James suggested I post this image to kick off another post processing challenge:


This is a scene along the South Fork of the St. Vrain River as it courses through Wild Basin in Rocky Mountain National Park.

The EXIF is available if you have an exif reader. I use Opanda IExif 2.3 available here: http://www.opanda.com/en/iexif/index.html

My processing strategy for this particular image involved a standard workflow that I've developed for images that are not significantly over or under exposed:

1. Double convert the RAW file, one tuned for highlights and one for shadows. Blend to taste in Photoshop CS2. (There are many ways to do this. Layered the brighter image on top of the darker one, switched the brighter image from 'normal' to 'screen' and reduced opacity to taste - between 50 and 75% if I recall correctly.) Cropped the image to taste using the marquee tool set to an 8.5X11 aspect in landscape mode, same resolution as in RAW (416 ppi). Adjusted the image size without re-sampling to exactly 8.5X11 inches print size making sure to settle on an even resolution number.

2. Using multiple adjustment layers - set the white and black points with levels, adjusted overall color using curves, again used levels to set the neutral grey point to taste, used hue/saturation to enhance/balance each color individually to taste, changed each adjustment layer to 'luminosity' and reduced the opacity of each to 50% and flattened the image.

3. Duplicated the new background layer and changed it to luminosity. Applied the smart sharpen tool globally at something mild like 50/0.5 and flattened the image. I then saved that as my full resolution TIFF file.

4. Duplicated the TIFF file and resized it for the web at 100 ppi and something like 560 pixels tall and 780 wide (don't remember exactly).

5. Used the sharpen brush tool set at a hardness of about 5 radius and strength of 10 to selectively enhance certain areas of highlights in order to create visual depth from front to back in the image.

6. Created a new white document 0.5 in larger in height and width, copied my image and pasted as a new layer in the new document to create a white frame. Selected the image layer and applied a drop shadow to taste, selected the white background and applied a stroke, flattened the image, converted to sRGB color space, created a text layer for my name, applied a drop shadow to taste and flattened the finished image, converted from 16 bit to 8 bit and saved as JPG at a quality level that kept the finished image under 300 kb for posting on the net.

I hope this level of workflow detail is useful to those who are looking to evolve their workflow, and useful to me so that others can suggest ways I might improve my workflow options. Developing time-efficient, data-preserving workflow stratagies is possibly the #1 need expressed by photographers working at the professional and advanced amateur level.

Here is a link to the 18+ mb RAW file: http://www.fototime.com/71BD8E45F62D0CB/orig.cr2

After you download and open the file using your RAW converter, make sure your converter is displaying the original image settings (that is if you want to see it the way it came out of the camera) as opposed to it being displayed with your RAW converter's default settings.

Ooops! Looks like the EXIF data doesn't include the camera related info. (I'm assuming that's because this JPG file a duplicate of the original TIFF file... but I'm not sure. Can anyone enlighten me?)

Here's the relevant data:

Canon 1Ds MKII, ISO 200, manual mode, WB full sun, tripod, 2 sec. shutter delay, Canon 90mm TSE L tilt-shift lens and manual focus, f8, 1/40 sec., polarizing filter set at about 1/4 to 1/3 full, taken about 3PM facing South with the sun due West and beginning to get lower in the sky. I did not use a lens hood (so I could rotate the circular polarizer) and I shot from the bank in full shadow.

Re the tilt/shift lens: shift was at 0 but I used a touch of tilt on the focus plane to get as much front to back clarity in the scene as possible. That enabled me to use a wider aperture than the normal f16 to f22 one might use with a regular lens shooting a scene like this. Even so I had to bump ISO to 200 and open the aperture to f8 to get a shutter speed that would hopefully prevent blurring of the willows along the stream, since there was a slight West to East breeze blowing.

Here you go....first response. Actually a pretty challenging edit. Hd to isolate the stream, the foreground bushes and the rocks on the beach all in their own layers. The light being as bright and contrasty as it was I had to tone down the bushes and the beach. And brighten up the river and its contrast.



It is one of the STRONGEST reasons for shooting in better (softer) light.

Roman

I have the raw file if anyone wants to play with the raw file. I will attempt to take a crack at it tonight.

James

I got mine (RAW File) from his link in the OP....is it not working any more?

Roman

Very nice edit! I particularly like the willows along the banks of the stream.

I just discovered this little spot on Saturday. I agree that 3 PM is not ideal for light. Because the location is less than 70 miles from home I can get there easily and often. Early morning might be nice. The sun will rise on the Left of this shot and hopefully light up the willows on the Right while bringing out the color everywhere else.

In this image I'm shooting from the stream bank. Camera is about 8 feet up from stream level and the 90mm lens creates an interesting perspective.

I have a companion shot to this one that features a fellow fly fishing right there in the second bend of the stream. Will post it elsewhere later.

My attempt, I didnt' use a bunch of different layers etc. Just used the shadow/highlights tool in ps3. Prob not as good as some here, but very quick, I did add a bit of USM after resizing. DAve

I like it, Dave. It's much darker overall but it works.

Well, since nobody else wants to take a turn right now I'll post a second attempt stimulated in part by what Roman and dave_lines did with the image. I bumped up contrast, saturation and colored up the water some.

Because there's so much detail in those millions of willow leaves (and elsewhere too) I did something that I don't normally do. When I resized down to make a jpg to post here I used Bicubic instead of Bicubic Sharper. Then I duplicated the background layer, applied a little smart sharpen (50/1.0 I think), changed the layer to luminosity and decreased oapacity to 50%. Otherwise it seems too easy to wind up with an over-sharpened image.

I went with a little extra saturation and an attempt to get the water to move. The real challenge for me was getting the motion blur to look right. The water is moving in so many directions and speeds. I had to do a different blur for each direction and speed. The faster the water the more pixels had to be blured. I may have missed a few spots. Enjoy! Darren