Photo-a-day

[Syd]

new edition to the family

What 'edition' is the little fella

[Bobster]

What 'edition' is the little fella

She's a Chihuahua mixed with a Yorkie

[kalniel]

Here's looking at you...

[r_j_k_p]

Playing with macro and ringflash:

[GeorgeStorm]

Lone ladybird by George.Yoda, on Flickr

Had a bit of a play with photoshop, quite like how it came out

[r_j_k_p]

[GeorgeStorm]

Like them both, although the colours pop a little more in the 2nd, maybe a little touching up in the first could bring out the colours a little more, to provide a nice contrast?

[GoNz0]

boulton paul defiant, made by my grandad from parts of a boulton paul defiant that tried to land but never quite made it. (finally got my hands on it)

[Kaged]

[r_j_k_p]

Like them both, although the colours pop a little more in the 2nd, maybe a little touching up in the first could bring out the colours a little more, to provide a nice contrast?

How would you touch them up, in terms of what to alter.. contrast?brightness?shadows?saturation?

I don't have a clue on post processing photos!

[GeorgeStorm]

Ah, I've no idea either, I just try all of the auto options and choose my favourite

[kalniel]

How would you touch them up, in terms of what to alter.. contrast?brightness?shadows?saturation?

I don't have a clue on post processing photos!

(Seeing as you appear to be asking for feedback...)

Actually those photos are a really good example of how the camera lies I presume they're both the same subject, so you can see how much the colours change between photos.

The first thing to set/correct when dealing with photos is the white balance (colour temperature). The first shot looks a little too cool so in your photo software there should be an option to adjust the white balance, you want to warm it up (ironically, that's done by lowering the temperature of the white point in K). The second shot's white balance looks OK, a touch warm if you're being accurate to what the eye sees maybe, but we tend to prefer indoor shots to be a little 'warm' so I'd leave it.

Next could be colour saturation. The vivid colours of the second shot are caused by boosting the colour levels, again it's slightly over done IMHO, but people like punchy colours. Your software will have a colour saturation control somewhere - dial it back a smidgin for the second, boost it a bit for the first.

Then have a look at the images to see how they're doing. It might be beneficial to brighten mid-tones on the first picture, but try it and see - if you do need it then do this before the colour saturation adjustment.

Last stage should be sharpening. The first image is quite blurred, almost certainly down to the very small aperture used (you shouldn't need f/32 for an image that is more or less on the same focal plane) and maybe because you've cropped in so it's more visible?, so you're going to have limited gains sharpening up in post process. The second image is better from that point of view, though as the camera has focused on the nearest point the back pencils are out of focus - if you're going for that look try focusing on the middle pencil. If not, move back a bit and crop - I wouldn't want to lower the aperture much further as f/13 is already very small.

[kalniel]

Enough talking from me. More photos.

[r_j_k_p]

(Seeing as you appear to be asking for feedback...)

Actually those photos are a really good example of how the camera lies I presume they're both the same subject, so you can see how much the colours change between photos.

The first thing to set/correct when dealing with photos is the white balance (colour temperature). The first shot looks a little too cool so in your photo software there should be an option to adjust the white balance, you want to warm it up (ironically, that's done by lowering the temperature of the white point in K). The second shot's white balance looks OK, a touch warm if you're being accurate to what the eye sees maybe, but we tend to prefer indoor shots to be a little 'warm' so I'd leave it.

Next could be colour saturation. The vivid colours of the second shot are caused by boosting the colour levels, again it's slightly over done IMHO, but people like punchy colours. Your software will have a colour saturation control somewhere - dial it back a smidgin for the second, boost it a bit for the first.

Then have a look at the images to see how they're doing. It might be beneficial to brighten mid-tones on the first picture, but try it and see - if you do need it then do this before the colour saturation adjustment.

Last stage should be sharpening. The first image is quite blurred, almost certainly down to the very small aperture used (you shouldn't need f/32 for an image that is more or less on the same focal plane) and maybe because you've cropped in so it's more visible?, so you're going to have limited gains sharpening up in post process. The second image is better from that point of view, though as the camera has focused on the nearest point the back pencils are out of focus - if you're going for that look try focusing on the middle pencil. If not, move back a bit and crop - I wouldn't want to lower the aperture much further as f/13 is already very small.

Thanks a million for your feedback. I use faststone image viewer 4.5 for most of my post processing/viewing etc.
Couldn't find a way to change the colour temperature (is it called something else?) but i had a quick play with the colour saturation and sharpening - and was amazed to see how much it makes a photo "pop".

Regarding sharpening - what is better to use and in what situations - Sharpen or USM Sharpen?

heres a quick play:

[Bobster]

The first thing to set/correct when dealing with photos is the white balance (colour temperature). The first shot looks a little too cool so in your photo software there should be an option to adjust the white balance, you want to warm it up (ironically, that's done by lowering the temperature of the white point in K).

are you sure?

[kalniel]

Thanks a million for your feedback. I use faststone image viewer 4.5 for most of my post processing/viewing etc.
Couldn't find a way to change the colour temperature (is it called something else?) but i had a quick play with the colour saturation and sharpening - and was amazed to see how much it makes a photo "pop".

Will depend on the software. Could be called colour balance which is harder to adjust. There should be some free software from canon that includes white balance adjustment and does the most basic correction things - once colours etc. are sorted you can import into a more choppy editor for major changes. I bought Lightroom which I find excellent for the vast majority of corrections/enhancements, then use GIMP if I need more flexible/creative editing.

Regarding sharpening - what is better to use and in what situations - Sharpen or USM Sharpen?

USM - un-sharp mask. This is a more sophisticated and better method.

heres a quick play:

My eyes! That's very.. saturated. Prefer the original, though you can see the effect the changes are having

are you sure?

Hmm.. no Getting my standards mixed up. On photos (in adobe software at least) it seems you raise the white point temperature to warm the photo up, which makes sense. I'm confusing it with monitors where the higher the white temperature, the cooler it looks.