Leica Rangefinder Photographs editing

[andybarton]

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Thank you. We do. 
 

Like most people here I am self taught with LR and PS. But I have been here a long time and had learned a lot from lots of other folk.

[MikeMyers]

2 hours ago, andybarton said:

And this is the shot after I have played around with it.

I wasn't going to ask anything, but I can't resist.  How did you get the left side of the lead boat to look so much sharper and clearer?  I can't read the words in the top picture, let alone see the texture on that side of the boat, but in your edited image, everything shows up clearly.  To me, that makes a huge difference.  By comparison, the top image seems "blurry".   :-)

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[MikeMyers]

2 hours ago, tamas said:

Not perfect, but I quite like it for its quirkiness.

I don't think your birds were out of focus, just too fast for your shutter speed, but the motion blur and the way you caught the shot at just the right time resulted in a really excellent image.  Had I taken that image, I'd probably have deleted it without "seeing" what you saw.  If I'm learning something from your photo, it's not to be so fast at deleting "junk" photos.  I might never have noticed this composition inside your image.  It's cool that you did it with a rangefinder - I find it harder to both keep things in focus and watch the overall scene.  Very nice!!!!!!  That to me, would look like a photograph I would gladly hang on my wall.

[andybarton]

36 minutes ago, MikeMyers said:

I wasn't going to ask anything, but I can't resist.  How did you get the left side of the lead boat to look so much sharper and clearer?  I can't read the words in the top picture, let alone see the texture on that side of the boat, but in your edited image, everything shows up clearly.  To me, that makes a huge difference.  By comparison, the top image seems "blurry".   🙂

Nulli Secundis?

That’s the boat on the left. 

The enhancement would have been via careful use of sliders in LR - texture for example. Never slide more than 20 points. 

[tamas]

Thank you for your kind comments Mike.

At one point I toyed with the idea of removing the bird on the far left, as it seemed to ruin the almost perfect circle by the others.  But I dismissed the urge as that would have been a manipulation too far, and I think would have looked obvious in the photo to trained eyes.

[MikeMyers]

7 hours ago, andybarton said:

I prefer the second, so much so that I have a meter wide print on my living room wall.

But, what does this prove? Processing your work makes it look better?

Well, to me, it doesn't "prove" anything, but looking at both versions, and trying to figure out why you made the changes you did, it seems to me that by cropping the left side and bottom, you got two rock formations that grab my eye and drag it into the center of the image.   The original image sort of did that, buy by removing all the "distracting" stuff, it made the image stronger.  That also eliminated the footprints.

What I do is to "squint" my eyes and look at things.  With the top image I see a lot "stuff", but no direction.  With the lower image, it's like having two large arrows pointing INTO the photo.  Also, the top image looks "heavier" at the right, but that one small change balances it, at least for me.  The only thing that is distracting for me, is on my screen, it looks like the hill has a "halo" on the edited version where sky meets hill.  This is only looking at the left side of the hill.  The right side looks natural.

So, what did I learn?  Mostly to be more careful about "balancing".  I don't think about that enough.

[jaapv]

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8 hours ago, MikeMyers said:

The original image sort of did that, buy by removing all the "distracting" stuff, it made the image stronger.  

Wouldn't that disqualify the image according to the "rules" you promote?

[jaapv]

As the thread has evolved into a discussion about postprocessing, it has been moved into the postprocessing forum.

[Guest Nowhereman]

23 hours ago, MikeMyers said:

This is exactly the reason why it's a good idea.  I would see what you had done under those conditions, and learn from your ability to to correct for them.  Your post is exactly how you would be showing/teaching others (like me) who didn't know any of your suggestions until now...The idea is to show others how you dealt with those problem.

Okay, got it. Yes, I could post an image SOOC with back light or strong sidelight and it would show the main subject to be much too dark; and, then, the processed image would show how lifting the shadows improves it. That is of course a simple concept: that with digital, like with slide film, you need to expose for the highlights, in order not to blow them out. But, most of the time there is much more to making a good image, in terms of the burning and dodging. To show the latter in Lightroom, all I could do is to take a screenshot that would show, for examplet, some ten "buttons", which only indicate that burning or dodging had been done, but couldn't show the actual areas or the intensity — not that useful. One can learn a lot more from the this article, which contains the example below as well as some others, although I don't know whether the darkroom manipulations in the article go beyond what you consider appropriate. 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

There is also an excellent book on darkroom burning and dodging, Larry Bartlett's Black and White Photographic Printing Workshop, which you can find on online sources, both new and used. While it's for darkroom printing, the before and after examples, showing also the intensity of the adjustments, is also excellent for seeing what you can do with digital processing.
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[MikeMyers]

8 hours ago, jaapv said:

Wouldn't that disqualify the image according to the "rules" you promote?

I don't think so - the rules in the contests and elsewhere say cropping is OK.  Anything outside the cropped area is lost.

At least that's how I read the rules.

[MikeMyers]

7 hours ago, jaapv said:

As the thread has evolved into a discussion about postprocessing, it has been moved into the postprocessing forum.

My prediction - after two moves, participation here will drop to near zero.

At least it got people to thinking about this.  Maybe they will look at photos more critically from now on, searching for signs where the photo is trying to fool them.

Maybe from now on, I'll post two images when I post any manipulated image, "before" and "after".

