Trying out the new photo editor - what do you think?

[NicTrain35]

Hi guys,

I'm still getting the hang of my new Adobe Photoshop 7.0. I picked a random photo to edit (UP! ). Which one of the two do you like best? Would you have done anything different than what I did? I resized the edited one to 1024 x 683, gave it an "Auto Contrast", and sharpened it (Unsharp mask, amount 100%, 1.0 Radius and the Threshold was set at 0). The unedited version was resized to 1024 x 683 and sharpened the same way.

Thanks for any opinions!

Unedited version

Edited version

Edit: Please ignore the above images.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/sho...aspx?id=480901 Unedited version

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/sho...aspx?id=480900 Edited version

[cmherndon]

The second looks to be the better of the two. It looks more natural, and also properly exposed. I personally would have also tried adjusting the saturation, making the colors pop out a little more.

As far as using auto anything, you'll probably find out quickly that it won't always give the results you want (sometimes it'll mess the color up). The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to finely adjust without using auto. Most of the time, you can also use Filter->Sharpen rather than Unsharp Mask and the results will be just as good. Either way, to each their own.

[NicTrain35]

Thanks, Caleb. I'll start manually adjusting the levels to get the hang of it.

[WembYard]

Caleb is correct, the second (edited) photo has better colour.
Regarding using auto adjust, I usually find that Auto Contrast works better than Auto Levels although you still might need to make further slight adjustments. I have heard that Auto Levels can mess the colour up but have not personally experienced this.

[Donna]

I agree, the second image.

[a231pacific]

I find that auto levels frequently gives me bad color, but surprisingly, auto color often works very well (do this before you crop, so the auto function has more image to analyze). When I'm in a hurry, I go to adjust, levels, then move the light and dark sliders over until they touch the histogram. This gets the level adjustment pretty close. I move the mid tone slider a bit just to see if it needs improving. I then hit auto color, auto contrast, and if necessary I'll bump the saturation up 10%. Then it's crop to the desired shot, resize to 1024, sharpen to taste and you're done! Your unsharp numbers are pretty close to what I use when it's a scanned slide, but for a digital photo, you can increase the percentage by quite a bit above 100.

Auto color works pretty well with normal shots. Just don't try it with unusual lighting!

Michael Allen

[TonytheTiger]

I forwarded this to Nick with the procedure I used in Paint Shop Pro 8.1

1. Rough lasso select area outside of sky with a “feather” setting of 25 (larger if working from the full size original)
2. Auto adjust color to 6000º (number depends on what catches my eye, but somewhere between 5000º and 7000º)
3. Slightly clarify (strength 2)
4. Adjust -10 brightness and +10 contrast
5. Clear selection, lasso select sky (same feather setting), and slightly enhance blue
6. Clear selection and slightly up the saturation overall
7. Overall brightness reduction of -15

[NicTrain35]

Thank you very much for the image, Rob, and thanks to everyone else for their opinions and suggestions. I really appreciate it!