Todays outside practice--c&c

[Njbowman]

GOOSE HEAD

DUCK LANDING

LAKE B&W


THANKS FOR THE INPUT AND CHECKING THESE OUT

[Peter Ryan]

Hi Gerald,

I like the close crop on #1 - it is well framed.

#2 is a nice action shot showing some movement.

#3 is my favourite. This is well captured and a great sky.

[jiro]

Everything worked nicely for you on the third image, Gerald. This is really very nicely captured. Thank you for sharing.

[ilovelucydog]

Your 3rd image is very nice... the clouds, the tree and the table waiting for Spring.

[Skitalez]

Hi! The Third photo really impresses! But I think, it is not necessary to give out a secret! I mean, that solar beams are very successful! But the sun is visible also. Whether it is better to cut off a little to hide their source????

[Njbowman]

Thanks for all of your thoughts
I liked the way the table grew when you cropped out the sun in the last redo.

[Snarkbyte]

I just learned a technique for improving clouds in one of the Kelby Training courses, and couldn't resist trying it on this image (hope you don't mind). It may be a bit overdramatic for this shot, but the technique really works very well. Here's the result:

[Peter Ryan]

Hi Al,

May we enquire as to what you did?

[Snarkbyte]

May we enquire as to what you did?

As I mentioned, I got this from a Kelby Training Course (the "Digital Arsenal" course, "Clouds" lesson, in case anyone is interested). The training video is obviously copyrighted, but to my knowledge, none of the techniques within the lessons are protected, and I certainly don't mind sharing. The following is an outline of the technique from notes I took during the course. This works for Photoshop CS4 and CS5, but I don't know about earlier versions of PS, and I'm not familiar with other PP products, so adapting the technique for use in other software is left as and exercise for the reader. As with most PP techniques, some artistic judgement and experience/experimentation is required to obtain the results you're looking for. Hope this is clear enough to make sense to the reader. Good luck!

(Mods: Nothing in the training videos or on the Kelby Training site indicates that the techniques described are proprietary, although the course instructor claims he developed this technique. I'm fairly confident I'm not violating any property rights here, but I'm not a lawyer, so please delete this post if I've been naughty, with my apologies.)

Enhancing Clouds: (menu selections are shown in UPPERCASE)

Load image in PS and create new duplicate layer

Use a high-pass filter to define the clouds:
FILTER > OTHER > HIGH PASS
Set Radius in range of 20 - 40 or until clouds show good definition
without blowout or "glow" around edges

Desaturate the filtered image:
Go to Hue/Saturation dialog box (CTRL+u) and reduce Saturation to -100

Define the tonal range of the clouds:
Go to Levels dialog box (CTRL-L)
There should be a distinct peak in the histogram that indicates the tonal range
of the clouds. You want to move the black and white sliders somewhat within the
tails of the cloud distribution peak. Experimentation and artistic judgement are
required here, but you're looking for slider placement that gives contrast and
detail to the clouds. Ignore everything else in the image - just pay attention to the
clouds. The effect this has on the remainder of the image will be handled later by
masking.

Reduce noise with surface blur:
FILTER > BLUR > SURFACE BLUR
Start at Radius: 5 Threshold: 5; adjust to eliminate noise

Change Blending mode of cloud layer to Overlay

Adjust Opacity of cloud layer to taste (~30% is usually a good place to start)

Restore image outside of clouds by masking:
Change cloud layer to black layer mask (use ALT key and layer mask icon), then
use Paintbrush tool to paint WHITE on clouds and sky using large soft-edged
brush. This will make the cloud layer visible on the painted areas, but masked
in the unpainted areas.

Done!

I suppose I should mention this works for color images, as well as BW. You may need some practice and experimentation, but that's the process. Obviously, there's plenty of room for artistic interpretation and preference in some steps, depending on how dramatic you want the clouds to appear. I suspect this technique might be useful for other low-contrast objects with a suitable tonal range, but I haven't tried it. Apparently, the course instructor developed this technique specifically for clouds, but now I'm wondering if I could use it to advantage for some of the shots I took of crystals at the rock show. I'll try it out, and post the result if anything interesting results.

BTW, the "Digital Arsenal" course alone is well worth the cost of a monthly subscription for the Kelby Training videos (especially for newbies like myself). Highly recommended (and for what it's worth, I have no connection to Kelby Training whatsoever, other than as a customer. I'm not plugging sales, just relating my experience with an excellent training product).