Critique The scent a portrait

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Stu
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Same chap as the wider Roe buck image posted previously. At the exact point where one is mubbling quietly about an extender and self confidence

shocking photography cropped from landscape cause I was too slow flinnin de camera Same techs as last

_S2I9145 scent portrait sm j by Stuart Philpott, on Flickr

cheers for looking

stu
 
Hi Stu,

I've had a look at the files you sent me, I think one of them was just after this one, so I'll put it up here for comparison if that's ok. Image quality is good, you could have exposed a bit more to the right, but you're not far off.

In my opinion there is plenty more detail in the file - quick disclaimer in that I've done this on the laptop rather than the normal screen so the changes may be a little OTT!

I'll put this one up here then over the next day or 2 when I'm off nights I'll fire you an email with the TIFFS and an explanation

Stu-TP5.jpg

Mike
 
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Ha you are a clever guy Mike;) and cheers again for the help. Ere buddy I know it's an early stage just asked Shaz what she thought simply I just got a roasting......."well why can't you just do that":LOL: ferkin 'eck she saw 6 bl**dy barns owls yesterday her fav................. she could be a little bit grateful .:D No images light was shocking but I wont do that many times in a life

Serious head on

noted on EXP and appreciated, I thought I was there Mike with these . I've been underexposing a bit too often of late so trying to address that : I appreciate that little gem. another third of a stop would that be about right?? .

Mike was I right on the veggies re the earlier frames that's the haze you saw isn't it?? Is the IQ ok on the closer frames?? I'm wary of pushing the sharps on this type of bright roe image Mike they can so easily look like a porcupine very interested to see what you do there I haven't pushed this much at all only set to 4 in DPP nowt selective

Buddy thank you for this a huge help already.............. when you have time Mike no rush:)

stu
 
Nowt wrong with either of the images here but the edit has improved it . It`s a shame that images are not just about what you get in the camera anymore , good editing skills can make a WORLD of difference . I am envious of all these editing geniuses , wish I had more skill in this part of image making .
 
OK, Stu has sent me the RAW file and asked me to put up a tutorial on this shot, apologies if anyone thinks I'm trying to take over this thread. It may be useful, it may not.

Please note, there are 101 ways to do similar things in PP, this is only a suggestion, not supposed to be the definitive and only way. It'd be nice to get some discussion and ideas out of it as I'm by no means an expert.

This probably seems very long winded, but when you get the idea and into a routine its just a couple of minutes in reality. I sometimes do more techy stuff but I've tried to avoid that here. I've had to redo the shot for this so it won't finish exactly the same as my version above

When I choose a shot to process I go with a 5 step plan as follows

1. RAW conversion making sure the colours are neutral and there is as much detail as possible. The RAW will look rubbish straight after conversion
2. Cloning - sometimes not needed, I try to avoid as much as possible, personal taste is a biggie here
3. Details - I work on getting as much detail as possible without affecting colours - explained below
4. Colours - thousands of ways of affecting and boosting colours - the way explained below just affects colour and not detail.
5. Sharpen and noise reduction for the final edit.

This is the original, just converted to a jpeg to show here - nicely exposed to the right, could have opened up another 1/2 stop but not a big deal in this case.

Original-shot.jpg

I use DPP4 for Canon files, so these were the settings for this shot. Style - neutral, Sharpness - 2, Luminosity NR - 0, brightness -0.67. WB taken off the white patch on the top lip.

For lightroom I'd have gone with neutral style, brightness -0.67, kept the sharpness an NR low, same area for WB

That gave me this -

post-RAW-conversion.jpg

For Stu - this is where I took the WB reading from with the pipette tool -

WB-point.jpg
 
Ive now got a nice flat RAW file, so I send it to photoshop.

There are a couple of very minor cloning bits bugging me

cloning.jpg

I go to my background layer in PS and duplicate it (CMD + J on a mac, CTRL + J on a PC)

For the line (number 1) I use the patch tool which you get here by holding down J

clone-tools.jpg

I circle the line and drag it slightly to the left . that gets rid of this line. click cmd+D to get rid of this selection

Then the spots at number 2. Press and hold 'J' again to get the same panel as above, this time choose the spot healing brush tool and click over each spot in turn. Job done

after-cloning.jpg

I then go with Stu's chosen crop

post-crop.jpg
 
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Onto part 3, getting the detail. Again this sounds complicated but do it step by step and its not.

