post processing – Page 4 – Ink, Yarn & Beer

Looking

There are days, as anyone creative knows, when you “get it” and things come along perfectly. Everything you do feels right, you learn, and all the knowledge you have acquired throughout your lifetime pulls together and you create something you love, feels satisfying, and adds to your ongoing growth as an artist. And then, there are days where anything and everything you do is crap.

My walk around the neighborhood the other day was satisfying. The ants-in-the-pants restlessness was put into action. While I took some pictures I thought were pretty good, it wasn’t until I got home and started playing with some of them in black and white that I began to get a sense of composition in photos. Sure, I know the rule of thirds, etc., but I wasn’t really using it in a way I found meaningful. When I began the post-processing, I began to appreciate some of my photos a bit more, and with some cropping, rotating, contrast enhancement, or whatever, I ended up with a few I really liked.

This picture was simply a quick shot into the tree above me. I like the shape of tree branches and leaves, the lines created against the sky. Turned into greyscale, the picture was too dark, and the texture of the bark was lost. I backlit it to the extreme, and it pushed the picture to this. A bit of contrast enhancement and playing with the histogram, and this is the result. It’s a rather edgy picture to me – not very serene – but there is something I also like about it, such as where the upper branch begins to get so bright it begins to disappear.

I cropped this picture a lot – it is evidenced by the size of the signature in the corner! Anyway, this crop is of some tiny cactus flowers on a lovely plant with pointy needles. I decided to emphasize the pointiness, both on the spikes, and more generally on the shadows. The back-and-forth movement of light and dark is the idea behind this picture, both soft and sharp.

I cropped this one to bring the focus onto the leaf itself. I pushed this, with contrast and edge sharpening. This is the underside of the leaf, which has a lot of linear texture. I also think this one has the potential to go further in subject matter – calla lily leaves are really lovely to look at through light because the veins in the leaf are so intricate.

Finally, there is this one. I played with it a bit, and finally cropped it and rotated it so that the main branch of the leaf became horizontal and rested in the lower third of the photo. Again, the contrast was pushed, and the final image cropped.

You can see all these photos on Flickr, in B&W and in color.

Altogether, the post-processing was quite a satisfying experience. I thought about my compositions, and saw things in the original photos I liked, did not like, and I learned more about framing an image as I cropped and turned. I may not get great photos out and about, but I do think I will be looking at the entire image more carefully before snapping a picture (unless I am crawling in the mud!).

Sparkles

I am a magpie at heart – I love shiny objects. As a kid, I used to drive my mother nuts because I liked rhinestone buttons on my dresses and gaudy costume jewelry. These days, I am more conservative, or at least demonstrate better taste, than I did when I was five years old as far as clothing. But, I am still irresistibly drawn to sparkles – splashes in water – spider webs in the morning light – flickery sun in dark shadow.

Today, I returned to the local botanical gardens. Autumn is settling in. The sky has a different quality of blue, the light is cool and intense. The scent of pine needles rises up with the heat of the day. With me came my Lumix ZS5, and the Canon QL17 GIII. I took a few pictures with the Canon, and oodles with the Lumix. This is the luxury of digital – 60 pictures without the cost for processing.

The path I took this morning was one I haven’t taken before. I always head uphill for some reason, but today I deliberately went downhill. Here, the garden is more of a woodland, with large California oaks mixed in with other native plants. The colors are more brown and green in the woodland area of the garden than up the hill, but there are little bright spots here and there of sunshine and shadow, along with lingering flowers and autumnal berries.

What I looked for today, very deliberately, was the contrast of light and dark, of sun and shadow. I stopped the camera down to -1/3 EV, to keep the camera from making all the light areas washed out. In the shadows, this creates a bit of drama with contrast. Compositional elements were a bit more studiously considered as well, such as movement of a tree branch across the picture, a pathway, a stairway. Some shots I framed with foliage, others I attempted to focus on a specific part, such as a tree leaf, and open the f/stop as much as possible with this camera (which is not more than f/3.3 manual), to blur out the background.

The set on Flickr for today contains images as they came from the camera. Most of them need some help, I think, but a few of the ones of the oaks are interesting and successful as they stand, I think. The one below has been cropped.

I am always in conflict about post-processing images, yet it has been done since the early days of photography. Images have been manipulated by time and f/stop, airbrushing out of unwanted characters who have lost political importance, handpainting. Processing of film images also influences the final product.

Why should digital images be any different?

Pushing Up Daisies

Below is an image of a daisy taken awhile ago alongside our house. It’s rather bland. Below is the same image, with post-processing done in Photoscape. You can see that under the top daisy, the flower’s receptacle has become nearly pure black, like a puzzle piece. Even in the original picture, it is a bit dark, and consequently distracting to the eye.

Neither picture above is especially spectacular, but the post-processing certainly messed up the final image. Below are two more results, the first which is sharpened only from the original. The receptacle is a bit more defined, with its ridges a bit more clear, but not darker. The second one uses the “bloom” feature (which I don’t understand – I’m a novice in post-production photography software) in combination with the sharpening. I think the result is a little better. The whiteness of the petals is more apparent. I also used the mole removal feature to get rid of the black spot on the foreground daisy.

One thing I have a very hard time with visually is contrast – adjacent areas and their shades of grey – when I work in color. Whenever possible, I try to take photos of any artwork I am doing to check out the contrast. High contrast has few shades of grey; low contrast has several. The degree of density in each, how dark or light, can determine the “pop” in a picture. In painting, this can cause items to retreat to the background, or move forward. This is what our mind uses to create depth and dimension in a photograph or a painting.

This next photo is the last one above, converted to greyscale. It is a soft photo, not especially dramatic. There are good areas of contrast, but the petals are lost.

Daisies in Greyscale after Sharpening and Blooming in Color

This next photo is the greyscale photo further sharpened, and the contrast increased. The petals are more apparent.

Greyscale Daisies with More Sharpening and Contrast

Finally, here are chorus lines of the photos in a row. It may be worthwhile to look at it, and thus decide which photo is ultimately the best. I set the lines up so they would span the same space, but in doing so, some of the image quality is degraded. What I am looking for is the contrast and clarity in the final image of the petals, the inside yellow part (stamens and pistils? I forget my flower sex!).

Ultimately, I am not sure about any of these photos. I think the viewer needs to determine it. Liking or disliking a photo is a personal thing. I do think, in general, the composition is rather nice, but in retrospect, I should have taken the photo from a more superior perspective, looking into the foremost daisy a bit more, but not by much. Also, to cut down on “busyness,” it would have been a good idea to remove the dropped petal on the most distant daisy, the one up against the wall. If I knew how to remove it with software, I would try it. There is some movement in the photo. The center of the daisy on the left may be a distraction, just as the receptacle on the upper daisy may be too dark.

Good, bad? I need to step back to reconsider! Too close, too much, a bit overwhelming. Later I can make a decision.

One thing which does help is turning one’s work upside down.The same can apply to a photo. Maybe I am more successful than I think, as I really like the movement in this upside down image. And, in reconsidering, I like the one of the colored daisies only sharpened a bit, with the black spot removed, the best.