How to Improve This?

jandrewnelson

What can I do in post processing to take this from a good shot to a great shot? I have GIMP, Raw Therapee and Noise Ninja (although I'm FAR from porificient with Noise Ninja.




Thanks for the help
Jerry
www.meesoon.smugmug.com

pathfinder

Jerry,

What is your goal for this image? Is this to be a documentary photo, an artistic rendering, or do you have some other task planned for it? What do you want to improve or feel needs improvement?

In order to edit an image AND improve it, you must see its defects first, and what its potential might be. Even better is to be aware of the potential when your press the shutter. Photoshop, or other image editing software like Gimp, certainly can improve very good out of the camera images significantly.

When I edit my images I have a planned workflow that I follow for most of my images.

Since I usually shoot in RAW, I do most of my major global edits there, color temp, sharpening, chromatic aberration corrections etc.

Then if needed, I may set black and white points and adjust the color temperature again if needed. I crop to my estimation of the ideal crop if I missed it in camera. I do curves on various selections in the image if I feel they are needed. I do a de-noising on portions of the image if I feel the image will be stronger without noise. I may then do a final sharpening for output.


If my image is out of focus straight from the camera I just delete the image. I am very strict about this for my own work.


Image editing software will not really fix out of focus images and this image does not seem sharp to my eye. It may be acceptable, but not ideal, for your purposes, however. For documentary purposes high pass sharpening might make this a useful image at small sizes.


The lighting is not noteworthy, but you can improve the contrast a bit with the Curves command in Gimp I suspect.

The color chosen for the back ground does not create great separation from the statue, but you might select the background and alter the color in Gimp, or replace the background with a simple gradient fill like this



If your image is to be the basis for an artistic rendering, give it a run through Topaz Adjust and see it that won't help some. I think it might.

jandrewnelson

pathfinder wrote:

Jerry,

What is your goal for this image? Is this to be a documentary photo, an artistic rendering, or do you have some other task planned for it? What do you want to improve or feel needs improvement?

Thank you for all the help!!