I like to work on individual areas, I'll just do 2 here for simplicity's sake. First the body needs some more contrast so I open up a curves adjustment layer (half black, half white circle at the bottom of the layers stack). If you look on the next screenshot, you'll see the layers stack over on the right. Towards the top left is a drop down box. This will have 'normal' selected at the moment. Change this to 'luminosity', I'll explain why shortly.

I only want to work on a specific area here, so a little knowledge is required on masks.

Key point - WHITE REVEALS, BLACK CONCEALS. This is vital to remember, as any part of the mask that is white shows the full change, any part that is black shows none, greys are in-between,

So, I've opened up my curves layer and need to choose which areas to target. I'm going to use a technique called 'colour range. Go to the top line, choose Select -> Colour range. click the pipette onto the target area on your panel, then use the fuzziness and range sliders so the areas you want to target are white on the mask, non-targeted areas are black. You need to trial and error this yourselves. Click OK on the colour range box.

I went with this

screenshot-colour-range.jpg

I want to add more contrast here so I go to the curves box and make the line into an 'S' shape. Basically this lightens the light areas, darkens the darks. Too complicated to explain fully here but have a play around to see the changes. I did this

screenshot-body.jpg

Earlier we changed the drop down box in the layers stack after creating the curves adjustment layer, going from 'normal' to 'luminosity'. This is as we're only concentrating on detail and we'll deal with the colours shortly.

I then think the muzzle is a bit dark so I do another curves adjustment layer - again with the drop down box set to luminosity and selected the same way using 'colour range'

screenshot-muzzle.jpg

This is what I now have - same colours as I've not affected them yet, but more detail where I want it. I could do loads more specific areas but no point in a tutorial

after-luminosity.jpg
 
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The file really lacks colour so time to address that.

Another curves adjustment layer now, this time changing the 'normal' to 'colour'.

As a pure example I've got way over the top here with a really steep 'S' shape in the curve just for affect

screenshot-colour-before-opacity.jpg

Horrible at the moment and needs reducing.

Look at the layer stack on the above screenshot. Towards top right if the word 'opacity'. It is at 100% meaning the changes are shown at full strength.

I click on the word opacity, hold the mouse down and drag it to the left which alter the % number. I go to 50% here

screenshot-colour-after-opacity.jpg

This now looks more realistic .

Note - there are many many ways of doing similar using various adjustment layers - Hue/saturation, vibrance, selective colour etc. Have a play with these on another file, see what you like best.

I've now got this which I think is OK

I personally then save this file as a TIFF as any sharpening I: do is specific to the required output.
 
Now I want to resize this to fit TP requirements - 1024px on the longest side. Use Image -> Image size and enter your required sizes.

I want to sharpen the file to taste and use some NR on the upper part of the background, so I go to the layers stack. I click on the bottom layer and merge the layers - Layers -> Merge visible. (I use a shortcut of shift + CMD + E for a mac, shift + CTRL + E for a PC)

I then select the deer using the quick selection tool. Hold down 'W' as below

screenshot-wand.jpg

Wipe over the deer. If you make a mistake, hold down the key labelled 'alt' or 'option' depending on your keyboard and go over the mistakes. I've been a bit sloppy here trying to get this done - sorry Stu!

I want to save this selection to avoid having to do it again for the noise reduction so I go to Select -> Save selection. Put something i the name box ( I just use the number 1) and save this.

sharpen-selection.jpg

Duplicate the background layer (may be called layer 0 now) using the cmd + J action.

To do a basic sharpening, I prefer the smart sharpen action -Filter -> Sharpen -> smart sharpen. I used the value of 100 for sharpen and 0.3 for radius.

Body is too spiky now so a create a layer mask with the icon at the bottom of the layers stack which is a white rectangle with a black dot. I used a black brush at 50% over the body. To get the 50% I mention here look at the top line and find 'opacity' Reduce that to 50 by clicking a sliding left over the word, or alternatively just by pressing '5'.

