Help with post processing for web

[Scottes]

I just posted a few images in 2 posts in Share, and I'm not happy with the look of the images. Could someone tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Here are the posts;
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26873
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26866 (6 images)

Give or take a little, what I did on these posts is more or less the same. For the Geese Portrait, I did the following:

Develop in Capture1
Contrast Comp 14
Sharpen amount 86, Threshold 0
Saturation + 2.5%
Level 0, 1.09, 251
Develop as 16-bit AdobeRGB

PS CS
Marquee 2750x1830, Crop Image
Fred Miranda Web Presenter 600x400, no sharpening
Fred Miranda Intellisharpen Level 3
Convert to sRGB
Save for Web, level 70

As far as I can tell I didn't do too much to the original. Yet I don't like the final result.

Am I doing something wrong, or am I just being too picky?

[maderito]

As far as I can tell I didn't do too much to the original. Yet I don't like the final result.

Am I doing something wrong, or am I just being too picky?
Good shots of the mallards.

Best exemplified by the last, tightly cropped shot of the mallard, all the pics are highly saturated, highly sharpened, and frozen by fast shutter speeds.

Others have said it before ... that's the obsession of digital photography - contrasty, sharp, saturated images.

I happen to like your pics, but you're not satisfied, and I suspect you're thinking that the images feel too artificial.

When viewing images like yours, I sometimes do 2 things to check myself:
1. Desaturate the images in steps (using a Fred Miranda action).
2. "Undo" the sharpening with a gentle Gaussian blur.

Then I try to honestly compare before/after while challenging myself: "is it too sharp? is it too saturated?

Also, from time to time I do a "now and then" exercise. I pick an image processed awhile ago and reprocess it again from the original. Invariably, the shot comes out looking entirely new -- and refreshing. Obviously, my skills have changed -- but also my sensibilities. Here's an example:

Processed 6 months ago ----------------------------------- Processed recently
http://www.pbase.com/image/26715024.jpg

My suggestion: put those pics aside for awhile and then reprocess them again to see what they look like. Most likely, you'll be more satisifed.

[Scottes]

Maderito you raise some good points. "...the pics are highly saturated, highly sharpened, and frozen by fast shutter speeds."

The mallard and geese portraits can't be helped by shutter speed, but the mallard in flight would probably look better by better panning with a slower shutter. I'm not there yet, but hopefully will be sooner than later.

So perhaps I'm saturating too much and sharpening too much. I won't disagree, and I'll try toning it down and see how it looks.

I'd like to get the post-processing down better, rather than post-manipulation which it seems you do to the girl (at least some by the looks of the background). Not that post-manipulation is a bad thing but I want to keep this to a more pure post-processing for wildlife.

Yes, I know it a fine line and post-manipulation is not a bad thing. I guess that I would like to get the image "correct" as whole, rather than correcting isolated parts of the image. And this is NOT meant to start a debate about processing vs. manipulation, nor is it mean in any way to knock manipulation. It's just that I'm a hell of a lot better at manipulating than processing, and for wildlife I feel it is "truer" to work the entire image rather than selecting and working parts of the image.

For instance the geese could stand out a bit more with less DoF. I should have widened the aperture (it was f/11) and lowered myself as I was shooting down on them. I could do that by masking off the geese and blurring the rest, but to me it would be truer to take the shot better as I stated, and then process the whole image.

As to the girl, there's NO DOUBT that the later version looks better. But I'm guessing that you isolated the shirt and brightened, isolated the face and softened, and isolated the background and blurred. And de-saturated the image too. Am I close? If not, please describe what you did to the second version.

Again, this is not meant in any way to knock manipulation, it's just that I need to learn post-processing better.

[scottbergerphoto]

Here's my 2c for what it's worth (2c I guess.) The pictures look soft due to too slow a shutter speed and/or camera movement and you attempted fo fix this by sharpening.There are noticeable halos around some of the geese especially the first post. They are a really good series of shots as far as exposure, compensation and color. The last shot is very nice and I think shows that the problem is not with your camera.
I found that when I first started shooting flying birds my pictures were similiarly soft, but improved with practice, Iso 400, and a Wemberly head.
Scott

[maderito]

Scottes,

Good post. I understand your points and agree with mostly all.

