OT - Post processing Nightime snow pics

[xxxbadfishxxx]

I am still getting used to both my camera (Nikon D50) and Photoshop CS2. I know little to nothing about photoshop. I will post the original pic and what i did, does this look good to you? looking for some tips, tricks, pointers. Feel free to try it yourself, if you do, can you explain what you did.

Original Pic

Processed pic

for this i simply did, auto color, then auto contrast, then auto levels, then made it slightly darker. I would say it was def. darker out then how it looks

here is another original

thanks in advance,

Jeff

 

[Blazer88]

Here is a quick shot at the first one. Shooting this in RAW would have been a much better idea so you could manually set the white balance in PP. I figured I would convert it to B/W since the color was so far off. Enjoy!

 

[xxxbadfishxxx]

blazer, simple solution, i like it. Is that what it was? the White balance was off? If i remember correctly, i shot this with a tripod in auto with no flash.

i choose not to shoot in raw because i guess i am kind of scared too, LOL. How hard is it to post process, and convert? I use CS2.

 

[xxxbadfishxxx]

heres my try

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/7294466@N06/421189641/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/165/421189641_93fa57092a_b.jpg" width="1024" height="681" alt="Snowy Night" /></a>

 

[Blazer88]

Don't be scared of RAW, it's your friend I use Adobe Lightroom for my RAW conversions and I find it very easy to use. You can make all sorts of adjustments before exporting the file into CS2 which cuts down the PP time. The processing for this picture was pretty easy and only took five minutes. Here is a brief of what I did:
-I converted the picture to black/white by using the channel mixer.
-Did noise removal (brightening dark parts of an image will always bring out noise)
-Fixed the dark corners
-Added a 50% gray layer set to overlay, and made certain parts bright and/or daker (mostly to even the sky)
-Added a very slight cooling filter for a touch of blue hue
-Quick curves adjustment for contrast
-And finally sharpened/saved.

And your're done I'm sure it's nothing to how the picture looked when you took the shot but better than the orange version.

 

[Rosseau]

An easy way to fix those dark corners caused by the lens distortion.

Filter --> Distort --> Lens correction

or, even better, when you bring a RAW file into CS2 you have an option to fix it right then and there

 

[xxxbadfishxxx]

thanks blazer, i always liked all your pics by the way, and hope to be able to take similar one one day.

what you just said sounds like another language, i think i really need to buy a book and read it, can you recommend one?

can you convert right in CS2? i dont beleive i have adobe lightroom.

 

[Rosseau]

Yeah you can do it all in CS2, try taking a raw photo and simply dragging it into CS2.


It has really easy to use options for white balance, exposure etc.

 

[xxxbadfishxxx]

wow, thanks all, keep the tips coming.

 

[Rosseau]

no problem, i'm still learning a lot myself these days. I've realized RAW is the way to go, though its larger, if you have the space it's worth it. Like having the negatives for film stored up.


How's the GIS going? I nearly ended up doing that full time for school and thus would be working away at that in the next few years. If you have mastered ArcGIS etc, then Photoshop should be a breeze!

 

[xxxbadfishxxx]

LOL, GIS is good, its not a bad gig at all, you should stick with it.

 

[Rosseau]

Yeah well the GIS is definately going places these days. That's for sure. I've taken a few courses and used different systems a fair amount. This summer i'll be up in the Canadian Arctic doing lots of things including modelling via GIS. Anyways. ... I hope I have the camera stuff all figured out by then.


Because snow is so bright it can be difficult to exposure an entire scene.. as you're finding out via this thread.

 

[Rosseau]

Yeah well the GIS is definately going places these days. That's for sure. I've taken a few courses and used different systems a fair amount. This summer i'll be up in the Canadian Arctic doing lots of things including modelling via GIS. Anyways. ... I hope I have the camera stuff all figured out by then. I digress...


Because snow is so bright it can be difficult to exposure an entire scene.. as you're finding out via this thread.

 

[BlueCorn]

I actually like your first attempt at correction on the first image. It has a faux-IR look to it. Blazer's fix is well executed but it completely removes the feeling of "night" from the shot.

Towards your first attempt, this would be my take on the scene:

 

[xxxbadfishxxx]

looks good beerguy, yeah thats why in my B/W attempt i darkened it a little to give it the nightime effect, i think it worked. How did you process your image? it looks similar to that, just darker.

 

[BlueCorn]

I removed the vignetting using filter/distort/lens correction and then ran a custom PS action that I use for swapping the red and blue channels on IR images. Then just did a crop.