Monthly Critique – You Make The Edits
Judging by the amount of participation and the wonderful perspectives exhibited, last month’s monthly critique was a hit here at DPS. While I won’t be completely abandoning the original format (select DPS writers chime in and we ask for your input as well) I will be mixing in more “You Make The Edits” posts. Last month was a bit of an experiment with the image selection and I have rethought things for this month.
This month I am going to first present the final product as I have edited it (above). I will then offer up the original photo, again, as a RAW file granting DPS readers the right to edit the photo for the purpose of reposting it here. We had some great input from critiquers (it’s a new word) who explained what they did to the photo and why. I’d like to continue that energy this month.
With that in mind, you are welcome to access the original RAW file here (WARNING: 17MB). This photo is offered under a non-commercial Creative Commons license which allows you to make all the edits you wish. As DPS is a learning site, I’d ask you to include three things in your critique comments below:
- An honest critique of my final image. Please be honest. It’s ok, I can handle good and bad criticism as long as it’s honest. What did you like and not like and why?
- Your version of edits. Take the file and play with it until you’re happy with the results, than post it here (or link to your changes)
- Please include what changes you made. Again, DPS is all about helping everyone learn more about photography. In this case, it’s the post-production aspect. Use whichever program you like, but please let us know how you adjusted the image.
And that’s it! I really enjoyed the ‘put your money where your mouth is’ aspect of last month. Anyone can sit behind a computer and tell you what they like and don’t like about an image. Which is fine. But I also like to learn and see what someone would do differently. Looking at last month’s response with over 230 comments, I’m guessing you do too.
I yield the floor to your perspective of the above image.
95 Responses to “Monthly Critique – You Make The Edits” - Add Yours
December 21st, 2009 at 1:06 am
Cannot access the photo. The ‘code’ shows up instead.
December 21st, 2009 at 1:34 am
1. I like the idea of the image, but the composition doesn’t please me. Vertical images are by default risky when viewed on computer screens and I don’t think your image really manages to pull it off. The distance between the goose and the mountain is simply too big. Getting down lower would’ve solved this.
The colours look fake to me, I don’t know what sunsets are like at your place, but I doubt the blues and oranges of your edit can be seen anywhere. Reminds me a bit of HDR images, which isn’t good.
When looking at technical quality, this image is rather blurry and lacks definition. I don’t know what exposure you used (photoshop says F40/2,5seconds, which doesn’t seem right), but I doubt it was taken at the lenses’ soft spot aperture-wise, with a tripod to keep the camera still.
2. http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h245/Jessaius/birdmountain.jpg
3. Cropped and colour-corrected in Adobe RAW. Adjusted exposure as well.
I have tried to make up for the angle by using the Content-aware scaling of CS4.
Used a curves layer to add some extra contrast in the shadows.
Duplicated the layer, completely desaturated that duplicate and added extra contrast to it. Then changed mode to overlay 24% and masked away the goose (so it’d only affect the rest).
Sharpened with a high pass layer.
Added white border and watermark.
To be completely honest (as you asked), I wouldn’t bother editing this photo had it been mine. Photoshop can make up for a lot of things, but not everything.
December 21st, 2009 at 1:51 am
I heavily rely on Lightroom and its fabulous presets to do all of my edits. I download the majority of my presets from PresetsHeaven.com. On this shot I used the presets:
Make It Better – Auto Tone
Matt’s Nostalgic Effect (2)
The key with presets I have realized is to not over do it. Less is more.
Feedback is welcome.
December 21st, 2009 at 2:09 am
Steps taken:
1. Cleaned sensor dust (I guess the aperture of f/40 didn’t help – was that really the aperture?)
2. Ran RAW Pre-sharpener on the entire image then a second pass just on the bird (did you really shot it at 2.5s?)
3. Increased contrast, Increased vibrancy, adjusted tint to the whites, grays and blacks on the bird.
4. Added a Neutral density to lower brightness on mountain
5. Added an Orange graduated filter to entire image.
All steps performed using Aperture and Nik plugins.
December 21st, 2009 at 2:19 am
I liked the original image. It has something really interesting about it. For me, the bird and the mountain needed to be centered to pull off the distance between and bring the photo into balance. The muted colors seemed perfect for a sepia-toned B&W.
December 21st, 2009 at 2:44 am
@Danferno
I completely disagree. I lived in Seattle for 5 years and the light looks just right. Late afternoon sunshine through loads of humid atmosphere creates the amber hues and water is.. well, blue. Complimentary colors and very pleasing together.
Your suggested crop is a weak attempt at blindly following the rules of composition. The vertical format works and who cares how it’s viewed on a computer? Should we all stop turning our cameras into portrait format? The bird lines up perfectly with Mount Rainier in the background and the shadow cast by the bird looks great. If the shot was taken lower, which might not have been possible, we would lose the gradient of blue tones that the water gives us as it vanishes to the shoreline.
It would be nice if the image overall were a tad sharper, but IMHO this shot is successful.
Oh and I believe it’s a heron not a goose.
December 21st, 2009 at 2:52 am
There was something really interesting about the photo that caught my eye. For me, it needed more balance so I cropped it to center the bird and the mountain. This way my eye seemed to bounce between the two, instead of falling off to the right side. I boosted the contrast, then converted it to B&W with a sepia-tone. I felt the B&W treatment made sense and brought more focus to the subjects.
December 21st, 2009 at 3:26 am
I think Danferno should have read this article. http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-handle-unwanted-critique-of-your-photography
and the section on how to “Leave better comments for other people”
December 21st, 2009 at 4:00 am
I have an obsession with wanting to turn every good photo I see into a painting … so no surprise here. My first impression of this one was that it reminded me of that delicate, Japanese watercolor look.
* Opened the image in ACR 5.5 : Clarity +30; Vibrancy & Saturation to +15 (didn’t want too much color).
* Opened in PS-CS4 and fixed numerous dust-spots…
* Doubled Horizontal size of Canvas (adding space to the right-side)
* Duplicated original layer – transform flip horizontal and move into “mirror” position – merge layers…
* Apply PS default “Watercolor” filter : Brush 14; Shadows 0; Texture 1…
* Found someone’s Koi (fish) tattoo on the ‘net and grabbed it – dropped still-warm tattoo into image as new layer…
* The most time-consuming part was erasing all the background from the fish image … once that’s done, set Fill to 60% (I believe Blend Mode was Overlay … sorry I didn’t note it.)
* Added Lens Flare filter to “bird” layer (behind fish), and added Layer Mask to confine effect to center of image…
* Added Outer Glow Layer Effect to fish…
* Used custom PS brush to add a little more mist / light / glow…
* Flattened, cropped, re-sized & optimized…
* Realized I had just created image that had Fish in the Sky and Birds in the Water…
* Went to get more eggnog!
So what does it mean? The mirroring of the images gives it symmetry (harmony). What do the birds do? I guess those kind look for fish – so I’ll surmise that must be mostly what’s on their minds. (They dream of them.) The fish is an idealized spirit in this image – shimmering above all else and breaking the symmetry of land, sky and sea all at once…
… or it was something I hacked-out in about 30-minutes because someone offered me a photo and said “Play with it” – take yer pick, I’m easy!
