Try editing this?

[blakemcguire]

I find Volleyball/basketball shots are some of my most difficult to get a good final picture from. Does anyone want to take a stab at editing this? I'm curious to see what the rest of you will get out of it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mnafefs1vv..._4848.NEF?dl=0

[xpatUSA]

Well, I opened it in RawTherapee and, at 1:1, saw serious amount of noise. Now RawTherapee excels at NR, and indeed it did. Got rid of it all. Much encouraged, I planned to downsize it 1/3 Lanczos then sharpen it back up in PSE. But RawTherapee froze up while saving - so that was the end of that. Going out now, so perhaps another go later . .

[Geoff F]

A bit tricky with it being a NEF file but I eventually converted to DNG before editing.

So this is what I would do, although a fairly quick edit.

Whatever you do this will never become a prizewinner but it might make an acceptable small print.

[ajohnw]

No croping and I suspect I might play with the tones a bit more.



Yes looking now I have left the blacks a little compressed. No real problems but I notice that there is a fair amount of chroma noise. It can be removed full size but mushes detail a little but should still be ok for shots a lot bigger than this one.

John
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[dennybeall]

Didn't mess with all the noise but here's a bit of a crop.....

[xpatUSA]

. . . but RawTherapee froze up while saving - so that was the end of that. Going out now, so perhaps another go later . .

Well, converted it to a TIFF and cropped it in FastStone Viewer. Then opened again in RawTherapee which, on my old computer, doesn't like big files. De-noised chrominance and luminance about 70% each and detail at 25%, then toned down that garish red hue's saturation and value. Then off to PSE 6 to downsize bicubic in two steps, and a final sharpening. A so-so result, FWIW:

[blakemcguire]

I went for a little wider crop. What do you guys think?



I never feel the colour is all that great in my edits. That being said, it IS shot at 6400 ISO under really crummy lighting.

[ajohnw]

I don't think that is a bad crop but playing in the light box it looks better to me when the person doing something to their knee is also cropped out - maybe even the next person along as they have that white bandage. I couldn't make my mind up about brightness. William call be Bill takes a lot of shots on this type of subject so followed him, fairly bright. I'd be very interested to see what he would do to it.

Crop? Pass. Leave others to judge



Wish I knew what colour the shoes should be.

john
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[ajohnw]

Ted I did most in Rawtherapee and to allow the figure to be brighter darkened the wall with lab a little. Also use zero on finest contrast by detail level which does loose some hair detail at 100% I used a camera std icc file clone and didn't use amaze for demosaicing to keep the noise down. Then crop, resized and sharpened a jpg in Fotoxx and added a bit of it's version of clarity which is what I usually do. It's well exposed so didn't need much adjustment. Just slight adjustment of the LAB versions of brightness etc. I pushed the blacks up as far as I could using those to try and show some shape but when that was very apparent they were no longer black. Curves same problem and levels.

As I have become more used to RT I find there is no point in saving TIFF's. Jpgs are fine if the image is where I want it.

John
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[Dave Humphries]

Hi Blake,

I think I prefer the WB in yours to the other conversions, I felt the greeny/amber tone; probably part fluorescent(?) lighting and part reflected from walls and floor, did need some compensation to make it match what I'm sure your perception was at the time, regardless that the other earlier conversions might be slightly more technically accurate.

The colour in your version is basically OK, although I would wind down the saturation a bit more, 10 - 15%, as the bold colours are very bold, particularly in the background (not helped by the crushed shadows).

For me, the blacks/shadows in ajohnw's version is probably what I'd have done.

It is a busy scene, the positioning of some other players and officials (and that red flag!) is unfortunate indeed. If the subject is the guy deep in thought despite the surrounding activity, your crop is not bad, I might be tempted to crop tighter behind him; e.g. on left, perhaps even shaving a slice off his backside to remove the other player's foot and as much flag as possible.

It looks like you were using the centre focus point when this was clicked, a recompose to right after focus could have saved some wasted space on the left (although I don't know whether it might have brought something in on right that would still have needed cropping off).

The noise is probably worst on your conversion though, have you tried Neat Image? I still believe it does a better job than ACR/LR in preserving detail while removing noise. If using Neat Image, turn off (zero) all NR in LR.

HTH, Dave

[ajohnw]

I wondered about skin tones Dave but left that alone as bare legs that don't see the sun much are the same the world over but this does leave a yellowish cast on his face. I suspect Blake's is part down to a darker image or maybe he uses Nikon software for raw - the ICC file on the fly for every image aspect. I can't save files from it on Linux but have noticed it can have a distinct effect on colour variations from reality.

John
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[ajohnw]

Daylight fluorescent which then needed the colours damping down by about as much as I had boosted them. Thanks Dave. In future I will always consider that now rather than just spot white balance. Might need doing again really.



John
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[ajohnw]

Take 2 from raw. One of the 3 daylight fluor. balances seems to give best results but the red channel is a pain. It seems to have helped the blacks a little too. Still had to use a warmer cooler slider as the man looked like he had been in prison.



I'd guess the shoes must be some sort of red.

John
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[Polar01]

Would have submitted an image on Sunday, but spilled coffee on keyboard, ended up not all keys were happy about it, so now have new keyboard. I did very little, WB was taken off the taped finger as it was in a little bit of shadow, the result was is warmed it up a touch so now the floor looks more like the floors in a gym I remember (I was in them a lot). As I could find no real blacks (778) I reset that to black (00), then raised an (11) black to (13) which also increased all the mid-tones. The only other think was I cloned out the trainer's shoe. I just remembered that in ACR I lowered the saturation of yellow to -77.

Cheers: Allan

[blakemcguire]

To add some context to the shot, I was shooting University Volleyball for the student run paper.

This is my first field run for my Nikon D600 and I must say, the AF system is going to take some getting used to. I was using the center point because I just don't have time to change the points shot-to-shot. The only thing I could do is follow a player and wait for a specific shot, but I also had another basketball game going at the same time that I had to shoot as well, so the night was very much an in-and-out thing unfortunately.

I am happy with the capture though. They were handing the team the ball to be served as they finished announcements, so the game was literally just starting. He was down like that for maybe four seconds, so I'm glad I caught it. I've been out of it with my photography for the past year or so, so it feels good to capture something of value, even if it could have been done better.

That being said, I'm certain that the files are better than what my D300s would have given me. I still wish I could have afforded the D800 though.

I'll probably post another edit later today now that I'm rested and have a good coffee beside me

[proseak]

CS6, WB & cropped in ACR, a little LCE

[blakemcguire]

[Dave Humphries]

Better Blake, definitely better