Castle Roche C&C

Roddylarge

Hi Guys, im pretty new to this, both the board and photography in general, i have a Nikon D40 with the kit 18-55 lens, anyway this is one of my first attempts and id appreciate any comments on what i have done/done wrong! thanks

Roddy

ps i have converted the files to gifs in order to upload them, is there a better way?

Thecageyone

Nice, but the first 2 are over exposed on the right hand side, what do you use to process? You could tone the burnout down and throw some fill light on the castle itself maybe. Too many leaves to the right in the 3rd, and the overall image is underexposed. Easy enough lift that in PP if you have lightroom or photoshop? or any post processing program? They all have tools for the job

Great start though, great potential.

Roddylarge

Thanks, i have photoshop (although i dont know how to use it) but ill play about and see what i can do.

Thecageyone

You'll find the dodge/burn/sponge tool down along the left toolbar by default. They're grouped together under the one icon, look for a hand that looks like it's pinching - that's your burn tool. You can use this to tone down over exposed areas - you can set it to do midtones/highlights etc ... and change the brush size as you go using the [ and ] keys - beside the letter P on your keyboard [same goes for lightroom adjustment brushes]

Then try the dodge tool, which basically brightens or brings up the exposure on darker areas. the icon for that brush looks like a little black blower {god I'm so bad at describing things ... ] - you could try this brush on the castle.

There are other methods, like masking, but it's too hard explain. You'd be better to look up some video tutorials on youtube for anything more complex. I much prefer using brushes.


Mess about with them and you'll get the hang of it

stcstc

firstly

i would suggest you dont use gifs use jpgs instead as gifs have a limited colour palette and are not really designed for photos

i think generally the images look a little flat overall so ideally you could do with adding some contrast.

dont worry about trying to do local adjustments initially, i think you would be surprised at the difference in results

Thecageyone

Boosting contrast wont brighten the castle or kill all that burnout though.

charybdis

Judging by the flare and shadows, it looks like the photographs were taken in the general direction in the sun. This means the castle is backlit and it's difficult to realistically portray detail in the castle wall and in the clouds. The biggest difference you could make to these photographs is to pick the light and time of day when photographing and then make creative decisions about exposure and composition when you know what you want to achieve.

As said above, use JPEG for stuff like this, it's what it was designed for.

Thecageyone wrote: »

Boosting contrast wont brighten the castle or kill all that burnout though.

Why would you assume that the intention was to brighten the castle?

Thecageyone wrote: »

You'll find the dodge/burn/sponge tool down along the left toolbar by default. They're grouped together under the one icon, look for a hand that looks like it's pinching - that's your burn tool. You can use this to tone down over exposed areas - you can set it to do midtones/highlights etc ... and change the brush size as you go using the [ and ] keys - beside the letter P on your keyboard [same goes for lightroom adjustment brushes]

Then try the dodge tool, which basically brightens or brings up the exposure on darker areas. the icon for that brush looks like a little black blower {god I'm so bad at describing things ... ] - you could try this brush on the castle.

There are other methods, like masking, but it's too hard explain. You'd be better to look up some video tutorials on youtube for anything more complex. I much prefer using brushes.


Mess about with them and you'll get the hang of it

The "fill light" slider is best used sparingly, as are the dodge/burn tools, masks, etc.; don't think post-processing will make your photographs better, better photographs will make your photographs better.

Thecageyone

I'm not assuming, that is my own personal suggestion, you don't have to agree.

I think the castle would benefit from a lighting boost, I use fill light alot, I'm well aware of it's restrictions. But it is still very useful. I prefer Lightroom's Adjustment brushes to Photoshops anyday, rarely ever use Dodge and burn, but it's the closest you get in PS.

I really don't get why anyone would be against using adjustments on burn out areas? It's the logical, easiest way to handle it.

If they weren't Gifs, and the OP didn't mind I'd have a wee go to show what I mean.

charybdis

Thecageyone wrote: »

I'm not assuming, that is my own personal suggestion, you don't have to agree.

I think the castle would benefit from a lighting boost, I use fill light alot, I'm well aware of it's restrictions. But it is still very useful. I prefer Lightroom's Adjustment brushes to Photoshops anyday, rarely ever use Dodge and burn, but it's the closest you get in PS.

I really don't get why anyone would be against using adjustments on burn out areas? It's the logical, easiest way to handle it.

If they weren't Gifs, and the OP didn't mind I'd have a wee go to show what I mean.

It's up to the OP, but I'd say knock yourself out. You're not going to recover clipped highlights and by darkening the surrounding tones you're just going to make the transitions more apparent, whereas a more aggressive contrast curve might give the highlight shoulder a more subtle rolloff and make them look a little more natural.

Thecageyone

If he had lightroom I'd suggest trying the recovery slider, that can work wonders on over-blown areas. Not sure what the equivalent is in PS?

kelly1

As others have said, I think they could do with a bit more contrast in the foreground for greater impact.

Have a look at the attached image.

Roddylarge

hi,

Thanks for all the comments, and i understand exactly what you mean, i took these photographs around 6 o clock, into the direction of the sun. i never really thought about where the light would be coming from to be honest, i suppose this is one of the thing you learn by making mistakes.
i have the original files as jpeg, i only converted them to gif to upload to the web.

i have attached 2 of them in jpeg if anybody wants to play around and show me. i tried to adjust them in ps last night and made an absolute mess of them.

As somebody posted above,its all about getting the shot right in the beginning.

Thecageyone

This is along the lines of what I meant -

I upped the exposure of the whole image first, then used recovery to pull back the cloud white-out, used the adjustment brush, under exposed, on the sky. used fill light to fire light on the castle, upped the black levels to make it pop out a little more, took the highlights down [-30] and lights down around the same, upped the darks and shadows and upped the contrast a little.

To me, it looks better, it just stands out more and is less flat. You can see the histogram is fine on both lights and darks.