Topic: Anyone care to take a swing at this one....

[themightyzog]

How to judge - that is the question?

I decided to ignore the most important aspect ! - composition - as this makes or breaks an image but is not really a CM aspect.

What about colour? - well we can all boost it or not with curves and MfM - so I'll ignore that was well!

What is left is how we managed to add tonal/contrast interest to the scene and the important area are the rocks.

So I took them, plus Greg's image, aligned them and then desaturated.

Below is the result, renumbered (I'll tell you who was who later) and then compared to the original - by putting them on a Difference layer and then boosting the level taking 255 down to 64.  Black signifies no change from the original.

Each image consists of the desaturated crop on the left and the difference on the right.

Quite interesting, do I prefer A for the change in all the rocks or B for general change all over or C for more contrast between the rocks and the sea?

I think on balance I like the extra detail in the rocks of A.

Timings - no idea, so I redid it in less than 4 mins, so it probably took around 6 the first time.

When you say benefit v time, are your refering to the course?  If so then surely predefined actions or simple, to use and master, tools will be the order of the day - except what about that last few percent that Derek reminds us is the hardest to achieve.  How do we measure that (quality) compared to time?

[derekfountain]

I'm posting 3 shots back to you.  Pick the best...Zog you might be able to pick out yours...but look at them all with a critical Eye and let's see which one would win. 
My goal with this is going to be cost benefit with time as the currency.  Derek how long did you take to make your final??  Same to you zog.  Total image correcting time not writing about it....

Mine took about 20 minutes, but I was doing it quite slowly making notes of what I did, what worked and what didn't. So maybe 15 minutes. I haven't used Photoshop or CM for about 3 months, so I'm a bit rusty. I also very rarely tackle bad images - my DSLR puts out decent images most of the time, so I spend my efforts working to make good images great, rather than poor images good.

I still prefer my image, just about. Chris's is his usual garish saturated style which really doesn't work for me. For arty stuff I suppose it's fine, but for landscapes, erm, no. I can't get past the fact that the sea and sky aren't really those colours. This shouldn't be taken as a criticism - it's just the style doesn't work for me.

Greg's image looks over saturated, but that works in some areas. The reddish yellow colour of the largest rock looks good - much better than mine - although the right most rocks have a magenta cast which surely isn't right. The red flowery stuff also stands the saturation a lot better than I thought it did. But the plants are too green and too dark, the sky is too rich and the earth on the outcrop to the left looks too red. I don't like images where the colours compete for the eye, I tend to go for subtle with highlights of colour. If I were doing it again I'd look to apply Greg's rocks and red flowers to my baseline.

Lesson learned for workflow thoughts: review. Come back to it the next day and be critical all over again.

[Greg Groess]

My goal with the time question was to see what it took to get the image into the conditions you presented...

If you could not get it done in a "reasonable time frame"...Say under 10 minutes...how are we going to teach / train anyone to get there without losing them in the minute details required to produce your images? 

Chris, I like the comparison and would like to ask, does the sharpening applied to the image have anything to do with the difference you are showing or just color / lightness changes?  I know you have mine pegged as a MfM correction and you are right...sort of...I take MfM a bit further and tone down the specific colors I see as over exaggerated within the MfM correction in CM. All one step really.  I limited myself to 5 minutes to see what I could do quickly and to see if I could come close to what you all had produced I did compare at a surface level.  My intent was to see if there is any greater advantage to your approach when it comes to quality.

More on the image..I see one of the biggest problems to be color contrast, even beyond the composition which by the way is one of the reasons I have never done anything with this image until now..I used CM to do a MFM correction and reduced the Magenta and Green a bit.  I also took down the blue in the clouds.  I used a K channel mask to create the "slider" to adjust the saturation on the image rather than a separate layer in PS.  After the CM correction I applied a pretty standard USM sharpen to the image using 230%, 0.7 radius and 0 threshold, the image you have is the same one I used, so I did not have any noise advantage over you with the original.  I find the image noisy as well and at this point I did not try to limit that beyond what I have stated.

Another question for everyone...

I am often asked, "How did you even think of that?"  To me the answer is finally forming itself as a part of this discussion and others I have had about experience and learning.  So far I would say that the answer would be...

It came to me based on my past experience with images.  Everyday I see images and I look for things within them.  I look at them and consider what would I have done?  If I cannot find anything, then I look at the image and try to divine what was done to make it look as good as it does.  I then think about, remember, and for lack of a better term synthesize my experience together to create a plan, Then i worked the plan until I was satisfied with the result. 

It is that "synthesis" that I am trying to quantify with this thread and this discussion.  To me it is the "apply and extend" part of the process that is hanging people up.  It might be imagination or creation I'm not sure... To me it is a bit of experimentation that leads to new techniques that I use on my images.

