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Here are some more pics from the little photo shoot with stormykids last Sunday. I spent a while photoshopping these, but I reckon once I converted to JPG, they now look crap. I'm really not sure how to fix them, any suggestions would be grateful! But please be nice coz when it comes to photoshop I HAVE NO IDEA!!

The first is very grey and muddy looking, the second has blown highlights and the third is a bit wishy washy! It's like they have lost ALL of their warmth.

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Can someone help or suggest anything? (It also doesn't help when your subject wont sit still!)

stormygirl wrote:Here are some more pics from the little photo shoot with stormykids last Sunday. I spent a while photoshopping these, but I reckon once I converted to JPG, they now look crap. I'm really not sure how to fix them, any suggestions would be grateful! But please be nice coz when it comes to photoshop I HAVE NO IDEA!!

The first is very grey and muddy looking, the second has blown highlights and the third is a bit wishy washy! It's like they have lost ALL of their warmth.

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Can someone help or suggest anything? (It also doesn't help when your subject wont sit still!)

hi Stormy girl I am by no means an expert, but the image on the first left looks rather soft, have u had a good go and changing brightness/contrast and curves stuff? The second image - hmmm harsh lighting conditions by the looks of it, did u use any fill flash (SB-800?)...i think the 3rd image is definately your best..but again seems a bit soft..did you do all your photoshop work THEN concet to 8bit to save as jpeg or vice versa? Look forward to your reply. Don't be too hard on yourself, you've said that they didn't stop (kids rarely do hehe) and the lighting conditions from what I see didn't look easy. Did you use AUTO WB in raw? Tell us more about the conditions and what settings/lens EXIF was invovled

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for the reply! I'm pretty sure I shot all of these with the kit lens, but I was also using the 70-300G on the day. It actually was late in the day (after 4pm) and the sun was on it's way down on an already partly overcast sky.

I did all the photoshop work, then converted to JPG, and that's when they looked crap! They were all resized for the web, then converted to high quality JPG.

It would have been nice to use an SB-800, but unfortunately, I don't own one (yet!) I tried everything in photoshop, levels, saturation, brightness, colour correction,contrast. You name it, I tried it! (Except inverting - sorry Mic!).

I also shot in auto WB and RAW. The whole DSLR thingy is very new to me, and I'm still trying to get my head around the whole thing, and now photoshop has made it more confusing! I'll have to go searching for the EXIF details, but I'm sure It was mostly done in apeture priority or auto (tut, tut!)

Anyway, I'll get there! It's all about learning and having fun...though at the moment I'm a bit frustrated!!

hi stormy
heres a PS colour correction of 1 pic



jethro

Thanks Jethro, although they aren't quite that jaundice looking!!

Some EXIF details. They were all shot on auto, multi metering and ISO 200. 1 and 2 using the kit lens and 3 with the 70-300G. 1 and 3 were 1/80 at f4.5 and 2 was 1/25 at f4.5.

I perhaps should have chosen ISO 400, but at the time they were running around madly, I was trying to organise them to sit still and not interupt the 2 Wedding parties that were also there at the time

...there is always this weekend! And I'll make sure Jessica is not wearing a white top and bright pink velour pants!

At least Jethro didn't Invert it

Stormy, these are not bad. You will find it takes awhile for it all to sink in, especially with 2 little monkeys always at ya. Stick at it.

The 1st one you could crop leaving only your little one in the blue top ?
The 3rd one is lovely, very natual looking shot, great leaves

They are a bit soft, but they still look good to me, this might not mean a lot to you after seeing my Spider from mars stuff

Mic.  PS, I did the Mars thingy between feeding my 3 mth old, Mum has gone out leaving me with my Monkeys.

I beg to differ about the first post. It creates a nice atmosphere to the photo

In terms of the jpeg conversion making the images soft, that's nothing really special or major. If you want to have the jpeg still retain some sort of sensible quality, try saving it at 80 to 90% quality in photoshop.

