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Xibalba
17th of September 2004 (Fri), 20:11
Hi all,

I thought I would post a picture of one of my fish here and see what you guys think of the post-processing I have done. I am still trying to learn how to use Photoshop (I have version 7) so I am sure there are many things I could do to improve the picture.

http://home.pacific.net.au/~rick/fish/Pseudotropheus_saulosi_female.jpg

Shot details:
EOS300D, EF 28-105 f3.5-4.5 USM II @ 105mm, 1/100 sec, f11, Internal Flash, manual setting, ISO200.

I was having some difficulty getting the whole fish in focus with lower f-stops so I dropped the ISO to 200 to compensate. Unfortunately, the shot still came out a bit underexposed. I have since borrowed an old external flash that has solved a lot of my exposure problems :)

Post-processing of the image involved converting from raw to tiff in FileViewerUtility. I then cropped the original down and used the clone tool to remove a couple of scratches. I need to practice this a bit more as you can tell where I have done it in the final image. I then converted to lab colour and used unsharp mask on the lightness channel. I then used an adustment layer with curves to compensate for the underexposure and adjust the colour slightly. Final task was to resize the image to a maximum width of 600 pixels.

The audience for the image is a friend's dad who is looking to buy some fry from this female and one of the aquarium forums I frequent (hence the image size restictions).

Here is a copy of the original image which has just been resized and converted to .jpg for this post.

http://home.pacific.net.au/~rick/fish/Pseudotropheus_saulosi_female_(original).jpg

Thanks in advance for your critique.

Rick

Axxis22
17th of September 2004 (Fri), 20:20
African Ciclids (sp?)

PhotosGuy
17th of September 2004 (Fri), 21:11
Your fix looks OK. Remember, with digital, you can take a lot of pics & make changes as you go. Then use PS for touch up.

Xibalba
17th of September 2004 (Fri), 21:25
African Ciclids (sp?)

Yes, it is one of the Mbuna from Lake Malawi in central Africa. This picture is of a female Pseudotropheus saulosi to give the full scientific name.

Ohh and Cichlid has a "h" in it :)

Rick