Post processing advice

Roadkill

Spent a day at Bush Gardens, unfortunatly it was pretty over cast so things were flat. Trying to refine my post photo editing and I am looking for suggestions and advice.

Original:




Tweeked: Adjusted levels, added a little saturation, took out a little of the blue and increased contrast a little. Oh, and burned surrounds a bit.

pathfinder

I think you did fine. I just I simply used this curve to set a white point, a black point and increase contrast a bit - here is the curve

pathfinder

And here is the result with the above curve and sharpened with a High Pass filter at ~ 6 pixels and a Soft Light Blend

I did not crop it to match your edit.

jjbong

Roadkill wrote:

Spent a day at Bush Gardens, unfortunatly it was pretty over cast so things were flat. Trying to refine my post photo editing and I am looking for suggestions and advice.

Original:

I think your biggest problem is that you didn't remove the cast sufficiently. You recognized that there was a blue cast to it, but you didn't go far enough (you didn't mention how you removed it).

I focused on the "white" fur, which may not actually be white, but shouldn't be "cold" (green or blue). I set the following sample points:



The second sample point (in the fallen branch) also shouldn't be too "cold", but it might be a little.

Using the LAB numbers on the Info palette, I'm reading negative in either A or B or both, meaning green (negative A) blue (negative or both (negative both). For your fixed version, I'm seeing improvement in the fur, but still areas of coldness, meaning colors that can't be correct.

As a first approximation, just try to make the fur white, which means equal numbers in R, G, and B. Using the Info palette as a reference, the R is too low and the B is too high for the fur. Adding a Curves adjustment layer, and calling up each of the R and B curves, clicking on the sample points, and dragging the R higher and the B lower:




Finally, changing the blending mode of the adjustment layer to Color (so that the curves don't screw up the contrast, but only change the color)



This is the result:



There is more you can do with this image (and if you want, I'll be happy to take a shot). But this demonstrates how much you can get just be getting rid of the cast.

Very nice shot, by the way.

jjbong

jjbong wrote:

There is more you can do with this image (and if you want, I'll be happy to take a shot). But this demonstrates how much you can get just be getting rid of the cast.

Very nice shot, by the way.

Pathfinder did some of the other things I alluded to, although I think a bit too harshly (de gustibus non disputandum). But if you get the ideas (remove cast, set white and black points, and get contrast into the interesting part of the shot), you can apply it to get a picture that's pleasing to you.

pathfinder

:duel

Roadkill

Thank you very much for the input and the screen shots are very helpful in getting a better understanding

I dont quite have photoshop down yet, so much of the corrections I make are through the simpler menus IE: image/adjustments/color balance.

But from your descriptions you have given me some direction and I shall give it a go.