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Bonaire Photography & Videography: Digital Photography Editing
Bonaire Talk: Bonaire Photography & Videography: Archives: Archives 2006- 2007: Archives 2006-08-01 to 2007-12-31: Digital Photography Editing
Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Cecil (Supreme BonaireTalker - Post #5639) on Friday, May 25, 2007 - 6:51 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

OK you’ve taken some underwater pictures and now you have the task of making the picture match what you saw, that takes editing. Now how much you manipulate the image is up to you, I prefer more rather than less. In defense of this, I fall back on Ansel Adams statement that half the work is taking the picture. Here’s the other half.

This is written around using Photoshop Elements 4.0. Always, always be sure your original images are safe and never save over them, always edit a copy. I will show the six steps that I use;

1) Cropping
2) Brightness/Contrast
3) Color Adjustment
4) Hue/Saturation
5) Sharpening
6) Backscatter removal/clone tool

I will also talk about saving for BT limits.

Here’s the original picture.

Moray

Lots of problems with this shot.

Open the picture and click the Rectangular Marquee tool, it’s a dashed box in the tools on the left. Drag and drop this across the image to select the section to use. Make sure the box is using a fixed aspect ratio (1) of 4 x 3.

Crop

Then click Enhance, Adjust Lighting, Brightness/Contrast. First adjust brightness then adjust contrast. Pretty much all digital pictures need more contrast, brightness changes from picture to picture.

Brightness

Then click, Enhance, Adjust Color, Color Variations, the following screen will appear.

Color

First thing is turn down the amount of change (1), then for most UW pictures increase, blue, decrease green and increase red (…). Do this to all three levels (3) Highlights, Mid-range and Shadows. Whatever you do to one do to all three. This step should be skipped for above water pictures and anywhere there is a flesh tone.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Cecil (Supreme BonaireTalker - Post #5642) on Friday, May 25, 2007 - 7:23 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

Now click Enhance, Adjust Color and Adjust Hue/Saturation. Increasing the Hue/Saturation is another step that should be done to all digital pictures as the colors are to mute (to my taste).

Hue

Now click Filter, Sharpen, Unsharpen Mask, and the following screen will appear.

Sharpen

This step is easy to overdo, look for bright spots to appear then back off the amount. Very critical step to do and get right. I would over do it a bit for prints.

Now the last step, removing backscatter. I use the clone tool for this, it copy’s from an adjacent area, like using a paint brush except the color is from the adjacent area. In the picture the cross is where the circle is cloned from.

Zoom in and select Clone Tool (2). Go to an area next to the spot and hold the Alt key down and click. Use the tool at the top to change the brush size and strength (3).

Backscatter

Now you have a beautiful edited picture and it’s time to reduce the size and Save As. If you cropped then click Layer, Flatten Image. This will remove the layers and allow you to save as a .jpg. Then click Image, Image Size and select the new size, for Slideshows I save as 1024x768, for BT save as 700x466. Then click Save As, select directory and new name, make sure to turn off the ICC profile as this makes it bigger, then the following screen will appear.

Save As

The slide bar determines the .jpg compression ratio. To get it small enough to fit on BT you quite often have to select 2, for other uses select 5. There’s no real reason to go higher, us mere mortals will never see the difference. The number shown for the filesize is not correct and you will need to check in a file manager for the actual size.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Cecil (Supreme BonaireTalker - Post #5643) on Friday, May 25, 2007 - 7:27 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

OK here’s the before.

Before

And the after.

Moray

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Becky Hauser (Extraordinary BonaireTalker - Post #1152) on Friday, May 25, 2007 - 11:45 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

Wow, Cecil. Thanks for going through all that, I'm going to bookmark this so I can someday figure all this out! I'm photo-editing illiterate and this will really help.

Nice pics from California!!:-)

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By William Gates (BonaireTalker - Post #67) on Saturday, May 26, 2007 - 9:08 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

Great Inputs Cecil!

I have Photoshop Elements 2 [as opposed to Element 4] and I use almost the same sequence as you do.

I crop using the CROP TOOL rather than the RECTANGULAR MARQUEE.

I then adjust LEVELS and then BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST. LEVELS is a very powerful tool and I?m sure you use it; or has it been combined with BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST in Elements 4?

Also, could you please elaborate on SHARPENING.

The UNSHARP MASK has three variables -- amount, radius and threshold. They seem to be interdependent. I usually skip the step, unless the picture is really bad -- but only because I don?t understand it.

