Have a go!?

[fig]

January 17, 2007 at 12:48 pm

I’ve been trying to get a decent photo from a raw photo I took a couple of weeks ago and just can’t get something I like from it (Mostly due to lack of experience/knowledge) Below is the best I could come up with. Does anyone want to have a go from the raw file (Download Raw) and post the result here with an explanation of what you did?

Keep Hill, Tipperary.

[Aimee]

January 18, 2007 at 11:45 pm

hey that looks pretty good to me!!

[fig]

January 19, 2007 at 9:39 am

Thanks :-) Thing is though I don’t like the sky at all and I can’t seem to get the foreground right either. Maybe I’m just looking at it too long or maybe there isn’t a nice shot in it.

[PeteTheBloke]

January 19, 2007 at 12:23 pm

I don’t rate my own PS skills very highly. If you like this, I’ll post up a quick list of what was done.

[earthairfire]

January 19, 2007 at 12:28 pm

Don’t have time to do this myself at the mo, but I’d process the same image twice in RAW – once for the foreground, and once for the sky. I’d then blend these together to get the best of both worlds, if you get what I mean.

Next time, I’d put a graduated Neutral Density filter on when taking the shot, so that you balance out the brightness of the sky & the land, and leave yourself with a lot less processing work to do!

If this makes no sense, gimmie a shout – didn’t wanna overcomplicate it, or patronise you so tried to go with the middle ground!

Tim

[fig]

January 19, 2007 at 12:29 pm

Yes, I like the sky better in that. Spill the beans :-)

It’s all new to me, to do mine I just followed a tutorial. Still a bit confused on how to get the best from each image.

[fig]

January 19, 2007 at 12:33 pm

Thanks Tim, I’ve been meaning to get a ND Grad for a while now but I have a cokin system and it’s quite difficult to find filters for this these days.

On the conversion, I did create this from two processed files from Raw but I just followed and tutorial and wasn’t happy with the result. Just interested in what others can do with the same file.

[PeteTheBloke]

January 19, 2007 at 12:39 pm

Here goes…

1. From RAW shift the exposure till the histogram just touches the right. This brings the sky to the edge of being blown out.
2. Save (in my case I saved as tiff)
3. From RAW shift the exposure till the histogram comes away from the left.
4. Open
5. Open the saved file.
6. Follow the instructions in Brandyman’s tutorial here https://www.photographyireland.net/viewtopic.php?t=3021

Then – and this is the bit I’m not so good at – try to fade out the flare blobs, centre and low left. I copied ech blob onto a new layer and played with the red histogram till it blended in a bit. The low left one was easier than the central one. I ended up making the central one 50% transparent.

I used an unsharp mask 40%, 4.1, 0.
Adjusted the saturation so that the foreground looked lit.
Saved.
Resized to 800px.
Flattened image.
Change profile to sRGB.
Re-adjust saturation.
USM again.
Save jpg.

I think that’s the lot. There are much better PS users than me here. I hope one of them will have a go for you.

Pete

[Rob]

January 19, 2007 at 12:59 pm

Very nice effort Sir Bloke. Your version had brought to attention a massive amount of detail in the middleground that was otherwise a little soft and unremarkable. The sky is improved a good deal too though could probably do with just a tad more contrast to give those streaks and clouds a bit more definition. The foreground of the original image has the sweeter and warmer colours for me, and better light, though it could do with the sharpening you’ve achieved in your version. Nice one. Be good to see a few more takes on this…

Rob.

[fig]

January 19, 2007 at 2:20 pm

Thanks Pete. That’s very helpful. I have been doing very basic merging. Great post by brandyman too.