Request for post-processing help

alex24

alex24

alex24

Soldato
Joined
1 Jan 2008
Posts
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I've got a shot that I feel may benefit some from PP, but I'm a total novice when it comes to doing this with proper software. I've tried the trial of photoshop and it's incredible, and since I'm a student I may well invest in it for the future as the price isn't horrific.

Anyway, to the point, can anyone give me some tips/help in enhancing the linked image please? It seems pretty good to me, but there's some lens flare that may distract and the colours aren't as vivid as I'd like. It's being printed (probably via an online poster printing service) with the view to being framed. I'm not sure if changing contrast or anything beyond that will benefit the shot?

Shot was taken on a Panasonic FZ38 if you're interested, dead impressed with that camera.

One more point, is a calibrated monitor essential to get this right? Since it's going to the printers and not my own is that a waste of time or not? I have no means to currently calibrate mine, and colour reproduction on it isn't top notch anyway (Samsung SM226BW) as it's a few year old TN panel.

Sorry for the bombardment of information, if you've made it this far, thanks, and thanks in advance for any assistance! I know there's a lot of really talented people on this forum, so sorry if I'm pitching a bit low.

Link to image (9 megapixels, over 4MB!):
http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/1228/p1030527k.jpg
 
wow, great starting point! Not a great deal I can see wrong with it. I'll stick it in Lightroom and have a play though!

Where was it taken?
 
Great shot! I'm on the wrong pc at the mo to give it a shot, but I'm sure someone can tweak it a little. Lens flare should be pretty easy to get rid of anyway. To those editing - don't forget to straighten the horizon;)
 
ok, I did a few takes, came up with this as an alternate colour scheme. I wasn't sure about cropping making an actual impact to the quality of the image. If anything it made the lens flare in the middle look a bit odd... So I didn't crop it. Horizon is level though!

re-processed


Edit: Image was too big for comfortable viewing in forum! (Also for some reason Skydrive has down-scaled it to 1600x900)
 
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ChazHurst said:
ok, I did a few takes, came up with this as an alternate colour scheme. I wasn't sure about cropping making an actual impact to the quality of the image. If anything it made the lens flare in the middle look a bit odd... So I didn't crop it. Horizon is level though!

re-processed

Edit: Image was too big for comfortable viewing in forum! (Also for some reason Skydrive has down-scaled it to 1600x900)
Click to expand...

I agree and think that the composition of the image is fine, certainly as good as I could hope for, and I don't want to crop much, perhaps to correct the very slight angle on the horizon.

I really like the recolouring, certainly a nice take on the shot, but I was looking to keep the oranges and browns to go with the room it was intended for, but in another the blues would work well too. Not sure if it's just the laptop screen I'm on, but the contrast seems quite high, I've lost a lot of detail on the darker areas, be that intentional or not. Great effort though, not exactly what I was going for, perhaps I should have been more clear! Thanks though, I'll keep that if you don't mind!

Rroff said:
My amature attempt at giving it that "tone balanced" look - prolly over done the smoothing a bit:

http://aten-hosted.com/images/test212.jpg
Click to expand...

Comparing it to the original I think I prefer the sharper look. Some areas such as the clouds can give a nice effect when balanced and smoothed a little, but I certainly prefer the original since you're probably right that it's a little too smooth. I have no idea what the difference in a print would be though, perhaps it'd be better! Hard to say as I have little to no experience doing such things. Thanks for the effort chap.

Any other good programs for doing this sort of thing with Windows except photoshop? I think we can agree almost all the free ones are quite limited.
 
Hi, I'm on the wrong PC to do anything just now. But try Picasa? It's limited, granted, but you can still use a few of its features for this shot and its completely free.
 
I used to use Photoscape when working on JPEGs. You could always download the Lightroom 3 trial, its easy to get to grips with.
 
Its worth getting a trial of PS or Lightroom to have a go with as there pretty much the standard for most post processing work.

Had a little play: removed the lens flare and made a layer mask to reduce the red cast and give a bit more colour back to the sky all very subtle though as its a good picture to start off with and doesn't really need a lot of work.

