More Digital Photography Tips - Post Processing

[pixel8r]

Just read the recent thread about photography tips for taking good photos (nice read), and I thought I'd start one for things to try AFTER the photo has been taken - ie. on your computer.

If anyone has any good tips for making your photos look great either in print or on computer, feel free to share them...

Here are a few of my own tips:

* The first thing I do with any photo off the camera is adjust Levels. In photoshop (or the GIMP which I use) and many other photo editing programs you can adjust levels, which basically corrects the exposure of photos a little. Obviously you cant work magic but it can greatly enhance even your best photos.

In the levels adjust window, you'll see a graph of the level of colour in your photos. Both ends may taper off and there may in some cases be a gap at either (or both) ends. Drag the little arrows inwards to where the visible colour starts at either end and see how that looks - this can be used to brighten up overly dark parts of a photo or darken overexposed areas. I haven't seen a camera that takes perfect photos every time, so this tool is invaluable for making photos that little bit more vibrant. Often your unedited photos will look a bit dull in comparison...

* Another thing you can do is brightness and contrast - although I would recommend not using these and using the above Levels adjust instead. This one's a matter of taste - but generally its better to use gamma controls or Levels adjust to brighten or darken your photos. I dont use brightness at all but occasionally I will use contrast to exaggerate a photo (for a surrealistic look).

* My other favourite tool is colour saturation. Increasing the saturation (again, exaggerating colours) will often make your photos look "better" because they will have richer colours. It all depends if you want your photos to look realistic or "nice". I usually keep my original photos separate and save my edited copies in a separate directory. That way I still have the "realistic" copy and for photos I want to print or have on my desktop etc. I bump up the saturation, sometimes a lot, and I find it makes the photos stand out more.

Its all about what people percieve as being a better photo. Thats why so many digital cameras have "noise reduction" built in. Personally I choose Ricoh digital cameras (they only do "prosumer" digicams, no DSLR's unfortunately - but then I'm not a professional photographer....maybe one day). They do not do noise reduction at all (except in very low light), giving you a slightly grainier photo but with way more fine detail. Look at your photos containing fields of grass. Can you see each blade of grass? or does it all look a bit smudged...I'm getting picky I know but it is a personal preference of mine and I love the extra detail I get. Things in real life are not all made up of flat colours so all those reviews that complain about "noise" in photos may just be complaining about real detail...

each to their own I guess

What other tips do you guys have for making photos look stunning on computer or in print?

[Sl!m]

Hi Steve, good idea

I've just gotten photoshop, looking for some basic tips and tricks to fix up photos no major photoshopping yet.

[2rismo]

Most basic and general Photoshop tip:

Ctrl-Shift-L

Especially with piece of crap, point and shoot Kodak rubbish.

[dan.1337]

usually i don't do a great deal of post processing. i'll adjust lighting levels, white balance (if necessary), maybe slightly increase contrast and one stop of sharpness. that's about it.

If u can, shoot at a lower ISO. this will lessen the noise. reasons being that noise is increased when more power is sent thru the CCD or CMOS to increase its sensitivity - which then gives a more 'cluttered' signal.

but then again guys, don't worry so much about noise. just shoot - in the end, the only person who is pixel peeping is yourself. photography is still about taking photos =)

[pixel8r]

When you adjust levels, compare the result with the original and the original will often look dull, even though it looked like a good photo when you took it.

I've only recently started playing with saturation and maybe even contrast to make it look more surreal or extreme. Sometimes its only subtle changes but other times its more noticeable, but it can really add "wow" to your photos

If anyone has trouble with "noise" in photos, try using software called noise ninja. Its fantastic.

And for those without photoshop, and who are pretty good with computers, try the GIMP (free download). Its not as good as photoshop (is anything?) but it is still quite powerful and did I mention its free?

[Sl!m]

figured this should be stickied.

feel free to add, though If your post is off topic/whoring it will be deleted.

[Silver-Arrowz]

I use a program called noise ninja as part of my post-process and it rocks socks! I'm not afraid to shoot at ISO3200 because noise ninja does a pretty good job of removing noise/graining. Still having said that, having a good source picture to start of with is still much better.

