The photo enhancement and tutorial thread

[rex]

IanH755 said:

I tend to find it easier working when the images are RAW files rather than JPG. With a RAW file it's usually a bit "safer" to under-expose slightly if you're not too sure on the proper exposure as you can still bring out detail, rather than when you over-expose and the deatail is lost forever.

It is quite safe to overexpose. In fact it is to our advantage to overexpose as you get more shadow detail. You can then use a raw converter to then bring the highlight details back and then in photoshop bring up the shadow detail (which would not have been there if you had initially under exposed) to create a great dynamic range without looking like an HDR picture.

[DibblyDobbler]

Craigwww said:

Use the light meter in your camera to first photograph a correctly exposed sky, this will capture the cloud detail. Then without moving the camera, meter for the rest of the image.

How do you do this please? Ie meter for the sky and then the ground without moving the camera

Edited by DibblyDobbler on Wednesday 14th October 13:48

[rex]

Has a go at this. Took about 3 mins to do. With more time I would darken the sky a little but otherwise leave it alone. Process from Guy Gowan technique of altering images and is done at a press of a button and then a few presses to get the desired result of contrast, range, colour intensity and sharpness.[url]
Original
|http://thumbsnap.com/uXHCrICG[/url]

Shopped




Darkened the sky a little and reduced colour intensity to balance up the image from sky to ground as looked a bit unnatural otherwise. second one has had nothing done to the greens unlike the first shopped picture.

Edited by rex on Wednesday 14th October 19:10

[Allanv]

^^^^ those look great as well. Thank you.

But as I said on the other thread that I derailed the camera used for this photo was fooked as we found out 6 months later in Iceland.

But saying that the new camera is a lot better but I am still going to learn and put into practice everything I can that you all suggest.

Many thanks for everyone's time so far it has been a learning curve.

I will invest in something better than paintshop pro X and look forward to producing some photo's that look great, and I thank you all again in providing you help and tips.

[LastLight]

On Wednesday I spent the day in a tutorial session on Lightroom (mainly) and Photoshop with wildlife pro photographer Andy Astbury, via the Calumet Academy. They/he run a lot of these around the country and for a tad over £100, and despite some prior familiarity with Photoshop and c. 3 months using Lightroom, it was well worth it. Lots of things I'd not have thought to do or short cuts saving plenty of time to get the same effect and loads of help with calibration and work flow for printing as well as monitor set up. If you get Lightroom I think something like this could be helpful. I'd have saved a lot of wasted effort if I'd done this at the start of using the program.

[budfox]

Go bold or go home, that's my motto.

[LastLight]

This article, and related ones, by Alan Briot (he recently wrote in more detail about his approach to processing in a couple of on-line 'magazines') might be of interest.

https://luminous-landscape.com/how-this-photograph...