Changing the colours

[peterjclarke]

I was out for action shots on Saturday but the light was so poor that I could not get fast enough shutter speeds without cranking the ISO up. I thought I would have a bit of a play about with the colour of the water. Using the colour control points in Nikon Capture NX. I sampled colours from other photographs with blue sky to get a realistic reflected sky colour.


Goldeneye before


Goldeneye After


Male Tufted Duck Before


Male Tufted Duck After

I stress that I hardly ever do any manipulation to my images and I was really just playing about with these shots. It took about five minutes for each photograph to chnage the colour and increase the contrast.

[mh68]

I like what you`ve done Peter, its given the images a lot more impact, to my eyes.

Mark H

[VinceS]

Having recently bought a Nikon D80 I have a 30 day free trial of NX. I have not yet used it as I am still learning about the camera but seeing your shots makes me want a go. Do you have to shoot in RAW or can it manipulate in JPEG? It does seem to make quite an impact on the shots you have posted.
VinceS

[big bill]

Hello Peter like Mark I like what you have done to the pics it is more plkeasing on the eye than the bland and washed out look of the water in the original well done.

[DaiTheDragon]

Too much blue the original looks much, more natural.

Dai

[NickCantle]

Somewhere between the two would be good. The initial shot has the natural look, which is great...but it lacks a punch, whereas the modified shot is over punchy and too 'in your face'. A happy medium methinks

[Seajay]

Doesn't look right to me. Looks like it's swimming in a bottle of ink!

[Geoff F]

As NickCantle said, try somewhere between the two. Never tried that programme but, if it is possible, I would do the alteration on a duplicate layer then merge the two. Vary the opacity and blend modes until you get things to look more natural.

[Tormentil]

I prefer the first. The second as lost the shading and what bit of detail there is, in the dark areas.

[peterjclarke]

Originally Posted by VinceS

Having recently bought a Nikon D80 I have a 30 day free trial of NX. I have not yet used it as I am still learning about the camera but seeing your shots makes me want a go. Do you have to shoot in RAW or can it manipulate in JPEG? It does seem to make quite an impact on the shots you have posted.
VinceS

Vince, Capture NX works with Jpeg, Tiff and Nef. I have a few friend who use Canon and they use NX on thier Tiffs for some of the features. It's a cracking bit of software.