Dgrin #6 Angular?

NanaMo · May 30, 2007

Any comments or criticisms would be appreciated....is this considered angular enough?

Air Force Academy had graduation today and every year they have a performance by the Thunderbirds.....got 158 more :roflif I need to find a more severe angle :scratch...but not quite this close.

Thanks in advance,
Maureen

richtersl · May 30, 2007

Sorry, but I don't get angular or curved in this.

Do you have any shots of them leaving curved con trails? Or doing "loop de loops"?

Tessa HD · May 30, 2007

lps #6
I agree with Linda.

Tessa

fashiznitsngrins · May 30, 2007

Great shot, but doesn't really scream the theme. The planes themselves are very angular but the overall picture says "airplane".

sherstone · May 31, 2007

nope neither

but I do think its a cool shot.:D

Nikolai · May 31, 2007

Maureen,
Sorry, this one doesn't "fly"

Strikeslip · May 31, 2007

richtersl wrote:

Sorry, but I don't get angular or curved in this.

Do you have any shots of them leaving curved con trails? Or doing "loop de loops"?

Good idea. Looped con trails might be attractive, and the planes would be minimal size-wise.

davidweaver · May 31, 2007

Nice Shot. Like the others I'd suggest something else.

Cheers!

NanaMo · May 31, 2007

Thanks one and alll!

Back to the 'drawing board' ......here is a sample of the con trails as suggested.

Thank you all for taking the time to post comments.

Maureen

richtersl · May 31, 2007

You have a curve in there for sure! And the composition's really good. But your image looks very noisy and grainy. :cry

I don't even know how to recommend that you correct it, because at times I get noisy skies like that too, especially when using a polarizer. I asked about it here at Dgrin several months ago and was told it was the Red Channel where the noise was located and I was never able to clean it from my photo.

I suspect you have something similar happening in this yours.

Nikolai · May 31, 2007

Maureen,
If you happen to have some shots of F-117, they could be great angular entries

LiquidAir · May 31, 2007

richtersl wrote:

You have a curve in there for sure! And the composition's really good. But your image looks very noisy and grainy. :cry

I don't even know how to recommend that you correct it, because at times I get noisy skies like that too, especially when using a polarizer. I asked about it here at Dgrin several months ago and was told it was the Red Channel where the noise was located and I was never able to clean it from my photo. I suspect you have something similar happening in this yours.

One way to clean up the sky here is to put the planes on a second layer with a mask. There are a variety of ways to approach making that mask, but starting with a color range and cleaning it up with a paint brush is the first thing I would try. There is very little color separation between the planes and the sky in this shot which is going make it very difficult to create a mask. The mask you create will let you add some definition to the planes which will add a lot of pop to the shot. Personally I think the quality of that mask will make or break the shot so it is critical to get it right.

Next, make a second copy of the background on a middle layer, so it looks like this:

Planes Layer
Sky Layer
Background

Clone out the planes on the sky layer so it becomes a solid field of blue and then apply a gaussian blur to it to clean up the noise. Usually when you blur a sky you will see some posterization (color level contours) in the gradient. That is why we saved the original. You can now tweak the blend of the sky to bring back in a little of the original noise which will magically make the posterization vanish. While you are at it, I'd drop an HSL layer on top of the sky and tweak it to a more appealing color. The planes are mostly shadowed and dark, so lightening up the sky will give you some of the contrast and pop the shot needs.

NanaMo · May 31, 2007

I suspect you have something similar happening in this yours.[/quote]

Thanks Linda, as you see LiquidAir sent us a great tutorial to resolve this "situation".

I have several other ideas and will try those .......

Maureen

NanaMo · May 31, 2007

Nikolai wrote:

If you happen to have some shots of F-117, they could be great angular entries

roflhe, he ....I am in the flight pattern at my house for the AFA....but by the time I pointed my camera to the sky it was nothing but noise!!! (It was a beautiful, magnificent machine...from what I could see.)

Maureen

NanaMo · May 31, 2007

LiquidAir wrote:

One way to clean up the sky.......

Thank you so much for the tutorial. I am sure it will be valuable to many dGrinners!

I will try to do this but have a few other ideas that might be "cleaner" and will work on your recommendation when not feeling under pressure.

Thanks again from all of us out here that your note helped!!

bow

Maureen

richtersl · June 1, 2007

LiquidAir wrote:

One way to clean up the sky here is to put the planes on a second layer with a mask. There are a variety of ways to approach making that mask, but starting with a color range and cleaning it up with a paint brush is the first thing I would try. There is very little color separation between the planes and the sky in this shot which is going make it very difficult to create a mask. The mask you create will let you add some definition to the planes which will add a lot of pop to the shot. Personally I think the quality of that mask will make or break the shot so it is critical to get it right.

Next, make a second copy of the background on a middle layer, so it looks like this:

Planes Layer
Sky Layer
Background

Clone out the planes on the sky layer so it becomes a solid field of blue and then apply a gaussian blur to it to clean up the noise. Usually when you blur a sky you will see some posterization (color level contours) in the gradient. That is why we saved the original. You can now tweak the blend of the sky to bring back in a little of the original noise which will magically make the posterization vanish. While you are at it, I'd drop an HSL layer on top of the sky and tweak it to a more appealing color. The planes are mostly shadowed and dark, so lightening up the sky will give you some of the contrast and pop the shot needs.

Thank you! This is so good to know because it's ruined more than one photo for me. I wish you had stumbled on to the note I had posted over in Finishing School a few months ago. Now I have to go play!

Dgrin #6 Angular?

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