Its still a bit too sharp, so I reduced the opacity a little on the layer as I explained in the colour section earlier, Choose your own taste.

Click back on the lowest layer now and go to Select -> load selection. In the channels drop down box there will be whatever you called your selection before (I just used the number 1) and tick the 'invert' box. Create another duplicate layer with the CMD + J action

Filter -> noise -> Reduce noise. I set it to 10 as I can always reduce the opacity later and click OK

I only want to target the upper background so I create another mask as I did for the sharpening layer and select a brush and paint over the lower portion of the shot. As on the sharpening layer look at the top line of PS you'll see another opacity box. This was set to 70% here to a little NR was added to the lower portion. The shortcut is just to click '7'.

This is how your layer stack now looks. Layer 1 is the sharpening layer, layer 2 was for the NR.

screen-sharpen-stack.jpg

Time to save the file, and this is what I get

post-sharpen-and-NR.jpg
 
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Stu - I hope this helps. Take your time reading each stage and it will eventually fall into place. It only looks a lot because I've broken it down a lot.

As above, there are numerous ways of doing similar things, but this is a good way of setting up a particular workflow so you don't miss the important parts

Mike
 
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Mike thanks so much. Sorry for asking for you to do this all but twice, a bit embarasing to say the least but huge gratitude : On reading Mark's (Lepus) post it made me think your notes would be a real help to others here,

I'm sure I'm not the only one who struggles with post ,when I saw how you have approached this I couldn't help but want others to see that.

My sincere thanks mate you are a cracking teacher I'll get alot from this I really hope it helps more than me though I might well be wrong if so my humbles

Words fail mate utterly fab thank you !!

stu
 
Indeed very kind of pooley to spend all that time sharing techniques . Is there an easy way to learn layers and masks ? I have lost count how many times I have read and watched tutorials ...and still can not get my head round those techs . I use DPP and Elements but they must all work similarly ?
 
Indeed very kind of pooley to spend all that time sharing techniques . Is there an easy way to learn layers and masks ? I have lost count how many times I have read and watched tutorials ...and still can not get my head round those techs . I use DPP and Elements but they must all work similarly ?

Hi Mark,

Layers and masks will click all of a sudden, then you'll wonder why you found it so confusing!

A good place to start for PP techniques on youtube is by looking for piximperfect. He explains stuff quite well I think.

Elements works similar to photoshop, but I'm not sure exactly which layers you have available, let me know what you're struggling with and I'll try and help.

Regarding masks, they are actually quite simple. If you open up an adjustment layer (half white half black circle at the bottom of the layers palette) then it will automatically give you a mask which by default will be all white. This means any change you make to that layer will be shown all over the shot, as the golden rule to always remember is WHITE REVEALS, BLACK CONCEALS.

So, you've made your change on the layer but didn't want to affect the entire frame, for example, you had a shot with a bright sky background and you wanted to darken the sky. Say you used a curves layer, and pulled the curve line down to darken the sky, but now your foreground subject has gone too dark.

You would now get a brush (shortcut 'B', and look towards the bottom of all the icons of the left hand side where you see a black and white overlapping boxes icon. Remember - BLACK CONCEALS - so you want the black box on top of the white, you toggle these with the shortcut 'X'.

Now paint over the foreground interest and as you do so, the white box on the adjustment layer will go black in the areas you just painted, and the foreground area will return to its previous state before you messed with the curves. You've now masked off the area and you should have a more balanced frame.

Give it a try on one of your files and see if it makes sense- if it does thats the most important lesson in using masks learned

Mike
 
Mike part 3 how do I crop the mask down to my target area??

cheers .
 
Mike part 3 how do I crop the mask down to my target area??

cheers .

A few different ways Stu. What I did here was one up the curves adjustment layer. I then went to Select -> Colour range and that brings up the panel in part 3. The mask in the panel might come up all black at first, sometimes happens, so select the pipette that is shown active on my screenshot, and click roughly where you think the change should be.

