Quote:
Originally Posted by flamerz /img/forum/go_quote.gif
No idea. But Towert, how do you set your contrast for your photos? They always look almost surreal because of it, and I love it. Even in your low quality photo the lighting looks stunning.
|
Thank you very much for that nice comment flamerz!
The last photo (low quality) was taken with a phone camera with the settings fixed (not able to be changed). It's for a research project in the computer science department at my college. So I can't take credit for that one.
For my other pictures though: I have the in camera settings for contrast and saturation set on high. My camera is a few years old, so my high setting is a little tame compared to what you can get out of some of the new nikons.
If the lighting was ideal, the pictures I get out of the camera are pretty much what you see me post. All that may be needed is an 'auto brightness' in photoshop to stretch the dynamic range all the way from black to white.
If the lighting is less than ideal, my pictures fall into two main categories.
They can either be over saturated, or under saturated.
For my typical under saturated images, I'll use software to change the image. It usually involves me changing the curves, by pulling down the mid tones (darkening them), clipping the highs a little if there is enough dynamic range available without loosing too much detail, and increasing the darks ever so slightly.
For most images, this amounts to something very similar to what "auto levels" would give in photoshop, but for others I put a little more work into it.
If the image is oversaturated, I'll try and pull back some detail in the shadows and highlights. I essentially try and stretch the dynamic range to get less contrast.
And of course, for each image if I see something little that can be improved, I'll do selective edits to it.
So to sum up. My best photos seem to be the ones where the lighting was ideal when taking the picture. If lighting is not ideal, I can do edits to it in software to make it a little more interesting and approach what ideal lighting would have given me. I basically set my saturation and contrast up high in the camera settings. Newer DSLR's it would be a mid setting. It also helps to have a lens that captures colors nicely.
I simply try and match what I see in real life as best I can.
If you want more specifics, just let me know.
Thank you again.
