Sony Lounge Thread MKIII (All Sony cameras welcome)

digital_AM wrote in post #18591373
I checked out some videos on Landscape Pro and honestly it looked like a tedious program to use. The intelligent lighting feature looks pretty cool though. My biggest issue with this software is it’s so easy to fake an image with it. I would rather try to capture a sunrise, light beams, or a moon for real than add something in post. That’s my issue with Luminar as well.

thats the way I feel too. I’m not into it at all. I think David A hit it on the head, if it’s my own sky I’m swapping in I.e shot by me, I don’t mind as much but if it’s just a random cool sky out of the software I need to draw the line. Having said that I’ve never swapped a sky on any image but I do like treating them as art and post processing to my own taste

Hehe I think how far you take a photo in post depends on the context and purpose of the photo. If the intention is to capture something in its most genuine form and you're presenting a photo as something that is natural, then swapping out the sky crosses a line. But very often photography is more about the photographers interpretation of a scene and its more about creating something than capturing something in the raw. I don't mind it for something like Disney photos I shoot for myself where I'm doing things like putting lightsaber effects in my kids hands.

I apply the same mindset to portrait photography too. Whether something is supposed to be a documentary photo where I'm capturing something in the raw will dictate a lot of the composition even before anything ever makes it to post. i.e. for documentary photos I stick to normal 'natural' focal lengths and am much more conservative about things like lighting... Because the minute I bring something like an off camera softbox into play, I've altered the lighting in the scene in a very obvious way that no longer looks natural given things like the position of the sun.... but it's because I've given priority to flattering my subject as much as possible even though it technically is not real.

I did it with this image. The house via the A7Rii + Batis 18mm
BUT the sky via Lumix GX7.
EXIF shows what the base layer was in Photoshop. Now I know to put on the base layer the image from
the camera you want EXIF to show as from

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/XNQA​Si

MedicineMan4040 wrote in post #18591440
I did it with this image. The house via the A7Rii + Batis 18mm
BUT the sky via Lumix GX7.
EXIF shows what the base layer was in Photoshop. Now I know to put on the base layer the image from
the camera you want EXIF to show as from

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/XNQA​Si A building by MedicineMan4040, on Flickr

I think the plugin does a good job of masking around the trees and around other objects like windmills. Now that I know I can use my own sky images to replace a plain one, I'll probably try to use LP for that task.

David Arbogast wrote in post #18591405
I’m with you Alfredo on disliking Luminar and Landscape Pro. I confess I take more of a “digital art” view of my work and don’t mind doing a little fakery though.

Personally I like faking my images the good ole fashioned way: right inside of photoshop! Need light rays or whatever? No prob: just take in some Phlearn or Glyn Dewis or etc. and you got 15 different ways to make light rays in Photoshop.

I’ve added a few lightrays on the rare occasion, and don’t care what anyone thinks about it. I do try to keep that stuff subtle. I’ve had a good carreer doing architectural CG (as part of my design work) and don’t mind using PS skills to embellish my images. Orton glows, dodge and burning, color grading, clone stamping, etc...that’s all post-processing fake stuff, and I love it and do it all the time. It’s got to look good or look believable though. Ever since Luminar came out I’ve seen some super cringy horrible-looking lightrays that do not look remotely believable.

I just looked at my own stuff and see it’s been a couple years since I added any lightrays on an image. I did it here and think it looks pretty cool: https://flic.kr/p/DXwc​Xz

lol that's exactly what I do! I don't memorize the steps I YouTube them

Good discussion guys. I agree with a lot of what’s been said. Yes I have replaced skies. Yes I have added sun stars and light rays to some images. Like Carlo said, we all edit our images to represent how we visualized a scene or how it felt to us being there. Not many of us here are photojournalists so I don’t see an issue with heavy post processing. I just try to do it where the edits match my vision for the image and where it looks realistic.

Scatterbrained wrote in post #18591404
Interesting looking, but now you have an image lit from camera left with a sun in the background. On another note, are you stuck with just their canned skies?