“Dream of the Herron” …
December 21st, 2009 at 4:04 am
There was something really interesting about this photo. For me, I needed to bird and mountain to be centered – this provided a more pleasing composition. I bumped up the contrast and then converted to B&W. I added a sepia-tone to the photo and darkened the left a little to balance the bird looking to the right.
December 21st, 2009 at 4:07 am
Sorry for my noobish question but … once I edit the picture and I upload it to flickr so that i can link it here … exactly how do I give you credit for the picture ?? I mean I need to give the original artist credit right ?
My first shot @ stuff like this … I don’t want to offend the original artist
December 21st, 2009 at 4:28 am
The original image was a fair exposure and the final product looks fine. I personally don’t like the washed out colors, but that is so subjective.
Steps to create my version:
1. Clean up all the camera/lens spots using the Spot Healing Brush.
2. I used a curves adjustment layer.
3. Create two additional copies of the layer and change the blend mode to multiply on each. Using a layer mask, paint in the desired lighting.
4. Flatten
5. To reduce the negative space, create a duplicate layer
6. Selected the area around Mt Ranier that I wanted to keep.
7. Using a layer mask, painted in the correct lighting and blended the two layers.
8. Created a smart object.
9. Added a vibrance adjustment layer and bumped up the vibrance a little more.
10. New blank layer, set canvas size as desired.
11. Set stroke on Smart Object
12. Reduce image size
December 21st, 2009 at 4:40 am
For some reason, I was unable to open the CR2 file so I will just add my comments here. I think the photo would have been much stronger if shot at a much lower angle. The colors seem off – too pastel and the water way too cyan. I would also see if I could reduce the overall contrast and open up the shadows on the heron.
Even though the primary subject is the heron, I would like to see more contrast in the wooded area below Mt. Rainier and I would slightly darkenand bring out more detail in the mountain.
I also cropped the photo tighter.
Since I can’t work on the raw file, I did the best I could with the photo posted on the web site, but I did slightly over sharpen it.
December 21st, 2009 at 4:51 am
Hi
Your picture looks nice… honestly !
here is the Edit.
http://s779.photobucket.com/albums/yy77/candidshot/
Basically used Canon’s software to edit exposure and white balance.
Used curves and color balance in photoshop.
Added contrast and then sharpened using layers.
December 21st, 2009 at 4:55 am
I think this is a case of when the rule of thirds should apply – so I moved the bird.
Also, the orangey colour is nice for the mountain if it was just a mountain shot, but I think it was too much here, so I toned it down.
Here’s my edits – if I can remember them all:
- Moved bird
- Adjusted levels & saturation
- Added a solid gradient with a low opacity
- Sharpened the mountain
- Darkened the image
- Bumped up the contrast
December 21st, 2009 at 4:56 am
Not sure how to add images, so will try again.
December 21st, 2009 at 4:57 am
Not sure how to add images, so here goes again:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pictureguy/4200226777/sizes/o/
December 21st, 2009 at 5:00 am
I agree with the previous comment that the composition would have been better if you had been able to move your shooting position so the heron was higher and to the left of center in the frame.
Also, the brightness and contrast seem to be optimized for the shore area, which is the least interesting part of the image, leaving the mountain faded and the heron too dark for my taste.
I don’t mind the softness of the image, which gives me the impression of a light mist over the lake and the watercolor quality to the mountain is very pleasing. Overall the photo has a serene quality that I like very much.
I applied noise reduction and adjusted the color to what I felt seemed “natural”.
Then I created two level adjustment layers, one I adjusted to make the mountain more prominent and the other to bring out as much detail as possible in the heron. I then painted each layer with a gradient to isolate the adjustment to the appropriate part of the image.
I then used the clone brush to clean up the bugs/debris in the image. Finally, I added as much sharpening as I could without creating obvious halos.
December 21st, 2009 at 5:05 am
1) For some reason, the colors remind me of 40′s florida adverts, with saturated orange and blues. It works, sort of, but doesn’t wow me at all. Actually, the more I look at it, the less I like it, but maybe that’s a product of trying to find “what’s wrong” with it…
I like the minimalist composition, but the heron is in the wrong spot, not off center enough.
2)
3) I tried to go for a “japanese ink painting look”, because of the heron and frankly, to get rid of the ugly colors … I used a lightroom preset called **RAW_B&W 04, from Seim (i think); cropped as much as possible to get the heron in lower right hand position and still see the mountain. Used auto exposure. Then tweaked the tone curve to clip shadows and highlights.
Used a graduated filter from the top to the middle of the shore line, lowered exposure and brightness. Finally, got rid of the specks on the top of the picture using the dust.
I probably wouldn’t have bothered retouching the shot, but after this little exercise, I realize I probably would have been wrong …
December 21st, 2009 at 5:07 am
Photoshop CS3 cannot open your file format. Could you post a version of the picture the rest of us can use?
December 21st, 2009 at 5:14 am
1) The more I look at the colors, the more I don’t like them. The blur doesn’t bother me, but the bird cries out to be in one corner. I thought I’d go for a more “japanese ink painting look”.
2) Here it is on flickr. Don’t know if there is a dedicated group to post it to ?
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4001/4201001090_6a9d6e4919.jpg
3) Lightroom edits. Basics are :
- use BW filter (Seim’s RAW-B&W 04)
- graduated filter for top half, with low exposure and brightness
- tweak tone curve to flat in shadows and highlights (+49, +100, -100, -50)
- clear the speaks that appeared on top of picture.
As a final comment, i probably wouldn’t have bothered with the shot either (see Danferno above), but given the exercise, it would probably have been a mistake.
December 21st, 2009 at 5:19 am
Let me try this again.
The original image was a fair exposure and the final product looks fine. I personally don’t like the washed out colors, but that is so subjective.
Steps to create my version:
1. Clean up all the camera/lens spots using the Spot Healing Brush.
2. I used a curves adjustment layer.
3. Create two additional copies of the layer and change the blend mode to multiply on each. Using a layer mask, paint in the desired lighting.
4. Flatten
5. To reduce the negative space, create a duplicate layer
6. Selected the area around Mt Ranier that I wanted to keep.
7. Using a layer mask, painted in the correct lighting and blended the two layers.
8. Created a smart object.
9. Added a vibrance adjustment layer and bumped up the vibrance a little more.
10. New blank layer, set canvas size as desired.
11. Set stroke on Smart Object
12. Resize the image
December 21st, 2009 at 5:20 am
I didn’t care for the image itself and @Danferno I also thought it was blurry and lacked definition. And you really need to clean your sensor, there are about 12 major dust spots and after working on the image I had to do a second pass and clean off another dozen.
I thought it would be fun this morning to try something like this, so I gave it a shot. After playing with it I really didn’t feel that the image was showing well in color- so B&W it went. I thought that an image that had these flaws would look best as an old ‘film’ look.
I started in Lightroom after converting with DNG Converter. I adjust overall exposure, recovery, blacks, contrast, clarity, tone curve, sharpening, masking, luminance and noise reduction, played with the bird to bring it out and the mountains to bring them out as well. Straightened the horizon which was just a little off (almost couldn’t tell). After deciding that was enough in Lightroom I jumped over to Silver Efex Pro and kept going. I started with a pull process and readjusted until I was happy and played with filter sensitivities -decreasing reds and increasing blues and violets. Increased silver and paper tones to give it an old feel and burnt the top and bottom edges.
