hey andy...am i on the money ?

[gus]

What do you recon mate ?

I took this shot a while back in Sydney & was disappointed with the colour (or lack off) I picked up a Digital Photography magazine today, you know the ones..comes with a free disk that is going to turn you into a pro in 8 keystrokes.

I always end up thowing them out as most of the tools on them are already in P/S usually or the results are simply crap. Today i think i got something usefull..small free prog that puts the colour back into the photo that i can see but for some reason ...my camera can not.

http://humongous.smugmug.com/photos/1754680-M.jpg

I think i over did it a bit but you get what i mean.

http://humongous.smugmug.com/photos/2970924-M.jpg

[Seamaiden]

That's quite a difference! Much richer, without looking too garish. Did you use your tool on Eric's sunset?

[gus]

Nup...this one is of some use to me...that other was a wast of time. This may not be a lot diff to what some here could do in P/S but its handy to wind a dial & hit a button.

http://humongous.smugmug.com/photos/1754867-M.jpg

http://humongous.smugmug.com/photos/2972706-M.jpg

[shecodes]

Nup...this one is of some use to me...that other was a wast of time. This may not be a lot diff to what some here could do in P/S but its handy to wind a dial & hit a button.


But you forgot to mention what the tool was. :D

[fish]

But you forgot to mention what the tool was. :D
Knowing Humongus, it was probably something like this...

http://www.fileget.net/fileget/wrench.jpg

[Seamaiden]

Hey.. nice wrench.

[rutt]

Just for fun I tried applying Dan Margulis (http://www.ledet.com/margulis/articles.html)' two favorite approaches to this picture. Dan is most commonly associated with CMYK highlight and shawdow correction via curves followed by lumonsity unsharp mask. This produced the following:

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/3001411-M.jpg

But Dan also teaches steepening the LAB curves especially when there is vegatation and it is disarable to make the colors more brilliant. This is also followed by lumonsity unsharp mask. It is then usually disarable to make a trip to CMYK to make the lowpoint be true black. Here is what that produced:

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/3001641-M.jpg

Notice that both my attempts avoid the red cast introduced by whatever tool Humongus used. You can best see that in the upper right hand corner where I avoided the pink cast and in the concrete street and sidewalk which are neutral in the original and in my corrections but which are red in the automated correction. You can see that the lab correction has intensified the colors which is the result you wanted. LAB curves give such complete control that it would have been easy to make this more or less intense and also to have focused this on any particular color range (making red redder without making green greener, for example.)

Probably, it was much easier to use your tool. There are other automated tools that will keep neutral points that way. I have used iCorrect quite a bit, but since I've had more experience with Dan's methods, I find that I get much better results and a lot more control with only a little more work.

[rutt]

This one was too tempting a target. I steepened the LAB curves a lot (maybe too much?) and did L unsharp mask:

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/3002132-M.jpg

[Seamaiden]

I'm just learning what a fantastic tool the unsharp mask is. It makes that 2nd hand shop piccie just pop! I, too, noticed that the concrete went from gray to brown, but hadn't paid attention to that upper right area.

I really need to learn better how to play with these particular tools.

<sm, sometimes dangerous with tools>

[rutt]

I'm just learning what a fantastic tool the unsharp mask is. It makes that 2nd hand shop piccie just pop! I, too, noticed that the concrete went from gray to brown, but hadn't paid attention to that upper right area.

I really need to learn better how to play with these particular tools.

<sm, sometimes dangerous with tools>
The main technique I used for both enhancement was LAB curve steepening, not unsharp mask sharpening. You can read about this here. (http://www.ledet.com/margulis/PSW_Dan_Magic_of_LAB.pdf)This technique really makes colors as vivid as you can want. As Dan likes to say, if you are in a rush and want to add some snap quickly, just steepen the LAB curves.

[Seamaiden]

Interesting, rutt! From what I've perused it seems that I can apply this to GIMP (post kernel recompilation). Thank you for the link!

<sm - loves links.. the sausage kind, too>

[rutt]

Interesting, rutt! From what I've perused it seems that I can apply this to GIMP (post kernel recompilation). Thank you for the link!

<sm - loves links.. the sausage kind, too>
I doubt it. I don't think the GIMP has a LAB color space.