PhotoShopping?

Hi Michael,

I do crop many of my pictures that I take. But I haven't used any Photoshop on airport-data.com yet. I do use the Photoshop for those pictures that I prep to print.

Then again, I guess it depends on what you mean by Photoshop. Now to be totally honest... I do use picasa to store...(lighten,sharpen...so forth as well as crop) so I guess I do manipulate the shots a bit.

My camera does only so well, and I need all the help I can get sometimes.

Regards,

BlueDharma

http://www.airport-data.com/photographers/Bluedharma;1045/

Hi Mike - Paul,

I actually did not own Photoshop until a couple of weeks ago, and so a lot of my previous posts were just as they were shot.

Certainly between shots I made a lot of changes with the camera settings, and the like, and my pictures varied quite a bit. The change to the D200 has even more variety, because I am shooting almost completely Manual, and I like the way the camera works in that mode.

Now that I have Photoshop, I will need to elarn the program because there is a lot to it.

Like Paul, I will certainly use it for printing purposes. Otherwise for web pictures, and posting on the airport-data.com site, I am not sure anyone would really notice things because of the size of the picture file imposed (not a complaint Ken, you do have to pcik a size limit or you would have to charge us for the larger servers and storage space......<g>

John L

not a complaint Ken, you do have to pcik a size limit or you would have to charge us for the larger servers and storage space

Actually I have upgraded the server once with 2 300GB hard drives (mirrored), they are 60% used now. I think next upgrade is just a few months away.

Photo size limit is mainly because of user's screen size limit. A large photo is 1280 pixels wide, and small one is 800. About 90% of the visitors have screen resolution of 1280 or less in width, so a bigger sized photo will make most visitors scroll left and right to view.

... I've lately gotten into getting rid of object that detract from the picture! Orange cones, porta-potties, even people!

You're not alone. Common photoshop removals for me include people, wing tips, cones, coolers, other junk on the ground. Look at http://www.airport-data.com/aircraft/photo/087841.html

People standing by the door other side of the aircraft. The ground where they were standing is just a little bit blurry :-) And if you look at the aft window you'll see the hat/face of the person I removed.

That's a very good job Timothy. I barely see any trace on the ground.

I post process some shots just to smarten them up a bit. I prefer to take my shots of the planes in the air at at times a hydro pole and their annoying wires get in the way. I also use it to adjust brightness / contrast and / or sharpen them up a touch if needed.

My program of choice is Corel PSP XI because it's a fraction of the cost of Photoshop and has the ability to do many of the same things.

I would like to think that any 'tool', (like photoshop but could be referring to myself also!) would be encouraged in almost any form of photography to improve a photo. I use Adobe Photoshop 6 but mostly limit my 'edit' to crop, resize, adjust levels, shadows/highlights, and sometimes hue/saturation or brightness/contrast. I usually make two layers: the first with unsharp mask and another with varying numbers of unsharp mask again. Very rarely, I'll use a dodge or burn tool and most of the time I use selective sharpening along the body and lines/markings of the aircraft.

On a side note: my computer crashed about a month ago. Luckily, I saw it coming and dumped all my stuff on an external hard-drive - whew! The new computer I got used the new Windows Vista instead of Windows XP. And guess what? The version of Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 is not compatible and did NOT work on Vista. I had to purchase the latest version of Elements.

I'd like to say something not specifically about 'photoshopping' but in regards to editing photos - mine included.

Ken has been very liberal with what he accepts and what gets discarded. I know I have a few that are probably questionable and substandard. I also know that ones skills improve over time. I'd hate to think of this site as a 'dumping ground' or 'storage' area for aviation photos.

I know some people are opposed to photoshopping a picture - some think it should be all about the camera. I can see their point. But, the ONE THING that I really wish we would all try to watch out for is UNLEVEL HORIZONS. Especially the extreme ones - I've seen more then a few thoughout the site.

Now this is just my 'gripe' and I'm not working in cahoots with anybody, but I think it would be really nice if we could all go through our files and fix the photos that have grossly exaggerated horizons if possible. I think it would be one way to improve the quality the site that Ken has so graciously let us use - for free! With NO limits on uploads and even though he asks, photographic quality. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, and I'm sure most of us have been there - check out Airliners.net and JetPhotos.net. Then you'll see how lucky we are to have a site like Airport-Data.com!

