[The_Warrior]

Gurus, Comments and Ciriticism please....

[sidkun]

A few pics that I took on a recent trip to the NE.

[clevermax]

Originally Posted by The_Warrior

Gurus, Comments and Ciriticism please....

Not sure how it will look in color, but I think a color version would 've been better.

[Rudra Sen]

Originally Posted by clevermax

I have not touched on the contrast directly, but it may have increased during the processing. I selectively enhanced the water first, then brough down the levels of the sky, applied a high pass filter to enhance the contrast of clouds, increased sky's vibrance, applied a violet photo filter on the water to match the sky's tone and increased the overall sugary feel of the picture by adding a duplicate layer and playing with its Adjustments->Shadows/Highlights.

This is extremely interesting! Why did you go through so many steps? Is this something which you follow regularly or is this image specific treatment? I'm especially keen to know the reason for the use of high Pass filter.

Below is my process for increasing the tonal range. I'll explain the process here but after reading your thoughts and explanation first.

[shajufx]

Originally Posted by typeOnegative

..This is what I feel is the best shot.....

Yes this is the best from that lot, I already liked it in Flickr

Originally Posted by sidkun

A few pics that I took on a recent trip to the NE.

Happy to see you here Sidhu. Loved the grass image. Last one looks more like a painting.

My baby !

[clevermax]

Originally Posted by Rudra Sen

This is extremely interesting! Why did you go through so many steps? Is this something which you follow regularly or is this image specific treatment? I'm especially keen to know the reason for the use of high Pass filter.
Below is my process for increasing the tonal range. I'll explain the process here but after reading your thoughts and explanation first.
Attachment 869157

Here goes mine

To make the sky look like what is shown, I admit so many steps were not required. I achieved that through bringing down the curve and then applying the high pass filter with a large radius - usually we apply HPF with a small radius to enhance the sharpness, but I've found that if we use a larger radius, it can make the clouds more pronounced... What I exactly did was to create a duplicate layer of the image, set the blending mode to 'Overlay' and applied HPF on it with a bigger radius and then set the opacity of that layer to about 70%. The radius to be set depends on the overall image resolution and how big the clouds are on that image. This may be a crude method but I do that often on the clouds

Looking forward to reading your method

[gd1418]

Wish you had lowered the aperture in the first picture to get overall sharpness. The 2nd pic is highly overexposed. You could have played with the aperture setting..

Originally Posted by The_Warrior

Gurus, Comments and Ciriticism please....

[gd1418]

Star male of Sariska Tiger Reserve - ST 6

[HellwratH]

Originally Posted by typeOnegative

@Veeresh, thanks dude. With regards to your recent pictures, don't you think that photography nuts will think of clicking almost anything if they are not out? Yesterday, I started clicking cut radishes. My wife already thinks I like the camera more than her.

Also, did you you use tissue paper? I find a glass top with a white paper / cloth below works better. Of course, you have to deal with the reflections ....

Ah, light the radishes/lemon from back and take a shot. That's next on my home experiments .

I used a paper napkin, yes. It was the closest I could get to white in my kitchen. Ideally, I would have loved to use plexiglass for it. But these were shots for me to practice specular highlight control for shiny surfaces, I think I did okay.

Originally Posted by clevermax

Does the camera recognize the flash, how did you trigger it?

On the banks of river Pamba
Attachment 867789

It has a hot shoe but the flash I used is very very old and I didn't want to mount it on my camera. So, I made my kitchen totally dark and used 1 second exposure and fired the flash manually. It was a pain, but good fun. I'll soon get triggers/receivers and some cheap flashes.

Originally Posted by Rudra Sen

This is extremely interesting! Why did you go through so many steps? Is this something which you follow regularly or is this image specific treatment? I'm especially keen to know the reason for the use of high Pass filter.

Below is my process for increasing the tonal range. I'll explain the process here but after reading your thoughts and explanation first.

Attachment 869157

Waiting for your tutorial . I think I had seen it on PAAI long long time back, but the photos do not show up there anymore :(. And for the love of God, I can't use the pen tool effectively at all.

