Post Processing

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Post processing for effect

Sunday, July 12th, 2009
Clover in a sand pit

Clover in a sand pit

The photo to the right was originally a fairly decent picture, but nothing spectacular.  By that I mean that it had decent placement, a good symmetry to the petals, and something to look at in regards to sharpness.  It looks much better after processing, though.

In this case, it didn’t take much.  First, I started in Adobe RAW.  Steps were roughly:

  • Moved it to +1.3EV;
  • Slid contrast to the right until there was decent contrast (whites are blown out);
  • Moved recovery slider over to recover highlights;
  • Reduced EV back to +.4;
  • Moved up Clarity slightly, until petals jumped out again;

Then in to Photoshop:

  • Open the NIK Viveza tool;
  • Lower brightness on background areas with control points (4 points, large);
  • Slightly increase saturation on rosy areas of clover with another control point, click OK;
  • Merge layers on a new layer;
  • Sharpen (with a luminosity layer, at 60% opacity);
  • Add copyright, etc.;

Total time: 3 minutes.  Which is why I was willing to pay for NIK’s software – it saves that much time.

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Motivation found, then lost again

Sunday, June 14th, 2009
A view from the Johnson Lake trailhead

A view from the Johnson Lake trailhead

I wrote yesterday’s post knowing that there would be a great opportunity for me to find motivation.  Yesterday we took a nice, long trip down to Seward – that’s 120 miles (more or less) each way.  Ostensibly, our goal was to visit the Seward Sea Life Center, which was great in its own right.

One thing I was hoping for, however, was to get that strike of inspiration back.  It kinda struck a few times – the pic to the right is a good example.  The clouds and sun creating something of a chiarascuro effect.  Look at it closer up (click on it) – it’s a fairly neat photo.  All the more impressive if you consider that it’s a 9-frame HDR.  The technique was similar to the one outlined here, except that it was completely hand-held.

After getting home and starting processing, I now realize that I let my sensor get beyond dirty.  It’ll take hours to recover most of the pics – this one is a lucky pic – the dirt is mostly obscured by the tones in the photo.

As you can guess, I’ll be writing about sensor cleaning soon enough.

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Finding Motivation

Saturday, June 13th, 2009
Young ferns, fighting through the recently-cut grass in our backyard

Young ferns, fighting through the recently-cut grass in our backyard

Sometimes it’s hard to be motivated. For me, this usually means that I’m too busy – working long hours, not enough time away from the computer, and not sleeping enough. When I get to that point, I go numb. The world is flat and uninteresting.

I can usually snap out of that by doing something new and interesting – going to someplace new, or finding a new perspective.  Witness the rooftop pic I took recently – that was inspiring.

Today?  Not so much.  It’s drizzling, but not heavily.  The mosquitoes are out, and I’m itchy.  It’s not warm, kinda dank and grey.  I’ve fought my way to the end of a tough week, but I haven’t had my normal opportunities to exercise.  I’m tired and somewhat cranky.

So I’m fairly unmotivated.  How to get around that?  Shift perspectives!  Yesterday I decided to find something that would come out decently in black & white.  Witness the ferns to the right (click for a larger pic – the larger one is much better!).

Details on this: completely manually focused.  In the flat, grey light it’s pretty uninteresting, but by boosting contrast in photoshop, the fronds begin to stand out.  Shift to black & white with NIK Silver EFex, work in some grain & add to contrast & you have this.

Not bad for 5 minutes of work.

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Opportunities are where you find them

Monday, June 1st, 2009
View from our roof - doing repairs

View from our roof - doing repairs

Yesterday I posted about “frame within a frame” and metioned that it was a topic going around a while ago.  Well, it’s apparently back – I noticed in on Digital Photo School a post named “Crop and Chop.”  A slightly different point than I was trying to make yesterday, but the same concept.

Another meme going around these days is “shoot in your own backyard.”  As several pros have stated, there are thousands of photos of foreign places, sunsets, and exotic things.  Where are the common things?  Where is the spectacular in the ordinary?

I’m not so sure I’m all that big on shooting in my own back yard.  But it beats not shooting at all, and from the correct vantage point I can find fairly impressive views.

Take the shot to the right, for example.  I had some repairs I needed to do on the roof, so up I went.  Started looking around, and after a few days of rainy weather, noticed that the not only was it sunny, but it was a well saturated sunny!

