Hey fellow photography friends! Just curious on what everyone does with there pictures when they get to the post process phase! Any techinques you use that you particually like?
My post process techinques: I contrast my pics up to +18 and-7 brightness (tends to make the pic stand out)
I also mess with levels! I'm just a beginner at this photo shop thing! Any other techinques that I should use?
I use the tools ... mess with it some more ... mess with it a lot more ... and end up messing it up. Then with the deadline looming, I throw it all together with what looks good at the moment. Then kick myself for not seeing something once the challenge starts.
I've messed with curves.. but I can't seem to get myself to understand them at *all*.. and nothing ever works the way I want it, so I've pretty much decided to leave curves alone.
I also like to do a lot of smudging... or.. did, until I discovered the magic of the clone brush.
*EDIT* Of course.. this is for non-open challenge photos only! Open challenge photos I pretty much only mess with brightness/contrast, sharpen, and levels.
If you go into curves you'll see a line going diagonally across a grid. If you click on the line you'll see that it creates a point where you clicked.
If you click on the bottom 1/3 of the line it will effect the black points. Halfway inbetween the line will effect the gray points. And on the top 1/3 it will effect the white points.
What I do, is I first pick where I want the picture to be overall, by moving the center of the line either up or down. Depending on if it needs to be lighter or darker.
I then put another point down on the bottom 1/3, and one on the top 1/3. By moving these two points I will be messing more with the contrast rather than the lighting.
When I am finished my curve should look pretty close to an "s" shape.
Did I help some of you out with a couple problems you were having with it...?
Curves, hue and cropping (for non dp challenge minimal cloning/healing). In curves I pull the bottom-left over to the right a bit. This makes the "almost blacks" burn out all the way. depending on the exposure i may do the same operation in the highlights going left. I usually will also lighten or darken the midtones. in the saturation I usually hue shift a little bit left making the greens greener, etc. Sometimes I will increase or decrease the saturation of a particular color and change its lightness to direct where the eye goes in an image. hope this helps!
Almost all my images get some application of Curves, most get cropped (less and less lately), and UnSharp Mask.
Curves are one of the most powerful controls you have, and easy to use once you get the feel for them. An added benefit is that Duotones use a similar system for applying the color. I have a couple of images with screenshots showing Curves being applied here. Note that I flip the direction of Photoshop's default layout (click on the gray scale below the graph) so that the 0,0 (highlight) point is in the lower-left and the shadow values in the upper-right (more intuitive graph layout to me).
As a general guide, areas of the photo where the tones fall on a steep portion of the graph will show/reveal more detail, while areas which fall on flatter parts of the graph will look, well, flat, to the point of objectionable "banding" if carried to the extreme.
Curves can also be applied to individual color channels as well as the overall (composite) image. You can use this for color correction or to create bizzare effects; these entries all used Curves to change around the colors (note that these are not necessarily high-scoring examples!):
i use the same as above, but dont have a real clear understanding of how unsharp mask works. i can see the extremes when i play with the settings but logistically i am not totally sure.
USM looks for areas of contrast and makes the lighter side lighter and the darker side darker to enhance the contrast and make the edges easier to see. Over use will create a "halo" effect.
Smaller images should have lower values used than larger print images, since there are fewer pixels with which to work. I usually use 66-88%, a diameter of 0.6 - 0.8 pixels, and a Threashold of 5-7 (use the higher number where you want smooth tones, like portraits).
Something I've found useful to understand the effects of various tools is to create a black-to-white gradient (use the gradient tool or a gradient fill layer). Then watch the effect as you twiddle the controls.
Of course, there are no areas of contrast in a smooth gradient so USM affect it much. A simple image to understand USM effects is to make a horizontal rectangle with the top half light gray and the bottom half dark gray. Zoom to about 500% and add two squares, one black, one white, straddling the border between the gray areas. Then bring up the USM dialog box and play with the values. (I suggest starting with Amount 100%, Radius 3.0 pixels, and Threshold 0 levels, which is extreme but shows the effect well.)
One of my favorite techniques is to extend the dynamic range of the photo by using an extreme USM.
I set percentage to 25 and increase radius to 80 pixels with a threshold of 5 or less. Does not sharpen the image, but nicely affects contrast and saturation.
Something else that is interesting: Use 'emboss' to add a 3d depth effect to an image. In PS: Image> duplicate image.
With the duplicate image; 'Filters' > Stylize > Emboss. Adjust the depth and light angle until it matches the original lighting pretty closely.
Now go to 'Image' > Apply Image. Select the original unmodified image as the source, layer = background, Channel= RGB, Blending= Overlay. Click Ok
and view the result. At first there may not seem to be much difference, but compare the original with the duplicate and now the image seems to 'Pop'!
