Doug's front page today and a tip for better looking photos

[alpinelakespilot2000]

In reading Doug's front page story on his early morning photos, I noticed that he had labeled some of them as being "unprocessed." For those who don't know much about it, there is a really simple "processing" trick to get rid of the gray "haze" that covers many photos. We don't always notice it until we see what the photo should look like. Digital photos seem most susceptible, and shooting through something like plexi seems to exacerbate it even more. The way to get rid of that haze, and thus improve 90% of the photos we take, is to use the "levels" feature on your favorite photo editing software. Usually you'll see it listed under the menu where you adjust brightness and contrast. It's super simple to learn to use. I'd try to explain it, but probably better is to use the help feature on your photo software and type in "levels" into the search function. (I used Adobe Photoshop Elements, which is a much cheaper, more user-friendly version of Adobe Photoshop, but I think the basic photo editor that comes with Windows PC's probably does it too.)

Here's an example drawn from Doug's pictures. (Hope you don't mind Doug--I'm not making any money off them)...

Shot one (pulled direction from Doug's site, he left it unprocessed):


And the one I spent 30 seconds on adjusting the levels:


See the difference? It's not like you're artificially changing the color such as when you add saturation... it just removes the gray "film" that digital cameras seem prone to leaving behind. Some pictures benefit from this process even more than todays pics from Doug, so it's always worth checking if you find a picture that you really like the composition of. There are a ton of other things you can do to significantly improve your pictures through "post-processing," but this is easily the easiest and best bang for the buck.

Hope this helps you take better $100 pictures on your way to getting the $100 hamburgers!

BTW, Doug, my best pictures are still taken from the G3 I bought in 2003! I'm about ready to spring for a new G12 though. The G series are fantastic cameras!

 

[scsmith]

actually, no....

as rendered here, on my browser from the site, I can not tell any difference at all. I have a pretty good eye for this sort of thing, so it may be the rendering on the site.

 

[craigvince]

I can absolutely tell the difference.
Could be a monitor issue if you can't see the clarity and contrast in the 2nd photo.

 

[alpinelakespilot2000]

A better example

Just another example. Here's one of my favorite pictures of the RV-9. It's of Bill Repucci's. I think Robert Morrison took it.

The original:


With levels adjustment:


The original was low-resolution, which is pretty obvious, but it should still provide a sense for what the levels feature can do to the colors and clarity. Definitely some photos benefit more than others with this process but, again, it's always worth checking if you're planning on printing a picture for framing. And, I bet if you asked Doug, he'd confirm it's a trick he uses on many of his pictures. Now, I just wish I could take originals that looked like his!

 

[rv7boy]

I can see it now!!!

The second example (Bill's plane) definitely shows the enhancements on my monitor.

 

[Rivethead]

Although it's not strictly about fixing the images for our purposes. If you follow the instructions on the link I'm posting but skip the invert step you will end up correcting a lot of problems in your images taken with digital cameras.
http://www.computer-darkroom.com/tutorials/tutorial_6_1.htm

 

[az_gila]

Auto Correct

Sometimes the simple things actually work well.

The second sample picture from above, downloaded to my computer and then opened in MS Picture Manager - which is free in Vista and I'm sure later versions.

One click on the Auto Correct button usually cleans up most normal pictures and makes the levels look better.

MINOR CORRECTION

It the Microsoft Office Picture Manager

 

[Rivethead]

Gil, I believe in simple things also. Auto correct is a pretty nice tool. Occasionally you'll run into an image that just doesn't co-operate and that's when further measures come into play. As the example linked to in my last post shows you can tweak an image to death with levels and curves. If I had the editing tools in the sixties I could have been a psychedelic millionaire . Also, I'm not sure how much difference any it makes to anyone anyway. One of the reasons I like to keep my images on my own host and link to them is that I already put quite a bit of effort into making my images look good and display at an appropriate size for most screens.