Ok, I'll get off the soap-box. Thanks for your time...

I agree with Brad. Some attempt to make the horizon level or verticals vertical should be made. Actually, you should level your photos by making a true vertical item such as a building edge vertical. Don't rely heavily on light poles, because they are often not truly vertical.

Dean

I agree with the, "use the tools you have at hand" rule.

I PS almost every photo to some extent. Whether it is to crop or straighten the horizon (I seem to have a 2 degree list to the right most of the time : ) or to make some adjustment to the lighting.

As my dad always told me...only show your best photos and everyone will think you are a good photographer..

I also am scanning a lot of older prints and they require some touch up because of fading or dust and scratches. Plus quite a few have a label placed on the face of the photo in the past...

A little quick processing makes a photo presentable...Although my PS skills are quite rudimentary, it seems to work out.

Example.

Before

After

that's a good example, I would go even further and clone out the white noise spots under the wing (and in other places)

Persnally I don't have any problem whatsoever with levels, curves and brightness/contrast type adjustments, as these are things that would be done when developing pictures "the old way" and if it was acceptable then, why not now?

AS to colour adjustment - well here you are simply compensating for the way modern digital cameras calculate white-balance, which is often an imperfect science. In the case of old scanned negatives or prints, you are compensating for the effects of time on the original media.

With cloning out extraneous details, it's a little less clear. My rule of thumb is that if it's a techincal photo, it's quite appropriate as it is simply abstracting only that which is important to the purpose of the photo. However if it can't be done well then I suggest it be left as is.

However I also like to avoid becoming complacent when taking photos by thinking that I'll just clone out any odd details. 1. this creates more post work, and I hate work! 2. it creates a sense of laziness that in the end only makes you a worse photographer. Not everything can be cloned out. It is FAR FAR better to get it right when taking the photo. I reserve cloning for those times when it just wasn't possible to get it right at the time, or for those times I simply screwed up :

Max,

I agree..anything that could have been done in the dark room should be acceptable in the Photoshop. I also agree that taking photos with the attitude that it can be fixed later leads to poor photos. There are times when I take less than exceptable photos because that is the only way to get the shot. The airport fence and the sun do not always agree on where hang out...

I cleaned up the B-17 photo a bit as well...I must have been tired when I did that PS job before.

Thanks

Zane

Yep, I too do a lot of photo fixing late at night when my body is saying SLEEP but my brain won't listen!!

Another example of legitimate fixing I came across a couple of days ago was a picture taken through a dirty windshield.

Some example of photoshopping I try to avoid (but no hard and fast rules): changing colours to correct for circumstances that didn't exist in the original, so for example making overcast skies appear blue; changing an aircraft's appearance for example cloning out aircraft details to make it look "cleaner" (actually I am hard and fast about this: I would never do it); removing or adding weather features, for example pasting in beautiful clouds from another picture to replace lacklustre clouds in the original; cloning out landscape feature to make the image "cleaner", etc etc.

I prefer not do make these kinds of artificial enhancements.

I would like to post a comment with two photos if someone will tell me how to attach them. I used imageshack for years but it is no longer free.

I would like to post a comment with two photos if someone will tell me how to attach them. I used imageshack for years but it is no longer free.

Greetings.

To post an image on this site you just need to do the following.

Disable BBCode in this post

Find the "url" address of the photo by right clicking on it and review the "Properties". Copy the address URL... that is where your image lives.

Greetings.

To post an image on this site you just need to do the following.

Disable BBCode in this post

Find the "url" address of the photo by right clicking on it and review the "Properties". Copy the address URL... that is where your image lives.

[img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3124/3185615300_a149e8aa03_m.jpg[/img]

If it looks like the above... then you should see an image.

Good luck!

Best Regards

I would like to post a comment with two photos if someone will tell me how to attach them. I used imageshack for years but it is no longer free.

Mr. Larkins, if you have the photos on your harddrive... there will be no way to link them.

One option for you could be http://photobucket.com/ .

I think they are like imageshack, but the signup is free at this time.

my photoshop experiment

Bill, if you have the photos on your harddrive... there will be no way to link them.

One option for you could be [url]http://photobucket.com/[/url] .

I think they are like imageshack, but the signup is free at this time.

[IMG]http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u43/bluedharma/Fury/collage28B.jpg[/IMG]