Oregon Coast

[Barb]

I took these pics last weekend. I like the starfish picture but was having trouble getting it to look good. Can it be saved, or is it just to bad of a shot?

[Dave Humphries]

I took these pics last weekend. I like the starfish picture but was having trouble getting it to look good. Can it be saved, or is it just to bad of a shot?

Hi Barb,

I quite like the compositions, especially #2, and although I would have preferred a level horizon on that one, it is my favourite. It would benefit from some Fill light to get some detail in the shadow side of the rocks.

#1 and #3 both look a bit 'flat', by which I mean low contrast.
Have a read of the Local Contrast Enhancement (LCE) techniques page.

Is the last one saved? I don't know, how's this look?

Slight tweak of Levels, correct WB with dropper on the white bubbles floating on surface, LCE with USM; 30%, 100px, 0th and finally increase saturation by +15.

Cheers,

[risingwolf]

I did the same thing with the starfish. I was told to use a polarizing filter to clear up the reflexion on the water. Will be back in Oregon in a few weeks to try that but it should work. Not sure if there is a fix with software. Did you try the Heceta Head lighthouse at night?

[Shadowman]

I edited the photo using PSE8.

[Barb]

Thanks guys for the help. I read the LCE post and tried to apply it to the starfish picture. I also decided to try cropping it. What do you think any better?

[Barb]

I took the picture at dawn, so I didn't have the polarized filter on, but I like the reflection of the starfish. I didn't get the chance to see the light house at night But we are going to go back some time early next year so hopefully then I will. We did see a pod of whales.
Dave I agree that the rocks in the second one are to dark. I did try to lighten the shadows but thought it washed out the spray coming over the rocks.
I used the LCE on the lighthouse picture and it helped.

[Dave Humphries]

I took the picture at dawn, so I didn't have the polarized filter on, but I like the reflection of the starfish. I didn't get the chance to see the light house at night But we are going to go back some time early next year so hopefully then I will. We did see a pod of whales.

Hi Barb,

Yes, I prefer that crop, well spotted. In hindsight I think I lightened the blacks too much, but yours looks better. It might benefit from a USM final sharpen though, something else I forgot to do, try 0.3 or 0.4px and 100% - 80% and 3 threshold after downsizing to display here at CiC. Yes, that means use a lesser amount when using a wider radius. Threshold should be set dependent upon image noise, anything from 0 (very clean RAW image) to 5 if noisy, maybe as high as 10 if working on a re-opened jpg. I always work from my RAW, Tif or PSD, except when tweaking already published pics like yours.

I used the LCE on the lighthouse picture and it helped.

My guilty secret; I use some LCE on almost every shot I PP

Dave I agree that the rocks in the second one are to dark. I did try to lighten the shadows but thought it washed out the spray coming over the rocks.

It shouldn't have that effect if done the way I was intending (but didn't fully explain).
If you're using ACR in Elements 8 for the RAW processing, first make sure the blacks are not clipped by setting the Blacks slider to 0, then advance the Fill light fader to the right. Don't worry if you have a small flat area on left of histogram, LCE will use this up when applied later in Elements 8.

Here's a histogram in ACR (for a different picture) which has some flat areas circled to show what I mean. NB These turned out to be too generous, so make tha flat areas narrower (by half) than shown here, before moving, via 'Open Image' button, into Elements.



I must do a screen grab that's right for this

Cheers,