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Thanks Welly! I don't think that one looked that good until I upped the contrast a lot. Makes a lot of difference.

Still not cracked the Flickr link

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Lets ask an admin to fix it for you! badly, i dont think i m going to ahve time to edit those images of yours today. Ended up edit the shots i took today and its now 00:42 in the morning (or past twelve and i got lectures in the morning) so i will do it tommorw afternoon before hitting the pubs

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Stick this in your signature:



Replacing the http://www.flickr.com etc. for your flickr gallery.

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Nikon D700 | 20mm f2.8 | 28mm f2.8 | 50mm f1.8 | 70-300 f4-5.6 | SB800 | flickr | serial photography

Given it one more go. When you look at your own profile, can you see the [url=... or does it actually appear as a link?


Edit: Looks to have worked! Thanks guys!

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Works great my friend

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Allright i did a litet quick ps on these images. What i do most of the time is copy the backgroung layer (the started image) and then i play around with the curve (bending it towards the left) to birghten up the image, and if i think its a lill too brigh i apply a layer mask image and fill it with white then i pain in black in this layer mask to remove that curve in that specific location. Then i play with the colours making the image not so flat, trying to pop out certian things, i use all sorts of tools for this playing around with the using what i like. Sometimes i find myself playing with the sliders of the selective colours (image>image adjustments>selective colour) till i m happy with the results. I used also teh unsharpen mask on both of the image to sharpen them a bit and added a layer mask to remove it form the skies and certain areas that i didnt really want to be that sharp making them fade away a bit.

When it comes to the image of the town, i cropeed the image to make it smaller and removed the jeep that was on the bottom right of the image, just didnt like it there and for this i used the healing tool (you find it the toolbar its the baind aid looking image) zoomed in quite nice to make sure that i dont go overboard, i did actualy try removing the poeple on the beach but i though they added some humanity to the image so to speak.

I m still learning in photoshop, and my skills arnt even close to good i m just playing around with it and trying to learn what each tool does, i m not saying that this is a better image but i m saying that the image does look some what more alive now in my oppinon and i prefer it this way then the way you photograped it, these things cant really be achived under those weather conditions with the camera.

There is also some noise in this images that is only because i was working with the flies avalibale on flickr, if i would ahve to have the orignal image it would look much better and more detailed.

I would love to hear what you think of the post precessing and the final outcome of the iamges.

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I think the curves adjustment has increased the noise a little too much.

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Graham
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Thanks Alex, I really appreciate the time you’ve put into this.

My first impression of the picture of the town is the increased colour and vibrance of the houses, they pop out of the image quite a bit more now. I like that a lot as to me, the most memorable image of these sorts of towns is the brightly painted houses. I have a few others from the same day and I think I will try enhancing them too. I’ve already tried to do this kind of thing in Lightroom by upping the vibrance and the contrast. Will see what else I can do in CS2. I also prefer your crop of the picture. I’m tempted to crop it down further still because I still don’t like the overexposed sky. Did you try anything with this part of the image other than sharpening? My problem with changing the skies is that they always seem too fake and out of synch with the rest of the picture.

As for the second one, I think this is a huge improvement, even with the added noise. I like the fact that I can now see the hillside on the other side of the bay, and the clouds are atttactive (might be tempted to crop again as there is still a layer of white at the top). What really makes it for me though is the highlighted detail which you’ve brought out on the boat in the foreground. Can you talk me through how you did that part?




I've used the Curves tool quite a bit myself, completely by trial and error - just tweaked it until I like the effect. What exactly does it change, and why does it lead to increased noise?

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Well what the RGB curve does it that it allowes you contoll manulay the settings of blue/red/green of the entire image in a combination (if i m not mistaken) well i dont get alot of noise when i play with my RGB curves from the image i have taken, but when the iamge has been resized and the download you will loose detail because there are just less pixels on the image the more pixels to create one spot the less noise you will have, does that make any sense?

Well for highlighting the boat what i did is that i copied the layer once again, and then i made the image a tad lighter, and then added a layer mask to remove all the other parts of the image so the boat would appear only light. Then i played with the selective colours of this layer and just looked at what the changes made to the boat, it will affect the entire image but that didnt really matter as i was only going to apply it to the boat. So i played with the sliders till i was happy with it. Then for le grand final i first merged all the layers (ctrl+shift+e) and then copied the layer again (ctrl+j) and then i applied Filters>sharpen>unsharped mask then again i played with the streng and radious, only focusing on the main boat again because that is the only place i wanted to the effect, then i ok:ed it and applied a layer mask again and painting back in the sharpening where i wanted it

i think the great thing about photoshop in general is the idea of layer mask they are really your key to creaitng a certain effect on a specific part of the image.

A note to bring out the clouds a bit i use the high pass filter (filters>others>high pass) and just play around with this a bit till your happy and then playing around with the opacity of the high pass filter layer, for incrase or decreased effect!

No problem my freind, i enjoy this and from working on diffrent types of images i broaden my knowledge on the software. I can bring back the light down from the sky if i want to, but i guess i just missed that part was focusing on another part of the image!

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A lot of those instructions and guides I find hard to follow without actually carrying out on a picture, so I will try these tips later. I know I've done something similar before - there's a picture of mine of a sheep in the landscape section and I made a layer just of her face in order to shed more light on it. It's just that I tend to forget how these things are done in between pics!

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When you increase the brightness of an image in post-processing by a given amount, you increase the variations between each pixel by the same amount and the noise which is already there(perhaps not very obvious) is made more visible.

That's my simplified explanation but you should read this if you want it in more detail: Wikipedia-Signal to Noise Ratio

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Graham
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