Advice

[MDM]

21 minutes ago, Alexander Hogg said:

I do shoot in Raw Bought a Canon EOS R6 mark 2 and used a RF 24-70mm lens Only got it on the 2nd March this year Maybe one of the other settings I used wasn't correct Still have the raw file 

 

Well that is some seriously good equipment and you definitely do not need a software sharpener to get sharp images. If anything that image is oversharpened as others have said. If you want to post the raw on Dropbox (sign up for a free account), I am happy to have a look and provide some feedback. Certainly the colour is well off in the existing image but with raw it should be simple to correct.

[Reimar]

For me, the blue caste seems right for a dusk/twilight/blue hour shot.  I would think the low resolution/oversharpening is what risks a QC failure.

[sooth]

.

Edited October 19, 2023 by sooth

[spacecadet]

Just now, sooth said:

There's a clear separation between the sky and the rooftop/buildings. There's a clear white line of some sort between the two. If you're in Photoshop, make sure the feathering is low if you're trying to select the sky

I think this has been covered- it's not a selection edge, it's a halo from over-sharpening.

[sooth]

.

Edited October 19, 2023 by sooth

[MDM]

1 hour ago, Reimar said:

For me, the blue caste seems right for a dusk/twilight/blue hour shot.  I would think the low resolution/oversharpening is what risks a QC failure.

 

Maybe but it is way too washed out for that. As Michael V said, the shadows are opened up too much. A blue hour shot should be much darker in the shadows with lots of contrast. If you darken it as is, the shadows go very blue so it is definitely an unintentional colour cast. It would be interesting to see the raw. 

Edited April 17, 2023 by MDM

[Alexander Hogg]

28 minutes ago, sooth said:

What software(s) are you using to edit?

Adobe Photoshop 

 

1 hour ago, Reimar said:

For me, the blue caste seems right for a dusk/twilight/blue hour shot.  I would think the low resolution/oversharpening is what risks a QC failure.

Will try a re-edit tomorrow and am getting up early tomorrow to go and retake the shot just in case

 

9 minutes ago, MDM said:

It would be interesting to see the raw. 

I'll try and get Dropbox this week and put up the Raw file 

[Alexander Hogg]

16 hours ago, MDM said:

suggest you upload the original to Dropbox which is free and allows raw uploads. You can upload the raw (if it exists) and the processed version. 

I have had another look at the image and have decided to take another photograph of the image I could try a re-edit but it may not come out any better I have uploaded the image to Dropbox 

[Steve F]

13 hours ago, Alexander Hogg said:

Adobe Photoshop

 

Alex, are you not signed up to the monthly Adobe subscription that also includes Lightroom? Lightroom is much more intuitive to use than Photoshop and user friendly. I only use Photoshop for really heavy edits. You're not alone in primarily using PS, but if you're struggling with editing, have you tried LR?

[Alexander Hogg]

53 minutes ago, Steve F said:

Alex, are you not signed up to the monthly Adobe subscription that also includes Lightroom? Lightroom is much more intuitive to use than Photoshop and user friendly. I only use Photoshop for really heavy edits. You're not alone in primarily using PS, but if you're struggling with editing, have you tried LR?

I have both I paid it in full I have watched some you tube videos

[Steve F]

2 hours ago, Alexander Hogg said:

I have both I paid it in full I have watched some you tube videos

 

Cool. Much as I'd like to start a LR vs PS debate... 🙃

Here's my workflow in LR in the Develop module, hope I'm not teaching you to suck eggs. It's pretty quick:

 

1. Lens corrections - apply correction for your lens - if you're lucky, LR does it automatically for you. Remove chromatic abberation.
2. Transform - make sure horizon is straight and buildings are not leaning at funny angles. You can get away with "Auto" in a lot of cases.
3. Check for dust bunnies with the spot removal tool, and click on "visualise spots". It's a bit hit and miss though so I just tend to zoom in on the photo by eye and remove them.
4. Adjust the exposure. I do it by eye so it looks "right" to me, but you can also try and get the histogram so the 'bell shape' is in the middle and not skewed to the left or right.
5. Adjust the White Balance as necessary. Default is "as shot". Change it to "Auto" to see what it looks like. See what you think, adjust by eye as you see fit. You can use the eye dropper tool to click on an area of white as an option too.
6. Adjust contrast by eye.
7. Adjust the whites and blacks so that the histogram goes all the way to the left and right with no clipping. But check by eye as well, sometimes you don't want to go all the way to the edge.
8. Adjust shadows and highlights by eye (sometimes necessary).
9. Add a bit of clarity if you think it needs it - affects the mid shadows. But not too much.
10. Adjust vibrance and saturation. By the way, increasing the overall exposure a lot seems to automatically increase the saturation so you might actually need to apply negative saturation.
11. Adjust saturation and luminance on individual colours if necessary, i.e. if one colour looks really garish or flat.
12. Sharpening - I just leave it as default and I believe that is alright for Alamy.
13. Export as highest quality jpeg with sRGB or AdobeRGB colour space - don't apply additional sharpening.
14. Congrats, you're done, next photo!

