Picture Editing Thoughts (1 Viewer)

[PaulCountyDurham]

Hi Paul,

What software do you use / have available?

I think the processed one looks good, but maybe slightly over processed. In Photoshop I would probably go with a slight curves S-curves adjustment for increasing contrast, and a nudge of increased saturation.

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/curves-adjustment.html

Available also in many other cheaper or free software, but names/ways of doing it might differ.

Hi,

I use Affinity and it has the curves adjustment. I've used it in the past but very infrequently. I've just had a looking at the Affinity guidelines for curves, which is very similar to the guidelines in your link, and it's clear I haven't used it to its potential.

I'll bear this one in mind. Cheers!

 

[PaulCountyDurham]

Hi all,

I've just found the time to play around with what has been suggested on this thread.

The easiest way would have been to apply saturation, contrast or whatever and then simply erase those changes in the green part, as well as maybe the bird's moustache because that's too dark. 'Just tried that and it worked well. I also tried selecting the bird and applying the changes to the bird only, it left a bit of a mark 'round the bird but I erased that mark with the erase brush and that worked well.

I also tried saturating selected colours in HSL and that worked well.

Although I mostly take pictures in decent light, and so minimal changes are needed, there have been times when applying contrast, saturation or whatever should have been done selectively. Both of those tips mentioned above are going to be very useful for me in the future.

Thanks for the advice!

 

[PaulCountyDurham]

I would be very wary of folk who reel off a list of things they do to every photo...

Quantise - this reduces the number of colours in an image, it is a way of making the file size smaller (or for arty effect reasons). Nobody has done this since the dial-up internet days.

Channel Filtering - only used for arty purposes, particularly creating black and white or sepia images from colour ones.

Blend background - again a way of doing arty things when you have multiple layers. Can be used to improve photos but it is very mid-2000s Photoshop.

The key to getting better with post processing is practice, just have a play around see what you like. There are a multitude of software specific tutorials on YouTube.

I'll avoid those then.

I actually have a decent repertoire of editing features adjustments after doing a lot of tutorials, certainly decent considering I started with zero knowledge a couple of years back.

I was struggling a bit with applying certain adjustments selectively so that's the next stage for me, and after playing around a bit on a few different pictures I can see now that the advice on this thread is going to be very useful.

Slow and steady improvements I suppose!

 

[robinlanark]

Bump. I've been searching for threads that cover post-processing but don't get much. I will start looking for tutorials on youtube, since I don't have a buddy or local photo club.

I did look quickly at GNU. It seems to be quite powerful but for some reason it would not read files from my Pana G9 i. I think it was the raw files. I hate the idea of buying software without knowing what exactly I need or what it can or cannot do, but I guess that's life.

If anyone knows a good thread, please let me know I've done searches. If I get no response, maybe I'll start a new one.

 

[Peregrine Took]

If anyone knows a good thread, please let me know I've done searches. If I get no response, maybe I'll start a new one.

Whatever you decided, you'll need to tell people what hardware you use and what applications will run on it. I've always used Mac's and for many years used Lightroom and Photoshop, as a designer / photographer, but I'm now retired, so there might be more out there nowadays. I know nothing about PC's.
.

 

[seaspirit]

Bump. I've been searching for threads that cover post-processing but don't get much. I will start looking for tutorials on youtube, since I don't have a buddy or local photo club.

I did look quickly at GNU. It seems to be quite powerful but for some reason it would not read files from my Pana G9 i. I think it was the raw files. I hate the idea of buying software without knowing what exactly I need or what it can or cannot do, but I guess that's life.

If anyone knows a good thread, please let me know I've done searches. If I get no response, maybe I'll start a new one.

You can download, install and test drive most image processing software during a free trial period, no need to buy the cat in the bag (or enter credit card info).
This will also allow you to find out if your current hardware has the capacity to deal with the ever increasing, resource hungry AI that is now part of most software applications (LR, PS, Topaz, ....).
Youtube has loads of instructional videos for pretty much all common and less common image processing software.