learn more.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

I understand all your concerns with trying to be purists and all. But the reality of the situation is that often times the scene is completely out of your control.

The picture was taken on a cruise in Hawaii along the Na Pali Coast. For economic and time reasons, there are no retakes. On a cruise, there is no waiting around at a particular spot for the golden hour to show up. You've gotta make the best of the time of day and the light that you have.

Landscape photography is a mixture of skill and luck. Skill in the sense that you've got yourself and your camera under control. Luck in the sense that everything else, everything that is not you and the camera, cooperates with you and gives you good light. In my case the above scene looked hazy, lacked contrast, had flat light, and nothing really jumped out. So pretty much like my unedited picture. I took the picture because it was the only time we would pass this.

If you process a bland scene as the eye sees it, it'll just be a bland scene that nobody will like. Purity makes no sense if no one likes it. The point of artistic photography is to create a final output that looks good. If you're not shooting and processing for artistic, good looking photography, then what are you shooting for? Editorials? Why does a photograph have to look exactly like how the human eye perceives it if the output is unremarkable?

And yeah, there is an ocean in the mountains. This was a quick edit at 5AM.

 

[Grabo]

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny

If you process a bland scene as the eye sees it, it'll just be a bland scene that nobody will like. Purity makes no sense if no one likes it. The point of artistic photography is to create a final output that looks good. If you're not shooting and processing for artistic, good looking photography, then what are you shooting for? Editorials? Why does a photograph have to look exactly like how the human eye perceives it if the output is unremarkable?

I guess it depends what your purpose is- as you say. And I do agree that some post processing often appears necessary, but almost never color saturation, for the simple reason that it more than any other form of editing appears able to make a photo look slightly 'unreal'. And color is like crack, unfortunately, in that it is so attractive.

To get back on track though - I feel that 'artistic photography' is taking photos of beautiful scenes of reality*, i.e where most of the 'artistic' comes from finding and composing. You may feel that 'artistic photography' means creating beautiful scenes (using reality as a starting rather than end-point). Either way, both ways are fine by me, as long as the latter is labelled(implicitly or not).

It is mostly when someone shows a picture that poses (directly or indirectly) as a bit of beautiful reality, when in truth only reality's toes can be seen, that I feel as if someone is stepping over an invisible line (that may not even reside in a majority of the world's population, but anyway).
Can view and appreciate heavily edited; for example color-replaced/inverted photos without feeling offended.

*'Reality' is obviously subjective, depending on what species you talk to, we have 'fish-eye' lenses after all; but for the sake of this argument I define it as how most human eyes perceive things, because that is our visual reality.

 

[montanafan]

My try with PS Elements 5.0

Edit: Another try, I didn't like my first one at all.

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb.../montanafan/fuzzyc.jpg

 

[Ctrackstar126]

a subtle change:

http://img120.imageshack.us/im...93/mountaincopyje4.jpg

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny


If you process a bland scene as the eye sees it, it'll just be a bland scene that nobody will like. Purity makes no sense if no one likes it. The point of artistic photography is to create a final output that looks good. If you're not shooting and processing for artistic, good looking photography, then what are you shooting for? Editorials? Why does a photograph have to look exactly like how the human eye perceives it if the output is unremarkable?

Obviously there's no point in taking bland, unremarkable scenes that nobody would like. The trick is to capture things that people will like, and the world around us abounds in things that are truly more fascinating than a photo could ever fully show, without having to 'sex them up' using garish colours. Learning to best capture those scenes is the measure of your skill as a photographer, at least in my opinion.

I suppose what I'm saying is that you're right, there's no point serving up photos that are unremarkable. While some may be quite happy to take unremarkable pictures and then play with them to make then passable (and indeed, some do it for a living, and have to), I'd rather discard it and get out there to try and capture the remarkable in fashion that does it some measure of justice, start achieving that and you'll produce fantastic photos.

I enjoy photography, I can't pretend i particularly enjoy image processing. I don't particularly care if I only get one photo I like out of weekend's shooting (in fact, that's a good weekend ). I'm under no pressure to produce anything, it's just a relaxing hobby after all...and when you do get it right, boy do you feel good :beer:

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: dug777

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny


If you process a bland scene as the eye sees it, it'll just be a bland scene that nobody will like. Purity makes no sense if no one likes it. The point of artistic photography is to create a final output that looks good. If you're not shooting and processing for artistic, good looking photography, then what are you shooting for? Editorials? Why does a photograph have to look exactly like how the human eye perceives it if the output is unremarkable?

Obviously there's no point in taking bland, unremarkable scenes that nobody would like. The trick is to capture things that people will like, and the world around us abounds in things that are truly more fascinating than a photo could ever fully show, without having to 'sex them up' using garish colours. Learning to best capture those scenes is the measure of your skill as a photographer, at least in my opinion.

I suppose what I'm saying is that you're right, there's no point serving up photos that are unremarkable. While some may be quite happy to take unremarkable pictures and then play with them to make then passable (and indeed, some do it for a living, and have to), I'd rather discard it and get out there to try and capture the remarkable in fashion that does it some measure of justice, start achieving that and you'll produce fantastic photos.

