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Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing 01-10-2020, 10:35 PM  
Feedback on my post processing
Posted By robysue
Replies: 14
Views: 2,967
Folks,

Y'all were all so kind and helpful when I ask questions about software to edit my photos with. So I'm now wanting some feedback on some of the first set of photos that I edited with Photoshop Elements. If this isn't the best subforum to ask for such advice, please let me know where I should be posting this kind of thing.


These two photos were both in the set of shots that I used as the test photos for testing the multiple pieces of software before I settled on Photoshop Elements.

Some background on the pictures: My daughter and her boyfriend were visiting us and we went up to Niagara Falls for a brief outing---the weather was cold and grey so we didn't stay long. The sky was overcast with clouds that were not interesting and the light was quite flat. For the first time in several years, I shot photos only in raw.

For each of the two photos, I've included a jpeg version of the unprocessed raw file as well as the jpeg after post processing. It's been a very long time since I've done much editing in raw, and I'm more than a bit worried that I may have overdone some of the post processing. So that's what I'm asking for advice about: What kinds of things could/should I have done in terms of post processing to improve the final pictures?


First photo: A standard shot of the American Falls taken from the US visitor's center on Goat Island. (Yes, it's a boring shot, but daughter's bf had never been to the falls before, and I want to send them the photos I took.) I'm a bit worried that I've brightened the photo up a bit too much: Does the edited version seem too bright for an overcast day?

Raw version:
IMGP9352-raw by Robin Sanders, on Flickr

Edited version:
IMGP9352 by Robin Sanders, on Flickr




**********************************************
Second photo: This picture is of the rapids and mini-falls that are at the up-river end of Goat Island on the pathway to the Three Sisters Islands. I'm sure my composition could stand quite a bit of improvement, but the advice I'm looking for today is really about the post processing. Have I over done it? Or does this look reasonable? What I'm after is trying to capture the mood of the weather and the river that day.

Raw version:
IMGP9372-raw by Robin Sanders, on Flickr


Edited version:
IMGP9372 by Robin Sanders, on Flickr

Finally, I want to add: I know that neither of these photos are particularly good in terms of composition. But they proved to be good test photos for working on relearning some of my old skills and learning a bunch of new skills in terms of editing raw photos.
Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II 01-08-2020, 08:01 PM  
K3 sample shots ... post here !
Posted By robysue
Replies: 12,379
Views: 1,655,117
As I'm reorganizing my photos, I keep rediscovering photos from the K-100D. This one of the moon rising over the Garden Wall was taken on the Highline Trail near Logan Pass in Glacier National Park. (The Garden Wall is the name of a ridge of heavily glaciated mountains along the continental divide.) It was taken in late afternoon, maybe a couple of hours before sunset. We're looking east or south east at the Garden Wall (as I recall), which why the rock cliff is nicely lit by the late afternoon sun. We'd stopped on the trail to eat a snack and drink some water when I noticed the moon over the Garden Wall.

Moon rise near Logan Pass by Robin Sanders, on Flickr
Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II 12-31-2019, 09:46 AM  
K3 sample shots ... post here !
Posted By robysue
Replies: 12,379
Views: 1,655,117
Just a few photos of Christmas decorations in the Elmwood Village area of Buffalo taken with my new, used K-3. I think I'm going to like this camera once I really learn how to use it.

Christmas lion #1 by Robin Sanders, on Flickr

Christmas reindeer by Robin Sanders, on Flickr

Christmas lights #1 by Robin Sanders, on Flickr
Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion 12-20-2019, 02:11 PM  
The Six-Megapixel Club
Posted By robysue
Replies: 4,311
Views: 395,173
Although I've got a K-3 coming, I have no intention of completely retiring my K-100D. Thought I'd post a couple of pictures I took with the K-100D this summer when my husband I did some camping at Watkins Glen State Park. Watkins Glen is a step, short gorge with lots of waterfalls that flows into the southern end of Seneca Lake.

The gorge trail, which usually has heavy pedestrian traffic, goes right along the river and there are a couple of stone arch bridges that pass over the river. Both photos were taken on the gorge trail.
Forum: Weekly Photo Challenges 01-08-2020, 12:23 PM  
Weekly Challenge #482- From Above
Posted By robysue
Replies: 32
Views: 2,531
This shot was taken back in June 2012 when I was wading in knee deep water in Lake Superior along the Painted Rocks National Lakeshore. The clarity of the water was amazing and I loved the look of how the ripples at the surface distorted the pebbles and rocks on the lake bed. So I pointed the camera straight down while bending forward enough to not get my feet in the picture and took this photo. So I've got the perspective right, but I admit, the height is only from my (short) eye level---and I'm only 5' 1" tall.

