First Trial with Photoshop

I'm sure you guys thought that I had forgot this site and forum already :p

The truth is that I have been trying to learn to use Photoshop and finally today after all the reading I took the first step. Nothing major and I know this would still need tons of work. But I'm starting to understand why people use PS. Especially the noise reduction is a tool from which I have no experience before and which has a huge impact to a photo. Another thing which I noticed was how easy it is to over sharpen everything with PS. You have to be careful. Overall I think I opened a can of worms and after I can use PS better, I need to go thru all my old photos as there is so much in those I can still improve... :confused:

Anyhow nothing major with this one; Did most of the work still in ACR (also some basic sharpening even though Artie says no-no), reduced some noise more in PS and did final sharpening there also after I had resized the image.

Eastern Phoebe;

EOS MK3 + 500/4 + 1.4TC
F5.6
1/2000, +2/3
ISO 400
Distance; 12.1 m (this is pretty cool info)
Metering - Partial
Camera on Tripod

Self critic; I think the bird is rather OK but the background is quite busy. Next step is to learn how to change that...

Big thank you already beforehand for any comments I might get.


Cheers,

Mikko

Hi Mikko - looking good - you are correct it is very easy to overdo EVERYTHING in Photoshop. Replacing backgrounds is certainly possible - I personally prefer not to and strive to get my image in-camera, but to each their own.
Sharpness looks good - like how you have left some space up front for him to look into.
HA is good, nice catchlight in the eye.

One thing you will get to notice is when you get your image close in-camera you really dont need to spend much time on PP - Most of my images would be a maximum of 5 minutes - would rather be out taking photo's than sitting behind a computer :)

I think you did very well for your first time with PS Mikko! The bird doesn't look oversharpened and yet he's detailed and crisp. The exposure looks nice as well. In the field, a better angle to move the bird out of the foliage a bit more would have helped but you have a nice HA and good pose!

Thanks guys. Now when I look at the photo I think I could have sharpened the bill / head area ever so slightly more. To be honest I didn't think using ACR was too much different than using Canon's DDP. Which makes me to wonder how much do people usually use ACR (or something similar) or do most of the people go straight to PS from Bridge etc? I understand that when I use ACR I can't use layers which is a drawback and something which I have learn to do better next. Then I can sharpen the isolated bird only and not the whole BG as I did now. The other thing which confuses me still after all the reading and researching is at what point do people (and how) resize their photos? Do you do this in ACR or in PS? As I rarely do any prints from my photos I usually like to, after possible cropping, down-size my pictures to 900 x 600 at 72 dpi. (Sorry if this goes already to workflow forum's area).

And yes Lance. I probably used few minutes with this one. I'll try to find another couple of minutes during the weekend and post something new.


Cheers,

Mikko

Agree with Lance and Jules Mikko. The image has some good points like the exposure and pose of the bird. The BG is quite distracting particularly with the strong diagonal it forms from UL to LR. For me the aspect of the image that jumps out is the upwards camera angle. It is rare IMO that this ever works well on perching birds and it's best if you can be at eye-level or roughly so. If a subject is too far above or below me and I can't move to eye level I put my camera down and appreciate the subject with my eyes!

Regarding your questions about ACR and Photoshop:

1. ACR- Adobe Camera Raw is a very powerful RAW processing software. Some say you get better results with Canon's own Digital Photo Professional but I find DPP very clunky to use so stick with ACR. The ACR in CS5 is much improved I understand and gives noise and other results on a par with DPP.

2. With a RAW image you have to process it first so you can't go straight from Bridge to Photoshop- ACR will intercept.

3. ACR does not have layers but of course you can use layers once you have processed the RAW image and it's sitting in Photoshop. There is good reason to try to do as much of your image adjustment in ACR before you go to Photoshop because you have all the RAW data at your disposal.

4. IMO if you are resizing your images, say for the web, you want to keep all your pixels as you edit an image in Photoshop and then resize and finally sharpen at the end of the process. Having said this there is opinion out there that early sharpening can work for you. Have a look at this excellent BPN thread on the subject:
http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ng-Information!

5. Take a look at Photoshop's Save for Web and Devices. It is a one-stop-shop for resizing, changing colour space (e.g., to sRGB), adjusting file size to a target (say < 200kb for BPN), flattening an image etc.

Mikko, as to your question of when to re-size, I do this:

I open the image in ACR and make major tweaks/adjustments.
I save the entire image in tact (unless it's to make a very small crop adjustment to one end/side of the frame).
I reopen the image in CS4 and do anything minor, including adjustment layers and/or filters. This is also when I sometimes get funky and try the unknown or something new. If I don't like it, I blow the layers away!
I then save the file as a full size image into a "finals/master file" folder by month.
Next I pick a frame size I like (usually 7x10, 8x10, 8x8, or pano crop) and I save that in a "finals/edited" folder. Here I save the images by category (floral, abstract, landscape, etc.)
Lastly, I go to image/image size and change the resolution from the default 240 I use for printed photos to 72 for web photos. I then click on "print size" so the image before me is as it would be online and I do any final sharpening. I save that in a "finals/web" folder, also saved by category.

John and Julie thanks for your comments. Here are my thoughts:


1. ACR- Adobe Camera Raw is a very powerful RAW processing software. Some say you get better results with Canon's own Digital Photo Professional but I find DPP very clunky to use so stick with ACR. The ACR in CS5 is much improved I understand and gives noise and other results on a par with DPP.
Correct. With my short experience I can tell already that I have much more options to influence with ACR than with DDP.

2. With a RAW image you have to process it first so you can't go straight from Bridge to Photoshop- ACR will intercept.
Correct. I was mainly wondering if people actually do something with ARC like I did or do they just use that to get photos to PS.

3. ACR does not have layers but of course you can use layers once you have processed the RAW image and it's sitting in Photoshop. There is good reason to try to do as much of your image adjustment in ACR before you go to Photoshop because you have all the RAW data at your disposal.
Thanks. This was what I wanted to hear.

4. IMO if you are resizing your images, say for the web, you want to keep all your pixels as you edit an image in Photoshop and then resize and finally sharpen at the end of the process. Having said this there is opinion out there that early sharpening can work for you. Have a look at this excellent BPN thread on the subject:
http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ng-Information!
This was one of the links I was referring.

5. Take a look at Photoshop's Save for Web and Devices. It is a one-stop-shop for resizing, changing color space (e.g., to sRGB), adjusting file size to a target (say < 200kb for BPN), flattening an image etc.
I saved the attached image like this. But I was still confused if people are converting photos to pixels like I did or to certain inches like Julie is explaining.



I open the image in ACR and make major tweaks/adjustments.
I save the entire image in tact (unless it's to make a very small crop adjustment to one end/side of the frame).
I reopen the image in CS4 and do anything minor, including adjustment layers and/or filters. This is also when I sometimes get funky and try the unknown or something new. If I don't like it, I blow the layers away!
I then save the file as a full size image into a "finals/master file" folder by month.
So far this is exactly how I did.

Next I pick a frame size I like (usually 7x10, 8x10, 8x8, or pano crop) and I save that in a "finals/edited" folder. Here I save the images by category (floral, abstract, landscape, etc.)
I'll try inches next time instead of pixels.

Lastly, I go to image/image size and change the resolution from the default 240 I use for printed photos to 72 for web photos. I then click on "print size" so the image before me is as it would be online and I do any final sharpening. I save that in a "finals/web" folder, also saved by category.
Again like I did with the Phoebe above.


Thanks guys,

Mikko

The bird looks great. The BG is distracting. Maybe try a portrait crop to reduce the amount of BG leaves.
Peter