The only similarity between your ducks and "the girl" (whom I barely know) is that they are pretty, living objects and they were both shot without a lot of preparation (attention to shutter speed, aperture, etc.).

When I started PS post-processing, I found myself always trying to make things look more dramatic. My main tools were sharpening (USM), saturation enhancement (hue/saturation), and contrast adjustment (curves). Virtually ALL of those early images don't look right to me now.

Now I use much less sharpening, sometimes selectively applied (as with the girl - only to the eys and lips and denim jacket) and usually with a mask. I am VERY gentle with curves adjustment which not only changes contrast but also shifts colors. I make small adjustments at a time, usually on a separate layer, then lower the opacity before merging. I don't usually manipulate backgrounds - but this hastily shot image of the girl had some bright objects (books) in the background that detracted from the face. So I had to change both their saturation and brightness as well as soften. It was done in steps.

I happened to visit a museum this weekend which had a beautiful display of local birds and wildlife (including mallards). I was struck by the subtelty of all the colors - so different from what I usually see in paintings and film images. Cardinals are red, but not bright red. Hawks have very muted colors in their feathers which blend into each other. I imagined that if I shot any of them in the wild, I would be very tempted to enhance tones and lines that just weren't there to begin with. I'm not saying that it is wrong to do the enhancements. I'm only saying that it's hard to resist the temptation.

The shots I showed were originally captured as JPEGs. When shooting RAW, I do minimal post-processing until I have the image in PS. Then I go to work with adjusting colors, tonality, sharpness, etc. I have much more control in PS.

Currently, I find that many shots require very little manipulation - especially after the temperature is properly adjusted (during RAW procesing) and the grays are neutralized (either during RAW processing or in PS). Getting the grays/whites right is crucial. If done well, then manipulating colors and saturations to the images doesn't introduce casts where they don't belong. That is consistent with the advice usually given -- get overall color and tonality in the image right first, then work further (if necessary) on the details.

The main point that I'm making is that one's workflow in post-processing improves over time. It's not one specific thing. You just make better decisions with experience.

Thanks for talking about this. Gotta run. :)

[Scottes]

The pictures look soft due to too slow a shutter speed and/or camera movement...

Mallard: 100-400 at f/5.6 1/1000, IS mode 1 enabled, ISO 400.
Geese: Same lens & IS, 1/500 at f/11, ISO 200.

...and you attempted fo fix this by sharpening.There are noticeable halos around some of the geese especially the first post.

Actually the original shots weren't that bad. Yes, there are haloes. I fidddled with those haloes for 30 minutes and tried about 6 different ways of sharpening - a variety of PS methods (high pass, LAB sharpening, many different USM settings) and Fred Miranda's Intellisharpen at varying levels. Regardless of what I did, *any* amount of sharpening produced some sort of halo. I'll have to go back tonight and try even less sharpening. Somehow. Maybe I shouldn't have sharpened in Capture1.

They are a really good series of shots as far as exposure, compensation and color. The last shot is very nice and I think shows that the problem is not with your camera.

Thanks. And I know it's not the camera. :)

I found that when I first started shooting flying birds my pictures were similiarly soft, but improved with practice, Iso 400, and a Wemberly head.

Oh yes, practice is required. These are all handheld - next time I'll try my tripod with the ball head. A Sidekick would be nice, but...

But practice, yes. This was my second day trying to get birds in flight. The Mallard Landing posts were the last of the day, giving me about 250 frames of practice by then.

[Scottes]

When I started PS post-processing, I found myself always trying to make things look more dramatic.

Yep, duly noted. I'll try some more subtle things tonight and see what I get.

I'm also wondering if the geese portrait simply looks dull and flat due to the light. It was bright, somewhat high (10:30) and almost broadside to the birds. Next time I'll get there earlier to boot.