Photomatix Before/After

[fozzeee]

I liked the way the shadow of this tree was seemingly trying to reach up to the sky from the angle I was seeing it. Originally I took 3 identical shots at different exposures and put them into Photomatix, but using just the 'normal' exposure one gave the after results shown here

Before:


After:


I like using Photomatix, but I'm not that familiar with all the settings so I generally just play around with one setting at a time, at the min and then max value to see what effect it can have. For this picture I settled on these settings:


Generally I bump up the Strength/Colour Saturation settings somewhat, set the Smoothing on the 2nd dot from the right (too much to the left can give strange results!) and have the Microcontrast between 4-6 if I use it at all. I then have the White Point contrast pretty much on the far right most of the time, and the Black Point fairly far over that way too. This affects the overall black to white contrast and I seem to like increasing the contrast in my pictures. In this particular edit I then set the Saturation Shadows setting to -6 as this made the shadow stand out more by making it paler, and more of a contrast with the rest of the field. Again this was just from playing around with it at various values.

Having settled on the Photomatix settings, I saved the file, and then used Photoshop Elements 7 for the rest of the editing. First I used the quick selection tool (A) to select only the horizon and below area, and I used the unsharp mask set at 250% to bring out the detail in the field and trees more. Then I inversed this selection to select the sky, and used the levels adjustment (CTRL + L) to darken the sky to highlight it a bit more. As the sky was looking a little noisy, I also used the Neat Image plugin to reduce some of the noise/grain ( http://www.neatimage.com/index.html?v72 ) I find this plugin very useful if I have been doing sharpening/HDR type editing

One thing I learned from doing this post was to make a note of what I was actually doing, as I've uploaded this picture to Flickr before, and I couldn't remember what I'd actually done to it! Here's the other version - Shadowlands II Somewhat different, but it just goes to show how ones mood can lead you off in a different direction (and what happens when you cannot remember what you did the first time round).

This post has lead me to ask anyone who would care to reply, do you use a 'standard' size or dimension when uploading images to Flickr etc? My original file was a NEF so I did an JPG export within Elements and kept the original image size (4286x2858), and a quality setting of 8. This led to a Before file size of 1.2MB The After image I also saved at a quality of 8 to keep it under 5MB, but I wonder if this is too large. I assume Flickr automatically resizes and adjusts image size so would it make sense to keep to a lower initial filesize when uploading?
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Nikon D90 + 18-105VR kit | Tamron AF 70-300mm F4-5.6 Di LD Macro 1:2 | SB-600 Speedlight
MyFlickr

[EXILER]

wow what a difference from the before and after... great work..

[peeperita]

Originally Posted by fozzeee

This post has lead me to ask anyone who would care to reply, do you use a 'standard' size or dimension when uploading images to Flickr etc? My original file was a NEF so I did an JPG export within Elements and kept the original image size (4286x2858), and a quality setting of 8. This led to a Before file size of 1.2MB The After image I also saved at a quality of 8 to keep it under 5MB, but I wonder if this is too large. I assume Flickr automatically resizes and adjusts image size so would it make sense to keep to a lower initial filesize when uploading?

i use my flickr as another means of backup so i always save at the highest resolution possible....

[FoG]

WOW ! Without sound a complete mewbie is the priginal format in RAW ? Just m,y lil Camera only does Jpeg which for the moment holds me back somewhat.. I love the after pic nice job !

[munkiegal]

Thanks that is very nice I really like it

[Hellwrath]

Great difference, I am yet to try Photomatix. I am unaware of the settings, so I guess I will go with your approach. Thank you.

Originally Posted by FoG

WOW ! Without sound a complete mewbie is the priginal format in RAW ? Just m,y lil Camera only does Jpeg which for the moment holds me back somewhat.. I love the after pic nice job !

Try CHDK, and you can start shooting in RAW.

[chipshill]

loving the contrast there, well done, I'm yet to make a post on the forum as i only joined today but im shooting now thanks to the inspiration i got from this... also so everybody knows, if you haven't got photomatrix, but use photoshop, photoshop CS3 has the same feature built in

[FoG]

I just downloaded the photomatix trial and WOW !!! even this lil point and shoots are turning out great ... Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention ... my wallet however says grrrrrr

[FoG]

Originally Posted by Hellwrath

Great difference, I am yet to try Photomatix. I am unaware of the settings, so I guess I will go with your approach. Thank you.



Try CHDK, and you can start shooting in RAW.

I have seen this twice now wjhat exactly is it ?? I want to try but would love links etc but have tried with jpeg and it blew topaz away

[xxpinballxx]

Im with Peep on the size. I upload the very first Jpeg finished shot. Mostly for backup if I need to redownlaod or want to play around with it again.....I also use two Externals though too so I should be covered!