I know some people apply preset edits using LR. I don't take enough images that I've felt the need to do that, but that would be even more efficient. I sometimes spend more time removing distracting elements, but the edits above are what I do for every photo.

 

 

 

Edited April 18, 2023 by Steve F

[Alexander Hogg]

4 minutes ago, Steve F said:

Cool. Much as I'd like to start a LR vs PS debate... 🙃

Thanks All that makes sense 

One of the photos I had submitted that I thought might fail actually passed 

[sooth]

.

Edited October 19, 2023 by sooth

[MDM]

1 hour ago, Steve F said:

 

 

 

1. Lens corrections - apply correction for your lens - if you're lucky, LR does it automatically for you. Remove chromatic abberation.
2. Transform - make sure horizon is straight and buildings are not leaning at funny angles. You can get away with "Auto" in a lot of cases.
3. Check for dust bunnies with the spot removal tool, and click on "visualise spots". It's a bit hit and miss though so I just tend to zoom in on the photo by eye and remove them.
4. Adjust the exposure. I do it by eye so it looks "right" to me, but you can also try and get the histogram so the 'bell shape' is in the middle and not skewed to the left or right.
5. Adjust the White Balance as necessary. Default is "as shot". Change it to "Auto" to see what it looks like. See what you think, adjust by eye as you see fit. You can use the eye dropper tool to click on an area of white as an option too.
6. Adjust contrast by eye.
7. Adjust the whites and blacks so that the histogram goes all the way to the left and right with no clipping. But check by eye as well, sometimes you don't want to go all the way to the edge.
8. Adjust shadows and highlights by eye (sometimes necessary).
9. Adjust vibrance and saturation. By the way, increasing the overall exposure a lot seems to automatically increase the saturation so you might actually need to apply negative saturation.
10. Adjust saturation and luminance on individual colours if necessary, i.e. if one colour looks really garish or flat.
11. Sharpening - I just leave it as default and I believe that is alright for Alamy.
12. Export as highest quality jpeg with sRGB or AdobeRGB colour space - don't apply additional sharpening.

 

 

Good stuff Steve. I'd just like to add a few thoughts for what they're worth. 

 

Firstly, for me it's a more iterative process rather than a linear one. First of all I use the clipping indicators as well as the histogram. In particular the highlight clipping indicator can  show clipping when the eye can't see it.

 

The  first thing I do is get the exposure into the ball park. Then I do the white balance as that can have a big effect on the rest of the processing. For example, if it is too warm then yellow highlights might clip. I then iterate between the white balance and exposure (maybe the whites and blacks as well if there is clipping). II use the highlights slider to make sure I am getting detail in the highlights. The same applies to the shadows. Then I hit the contrast (usually a curve) and iterate further so the histogram is going all the way and I have detail in the highlights and shadows.

 

I will also apply masks to skies and other very bright areas that don't have detail in the highlights but where detail is recoverable (usually the grad mask as I don't like freehand drawing (never any good at it). I tend to use selective saturation rather than the vibrance (sometimes) or saturation (never) sliders. It is basically similar to what you are doing with a lot more iteration. I have not used the new selection mask tools much to date but they are very powerful and worth investigation. 

 

The other stuff I leave to the end.

 

One thing I never do is use Auto White Balance as it is frequently incorrect. It is somehow averaging the colours in the scene and coming to a conclusion which is frequently wrong. What I do advocate where possible is to use a good gray card or Color Checker Passport (better) as this allows very easy white balancing in Lightroom. In fact if Alexander is still considering Topaz Sharpener or similar, I think his money would be better on a cute little Color Checker Passport which can be transformative in terms of getting exposure and white balance close from the beginng with a click of the eyedropper.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 18, 2023 by MDM

[Alexander Hogg]

26 minutes ago, sooth said:

Do you have the Dropbox link, I'm interested in the image

Which image I am not on the PC at the moment for the Dropbox link 

[Ognyan Yosifov]

7 hours ago, Alexander Hogg said:

Thanks All that makes sense 

One of the photos I had submitted that I thought might fail actually passed 

...or you just got lucky the photo wasn't in the QC spotlight...this time.

Edited April 18, 2023 by Ognyan Yosifov

[Steve F]

1 minute ago, MDM said:

Firstly, for me it's a more iterative procress rather than a linear one.

 

Thanks for that. Agreed about it being an iterative process. I haven't necessarily put the correct order down that I do things - wrote this from memory. I use a lot more masks these days - enjoying the sky mask in the latest LR version.