So I did the logical thing: set my hammer & nails down, scrambled for my SLR (sorry, love that far more than my P&S – but the P&S is much, much more portable), and fired of a series of 9 photos.  Spent another 20 minutes shooting up there, so you’ll see a few more pics this week.

This shot: an HDR from 9 photos, all at maximum aperture (f/25).  Fired off on a tripod.  Much fun.

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Frame within a frame

Sunday, May 31st, 2009
HDR of clouds and trees

HDR of clouds and trees

I read a lot on photography.  One of the more common themes a year or two ago were about finding the “fram within a frame.”  That is to say, find a new composition an existing photo.  For example, take a look to the right.  An HDR from last weekend, which has some incredible light in the clouds, but sorta loses the feel in the trees.  This was hand-held, mind you, so that might have contributed to the trees being off, but it was also slightly windy.

Nonetheless, the light in the clouds was great! Wanting to capture this, I dinked around for a few minutes in photoshop, until I came out with the photo below.

There I go again with abstracts…

HDR Clouds, from cropping in the previous pic

HDR Clouds, from cropping in the previous pic

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One final B&W

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Well, for now.  The same day that I took the photo of the mountains across Turnagain arm also yielded the photo below.  This one didn’t come out as well as I would have liked, but it does have something of that light, old-timey feel.  I like that.

In post-processing, I did actually do a bit of burning to the shadows of the trunk, and dodged the details back in to some of the branches. When working in black & white, I usually stick to that – I feel it’s closer to the original techniques in the darkroom.

Bird Creek Tree in B&W

Bird Creek Tree in B&W

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Starting to like Black and White

Monday, May 25th, 2009

Despite taking photos for years, it’s been only recently that I’ve actually started converting them to black and white.  I’m starting to like it, though – in some situations, that is.  Such as this fence, which (with the high structure & contrast) somewhat reminds me of some work by Ansel Adams.

Gate to Fence, B&W

Gate to Fence, B&W

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A Black and White image from Monday

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
I think this is Bradley Peak, on the far site of Turnagain arm

I think this is Bradley Peak, on the far site of Turnagain arm

Monday, driving home: had spend dinner with my folks at the Bird Creek campground (it’s all of 20 minutes south of Anchorage).

It was about 9pm – golden hour was just beginning.  For some reason, the color version came out extremely blue and flat, despite the angles and the shadows.  So I dropped it into Photoshop and opened NIK Silver Efex.  A basic conversion, but I added some noise, burned in the top edge a little, and slapped on a red lens conversion.

Instant drama.

It was interesting, this reminds me of Ansel Adam’s famous shot of the half-dome.  In his book Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, he mentions that he used a red filter on that image.

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Revisiting RAW vs. JPG

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

It seems that recently I’ve started moving back to using JPG formats for my images. Two months into this blog, and I’ve realized that (for the web, at least), I never start post-processing from the RAW image. That’s partly because the JPG conversion on the sd500 is excellent – it usually takes me much more work in Adobe RAW & Photoshop to get to the same point (which usually means tweaking the black point, adding some fill light, adjusting contrast, and adding sharpness).

RAW is still the far superior format and I should use it exclusively. I’m just finding that my actual use doesn’t require it.

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When White Balance is Wrong

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
A mid-winter scene. Note the yellows.

A mid-winter scene. Note the yellows.

Stepping back to last week’s white balance post, Let me show you something that was wrong.  During the winter, most of my small-camera photography is indoor.  As such, ISO is always set high/fast, and white balance is usually left on Tungsten (the light bulb icon).

So I walk out of a building (at 8:30 in the morning, no less), and this is what I see.  It’s cold, maybe -5 F, and I don’t want to mess around too much.  ISO was already at 400, as it usually is in the winter.  Flash was off, EV was at 0.  This is the exact exposure as it appeared that morning.

However, note the yellows.  I could fix that (easily) in post-production, or I could claim that it’s part of my artistic vision.  It’s neither, however.  No, this was the effect of taking a pic when White Balance was set to daylight.  The big light there?  It’s not at daylight colors.  Thus everything went yellow.

Still, not really a problem.  I have a feeling this would work extremely well in black & white…

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