Note: The date in the exif information is wrong. Back on that camping trip I forgot to check the date and at some point the batteries had died and the camera reset the date without me paying attention to it.

IMGP3048 by Robin Sanders, on Flickr
Forum: Digital Processing, Software, and Printing 01-08-2020, 10:24 AM  
Looking for advice on post processing software
Posted By robysue
Replies: 19
Views: 1,812
An update:

I've been downloading trial versions of just about everything that's been suggested as well as a trial version of Photoshop Elements 2020, which is a standalone program rather than a subscription.

And I've edited the same bunch of 15 K-3 photos in every piece of software that I've downloaded. The photos included a few jpegs with a somewhat difficult white balance problem and a need to clone out a bit of distracting background. The bulk of the photos are a bunch of outdoor raw photos recently taken up at Goat Island (part of Niagara Falls State Park) on a cold, grey overcast day with very flat light.

I've learned some basic lessons about post processing:

1) Different pieces of software do different things well, different things ok, and different things not so well.

2) Ease of use is important. (And ease of use is in the eyes and hands of the user!)

3) It can be remarkably easy to over process an image, sometimes without realizing it at the time. (It's easy to make those cold, grey flat photos taken at Goat Island look like they were taken on a partly sunny day.)

4) It will take time to become a reasonably competent user of any of these programs. But at the same time, it's possible to get decent, usable images from any of them even after only spending about 5 or 6 hours using them. And the time spent learning how to use any of these programs should make it easier and easier to get really good output images in a reasonable amount of time.


More specifically I learned:

I liked the results of post processing with Affinity, but I did not enjoy working with the program at all. It seemed to take forever to load the set of 25 photos that I was editing. Moreover, while it was loading the photos, everything on my Mac slowed down to the point where I really couldn't work on much of anything. I also did not like the fact that there was no "filmstrip" of the loaded images---just tabs with the image names. And the negatives of that editing environment out weighed the positives of the final results of the post processing. If I planned on just editing one or two photos at a time, I think Affinity would have won out. But since I tend to do "batch editing" of large numbers of photos, the difficulty of navigating through the list of open photos was a significant drawback for me.

While Darktable and RawTherapee both run on Macs, neither program is exactly "Mac friendly". Meaning---there's no menu across the top bar on the Mac and the keyboard shortcuts are Windows-style shortcuts: For example Control-Z to undo rather than Command-Z. I liked their editing environments well enough---except for the lack of that main menu. I did not like the fact that Darktable seems to presume the presence of a three button mouse and/or a mouse with a wheel, neither of which my MacBookPro's trackpad can emulate in a fashion that Darktable understands. Darktable seemed slower to work with than RawTherapee, but the results I got with Darktable seemed a bit better. But to be fair: RawTherapee was the first program I tested out, and some what I didn't like in the final results may be "post processing errors" on my part---i.e. the more times I started with the same original file, the more likely I was to know what I was really looking for as an end result. So for example, the batch white balance adjustment I did in RawTherapee for the Goat Island pictures was decent enough, but it didn't really capture the moodiness of the actual light. After lots of editing of those pictures on other pieces of software, I finally noticed that I'd subtly (and in once case not so subtly) shifted the temperature in a different way in other programs than I had done in RawTherapee. When I went back and re-edited a few of the photos in RawTherapee to make a similar change in temperature, I liked the RawTherapee output a lot more than the first time through.

While I liked the editing environment of On1, it was sluggish when loading the pictures and sometimes I had to wait for it to show the edit. I really like On1's AI mask tool, however. But in spite of liking the editing environment, I didn't actually like the output as well as that generated by most of the other programs I tried out.

Luminar was ok in terms of editing environment, but the output I got from Luminar was not as pleasing (to me and my tastes) as the output I got from other programs.

As for Photoshop Elements 2020: Things loaded exceptionally fast and I like the fact that it writes sidecar files for that are easy to locate (so do RawTherapee and On1). The editing environment is definitely aimed at nonprofessionals (like myself), but the tools under the "Expert" tab are not as well organized or as well labeled as I would wish. But I quite liked the output I got using Elements, almost as much as those I got from Affinity on about 60% of the photos and as much or slightly better than I liked from the ones from Affinity on the remainder of the photos. Adding layers to photos was not as easy as On1, but about the same as Affinity. (During my trialing, I was not able to figure out layers in either Darktable or RawTherapee, but I know that they must be there.)

