Post Processing for Assignment 2

Having downloaded all the images that I took the other day and discarded those that had not worked out as I hoped (about 40%) I began work on changing them from Camera RAW to the finished product. It so happened that at the same time I received notification about the release of Lightroom 4 beta version so I decided to try it out using the images from the shoot (well copies anyway given that it is a beta version). I found it very good not least the shadow and highlight sliders that now only affect that particular part of the image. It negated the need to create 3 images at different exposure levels to capture the best of the tones available as virtually the same effect could be created in Lightroom 4. I do not know if the grunge effects at the extremes of HDR could be achieved but as that was not my aim, I was looking for a photorealistic result, it does not matter to me at this stage.

One problem I came across was transferring the images across to Photoshop (seems to be that this is becoming less and less necessary for many images. Using the given shortcut or the menu version produced an image that had none of the enhancements from Camera Raw (ACR). Using the Adobe forum I discovered that the current version of ACR in Photoshop (6.x.x.) cannot read the Lightroom 4 code hence the lack of changes. ACR 7, that will resolve this problem, has yet to be released by Adobe. The workaround is to 'export' the image to Photoshop. It is exported as a jpeg but that has not proved too much of a problem.

Overall I am quite pleased with the results both of the shoot and the post enhancement. I have reduced the saturation to see if that produces a better overall effect. Although it is a matter of taste I think that the change is for the better. I also have reduced dramatically the amount of sharpening applied at the finish and I think, with this particular set of pictures, it has given a much better result. I have yet to finalise the images I want to submit and am also considering trying one or two black and whites.

I have also re-examined those images with which I was unhappy (learn from one's 'mistakes').  Some failures were for obvious reasons such as very bad lens flare or shots where the brightness of the sun washed everything out because the camera was pointing almost directly at a sun low in the sky. Others were images that were very similar to another one but where the overall composition was not quite so good. some more difficult to decide was where the image did not match my memory of what I taken.  A common failure was lack of contrast i.e. a flatness that was unappealing. Of course these may have benefited from work in computer but they lacked any real interest point that made them worth working on.