Newbie PS Attempt

[Namerifrats]

Here is a photo I shot right after I got my dSLR. So I'm new to both the camera and Photoshop. I like the silhouette look of the original, but wanted to lighten it as well. Fire away!

Original
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r203/namerifrats/293.jpg


PS
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r203/namerifrats/293_Edited.jpg

[MattMoore]

I think you lightened everything that you didn't need to.

Mask off the subject (who seems a bit too centered BTW) and work on him; the work on the surroundings.

[DerekSimon]

I agree with Matt, I definately think really the only thing that needed to be brightened would be the subject. I think a good way to remedy the centeral issue, is to simply choose a good section to crop off. Good idea with this shot overall though.

I would attempt a stab at an edit but your permissions don't permit it, so I won't.

[Namerifrats]

I was thinking about cropping part of the right side of the picture off to offset the subject. As far as lighting, would I just use the "Magic Wand" to work on lighting the subject alone? I used the overall brightness to light the entire photo more. I just got CS4, and watched an online video showing there was some way to "paint lighting, contrast, etc". But haven't really messed with CS4 much yet. I appreciate all the advice guys, keep it coming!

[F4 Cyborg]

photoshops best friend is layer's. Layer's and blending with along with a soft edge brush. If you wanted to learn one thing only with photoshop I would pick layers. Beware learning layers will make you want to learn more.......

[sue.t]

I'm sitting here wondering about "America's" what?
Since the photo doesn't provide more info, crop to eliminate it.
That would also get rid of the tire.
Then I would try some PP to get rid of the wood block, which is distracting.

Prefer the silouette, and without these distractions, the person would be of more interest.

[Namerifrats]

I agree with Matt, I definately think really the only thing that needed to be brightened would be the subject. I think a good way to remedy the centeral issue, is to simply choose a good section to crop off. Good idea with this shot overall though.

I would attempt a stab at an edit but your permissions don't permit it, so I won't.

I just joined the forum a few days ago and haven't gotten into mess with my profile yet. I just went in and changed permissions to allow it. I would be more than happy for anybody to adjust ANY photo I post here. Only condition, if you make it look better, just tell me how you did it so I can learn!

[Namerifrats]

I'm sitting here wondering about "America's" what?
Since the photo doesn't provide more info, crop to eliminate it.
That would also get rid of the tire.
Then I would try some PP to get rid of the wood block, which is distracting.


Well, to answer your question, here is another shot taken a little further back.
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r203/namerifrats/292.jpg

[BigAlz1]

Good retouch with what you had to work with. What camera do you have? This looks like an unfortunate case where the camera was set to eval metering when it should have been set to spot and used exposure lock on the camera to get the subject correctly exposed. I have been there and missed my share of shots too. But you did ok in post. Hard to bring that type of stuff to life when it's all but pitch black.

[tonydee]

Just taking a step back form the compositional and post-processing issues for a moment: the image was taken in the Tv (Time Value) aka Shutter Priority mode, which means you got to dial up a shutter speed and you chose 1/2000 of a second. You also had the camera set to ISO 800. The camera then choose the widest/fastest aperture it could: f/5.6, to let light in as quickly as possible. 1/2000s is fast enough to freeze most birds in flight, or the spray from an ocean wave smashing into the rocks: way faster than you needed here. First pic was 232mm, wider one at 121mm. Really, with your lenses sporting "Image Stabliser", an shutter speed fast enough to avoid motion blur would be around 1/focal-length - 2 stops = 1/232 * 4 ~= 1/60s. If you're worried about your subject moving, you might go a touch faster. But, you could use ISO100 or 200 for less noise, and still have headroom to use a much smaller aperture to get more depth of field - basically, a bigger ranges of distances in focus. With the camera choosing f/5.6, and in this last pic focusing on the nearer part of the van, the musician himself seems out of focus. Of course, you could deliberately focus on the musician and have the van out of focus, but it's probably easier and better to get it all in focus, which requires the narrower aperture. In reality, simply using "P" mode would have worked better. I prefer to do that - it's asking the camera to guess what's reasonable - then I consciously inspect them and modify the settings to suit my purposes... some people do prefer fully manual modes, but I don't think it hurts to see what the camera's suggesting as a point of departure. The fully manual modes are most useful when you want to take a lot of shots without having to repeat an adjustment.

Otherwise, I prefer seeing the whole van, but if you want to crop the first version, do it just past the grills on the side. To make the most of the colour that you did capture, you can use a "curves" adjustment. I'm doing this in "the GIMP", as it's marginally quicker for me than running up Windows in a "virtual machine", then Photoshop, but I can show you in PS CS4 if it's better for you. It's pretty much the same. What you want to do is brighten the darker areas more quickly, and tell it the brightest areas - which are a dull grey in the original image - should be "promoted" to near-white. To do this, you need to place two "points" on the curve, modifying it from the simple diagonal represented by the dull grey line. One point should be near the bottom left, lifting the curve up faster. The other point should be along the top, and above the last points in the histogram graph superimposed at the bottom, which indicates the brightest parts of the original image. It looks like this:

357101

The result, with my recommended cropping, is:

357102

I'm not saying the picture couldn't benefit from some further processing, but this is the minimum to deal with the most immediate problem of lightening the shadows.

