[shakari]

Hope I'm not wasting your time here folks........ Here's an image I took a few years ago. We'd just darted this bull prior to veterinary treatment (note the pink dart in his ass). The first shot is as it came out of the camera and the second is after the wife & I had played with it a little....... Could someone please tell me what else I could do to improve it further.

[Steve]

This is a much better before and after, you are making good progress and the benefits are beginning to show.

Here is what I did very quickly in Adobe Photoshop. I took your shot and opened levels

In the drop down box instead of leaving it at the default setting of RGB I switched to each channel individually, so first Red, then Green then Blue, each time I brought the slider underneath the graph on the right in until it touched the end of the graph. Your original shot was underexposed and adjusting each channel in this way gives the best results.

I then opened saturation and selected the yellow channel, giving it a slight boost there to show some of the colour in the foreground. After that I ran it through Noiseware (available as a free download) on a low setting as the detail in the low resolution version is not immense and too much noise reduction can remove detail very quickly. Finally a small amount of Smart Sharpen and my usual border.



The above may sound a lot but it took me far longer to type out the steps than it did to do them

Hopefully that will help a little.

[Arkady]

It's a bit too much still. The bright areas have lost all the detail and in trying to bring out the shadow detail in the animal you've only served to highlight the crumminess of the print you're trying to work from. This is a good image - don't get me wrong, but working from this print, you're on a hiding to nothing.
The problem you're having is that you're working from scanned prints, which have lost much of the information contained on the negatives. Your 'processed' image here lacks any detail in the shadow areas and has lost detail in the sky - all recoverable from the negative, as I know from experience that the information will be there, it's just how to get it out - it's the difference between a machine print from your local Happy Snaps shop, or a hand-made print by an expert printer. You'd be amazed at the difference it makes. Trying to work from a lack-luster print makes the whole learning process so much more difficult as the information you need to make a good image is already lost to you.
To really see what's achievable in Photoshop, you need to go back to the source - in your case the original negs. Tha's why I suggested buying a film scanner rather than a DSLR. That way you still have access to all the(possibly great) images you already own, rather than starting all over with a digital camera.

[shakari]

Steve,

First of all, thanks for all your help! - I'm still learning how to fly photoshop but am getting there!

Can I ask how you put the border on the image....... I've played around with P/S but can't work it out!

While I'm here, this is my (probably amateurish) before and after P/S...... What do you think?





Hmmmm Seem to have a size problem on the top pic...... according to my P/S it's 350 pixels and a smaller print size than the other one..... please fel free to delete or change it as you wish.....thanks!

[mrgubby]

Hi Shakari,

Fancy swapping places for a few weeks & I'm sure you'll love the photo opportunities round Baldock (UK) .

I had a fiddle with your shot in Elements 3.0 using the shadow/highlight tool followed by brightness/contrast then a final tweak on saturation. It came out very noisy so had to run noiseware then a bit of USM. Don't know how bright it should be but it came out like this :-




Brian

[shakari]

Hi Brian,

Pretty nice - thanks. They can vary in colour a lot as they roll in the dust/mud and then come out whatever colour the soil is....... I've even seen red Elephants.

We've just downloaded noiseware but I don't know what USM is.

By the way, where's Baldock?....... I'm from Kent originally by way of different parts of Berkshire.

[mrgubby]

Originally Posted by shakari

Hi Brian,

Pretty nice - thanks. They can vary in colour a lot as they roll in the dust/mud and then come out whatever colour the soil is....... I've even seen red Elephants.

We've just downloaded noiseware but I don't know what USM is.

By the way, where's Baldock?....... I'm from Kent originally by way of different parts of Berkshire.

Hi ,

USM , from what I remember is unsharp mask , a way of "crisping" up an image. I used a radius of 1.8 pixels & strength of about 30% on your image (after noiseware).

Baldock is in sunny Hertfordshire , 30 miles north of London

[Steve]

Your the second person to ask about the border I use on my images. I am a little busy today but if I get time I will do a tutorial and possible and action for anyone to download.

[shakari]

Thanks Steve.