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Thread: moved on

  1. #1
    jconti3's Avatar
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    moved on

    C&C is cool with me.
    moved on

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    Re: moved on

    Hi John,

    I like the concept and the child’s bike adds a real sense of interest. Why did they leave it behind when they left? The image tells a good story.

    I like the panorama crop but I find it is a little too tight at the bottom. I think the child’s bike is a bit too close to the frame.

    The EXIF data shows an aperture setting of f3.5 and shutter speed of 2500th at IS0 200. This aperture will give a very shallow depth of field and you might find you will get greater clarity in the shot if you use something between f/8 to f16. You have more than enough latitude in your shutter speed to able to stop down the aperture and still have sufficient shutter speed to hand hold this shot.

    Again the EXIF shows you cropped this in GIMP and you may have added some sharpening (I cannot see it here) but because of the wide aperture your have restricted the DOF and caused softness within the shot.

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    Re: moved on

    Hi John,

    This is a really interesting image, and I mostly agree with Peter about the crop and the softness.
    What I also find annoying is the colour of the sky on the right. It looks like the colour of the ocean near Hawaii (although I never been there, but I "know" it from pictures..)

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    Re: moved on

    That was my first thought, David, but I assume that the angle of shot was against the light and required some over exposure for the shadow areas which has resulted in an unavoidable sky problem.

    Possibly editing with layers and masks would improve things but won't be easy, although even a simple gradient mask would help.

    Ideally, I would have liked to see a really dark stormy sky here. But that is life, and we usually just have to make do with what is available.

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    Re: moved on

    Quote Originally Posted by Geoff F View Post
    That was my first thought, David, but I assume that the angle of shot was against the light and required some over exposure for the shadow areas which has resulted in an unavoidable sky problem.
    Now you say this, I remember shooting a silhouette straight into the sun, and it gave me a similar result, need to find it and try to remove it as well, because the picture itself is very nice...
    Yeah a stormy sky would be very nice, perhaps it is possible to play with curves to get it much darker?

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    Re: moved on

    As Peter and David say, this is a a good shot and the letter box format makes it very evocative. I agree with their comments about the crop and the blue sky but both these can be altered. The crop of course if you have the original and the blue sky very simply by adding a bit of magenta to the blue (It is actually almost pure cyan and adding a small amount of magenta makes a big difference). I have no idea how to do this in Gimp but in PS a Selective Colour adjustment layer makes it quite easy. Is there not a similar command in Gimp? Perhaps a Gimp user could tell us.

    The bigger problem to me is the expanse of white sky, which is blown out. I think substituting the whole sky is probably the best way to deal with it, though I suppose you could make a cloudless blue sky without too much difficulty.

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    Re: moved on

    I really like this forum! Ok, so not that I completely understand DoF and fstop but, I was trying to keep the distant backgroung out of focus. Right behind the tree line sits a white Chevy truck and a newer home that just throughs the mood all off. As for the sky....I made it worse trying to make it something. Now, this image is cropped less......slight adjustment to the sky,and sharpened. Not much I could do about the focus.....any better?
    moved on

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    Re: moved on

    dont you like how the sky is moving around the trees!

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    Moderator Donald's Avatar
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    Re: moved on

    Quote Originally Posted by jconti3 View Post
    any better?
    What a sky!!

    You're explanation of your aims, John, make understanding what you did much better.

    (Maybe that's a lesson for us all - Remember when you're posting up an image for comment, include as much info as possible and what you did and why. People can then make comment from an informed base)

    What we need is to get elements of the sky from this re-worked version together with aspects of the foreground from the first one.

    I think the foreground in #2 is way too dark. There are lots of ways to post-process it to get the balance between sky and land right. Of course the other way to do it is at the time of capture with ND Grad filters.

    Now, I don't know if you have any filters in your bag, nor what your experience levels are with post-processing software.

    If that was mine, I'd get to work on #2 with the dodging brush to bring the land and the buildings closer to what we see in version #1 (but not so bright).

  10. #10
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    Re: moved on

    Donald, thank you. I do not have a ND filter yet. My gimp skills are lacking for sure. I have been using PP for about 2 months now. Well, since Christmas when I got the camera. I'm going to try it again after work today.

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    Moderator Donald's Avatar
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    Re: moved on

    John

    With that second image and GIMP ......


    1. Either from 'Layer' in the Menu bar across the top of the main window, or from the Layers dialogue in the Toolbox, choose 'New Layer'
    2. Click 'Transparency' in the dialogue window that appears .. and 'Ok'
    3. In the Layers dialogue in the Toolbox, change the Mode from 'Normal' to 'Overlay'.
    4. Click on the paintbrush tool, and with the black and white foreground/background options below the tools, make sure that white is on top.
    5. In the 'Tool Options' dialogue box, take the opacity down to about 20 or 25%.
    6. Select the largest 'Circle Fuzzy' brush
    7. Start painting smoothly on the land section of the image.


    You are now dodging. You'll see detail in the land and the buildings start to emerge before your eyes.

    Play about with brushes and opacity. Only by practising this will you learn how it works. And remember you can undo everything or delete the transparent layer you added. So you're not making any permanent changes to your image.

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    Re: moved on

    Quote Originally Posted by jconti3 View Post
    I really like this forum! Ok, so not that I completely understand DoF and fstop but, I was trying to keep the distant backgroung out of focus. Right behind the tree line sits a white Chevy truck and a newer home that just throughs the mood all off. As for the sky....I made it worse trying to make it something. Now, this image is cropped less......slight adjustment to the sky,and sharpened. Not much I could do about the focus.....any better?
    moved on
    I do wish I could see John's second/reworked image but it fails to display on my computer. I am afraid that happens rather often, F5 and Ctrl+F5 are no help and I wonder if I am doing/not doing something or the problem is outside my control. I think this has happened to others but I don't remember if there was a solution. Can anyone help?

  13. #13
    Moderator Donald's Avatar
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    Re: moved on

    I don't know what to suggest John.

    You pressed 'reply with quote' to compose your image and, on my computer, John's second image is embedded, along with his text, in the quoted section of your message. So, I don't know why you're not seeing it.

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    Re: moved on

    Thanks again Donald. I tried the overlay and white brush. What do you think?.....moved on

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    Re: moved on

    Hi John,

    For your first go at dodging you have done very well. This shot keeps the beautiful sky and brings out all the things you were trying to achieve. I understand your comment about trying to hide the background and you have done this well. The only thing I might do now is add some sharpening to show some crispness in the branches. The viewer seeks out the brightest and sharpest part of the image so by having the branches sharp you are drawing attention further away from the blurred background.

    How do feel the shot is coming along?

  16. #16
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    Re: moved on

    How do feel the shot is coming along?[/QUOTE]

    Well, I should of not dodged around the house in the background so it would blend more maybe. But, overall one of my bigger steps in the learning proccess. I used a layerd mask to create the path on the sky and then multiplied that. After that I used the smudge tool to drag the grays around to create the stormy effect. Then,moved layer down and then added the overlay and dodged the bottom half. WOW, yesterday I didnt even know how to spell it, today I are one!

  17. #17
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    Re: moved on

    What I found is that over time I went back and reprocessed the images over and over again as my technique improved - not that there isn't s lot of room to improve still. So keep the original and use this one to go back from time to time and see how you are progressing.

  18. #18
    Moderator Donald's Avatar
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    Re: moved on

    Quote Originally Posted by jconti3 View Post
    Thanks again Donald. I tried the overlay and white brush. What do you think?.....

    WOW, yesterday I didn't even know how to spell it, today I are one!
    Congratulations - That's the immense joy of climbing up the learning curve. Like Peter says, it's about re-visiting images as your skill set grows.

    If you now compare what you've produced with your original you can, I think, see your massive step forward in learning in just this one thread. Brilliant.

  19. #19
    Moderator Dave Humphries's Avatar
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    Re: moved on

    Quote Originally Posted by ANSORB View Post
    I do wish I could see John's second/reworked image but it fails to display on my computer. I am afraid that happens rather often, F5 and Ctrl+F5 are no help and I wonder if I am doing/not doing something or the problem is outside my control. I think this has happened to others but I don't remember if there was a solution. Can anyone help?
    Hi John,

    I know this problem ... it only happens to TinyPic hosted images for some UK based viewers, the effect is random.

    A very annoying problem; read more here

    Quote Originally Posted by Donald
    You pressed 'reply with quote' to compose your image and, on my computer, John's second image is embedded, along with his text, in the quoted section of your message. So, I don't know why you're not seeing it.
    Even if the picture doesn't display, the IMG tags are still there, so it gets put into Replies, even after the reply is posted, it may, or may not, become visible to the 'replyer'

    Cheers,

  20. #20
    Moderator Dave Humphries's Avatar
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    Re: moved on

    Hi John,

    Can I lob yet another PP idea into the mix?

    If mine, I would perspective correct the verticals on this too - by making the door way on left and post on right parallel to the image sides.

    Not sure what caused the 'sky bending around the trees' problem in the later versions, but I suspect it should be avoidable, if starting from scratch with RAW - it wasn't evident in the first version at the top of the thread.

    Good luck,
    Last edited by Dave Humphries; 16th February 2011 at 01:42 PM.

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