QUOTE (GTD @ 21/11/2010, 00:59)
QUOTE (Gee Dub @ 16/10/2010, 16:34)
If you are truly interested I would be happy to give you some details.
Yes Sir!
I am interested!
A lot of what I do is subjective and experimented on while I am working on a image. I take many photos but some have something that warrants adding more to the final output. It might be the action, the patterns, or some times I like the photo but it has something wrong with it like overexposure, blurry, or too contrasty or over contrasty. Often times it is simply trying to save a bad photo that has something that I feel still needs to kept. I will also have to say that maybe 50% of the ones I start on never pan out and are scraped. But here are some of the things that I do that helped out in some cases. I will use general editing terms and not specific to any one program. I do not use photoshop but I am sure most of the ideas and tips I use can be found in any editing program.
1. Over-saturation: Simply adjust the saturation tool to the over saturation range. I will do this in stages including reducing saturation in some steps. This will give more flat even tones then back to over saturation.
2. Adding black as composite. Sometimes I want more black areas to be very black so I will convert the image to B&W then push the white and black tone to the max adjustments to created a high contrast image. Some programs come with a high contrast special function tool. Save this then make a composite by combining the two images together. Now you will have a oversaturated image blended with a HC B&W. See items 2, 4, & 5 above.
3. Color balance replacement. On the last image I simply replaced the white color in the image with another color. You can normally do with with a color balance tool. This is usually done to correct color temp adjustments. You can select a slightly yellowish color in a image and replace it with a true white to correct for incandescent light. I use this tool and substituted the white with a strong yellow. Just because I wanted this to pop off the page. This is harder to do effectively but under the right colors and action it can be effective.
There are not any hard fast rules to do this kind of processing. Experiment with the different settings and see what happens. A lot of these techniques I use came about by making a mistake while correcting a image only to like the mistake better than what I was originally trying to do.
Photography today doesn't have to be perfectly sharp clear images to be interesting or "Good photos". Composition and catching the moment to me are more important. But sometimes the resulting image upon downloading does not give the feeling I got when I was there. By using the tools of the photo editor I try to put back in the image the feelings I had when I took the shots.
I hope this makes sense and is of some help to you.
Gee
