I've recently joined the project and I'm loving it so far. I've been into photography for a while now so it's good to have a space to share my photos and I welcome all the wonderful, supportive comments I've so far received. I really want to learn how to take better photos but I'm concerned that I'm limited by the equipment I have. I have a basic $200 Olympus mirrorless camera and kit lens. I have uploaded The Olympus Photo Viewer which can be used for post processing but I'm wondering if there is a better free or budget postprocessing software available? I'd be especially keen to hear from Olympus owners.
My biggest issue is that I feel most of my photos look overly processed. I'm wondering if there is some way I can learn how to better process my photos. Is there a website I can go to? I'm not sure how to attach photos to this topic. I tried cutting and pasting here but it didn't work. I'd like to post an example photo and get your opinion on it.
Any suggestions and help with adding photos most welcome.
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Thanks for your help with adding a pic. I hope this works. Here is one example of a photo. I feel it doesn't look very natural. Maybe the tones look a little off. What does everyone think? FYI I adjusted the contrast and brightness and added a warm filter.
I am into my second year of photography and in February moved from an Olympus Stylus to an Olympus OMD E-M10, which is a micro 4/3 mirrorless camera. When I got the E-M10 I started to investigate shooting RAW images rather than jpegs, processing them in Olympus Viewer. I did a net search and whilst not unanimous, there were plenty of bloggers and professionals who wrote that Olympus Viewer gave the best results for processing RAW files taken with an Olympus camera. I was happy to take their word and save myself some money. I have been happy with the results. I see that your camera, like mine, has a micro 4/3 sensor and is capable of producing RAW files. I don't therefore think you will be limited by your equipment and that shooting RAW and learning to properly use Olympus Viewer is the way to go. Unfortunately, I found no one resource suitable for this, and I suppose that is the major disadvantage compared to other RAW editors. There is some info on the US Olympus site, a blogger called Robin Wong and a good site at http://www.ayton.id.au/wiki/doku.php?id=start . This also deals with camera settings. Good luck with your photography.
Thanks so much for the reply @laroque. I do shoot in RAW and have been using Olympus photo viewer to edit but as a newbie to photography I don't really know what I'm doing half the time. Just pushing sliders back and forth until I get a photo that appeals to me. I have been viewing others photography and those images looks more natural and appear as though they have less editing applied to them. Maybe I'm wrong but just the way it looks. I've read a few of Robyn Wong's lens reviews so will look deeper into his site. I love his street photography although it's very different to the kind of shots I take. Thanks for the tip! I'd heard the OMD-EM10 is a great camera. Will be interested to follow your work. Thanks again for the massive reply and tips.
As a relative newbie to postprocessing techniques (and photography in general), I don't have much in the way of expertise to pass on yet, but I would definitely recommend Adobe's Creative Cloud photography package - it's €12.29 per month ($13.79 or £9.58), which breaks down to about 40 cent per day. You get Lightroom and Photoshop, I think a fair few people on here use this so they can probably offer more in the way of tips than I can right now...
Regarding filters, I have found that some of the preset filters in Lightroom do make an image look a little overprocessed, but I can't speak for other editing programmes. Hope this is of some help :)
Thanks @m2016 I'll look into Adobe Cloud. I guess no matter the program I use I really need to learn how to edit photos first so will perhaps do some research and find some books on the subject. Thanks for the tips and for taking the time to reply.
Hi Daniela... welcome to 365! i use the Lightroom on Adobe Cloud for processing RAW images and it is a wonderful program. However, i am guessing that you can probably go pretty far without your existing software... i am not the best person to talk to about "over" processing because (a) i mostly work in black and white and am not really good with colour processing and (b), i always process to the nth degree anyway... but one thing i found when i was just starting (and still working with colour) was the tendency to over do it with saturation and contrast... someone suggested that i try taking the sliders all the way to the right and then decrease bit by bit until it just hints at the emphasis i am looking for... i'm not sure if that describes it correctly, but this was a really helpful suggestion for me, and really made me look at my images more critically, rather than relying on what youtube videos were telling me were the "correct" settings to use in LR...
@northy@photographynewbie Northy nailed it about watching the saturation and contrast for color processing. Different cameras register different colors in different degrees, so it might be only certain colors that become "excessive." I find I often have to scale back blue skies and new green vegetation especially to get the "natural" look. And vegetation is just as much yellow as it is green, so remember that too.
That is unless I want the image to be "over-wrought" but that is not very often if I am working in color.
