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01/27/2008 03:28:02 AM · #1 |
Hallo!
I took this shot for the clown challenge and ended up not using it. I know a lot of my pictures look too dark on a lot of monitors, and, sure enough, this one looks terrible on my work monitor!
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I had it printed today and the print came out super dark, so I thought I'd try a re-edit. To get the picture to look like the above, I really pushed it already, so I feel the lightened-even-more version is a bit soft.
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I'm curious to know (pretty please, if you have the time) which edit looks better and if there are any really good techniques for lightening an image and maintaining the quality?
Thanks so much! |
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01/27/2008 03:31:34 AM · #2 |
| The first one is super dark, the second is not really much better on my laptop. I just recalibrated it 2 days ago so I am sure that it will be dark on most peoples computer. Sorry |
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01/27/2008 04:35:02 AM · #3 |
The first one is close to invissible, whereas the second one looks like it's dark on purpose. I actually like the mood in the second picture, but I am pretty sure it's too dark to receive a high score at dpc. (don't know if you care for scores though).
As to techniques, don't count on postprocessing, get you lighting right when shooting. Pics like this, with a large surface intentionally black, are hard to do. You can't trust your cam to get it right. Look at your histogram when shooting. It should have a huge peak on the left hand side, but the right hand side should not be totally empty. If it is, the pic is too dark.
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01/27/2008 04:43:50 AM · #4 |
| Just agreeing with the other 2, the first one is hardly visible, the 2nd one a bit better. |
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01/27/2008 06:25:38 AM · #5 |
lots of noise in the second image because of the editing. Did you try applying neatimage to it? use more light next time too, although I know sometimes it's hard to tell when you get caught up in shooting something, good shot though.
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01/27/2008 07:22:07 AM · #6 |
Same again here - 2nd is better but still noticeably noisy and blurry. I liked your challenge entry a lot but it lacked a certain sharpness...am wondering if this shot isn't suffering from the same probs. Maybe try making it a touch more 'art' by almost over editing it to give it some definition. Maybe try turning up the smoothness and strength to max in noise ninja and seeing if a few hits doesn't make the noise manageable. It might also destroy the image, hence making it more 'art' and needing some creative ideas to make it work (e.g. another layer with a find edges blend in it).
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01/27/2008 09:00:32 AM · #7 |
I had a little play with the darker photo...
[thumb]638529[/thumb]
One of your problems is possibly because a lot of those colours are outside the printing range, it might not be so bad on the larger file but when I put the gamut warning on it the whole face lit up. There's still some unprintable colours in the greens on the edit I've done you may have to look at changing the colours slightly to get it accurate. And I lost the nice grunginess of it in neat image.
I tried it in B&W with a slight film grain as well, just for fun.
[thumb]638530[/thumb]
Message edited by author 2008-01-27 09:02:26. |
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01/27/2008 09:12:59 AM · #8 |
| I agree with the consensus here that the first is barely visable and the second is a bit better but still dark. I too amd running on a recently calibrated monitor, you might wan to get you screen calibrated to avoid printed pictures from coming out completely differe than what you view them in PS or any other editing software. |
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01/27/2008 10:55:14 AM · #9 |
Yeah, soft.
Also, I don't mind dark images as long as the detail are still there so that I am not trying to figure out what the hell I'm looking at.
If I want to play with a puzzle, I will get the 1000 piece jig saw box out of the brown mare.
When I look at a photograph, I want immediate satisfaction. I don't want to hover and squint.
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01/27/2008 10:51:57 PM · #10 |
Eek? Is it at that puzzle-like combination of dark and blurry, then?
And, yeah, the picture is intentionally dark - he's list by a single flashlight here. I know it's way too dark for DPC use but I want to get it good for my own personal satisfaction because I really like it.
I don't have photoshop or noise ninja or neat image or anything like that, just GIMP. So, I'm not 100% on what you were saying you did, there, Wildcard, but I would be very interested in hearing more about it.
As you can see in the outtakes thread I had more shots that were more 'DPC friendly,' but, like I said, I really liked this one. |
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