Can i be cheeky........??

Being fairly new to all this photoshop lark and just learning step by step i wondered if any of you more experienced photoshoppers would be willing to have a tweak with one of my images, been out today taking a few pics and would just like to see what can be done with an image ... will email if any takers!!!!

Go on then send me a copy.

Tim

Hi Andy. my e-mail address is canham 'at' gofast.co.uk, and I would be happy to have a play and see what we can do. I spend most of my working day in Photoshop, so If I can help feel free to ask any questions..........

Stewart..............

Hi send me one.

Phillip.

philliptomkinson 'at' blueyonder.co.uk

Hi Andy,

I love having a tinker, send me one please.

robert.howard10"at"btopenworld.com

Regards

Rob

Hi Andy,

Don't forget to let us see the results of some of this photoshopping!!!

Brian

I would love to have ago to.

email is vince at barnowl.co.uk

Regards

Vince

PS: Can we upload the finish result?

Hi Andy

I would suggest posting your image on the forum and invite everyone to have a go with it. Forum members can then post back their revised versions for discussion. I reckon we all could learn something from this exercise.

cheers

Sean

Hi Sean

I think it would be better to upload ours first then upload the original followed by Andy's mod

Just an idea

Hi all,

This sounds like a great idea. I agree we could all learn somthing from this.

I look forward to looking at the results.

Rob

My email is t.s.munsey 'at' leeds.ac.uk
I just spotted a lack of attachment thingy with npn email facility.

Tim

This should be fun and very useful.......fire me a copy too! - p.williams 'at' lancaster.ac.uk

Paul

will email you all now!! wow, what a response, pressure is on to choose a decent image now!!!

Email sent!!!

Here's my effort.

OK here's mine!!

Regards

Rob

nice tim, what did you do?

Now that would be telling .
I opened it up in Nikon NX reduced the exposure to recover blown areas, used D-lighting to bring it back to life, went to photoshop for cropping, sharpening, spot removal (boy have you got a dirty sensor), noise reduction, some curve fiddling to bring up the midtones careful not to effect whites. I did some local contrast work, saved the file and opened it up in breezebrowser, proofed it for the web, opened it back up in photoshop to do a final sharpen and oops adjusted file size to 100kb, dam I should've sharpened after this but hey.

Cheers

Tim

thanks, yes the sensor needs a little bit of a clean!!!!

Ok. here's my go.....

how did you do it???

Errr…..I forgot!.....well not quite…. I think I do this sort of stuff intuitively nowadays. One thing for certain is that I refuse to spend vast amounts of time on an image. If I have to spend more than maybe ten to fifteen minutes on a shot then I know that I’ve messed up the bit that matters i.e. taking the shot in the first place.

I’ve no doubt that everyone else who has a go at this will have a different workflow. My workflow depends on what I’m seeing in the image when I open it. Some experts may be horrified when they read the workflow below, but it seems to work for me! On occasions I do play with curves and other stuff but on the whole I just like to keep things as easy and quick as possible.

Anyway, for this one I kept it very simple, I opened in NC4.4, reset to low contrast and knocked back the exposure just over half a stop to recover the highlights. Also gave it a bit of a colour boost in NC (only a bit).

I then passed it over to PS2. Added a bit more saturation and lightness in the Hue/Saturation dialog box, and then adjusted the contrast and brightness a bit. Did a first sharpen (150, 0.2, 0) and then resized for web. Had a minor fiddle with the brightness and contrast again and then ran two or three unsharp masks at the previous settings………and that was it as they say.

Paul

P.S I couldn't be bothered sorting the dirt out!

Hi hear's mine I used nikon capture 4.4.2 I have a preset set off settings that I use for my images I applied this and then set the white bal from its forhead then reset the red and blue channel to a value of 1, then sent it to photoshop 7 gave it a light going over with neat image then selected the background and gave that another going over with neat image then a final round of USM at 100, .6 , 0.

Phillip.

thanks everyone, did anyone like the photo???

Hi all,

Looks like the sun went in between Tims and Phillips convertion ,
and yes any nice pecker picture too Andy.

Brian

which version to people prefer????

Which version...?

What time/light was the 'pecker photographed in?

was mid afternoon with a low warm sun

Hi,

I like the photo, it's a nice portrait.

It's tough to call between Tim and Paul's but I guess Paul's has it for me.

I think Paul’s effort is slightly sharper.

Well done all, very interesting to see general workflow techniques.

Rob

'..mid afternoon with a low warm sun'
...then I'd probably pick something somewhere between Philip's version and Rob's version. Tim's and Paul's appear too 'warm' to my eye, even for late afternoon at this time of year.

Hi All,

Sorry just got back to this, Have I posted mine the incorrect way to how the image was taken it's just when I rotated it in CS2 it looked odd upright but the image did look like it was taken with the pecker upside down??
Am I right or am I losing the plot

Regards

Rob

pecker was taken upright

This is an incredibly useful thread - thanks to everyone who worked on the image - I am now starting to understnad some of the stuff I need to do to optimise my own images.

Thanks!
Niall