Before and after, C&C and RAW advice please!

[Einstein]

Here are 3 shots. The before pics are jpegs straight from camera and the after pics are edited from RAW using GIMP. I have issues with each of them and would appreciate harsh C&C on all of them.

1. I thought this was a good subject for selective coloring.

2. I cropped, saturated and played with the colour levels to get rid of the greyness and make the grass pop. From what i understand the advantage of using raw is you can make many changes to color and level in PP without losing quality but i seem to have lost allot of image quality processing this one?

3. Cropped and upped the saturation/contrast. Also i feel like i lost allot of image quality in PP on this one. Am i doing something wrong? Too much saturation maybe?

Any help is appreciated and dont be afraid to be honest. Thanks!

 

[wisv1k]

I actually like the before in #3 more than the edit. Too much saturation for my tastes, looks unnatural.

 

[tyashinsky]

1. I'm not an expert by any means but I think if you reduced the vibrance a bit of that magenta color it'd look better. Its almost too bright I think, looks unnatural/ cartoonish almost to me. Turn it down a bit so the color stands out, but doesn't rob the beauty of the shot.

 

[arkuro]

yeah same here.. #3 looks better before. more natural I guess

 

[desertdave]

1. Great idea, You made it pop doing that
2.Sorry not a fan
3. I like it, natural or not that image just screams at you Look at me for I AM the golden sun.

 

[myfotoguy]

Welcome to TPF!

I like #3 before too. I think there are times when boosting the color does look nice, maybe this is just a bit too much. Also, because of the great silhouette the boost in color tends to compete with the silhouetted person on the edge of the hill/cliff. By the way, The silhouetted photographer is great, I LOVE that. Nice shot!

I feel like a crop isn't needed to crop IN so much as I would crop to move the horizon off center, maybe so it's lower in the frame. For example, something like:

 

[Einstein]

Thanks for the input everyone. This is my first time processing from raw and it sounds like im going overboard on the saturation all around.

I agree #2 is probly getting trashed.

#3 im going to use the tighter crop but bring the saturation back a bit.

Thanks!

Any input on losing image quality when processing in raw? Links or advice apreciated.

 

[Einstein]

myphotoguy: good call on cropping the horizon off center. will definitely take up that advice as well.

Thanks!

 

[myfotoguy]

myphotoguy: good call on cropping the horizon off center. will definitely take up that advice as well.

Thanks!

Glad my suggestion made sense. Sorry about the "welcome to TPF" earlier, for some reason I thought I read you had 3 posts.

 

[Einstein]

i was wondering about that, no worries.

 

[KmH]

Does this mean you shot RAW + JPEG?

"The before pics are jpegs straight from camera and the after pics are edited from RAW using GIMP."

What RAW converter are you using? What color space? What bit depth is the conversion being done at?

GIMP is pretty much limited to an 8-bit depth which seriously limits the editing headroom.