Revisiting raws - Applying new skills

[Donald]

In this thread I spoke about revisiting raw files from a long time ago and applying to them the skills I now have.

More and more I am looking at images I made back 3/4/5 years ago and thinking how much better they could now be. Now, of course, you are still perfectly entitled to think, 'You still haven't got any skill, mate'. But I'm enjoying myself!

This was captured in 2015 and was previously presented as a dark 'moody' image in which lots of global adjustments, or crude local adjustments, were made.

Any critical analysis you wish to make will be welcome.

The North York Moors.

[John 2]

I don't recall the original Donald but I do like this. Capturing moisture on a road against the light always makes for a nice effect but you have seen a particularly interest bit of road which makes the comp. As for the processing, there is some nice recession but I'm not keen on the blocked shadows on either side of the FG. Is there any more detail there?

[Donald]

[QUOTE=John 2;719834 but I'm not keen on the blocked shadows on either side of the FG. [quote]
You are absolutely right, John. Aargh!

Correction being done. Y'see, I haven't got any skill.

[Manfred M]

+1 to John's comment. From time to time, I will revisit some of my old shots and much like what you are doing. I find it is more than just the skills I have acquired in the time between when I took the shot and now, but also that my personal tastes and my PP approach have changed as well. Often I don't like the image nearly as much as I did when I first made it but every so often I find a real "gem" that works well for me now, but did not do so in the past.

I also like reflections on wet roads, but find that they can overpower an image. My preferred solution is to use a polarizer and use it to manage the glare. I generally do not use the polarizer at maximum settings, but usually something intermediate that helps balance out the image. It's easy to do at capture but virtually impossible to do later on. I try to always have one in my camera bag for these types of shooting situations. Fortunately, the lenses I use most often all have a 77mm filter thread, so I only have to carry one polarizer most of the time.

As for the shadow detail, I agree with John there too; a bit of dodging seems to be worth considering.

[Shadowman]

For me, noise reduction used to be the software upgrade that would send me back to older images, lately I haven't searched for the next best thing as I'm happy with the software available and somewhat happy with my system's capability; would still love to shoot at ISO 52,500 when needed. New editing techniques/styles can always be picked up so I can understand your desire to revisit older images. Nice hazy style.

[John 2]

+1 to John's comment. From time to time, I will revisit some of my old shots and much like what you are doing. I find it is more than just the skills I have acquired in the time between when I took the shot and now, but also that my personal tastes and my PP approach have changed as well. Often I don't like the image nearly as much as I did when I first made it but every so often I find a real "gem" that works well for me now, but did not do so in the past.

Ditto plus I think that your ability to see the potential in a subject from a different point of view matures.

[JBW]

Perhaps we could see the images side by side?

My personal preference would be for the clouds and the land to meld at the horizon

[xpatUSA]

Recently there was a discussion elsewhere about raw versus JPEG.

As a raw-only shooter I had a look with my newly acquired Sigma DP1 Merrill, comparing the out-of-camera JPEG with a JPEG converted from the raw for the same capture, voila:



What stands out most is the cloud contrast "recovered" from the raw; the in-camera JPEG being too bright (yes, the presets were all at zero and yes, sRGB was selected). When lowering the brightness of the in-camera JPEG, the cloud contrast barely changed which tells me quite a lot about relative merits of raw v. JPEG in that camera.

Another point against in-camera JPEGs is that selection of the best quality in-camera doesn't necessarily get you the best possible image color (which some of us know as being YCbCr = 4:4:4 (1x1) i.e no chroma sub-sampling) and almost certainly doesn't get you minimum compression ... whereas your converter probably offers you a choice in these matters. For example the converted JPEG above was saved at quality 12 which got me 2:1 compression and no sub-sampling.

Probably too much information for most of us ...

[rpcrowe]

I really like the curvature of the road into the hazy distance on Donald's shot.

I frequently revisit old images. Some of these have been post processed and some of them have not. What strikes my fancy at one period might not be the same as what I like at other times. Sometimes I will learn a new technique and want to try this out on some previously post processed images.

That I one thing that I like about hooting RAW... I can always return to an image...

[lookmore]

In this thread I spoke about revisiting raw files from a long time ago and applying to them the skills I now have.

More and more I am looking at images I made back 3/4/5 years ago and thinking how much better they could now be. Now, of course, you are still perfectly entitled to think, 'You still haven't got any skill, mate'. But I'm enjoying myself!

For me, I don't even need to REvisit old RAW files. . . I have such a backlog of unprocessed photos that it comes to me pretty naturally. For example I still have 1000+ files to process in my July folder... From July 2017 :-)

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[Donald]

For me, I don't even need to REvisit old RAW files. . . I have such a backlog of unprocessed photos that it comes to me pretty naturally. For example I still have 1000+ files to process in my July folder... From July 2017 :-)

I don't take that many in a year, or even two years, never mind a month.

[lookmore]

I don't take that many in a year, or even two years, never mind a month.

This was a holiday month, always a good motivation to get the fast trigger syndrome. Never mind, when I'm done reviewing them that number will shrink quite a lot.

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[rpcrowe]

Visiting old versions of Photoshop is no where nearly as much fun as reworking old photos with the latest software.

I was working on another person's computer to edit an image. That computer had a much older version of Photoshop running. I think it was CS6 or even earlier.

I was surprised at how much I depend on he Camera Raw filter, even when working with JPEG images...

[Rufus]

That computer had a much older version of Photoshop running. I think it was CS6 or even earlier.
I was surprised at how much I depend on he Camera Raw filter, even when working with JPEG images...

Yes, the Camera Raw filter was the one thing that convinced me to move on from CS6 to the dreaded subscription model, and at the time I didn't even appreciate that it worked with jpegs as well!

[tbob]

I find revisiting images a worthwhile enterprise. Not that my skills have progressed massively, however my tastes seem to have.