I have found an excellent tutorial by Josesph Rossbach that I use to manually blend exposures. It's really really easy to do and gives good control as well. Here's the video for it:

Manual Blens of 2 Exposures for HDR.avi - YouTube

[Rudra Sen]

Originally Posted by clevermax

Looking forward to reading your method

1. Take a clean path drawing for the sky. Feather selection greatly depends on original image resolution. So for a low res image like this .5 feather is enough.
2. Copy paste as layer 1.
3. Multiply layer 1. Cut opacity to the kind of depth you like.
4. Duplicate background layer.
5. Keep colour palette black and white (black on top/white below). Go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENT > GRADIENT MAP. This is purely a personal choice. I did it to cut the strong colours in front.
6. Cut opacity to 30% minimum to get those neutral colours. You can go more or less depending on your choice.
7. Mask out (layer mask) to bring out colours wherever you want more.

Note: This is not the only way I follow for all type of images.

Originally Posted by HellwratH

And for the love of God, I can't use the pen tool effectively at all.

You must get into this. It's a must tool.

[jkdas]

Originally Posted by clevermax

Oh if you are already doing that, probably going a bit deeper into such processing will make it look more stunning.. this is my version, with your permission:

(Picture by extreme_torque)
Attachment 868170
Wish I had the raw file

Originally Posted by extreme_torque

Dalkey Village, Dublin

Originally Posted by clevermax

I have not touched on the contrast directly, but it may have increased during the processing. I selectively enhanced the water first, then brough down the levels of the sky, applied a high pass filter to enhance the contrast of clouds, increased sky's vibrance, applied a violet photo filter on the water to match the sky's tone and increased the overall sugary feel of the picture by adding a duplicate layer and playing with its Adjustments->Shadows/Highlights.

Originally Posted by Rudra Sen

1. Take a clean path drawing for the sky. Feather selection greatly depends on original image resolution. So for a low res image like this .5 feather is enough.
2. Copy paste as layer 1.
3. Multiply layer 1. Cut opacity to the kind of depth you like.
4. Duplicate background layer.
5. Keep colour palette black and white (black on top/white below). Go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENT > GRADIENT MAP. This is purely a personal choice. I did it to cut the strong colours in front.
6. Cut opacity to 30% minimum to get those neutral colours. You can go more or less depending on your choice.
7. Mask out (layer mask) to bring out colours wherever you want more.

Note: This is not the only way I follow for all type of images.

You must get into this. It's a must tool.

That was an interesting thing

Hope we have more discussions like this in here

[shajufx]

Originally Posted by HellwratH

....I can't use the pen tool effectively at all.

I can only think about Reynolds and Cello here

Originally Posted by Rudra Sen

......This is not the only way I follow for all type of images.......

The entire thing was Greek to me !!!! Will dedicate some serious hours into understanding it. One good thing about not knowing any of these = the never ending struggle to get things straight from camera, by whatever it takes

[Torqueguru]

@Rudra
Awesome.

@Shaju
Remember u must first get a diamond to polish it else no matter how much u polish, the value wont be there!

A portrait of one of my best friends.


Cheers,
TG.

[geeash]

Originally Posted by shajufx

The entire thing was Greek to me !!!! Will dedicate some serious hours into understanding it. One good thing about not knowing any of these = the never ending struggle to get things straight from camera, by whatever it takes

For me too !!. Rudra sen please take 1/2 hr class each day for us !!

But what you have said is 100 % truth. I have always struggled to get the best possible picture straight out of the camera which in a way is good !!. I am a little old fashioned

But not knowing such things is a blunder in this era. Where did you learn all these things rudrasen?
show us some light !!

[HellwratH]

Originally Posted by Rudra Sen

1. Take a clean path drawing for the sky. Feather selection greatly depends on original image resolution. So for a low res image like this .5 feather is enough.
2. Copy paste as layer 1.
3. Multiply layer 1. Cut opacity to the kind of depth you like.
4. Duplicate background layer.
5. Keep colour palette black and white (black on top/white below). Go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENT > GRADIENT MAP. This is purely a personal choice. I did it to cut the strong colours in front.
6. Cut opacity to 30% minimum to get those neutral colours. You can go more or less depending on your choice.
7. Mask out (layer mask) to bring out colours wherever you want more.

Note: This is not the only way I follow for all type of images.

You must get into this. It's a must tool.

Thank you for the tutorial Rudra sir. Will start practicing on how to use the pen tool. Thank you once again.

Originally Posted by geeash

For me too !!. Rudra sen please take 1/2 hr class each day for us !!

Ha, I have been requesting that for a long long time .