photo Tips for touching up Photos

[Chewy509]

Hi Guys,

I've uploaded some photos to my personal website ( http://chewy509.110mb.com/pic.html ), and would like to get some feedback on the best ways to touch up some of them, before having them professionally printed.

I'm looking at getting them ready for 8x10 print sizes...

I know a photo-centric forum would be better, but since we have a few people here that are into this, I'd thought I would ask here.

PS. Click on the thumbnail for full view.

 

[blakerwry]

I've recently started processing my photos in Adobe Camera Raw - Part of Photoshop. I generally let it adjust the white balance and then apply a vignette to most of the photos.

A little exposure/contrast adjustment and use of the clarity (sharpening/contrast) slider goes a long way.

Camera raw makes it easy to sort through/rate my photos, apply the same settings to a shoot, tweak individual photos, and then export to jpg.

 

[e_dawg]

Holy bokeh, batman! I'd use some selective / local USM on the part of the image that's in focus and a combination of box blur and lens blur with progressively increasing radius as you move progressively away from the focal plane to tame the bokeh.

 

[Chewy509]

Holy bokeh, batman! I'd use some selective / local USM on the part of the image that's in focus and a combination of box blur and lens blur with progressively increasing radius as you move progressively away from the focal plane to tame the bokeh.

Unfortunately with a P/S camera I'm using, it's a problem not having descent control the over depth of field, but I guess I should take some photography lessons as well, or read the user manual to understand how to use the manual modes...

Most of the plant/flower shots were taken at around max zoom for the camera in macro mode, up close to the subject, which I know doesn't help either.

PS. Using a FujiFilm S6500. 6MP, w/10x optical zoom. All shots are taken in RAW, and converted to JPEG using ufraw/gimp. (I'm using Solaris, so Photoshop isn't really an option).

 

[ddrueding]

Lovin' the frogs. You are going to want some significant noise reduction, but that will lose some detail. 8x10 should still be doable.

 

[udaman]

Unfortunately with a P/S camera I'm using, it's a problem not having descent control the over depth of field, but I guess I should take some photography lessons as well, or read the user manual to understand how to use the manual modes...

Most of the plant/flower shots were taken at around max zoom for the camera in macro mode, up close to the subject, which I know doesn't help either.

PS. Using a FujiFilm S6500. 6MP, w/10x optical zoom. All shots are taken in RAW, and converted to JPEG using ufraw/gimp. (I'm using Solaris, so Photoshop isn't really an option).

I kind of doubt there are more than one or two users of Solaris on any given photocentric forums *anywhere*. You could spend lots of time searching on Solaris forums, ask for image editors there....or

Bite the bullet, and don't severely limit yourself by insisting on only using Solaris, transfer your files to a partition that boots an OS on which you'll have multiple choices of image editing programs/solutions.

Do you have Linux on that box? Suggest you read up on this inexpensive program (version tracker, other photocentric sites) to find out the limitations/flaws, consider this

http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/?page_id=9

http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/?page_id=7

 

[Stereodude]

Holy bokeh, batman! I'd use some selective / local USM on the part of the image that's in focus and a combination of box blur and lens blur with progressively increasing radius as you move progressively away from the focal plane to tame the bokeh.

That's not bokeh. That's a lack of bokeh you're complaining about.

 

[e_dawg]

I'm not sure you're using the word in the right context, sd. AFAIK, bokeh is used to describe the quality of the background blur for things that are not in the depth of field, not the quantity or presence of blur.

The Japanese apparently refer to the quality of the out-of-focus image as "boke"

The rendering of out-of-focus (OOF) image parts does not enjoy a large weight in the overall design compromise of a normal photographic lens. However, the OOF blur characteristics mattered to certain Japanese photographers who introduced the term "bokeh" to the photographic society to describe the aesthetic quality of the blur.

http://www.planetneil.com/faq/bokeh.html

 

[Stereodude]

I'm not sure you're using the word in the right context, sd. AFAIK, bokeh is used to describe the quality of the background blur for things that are not in the depth of field, not the quantity or presence of blur.

Yeah, but the background is hardly blurred, so I'm not sure bokeh is the right word to talk about the quality of the non blurry backgrounds.