ProcessedPhotos

Well, processing photos is quite new to me, so I'll record some of my experiences as I go along here.

2005-12-16++18-46-27_dsc_1639

Idea was to expose for the highlights, then boost the shadows in another layer. The use a mask to show the appropriate bits where they are needed. Alas the camera ISO was accidentally set to 800. This resulted in the boosted shadow bit being very very noisy, with horrible splotches in the red channel.

UFRAW

Do two conversions, one for highlights, one for shadows.

Shadows, noise processing

• Copy to new layer
• Blur only the red channel with gaussian, radius 10

This seems to be one way of getting rid of the big splotches

• Select original layer, decompose -> LAB
• Gaussian blur the A channel (I think) which seemed to contain most of the big splotches with radius 9
• Recompose to new image
• Tried recursive de-speckle on R+B channels of the recomposed layer, looked quite good. Did however make a colour artefact around the fire. We'll fix this later.
• On another layer tried same de-speckle settings on all channels, but had weird artifacts, such as red objects "growing"
• GREYCstoration, applied on the R+B de-speckled layer, p1=0.1, p2=0.7, dt = 178.976, sigma = 1, iter = 1
• copy above to new layer, and apply same GRYCs again. Now it looks very smooth
• apply USM, 2.5, 0.57, 3
• apply USM, 0.6, 1.1, 6
• LAB decompose original, gauss blur A,B 11, recompose copy below USMed layer
• use opacity to combine double-USMed layer with above layer to achive desired effect
• make a selection around the fire on LAB A blurred fire, and give it a bit of a selective gaussian blur. We'll use this to fix the colour artefact on the fire
• now remove all unneccesary layers (we should have the double USMd, AB blurred, and fire layers
• open file as layer, the highlights-converted file, turn off visibility
• The highlights layer should be first, then the fire, then the rest
• adjust fire layer opacity till it looks good. For extra points use a layer mask, and paint it to transparancy on all the fire-layer bits that isn't actually fire.