Messing about with photo software

[jennyb]

Originally Posted by glsammy

What software are you using? Most software has some form of level feature. It looks like this:



This is the levels for you Robin shot.

What you can see here is that most of the data, the black block is in the centre. If you look just under the graph, you will see three small pointers. All I did was move the left one slightly towards the block of data, and likewise the one of the right. As you move them you can see instantly the effects on the image, so you can easily judge when you've gone far enough.
This is the first thing I do with any image.

Graham,

Thanks for this. I had not used levels before you mentioned it. Although I use PSP rather than Photoshop, PSP has a similar feature.

Jenny

[glsammy]

Originally Posted by jennyb

Graham,

Thanks for this. I had not used levels before you mentioned it. Although I use PSP rather than Photoshop, PSP has a similar feature.

Jenny

My pleasure Jenny As I said, most software has a similar feature. It's one of the fist things you should look at. You won't always see a good spread of data in the histogram, sometimes it will be condensed to one side or the other, it all depends on the range of tones in the image. The general principle of adjusting the points to meet the data is true for most images though.

[Hobjob]

Originally Posted by glsammy

What software are you using? Most software has some form of level feature. It looks like this:



This is the levels for you Robin shot.

Sound advice

Ctrl 0 - maximize to screen size
Ctrl L - levels

I ALWAYS look at the levels first - may need no adjustment,
but I often have a quick play just to be sure I don't want
to alter it.

Then, for me the routine is:

SAVE as a new file name !!!!!!!!!!

Crop if wanted

Add saturation (Ctrl L) if needed (depends usually on how I have the camera set up)
again I will usually have a play.

If I don't like the colour cast I will

either adjust the curves

or add a photo filter

Then add a a lighting filter if I want a bit brightened

Select and play with sky perhaps

Burn tool and Darken off any bright / highlight background distractions

Possibly clone off any background not wanted

Possibly blur off some background

Sharpen a bit (I don't usually add sharpening in the camera)

Possibly run neat image to reduce noise.

And save, save, save, as my computer does crash with hotoshop from time to to time
I lost half an hours work on my son ski-jumping the other day,
I never seem to learn