"Pop" Tutorial Discussion Thread
DavidTO
Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 19,160 Major grins
This is the place to ask questions, show your attempts at "popping" your pic, and all things "poppy".
You can find out tutorial on this (updated, new and improved), here.
After you've read through the tutes, feel free to post here. Show us your progress, ask questions, etc.
Also keep in mind that this is "Pop" 101. There are many, many methods of adding pop to your picture. In other words, once you've mastered these basics, you might want to check out the LAB Discussion Group, an excellent resource, and a good next step. But please keep the discussion in this thread to the methods outlined in the tutorials.
Let the popping begin!
You can find out tutorial on this (updated, new and improved), here.
After you've read through the tutes, feel free to post here. Show us your progress, ask questions, etc.
Also keep in mind that this is "Pop" 101. There are many, many methods of adding pop to your picture. In other words, once you've mastered these basics, you might want to check out the LAB Discussion Group, an excellent resource, and a good next step. But please keep the discussion in this thread to the methods outlined in the tutorials.
Let the popping begin!
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Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam
http://www.mcneel.com/users/jb/foghorn/ill_shut_up.au
Yep
Thanks
Fred
http://www.facebook.com/Riverbendphotos
Oooh!... this is a fabulous powerpoint tidbit...
Thanks!
the following photo was one of favorites taken over the past year, unfortunately the bulk of the photos were poorly exposed...
the following is a link to my 'before pop' fix
this next photo is your after 'pop fix' ...MUCH BETTER
...this indeed was the color of the baby baboons coat
now I am left with one challenge, to get those eyes back, given that they are what makes this photo!..
what would you suggest for bringing out her
...bright hazel eyes with the pitch black pupils?
Thanks in advance.
First off, you're not done with the pop yet. Have you taken a look at Part 2? You can do more.
As for the eyes, that's not really in the scope of this discussion...but the curves work that you do in Part 2, you could make a layer that you push further for the eyes, and then paint a mask with a soft brush so that it only effects the eyes.
Keep working on the curves for pop, and when you're happy, why don't you post in a new thread about the eyes? I really don't want this thread to become cluttered with a lot of different methods/problems. At least not yet. This is Pop 101...what you're asking about is the next step...
It would be great if you posted a link to that new thread here, though, so that anyone interested in following it could find out what you learn!
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Also, where did you set your black point? I set it on your before, and my results are very different from yours. Overall I find your after to be too dark and shadowy.
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I will go back and rework step #1 ....Thanks.
(my final choice on my first run through with step #1, was the nostril or the outside ring around the eye!?
I was considering both and foirget which one I settled on?)
re: step #2...
as for my baby babbon, I am unsure where to mark my HIGHLIGHT and SHADOW points....
I do understand why you chose the mans cheek area as the main focus to set the points, but given the ideal main focus of my photo, is the Baboons eye (and given it is very under-exposed)... should one be looking elsewhere on the photo, to mark these two points?
... OR should I still mark my highlight/shadow points within the eyes and tweak from there??
in a nutshell, I am confussed
thanks again.
I would do the same thing. The monkey has light hair on the cheeks and darker hair around the nose/mouth...perfect!
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Using this as a practice picture. This was just a quick, for the heck of it, shot.
I tried part 2, so how do you decide what to highlight? Tried a couple spots, and the marks did come up, but trying to adjust the marks changed the whole picture, not just the marked areas, so I left it.
The original and 1st attempt are here
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=25422
New attempt
I will give step #1 and #2 a run through and post my masterpiece
After I nail the 'POP' (with your direction), I will research how to tackle the eyes!
Thanks!
here is where I am so far!
-part 1
I chose left pupil of the eye
x-24.556
y-15.861
-part 2 (1st step)
I moved bar around for highlights and settled on
input - 219
output- 255
-part 2 (2nd step)
I placed the markers as you suggested
cheek hair for lightness
and
nose/lip area for darkness.
I then, manually moved both markers in a left/right -horizontal- motion.
...after completing part 2 (2nd step), I realized my mistake...
I tweaked based on the eyes (which popped the eyes, but over exposed the remainder of the photo)
The next stab at at PART 2 (which I will post later on tonight), will focus on an overall pleasing exposure of baboons hair, human freckles, red hair and perhaps a little enhanced green in the background etc.
....the Eyes will be tweaked in a future technique I have yet to learn?
David from TO...is Anson from Ventura
before
after
I will take another stab and post for your comments!
The internet connections at work is wicked slow today, couldn't even load your images.
