New Member: C&C / What Can Post Production Do for Me?

[banpreso]

Hi All:
I'm new to this forum. I've had my Rebel XT for maybe over 2 years now, have been shooting with the 18-55 lens that came with it. Nothing too serious, just frame and shoot. I think I'll take photography a bit more seriously now, now that I actually have some assignments to shoot concerts and events and other fun stuff around the guitar scene. I just purchased the Canon 50mm f1.4 lens, with polarizes, will be here tomorrow! I'm super excited!

Anyways, I've always been curious about post production. I really haven't done any up to this point. I'd appreciate some C&C on the pictures which I'll be posting below, as well as some tips on how I can do some PP on these pictures and make them... better?

Thanks in advance

Pictures are taken on a recent vacation to Shanghai

1.

2.

3.

4.

 

[cosmoepic]

what can post production do for you? other than anything? EVERYTHING

just use it to enhance a already good photo which is what you have here you dont want it to necessarily look photoshopped at all, just enhance whats there

in #2 i would say raise the contrast a bit as well as the exposure since to me it looks alittle under exposed

 

[banpreso]

I've never done PP in my life before... so really don't know what I'm doing.

Is this better or no?

Version 2x

Version 2Y

 

[cosmoepic]

the top one is yes, thats actually pretty close to what i did, i may have (on accident) deleted it off my photobucket hence the icon above

but much better good job!

 

[LaFoto]

Well, with the photo of the street scene (and also with regards to the first), nothing in pp will help save the blown-out sky. And when you start brightening up the ENTIRE photo, the overexposed part will become brighter and brighter. So while your first edits look brighter, more contrasted and more (too!) deeply saturated in the shadowy areas, at the same time the brightly white sky became even brighter and whiter. The second edit is too warm in colour temperatures, or do people have a skin colour like they have in the second edit?

What you would need to do in the case of a photo like that (second one, street scene, bright sky), where the light dynamics were way too large for your camera to capture all of it correctly, is either try to create a HDR-photo (that would mean three differently exposed photos, one exposing for that sky, one middle exposure, and one exposing for the street) by maybe using the auto-bracketing function of your camera, but this does not work too well with moving objects/people walking about. Or you would need to tonemap your photo, selecting the darker parts and working on those seperately from the sky, so the bright sky would at least remain unaffected by any further brightening steps.

But that does not remedy the fact that in the first and second photo the sky is blown, featureless and too bright.

Composition is yet another thing that needs to be looking into...... but that is too much for now. I need to get myself going, too.

 

[TheUndisputed]

Well, with the photo of the street scene (and also with regards to the first), nothing in pp will help save the blown-out sky. And when you start brightening up the ENTIRE photo, the overexposed part will become brighter and brighter. So while your first edits look brighter, more contrasted and more (too!) deeply saturated in the shadowy areas, at the same time the brightly white sky became even brighter and whiter. The second edit is too warm in colour temperatures, or do people have a skin colour like they have in the second edit?

What you would need to do in the case of a photo like that (second one, street scene, bright sky), where the light dynamics were way too large for your camera to capture all of it correctly, is either try to create a HDR-photo (that would mean three differently exposed photos, one exposing for that sky, one middle exposure, and one exposing for the street) by maybe using the auto-bracketing function of your camera, but this does not work too well with moving objects/people walking about. Or you would need to tonemap your photo, selecting the darker parts and working on those seperately from the sky, so the bright sky would at least remain unaffected by any further brightening steps.

But that does not remedy the fact that in the first and second photo the sky is blown, featureless and too bright.

Composition is yet another thing that needs to be looking into...... but that is too much for now. I need to get myself going, too.

The comment about nothing being able to do for the blown out sky is completely false information. He won't be able to work the the sky he currently has, but he can lasso the blown out area out, take another picture of blue sky with clouds and insert it as a layer in place of the sky, and then use the burn tool to bring the edges of the buildings and the building roof in the back ground back into the picture.

If I wasn't so drop dead tired, I would do it right now and repost it. Maybe I will do it tomorrow when I get a chance and show you. Anything is possible in post processing.

***EDIT***
Ah, I went ahead and did it anyways. This was only about a 3 minute job, but it's all my brain can comprehend right now:

1. Blown out portion selected with magic wand
2. Blown out portion deleted to transparency
3. New sky introduced as new layer beneath initial layer
4. Burn tool used on 24 exposure on highlight selection to get rid of stray pixels around building tops and to bring rear building more visible into the image.
5. +1.33 Exposure Adjustment Layer
6. +6 Contrast increase
7. Minor curves adjustment to equal out the midtones.

