Oh, help! (post processing woes)

[Katy Noelle]

I got this far in iphoto but it wouldn't process any further



Being the intrepid explorer that I am (sigh), I ventured into photoshop to lighten it.



Then, I tried this.



Insight, please! I need your knowledge, fresh eyes and any C&C that comes to you would be so appreciated.

[rob marshall]

Katy, my dear.

We share your pain. Do you have the original RAW, or original JPEG? Would you post it here http://www.mediafire.com/myfiles.php
as it would help to see the original, and perhaps do an edit?

[Wirefox]

I will leave a PS expert to this. I run GIMP but what I can tell you is that you will be far better discarding the iPhoto image and opening for PP direct into PS. The background already looks a little stretched and overprocessed to me. This will be one for Jiro et al. It is puzzling me why you seem to be getting so much noise. i have never noticed it on your images until recently. Are these underexposed shots to start with? That would explain the noise if you are trying to recover the exposure.

[Katy Noelle]

Katy, my dear.

We share your pain. Do you have the original RAW, or original JPEG? Would you post it here http://www.mediafire.com/myfiles.php
as it would help to see the original, and perhaps do an edit?

Go for it! I'd love to see what you can do with it. I only have jpegs, though. Thank you!

This one is the "original" in color.
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?w6ho2y3o6qec8sz

This is the B&W one that I worked on.
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?gma2q5d47qy82gb

and, I've never used mediafire, before and am not sure if I did this right.

[Katy Noelle]

I will leave a PS expert to this. I run GIMP but what I can tell you is that you will be far better discarding the iPhoto image and opening for PP direct into PS. The background already looks a little stretched and overprocessed to me. This will be one for Jiro et al. It is puzzling me why you seem to be getting so much noise. i have never noticed it on your images until recently. Are these underexposed shots to start with? That would explain the noise if you are trying to recover the exposure.

Yes, Steve, it's underexposed. The light has been strange because of the rain that we've had all week. I know that it's not making sense but that's how it's turning out.

I've been shooting in RAW the whole year but recently found out that iphoto won't surrender them. (It's a long story.) I'm having to take one technical stretch at a time, these days, and am definitely looking forward to figuring another library out in the next month (or two - but, hopefully not that long.) The worst part is that iphoto doesn't save what I worked on in edit. It's such a sad story!!! Any suggestions, that way, would be appreciated for sure.

[rob marshall]

Katy

Couple of things...

1. You have some gorgeous (like me) colours here. Why B&W? The colour is great.
2. You don't need to shoot at 1/800sec unless there's a hurricane blowing. Do you have hurricanes in Vermont?
3. You have a Rebel (which is fine) but I'd stick to ISO200 or less if you can, and you could have in this case. Otherwise, you start to get noise, especially on spot-metering as here.


I put the JPEG through the RAW edit (pretended it was RAW) and increased the saturation a little, the clarity, reduced the noise a bit, a bit of fill-light and tweaked the contrast. I also did a square crop of the second one as I thought getting in closer would help to highlight the best part of the shot - those very nice petals at the front.

[Shambhala]

That is a Beautiful shot Katy. Glad Rob could help sort out your PP.. I can't wait till I learn to do PP

[jiro]

Katy, I downloaded the file you have, processed it first to LR then did some additional editing work inside Photoshop and I came up with this:

Click the image to see it in lightbox.


I'm not sure if this is the concept you want but this is how I would probably edit this image if this was my shot. May I ask what flower is this?

This is how I would probably interpret this in b&w:


Btw, this is Katy's original file:

[Katy Noelle]

Firstly, thank you very much, everyone, for your help and input!

It's an Angelique Tulip. The problem that I'm having with the color is sort of a Red Queen issue. They're the wrong color (well, this one is). I've grown them in the past and I don't remember this first flush of strong color - indeed, some of them are what I expected and some of them are like this one. They're supposed to be a softer pink - that was my garden plan, anyway, but, as it turns out, my earlier blooming tulips are all blooming at the same time as my late blooming tulips and entirely ruining the effect anyway (the early blooming tulips color is not what was advertised and are too strong, too. (Rob, this may, honestly, be more of a case of needing help from your wife!) The point is - I want to paint the roses white!

