A sad looking fly ;p

The focus is good Darren, but they look rather dark overall, and especially the fly's body. There is more to be seen there.

Do you do any post processing? If you do, then these images can be adjusted to show more. I can't show you an example because you have Edit my images set to No.

In this case it isn't simply a matter of raising the brightness in post processing, and it isn't something that can be done by changing the capture exposure.

If you do do post processing you might want to follow up on this. Otherwise, I'll try to remember not to mention this again.
 
GardenersHelper said:
The focus is good Darren, but they look rather dark overall, and especially the fly's body. There is more to be seen there.

Do you do any post processing? If you do, then these images can be adjusted to show more. I can't show you an example because you have Edit my images set to No.

In this case it isn't simply a matter of raising the brightness in post processing, and it isn't something that can be done by changing the capture exposure.

If you do do post processing you might want to follow up on this. Otherwise, I'll try to remember not to mention this again.
Click to expand...
Changed to Yes. I have a rudimentary understanding of post process editing. Its something I do with my coil photos a lot, but its different for them as its more artistic and often results in purposely causing darker areas.
 
MikraCoils said:
Changed to Yes.
Click to expand...

Excellent.

MikraCoils said:
I have a rudimentary understanding of post process editing. Its something I do with my coil photos a lot, but its different for them as its more artistic and often results in purposely causing darker areas.
Click to expand...

OK. As you know it is a matter of taste/artistic interpretation as to exactly what looks good. So with this example I'm only trying to illustrate the sort of thing that can be done. As to what your images would best look like is obviously a matter for you to decide. And if you don't like what I did that's fine of course - we all have different tastes. :)

If you like I can explain what I did.

What are you using for your post processing btw?

Hopefully you will see this flip between your posted version and my edit. (It is an animated gif - these only use 256 colours so the colours may not look right).


NOT MY IMAGE - MikraCoils fly LR by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
 
GardenersHelper said:
Excellent.



OK. As you know it is a matter of taste/artistic interpretation as to exactly what looks good. So with this example I'm only trying to illustrate the sort of thing that can be done. As to what your images would best look like is obviously a matter for you to decide. And if you don't like what I did that's fine of course - we all have different tastes. :)

If you like I can explain what I did.

What are you using for your post processing btw?
Click to expand...

It would be extremely helpful if you could explain what you did.

At the moment I am using trial versions of Photoshop/lightroom and dxo optics pro. I'm more inclined towards Photoshop personally and will probably purchase a subscription to that.

Thanks Nick
 
MikraCoils said:
It would be extremely helpful if you could explain what you did.

At the moment I am using trial versions of Photoshop/lightroom and dxo optics pro. I'm more inclined towards Photoshop personally and will probably purchase a subscription to that.

Thanks Nick
Click to expand...

OK, since you have Lightroom this will be easy. I'll try to explain the thinking/process I went through.

When I looked at the images in the post they looked a bit dark to me.

I went over to your Flickr and downloaded a large size version of the one that I worked on.

This is what it looked like in Lightroom. The histogram over at the top right confirmed my initial impression - there is a gap at the top of the histogram and this means that the brightest brightnesses are not being used. This results (as does a gap at the bottom end) in a flat-looking image.


MikraCoils Fly Lightroom 01 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

The first step was to close up that gap. I'll show you the sequence I went through (which you can track in the History panel on the left), but in retrospect I think there was a better way, which I'll describe at the end.

I moved the Whites slider to the right. This increases the brightness of the very brightest areas in the image, so you can make the brightest of them the brightest available brightness. Actually, I didn't move the slider directly. I held down the Shift key and double-clicked on the triangle in the middle of the Whites slider. This makes Lightroom shift the slider so as to close up the gap at the top of the histogram.


MikraCoils Fly Lightroom 02 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

I now wanted to make the dark areas on the fly's body lighter, so I moved the Shadows slider all the way to the right. The Shadows are the dark areas which are not absolutely the darkest areas (those are the Blacks).


MikraCoils Fly Lightroom 03 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

Now the very darkest areas looked not dark enough to me, so I moved the Blacks slider over to the left.


MikraCoils Fly Lightroom 04 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

Now the light areas on the leaf looked a bit distractingly bright to me, so I turned down the Highlights, which are the bright areas which are not absolutely the brightest (that is the Whites).


MikraCoils Fly Lightroom 05 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

Those areas still looked a bit bright so I turned down the Highlights a bit more.


MikraCoils Fly Lightroom 06 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

And that was the version I exported and used in the animated gif I posted.

I'm not sure why I started with the Whites. I remember starting with the Exposure but not liking the effect, reversing it and starting again with the Whites.

According to a book I read about Lightroom, it is designed so you go from the top down in the Basic panel on the right. I remembered this when starting to draft this response and I had another go, this time starting with Exposure. I won't go through the whole sequence because you can recreate it for yourself by working up from the bottom of the History panel in this illustration.


MikraCoils Fly Lightroom 10 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

I started by holding down the Shift key and double clicking on the little triangle in the middle of the Exposure slider. Lightroom moved the Exposure slider up by just over one stop. I am always a bit suspicious about what Lightroom does in these circumstances - it often seems to make the light areas look too bright for my liking. I imagine that was what I reacted to first time around. However, this time I left the Exposure where it was and went through steps shown in the History panel, as before reacting each time to what I didn't like about the image.

In fact I did just three steps - Exposure, Highlights and Shadows - thought it looked ok and so I exported the image. However, when I looked at the exported image I wasn't quite comfortable with it so I made the other two changes shown at the top of the History panel.

When you have done both of these versions you will be able to compare them and see that they are rather different. I think I prefer the later one that started with Exposure. But that is by the by. Over to you now. Enjoy. :)
 
It's a bit of an aside, and probably not very relevant to your journey, but you may have seen from my image posts that I use DXO Optics Pro. I don't know/recall what camera you are using. I use a small sensor camera and it has a very noisy sensor. That is why I use DXO Optics Pro, because it has very good noise reduction for RAW images. I expect you are using a larger sensor camera and so that particular issue may well not be an issue for you. It might be - it all gets a bit complicated, lots of ifs and buts I'm afraid.

I would have thought Lightroom or Photoshop would be a better bet for you at this stage (or possibly Elements), not least because all of these let you do local adjustments and DXO Optics Pro doesn't. That may not matter to you just yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it does come to matter later.

You'll also see that I use Silkypix Developer Pro (with DXO) these days, whereas I previously used Lightroom (with DXO). I am certainly not recommending that you try Silkypix. I really like it, now, but it is (or it was for me) extremely difficult to get my head around. The same applied to (a much earlier version of) Photoshop actually. Perhaps it is easier to use now - I have not used a modern version. But once I tried Lightroom after using Photoshop for a while I found Lightroom much more intuitive to use, very fluid in moving from eye to hand as it were. I find it much better than Photoshop in that respect, and in that way better than Elements too. It did take me a little while to get used to Lightroom (not even remotely like the effort with Silkypix though), but there are loads of videos you can watch and once you see some of these Lightroom facilities being used they seem (to me) to be very easy to get the hang of. The mechanics of Photoshop seem (well, seemed to me for the version I used) to be rather more esoteric and disjointed.

All FWIW. You will be making your own option assessments of course, as must we all.
 
Thanks a lot Nick that helped tremendously and I'm now in lightroom playing. I need to get a grasp of the basics too, as I dont actually even understand basics like what the histogram represents
 
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