Small fly

That worked well Mike. Nice and sharp and the DoF falls very nicely.

I see you used f/11. Did you crop much/at all? (I'm thinking you probably must have cropped to get that DoF with f/11, but maybe not. I have an ulterior motive for asking, to do with my thinking about Sony kit. :))

Very little indeed in our garden too. I find that rather worrying. That sort of fly (or one's looking rather similar) is one of the things I do see, although even that is mainly at the local woods rather than in our garden at the moment.
 
A Metz mecablitz 44 af-1 with a home made ice cream tub diffuser. But I think I took that one with my old cheap Jessops flash and the same diffuser

785f437d95a90b2dcba666b227b79f85.jpg
 
I feel there is more to get from the image by processing
 
mjmountain said:
That's nice, much brighter - would love those workflow shots please.
Click to expand...


Here goes

First what I did in LR which was pretty and seems wrong.
I adjusted the WB and reduced the expsoure to contraol the highlights. I reduced contrast by reducing the highlights and increasing the shadows. The area below the leaf can be lifted with a a grad filter in LR too. I worked on the carlity vibrance and saturation and exported to PS

More could be done in LR by using teh radial filter or targeted adjustment brush.

LR processing by Alf Branch, on Flickr


I then worked on a layer with the fly and its shadow selected the brighten the fly but still no contrast
If you only use LR a radial filter or targeted adjustment brush could do this

PS fly layer 1 the fly by Alf Branch, on Flickr

The then worked on the background in another layer

PS fly layer 2 the background by Alf Branch, on Flickr

Then I worked on the overall contrast with a curves layer at this point I can gow back and tweek the other layers if I need to

PS fly layer 2 the background by Alf Branch, on Flickr

My final part in PS is to convert the original layer to a smart filter and apply a smart sharpening filter and save the shot in LR where I export the JPG from
 
Last edited:
mjmountain said:
Lots to chew over there Alf, thanks.

M
Click to expand...

If there is anything you do not understand let me know. I am sure someone will be along soon to tell you it can be done easier than that.
 
alfbranch said:
Here goes
Click to expand...

Good result Alf, and nice explanation of what you did too.

@mjmountain, Mike, here is a different interpretation, this one done entirely in Lightroom to follow up on Alf's point that various operations could be done there rather than in Photoshop (or whatever else). I will happily explain what I did if you like, but my main intention here is simply to illustrate the (rather obvious) point that an image can be taken in different directions; and how we choose to make our images look is a very personal thing, depending on our personal tastes as to colour, contrast, composition etc. As with the look, so it is with the tools. There are loads of different tools that can be used, alone and in combination, and that is another area for experimentation to find what suits each of us best.


NOT MY IMAGE - mjmountain, small fly LR6 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
 
Thank you for posting details of your processing, I think it really helps those of us with less experience to learn how to get our images looking their best. Many thanks
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top