Show Us Your RAW Conversions, BEFORE And AFTER

curiousgeorge wrote in post #10217840
You've blown the detail in the clouds there. Not even RAW files can recover from that!

You don't have good lighting in these so it's very difficult to do much with them.

cfibanez wrote in post #10225630
Yeah, an ND grad would have helped with the first too images. They were taken just walking about in the mountains. I think these examples still show that one can do a lot with a RAW conversion. I would not have been able to bring back so much with a jpg file.

Heh! I'd say your conversions did quite well, but of course with challenging scenes some things can be out of reach. Sure a GND would have helped -- oh well! But you actually did a nice job of retaining a lot in the skies while bringing out the foreground nicely, IMO!

This is my first time in this thread, so please go easy on me. Also, adjust the luminance of blue to -50. Any suggestions you all can give me to add to what I've already done?

^Great conversion Peter! Well done!

I'd say that's a very nice "first shot"!

You might do a touch more on lifting the foreground shadows, a bit more Fill or use the Shadows and/or the Dark sliders in the Tones tab. To me, at least, that would look more like a bright sunny day scene, like this appears to be.

You did a really nice job on the sky, good job on the highlight recovery and using the Blue channel Luminance trick, so make sure to keep that in balance if you do take on the foreground shadow thing!

tonylong wrote in post #10227223
Heh! I'd say your conversions did quite well, but of course with challenging scenes some things can be out of reach. Sure a GND would have helped -- oh well! But you actually did a nice job of retaining a lot in the skies while bringing out the foreground nicely, IMO!

Thanks for the encouragement Tony. I have followed your thread from the start. It's awesome! Nice to hear that non-pros can also contribute here. I attach below the histograms. Left before; right after. You'll see that most of the highlights are inside. The lake was the toughest one. There is clearly some clipping left.

Valley:

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cfibanez,

Those before and after histograms do a great job of showing what you can do! Look at how the highlights were being totally blown in the lake shot, and what you could do with them, and how much you were able to get out of the shadows in the Cascade shot. Those histograms tell a thousand words!

You know, some people question why we mess with Raw converters when we can "do the same thing in Photoshop", but when you look at the power and simplicity in these Raw conversions my question is "why mess with Photoshop when you can do this with a Raw file and Raw processor!" -- thanks for showing us this!

petercotton wrote in post #10227567
This is my first time in this thread, so please go easy on me. Also, adjust the luminance of blue to -50. Any suggestions you all can give me to add to what I've already done?

Nice conversion .Furman University clock tower in SC right
Don

I had posted this in the critique corner, but somebody suggested trying here too for feedback. After telling myself I should be shooting RAW, I finally did it. And I've been trying to learn more about Post processing Here is one of the pictures SOOC and with the editing. Would love feedback on the picture and/or post processing. Thanks in advance!

This is the picture SOOC:

settings:
1/80 shutter
7.1 aperture
400 ISO
focal length 30.0 mm
auto WB

Took some pictures up at the lake this morning... I really wanted blue in this picture, so I pushed that a little bit, then I desaturated the red a little bit since the two red shirts were drawing my eye too much:

pudgy_groundhog wrote in post #10230605
I had posted this in the critique corner, but somebody suggested trying here too for feedback. After telling myself I should be shooting RAW, I finally did it. And I've been trying to learn more about Post processing Here is one of the pictures SOOC and with the editing. Would love feedback on the picture and/or post processing. Thanks in advance!

The edit (two versions, if I decide I want to keep the b&w, I need to tone down her cheeks - they went a little bright):

Katherine, welcome to our little thread!

You seem to have done a nice job with both "takes", brightening up the color one a touch to make it more vibrant -- I don't have a favorite, but I wonder how the color version would look at the same crop as the B&W?

By the way, if you check out the "introduction" to this thread, note that we ask for either a screen shot or a detailed sharing of what your processing was for your images. This is a major part of this thread, so that we can both see what you've done and maybe share input!

Thanks for your contribution!

talz13 wrote in post #10231131
Took some pictures up at the lake this morning... I really wanted blue in this picture, so I pushed that a little bit, then I desaturated the red a little bit since the two red shirts were drawing my eye too much:

That's a really interesting shot, how the pier seems to just disappear into the distance.

The sky looks nice but maybe a bit dark? Did you lower the Blue Luminance? Skies can be a challenge to get "right"...

Thanks for chipping in here!

tonylong wrote in post #10231561
That's a really interesting shot, how the pier seems to just disappear into the distance.

The sky looks nice but maybe a bit dark? Did you lower the Blue Luminance? Skies can be a challenge to get "right"...

Thanks for chipping in here!

That's a good point, I hadn't lowered the blue luminance, but it looks better after I raised it a little bit (+26):

Great -- it's a good improvement!!! Don't you love how simple things can be?!

Here's a bee portrait I just worked on in DPP
Light source is wind up LED torch, WB set to Auto
Exposure 3.2 seconds at f14
ISO 100
Lens Vivitar/Cosina 100mm macro at just below 1:1
Before:

Tendy -
Since you are new to this, I hope you won't mind a few pointers on the use of DPP.

First, Canon recommends doing RAW editing primarily on the RAW tab. This is not to say that the RGB tab cannot be used, especially the curve editor which is very useful, but editing on the RAW tab is more straightforward. I have found this particularly true in handling color. In macro photography the emphasis is usually on accurate rather than artistic or impressionistic color. For this you need to get your white balance as accurate as possible for the actual light in which the subject was captured. Trying to do this by mucking about with the individual color curves is very difficult, precisely because they are curves and a proper balance in one range of tones can be accompanied by an improper one elsewhere. Moreover, moving the curves will affect the brightness or darkness in ways that are difficult to foresee. For this reason the color curves are best left for more artistic interpretations. The White Balance adjustment on the RAW tab is a linear adjustment, the same change is made throughout the tonal range from black to white. The best way to find an accurate WB is to use the eyedropper probe on a neutral grey or white object shot under the same light as the subject and the WB setting is than registered and applied to shots of the subject itself. In the case of the photo you posted above, assuming the bee is standing on a white paper, you have WB target and subject in one. After the basic WB is attained it can be tweaked using the color ball in the 'Tune' box.

Next, the slider that DPP calls 'Brightness' but which is generally called Exposure. This is also a linear adjustment, as you move it watch the entire histogram shift to one side or the other. Because of its linearity, its effect is similar to giving more or less exposure in the camera and is generally used to repair or at least tweak mistakes in the original exposure. The curve editor in RGB can then be used in its Luminance mode to change the tonal values of one range differently than another. For instance, the bee's tail can be lightened more than its head.

I have done an edit of your "before" view, although not in DPP because it is a jpg, not the original RAW:

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Thanks tzalman for the info but well I don't know what happened to the shot you did but the colours look very odd and it looks lo res,jaggy!