The Before Image

Overall a good image to start with.  Unfortunately it was not shot as a RAW file, so my options in ACR for recovering details in the shadows was somewhat limited. Fear not, though, as Topaz Adjust was able to help out there.

The After Image

The first change I made was in ACR to adjust the White Balance, since this was taken indoors and before I really knew how to use the Custom WB feature on my Canon 20D. You can see that effect in the white sheet under our furry friend here. From there, I increased the exposure compensation just a tad, but not too much because this was not a RAW file.

Next up, Topaz Adjust had its turn using the Exposure Correction preset and tweaking the Detail tab just a bit. You can see from the detail around his eyes and nose where there’s more detail and texture from his fur.  In the resulting image, his fur does end up looking a little lighter than it was in real life, but I’m willing to except that for the additional detail it provides.

Missing Our Little Friend

The photo is more special now than ever because our furry little friend is no longer with us. He passed last summer while fighting with a few medical issues on and off. This is by far my favorite image of Sky, and seeing it makes me wish I could still take more.

Thoughts?

Just like all editions of the Before and After series, let me know what you think of these adjustments and any other suggestions you might have.

– Kris

Photo: Series of waves washing on the shores of Wailea Beach, with clouds over West Maui near the horizon.

Now that I’m sort of back in business with my laptop situation, I wanted to throw in a few paradise shots before getting back into all the hockey images from the last two Chicago Wolves games I shot.

First, The Composition

Before I get into the detail conundrum I’m in, I wanted to say I really liked how this composition came out. Not just with the waves and the trees, but the clouds over the mountain as well.

Contrast that with this similar shot that has a more wider feel to it, and you’ll see what I mean.

Now, The Conundrum

This image made its way through my workflow with a stop in Topaz Adjust, the new Version 4.0.  I’ve been using TA for a few months, and this one is with one of the new presets named “Detail – Strong”.

Now, I also did this same image with Topaz Detail, which I’m just starting to experiment with.  You can view those results on Flickr here.

The Vote

Which one do you prefer?  I’ve added a call for input on both images on Flickr, but if you’re not part of the Flickrverse, please leave your thoughts here or on Facebook when the post is published there shortly.

Many thanks in advance,
- Kris

Being able to view the sunrise in Hana was a special moment for me personally, so now that I look back one year later and relive those moments, I wanted to make this image a little more special.

The Before Image

This image does a pretty fair job as-is for taking me back to that moment. There were a few things I wish I had done differently back then, and here’s a short list.

• Scout out a location the day before – it was a pretty long day driving all the way to Hana, but I still could have taken 15 minutes to find a spot before we went to dinner that night.
• Remember the tripod – left it in our cottage, and by the time I realized that I needed it (because of the low light), going back to get it would have meant missing the moment.
• Shot bracketed exposures – I wasn’t shooting HDR at the time, and I’m not necessarily saying it was a strong HDR candidate. If I had bracketed shots – and that tripod – I could have used a few other multi-RAW techniques in post.

Okay, enough with what didn’t happen and onto the after image.

The After Image

Although I may still go back and try to recover some of that orange glow around the sun, this image is where I’m leaving it for now. Wanting to make this one special, I played around with a few tricks to get to this look.

• First up was a little cropping. It ended up putting the sun closer to the middle than I prefer, but there was too many distractions in the foreground otherwise.
• Next was multi-RAW processing in ACR using a gradient layer mask to blend separate exposure adjustments for the sky and the foreground.
• To bring in more detail, I used two different tools from Topaz Labs. The first of which was Topaz Adjust by applying the Clarity preset and tweaking the Noise tab to clean up the clouds a little bit.
• Topaz Detail was then used by applying the Feature Enhancement preset to add just a little more definition to the clouds and the surface of the water.

Thoughts?

Let me know what you think or if you have any other suggestions of things I should try differently. I like the after image being a little brighter, but tried to avoid getting to bright so that it didn’t feel like dawn anymore.

– Kris

Photo: A view of the mysterious Alau Islet from the intriguing red sand next to Koki Beach near the small town of Hana, Maui.

Another image reliving our fond memories of visiting Hana last February and making the wise decision to spend a night there.

Going back to Hawaii (Photography)

No official trip plans to Maui yet, but as I’m starting to revisit my previous images of Aloha and running them through my newest workflow, I’ll be working to add a format and output step for posting to the Hawaii Photography site, too.

Of my latest images (i.e. since September), this is the first one I’m adding there, but will work to go back and upload some of my recent creations as well.  To see all my photos at HP, check out my profile page.

And if you have lovely images of Hawaii that you’d like to share with other fans/photographers of the Aloha State, be sure to sign up while you’re there.

– Kris

More Reading: More on Hawaii Photography (Dec ‘08 post)

The Before Image

This image was taken at D.T. Fleming Beach in September ‘07, in the early afternoon. I really liked the composition, with the symmetry between the water and the clouds above. The rocks add a nice touch in the foreground, although the horizon is off and the colors are a little dull.

The After Image

A little color saturation, straightening the horizon, and a little cropping (notice the difference in the rocks) in ACR set this one up for Topaz Adjust. I chose the Photo Pop preset in Topaz Adjust to help achieve the look you see here.

Another Old Photo Saved

I like to think the next time I’m at D.T. Fleming Beach with my camera gear to find a scene like this, I would have learned enough in the last 2 1/2 years to get it better in-camera first. I also like to think I’ll be back to Maui sooner than later.

Until that next 9 hour plan ride to that beautiful island in the Pacific, I will continue pushing my post production skills and working on new tools and techniques to create these “new” images, while at the same time reliving the great memories of capturing the originals.

Stay tuned for another edition of Before and After next week as more of my early works get a new look on the digital life.

