The Magic of Post

[Timmyjoe]

Hey folks,

I think we're getting away from the reason I posted this. It wasn't supposed to be about the best way to photograph a room, or even about real estate photography.

What I was trying to convey with the original image is the range of light that you can make work when shooting RAW with a current digital camera. The interior of the room was way too dark, and the light coming in from the lake was way too bright. But because the file was a digital RAW, I was able to balance the two in a way that made the image "work".

Scott Kelby has written some great books about doing post work in Photoshop. Years ago I learned from whatever book he had out at the time which was geared toward Photoshop Creative Suite 3. It really is amazing what you can do with RAW files.

Would love to see more examples of folks getting the most out of a difficult lighting situation, using digital post processing.

Best,
-Tim

 

[charjohncarter]

OK, not lighting but here is a film image of building in Belmont Shore, Long Beach, CA. I took the photo with an Olympus Stylus Infinity which has, I think a 38mm lens. The perspective was way off, I needed swing and tilt of a 4x5. But using the SKEW tool under Image I was able to bring it into almost good perspective.

Belmont Shore, Long Beach, CA-2007 by John Carter, on Flickr

And I 'saved' this one from 1972, also:

1971-1972 by John Carter, on Flickr

Both were TIFF scans.

 

[RichC]

I think we're getting away from the reason I posted this ... What I was trying to convey with the original image is the range of light that you can make work when shooting RAW ... Would love to see more examples of folks getting the most out of a difficult lighting situation, using digital post processing.

OK... I was handholding at night. This meant seriously underexposed images to keep the shutter speed fast enough to avoid shake. My intent was a series of underexposed images - but I knew that the images were way under underexposed: practically black!

The project is a reflection on the coronavirus pandemic, and can be seen here: https://richcutler.co.uk/photography/isolation-project/

Here's the after and before of one image. The camera is a Sony A7R II, which has amazing dynamic range. I'm happy with how the images turned out.

 

[Vince Lupo]

Hey folks,

I think we're getting away from the reason I posted this. It wasn't supposed to be about the best way to photograph a room, or even about real estate photography.

What I was trying to convey with the original image is the range of light that you can make work when shooting RAW with a current digital camera. The interior of the room was way too dark, and the light coming in from the lake was way too bright. But because the file was a digital RAW, I was able to balance the two in a way that made the image "work".

Scott Kelby has written some great books about doing post work in Photoshop. Years ago I learned from whatever book he had out at the time which was geared toward Photoshop Creative Suite 3. It really is amazing what you can do with RAW files.

Would love to see more examples of folks getting the most out of a difficult lighting situation, using digital post processing.

Best,
-Tim

Yup definitely agree, that digression was my fault. I was just thinking of a way to help a scene like that so that the post-production didn't have to be quite as heavy a lift. Sorry for the detour.

BTW there is a feature in PhotoShop - which you all likely already know about - under 'Image/Adjustments' called Shadows/Highlights. You can bring the shadows up and the highlights down a fair bit by using this option (I wouldn't advise going too crazy with it though), and then adjust your midtones to compensate for the reduction in contrast. The other nice thing about PhotoShop CC is that you can always return to the Camera RAW filter even after you bring the RAW image into PhotoShop to work on.

 

[Timmyjoe]

Yup definitely agree, that digression was my fault. I was just thinking of a way to help a scene like that so that the post-production didn't have to be quite as heavy a lift. Sorry for the detour.

No worries Vince, it's all good.

I've been using Apple's Aperture product pretty much since it was introduced (unfortunately now it's no longer supported). It has the Shadows/Highlight sliders and I've become a bit dependent on them. They are much more subtle than the ones in Photoshop, which I don't use as much.

Best,
-Tim