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

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Eric CAN said:
Yes Mike, I went through some work here, had nothing else to do,
was raining so no photos and most of my images been post-processed.
You opened a door, which is something I really like to do.

From this forum, I've learnt a lot from individual like Paul
(Plbeic) and so many others. I'm a self-learner by nature, but
picking here and there little tricks doesn't hurt. So I just wanted
to return a little bit to the forum member, and your post came at
the proper time, I was and I'm sure a lot of people are fedup with
someone I won't name who simply don't understand we're tired of his
game of comparison.
Click to expand...
I know, so am I. I am learning to ignore it finally.
 
Hi Jun - I went back to the psd file and one of the last things I did was to run a gaussian blur of .6 (with eyes erased) - what you call oversharpening was actually just the contrast enhancement, but maybe it was still too strong. Can't agree about the catchlights though, those are not too large for typical umbrella distance, and softboxes give even larger reflections. The 2 o'clock position is better but since it was actually shot straight on I could only go slightly off-center. Thanks for your input though. ~ m²
Jun2 said:
I don't like what has been done here. The white spot in the eye
balls in "after" pictures bother me a lot, and the face is way
oversharpen. I prefer a bit softness for the face.
Click to expand...
--
Enjoy life - spend your clothing budget on lenses!
http://rhodeymark.instantlogic.com/PhotoGallery.ilx

 
DMahoney said:
Don
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!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
From this....



then

The patching, digital makeup, level, color, blur, layering with soft light, opacity control, and a little compositing to make room for the icons in my desktop

to this



Regards

Andrian
 
Ohh, just noticed this.

Time it takes for post-processing, well yesterday when I took screenshots of the whole process, while writting and actually doing the post-process... well it too me over an hour :-P LOL

No seriously, it all depends how the image looks like to start with. I do save time with C1 Rebel when I do WB correction, or EC correction and save multiple TIFF for then prepare this in layers in PS. It takes more time making the final judgement in C1 Rebel than doing the actual process.

In PS, this is where it takes longer, personally I never use any "auto" thing, including auto-level, brightness, contrast or sharpness. I prefer to do manual Level , by enlarging the large picture to at least 100% and lets say look at the bright and dark feather, making sure in Level that I don't loose details to both extreme (dark and bright).

Before doing all this, when I'm in layer, and lets say I erase the background of layer1, so background layer which lets say is darker, this can take some times, especially if I have a lot of branch in focus. Same by applying the blur tool to the background. It really depend what challenge is in front of me.

So to answer, if you nailed the exposure, there's good chance the time to process might be quick, if you're off and have to do 2,3,4 layers than accept to spend more time. So there's no real time frame answer I can give DMahoney and Mike.

Cheers

--
Eric Cote

Galleries :

http://drhangar.fotopic.net/
http://community.webshots.com/user/drhangar
 
This is a jet photo that I snapped at the spur of the moment, and totally messed up the shot with incorrect camera settings. The picture is dark, and it was hazy out and the sky was yuk. So what I did was open the photo in PhotoImpact (photoshop would work the same for most of this) and the first thing was to adjust the brightness and contrast to get the whole picture looking better. Then using the magic wand, I selected the jet, and cut it out, leaving only the sky. Then, I used the blur effect to smooth out the sky, and I used a tool in PhotoImpact called "sunlight" to give the sky a richer, slightly gradient effect, and to make it look like the sun is reflecting on it. Then I pasted the jet back in a new layer, and shut off the background layer, so I could add some unsharp mask to the jet. The only thing left was to turn both layers back on, and touch up the brightness a little. That was it. Here are the before, and after shots.
I'm no pro with editing, but I'm learning a little at a time :)

Before:



And After:

 
For some reason, the downsized "large" photo turned out to have some lines running through the sky. Must be something to do with the way pbase down sizes them or something, Any, the original seems to be fine, so here it is.

 
hank said:
thats cool! how did you blend them?
Click to expand...
I used photoshop to combine the exposures. The top one is exposed for the car, th ebottom one is exposed for the sky. Just do a gradient half way like a real ND filter would do.. then show it a little bit of love. :)

--
phi dong
 
Eric CAN said:
So to answer, if you nailed the exposure, there's good chance the
time to process might be quick, if you're off and have to do 2,3,4
layers than accept to spend more time. So there's no real time
frame answer I can give DMahoney and Mike.
Click to expand...
Heh, I can appreciate how difficult it might be to come up with a guesstimate on time, I was just thinking with some of the results that were posted, how much the person might have spent on THAT picture. Some pics I might just do a quick levels or nothing at all, so obviously the time is going to be quick. Someone posted a pic of a couple musiciians, where the background was pulled out and replaced with diffusion clouds or something. That will take longer than a simple levels adjust. I actually played with that effect today on a pic of me and my girl. Took over an hour to erase the background completely without leaving little bits hanging around. And another half hour or so playing with backgrounds and sepia toning, that sort of thing. But after an hour and a half or more, I got a nice result. I might actually even keep the pic too. Thankfully, that isn't my average time per pic, but if I were to post that one, I could at least say I spent almost a couple hours on it, and maybe give people an idea of how much work they would be looking at to get those results. Some of the improvements make a big difference, and if people knew that it only took a couple minutes to get that once they are more famliar with the post processing, they might not cringe at the thought of doing some touch-ups! I remember how long it used to take me to do some simple adjustments. Now I can fly through them.

Don
 
Well, that picture was taken a while ago, but as far as I can remember, first I selected the part that I don't want to blur (i.e. the tree, the basket and the water tap), then created a layer simply went from white to black vertically.. Then chose the 'lens blur' and gave that layer as source.. That gave me a gradually blur from near to far. At PS CS help file, it explain it quite well.
Andrian Purnama said:
Mark Marshall said:
Juggler said:
Here is a before-after pic.
Playing with levels, then lens blur
before
Click to expand...
--
Enjoy life - spend your clothing budget on lenses!
http://rhodeymark.instantlogic.com/PhotoGallery.ilx

Click to expand...
Click to expand...
--

'Juggling is a metaphor for life.. Each ball represents one of life's concerns and the goal is to give each the appropriate amount of individual attention while simultaneously watching and guiding all the others. Life is about balance and staying quick and alert as everything threatens to spin out of control' from Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
 
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