My first try on PP

[Harshad Barve]

Hi folks

This is my first try in PP, earliesr all of my images were processed by my dear friends ( Kiarn/Mital)

Would love to see comments on PP job

I would request PP masters to post a tread in which they can give workflow for back benchers like me

Taken at Rajbehara

Nikon D300
Nikon 600MM Tele
ISO 200


C & C welcome

Harshad

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Harshad,
Post processing is much easily acquired than photographic skills. You are very nearly there. Just a little bit of changes I have made in the repost along with the justifications. You will only get better and better with practice.

The twigs on the top right are overexposed and have lost details. That is bound to happen, as you have exposed for the tiger which is in the shade. The best thing is to compose with similar tonalities. Our cameras don't have dynamic range to cover completely dark and very bright objects in one frame. So reducing the bright areas at the top and increasing a bit more at the bottom would have helped. During processing I recovered the details in the bright areas. Remember, a little bit of overexposure i.e. if only a small part of the histogram touches the extreme right bar, then it can be recovered. If time permits then please check the histogram on the field to see if the exposure is right.

Also, I increased the fill light by just a few points.

To know whether the image is oversaturated or not, just look at the tongue. The tongue appears a bit more pink. Try to move the saturation slider a bit more and you find the tongue appearing unnatural red. You find such images floating around in the net a lot. Also, you can see that the greens (look at the grass) appears a lot greener. So I reduced it just a bit during post processing.

In the levels I reduced the bright highlights a bit and then opened up the shadow areas and the dark areas, just a little bit.

Our best images don't need much of post processing. Here is what I do. May be will write in detail about it later.

I import my RAW images into lightroom. There is a eyedropper tool to select the white balance. Click on that tool and move it over the image and select an area that is approximately 18% gray. That is a starting point. Then you can move the white balance (colour temperature) slider a bit and the tint a bit to fine tune. You can also select the presets like daylight, cloudy, shade etc.

Then see if the image is bright enough. Else move the exposure slider to the right without touching the extreme right bar of the histogram. If parts of your image is already touching the extreme right bar of the histogram then you can recover the highlights by using the recovery tool.

Check the image at 100%. If there are shadows in the eye, then you can try to increase a bit of fill light. Don't overdo it.

Move the black point to select how black you want to see your blacks. Move the slider before it gets underexposed (the blinker will blink).

I hardly use the saturation tool as it is more useful in landscapes. Better to use the vibrance tool. A little bit will add to areas that are not saturated.

Levels or tone curve:

There are already presets for varying degrees of contrast like liner, medium contrast, strong contrast etc. Choose one of those depending on the situation.

You can use the individual levels of highlights, lights, darks and shadows.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Mrudul Godbole]

Hi Harshad,

Seems your quite good in PP.Cant see much difference in your image and the repost.Sabysachi has already explained in detail abt the PP. I am learning too .

Looking forward to see more from you..

[AB Apana]

I would simply crop out the hotspot at the top. Or clone it, if one is okay with cloning.

Apana