Before and After?

[Phill D]

How about a before and after thread where people post before and after processed images with details if they want to include them?

Here is a my simple starter using the recent shot of Curbar Edge I posted to see if the idea is of interest. I'm pretty new to this so I'm sure others will have a lot more dramatic examples.

Before


and After


Initially I exposed for the dramatic sky and took the shot. I then basically lifted the shadows and dropped the highlights then added a bit of clarity and vibrance all in Lightroom. I was surprised how much difference it made without resorting to graduation changes.

All comments and other examples welcome in this thread.

[MJ224]

Re: Before and After?

I think that is a really good idea Phil. It will help us not so good photographers to see the processing possibilities, and to see what others actually shoot and the final result.....................

[Ross the fiddler]

Re: Before and After?

I've shown this before but it is my favourite.
Jake, Toby & Max. (Jake is no longer with us)

EDIT: Maybe it should be said that any level of decent editing can really only be done with raw files as this would not have been possible from the JPEGs.

Original jpeg (E-M5).


Processed in Capture One, recovering highlights & healing (removing green wire frame).



Another more recent example is with Beatrix (E-M1 Mk II).

[OM USer]

Re: Before and After?

Its a good idea. Unfortunately my best processing has been on other forum members pictures that they have posted and asked for improvement suggestions.

[MJ224]

Re: Before and After?



Pair of Fieldfares 70 metres away, BEFORE



And after a bit of tweaking.................

[chris]

Re: Before and After?

This will be a very interesting thread, I’m not at all up on editing, but keen to improve, at the moment I just shove sliders about to see what happens, without any real method to it! So seeing what’s possible will be an inspiration

I also never know if it’s best to start with a under/over/correctly exposed shot??? There seems conflicting advise out there

[shenstone]

Re: Before and After?

2 clicks (Smart lighting & Clearview) in DXO

before

After


Sky was a little over done in this I think (I can redo that better in the new Photolab) but I have got a lot less worried about underexposed sections since working in RAW the recovery potential is immense

Regards
Andy

[Phill D]

Re: Before and After?

These look really good guys and quite a variety of post processing techniques being show already. Thanks for having a go. I definitely agree with Andy's comment about the latitude in the RAW files.

[yorky]

Re: Before and After?

An interesting idea, keep at at it!

[Matt_Hirst]

Re: Before and After?

Thanks for posting this thread - looking forward to further examples and tips.


Matt

[Bikie John]

Re: Before and After?

Here is a rugby example that worked out quite well. It was against the sun in January, so the sun was pretty low, but the air was clear (so not too much haze) and there was a lot of light (so I only had to jack the ISO up to 800).

Before, as rendered by default settings in Lightroom:



After, with crop plus topping & tailing and so on:



E-M1 Mk I with 300mm f/4. File has full EXIF if you feel like digging, I can also describe the detailed adjustments if you want.

More to come .... John

[Matt_Hirst]

Re: Before and After?

Please post what adjustments you did as it helps those of us just learning.

Matt

[Bikie John]

Re: Before and After?

Sure Matt.

Crop - should be obvious - by default Lightroom will keep the original aspect ratio and this suited me as I wanted to prepare 800 x 600 versions for our club website.

In this case I didn't need to do any colour adjustments, I often find this is the most difficult of all to get right.

For the tonal adjustments, the final values it ended up with are exposure +.12, contrast +33, highlights -60, shadows +48, white point left unchanged black point -57.

Shots like this have all the tones concentrated in the middle of the histogram, which is why the before version looks so flat. Because it is quite bright there is data towards the right, but nothing on the left. So normally my first step is to adjust the black & white points to give decent shadows and highlights. Then adjust the exposure so that the mid-tones look about right - our first impression of a picture comes from the mid-tones. Then look at lifting the shadows and reducing the highlights. Having done all this it still looked a bit flat so I increased contrast to get some life back into it. Often this is quite an iterative process - lifting the shadows can leave you with no blacks for example so you have to pull them down again.

I hope this helps. A couple more examples coming soon.

John

[Bikie John]

Re: Before and After?

A more tricky rugby one. This was two weeks earlier, so the sun was even lower, and it was quite hazy so even though it was probably closer than the first shot there was more veiling flare. It was also darker so shot at ISO 1600.



And the after:



There is a slight crop, but not much. Final tonal adjustments were exposure +.71, contrast +36, highlights and white point left unchanged, shadows +31, blacks -76.

Looking at the LR history I started with black point -57 to get some proper blacks, then exposure +.48. This general lightening moved the black point up, so black point -14, which made everything darker, so another +.23 on exposure. That got the basic parameters more or less right but the shadows were very heavy so the +31 lifted them up (perhaps a bit too much as you can see some noise appearing in the black shorts). It was still a bit lifeless so added some contrast. After all this it looked too yellow (not surprising in the late sun) so I reduced the colour temperature (the blue-yellow axis) from 5000 to 4500, didn't change the tint (green-magenta axis). The colour temp adjustment lifted the blacks a little too much so I gave the black point a final tweak of -5 for the final result.

It sounds complicated but it's actually a series of simple steps.

Hope this is helpful ... John

[Matt_Hirst]

Re: Before and After?

That is superb what you have done with the last photo, I have a number of shots that are hazy and I've just deleted them but at least now I know I can rescue them.

Mstt