Clives recent Lapwing in flight image prompted me to head out on a wet and dull morning to the north Kent marshes to grab some images of these birds, just to prove that you don’t always need great light to get good images… a bit of careful PP can help so thought I would outline the stages I took in conversion…
Firstly and most important is to get it right in camera, hence this is virtually full frame, just a slight crop from the left to A4 proportions.
Download from card with downloader pro
Weed the OOF blurred images in Breezebrowser.
Open in C1Pro, first set the white balance… differing w/b will affect the clipping levels.In this case I choose a preset of cloudy and made a slight adjustment from there to get it looking right.
Adjust the exposure if needed, my normal rule of thumb is that if the adjustment is within +/- 1/3 stop I got it reasonably close, +/- 2/3 I got it wrong but can still use the image…. Greater than that well its filed into the possibly only if I got every other image wrong folder.
Set the white and black points using the levels sliders, set the program to show highlight/ shadow clipping then bring the highlight slider in until clipping just shows then back off ever so slightly, do the same with the shadows but you can allow some clipping simply to enrich any true blacks.
On this image taken under the poor conditions prevalent a boost in mid tone contrast was needed which was achieved with an ‘S’ curve, rather than push the highlights up and the shadows down I chose to move both points inwards slightly so as not to effect the highlights/ shadows, but increasing the gradient of the curve for the mid tones thus increasing their contrast..
Saturation was boosted ever so slightly (my default has a slight boost)
The image was then exported as a 16 bit TIFF, tonality was checked in PS (hint… hit the ‘F’ key the image will then be displayed against a grey bg which will enable you to judge overall tonality better), do any minor (if you have converted correctly they will be very minor) adjustment to levels or curves. Hit ‘F’ twice to return to the normal PS screen. Apply capture sharpening and save the image as your master…
HTH and all the best
Phil
Posted by Brian McGeough on February 12, 2007 at 7:44 AM
Hi Phil,
Great Lapwing shot, colours look spot on and looks pin sharp too. Im off to try mt F button thanks for the tip and great break down of your work flow.
Cheers
Brian
Posted by Richard Peters on February 12, 2007 at 7:46 AM
A nice shot. I was just this second looking over my shots of these from the very same marshes. They are very similar but the rain in yours adds something extra to the image which I really like
Posted by Tim Munsey on February 12, 2007 at 8:22 AM
Nice shot Phil, like the rain streaks. Good tip about PS, will give it a go.
Tim
Posted by Clive_S on February 12, 2007 at 12:46 PM
Well Phil, you did say you lived near the Lapwing capital and here's a superb resident. Beautifully composed and exposed and the rain adds some nice 'atmosphere' too!
Posted by David Kjaer on February 12, 2007 at 1:03 PM
Hi Phil
Nice well composed image and beautifully processed as usual!
David
Posted by Rob Fisher on February 12, 2007 at 4:07 PM
Phil,
Thanks for the info on your workflow, great tip about 'F'
Great image also, love the colours.
Rob
Posted by Philip Kirkham on February 12, 2007 at 5:06 PM
Thanks for that Phil, great photo and excellent information.
Best wishes
Phil
Discussion
10 repliesHi,
Clives recent Lapwing in flight image prompted me to head out on a wet and dull morning to the north Kent marshes to grab some images of these birds, just to prove that you don’t always need great light to get good images… a bit of careful PP can help so thought I would outline the stages I took in conversion…
Firstly and most important is to get it right in camera, hence this is virtually full frame, just a slight crop from the left to A4 proportions.
Download from card with downloader pro
Weed the OOF blurred images in Breezebrowser.
Open in C1Pro, first set the white balance… differing w/b will affect the clipping levels.In this case I choose a preset of cloudy and made a slight adjustment from there to get it looking right.
Adjust the exposure if needed, my normal rule of thumb is that if the adjustment is within +/- 1/3 stop I got it reasonably close, +/- 2/3 I got it wrong but can still use the image…. Greater than that well its filed into the possibly only if I got every other image wrong folder.
Set the white and black points using the levels sliders, set the program to show highlight/ shadow clipping then bring the highlight slider in until clipping just shows then back off ever so slightly, do the same with the shadows but you can allow some clipping simply to enrich any true blacks.
On this image taken under the poor conditions prevalent a boost in mid tone contrast was needed which was achieved with an ‘S’ curve, rather than push the highlights up and the shadows down I chose to move both points inwards slightly so as not to effect the highlights/ shadows, but increasing the gradient of the curve for the mid tones thus increasing their contrast..
Saturation was boosted ever so slightly (my default has a slight boost)
The image was then exported as a 16 bit TIFF, tonality was checked in PS (hint… hit the ‘F’ key the image will then be displayed against a grey bg which will enable you to judge overall tonality better), do any minor (if you have converted correctly they will be very minor) adjustment to levels or curves. Hit ‘F’ twice to return to the normal PS screen. Apply capture sharpening and save the image as your master…
HTH and all the best
Phil
Great Lapwing shot, colours look spot on and looks pin sharp too. Im off to try mt F button thanks for the tip and great break down of your work flow.
Cheers
Brian
Tim
Nice well composed image and beautifully processed as usual!
David
Thanks for the info on your workflow, great tip about 'F'
Great image also, love the colours.
Rob
Best wishes
Phil
The rain is a great touch in this image
Raff
Graeme