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Author Topic: Challenge 15- 1,2,3,4, That's why you shoot Raw  (Read 17584 times)
Fred A
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« on: June 26, 2013, 12:07:12 PM »

I'm Baaack!
Still puttering around with Jpgs, still convincing yourself that Jpgs are just fine? No need to "fix what ain't broke"?

Here's your challenge.
Find a shot you took like my sample, that is a throw away in JPG  see snap marked 1 in red.

(Forgive me for making three posts, but the limit on attachments is restricting)

Next we see what Qimage Ultimate did all by itself using its normal, Smart Exposure.  (See shot marked 2 in red.).
See how it found a happy medium between the blown out base and the under-exposed red leaves!!

But now we improve the shot using some tweaks.

(See shot marked 3 in red.) Next post!
This is the one that convinces you.
We find the brightest spot in the shot which is the pedestal, and we click on the spot, selecting one of three choices for a checkmark.
I chose the center grid with the bright part of the pedestal, and placed a check on the red check box.
Why?
I knew my next move was to add Fill light to the red leaves and did not want the pedestal to get blown out because of adding Fill.
You now override the default Fill light by moving the slider up, up up, until you have achieved a better exposure on the dark red leaves.

OK the leaves look better, but we are losing detail in the pedestal.
(See shot marked 4 in red) Next post

Now we slowly move the HDR slider watching for the detail to return to the pedestal, but also watching not to go too far.
Too far?   Too far is when other parts of the image, like the grass and the walkway change shades. That's too far!

... and the last part?
(See shot marked 5) We add a touch of DFS. Deep Focus Sharpening in the Editor screen.
I chose, "Sharpen all except the grass"

So that's your challenge!!!   Find one of your shots that you took in Raw + JPG, and see if you can improve it.
FYI there is a JPG buried inside the RAW that you can use. 
Put the Raw into the queue. Right mouse click on the big image in the preview panel, and select Extract JPG.

Post your results and comments and questions.

Have fun!
Fred
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Fred A
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« Reply #1 on: June 26, 2013, 12:08:49 PM »

Here are screen shots 3 and 4
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Fred A
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« Reply #2 on: June 26, 2013, 12:10:22 PM »

... and the Final, shot #5

Took all of 3 minutes.
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Jeff
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« Reply #3 on: June 28, 2013, 09:28:49 AM »

Hello Fred and All

Back from travels, now got a wet day so some time for messing about with holiday images.

Thanks for your challenge, more of a what to do instruction.

The embedded jpgs on my Pentax K20 are so bad I have not used them for some years, I just shoot in raw.

However took one of the hols images and stripped the jpeg for comparison,  see the difference.

Raw adjustments
 - centre left area - fill 7 (one more than the auto) hdr - 32

Editor adjustments
 - Rotate -1.3 to get verticals vertical
   Sel col - smart color gave 1.35
   DFS 6/120 all except the blue sky
   shadow noise
   and cropped

The first one is the jpeg
  Moritzburg Castle, built from 1542–1546, was a hunting lodge for Moritz of Saxony, then Duke of Saxony
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Fred A
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« Reply #4 on: June 28, 2013, 09:42:11 AM »

Excellent!!!
This time you "nailed" it as we say in the USA.

You showed the improvement in the image that you can do only in RAW mode.

Remind me that I owe you a cup of tea and a crumpet.

What's a crumpet?

Fred
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Terry-M
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« Reply #5 on: June 28, 2013, 10:03:57 AM »

Quote
Excellent!!!
This time you "nailed" it as we say in the USA.
I agree, well done Jeff. I bet you did not take very long to do that either.
Terry
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Jeff
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« Reply #6 on: June 28, 2013, 10:48:28 AM »

Quote
Excellent!!!
This time you "nailed" it as we say in the USA.
I agree, well done Jeff. I bet you did not take very long to do that either.
Terry

No, just a few minutes.  But, I took a long time to re find out how to strip the raw files.

Fred, at our age all we can do is think, this side of the pond we go in for the "Thinking man's crumpet"

See -    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2300772/Joan-Bakewell-stand-Mary-Berry-feminism.html

Jeff
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Fred A
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« Reply #7 on: June 28, 2013, 11:13:08 AM »

I read the article... and still do not know what is a crumpet.
All the years watching British films, and hearing that said.... (Downton Abbey, one of my favorite shows).
No crumpets to see.

Fred
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Jeff
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« Reply #8 on: June 28, 2013, 02:08:52 PM »

I read the article... and still do not know what is a crumpet.
All the years watching British films, and hearing that said.... (Downton Abbey, one of my favorite shows).
No crumpets to see.

Fred

You are having me on Smiley Smiley

A "Crumpet" is a very desirable lass/lady

Frank Muir - our late intellectual comedy writer described John Bakewell as the "Thinking Man's Crumpet" she is now about 80 and I still agree, but Abbas Agnetha is now top of my list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Muir

Plenty of high class crumpet in Downton Abbey, how about -

 
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Terry-M
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« Reply #9 on: June 28, 2013, 07:45:00 PM »

Quote
Plenty of high class crumpet in Downton Abbey, how about
Is she QU Refined?  Roll Eyes
Back to the challenge.
Last week I visited a National Trust property in Worcestershire that had a fine park as well as a interesting house and garden.
A dead tree in the park took my attention, trouble was it was a clear blue sky with no cloud interest and the sun was high in the sky; not ideal!
I took some shots and as an example it's shown below where I used QU to make it a little more interesting, I hope!
1st image: extracted jpeg; where's the blue sky gone? One good reason to use raw, no more blank skies.
2nd image: the QU default, more colour and reflects the actual scene which was relatively flat and needed a little more work.
3rd image: QU raw refined with a little highlight recovery on the tree and a tweak on fill, then edit.
Edit included Smart Colour Boost with the yellow row toned down a little  and the blue & cyan rows tweaked to make the sky less pale and a little more saturated. Some extra contrast & EQ DFS was used.
I ought to return to that scene at a different time of year when the sun is lower and there's more atmosphere but that is not always possibe.
Terry
EDIT: Some more detail
I used a magenta rectangle top middle over the almost white branches and reduced the auto fill from 7 to 5. This gave more contrast and intilayy looked a little dark. However, I knew I would use SCB which would lift it again.
SCB with cyan & blue not ticked, gave 2.95 in the other rows.
I reduced the yellow row to 2.0 so the bright green of the sunlit grass was more subdued.
The cyan & blue rows were modified to 0.2, 0.5, 1.0 - interesting playing with those numbers!
Contrast was increased with a simple curve. DFS was EQ 20%, 100%, 6 radius.
« Last Edit: June 28, 2013, 08:11:15 PM by Terry-M » Logged
rayw
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« Reply #10 on: June 29, 2013, 01:39:02 AM »

Hi Jeff,

Maybe been more exciting if Fred had said 'cup of tea and a tart'?
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Jeff
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« Reply #11 on: June 29, 2013, 07:41:43 AM »

Terry

You did a good job on that one.

It is a fine day to day so must get the outside jobs done

Will come back to this challenge again later, there is more to QUltimate than is first obvious, even after using it for a few years.
 
Jeff
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Grumpy
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