This doesn't need to be exact as once you click, that part of the mask will become visible and you can then click again, this time on the exact area you want to target.

You can then refine this mask with the fuzziness and range sliders, and you should see the outline of the areas you're targeting.

The advantage of doing it this way is the mask will be smooth based on colour tones and should avoid hard edges

Is this what you were asking?

Mike
 
Mike, sorry, I thought I replied yesterday morn looks like I didn't hit submiit my bad my apologies Mate I got myself confused in step three,my question was irrelevent I some how thought. the little black boxes where we were working on detail were crops,it took a while but I'm past it. :banghead:

Ok it took 3 hours of banging my head against a wall, and I gave up Hmm, OK I saw a gap in the squalls and whipped out for 3/4 hr. Came back after a good stalk with a few very close images of yet another buck roe , Ha I beat the storms by seconds, came in as the next hit and went back to editing. How can can one part of this be so effortless and the other side so hard, for me?...........hey ho:LOL:

Mike how does this sit with you ?

The secnt portrait redit by Stuart Philpott, on Flickr

To me I'm not there yet....... tis too sharp crunchy !! But hey it's my first attempt at running through i've got a niggles about blue in your edit the upper portions are rides and young woodland not sky , But bar that and how I've handled the stages ( lol like a bull in a china shop) I'm chuffed.

Cool stuff Mike, !! Fascinating process,I don't think I've ever been shown a complete base work flow like this before with both DPP and PS

Hellish useful for me Mike ,;)

Ta again
 
Superb Stu - top marks pal

Yes, I agree with you own critique, it is a little too crunchy, but thats an easy fix, either back off the final sharpening, or maybe you were a little aggressive with the curves in step 3.

If you think the blues are too much either use the provided mask to cover the offending areas ( try starting at 50% opacity on the brush - shortcut '5' and see how that goes) or alternatively, open up a fresh hue / saturation adjustment layer, select 'blue' from the drop down menu and reduce the saturation.

Either way, I think you've done fantastic job, I know this doesn't come naturally to you which is why I suggested a stepped workflow rather than trying to do several things at once

Just look at this screenshot to compare your OP and your latest effort - no comparison, loads more detail, spot on self-critique.

Screenshot-2020-03-02-at-21.26.42.jpg

Glad this was useful Stu - it WILL get easier after a few run throughs, I hope you're secretly chuffed with yourself.

You can get your own back on me one day by letting me watch your fieldcraft skills - then laughing at mine!

Mike
 
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Mike without over egging the thanks massively useful...HUGE !!,

To be honest it's you that should be chuffed I'm a willing pupil but not the sharpest,all credit to me teacher. Cheers for the encouragement i'm going to have a pop at something else shortly

Mike I see you have popped up a couple of ways of addressing my blue concerns,would it be not be a good idea to pull the blues back in the RAW? I'll have a go with the above anyway,just curious about any possible negative consequences.,caused by playing with the blues in the RAW ie globally.

Hmm FC at times it works at times no,it's like everything in life , practice makes perfect. Mate sure I'm time pressed but I am very fortunate. I get repeat chances to learn and naturally fail. . In some ways I don't think we really understand what is possible without a hide I don't really think I do yet it's a massive curve to lean into. .Nowt special about what I do FC wise mate, I'm just lucky to get to do it over and over not everyone has these chances. I am properly sneaky though:LOL:

Fab Mike just Fab
cheers
stu
 
Cheers Stu,

In this frame it would probably work pulling back the blues ay the RAW stage. However, you nee to remember that with DPP4 you're adding global changes, so yes, on this occasion it would have worked, but say you were shooting a Jay with the blue on the wings, then you'd lose that in DPP4.

The above is only a guide, but it will get you thinking in a particular way, once you get that down then making your own individual changes will soon happen.

I like your thinking with the RAW file though

Mike
 
Understood on the blues Mike...all good

Yup, it's that in a nutshell " making me think in a particular way" that is so positive Mike I latched on to what you were trying to show me all but instantly,

I realise it's a guide,i'm part way through the next using similar methods. Ha ha slower than a slow thang but getting there :)
 
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