Looking for some PP Advice for a night pic :)

Gambler

Hey all,

I had some spare time over the weekend to go out and take some long exposure night shots at Dromoland castle and I was looking for some advice on PP for a pic I took:

IMG_8757.jpg

What I am wondering is what would you recommend doing to it PP wise? (That version is as taken and I took it in Raw.)

I feel like there is potential for a much better picture in there but really not sure how to get to it!

Dragan

What kind of programs do you have?

Personally i am a big fan of Lightroom and when i get a pic like that....nothing too obvious in it but potential...i tend to just run it through all the presets and see what comes out?

smelltheglove

Wow I think it is gorgeous. I'd definitely use curves on it, that way you can bring up the statue and roof or whatever it is:p and leave the sky as is without having to select an area. I'd possibly sharpen also depending on the results of the curves.

It will be a fabulous shot then.

Gambler

Thanks for the tips, Tried playing with the tone curves in lightroom and didn't seem to get far so I started playing with the presets and the cyanotype preset seemed ok:

IMG_8750.jpg
IMG_8757.jpg


Still think I could get more from them, think I'll have to mark them for processing again once I'm generally better at it

Pigwidgeon

hey hope you don't mind, i had a go of this,

i adjusted the levels then increased contrast just slightly

EDIT: i used photoshop elements for this.

smelltheglove

what kateos has done is generally what I was thinking.

I often say this but I find corel paint shop so brilliant for this type of thing. It takes less than 2 minutes to edit a shot.

If you want me to have a go say so and I'll track exactly what is done to help you learn. You just need to keep going, find a program that works for you. THe main thing is though get such a shot you need less pp, although this kinda shot rarely gets finalised without some computer input.

al_

tbh there isnt a whole lot you can do with it as its been underexposed by about 3-3.5 stops. However, its been composed nice and is a detail well spotted.
Ive tweaked it a bit in cs4, just levels and curves to bring out some of the detail. What you do from here is entirely upto your own tastes.
Best of luck with it

Gambler

I think I'll try playing with combining the sky from that one with one of the pics where I used the flash but will take me a while (I've never done a composite before and it looks quite fiddly!)

Gambler

OK, How the hell do people usually cut out the bits of the picture they don't want! I just can't seem to get the edges right?!

I've started from scratch 6 times alredy because I keep getting it wrong

al_

There are lots of different ways of doing this, if you have photoshop you can get a plugin called maskpro which is just amazing.
You can select it quite painfully with lasoo and pen tools.
You can quick select it with the magic wand and use the color select tool, this is my favbourite way of working with awkward edges.
Are you using photoshop? If so, what version.
If you need a brief tutorial, reply here and ill post one for you.
Al

Gambler

I'm using photoshop and would love some pointers!

whyulittle

If you look at 8750, you almost have a heart shape (top part created by the stars, and bottom part created by the trees) - which goes well with the statue. You'd just need another star or two on the RHS to complete it.

al_

Cool. Heres the basics.
if you wanted to remove the sky in the above image.
Duplicate the layer and use the quick selection tool to quickly select as much of the sky as you can manage. You dont have to be overly accurate but do try and select as much of it as you can.
In Photoshop, goto menu option(SELECT)>(COLOR RANGE)
Click Selection on the bottom.
Ensure Sampled colours is selected from the drop down menu.
Move fuzziness to about 20-30ish... you can adjust it further later.

Adjust Range to around 50%, again this can be adjusted later before clicking ok. You're looking for clarity of slection here.

Using the 1st eyedropper tool, click on part of the sky in the actual image, then use the +eyedropper tool and click and drag around the sky, it will gradually fill in the slection.
If any parts of the statue get selected use the -eyedropper to remove this colour from the selection.
When done click (OK) and the selection will be loaded.
Press (CTRL)(J) to duplicate the layer and you will have the sky as a new layer.
Good luck with it!
Al

Gambler

OK, I did some playing, what do you think of this version:

al_

much more detail in the statue, seems better alright.
did you use that method for cutting out the skies?

Gambler

Yeah, basically I took two images, one with a flash and the original (both were on the tripod in exactly the same location.)

Put them both as layers in a new image and cut the sky (and trees) out of the flash version. Then put that on top and set the opacity of that level to 42%

Happy to upload the two original raw files if anyone else wants to play around with them and see what they can do as long as their willing to post how they did it!

XLR8

Boredom set in so I thought I'd have a mess. Hope you don't mind?