Overall I still don’t care for the image and wouldn’t have called it a keeper to start with. I think it was a good challenge, and was a fun morning project to play with. After working in Nik Efex again I think I’m going to do another series using it soon. So if this post made me want to do anything it was to work in B&W soon.
I hope someone enjoys my version, I was going for an old film look.
December 21st, 2009 at 5:25 am
The original image was a fair exposure and the final product looks fine. I personally don’t like the washed out colors, but that is so subjective.
Steps to create my version:
1. Clean up all the camera/lens spots using the Spot Healing Brush.
2. I used a curves adjustment layer.
3. Create two additional copies of the layer and change the blend mode to multiply on each. Using a layer mask, paint in the desired lighting.
4. Flatten
5. To reduce the negative space, create a duplicate layer
6. Selected the area around Mt Ranier that I wanted to keep.
7. Using a layer mask, painted in the correct lighting and blended the two layers.
8. Created a smart object.
9. Added a vibrance adjustment layer and bumped up the vibrance a little more.
10. New blank layer, set canvas size as desired.
11. Set stroke on Smart Object
12. Resize image
December 21st, 2009 at 5:29 am
1. I suppose that at the moment you shoot, it was a great moment, but for me the photo doesn’t really work because of the composition. As said before, maybe being a bit lower would have help to get the bird closer to the mountain, but for me the most important is the fact that the bird and the mountain is on the same vertical line. It would work better with the bird on the lower left key point and the mountain on the upper right key point. Moving on the right could have solve this problem.
The photo is indeed quite blurry, probably because of the small aperture. I think you did that to get the bird and the mountain sharp, but with such an aperture it’s difficult to get sharp image because of the diffraction.
The last point (and you’ve corrected it here) is that your sensor is full of oil splashes that appear on the photo because of the small aperture.
2. My version :
3. The aim of my work was to get the more natural photo as possible.
Nothing done on the framing as I really don’t know how to get something better…
First in Canon DPP :
- remove oil splashes
- RAW – lightning : -0.83
- RAW – white balance : auto
- RAW – image style : standard (hummm… I generally use neutral, it’s a mistake here)
- RAW – contrast : +4
- RAW – highlight : +5
- RAW – shadow : +5
- RAW – saturation : +2
- RAW – sharpness : 0
- RVB – tone curve assist (small one, and you’ll see that it does nearly nothing : the RAW corrections are already doing 90% of the work)
- NR/Lense – No noise reduction at all (because the photo is already a bit blur)
- NR/Lense – Peripheral Illumination : 0
- NR/Lense – Chroma aberration : activated, 100 (default) to remove blue and red around the bird
- Export to JPG
Then in Paint Shop Pro (an old one that I use nearly everyday) :
- Color / Levels : 10 / 1.09 / 245 (to get a bit more contrast, but 1.09 to keep details on the bird)
- Resize
- Sharpen (twice !)
- Borders (black, because the colors are soft and the black border give a more vivid result)
How do you like it ?
December 21st, 2009 at 5:34 am
I’m failing to open this file, both in Photoshop CS3 using the v4.6 CameraRaw plugin, and with the latest DNG converter from Adobe (v5.1). Any chance we could get it in another format?
December 21st, 2009 at 5:39 am
Trying again, my first post didn’t work.
I didn’t care for the image itself and @Danferno I also thought it was blurry and lacked definition. And you really need to clean your sensor, there are about 12 major dust spots and after working on the image I had to do a second pass and clean off another dozen.
I thought it would be fun this morning to try something like this, so I gave it a shot. After playing with it I really didn’t feel that the image was showing well in color- so B&W it went. I thought that an image that had these flaws would look best as an old ‘film’ look.
I started in Lightroom after converting with DNG Converter. I adjust overall exposure, recovery, blacks, contrast, clarity, tone curve, sharpening, masking, luminance and noise reduction, played with the bird to bring it out and the mountains to bring them out as well. Straightened the horizon which was just a little off (almost couldn’t tell). After deciding that was enough in Lightroom I jumped over to Silver Efex Pro and kept going. I started with a pull process and readjusted until I was happy and played with filter sensitivities -decreasing reds and increasing blues and violets. Increased silver and paper tones to give it an old feel and burnt the top and bottom edges.
Overall I still don’t care for the image and wouldn’t have called it a keeper to start with. I think it was a good challenge, and was a fun morning project to play with. After working in Nik Efex again I think I’m going to do another series using it soon. So if this post made me want to do anything it was to work in B&W soon.
I hope someone enjoys my version, I was going for an old film look.
December 21st, 2009 at 5:40 am
I edit in Aperture, so I’ll try and be as precise as I can
1. Cloned out all the dust spots, and then cropped to 8×10
2. Lowered the exposure by half a stop
3. Tweaked the Recovery and Black Point sliders till I was happy with the mountain
4. Adjusted the Shadows slider to bring the bird back out
5. Using the SilverFX Pro plugin I converted to black and white and did some small contrast adjustments
6. Added some grain, a bluish colour wash, and a vignette
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mpimagery/4201078046/sizes/o/
As for critiquing the original image. I don’t think there was anything wrong with it really, I just went in a different direction coz I’ve got a thing for black n whites at the moment..
December 21st, 2009 at 6:02 am
I’m a beginner amateur photographer with little over 2 yrs of DSLR experience. I use PS although I’ve tried almost all software out there. I like NX2 much better than PS when dealing with Nikon NEFs but PS has unrivaled power and flexibility.
Here’s my take on the original photo. It’s main subject I take it is the bird, herron I think, with a very nice background. Not the most skittish of birds but if you take your sweet time it’ll decide to repose
or leave, then you’re out of luck. In a situation like this I’d love to make sure the horizon is horizontal, and that I follow the rule of thirds for an interesting composition. With birds and other animals, however, the best picture is the one you took, not one you could have taken, so, snap away and then try to reposition. With my first shot in the pocket, maybe I’d move left, maybe try to crouch down. I don’t like the buildings on the far shore, but I don’t imagine it would be easy to move or compose in such a way that they would be cropped out, without loosing some of the awesome mountain in the back. Moreover, the exposure is a little high for my taste and white balance could be better, but again, you do what you can in a split second you decide to take the picture. So overall, yes, the image could have been done a little better but I’m no expert and I rather like it anyway, regardless what could have been done.
Now for what I did in PS. First in ACR, lowered the exposure by about .25 ex. Then changed the contrast slightly. Having opened the image in PS, I immediately went for the geometric adjustment to get the horizon level, and cropped the image. Cropping was had because I didn’t want to loose the mountain in the background, particularly the great highlights but wanted the herron a little to the left. I contemplated clone-stamping the buildings on the far shore but decided not to alter the picture that much. Then I split the image into four segments, using layers: 1)the mountain in the background, 2) the treeline on the far shore, 3) the water 4)the bird itself. On the mountain I did a highlights adjustment; also changed blending to multiply, added a blue photo filter and used a grad adjustment mask. The treeline and water I darkened a bit using multiply and again used the gradient tool on the adjustment mask, with the intent of keeping the shoreline darkest while lightening the image as my eye moves away from it. The bird received some “screen” blending treatment to lighten it up a bit, but not too much, about 30%. The whole image, once flattened, I converted to LAB and increased the contrast just slightly. Once that was done, I noticed some spots in the sky which I got rid of, and gave the image a dose of NoiseNinja. Then, voila, rescale, sharpen, save, upload.
