PP Practice

[Lance Peters]

Another chance to practice your PP skills- this is a straight conversion from the RAW file.
Feel free to have a go and see what you come up with.
Dont forget to report what you find!!!

D3S
Nikon 300mm F2.8 WITH 1.7X Converter
F4.8
1/800th
1600 ISO
Manual Exposure
Matrix Metering
Handheld

You will be seeing more of this guy - he was most gracious as he allowed me to sit 15 feet away from him s h went about his daily Business.

:)

[Alfred Forns]

Will be a good one to work on Lance !! Will be watching !!

[Colin Knight]

I need the practice! NR and gaussian blur on the BG, sharpening, contrast, sat on the subject, slight crop off of the left side. Honestly, I was surprised at the noise in the BG given the reputation of the D3S.

Thanks, Lance!

[Lance Peters]

I need the practice! NR and gaussian blur on the BG, sharpening, contrast, sat on the subject, slight crop off of the left side. Honestly, I was surprised at the noise in the BG given the reputation of the D3S.

Thanks, Lance!

Nice repost - looks pretty good.

I do not have any NR turned on in camera.

What did you learn??

[Alfred Forns]

.... great point Lance :) Hope someone can come up with it ... important !!!!

[Rachel Hollander]

Here's my attempt. I lightened the bird and added contrast as well as selective USM, darkened the BG, cloned out the spots, cloned out the mud in the lower left and cropped in from the left as well. While the BG had noise, I was impressed that the bird had none at ISO 1600.

Thanks for the project.

Rachel

[Bill Dix]

Good project, Lance. Here's my $0.02 worth. Rotated 1 degree CCW, trimmed a bit off the left, added a slivver of canvas on right to compensate for what was lost in rotation. Used Topaz Denoise on the BG, with setting for minimal detail retention (otherwise no blurring). Darkened BG except for bit behind bill tip. Cloned out spots here and there. Used Levels to bring in histogram from the right. Added light saturation to the bird, with a bit more on the eye. Used USM at 20/50/0 to add contrast to the bird, but used eraser on forehead to remove some of the contrast on the forehead which became a bit hot. Lightening the bird with Levels seemed to bring out some noise on the bird so I ran a very light pass of Topaz with detail retention. Very light USM on bird ( I think one pass at 100/0.3/0) since any more seemed to bring the noise back, and image seemed pretty sharp to start with. (edit, looking at the preview post, I might have sharpened a bit more, but here it is.) Nice image btw, and thanks for the project.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Lance,

Greetings. Pretty good looking soc... I would call this somewhat routine pp...

Neat Image NR - but not on head, neck, chest
Selectively flattened and toned down (separately) green background and reflections in foreground.
Spot removal
Slight S curve for tone/contrast selectively on bird
Separate curve for eye (lift & contrast).
Light smart sharpening on bird (This actually had a pretty big impact... a little surprised by that).
Slight crop from left and even slighter from top



Cheers,

-Michael-

[David Stephens]

Great image.

I like clknight's repost best, otherwise the bill blends into the background too much. I also like the slight counterclockwise rotation.

[Stuart Hill]

Does the noise in the background mean even with the d3s, exposing to the right is still critical?

regards.
Stu.

[Colin Knight]

Stu, the background is the right exposure, IMO, since it's not encroaching on the subject. However, it's "underexposed", at least it's darker than the subject, which makes the noise more apparent.

[David Thomasson]

Thanks, Lance. Good practice for all!

Background: faded with a curves adj layer, ran NR and lens blur.

Subject: Set white point, brightened with S/H and "paint with light" (blank layer in Color Dodge mode,
fill with black, paint with white at very low brush opacity, about 3% usually works well). Sharpened
with Topaz Detail.

[arash_hazeghi]

I like the original as well as David's repost, excellent shot Lance, very well done.

[Lance Peters]

Yes a tad under exposed - wanted to protect those whites.... NEXT shot i post will show why.

Still the question remains --- What did you learn??

[Bill Dix]

Yes a tad under exposed - wanted to protect those whites.... NEXT shot i post will show why.

Still the question remains --- What did you learn??

Message to me is what I already knew: get the exposure right in the camera (push histogram as far to the right as possible without blowing whites), in order to avoid introducing noise when you open it up in RAW. You're probably looking for something else (I'm eager to see the next one), but this was an issue for me in attempting PP.

Question for you: would this have been better if you had turned on the High ISO NR in the camera? Or would that rob you of detail?

[Harold Davis]

i gave it a try...here's my version. added canvas top and right and fixed the green color cast. i'm a dummy.....i dont know what i learned!!!:eek:

[arash_hazeghi]

Message to me is what I already knew: get the exposure right in the camera (push histogram as far to the right as possible without blowing whites), in order to avoid introducing noise when you open it up in RAW. You're probably looking for something else (I'm eager to see the next one), but this was an issue for me in attempting PP.

Question for you: would this have been better if you had turned on the High ISO NR in the camera? Or would that rob you of detail?

No, D3/D700/D3s do not apply in-camera NR at ISO 1600 because it is too low for them, there is hardly any noise in these cameras at ISO 1600 and a scene like this. The fine grain that you see in the BG is a result of down-sampling and sharpening which will highly exaggerate whatever residual noise that might be there , you should always apply noise reduction on the BG separately as the final step when you downsample the images.

