Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Wed, 17 Aug 2011
The Power of Color and Exposure Correction
So, I'm constantly amazed at what can be performed using just exposure and color correction on a photo. For example:
Take for example these shots. The one on the left is the picture as it came out of the camera (Canon 7D, Sigma 24-70 f/2.8), and on the right is the picture as fixed up. It only represents about 10 minutes of fiddling to make that kind of a difference.
Now, the picture, as shot, isn't terrible. The foreground subjects are a bit washed out, and the background is pretty yellow, but it's acceptable. It's only when you make the adjustments (deepening exposure on the foreground, deepening it a little less on the background, and shifting the background away from that heavy yellow cast) that a really good picture comes out of it, though.
For what it's worth, the process I followed here was to load the image in Photoshop, then select the foreground dancers. Then I set up three adjustment layers: a Levels layer for the foreground, a Levels layer for the background, and a Color Balance layer for the background. (Make the selection, then save it using Select > Save Selection... to use it over and over.) I missed on the selection a little bit, so I went into the Channels panel, turned on the appropriate mask channel, and painted around as appropriate. The whole thing took less than 10 minutes.
It's amazing to me that I went for so long without post-processing pictures. Now that I have half a clue what I'm doing, I'm consistently well pleased with how my pictures turn out.
Posted at 15:46 permanent link category: /photography
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater