Author Topic: Just playing around with editing (Read 4059 times)

Pricecheck · « **on:** November 16, 2013, 12:20:29 AM »

Just so it's known, I'm not the photographer in the family. My wife is. She had no part in editing my calendar photo nor did she have anything to do with me making the R look fake. I have included the submission photo and the editing from tonight. All editing was done in Lightroom 4 and exported at only 60% quality. If it were 100% it would be 17.84mB each!

Photos taken by me (lack of proper lighting and exposure) with a D7000 and 24-70 2.8G lens. Let me know if it looks retarded or decent with the extreme editing…

Submission photo:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]2357[/ATTACH]

Extreme editing:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]2358[/ATTACH]

Don't try and use these settings when editing people. They come out looking dead! Works great on cars and metallic things. Again, just having a little fun and wondering if this look would be better for the future.

Hawaiiysr · « **Reply #1 on:** November 16, 2013, 01:03:45 AM »

If you had a different background such as the sky it would look much different. The foreground and shadows are too dark and hard to edit. You can lighten those areas first before any kind of editing but in the end a shadow is a shadow and black is just that, black.

Still its fun to edit. Some people are not so edit friendly. They feel the picture is "fake" I don't think its a bad picture. I think the setting could be better.

I like hdr stuff:)

Pumashine · « **Reply #2 on:** November 16, 2013, 08:59:18 AM »

Fake or extremely nice. Its always fun to make it look better. The frame in the edited pic is too sic to be real. Great job!

Pricecheck · « **Reply #3 on:** November 16, 2013, 10:46:36 AM »

It does bring out the shine better than the other. I know the first pic doesn't show the shine due to the shadows. The other shows to the point of looking like a "hot wheels" car!

Hawaii, it's actually not HDR though. I know those you take three separate photos at the exact same position (under exposed, normal exposure and over exposed) and you layer them. Those pics are cool. Besides that tidbit, I do agree that the background needs some help.

Spiritaces, I agree with the cell phone. I've got one in my phone that turned out hood. I actually like it a lot but there's a couple things on the quad that are not complete and that kept me from using it. In addition, my iPhone likes putting this little purple flake thing on my photos. Some kind if camera issue.

fergmyster · « **Reply #4 on:** November 16, 2013, 12:07:49 PM »

I think if you make the calendar you should use the edited pic. I thinks it's cool.

Pricecheck · « **Reply #5 on:** November 16, 2013, 01:51:32 PM »

Well, the guys here running it have that authority. I'm sure whoever makes it, their pics will look good.

I did think about taking all the pics and editing them for fun. Maybe some in black and white or sepia or antique. Like Hawaii said, it's fun to edit pics.

Crankedupgear · « **Reply #6 on:** November 17, 2013, 02:08:50 PM »

I have been trying to use my iphone 4 to take pics of the embroidery, it works better than my old digital cannon, but I am having so much trouble getting the colors to be true...I know angle and lighting is important, but i still have way too many issues! I take like 40-50 pics of each item to get one close...to get the true colors, the background is too dark, so i have to edit it...do you guys have a user friendly favorite camera you use? I don't want to have to adjust a bunch of settings like my old 35mm! I have been trying to get a good pic of this sweat, here is my issue!
[ATTACH=CONFIG]2359[/ATTACH]
looks better here
[ATTACH=CONFIG]2360[/ATTACH]
still the silver stitching is off
[ATTACH=CONFIG]2361[/ATTACH]
I have so much silver/chrome color on the bikes it is difficult to get a good pic on any of them!
Suggestions?

Pricecheck · « **Reply #7 on:** November 17, 2013, 02:48:10 PM »

Your best bet is to get a true DSLR camera; even a start up camera (Nikon D3100) is fine and if you don't want to mess with settings, just keep it on AUTO. We use Nikon's in our house, my wife is a photographer, but some people prefer Canon. That's all preferential.
When you take your photos, make sure that your settings are being shot in RAW/NEF format rather than jpg. RAW will take up much more space on your memory card, but it's capturing every bit of the photo/color, etc. rather than compressing it into a jpg. file. You import RAW files into an editing program and that will allow you to do much more as far as color enhancement, exposure, etc. You basically have a blank slate to work with rather than an already compressed file that gives you limited range when editing.

A good and inexpensive editing program is Lightroom 4. This will give you a HUGE range as far as editing controls go, without breaking the bank on something as expensive as Photoshop. The "editing" programs that you get on your computer are so limited, you are not going to get what you're looking for when editing through them.

Hope that helps some.

Pricecheck · « **Reply #8 on:** November 17, 2013, 05:11:14 PM »

I do have to say that photoshop can get quite overwhelming. You can do A LOT with it. Lightroom is geared a lot towards most photographers. It is quick and best for editing a lot of photos.

Lightroom does all of you needs and more. Photoshop is where you can remove people from pictures and make it look like they were never there. To give an example of price: last years photoshop was about $600. Lightroom 4 is $75.

Back to photography. Your best start is a DSLR camera. Almost all large body cameras are DSLR these days. Most people unknown to expanding their photography skills use auto settings and shoot jpg photos. This isn't a bad thing but there is so much more capability that your camera can give you. It's kind of like having an engine built and not pro porting it or running it on race fuel. You'll get great results, just not to the engines full potential. Like stated before, when you shoot raw your photo takes in all exposure and data and it gives you a large file size. To give a better understanding of the file sizes; a jpeg is roughly 2.5mB. A .nef (raw) is roughly 17mB. This being said you'll need an sd card that's large enough. In our D7000 we run two 32gB Class 10 Extreme Plus cards. 16gB will do what you need though.

I'm sorry for ranting! I get a little carried away with this hobby and how much you can capture after you spend a little time learning your equipment. So, if there's anything you take away from this, this is it: shoot raw, get it right in the camera first (this means get your settings right), edit to fine tune you pictures and most of all have fun.

This might be more than crankedupgear asked for but I figured it will help others reading! For some interesting info go find jaredpolin on youtube. He's pretty helpful in all of his videos and is a great photographer.

Pricecheck · « **Reply #9 on:** November 17, 2013, 07:43:30 PM »

I do drop them back to jpg file at 60% quality! I actually pulled the trigger for my wife. She's got about $5k in her setup, which sounds like a lot, but she's already brought in about $2k in three months. Now if I can get my hobby to pay as well!

You should be able to find a good setup and Lightroom for about $400 on Craigslist. The program won't be on there but the cameras are in abundance.

Crankedupgear · « **Reply #10 on:** November 18, 2013, 12:58:20 AM »

Thank you! I have the $80 photoshop elements, but it only does so much...very limited. That was very helpful, now I know enough to research for what I need. In the meantime you guys will have to deal with my ugly photos and know things are way better than they appear! :apologetic: