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MiRF Photos - Sunday Sep 6

Started by Xanthenes The Unbalanced, September 07, 2009, 12:07:15 AM

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Xanthenes The Unbalanced

Quote from: Deadbishop on September 09, 2009, 12:28:02 AM
Hey, no problem.  I kinda followed what you were describing, but like most things, I learn from direct experience rather than descriptions.  Just like what you described, some details require boosting, while others require suppressing. 

The falloff is one thing I noticed (on the knight image, for instance), and I usually do a dark vignetting, but I like the falloff quality of yours.  How do you do your luminance matte?

Another thing I noticed with my HDR that I see similar things happening in some of your photos (again the first image of the knight) is that there tends to be a lot of noise, particularly when there is blue sky.  I found selecting just that part of the image, and then boosting the median noise filter helps smooth that out without losing detail in the bokeh.

I actually do my falloff mattes outside Photoshop.  I do them in Adobe AfterEffects.  While I could do them in Photoshop, the workflow of AfterEffects makes it a bit quicker to run through a batch than with Photoshop.  Since I probably do 80% video/20% photography, my natural inclination seems to be toward AE. 

And that's a great point about direct experience.  I have a really hard time describing my Photoshop processes, because so much of it is still just trial and error; unless I specifically know the look I want in a photo right when I sit down (which is rare).  Most times, I just knock the photo around until it starts looking like what I saw in my head when I took the darn thing. 

I would make the world's worst Photoshop teacher.
(This space for rent)

Rani Zemirah

#16
Wow... you guys are better than good-tutorials.com... and I'm starting to feel a bit like a sponge that's reaching the saturation point!  LOL  

I have discovered one thing with working blind in Photoshop, though.  If I'm playing around, but think I may want to reproduce the effects of something I'm experimenting with, I'll set my Actions palette to record, and that way I can go back later and look at every step, see where I backtracked, what I changed, where I screwed something up, etc... and eventually puzzle out how I arrived at the end product.  Then I can (occasionally) copy the useful steps into a new Action and apply it in batch, or individually, to achieve the same, or at least a similar, result.  Or, even if that's not possible, I can keep the palette open as a guideline...

I think I need to start a glossary for myself, though... I'm learning lots of new (to me) terms here!
Rani - Fire Goddess

Aut disce... aut discede