# Been Playing Around



## yustr (Sep 27, 2004)

I have posted this one before - sorry for the duplication but I decided to completely change the sky. I thought that the blown out highlights were a negative. I had another version of the same scene that I thought was better exposed and more dramatic. So I combined the two in PS. I also did some color adjustments and blending to the sky reflections on the water. What do you think of the new "photograph"? (Can it still be called a photo???)

New 











Original


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## WereBo (Apr 5, 2008)

There's no getting away from it, the new pic is a definite improvement over the original - Excellent editing yustr, the colour's not too saturated and really shows the drama ray:


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## DonaldG (Aug 23, 2007)

Nicely done Yustr...

Blown highlights: The bain of my life! Shooting in raw certainly helps to overcome many of these problems with a wide dynamic range of light in shots such as sunsets. However that does not help when is is already shot in JPG.

If you have Adobe Bridge part of Photoshop, use Bridge to find the original .jpg, highlight the thumbnail and select 'Open in Camera Raw'. You will find that you can process the jpg as if it is a RAW image with all the power of the RAW tools. It won't recover data that is lost but it will bring out details that are difficult to get to in Photoshop itself, The RAW tools include a fantastic grad filter and exposure brush that will help to tweak even tiny parts of the image.


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## Laxer (Dec 28, 2010)

How wide is the picture? (px before being shrunk)

I could use a new background and this one is simply beautiful.


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## DonaldG (Aug 23, 2007)

About 10Mpix image.


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## yustr (Sep 27, 2004)

Laxer said:


> How wide is the picture? (px before being shrunk)
> 
> I could use a new background and this one is simply beautiful.


Original was shot in RAW so I will try some of Donald's suggestions.

Some interesting statistics:

The original as shot in RAW = ~16 MB (of course that's only one of the two images but since I really used 1/2 of each that's about right)

As modified in Photoshop = ~39 MB 

Converted to JPG (3433 x 1917) = ~5MB

Reduced and compressed (to 88 x 447) for posting here using Photobucket = ~175 kB


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## DonaldG (Aug 23, 2007)

With the Camera RAW tools in Bridge, you have far more control than a .jpg in Photoshop. Do experiment with the sliders:
*Exposure*, *Fill Light* (for dark shadows), and *Recovery* (bring back blown highlights to a great degree.

Then from the top left tool bar, experiment with the *Grad Filter* (You can put as many grad filters on and at any angle you like. Also experiment with the *Brush* (Add or decrease exposure in small or large portions of the image) next to the Grad Filter. That brush is incredibly versatile fully adjustable in size, feather an amount.

Each tool in Camera RAW is so powerful that I do most of my tweaking therein. Even if the original was shot as a .jpg. I only do the final, small tweaking in Photoshop itself.

There are many other tools available but I suggest that if you get to grips with those I mentioned, you will get a lot out of the image and in many different ways.

EDIT: when you use the RAW tools for the first few experiments, there is the huge temptation to over apply the tweak. However Tweaking in RAW is non destructive - Photoshop saves the tweaks from the original RAW file as a 'sidecar' file. . When you pass the RAW file into Photoshop, Photoshop takes a *copy* of the RAW with the sidecar file applied to it. The original RAW file is never changed. You can always re-open a tweaked RAW and revert or re-tweak it. Using file explorer to find and delete the sidecar file will restore the RAW instantly back to its original state... Magic.


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