Hometown Christmas Decorations, Lancaster, NY

Whew! ChrisH. in Southern California is trying to convince me to get into shooting RAW. I'm still not convinced, but promised him that I would shoot in RAW a little bit and play with it. This is the first result. The holiday decorations in the center of the little village near where I live. I did most of the adjustments in the ACR software, then went into PScs3 and worked with the tweaking things ... levels and colors and cloning out power lines, etc. Any thoughts you have would be most helpful! Thanks!!

I am attempting to convert from shooting jpg to shooting raw. This

image is my first attempt to work with one of my raw files. Any

thoughts, comments or ratings you have for me would be greatly

appreciated! :-)

Nicely done Lou Ann. I would clone out the hat in the lower right and the cut off character on the right. And add some space between the foot of the character and the bottom edge.

Love that perspective. Nice colors. Stick with RAW. Ccheck out Lightroom... love it when shooting RAW. (Not a paid endorser. ;)

I can flat-out tell the difference. This is one terrific shot. Wonderful sense of perspective; and the white balance looks spot-on. I am in agreement with cloning out the green hat in LR corner, but it isn't a big deal. Well done! Now, that's one down, the rest of your photographic career to go! You just have so much more latitude and flexibility with camera raw. Cheers! Chris

Agree about cloning the hat out. Great perspective and pleasing lighting, Lou Ann. I always shoot in RAW, btw.

Funny group and very pleasing Lou Ann.I join the others without the hat... I shot only RAW, and it is so much better. very well composed .

nice DOF.

Hi LouAnn,

Cloning out the hat to me would be more work than it's worth. If it was really bothersome you could easily crop it out, I myself don't find it that distracting.

You did a very good job editing a raw file in my opinion. I see many flat looking images from folks editing raw images, this has great color, and a very nice punchiness to it.

Raw editor from your camera's manufacturer I think is the best way to go from my experience. In my case, Nikon just had a better idea at what the colors should be than ACR, or any other raw editor I've tried. I would suggest in your case exploring raw editing software by Canon.

In my opinion raw has it's advantages in high contrast situations, and in situations where you're not too sure what the camera settings should be. With that said, I think someone who knew their in-camera setting fairly well could get away with shooting strictly in jpeg 90% of the time or more. One advantage of becoming intimately familiar with your in-camera settings is less time editing = more time doing other things you enjoy :) This of course goes against the idea that I enjoy editing photos. Hmmmm. My life must be bleak :(

 

Steve

This is very nice. Great depth and very could colors - the color of the snow is perfect so you did a good job here. Th ehat doesn't bother me. I think we sometimes are too efective cloning 'just everything' out.

 

For the raw thing - I do always shoot in raw. I'm of that meaning that you get the best quality when using raw. I'm using Canons own software 'Digital Professionel Photo' DPP for the editing and I'm mostly only increasing the contrast and the sharpness but the photo has to be sharp/clear from the beginning because you can't rescue any bad photos if this is'nt ok from the start - so as Steven say: let the camera do the work. Easy said I know, ha - but you get the best then.

Very nice. I like the scene and especially the snow....

Hello Lou Ann! Something in this shot give me the impression that it is soon Christmas.

I hope you are satisfied with your RAW images. I have also began to shoot in RAW.

Ditto on the hat cloning and all the good things said about RAW. One other point about saving your RAW files is that software gets better and better for post processing. Tomorrow's Adobe products will work miracles on your RAW files from last year. I especially love the snow here - actual texture and color variations - hard to get right. Great shot! Cheers -

I love the hat down to the right, preparing the eye for a travel through the scene introducing a series of Dickens's like personalities. Well done Lou. I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year hoping to see many more of your marvelous shots.