Oh, make sure you calabrate your monitors also.

[Sl!m]

A neat little tool I use for Photos is Google's Picasa 2.

It organises all your photos, gives you an easy way to upload them to a webspace you own.

ie: all you do is upload the folder to your webspace and it looks some thing like http://slim.skylinesaustralia.com/saudragday

Also has some basic picture fixer-uppers. There is a "one click fix" that usually does a pretty damn good job at fixing the lighting etc

when you download the installer, it tries to get you to install a whole bunch of other crap, you can chose not to install it and just install picasa 2 though.

[dodgsun]

i dont have PS , so instead i use Faststone image viewer, not as much stuff but easy to use with saturation/brightness etc so not bad! and has a brilliant crop and resize bit for all your web AV's and such!! and it's FREE too!!

[NS2500]

My number 1 digital photography tip - Don't blow out your highlights!

You can still get a lot out of shadows but nothing back from pure white.

[Sass]

thanks for posting

i am fairly new at editing and photography

using Lightroom at the moment only because it seems a bit easier to understand than Photoshop

but am also using Photoshop for a few bits and pieces too.

- i am still very much learning. it makes it tough when i get different cropping opinions from people more experienced but am certainly willing to listen and appreciate it!!

my pics are here: www.pbase.com/sooty34

[Sl!m]

Not really photo editing.. but kind of is anyway..

quick way to resize a bunch of photo's without having to do each one idividually

1. Press [Windows]E to launch Windows Explorer.

2. Make sure the Tasks pane is visible. (The Folders button acts like a toggle switch. If the Tree pane is showing, clicking the Folders button will display the Tasks pane. Click the Folders button if the Tree pane is showing.)

3. Open the folder containing the group of digital pictures you want to resize. Select the group.

4. Under the File And Folder Task list, choose E-Mail The Selected Items.

5. When you see the Send Pictures Via E-Mail dialog box, click Show More Options to expand the dialog box.

6. Select a radio button next to one of the available sizes and click OK. A new mail message window containing the resized digital pictures as attachments will appear.

7. Pull down the File menu, select the Save Attachments command, and save all the attachments to a different folder.

8. Close the mail message window and click No in the Save Changes dialog box.

[NickR33]

Also editing with 'Curves' allows you to adjust the colour balance within an image... very useful and much better than using the 'colour balance' sliders... good for when you have been shooting inside with artificial lighting, take out some red (or magenta if you are going CMYK)

ps. probably should mention you can edit colour balance within 'Levels' but Curves gives you more control IMO

[ZENNON]

Slim not really post processing related but how do you customise your picasa web page and its url?

mine always look like this - http://picasaweb.google.com.au/ZennonDaman...ssionSuspension

[Sl!m]

You have to use your own domain and use picasa 2.

and then you just upload the index page and photos etc.

[Lepperfish]

I'm shooting in RAW mode and using photoshop CS3 to edit my images. Shooting RAW allows so much flexibilty with editing exposure, saturation, contrast, sharpness, white balance ect. Then I just convert to JPEG & have a play with curves and levels and thats about it. The clone and burn tools are great as well..

Edited January 5, 2009 by Lepperfish

[ZENNON]

very clever Slim

[NoFX_Hardcore]

Lightroom 2 is a great editing program. More features than Picasa and still easy to use. CS4 is good too if you really want to play around with the pics...

[FST513]

Hhmm i figured i might post a few corrections that i do, seeing as no one has mentioned them lately.

First thing to do before you do anything is change your WB. Effectively, this is essential because it can change the colours from having a warm colour cast or a blue color cast/red color cast etc.. I have an actual shooting target card, where i can focus on and get the correct exposure, review it in the histogram and if i want to change the exposure for a bit more light or less light i can adjust by judging off the histogram. I also use it, to set my custom white balance. It is this product here: Photovision Pocket One Shot Digital Target

I shoot RAW. JPEG just doesn't have the flexibility i need for most of the shooting i do. RAW is very powerful, but also time consuming. When you shoot JPEG, the camera corrects sharpness, saturation levels, contrast etc... but when you shoot RAW and connect your camera to your computer, you may notice that the photos are DULL and FLAT. That is because this is the RAW photo and has had no corrections made. I don't advise shooting RAW unless you have the time and the space on your CF cards or computer as file sizes are pretty big.

