SHOW: Before and After Shots

[Darmok N Jalad]

Probably not the most ideal photo to try to "save" in post, but I thought it was a good test of the G9's dynamic range.

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[TheLaird]

Coming back from the pub after having a few. Braced myself against a wall and fired off a couple of shots.

Before ....

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and the mor

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e sober edit.

 

[TheLaird]

And an indoor one too

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[Julia]

Hey there! I am back with another mini showcase – I'm constantly amazed at what I can pull from the RAW images of our beloved m43 cameras. This time, I was testing my new Panasonic GX80/85 with the tiny 12-32 zoom kit lens (which I got for 99 Euros used off eBay).

It was a really cold morning, and I had the worst hangover you can imagine – our company christmas party the night before had been long, fantastic, and there had been a lot of excellent wine. I got up before sunrise and went for a walk in the vineyards in the hopes of lifting the cobwebs

I used the GX80's bracketing feature to capture 3 separate exposures, and then blended them together into a DNG using LR's (Classic, the subscription version) onboard HDR feature.

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Next, I did my usual adjustments:

• lower highlights a tad -49
• lift shadows +46
• add some whites until they are clipped +17

Then I apply some magic through the Calibration panels (at the very bottom of the adjustments) and drag the Saturation slider for Blue Primary to the very right (stole that trick from Max Rive's tutorials). That punches up the colors nicely. Normally, you'd have to lower the blue/aqua saturation and brightness through the HSL sliders, but in this case there wasn't any true blue/aqua in the image so I could skip that step.

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Better. But now I wanted to brighten up the leaves while not overexposing the background. Normally, this would be the point at which I'd export the image as a TIFF, load it into Affinity Photo, and start a fine selection/mask. But I thought that since I'm paying for this new shiny Adobe LR version which supposedly has great color/luminosity masks, why not give those a try?

I started out with the brush tool and just painted on the leaf in the foreground. Afterwards, I used the eye dropper tool to select various spots on the leaf to narrow down the selection and then painted on the other leaves with that color selection present. As you can see, LR did an OK job ignoring the darker background and focusing on the warmer colors of the leaves.

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Next, I wanted to brighten up the stalk (?). Here, I used the brush tool again, and then defined a Luminosity mask by using the eye dropper tool to narrow the brightness to the stalk, and not have a halo around it (prevent brightening the background).

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I did the same for the bright green leaf in the top left corner. The results are not 100 percent perfect, but close enough for a quick-and-dirty edit that you aren't going to print or show off as the greatest piece of photography you ever did You can always go in with the brush tool, hold down the ALT/OPTION key (Mac) and erase any selection you don't want. I was too lazy to do that here

Next, I wanted to brighten the sky and used a graduated filter, but of course that also affected the vine. The eye dropper tool and the Luminosity masks came to the rescue again and within a minute, I had an acceptable selection that did what I wanted.

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As you can see, the exposure on the vine is much more natural, and I was also able to correct the blown out highlights in the sky, just by selecting various luminance levels (eye dropper tool → hold down SHIFT to select *multiple* luminances, or for the color picker, various colors).

Next up, the white balance needed some adjustments to make the warm colors pop a bit more → the "cloudy" preset did exactly what I wanted.

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And finally, I wanted to brighten up the dark background (city) just a bit - again, using a graduated filter, but when you first apply it, it will brighten up the vine to an unnatural level as well. So, Luminosity Masks and eye dropper tool to the rescue.

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And here's the final result, which took me less than 10 minutes (time between import, rendering of the preview, culling of unnecessary images from that import, and export to my hard drive). I'm actually quite pleased that I can do these quick-and-dirty edits with color/luminosity masks now in LR only and don't need to go to another app for them.

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Thanks for reading!

 

[Phil.H]

Great result Julia. I don't have the software or skills in pp to do that. I do keep all my raw files to go back to one day though.

 

[BosseBe]

I've heard so much about the great colours of SOOC JPG on Olympus, so now that I have one I thought I would show before and after.

SOOC JPG:

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And here is the results from a quick PP in DxO PL3 from the raw file:

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For me it is easier to achieve this result in PP, then in camera.
In camera I would have had to put on a graduated ND filter, changed to a scene mode probably to get more saturation and vibrancy and I don't know what.
Then I would have had to take several pictures and try to judge the results on the small screen on the camera.

Raw and PP rules!

 

[Diamondback]

I didn't have my filters with me when shooting this sunset in Arches National Park so had to rely on Lightroom for tonal adjustments and to recover the shadows.

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[TheLaird]

Local wildlife park ….

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[BosseBe]

This was taken with my first digital camera a Nikon Coolpix 560 on a rainy day when I visited Grand Canyon South Rim in 2012.
Processed in DxO PL3.
SOOC:

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After DxO has done its magic:

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Comments?
Have I overdone it?

 

[stagor]

I haven't been able to get out and take any photos for a while, due to illness.
So I am passing time by redeveloping some older shots in On1 2020.

