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Enhancing Photo's


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Posted
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey

Here are two pictures, post-164-1198878145_thumb.jpgpost-164-1198878173_thumb.jpg

The first one unedited other than cropping the second the brightness adjusted on it..

Yes the second one looks far more dramatic, but I have to say there was no challenge or satisfaction in producing the second one, it also looks nothing like the cloud did to the eye.

Enhancing pics is great fun I can't deny that, its nice to see what you could have got, but to me the real enjoyment of photography is seeing something you think would look good, and getting that shot. As I did with my lasses picture, she was just sat there looking all moody and grumpy because I wasn't taking any notice as I was mucking about with the camera, thought that would make a great shot, snap :) very happy louby!

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Here are two pictures, post-164-1198878145_thumb.jpgpost-164-1198878173_thumb.jpg

The first one unedited other than cropping the second the brightness adjusted on it..

Yes the second one looks far more dramatic, but I have to say there was no challenge or satisfaction in producing the second one, it also looks nothing like the cloud did to the eye.

Enhancing pics is great fun I can't deny that, its nice to see what you could have got, but to me the real enjoyment of photography is seeing something you think would look good, and getting that shot. As I did with my lasses picture, she was just sat there looking all moody and grumpy because I wasn't taking any notice as I was mucking about with the camera, thought that would make a great shot, snap :D very happy louby!

No'2 stills looks great though Lou :good:

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Yes it does, can't deny that, but it doesn't even represent what I saw with the naked eye

Yeah I get what you mean but isn't enhancement a large part of even pro photography? as you can wait an awful long time for that perfect shot.Fashion photos seem to be complete enhancement as they rarely bear any resemblance to the actual person who was snapped.

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Posted
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey

But that is the challenge Phil, tis like fishing for Carp, Would be much easier to go to an over stocked lake with fair to middling sized fish, yes you will catch and you will catch lots but there isnt that challenge not like going to an old estate lake where there is a couple of huge fish, that you have sit and wait for, weeks at a time.... but when you do catch that fish its the best buzz ever and its the same with photography for me.. when I do get that shot I want its the best feeling!!

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Posted
  • Location: Isle of wight
  • Location: Isle of wight
But that is the challenge Phil, tis like fishing for Carp, Would be much easier to go to an over stocked lake with fair to middling sized fish, yes you will catch and you will catch lots but there isnt that challenge not like going to an old estate lake where there is a couple of huge fish, that you have sit and wait for, weeks at a time.... but when you do catch that fish its the best buzz ever and its the same with photography for me.. when I do get that shot I want its the best feeling!!

I totally aggree Louby, Well said.. :good:

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But that is the challenge Phil, tis like fishing for Carp, Would be much easier to go to an over stocked lake with fair to middling sized fish, yes you will catch and you will catch lots but there isnt that challenge not like going to an old estate lake where there is a couple of huge fish, that you have sit and wait for, weeks at a time.... but when you do catch that fish its the best buzz ever and its the same with photography for me.. when I do get that shot I want its the best feeling!!

I Get you!For me being a keen gardener I prefer to grow my annuals from seed and am chuffed when I grow a nice specimen as opposed to going to the garden centre and buying off the shelf type of thing.

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Posted
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey
  • Location: Redhill, Surrey
I Get you!For me being a keen gardener I prefer to grow my annuals from seed and am chuffed when I grow a nice specimen as opposed to going to the garden centre and buying off the shelf type of thing.

Exactly :good:

But don't get me wrong.. I do enhance some photo's but in an abstract ie black and white with a tad of the original colour...

post-164-1198955716_thumb.jpg

post-164-1198956249_thumb.jpg

Edited by Louby
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Exactly :good:

But don't get me wrong.. I do enhance some photo's but in an abstract ie black and white with a tad of the original colour...

post-164-1198955716_thumb.jpg

I love stuff like that .We get the kids school photos done in b/w or even sepia.Photos seem more thought provoking and dramatic when colour isn't the issue.Maybe that's because I have a poor eye for blue/green shades and therefore prefer stong red and purple images on the colour snaps and is probably also where my liking for the enhanced ones began.