December 21st, 2009 at 6:04 am
December 21st, 2009 at 6:16 am
I have to agree with Danferno above, the colours look kinda fake. The pic starts from being a photo at the bottom to gradually moving to be some sort of painting (towards the top, mountain)
Also, the mountain’s a distraction to me. Even if its colours were oki-dokie ish, I still wouldnt be able to figure out what its doing there in the first place. The lone goose and the lone mountain? the goose, water, mountain? It kinda jars, having altogether, IMHO.
Still downloading the Raw file. Will post an update soon!
December 21st, 2009 at 7:58 am
I thought I would take a stab at this. I wanted to keep the picture as close to as shot as possible without any “Major” edits; though I did remove some dust spots. I did like Andre’s photo better than what I ended up with. I hope you like it some.
My edits are listed below.
Basic:
WB = 4200, Tint = +4, Exp = +25, Blacks = 32, Cont = +70, Clarity = +75, Vib = +65, Sat = 25
Tone curve:
Highlights = +25, Lights = + 33, Darks = -30, Shadows = +60
Hue Changes:
Aqua +2, Blue +11
Saturation:
Aqua = -4, Blue = -32, Purple = – 30, Magenta = -9
Luminance:
Blue +10, Aqua + 1
Split:
Shadows – Hue = 30, Sat = 15
Detail:
Amount = 50, Radius = .5, Detail = 74, Masking = 40, Ch = R/C +75, B/Y -6
December 21st, 2009 at 8:00 am
I thought I would take a stab at this. I wanted to keep the picture as close to as shot as possible without any “Major” edits; though I did remove some dust spots. I did like Andre’s photo better than what I ended up with. I hope you like it some.
My edits are listed below.
Basic:
WB = 4200, Tint = +4, Exp = +25, Blacks = 32, Cont = +70, Clarity = +75, Vib = +65, Sat = 25
Tone curve:
Highlights = +25, Lights = + 33, Darks = -30, Shadows = +60
Hue Changes:
Aqua +2, Blue +11
Saturation:
Aqua = -4, Blue = -32, Purple = – 30, Magenta = -9
Luminance:
Blue +10, Aqua + 1
Split:
Shadows – Hue = 30, Sat = 15
Detail:
Amount = 50, Radius = .5, Detail = 74, Masking = 40, Ch = R/C +75, B/Y -6
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29673894@N00/4200759615/
December 21st, 2009 at 8:02 am
I thought I would take a stab at this. I wanted to keep the picture as close to as shot as possible without any “Major” edits; though I did remove some dust spots. I did like Andre’s photo better than what I ended up with. I hope you like it some.
My edits are listed below.
Basic:
WB = 4200, Tint = +4, Exp = +25, Blacks = 32, Cont = +70, Clarity = +75, Vib = +65, Sat = 25
Tone curve:
Highlights = +25, Lights = + 33, Darks = -30, Shadows = +60
Hue Changes:
Aqua +2, Blue +11
Saturation:
Aqua = -4, Blue = -32, Purple = – 30, Magenta = -9
Luminance:
Blue +10, Aqua + 1
Split:
Shadows – Hue = 30, Sat = 15
Detail:
Amount = 50, Radius = .5, Detail = 74, Masking = 40, Ch = R/C +75, B/Y -6
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29673894@N00/4200759615/
December 21st, 2009 at 8:34 am
I like the composition of your image. I am more of a mountain person than a bird person, so I would have liked to have seen better coloring in the mountains. I would be interested in knowing what software you used and how you came about the end result.
I heavily rely on Lightroom and its fabulous presets to do all of my edits. I download the majority of my presets from PresetsHeaven.com. On this shot I used the presets:
Make It Better – Auto Tone
Matt’s Nostalgic Effect (2)
The key with presets I have realized is to not over do it. Less is more.
Feedback is welcome.
December 21st, 2009 at 8:35 am
I like the composition of your image. I am more of a mountain person than a bird person, so I would have liked to have seen better coloring in the mountains. I would be interested in knowing what software you used and how you came about the end result.
I heavily rely on Lightroom and its fabulous presets to do all of my edits. I download the majority of my presets from PresetsHeaven.com. On this shot I used the presets:
Make It Better – Auto Tone
Matt’s Nostalgic Effect (2)
The key with presets I have realized is to not over do it. Less is more.
Feedback is welcome.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sallymestrada/4200472936/
December 21st, 2009 at 9:24 am
1. The image is beautiful…vertical is difficult sometimes because of how the eye prefers horizontal. I tried cropping…but didn’t want to lose the birds reflection or the mountains. It’s a nice capture.
2. In Lightroom I added a preset….called metropolis. It adds some browns and lighter blues giving more of a vintage look.
–I manually changed black setting…adding a decent amount of black.
–I then increased the contrast.
–Added a slight vignette.
–Went to PS and added a linen texture. Switched it to overlay and decreased the opacity to 76% and the fill to 67%.
That’s it!
Jack
December 21st, 2009 at 9:43 am
1. It’s a great image to start with. I prefer horizontal over vertical…but I wouldn’t want to lose the bird’s reflection or the mountain. I like it!
2.For my edit…
In Lightroom I added a preset….called metropolis. It adds some browns and lighter blues giving more of a vintage look.
–I manually changed black setting…adding a decent amount of black.
–I then increased the contrast.
–Added a slight vignette.
–Went to PS and added a linen texture. Switched it to overlay and decreased the opacity to 76% and the fill to 67%.
December 21st, 2009 at 9:46 am
oops…my image didn’t post for some reason…here it is…
http://travelingtribe.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/birdtexted-1-of-1.jpg
December 21st, 2009 at 10:03 am
I agree with the first poster. A lower point of view would have helped to create a more dynamic composition. Also the colours do seem off and not very natural. My eye is immediately drawn to the Heron which is good, but because of the high angle it’s not as interesting as it could have been. Then it moves to the mountains which really don’t stand out. I still think it’s an ok shot, it just could have been better.
My solution was the following.
I converted it to b/w. The reason being is because I personally didn’t like the colours in the first place, and I thought a b/w treatment would help improve upon the mood. I completely centered the heron in the photo. I also darkened the mountains and added a gradient adjustment to the sky darkening the exposure a bit. Lastly I vignetted it a little as well. I tend to use this treatment a lot of for my own photos especially when the main focal point is near the center. In this case it helps draw the eye to the heron even more.(in my humble opinion)
Programs used.
Lightroom
Silver Efex Pro
I put it on my website for the time being. Link is below.
http://www.chondonphotography.com/p941378424/e371d6c2c
Patrick Chondon
http://www.chondonphotography.com
http://www.patrickchondon.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chondon/
December 21st, 2009 at 10:13 am
I have tried to publish my step by step twice and nothing. Here is my version http://www.swphoto.net/sw/media/images/Heron-Rainier_sm.jpg
December 21st, 2009 at 10:15 am
I’m an amateur photographer with a little more than 2 years experience with dSLRs. I shoot Nikon D90, use PS, and have tried many RAW conversion programs. I like NX2 which gives me more accurate color when dealing with NEFs but PS is unrivaled in power and flexibility. I just wish it was better reading Nikon color.
