January 15, 2015

"Ask and ye shall receive...


It's not often I get asked HOW I do something.  Usually the question revolves more around WHY I do something.  And it comes from my familial unit in the form of "WHY did you do THAT?!?!?" #momproblems #Icantwin #wtf (as in...What the Frick!).  Sooooo, when I've been asked by a few people "HOW do you process your photos, they look so crisp and clean", well....ask and ye shall receive (within reason).  I hope you believe that more than my Thing #3!

So THIS is how I process my photos to get this end result...


"Christmas Market at the Frauenkirche"
Dresden, Germany



1.  SOOC (Straight out of camera)

This photo is 'okay'.  But could use a little tweaking.  It was a dark and dreary day.  The lighting conditions were doing me no favor.  You'll find that my editing process is pretty basic, I think!





2.  I ALWAYS:  upload photo to Photoshop and adjust levels, sharpen and crop (I do not re-size for web).  I will admit, OR the Better Half will be glad to tell ya....I tend to get a little OCD about these simple decisions.  "Just give me 5 minutes!" often morphs into...just a wee bit longer.

Kinda subtle.  FYI, an attribute I'm not normally known for.  The crowds in the street are a bit lighter now, the shadows aren't quite as dark.  Not much cropping is needed as the SOOC was pretty well framed.  I TRY to compose my photos as much as possible when I take the shot, so I have less editing to do afterwards.  I crop my photos to a standard 4 x 6, or 5 x 8 dimension.





3.  I OFTEN like to:  use a pre-set action on the photograph.  My "go to" action the past couple of years (yes, I'm a creature of habit) is Florabella's "subtle color".  I have found that this action comes as close to accomplishing what "I" would choose to do, but much quicker.  It is part of Florabella's "Colorplay" actions set.  I do not purchase very many preset actions, but this is one I use frequently in quantity, but sparingly in application.  I very rarely use overlays and/or textures.  Less is more, in my opinion (yet another attribute I'm not normally known for).


(This is a smaller version of the photo at the top of the page.  Not bad for dreary December day in Dresden...and yes, I kinda love alliteration too)


4.  SOMETIMES I will adjust the "contrast" at this stage, if I feel it is needed.  This photo, I didn't.  I'm sure there is a LOT more I could do when it comes to editing.  But like I said, I'm a creature of habit.


And finally...

5.   For quite awhile I was not liking how the photos were appearing on my blog.  They were not as bright and colorful as they were when I was finished editing them in Photoshop.  After some trial and error I went to my Google settings.  Under the "Photos and Videos" section there is an "Auto Enhance" option (which I was previously unaware of).  The choices are:  off, normal, high.  My account was apparently preset to "normal".  I tried it on "high" and saw no difference.  But when I turned it "off"...the quality of appearance improved for me.  


Voila'!  It all boils down to K.I.S.S. (yep, not known elsewhere for THAT either!).  But, thanks for asking!






P.S.  Now I have a question for YOU!  Can you tell me if you see one of those "I am not a Robot" captcha's in my comment box?  If you have one on your blog, did you add that yourself?  Or did it just appear one day thru the magic of Google/Blogger?  Not that this is unheard of...shoe's just magically appear in my closet all the time.
Here's where I "link up" today.

(click on image for description of Song-ography)
Next Tuesday's Song-ography title suggestion is "Imagine" by John Lennon.
Come back and link up!

26 comments:

  1. Interesting to read about your process. Your photos have a clear, natural look which I like a great deal. I'm not much for textures myself. YES, the "I'm not a robot" thing does appear when I comment on your blog. I noticed a few weeks ago that the Captcha thingy suddenly appeared on all of the Blogger blogs I follow. It's a pain in the....well, you know.

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  2. I love how your photos look and wondered what your editing process was. I never see a difference with resizing for web or facebook and not quite sure why we're 'supposed' to do it. I might stop doing it as well. I don't edit too many photos on my blog because it's so time consuming and I'm still learning. I do love Florabella actions though. I am going to check out that Google settings thing right now! Thank you for all of this great info!

