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- Name
- Joe
- Edit My Images
- Yes
You crushed the whites
I would crop out the background highlight & the right side a little and restore the white slider.
Also - Vibrance is a better way to boost colour.
The saturation slider is generally more aggressive than the vibrance slider in that it affects all colors in the image, regardless of how saturated they already are.
The vibrance slider only affects muted colors and leaves skin tones and already-saturated colors alone. This creates a much more natural-looking image.
A RAW file is actually a true representation of the image your taking, i.e. the bird in my original image is actually the true colours of what I would see by eye & that the post processing is all about just sharpening the edges/vibrance ect... but focusing on localised whites/blacks/shadow/highlights issues & not playing too much with the main subject. (Unless of course your trying to use post editing to create a creative shot).
Birds are soft. They are covered in downy feathers. What I said above about only moving sliders a little bit particularly applies to the sharpness slider or you will end up with a bird that looks like it has been carved in something solid. When using the sharpening slider, press the Alt key to mask the sharpening. The screen will go blank and then move the slider until just the bits you want sharpened are visible.
You’re going too far I’d say - why so much dehaze and positive black? Wildlife often benefits from negative dehaze and negative clarity, but go gentle!
Can anyone kindly offer any hints/tips as to where to begin with noise reduction & sharpening, I know you have very kindly given some tips above but i'm now talking in a general sense rather thank just the bird image i used above.
Am I also correct in saying that; you actually want to apply as little NR as possible & that it is better to shoot at as low ISO as possible to avoid NR & sharpening loss in the image, to which if your then need to bring up the exposure this can be done in post processing (ie not affecting NR or Sharpness).
Assuming you're not using Fuji, I'd suggest setting Sharpening to about 55-65 APS-C or 65-80 FF, Radius to 0.7 or 0.8, leave detail alone, hold down the alt key & adjust masking until the bits with detail are still white while the bits without detail aren't. Normally I'd suggest leaving luminance noise reduction alone unless you're using really high ISO & the noise is worse than losing fine detail. Colour noise reduction can be useful however to get rid of the technicolour pixels caused by high ISO.
Yes - apply as little change as possible, as much as necessary (and then perhaps back off a bit).
Thank you very much for this, very helpful & much appreciated. Only thing is I'm not using Fuji, but I'm using an Olympus M4/3 so would I be right in saying using the lower end of your APS-C recommendation for the Sharpening amount (say 50-55)?
Thanks again, Joe
That should be fine. There are times you might use a bit more, but watch out for edges looking un-natural.