Photo Edit Show n' Tell
Quote from KankRat on February 22, 2022, 6:29 pmI think the snow should maybe be "whiter".
I am always struggling with that. I get home and the snow looks a bit yellow or blue, and I'm left wondering if it always did and my eyes adjusted (it always just looks white in person, except for unique lighting situations), or if it's a white balance issue.
What is funny now is if you blur your eyes a bit boy do the stick and the eagle shot look similar. Is it just me?
It may be just you 🤣
I do see what you mean about those bird shots (what an outstanding angle of view, wow...). Compared to the eagle they do look more "natural" and less like a crop/edit has taken place, but I have to really look for it.
Quote from JBP on February 22, 2022, 8:11 pmQuote from KankRat on February 22, 2022, 6:29 pmI think the snow should maybe be "whiter".
I am always struggling with that. I get home and the snow looks a bit yellow or blue, and I'm left wondering if it always did and my eyes adjusted (it always just looks white in person, except for unique lighting situations), or if it's a white balance issue.
I think it is probably WB. Can try that eyedropper thing in LR. I've used that quite a bit.
I think the two shots look a lot alike. The general color scheme especially.
I do see what you mean about those bird shots (what an outstanding angle of view, wow...). Compared to the eagle they do look more "natural" and less like a crop/edit has taken place, but I have to really look for it.
Thanks. The vulture was from was looking down or almost eyelevel into a valley from the top of a cliff. The eagles are from the top of a bridge and were in a river valley. Would have been cool to have better lenses.
The difference when you take a shot with flat overcast low-ish light and then try to fix it in post to me looks like a shot from the early days of digital photography (2002 ish). Believe me, I have plenty of those shots.
Back then I was not at all a fan of digital photography. I used to say "ecchh looks digital".
Quote from KankRat on February 22, 2022, 8:37 pm
I do see what you mean about those bird shots (what an outstanding angle of view, wow...). Compared to the eagle they do look more "natural" and less like a crop/edit has taken place, but I have to really look for it.
Thanks. The vulture was from was looking down or almost eyelevel into a valley from the top of a cliff. The eagles are from the top of a bridge and were in a river valley. Would have been cool to have better lenses.
The difference when you take a shot with flat overcast low-ish light and then try to fix it in post to me looks like a shot from the early days of digital photography (2002 ish). Believe me, I have plenty of those shots.
Back then I was not at all a fan of digital photography. I used to say "ecchh looks digital".
I started on film because I felt the same way. That seems like forever ago. I was a teen and got the gear pretty much for free (Canon AE-1 Program + kit) but soon could not afford film or development. I started down the darkroom path, again getting some stuff for free, but didn't see it through. Someday I want to do that.
Then I got the K10D and could snap as many photos as I wanted and I was like "OK, yeah, I get this digital photography thing." Ironically I actually took better photos with the film camera but I didn't realize that then. I look back at my early K10D photos and it's mostly crap. 😅
Quote from JBP on February 22, 2022, 9:46 pmQuote from KankRat on February 22, 2022, 8:37 pm
I do see what you mean about those bird shots (what an outstanding angle of view, wow...). Compared to the eagle they do look more "natural" and less like a crop/edit has taken place, but I have to really look for it.
Thanks. The vulture was from was looking down or almost eyelevel into a valley from the top of a cliff. The eagles are from the top of a bridge and were in a river valley. Would have been cool to have better lenses.
The difference when you take a shot with flat overcast low-ish light and then try to fix it in post to me looks like a shot from the early days of digital photography (2002 ish). Believe me, I have plenty of those shots.
Back then I was not at all a fan of digital photography. I used to say "ecchh looks digital".
I started on film because I felt the same way. That seems like forever ago. I was a teen and got the gear pretty much for free (Canon AE-1 Program + kit) but soon could not afford film or development. I started down the darkroom path, again getting some stuff for free, but didn't see it through. Someday I want to do that.
Then I got the K10D and could snap as many photos as I wanted and I was like "OK, yeah, I get this digital photography thing." Ironically I actually took better photos with the film camera but I didn't realize that then. I look back at my early K10D photos and it's mostly crap. 😅
I'm guessing you are a lot younger than me.  I am 57.  In the last 5 years I accumulated so many nice film cameras  for next to nothing .  I have 1 from every major manufacturer.  The scary part is, I was gawking over them when they were new.
Here's an edit I'm really happy with. Same sort of idea with some of my other wildlife images.
- Upped the exposure by a stop
- Cropped (you don't see the uncropped image here)
- Masked bird and gave a small exposure bump, sharpness and texture
- Started working on colors. A lot of yellows and browns from the bird and a pop of green that I positioned behind the birds head to make it pop. So, I went with a Triad color scheme and emphasized some of those colors in the color grading tab and also the HSL tab.
- Masked the background and lessened texture, sharpness, clarity and bumped up noise reduction for a smooth dreamy background.
- Took to photoshop to remove background sticks
- Decided to add a small radial filter right on the birds head and gave a +0.1 exposure bump. Very slight but I find it an effective way to draw attention to the eye.
