Biking in Boston

[Alis]

This is just for fun. I am trying to practice sharpening! Not sure if I have overdone it:

[Geoff F]

There does appear to be some slight dark lines particularly around the child's arms and other problems. But you do have to specifically look for them.

What settings? If you give a breakdown of your workflow I feel sure that one of our real experts will give plenty of advice.

In some ways this photo looks, to me, like a good candidate for selective sharpening on a duplicate layer. But it will be rather time consuming.

[Alis]

There does appear to be some slight dark lines particularly around the child's arms and other problems. But you do have to specifically look for them.

What settings? If you give a breakdown of your workflow I feel sure that one of our real experts will give plenty of advice.

In some ways this photo looks, to me, like a good candidate for selective sharpening on a duplicate layer. But it will be rather time consuming.

Thanks Geoff. I was trying to apply Colin's recipe (300%, 0.3 pixel radius, and 0 threshold) but it looked frosty. So I reduced it to 0.2 and around 100% with same threshold. Then I did the 300/0.3/0 on a duplicate layer on luminosity channel only. Then I flattened the image.

[Colin Southern]

Thanks Geoff. I was trying to apply Colin's recipe (300%, 0.3 pixel radius, and 0 threshold) but it looked frosty. So I reduced it to 0.2 and around 100% with same threshold. Then I did the 300/0.3/0 on a duplicate layer on luminosity channel only. Then I flattened the image.

Hi Ali,

I hope that I remembered to point out that you need to do capture sharpening whilst the RAW image is still at full resolution. So images will show frosting at 0.3, but not many - and I wouldn't have expected that one to.

If you'd like to send me a full-resolution RAW shot I'd be happy to process it for you and then give you all the relevant settings I used.

[Alis]

Hi Ali,

If you'd like to send me a full-resolution RAW shot I'd be happy to process it for you and then give you all the relevant settings I used.

Thanks, Colin. I just sent the link to the file to you.

Honestly, I do not really remember that much detail about what I did right now but I guess I was working on the RAW file still. Next time I have to remember what I do better.

Thanks.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Ali,

Got it thanks. I'll have a look at it in a few hours for you.

[Alis]

Hi Ali,

Got it thanks. I'll have a look at it in a few hours for you.

Hi Colin. You must be very busy! I would love to see what your technique is...

[Colin Southern]

Hi Colin. You must be very busy! I would love to see what your technique is...

Oops - sorry Ali - the weekend snuck up on me!

I'll take a look later on today ot tomorrow (public holiday today and I'm not around the office).

[Alis]

Oops - sorry Ali - the weekend snuck up on me!

I'll take a look later on today ot tomorrow (public holiday today and I'm not around the office).

Colin, I am still waiting

[Colin Southern]

Colin, I am still waiting

Opps - sorry again! I'm somewhat embarrassed - considerably richer, but still somewhat embarrassed!

[Colin Southern]

Hi Ali,

Ok ... here's my version of the shot ...



Post-Processing was as follows ...

[DNG Converter]

- Convert to DNG & Rename

[Adobe Camera RAW]

- Set White Balance to 5300 / +12

- Set Exposure to +0.4

- Set Fill Light to +25

- Set Blacks (Clipping Point) to +8

- Set Brightness to +40

- Set Vibrance to +20

[Photoshop]

- Capture Sharpening; USM 300%, 0.3 pixel, 1 threshold

- Creative / Content Sharpening; USM 20%, 8 pixels, 0 threshold

- Crop

- Resize to 1024 pixels wide

- Output Sharpening; USM 50 pixels, 0.3 radius, 0 threshold

- Roll back sharpening on pants with history brush

- Convert to sRGB / 8 Bit

As with any image, it's a case of personal taste - I've gone for the sharp, bright, and colourful look.

Sharpening wasn't an issue - possibly the frosting you got could have come from trying to capture sharpen after cropping and down-sizing?

Focus was good, but at 24mm on a FF camera @ F3.2, DoF was always going to me minimal from that distance (which wasn't a problem).

What do you think?

[Alis]

Hi Ali,


What do you think?

What can I say? Wonderful.

About the workflow, I used to use vibrance and black slider more often but I guess I was overusing them and always got dark and brown skin color. That is why I am very hesitant to use it now, but I am going to try it more often now.

The problem is that without a printer nearby, and having to send everything to a shop later and wait, it is not easy to use these risky things But I guess I will have to practice and spend some more money.

You know, Colin, these days video cameras do wonderful things. Can you do a few simple video tutorials like this and post it somewhere. I know there are lots of them but in forum, we can ask you to do things we want and see them right away

Thanks again!

[Colin Southern]

Hi Ali,

No worries! (I got there in the end!).

The thing to remember is that many of the sliders interact; as a case in point moving the black slider will make the image darker - but that can be a good thing if it was too light to start with - and that depends on things like the exposure and brightness sliders. Normally I like to get the exposure and black points right before doing much else as it sets the basic contrast of the image, but you have to constantly re-evaluate it, especially if using things like the fill light control. And of course, operating from a calibrated and profiles screen needs to be a "given" for this kind of work.

Vibrance is a lot like the saturation slider, but it's designed to leave skin tones alone, but if all else fails, just use the sponge tool set to saturate in PS, and avoid any skin (you don't need to be overly precise when painting as the eye isn't very sensitive to changes in saturation over a small area) (or alternativly, saturate the entire image and then desaturate any areas of skin).

Colours like skin, sky, grass are what are called "memory colours" - our brains remember what they should look like - and so they need to be fairly close. If your a glutten for punishment, grab a copy of "skin" by Lee Varis, but be sure to finish reading those other books first!

The "Trick" to skin tones is to get the white balance right first - and that's where you really need the likes of a Whibal card for professional work; for non-professional work you'll probably find that just using an Auto WB setting is usually quite close enough.

[Alis]

Excellent points, Colin.

What do you mean by getting the exposure right. I mean how do YOU decide it is right or wrong. What are your indicators?

Also, how do you decide about that threshold of 1?

Thanks.

[Colin Southern]

Excellent points, Colin.

What do you mean by getting the exposure right. I mean how do YOU decide it is right or wrong. What are your indicators?

Also, how do you decide about that threshold of 1?

Thanks.

Hi Ali,

In terms of RAW conversion, by "getting the exposure right" I mean pushing the histogram as far to the right as I can without clipping (ultimately I usually do clip the highlights and the shadows, but I prefer to make these final adjustments with a levels layer in Photoshop).

Re: the threshold, it's just a visual thing. Normally I use 0, but in your case it appeared to have a slightly detrimental effect on your boy's skin texture, and using 1 made it slightly better.

[kevinbythebeach]

I think Colin ought to start his own photo editing business....

[Colin Southern]

I think Colin ought to start his own photo editing business....

Already got one thanks (amongst other pies I've got fingers in!)

[Alis]

Hi Ali,

In terms of RAW conversion, by "getting the exposure right" I mean pushing the histogram as far to the right as I can without clipping (ultimately I usually do clip the highlights and the shadows, but I prefer to make these final adjustments with a levels layer in Photoshop).

Re: the threshold, it's just a visual thing. Normally I use 0, but in your case it appeared to have a slightly detrimental effect on your boy's skin texture, and using 1 made it slightly better.

Great points, Colin. Thanks!