Before And After

[Jeff D. Welker]

Before


After


Spent some quality time yesterday at Willie hoping to catch the DC-10 making a few sorties on the Wallow Fire. Unfortunately, it never flew. With a little luck and perseverance, I caught this KC-135R making its monthly milk run from March to Willie to Nellis. The late afternoon light was very good and I did my post processing with an eye towards emphasizing that golden glow. The sky was "dirty" from the fire and I thought about masking it and adding some blue; however, ultimately decided to leave alone so as not to distract from the 135.

- Slight crop
- Cut out plane and mask
- Process Plane (Viveza, Curves, Hue/Saturation)
- Overall Curves tweak
- Output Sharpen to taste

C&C welcome.

[Jay Beckman]

I think it looks pretty good Jeff.  I might pull the "Golden Hour" effect back just a hair.  It's probably a "My Monitor Vs Your Monitor" thing but here it's trending a little past "warm" and looking a wee bit yellow.

Here's a fun little fix I did tonight involving Copying, Pasting, Flipping and Nudging various parts in order to clean up what was behind the jet.  Did some spot cleanup on the ramp as well to get rid of loose rocks and little sparkly highlights.

Before


After

[Jeff D. Welker]

I think it looks pretty good Jeff.  I might pull the "Golden Hour" effect back just a hair.  It's probably a "My Monitor Vs Your Monitor" thing but here it's trending a little past "warm" and looking a wee bit yellow.

I don't think it was your monitor alone. My wife said it was a little too "golden". Here is a toned-down version to compare with the "Extra Golden". While the change is subtle, I like the toned-down version better. What say ye?

Extra Golden...


Toned-down...

[Dave S.]

Jeff,

Getting one of those 'This photo is currently unavailable' notices from flickr, regarding your 'Extra Golden' photo.

All is good in the world again, 

Dave

[Jeff D. Welker]

Jeff,

Getting one of those 'This photo is currently unavailable' notices from flickr, regarding your 'Extra Golden' photo.

Dave

Dave:

I hope I've fixed it - darn flickr gets finicky from time to time.

[Jay Beckman]

I like the re-tweak Jeff...

Went back and re-worked an image from October of 2010.  As soon as I saw some of the techniques shown at ISAP, I immediately thought of this shot and wanted to try and make it much more commercial and polished looking...

Yay or Nay?

SOOC


LR Adjustments and CS5 Surgery (No Nik Viveza .. Decided to pass on that for now .. All layers, masks and layer properties)

[Joe Copalman]

The synthetic lens flare is a bit much, but the rest of the image has a good deal of "pop" without looking fake or over-processed. 

Do you have a copy of your previous edit to contrast your prior treatment with the post-ISAP edit?

[Jay Beckman]

The previous, "non ISAP" edit lives over HERE

[Joe Copalman]

Oh yeah.  Post-ISAP is way better.  And while the lens flare ain't my bag, baby, re-reading your intent to do more "commercial" edits makes me less hostile toward them.  I know Kris Klop does a bunch of false-flare work and he gets quite a few oohs and ahhs from the non-aviation Flickratti, so there's definitely an appeal there, even if it isn't among grumpy, up-too-late aviation shooters named Joe Copalman.

[Jay Beckman]

Thanks for the feedback sir...

[Jay Beckman]

Further refinement of the processing techniques...  I think this one is a bit more subtle:

SOOC


Treated


Two additional layers were created.  One masks everything that's 50% luminance and higher and the other masks everything that's 50% luminance and darker.
50% and UP is given a "Soft Light" property which darkens it some.  50% and DOWN is given a "Mulitply" property which really darkens the shadows.

All you have to do then is go in and softly remove the darkened areas where you want highlights to pop (Leading edges, inside cowlings, faces, the edges of oil cooler intakes, cowl edges, etc...)  I also removed about 20% of the mask from the river to bring it out a little bit more.

[Jeff D. Welker]

Here is a rescue effort that I don't know exactly how it ends. I made a serious mistake in a manual exposure a week ago. I showed Matt and Bill how "blown out" the images were and mentioned I like to try and say one or two. I spoke to a photographer in Chicago that works miracles on overexposed images. While I'm not nearly done yet, here are my before and after thus far.

Straight from the camera.


After about an hour of rescue work - much more to go.


The nearly all white plane is really adding to the challenge; however, my associate in Chicago tells me it can be brought completely back from the dead. He keeps feeding me little hints and suggestions; then tells me to keep working at it. I'm already wondering if I've hit the wall as to what is truly possible; however, Schewe tells me he has recovered worse - hard to image. I'll post other efforts as they come forth.

[Jay Beckman]

You may well be able to recover / remake the blown out white areas but I think you're going to find yourself having to hand draw a lot of details.  I'll be very curious to see if any fine details can ultimately be recovered.

Keep at it Jeff.   

[Jay Beckman]

One Girl's Beautification Project:

SOOC


Cinemascope Crop and Basic Lightroom Adjustments


Export to CS5 for more localized adjustments yielding more "pop"


Now some cleanup.  Taxiway Lights and Blue Water Tower gone and ready for prime time!

[Jay Beckman]

A little bit of Saber Saving...

Before


After


I see a few small details I could probably go back and clean up more but this version was only about an hour's worth of work.