I am really interested in seeing the before and after photos people take. See how the picture was taken and the magic to bring it to life. I will start out.

Before:

After:

Impressive.

wow moloko.. that's some really bad WB on the original... wrong settings?

Photoshop Color Balance.

man somebody forgot to set the WB before taking the shot

I work in RAW so I was not concerned much with color balance. Is to fix in PP. I was hoping others would share the before and afters too. I curious as to how much poeple actually tweak the photos.

everyone tweaks photos.. as much as i like a thread like this, it's really pointless because i would say 98% of the shots in the monthly picture thread are tweaked. Very rarely will you get a perfect out of camera shot without any pp.. there are always ways to improve the picture.

I like the idea of the thread, I'll post something when I get home from the office tonight.

The original photograph is not mine - I found it online and decided to clean it up.

Before


After

I post a lot of untouched pictures up here. Sometimes it's cuz I'm lazy/tired, or sometimes it's cuz I don't have the photoshop skills to adjust it.

+1
A small example of slight levels in photoshop. IMO more of a light post process instead of the "OMG look at my skillz"

Yeah, everything I posted is untweaked as well, mainly due to being too lazy to do it.

i don't really post any photo's, let alone corrected ones.

but heres one i'm reviving for my mum. its a picture of her grandparents and a few of their kids (my mums aunts/uncles*). so its my great grandparents.

i think it was taken in the late 1800's.

*my mums mum hadn't been born yet

before
Click to view attachment

after
Click to view attachment

full size original (have a go yourself if you want)
http://img292.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fulloriginaltl2.jpg

Before


After

Just for fun first:

Before



After




Serious one

Before



After

^ Not sure on that one.
The colours after editing look really strong. The first one looks more natural. Perhaps a little less contrast would have done it?

I've seen these two pictures together like YEARS ago... are these originally yours and I've seen them on neowin before or what? I'm trippin out man.

Yeah they're mine

I made a topic about them last year

There were some more too.

Chill.......... lol

Indeed. Definitely looks better before because the colours are too extreme on the modified one.

That's the look I was going for though

Before:



After:



<3 post processing

OMG Metro

That is truly amazing

Where is that??

Mt. St. Helens in Washington. Pretty historical mountain

The sign (bottom right) left traces in the edit as well

So it did

I never noticed till you pointed it out cheers

I saw the sign and the lack of sign and it took a while to suss out where it went


Also, just tried (spurred on by this thread) to process some photos from my point and shoot (okay, crap, but it'll give me the bug enough to justify a dSLR)

http://wst50.deviantart.com/

There's only 2 photos there, so it's easy to compare them.

Was playing around. Really shows the flexibility of raw--a lot of the data is preserved, you just have to bring it out!

really good example of how the RAW image keeps illumination information, giga good job

what camera did you use to take that picture giga ?

my dad's xti--but raw adjustments like that can be done most any other modern dslrs as well.

giga lives in a big house

Lol I was givin him crap about that already

Original:


Edited for HDR:


Damn I REALLY love HDR photos - I'm sooooo going to do more of these

Too dramatic IMO.

What techniques did you use to do that? looks sharpened a good bit

Honestly, I really can't remember haha. It was long ago. I did use a lot of color dodging and burning, and yes, it is sharpened up a bit but I did process with RAW so I was able to bring out a LOT of detail from the shot. I used some selective color saturation, brightness, etc... A lot went into it, probably around 3-4 hours worth of post.

Did you just edit it to look like it is HDR, or did you actually take the multiple photos and make a real HDR image?

I think HDR looks terrible, on almost all of the examples i've seen.

I kind of agree with you. There are some that are way overdone and blown out, but there are some, though not a lot, good ones that look decent.

It really depends on how someone processes the photos. I see a LOT of HDR that looks amazing and not like plastic with tons of halos. Here are a couple of my own that I put together that I know don't look like some cheeseball shot that you see a lot of:

See, your examples are how HDRs should look. They're not blown out, nor do they look ridiculously over saturated.

Did you have a Neutral Density filter on for the ocean shot? Looks kinda like it

Those images go against the entire point of high dynamic range imaging, as defined on Wikipedia:

"The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows."

The images you posted do not accurately respresent the intensity of the scene but merely exaggerate particular aspects of it - they look far too arty and processed. HDR is great for computer games where you're talking about a dynamic experience but it's only really useful for arty stuff when it comes to imaging. That's not to say that I don't like them... just that they don't look at all natural or realistic.

Sorry metro but even in your images, which i agree are better than most examples, the HDR ruins a nice shot.
It just looks processed and unatural, which to me is exactly what i don't want my processing to be, noticable.
If that made any sense.

You don't have to like it. I know a lot of my work looks great and that's all that matters. Different strokes.