Ian, this might not be to everyone's liking but I did a closer crop and also turned him more on a diagonal, cloning a bit of branch at the bottom of the frame to fit him in this way. You could also turn him the other direction so he was looking up instead of down.
Just to give you some ideas...I also increased the blacks in the reds and lightened up the BG just a bit with a curves tweak.
Jules, please explain how you brightened him up. Your PP looks great and mine looks muddy next to it. I'm not very skilled at PP yet. I have the tools (CS5), but not the skill :)
Ian, I can explain what I did here but if you are at all unfamiliar with how to do a curves adjustment try googling that phrase and read a few of the 8 million explanations that are online. I'd also recommend getting a good Photoshop book because it will make a world of difference when you learn the basics and start using them as part of your workflow. (I love "The Missing Manual" books - there's one for each CS version!)
Here's what I did:
When I saw that your image looked a little "muddy" I decided to start with an exposure layer adjustment. See how the wings look almost hazy (probably from the light source - it sometimes does this.) Whenever you have a "hazy" or "foggy" looking image I like to start with an exposure adjustment but curves and levels can also work. It's just that the "offset" slider in the exposure level tends to bring down that "hazy" feel by adding a deepening to the dark tones better than the other 2 options.
So I set the following around these markers on the exposure layer: Exposure +0.24 / offset -0.0288 / Gamma +0.89.
Then I opened a curves adjustment layer next. See how there are dark areas on the lefthand side of the frame now that we've made the exposure adjustment? The dragonfly looks good now but parts of the BG are a bit too dark. So I grabbed the hand with the up/down arrow next to it (right next to the RGB dropdown box on the top left area of the curves box.) I clicked on one of those darker areas and that put a black dot on my curves "line" showing me where that exact dark tone was. I then grabbed the line at that marked point and pulled it up and to the left just a bit to make the straight line "curve" upward a little bit. Each time and each image will be different but move the line and find where you like the changes the best and then save it.
I ended up with the following changes: Output = 191 / Input = 175. (You can enter these numbers into the little boxes at the bottom of the adjustment layer and get the instant change I made without using the hand tool to find your exact spot on the graph.)
Finally, to help even out the BG even more I combined all the bottom layers ("ctrl + "alt" + "e") and then used the eyedropper tool (set to a 3x3 sample) and clicked in the upper right corner where the BG was most even in what looked like the middle tone for that beige color. It wasn't as dark as the left side and it wasn't as bright as right below the df's body. That put the same color in the FG box on the toolbar. I then chose a soft brush set at 30% opacity and brushed over any area that was too light or too dark and this evened out the BG. (Some areas I went over a few times; some I only went over once.) To get in close to the dragonfly without going over him I zoomed in on different areas and went right up next to him and the perch. If you do overlap onto the wings or body just add a layer mask to that layer and then "erase" the marks by changing the FG/BG button to white and painting the changes back out.
Hope this helps! It's hard to understand just by reading it...you really have to do it to understand why each step is important to the process and you also have to understand that why these were the layer adjustments I made you could have done this about five different ways using different adjustment layers and you still would have ended up with the same look. That's why getting a good Photoshop book really helps...it explains how each different tool works and then you learn through trial and error when each one works best in different types of lighting and different types of images. :)
Last edited by Julie Kenward; 09-11-2010 at 01:11 AM.
Jules, thanks so much for the play-by-play. I have a good PS book, but I'll be honest that it's hard to sit down and go through it inch-by-inch. I've picked up the forest, but have missed a lot of the trees :) I'm going to buckle down this weekend and force myself to work on it.
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