Alright, I have an example to give but it's been a spectacularly distracted morning and I need to take my parents to the airport, now. (I mean, now!) I'll be back!

[jiro]

The point is - I want to paint the roses white!

I gave this image another try, Katy knowing now your vision on the edit. I think the easier way to achieve your vision is to use the "red channel" and use that as your b&w layer. On the channels palette, your image is broken down to three components - namely the RED, GREEN, and BLUE channels. This is a screen capture of the flower's RGB components. By the way, I have used my edited image as my base layer or starting image.

Click the image to see it in lightbox.


As you can see, just by looking at the Red Channel component, it is already a good b&w rendition of the flower as if the petals are painted white. So, the question is - "How are we then going to extract the red channel so we can use it as our working layer in photoshop?" You use the APPLY IMAGE command.

First, copy the background layer (in case we messed up, we still have the original image intact. ) Then, you go to IMAGE > APPLY IMAGE. A new window will appear with options in it. Choose:

Source = the name of your source image
Layer = Layer 1
Channel = Red
Blending = Normal
Opacity = 100%
Preserve Transparency = Unchecked
Mask = Unchecked

Then press OK. You now have the copied layer (layer 1) with the RED Channel imbedded on it. Now, I think it won't benefit having a very strong sharp image with this kind of subject so I decided to add some softening effect to it by blurring the image a little bit. This is the end result:

Click the image to see it in lightbox.


Hope this helps, if not... Sorry.

[Katy Noelle]

Talk about fresh eyes... you guys don't have that preconceived, personal frustration with the color and see it beautifully. I like all of the edits. Rob, did you crop your edit like that because that's how I, usually, like to crop things or is that just what you saw?

This is what I did with my color version before I switched to B&W. The color was distracting me - I thought the point was more the ruffly petals and the raindrops but, I guess, the B&W's just not carrying it?



This is the "Queen of the Night" tulip that I have planted with them. (They're twerked with a bit more blue just cuz I like it that way.) The ones that I took with more dof were blurry because of that slight breeze and forget the macro! The second, close up one is just a "rough draft" - I didn't finish it. Anyway, that's why I was at ISO400 - I couldn't get it clear with the dof that I wanted. I think, Rob, considering what you've said, the light was beautiful and soft but just wasn't strong enough.

[Katy Noelle]

I had another go at this. I think that it needed more contrast - maybe it still does. Should I give up the ghost or am I getting somewhere?

[Vandenberg]

something like this?

[Katy Noelle]

something like this?

Ooooooo! Yes, Vandenberg that is much closer to what I was hoping for. Explain, please! (You know this particular tulip, maybe?)

[Vandenberg]

long list, try to make it short

cs5
alien skin exposure 3
picture code noise ninja
some of my home made things
some of my light filters (see right corner) i made
not easy to explain it

my cs looks like this, you only see half of my layer pallet

[mythlady]

I think they're gorgeous, Katie -- and I love Vandenberg's edit. It's exquisite.

[Katy Noelle]

long list, try to make it short

cs5
alien skin exposure 3
picture code noise ninja
some of my home made things
some of my light filters (see right corner) i made
not easy to explain it

my cs looks like this, you only see half of my layer pallet

I.have.SO much to learn. Thank you for sharing this, though. I had definitely noticed the light filter and almost asked specifically about it. I'm sure that I've seen that you've used it in some of your other shots that I really love but I didn't realize, until now, that it was done in post processing. Ah HA!

I love how you're photoshop widget/thing titles are "alien skins" and "ninjas" and I've been wanting to try using things like Florabella, coffee shop velvet cream and vintage blush. It reminds me of the new lipsticks that I got in NYC - pink parfait, candy and (my favorite name) bois de rose. I love marketing.

Well, now I have a conundrum. I wish that that photo was mine. Hm! All of you show me that it's not so bad, after all. I'll keep working on it.