Middle Age

Icebear

Three Zinnias in the garden - Youth, Prime-o-Life, and Over-the-Hill.
These are some of the results of a comparison I'm doing between Zerene and CS5. I'm not at all sophisticated at this, but what I'm seeing so far is that Zerene seems to do a better job of aligning the images, but Auto Align then Auto Blend in CS5 (so far) seems to make me happier overall.

Since this does not seem to be the majority opinion here, can I get some hints as to how to get the best results from Zerene? I'm still in the trial period.

Youth


Prime-o-Life



Over-the-Hill


Thanks for looking, and I'll appreciate any advice!

Lord Vetinari

Wonderful series os shots.
One slight negative - think you have some blown colour on the petals.
Brian v.

Icebear

Thanks Brian. What do you mean by "blown colors?" Do you mean that (for instance) the orange petals are oversaturated? I shot these in JPEG, which is not my usual practice, and I thought they looked a bit cooked too 'till I went back and looked at the flower. It really is quite vivid, but yes, there does seem to be some "blooming." Here's one of the SOOC jpgs.



If that's not what you meant, I missed your meaning.

Icebear

Lord Vetinari wrote: »

think you have some blown colour on the petals.
Brian v.

Does this address what you were referring to? Heck, you were probably talking about one of the other flowers anyway.

As original posted:

Red & Orange dialed back

Lord Vetinari

Hi John,
By blown colour areas I meant the colour value was stuck at 255 and you lose detail (ie the colour was overexposed just like white overexposure). Having said that , it might have been tired eyes last night- they don't seem too bad this morning .
Brian V.

Icebear

Thanks for your help Brian. I do sit up and take notice when you give advice.

GOLDENORFE

good shots, the stacks look pretty good.
always a good idea to check the petal edges of stacked version to the single frames and use touch up tool to correct any blemishes.
agree the reds and oranges blown in many areas, probably too much to recover any detail. [ they are the worst colours for blowing ]

i think partial stacks work better for flower shots, with back petals oof.

#1 looks like it has been oversharpend ?

Icebear

GOLDENORFE wrote: »

i think partial stacks work better for flower shots, with back petals oof.
#1 looks like it has been oversharpend ?

Hey Phil,
Thanks for the feedback,
I agree about the back petals being allowed to blur. These were an exercise. I also shot them in jpeg which I'm not used to, and I think I let the camera's VIVID setting overcome my better judgement.

Do y'all shoot jpegs if you're going to go through Zerene, or shoot raw, process to a flat looking jpeg to run through Zerene, then process the output for sharpness and saturation, or what? Zerene can't handle raw files can it? Zerene's touchup tool sure strikes me as easier to use than mucking about with layer masks in CS5, but at least in CS5 I can work on the raw files, then get the kind of look I want with the final product. I'm sure it's lack of familiarity (and lack of skill) more than anything. That's why I'm here looking for advice.

I do agree the red and orange zinnias and the marigold I posted a few days ago all look cooked/blown/oversaturated, whatever.

Lord Vetinari

Icebear wrote: »

Do y'all shoot jpegs if you're going to go through Zerene, or shoot raw, process to a flat looking jpeg to run through Zerene, then process the output for sharpness and saturation, or what? Zerene can't handle raw files can it? Zerene's touchup tool sure strikes me as easier to use than mucking about with layer masks in CS5, but at least in CS5 I can work on the raw files, then get the kind of look I want with the final product. I'm sure it's lack of familiarity (and lack of skill) more than anything. That's why I'm here looking for advice.

I do agree the red and orange zinnias and the marigold I posted a few days ago all look cooked/blown/oversaturated, whatever.

I always shoot RAW no matter what I'm going to do with the shots after and just process RAWS as I would normally to jpgs for stacking.
Brian V.

Flowerman

IMHO - You would of had better luck with your processing if you had shot the first flower for all of the shots. Also, the first shot shows an almost perfect flower with no petal problem, of course the bugs might get to it on succeeding days. Placing a plastic bag over it , removing it for photography, would eliminate the chewed pedal problem.
Great idea - I may give it a try.
Ed Siciliano

www.photoman74.smugmug.com