Official Photography Thread

[Katy Lied]

the 1st round of processing was a result of playing in LR and I had the clarity, saturation, and vibrance way over the top. The original scene did not have anywhere near that richness of color. I like the look of it, but it's not anywhere close to natural and I got called on it in another forum.

Ahh, I am a sucker for flash.

[wuapinmon]

Dude,

That shot 9 of 36, of the snake, is awesome!

[swampfrog]

Dude,

That shot 9 of 36, of the snake, is awesome!

Couldn't remember if I had previously shared that one before. I've learned a lot about post processing since this image was produced. I think I may go back and see what else I can get out of it (since it's significantly cropped down from the original). It's one of my favorites, with the snake obviously distressed and the heron just business as usual.

[swampfrog]

Couldn't remember if I had previously shared that one before. I've learned a lot about post processing since this image was produced. I think I may go back and see what else I can get out of it (since it's significantly cropped down from the original). It's one of my favorites, with the snake obviously distressed and the heron just business as usual.

Here's the comparison between the old processing and new...

Old Picture:



Updated Picture:

[Katy Lied]

Big difference. Nice job.

[swampfrog]

Big difference. Nice job.

I think I may have overdone the sharpening in some areas, will probably take one more shot at it. The snake came out much better.

[clackamascoug]

I think I may have overdone the sharpening in some areas, will probably take one more shot at it. The snake came out much better.

It's like "where's waldo." Trying to find the differences between the two.

[wuapinmon]

I think I may have overdone the sharpening in some areas, will probably take one more shot at it. The snake came out much better.

Here's a couple I got last month at Huntington Beach SP near Murrell's Inlet, SC.

[wuapinmon]

Another one I liked:

[swampfrog]

It's like "where's waldo." Trying to find the differences between the two.

Probably not interesting to most, but here's what I did.

There's not a whole lot that is actually different, most of it is pretty subtle. In Photoshop there is a tool to select any clearly defined object in the picture. I selected just the bird and snake. I then ran a process to sharpen just what was selected. It worked great on the snake and most of the head, but some of the feathers look overly "baked" for lack of a better term. I'll likely reprocess and run different parameters on the head and snake than on the body/feathers.

Once I have the bird and snake selected, I also asked Photoshop to invert the selection, which gives me just the background (everything but the bird and snake). I then used a blur tool to soften it even more. I toned down the overall brightness of just the brightest areas of the background also.

The last thing I did was a bit trickier, and that was to remove the really light piece of brown grass around the snake's head. If you look carefully, you'll notice just down and to the left of the head is a wider piece of green grass that was replicated in place of brown grass around the head. I was pleased at how that came out.

You will find that a lot of (if not most) photographers use similar editing. In this case it's about the snake, and anything that distracts is subject to modification.

[wuapinmon]

Tonight's sunset

[swampfrog]

Tonight's sunset

Nice, if you have the software, rotate counter-clockwise until the far shoreline is horizontal. Love the tree.

[swampfrog]

Female Wood Duck

[Jeff Lebowski]

Female Wood Duck

Wow. That is a great photo.

[wuapinmon]

Nice, if you have the software, rotate counter-clockwise until the far shoreline is horizontal. Love the tree.

Fixed it. Thanks for the suggestion.