On Tuesday Chris and Kathy put together an evening that stretched our minds and informed us of some software enhancements.
We were asked to view twenty -two images all very different and to improve them .
We were divided into groups and were given a short time to discuss what might improve the images before us. Many images needed cropping , or lightening, textures to be brought out, or saturation to be improved. On occasion the image suited being converted to monochrome.
After the break Kathy and Chris armed with their laptops brought up some of the images and table by table asked us what we felt should improve them. They then alternately followed our instructions and enhanced each image using the software provided mainly Lightroom and Photoshop.
It was very interesting to see how images could be improved and as many of our members use different software, questions were asked and discussions took place . It was a very interesting evening and gave many the members the chance to see which tools can be used to enhance our photographs for competition.
Thank you to Chris and Kathy for working hard to produce an enlightening evening.
Below are a few examples from the evening, showing before (small image on the left) and after (larger image on the right) plus a few notes about how the image was processed for some of the images.
- Cropped to letterbox
- Converted to black and white
- Graduated filter applied to darken the sky
- Shadows level increased
- Clarity increased
- Small amount of noise reduction applied
- Tiger selected and lightened
- Contrast increased
- Yellows and Oranges lightened and increased saturation (in Colour Mixer)
- Greens de-saturated in the Colour Mixer
- Cropped to remove path (but retain aspect ratio)
- Clarity increased
- Highlights level reduced
- Whites level reduced
- Shadows level increased
- Cropped for symmetry (bridge supports to top left/right corners)
- Slight vignette to darken corners
- Clarity increased
- Small amount of noise reduction applied
Blog post written by Carol Haines, with images from Chris Andrews and Kathy Chantler
Don’t forget to put your ‘It’s a knockout’ images for the evening of December 12th when you’ll be the ones to choose the winner.
Next Week : Club Challenge #2
Tuesday, December 5th @ 20:15 – 22:15
All. It’s quite hard to “do” software as a club night when everyone is at a different level of knowledge and as Carol states, using different software packages (and versions). As I stated on the night, there are also often multiple ways to achieve the same outcome too and we probably all have our own favourites. That said, I hope everyone took something away from the evening. There is a mountain of knowledge on software in books, YouTube etc. but also in club members heads so keep talking to each other and asking the questions.
I really enjoyed the practical use of software to Chnage and improve photos. It is a springboard for those less confident to see it in real time and hear the views of the club members.