Processing an old digital photo

[18 316]

Hello all,

first by way of introductions, I am a very longtime railpictures.net member but I was an infrequent lurker for a decade, and only started submitting photos a few days ago. My question concerns this image, which was rejected for lack of contrast.

I made this photo in 2004 with a first-generation Sony Cybershot digital camera, so it was not high-resolution, nor the best quality colour-wise or JPEG compression-wise, and not much could be set. A general problem with the pictures this camera produced was that greens are washed out. For the uploaded (& rejected) image, I processed the original by increasing contrast a bit - but not too much because then the forest become black, and the front of the loco and the underside of the bridge become too dark - and also increasing the brightness of the mid-bright parts a bit.

Do you have any suggestions what can be done with the photo? (I would only bother with the effort because I see historical value in the subject of the picture.)

[FloridaRailroading]

I'd suggest upping the contrast a little more then messing with the shadows/highlights adjustments.

[Milepost 58]

I don't know what program that you use to edit. I have Lightroom. But no matter what program you use, it should have a highlights slider. I would turn down the highlights. That will make the bridge not so white and give it some depth. I wish I knew how to add a photo here, as I have done a quick edit in LR but have no way to post it. I would do that and resubmit it.

[FloridaRailroading]

Originally Posted by Milepost 58

I don't know what program that you use to edit. I have Lightroom. But no matter what program you use, it should have a highlights slider. I would turn down the highlights. That will make the bridge not so white and give it some depth. I wish I knew how to add a photo here, as I have done a quick edit in LR but have no way to post it. I would do that and resubmit it.

Click on Quote and then the paper clip icon that says "attachments." It's on the top row next to the smiling emoticon.

[Decapod401]

Originally Posted by Milepost 58

I wish I knew how to add a photo here, as I have done a quick edit in LR but have no way to post it.

In the dialog box when typing a reply, click on the paper clip icon at the top. A "Manage Attachments" dialog will open. Click on "Choose file" and browse for the photo that you want to attach and select it. Then click "upload", return to the original dialog box, and click on the paper clip again. Click on the filename in the dropdown menu, and the photo will be inserted wherever you have the cursor positioned in your reply.

For newer contributors, I recommend that they read Chase Gunnoe's Railpictures Beginner's Guide:

http://forums.railpictures.net/showt...nner%27s+Guide

It will familiarize you with common rejections and how to avoid/fix most of them.

[Milepost 58]

Ok thanks guys. This was my take on it, just adjusting the highlights.

[18 316]

Originally Posted by Milepost 58

Ok thanks guys. This was my take on it, just adjusting the highlights.

Well, thanks for that advice, the forest definitely looks much better! But the train itself now looks too processed. However, you gave me the basic idea of what to play around with (I thought the mid-tones are the problem).

[Milepost 58]

If you have Lightroom, you can selectively adjust the highlights with the brush, and then it would not affect the train. I pay 9.99 a month for Lightroom and you don't get all the features but it's enough to edit the photos and does an excellent job of reducing it to the 2mb limit without destroying the quality of the photo. If you have photoshop you are way ahead of me so disregard.

[18 316]

Originally Posted by Milepost 58

If you have Lightroom, you can selectively adjust the highlights with the brush, and then it would not affect the train. I pay 9.99 a month for Lightroom and you don't get all the features but it's enough to edit the photos and does an excellent job of reducing it to the 2mb limit without destroying the quality of the photo. If you have photoshop you are way ahead of me so disregard.

I'm low-tech. I normally use IrfanView for simple stuff and Gimp for more elaborate stuff. Since I couldn't reproduce what you did with Gimp, I downloaded a trial version of Lightroom, and discovered that it handles highlights/shadows differently from Gimp.

At any rate, I ended up messing with a lot more than highlights (I also corrected the perspective, changed colour saturation & vibrancy and lowered it selectively for red, etc.), using all three software, and the end result was accepted and is now public.