All of your thoughts are most welcome...

[themightyzog]

Sharpening will have an influence Greg (but I think Derek was the only one to add that step) around the edges.  I just thought it would be interesting to remove colour from the equation as it is so subjective, whereas tonal adjustment is not so.

BTW the images were
A- shot3
B -shot2
C - Greg(2)
D - shot1

I'm affraid you lost me on your new question.  I don't really see what you are saying.  For me, with a truely awful memory, I run off a crib sheet which organises my work flow into distinct steps which I try to religiously follow for any serious work.

1. Inspect - this is the most important phases where I try and analyses the image and work out what I want to do with it.  I also crop etc at this stage.  Inspection may involve flicking through 6 channels to see what is there that could possibly give me an edge in what I want to achieve

2. Levels+colour correction - basically setting s/h/neutrals and maybe a bit of basic curving

3. Contrast - putting the tonal emphasis where I think it is important

4. Colour - this is where I usually blow it !!!

5. Sharpening - frequently omitted or reversed (ie selective blurring)

6. Look - inspect the image, see what I've missed and if it is an important one, leave it overnight

7. Titivate, which usually means going back to steps 3 and/or 4 (throwing away the sharpening, which I'll reapply later) and re-working at a finer level

Eventually I'll get to step 6 and be happy and stop, otherwise I will recurse once again!

What I do in steps 3,4,5 & 7 tends to be based on a bit of experience or quick experiments - I have actions and notes to help me solve particular problems, in each step, as my memory tends to lets me down, but I believe I'm correct (if only I could remember!) that I do not keep on using the same action/tool/technique on my images.  I only repeatly use 3 tools - NeatImage, FocusMagic and CM, the remainder is what comes to mind at the time.

By far the most important step is 1 - it then only gets frustrating if one can not find a solution.

I should mention that there is a step 0 ! For all my photographs, rather than snapshots, I think about what I want to portray and the problems I will have in pp-ing before I press the shutter.  This will influence how the shot is taken.  As I continue to play and enjoy this hobby, I am tending to get away from image recording and moving towards expressing what I saw/felt - hence a slight(!?) over exaggeration in some areas.

Does any of that help?

[Greg Groess]

All of it actually...

I am comparing my process to yours, Derek's, Ricky, GregM and anyone else that is willing to post. My intent is to search for patterns, process flows, and goals that can somehow be distilled down to a work flow "process" that would form a solid starting point for image processing based on the usage of tools and decisions...(Phew that was a mouth full)  I fear that it is very personal and that is part of the problem.  "I know what works for me"   I do not want to be nor could I ever be the definitive word on this.  I want to go the other way and start people down the right path without setting that path in stone.

BTW my image Shot1 was also sharpened...your removal of color was a brilliant twist on the problem because as you state the color is subjective.  I personally am a fan of saturated color but not to the point of false color.  I use my personal experience and memory of the scene to limit my saturation decisions.

Greg

[derekfountain]

If you could not get it done in a "reasonable time frame"...Say under 10 minutes...how are we going to teach / train anyone to get there without losing them in the minute details required to produce your images? 

I think the answer to that is to provide sample images that need just one correction (or at least instruct the participants to only concentrate on one correction). If the brief is "make the plants in this image look healthier without disturbing any other part of the image" then that might be a 10 minute job. If you present half a dozen such challenges, then introduce an image that requires each of the 6 steps in order as a final challenge, people would probably stay with it.

I am often asked, "How did you even think of that?"

I think that relates to the rustiness I was talking about earlier in the thread. Using CM comes down to assessment of what needs fixing, followed by applying techniques that fix the problems. Although you can teach techniques, they can be hard to remember (Chris isn't the only one who struggles there!). A Curvemeister crib sheet might be a good idea. Ultimately you need to instill in people the willingness to experiment, see it all go wrong, then back out and try something else.

I think that was the most important point I gleaned from the interactive Skype session we did some months ago: on the boards users only see the solution, and it gives the impression that the guide knew which magic bullet to use. In practice the guide will try lots of techniques until he finds the one that works. Once there, he will fine tune the technique towards the end goal. Getting people familiar with an arsenal of techniques is step one. Step two is getting people comfortable with the idea of doing it wrong over and over until something comes right. Step three is getting people to home in on the right technique as quickly as possible. I think experience is the only guaranteed answer to that last one.

So push, push and then push again to get people to do the interactive session! Use new tricky images, or, if necessary, "forget" how to do ones you've seen before and demonstrate the iterative nature of the challenge.

[Greg Groess]

Wow...
That is really close to the mark....

Wow...
Thanks Derek...The road map is indeed forming....
Greg

[gremurphoto]

Very well put,Derek.