So the upshot is that I bought Photoshop Elements 2020 this morning at 2:30 EST for $69.99, about 30 minutes before Adobe's holiday sale expired and the price went up to $99.99. I plan to keep Darktable and RawTherapee around since the are free and powerful. My guess is that for now I'll use Elements most of the time while using Darktable and RawTherapee if/when I can't do something in Elements. I also want to continue playing with DarkTable and RawTherapee enough to learn much more about editing in those programs so that if/when I either outgrow Elements or Adobe converts Elements to a subscription program, I'll have the know-how to gracefully switch to DarkTable and RawTherapee.

Finally: A great big thank you to everybody for all the suggestions that you gave me. It's been a very interesting week of intense post processing of the same 15 images over and over and over and keeping track of what I liked and didn't like about each of the programs I downloaded and tried out.
Forum: Monthly Photo Contests 01-01-2020, 01:43 PM  
At the Cemetery
Posted By robysue
Replies: 6
Views: 275
I would like to nominate this photo
Forum: Photo Critique 12-24-2019, 12:07 AM  
Abstract Yes, it's a standard tourist shot, but I'd like a critique anyway
Posted By robysue
Replies: 31
Views: 2,222
I live about 30 minutes away from Niagara Falls. So we go up there several times a year. This shot is from several years ago. The rainbow with the Maid of the Mist really caught my eye.

Notes:

1) There is actually a double rainbow, but the second one is very faint and is lost in the falls. But that's why the color of the water of the falls might not be totally consistent.

2) The primary rainbow really was that bright and distinct. :)

3) Focal length on the zoom was 28mm

Maid of the Mist with rainbow(s) by Robin Sanders, on Flickr
Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion 12-23-2019, 12:54 PM  
The Six-Megapixel Club
Posted By robysue
Replies: 4,311
Views: 395,173
I'm in the middle of a large photo project right now and I rediscovered some insect shots from my K-100D that I was really happy with back when I took them. They were literally hidden away on a different computer and I'd forgotten about these.

Hope you all enjoy them.

2007-097 by Robin Sanders, on Flickr

2007-094 by Robin Sanders, on Flickr

2007-093 by Robin Sanders, on Flickr
Forum: Pentax K-3 & K-3 II 12-26-2019, 04:24 PM  
My K-3 arrived today and some Christmas lions
Posted By robysue
Replies: 12
Views: 1,624
The used K-3 I recently bought arrived today. So of course I had to take some pictures.

There's this really rich neighborhood in Buffalo and one of the houses has two large concrete lions facing the street. This year they decorated the lions. So here are the Christmas lions for your enjoyment. (Note: the spot light on the second lion casts a strange shadow on the lion's nose so its pretty hard to get a night time picture.)


Christmas lion #1 by Robin Sanders, on Flickr

Chirstmas lion #2 by Robin Sanders, on Flickr
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 12-23-2019, 01:27 PM  
Finding image location for images posted to Flickr or Shutterfly?
Posted By robysue
Replies: 13
Views: 826
Again, thanks for all the help.

I know all about using the BBcode from another totally unrelated forum. It just took me a while to find and the realize the funky arrow was the link to what I needed.

I've now successfully posted a few pictures over in the The Six-Megapixel Club thread.

And here's a dragonfly to show that I know how to do it here as well.

2007-093 by Robin Sanders, on Flickr
Forum: Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 12-23-2019, 12:39 PM  
Finding image location for images posted to Flickr or Shutterfly?
Posted By robysue
Replies: 13
Views: 826
I've read the beginning of the sticky post about how to post your pictures, and I understand the directions. But I've gotten real frustrated with both Flickr and Shutterfly: I can't seem to find the actual image location---i.e. the url that ends with the file name photo.jpg that I want to embed in a post over here.

So I have a really basic question: How do you find the image location---i.e. the url that ends with .jpg when you're in Flickr or Shutterfly?

When I'm logged into either Flickr.com or Shutterfly.com and I'm looking at the photo I want to link to here, I simply cannot find a way to get the image's actual location. So of course, the image doesn't embed properly over here.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me
Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion 12-21-2019, 02:46 PM  
The Six-Megapixel Club
Posted By robysue
Replies: 4,311
Views: 395,173
When my mother-in-law died in September we brought her cyclamen home with us. It's now blooming. And I thought I'd take a photo of it with the K-100D:

Forum: Photo Critique 12-20-2019, 05:42 PM  
Landscape Which direction works best? Suggestions for cropping? And any other suggestions.
Posted By robysue
Replies: 17
Views: 1,410
The following pair of pictures are of the same spot on the Watkins Glen State Park gorge trail. (Watkins Glen is a deep, steep gorge where the river that cut it flows into the south end of Seneca Lake in New York.)