Stormygirl - #3 is beautiful.

Just a little header on preparing shots for the web. This is the method I use and it works for me.

Do all of your post processing on the RAW image until you are satisfied that what you see is what you like. Then do a ”save as” and save the image as a TIF. This retains the original RAW file and gives you a file that you can now work on without losing the original.

In PS go to Image - Image Size and whichever side (height or width) is the longest (3008 pixels) change it to 800 or 600. Then click OK. Then do a ”save as” and hit the jpeg file format, when the dialog box comes up save it as an 8 level. That is it.

Do not use the save for web function as it is actually far more complex for a beginner and the results can be uncertain.

Stormy, I'm with Chris - the third one's a charm.

Stormy,

Who says auto-wb doesn't work all that well?

Yes, that's my hand sticking up there.

One of the reasons that these probably don't look too hot to you is that the wb is slightly on the cool side. Late afternoon is a difficult time to shoot because the colour temperature is constantly changing, and computers can only do so much.

If you have the raw images, have a play with the wb settings, and remember that you can nudge the default values for any given setting one way or the other.

Your exposure looks fine, btw, so I'd be starting with just the wb, and seeing where it takes you.

One other clue I might offer would be to pay attention to the shadowed areas of the girl's white top, and get the colour cast in there to something more neutral. In the first image there's a definite blue or cyan cast, and that will definitely give a pasty look to skin tones. In image 2, look at the girl's upper right arm, or her left shoulder. While the cast is less noticeable, it's still there.

Make those shadowed whites more neutral, and see how it goes.

Actually Chris, I beg to differ on your work flow. I've always shot in Colormode II (Adobe aRGB) and then used NC to save to TIFF with color profile embedded and work in Adobe CS in that color profile. At the last moment I chose to convert to 8bit and to convert color profile to sRGB.

Now in the past I used to do Save As and select JPEG and click save, and always was left wondering why my shots never looked quite like they did in Adobe CS. Then I stumbled across Save For Web and was suprised when my shots when saved as JPEG looked like they were suppose to. I came across this when I was taken photos of the F18 at the F1GP. Was using the Save As and the F18 was coming out dark and the sky colors were totally different as to what I was seeing in Adobe CS. Tried the Save For Web feature and it came out about 98-99% correct. It was an online article that tipped me towards using it.

I do not disagree with you Kipper - there are so many ways of saving files and workflows are particular to the individual. The only reason that I follow my own workflow pattern is that it works for me and it must also be OK to others as there has never been an instance on this forum (that I can remember) where anyone has commented on my images being too dark, too light or unsharp when shot with the D70.

I work in colour mode II as well, then as stated I work on the RAW image in PSCS until I am happy with the result and do a save as TIF. I then also convert to 8bit. The only differential is that I maintain the Adobe 1998 profile and do not convert to sRGB.

My sky shots maintain the same colour between the original TIF and the saved jpeg.

Wierd. Be nice to be able to have my PC and yours next to each other to verify this. Because it really peeved me off having all the colors change, and I think I even tried remaining in the same color profile.

Welcome to my nightmare

Thankyou to each and everyone of you for your comments and suggestions. I will take all of it on board and try various different things.

At this stage, it is a matter of experimenting with "Photoshop for Dummies" infront of me, and time and patience. Yes Mic, it is VERY hard with a 3 year old wanting to play with the mouse all the time

It is a huge, HUGE learning curve with both the hard and soft ware, but it's fun, although sometimes frustrating! I will get there, especially with everyone here encouraging me. Thankyou!

Stormygirl - PS is a big challenge and it is something that can not be learnt overnight. The main thing is that you can see what happens everytime you try something and that is the real fun of PP’ing - you determine want you like. Remember to always keep an original.

Thanks Chris!

Yes, the first thing I do is make a copy of the original into another folder so I can work on it! I'm about to burn all the original NEF's onto CD