Cheers, Tony

[Namerifrats]

Good retouch with what you had to work with. What camera do you have? This looks like an unfortunate case where the camera was set to eval metering when it should have been set to spot and used exposure lock on the camera to get the subject correctly exposed. I have been there and missed my share of shots too. But you did ok in post. Hard to bring that type of stuff to life when it's all but pitch black.

I have a Canon XSi Digital Rebel. That picture was in the first batch I took with the camera. I took about 200 pictures that day, wasn't really familiar with alot of the settings due to never owning an SLR before. I was in the default metering, eval. Didn't know anything about changing that until a couple days ago I started playing around with it. Still learning about correct exposure settings, ISO, and the proper combination of F-Stop and shutter speed.

[Namerifrats]

Just taking a step back form the compositional and post-processing issues for a moment: the image was taken in the Tv (Time Value) aka Shutter Priority mode, which means you got to dial up a shutter speed and you choose 1/2000 of a second. You also had the camera set to ISO 800. The camera then choose the widest/fastest aperture it could: f/5.6, to let light in as quickly as possible. 1/2000s is fast enough to freeze most birds in flight, or the spray from an ocean wave smashing into the rocks: way faster than you needed here. First pic was 232mm, wider one at 121mm. Really, with your lenses sporting "Image Stabliser", an shutter speed fast enough to avoid motion blur would be around 1/focal-length - 2 stops = 1/232 * 4 ~= 1/60s. If you're worried about your subject moving, you might go a touch faster. But, you could use ISO100 or 200 for less noise, and still have headroom to use a much smaller aperture to get more depth of field - basically, a bigger ranges of distances in focus. With the camera choosing f/5.6, and in this last pic focusing on the nearer part of the van, the musician himself seems out of focus. Of course, you could deliberately focus on the musician and have the van out of focus, but it's probably easier and better to get it all in focus, which requires the narrower aperture. In reality, simply using "P" mode would have worked better. I prefer to do that - it's asking the camera to guess what's reasonable - then I consciously inspect them and modify the settings to suit my purposes... some people do prefer fully manual modes, but I don't think it hurts to see what the camera's suggesting as a point of departure. The fully manual modes are most useful when you want to take a lot of shots without having to repeat an adjustment.

Otherwise, I prefer seeing the whole van, but if you want to crop the first version, do it just past the grills on the side. To make the most of the colour that you did capture, you can use a "curves" adjustment. I'm doing this in "the GIMP", as it's marginally quicker for me than running up Windows in a "virtual machine", then Photoshop, but I can show you in PS CS4 if it's better for you. It's pretty much the same. What you want to do is brighten the darker areas more quickly, and tell it the brightest areas - which are a dull grey in the original image - should be "promoted" to near-white. To do this, you need to place two "points" on the curve, modifying it from the simple diagonal represented by the dull grey line. One point should be near the bottom left, lifting the curve up faster. The other point should be along the top, and above the last points in the histogram graph superimposed at the bottom, which indicates the brightest parts of the original image. It looks like this:

I'm not saying the picture couldn't benefit from some further processing, but this is the minimum to deal with the most immediate problem of lightening the shadows.

Cheers, Tony

I appreciate the help! It was taken in TV, as I was shooting a few birds and some fast moving boats moments before. Didn't remember to adjust my settings for a new scene as I just happened upon this guy as I was walking along. As said above, I'm still trying to figure out and learn all about working combos of Aperture, shutter speeds, ISO, etc. I have a fairly decent "point and shoot" (Canon Powershot S2 IS) that I have used up until purchasing my dSLR. Mostly just used auto focus, with a little tinkering with shutter speeds. Everything else is still new and I'm trying to learn all I can.

I have a couple books (Digital Photography for Dummies, and Digital SLR's for Dummies, as well as a few recent digital photography magazines) that I've been reading. I'm thinking on getting the Photoshop CS4 for Dummies as well. I have a couple other photos I shot the same day in Wildlife, Birds, and Transportation. I'm fairly pleased with the way those turned out. I shot a baseball game last Thursday night, open stadium with bright lights, but night time. Those turned out "ok". Had quite a bit of lighting problems, some blur, and several dark shots. Kept adjusting settings trying to get the best "Action shots" while keeping the pictures as well lit as I could. I'm thinking I was too far from the players due to a slower zoom lense (Canon 55-250mm 1:4-5.6). I was using it at 250mm with a fast shutter speed. I ended up with some decent action shots, but they were kinda dark similar to this shot. Here are two different shots below from that. Both are from different lenses. The first is just to show apporx how far i was from the players and the ambient lighting. The other was with my zoom lense, quite dark but I was pleased with the shutter speed.

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r203/namerifrats/087.jpg
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r203/namerifrats/111.jpg

[tonydee]

Given how little the ball and bat are blurred in the first shot, I think you've done very well. Quite understand how we often see things and don't have time or presence of mind to check all our camera settings - I shot 30 shots of some little birds at -2EV by accident last time I was out. Hope the post-processing tips on here helped you recover your image a bit, and looking forward to seeing how you get on. All the technical stuff should become second nature after a short while - especially when you're hammering it with all those books - then you'll be on a roller-coaster experimenting with the compositional stuff, then - like me - you'll find it gets harder to improve :-). But, all good fun. Cheers, Tony

[neil_ross]

i havent read everyones posts but i woud try using the dodge a burn tools....

[hawkeye60]

My quick shot at it: