Got the Picture - Whats next

[Don Hoey]

Those that have followed some of my previous postings will know that my knowledge of digital image processing could be written on the back of a postage stamp.

I know there are lots of different imaging programs out there but at a fairly basic level there must be similar functions.

So now I have my image on the PC what should I be looking at doing, and is there a preferred order.

I am attaching a 200kb file to allow the wizards some scope with the responses.

Don

[Saphire]

Don there wasn't an awful lot to do the historgram was nice and even.
All I have done is the following.

1. Duplicated the layer then did a little burning and dodging of the highlights and midtones. Softened and burnt the forground in a bit.
2. An adjustment layer and added +22 saturation.
3 A little Unsharp mask.

Saved

[Don Hoey]

Originally Posted by Saphire

Don there wasn't an awful lot to do the historgram was nice and even.
All I have done is the following.

1. Duplicated the layer then did a little burning and dodging of the highlights and midtones. Softened the forground a bit.

Saved

Christine,

I may now sound a bit thick but never mind. Two questions to start with.

1) Why do you create another layer and not work on the background ? I have this up and have managed to create another layer to which I can apply your suggested corrections.

May have just answered my own question as I type this .... is that so you can toggle between corrected and original ? Makes sense.

2) Once you have a correct layer do you use merge layers before the save or manage somehow to get rid of original background.

One post and I've learnt something new, as I have only worked on the background.

Don

[Saphire]

Don. the reason I have started using separate layers is, if I make a mistake I can delete the layer and start again, also you can switch the layers on and off so you can see the difference the alterations have made, if you don't like it you can delete the layer without harming the original. I have also been told that if you want to go back to the image at a later time, save it as a psd file and it will keep the layers separate. I have found that if you just do a save into jpg it automatically flattens the layers so you can't go back when you re-open and edit.

Hope I have explained this right.

[Don Hoey]

Thanks Christine,

Very logical.

Going out with Stevie now and will have a play on my return.

Don

[Stephen]

Don, your image does look somewhat flatter onscreen than Christines, however she has had to add saturation etc. When I put the shot into Photoshop it instantly looked better. On further inspection it appears the picture has an Adobe RGB 1998 embedded profile. This profile will look much flatter on a web browser as it only supports sRGB. Photoshop recognises the embedded profile and shows the image as you had it. However it is always a good thing to convert the profile/colour space to sRGB before posting on the web, this will preserve the colours better.

I have attached your pic converted to sRGB before posting, it has had no other adjustment made. Can you see any difference?

However I would say that to get the file below 200kb I had to apply more compression than I would normally want to do. Ialso do not believe it was in need of any further sharpening, a technique which IMHO is overused

[Saphire]

Stephen that's odd when I first downloaded it, it showed in the profile as no colour management for this document and when I clicked on srgb the photo never changed it still looked flat.

[Stephen]

Originally Posted by Saphire

Stephen that's odd when I first downloaded it, it showed in the profile as no colour management for this document and when clicked I clicked on srgb the photo never changed it still looked flat.

Mmmm, all I can say is that my default colour space in PS CS2 is set at Adobe RGB 1998, and it was telling me that this was the embedded profile in Dons image when I pasted it into PS. The difference between Dons and my copy with an sRGB profile embedded is marked. Do you agree?

Generally if you Save for Web on an Adobe RGB file the image becomes flat, however if you convert the profile to sRGB the colours remain relatively punchy and Save for Web has no effect on this.

As a matter of interest how did you find saving Dons adjusted file, did you have to use much compression?

[Adey Baker]

Originally Posted by Saphire

I have also been told that if you want to go back to the image at a later time, save it as a psd file and it will keep the layers separate.

Yes, this is the advantage of saving as PSDs rather than TIFFs - I routinely save mine as PSDs even though I don't often use layers! It's a habit I got into 'just in case.' The only disadvantage being that some other programs don't always support PSDs so you have to convert them to make a copy for other use.

[Adey Baker]

I've done a bit of burning-in with the 'burn' tool (set at 25% opacity) to the foreground grass to balance it out a bit better as the pale foreground was tending to catch the eye a bit