Given the picture below, how can I make it pop? I've seen a lot of stunning shots with castles, but somehow I can't get this one to look close to them. For instance:
(Mar 10, 2015, 07:51)kNox Wrote: Given the picture below, how can I make it pop? I've seen a lot of stunning shots with castles, but somehow I can't get this one to look close to them. For instance:
These all look better than my picture, for some reason. How can I edit mine to be... better?
Hi Knox
I am a trainee when it comes to photo editing, so for what its worth here is my example. Please feel free to criticize or advise, all will be helpful.
Nice work on the sky! Somehow, the picture is better with the buttery smooth look - but not on the tiles. Somehow, the tiles look like my graphics card is buggy
(Mar 10, 2015, 08:30)kNox Wrote: Nice work on the sky! Somehow, the picture is better with the buttery smooth look - but not on the tiles. Somehow, the tiles look like my graphics card is buggy
I agree, the castle looks too false, so have had another go. Hope you don't mind me playing with your photo.
(Mar 10, 2015, 09:41)kNox Wrote: I like it better like this! I certainly don't mind, after all, I was the one who asked for opinions.
The only thing that stands out is the halo around the castle - it's kind of obvious. Apart from that, the texture is really cool! How did you do that?
I have corel paintshop pro x6 and am learning slowly how to use it. I removed digital camera noise with settings at 78, 78, 78, and 70. Adjusted the sharpening and played around with the contrast.
With your picture it looks like the castle was in shadow from a cloud and has ended up looking a little flat. While increasing contrast and saturation can make the picture pop more, you will be hard pressed to get the feel of the examples.
Lowering your ISO and increasing the shutter time would of added more "pop", from the iso you used I am guessing that it was pretty dark when you took the shot? I try to keep my ISO as low as possible, it keeps the colours crisper and truer to the original, as well as minimizing noise and keeping the image sharp.
Unfortunately somethings cannot be fixed with any amount of editing. There's not much wrong with the image that being there with better weather/light wouldn't fix. The examples you posted all have one thing in common, they were all taken with fantastic light, just before sunset, early dawn, dramatic clouds, these all create very good light to photograph in.
I've been to the grand canyon 3 times, and have yet to get any decent pictures there, been unlucky with the light/weather every time. I've been to Yosemite National Park hundreds of times (6 times this year) and very rarely get any magical light there. I guess a lot of it is all about luck and planning.
In my opinion the starting point for a good exposure are the light conditions. Many images are produced in a fantastically clear atmosphere and this cannot be post processed. Your castle image is good and required little pp.
My example received slight sharpening, slight noise reduction, reduction of light areas and re-sizing
For image editing, I use PaintShop Pro. For this image, I experimented with small changes to the colour balance, saturation, brightness, contrast and sharpness, to produce something that looks more natural to me:
(Mar 10, 2015, 15:46)MrB Wrote: For image editing, I use PaintShop Pro. For this image, I experimented with small changes to the colour balance, saturation, brightness, contrast and sharpness, to produce something that looks more natural to me:
Cheers.
Philip
That is superb and I prefer it to my effort. Great processing Philip.
Wow! A lot of very cool edits, it just shows how much you can do from a picture.
@Ed - your second image is very cool, I really like it! By the way - I took your advice and edited the white balance in my original shot, does it look better this way?
@MrB - I think your shot is the closest to what I saw that day, it's really natural!
@Plantsman - great edit too! It looks a lot warmer than it actually was on that day, I remember freezing my ears off while I took the outside shots.
@Rolf - I like the way the castle looks, the texture seems very "3D" to me.
(Mar 10, 2015, 07:51)kNox Wrote: Given the picture below, how can I make it pop?
These all look better than my picture, for some reason. How can I edit mine to be... better?
(This post was last modified: Mar 25, 2015, 08:13 by danmdan.)
(Mar 25, 2015, 09:22)kNox Wrote: Cool edit, Dan! It sure stands out now!
All done using Photoshop Elements 12, and Apple's new "Photos" program in O.S. 10.10.3
I could do some further tidying up of a few highlights which would be toned down a bit - your pic is, in my opinion, just too much orange/yellowish in tone - it needs to be cooler, bluer.
Less is the simple answer. Photoshop is simply a more comprehensive program, especially in the more recent editions.
Photos can - Import; Show exposure data; Organise pics. into albums; Share (cloud, twitter, facebook, mail, etc.); and EDIT (enhance, rotate, crop, filters, adjust, retouch). That's a short list, but I have yet to examine each item in any detail.
I suppose it would appear at first brief glance to compare to Photoshop Elements, rather than Photoshop proper.
I'll probably couple it with use of Lightroom.
(This post was last modified: Mar 31, 2015, 03:17 by danmdan.)
![[Image: Castle_zpsnvh6qqrq.jpg]](http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/ll136/persamon/Castle_zpsnvh6qqrq.jpg)
