Post processing post

[Brettus]

Alright, I've got an idea thanks to Richie's daily pictures. Everyone processes their pictures differently (and each result is as right as any other) I thought it'd be interesting to post up a picture I've processed and post up the RAW file so anyone who feels like it can have a play with it and show how THEY would process the file.

Here is a quick example of what sparked the idea, Richie had a picture of Durham (I think it was) castle and it had a lot of yellow street lights, personally I remove as much as possible:

But it is a very much personal choice.

So, here goes my chosen image to see how you lot might process it:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m0m9r5e3m3fmmcs/IMG_0545.dng
and it looks like this: (before processing)


I'll post up how I did it later in the week if some others want to play along.

Feel free to post your own RAW files to see what others do with them BTW.

[Richie]

My attempt...

[mister c]

Mines later at night I'm not too good at this post processing malarky. I did try HDR, but it looked pants

[Brettus]

Nice work on both counts! It is amazing how much detail is there but isn't readily shown in images. For those unsure, this isn't colouring in the image, it is just pulling out the elements you want to show, they have all been captured in the RAW format.

When you take a picture with a digital camera and just get the normal JPG image out of it, it has applied a "default" processing to the image, balanced to give the best results in most conditions. RAW lets you choose how to apply that process (it also means you have to do the work which isn't insignificant) if you have a DSLR then I'd advise shooting RAW+jpg so that if you (or the camera) screw a shot up, RAW can sometimes mean you can salvage something.


Anyway, back onto the two that have been done, I love the vibrant colours and how the whites stand out Richie. Mister_C, that is a really nice one, I was shooting to get a silhouette at the time but didn't want to miss out on the details of the structure (even if I didn't necessarily use them later), this one was a half way image, details in the structure but blown out sky for the most part too. I think I tried HDR myself for this one thinking it'd work well.

MOST of my HDR ones don't work out, haven't quite got the eye for it. I often shoot bracketed though just to hedge my bets I've got loads of panoramic series of shots I've taken but rarely use too, no harm in shooting them at the time. I'm just rubbish at throwing them away LOL.

I'm off to bed shortly as I'm beat but I'll post up what my final one looked like tomorrow.

[mister c]

Cheers Brett.
I use a program called Photomatix Pro to do my HDR, like I said, I'm no good at this processing lark, so anything to make life easy I'll use it. I use Photoshop to change the exposure of a RAW image, save about 9 exposures, then let Photomatix do all the work I get shots like this

[Brettus]

Nice work! I use the same program I try and shoot the different exposures whilst there as if your default exposure doesn't have much sky then you can't always pull it back from a single shot (although it does mean you don't ever have camera shake in between shots to align I guess)

I might also shoot myself in the foot as I only tend to shoot 3 exposures for any HDR, might give it a go using more.

Oh, before I forget, here was my processed shot of this scene:


Pretty mid way between the two posted to be honest. Anyone else got one for us to try?

[Richie]

see what you can do with this..

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rljj0j8mmhy58q6/075.JPG

[mister c]

I might just have a play with that one later Richie.

Here's one of mine
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3vgofmd0pbpzql1/CRW_8276.CRW

[Brettus]

Have you got a RAW version of that shot Richie? processing jpgs is possible but most information is lost

[Brettus]

OK I had a go with Col's shot, decided to go heavy on the tweaks as it'd likely produce something that you hadn't gone for.

Looks a little "Brothers Grimm"-like to me.

I opted to crop a good portion of sky out as there was little of interest to be pulled back, the branches became more defined but the weight of that expanse of light colour distracted me. (I really don't mean to sound as pretentious as that sounds, I'm only trying to explain my thinking) There is now a rather dark area drawing the eye off to the left but I perceive that as adding to the mystery a little, if I were to bring that area up it wouldn't be as good, cropping wasn't an option as it'd put the house back in the dead center and the stone in the foreground works really well. I miss getting something like that in the foreground most of the time, I really need to work on spotting them (especially with my wide angle now, it needs a strong subject to keep it from being just a busy expanse of image)

I'd tried a monochrome conversion of the image too but no matter what colour balance I couldn't get the house to stand out sufficiently from the natural stone, in colour that works much better.