I could do with a bit of help either in photo settings or post processing photoshop fiddling.
So I took the picture below and it looks fine but I can never really get the colours to 'pop' like I see a lot of people posting on sites. It just looks a bit 'flat'. Now I grant you the bird was a bit in the shade so that doesn't help (and some pictures on sites look very over saturated and artificial) but what can I do either in the camera settings or, I suspect more likely, in post processing to really make it a bit brighter/vivid and more punchy with the colours?
If that was my photo (and I shoot in Raw) I'd brighten the image a tad and increase the contrast. It looks a bit under-contrasted (if that's a word) to me, which is why I think it looks 'flat'. Then I'd look at increasing the saturation.
I use the software that came with my camera (Digital Photo Professional) which has some basic tools to fiddle with images without going the full Photoshop experience. That's all I've ever used to post-process because it has sliders (for Raw photos at least) to control exposure, contrast, saturation, white balance and tone.
Kev did you shoot it in RAW?? I mainly use adobe camera raw to adjust my images. That image needs a bit of a bump in exposure for a starters, I'd say about 3/4 - 1 stop more. I usually give some clarity a bit of a bump up, adjust black point to give desired contrast, and if shot in raw you can add in a bit of saturation to brighten up the colours. In ACR I generally wouldn't go more than +20. If you go too nuts you will start to lose detail in those areas.
You could possibly tone down the background a bit if you can be bothered, as that will brighten up when you bump up exposure as well. Perhaps even use the sponge tool on 'desaturate' in photoshop to tone down the colour for the background. In contrast to the bird that may help to make it stand out a little more. A lot of this stuff is just messing around. The key is usually to give the photo a bit more pop but not go so far it looks overdone.
Generally these days I stay out of photoshop as much as I can, and most working photographers are the same. Everyone I know does 99% of their organisation and editing within either Bridge/ACR or Lightroom.
Kev,
The standard Canon software (DPP) is also quite good. I use it to do any post shot processing...you should also give it a run as it wont cost you anything as it would be on one of the disks you got with your camera!
Hazelb wrote:Kev,
The standard Canon software (DPP) is also quite good. I use it to do any post shot processing...you should also give it a run as it wont cost you anything as it would be on one of the disks you got with your camera!
As VT suggested the biggest reason the image looks flat is because of the lack of contrast.
If I only did one edit on my images in Photoshop it would be a "levels" adjustment, a 10 second adjustment can make a huge difference to how the image pops.
Create a levels adjustment layer & holding your finger on the alt key bring in the black & white points until you see clipping & then back off the adjustment until the clipping points disappear. It will make sense when you try it....the screen changes colour.
Lightroom is fantastic & I use it when I'm working on multiple images however if I have one particular image that I really like I will work on it in photoshop.
Speed wrote:Create a levels adjustment layer & holding your finger on the alt key bring in the black & white points until you see clipping & then back off the adjustment until the clipping points disappear. It will make sense when you try it....the screen changes colour.
Not sure what you mean by clipping but I'll give it a go.
You can usually see it on a histogram. Same sort of graph you can use on your camera when shooting images. Basically let's you know when highlight or shadow detail is lost at each end of the graph. Left side of the graph is the blacks, right hand side the highlights. Or as mentioned, theres a colour indicator in photoshop that shows up on your actual photo. This is basically the same adjustment I mentioned when using camera raw... but just doing it a different way. There's a thousand ways to do the same or similar job using different programs or even multiple techniques often within one program. Which ever way you choose to do things, I'd start off by shooting in RAW. The editing power and massively increased latitude you get from a RAW file is one of the biggest advantages of digital imaging in my opinion.
DexterPunk wrote:The editing power and massively increased latitude you get from a RAW file to salvage some sort of result when you've fucked up something while taking the photo is one of the biggest advantages of digital imaging in my opinion.
Haha very true! But it's still no reason to get lazy about exposure. I honestly believe if you get that right then you can use that extra latitude for enhancing rather than fixing. You can also shoot with editing in mind... Just like folks did in the black and white film days - "Expose for shadows, develop for highlights." I do this for digital capture a lot, specially for landscape images.. But usually reversed... Shoot for highlights... Or rather... Just dont blow them.
Cool thanks guys.
Well it looks like we have some nice-ish weather this weekend so after I get up and watch the F1 qually over lunch I think I might go for a walk in the afternoon and see if I can put some of these things in to practice and see if any insects are about yet to give the macro a go.
Just switched the camera over to RAW. I'll have to invest in a bigger SD card. My 8mb one will only hold about 220 pics but a 32meg is a reasonable £30 to push that up to 1000 pics.
Big Kev wrote:Just switched the camera over to RAW. I'll have to invest in a bigger SD card. My 8mb one will only hold about 220 pics but a 32meg is a reasonable £30 to push that up to 1000 pics.
I have a bit of a computer meltdown recently, which resulted in a fresh install of windows, and photoshop.
Now, when I'm in ACR, certain settings seem missing. For example, there is no setting to turn on the gridlines in the cropping tool anymore. And in lens correction, there are no settings for my camera/lens at all. These things used to be there so I am lost!
Any idea on some hidden away setting I might need to click?
I'd say it's gone back to an older version of ACR. Which ever is included with your version of photoshop. It's free to download/update... Google the newest version and grab that.
