need some feedback

[btsmith12]

This is still a work in progress, but I think it's getting close. Have I been heading in the right direction? Any and all suggestions, nitpicks and advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Brad

(Now that I know how to embed images, I modified my original post.)

[Mhayes]

Hi Brad,

Great to see you on the forum! Do you think I could talk you into using another storage site--photobucket is good--than flicr for when you post photos for help? For one thing it's not as easy to view when you have to go off our site and for another Flckr will not allow others to download your work.

One thing I do when I upload to photobucket is make a special folder on my hard drive call "photobucket" and all my photos to the OPR Forum are stored there. You have plenty of free storage there--keep resolution to around 72 to 120 dpi--and by not removing any from that folder you won't have broken links on a post.

On the Forum Home is The Welcome for Newcomers and it covers posting photos and here is the link:
http://www.operationphotorescue.org/forum/index.php/topic,2002.0.html

Hope that helps.

Margie

Margie

[btsmith12]

Thanks Margie. I saw the Welcome for Newcomers section on posting photos, which has instructions for flickr, but I haven't been on flickr in a long time and it seems they've gotten more strict about referencing photos stored on their site. I tried several things to get the images embedded in the post but had no luck.

I really appreciate your response. I will set up a photobucket site, and I like your workflow so I'll do the same or similar.

Brad

[btsmith12]

OK, thanks to Margie, here are some actual images :)

[Mhayes]

Hi Brad, I think you are doing a great job, especially on repairing the tree. When I downloaded your examples, I see that the original is now a Raw file. I like working in Raw when I shoot and I bet you do too as a photographer. However, with these photos I don't use Camera Raw, because they are jpgs and I can't tweaked the camera settings they were originally. If I take your original and open it up in PhotoShop (no tweaking in Raw) and then do a Level's Adjustment where I bring the sliders in on each channel, my color correction differs a little from yours.



I think you have color corrected, because when I checked yours in Levels all of the channel have no clipping. I did notice that when I opened your wip that I get the message that there is no RGB embedded profile. That means you have no profile as to the photo being a sRGB (what originals are) Adobe RGB or any other color space. That could be why the color might not be true to what you want. Yes, sRGB is what you think for Web, but most commercial printers for the public want it that color space and then their printer switches over to CMYK for printing.

One thing to be very careful of is that when you open one of our photos in Camera Raw your default setting will be 240 dpi unless you change it. Even if you set the default for 300, it will go back to the default when it reads the info from a new camera setting. Ours need to stay at 300 dpi and wondered if you caught that?

I think you are off to a good start and there is still damage on the boy, but this is a wip so no need to go there.

Margie

[btsmith12]

Thanks for your reply, Margie. There's a bit more work to be done on the background and tree, but yeah, the boy is what I'm working on now.

Photography is a side business for me. My "day job" is working at Hewlett-Packard developing firmware for color LaserJet printers and all-in-ones. Our color laser printers work exactly as you describe: we do most of our image processing in an sRGB-like color space then convert to CMYK for printing.

My working color space in photoshop is Adobe 1998 because it has a fairly large gamut and works well for editing images that are intended to be printed on a CMYK printer or press. I created the wip image by flattening the photoshop file, downsampling it to 72dpi, then converting it to a JPEG using Save for Web.

When saving for web, I had photoshop convert the image to sRGB, but I did not check the "embed profile" box. I usually don't embed a profile when saving for web because very few people calibrate their monitors or use a browser that fully supports color management (Firefox is the only one I know of). If I embed the profile, the image can look really "off" depending on what someone's displaying it on.

However, I should have embedded the profile when I uploaded the images to this forum, since folks will probably pull it into an app that supports color management rather than just looking at it in a browser. I'll embed the profile from now on.

BTW, if you have the time to read through a long forum thread, here's a lively discussion about embedding profiles when saving for the web:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4251949

Yes, I often use Camera Raw (CR) when starting work on JPEGs. You're right: for raw files, CR has to convert the Bayer-pattern image from the camera into an RGB space, and you have a lot of control over how that's done. As you said, with a JPEG image there's no converting. However, CR has image editing capabilities that photoshop doesn't, and in some cases -- noise reduction is a good example -- CR's results are much better than photoshop's.

The version of Camera Raw that will be released with PS6 has had a major overhaul. (I was a pre-release tester for PS5 and PS6; I've been working with PS6 for several months.) In fact, it's so much better than the version in PS5/PS5.5 that I will be using it more and more on JPEG and TIFF files.

Yes, I'm aware that CR's default resolution is 240dpi; I change it to 300 before I open the image in photoshop, and I understand why it needs to stay at 300.

I hope I wasn't preachy in this post; I just wanted to give you a bit more background about me and explain why I worked the image the way I did. You guys have been doing this for a long time, and you have established a set of expectations for color balance, restoration limits, etc. I enjoy this type of work and want to deliver results that meet OPR's expectations. Since this is my first restoration for OPR, I wanted to toss it out there and find out where I'm doing what's expected and where I'm not.

So please help me do things the way you want; don't be afraid to be blunt! The best thing for me is to get as much feedback as possible on my first few images so I can be more efficient and give you better results :)

Thanks,
Brad

[Mhayes]

Hi Brad, you are not "preachy" at all and I love it when someone knows what they are doing and can explain why they took the path they did. The reason I mentioned the dpi of 240 is that I have had volunteers return it at that and swear they never changed the resolution and later I found out they brought the file into Camera Raw and it was changed there.

I do notice the difference in colors on yours as compared to mine and more pink to yours and mine more to the yellow. I think mine is darker and I really think the kid's t-shirt is more of a yellow.

Yes, I totally agree about how embedded profiles and the ability of the web to show the true colors. As soon I find the thread on the forum, you will find it interesting on some of the other links. What we notice the most on the forum is that photos no matter how they are save or what browser you are in seem to make photos with red in them a lot more red. That is why I am hesitant to tell a volunteer their photos are too red until I download them. Also, at one time it was said that Internet Explorer does not read the embedded profile, but I'm reading the later version does.

Another reason I mentioned the default of Camera Raw is that I assumed that when I changed the default to 300 dpi it was set for life until I would change it. That proved wrong when I was color correcting some photos for a friend and because it was from a different camera, the default went back to 240.

Thanks for all the information and that is what the forum is for is to exchange information. I love it when I learn something new. I'm also looking forward to the new changes on CS6 that you mentioned---much as I hate spending the money.

Margie

Footnote: here are the links to previous discussions on color space:
http://www.operationphotorescue.org/forum/index.php/topic,3383.0.html
http://www.operationphotorescue.org/forum/index.php/topic,3326.msg30055.html#msg30055
http://www.operationphotorescue.org/forum/index.php/topic,3331.msg30109.html#msg30109

[btsmith12]

Oh GREAT-- after reading your post, now that photo looks redder every time I look at it. I think you did some sort of subliminal thing to me, kinda like periodically inserting a frame of a Coca-Cola ad in a movie; after a while you find yourself really wanting a Coke  ;)

Interestingly, on my monitor at work, your version has a slight greenish cast, but my version does have a slight reddish cast. I'll dial back the sunburn a bit.

I'm also planning to desaturate and/or darken the boy's pupils a bit and modify his hair so it's more light brown than red.

Brad

[Mhayes]

Thanks Brad, you made me laugh! That is a requirement of all team members is to cause confusion or soft pedal how bad a photo is until you download.

I agree with you on mine having a slight greenish cast especially on the skin. Let me know if I can furnish more links with subliminal messages.  ;)

Margie