Discussion? Enhancing photos...

I have been toying with some PS4 actions that "enhance" images...

Now first off, I stopped my subscription to Playboy a decade ago because the girls in the pages of playboy are more fiction than anything. I had a subscription to perfect 10 for a few years afterwards.

With tha being said, I have also found some photographers / editors love to over edit... make skin unreal, milky smooth. That usually annoys the piss out of me.

So I am trying to find a way to edit images that keeps the "realness" in the image but make it better. I have some examples here. I will continue to update to get feedback.

 

http://forum.phun.org/showthread.php?t=419213

Dunno if this helps any.

 

Here is another. Now this is an action I created...

 

No it definitely does.

That is good for images with issues.... I am trying to find a nice action set that will just enhance images over-all... Like look at the bikini one... it is really not BAD original, but after the actions I did, it is enhanced, a little sharper, more defined, colors pop more. I am not looking to recreate the image just bring out the colors and crispness.

Have you tried anything like this?

 

I like this one...

 

Looking at your bikini pic "enhancement" I think you messed the wrong way with the colors.

Cranking up the blue tones generally cools the image down; in this case to a degree that her skin is too red and all warmth is lost.
Blue is opposite to yellow (as magenta to green) so adding blue will extract yellow tones and thus warmth.

As to luminance (shadows/highlights contrast), not much is gained except you clipped some of the shadows (bikini) turning them to pure black so every detail and structure is lost.

I don't know what filters and all you used but believe me there's more to editing or post-processing than turning on some magic tool.
In all truth there's no such one action magical tool that fixes poor/flat images.

I started from the original bikini pucture and added my version.




My edit is based on curve narrowing with opposite colors. Also seawater is more cyan than blue toned so closer to green than most think. That's why in my example you'll notice more green and cyan tones pop up.
Shadow/highlight contrast is increased by a reduced luminocity blend with a Lightness channel I copied from Lab color space over it.
Isolated her body by making a selection using color range so I could apply a blur with a gradient mask on the sea and background.

In all honesty there's not much wrong with the original photo, her body came out nice just the seascape is flat but that's what happens when you photograph someone against a sunlit seascape.
If the photographer would have used a polarizer and maybe a warming filter he would have obtained richer colors and more depth.

 

:worshippy::worshippy:

TCF I seem to learn something new every time I read one of your posts....Your input is always much appreciated! I'll be the first to admit I am a sucker for "cool" or dramatic filters........Mostly because I do not have the knowledge of lighting and contrast that you seem to notice right away......

I totally agree with you in that there is no magic tool to fix colors/lighting and all that comes into play with a picture....that is for sure! NO filter can match and or fix what the photographer may have wanted to capture........Post editing is a bit of an art form.......what is pleasing to one.........may not be to another.....Every picture is different.........there is no one click fix "enhance" any photo.........and In many cases the enhancement turns out worse than the original...Many of my edits are proof of that.......

 

Retouching is as much about taste as anything, but that said there's no single action that will get the most from a wide range of photos. At best you might want to have a set of 5 or 6 that you select from for images that fall into broad categories.

How many images would you typically work on per session? If you want to get through hundreds a week I can understand wanting to automate the process and anything that saves time is a bonus but tailoring your approach to individual images is the best way to go. And educating your 'eye' to what is good is an important first step since it's too easy to become accustomed to mediocre image quality because we see it all the time.

It won't produce results that everyone will like but if you want to have a look at a simple routine that requires the least effort and will usually give a decent improvement to any flat image, try running the original through a good noise-reduction routine, then apply Unsharp Mask at a low amount and a highish radius (numbers depend on the size of the image, at this size 30,15,8 works) and see how you like it. If you want to actually sharpen the image then use Smart Sharpen with normal numbers.

