tim

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Tim Preston
Edit My Images
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Spent a lovely day enjoying the sun (and wind!) on Wednesday. F15's kept us occupied most of the day.


Taken using D7100 and a Tamron 150-600. Any advice on processing these to improve them would be greatly received. I am currently using Lightroom and shoot in RAW.


F-15 Cad West 14.09.2016 USAF Mach Loop Low level flying
by Tim Preston, on Flickr


F-15 Cad West 14.09.2016 Mach Loop USAF low level flying in the Mach Loop
by Tim Preston, on Flickr


F-15D Cad West 14.09.2016 (1 of 1)-8
by Tim Preston, on Flickr
 
Very jealous. In the words of Arnie, "I'll be back" to try and capture some of my own.
 
Very nicely captured shots Tim, and they look pretty accurate to how they were lit at the time given the light angles.

What exactly is it you think needs improving?

The first has potential to get quite 'arty' with the way the hills are lit behind the plane by doing curves adjustments to darken the BG but it depends it thats the way you want to go with things.

Mike
 
Very nicely captured shots Tim, and they look pretty accurate to how they were lit at the time given the light angles.

What exactly is it you think needs improving?

The first has potential to get quite 'arty' with the way the hills are lit behind the plane by doing curves adjustments to darken the BG but it depends it thats the way you want to go with things.

Mike


The first one I think is ok, its probably my favourite I took on the day.

In the second one the darks are too dark but when I lift the shadows or blacks then the whole image gets lighter and the sky is too bright. I want to lift the darks on the plane but darken the background hills. I don't know how to go about it. Same with the third really, I want the plane to pop if that makes sense.
 
Tim, I find it far easier to do adjustments like these in photoshop, which I appreciate you may not have at the moment. The same results could also be done in Elements, so it may be worth looking at getting a version of Elements which will work fine with Lightroom. Personally, I'd suggest getting a version thats a couple of years old, as you could pick up something like PSE 11 for peanuts and it'll do 99% of what you need, and it's really not as daunting to learn as people make out. I only use a few of the tools and they serve me well enough.

What you want can be achieved, I take it you mean something along these lines, I don't know the planes well enough to get the tones spot on though -

f15-2-repost.jpg

In photoshop (or elements) you can select certain areas and target them, so here, I first selected the pane and did a curves adjustment and lightened it. I then did a second curves adjustment, darkening the hills only. It's only a rough edit so the edges could be neater, but only 3-4 minutes work.

You can do similar adjustments in Lightroom though, if you want to stick with that, but for me, I find it more difficult. I don't use LR but gave it a go here -

f15-LR-edit.jpg

What I did was open the shot in LR and go to the adjustment brush. I pushed the shadow slider to the right, ten used the brush to paint over the plane, so only the plane was affected by the shadows adjustment. I then did a second adjustment brush, dropped the exposure a bit then painted over the hills so only they were darkened.

If you go on youtube and look up using the adjustment brush in LR, you will get better explanations than I can give.

Hope that helps a bit.

Mike
 
Excellent set (y)
 
It's when you see a shot like #3, wih the pilots, it gives a real sense of scale to these planes. I think both pilots and photographer had good days at the office :D
 
The location you were doesn't work when the sun is out till around 3pm.jets are backlit until then Tim.
Very nice shots otherwise
 
I am rarely in this bit of the forum but these are great shots Tim.

Just had a play with the first shot and the bottom end of the curve can be lifted to show a bit more detail on the underside of the plane without sacrificing highlights, but that is a minor criticism - they are good ones.

Dave
 
Mike..Your post was too long to use quote but I have LR (as you've shown the brush tool is great as is the grad tool) and will upgrade to LR6 when the new iMac comes out soon and for what LR can't do,like cloning, I use Elements 11 so that version works well but the latest version 14 is only £66 on Amazon,I see.Tim may as well get 14. I thought it would have been more than that.
 
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