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Thread: THEME: I'm pretty colorful!

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    Default THEME: I'm pretty colorful!

    Dendrobates tinctorius, "Surinam"

    Name:  _DSC7123.jpg
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    NOT shot in the wild. Photographed during a workshop. I used a 105/2.8 micro lens on the Nikon D300 with a Ray Ring flash
    1/60 at f13, ISO 200, -0.5 comp

    Slight crop for composition. Curves, contrast and sharpening.

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    Moved from Out of the Box.

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    Macro and Flora Moderator Jonathan Ashton's Avatar
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    Nice composition, I suspect you went in and tried to fill the frame? I would suggest not quite so close then you will have more DOF as there will be less magnification.
    the colours are bold and bright - and pleasing, I am not sure what the raw file was like but maybe a tad less saturation and a little lifting of the black would help. It is nevertheless a very striking image..keep them coming!

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    Ron Conlon
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    Very striking. Jonathan has some excellent suggestions.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jonathan Ashton View Post
    Nice composition, I suspect you went in and tried to fill the frame? I would suggest not quite so close then you will have more DOF as there will be less magnification.
    the colours are bold and bright - and pleasing, I am not sure what the raw file was like but maybe a tad less saturation and a little lifting of the black would help. It is nevertheless a very striking image..keep them coming!
    I was manually focusing after setting the lens to f13 by leaning in until focus was achieved. Most times, I seemed to bob in and out struggling to find focus on the eye and often the frogs simply had no patience for me and immediately hopped away! I did crop just a very little bit around all sides for composition. This is about 91% of the original. Good point about saturation. I applied no saturation but this may be an image where de-saturation should be considered. The colors are very true to the raw, however.

    The blacks unfortunately yield very, very little data. Perhaps I should have increased the ISO to keep a good SS and still increased the exp comp.

    What about the reflections? The frog was wet and shiny. I tried to tone them down and in some cases cloned them out. Afterwards I wondered if a polarizer would have helped.

    Thank you very much for commenting...and for your encouragement!
    Last edited by Karen Pleasant; 06-25-2015 at 04:11 PM.

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    Very colorful! A subject with blacks and whites is difficult. More exposure may have helped -- hard to say where the balance lies between blowing out whites and blocking up blacks. Bracketing exposure is good if the subject will sit still.... Big If. Diffusing the flash to make it a very large light source close to the subject can help with reflections, but a wet frog looks as if it might tax the best lighting setup.

    I wonder how a re-do with no Curves and Contrast would look? I always try to get the tonalities correct in raw processing -- there is a lot of leeway in the basic tonal adjustments in ACR / LR. Once blacks and whites are set, conservatively, they can be boosted slightly in PS if necessary. In many cases they should make Contrast and Saturation fall very close to optimal without using those sliders.

    Is there a bit more room on top? The lovely curve of that leaf might like a little more room.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Diane Miller View Post
    Very colorful! A subject with blacks and whites is difficult. More exposure may have helped -- hard to say where the balance lies between blowing out whites and blocking up blacks. Bracketing exposure is good if the subject will sit still.... Big If. Diffusing the flash to make it a very large light source close to the subject can help with reflections, but a wet frog looks as if it might tax the best lighting setup.

    I wonder how a re-do with no Curves and Contrast would look? I always try to get the tonalities correct in raw processing -- there is a lot of leeway in the basic tonal adjustments in ACR / LR. Once blacks and whites are set, conservatively, they can be boosted slightly in PS if necessary. In many cases they should make Contrast and Saturation fall very close to optimal without using those sliders.

    Is there a bit more room on top? The lovely curve of that leaf might like a little more room.
    Here is the image with no curves, no saturation, a little cloning and dodge and burn. The full frame image had very little on top....only the top right leaf and another leaf splitting in two.

    Name:  _DSC7123_no curves.jpg
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    Are you sure this is without the adjustments? When I stack this with your original post in PS, there is no difference except a few pixels more at the top.

    What are you using for raw conversion? Are you doing adjustments in PS as adjustment layers, rather than as adjustments on a duplicate layer?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Diane Miller View Post
    Are you sure this is without the adjustments? When I stack this with your original post in PS, there is no difference except a few pixels more at the top.

    What are you using for raw conversion? Are you doing adjustments in PS as adjustment layers, rather than as adjustments on a duplicate layer?
    Perhaps I linked to the wrong file. Let me try again. I use ACR as my raw converter and adjustment layers in CS6. This is the raw file with just my spot, reflection clean up layer.
    Name:  _DSC7123_no curves.jpg
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    Looking forward to your comments. Thanks!

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    I don't see a difference. Maybe it was just this underexposed. But this looks dark and contrasty for a raw file with no adjustments. Are you using any sort of auto adjustment? Is this the way it came into ACR with no adjustments?

    What happens if you zero everything (no auto anything) and move the Shadows slider considerably to the right? No detail to be pulled out of the darks?

    It's usually possible to balance blacks and whites with some detail in each, although sometimes it causes halos when you pull the Highlights slider left, such as a bird with white areas overexposed, against a blue sky. In that case you composite two images with different develop settings. But in this case I doubt any halos would show, as the whites are surrounded by dark areas.

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    This is Nik's Detail Extractor on your JPEG -- even there there is some detail in the darks. So there should be a lot more in the raw file.

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    Diane,

    Thanks for much for your work on this image. I've never been a fan of CEP Detail extractor, to me it seems that even a setting of 1 can be heavy handed and wash out the image. However, I did try getting more detail out of the raw using ACR, I just didn't care for the noise and red tint on his back. Based on your encouragement I need to re-consider this though. In the OP and #7 there is faint detail in the eye and this could also be improved by re-working the raw. Thanks so much for commenting!

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    Once tonalities are brought into PS they are glued into a file, and a good job of lowering high contrast is next to impossible. Contrast can be increased much more successfully. I was only using Detail Extractor to see if there was some information hidden in the darkest and lightest tones, which there is. The raw is worth reworking. Keep an eye on the histogram. The reds are a reflection of light from the flower and could be dealt with by a masked adjustment.

    With careful use, DE can bring out some nice detail on some files, but at the expense of bringing out noise. (Balance the sliders for Contrast, Saturation, try different settings of Effect Radius, and check the Shadows and Highlights sliders.) An underexposed original is going to have more of a noise issue.
    Last edited by Diane Miller; 06-27-2015 at 05:25 PM.

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    BPN Member Andreas Liedmann's Avatar
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    Hi Karen i just really like this " tinctorius " shot , really well done flash work without any disturbing reflections on the subject .
    Besides the reds of the bromeliad which are a little bit too intense for my taste i actually like the colors as they are very close to natural color of the subject , i do see them every day . I really like that you brought out the eye that good !!!

    Blacks are a tiny bit to strong but not much though, in really life you can hardly see any detail as the blacks are black on this species . So i would stay with the OP that is working really nice and well executed in post , i personally would stay away from stuff like detail extractor , makes good stuff worse , saying this just from my POV , but your call following other routes .

    Enjoyed watching , TFS Andreas

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    Hi Karen maybe something like this , 10 minutes of work to find the right route

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    Quote Originally Posted by Andreas Liedmann View Post
    Hi Karen maybe something like this , 10 minutes of work to find the right route
    Thank you so much for commenting, Andreas! I like the improvements you made in the reduced saturation of the reds, better eye detail and just a hint of detail in his back. I spent two days photographing many colorful dart frogs. What fun!

    Thank you for taking the time to show me how the image could be improved while retaining the strong parts of the image.

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