Learning the system

[wattsbw2004]

Just got the 7 Point System by Scott Kelby last week and although I'm not even half way done I find that I've learned a lot more about CS3 then before.

Before:


After:

[krypticide]

Nice PP job. I would keep a bit more of the foreground grass to maintain more balance.

[chins]

Excellent job, I am surprised to see the detailed clouds after PP, nice work.

[Sistog]

i don't know... it seems unreal to me.. try to apply a little less of this effect..

[rodrigo]

I've got this book as well, and I recommend it to anyone.

I would say the "after" photo is a bit oversaturared over the grass, personally I would tone it down a bit, but that goes with the person's preferences. Overall you've done a great job, especially with the sky! I always get surprised when I see that all that information was actually there in the photo, hidden under a white overexposured patch.

For those who know a little bit of Photoshop and would like to learn some kind of systematic approach to post-processing, this book is highly recommended.

My long-term goal is to see if I can apply the same system using The Gimp instead, I can't afford Photoshop CS3 (I'm running a trial version at the moment, but it won't last much longer)

[wulf]

What are the seven points? I assume they are things like cropping, colour balancing, contrast adjustment and the like.

Wulf

[rodrigo]

Here are the 7 points:

- Camera RAW processing
- Curves Adjustments
- Shadow/Highlight
- Painting with light
- Channels adjustments
- Layer blend modes & layer masks
- Sharpening

It's probably "old news" for people who have being doing this for a while, but for beginners like me who get overwhelmed with all the features of GIMP/Photoshop it's nice to have a systematic approach to get started with. I suppose that later you outgrow it and develop your own workflow, but it's a good starting point.

[kany]

nice job! RaW is the key for the detail of old new clouds :d ! right?

[wulf]

You can definitely do all of that in The Gimp, although the controls will be a little different.

Wulf

[jiminyClickit]

kany,

The information in a jpeg is sufficient to get detail from an over-exposed image as well. Raw is valuable; unless you're enlarging or doing professional photography, jpeg can be manipulated with nearly the same results. I use an old Adobe PhotoDeluxe program (1998) for editing everything seen here and on Flickr, so I'm sure the other newer programs (free or otherwise) can do as well.