The Photography Thread

[DaiSuki]

Thought I'd stick one or two more of mine up, since this thread has come back to life

> bizarre chinese guys in matching hats <

> bike bloke; i like the focus on the leaves as much as anything else in this shot <

> long exposure of the North Sea after sunset; the lights across the bay turn the water a most peculiar colour <

No photoshopping or owt; as I've proved, I can't use it to save my life

[MartyG]

That hats one is ace - that wouldn't look out of place as a billboard advert.

How did you manage to stop that one?

[andrewfee]

I just had a very quick go at editing this flower image in Photoshop Elements 3.

The first thing I did, was duplicate the layer and do a "Shadows & Highlights" adjustment - around 7% shadows, and left highlights / midtone contrast alone.

I then created a "Levels" adjustment layer in "Luminance" mode, so it only affects the brightness/contrast of the image, and not the colour.

If you hold down Option / Alt and bring in the slider on the right below the histogram, it brightens the image, and will show you as soon as something is clipping. (will be pure white) I went with around 241. The same was done with the slider on the left, I brought it in to 5.

If I had the "Proper" Photoshop, I would then have closed the dialogue box and created a "Curves" adjustment layer in "Luminosity" mode and adjusted the midtones using that, but as I don't, I just dragged the midtone slider over to the left to 1.30. Output levels were left at 0 and 255.

As brightening up the shadow areas revealed some noise, I duplicated my Shadow/Highlights layer and ran the "Noise Ninja" plugin on it. (well worth buying, in my opinion) I just let it use an auto-profile with USM set to 0, and everything else at the settings left on it from the last time I used it; as it didn't look to be ruining the image, I left it at that. If it was something "critical" I'd have spent a lot of time playing around with it to get the settings just right.

I then duplicated my Shadow/Highlights layer again, putting it below the "Noise Reduction" layer, made it the only visible one, (option/alt click on the eye) and did a basic sharpening. I left it on the USM 220, 0.3, 2 that it was previously on, as it looked "ok."

I brought down the opacity of the "Noise Reduction" layer down to around 50% to make the effects of sharpening more visible, but this still lost some of the detail from the flower.

To fix this, I brought out the selection brush in "mask" mode, and painted in the flower, keeping just in from the edges, so as not to enhance any ringing that might be there. (as I didn't fine-tune the sharpening) With the flower very roughly painted in (only takes seconds with my Wacom tablet) I feathered the edges 3px to smooth the transition, inverted the selection (Cmd, Shift, I) and deleted it from the "Noise Reduction" layer.

Showing you the levels pallette probably makes understanding this all a bit easier:


So there you go, it probably took at least 5-10 times longer to type that than it did to actually do it (literally only spent 2 minutes) but I hope that helps. If it was an image of mine I was going to put in an image gallery, I'd have spent a lot more time with it, and probably done some colour adjustments etc, but I think it looks pretty good considering how little time it took.

[Magnakai]

To be honest - I much prefer Thisco's PSed flower.
The detail on the petals is much greater.
Perhaps bring back the Shadows & Highlights just a tad to let some of the base detail show through?

Good call on Noise Ninja, though. Tis fantastic.

After all this Photoshoppery, I'd like to point everyone towards this article/rant by Ken Rockwell.
It's very inspiring to someone who spends at least 10 minutes a day lusting after a decent SLR.

Oh, and I might as well chuck this up here.
I'm quite pleased with it, especially when it's a bit bigger than that.

[andrewfee]

Might be a case of monitor calibration then, as there's no detail lost there at all - I brought it right to the edge of clipping using the levels adjustment technique mentioned above. (my monitor is calibrated to D65 with a Gamma of 2.2) I hadn't noticed that post though; wouldn't have bothered if I had. (although I feel it helps to explain the processes being done)

I have a fair bit less contrast in the midtones, making the shadows on it less harsh, and the detail more subtle, giving the flower a softer, more delicate look. Personal taste I guess; there's more saturation / contrast in his image than I would personally have.

As I said though, had I noticed his post, I wouldn't have done this at all, so I'm not trying to say one is better than the other etc.

But of course, it's best to have the "right" image straight out of the camera than having to do any post-production at all.