Lighting discrepancy was the first clue for me, but also how it doesn't look real...I don't like plugins like that one...

xpfloyd wrote in post #18591430
thats the way I feel too. I’m not into it at all. I think David A hit it on the head, if it’s my own sky I’m swapping in I.e shot by me, I don’t mind as much but if it’s just a random cool sky out of the software I need to draw the line. Having said that I’ve never swapped a sky on any image but I do like treating them as art and post processing to my own taste

Yeah, using a sky you didn't shoot removes it from being yours, and for me it looses credibility then...I am not fond of sky swaps in general.

digital_AM wrote in post #18591493
Good discussion guys. I agree with a lot of what’s been said. Yes I have replaced skies. Yes I have added sun stars and light rays to some images. Like Carlo said, we all edit our images to represent how we visualized a scene or how it felt to us being there. Not many of us here are photojournalists so I don’t see an issue with heavy post processing. I just try to do it where the edits match my vision for the image and where it looks realistic.

I generally won't add anything, I prefer to work with what was presented...

I did recently edit an image that was a bland of two images that were about 60 seconds apart that blended into the image that would have happened had clouds not partially obscured some setting sun light, and that minor edit made all the difference...even still I was conflicted.

Fair points on where to draw the line in terms of what is acceptable in post. It's very subjective and its interesting where we see compositional techniques (which I consider PP to be) are acceptable and are not.

i.e.

one hand a photojournalist gets fired for cloning a camera out of a shot:

http://www.dailymail.c​o.uk …amera-original-image.html

on the other, a photographer is paid $160k to produce ads to sell real cars, using basically toy cars and a lot of compositional tricks:

https://www.boredpanda​.com …-car-toy-felix-hernandez/

These are two extremes of course, but it goes to show how wildly subjective this can be given a lot of different circumstances. This is something that is debated pretty hotly in the realm of portrait photography and the ethics around aggressive corrections being done in post, and whether these photos are real any more. My take is that cameras resolve a lot of detail that one wouldn't normally notice in person, and as such, SOOC portraits aren't really either because we would be overly critical a person's flaws if corrections were not done, but where do we draw the line there?

As photographers, its certainly something you have to decide for yourself. Generally though, I feel weird about doing aggressive things in post without disclosing them....which is why I pointed out the fake sky in the first place.

For me, I enjoy the creative process, whether that be in camera or in post processing. I think I enjoy editing my images as much or more than I do actually taking them and I edit EVERY single image I post or share. My goal is to wind up with an image I enjoy looking at and sharing with friends. I enjoy the challenge of manipulating an image to better tell a story or convey an idea or mood. Heck, I even enjoy the challenge of trying to figure out a new way to incorporate my sig somewhere into a scene.

I'm just now getting to a couple thousand pics I have taken since the beginning of Feb up in Tallahassee--and now south of there--but pretty much I can sum up the direction of that time period with this picture I took of Rep. George Moraitis of the Florida State House.

IMAGE LINK: https://www.flickr.com …5754/in/datetak​en-public/

session318

One of the bright spots from late February was definitely a trip to Maclay Gardens in Tallahassee. It was a family trip, complete with my parents, so I didn't get to bring a tripod and really do it justice. Most of the things planted in these gardens were designed to bloom in mid-FEB.

IMAGE LINK: https://www.flickr.com …1214/in/datetak​en-public/

maclay2118

IMAGE LINK: https://www.flickr.com …3444/in/datetak​en-public/

maclay2818bw

IMAGE LINK: https://www.flickr.com …3502/in/datetak​en-public/

maclay1418

quick magmod magsphere test. really closeup about 2.5 feet.

little to no hotspots i love it. and stays in place.

Better story telling in this shot than pure image quality but is what is

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/25kf​ZqW

Last Sunday with some snow & just a little bit of a breeze!!!

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/FKhu​xX

My apologies for posting the same subject twice but I lit this exposure a bit differently and I really like how that draws out all of the textures in the image. For this shot, I placed a 2nd diffuser between the stripbox and the pot to soften and spread out the light more. I only had one diffuser out at the time so this is a 2 exposure blend of the diffuser on the right and then on the left.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/25kT​mbS