Baked fish???

[dusty montgomery]

Hey Guys,
I am having a bit of trouble with post on this image. A few things are concerning me:

1. Is the image baked?
2. Did I draw out the blacks too much?
3. Why is there banding in the lower right corner…b/c I shot in low light and this another form of noise?
4. Did I take the sharpening too far?

I know that some of my questions could be up to interpretation, but I guess I am asking them as they pertain to given or accepted rules of post-processing. I have not calibrated my monitor, if that helps in any evaluation. I am using a first gen. iMac w/ 20″ monitor.

Thanks for any feedback.  

[John Bennett]

Its appears like it might be over sharpened a hair but that could be a result of sharpening the original and then resizing for web. Contrast and reds likewise seem a hair overdone but these are definately subjctive ( a persons taste) so it really doesn’t matter what I think. The banding in the lower right?? No idea, I’m inclined to think its something in the background and can be easily removed if desired.

Over all Dusty its a fine image, PP might be a hair over done but its not in your face overdone and the only people who might care (and hence notice) are other “photogs”, very, very few “viewers” will notice or care

[dusty montgomery]

John,
I agree with you about the reds, contrast, and the sharpening. though in truth I still do not understand how the three sharpening sliders interact with one another. Also, I was trying to bring back some data or color in the whites of the fish’s mouth, which I guess ended up giving me a darker image using curves. And I knew when I had done it that the gill plate was too red, but I wanted to see what y’all thought. (It was an abnormally bright and colored fish though.)

Thanks John!
D.

[anonymous]

Dusty,

I have no advice, call me a professional “viewer” not photog, haha.

[David Anderson]

Yep, over cooked IMHO.

Sharpening is best done between raw and final size format, though taking something down to web rez off a large file shouldn’t give you too much trouble.

In Bridge (CS3) I would normally give a shot like that a little bump in the blacks and sharpness, but only a bump.
Sharpness of around 50 is heaps if the shot is already sharp, and blacks +7 (normal is +5) would be my max.

The artifact in the bottom corner could be from conversion to JPEG as well.

Is the shot from a raw ?

www.dsaphoto.com

A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.

[Ben Cochran]

Nice catch, Dusty! Along with what David Anderson mentioned. I believe that the lines are more similar to digital aberrations, meaning: You over sharpened the blur and then increased the exposure and contrast. The sharpening tool tried to define lines in the blurred area and did the best that it could do, add an enormous digital pixel shift and these artifacts will appear almost always. Try erasing the area that you do not want to apply the sharpening tool and it should help. Also, you have several hot spots (no data) and I am not sure if that was because of the PP or in the original, facing jaw joint, thumb and fingers. By leaving the background section a bit darker, helping to prevent hot spots or amplifying them, you can actually give your subject more pop and separation from the background.

As John said, a bit over saturated and contrasty, mostly in the reds. You also have a good bit of magenta on the roof of the trouts mouth and along the upper lip. It is more noticeable on the wide gamut monitor but I can still see it on the Mac monitor. Glad that you posted in jpg as it really has a lot more pop in the wider gamut.

[dusty montgomery]

Yep, over cooked IMHO.

Sharpening is best done between raw and final size format, though taking something down to web rez off a large file shouldn’t give you too much trouble.

In Bridge (CS3) I would normally give a shot like that a little bump in the blacks and sharpness, but only a bump.
Sharpness of around 50 is heaps if the shot is already sharp, and blacks +7 (normal is +5) would be my max.

The artifact in the bottom corner could be from conversion to JPEG as well.

Is the shot from a raw ?

Thanks David,
I am using CS4, and I was having some difficulty, due to ignorance, getting the sharpening done as the final step. I always try to do it in the end, but it will no let me. I have to activate the original layer befor ethe sharpening will work. Otherwise, no preview pops up and no sharpening is rendered.

I think I put the sharpness at 125 and the blacks at 15…oops!

[dusty montgomery]

Try erasing the area that you do not want to apply the sharpening tool and it should help. Also, you have several hot spots (no data) and I am not sure if that was because of the PP or in the original, facing jaw joint, thumb and fingers.

