PP challenge (sort of inter-forum too!)

[Jack Hogan]

My Try. I liked the noise, so I pushed it.



All done in ACR 6.3.

[rob marshall]

The noise is worse on the dump than the RAW Rob; the dump is a DPP conversion & downsize Qual 6. It is still bad, that is the problem, but often folks use noiseware that I have not tried and swear by it.

This was about 4 months into DSLR ownership, much of which was taken learning about RAW & choosing lens (Sigma), which I think is excellent (though not IS). The scene was changing quite fast and I just didn't have the experience to optimise settings as I would now or try a few different.

Your choice, but would you care to upload the RAW and let me have a link. I'd really like to have a look at this. http://www.mediafire.com/myfiles.php I take your point about inexperience and the settings.

[nickjohnson]

OK, here is my try. I ignored the noise, and tried for atmosphere plus some articulation in the trees. Used my normal pp routine. RAW → DXO 5.3 → DNG → LR 2.6 → TIFF → PS2 + PercepTool plugin (also Noise Ninja but not much good) → JPG.

Regards,

Nick.

[crisscross]

I don't want to stop anyone else having fun with my previously linked RAW, but neither to waste more of your time

This edition changes the crop to include more to the right of the boat (pier airbrushed & heal brushed out) and it does throw the emphasis onto the receding right hand bank, thank you Adam at Juza for suggestion.

1120x800: http://www.pbase.com/crisscross/imag...1/original.jpg

forum reduction 720w:



To my great surprise, this has even come out as quite an acceptable A4 print, actually a little darker than the .jpg.

To my equal surprise, this version was done using DPP (3.7.3) for conversion and noise reduction. I did no alteration to exposure. The NR on RAW added to DPP a year or so back is really very good, showing once again that camera makers know what goes into the camera. In between I tried ACR5 (with & without CS4 follow up) and was surprised at the small size of the .tif files. Hence I checked the 16bit button on export from DPP - file 5x the size and less prone to disintegrate on being 'pushed' in Nikon Capture NX2. Maybe also accounting for better print performance, but I now need to do homework on 8 v 16 bit.

So don't throw away files difficult to re-visit, however unpromising they look!

Over the next day or so, I will look at the detail of what you kind people have done and put in more thoughts....just now I am off to Newent Camera club with the print for the current comp and feel it won't be a disgrace.

[Nuno]

This is how I would have done it. The main ideia was to get rid of the noise.
It is not easy to recover those shadows because the noise appears drastically. So I've decided to keep them dark.
I also decided to crop the most dark area too, because I think it adds nothing to the picture.
I liked the Pictus idea. Very creative.



I've used ACR6 + NIK Color FX + CS5

[JK6065]

I think the shot wasn't that bad except form the severe underexposure. The larger amount of the photograph is quite underexposed. Though the left hand side is even worse due to the direct sunlight just above it and no other light. This, in combination with an older camera, has caused the noise.

To test my photoshop techniques I also took a shot.

[Pictus]

thanks Pictus - interesting additions, but I would like to explore turning those layers off. Unfortunately I can't uncompress your .7z file as I am on a mac OS10.5.8 (32 bit) and neither system nor Stuffit 10 will expand it. Can you use Stuffit or something or nothing if it compresses to 2.3MB?

You are welcome, there are many for MAC at the page end http://www.7-zip.org/download.html

[crisscross]

I have learnt quite a lot from this excercise as well as emerging from it with a decent file from something that started very unpromising.

From your various inputs, I have also learnt how wide the range of PP treatments can be. I have liked the pinkish pastels and maybe I can try a dawn interpretation too!

As far as PP software is concerned, I am impressed by my re-visit to DPP (now v3.9). (a) its built-in noise reduction on the RAW image (NR/lens/ALO sub-menu at top of main edit window) (b) the very powerful 'fine balance' under white balance adjustment - for anyone who has never tried this it is a full colour wheel with visual and numeric filter selection (c ) its option of saving as 16bit tiff even if the original file would default to 8 bit in ACR5 (OK, I know there must be a setting somewhere in ACR)

NeatImage can also reduce noise further on my 'final' effort within a masked area, poking the image thumbnail in the layer list; however the Home version will only work on 8 bit and the Pro seems expensive for a plug-in. NB the demo is pretty useless as it will only work on a 1024x768 reduction, not the real thing.

I see that Sean's tutorials do confirm it may be worth working in 16bit, even if some aspects of the theory suggest not.

I am impressed by what now seems possible in LR, but am not convinced it does anything useful that Capture NX2 can't (after conversion to 16 bit tif in DPP or DxO from other cameras). And I would need a lot more conviction to spend £200 and face all the **** of using its own library system. I do note that its advocates do say it is 'as good' or even 'better than' CS within its limitations, not just a poor man's version. Like NX2 . Anything that will break the orthodoxy that CS is 'the only real thing' is good news to me.

So thank you