Photoshop Tute

[loopy]

Hey all - first off, there are some amazing pictures in this section, you guys are insane!!

What I was looking for was some sort of tutorial on touching up photos... I've read the one in this section, but it's pretty specific, just how to touch up a couple of different photos. Is there anything more general/comprehensive around? If not, would you guys be willing to write some more about it?

Keep up the good work - oh, and Anderson, how did you mod that photo of Rig? that was insane!

 

[Adrian]

retouching

Hi Loopy,
I don't use photoshop except when my regular program (which has almost everything and is 80% cheaper) doesn't have a particular filter I need. Just to give you an idea on one aspect, I retouched this picture because reds are quickly absorbed underwater. The result? Well, one one hand it's closer to what we "see", but on the other, perhaps the overall blue cast on the original is closer to what we "feel" when underwater. It gets really personal and there is no "right" way to retouch, just retouch in terms of the overall photographic effect you want to portray. So just experiment with all sorts of filters, contrast/brightness, tone maps etc, and you'll get some interresting and many times unexpected effects. And when experimenting write down the steps you take to not forget them later!

Each photograph has it's own soul, sometimes it is color, or balance, harmony, or pure emotion, contrast, texture, action, etc. Decide what a photo is telling you, or what you want the image to express, or why you are taking a particular photo and adjust for that. Maybe in this shot, making everything a deeper blue could evoke more mysteriousness. It's pretty subjective, and sometimes literal interpretations are not the best way to express something.

Anyway - just shoot if you have any questions- I can reply in terms of ULead's Photoimpact, which is pretty complete, and intuitive to use ie, not such a steep learning curve as Photoshop. The general principles are the same though.

Adrian

 

[Adrian]

here is the retouched shot

Adrian

 

[andrsn]

Loopy,

If you have any specific questions, I'd be more than happy to help you out. There are a few filters that you can purchase for PShop that are designed for UW photo color correction, but please understand that every time you use a filter on your photo you are losing information. When you have modified something to look great on the screen, it may turn out like garbage when you print it.

The best advice I have for freedive photographers is to stay shallow, get close to the subject(try not to use your zoom), and always look to have your own shadow in front of you (ie. sun as far behind you as possible). Also, if you're new and you're not using digital, you're missing out on great pictures, bigtime! The cost of developing film will pay for a digital setup in no time at all. Plus, you can never remember what settings you took your better film pictures at. :t

Later,
Anderson

ps. Oh, and rig's photo... you should see some stuff I've done for clients. :blackeye I don't trust digital pics any more! rofl

 

[DiverD]

Loopy I can give one general bit of color correction advice to always check and perform first on every image. Check and adjust the levels of each channel individually. How? Make an adjustment layer in photshop using Levels as the adjustment option. There is a pop up that says RGB and displays the histogram for all levles combined. Pop this up to display individaul channels one at a time. Slide the left and right arrows in, untill they touch where the info in the graph begins. This will correct the levels if they're out. A scanned image, if unprofessionally scanned, will almost always need this kind of correction. If you're shooting digital without any strobes you will also almost always need this kind of correction (unless you're exposure is perfect). For the most part this is the only adjustment I've been doing with the digital shots I've been taking. Experimenting with trying to compensate for low red levels begins to looks artificial quickly.
Hope this helps.

 

[loopy]

Wow thanks for the replies guys

I'll have a fiddle around and see what I can manage... I'll try to touch up some photos on this site

 

[loopy]

OK I'm playing around with the GIMP (for once he's not asleep... ) on Linux and trying to copy what you did with that image Adrian. Did you apply any filters, or was is just a change the level of red in the picture type thing?

 

[loopy]

25 mins later.... how does this look?

 

[loopy]

Hmmm, it's not the same as yours, but I can see what you mean by just play around with the values... all I did on that one was change the colour balance and hue/saturation. How do the filters help?

 

[loopy]

Wow, I just learnt about a thing called 'curves', and also how to sharpen... check this one out

Original:

 

[loopy]

And my version

 

[loopy]

Now lets give Jon some extra vis... (hey this isn't so hard!! )

 

[Jon]

VERY COOL!

I like what I see!

I know that switching to digital and playing around with photoshop will pay off. I still need to get the latest version fom my friend, but they live in another city and I haven't been able to get there to dive since my daughter was born- she's sleeping on my lap as I type.

I just learned how to do some minor editiing on my camera while it's still in the housing. This 5050 has so many features that it will take me a year to figure them all out- and then I can start on photoshop.

LEt see what you can do with some other images.

 

[Adrian]

Loopy,
Great work!
Yours is smoother and not as garish as my manipulation. After reading DiverD's advice I tried it out and got a much softer picture as well, closer to yours. (Thanks diverD! )

At first I just applied a filter called "bulb" on my program, but then i worked the rgb values individually and got this:

 

[DiverD]

Adrian your welcome. I worked with jon's great image of the shark and came up with this. I got extra oompph by doing my levles adjustment and then adding a curves adjustment layer. On the curves layer I selected the black colored eye dropper and sampled the darkest point of the shark, under his upper lip. This tells photoshop where the blackest point of the image is. The white eydropper picks the whitest point. I usually don't do the black point - white point adjustment for underwater pics (sometimes it looks too artificial) but Jon's shot has great lighting so it worked in this case. P.S. Jon, don't wait for photoshops latest version, any version will do this type of stuff, its the nuts and bolts of photoshop. The new versions have designer fluff that you just won't need for some time.

 

[Adrian]

Jon,
Here's your dusky musky - it's a hard one. Jon, does the 5050 have a macro mode?
Adrian

 

[loopy]

Jon, just stuffed around with it for an hour or so, and I'm getting pretty much the same as Adrian... even tried making it grayscale but it comes out looking kinda funny... I think it might have something to do with the the actual clarity of the Musky? Have you got any more like that?

 

[Jon]

Actually,

I just jumped in the lake and dove for the past two hours. Vis was still crap, but I wanted to play around with a couple of things.
First, I shot off a roll of film in my still camera with a 16mm lens attached. The fish were pretty skitish and the results were not as nice as I wanted.
Then, I put my digital camera on rapid fire mode and came away with some better shots- because I could delete so many without costing me any money.

So, my net result for a mornings worth of work was $10 in film and processing costs yeilding no quality prints and two musky shots on my digital camera that look like this:

 

[Jon]

Now,

All I need to do is sell of my doubles and buy one of those INON wide angle lenses for my housings and I'll be in buisness. Without a good wide angle lens I can only hope for "fish faces" with what I have right now.

Yes, the camera does have a macro mode. Actually, I think that it has 4 or 5 different macro modes!

So much to learn.

 

[loopy]

Gotta run to class so I didn't have time to play with the colours too much