I didn't even know there even WAS a post-processing forum.  

I suspect it will turn into "out of sight, out of mind".

I'm sure you know infinitely more about the forum than I ever will, so I'll just accept this.  No problem.

[andybarton]

On 2/2/2021 at 12:32 AM, MikeMyers said:

Yes, that is a perfect example of "final result".  Much more obvious than what I wrote.

One photograph as it was captured "in camera", and another photograph adjusted for posting online, printing, or selling.

I have shared two examples here. I am not sure that many others will be willing to do the same. I wouldn't normally.

Were you expecting dozens of examples?

[andybarton]

This is the front page of the Forum

32 minutes ago, MikeMyers said:

I didn't even know there even WAS a post-processing forum.

This is the front page of the Forum. Many people do not land at this page (this is where I start on a visit to the forum)

You can see all of the various sub-forums, both camera-specific, and general.

 

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[MikeMyers]

33 minutes ago, andybarton said:

This is the front page of the Forum. Many people do not land at this page (this is where I start on a visit to the forum)

You can see all of the various sub-forums, both camera-specific, and general.

 

I went to that forum, and found my post.  The most popular thread in that forum seems to be Workflow Examples, which I think is an excellent thread to read, now that I know it's there.

Please disregard my previous requests, and I apologize if I created any problems.  

Thank you!   .....and thanks for the link to the thread I noted up above.

[MikeMyers]

50 minutes ago, andybarton said:

I have shared two examples here. I am not sure that many others will be willing to do the same. I wouldn't normally.

Were you expecting dozens of examples?

Yes, but obviously I was wrong.

[LocalHero1953]

My landing page on the forum is an 'Activity Stream' showing all those threads with new posts since my last visit, in forums that I have selected - basically all forums except photo forums (because there are too many photo posts to track, not because I'm not interested), and forums for cameras I'm not interested in (X, DLux).

So it doesn't matter where your thread is, I can follow it if there is a new post.

Edited February 3, 2021 by LocalHero1953

[MikeMyers]

20 minutes ago, LocalHero1953 said:

My landing page on the forum is an 'Activity Stream' showing all those threads with new posts since my last visit, in forums that I have selected - basically all forums except photo forums (because there are too many photo posts to track, not because I'm not interested), and forums for cameras I'm not interested in (X, DLux).

So it doesn't matter where your thread is, I can follow it if there is a new post.

How do I set up the same thing you have?  Do I look for "Activity Stream" somewhere, and then set that to "landing page"?

[LocalHero1953]

You need the menu item 'Activity' at the top of the page, and then 'My Activity Streams'. I set mine up some time ago and can't remember quite how I did it, but it should be possible to work it out. 

[jaapv]

4 hours ago, MikeMyers said:

I don't think so - the rules in the contests and elsewhere say cropping is OK.  Anything outside the cropped area is lost.

At least that's how I read the rules.

Where do you think that top footstep went? And that white stone ?

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[MikeMyers]

Well, I don't know about others, but I compose many of my images "within" the frame of the viewfinder, and I've learned to leave extra room around "my" photo in case I need it during editing.  Maybe that's just that I'm not yet as careful at composing my images, or maybe it's because I have been frustrated too many times by not having the "room" around an image to crop as I wish to - maybe for the silly mistake of not holding the camera perfectly horizontal.  

As I understand all those rules and guidelines, they are trying to protect from someone taking a photo of people together, and deliberately crop out someone they don't want seen in the photo.  

If something is in the middle of the frame, I agree that it can't be removed.  But when I used to still have my darkroom, I remember raising and lowering the enlarger, and moving my easel around to allow it to show "my" photo.  I've also learned that once I know what I want my photo to be of, to try to let it fill the screen.  Considering that my M10 can't use a zoom lens, and that I've got so many megapixels to work with, I now use "crop" as a substitute for "zoom".

As to footsteps, I assume most photographers don't want to be intruding into their photo, so eliminating the footstep, which wasn't part of the scene anyway, seems logical.  I don't remember a white stone.

 

There was a response in one of these threads, where a teacher told a group of students to separate along with their photos into two groups, one "real photo" and the other "photoshopped photos".  The adults apparently got all confused with what goes where, but the kids understood instantly.

 

I remember you helping me back in 2009 when I first got my M8.2 and you seemed like a walking encyclopedia of everything in any way related to Leica.  If I wanted to re-assure myself that my 1960's collapsible 50mm Summicron now on my M3 could be used on my M8 or my M10, you would have the answer I would trust.  (Apparently I should never insert a retracted lens into either camera, but if I insert the extended lens into my M10, then collapse it, I am safe.)  That is what I think I learned, and that is the type of question I'd feel comfortable discussing with you.  Very precise question, and a very precise answer.  But there has never been a way with words to specifically say when "digital manipulation" goes too far.  That leads to trouble, as in your being concerned with the foot prints, and me ignoring them.   My best answer would be "I don't know, but I know when I see it".  If I post a photo here that I have gone too far on with digital enhancement,  I think I should be informed about that - but others might feel very differently.

You could ask me "what difference does it make?"  I have my own answer, but that might not apply to others.  So maybe it makes no difference, and I should go back to "doing", and stop "typing".   :-)

Edited February 3, 2021 by MikeMyers