South Africa

[Anthony Reilly]

Just thought i would share a few of my pictures from when i went to south africa earlier this year, hope you like.

 

[Anthony Reilly]

 

[Anthony Reilly]

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Anthony!

This one is particularly nice. It looks like it would be a painting by Audubon! Great to see so many pictures of birds. did you visit a bird sanctuary?

Notice I centered your images and put a space between them to make each one more happy and important.

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

Just thought i would share a few of my pictures from when i went to south africa earlier this year, hope you like.

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Did you shoot this leopard through the front windshield of your car in a game park? Splendid animal. Try post processing to bring out contrast or you did that already?

Asher

 

[Don Cohen]

Fun collection, Anthony. The raptors are quite beautiful. I agree with Asher's suggestion on the leopard - I bet this image could significantly benefit from some post processing to bring out the detail and color that I think is there.

I'm about a week away from posting images from a Tanzania trip I took at the end of October/early November. Several people on the trip mentioned South Africa as another very worthwhile destination!

 

[Asher Kelman]

Just thought i would share a few of my pictures from when i went to south africa earlier this year, hope you like.

Anthony,

This leopard is magnificent! I hope you managed to grab more pictures. I've never had one actually cross in front of me like this; so impressive. I've tried to process the image to bring out it's power more. Hope that's O.K.

Anthony Reilly: Leopard!

Original

Anthony Reilly: Leopard!

Edited ADK
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I missed the magenta cast!!!

More work needed, I think that the coat is more likely in the direction of an orange brown, ratter than the yellow-green that would be seen after correcting the magenta cast, (which I tried but didn't like). Pictures online vary so much, largely, I think because of lack of strict color workflow. I expect that no one shoots them, with color cards before posting online, LOL! I'll have to go back and refresh my memory and get the true colors before I can be certain. So Anthony, how close is it?

Asher

 

[Don Cohen]

Definitely magenta cast. I don't have time now, but may be able to play with it this afternoon and see what I can get.

 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Pictures online vary so much, largely, I think because of lack of strict color workflow. I expect that no one shoots them, with color cards before posting online, LOL! I'll have to go back and refresh my memory and get the true colors before I can be certain.

Hi Asher,

For those who use Photoshop, a good method to try as a first attempt is the Curves Auto setting, but with one of the presets. In this case I started with the "Find Dark and Light Colors" option, followed by some other steps to boost the detail level (I've over-done it), and finally to reduce the blue cast from the (presumably) car window reflection of the interior:

Anthony Reilly: Leopard!
Quick edit: Bart van der Wolf​

The goal was to see how much could be salvaged, and what the real problems were, but the final quality did suffer from the small JPEG original which didn't tolerate all the heavylifting needed to do a really good job. But the good news is that a lot can be done, especially when a bit more time can be spent on the repair job at the original size.

Cheers,
Bart

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hello Leopard! Welcome from the colored fog!

Great job Bart. The contrast and detail is not so hard but the color correction was more of a challenge. How did you achieve that?

Asher

 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Hello Leopard! Welcome from the colored fog!

Great job Bart. The contrast and detail is not so hard but the color correction was more of a challenge. How did you achieve that?

Hi Asher,

Well it all started with adding a Photoshop Curves Adjustment layer, and selecting/setting the "Auto" parameters to the "Find Dark & Light Colors" choice (checking the Snap Neutral Midtones givs a bit 'cooler' result):

I then, to save some time, used some of the Topaz Labs plug-in filters to recover some selective contrast, and added a Color Blending layer to fill with a shade of Blue I wanted to remove from parts of the image, inverted that layer (to it's complementary color), reduced the opacity, and filled the layer mask with black. Then I painted with white over those mask areas were the blue window reflections were showing.

Not more than some 5 minutes work, when you have the right tools, and a plan. With more time it can be done better, but it would not make much sense to spend the time on a small web version.

Cheers,
Bart

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Asher,

Well it all started with adding a Photoshop Curves Adjustment layer, and selecting/setting the "Auto" parameters to the "Find Dark & Light Colors" choice (checking the Snap Neutral Midtones givs a bit 'cooler' result):

I then, to save some time, used some of the Topaz Labs plug-in filters to recover some selective contrast, and added a Color Blending layer to fill with a shade of Blue I wanted to remove from parts of the image, inverted that layer (to it's complementary color), reduced the opacity, and filled the layer mask with black. Then I painted with white over those mask areas were the blue window reflections were showing.

Not more than some 5 minutes work, when you have the right tools, and a plan. With more time it can be done better, but it would not make much sense to spend the time on a small web version.

Cheers,
Bart

Bart,

Thanks for providing the details; much appreciated

Which Topaz did you use? I'm going to try your workflow. I love the idea of picking the color to quench and then inverting it to get the complementary color! So logical! (You probably have done that for ages for getting rid of color casts from wide angle lenses in MF digital!!) Were you abel to get all of the blue-magenta color cast with one correction or did you need to do it area, by area?

