2016 Project 52, 4th quarter by Judith Noble (Urbanflyer) C & C desired always

[Urbanflyer]

Week 51--Nova Scotia Garden in early spring---Hard to believe only one more week of 2016! Plan on doing this again next year but with a different purpose.

Original photo with basic RAW processing




Image after post processing--not much --adjustment layer mask

[Dave Humphries]

Week 48- Bark--this is an old photo. I think I oversharpened it. Would like your opinion.

Hi Judith,

Yes, I agree with you.

Looking at the 'after' image at 100% and using terminology relevant to USM (because I know that best and you didn't say);
I think the "Threshold" was too high - because only contrasty detail has been sharpened, while the less contrasty detail is very soft.
The Amount was probably too high also.
I cannot decide on the radius, the bark texture doesn't lend itself to that analysis.
I could also be being influenced by other settings you might have applied such as Clarity.

It would help if you could advise what you did and settings used (if you can remember).

Sorry I only just saw this.

Dave

PS
Week 50, the doorway; I would have liked to see some of the blue boarding to the right of the door, however, perhaps it didn't exist - e.g. the neighbour's property which might have been a different colour.

PPS
Week 51, the garden bench; good effort, subtle, my only suggestion would be to 'burn' the foreground branch that cuts across the top right corner so (with a somewhat darker tone) it's just a little less distracting. It could be cloned out, but I think it helps to add depth to the scene.

[Urbanflyer]

Thanks, Dave--agree about burning the right upper branch. How did I miss that!!

[Shadowman]

Week 51, nice effort original reasonably sharp however edit does seem to have softened the image somewhat.

[bnnrcn]

Very nice image in week 51 Judith , I also like the hand-made wooden armchair very much

[Urbanflyer]

Week 51, nice effort original reasonably sharp however edit does seem to have softened the image somewhat.

Thanks--clearly I am not sure how to SEE this--can you help me? I am not arguing that there is not an issue, I just can't figure out what to look at to identify it.

[Urbanflyer]

Very nice image in week 51 Judith , I also like the hand-made wooden armchair very much

Thanks Binnur. That style of chair is referred to as an Adirondack chair, with reference to a mountain range on the eastern side of the U.S where many people had summer places during the 1900's. The chair style is very common across the U.S. and is usually smaller, just for one person. This one is likely a two person style.

[bnnrcn]

Those type of chairs are sold in Turkey too as garden furniture Judith. But I really like the one in the image because it is hand-made and it looks very natural

Thanks Binnur. That style of chair is referred to as an Adirondack chair, with reference to a mountain range on the eastern side of the U.S where many people had summer places during the 1900's. The chair style is very common across the U.S. and is usually smaller, just for one person. This one is likely a two person style.

[Urbanflyer]

Week 51, nice effort original reasonably sharp however edit does seem to have softened the image somewhat.

I am working on seeing the sharpness issues, which, for me, includes understanding sharpening at a deeper level. I think there may have been two things at work in this image--1) I did not sharpen the original image at all and I am now starting to understand why consideration of that needs to be in my workflow, and 2) I have been experimenting with the alternative technique for burning and dodging which involves a white or black adjustment mask and doing adjustments to the opacity of that layer. In this case I used a black adjustment layer, masked the chair only. It makes sense to me that that approach to burning in the rest of the image would reduce sharpness. Here is another go at it with sharpening. Am I heading in the right direction?

[Shadowman]

Judith,

Dodging and burning shouldn't affect sharpness; in fact if used correctly could enhance edge detail. Here is an example using just two sliders clarity and contrast, I may have gone a bit too far but you can easily see the difference. The second image is your RAW with a bit of processing, the first has clarity/contrast applied to the overall image; used sparingly and in certain areas can make a big difference to your final output. Also, you can use sharpening during any portion of your workflow, however output sharpening should be done last and after any noise reduction.

[Urbanflyer]

John, thanks for your time. After the holiday I will delve into this more. I really need to conquer this conceptually and practically. One of my mentors encouraged me to avoid the contrast slider and instead use the black, white, shadow and highlight sliders. I feel comfortable with the clarity slider since its aim is to increase contrast in the midtones. I will work through some other tutorials after I study what you have presented. Thanks again!

[Wavelength]

Nice image

[Shadowman]

John, thanks for your time. After the holiday I will delve into this more. I really need to conquer this conceptually and practically. One of my mentors encouraged me to avoid the contrast slider and instead use the black, white, shadow and highlight sliders. I feel comfortable with the clarity slider since its aim is to increase contrast in the midtones. I will work through some other tutorials after I study what you have presented. Thanks again!