In-camera NR is generally poor and it is only applied to JPEG files, it does not affect RAW capture, if you use ACR in-camera NR settings will be ignored. If you use manufacturer converter it will read an apply those settings to the RAW, but you can disable it. Any way, in-camera NR should be avoided as it often chews up the buffer too.


Hope this helps

[arash_hazeghi]

i gave it a try...here's my version. added canvas top and right and fixed the green color cast. i'm a dummy.....i dont know what i learned!!!:eek:

This is actually a good example of how NR chews up the detail, put your repost side by side to OP and see how the fine plumage detail is gone, this shows that you should apply NR to BG only :)

Best

[Bill Dix]

No, D3/D700/D3s do not apply in-camera NR at ISO 1600 because it is too low for them, there is hardly any noise in these cameras at ISO 1600 and a scene like this. The fine grain that you see in the BG is a result of down-sampling and sharpening which will highly exaggerate whatever residual noise that might be there , you should always apply noise reduction on the BG separately as the final step when you downsample the images.

In-camera NR is generally poor and it is only applied to JPEG files, it does not affect RAW capture, if you use ACR in-camera NR settings will be ignored. If you use manufacturer converter it will read an apply those settings to the RAW, but you can disable it. Any way, in-camera NR should be avoided as it often chews up the buffer too.


Hope this helps

Thanks Arash. Helpful information.

[Lance Peters]

No, D3/D700/D3s do not apply in-camera NR at ISO 1600 because it is too low for them, there is hardly any noise in these cameras at ISO 1600 and a scene like this. The fine grain that you see in the BG is a result of down-sampling and sharpening which will highly exaggerate whatever residual noise that might be there , you should always apply noise reduction on the BG separately as the final step when you downsample the images.

In-camera NR is generally poor and it is only applied to JPEG files, it does not affect RAW capture, if you use ACR in-camera NR settings will be ignored. If you use manufacturer converter it will read an apply those settings to the RAW, but you can disable it. Any way, in-camera NR should be avoided as it often chews up the buffer too.


Hope this helps

Good explanation Arash!!

[Lance Peters]

Still haven't found the answer I was looking for - Its simple....

[David Thomasson]

Still haven't found the answer I was looking for - Its simple....

I have no idea what you're looking for, and I'm certainly no photographer,
but one bit of the tech info that caught my attention was the matrix metering.
I probably would have used spot metering on this one.

[Lance Peters]

I have no idea what you're looking for, and I'm certainly no photographer,
but one bit of the tech info that caught my attention was the matrix metering.
I probably would have used spot metering on this one.

HI David - nope I wasn't thinking SPOT - too hard once any action starts.

Point I was trying to make is.....

Get it as close as possible IN CAMERA and there is very little PP work that needs to be done.
Only simple adjustments - quick and easy!!!

[Harold Davis]

well, that's exactly what i was thinking when i opened it up, but......

it only needed a slight s/h, nr on the bg, and sharpen very little. i went way beyond that, just because......

[David Thomasson]

Point I was trying to make is.....

Get it as close as possible IN CAMERA and there is very little PP work that needs to be done.

Well .. YEAH! But that's on a par with the advice to buy low and sell high! :D

[Alfred Forns]

Glad the point came out .... even the D3s will be noisy with any under exposure !!! ... as Lance said you need to get right in camera !!

Great thread and some cool re posts !!! Big Thanks to all !!

[Dave Mills]

I really enjoyed seeing the different ways folks handled the image. Lots of personal interpretations on how the image should look. Good exercise Lance and contributors!

[Rachel Hollander]

Lance - Thanks for the lesson.

Rachel

[Desmond Chan]

Point I was trying to make is.....

Get it as close as possible IN CAMERA and there is very little PP work that needs to be done.
Only simple adjustments - quick and easy!!!

If so, why entitled it "PP Practice" ? And "have a go and see what you could come up with". I think that's what David Thomasson did :) When in fact what you had in mind was: "not a whole lot need to be done" :confused:

To me, like many of the image that you've posted and invited us the mortals to work on, this one is already very good as is judging from what I see on my monitor. Good colors, good details. A little adjustment and it's perfect...thanks God I read the responses before I pulled out all the make-a-photograph-looks-like-a-painting plug-ins from my drawer :D

[Lance Peters]

If so, why entitled it "PP Practice" ? And "have a go and see what you could come up with". I think that's what David Thomasson did :) When in fact what you had in mind was: "not a whole lot need to be done" :confused:

To me, like many of the image that you've posted and invited us the mortals to work on, this one is already very good as is judging from what I see on my monitor. Good colors, good details. A little adjustment and it's perfect...thanks God I read the responses before I pulled out all the make-a-photograph-looks-like-a-painting plug-ins from my drawer :D

Hi Desmond - lots of different skill levels here! - Often see images totally overdone in the PP.

Idea was to get those new to the forum to notice the difference between what is required when the IN CAMERA result is close to what you want - only minor adjustments required and very little time.
Also demonstrates that different people have different visions for the image - none are incorrect.