Before & After Shots!

[Sahil]

Hi all,

The idea is to have a set of images here having a pic right out of camera (JPG may be, if not RAW, as it would be too heavy) and then the same pic after its processed. I feel that it will help beginners (Like me) to improve considerably. Something like the home-work I was given by Colin, in which I failed miserably.
Suggestions are welcome.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Sahil,

Do you mean like this?

Before



After

[Sahil]

Lol! Eggjactly!

I am starting to work on it.....

[wilgk]

To quote a famous Australian movie Sahil..."tell him he's dreaming'

[Colin Southern]

Lol! Eggjactly!

I am starting to work on it.....

All joking aside, it's probably not as simple as it sounds, as each image is different and thus requires different treatment. In some cases the adjustments are quite minor and don't change the image a lot - in other cases the adjustments are quite minor but DO change the image a lot (white balance being a typical example) -- whereas in other cases I make big changes that only give a relatively minor change (like adding lots off fill light but also raising the black clipping point) - whereas on other occasions it's big adjustments and big changes.

Having said all that though - the majority of the time when I look at images posed here by others, if anything is needed then 9 times out of 10 they mostly just need clipping points adjusted (to increase contrast) - sharpening - and saturation.

[Sahil]

Lol!!!!

[Sahil]

I agree, Colin. But I really wish to see the right out of camera images of the great shots we see here. Want to see what part does PP play in photography. Can this be made possible?

[Colin Southern]

Here's a before / after of your favourite from my 6 of the best series ...

[Sahil]

Oh wow! Thanks a tonne, Colin. I am grateful

[Colin Southern]

Oh wow! Thanks a tonne, Colin. I am grateful

No worries - why not see if you can get it looking like mine (or better)? All I did was adjust black clipping point - clarity - crop - sharpen - and a little burning.

[Klickit]

Sahil, I think this is a good idea, especially for those of us who need to see that there may be more potential in some of our shots than we realise. It took me a long time to see that shots that I was trashing because they lacked good contrast, rather than because they were blurry, or badly composed, often were actually recoverable with a bit of pp.

[Sahil]

Here.. I don't know quite how to use dodge/Burn tool. Things look messed up when I use those tools. What I do is, make a layers, turn the blending option to 'Soft Light' and then use Black & white colours to Burn & dodge, respectively.



What say?

[Shadowman]

I think less post processing is done by photographers when they have limited resources. Once you get your hands on photoshop you tend to experiment more, especially with RAW files. My previous editing consisted of sharpening, contrast adjustment, and cropping. Now that I am experimenting with HDR I take it a little further.

[Sahil]

Looking forward to see the HDRs

[Colin Southern]

What say?

Pretty good, although some of the transitions look a bit "harder".

I guess the hard bit is knowing how to interpret an image in the first place.

[Sahil]

Yea. I didn't sharpen it. I didn't feel the need as I am liking the softness in the picture.

[JK6065]

Here's one of my before&after shots.

I walked through a nearby shopping centre/village with my camera to see what I could get from there. This tunnel appealed to me because it's recursive character, though I only took a single shot (which was nothing good at all).



After that I made it into this:



View on Black

[Sahil]

Wow! What a transformation!

[JK6065]

Thank you Sahil

Actually is was quite easy to do. It was one of my first photo's on which I did this much in photoshop.

Here is roughly how I did it: It straightened the original, crop the tunnel bit and mirrored it. Then I used the clone and heal tool to clean up the edges, make it look good and get rid of each time one of the matching details on both sides to make it look less mirrored (and fake). After that I converted to black and white and that was about it

Of course this is an example of an extreme makeover, which I rarely use. Most of the time I do little tweak to make it look better, like Colin showed (but he does it way better than me).

[Sahil]

Thanks, Jereon.

Yea, I figured that out and could successfully imitate it
You did a pretty neat job.