How is my post-processing

[anderschr]

Original is the first image, edited is the second. I only want to maintain the natural appearance of the scene,

as if you were to see it with your own eyes. I used levels adjustment, curves, color-balance and lonestar digital

sharpening.

 

<a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v608/Liono/?action=view&current=1.jpg" target="_blank"><img

src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/Liono/1.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

 

<a href="http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v608/Liono/?action=view&current=2-2.jpg" target="_blank"><img

src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v608/Liono/2-2.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

[david.elliott]

I think it looks pretty good. Very nice sheep. :)

 

I took the liberty of using your original image and making some adjustments of my own. I hope you dont mind.

 

I tried to keep it natural looking. The biggest change I made was a crop. Other adjustments were relatively minor.<div></div>

[anderschr]

Not bad either. The color looks good-- what did you do, just curves? It looks a little over-sharpened.

[david.elliott]

I added a bit of sharpening and clarity. I debated about whether or not it looked oversharpened. One issue is that we

now have a much closer crop, and I needed to make the trees in the foreground and the background defined, and had to

do that with clarity and sharpening - which because I am using LR 1.4, was a global adjustment. I would have preferred

to selectively apply it. They looked very soft after the crop without any adjustment.

 

I might have overdone it though. Probably shouldnt edit late at night with tired eyes.

 

I made exposure adjustments, fill light, etc, a very slight brightness and contrast adjustment, miniscule white balance

adjustment, minor curves adjustment - and I think that is it.

[david.elliott]

Here it is again with contract reduced, clarity and sharpening removed.<div></div>

[anderschr]

The color looks better than mine, which has a very slight red bias. I think I may be over relying on color balance, since it seems I can never get it quite right anyhow.

 

What do you mean by fill light and white balance adjustment, in photoshop terms? And people do use brightness/contrast after all?

[bwcombs]

Reminds me of Woody Allen's:

 

The lamb and the lion shall lie down together. But the lamb won't get much sleep...

[david.elliott]

I use brightness and contrast sometimes. Dont know if other people do. I'm an amateur though, so take that into account I guess.

:|

<br><br>

I dont use photoshop so I'm not sure what terms to use. If you use Adobe Camera Raw, the terms should be the same as my Lightroom terms.

<br><br>Fill light

basically lets you recover detail in dark areas, in this case parts of the trees. Recovery lets you recover highlight detail, in this

case the sky. White balance is the temperature and tint of the photo. For example, your camera probably has various white

balance settings for cloudy, daylight, tungsten, etc. I'm sure there is a thread on this forum (if you do a search you should find it)

that explains this much better than I could. I dont want to accidentally say something wrong, so I wont say too much on the

subject. But essentially, you can use white balance to warm or cool your photo.

<br><br>

I'll list all the Lightroom Adjustments I made (to the last version) below:

<br><br>

- I cropped the photo<br><br>

- I did a +2 adjustment to the white balance<br><br>

- For exposure adjustments I put recovery to 89 and fill light to 18<br><br>

- I set brightness to -6 and contrast to -9<br><br>

- Tone curve adjustments are highlights +19, lights +4, darks -6 and shadows -13<br><br>

- Hue adjustments are Yellow +2 and Green -17<br><br>

- Saturation adjustment of green -6<br><br>

- Luminance adjustment of green -47<br><br>

<br><br>

I think that covers everything I did.

<br><br>

Hope that helps.

[anderschr]

Thanks, I will have to look into trying out light room.

[david.elliott]

Adobe has a free trial of LR up, so give that a go before buying it - might as well make sure you like it.

 

If you are eligible, there is an education version available at a significant discount. It is identical to the commercial version.