Before and after pictures. Daniella, Sandman, and others.

Mjack1957 said:

This is just a plain old pasture that I shot just a few minutes
ago. A lot of sky and open space. I was using the kit lens



After a crop, some sharpening actions, desaturaton, masking, sepia
and other stuff in PS8, this was what came out. I don't know
because I'm still learning, but I think it makes the photo much
more interesting.

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hank said:

many people are confused about sharpening and when and why to use
it. they don't understand that shooting at sharpness -2 actually
gives them a truer, right off the sensor bitmap image than having
the camera apply sharpening routines.

Sharpening is a destructive process that increases contrast in
certain parts of the image to simulate higher resolution detail.

USM sharpening is used primarily for commercial halftone printing
(newsweek, playboy, artbooks), where overemphasizing the contrast
in certain parts of the image "restores" detail lost in the analog
process of printing and returns the human perception of the image
back to that of sharp photograph when viewed in a book or magazine.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Images displayed for the web don't need unsharp mask style
sharpening. instead they benefit more from traditional computer
image sharpening, or what i refer to as "edge sharpening"

This is because USM sharpening is a very specific process that is
designed for high resolution images destined for print publication.
These sharpened bitmaps are never really viewed at 100% pixels on a
computer monitor except by the artist preparing the file for
printing.

A properly USM style sharpened image will actually look quite
strange when viewed at 100% pixels. When viewed in a magazine
(which has about 4x the resolution of a computer monitor) the
printed image will look reletively natural. That is to say that the
goal here is to make the final printed image look like the
UNSHARPENED image that the artist was seeing on his computer.

When applying USM to images destined to be viewed on the web at
100%, images can take on a blotchy, smeary effect that actually
softens and degrades the image.

The unsharp mask effect is a trick magazine printers have been
doing for decades which combines two negatives of the same image
(one of which is defocused or "unsharp") to make the image appear
more natural when viewed in the final magazine. it is an optical
"trick" that can be reproduced digitally by programs such as
photoshop.

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BigMike said:

Taking out that pole and wires had to be tedious at best. The photo
turned out great though. Thanks for sharing your method!

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Mjack1957 said:

This is just a plain old pasture that I shot just a few minutes
ago. A lot of sky and open space. I was using the kit lens



After a crop, some sharpening actions, desaturaton, masking, sepia
and other stuff in PS8, this was what came out. I don't know
because I'm still learning, but I think it makes the photo much
more interesting.

Click to expand...

BigMike said:

Taking out that pole and wires had to be tedious at best. The photo
turned out great though. Thanks for sharing your method!

Click to expand...

BigMike said:

There are many incredible pictures posted here, by many good
photographers. These folks are not only good at shooting, they are
talented at post processing as well. For those who are new to all
of this, or still trying to get the hang of post processing, I
think it would be extremely useful if some of our talented members
here, would post their before and after pictures, so people can see
the actual results of skilled processing. I know we all look at
some of these incredible photos, and wonder how much of it is in
the shooting, and how much is in the processing. So, while we know
not all shots need a lot of processing, many are tranformed into a
much more impressive photo because of it. The processing may be as
simple as curves, levels, and sharpness adjustments, or complex
layers that completely change the look of the original photo into
a work of art.

So, for those brave enough and kind enough to share their before
and after pictures of a shot or two, and because this is a learning
forum, it could help people understand the power of skilled
processing. Thanks for sharing!

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Eric CAN said:

Now we've done pretty much with layers, adjusted slightly the
Levels, blured some noise in the lighter background of the picture.

Resize the image and time for Plbeic USM trick.

Now on top of PS on the layer tab -> DUPLICATE LAYER

Now on the filter tab -> SHARPEN -> UNSHARP MASK

I chose :



Yikes, look at the result ! :



Ok this is too much , lets make another layer , go on Layer tab ->
Duplicate Layer, this will be named : Background copy 2

Now the first layer which is Bacgkround Copy, use DARKEN, instead
of Normal :



Do the same with Background Copy 2, use LIGHTEN instead of Normal.