Although there are some rights and wrongs in retouching/tweaking, within the limits there are many ways you can go depending on the kind of end result you like... some people like higher contrast, some guys prefer a little more sharpening than others, that kinda jazz. Coming back to the bikini photo, there's no denying how great TCF's version of it looks but I wouldn't go as dark on the background plus I'd aim for less cyan in the water because to me more blue looks better against the skin (orange/blue v orange/cyan).

I did two versions, based on the same basic tweak, the first more naturalistic and the second more punched up.

 

I am definitely picking up what you are laying down.

The one thing I was working with was an action I could work on every image in a set. When I owned my own studio back in the early 2000's I would most definitely work each image individually. I am not really looking for a magic button, I am just trying to make some images "pop" more with contrast, color and texture. The bikini pic in question I did not want to have the background so saturated, I wanted to bring this amazingly hot bikini girl to pop off the page.

What I am doing here is a action batch of sorts that would just "tweak" the images a bit. As far as messing with the colors the wrong way I have to disagree a bit. This is much more a personal preference or an opinion I work with than trying to get "true" color. Your image you edited is excellent, but it probably took you a bit to get to that and to run through 20 images could take you an hour or more. If this was a model I photographed than it would be worth it, but since it is candids of some hot babe that I am putting on my blog, heh heh heh... I'm not willing to invest that kind of time.

I guess I am defending myself a bit. You are right, my edited image is better than the original, but lacks a lot and appears to be a bit lazy. I guess it is why I called it "enhanced" images rather than edited... does that make sense? Finding the medium between time spent and a quality action.

Love the feedback and I appreciate it, thank you. :489:

 

Thank you for the feedback!

I will be working with hundreds of images a week so I am looking for a batch of actions to "enhance" the images. If it doesn't really need it I wont filter it but in the bikini example the colors are flat and it was in need of some sharpening and contrast.

I will try to run through my action quickly.

I adjust the levels out of the gate to lighten up some shadows
I copy and paste 3 times for 3 levels.
First level I do a very light posterize (notice an almost outline on my image) with some over saturation.
Second level I lighten even more and put a diffuser on it and add a photo filter
I set the transparency in the 2nd level at 50% and the top level at 60%
flatten the image.
Adjust the settings again and add in a touch more saturation
Shrink the image 50% using the sharpen resample.
one last tweak using onyx filters with little detail.

I could be going about this the wrong way, and the main reason I wanted to discuss this. Maybe I can post my action some where and people can see what I am doing and tell me good job or wtf are you doing LOL!

 

If you're looking to do hundreds a week and don't want to spend hours and hours on this then yeah some Actions are the only way to go. This won't give the best results but you don't need that and at least the images will be better than they started out.

You might want to have say three levels of some different basic routines. Same basic tweaks at three strengths is what I mean. Since I bet you're not gonna want to do any masking I can't think of a better way than using Selective Colour to try to isolate certain colours while leaving others alone, like for better blue in the sky or water without messing too bad with the skintones.

You using PS? Does your version have Shadow/Highlight? If it does I'd do a comparison with Levels, you should see that S/H is much better for opening up the 3/4 tones, plus aat the same time you can reduce highlights effectively if you need to.

When you're reducing BTW, I'd recommend using Bicubic and then sharpening using a filter, better results. Smart Sharpen is probly the best of the inbuilt ones.

 

Ok... so I have been playing with this some more... stumbled across a noise reducer plug in. You guys have really helped out and I appreciate it! Ever since I could get images into a computer I played around with filters and stuff on PS...

Here is what I came up with:



I just read and I dont how I missed it that GUI said to use a filter AFTER the reduction of image size.... little hints and advice are awesome... even the criticism...

I have been using topaz filters alot and because they can be pretty damn intense I use the FADE to reduce it by about 35-40% and it results in some fantastic pics.

I work as a lead graphic artist at a t-shirt design / promotion workshop. I found a topaz filter that pretty creates a graphical cartoon out of just about anything... it is AWESOME!



Anyways, loved the discussion just read it again, some great stuff thanks everyone!!