Autumninal Scenes

canon400d

Autuminal scenes along the banks of the River Nith which runs through the town of Dumfries, Scotland. C & C welcome as usual.
Regards
Bob
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JMP

thats a beautiful place, but why is that all colors look like washed out?
i'd try different exposure settings, and always look for the highlights to get better readings, do not forget Bryan Peterson's book: Understanding Exposure!
Keep bringing us those images, they help us develop styles and keep us hooked on this marvelous art!
Thanks!

canon400d

JMP wrote:

thats a beautiful place, but why is that all colors look like washed out?
i'd try different exposure settings, and always look for the highlights to get better readings, do not forget Bryan Peterson's book: Understanding Exposure!
Keep bringing us those images, they help us develop styles and keep us hooked on this marvelous art!
Thanks!

Yes thanks for your advice. I really will look at Brian Peterson's book as I am still learning and thanks again for all your kind help.
Regards
Bob

Cato

I really like the menagerie of color in #'s 3 & 4.

I hope you don't mind, I took a minute to play around with one of your images. It's a little over-the-top for some tastes, but I just wanted to give you an idea of the latitude you have during the post-processing process.

Please let me know if you want me to remove the image.

canon400d

Cato wrote:

I really like the menagerie of color in #'s 3 & 4.

I hope you don't mind, I took a minute to play around with one of your images. It's a little over-the-top for some tastes, but I just wanted to give you an idea of the latitude you have during the post-processing process.

Please let me know if you want me to remove the image.

Thanks Cato, I think you have done a great job there as it certainly looks much better than mine. I use photoshop CS3. What did you do exactly to bring out those striking colours. When I took the shots I had it on ISO 800 and I think I should have been much lower.
Regards
Bob

Awais Yaqub

Apart from technical issues i really like the shots. I think reshooting this beautiful place will be worthy !

Jack'll do

Hi Bob
I had the same problem with many landscapes (that hazy, washed out look). Somewhere along the way I found this quick and easy fix. Simply apply the unsharp mask with very low amount, very high radius, and threshold 0 or 1. Another method though more steps is to increase brightness and contrast with an adjustment mask and then apply the high pass filter. (A tutorial on hpf is here. I took the liberty of applying these techniques to two of your images (hope that's OK). I'll post the usm results below. I have created a protected gallery with the other (hpf/bc) results and will PM you the Password. The gallery is in the "Other" category on my homepage.

Original Image

USM applied (amt. 27 radius 158 threshold 1)

Original #2

USM applied (amt. 38 radius 158 threshold 1)


The nice thing about this is that you can play around with the amount slider and toggle the preview till you get the desired result.

Cato

canon400d wrote:

Thanks Cato, I think you have done a great job there as it certainly looks much better than mine. I use photoshop CS3. What did you do exactly to bring out those striking colours. When I took the shots I had it on ISO 800 and I think I should have been much lower.
Regards
Bob

Hey Bob. I also use CS3. On your photo, I used EDIT > IMAGE > SHADOW/HIGHLIGHT and adjusted the "Shadows" sliders all the way to the left, and played with the 3 "Highlights" sliders. It is an easy and interactive way to affect the color and contrast of your image.

One of the neat things about Photoshop is there are many paths to the same result. You can see that Jack'll do accomplished the smae effect by utilizing Unsharp Mask. You can also use "Smart Sharpen", which is similar to Unsharp Mask but supposedly has a better alogorithm. In general, I try to avoid doing any kind of Sharpen operation until the very end of my processing, as I want the corrected colors and contrast sharpened, rather than the other way around.

Like my camera skills, my post-processing skills are pretty mediocre. There's a whole bunch of ways to get things done, and subtleties in techniques that I could never see until someone shows them to me.

canon400d

Jack'll do wrote:

Hi Bob
I had the same problem with many landscapes (that hazy, washed out look). Somewhere along the way I found this quick and easy fix. Simply apply the unsharp mask with very low amount, very high radius, and threshold 0 or 1. Another method though more steps is to increase brightness and contrast with an adjustment mask and then apply the high pass filter. (A tutorial on hpf is here. I took the liberty of applying these techniques to two of your images (hope that's OK). I'll post the usm results below. I have created a protected gallery with the other (hpf/bc) results and will PM you the Password. The gallery is in the "Other" category on my homepage.

Original Image

USM applied (amt. 27 radius 158 threshold 1)

Original #2

USM applied (amt. 38 radius 158 threshold 1)


The nice thing about this is that you can play around with the amount slider and toggle the preview till you get the desired result.

