Micro 4/3 A little post processing magic

Jock Elliott

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Location
Troy, NY
I was researching sky photography when I stumbled upon this very helpful video for dealing with cloudy sky shots:


Here's the original shot:

LX100_oakwood_dragon_gargoyle_016_Medium_.JPG
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Using his recommendations and DXO 9, I was able to get to here:

LX100_oakwood_dragon_gargoyle_016_DxO_Medium_.jpg
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Cheers, Jock
 
I'm not so sure whether the video did a good job with explaining how to edit underexposed images.

Why don't you post your RAW file on dropbox or google drive and let people in here have a go at it?
 
I'm not so sure whether the video did a good job with explaining how to edit underexposed images.

Why don't you post your RAW file on dropbox or google drive and let people in here have a go at it?

I didn't shoot raw, but folks here have my permission to download the first image and have a crack at it.

Also, I was exposing for the sky.

Cheers, Jock
 
I just always seem to go a little too far. It's hard to know what to do when the shot is not one's own. Because I'm not sure what the shooter wanted to portray. Was it the overwhelming grayness that motivated the shot? Maybe the sadness of a cemetery and an overcast day? Or was it more of an autumnal "everything eventually dies" kinda thing? I can't know what you saw and felt Jock, so I went with my own feelings and felt that in addition to bringing back hidden details, I also wanted more contrast in the sky (which you may not want) and I also wanted to "cheat a bit" in the color department. I jacked up the saturation (which reulted in that dark blue corner of sky that I didn't notice until I loaded it up here....... I would selectively desaturate that part now so it doesn't stick out so much, but I need to head out for work soon) and then warmed up the image and gave it an autumnal glow. Again, those are very personal decisions which very likely may not reflect your original intent with the photo, but there's a fair bit of stretchability even in that jpeg to stretch it before it breaks.

As usual, I overdid it. Which I don't realize until after I'm done. Going forward I need to "finish it" and then walk away from my computer for 10 minutes and come back and re-evaluate before I save it. I almost always push it too far.

15888947946_62f35ff0a4_b.jpg
LX100_oakwood_dragon_gargoyle_016_Medium_ by Luke Lavin, on Flickr
 
I just always seem to go a little too far. It's hard to know what to do when the shot is not one's own. Because I'm not sure what the shooter wanted to portray.
I like what you did. But you're right. Generally, playing with other people's work is fruitless because we are coming from a different place.

I've overcooked mine, interestingly it was not obvious until after upload, just how overcooked it is. (and deleted the post because the more I looked at it, the more I detested my effort)
 
I was researching sky photography when I stumbled upon this very helpful video for dealing with cloudy sky shots:


I do worry anytime I see sliders being dragged all the way to 100. It's usually a sign that something's gone wrong with the original image, or that something's about to go wrong. In this video there also seems to be a lot of double-handling happening with respect to the exposure controls i.e. change something here, only to change it back again there.
 
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