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Posted
  • Location: Near Beverley, East Yorks. (5 metres a.s.l.)
  • Weather Preferences: Something good in all four seasons
  • Location: Near Beverley, East Yorks. (5 metres a.s.l.)

Well I'd really like to thank you folks for this thread as it has made me

think more about what cameras can offer / do.

I've had a very basic Sony Cyber-shot with only X3 optical zoom for

several years now, my first ever digital camera.

I was unaware of these so-called 'bridge', 'prosumer' (heck) compacts and

all they can offer .. wide angle to huge zoom etc, etc all built in.

I've spent best part of three days researching what might suit me best and

now have a short-list of three, all about £250.

I feel excited at the prospect of getting one soon and seeing what I can do

with this upgrade. Just hope I can understand all it offers, else use the

'Auto' functions most (?) lol.

Cheers,

B x

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Posted
  • Location: Nr Salisbury, Wilts
  • Location: Nr Salisbury, Wilts

Well, I think Kelly knows what my answer will be.

Firstly, if you are using the jpeg setting on your camera, the camera is already doing a lot of in camera "photoshopping" for you - setting the sharpness, the colour balance, the white balance, the temperature, the contrast, etc. So in fact your photos are postprocessed from the moment the tiny chip captures the raw, does its business and squashes it into a jpeg.

Secondly, if you use any of the auto scene modes on the camera, again, the camera will do a lot of internal work.

Thirdly, if you shoot raw like I do, the chances are by the time you get home you won't remember what the scene actually looked like, and so will create something pleasing to the eye.

Fourthly, all images need sharpening for a start, which is normally done by an algorithm in the camera (they need sharpening because of the filters used in camera). At what point can you agree that the sharpening provided by a programmer in Japan is absolutely the right level of sharpening you want? Different cameras produce different sharpening/tones/contrast, so if I took a pic with my Sony and Kelly with her Canon, and the tones were different, which would be true, and how would we conclude that that is so? I've never used a camera yet that faithfully reproduces what I see with my eye, even going back to my Practika film camera. And my eye will be different to your eye, so again, how can I know that when you look at my Sony LCD and I look at your Canon LCD which one will be representing the "true" colours?

Fifthly, in the film days, all photos were postprocessed. IF you were lucky, by a professional in a shop, most often automatically by a machine at Truprint (which needed constant recalibration. Were the colours truer at the start of the run, or at the end of the run?) I prefer to develop my own raw into a picture that pleases me.

Sixthly, if you want the camera to only naturally render a memory of a particular scene, fine.

Seventhly, if you want to create photoshopped stuff, fine. I like to process my own raw files (just like using a darkroom but less stinky) into something that pleases my eye. If that's "unnatural" (that is, not somehow a "true" resemblance to a half remembered scene) then so be it.

I think I've rambled enough :doh:

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Posted
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield
  • Weather Preferences: Any Extreme
  • Location: Sheffield South Yorkshire 160M Powering the Sheffield Shield

Basically I believe you should leave the shot basically as it is unless the Digital Camera is struggling to take the shot due the limits in it's dynamic range. You can also buy graduated filters to put on your camera but again if the sky is blue and you change to red using filters again you're not really taking a true photo of the scene and shouldn't pass it off as one.

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Posted
  • Location: Near Beverley, East Yorks. (5 metres a.s.l.)
  • Weather Preferences: Something good in all four seasons
  • Location: Near Beverley, East Yorks. (5 metres a.s.l.)

Hi, can someone tell me if there is a rules section to read re.

'photo enhancing' for the competitions here on NW ?

I looked in the photo comp. section and couldn't see any.

Up to now, I've presumed no PS alterations were allowed and

I've abided by that.

Thanks,

BL.

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Posted
  • Location: Western Isle of Wight
  • Weather Preferences: Snow, Storm, anything loud and dramatic.
  • Location: Western Isle of Wight

Interesting those points Steve_De4, they make sense to me :D

Regards,

Russ

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Posted
  • Location: Nr Salisbury, Wilts
  • Location: Nr Salisbury, Wilts
Basically I believe you should leave the shot basically as it is unless the Digital Camera is struggling to take the shot due the limits in it's dynamic range. You can also buy graduated filters to put on your camera but again if the sky is blue and you change to red using filters again you're not really taking a true photo of the scene and shouldn't pass it off as one.

