lostfx

Hm, I will work on that. I went to one workshop session of the company specializing in wedding picture printing and they gave us some hints like: always adjust White Balance (Custom) when lighting conditions or environment changes. So I got 18% gray card for my Canon 20D and I see improvement. Also they insisted on Adobe RGB rather than sRGB for better color reproduction, constatly checking histogram when shooting, using RAW, etc. I mean with all these, the quality of pictures improved, but still after visiting tons of websites with wedding picture content, the pictures look much color vibrant, contrast, sharp and consistent even if the environment changes than do mine. I'm putting website together, so I will soon show you what I mean.

I have the same problem. To make colors vibrant with nice skin tones and contrast so the overall picture is warm but colors are natural. I can't believe that somebody is adjusting each single picture in photoshop. It must be some kind of camera setting or filter that they use.

 

DD

Try this one: http://www.imagenomic.com/detailsplugin.asp

 

Pretty decent results.

 

 

DD

Thank you guys again. That B&W solution was exceptional. It is very artistic and very nice. By the way, while I was looking for some high ISO noise reduction software, I found this: http://www.imagenomic.com/detailsplugin.asp

 

I applied it to the above image, and I got very nice soft skin.

 

Give it a try.

 

Dusan

I also just found this software Noiseware plugin for Photoshop: http://www.imagenomic.com/detailsplugin.asp

 

It is suppose to provide outstanding results.

 

DD

Here is the cropped area with lots of noise.<div></div>

Do you have to talk to the operator to turn off all the correcting or just upload images thru their kiosk machines at the store?

 

Dusan

Hi, guys!

 

Anybody tried to print proofs at Costco Canada with their printer

profiles? I tried without printer profiles (since I found them just

today) and they just lack more contrast. I mean pictures look flat to

me. I will try to load their printer profile and go from there if I

see the difference. On monitor, pictures look good and I calibrated

my monitor with Spyder 2 PRO.

Ok, here I uploaded picture taken with Canon 20D, 50mm f/1.4 with no flash. Here are the settings: 1/13sec at f/2.2, exposure bias value +1.33 ISO 3200. The problem is that as I was saving this file to fit 100kbytes, slight decrease in JPEG quality lost the noise detail.<div></div>

Don't worry I will try to go thru his posting to find out.

I know what you are talking about. It is nicely demonstrated here: http://www.canon.co.jp/Imaging/enjoydslr/p_2_007.html

The other thing is that I don't want to open aperture to the f/1.4. It will generate such a short DOF that portion of the faces might get blurry slightly. I would rather start at f/2.0 or higher to get faces in focus. 1.4 or 1.8 is excellent for details, like wedding rings.

 

Dusan

ok, I will try to do some testing and I will post the pictures.

Hi, guys!

 

Another one. How do you reduce noise when you have to shoot in low

light situation with no flash allowed? I mean ISO 800 - 3200? I do

use 50mm F/1.4 but I set the aperture to 2 or little higher to still

keep acceptable depth of field. I shoot RAW, then reduce Noise in

Adobe RAW converter as much as possible. Then I save it as a TIFF and

do another noise removal in Photoshop. The problem is, that sometimes

you loose quite a bit of detail, even you try to do it carefully. Any

suggestions or opinions? I was surprised by that beautiful picture

shot at 3200 that was posted on this forum before. That was amazing.

I tried the above with my Canon 20D and EF 50mm f/1.4 lens. It looks good but amount of noise in shadows is huge.

THANK YOU ALL for your contribution on this matter. I really appreciate it a lot - all your effort, time and energy. Nothing beats personal experience as you guys possess. On top of it I can't agree more that mastering light, camera and composition is much more important than mastering PS. Exactly as you said, who wants to spend hours retouching and correcting every single wedding picture? But sometimes, it happens that due to circumstances you don't have a time or resources or even knowledge how to shoot the picture (in given situation) right. And that is the point where you need to have PS skills to save this kind of picture that would otherwise go to garbage.

 

By the way, this one horrible shot I took at my first wedding (I will post some pictures for you to review, this afternoon) was in a very tiny appartment. Immediately after the reviewing pictures I went to photo store and ordered Lumiquest for my Flash and did some testing. Results were much different. No harsh shadows, more even and diffused light.

 

Now I'm in different situation. What to do in low light situation, where no flash is allowed. I'm sure that you say, use fast lens and increase ISO speed. Fast lens wouldn't be such a problem, but increasing ISO speed is a kind of problem. There was a post before mine that somebody with 1DMKII took pictures at ISO 3200 (with no corrections as I understood). That picture was beautiful. I took my 20D, bump up the ISO, got approximatelly the same settings and it wasn't bad except the horrible noise level in shadows. I did couple test shots in RAW and I cleaned them quite decently, but still it is not as beautiful as he did. Is it really such big difference in camera body electronics and features? Is there a more noise as well because my sensor is not full frame?

 

Thank you again for all your contribution and I'm sure other new members appreciate a lot those who posted the instructions as well.

 

Dusan

Karin, Michelle and Emanuoil.....I like yours a lot. It is very professional. Can you post the techniques, how you did it?

 

Thank you very much.

 

DD

Here is my try.<div></div>

Thanks for trying, but it doesn't look natural if you know what I mean.

I purposly uploaded such a bad picture. Please ignore the shadow under chin.

Here is the photo that needs to be retouched. Can you give me some suggestion so it looks perfect?<div></div>

Ok, I will do as soon as I get home. Maybe I'm just too picky. :-)

Thanks a lot guys.

Hopefully it will be a significant quality difference especially in low light situations with my Canon 20D compared to EF-S 17-85 F/4-5.6 IS USM lens that I bought with the camera.

Hi, guys!

 

I went thru several websites of wedding photographers and I found

many of them to have a very beautiful pictures. I mean beautiful

especially in terms of color and clarity. People's faces are very

nicely retouched. And this is my problem. I tried several retouching

and color correcting techniques from photoshop books, but it still

doesn't give me the results I want. The skin when retouched shows

marks of retouching I mean you can see it was retouched by lost

detail or slightly different color compared to the rest of the face.

So the faces look very unnatural and they loose the detail. Can you

suggest me some Photoshop techniques, books, photoshop plugins or

websites thru which I can get better results?

 

Thank you very much!

Marc would you mind posting some images taken with that 24-105 lens?

Thank you.