Ben,
Thanks for the response! I do understand the idea of what you are saying, though I do not know how to apply selective sharpening. Is this done by masking first then applying the unsharpen filter?

I tried to darken the fish’s mouth, but I did so in curves, and it only resulted in darkening the image, after I had set the blacks to 15 in ACR. I guess the one amplified the other.

I understand, and appreciate, all that has been said, and Dave Z., you are right–the banding does grab one’s eye…except for the cause and cure for the aberration in lower right. I thought it was noise due to low light conditions. If it would help, and someone can tell me how, I will post an image of the histogram from the original file.

Thank you guys!
Dusty

[Ben Cochran]

Dusty, the easiest and quickest way for me to explain it would be this:

As DA mentioned, save the sharpen step for last. Once you have made all of your other adjustments, save the TIFF or PSD if you want the layers saved. Now flatten the image and copy a new background layer. On the 1st background layer, add your sharpening to that layer, then make a copy to a new layer. Convert this new layer to a masking layer and make sure that you highlight the masking layer box. You can use the eraser tool or paintbrush to edit the particular layer. If you use the eraser tool, keep in mind that you can adjust the size as well as the density, a softer brush adds more feathering while the harder brush is more precise. The painting process is much cleaner and is the better choice. Select the masking box and paint white to keep the effects or black to erase them, you have the same brush controls as the eraser brush. Very important that you do this in the masking layer as, if you don’t, you may end up with a terrible haze in a printed version.

You may want to open up a hue layer and desaturate the magenta channel, this may help with the mouth hue.

[dusty montgomery]

That’s great Ben!
I will give it a try and see what happens.

Re. the inside of the critter’s mouth, are they not normally on the pink/red side due to blood flow? Or in real time are they more white? I never paid attention to it or thought about it until now. Please do not think I am arguing as I obviously do not comprehend colors as well. I see the magenta since you mentioned it, but if you had not it would not have occurred to me.

I think the mouth was affected in ACR when I bumped the luminance of the red slider.

Thank you,
Dusty

[Ben Cochran]

One thing that you can also add, to your work flow, is a print proofing step. Any descent printer should do fine and more colors will probably show up in flat sheet proofing. You may also try converting to sRGB as well. On the wide gamut monitor, I can see more of the RGB gamut than on my macbook, the macbook pro is about 72-75% of the RGB scale so, I don’t heavily trust it for proofing. Your printer may print that additional gamut, a smaller sRGB gamut conversion will help limit it too but that isn’t why we purchase these expensive camera’s.

Got to love colors—- and prozac  😀

[John Bennett]

Dusty for lack of better words think of sharpening as “defining” the borders (edges) of contrast. Its really all it amounts to. Some images of mine I apply no sharpening at all. Others a little ‘capture” sharpening to the master file to recover whats lost at capture vis a vie the AA filter. All DSLRs have an AA filter, the strength of which varies body to body, te trner the AA filter, the “softer” a raw file will appear.And other images still a little “output” sharpening thats dependant on whther the files for web display or print.

As a “general” starting point I set my sharpening parameters to .3/100/2 and then adjust from there.  Also if your using CS3 or 4 use “smart sharpening” rather than unsharp mask.

Radius essentially defines the “width” of the line of contrast being defined.

Amount defines how much the “contrast” along the line is increased

Threshold determines how much contrast needs to be present before its sharpened (contrast on the edge is increased)

While not entirely accurate think of the three common things done to any raw file…
1) black point set
2) global contrast is “boosted”
3) sharpening

all 3 impact or emphasise the existing contrast present in any image

With regards to your “blacks” slider in ACR, heres a little trick.
My “preset” is set to 5. but on every image I check for clipping by holding the alt key, while dragging the slider. It gives you a very good idea of whether to or not to back off or increase your blacks. The same is true of your exposure slider (hold alt while dragging). Any clipped area will appear as you exceed, or dissapear as you back off.
Sometimes clipping is good…a siloette for example in which case you migt want to increase your blacks. Its still a good way to get a sense of where to set your blacks in the raw file and then move onto global contrast, curves etc

[dusty montgomery]

I appreciate the help guys. When I get back home to my machine I will try all of the above suggestions.

Thanks for the input!
Dusty

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