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  3. Ps..no robot question. I've been noticing that a lot on blogs lately. I need to go check mine now!

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    1. So some can see the "robot" and other's can't. Weird! FYI, I guess you can't see it when it is on your own blog. Again...weird.

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    2. I always comment using my Wordpress ID. Other Wordpress blogs remember who I am, but blogger makes me prove myself "not a robot" every time. The new checkbox is easier than those twisted words, but it's still annoying to have to go through that process on blogs I visit every day.

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    3. I agree. I've gone into my HTML and can't find the code anywhere in order to delete it. Seems that blogger is giving this can't ha with no option to opt out. Sorry.

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  4. How do you check the Google settings? I have a Wordpress Blog. Your photos are beautiful. I don't have Photoshop and edit my photos in Pic Monkey. I can't say I am that happy with my photos since I changed Cameras. Thanks for sharing. I'll let you know about the Robot thing.

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    1. Jan, good question. I use Blogger which is associated with Google. I'm not sure how you would go about checking photo quality settings for Wordpress. Maybe someone else will be able to answer this.

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  5. I agree about your photos. I always think they are so clear and crisp. I have Florabella actions also, but mostly use Lightroom. One of her actions, "Classic Color", is my favorite one to use for portraits. There were a few different verifications the last month or so, but they were never consistent from blog to blog. I learned that Google/blogger folks can just ignore and Publish comment.

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  6. First, thank you for your post and answering my questions. I use lightroom, but have never used actions...maybe it's time I did. I don't get the capcha code on your site, but if you go into your blogger settings you can turn it off. Just google search it, that's what I did when someone told me I had it on mine.

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  7. Nice process for processing! Your images are always so beautiful. I love that you adopt a simple approach so that your images shine all on their own merits.

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  8. Makes me wish we left holiday lights up all winter long! So pretty!

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  9. No robot captcha here right now, let's see what happens when I press publish.............

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  10. ... and now we know the rest of the story. Gorgeous scene and excellent edit.

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  11. Looks amazing..Thanks for the tips.

    Hugs~

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  12. If you are self hosting then resizing your images is VITAL because otherwise every time someone loads the page it will push up your CPU. Also, high res pictures on the internet are pointless, blogger will be scaling your images down behind the scenes anyway, it has to, also screen resolution means 1600x1200 so uploading anything bigger than that is not worth it. Also the larger the image the slower your website response time and Google hates slow sites and will penalize you in their search rankings the slower you are.

    As for editing, this is interesting, like you I try to keep my shots as best to straight out camera as possible and I tend to do all my editing in Lightroom although I have been recently exploring Photoshop a bit more

    Mollyxxx

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    1. Thanks for the input Molly. When I crop, I crop to either 4x6 o 5 x 8 dimensions. Do you feel I should resize even after that? I will look into it!

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  13. Great shots, I just like to press the button. Tom The Backroads Traveller

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  14. Love your simple explanation of your process.
    I use blogger and just let it moderate comments, I have to choose to publish but I can do that from my phone and it seems good at picking up all the spam, I just check that once a week to make sure nothing good is in there by mistake (hasn't got it wrong yet)
    I've no idea how you get the "I'm not a robot" thing but I do kind of like it.

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  15. Keepdoing what you are doing! That top photo is glorious in color and sharpness! Lovce the original too, though. Still, the bright color of the first one gives you more of a feeling of celebration. beautiful!

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  16. Beautiful photo! Thank you very much for sharing your processing. I too like SOOC, but even when I do I enjoy trying different presets, textures and actions and seeing what I come up with. I'll will check out Florabella's actions, never tried them before.

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  17. Love all your shots...with or without cosmetic surgery!

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  18. your photos are always amazing and thank you for the tutorial....i have to check what my setting is on my blog...and no, you don't have a robot thingy when commenting...i don't know if i do or not but i didn't add it if i do. i know there was an issue with the word verification just popping up randomly....thanks for linking!!

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  19. Great tips! Your photos are always just lovely!! Thanks for sharing with SYC.
    hugs,
    Jann

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