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

[nac]

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

My lens profile is not available

 

[sujoyp]

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

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

Jpeg->JPEG *copy.com/BFTs6BTl7mmQ

 

[Gen.Libeb]

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

 

[izzikio_rage]

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.

 

[sujoyp]

I have applied some grad filter effect from picasa too

 

[Gen.Libeb]

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 ?

@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

 

[sujoyp]

@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 ....

 

[raja manuel]

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.

 

[izzikio_rage]

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.

 

[Faun]

Why one should shoot in RAW ?

Raw File

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

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

 

[raja manuel]

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.

 

[izzikio_rage]

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

 

[izzikio_rage]

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

 

[sujoyp]

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.

 

[sujoyp]

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.

 

[Gen.Libeb]

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)

 

[lm2k]

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.

 

[sujoyp]

@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

 

[lm2k]

@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.

 

[sujoyp]

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