I like this image, particularly the highlights on the mountain. I would have placed the herron a little to the left or right, but often when dealing with wildlife, the first shot is what you walk away with and don’t really have time to recompose. Ideally, in a situation like this I take the shot, crouch, shoot again and then try to reposition to try and get a better composition. It’s all up to the bird at this point, whether it wants to stick around or not. Often you don’t really have the time to make sure the horizon is level, the white balance is right and that you are following the rule of thirds or any rule whatsoever. Adrenaline kicks in, you get hyped over the scene before you and you shoot. So, no, I won’t pick at this image. It it were horizontal rather than vertical, it would have allowed for more freedom when cropping but so what. I like this image.
I stared in ACR where I adjusted the curve to get a little extra contrast, and set picture control to camera standard rather than Adobe Standard which looks weird and color cast. In PS, I first adjusted the horizon and cropped with the intent to move the bird to the left slightly, but I was careful not to lose any of the bright areas of the mountain. I then split the image into four layers: the mountain, the treeline on the far shore, the water and the bird. The bird I brightened using screen blending mode at about 30%. The water and the treeline I darkened using multiply, but used a gradient tool on the adjustment mask to get the water edge darkest. The mountain got most of my attention. I wanted to bring some of the sky out and give some clarity to the highlights so I added a blue photo filter (again used grad tool on the adjustment mask), used the highlight recovery tool at about 5% and gave the whole thing a little more contrast. Once my layers were flattened, I got rid of some spots which became visible in the sky, used Noise Ninja to clean up some of the noise, rescaled and sharpened. Then save and post. I didn’t want to dramatically change the image, but give it a little punch and clarity. Didn’t like the buildings or whatever it is on the far shore, but decided to leave it alone (could have used clone stamp tool). Overall, I rather like this picture, especially the background.
December 21st, 2009 at 10:53 am
I can’t seem to post anything? Trying again.. If it works I’ll post an explanation.
December 21st, 2009 at 10:55 am
For some reason I am having a problem posting here. I’ll just write the URL below for a link to my interpretation and if that works I’ll post my explanation after.
http://capturedconcept.com/Heron-copy.jpg
December 21st, 2009 at 11:03 am
Well it worked that time.
I didn’t care for this image, as Danferno stated- it is blurry and lacks definition. I also thought the colors were poor, and I should note that your sensor ‘really’ needs a cleaning.
I was working on this image and thought, forget color, the image isn’t great- why not make it look like an old image taken on film. So B&W I went. I started in Lightroom for cleaning up and adjusting the image overall. I ended up in Nik Silver Efex where I started with a pull process and altered tones and filter sensitivities. I finished it with some burning to the top and bottom edges, and in the end, I still didn’t care for it.
Personally I would have cut this image and would not have processed it. But it was a fun morning activity and made me want to do another B&W shoot soon.
December 21st, 2009 at 11:59 am
Ok, I tried to upload twice with comments, and it didn’t work. Used my live.com email and Zooomr so I hope that has nothing to do with it. Here’s my third attempt using Picasa, but I’m tired of writing the explanation of my edits so I’ll post them later. Here’s the pic if this works now…
December 21st, 2009 at 12:51 pm
@Patrick Chondon
Not bad, one question though. Your linked image looks like it is for sale via your website, pretty sure that’s against the Creative Commons licensing of the image. Might be an idea to link it from Flickr, or just a file directory on your server.
Cheers
Mat
December 21st, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I changed it. Sorry about that Mat. It does that by default!
It should be fixed now.
Thanks,
Patrick
http://www.chondonphotography.com
http://www.patrickchondon.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chondon/
December 21st, 2009 at 3:44 pm
The only thing that bothered me about the composition was the heron almost dead center in the frame. I would have moved it to the left side. Other than that, it’s a good photo with lots of potential. Here’s how I processed:
Lightroom
– Exposure -1/3
– Tone curve: highlights +36, shadows -12
– Painted some clarity on the mountains with the adjustment brush.
Nik ColorEfex Filters (in Lightroom)
– Tonal Contrast on the mountains to bring out the detail.
– Graduated filter to add some darkness and depth to the bottom of the image.
– Midnight – soften and darken the water and heron.
Since the focus on the heron was soft, I liked the idea of making it more like a silhouette.
December 21st, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I had trouble today posting also…
Here is a link to what I did… http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2748/4200078929_6091482d22_o.jpg
Or maybe this will work…
Anyway, in a nutshell, I thought the photo was very interesting. For me, it felt a little heavy on the right so I centered the bird and the mountain. It also seemed perfect for a B&W – it didn’t need color – so I bumped up the contrast, converted it, and added a slight sepia-tone.
December 21st, 2009 at 3:51 pm
@Ron, I like your B&W interpretation better. Back to the drawing board for me.
December 21st, 2009 at 5:37 pm
This is an updated link to my edits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29673894@N00/4202860380/
As I said in my last post, my edits were simple and not major.
Basic:
WB = 4200, Tint = +4, Exp = +25, Blacks = 32, Cont = +70, Clarity = +75, Vib = +65, Sat = 25
Tone curve:
Highlights = +25, Lights = + 33, Darks = -30, Shadows = +60
Hue Changes:
Aqua +2, Blue +11
Saturation:
Aqua = -4, Blue = -32, Purple = – 30, Magenta = -9
Luminance:
Blue +10, Aqua + 1
Split:
Shadows – Hue = 30, Sat = 15
Detail:
Amount = 50, Radius = .5, Detail = 74, Masking = 40, Ch = R/C +75, B/Y -6
December 21st, 2009 at 6:51 pm
My favorite of the above is the picture redone by Andre. I think that one looks the best out of all of the others but that is just my personal opinion. Here is the link to the picture andre did so you don’t have to go and find which one I am talking about: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pictureguy/4200226777/sizes/o/
December 21st, 2009 at 6:55 pm
-It’s not that the colors bothered me as much as it just took away from your main focus point (which was confusing). I assume your main focus point was meant to be the bird. I think most everyone else is over editing their photos, and by over editing I mean completely distorting the image. You can’t move the bird or the change the angle when the picture wasn’t taken that way.
-My Edit:
-I just corrected some things with Camera Raw in PS, then opened it in PS. I made two copies of the photo. Made one copy sepia tone and the other into b&w. I put the sepia copy on the top layer and set the blending mode to Soft Light. I did a little burning. Then, as always, finished with a high pass filter to make the image sharper.
-I think with my version the colors don’t distract from the focus points. In my opinion, clear focus points are more important than pleasing colors. Unless you are purposefully trying to have no focal point.