 

[bwlergh]

This:

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/just-fun/153805-photoshop-midnight.html

Turned my friend into corpse bride hahahahaha

 

[Samanax]

I've never done PP in my life before... so really don't know what I'm doing.

Is this better or no?

Version 2x

Version 2Y

Both versions are way over-processed and don't look "real". I like the original better as there is a certain mood to it...the people are all bundled up and it appears it was an overcast day so I imagine it was kinda cold. The colors and look of the picture convey this to me. I'd leave it as is.

Since you want to get more serious into photography you'll learn that preparation, set up and getting it right in camera are going to be very important. While your pictures are nice, they're basically vacation snap shots. For your upcoming assignments you'll want to go out and practice first...you want to be aware of the light conditions in the place you're in, which direction the light is coming from, look at positive and negative space, understand how light falls on an object and how to position yourself to make the best use of that light, practice your composition skills, practice shooting in both landscape and portrait orientation, etc, etc, etc...event photography is quite a challenge...be prepared.

 

[banpreso]

thanks for all the tips and comments guys! obviously at the moment i'm in desperate need for improvements. i'll try to read up and practice as much as i can.

 

[Overread]

The comment about nothing being able to do for the blown out sky is completely false information. He won't be able to work the the sky he currently has, but he can lasso the blown out area out, take another picture of blue sky with clouds and insert it as a layer in place of the sky, and then use the burn tool to bring the edges of the buildings and the building roof in the back ground back into the picture.

If I wasn't so drop dead tired, I would do it right now and repost it. Maybe I will do it tomorrow when I get a chance and show you. Anything is possible in post processing.

***EDIT***
Ah, I went ahead and did it anyways. This was only about a 3 minute job, but it's all my brain can comprehend right now:

1. Blown out portion selected with magic wand
2. Blown out portion deleted to transparency
3. New sky introduced as new layer beneath initial layer
4. Burn tool used on 24 exposure on highlight selection to get rid of stray pixels around building tops and to bring rear building more visible into the image.
5. +1.33 Exposure Adjustment Layer
6. +6 Contrast increase
7. Minor curves adjustment to equal out the midtones.

Nope - you still can't save the blownout sky - in a DSLR (or any digital camera) if the camera exopsure captures either totally overexposed (white) or totally underexposed (black) areas in the shot the detail in those areas cannot be restored no matter how much editing you do because the data is not saved into the image at any point - its just a white or black area.
What you have done is replace the sky with one from another image - idealy you would use the bracketing method LaFoto described to do this, taking the correctly exposed sky from one shot and putting it into the shot with the correctly exposed street scene. The advantage with this is as you are working with the original sky you can get a more realistic appearance than can sometimes happen when you just rip a sky from a totally different image.
Also some people prefer to stick to the "real" site rather than simply compose a composite image.

Granted one can do anything in editing - one can use photoshop like an artistic program to edit, but most people draw limits on how far they will edit a shot before it is too procesed or altered from the original for them.

 

[NateS]

Well, for starters, post processing can enhance parts of the photos that you couldn't do when shooting. For example....that last one, the foreground is too dark...but if it was brighter, the sky would be too blown out. But with post processing you can slightly darken the sky and lighten the forground for a more appealing pictures. See below (about 3-4 minutes of pp total).

Before

After

Search out some tutorials on the web and you'll come across some very useful info.

 

[banpreso]

Well, for starters, post processing can enhance parts of the photos that you couldn't do when shooting. For example....that last one, the foreground is too dark...but if it was brighter, the sky would be too blown out. But with post processing you can slightly darken the sky and lighten the forground for a more appealing pictures. See below (about 3-4 minutes of pp total).

Before

After

Search out some tutorials on the web and you'll come across some very useful info.

Wow! much better! Thanks, I'll keep that one in mind.

Now does everyone use photoshop? I currently use the software that came with my canon

 

[NateS]

Wow! much better! Thanks, I'll keep that one in mind.

Now does everyone use photoshop? I currently use the software that came with my canon

I use Nikon Capture NX to process my RAW's but I use a software called "The Gimp" for everything else. Everything I did to your photo above was done in Gimp and it's a free software so check it out.