I'm not sure what that means. It's a photo. It's not of the scene that was there at the time, sure enough, but it's still a photo. Does it become a bad photo just because it not "naturalistic", because it's not a "true rendition of nature"? Are photographers who do use photoshop therefore "not as good" as those who take naturalistic scenes? But if that were true, then surely using scene modes and letting the camera take care of "all the work" to create a "naturalistic scene" is also "bad". And if the camera makes adjustments automatically to the tones/contrast/sharpness, is that bad?

And what does "pass it off as one mean"? If you were to ask me "did I photoshop my landscape", I'd say yes - because I do raw photography. But it would still be a landscape. It would still be representation of that landscape. If I was invited to a competition where I could only take non-photoshopped photos, then I wouldn't pass it off as a non-photoshopped photo - but then it would have to be a jpeg, and then the camera would have done various tone/sharpening/contrast enhancements in-camera for me.

For example, this is photoshopped because it was raw.

520857637_9f87c5130c.jpg

Is it a true representation of the scene that was there in terms of colours? Gawd knows. I'd forgotten by the time I got home. The photograph has become my only memory of that scene, it is the only re-presentation. Is it bad that I can't remember if this is a true representation? If the blue is now bluer, or the green is now greener, than it was at the moment I clicked the button, is that bad? Should I say underneath this photo "this is photoshopped and not as good as other photos"? Is this photo a lie? Should I never display it? Should I sheepishly admit that, "well, it's okay, but it's been photoshopped?"

Are the only good photos those that represent something as it could naturally be seen?

Cheers

SteveDe

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Posted
  • Location: Douglas, Isle of Man
  • Location: Douglas, Isle of Man

I usually tweak the hystogram levels a little, and I often set the camera to under-expose a stop to get better range

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Posted
  • Location: Near Beverley, East Yorks. (5 metres a.s.l.)
  • Weather Preferences: Something good in all four seasons
  • Location: Near Beverley, East Yorks. (5 metres a.s.l.)
Hi, can someone tell me if there is a rules section to read re.

'photo enhancing' for the competitions here on NW ?

I looked in the photo comp. section and couldn't see any.

Up to now, I've presumed no PS alterations were allowed and

I've abided by that.

Thanks,

BL.

Ok, no-one has answered and pointed me in the right direction,

so I'll either ask a Mod in a pm. then or perhaps use my own

judgement on PS alterations for the NW comp. in light of this

interesting and enlightening thread :(

BL.

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  • 8 months later...
  • 3 months later...
Posted
  • Location: Louth, Lincolnshire
  • Weather Preferences: Misty Autumn days and foggy nights
  • Location: Louth, Lincolnshire

I really don't have a problem with using Photoshop - I do, I've dabbled with HDR photography and used Photomatics too - I shoot RAW so it tends to need more postprocessing than JPEG, but since a lot of the time I'm not necessarily trying to recreate a 'natural' scene, but to create a striking photograph, then I really don't see a problem with it. I am up front about the post-processing, however and tend to identify what I've done if it's anything other than a bit of a crop.

I do find that I am most proud of the shots I've taken that I've not tweaked with at all, but that's just my odd psyche.

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Posted
  • Location: Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
  • Weather Preferences: Thunderstorms and snow
  • Location: Peterborough, Cambridgeshire

I am a regular user of Flickr, and enjoy photography. I just have an old point and shoot but it's a good hobby all the same and combines well with my love of the outdoors.

I have to say, most of my pictures are left as taken and rarely do I wildly edit an image. Occasionally I will bump up or down the saturation and contrast/brightness but with the intention of making the picture look closer to the reality. Obviously, black and white photographs are an exception.

My most heavily edited picture is in fact my most recent one, taken on May Hill. I changed it to Black and White but also cloned out two trees on the right, to achieve a cleaner look, improve composition and emphasise the contrast in size between the mature and younger trees: http://flickr.com/photos/jtrickey/3130642097/

Another shot I changed to black and white was this: http://flickr.com/photos/jtrickey/2894240421/

I thought the B&W provided better contrast with the rays of light.

