Tuesday, February 24, 2009

London Street: Waterloo Tube & Consulting the Map

In keeping with this week's theme, I'm posting two photos, with their unedited versions.

This first, SOOC shot, is a very unexposed photo of Dianna, Brian & Emily consulting the map, deciding which double-decker bus to take next.


Nobody is patient or trusts my map reading; I have to hold the map 1" from my nose. Yesterday, I found out an icky, luck-of-the-draw, reason why. It turns out that I have the beginnings of cataracts!!!!!

I lost my sun glasses in London, and really hate glare. I have been frustrated with my glasses this past year, and thought it outrageous that less than a year later, I seemed to need new glasses. Losing the sunglass clips gave me justification to check out new glasses.

I'm very excited about the prospect of seeing better, but was not happy to hear the word "cataracts," or the words "$700!" Could be worse, but I'm bummed (no, wait! I'm cantankerous about it); think of the much more exciting lens I could buy with this money!

This photo, while not great, would have been a total reject without having shot it in Camera Raw. In ACR, I increased the exposure, increased black and recovered the detail in the shadows. In CS3, I added contrast with luminosity blend mode, and sharpened. (yep! us ancient ones will probably want LOTS of sharpening in our photos.)

This next shot is a street scene in London near the Waterloo Tube station. The first photo is SOOC.

For this editing, I decided to tweak the photo using Scott Kelby's "recipe." I opened it in Camera RAW, slid Recovery, Fill Light, Contrast, Clarity & Vibrance all the way to the right. Then I opened it as a Smart Object (press Shift).

In CS3, right click and make it a New Smart Object Via Copy. In layers, I double-clicked the image thumbnail, which brings you back to Camera Raw. In the menu in the Basic palette, I selected Camera Raw Defaults. Once this opens in CS3, I changed the Blending Mode to "Color", and played with the opacity, and flattened. I wanted a little more intensity and then ran an acid action on it, giving me this colored-pencil-like version.

(And this photo better look really, really good when I look at it with my frickin' new $700 glasses.) (At least I'll get to show you a picture of them when I get them.

21 comments:

Lauren Hartman said...

Love how you were able to salvage that first shot, and the second one is very fun and cool. I hope you DO like it with your new glasses :) Sorry about the cataracts...hopefully they won't get worse!

I also posted on my blog to clarify a question you had yesterday. I left out one key word when posting...sorry about that!

Mom2Drew said...

OOO, that's some great processing! Amazing the difference in the first two, wow.

janett said...

Great job saving the shot! And ouch on the $700! Eek!

Diana said...

great great great edits! i guess i need to play with camera raw more often.

KRISTIE said...

How fun!

CindyTykie said...

I love how you saved the first picture, great job on the PPing

Sharon said...

Great processing. Sorry about your eyes.

Jason said...

Great job, I really like what you did with that first shot!

Kristen Wagner Penn said...

Wow! I love both your edits. You did amazing things to those. And I'm sorry to hear about your cataracts.

Margaret said...

I love the way you processed these photos! Wow! Such a difference. Sorry to hear about the cataracts...and the $700 glasses. Yikes!

Maria said...

I'm so sorry about your cataracts! Aging sucks. I've begun adding myself as a line item on our budget because it seems there are all these health expenses all of a sudden. When it isn't one thing it's another. I'm intrigued by the train ride . . .

Suzy said...

wow your pp is so neat on that 2nd shot! And on the first one but I love that look on the 2nd one! Nice work!

Steph said...

Wow, great work. You worked magic on that first one!

Anonymous said...

That first one is an amazing save! Great work, and thanks for including your steps, it really helps me.

Nicki said...

Shucks - even your 'under exposed' shots are pretty darn good and what a save with the processing. Like your pping on the 2nd shot as well. (interesting)

Jeanne said...

Wow amazing job on the photos. I am enjoying how you are sharing the before and afters because I might never have known all the work that went into making the photos look so good!

I'm sorry to hear you have cataracts. I hope your new glasses will help tremendously. (They'd better almost walk on water for that amount of money, huh?)

Thanks for all the sharing!

Shanna Jones said...

That last one is a very funky edit. I like it. :)

Bobbi said...

Holy cow $700...I'm sorry :( Don't you just love RAW I think that first picture looks great after you edited it.

shirley said...

Amazing how you can save a picture shot in RAW - great job on the first picture. The PP on the 2nd picture is cool.

Krista P said...

Clever PPing in the second one. Very cute.

Amy said...

Wow, that's some great processing on that first shot and I really like what you did on the second too! :)