[Charlotte]

In my endeavour to get the hang of image manipulation, I worked on a pic that looked awful straight from the camera, but I ended up with this panorama ...



which I'm quite pleased with. Ok, so it's not the best compo-wise, but I like to think I created a relatively good pic from a bad one ... here's the original ...



Awful, isn't it! I worked pretty long + hard on it to end up with the panorama view, + as it's my first serious attempt at image manipulation, I thought I'd ask for comments on that aspect, i.e. I don't want a crit on the original pic - I know it's bad - I only posted it here to show you from whence the panorama came

So, waddaya think of my budding editing skills?

PS Anyone wishing to have a go at doing something different with the original is most welcome to

[P-E]

You have every reason to be pleased with your PS work Charlotte

[Soupdragon]

So, aides the obvious flipping of the image, minimal crop and correcting the exposure! would you like to let us know what the other manipulations were?

[Rob Barron]

You have done a decent job there Charlotte, great to see you are starting to give the post-pro side of things a go and see what ytou can do. You will learn more with every one you do so keep it up. Now you have a grip of the main tools, try and remember what effect each adjustment made so that you can replicate the path you took with future images. That will boost your confidence and enable you to take picture with a certain look and feel in mind.

I have had a little play and I flipped it the same as you did just for ease of comparison. I wanted to give it a brighter, summery sort of feel and am happy enough with that. Unfortunately because I cropped from a 72dpi image rather than the true original, it has made it a little posterised. I just finished it off with a little frame but that is always down to taste.

Hope you like it.
Rob

[Charlotte]

I'm glad you asked Soup The editing wasn't quite as straight forward as it may seem on the face of it (it was an exercise for me to use different tools), which might be best illustrated by this pic, which is a basic exposure correction :



So, here's what I did to get the panorama :

Flipped it, as I felt the FG flowers + the isolated tree (being the main focal points) looked better on the RHS
Cropped the sky a tad, just to tidy away the half-clouds at the top. Cropped quite a bit off the bottom to bring the middle ground into perspective, as the FG was too overpowering.

For the exposure + colour corrections, I isolated each section + worked on the pic bit by bit, not on the image as a whole, as I felt that different parts of it needed different treatments. Yes, most of the work was to do with brightness/contrast, as the colours were generally good as they were.

Colour correction: I altered the colour of the red flowers to make them bolder, so they'd stand out more. Brightened up the white flowers, to make them stand out too. I did all the flowers using 'selective colour' adjustments. I also dodged a couple of the clouds on the RHS + also increased the brightness of the sky on that side too, to equalise it with the sky on the LHS.

Detail Extraction: I clarified each part of the image separately to bring every inch into 'sharp focus', including each line/clump of trees, the far hills, the different patches of vegetation, to enhance each one's separate colouring, shading + detail, as well as the FG, + I brightened the green grass around the single tree to make it stand out, + I brightened + saturated the green patch on the LHS + increased contrast to give it texture.

Due to my inexperience, this all took a good coupla hours to get it how I wanted it.

[skipper954]

Very good, Charlotte. But be aware that post processing can take valuable time away from behind the camera. It is addictive.

If you are using photoshop, going along with what Rob said, always work in layers. Always name the layers as you go, and always save the image as a psd file. That way when you return to the image, you have a record of what you did, you can see the changes you made, and you can add or subtract or otherwise modify what you did with ease.

If you are using another program, perhaps someone else here has helpful hints.

I just saw your explanation of your work. That is a ton of work and planning, and you surely did a great job. It would have taken me days!!!

skip

[Charlotte]

Thanks for that, Rob Yes, I like the way you've brightened it up Comparing yours to mine now, mine does look a little dingy. My thinking behind limiting the brightness was that colours retain their saturation better with slight underexposure, + colours being the main part of this pic, rather than shapes (not much in the way of shapes going on here); but I do like your version, + see that I should've gone a bit brighter

Thanks for your encouragement It's good fun having a go at image manipulation.