[StokeCreative]

1 hour ago, Steve F said:

 

Cool. Much as I'd like to start a LR vs PS debate... 🙃

Here's my workflow in LR in the Develop module, hope I'm not teaching you to suck eggs. It's pretty quick:

 

1. Lens corrections - apply correction for your lens - if you're lucky, LR does it automatically for you. Remove chromatic abberation.
2. Transform - make sure horizon is straight and buildings are not leaning at funny angles. You can get away with "Auto" in a lot of cases.
3. Check for dust bunnies with the spot removal tool, and click on "visualise spots". It's a bit hit and miss though so I just tend to zoom in on the photo by eye and remove them.
4. Adjust the exposure. I do it by eye so it looks "right" to me, but you can also try and get the histogram so the 'bell shape' is in the middle and not skewed to the left or right.
5. Adjust the White Balance as necessary. Default is "as shot". Change it to "Auto" to see what it looks like. See what you think, adjust by eye as you see fit. You can use the eye dropper tool to click on an area of white as an option too.
6. Adjust contrast by eye.
7. Adjust the whites and blacks so that the histogram goes all the way to the left and right with no clipping. But check by eye as well, sometimes you don't want to go all the way to the edge.
8. Adjust shadows and highlights by eye (sometimes necessary).
9. Adjust vibrance and saturation. By the way, increasing the overall exposure a lot seems to automatically increase the saturation so you might actually need to apply negative saturation.
10. Adjust saturation and luminance on individual colours if necessary, i.e. if one colour looks really garish or flat.
11. Sharpening - I just leave it as default and I believe that is alright for Alamy.
12. Export as highest quality jpeg with sRGB or AdobeRGB colour space - don't apply additional sharpening.
13. Congrats, you're done, next photo!

I know some people apply preset edits using LR. I don't take enough images that I've felt the need to do that, but that would be even more efficient. I sometimes spend more time removing distracting elements, but the edits above are what I do for every photo.

 

 

 

 

 

This is exactly the same in PS ACR, except for dust bunnies, which I do as a final check on the JPEG (and for most similar images I start off with a one click "apply previous settings" which speeds up the workflow no end.) I find the interface non-intuitve in LR compared to PS ACR, and it looks a bit like a 90's CAD program

I'm genuinely interested to know from anybody that uses both, if there's any advantage to using LR? Bear in mind I wouldnt use LR for keywording/cataloguing - probably. I have got access to the whole CC suite, so I could use LR if a genuine advantage ratrher than simple user preference (emphasis on the 'simple' lol)

Thanks

 

HUGH

[StokeCreative]

Just now, StokeCreative said:

 

 

This is exactly the same in PS ACR, except for dust bunnies, which I do as a final check on the JPEG (and for most similar images I start off with a one click "apply previous settings" which speeds up the workflow no end.) I find the interface non-intuitve in LR compared to PS ACR, and it looks a bit like a 90's CAD program

I'm genuinely interested to know from anybody that uses both, if there's any advantage to using LR? Bear in mind I wouldnt use LR for keywording/cataloguing - probably. I have got access to the whole CC suite, so I could use LR if a genuine advantage ratrher than simple user preference (emphasis on the 'simple' lol)

Thanks

 

HUGH

P.S Sky and object masks also in PS ACR

[NYCat]

No mention of Clarity? I don't change the default of sharpening but a little bit of Clarity makes a big difference. When I do the Whites and Blacks I hold down option so as to see exactly when to stop.

 

Paulette

[Steve F]

8 minutes ago, NYCat said:

No mention of Clarity? I don't change the default of sharpening but a little bit of Clarity makes a big difference. When I do the Whites and Blacks I hold down option so as to see exactly when to stop.

 

Paulette

 

My bad, missed that off. Edited my post above, thanks.

[Jill Morgan]

I use ACR instead of LR as it works in combo with PS when you are editing.  It is the same as LR for editing, just doesn't have the cataloging ability. Usually if you open RAWs they will open in ACR automatically and then you do your editing and send to photoshop (or not).

 

I also have ACR set to open images as Smart Objects in PS.  That way if I want to do more correcting, I double click on the image layer and it opens back up in ACR and you can adjust your settings. 

 

If I am working on a jpg in PS, I convert it to a Smart Object so when using the ACR filter, it saves the changes and I can adjust from there.  Smart Objects are the best way to work on an image in PS.  If you use the ACR filter without converting a jpg to a smart object, it will change your image but not save the changes in the ACR filter.  If you call up the filter again, everything is set to 0.

 

Jill

[Vincent Lowe]

4 hours ago, StokeCreative said:

I'm genuinely interested to know from anybody that uses both, if there's any advantage to using LR?

 

I use both but Lightroom only for the LRTimelapse plug-in.  Photoshop and ACR for editing and the brilliant IMatch for organising/keywording etc.

[Cal]

On 17/04/2023 at 14:29, Alexander Hogg said:

No about 80% cropped I try and not sharpen too much I usually only use sharpen and one other I cannot remember the name off by heart at the moment 

 

is this a JPEG straight out of camera?

[Alexander Hogg]

53 minutes ago, Cal said:

is this a JPEG straight out of camera?

No Raw