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Here's an example of a before and after. The first is straight Raw to jpeg conversion. The second is retouched. Very similar to the film process.




Here is the retouched. Cloned out the lights, increased contrast in the foreground, lightened the water, fixed the horizon, and contrasted the sky (though I'm not sure I should have bothered with the sky). It's smaller because I don't like having high resolution stuff for people to rip off.




What do you think? Do I go too far? Is it overcooked, would you have done more? What would you have done? Should I have left the sky alone?

it'sgreat
your an artist you have a vision and if ou can't technically get what you want via your camera there is no prob tweaking
you have more skill in realising and perfecting your vision using the camera and your photoshop skills together

i looked through your 50 best images on your flikr site many have not been posted here amazing work, they all have a fantastic art direction to them

Dave,

I very much like the processed version compared with the raw. What did you do exactly? Crop and curves or something trickier? I think the sky is not overcooked at all.

Alex

For me you haven't gone to far, and it's definetly not overcooked (had your sky turned green, then yes it would of been overcooked ).

Thanks for sharing with your process for turning you great raw images, in to lovely works of art. For a moment there reading the thread title I thought this might of been a wild life photo of a bird at the zoo !

Dave, very nice, not too far for me

I like the second.
not overdone either.

Is interesting because I knew you had shot it before I saw who did.
that is a style you have made your own, at least around here!!


interested also in what you did to the second.

Steve

Thanks guys.

I'm a bit of a hack with photoshop. I know that I'm supposed to work in Layers, but I can't get my head around them. I make selections with the lasso, sometimes the wand (the foreground for example). Then I hit Q for quickmask, and add a gaussion blur (10 to 25 pixels wide or so). Then I adjust the levels. I used to only work in curves, but I find the levels slider a little easier to manage for some reason.

Same with the water, I brightened it just a touch.

Same with the sky, except all I really wanted was deeper darks, I ended up losing some of them, and the sky turned out pretty good already in the original. Then I go ape with the cloning tool and get rid of the lights and spots.

Dave, what a lovely image.

To answer your question: In my opinion what you have done with the 2nd is great. I would have left the sky as it is in the first, but that's just my personal preference. The highlights in the sky are just a little too blown in the 2nd for me, but as Wendell says, this is art, so it's up to the artist. Maybe if you'd used Shadow/Highlight Adjustment (I think it's called), you could have adjusted up the contrast in shadows and mid tones but left highlights as they were. You could get a similar effect with the middle (grey) slider in Levels I think.

I would encourage you to work with layers though. It's just so easy to tweak something in a layer, turn the tweak on or off by making the layer visible or not and even change the tweak after you've done a whole lot of other stuff, maybe days later. Once I learned how to do this I never do anything except in a separate adjustment layer. Even things like Shadow/Highlights that you can't do in an adjustment layer, you simply duplicate the background layer and do your Shadow/Highlights on that. I promise you, once you get the hang of it, you'll never look back. I got hold of a photoshop tutorial from somewhere (probably off this forum but I can't remember), practiced for an hour or so, forced myself to use layers for the first few times and now it's second nature. I also always save my psd with layers intact (maximum compatibility or something like that is what it's called) so I can easily and simply come back and tweak my changes long after.

Layers are your friend. Just my 2 cents worth.

Cheers
John

Dave,

I really like what you've done in PP with this image. For mine, the second image is a definite improvement on the RAW image.

Thanks for sharing your PS technique as well. As a newbie to digital imaging and PP, I find it very helpful when you more experienced guys (and gals) explain how you achieved a certain effect.

Would you mind explaining a few things to me in more detail? Firstly, why do you select quick mask? Does this limit the changes you're making to the image to just those areas you've selected? Why do you use gaussian blur and what settings do you use? How did you brighten just the water? Finally, do you sharpen your images and if so what method and what settings do you use?

Thanks a lot for that John. I needed a good talking to do about layers. It's so basic, and it's my own laziness that I haven't figured it out.

ABG,
I'll tell you how I did it, but you have to understand that it isn't necessarily the proper way. As John said, these things should be done in Layers (it's non-destructive to the image, and totally reversable). But I suppose what I do is similar in principle.

Firstly I make a selection. You can do this with the wand or the lasso, by clicking or lassoing an area. Hold down shift to add another area without deselecting the other one. Alt click subtracts it. Then I hit 'q' for quickmask, which allows you to control the transition between the selection (water/foreground) and the non selected areas (sky etc). You need to do this because if the area between the selected and non-selected areas separates with only one pixel, it doesn't look natural at all. When you add a gaussion blur to it, it creates a smooth blended transition between the selected and the non-selected areas. There's a bit of skill in figuring out how much gaussion to add, where in the selection the line goes etc. The settings of gausion blur on the quickmask depends on how much blend and transition you need. I do sharpen my images, and this is a tricky subject, but I sharpen only with Rawshooter premium, as I find it easier to manage (and harder to overdo) than Photoshop. I was never sure in ps if I was oversharpening, and often would print to terrible effect. Since sharpening in the Raw converter, it's more manageable.

Again, don't take me for gospel, I'm total hack. I figured this stuff out by clicking around. I need more formal training, but I generally achieve my desired effect.

I agree with the sky. I was bent on getting more contrast in it, when it didn't need it.

Dave I may be out of step with others but to be blunt I much prefer the RAW version. I an guessing but by bringing more deatil out of the shadows you have lost some detail and the other end. I really like the RAW image.

ive got to agree with Oneputt, i prefer the raw version.. only problem with it is the slanted horizon, i like the lights from the building on the left side.. but in the processed version the building is gone, but the light is still shown on the water.. doesnt look right...

Tim

The sky I definitely lost some of the effect. I have to either: paste in the old one, or start again from scratch.

Oneputt, are you talking about detail in the sky, or in the foreground? The sky was actually achieved with curves (testimony that I'm not very good at curves on selected areas). I do think I erred in my treatment of it.

Zeek, the light on the right, I didn't want to try and fix perfectly, because there's some orange in the water all around it, and I thought that by only getting rid of the obvious bright orange, the rest would look like a reflection of the sky (it would have been very difficult for me to completely get rid of it).

I find that the lights from the houses on the left, and the city in the distance only distract, so whenever I can I clone them out. For me it focuses on the foreground, the water, and the sky. Sometimes city lights are okay, but in this case I found them sporadic, pulling the eye to the side.

I really appreciate your input.

Thanks for sharing your PP techniques Dave - greatly appreciate it. You may consider yourself a total hack, but your results speak for themselves. Newbies like me learn so much from the more experienced members like you who share their knowledge. And before anybody jumps on me, Dave your images are fantastic straight out of the camera

you definitely have some good work Dooda and I always look forward to viewing when possible

I'm not sure how you processed it, but by the looks of it, you've pushed the sky out in trying to pull the rock up. grrr limiting digital dynamic range!!

I would have treated the image in two layers. I like the sky in the first image and the rock in the second. And pasted one on the other.

Padey, I did it through selecting the areas, but not through layers as previously suggested. But yes, I was sloppy in my treatment of the sky. I should have left the highs alone and and lowered the mids. I'll revisit this perhaps one day.

I much prefer the "worked" one, slight halo around the rock edge but like the pushed levels on the foreground subject, takes my eye straight to it, like the increased spotlight on the boat on the water, and the movement in the sky is terrific...

Also, cloning out the distracting lights made a huge difference...

Nice stuff...