Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Before and After #2: Ava


I haven't done this in several months, but I thought I'd share another before-and-after shot. This picture of Ava shows her standing on the driveway that leads up to the Richardson house atop Marye's Heights in Fredericksburg, VA.

It's overexposed to a great degree, so I backed off the exposure overall by about a half stop. The sunlit side on the right side of her neck and chest were overexposed as well, so I used an adjustment brush to burn in those areas, but not too much. Adding a vignette darkened her ears too much, so I dodged her ears with another adjustment brush (it's hard to make out since it's such a small area in the picture). Last of all, I cloned out her red leash and its shadow, which wasn't hard to do but it was time-consuming.

And I encountered the memory problem that other Lightroom users have run into when placing more than 10 cloned spots on one picture:. I had to exit out of Lightroom to free up memory. It's somewhat annoying, and I've read it hasn't been fixed in Lightroom 4 yet, either.

Note also that I'm working with an Adobe DNG file: I had to convert it from a Nikon NEF raw file to Adobe DNG because Lightroom 3.6 (the version I use) doesn't support D600 RAW files and never will. (I also didn't want to install Nikon's own software because that would add another step in my workflow.)  Adobe stopped supporting my version months ago, so I have no choice but to upgrade to LR 4 (and Windows 7). Which brings up the problem of software companies always playing catch-up when new cameras are introduced with their particular RAW files if that's what you like to shoot. If I had shot JPEG, no problem.

6 comments:

  1. Sometimes I am surprised by how long it takes to get a picture just the way I want it. Post-processing can be so time-consuming. Maybe if I actually learned how to use the software? I upgraded to a 27" iMac and LR4 recently. Sometimes it's easier just to make the jump.

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    1. sometimes i don't even know how i want it -- thus the sometimes long journey. i've never been crazy about post. i'd rather be out shooting.

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  2. I didn't know you could clone things out in Lightroom. I still have 3.6, or whatever was out right before 4.0 came out. I do a lot of going back and forth between Lightroom and PS Elements.

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    1. yeah, you can either clone or heal. i use it for removing obvious dust specks, leashes and shadows, nose drips, eye boogers, and other stuff. it's not as exact a tool as what's in photoshop (which i also have but rarely use), but, unless you zoom in at 100% or more, i try to clone stuff out and not be too obvious about it.

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  3. Whew. It's been a long time since I've worked any of my photos in anything more sophisticated than Picasa. I used to love it but reading your post it reminds me how much work it is and how long it can take! Still the result is fabulous. No doubt the after makes that photo pop.

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    1. it can be tedious and boring, as you know. fortunately in lightroom i can select one post-processed photo and propagate its changes to any number of pictures that need similar modifications. that's very, very handy. i've done this with cloning but i still have to open every picture and make sure the cloned areas are in the right spots.

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