Hi Jack I see exactly what you mean. You have done a terrific job on those and I will have a go. I acknowledged your PM before I saw your post. I will have a look on your site. Thanks again for all your kind help.
Regards
Bob

canon400d

Cato wrote:

Hey Bob. I also use CS3. On your photo, I used EDIT > IMAGE > SHADOW/HIGHLIGHT and adjusted the "Shadows" sliders all the way to the left, and played with the 3 "Highlights" sliders. It is an easy and interactive way to affect the color and contrast of your image.

One of the neat things about Photoshop is there are many paths to the same result. You can see that Jack'll do accomplished the smae effect by utilizing Unsharp Mask. You can also use "Smart Sharpen", which is similar to Unsharp Mask but supposedly has a better alogorithm. In general, I try to avoid doing any kind of Sharpen operation until the very end of my processing, as I want the corrected colors and contrast sharpened, rather than the other way around.

Like my camera skills, my post-processing skills are pretty mediocre. There's a whole bunch of ways to get things done, and subtleties in techniques that I could never see until someone shows them to me.

Thanks Cato, I can see exactly what you mean and I must admit I am like you I have to be told and shown how to get there and you are right about there being many ways to the end product. That is what I like about CS3 at first I found CS3 very difficult but after a period of time and constant usage and reading one can achieve some excellent results. However, with the help of others from Dgrin makes life much more pleasurable and everyone is so helpful which I truly appreciate and I will try your method too.
Thanks again,
Regards
Bob

canon400d

Awais Yaqub wrote:

Apart from technical issues i really like the shots. I think reshooting this beautiful place will be worthy !

Thanks for looking Awais, I am going to take some more shots like you say to see if I can improve.
Regards
Bob

imonk

Hi Bob,

I'm just up the road from you in West Lothian so I know that this isn't haze from a sunny day It's bloomin cold here eh!!

Anyway, this looks to me like flare from the bright sky. Did you have a lens hood on? If so, perhaps you need a deeper one for that lens. I have an older 35-70 2.8 that I bought and I couldn't believe how much it flared and so I went out and bought the deepest hood I could, and it really does make a difference.

Cheers
Ian

onebaduce

canon400d wrote:

Autuminal scenes along the banks of the River Nith which runs through the town of Dumfries, Scotland. C & C welcome as usual.
Regards
Bob

Wow from a flyfisherman's perspective what a great river to fish! Made my jealous that you have such a nice river to get a line wet in. I think a close up of someone actually fishing with that beautiful tree line in the back ground would make a great shot!

Thanks for sharing

Jack'll do

Cato wrote:

... in general, I try to avoid doing any kind of Sharpen operation until the very end of my processing, as I want the corrected colors and contrast sharpened, rather than the other way around....

I too reserve sharpening until the end, but this technique, though it uses Unsharp Mask, is not a sharpening process at all. Using a small amount (around 20 or so) and a large radius (50 or more) increases local contrast and reduces haze. The method is often referred to as "haze cutting", "HIRALOAM" or "local contrast enhancement".

As you said, there are many ways to skin a cat.

ritewinger

Photos are ok, a little post processing will help. Tough time of day to take snaps, hope you don't mind a 3 minute touch up, a full sized raw file would be a delight to work on. Keep shooting and posting.

canon400d

imonk wrote:

Hi Bob,

I'm just up the road from you in West Lothian so I know that this isn't haze from a sunny day It's bloomin cold here eh!!

Anyway, this looks to me like flare from the bright sky. Did you have a lens hood on? If so, perhaps you need a deeper one for that lens. I have an older 35-70 2.8 that I bought and I couldn't believe how much it flared and so I went out and bought the deepest hood I could, and it really does make a difference.

Cheers
Ian

Hi there Ian good to know I have a neighbour. Which part of West Lothian are you. Gales forecast for this weekend. You are quite right I didn't use the hood on that occasion but I certainly will in future.
Regards
Bob

canon400d

onebaduce wrote:

Wow from a flyfisherman's perspective what a great river to fish! Made my jealous that you have such a nice river to get a line wet in. I think a close up of someone actually fishing with that beautiful tree line in the back ground would make a great shot!

Thanks for sharing

Thanks for looking Onebaduse. Yes it is a very popular river for fishing and as the river runs into the sea {Solway Firth} you then find the half netters at work. They stand in the water above their waist and hold these huge nets to catch the salmon.
Regards
Bob

canon400d

ritewinger wrote:

Photos are ok, a little post processing will help. Tough time of day to take snaps, hope you don't mind a 3 minute touch up, a full sized raw file would be a delight to work on. Keep shooting and posting.

Thanks for looking Ritewinger and I certainly don't mind at all. I always shoot raw now and I have certainly learned a lot from this thread.
Regards
Bob