[Magnakai]

Oh, ok.
Sorry, I didn't mean any slight by that! I really enjoyed the post, I just assumed that it was intended as an improvement, since it was posted afterwards.

[MartyG]

Ken's right you don't need a fancy camera to take good photos, I've got an old Olypmus OM10 35mm which I've taken great shots on, I think it's a little different with digital cameras though. If you have a cheap thing like my Jenoptik LCD 3.1, despite how you frame a shot it'll always look grainy because of the cheap CCD and lens; the D50 takes far better photos. Having said that, my Olympus C2020Z which is a 2 MP camera takes some cracking shots, certainly able to compete with the DSLR, but it doesn't have the same flexibility an SLR provides.

The Jenoptiks thing I take everywhere because it doesn't really matter if it gets lost or stolen, I'd never use it as a main camera.

My Flickr account has photos from all three of those digital cameras.

I like that Ticket shot very much.

[DaiSuki]

That hat's one is ace - that's wouldn't look out of place as a billboard advert.

How did you manage to stop that one?

The picture's tag says F2.8 @ 1/30th. I'm pretty sure I took it on program mode where all I needed to set was the focus and the camera did the rest for me.

I watched them for ages... they were at the Terracotta Army museum, and eventually they stopped right under the balcony I was on and formed into that tremendous pattern

[MartyG]

I meant snap rather than being after an apature setting

You couldn't have planned for them to be better positioned - just a shame no one bothered to clean the floor properly - mind, those marks look pretty easy to photoshop out.

[Thisco]

Might be a case of monitor calibration then, as there's no detail lost there at all - I brought it right to the edge of clipping using the levels adjustment technique mentioned above. (my monitor is calibrated to D65 with a Gamma of 2.2) I hadn't noticed that post though; wouldn't have bothered if I had. (although I feel it helps to explain the processes being done)

I have a fair bit less contrast in the midtones, making the shadows on it less harsh, and the detail more subtle, giving the flower a softer, more delicate look. Personal taste I guess; there's more saturation / contrast in his image than I would personally have.

As I said though, had I noticed his post, I wouldn't have done this at all, so I'm not trying to say one is better than the other etc.

But of course, it's best to have the "right" image straight out of the camera than having to do any post-production at all.

Thanks for all the trouble though. Your post was very inspiring to learn more about the program.

I do agree though that for me a good photograph is one which I really like WITHOUT it having been through Photoshop. Therefore, the flower in itself was nicely framed, in the middle of the darker leaves, so I was pleased with it as it was. With a bit of tinkering I must admit that it's nice to have the background a bit lighter, but still...the original picture has to be good or I won't bother trying to make it into anything halfway decent afterwards.

I believe the expression goes: you can't dress up a turd :-D

[DaiSuki]

I meant snap rather than being after an apature setting

I wasn't sure, so I answered it both ways

[Thisco]

It's absolutely LOVELY weather over here so I'm tempted to go out and make some new photographs. For the time being I'll post some 'older' stuff. Some of these were also made with an older camera, I believe a Canon, 3.2 megapixel. Very pleased with the shots it produced.

No photoshop-enhancements have been applied yet, but feel free to recommend stuff!

Clich? 'arty' picture on the beach:

http://static.flickr.com/5/8222746_9774afc799_b.jpg

Nice sea view:

http://static.flickr.com/6/8221364_40cc91478c_b.jpg

Bunker on the beach with crashing waves ( will Photoshop the people in the upper right corner away :-D ):

http://static.flickr.com/8/8221421_be0c2f3b79_b.jpg

Rent a motorbike:

http://static.flickr.com/24/47188678_65550d1c09_b.jpg

Bottle of water:

http://static.flickr.com/24/50464431_61289a8b1f_b.jpg

[MartyG]

Couple of pics I've taken today ...

[Distant Cousin]

That's one stoned/sinister looking pigeon!

[LaParka]

Frank Kozik fan, LaParka?

Sorry only just saw this.

Yeah - freakin' nuts about his stuff. Bought a subscription to him this year so I should be getting tons of stuff in.

The glow pic is a set of japanese figures called Secret Base. Cost quite a bit as they're made in japan, but the quality is superb!!