– Kris

Photo: One of the waterfront facing buildings of the Stone Harbor Resort, overlooking the frozen waters of Sturgeon Bay.

This was shot from the first early morning session I did over the weekend up in Wisconsin. I shot it as an HDR image, and at the time, I was a little unsure how it would turn out because of the overcast skies that early in the day left me no shadows to play with.

Photomatix took it close to halfway of what you see here, but Topaz Adjust brought out even more detail, and gave the building a nice two tone look from the brick and the other paneling.

Hockey Alert!

For those that were following along on my new Facebook page late last week, might have caught that I picked up on a hockey game one of my former players was playing in down in Green Bay. It’s been a longer delay than I had anticipated, but I’m going through all the shots now and getting ready to post them.

So, if you liked the recent hockey shots from a few weeks ago, time for another skate.

– Kris

Photo: A pickup truck parked out on a frozen Europe Lake in Northern Door County, WI.

I captured this image while standing in the middle of a frozen lake up in Door County over the weekend. There were a few vehicles out there with adventurous ice fisherman braving the elements and enjoying a popular winter pastime in this part of the country.

Even though there were entire pickup trucks and minivans driving around on this ice, we were still a little leery about trekking out ourselves. Seeing as I grew up playing hockey my whole life, you’d think being out on a frozen lake would come natural, but playing it safe seemed to be the order of the day. Looking back, I almost wish I had brought my skates like I did the previous winter trip up north.

Photo: A look at the Stone Harbor Resort in Sturgeon Bay, WI from the Bayview Park located just on the other side of the water.

Let the darkroom work commence! Now that we’re back home from our latest road trip up north, it’s time to get cranking on processing and uploading all the photos I took.

This first shot is from a series I did on Saturday afternoon, about an hour before sunset. We’re looking East here towards the resort we were staying at this time. The park where this was taken is visible from the resort via my telephoto lens, so I had to scope it out on Google Maps and make the drive over there.

Can’t wait to come back to this spot during the warm summer months.

– Kris

In the meantime, and to keep the stream of images coming, I thought I’d start a new series to showcase some of my work in the digital darkroom and touch on some of the tools I use from time-to-time. These aren’t going to be full tutorials, more of just a little peak under the covers and maybe a little inspiration for others in the process.

For the first image in this new series, the featured tool is Topaz Adjust.

The Before Image

The image below was one I was already particularly fond of. It was taken back in April ’08 on a visit to Maui’s east coast.

To me, this misty view of Koki Beach had a certain mystique to it, and my original attention was to enhance that aspect of the image. What happened, however, was the creation of an entirely new, maybe even more powerful, image as a result of using the Spicify preset in Topaz Adjust.

The After Image

Since I hadn’t visualized this artful look as my intended output, my initial reaction was a surprising “Whoa!” It certainly was an entirely new image, and it was love at first sight. I toned down the saturation just a tad, removed a little noise, and that was it. Sure, that mist is all but gone, but it’s not missed that much now.

More About Topaz Adjust

Topaz Adjust, from Topaz Labs, is still relatively new to me. I first heard about it from a keynote presentation by Rick Sammon entitled “Awaken the Artist Within” at the ‘09 Maui Photo Festival. I will have more to say about Topaz Adjust when I feature it as part of my revamped Software series here at the blog, but if you haven’t experienced it for yourself yet, go ahead and grab the 30-day trial from their website.

If you’re still not convinced, stay tuned to blog for more before and after images, and I assure you that you’ll be a little curious about what it can do for the large archive of photos you have on that hard drive of yours.

Thoughts?

I admit beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as we all have different tastes and dislikes. Please share your thoughts on the particular outcome shown above, as the broader range of opinions and feedback I receive helps me to gauge which direction my little experiments are headed.

As this is the first post in the new series, I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on it. As stated, my goal is to showcase a little of my creative side and maybe inspire others out there to tinker a little bit outside of what they do now. Future posts in this series will likely be less wordy, so I hope to crank them out with a decent amount of frequency.

Photo: Boats docked in their slips in Lahaina Harbor in the early morning, awaiting the day’s tours.

That title almost sounds like a Matt Damon action thriller, doesn’t it?  I also thought of, “Dude, Where’s My Boat?” referencing the two empty slips there, but be glad I didn’t.

I’m calling this an experiment – possibly the first of many – because I’m trying something new here, and while not entirely excited about the result, I wanted to share and elicit feedback and comments about how it could be improved.  Based on any additional ideas, I may repost a new version for a little before-and-after.

Behind The Experiment

This shot wasn’t too bad in full color, but there were parts to it that I wasn’t sold on. I thought about trying just a plain black and white photo, but decided on leaving just a dash of color.  Maybe it’s the little voice in me that wants to shoot more infrared shots, I don’t know. There is just that realm between black and white and ever so subtle color that almost plays tricks on your mind as to whether there is color there or you’re just imagining it in your mind’s eye.

On the technical side, I did some exposure correction and a few saturation tweaks in ACR before I decided it wasn’t working.  I actually applied the Topaz Adjust Photo Pop filter just prior to adding the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.  It might be considered sacrilege to use Topaz Adjust and then undo all the colors, but it’s an experiment.

Primary it was the blues and the greens that I was try to leave as subtle, and for added mind-trickery, I left the guy on the boat to the right in his red shirt as-is, seeing as though it was the only red in the original image.

Give It To Me Straight

Okay, I’m shutting my eyes hard and bracing for the worst.  Please share your thoughts, whether you like it or think it’s awful.  If you could also comment on what parts you don’t like about it, that will help me a lot.  If something does happen to work for you in what’s already there, mention that, too.  You can tell I’m a glass-half-empty kind of guy, eh?

Thanks in advance for your feedback,
– Kris