Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: woof75 on May 12, 2008, 04:20:27 pm
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So we come to the point where all current digital backs are really good, so how do you get that last bit of sparkle out of your files? James mentioned that he likes to underexpose his P30 files slightly and push them in post a bit to give them a bit more bite or texture if I understood him correctly, I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong.
Personally my trick which I really love and increases the feel of sharpness, reduces the appearance of unpleasant noise and stops files looking plastic is to do a duplicate layer, fill it with 50% grey, change the blending mode to overlay and give it a little noise (monochromatic gausian). I'm not talking about creating big old grain, just slightly breaking up that super smooth digital look you can get. It really is a peach of a trick.
Another good one is when shooting the P21 you can easily shoot ISO 200 with virtually no noise when you process in Lightroom. So come on, spill the beans, whats your favorite tricks?
I wondered about posting this in image processing but I want to include "tricks" in the actual shooting process too.
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I don't use PS so I don't know how you would do this, but if you can manipulate the histogram in post processing there are some possibilities there that normal layer processing might miss.
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There are too many things to be mentioned and most are pretty extensive. One of my favorites at the moment which I use quite frequently (together with other things, like grain and color mapping, etc..);
1) Add a layer B/W, layer opacity at anything between 40 to 90%
2) Copy background and put at the top of the layer stack, set blendmode at softlight and layer opacity at anything between 40 to 90%.
3) You can group the 2 layers above the background now and adjust the effect in its totality by adjusting the opacity of the group.
Now add the layer Woof75 created
Sure you can manipulate the histogram in post, via ACR, levels or curves would be the most appropriate way.
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There are too many things to be mentioned and most are pretty extensive. One of my favorites at the moment which I use quite frequently (together with other things, like grain and color mapping, etc..);
1) Add a layer B/W, layer opacity at anything between 40 to 90%
2) Copy background and put at the top of the layer stack, set blendmode at softlight and layer opacity at anything between 40 to 90%.
3) You can group the 2 layers above the background now and adjust the effect in its totality by adjusting the opacity of the group.
Now add the layer Woof75 created
Sure you can manipulate the histogram in post, via ACR, levels or curves would be the most appropriate way.
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whats a layer B/W?
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whats a layer B/W?
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=195481\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Black and white adjustment layer in CS3?
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Yes it is. (a B/W adjustment layer). Sorry for the somewhat cryptic description.
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Yes it is. (a B/W adjustment layer). Sorry for the somewhat cryptic description.
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=195524\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Doh, I'm still on regular CS.
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No problem you can also make a layer, fill it with white (or black) and put the blend mode on color. Or use the channel mixer, etc.. As long as you put a B&W layer on top of the background.
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this is more a post technique I suppose, but it's a great one - option click the new layer button, set to overlay mode, click the fill w/ 50% grey box - now dodge and burn on anything under the layer-
set this to a key command and your off...
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If you have shot against white, and need of a 100 % white background (255,255,255), you can do the following to visually inspect that it is while removing small imperfections. The steps are as follows:
1: Make a levels adjustment layer, with the input values 253, 255.
2: Set layer opacity to 85 %
3: Select dodge tool for highlights with exposure around 4-14 % with brush diameter quite large (600-1600px, depending on image size.) Or just use the eraser tool.
4: Select the background layer and dodge/erase all the stuff that you see is not white...
5: Delete the levels adjustment layer.
Now it should be completely white and clean ;D
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