Just Post (process). How to Make Your Bad Pictures Even Worse!

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > Just Post (process). How to Make Your Bad Pictures Even Worse!

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

The Rat posted:

Seconding this, his lessons are clear, understandable, and broken up into digestible chunks.

Lightroom question. I've been processing the 50/80MP shots produced by my camera's hi-res mode, and pretty often, Lightroom will slow to a crawl. What can I do to alleviate that, for that size of pictures? I have 16GB of RAM in this computer and a 4GB Geforce 970 video card. Not sure if I need to upgrade one of those (or both) or if it's something in the settings.

What CPU do you have?

# ¿ Dec 10, 2018 14:44

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 01:29

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

Hmm I find scratch disk on an SSD and my i7 is good enough

If you can upload an example RAW somewhere I'll load it into LR and see if my machine chokes

i7 6700k, 16GB and a 1080.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2018 15:17

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

You putting noise reduction on?

# ¿ Dec 10, 2018 17:00

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

I downloaded and imported that RAW into LR Classic CC latest version and applied some NR did some general tasks and LR was fine used about 4.4GB RAM usual CPU spikes when applying NR/sharpen etc but generally all fine no different to my 24MP RAWs from my Canon.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2018 00:21

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

Strong light gives you strong colours and blown highlights, the colours seem pretty accurate, I mean there's a reason we like flowers, the colors are vivid.

You could try messing with colour profiles to see if you find one that suits your tastes more.

jarlywarly fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Jun 30, 2019

# ¿ Jun 30, 2019 16:52

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

President Beep posted:

That confirmation helps�thanks. The output you�re seeing here is using the LR portrait profile, and I�ll likely play around with that tack some more.

As I continue to try and improve as a photographer, one thing I�m aware of is that in the past I�ve over relied on things like saturated colors because I thought they might help make my images more interesting. I�m trying to discard that particular (flawed) crutch, but I also want to make sure I don�t overcompensate...

Yeah remember monitors are vastly different, I tend to find black levels and dynamic range on my main edit monitor are so much better than than most screens out there that photos that look fine on my screen look very dark on less good monitors, in some way if you are editing for mass consumption you have to normalise the colours and black levels somewhat for the lowest denominator, a bit like audio on the radio.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2019 17:19

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

People just crop them out anyway cos no-one cares about composition on instagram.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2019 14:19

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

Blackhawk posted:

I mean in my experience no amount of post processing can fix a dogshit image, so it's not like it removes the skill from the action of actually taking the photo. I don't think cropping to fix a composition is really a sin, especially if for some reason you don't have perfect lens for a given situation and for whatever reason you can't zoom with your feet (cliff or river etc.)

It can do miracles on some types of badly shot image, of course focus is ultimate arbiter but I've been able to retrieve some really pretty badly exposed stuff, especially when I'm shooting fully manual with flash macro. I'm always removing highlights and cropping for composition as it's basically impossible to get that right through the lens.

It's important to know that looking at RAW is not quite "straight out of camera" any app/device that shows you a RAW direct from the file is applying an interpretation and some do some default adjustments without explicitly telling you (Lightroom for one, although recent updates have made this easier to control)

# ¿ Feb 13, 2020 14:23

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

rio posted:

Ok so weird question. Is there any program/app specifically to improve lovely, snapshot phone pictures done by people who put no thought into photography? I�m not looking for perfection by any means but my experience with editing is on my own stuff, where I actually think about the process, don�t use a direct flash, shoot raw and am refining, not trying to save bad photos (they are all bad of course would be the response to that).

The composition doesn�t matter or any of the things we would normally be thinking about in terms of a good image - I have started painting pet portraits and I have one now where the dog passed away and it is a surprise for the client�s son so my available photos for reference are lit like poo poo (direct flash on a black dog) and lacking detail. I would never ask this in terms of pure photography since there�s no saving or making a good photo out of something like this, but since it�s a painting I can change whatever I want and just would like a better starting point from the photo - I didn�t know if there was some program that specializes in telling people that they can be terrible photographers and have better looking images through some sort of computational magic. I already expect to save what I can in Capture One (for pet portraits I already do this if I am working off of photo reference) so things like white balance, sharpness, color balance, levels etc. I will handle and just am curious if the whole computational photo thing has gotten to a point where anything can do this.

