My 1st Attempt at PP'ing ... SCHOOL ME, please

[stirfry]

This was my first genuine attempt at correcting a picture using Photoshop (Elements 5). Most typically I just do a crop, a quick auto fix and/or an intentional posterization using an outdated program. This time I tried using layers and all that jazz in a bona fide attempt to learn PP'ing using

I'd love any and all criticism, most especially of the constructive variety :wink

EDITED:

Thanks everyone for the feedback ~ I'm headed back to the drawing board! The input was very helpful and allowed me to see the picture through fresher eyes ... the undercarriage was something I had neglected to consider, so that was especially helpful. I'm going to have to learn some more Photoshop tricks to implement some of your suggestions, and then I hope to post in the before/after thread. Thanks again!

EDITED AGAIN:

Re-adding picture.

http://stirfry.smugmug.com/photos/189284469-L.jpg

[Chrissiebeez_NL]

no picture.. :doh

[stirfry]

no picture.. :doh

Aha! Found the problem :)

[Katie Beth]

I think you've done a good job on the post-processing. I'm a newbie and I have PSE5 too. The only thing I can think of is maybe replacing the sky if you have any pics of nice looking skies with more blue. I have several images of skies for that purpose but haven't yet done it.

Great 1st effort! :thumb

[kisi]

hi stirfry, nice 1st ps attempt. i'm glad you took out the sky, which would have been superfluous. my main critique for you is that the big "Canada" is stealing the show (both because of the text and the color). it is pretty much all i am looking at, and the grain elevator is overshadowed (which seems to be what you want the eye to travel to). thee super saturated grass at the bottom and the overblown sky are also distracting. not sure if you can do much with the sky, but you might be able to do something with a b&w conversion... give it a shot.
if you had this to do over again, maybe try to move closer to the tracks, try a lower angle, and maybe turn the camera. the easiest way to "correct" in ps is to not have to correct much at all :):

[Richard]

I like the composition a lot, but I think you have gone a bit overboard on the PP. The colors look oversaturated, especially the green of the grass. There are also visible sharpening halos around the grain elevator. All of that should be easy to fix, though. Just do whatever you did, but do less of it.

More problematic are the overexposed areas of the sky and the lack of detail in the undercarriage of the train. In CS2/3, this would be a job for the shadow/highlight command, but I don't know whether that's available in Elements. An even better solution would be available if you shot RAW, but that requires some intermediate level PP stuff (combining multiple conversions).

I don't want to sound too discouraging, though. It's a good shot and with a little more work it could be improved considerably. It takes some practice to know how much PP to apply. You are off to a good start.

Cheers,

[Katie Beth]

More problematic are the overexposed areas of the sky and the lack of detail in the undercarriage of the train. In CS2/3, this would be a job for the shadow/highlight command, but I don't know whether that's available in Elements. An even better solution would be available if you shot RAW, but that requires some intermediate level PP stuff (combining multiple conversions).

Cheers,

There is at least a type of shadows/highlights in PS Elements 5. Under enhance>lighting>shadows/highlights.

Good idea.

[timk519]

First thing is this pic needs some white-balance - an "auto WB" in Lightroom gets rid of the blue cast, makes the colors look a lot more believable, and brings the wheels out of the shadows a bit.

Beyond that - I've found photo-shopping pics w/heavy-cloud cover and sun in the sky incredibly hard to work with in Elements 5. Lightroom provides a few more options w/out the cost of CS3, but it's still hard to edit the pic w/out it looking like it was edited.

Now, if this pic was taken w/the sun behind you, or sometime in the day when the sun wasn't causing problems in the clouds, you'd have a lot more options.

[DavidTO]

Stirfry,

I hate to see posts like this, where the original picture has been pulled. There is so much benefit to all to learn from the picture and the whipping. :D

[timk519]

Stirfry, I hate to see posts like this, where the original picture has been pulled. There is so much benefit to all to learn from the picture and the whipping. :D dittos. Once you've worked the pic over you can post updates here, and then the final product in the "Before & after" section. But please don't pull the pics from here.

[stirfry]

My bad! :smack

I'll put it back up; I can see how it may be more beneficial to do so. :lust


(But man oh man, ... now the problems with the picture are more glaringly obvious to me so by putting the picture back up I'm afraid I feel more inclined to sit here until I figure out this danged PP thing LOL. Laundry? Dishes?? Eh, ... there's always tomorrow!)


I've been tooling around the forums here trying to learn some PP tricks but I think just getting in there and gettin' dirty in PSE is what it is gonna take for me to grasp the terminology, concepts, and uses for all of the tools. So I'm diving in blind and darn it if I've never been the sharpest crayon in the bunch :rolleyes :D

Thanks again for the input, all. Much appreciated that you took the time.