Judith,

A couple of other things to consider are shapes, patterns, leading lines, and textures. Overall your image contains many elements, perhaps too much perhaps not enough. If you were designing this scene as a still life what would you remove, what would you alter and what would you emphasize through aperture choice, lighting, or personal preference. If you have some control over a scene such as this; have fun with it. I often find myself questioning whether or not I should move an object just for compositional perfection.

[Geoff F]

I'm much the same as you, Judith. Never touch the Contrast adjustment as it is a rather coarse adjustment. Clarity works rather like the old Local Contrast Enhancement from Unsharp Mask settings.

For me, my basic settings in Adobe ACR start with Exposure and White Balance then often a bit of Vibrance (just a little) plus a small amount of Clarity if required.

Then think about reducing Whites and/or darkening Blacks - if required. Sometimes highlights as well at this stage but more often I like to add any highlight boost towards the end of my overall processing after final sharpening. However, highlight reduction can be required at the Raw edit stage.

A tad of sharpening at this stage. Eg Amount 40 Radius 1 plus a little bit of Detail and Threshold. And often a tiny amount of Noise Reduction.

Then over to the main editing window where any selective 'dodging and burning' gets done with Curves and a mask. I tend to dislike the dodge and burn terms which take me back to previous software with some rather coarse brushes without the finesse of Curves plus masking.

However, for much of my selective editing I prefer to make two or three different Raw conversions then stack the layers for some masking to create something similar to HDR processing. Except I do it manually.

With CC it is possible to create the Raw versions using Smart Objects which can be returned to ACR at any time for additional tweaking using the original image as the source each time.

[Urbanflyer]

Thanks, Geoff. It seems there are many possible workflows. It is really helpful to hear how others approach the job of turning a capture into an evocative image. I am going through a number of tutorials this week and, hopefully, will have a better understanding of sharpening when 2017 starts! Stacking is something I hope to approach in 2017. So much to learn!

[Urbanflyer]

Last post on this image. Need to move on to week 52 (yea!) But wanted to make one last try. For this attempt I went back to basics I learned from Steve Burns. It is not that I think this image is important. It is that it has offered a good learning opportunity. Thank you for your patience!

[bnnrcn]

Looks good

[Urbanflyer]

Looks good

Thanks, Binnur! Best wishes to you for an interesting and productive new year!

[Urbanflyer]

Week 52!!!! Bristlecone Pine detail--taken at the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest near Bishop, California

Thank you all for your comments throughout the year!

Original RAW image




Image after post processing

[GBO25]

Your old fishing boat certainly looks a little brighter with an enhanced morning glow.

Below I've suggested a couple of other edits you might like to try to bring it up even more.


Open the image in camera raw. Doesn’t matter if it’s a jpeg it can still be opened in camera raw.

Once there do a Luminosity adjustment. This will remove an awful lot of the grainy coarseness in the image. Drag the luminosity slider to at least 50% and maybe even close to 60%

Now open the image in the main Photoshop editing window and create a Hue/Saturation layer. Use the drop down menu in the hue/saturation layer adjustment box and select just yellow. Now use the lightness slider and move it toward the light end to bring all the yellow tones lighter and thus brighter.

Because you only want to adjust the old boat’s yellows use the keyboard command Ctrl-i (or Command-i on a Mac) to invert the hue/saturation layer and effectively remove the adjustment you just did. The layer thumbnail will go black.

Now choose the brush tool in mode = normal and at 100% opacity and make sure white is the foreground colour. With the black hue/saturation layer mask selected as active start painting in white over just the boat. Because white reveals when painting on a layer the yellow lightening you did begins to appear but only where you want it to. Suddenly you have even more pop.

Now try this.

Flatten the image so your adjustments all become part of your Background layer. Next right click the background layer and select “Duplicate Layer”.

Once that’s done you’ll have a Background Copy layer sitting above the background layer. Set the blend mode of this new layer to Overlay.

I don’t know where the command is in Photoshop because I don’t use it but you now need to remove colour from this overlay blended layer. This step is not totally necessary but it helps if an image has bright colours.

Now go to the filters drop down menu. Slide down to Other and select High Pass. When an adjustment window opens move the slider to about 2 and click ok. You’ve now done a high pass sharpening edit.

If you turn your adjusted layer off and on you’ll see the difference.

Happy editing.