Editing attempt with Nik C&C please

[davidedric]

Hi,

I have been scanning some old slides. I like this image of Zebras in Etosh NP in Namibia, because for me it sums up the dry and dusty feel (the whole herd must have been at least a couple of hundred animals).

However the original is horribly noisy, I think largely because it was shot either on Ektachrome 200 or 400, (this was long before the days of IS, and I needed the speed). This is the original, I hope the noise shows (view at full size in Lytebox for best results).



What I did, after improving a little in Lightroom, was to use Nik Dfine2 to reduce the overall noise by 200% (the maximum). I decided that I didn't mind the blurring that gave to the general scene, it's pretty dusty out there, but I wanted the four zebras to the right and the one in the middle distance to stand out, so I used control points to reduce the noise reduction to 100%. Then, I went into the Nik output sharpener and applied some sharpening to the same animals. I exported from LR with "sharpen for screen" selected, and this was my result.



Comments gratefully received, and any suggestions as to improve the image, especially with the tools at my disposal (LR4, Nik collection, PSE11)

Many thanks,

DAve

[Donald]

I'd say that was an excellent job, very well done.

A significant improvement, I think, on what was an very good image to start with.

[Brownbear]

Beautiful image, and the noise reduction looks very well done to me.

[jprzybyla]

David, it looks good to me. I can see a significant improvement in the sky when switching between images. Nice Zebras and a wonderful memory of your time in Africa.

Best regards to you and Margalit.