Sunset over the river Maine Co. Antrim.
Before.
,

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[gnarlydog australia]

With the clear intention to work on the image and create a "Rembrandt" style lighting while the scene was shot just in daylight, I slightly overexposed, to get more definition in the shadows and avoid too much noise; there was no clipping of the highlights.
Here is the RAW version (converted to jpg in Photoshop, but no adjustment)

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Then I deliberately worked on tones to create a more gloomy overcast looks with a spot of light on the main subject.
The process is localized adjustments and treatments that is layered and masked and then selected just in spots. I don't believe in global adjustments of the whole image, it just doesn't work for me. I do use liberal amount of the "burn and dodge" tool too, just like when I used to do manually when printing from film.

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fast dirt by gnarlydog, on Flickr

 

[Lupin 3rd]

With the clear intention to work on the image and create a "Rembrandt" style lighting while the scene was shot just in daylight, I slightly overexposed, to get more definition in the shadows and avoid too much noise; there was no clipping of the highlights.
Here is the RAW version (converted to jpg in Photoshop, but no adjustment)

View attachment 808304

Then I deliberately worked on tones to create a more gloomy overcast looks with a spot of light on the main subject.
The process is localized adjustments and treatments that is layered and masked and then selected just in spots. I don't believe in global adjustments of the whole image, it just doesn't work for me. I do use liberal amount of the "burn and dodge" tool too, just like when I used to do manually when printing from film.

View attachment 808305 fast dirt by gnarlydog, on Flickr

Nice, looks very natural!

 

[gnarlydog australia]

Nice, looks very natural!

to the average viewer (non photographer) it might appear rather natural, and that was the intention, but to a skilled digital editor the are probable doubts that this is not OOC.
I do strive to have most of my images look "natural" (semi credible) and I am not a big fan of overcooked obvious PP. Where is that line? .... it's not clear and everybody has a different definition of what constitutes pleasant editing and what is over the top.

 

[SojiOkita]

I do strive to have most of my images look "natural" (semi credible) and I am not a big fan of overcooked obvious PP.

I like how you call it: semi credible
That's also what i aim to do: It's processed, enhanced, but without looking overdone. (Of course what's overdone is very subjective)

 

[gnarlydog australia]

I like how you call it: semi credible
That's also what i aim to do: It's processed, enhanced, but without looking overdone. (Of course what's overdone is very subjective)

Semi-credible is a perceived representation of reality for me.
While some folk are up in arms shouting FAKE when something is edited none of them are crying foul at black and white images ?
So why are monochrome photographs perfectly acceptable where vast majority of us see the world in color?
Like other things in life there is a convention of acceptance even if it's clearly nowhere near reality. Some might argue that black and white images are only stripped of color and the rest is all still there.
So, one could argue further that the human eye does NOT see reality in a very shallow depth of field with blurry background style, so prevalent in photography at the moment.

Where is that line that one should not cross? It's anywhere you want it to be. Personal choice. ?

 

[SojiOkita]

Where is that line that one should not cross? It's anywhere you want it to be. Personal choice. ?

Yes, everyone has their own limits...
https://petapixel.com/2020/03/19/luminar-4-2-adds-ai-augmented-sky-for-seamless-photo-manipulation/

 

[Lupin 3rd]

IMHO it's a matter of what the individual is trying to express with the photo: is it reportage/journalism or feeling artsy?

Personally I strongly dislike fake skies and heavy HDR use. Some folks just love it!!! Some people only shoot film, some only shoot RAW, some are just happy with jpegs straight out of camera and some edit every single detail in every single photo. Like food or music, it's a matter of taste.

I've been using Luminar 3 & 4 for a bit now and it works well for me. I don't care for any of the AI sky replacement stuff, but there's some nice features for portrait touch ups. The AI Enhance for Accent and Sky enhancement are nice. I don't have much time for photo editing so anything that can speed up the process is welcome.

Here's some different edits of the same photo from the Monocacy Aqueduct on the C&O canal.

Base image (for reference).

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AI Enhance: accent and sky

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AI Sky Replacement (Bright Blue Sky 3):

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AI Sky Replacement (galaxy and rainbow - 'cause why not! ):

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The only one I like is the AI sky enhancement that brings out the clouds. I could maybe do it with a couple hours editing work, but I don't have that much time for a single photo. Especially since my kids are not in it, so it's not relevant to me. It took me 2 minutes and 2 sliders to get the desired effect. And that's all I would want to do.

 

[SojiOkita]

IMHO it's a matter of what the individual is trying to express with the photo: is it reportage/journalism or feeling artsy?

Absolutely. However, for me there's a big difference between takin a sky from another picture of yours, and taking one from the same library everyone gets.
There's nothing artistic about taking something from a catalogue...

With the last version you can even put giant elephants in the background...

 

[gnarlydog australia]

Absolutely. However, for me there's a big difference between takin a sky from another picture of yours, and taking one from the same library everyone gets.
There's nothing artistic about taking something from a catalogue...

With the last version you can even put giant elephants in the background...

Composite images have a place for me: they can be interesting but rarely they really are moving or inspiring.
I compare them to music that has been assembled with samples: yes can be OK but never will compare to a true original masterpiece from a talented artist.

 

[stagor]

Another older image revisited today with On1 2020

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