[Charlotte]

Originally Posted by P-E

You have every reason to be pleased with your PS work Charlotte

Thanks P-E

Originally Posted by skipper954

Very good, Charlotte. But be aware that post processing can take valuable time away from behind the camera. It is addictive. ...

Thanks skip, + you're right about not getting too addicted to the PC side of things I use Serif PhotoPlus, but the tools + methods for most image editors are pretty std, so advice given for PS can usually be adapted. Thanks for prompting me to use layers - I usually forget but am working on another pic at the mo' + have remembered to use layers ... now I have 6 layers I hope I don't get confused about what I was doing on each layer

[skipper954]

If you remember to name your layers, you will do fine. Once you use layers and name them, it becomes second nature.

I don't know about SerifPhoto, but in ps, using brightness and contrast is not a good idea because it causes a lot of loss of pixels, except in RAW.

[Soupdragon]

I know this is a bit off topic but, I still advise getting things as close as possible at the time you take the picture.
I am old school as I believe photography is of the moment as opposed to post processing which is graphic design as far as I'm concerned.

[Charlotte]

You're quite right Soup, + I was staunch no-post-processing until fairly recently, as I wanted to just concentrate on straight photography. I still do want to get things right in-camera but am still learning - I have a lot of theory straight in my head, but not much chance to get the practice unfortunately - and this batch of landscapes I've uploaded over the last few days are an old lot I took last summer. I thought I could make something of them, but agree with you that the composition is all wrong, so decided they gotta be good for something = learning image manipulation on, which I now want to learn as well

Thanks for your comment, + now that my little one has started pre-school, I should (theoretically) have more time to spend on photography, so that you should see a bit of improvement in my composition in the not too distant future

[Rob Barron]

Awww come on Soupy, change the record! It seems that every time we have a thread which dares mention the theme of post-processing someone feels they have to remind us that we should get it right in camera. Fact is, we ALL try and get it as right as possible in camera but with careful post-pro work you can often get the picture much closer to 'the moment' than the necessary limitations of the camera alone allow.

But not going to go into all that yet again here, as you said it is off topic and I don't want Charlotte's thread to get hijacked.

The comments made here showing what has been done in post-pro are very helpful and you are obviously going the right way Charlotte. I would like to add my voice to Skip's on advising strongly against using the Brightness and Contrast tools. They really are not the best way to apply those changes. If you don't mind me taking a second, i'll explain why....

If you use the Brightness tool, it lifts each shade (of luminance) by an equal amount so the entire picture is lightened. This means the darkest areas get lightened even if there is no detail in there so they just become a dark grey. At the other end of the luminance scale, the lightest areas get lightned to white because there is nowhere else to go so you end up with more burnt out areas.

The much better alternative is to use the most wonderful tool PS possesses: Curves!

This allows you to apply logarithmic adjustments (don't worry, no maths involved, I promise!) rather than linear adjustments so the mid areas where most adjustment is generally required get lifted more with the darker and lighter areas being adjusted progressively less.

You should use the same tool for adding contrast. Just use a shallow S-curve darkening the lower end and lightening the upper end. More contrast needed = bigger S curve. BUT it is usually better to apply the curve in small increments. I am not sure whether Photoplus has adjustment layers but that is what I always use oin Photoshop as it allows you to go back and adjust again without affecting whatever else has been done since.

Good work, keep it up and I look forward to seeing the fruits of your labours

Cheers,
Rob

[Soupdragon]

Originally Posted by Rob Barron

Awww come on Soupy, change the record! It seems that every time we have a thread which dares mention the theme of post-processing someone feels they have to remind us that we should get it right in camera.

That's neither true or fair.
I replied to a post where someone had used what he called "chocolate box" post processing.
Not only did I compliment his work I also requested his work flow as a tutorial.

Further more, Charlotte appears to be trying to recover from exposure and composition issues the two things that should be as close as possible out of camera.
Admittedly from a single shot consumer slr true panoramas are impossible.

And a final point, I think I can differentiate between a "manipulated image" and a "corrected image".