Sounds like you're on the right track. Move your points up and down, not left and right. (At least for starters).
Yep, Thousand Oaks! Nikolai, too. We get together and shoot some, drink too much...
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Hell, I am still at the crawling stage!
Okay, I seem to have hit a snag...
the last step, setting the markers for highlights and shadows on Babs face, and then moving markers around/tweaking...
I do not seem to be able find any consistency in the end result of this last stage...
every time I attempt a tweak, I get yet a different outcome...
I do not yet understand how much and/or, how little to move the markers
normally, does one move both markers around in an north/south as well as east/west direction? (what visuals/clues would you look for to find the sweetspot in this last step?)
Thanks
You command-click (control-click, PC) and it sets the markers in the curve. You then move them up and down. The horizontal represents what you marked in the image. When you move that marker to the highlights, that spot in the curve will brighten, to the shadows it will darken.
It makes sense that you would get different results, as you are most likely not doing it exactly the same each time.
It's a judgement/balancing act. You want to get more contrast out of that area of the image while not crushing the shadows or blowing out the highlights. Keep playing...
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Chris
Detroit Wedding Photography Blog
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This is a tricky image, a difficult image, actually, and one that doesn't really lend itself to the Pop formula all that easily. The theory is that by pulling the lightest and darkest points to their maximum potential, the overall tonal range will be expanded, with a subsequent increase in detail. In this image, you don't really have a problem with crushed highlights or flat shadows. The lightest areas, in the gray shirt could be pulled a bit farther down, but not much. The darkest areas, in the baboon's face, don't need to go too much darker. So the interior curves become crucial.
The two areas most needing attention are the two faces. The human face runs in a range from about 45% to 65% and the baboon (is that what it is?) runs from around 65% to 90+%. You don't want to make the baboon any darker so the obvious choice is to pull the bottom end of that range down more. But this crushes the top end of the human face, requiring a further move from the bottom end of the skin range, to keep the detail from flattening out. But now we get into a problem with the shirt, which, in your version, has lost much detail. In fact, the entire move has lightened everything at the expence of the detail and contrast. The baboon is too dark to start with, but there needs to be a distinction between the dark and light areas, which is not there. You have simply shifted this lack of distinction to a lighter range.
This is the curve I came up with to help things out, without losing needed darks or blowing out the lightest areas.
Whenever you need to steepen a curve in one area, by definition you flatten it elsewhere, ruining detail in that area. The trick is to find a good place to hide the flat pixels. In this image I applied a fairly linear steepening throughout both face ranges. Then I let everything below 35% go flat, though I put some brakes on with the anchor at 15%, to keep the lightest areas of the shirt from blowing out and also to keep some detail in the folds. But between 15% and 35%, its pretty much a loss. Fortunately, there's not a lot going on in that range. I could have pushed the anchor at 35% up a bit to sharpen the cloth folds a little more, but that is where the lightest parts of the skin fall, and I liked the definition in the face more than in the shirt. This is the result.
Better, but the whole image still needs contrast in all areas, and curves are too heavy handed to manage it. That's why I've become such a fan of the HIRALOAM technique. Read Rutt's excellent discussion here: http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=185241&postcount=2. By processes still mysterious to me, it allows contrast to increase between nearby elements, without an overall lightening or darkening that curves would produce. My settings were Unsharp Mask: amount—30, radius—32. I applied it to a duplicate of the original image, and here's the result with the same curve as before.
Now that the image seems to be in good shape in all the areas of its range, a slight, overall lightening will be appropriate. I used a simple curve, with one anchor at 20%, pulled down to 15%.
The last problem is the eyes. They're still too dark, but trying to address them with a curve will screw up shadow areas that are doing just fine elsewhere. So, we come to the number one rule in image work: cheat. No one says you have to accomplish everything in one step, or in one way.
Eyes are often too dark, when the rest of the face is just fine. The long fix is to mask out the eyes, with a curve adjustment layer and adjust to taste. The quick fix is to pop a new layer in Soft Light mode, get a big soft brush and plop two globs of white on top of each eye. Shrink the brush some, go to the mask and at a lower opacity paint black into the areas around the eyes that you don't want lightened, then adjust the entire layer's opacity to taste. I used a setting of 40%, just enough to wake things up.
Further moves are called for, of course, including a traditional Unsharp Mask, but I think that would be outside the scope of this particular thread.
