The Salmon Approach

Dwayne Oakes

I took marks advice and tried some pp for the first time. It is only a jpeg
file that I have no nef files yet so not much wiggle room on this one. I am using nikon NX2 demo. What do you think ?

-levels to set the points
-a little contrast boost
-light USM

Take care,

Dwayne Oakes

no pp




with pp NX2

Thwack

If you're using Nikon's "Capture NX2", try putting a "color control point" right where the water is blown out in your pp'd image (the spot where the bulk of the water comes together).

I know it's a black & white pic, but I find the color control point easier for tweaking than the black or white control points in NX2. Place it right in the heart of the white spot, lower brightness a bit and boost contrast.

Resize the control point's area of impact to suit your tastes. I gave it a quick shot just now and it improved the look of that spot. I worked with the second pic (the pp'd one). Try your level tweaks, etc again on the first pic but add that control point to prevent blowing out that spot.

NX2 makes tweaking small spots really quick and easy. I've only just started using it a few months ago and then only lightly. Santa brought me NX 1 and Nikon gave me a free upgrade to NX 2 (saving about fifty bucks in the process).

Thwack

Here's a quickie comparison showing the original pp'd pic on top of you can see the color control points I added and the effect they made. The original is in the top half of the picture below and NX 2's tweaked version in the bottom half.

I'm guessing, they'd work better on the original pic (in case any data was lost when those spots got blown out).

HoofClix

I've been over in the Whipping Post trying to get Dwayne to see that pp, even a little, is critical to making his images. Dwayne, I commend you for taking this step, and I think that your slightly corrected image is much more pleasing to the eye. I assume also that you've made your contrast adjustments on your D80's black&white capture. You might find that teking a color capture, then doing the bw conversion in the computer, adjusting the color channels to simulate the filters will give you an advance edge on some more definition in the water, as was already suggested here by Thwack...

Dwayne, now that I've convinced you to try the atlantic salmon, we'll be working to further enhance your pallette by moving on to to some of the wild-caught varieties. We may even soon be able to move to several varieties of tuna, who knows...