[smarti77]

Show me your worst shot that turned out ok after some heavy processing.

I took this shot about 6 months ago. Its the view from a family members front door in Queensland. At the time I had no idea about HDR or taking different exposures etc. You can see the amount of contrast in the scene was very high.



I delete alot of my shots but kept this one for some reason. Tonight I had a play and was quite happy with this edit.



I would love to see some of your shots that you have saved.

[alastair_hm]

I tend not to throw any shots away

[shuttertalk]

Wow shane... it looks completely different!

If it weren't for the clouds, I would have thought it to be a sunny day!

[Toad]

Wow!! Great processsing work Smarti!! I have many many cases of this because I can be very sloppy when I am actually taking photos, and tend to process everything. Here's a really old one.


Before:



After:

[smarti77]

Wow - Great clean up Toad. You've found the perfect level of contrast keeping it photo-realistic. (I think I pushed mine a bit too far.)

[Petographer]

Great work you guys. Great topic too smarti. I'd like to see more from people on this topic.

[Keith Alan]

Viewed in the context of the oft-repeated advice to "always expose to the right" of a histogram, Toad's example shows why this can make sense, while Smarti's disproves it completely.
Both are good to learn from.
The main thing is knowing when to take each approach.

[Banded Drake]

Good job Shane and Rob ,

I have a hard time getting any of my shots to " pop " like these in PS. Usually i just toss them if i cant get them they way i want ...

Is this more HDR ? they both look like they have a little in them.

.......... Shawn

[Toad]

No HDR on mine. The biggest single fix for the exposure and clarity was "Auto Contrast" which works surprisingly well on misty shots. The majority of the work on this one was cleaning up the river with the clone tool...

[Wedding Shooter]

Lovely work guys - I especially like the the ruver shot Toad. However, Smarti's shot is great as well.

[smarti77]

Is this more HDR ? they both look like they have a little in them.

Shawn - Well spotted. This is the first time I have tried to use photomatix on a single exposure. This took some fiddling but I was happy with the result as a starting point. Then it took alot of time and alot of layers in CS2...
Shane