One other thing to note: when using master RGB curves, as is the case with the Pop tutorial and as I've done here, there will be a red shift as you pull the lower end of the curve down to brighten highlights. This has been noted elsewhere and seems to be an unavoidable function of altering not just the value, but also hue and saturation. Shifting your curves to Luminosity mode will show the difference. In this case, since darker tones are always more neutral, a luminosity curve didn't look as pleasing, so I left them in Normal mode, but it's worth keeping in mind.
—Korzybski
This simple recipe is just that...a simple recipe. It won't save all pictures.
There are a million ways to skin this cat, and post processing is a fine art that one can always learn something new from.
Anson, take the time to digest and understand Edgework's step by step and feel free to ask questions...
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And I am handicapped as my printer is not printing out photos or examples.
But does one use the same curves, if it is a different image?
ginger
You might have to think.
I did get yours printed out. A def advantage.
ginger (headache and stomach ache. Will try this and post. Am going to try to photograph bridge at night, next two to three nights, damn cold here. Have never done this before: night, long exposures. Decided to try this, too.)
But think????
I completed the lab one, and I am going to try the RGB one. I can't print out, or download the curves as I have forgotten how, but they were quite similar as to the ones Rutt used, except I set a dark pt, then when I set the light pt, I was quite unhappy with it being too light, so I made it darker.
I am trying here.
I cannot print the curves and examples from david, don't know why, so I am looking.
For the sake of simplicity, I've moved it, and you can find it here. Like I said above, there's a million ways to add pop. This basic recipe is very easy and works on a lot of images. It's not the most powerful way of achieving pop, but it's a good first step. I highly encourage anyone interested in taking this further to follow any of the threads that rutt or his team of summarizers has started. Most can be found by starting here.
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And I am going to put them all on here:
This, below, is as the photo was brought up from Raw, full frame:
This is as done by the RGB method as covered in the first part of this thread. I used both references as just the black point was definitely not enough. I also increased the saturation by about 20, across the board. I then sharpened it.
My purpose in taking this photo early morning was to show the morning light shining on the bridge. I cannot say I was successfull. There is a lot of yellow here, I could bring out more, but this is actually pretty accurate and playing with selective colors was not part of this exercise. And bringing out more yellow has not helped this photo in the past.
This is as was done by that other method, beyond the scope of this thread, but it is interesting to me to compare them, as I understood the instructions. I also added saturation to this one and sharpened it. It does show the yellow a bit more.
I am still not particularly happy with these photos, sigh. You can imagine that I don't want to go out in freezing temps for the next two nights learning/trying something I have never done before: big sigh.
Here just for fun is the other one I did. I like the bridge colors in this one best. I do think the marsh grass is too prominent, dark, something, if I liked the photo, I could keep working on it. Why or why was this damn bridge so difficult.
ginger
This whole pop thing was never meant to be the only thing you needed to do to an image. But too many shots posted on dgrin lack a black point. Having a black point in an image is very important...except when it isn't. There are some shots that won't have a black point, but most do.
On another note: looks like it's time to clean your sensor.
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My philosophy: beware of both Spiritual leaders and retouching techniques that claim to address all questions with one answer.
—Korzybski
I think it was the windy day that undid it, or photographing this bridge the last time. Very discouraging as I even stayed away from the beach to keep the darn sensor clean.
I have never cleaned it and will put it off as long as possible. This, however is minor compared to where it was when I sent it to Canon.
g
David this was a wonderful tutorial! I've struggled with getting "pop" in my images and this really helped me get started.
Here's a so so shot of my middle son SOOC (except for sizing)
EXIF
ISO 1000
F25
Shutter 1/400
I think you went a bit far with the pop, and the contrast looks a touch harsh. But that's good, only way to learn, right?
Be careful where select your black point, make sure it's really what you want black. I tried that on your before image, and I gotta tell you, it doesn't need much more than that. The sun was harsh when you shot this, so there's a lot of contrast built in...
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You're getting there. I agree with David's comments that you took the black point a little too far. This image starts out with quite a bit of contrast already so you don't need to add much. Some things you might want to also do to this image are:
- Use some noise reduction. I can't really tell whether I'm seeing noise or JPEG artifacts from high JPEG compression, but ISO 1000 makes me suspect some noise.
- Warm up the image a bit. The skin tones feel a little bit cold and the white part of the tennis shoes had a bit of a color cast to them.
- Post with a litte less JPEG compression so we can see the image detail better.
- Use a little shadow/highlights on the highlight side to bring a little more detail back in the shirt and foam on the waves.
Here's my attempt at doing those things:Homepage • Popular
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