Now in the layer box, click on the Background Copy 2 'eye' so that
layer is not visible, only the Background Copy is, and it is
Darken. Adjust Opacity of that layer, until you're satisfied with
the level of sharpness it provides :



Then click back on the 'eye' of Backround Copy 2, we'll adjust
Opacity of "Lighten" :



When you're satisfied, MERGE VISIBLE (shift-ctrl-E)

And the end result is this :



So I hope that helped some people

Cheers !

--
Eric Cote

Galleries :

http://drhangar.fotopic.net/
http://community.webshots.com/user/drhangar

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Iggy said:

Hi all

Ok, here's mine. Went along to a band rehearsal a couple of days
ago with a musician friend & ended up doing some snapshots. No
flash or posing, just got bored waiting so took a few pics & then
played around with them in P/shop.

Cut them out from the background using Select/Colour Range & the
Lasso tool. Added a new layer/background using the
Filters/Render/Clouds & then a slight fade. Duplicated the layer
(of them) & then darken it to a silhouette & applied the Gaussian
blur filter to get their shadow effect on the background.

Converted the image to greyscale (Mode/Greyscale) & then again to
Duotone (Mode/Duotone) also wanted a slight bleached out feel so
played around with the curves, lastly selected the whole image &
narrowed it using the Free Transform under Edit/Free Transform.
Lost some of the shadow detail but that's what you get if you are
going for a bleached out image.

Not great but shows how P/shop can enhance a snapshot.

Iggy.

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Daniella said:

something really important here...the eye did not come out right
even though I had lighten it up as much as I coudl, so I had a red
kit eye from one of my other photos from the same session and I
copied that red eye, pasted it into that photo and scaled it in
place.

I took the eye from this photo:

http://www.pbase.com/image/27043417

this is quite easy to do. I just selected the eye from this photo
with the lasso tool, copied it and pasted it into my other photo.
then set the layer transparancy to 50% to see where to position the
eye and how to scale it so that it will fit right in place.

This can only be done if you have similar parts with similar angle
though.
And the resulting photo is a flying bird with a new eye:

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Gayle said:

Here's one of mine that shows the value of straihtening, cropping
for better composition, and enhancing.
Levels, unsharp mask with layers. Taken in JPG, Parameter 2, edited
in Photoshop Elements:





Gayle

--
'We don't make a photograph with just a camera. We bring to the act
of photography all the books we have read, the movies we have seen,
the music we have heard and the people we have loved.' Ansel Adams



http://shot2shot.no-ip.com

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Boo said:

I'd work in RAW and simply develop it twice with different levels
of EC.

I copied the dark original over the lightened copy, as a new layer
and then created a mask over the top of them both and painted, with
various degrees of transparency, a mask on the top dark copy to
reveal the lighter foreground from the lower layer through holes I
was making in the top copy with the mask. When I was happy with
the mask, I guassian blurred it to soften the edges so they blend
more realisticaly and then blended it with the top layer. I then
merged the two layers to make a new composite image.

I also decided to remove the telegraph pole and wire (after
suggestions to do so from here) and I did this by cloning it out -
very carefully - almost a pixel at a time - I thought it worth
doing very carefully to do a good job - it took several hours of
work, with it blown up very large on screen.

Thus:



--
So many photos, so little time . . .
http://www.peekaboo.me.uk - general portfolio & tutorials
http://www.boo-photos.co.uk - live music photos
http://imageevent.com/boophotos/ - holding page for recent images

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Daniella said:

this is a cool tecnique however I noticed that you must be on
tripod absolutely as even if you try not to move between shots,
there is always a slight shift and the 2 photos do not blend
perfectly. On tripod they both blend perfectly.

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Eric CAN said:

Interesting Daniella, now another trick. If you shootin JPG with
Bracketing on, you could then use -2/3 and + 2/3 and get 3 JPG
shots. Then use the same trick as I've used with the tripod.

What do you think ?

I've tried that technic for other uses, and it works pretty well. Another interesting thing is the editing program, PhotoImpact pro. It will auto-align handheld shots at different exposures. If your not to far off, it does an amazing job.

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