20100702-ps51rg834uh39ggexqtycdjunc.jpg
 
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Had a quick play, poor cloning effort on the flare though.



Cooling ND grad from the top, warming from the bottom. Needs noise removal as I over sharpened somewhere along the way!
 
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They look great guys, thanks for the ideas and assistance. My internet is currently down so I'm posting on my phone, so I'll have to give some proper feedback later. I appreciate your efforts, thank you.
 
alexhull24 said:
Comparing it to the original I think I prefer the sharper look. Some areas such as the clouds can give a nice effect when balanced and smoothed a little, but I certainly prefer the original since you're probably right that it's a little too smooth. I have no idea what the difference in a print would be though, perhaps it'd be better! Hard to say as I have little to no experience doing such things. Thanks for the effort chap.

Any other good programs for doing this sort of thing with Windows except photoshop? I think we can agree almost all the free ones are quite limited.
Click to expand...

Yeah theres some areas the blurring works well but other areas that you need the sharper look, I could adjust the mask a bit but would take more time.

The original image is pretty good overall it just could do with a slight touch of luma correction and some cleaning up of the noise/scatter from the CCD/sensor (which will show up poorly on print). A little color correction wouldn't go amiss but isn't essential.
 
Rojin said:
Had a quick play, poor cloning effort on the flare though.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_YuHJFANHapY/TC21LUNb08I/AAAAAAAAAak/5nmOfmmAC94/s800/AlexHull24.jpg/IMG][/URL]

Cooling ND grad from the top, warming from the bottom. Needs noise removal as I over sharpened somewhere along the way![/QUOTE]

Looks good, I imagine my end result won't be much different, I've got a bit more time to try and remove the lens flare with some more care.

[quote="n1blo, post: 16866627"]Hi, I'm on the wrong PC to do anything just now. But try Picasa? It's limited, granted, but you can still use a few of its features for this shot and its completely free.[/QUOTE]

Thanks, I'll take a look. I imagine it'd be good for a quick touch up, but this is being framed so I want to do a half decent job within my ability of course!

[quote="Janesy B, post: 16866872"]I used to use Photoscape when working on JPEGs. You could always download the Lightroom 3 trial, its easy to get to grips with.[/QUOTE]

I'll check them out, thanks.
Click to expand...
 
ChazHurst said:
here's a less contrasty one for you
Click to expand...

Thanks, again, I like this interpretation a lot.

Rojin said:
Had a quick play, poor cloning effort on the flare though.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_YuHJFANHapY/TC21LUNb08I/AAAAAAAAAak/5nmOfmmAC94/s800/AlexHull24.jpg/IMG][/URL]

Cooling ND grad from the top, warming from the bottom. Needs noise removal as I over sharpened somewhere along the way![/QUOTE]

Very vibrant! Looks good on the screen, does it dull down a bit when it's printed do you think? The cooling and warming works very nicely, what software did you use, and exactly what sort of process is that? I think I could use that technique.

[quote="Rroff, post: 16868899"]Yeah theres some areas the blurring works well but other areas that you need the sharper look, I could adjust the mask a bit but would take more time.

The original image is pretty good overall it just could do with a slight touch of luma correction and some cleaning up of the noise/scatter from the CCD/sensor (which will show up poorly on print). A little color correction wouldn't go amiss but isn't essential.[/QUOTE]

I agree, and I'm not asking someone to do [I]all[/I] the work! The original isn't bad, though as in the OP, I think you're right it needs a little work. What software can I use to reduce the noise? Would using a simple option in photoshop or similar suffice, or is there a better accepted process to do this? I wish I'd set it to take in RAW instead of JPEG as I think that'd result in a better quality shot for print, but what's done is done.

Thanks to everyone who's assisted so far.
Click to expand...
 
I'm no expert so theres probably better ways to do it - but I usually just blow the image up by say 400-600% apply a light gaussian blurr and then resize back to original as this usually reduces the noise without losing too many of the original edges, then some careful use of the unsharpen mask tool to bring the sharpness back up, plus maybe a bit of sharpening on lightness only.

Definitely shoot in RAW if your gonna be doing any post processing.
 
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