Lightroom Plugin - Nik Collection or On1 Can it Help these photos?

[TheBigE]

Erik,

I have a suggestion.

I think that it might be useful to put the question of software aside for a bit and find a way to see what different types of adjustments do. With all due respect to Mike, I think looking for inspiration in others' photos, while a good starting point, won't be enough, because you won't know which types of edits have which effects. For example, you may see an image that appears very crisp and high contrast, and you might want to emulate that, but that wouldn't tell you how to do it.

So, i suggest some basic training in editing. You can certainly find things online, and many photo clubs offer occasional training.

Dan

Dan - Great point and I agree with your statement. I would find it difficult to look at the work of "others" and try to replicate. I have no idea of the light, time, situation, background of the photo. For these professional, frankly I would need them to stand next to me, take the same photo and see the results they produce. I hope that makes sense.

I have done a fair amount of training in basic editing in Lightroom specifically

Lightroom for Everyone (Online Course) by Rob Sylvan
KelbyOne Lightroom Training Courses
KelbyOne Photoshop Training Courses

Certainly there are more options, but I really feel comfortable in LR in making basic adjustments and optimizing my work.

The courses above are really geared toward the "nuts and bolts" of the program. I struggle with the creative side of this...and I agree that using programs like NIK or On1 may not be the solution to this problem.

Ultimately as i stated above, I really would like to keep things between LR and PS, jumping into PS is great but it is the shear volume of options that lie in front of me that make it difficult for me to find a path.

For the photos above that I posted, I guess my struggle is really the sky and lack of details in the clouds. It does not appear that the highlights are blown out, so I am hoping to recover some of those details and add some depth and feeling to the photos.

Hello again, Eric,
One of the big advantages I have found with OnOne is that you can apply any number of different filters and preview the effect on your image and this allows you to decide the direction you want to take the image and gives you a head start with your edit. It seems to me that this is what you are trying to achieve. Of course, as mentioned by other forum members above, Photoshop has many sophisticated tools that will allow you to get to the same point. But in my opinion, Photoshop won't allow you to easily pre-visualise the end product as can be done in OnOne and even if you have a good idea of what you want the final image to look like, unless you are a Photoshop expert it can be a bewildering task to achieve in Photoshop what can be done with one or two clicks in OnOne. I don't want to give the impression that I do not like Photoshop - quite the contrary, but if there is an easier and quicker solution, why not use it.
The NIK filters are great for editing images where you have a good idea of what you want the end product to look like. Others may disagree, but I feel the control point method used by NIK is better than fiddling with Photoshop selections.
Grant

Grant - again thanks for the feedback. Having given NIK a trial for the last couple of days, it seems to me that it can help me figure out where I could go in PS. One or two clicks and I see an image that maybe drastically different than before - appealing or not that is still up in the area. For example the image below really changes in my mind with using two filters in NIK - Detail Extractor and Contrast



and compare it to the original image.

[DanK]

Is the bottom one really the original? It has higher contrast in some regions than the top one (look at the lettering on the sign and signpost, for example, and the edges of the paved part of the road). the colors also seem more natural.

[TheBigE]

Is the bottom one really the original? It has higher contrast in some regions than the top one (look at the lettering on the sign and signpost, for example, and the edges of the paved part of the road). the colors also seem more natural.

Dan - Original from the Camera no...sorry this is confusing. This is where I stopped with LR adjustments...normally this would be my end point.

[D L]

Erik - I am trying to get my head around the ON1 tools a well. I have found their YouTube videos helpful, in particular the series "Your Photo... Our Look" featuring Matt Kloskowski link
He demonstrates his process in both Lightroom and the On1 suite, so you get a really good idea of what he would do in which software. As the photos are provided by the general public, you get a wide variety of genres and skill levels, so it is interesting to see what a pro might do with a photo taken in less than ideal light.

[Manfred M]

I would find it difficult to look at the work of "others" and try to replicate.

Erik - that is actually the whole point of this type of exercise. When you look at someone's image you can try to "reverse engineer" the shot. Look that the point of view, the angle of view and figure out roughly where the photographer was standing and what focal length was used. Look at the overall sharpness of the image. You can get reasonably close to the aperture used in the shot and in some cases, even what the photographer was focusing on.

Look at the scene - in a number of cases you can figure out the time of year the shot was taken. Sometimes the clarity of the environment can help too; low humidity (haze) can suggest time of year. For instance a clear shot of mountains was probably taken when temperatures were below the freezing point as the humidity in the air is low = no haze.

Look at the light; the direction of shadows. These can be a clue to the time of day. Online tools like the Photographer's Ephemeris can show you what the sun (and moon) were doing at a particular time for a specific day.

Having the photographer standing beside you and taking pictures at the same time is no guarantee that the shots will even be close to what you have taken. I've done this a number of times and the results might surprise you. If you can do this, you will start seeing a scene differently (and more photographically) than you do today.

[DanK]

I think the bottom one is better. I assume that the point of the top one was to try to bring out a little more detail in the sky, and you did that, but other aspects of the image were damaged in doing this--the loss of contrast and the color shifts.

If you want to bring out detail in the sky, you can do this with selections in photoshop or any similar program. Here is a quick edit that I did to illustrate this:



It's not great--given that I was working with a small jpeg, the increase in saturation caused some posterization. Also, the sky is so nearly featureless that it is hard to bring out much detail. Still, I think this edit shows that you can do it with photoshop, and I think the results are better, because there is no effect whatever on the rest of the image, and the contrast in the sky is greater than in your final version.

Here are the edits:



For the bottom, saturation edit, I selected by color (not all that successful, given the weakness of the blue in the original) to avoid increasing the saturation in the clouds. For the other edits, I used quick select to select the entire sky.

[TheBigE]

So today with a bit more time, I ran a single photo through PS and NIK to see my results.

First is the photo with basic adjustments in LR

Lightroom


Photoshop -




NIK Adjustments - Basically a Detail Extractor and Contrast Filter


Each has there merits, for me the PS one seems to be "what" I remember...I think there is some refinements to the selections that were made.

Thoughts?

[DanK]

second one looks best to me. Look at all the noise in the sky in the third one. (I'm guessing that is detail extractor, but I have never used it.) The third also has a subtle color shift from the first.

[TheBigE]

I agree on the second one being better than the NIK version. I think to me it looks more natural.

So given the adjustment layers I have done, is there a way to "keep" those such that if later I go back from LR to PS on this photo?

The tif photo that is returned to LR does not retain the PS edits if I go back in later...

[rpcrowe]

I love NIK but, I seldom use the presets supplied in that collection. I do most of my editing in NIK using Viveza.

[DanK]

So given the adjustment layers I have done, is there a way to "keep" those such that if later I go back from LR to PS on this photo?

The tif photo that is returned to LR does not retain the PS edits if I go back in later...

It should retain the PS edits, if you are saving a TIF and using 'file save' rather than 'save as'. However, if you want to bring the TIF back into PS and see the layers, use "original" in the photo-edit in menu, not 'with LR adjustments'