I know I need to work on composition of photos. And that's my big question here: Is the vertical shot better than the horizontal one in terms of composition? Does it make for a more interesting photo to see more of the gorge's rock walls on the left side of the picture?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Note: Both shots have ISO=200 and Shutter Speed=1/30. The vertical picture has aperture=8 and focal distance=55. The horizontal picture has aperture=6.7 and focal length=38.
Forum: Welcomes and Introductions 12-17-2019, 11:23 AM  
Hello from Buffalo, NY
Posted By robysue
Replies: 26
Views: 1,200
I meant to add one of my favorite photos of Niagara Falls. I took it back in Feb. 2015 when we had some super cold weather that lasted long enough for the falls to "freeze" over. It made the national news. Hubby and I went up a few days later after the falls started to thaw out a bit. This is my favorite shot from that day.
Forum: Welcomes and Introductions 12-17-2019, 08:54 AM  
Hello from Buffalo, NY
Posted By robysue
Replies: 26
Views: 1,200
I'm Robin from Buffalo.

In 2000 I bought my first digital camera, a Polaroid Digital 320. My husband and I bought it on a lark at the Toronto airport for my birthday present. It cost C $80 as I recall. We were flying out to Calgary with two kids for a two week vacation. The kids each had some some kind of Vivitar 36 mm point and shoot film cameras while the adults' serious camera was my husband's Olympus XA 35mm film camera, which he had bought way back in 1982. The Polaroid 320 was really nothing more than a toy camera---it's resolution is 320x240 or 76K pixels. But it was still a lot of fun to download the pics onto my husband's PC each night and fiddle with the camera's software to "improve" those very primitive pictures while we were accumulating lots of rolls of film to develop once we got back home.

In 2001 I bought my first real digital camera was an an Olympus Camedia C-3000 Zoom. It was bought to replace the Olympus XA which developed some serious problems during and after that trip to Alberta and was no longer taking the high quality pictures we were used to getting out of it. At the time I wanted four things:
  1. A viewfinder rather than just an LCD screen on the back. I didn't particularly want or need the viewfinder to be a through the lens one, however. Just something similar to the Olympus XA's was fine.

  2. An aperture priority mode since that was what we were used to with the XA: You set the aperture manually, focused the camera manually, and it figured out the exposure.

  3. Auto focus. I was not as good as my husband was at manually focusing the XA.

  4. Enough pixels to make decent quality 4x6 inch prints of good pictures.

I paid a lot more for the Camedia than I meant to, all because I really wanted a way to control the aperture. I really enjoyed that camera and got some really nice pictures (as well as some really awful ones) out of it. However, the shutter lag was horrible.

I bought my first DSLR, a Pentax 100D, way back in July 2007. I was replacing Camedia because it was time to let my daughter take it off to Turkey on an AFS-exchange year when she was a high school senior. When I was camera shopping I didn't intend to get a DSLR and I didn't intend to get a Pentax. But---every single "advanced point and shoot" that had similar features as the Camedia also had no viewfinder---they'd all gone with just Live View on the back LCD, and while my Camedia had that feature, I seldom used it because I just couldn't hold the camera still enough at a comfortable distance for viewing the screen. (Middle-aged eyes don't help that problem.) And so I was "forced" to start looking at entry level DSLRs. The Pentax 100D won based on price and its shake reduction.

I've recently bought a used K-3 to (slightly) update my camera. I looked at the current K-70, which would have been in my budget and "current generation" but I noticed that it does not have the top LCD. And I rely on my K100D's top LCD to remind me of the camera's settings, which I have a bad tendency to forget. So a used K-3 wound up being what I bought, even though it's really more camera than I need.

As for what I tend to photograph: I'm very much an amateur. I enjoy taking pictures of scenery (landscapes) when we're traveling and I also take a fair number of pictures of flowers and other plants. I take family snapshots, but I'm not really into trying to get portraits---my kids just would never sit still long enough and cooperate to get a portrait. Because we're close to Niagara Falls, I've taken lots and lots of pictures of them in all kinds of weather. Over the years, I've managed to take some really great photos that have wowed family and friends, but its still hit or miss a lot of the time, which doesn't really bother me at all.


Well that's far longer than it needed to be. So thanks for being patient with me.
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