Snapseed on Mobile OS.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.niksoftware.snapseed&hl=en_GB
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/snapseed/id439438619

# ¿ Feb 19, 2020 16:09

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

rio posted:

Ok so weird question. Is there any program/app specifically to improve lovely, snapshot phone pictures done by people who put no thought into photography? I�m not looking for perfection by any means but my experience with editing is on my own stuff, where I actually think about the process, don�t use a direct flash, shoot raw and am refining, not trying to save bad photos (they are all bad of course would be the response to that).

The composition doesn�t matter or any of the things we would normally be thinking about in terms of a good image - I have started painting pet portraits and I have one now where the dog passed away and it is a surprise for the client�s son so my available photos for reference are lit like poo poo (direct flash on a black dog) and lacking detail. I would never ask this in terms of pure photography since there�s no saving or making a good photo out of something like this, but since it�s a painting I can change whatever I want and just would like a better starting point from the photo - I didn�t know if there was some program that specializes in telling people that they can be terrible photographers and have better looking images through some sort of computational magic. I already expect to save what I can in Capture One (for pet portraits I already do this if I am working off of photo reference) so things like white balance, sharpness, color balance, levels etc. I will handle and just am curious if the whole computational photo thing has gotten to a point where anything can do this.

If you want upload a few of the shots and I will give them a go in PS/LR see if I can get you some better photos to work from.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2020 21:09

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

rio posted:

Sure, if you have the time and wouldn�t mind. If anything I�d also be curious how someone else would edit something like this as I don�t have editing experience trying to �save� photos.

This is the one she wants (the first was out of focus and she thought the dog looked happier here so at least this one is not totally blurred), 8x10 so I�ll definitely be cropping it to be mostly head and try to extend the torso by undoing the perspective, or trying to mentally. The main issue is the lack of photos and she doesn�t know if this is a specific breed so I am not sure where else to try to get info. I had done one of these portraits before for her and it was the same kind of thing but for her daughter (dog had passed away, wanted a surprise gift so couldn�t directly ask for other photos) and while I wasn�t thrilled compared to what I can do with adequate references, or meeting the dog, it was ok. This one though just really seems like it will be tough because I�m afraid if I stray too far it will lose the likeness and at least locally my output has been on the photo-realistic side with the paintings so I can�t get away with just going looser.

Ah, I see what you mean. I�m going to spend some time looking online for similar dogs but what is really have preferred is the head at even a little bit of an angle to get a sense of the geometry of the face so I could change the lighting. As-is I�m afraid if I took another dog to try to do that then I might lose the likeness (if the snout length was off enough it anything like that). It�s doable but the last client spoiled me with a living dog and some very good photo references. I should probably expect more of this though, at least if I can�t meet the dog myself.

That photo is much better quality than I was expecting, I mean I can boost the shadows a bit and drop highlights, there's no getting back the eyes of course because it's a dog that's been directly flash lit and their eyes are basically retro reflectors. I not really sure what is missing that you couldn't paint the dog from that? There's no saving that photo from the effects of direct flash.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2020 15:23

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

Yeah that's out of focus again nothing much can be done, but at least from that photo you know the eye colour.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2020 15:57

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

Yeah these photos are just taken at the classic "easy but worst" angle of looking down 45 degrees at something.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2020 16:33

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

As a hobbyist I can't imagine having multiple tens of thousands of photos I've taken that I felt were worth keeping, I maybe keep 200 a year and only publish a few of them.

Are you referring back to them often for edits or more just to look at them?

# ¿ May 11, 2020 12:16

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

The Vikings posted:

She's been taking photos since ~2009 but only really started editing seriously since ~2017 or so. Now that the most recent ones are finished with editing she's planning to go back to the earlier ones and edit them. We do look through them occasionally for ourselves or to share with other people, but she also wants to be able to use them for other creative things.

She already sorts them by location in a couple levels of folders, labeled with the date, specific trip, people involved. I think she wants to have tags so that she can search for things over multiple folders (e.g. I want to make a collage of purple flowers, or birds, or...)

She likes having fairly detailed collections from trips, I don't think it would be useful to suggest deleting more than the 'bad' photos (which she is intending to do from the older ones). Also hard drive space is cheap.

Should be able to script the folder names into the tags.

# ¿ May 20, 2020 15:48

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 01:29

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

Check your cache locations as well as catalogue locations and app files, also what are the actual specs (cpu/ram/gpu.)

# ¿ Oct 5, 2020 17:05

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > Just Post (process). How to Make Your Bad Pictures Even Worse!