December 21st, 2009 at 7:23 pm
I have mixed feelings about the picture. The composition is not too bad but I’m not so sure about the colors and I can see no details on the mountains or the heron. I decided to take a stab at it anyway because the heron and it’s shadow seemed interesting and here are the results:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/V36D9OUyf8_GbkPZ1UJ39w?feat=directlink
Here’s what I did to get the above results:
I opened up two copies of the photos. The first one, I converted to LAB mode and chose just the Lightness channel and discarded the rest. I converted the second one to LAB mode as well, then selected the lightness channel and equalized it to get the details on the mountain, then discarded the rest of the channels. I then copied the second equalized copy on top of the first one as an overlayed layer and adjusted the opacity, till I got the details correct. Then after merging the two layers, I created a second copy and applied High Pass Filter (50 pixels) to it and then changed the blending mode to overlay again and played around with the opacity till I got decent results..
A little bit of unsharp filter to get the details correct and a little solid colored layer multiplied on top with opacity adjusted to taste, to make it a bit more interesting, followed by some cropping and cleaning up some obvious smudges by patch tool.
December 21st, 2009 at 7:46 pm
I have mixed feelings about the picture. The composition is not too bad but I’m not so sure about the colors and I can see no details on the mountains or the heron. I decided to take a stab at it anyway because the heron and it’s shadow seemed interesting and here are the results:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/V36D9OUyf8_GbkPZ1UJ39w?feat=directlink
Here’s what I did to get the above results:
I opened up two copies of the photos. The first one, I converted to LAB mode and chose just the Lightness channel and discarded the rest. I converted the second one to LAB mode as well, then selected the lightness channel and equalized it to get the details on the mountain, then discarded the rest of the channels. I then copied the second equalized copy on top of the first one as an overlayed layer and adjusted the opacity, till I got the details correct. Then after merging the two layers, I created a second copy and applied High Pass Filter (50 pixels) to it and then changed the blending mode to overlay again and played around with the opacity till I got decent results..
A little bit of unsharp filter to get the details correct and a little solid colored layer multiplied on top with opacity adjusted to taste, to make it a bit more interesting, followed by some cropping and cleaning up some obvious smudges by patch tool.
December 21st, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Thanks Sara, I appreciate that.
I also like the feel of sepia in images. If you do a lot of sepia or similar B&W you should try a trial copy of Nik Silver Efex Pro. I really enjoy their software. It’s as easy or as complicated as you want it to be- so it’s a nice learning tool (no I’m not a salesman). It’s not the cheapest software out there, but it is great at converting an image to B&W. I haven’t used it in months, but I certainly enjoyed using it on this image.
For your image I think the first thing you should do is clean up all of the distractions- get rid of all of the dust spots. Then your eyes can concentrate more. I found about 24 dust spots in the original Raw. The spot healing tool is my best friend (found in Lightroom and Photoshop if you have one of those. It’s called the healing brush in Gimp which is a decent program and it’s free).
December 21st, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Aaaargh, my post didn’t work yesterday ?
I was thinking that it was moderated so I was waiting to appear online…
I gave a lot of details about my work but now it will be lighter…
1. Comments : as said before I would have try (if possible) to be a bit lower and more on the right to have the bird on the lower left key point and the mountain in the upper right corner (I recognize that Andre did a good job by moving the bird. Personnaly I prefer real photo and I have a problem with retouching photos, particularly landscape and wildlife photos.)
2. Opened the file in Canon DPP
All my work tend to get the more natural photo as possible, and particularly in getting the maximum of details in the dark of the bird and the lights on the mountains.
RAW editing :
- remove the dust on the sensor (you really have to clean that sensor, the small aperture you used here make them very visible)
- lightning : -0.83
- contrast : +4
- hightlight : +5
- shadow : +5
- saturation : +2
- sharpness : 0
RGB editing :
- auto tone curve adjust
- sharpness : 0
NR/Lense editing :
- No noise reduction at all (to keep all the details as the photo is already a bit blur)
- Peripheral Illumination : no editing
- Chromatic Aberation : activated (100, default) because we can see some blue and red chroma around the bird
Then, common editing in Paint Shop Pro.
- Colors, level (something like 5 / 1.15 / 245 to have a bit more black shadow, a bit more light on the mountain, and keep subtle details on the bird
- Resive
- Sharpness (twice !!)
- Black border (because the colors are very soft and the black give them a bit of punch while they are still natural)
Finally I really like all the details that are in the photos : a very nice and soft gradient in the sky, a lot of details in the mountain. I think it would be perfect with the bird a bit more in the left (my eyes are just on a vertical live and don’t “run” all over the photo) and with a bit more light on the bird.
The result :
December 21st, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Aaaargh, my post didn’t work yesterday ?
I was thinking that it was moderated so I was waiting to appear online…
I gave a lot of details about my work but now it will be lighter…
1. Comments : as said before I would have try (if possible) to be a bit lower and more on the right to have the bird on the lower left key point and the mountain in the upper right corner (I recognize that Andre did a good job by moving the bird. Personnaly I prefer real photo and I have a problem with retouching photos, particularly landscape and wildlife photos.)
2. Opened the file in Canon DPP
All my work tend to get the more natural photo as possible, and particularly in getting the maximum of details in the dark of the bird and the lights on the mountains.
RAW editing :
- remove the dust on the sensor (you really have to clean that sensor, the small aperture you used here make them very visible)
- lightning : -0.83
- contrast : +4
- hightlight : +5
- shadow : +5
- saturation : +2
- sharpness : 0
RGB editing :
- auto tone curve adjust
- sharpness : 0
NR/Lense editing :
- No noise reduction at all (to keep all the details as the photo is already a bit blur)
- Peripheral Illumination : no editing
- Chromatic Aberation : activated (100, default) because we can see some blue and red chroma around the bird
Then, common editing in Paint Shop Pro.
- Colors, level (something like 5 / 1.15 / 245 to have a bit more black shadow, a bit more light on the mountain, and keep subtle details on the bird
- Resive
- Sharpness (twice !!)
- Black border (because the colors are very soft and the black give them a bit of punch while they are still natural)
Finally I really like all the details that are in the photos : a very nice and soft gradient in the sky, a lot of details in the mountain. I think it would be perfect with the bird a bit more in the left (my eyes are just on a vertical live and don’t “run” all over the photo) and with a bit more light on the bird.
The result : http://etherreal.free.fr/digitphotoschool/Heron-Rainier_600x400.JPG
December 21st, 2009 at 9:57 pm
I downloaded all edited. At last I do think the Peter’s one is perfect. To me it is very romantic.
December 22nd, 2009 at 2:02 am
I think I would have moved the bird a bit to either side to get it on a thrids line, and used a ND grad filter “upside down” so that it darkened the foreground and allowed the mountain to burn in a bit more. Other than that I think the coloring is amazing and the shadow of the bird makes for a very peaceful image. I agree with others that the focus is a bit soft, specifically on the far shore and the mountain.
December 22nd, 2009 at 2:13 am
I love to take part here – editing pictures from other people is really different – I don´t struggle that much
I used a copy of the displayed image, the file format didn´t fit here. My thoughts were the image is great – also the colours – the only thing was the composition – I just copied the heron and placed it more left, then cleaned up a bit ( lots of dark spots) and used Niks colour effects, the tonal contrast to get more details in the mountain and push the colours a little more. Last step was denoising the sky.
