Would you edit this or leave it be. Airplane take-off.

[AprilEye]

This photo is pretty much un-edited in color. I adjusted the contrast to make the detail in the mountains pop a little, but the sky looks a little drab (then again it IS L.A.). If this were you, would you edit the color a bit to make the sky/background a bit more colorful? Or would it distract from the plane itself.

 

[oldmacman]

I would edit. You could ask people to post their take on the image. You are bound to get a ton of editors. Heck, I'd do one.

 

[AprilEye]

I would edit. You could ask people to post their take on the image. You are bound to get a ton of editors. Heck, I'd do one.

Would love to see it!

 

[Josh220]

My question is whether you shot in RAW or Jpeg.

If you shot in RAW, edit it. Always. No matter what.

If you shot in Jpeg, you should be shooting in RAW.

I might play with the color a bit (vibrance, NOT saturation). You can also warm it up by playing with the white balance slider which will add some color to the background and buildings.

 

[Overread]

Did you take this shot in RAW or JPEG?

 

[altitude604]

i'd level the shot a little, that's about it really. I like the way the aircraft kind of pops out from the background.

Possible a tighter crop without the Radisson might be nice too.

 

[AprilEye]

I shot in JPEG. I am not really familiar with RAW at this point as I am still a fairly new DSLR owner. Its something I would like to learn more about though.

 

[rainking]

I would just leave it as is then. You will lose detail or create noise if you try to do more. JPEG means your camera already processed/compressed the image which leaves little to no room for editing. Look into shooting RAW if you like to edit your image.

 

[PavementPilot]

Here is what I did. I just used Graduated Tint with a feather of 42% and shade of 50% and the pointer set above the nose of the aircraft and not hit the top of the peak of the mountain.

 

[AprilEye]

Here is what I did. I just used Graduated Tint with a feather of 42% and shade of 50% and the pointer set above the nose of the aircraft and not hit the top of the peak of the mountain.

Wow I can definitely see a difference. Its subtle but it speaks volumes!

 

[ajkramer87]

My quick edit

 

[KmH]

I shot in JPEG. I am not really familiar with RAW at this point as I am still a fairly new DSLR owner. Its something I would like to learn more about though.

You're likely not familiar with JPEG either.

Your T2i makes 14-bit Raw images, but only 8-bit JPEG images.

Ironically, the T2i makes every image a Raw capture, at first. To then convert it to a JPEG, the camera throws away, forever, 80% of the color data it originally captured, so it can get down to that 8-bit limit.

14-bit means there are 16,384 tonal gradations per color channel in a Raw. 8-bit means there are only 256 tonal gradations per color channel on a JPEG. There are 3 color channels red, green, and blue (RGB).

JPEG files are smaller. Generally, the Large/Fine quality JPEG file size is 1/4 the file size of a Raw capture. But as mentioned, compressing the file size that mich, and particularly losing 80% of the image color data make editing JPEGs a touchy proposition.

As bad as that is, it gets worse. JPEG converts the image into 64 pixel squares called MCU's or Minimum Coded Units. That means no more pixel editing.

Why should I use Raw?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPG

 

[Overread]

I shot in JPEG. I am not really familiar with RAW at this point as I am still a fairly new DSLR owner. Its something I would like to learn more about though.

Since its in JPEG what you can do a little bit more limited because - however the basic method remains the same - its just that you can get better with a RAW because the image data hasn't been compressed.


For this shot as a single JPEG the best approach I would use is with a layermask - isolate it into two zones - the foreground and the background and then boost up the contrast of the background areas to get a suitable appearance. For this I might even divide it into a further 2 more zones - the sky areas and also the smaller amount of land at the bottom that joins between the fore and background.

Were this shot as a RAW I would be going back to the original RAW data and processing it twice - keeping the white balance the same, but varying the exposure, contrast and blacks sliders to pull more data out of the dimmer background areas - you'd then merge the two shots together using layermasks to get the final shot. The bonus to this is that it lets you unlock all the light data in the background areas without having to worry about the foreground and vis versa

 

[AprilEye]

KmH: WOW! 80%??? That is crazy. And with that being said you are correct, I dont know much about JPEG. But now I am going to start shooting in RAW (and check out all the links you guys posted).
OverRead: I have the layering capabilities in PS Elements so I am going to have to work on using that too...Thats why I love this forum. You guys rock! :hail:

 

[Overread]

Free Layer Mask Tool for Photoshop Elements (Win/Mac Any Version)

download that for a free layermask - it won't have all the advanced features that CS5's layermask has, but it gives you the basic usage of a layermask over your layers. This is the same as the layermask that you get with the adjustment layers (eg levels, saturation), but can be applied to any layer in your layer pallet.