Is that the latest version of Photoshop with the grey b.g. I'm still at CS5 as it's expensive to upgrade. with capture One 7, is it still really worthwhile?

Asher

 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Bart,

Thanks for providing the details; much appreciated

Which Topaz did you use?

I used the Adjust plugin with the "Photo Pop preset", and the new Detail 3 plugin with the "Overall Detail Medium" (I or II, don't remember) preset. On a full size image it would have been a starting point for additional tweaking, but for an image that already has good contrast I would have only used a very little, similar to a "Feature Enhancement I" preset. I am not a fan of huge alterations on normal images, but for problem cases there is enough headroom in these plugins. These plugins can be real time savers, although one can also spend a lot of time tweaking if so desired. They are very powerful, so they need a bit of dedicated tutorial watching and trial and error to get the hang of them. The presets will allow a fast start for a reasonably good result but, as always, practice makes perfect.

TopazLabs regularly has discounts, like now till year-end. I have bought several of them over time when a new version of one of the plugins was released at discounts up to 50%, when I needed them for specific tasks which took too long to do with only Photoshop. With Adobe's new licencing schemes it becomes more interesting for a lot of people to look at alternatives, and TopazLabs also have a photoFXLab plugin that also runs as a stand-alone application, a kind of wrapper for all plugins and some functionality of its own, including blending layers. Sofar, all updates have been free for existing users, so it seems like a good investment for the future to me.

I'm going to try your workflow. I love the idea of picking the color to quench and then inverting it to get the complementary color! So logical! (You probably have done that for ages for getting rid of color casts from wide angle lenses in MF digital!!)

Well, as always there are limitations as to how far one can push things. Strictly speaking, this operation should be done in a linear gamma space, but for limited corrections (and with masks) one can use multiple layers if there are very different brightness areas that need work. It ís a trick that can do a lot of good to local areas, say e.g. remove some of the color cast that brightly colored surfaces reflect on subjects, or as in this case local pathes of reflected color.

Were you able to get all of the blue-magenta color cast with one correction or did you need to do it area, by area?

To save some time, I only used one color and adjusted the layer opacity to an average correction for all relevant areas, but one can use multiple corrections if needed, although I'd probably use a different layer and opacity for each adjustment/color. One can also use semi-transparent masking, by painting on the mask with gray or by dodging/burning the mask.

Is that the latest version of Photoshop with the grey b.g. I'm still at CS5 as it's expensive to upgrade. with capture One 7, is it still really worthwhile?

It's CS6. Hard to say in general, but there were a number of features that made it worthwhile to upgrade for me. The Raw conversion quality of Capture one Pro V7 is very good, so I use that mostly for Raw conversions, but I use Photoshop more for its editing features, and CS6 has several new and useful ones for those who need them.

Cheers,
Bart

 

[Asher Kelman]

To save some time, I only used one color and adjusted the layer opacity to an average correction for all relevant areas, but one can use multiple corrections if needed, although I'd probably use a different layer and opacity for each adjustment/color. One can also use semi-transparent masking, by painting on the mask with gray or by dodging/burning the mask.

I'd like to look at the option of using the dodge and burn tool with the mask; such a brilliantly simple idea. when I tried to get rid of the magenta-blue hue with just the simple color balancing middle dropper from "levels", I was faced with an uneven, even "blotchy" result. So being able to pain in different strengths would allow one to alter the strength of the complementary color to what's locally needed.

Thanks, Bart, for all these ideas. Kudos again to you, Anthony, for the pictures! Good thing we had this leopard to challenge us!

Asher

 

[Anthony Reilly]

Hi Anthony!

This one is particularly nice. It looks like it would be a painting by Audubon! Great to see so many pictures of birds. did you visit a bird sanctuary?

Notice I centered your images and put a space between them to make each one more happy and important.

Asher

Yes Asher i noticed i thought i had put a space between them, I was working at a bird of prey centre for 3 months and part of the deal was i got 2 days safari in Kruger National Park. The African jacana picture i took from a bird hide where i also took a couple of pictures of hippos.

Anthony

 

[Asher Kelman]

Yes Asher i noticed i thought i had put a space between them, I was working at a bird of prey centre for 3 months and part of the deal was i got 2 days safari in Kruger National Park. The African jacana picture i took from a bird hide where i also took a couple of pictures of hippos.

Anthony

Anthony!

A bird center? Is this a sanctuary for damaged raptors or a general educational center? Krueger! Magnificent place to stay and drive round with a tour guide. That's where I was decades ago in film days, LOL!! Now the hippos, they're something I've never seen in the world.

So three hard drives full of pictures! Great news.

Asher

 

[Anthony Reilly]

Just a few more pictures

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In answer to your question Asher the centre is a rehabilitation centre, wild raptors come in if they have been found or injured and hopefully they recover and get released back into the wild but there are alot of birds there which cannot be released because of there injuries and for other reasons, hope you like the picture of the hippo HAHA.

 

[Anthony Reilly]

And the owl!

 

[Anthony Reilly]

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Anthony

 

[Anthony Reilly]

Anthony