December 22nd, 2009 at 3:24 am
First a critique on some critiques from a nature photographer (not a pro one!): If the scene has those colors (which I can believe, I’ve experienced similar light situations), I would expect one of the objectives of the picture to be to show those incredible colors. To change or get rid of them would be, in my opinion, a mistake, well I guess that is the difference between a nature photographer and a true photography artist. My point is, if the purpose is to put other colors or remove them in the digital light-room, why bother taking the picture in the moment of the day when it is as shown? It would be way better to try at another time in the day, when light suits, for instance, the foreground better.
Now about the picture:Apart of what has been said, my impression is that this photo has 2 images in it, one on top of the other: On top, a lovely mountain with lovely, and compelentary! colors, in pastel tones, lighted from the side, a bit blurry, very romantic. Bellow, a picture of a bird with very high contrast, but low detail, almost black and white. I think the problem is not only the position of the bird, its the impression of being in a complete other picture.
I would have liked it better if the bird was higher in the picture, by changing location, but it is true, you risk loosing the blue fade in the water, as “major bokeh” already mentioned. Still I think a bit further down is still achievable. It would definitely improve the image composition.
It is uncommon to have such blue water below so orange skies, normally the blue comes from water reflecting the sky. I guess it is because water from glaciers normally has a blue-turquoise color. Maybe a polarizing filter would have helped. You could be compromising the sunset colors in the upper part, but it could as well happen the the colors are improved. Any way it would decrease that whitish reflection around the bird and maybe show more blue.
As “razmaspaz” says, a gradual neutral density filter would help, I would go rather the other way: to darken the upper part, so that the lower part gets lighter and we can see more from the bird, which is showing us it’s shadow. The modern version of the same would be the best: to expose optimally for the mountain and then optimally for the foreground and in the studio later combine them (by hand! Not using those HDR things).
I would have also tried to use a flash (with a “better-beamer”) to bring some light to the shadow side of the bird, which is almost the whole bird. Care should be taken not to reflect to much Flash on the water.
The picture is nice, it shows an incredible light spectacle, the kind of testimonies I look for in a nature photo! And a bird. The two concepts are disjunct in many aspects.
I hope this is of any help, analyzing and thinking in detail about the picture and the comments and edits has been of great help for me.
Cheers.
December 22nd, 2009 at 3:56 am
I love the feel of this photo; it reminds me of Oriental art. This would be a favorite photo if it were mine. The color is just as you would see on a hazy morning just as the sun rises and is just perfect. The heron’s position bothers me, however so I moved the bird over closer to the left side to make the composition more pleasant. This was done by simply carefully aligning the Clone Stamp tool, cloning once to move the bird over and then again to remove the “old” bird. I also darkened and desaturated a couple of bright spots on the far shore which I found distracting for no good purpose. But these are details easily handled in post. Great job!
December 22nd, 2009 at 4:24 am
I used a copy of the displayed image, the file format didn´t fit here.
My thoughts were the image is great – also the colours – the only thing was the composition – I just copied the heron and placed it more left, then cleaned up a bit ( lots of dark spots) and used Niks colour effects, the tonal contrast to get more details in the mountain and push the colours a little more. Last step was denoising the sky.
December 22nd, 2009 at 6:23 am
3rd try now – looks as if tere are problems with posting images –
I used a copy of the displayed image, the file format didn´t work here.
My thoughts were the image is great – also the colours – the only problematic thing is the composition – I copied the heron and placed it more left somewhere around golden spiral´s eye, then cleaned up a bit ( lots of dark spots) and used Niks colour effects: the tonal contrast to get more details in the mountain and push the colours a little more. Last step was denoising the sky.
http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e52/batdanush/heron-mountain.jpg
December 22nd, 2009 at 7:04 am
downloaded the CR2 file and tried to open in CS3 but file would not open???
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Tim,
I think it wouldn’t open because the verson of Camera Raw that the file needs is not compatible with CS3. The error message I got was the 4.6 was the highest version of Camera Raw that exists for CS3.
Steve
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:23 pm
I thought the best thing about the photo was the bird and its shadow, and I felt it got lost among the sky, the opposite shore, and the mountain. So I cropped those out. I also felt that the dark line of the surface around the birds head cut the image up and was distracting so I cloned it out. I tried to eliminate any competition with the bird and its shadow. Of course, cropping this way increases the noise since the image “expands.”
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
I thought the best thing about the photo was the bird and its shadow, and I felt it got lost among the sky, the opposite shore, and the mountain. So I cropped those out. I also felt that the dark line of the surface around the birds head cut the image up and was distracting so I cloned it out. I tried to eliminate any competition with the bird and its shadow. Of course, cropping this way increases the noise since the image “expands.”
December 22nd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
I really like Ron Gibson’s B&W version, too. It focuses attention on the bird without needing to take away anything else from the photo. The mountain now seems to accent the foreground rather than distract from it. Cool.
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:06 pm
This is my fourth post to this entry to this post. Why? Because there is no feedback to the user that their message has actually posted, but is being moderated. Also, the “You can add an image” script does not seem to work. Maybe I am a newby to this site, but this is a basic function that either ought to work or be removed.
December 22nd, 2009 at 11:43 pm
@Leo Cummings – I had the same trouble. Adobe stopped supporting new camera models for CS3. The way around it is to get their Adobe DNG Converter. Convert the image to a DNG, which CS3 will open.
December 23rd, 2009 at 5:36 am
test
December 23rd, 2009 at 10:07 am
I agree with a few of the other comments above. I tried three different times to post a comment…they appeared not to go through, now they’re all three here. I tired the “add images” option below and it didn’t appear to work….yet when the comment finally posts it does work. If they’re being moderated it would be nice to know this so we don’t repost our comments.
Thanks!
December 23rd, 2009 at 10:26 am
Some great stuff posted, thought i’d give it a try.
*Made With GIMP
http://www.meetthegimp.org
December 23rd, 2009 at 1:18 pm
The heron gives a nice sense of scale to landscape.
It’s nice to see that – like others – I though th light hitting the mountain was the most important.
In fact, my processing results look like a lot of others.
But mine was done with Open-Source software (‘ufraw’ and GIMP).
Double heron and then fade to add contrast
Add a blend layer to multiply the overall colour, faded to taste
Add a blend layer to multiply the land and sky, faded to taste
Clone out some things
Local Contrast Enhancement
More Cloning
Various Sharpenings, pick the best one
Blur Non-Edges to get rid of grain and noise (some caused by Sharpening)
Final Clone
Scale to 30% and save as PNG
December 24th, 2009 at 1:37 am
Did it work this time? Grrr
December 24th, 2009 at 1:38 am
I don’t often name photos but I think I will call this “Something Wicked This Way Comes”.
I wanted to isolate the heron and what it is looking like without actually making the “Something” obvious. I initially thought the gratuitous use of NG filters was taking too much away but having left it for a couple of days (always a good thing to do) I thought this still worked as is. I hope you like it.
I took out the boat(?) from the background because I thought it took the eye away from what the heron is looking at.
I thought the presented version of the image was a little “flat” but I’m a dabbler in this stuff and each to their own.
December 24th, 2009 at 1:39 am
December 24th, 2009 at 1:40 am
Having tried and tried and tried to post the link to the file using the web I thought I’d try this…
“I don’t often name photos but I think I will call this “Something Wicked This Way Comes”.
I wanted to isolate the heron and what it is looking like without actually making the “Something” obvious. I initially thought the gratuitous use of NG filters was taking too much away but having left it for a couple of days (always a good thing to do) I thought this still worked as is. I hope you like it.
I took out the boat(?) from the background because I thought it took the eye away from what the heron is looking at.
I thought the presented version of the image was a little “flat” but I’m a dabbler in this stuff and each to their own.”
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4002/4209036616_de6f06d8c1.jpg
December 24th, 2009 at 1:41 am
Please click the link to see the picture above
December 24th, 2009 at 5:40 am
I don’t think that DANFERNO was off the mark at all. The photo had far too much vertical space between the bird and the mountains. the image was soft throughout and the colors, although according to one poster were accurate, had an unreal look about them that was irritating (One said similar to HDR, but I’ve seen HDR photos that were spectacular). All in all, I would not have considered this to be a “keeper” out of a series of shots of the subject. Some of the adjusted images were nice, and I particularly liked the color of the mountain in the lowering light (once you brought that up in RAW), but again, the softness of the image, the distance between subjects and the muddled middle ground all conspired to disappoint.
People need to understand that a negative critique isn’t an attack on the photographer. Most people attending are fairly accomplished to professional so if criticism is asked for, then one’s skin must be thick enough to take it (no allusions meant to Mr. Carey who is as accomplished as one could ask for). Not every photo will work for every person, but an obviously substandard photo can’t recover from even major rework.
December 24th, 2009 at 6:41 am
I liked the photo but thought the color took attention away from the subject.
I’m out for the holidays so edits were done with the Tiffen app on an iPhone.
I adjusted the depth of field to bring your attention back to the crain and loose the detail of the building in the background. It seems to add a feeling of solitude.
December 24th, 2009 at 8:46 am
I overall like the image, but I wanted to see more contrast in the top part, where the mountain is. I focused my corrections on getting this part the way I wanted. I posted the whole story on my blog:
http://www.korwelphotography.com/2009/12/23/dps-monthly-edits-december-2009/
And here is the final image:
http://www.korwelphotography.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Heron-Rainier-Edit-2.jpg
December 24th, 2009 at 10:45 am
The link for may above post
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4052/4208863087_cb997b910c.jpgT
December 25th, 2009 at 8:18 am
@ Major bokeh: That’s your good right. But I disagree with about everything you say, as well (which was to be expected, I guess). I’m not calling for a blind following of the rules of composition. Rules don’t interest me, though they can be useful guidelines. What I care about is the true quality of an image: is this image worth looking at? There are many reasons an image can interesting: it can have a good story (nope), spread a message (nope), contain objects/people we (dis)like (nope, unless you like animals much) or be of great artistic merit. What do I mean with that? Simple, that the image draws the attention and is nice to look at. This image doesn’t have that, because it’s composition is well, not pleasing. If you saw this image among 20 others, would you give it a second glance?
@ Vone: No, I don’t think I should reread it, thanks. The person who posted this is a professional, I really doubt he’s interested in sugarcoating. He asked for critique, I gave my thoughts and tips for improvement.
December 25th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Done in Ufraw and Gimp
Here is my attempt. Although I have never worked with Ufraw, I understand that RAW files have a lot more info than normal jpgs, so I basically (unscientifically) “milked” the controls until I felt I had extracted as much pixel info and detail as possible.
In Gimp I added a layer to turn the foreground into a “pearly” warm reflection of the sky. (simple gradient layermask) to leave the mountain and snow untouched. Then similarly I used a layermask to reintroduce a bit of blue into the sky leaving the mountain snow and below unaffected.
I created a “new from visible” and used that layer to cut and paste the two other Herons. These herons were transformed with perspective, shear, and scale tool to give them different aspects. Then a “clone” to clean up the pastes and re-position the legs of the herons to make them look individual. Changed the outlines a bit and added some frontal feathers and blurred (gaussian) to make a better blend.
I was astounded at the reflection of the ship and shore line and I have in fact drawn a very small chalk like line to try and help separate. It is only visible at magnification.
Wbool63
December 27th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
I went a different way from what it seems like most have done so far – I tried to bring out more of the detail rather than smoothing it all for the “painted” effect that most people seemed to be going for. I don’t know that I had any reason for this other than the fact that my various detail-enhancing plugins are sort of my toys of choice right now; although I do like the effect on the mountains in particular.
I tried two different versions of this, both posted here (if you click through the pics to their Flickr pages, you’ll see the details of the steps I took listed in the description of each). I like elements of each, although I think overall I’m partial to the first of the two.
December 27th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Wait, I don’t think I posted the images to the comment correctly; let me try again:
I went a different way from what it seems like most have done so far – I tried to bring out more of the detail rather than smoothing it all for the “painted” effect that most people seemed to be going for. I don’t know that I had any reason for this other than the fact that my various detail-enhancing plugins are sort of my toys of choice right now; although I do like the effect on the mountains in particular.
I tried two different versions of this, both posted here (if you click through the pics to their Flickr pages, you’ll see the details of the steps I took listed in the description of each). I like elements of each, although I think overall I’m partial to the first of the two.
December 30th, 2009 at 10:20 am
yet another take:
I never crop, but in this case I thought I’d get that flying rat (that’s what they are called where I come from >^) out of the image and achieve a classic 6×6 square.
next: tried get some range out of the raw in iPhoto, then into GIMP.
first pepped the local contrast with some unsharp mask, just for good luck.
then c2g magic, get some contrast on the mountain and a film look. made the blots a feature instead of a bug.
then a home-brew 4-layer pseudo-lith: flat highs, dodging toning, multiplied hard blacks, some screened whites (bottom to top):
January 7th, 2010 at 4:53 am
So here’s mine.
I used UFRaw and GIMP and did the following steps
- dust cleaning with the clone tool
- adding local contrast
- raised saturation and adding a inverse saturation mask
- some doge&burn to bring more lights to the snow and more details to the mountain, adding a lyer mask to softly fade out into the water
- some vignetting
- sharpening in LAB twice
January 9th, 2010 at 7:50 am
Hi folks,
1. Raw done with Canon Digital Professional V.3.7 generated, then
2. developed with GIMP V.2.6.8,
3. Filter von Darla "Contrastfix".
4. Scaled down in steps to maintain the sharpness.
I wasn´t lucky about the generell performance of the photo, difficult to tune up. Newertheless, I hope you like the colour, sharpness, contrast, relativ many details I could digger out. I hope you agree with me. If not, please make your comments. I appreciate it.
Thanks for watching and reading “Eisenhans”
PS: I hope the picture-link works.
January 27th, 2010 at 1:19 am
Hello,
I made 3 jpeg with ufraw (-2EV, 0, +2EV)
- Fusion of the 3 with Enfusegui
In Gimp
- Dust cleaning with the clone tool
- correct the Levels and curves
- Use vibrance
- Sharpening with Wavelet decompose plugin
- adding vignetting
- add luminosity to the bird with a duplicate layer in screen mode and alpha mask only for the bird.
February 5th, 2010 at 4:19 am
Peter
I love the concept of this article – I tried to open the picture but my softwre said it as the wrong type of file. I am using elements and may have a canon raw translator.
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