does this pecker have "pop" ?

windoze

ive tried David's suggestions and tried my best to follow the tutorial. I tried to make one of these "pop"..... looks to me like I did but.... im not really one who knows about such things ..............

http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1075277
http://dgrin.smugmug.com/gallery/1086744





troy

gus

Troy the best way to see if you have improved the shot is to post both this version & one of how you would have done it without davids suggestions & then throw it to the masses to decide.

Nice shot

edgework

Humungus wrote:

Troy the best way to see if you have improved the shot is to post both this version & one of how you would have done it without davids suggestions & then throw it to the masses to decide.

Nice shot

I agree. It would have been nice to see the original, but even so, the version here seems a little cloudy and dull. One thing you always want to look for is places to bring out detail. The birdfeed is one, both in terms of contrast and in color. The feathers are another. I used a curve in lab to bring out some shadow detail, a general color enhancer (as in Chapter 1 of Dan Margulis' LAB book), and then a HIRALOAM and a USM for additional contrast and detail.

USAIR

edgework wrote:

I agree. It would have been nice to see the original, but even so, the version here seems a little cloudy and dull. One thing you always want to look for is places to bring out detail. The birdfeed is one, both in terms of contrast and in color. The feathers are another. I used a curve in lab to bring out some shadow detail, a general color enhancer (as in Chapter 1 of Dan Margulis' LAB book), and then a HIRALOAM and a USM for additional contrast and detail.

Man I got to pickup Dan's book
Great improvement

Thanks
Fred

windoze

edgework wrote:

I agree. It would have been nice to see the original, but even so, the version here seems a little cloudy and dull. One thing you always want to look for is places to bring out detail. The birdfeed is one, both in terms of contrast and in color. The feathers are another. I used a curve in lab to bring out some shadow detail, a general color enhancer (as in Chapter 1 of Dan Margulis' LAB book), and then a HIRALOAM and a USM for additional contrast and detail.

hmmm, i thought my original was actually quite good with a lot of pop, but when i see what you did to it, my original now "sucks"...


i have no clue about these things: curve in lab to bring out some shadow detail, a general color enhancer (as in Chapter 1 of Dan Margulis' LAB book), and then a HIRALOAM

now its back to the "no matter how much I learn, Im always getting further behind " mentality for me....

But you did GOOD and I appreciate the advice... i will try to read ( i hate reading ) that book as soon as I finish the book im on right now - Understanding Exposure - been reading it for about a year



troy

rutt

I thought that yellow text was hard to read but then I went to reply and discovered the white text, invisible against a white background (an option some of us love.)

Anyway, you don't have to read very much to be able to do most of what Edgework did (but remember that he's a professional digital retoucher and has been at it for a long time, so don't feel bad if he's better at it than you are; I don't.) Jeez, that was a long sentence. But the point is that you can read just a few posts and be most of the way to what he did with this shot. See:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=18308
http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=185241&postcount=2
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=9541

Of course you should have Dan's book, but you can get started with just a little dgrin reading.

edgework

rutt wrote:

I thought that yellow text was hard to read but then I went to reply and discovered the white text, invisible against a white background (an option some of us love.)

Anyway, you don't have to read very much to be able to do most of what Edgework did (but remember that he's a professional digital retoucher and has been at it for a long time, so don't feel bad if he's better at it than you are; I don't.) Jeez, that was a long sentence. But the point is that you can read just a few posts and be most of the way to what he did with this shot. See:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=18308
http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=185241&postcount=2
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=9541

Of course you should have Dan's book, but you can get started with just a little dgrin reading.

I agree that you can learn a lot from the dgrin posts. The threads here are a far better examination of Photoshop than on some of the dedicated Photoshop forums that I've wandered around.

As for Dan's book (and the threads summarizing some of the crucial chapters with copious examples), it has totally transformed my approach to virtually every image that I come in contact with. What is surprising is that, once the oddities of LAB are grasped, the techniques really are fairly straightforward and easy to assimilate. I find CMYK curves far more daunting than, say, the Man From Mars technique (Chapter 12) or the portrait recipe (Chapter 16).

Regarding HIRALOAM, and Rutt's excellent summary—I didn't get this step for a while. Couldn't wrap my head around it to see what it was doing. I kept thinking of it as a sharpening variation, simply because it uses the Unsharp Mask filter (okay, maybe that's not a wholly unwarranted assumption) but I couldn't see the point.

I stumbled across a discussion on creating contrast on another site, a not particularly advanced discussion; there's better to be found here. But one thing jumped out at me. They were describing the HIRALOAM technique, but calling it "Localized contrast" and suddenly everything made sense. It's not a sharpening move at all. It's a way of enhancing contrast between objects and their close neighbors, across the whole value spectrum. Since then, I haven't been able to get by without it.

DavidTO

edgework wrote:

I agree that you can learn a lot from the dgrin posts. The threads here are a far better examination of Photoshop than on some of the dedicated Photoshop forums that I've wandered around.

Regarding HIRALOAM, and Rutt's excellent summary—I didn't get this step for a while. Couldn't wrap my head around it to see what it was doing. I kept thinking of it as a sharpening variation, simply because it uses the Unsharp Mask filter (okay, maybe that's not a wholly unwarranted assumption) but I couldn't see the point.

I stumbled across a discussion on creating contrast on another site, a not particularly advanced discussion; there's better to be found here. But one thing jumped out at me. They were describing the HIRALOAM technique, but calling it "Localized contrast" and suddenly everything made sense. It's not a sharpening move at all. It's a way of enhancing contrast between objects and their close neighbors, across the whole value spectrum. Since then, I haven't been able to get by without it.

So good to hear you say that. I've really been finding it useful, and in another thread you mentioned that you didn't like it...that comment kept gnawing at me...why wouldn't this pro like that move? Well, now I can rest easy!

edgework

DavidTO wrote:

So good to hear you say that. I've really been finding it useful, and in another thread you mentioned that you didn't like it...that comment kept gnawing at me...why wouldn't this pro like that move? Well, now I can rest easy!

A pro is someone who's had more opportunity to mess up more jobs. Eventually, the hope is that you'll figure out all the stuff that didn't work and stop doing it and just focus on what's left.