I enjoy photography, I can't pretend i particularly enjoy image processing. I don't particularly care if I get one photo I like out of weekend's shooting (in fact, that's a good weekend ) I'm under no pressure to produce anything, it's just a relaxing hobby after all...and when you do get it right, boy do you feel good

My point is that in some situations "learning how to best capture those things as a measure of your skill as a photographer" is completely moot. You can be the best photographer in the world but if mother nature gives you a really drab, unremarkable scene to work with, you're out of luck unless you post process. In the field, no amount of photographic skill can make an unremarkable scene suddenly become remarkable. There is no "learning to do this" or "learning to do that." A soldier can learn how to survive but if he's unlucky and gets clipped in the head by a random bullet he's a goner. A photographer can learn how to take pictures but if he's unlucky and mother nature doesn't cooperate there's nothing he can do.

What does work? Money and time. Time to travel back and stake out the spot and money to do so, both of which I don't have at the moment.

If you've got a photo that is not up to par, but took a lot of time and money to obtain and there's a very low possibility of a redo, you might as well post process it as best you can. If you don't and decide to instead be a purist or a near-purist with minimal processing, then you're just a photographer with a really bland photo.

 

[dug777]

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny

Originally posted by: dug777

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny


If you process a bland scene as the eye sees it, it'll just be a bland scene that nobody will like. Purity makes no sense if no one likes it. The point of artistic photography is to create a final output that looks good. If you're not shooting and processing for artistic, good looking photography, then what are you shooting for? Editorials? Why does a photograph have to look exactly like how the human eye perceives it if the output is unremarkable?

Obviously there's no point in taking bland, unremarkable scenes that nobody would like. The trick is to capture things that people will like, and the world around us abounds in things that are truly more fascinating than a photo could ever fully show, without having to 'sex them up' using garish colours. Learning to best capture those scenes is the measure of your skill as a photographer, at least in my opinion.

I suppose what I'm saying is that you're right, there's no point serving up photos that are unremarkable. While some may be quite happy to take unremarkable pictures and then play with them to make then passable (and indeed, some do it for a living, and have to), I'd rather discard it and get out there to try and capture the remarkable in fashion that does it some measure of justice, start achieving that and you'll produce fantastic photos.

I enjoy photography, I can't pretend i particularly enjoy image processing. I don't particularly care if I get one photo I like out of weekend's shooting (in fact, that's a good weekend ) I'm under no pressure to produce anything, it's just a relaxing hobby after all...and when you do get it right, boy do you feel good

My point is that in some situations "learning how to best capture those things as a measure of your skill as a photographer" is completely moot. You can be the best photographer in the world but if mother nature gives you a really drab, unremarkable scene to work with, you're out of luck unless you post process. In the field, no amount of photographic skill can make an unremarkable scene suddenly become remarkable. There is no "learning to do this" or "learning to do that." A soldier can learn how to survive but if he's unlucky and gets clipped in the head by a random bullet he's a goner. A photographer can learn how to take pictures but if he's unlucky and mother nature doesn't cooperate there's nothing he can do.

What does work? Money and time. Time to travel back and stake out the spot and money to do so, both of which I don't have at the moment.

If you've got a photo that is not up to par, but took a lot of time and money to obtain and there's a very low possibility of a redo, you might as well post process it as best you can. If you don't and decide to instead be a purist or a near-purist with minimal processing, then you're just a photographer with a really bland photo.

I couldn't agree more

 

[Aharami]

i like your post processed results, although I do think you went a tad bit too far with the colors. they have no resemblance to the original photo. do i care about this? kinda, sorta...but only because i know what the original scene looked like. Im not saying that your post processed image looks unnatural like some HDR images. had you not posted the original, i'd thought that the PP shot is how it looks like and wouldve gone along my merry little way. All that said, given an option between the two, which one would I choose? The PP one. I say put some blue back into the mountains and it might look better.

BTW, do you mind if I make some 3200x1200 wallpapers out of your panos for my dualscreen setup?

edit: meant to say 3200x1200. not 3200x1600

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: Aharami
i like your post processed results, although I do think you went a tad bit too far with the colors. they have no resemblance to the original photo. do i care about this? kinda, sorta...but only because i know what the original scene looked like. Im not saying that your post processed image looks unnatural like some HDR images. had you not posted the original, i'd thought that the PP shot is how it looks like and wouldve gone along my merry little way. All that said, given an option between the two, which one would I choose? The PP one. I say put some blue back into the mountains and it might look better.

BTW, do you mind if I make some 3200x1600 wallpapers out of your panos for my dualscreen setup?

Yay!

Go for it.

 

[episodic]

I played with it. . . I know this isn't what you want, just playing though!

http://farm2.static.flickr.com...93614_659c2f8be1_b.jpg

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: episodic
I played with it. . . I know this isn't what you want, just playing though!

http://farm2.static.flickr.com...93614_659c2f8be1_b.jpg

Whoa. That has some serious kick. What did you do to obtain the result?

