Post Processing Course part 2, Tuesday 14th March

Hi Folks,

Post Processing Course part 2, Tuesday 14^th March

Tuesday night the club held the second half of the Post Processing Course and the two groups attending the previous session joined together for the final part. Before the evening we were all sent five images by email and the images were in both raw and jpeg formats. We were invited to bring along our laptops to allow us to have a hands on session during the course using the provided photographs.

The main reason for the images sent in both formats was to show the difference between them when enhancing them in Photoshop Light room. Because raw files contain much more data than JPEG files it is possible to achieve far better results using the software. The Jpeg files have been produced using the software in the Canon camera.

Brian said these raw files provided have around 25 mbs of data per image so they are large files.

The first image shown in raw had a background which had a cold look to it and an attempt was made to warm it up.

Because the model skin tones were just right they didn’t need changing and Brian showed us how to change the colours of the background without making the model’s face going a bright orange colour. The same image of the girl in Jpeg format had less controls to use in Photoshop and there was no temperature adjustment in Photoshop for Jpeg files.

The second image of the lake with snow around was even more difficult to get a good effect as the snow was too dark and the sun in the sky too bright. This is where Layers became the only answer using two copies of the same image sitting on top of one another.  Brian darkened the sky line on one image and on the copy layer underneath lighted the snow

As the images sit on one another it is possible to pick the section on the horizon to unmask and reveal the bottom image of brighter snow using a magic pen

The white area can be seen of the image for the parts that stay and the black part hides it. Finally the trees on the image didn’t quite look right against the sunlight so there is a brush opaque level that can be adjusted to show a semi translucent part of the image underneath, shown here in grey

And with a little experience and skill adjustments are made to make the image much better

On the third image shown to us Brian said it looked too flat and needed a lift and warming it up, changing the contrast and highlights will make a difference.

But by adjusting it you can over do it so do it with care.

Brian said, the obvious thing to change in this image would be to remove the two people on the left by cloning them out

We were shown two ways of cloning one by the lasso tool and another selecting a piece near the area to be cloned.

We were also shown that it is important when cloning not to generate the same pieces of rocks

And it was advisable to gather pieces from different areas of the sand that had the same tone and colour to break up any cloning repeats.

The fourth image was used as a demonstration of layers where the background was changed to a patterned image  selected from a library.

So the layer showing a pattern was placed underneath

And with the special unmasking brush parts of the pattern underneath were unveiled but not a good idea to do it in the middle of the guy’s head, said Brian

Somebody asked if a sky background could be added and Brian chose to use the sky in the image of the Pyramids. Although this image didn’t have enough sky to cover the whole of the background so had to be stretched to cover the required area.  The operation did look a little complicated at that point with three layers hanging around but I did try a similar exercise at weekend making sure both my images were of the same size and that I had enough sky behind lol.

Then the unmasking brush was used around the outside edges of the guy’s face to reveal the clouds. A lot more intricate work would have to be done around the guy’s hair to make it convincing but a good demonstration of layers and how they worked

Finally Brian answered a question on the sizing of images and gave a demonstration on how to do it.

Thank you to Brian and Chris for their time on showing us all how some of this software works.

Next week is

Club Challenge Round 4