I use Lightroom 2 too organise my photos, i just find it easier than bridge because i don't really need to know half the stuff that bridge shows me about the photo and i often waste time just reading half of the stuff, but it is a very good tool to use if you do not have Lightroom.

Once you have opened the RAW photo it should open in PS, ACR (Adobe Camera Raw). This is where you can make adjustments to the white balance, sharpness (use low numbers here as its only capture sharpening you don't want to sharpen too much), recovery,fill light, blacks, brightness,contrast, vibrance, clarity and saturation.

Once you have finished up here you can click open image and it will open it in photoshop itself (You can hold shift to open it as a smart object, but thats another story).

I often check my white balance by using curves. I find it is more powerful and useful than levels for this. To check, click the left eyedropper tool (Blacks) and then on the histogram you will see underneath it two sliders, one is on the left (Blacks) one is on the right). Hold ALT and click the black slider and move it gradually to the right, until red spots start showing on your image (Your image will turn black) these are the blackest parts on your image and you should use your eyedropped to sample from here. The same thing with the white slider. For the midtones eyedropper you need something Neutral gray, which you can always use your info palette to see what the RGB values are.

LAYER MASKS

Layer masks are an effective tool. I use curves and create a "S" curve which lowers the initial exposure and ramps up the contrast, depending how savage you make the curve. An "S" curve is just one of many ways to use curves depending on what you want to do, but all it is, is a "dot" in the lower left hand side (shadows) and a "dot" in the right hand upper corner (highlights) You can use your arrow keys to make the image how you want, normally concentrate on making your background how you want first, then focus on the target. Once you are happy press ok, and the curves will be applied to your image.

If you are happy with it overall, you can leave it. If you like the background but not the target, or you like the target and not the background, this is a simple fix. I find that if you like the target, press CTRL + I (invert) this will invert the mask and make it a black mask, (press D for black and white and then press X to change it to white if the current colour is black), it will be back to the original image. All you do then, is press B for the brush tool, change the brush to a soft edge, and "paint" your target in. Once you are happy with how your target looks, do the same thing as above, but instead of inverting the mask, this time paint the target "out". So once you are happy with the curves adjustment, press ok and in your layers palette you will see it has background and then above that it will save "Curves 1" with a white box there that is the "mask". Now change your color to Black (press D then press X to get it to black) and now paint your target out.

SHARPNESS

There are 3 steps to sharpening, its not just the simple sharpen it at the end and "she'll be right", there is capture sharpening, creative sharpening and output sharpening.

There are also many ways to sharpen, USM (Unsharp Mask), smart sharpen, high pass sharpening, selective sharpening etc...

This topic is far too in depth for me to explain as people all have there own different ways to what works and what doesn't but i will explain a simple technique which is selective sharpening.

One way to do selective sharpening is to duplicate your background layer (CTRL + J) make sure you have layer 1 selected, use your preferred sharpening tool then hold ALT and press the little camera looking button at the bottom of the layers palette also know as "add vector mask". This will create a black mask on layer one and take away all the sharpening you just added. Now, if everything seems like when you zoom in it is all pixelated and not nice, or something is oversharpened, all you do is get your brush tool, select white colour, and "paint" in where you want to be sharpened. You can also change opacity of brushes etc.. if something becomes too sharp or you just want it be subtle.

REMEMBER TO SHARPEN YOUR PHOTO AFTER YOU HAVE RESIZE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For this just a subtle sharpen will be fine, i often oversharpen a little but ONLY for prints, not web display.

Hope i have explained some techniques here for you guys to play around with!

Many thanks!

Kory

[PitlanePhotos]

Lightroom 2.4

Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection (64-bit)

LIFESAVERS!!