[wulinka]

... are not as beautiful here as in Germany, leave alone New York State. But I was out today and got a couple of random shots, I am not sure what to make of them. Maybe you have some ideas?

I was also thinking about a thread I thought we had last year where Irma was showing pictures of leaves and we were talking about autumn colors, but I searched and can't find it again. maybe it wasn't in autumn after all, does anybody remember?





Greetings, enjoy autumn time wherever you are!

Uli

[Zig]

...Maybe the top one could be cropped a bit on the left??...and run the dodge tool(on highlights) over the flowers.....?
I've used a bit of blur too and also cloned out the twigs on the left. Finally I added the frame for that,er, "organic" look.
Actually, the dodge tool really works wonders for autumn leaves generally: gives the colours a bit more zing, I find!

[Irma]

I like very much what Zig did with this leaves. The golden yellow color is gorgeous... brings a lot of light in the picture.

It is a pity I haven't got the time to post any leaves pictures, Uli. I know you like them. I will make a series and I'll post them for you to see your German leaves and autumn colors...

I will try to find that post you mention....

[wulinka]

thanks zig! great changes.
there are really not many nice colors here....

Uli

[ADK_Jim]

I played with the second shot to get this:


What I did was to add a curves layer to darken the background and make the leaves stand out better, then I duplicated the background and ran a high pass filter at 0.5 on the duplicate which is set to the "Overlay" blend mode. That has the effect of sharpening the image without introducing halos.

Right now Northern NY isn't too photogenic either but as the old saying goes "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and can be found almost anywhere. Look carefully and you will find things worth photographing even if they sometimes need a bit of post-processing help.

[wulinka]

Nice!! Thank you!

Actually, I don't know what a high pass filter does, never used it.... Would it be too much trouble to explain?

Uli

[ADK_Jim]

"I don't know what a high pass filter does, never used it.... Would it be too much trouble to explain? "

Not at all. It is very easy. You start by duplicating the background layer. It only works with an image layer, not an adjustment layer so if you have made other duplicate layers above the background (i.e. I make separate duplicate layers for adjustments that I wish to mask out portions of) you will want to merge such layers with the background first. With the duplicate image layer above the background layer go to Filters>Other>High Pass. I generally use a setting between .5 and 2.5. The amount will depend on the image. Smaller images usually require lower settings but the content of the image affects the setting you will choose as well. With "Preview" checked the layer will turn monochrome grey with a sort of bas-relief look. Go for a setting that reveals the main details. After clicking "Okay" to apply the filter, set the blending mode to "overlay", "Soft Light", or "Hard Light". You can experiment with the other blending modes but those are the ones I find give the best results for me. High Pass is a good way to sharpen without halos.

Another method I use often is the Defog or Clarify Technique in Unsharp Masking. The usual advice is to set the USM amount to somewhere between 100 and 400 with a radius of 1.5 to 3 and a threshold of 6-12. What this does is create a narrow band of contrast enhancement along edges while avoiding heightening noise because of the threshold setting. The problem with this method is that if you push the amount too high you get halos along the edges precisely because the USM affects only narrow bands.

A better way is to set amount to somewhere between 5 and 20 (I rarely use more than 15), the radius to 50-60 and leave the threshold at 0. Since you are using such a low amount and broad radius there is little danger of heightening the contrast of noise so you need not set the threshold higher although you could if you wished. This works very well increase the contrast which is all "sharpening" really does anyway.

ADK Jim

[wulinka]

Thanks, will try!

uli