Mouth-to-Mouth Resuscitation

[John Lowin]

This is another image in the sequence of the Gnu/Wildebeest kill, shot in the Masi Mara Triangle. This older slide scan has no detailed exposure information. Thanks for looking, I hope you like it. C and C eagerly sought, I'm here to learn.

Nikon F5
Nikkor 500mm f/4 AF-s
Kodak E100 VS
Niall Benvie Bean Bag

[Sabyasachi Patra]

John,
You got a nice moment captured. I like the image. There are some bright areas in the image, especially the right paw of the lioness. I would reducing the saturation a bit as well as lowering the colour temperature. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Great timing John and a good composition and low angle. Agree about lowering the saturation a tad. Congratulations John . You have some wonderful images from your trip !!!

[John Lowin]

Hi Sabyasachi,

Thank you for your comments. I reduced the saturation and darkened the hot spots. Other than color temp adjustment in Camera Raw, or using Color Balance, how do you suggest adjusting CB in CS4? Do you find this version better? Thanks for your comments. - John
- John


John,
You got a nice moment captured. I like the image. There are some bright areas in the image, especially the right paw of the lioness. I would reducing the saturation a bit as well as lowering the colour temperature. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[John Lowin]

Hi Judy,

Thank you for your kind comments. I'm learning so much here, thanks to everyone who takes the time to comment and critique. - John


Great timing John and a good composition and low angle. Agree about lowering the saturation a tad. Congratulations John . You have some wonderful images from your trip !!!

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Other than color temp adjustment in Camera Raw, or using Color Balance, how do you suggest adjusting CB in CS4? - John
- John

Hi John,
I don't use CS4. So I will ask our CS4 users to help you out in this. I use adobe lightroom to adjust both Raw as well as scans. The repost looks better.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Lance Peters]

Hi John - are you wanting to adjust colour balance - or colour temp??

:)

[Jasper Doest]

Now we're talking...this scan looks much much better! Great framing, right on the action. The moment is very well chosen...you just keep looking at it...special.

[John Lowin]

Hello Lance,

Sabyasachi suggested lowering the color temp. I know how to do that on a CR2 file in camera raw, but this is an already processed slide scan and I am using PS CS4. So any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your response. - John

[Doug Brown]

There are Cyan/Red and Magenta/Green sliders in the Color Balance adjustment tool of CS4 that should do the trick.

[John Lowin]

There are Cyan/Red and Magenta/Green sliders in the Color Balance adjustment tool of CS4 that should do the trick.

Thanks Doug, So you are saying to create a visual reduction with a combined use of sliders, rather than a Kelvin temp setting? - John

[Alfred Forns]

Hi John

The Kelvin temp setting will affect the white balance of the entire image, we are talking about a color cast.

It does take a little doing color balancing with the sliders, first you need to identify the color cast then be able to neutralize. One way you can fix it is by using a PS plug in It makes the work faster and easier.

The one I use is iCorrect Edit Lab Pro 5.5 You open the plug in and place the eye dropper on an area that is supposed to be neutral ( something black, white, gray etc.) then you click on that area and the cast is gone !! Works like magic. Might want to do a Google search. btw tried it on your image, used the black area at the bottom and worked great !!!

[John Lowin]

Thanks Al, I'm familiar with color cast issues, I was responding to Sabyasachi's comment about lowering the color temp in addition to the saturation. That's what I was trying to get at. It sounded like he was referring to White Balance.

This web site is getting expensive :-) First I found out that Nikon no longer supports their scanners under Mac OS10.5 Leopard, so I had to invest in new software. Then Tony told me about PhotoKit Sharpener. Now it's iCorrect Edit Lab Pro 5.5. Darn good thing my wife doesn't visit this site! :-) - John

[Roger Clark]

John,
There are tools right in photoshop to set the white and black points. Just open the levels tool and there are 3 eyedropper symbols. Click on the right-most one then click on a point on the image and it is set to R,G,B= 255,255,255. Then click on the left eyedropper then click on a dark part of the image and it is set to 0,0,0.

As for color balance versus color cast, isn't that really the same thing? I personally do not like the slider tools such as the color balance tool. I feel you simply do not have the control and they tend to produce strange results if pushed too far. I prefer to use the curves tool. Once you understand curves, you can do amazing things with them. For example, for color cast/balance effects, I'll change the individual red, green or blue curves. It usually only takes very small tweaks.

For example, sometimes shadows appear too blue. In curves, I'll pin the upper part of the line with 2 or 3 points, then with the blue channel selected, pull down the lower part of the line, then go to the red channel, pin the upper part and add some red to the lower part of the line. I forgot to mention, if I'm adjusting shadows, I'll usually select them first before changing the color. This is all pretty hard to do (at least it was for me when I first started), but after some practice it can become quick and simple.

It helps me to have a color chart screen beside your image so you know what white grays and blacks look like.

[John Lowin]

Hi Roger,

Thanks for you helpful tips. Greatly appreciated! - John

[DanWalters]

Very intense image. The repost looks great.

[Robert Amoruso]

Nice work on the repost. Scan quality is getting better. An interesting image of the kill being consumed.

[John Lowin]

Thanks Robert and Dan, much appreciated. Just goes to show even an "old dog can learn new tricks." All your help here is truly invaluable. - John.