what do you do in your PP?

I have the basics down pat for my motorsports photography, and am happy with the photos. But now I find that I dont like my photos just looking normal, and have been fiddling with a few different PP styles in photoshop, but I cant find anything that I like.

The usual thing I do, is load the photo, adjust all the settings to get the exposure I want, maybe fix some colour and thats it. My photos do not pop like some of the ones posted on this site. So I was wondering if you guys could tell me what you do in PP to your motorsports photos?

i use lightroom so the workflow is a little different

after importing, i'll usually see what auto toning does. sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse. then i make sure the white balance is what i want.
i usually shoot slightly underexposed, so i increase exposure a little bit and fiddle with highlights/shadows/whi​tes/blacks til i get the toning i want.
then i add dark gradients if i feel like the photo needs it.
i usually increase clarity a touch. sometimes vibrance, and almost never saturation.
then i go to the tone curve and make a typical s curve
then i go to detail and take out noise if it was high iso
then i go to lens corrections and take out chromatic abberation.

that's about it.

mcrow5 wrote in post #16025596
I have the basics down pat for my motorsports photography, and am happy with the photos. But now I find that I dont like my photos just looking normal, and have been fiddling with a few different PP styles in photoshop, but I cant find anything that I like.

The usual thing I do, is load the photo, adjust all the settings to get the exposure I want, maybe fix some colour and thats it. My photos do not pop like some of the ones posted on this site. So I was wondering if you guys could tell me what you do in PP to your motorsports photos?

Oversaturate, extra contrast and sharpening. Accurate saturation can be boring.

Typically I darken the shadows, brighten the highlights and darken the midtones a bit.

I then desaturate a little, use more of the blue channel as I prefer the quality of light in the blue channel. I then add a little bit of blue to the shadows.

Not much to it. I don't aim to record the image exactly how I saw it but rather as I remember it.

I always crop first, then tweak the shadows/highlights/con​trast and sharpen. That's usually enough, but sometimes I also dodge/burn where needed, use a slight gradient on the sky when it's too light, add some vignetting, etc - it all depends on the picture.

thanks for your inputs guys, much appreciated.

shootingdave wrote in post #16026514
I then desaturate a little, use more of the blue channel as I prefer the quality of light in the blue channel. I then add a little bit of blue to the shadows.

how do you do that?

Generally in this order...

•Tweak contrast/brightness
•Tweak curves - sometimes individual RGB channels if required.
•Dodge/burn if there's light/dark areas that need attention.
•Tweak saturation - sometimes individual colours to remove colour cast.
•Crop if necessary
•Unsharp mask if required.
Job done.

Not suggesting just throwing money at the situation but Topaz Adjust has a free trial version that you might care to play with and see some of what is possible. topazlabs.com

mcrow5 wrote in post #16028812
thanks for your inputs guys, much appreciated.

how do you do that?

channel mixer is your friend I'm not going to tell you exactly how as it is my style.

Play with adjustment layers and see what you like. But please do the "does it look sh*t?!" test before posting online.

That involves leaving the image for about an hour and then looking at it again with fresh eyes

My pp in lightroom is usually something like this (about 30s per photo):

- crop
- adjust exposure/contrast/whit​e balance (if needed)
- white/black point with sliders
- maybe some clarity/vibrance
- sharpening w/masking
- noise reduction (if needed)

I have a preset that I start with in Lightroom.

Increase contrast, clarity, vivid, saturation just a smidgen and lighten the shadows. I will then go through each keeper and fine tune. A few months ago I posted a
series that I tone mapped with Photomatix that was a big hit but I don't make that part of PP a regular thing.

I use Aperture to edit RAW images using the general workflow below. Each photo only takes about 1 minute to adjust with Aperture, since I try to get the image I want in camera

- Crop Image module: For desired composition
- Straighten Image module: For desired angle
- Auto Enhance: To get image into “ball-park”
- White Balance module: Use Eye dropper to adjust white balance if needed
- Exposure module: Adjust Luminance Curve using Exposure and Black Point sliders so curve extremes not too far to left and right, then push Brightness slider to left to make image more vivid
- Color module: Make individual colors more vivid by using Eye-dropper; and Hue, Saturation, and Luminance sliders. Be careful don’t shift color of related colors (e.g. greens, yellows, and oranges)
- Highlights and Shadows module: Adjust Highlight and Shadows sliders for desired detail in bright and dark parts of image, respectively. Use Mid-Contrast slider to make image more vivid, but be careful not to lose shadow detail
- Enhance module: Use Vibrancy slider to apply saturation to under-saturated parts of image

I have examples of my work on my motorsport photography blog

http://dlymotorsportim​ages.com

When I first started shooting motorsports I was in the mentalitly of “I need to shoot everything in RAW to get the most I can out of every shot”. The problem though, is this lead to using a massive amount of card and hard drive space to store all of the images, and the I would always spend too long actually editing everything. I then discovered that you can make custom picture styles, and spent many many hours developing a custom picture style that would give me a Jpeg out of the camera that was very similar to how I would edit it from a raw. I used some older raw files, that contained problem areas that I encounter frequently (such as the horrible colour of green grass on a sunny day…) and tweaked and tweaked until I had something that worked with most all lighting situations.

Now I shoot JPG at every event, which forces me to think about what I’m doing a bit more, and not just thinking…I can just fix it later.

While at the track, I generally cull images on the go. Most of what I shoot is small races or time trial events, where each group is only on track for about 5 or so laps. Once they finish their session, while they file off and the next group file on, I flick back through the shots taken and delete anything that isn’t up to scratch. This saves a ton of time in lightroom later, as I don’t need to zoom in and check sharpness etc of each file, as I have already done this and know that any file that makes it to lightroom is of acceptable image quality.

Once back home, I put everything into a new lightroom catalogue, and apply my JPEG preset, which:
- Lifts the shadows a little
- Blackens the blacks a little
- Whitens the white a little
- Adds a bit of clarity
- Adds a bit of sharpness
- Adds a slight amount of vignetting
(all no more than about 10 points)

I then go through the shots from start to finish, cropping where required, and also adding slight grad filters to suit. Each picture that I like gets given a rating, then once through everything, it is sorted by rating, the shots I didn’t choose are removed, some keywords added and then exported and uploaded to the site.

With just this minor PP, this is the kind of look I end up with. Nice vibrant colours which is what seems to be popular and sought after for motorsport images, but without being over the top.

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

What shutter speed and aperture are you guys at for panning?

Qtep wrote in post #16169848
What shutter speed and aperture are you guys at for panning?

1/30 to 1/100, i use shutter priority so the camera sets the aperture for me. it depends on the day, full sun its really small (ie about f16 or maybe f22), but if its overcast its about f5.6 to f11.