With this one, I simply boosted the saturation to how it actually was at the time of the sunset: http://flickr.com/photos/jtrickey/2934881705/

And finally, a completely untouched picture: http://flickr.com/photos/jtrickey/2582899037/

Photostream: http://flickr.com/photos/jtrickey/

Edited by 03jtrickey
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Posted
  • Location: Scarborough, North Yorkshire - 80m ASL
  • Weather Preferences: Tornadoey
  • Location: Scarborough, North Yorkshire - 80m ASL

I've just started getting into photo enhancing a bit more recently. Prior to this, I would use it only very occasionally, mainly for artistic value (i.e black and white conversions etc). Part of this was due to a lack of knowledge on how to use such tools. I also have a dislike for unrealistic looking over-processing. I can however appreciate it as a tool for fixing those shots which you maybe badly composed, or which came outt over/under exposed. Given my modest photography skills, this is very useful. B)

Here's a photo from earlier this year, which I have just tweaked today... The photo itself was taken with the camera on an automatic mode, hand held, in blowing winds and with me wanting to be outside of the car for as little amount of time as possible due to the insane amount of close lightning strikes. I didn't have time to prepare a carefully thought out shot and this is one of the few which were salveagble when I got to look at the final results.

In my opinion, it is badly composed, a little over exposed, has unwanted powerlines bligting the sky, which should be the focus, and just didn't give the true picture of how mean looking the storm was.

post-1731-1230146598_thumb.jpg

In the new version, I have rotated the image a touch so the horizon is more level, cropped the image to remove some uneccesary foreground and sky. The new aspect ratio of the picture suits it better also, as it is a wide angle shot and this in my view makes it look more panoramic. I decreased the exposure by half a stop as the scene did look too bright compared to what a storm should and indeed, did, look like. I also cloned out the power lines, a tool that I certainly will be using a bit more in such situations.

post-1731-1230146731_thumb.jpg

I'm happy with the result. It fixes a few of the problems with the photo I took. There are a few other things I wish I could fix, but I'd probably need a time machine to go back and give me time to properly set the shot up in Manual mode rather than using a poor choice of preset.

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  • 9 months later...
Posted
  • Location: marlow bucks
  • Location: marlow bucks

I personally do not retouch photos, except every now and then with contrast sharpness etc... But it is the exception not the rule. I shoot mostly landscape and wildlife and always try to get the exposure right in the camera, as I work on a computer too much during the day already..

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Posted
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire
  • Weather Preferences: Sunshine, convective precipitation, snow, thunderstorms, "episodic" months.
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire

It's a difficult one. While I very rarely enhance photos using photo editing software, when taking photos that involve contrasting light amounts it is often difficult to judge how far I should compensate for the camera's automatic under-exposure or over-exposure (the camera has exposure correction settings when using landscape mode). On those occasions I often err more on the side of "dark and dramatic".

I definitely feel less satisfaction about a photograph if I've edited it heavily in photo editing software than if I get it unaltered straight from the camera.

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  • 1 year later...
Posted
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire
  • Weather Preferences: Sunshine, convective precipitation, snow, thunderstorms, "episodic" months.
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire

It's an old topic, but I had some relevant experiences recently. During the so-called "smog" episode in mid to late April 2011, I saw a large number of striking orange/brown hues near the horizon associated with the haze/dust/pollution in the atmosphere. The pictures came out rather washed out because the camera appeared to "drain out" the oranges- perhaps the camera "thinks" that "normally" the horizon isn't a different colour to the upper parts of the sky when applying its own processing to the JPEG images?

I found that adding a slight orange filter to the photos using Paint Shop Pro made the pictures look a lot more similar to what I actually saw at the time.

I think, summarising, that there's a lot of truth in what Steve_De4 said earlier. All photos are manipulated to some degree, because the camera does its own "photoshopping" and although modern cameras generally do a good job, under some circumstances they get it a bit wrong. Thus my comment

I definitely feel less satisfaction about a photograph if I've edited it heavily in photo editing software than if I get it unaltered straight from the camera
no longer holds true, if the aim is to create a closer representation of the real thing (as opposed to enhancing it for dramatic effect).
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