Could you walk through how you go about Sharpening? Do you have starting points or ranges for each of the three variables and in what order do you make the adjustments? What do you look for in making each of the adjustments? My eyesight is such that I often don?t see subtle changes.

Thanks, for your help. I have a whole bunch of pictures that I recently took in Bonaire that could use some sharpening.

Oh, also, on some -- but by no means all -- poor quality underwater shots [no contrast or washed out] I am finding that a single click on AUTO-LEVELS makes a major difference. Usually a bit too contrasty [pixilated] -- but major improvement.

My apologies for the Capital Words, but quotation marks and apostrophes don't show right on my BT pages.

Bill.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By bob (Extraordinary BonaireTalker - Post #2025) on Saturday, May 26, 2007 - 9:58 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

i'm a "auto-levels" clicker myself;)

but at times that does seem to introduce some noise or something...

so work on a good focus, use a flash, shoot a little on the under-exposed side and let auto levels or something similar fix the shot...



 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Cecil (Supreme BonaireTalker - Post #5644) on Saturday, May 26, 2007 - 11:30 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

There is three adjustment for sharpening, amount, radius and level. Radius I use between 2 and 3 larger is more effect. Level between 10 and 20 lower does more. Amount I vary with each picture and it can vary from 80% to 200%. This is the one to increase till you see artifacting then back of.

The auto-level always seem to over do it to me, thats why I like to adjust each parameter individually.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Cecil (Supreme BonaireTalker - Post #5645) on Saturday, May 26, 2007 - 11:32 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

On cropping I left out an important step. Once you have the area selected, type ctrl-c, ctrl-a (new file box will appear), enter, and ctrl-v. The cropped picture should then be in the new picture.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Jerry (Supreme BonaireTalker - Post #5405) on Saturday, May 26, 2007 - 12:03 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

Thanks Cecil.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By bob (Extraordinary BonaireTalker - Post #2026) on Saturday, May 26, 2007 - 5:26 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

no editing here...just playing...

"po' man's reef (geographically speaking;))"

front_yard_reef

ps - i made photoshop "sweat" on this one;)



 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Babs (BonaireTalk Deity - Post #11747) on Saturday, May 26, 2007 - 7:27 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

Nice review of all those steps Cecil! I'm going to bookmark this page for sure! I attended my dive club photo groups weekend workshop a few months back and we were using all those tools - dang if I can't remember them all without the notes I took! :-)

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Kelly (Supreme BonaireTalker - Post #5450) on Saturday, May 26, 2007 - 9:05 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

Ditto what everyone else said ! I will refer back to this when I get photoshop !!

Bob, are you still taking your photography class? That picture you posted is awesome !! Looks like Ohio in the spring. :-)

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By bob (Extraordinary BonaireTalker - Post #2027) on Sunday, May 27, 2007 - 12:16 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

the whole photoshop line - photoshop, photoshop elements, photoshop lightroom - all good stuff - lots of different ways to "fix" things...

kelly, no classes...i took a intermediate photo class at CCAD a couple of years ago, though all we did was develop B/W film in the "dark" room - was lots of fun...instructor did manage to make a few art/photograhy related comments that have helped...

"become more aware of your shooting environment - when taking a shot turn around and also shoot what is behind you"

"study light and the way it interacts with objects...especially at sunrise and sunset"

"flat pictures (no DOF) suck" - paraphrased:-)




 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Russ Coash (Experienced BonaireTalker - Post #210) on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 - 9:21 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

I just starte editing some photos from our june 07 trip.

I have been cropping first then doing color adjustment before brightness or contrast.

I figured the main problem is color why not start there.

Cecil, any reason you start with brightness/contrast?

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Cecil (Supreme BonaireTalker - Post #5738) on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 10:40 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

No real reason, just a feeling that contrast/brightness should come before color. If you get better results the other way then I can think of no good reason not to do it that way.

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By DARLENE ELLIS (Extraordinary BonaireTalker - Post #2451) on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 11:16 am:     Edit PostPrint Post

I have been busy and lurking lately. Wicked glad to see this thread!! Thanks for the lesson!

 

Top of pagePrevious messageNext messageBottom of page Link to this message  By Susan - www.bsdme.info (Experienced BonaireTalker - Post #436) on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 8:26 pm:     Edit PostPrint Post

You might also want to check into shadows and highlights. More subtle changes than brightness and contrast....

 


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