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

nac

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

Gen, That guessing part was for fun... :)
 

Gen.Libeb

Padawan
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
 

sujoyp

Grand Master
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
 
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Gen.Libeb

Padawan
@ 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
 

nac

Aspiring Novelist
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
 

Gen.Libeb

Padawan
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.

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
 
OP
izzikio_rage

izzikio_rage

Technomancer
@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
 

nac

Aspiring Novelist
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.
 
OP
izzikio_rage

izzikio_rage

Technomancer
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
 

sujoyp

Grand Master
@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..
 

Gen.Libeb

Padawan
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
 
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