 

[episodic]

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny

Originally posted by: episodic
I played with it. . . I know this isn't what you want, just playing though!

http://farm2.static.flickr.com...93614_659c2f8be1_b.jpg

Whoa. That has some serious kick. What did you do to obtain the result?

copy layer
unsharp mask
merge
new layer
orange fill
multiply 70%
merged back
copy layer
layer mask
used a gradiant
multiplied top
selectively burned and dodged

merged


So you like it?

 

[montanafan]

http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...anafan/Fuzzybbbbb3.jpg

 

[Jawo]

Originally posted by: dug777

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny

Originally posted by: dug777

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny


If you process a bland scene as the eye sees it, it'll just be a bland scene that nobody will like. Purity makes no sense if no one likes it. The point of artistic photography is to create a final output that looks good. If you're not shooting and processing for artistic, good looking photography, then what are you shooting for? Editorials? Why does a photograph have to look exactly like how the human eye perceives it if the output is unremarkable?

Obviously there's no point in taking bland, unremarkable scenes that nobody would like. The trick is to capture things that people will like, and the world around us abounds in things that are truly more fascinating than a photo could ever fully show, without having to 'sex them up' using garish colours. Learning to best capture those scenes is the measure of your skill as a photographer, at least in my opinion.

I suppose what I'm saying is that you're right, there's no point serving up photos that are unremarkable. While some may be quite happy to take unremarkable pictures and then play with them to make then passable (and indeed, some do it for a living, and have to), I'd rather discard it and get out there to try and capture the remarkable in fashion that does it some measure of justice, start achieving that and you'll produce fantastic photos.

I enjoy photography, I can't pretend i particularly enjoy image processing. I don't particularly care if I get one photo I like out of weekend's shooting (in fact, that's a good weekend ) I'm under no pressure to produce anything, it's just a relaxing hobby after all...and when you do get it right, boy do you feel good

My point is that in some situations "learning how to best capture those things as a measure of your skill as a photographer" is completely moot. You can be the best photographer in the world but if mother nature gives you a really drab, unremarkable scene to work with, you're out of luck unless you post process. In the field, no amount of photographic skill can make an unremarkable scene suddenly become remarkable. There is no "learning to do this" or "learning to do that." A soldier can learn how to survive but if he's unlucky and gets clipped in the head by a random bullet he's a goner. A photographer can learn how to take pictures but if he's unlucky and mother nature doesn't cooperate there's nothing he can do.

What does work? Money and time. Time to travel back and stake out the spot and money to do so, both of which I don't have at the moment.

If you've got a photo that is not up to par, but took a lot of time and money to obtain and there's a very low possibility of a redo, you might as well post process it as best you can. If you don't and decide to instead be a purist or a near-purist with minimal processing, then you're just a photographer with a really bland photo.

I couldn't agree more

My thoughts exactly! FBB when you initially posted the picture, you did not state that you had les than deserible shooting conditions. This happens, and you just have to work with it. I think that the context surounding the picture can be more important any corrections...since the raw data will not change. Say if you got a picture of the Pope while in Rome, you would love the picture, even if it was wroing lighting, WB, color, etc. Some pictures you simple can not retake (ie Weddings!) and you have to work with what photos you have and go from there. I almost view PS as a "necessary evil," I only correct the best ones, since I probably take way too many since "film" is essentially free. Like you said, being a photo enthusiast it is not always possible to retake pictures.

Your second one is incredible! What is in the foreground?

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: episodic

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny

Originally posted by: episodic
I played with it. . . I know this isn't what you want, just playing though!

http://farm2.static.flickr.com...93614_659c2f8be1_b.jpg

Whoa. That has some serious kick. What did you do to obtain the result?

copy layer
unsharp mask
merge
new layer
orange fill
multiply 70%
merged back
copy layer
layer mask
used a gradiant
multiplied top
selectively burned and dodged

merged


So you like it?

Heck yeah.

Originally posted by: montanafan
http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...anafan/Fuzzybbbbb3.jpg

Man, I like you guys' PP better than mine. I think your skies are a lot more dramatic than mine.

 

[Aharami]

Originally posted by: montanafan
http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...anafan/Fuzzybbbbb3.jpg

i like this one a lot!

 

[montanafan]

Originally posted by: Aharami

Originally posted by: montanafan
http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...anafan/Fuzzybbbbb3.jpg

i like this one a lot!

Thanks, Aharami! I like the foreground and mountains in fuzzy's PP, but when I decided to make the clouds stormy I figured I should leave that part dark as well to match them coming over it.

Edit:

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny
Q]Originally posted by: montanafan
http://i34.photobucket.com/alb...anafan/Fuzzybbbbb3.jpg

Man, I like you guys' PP better than mine. I think your skies are a lot more dramatic than mine.[/quote]

And thanks to you too, fuzzybabybunny! You've gotten me interested in working on my PP skills with these posts. :thumbsup:

 

[OdiN]

Maybe I'll give it a go when I get home if I remember.

 

[Sukhoi]

PS 7 does not seem to have the shadow/highlight filter. Is it listed under another name, or is that something new in whatever the current version of PS is?

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: Sukhoi
PS 7 does not seem to have the shadow/highlight filter. Is it listed under another name, or is that something new in whatever the current version of PS is?

I think it may be something that was added in CS.