And here's the final photo. Some photos from process attached below:
Carolina Wren by Snappiness, on Flickr
Quote from James Warner on March 8, 2022, 5:16 pmHere's an edit I'm really happy with. Same sort of idea with some of my other wildlife images.
- Upped the exposure by a stop
- Cropped (you don't see the uncropped image here)
- Masked bird and gave a small exposure bump, sharpness and texture
- Started working on colors. A lot of yellows and browns from the bird and a pop of green that I positioned behind the birds head to make it pop. So, I went with a Triad color scheme and emphasized some of those colors in the color grading tab and also the HSL tab.
- Masked the background and lessened texture, sharpness, clarity and bumped up noise reduction for a smooth dreamy background.
- Took to photoshop to remove background sticks
- Decided to add a small radial filter right on the birds head and gave a +0.1 exposure bump. Very slight but I find it an effective way to draw attention to the eye.
And here's the final photo. Some photos from process attached below:
Lovely! I was comparing the photo with and without the branch taken out and I couldn't decide which I liked more. I actually like the one with the branch left in. I like the "looking through the brush" feel of it, feels more adventurous or something. But the other image is cleaner and that looks great too. I like them equally for different reasons.
Also, and I may be repeating myself, but I really like the technique you outlined of blurring the background. I've been using it to blur out messy house backgrounds when taking family photos when I can. My kid has wild curly hair so it can be a challenge to do this without it being obvious ("select subject" struggles with her hair, it's funny, looks like it just gave up in areas lol).
Quote from JBP on March 9, 2022, 2:37 pmQuote from James Warner on March 8, 2022, 5:16 pmHere's an edit I'm really happy with. Same sort of idea with some of my other wildlife images.
- Upped the exposure by a stop
- Cropped (you don't see the uncropped image here)
- Masked bird and gave a small exposure bump, sharpness and texture
- Started working on colors. A lot of yellows and browns from the bird and a pop of green that I positioned behind the birds head to make it pop. So, I went with a Triad color scheme and emphasized some of those colors in the color grading tab and also the HSL tab.
- Masked the background and lessened texture, sharpness, clarity and bumped up noise reduction for a smooth dreamy background.
- Took to photoshop to remove background sticks
- Decided to add a small radial filter right on the birds head and gave a +0.1 exposure bump. Very slight but I find it an effective way to draw attention to the eye.
And here's the final photo. Some photos from process attached below:
Lovely! I was comparing the photo with and without the branch taken out and I couldn't decide which I liked more. I actually like the one with the branch left in. I like the "looking through the brush" feel of it, feels more adventurous or something. But the other image is cleaner and that looks great too. I like them equally for different reasons.
Also, and I may be repeating myself, but I really like the technique you outlined of blurring the background. I've been using it to blur out messy house backgrounds when taking family photos when I can. My kid has wild curly hair so it can be a challenge to do this without it being obvious ("select subject" struggles with her hair, it's funny, looks like it just gave up in areas lol).
That makes sense. So far I have only used it for wildlife photos, and not for portraits. The main reason for wildlife is that I am often shooting at high ISOs and want to clean the noise from the background. The noise reduction does it's job, but then removing texture and sharpness finish the job by smoothing it out.
With portraits I am usually in more controlled lighting, or at least more preferably natural lighting and high ISO isn't an issue. Also my lenses that I use for portraits are f2.8 or faster which helps that and the background blur as well.
But the idea can definitely be applied anywhere. Even a landscape picture you could exaggerate the depth of field, or just remove noise in certain areas, etc. Still learning a lot about post processing as I've said before. Very much a novice.
This image was taken with my K-3 & 55-300 DA L at 300mm, 1/2000s, f/8.0, ISO 560.
The top image is the image at 100% view with my Lightroom settings. It's hard to see in this low quality image but the bird had gotten pretty noisy from these adjustments even though I was only at ISO 580. So I ran it through DXO (settings on the right-most image). DXO has three denoise algorithms: High Quality, Prime, and DeepPrime. The first two don't seem any better than LR's denoise tool, so I usually use DeepPrime. I like to use as low of a luminance as possible with DeepPrime otherwise it starts to make the image look artificial.
My next problem were the fringes around the tree limbs. Maybe I'm not good with the tools, but sometimes I can't get rid of the fringing with the lens correction or defringe tools. Thankfully in this photo the only greens and blues were the fringes, so I just brought their saturation down and voila!
Then I probably cropped the photo way too much but I liked the branches coming out of the two bottom corners.
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I shared this photo a while back but I was never quite happy with it. I worked hard for it through the cold and rain, trying to capture the fog over the water and in the trees. It was so beautiful in person but I just couldn't get it on camera. It was a 20s exposure with my K10D and 18-55mm sitting in the snow. Fun stuff!
Here I've made a few edits to try to better show the scene how I saw it. I made it black and white which seems to suit the scene well, and I added two masks: one of the stream with boosted clarity and reduced texture, and one for everything else with reduced clarity. I feel like it is a foggier looking scene now, as it was in reality, and the water looks better to me as well with the extra pop of the highlights.
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