Thunderbird Flyover - Learning to edit

I went for the crop the hell out of it approach.

The wide view:

James H MacAllister wrote:

Orbit220 wrote:

James H MacAllister wrote:

Try adjusting the curves in Capture One. Here's a quick (limited, due to jpg) curves adjustment done in Paint Shop Pro (too cheap for PS).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n8J2t73itcYmbUp3FIVPoxFGZFfFRNOR/view?usp=sharing

Here is my attempt at sharing the raw of what seems to be the most popular and exciting shot. Let me know if this does not work. I appreciate everyone's feedback. How would one go about adjusting the curves in Capture One? If it is a complex topic I would be happy to search the web, but if I can gather good advice here I would appreciate it

Here I just upped the light falloff (under the Lens tab by default) to 120. And again adjusted the curves. The curves tool is a straight diagonal line, the top of which are the highlights and the bottom the shadows. By selecting any point along the line and moving it up will bring it toward the highlights (brighter). And moving it down will bring it toward the shadows. For instance, if you select the middle of the line and drag it down you will darken the mid tones. Pulling down the top of the line will darken the highlights; and vice versa. You can adjust the color channels in the same manner to adjust color tone. Just play with it, you can always reset it if you don't like the results.

Great explanation, thank you for taking the time to do that. A few follow up questions. What does light fall off do? I am playing with it myself and can't seem to notice a difference. Furthermore, is using the curves tool similar to using the "high dynamic range" tools? For instance, would increasing the highlight slider have the same effect as moving the right side of the line and moving it up? Or does moving the highlight slider to the right increase the "highlights" of the shadows, midtones, and highlights globally?

Orbit220 wrote:

James H MacAllister wrote:

Orbit220 wrote:

James H MacAllister wrote:

Try adjusting the curves in Capture One. Here's a quick (limited, due to jpg) curves adjustment done in Paint Shop Pro (too cheap for PS).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n8J2t73itcYmbUp3FIVPoxFGZFfFRNOR/view?usp=sharing

Here is my attempt at sharing the raw of what seems to be the most popular and exciting shot. Let me know if this does not work. I appreciate everyone's feedback. How would one go about adjusting the curves in Capture One? If it is a complex topic I would be happy to search the web, but if I can gather good advice here I would appreciate it

Here I just upped the light falloff (under the Lens tab by default) to 120. And again adjusted the curves. The curves tool is a straight diagonal line, the top of which are the highlights and the bottom the shadows. By selecting any point along the line and moving it up will bring it toward the highlights (brighter). And moving it down will bring it toward the shadows. For instance, if you select the middle of the line and drag it down you will darken the mid tones. Pulling down the top of the line will darken the highlights; and vice versa. You can adjust the color channels in the same manner to adjust color tone. Just play with it, you can always reset it if you don't like the results.

Great explanation, thank you for taking the time to do that. A few follow up questions. What does light fall off do? I am playing with it myself and can't seem to notice a difference. Furthermore, is using the curves tool similar to using the "high dynamic range" tools? For instance, would increasing the highlight slider have the same effect as moving the right side of the line and moving it up? Or does moving the highlight slider to the right increase the "highlights" of the shadows, midtones, and highlights globally?

To put it short the light falloff adjustment correct for vignetting which is the darkening of the corners and edges of an image which occurs to some degree with all lenses. Higher end lenses typically have less vignetting. While adjusting the slider, pay close attention the the corners. You may not notice the corners and edges being darker than the center until you make the adjustment. Often after the adjustment it becomes obvious and you won't believe you didn't notice it to begin with.

30 seconds . Not subtle but a bit more lively.

Snapseed is free and I love it.  Seriously took about 30 seconds.  Crop.  Bump Structure. Lift Shadows. Cut Highlights. Up Ambience.  Done. :).

CAcreeks wrote:

liggy wrote:

30 seconds . Not subtle but a bit more lively. Snapseed is free and I love it. Seriously took about 30 seconds. Crop. Bump Structure. Lift Shadows. Cut Highlights. Up Ambience.

Nice work! Do you run Snapseed on an Android tablet or iPad?

Some of the other software used here transformed the clouds into fake-o camera style pseudo clouds - blown out, too white - instead of the way clouds really look.

Thanks!  2017 iPad Pro.  Older but still more than capable.  I have Affinity Photo but the Fuji jpegs are so good that Snapseed does pretty much everything other than focus stacking and pano stitching.

CAcreeks wrote:

liggy wrote:

30 seconds . Not subtle but a bit more lively. Snapseed is free and I love it. Seriously took about 30 seconds. Crop. Bump Structure. Lift Shadows. Cut Highlights. Up Ambience.

Nice work! Do you run Snapseed on an Android tablet or iPad?

Some of the other software used here transformed the clouds into fake-o camera style pseudo clouds - blown out, too white - instead of the way clouds really look.

I don’t know about where you live, but in my neck of the woods, puffy white clouds in direct sunshine are intensely bright and intensely white, the very brightness parts of which should absolutely be rendered as nearly pure white,  just like in real life. Dark, bluish, mid-toney and HDR-like is decidedly not the way bright, sunlit clouds really look like in my reality.

Erik Baumgartner wrote:

CAcreeks wrote:

liggy wrote:

30 seconds . Not subtle but a bit more lively. Snapseed is free and I love it. Seriously took about 30 seconds. Crop. Bump Structure. Lift Shadows. Cut Highlights. Up Ambience.

Nice work! Do you run Snapseed on an Android tablet or iPad?

Some of the other software used here transformed the clouds into fake-o camera style pseudo clouds - blown out, too white - instead of the way clouds really look.

I don’t know about where you live, but in my neck of the woods, puffy white clouds in direct sunshine are intensely bright and intensely white, the very brightness parts of which should absolutely be rendered as nearly pure white, just like in real life. Dark, bluish, mid-toney and HDR-like is decidedly not the way bright, sunlit clouds really look like in my reality.

lol... where I love the clouds look like this most of the time.

CAcreeks wrote:

This is a really good one, with the railing cropped out. I like how planes are flying toward the camera. You got a good copy of this lens

Picked it up second hand for $140, if you can believe it. I was trying to use the railing to show just how close they were. Amazingly flew right over my head, set off car alarms. I really wish I had zoomed in more on this shot but was nervously preparing for them to shoot right over me