Look for something in your software to see if you have a panel that can individually adjust saturation and lightness for the different colors. It's called the HSL (Hue, Saturation and Lightness) panel in Lightroom. It's certainly not that you want to remove certain color contrasts and separations, indeed successful color composition relies on them especially for the main subject. But if everything is "in your face," especially in the non-subject part of the frame, then you really can't get that contrast or separation. Like eating too much candy or ice cream.
I see your camera does shoot raw, so I'd try to migrate to that if you haven't already. It gives the editors much more headroom than processing jpegs out of the camera.
If you are shooting jpeg, you can often choose a different camera processing especially of the color. Different cameras call it different things, Picture Controls is a common name, and the individual choices come with names like "Standard," "Vivid," "Neutral," "Portrait," or "Landscape." You can change the one selected in the menus, and then you can (probably) go on to make custom ones if you become adventurous.
@northy and @frankhymus thanks a bunch for your input. Yes, I am aware that I can overdo the contrast sometimes. I only just discovered the saturation slider a few days ago and have started using it but I can see I need to be careful not to be too heavy handed with it as it looks OTT. I'll look to see if I can individually adjust the colors as in the HSL. OLYMPUS VIEWER has hue, saturation and lightness sliders but I try just to work with contrast, saturation and brightness. Keen to try your suggestion @northy. Thx
@photographynewbie I have viewed your photos and noticed you have a variety of different subjects and processing methods. When I saturate I prefer doing less to give the photo a softer look. Sometimes I just let the software decide and do auto fix. Most of my processing is making the photo brighter. I try to enhance my photos but not overdo. I would like to be so skilled with my camera that I don't need to post process, but I'm not there yet. Mostly, have fun and enjoy your journey.
Hi Daniela, I use Lightroom for processing my photos and it's pretty much the only program I use. Feel free to look through my stuff to see if it feels "overly" processed or not before taking any advice haha :) (Hey, sometimes I play around, but my preference is always for more natural-looking.) Anyway if the thought of a monthly subscription fee is a bit daunting, LR6 is still available as a standalone purchase for somewhere around US$140 (?? I can only find Australian prices). I saw a link somewhere with US$99 but I've got no clue whether that is still available.
PS I don't mind the shot you've posted - doesn't look unnatural at all to me. It could just be that you are comparing in your own mind to what it looked like before, but I think it looks fine :)
@dmdfday@aliha Hi ladies thanks for your replies and advice. Again it seems Lightroom is a popular processing software for photographers. I think I will stick to the Olympus Viewer for now though as I am only an amateur and want to learn more about the techniques needed to process a photo. Perhaps I'll pos another shot as the one above didn't seem to spark much debate. 😊
Here is another picture I took recently while on holidays. It was middle of the day with some clouds and I was crouched down near a rock looking up so the effect was a bright (slightly overexposed) photo. Any tips on how to improve this photo? I won't let on what I've already done but you can probably tell for yourself. Any suggestions on how to get a more natural feel to it? Is it a little oversaturated in your opinion?
@photographynewbie Well there are so many great things about this photo! The POV and the way you have caught the action so crisply - perfect focus and quick shutter speed to freeze the action, I think it's great. So yes the reds are a bit overdone. I'm assuming his skin was the over-exposed part and in bringing that down the colours have gotten a bit haywire. Unfortunately this is often a thing that happens with trying to bring down over-exposed highlights in my experience. Better to get the exposure right (in a perfect world!!) or deal with it in a VERY subtle manner, and I also believe minor blow-outs are not all bad. Having experience only with LR I can only guess that other program tools may behave similarly, but I've found that colour saturation tends to increase without ever touching the saturation slider, when you 1, bring highlights down (whites become a bit yellow etc), 2, bring shadows up (especially sections of a photo that are in shade - that blue light really becomes prominent) and 3, increase contrast. I hope this makes sense? Am I close?? :)
@aliha@photographynewbie I think Alison has hit the nail on the head, Dealing with shadows and highlights in Olympus Viewer can affect the saturation. In this shot the sand was overexposed and dealing with that caused the mountains to turn a very oddd colour.
@laroque@aliha thanks guys. I see what you mean, Alison. Yes, I did play with contrast and I guess this may have resulted in an oversaturated image. Thanks for your critique and the follow. Looking forward to learning more. And Tim, I see what you mean. I guess it's tricky to shoot beach scenes in broad daylight and I can see that the mountains turned a bluish colour when you tried to correct the sand. Thanks for the explanation. That helps a lot. Yes, in an ideal world we would get the photos right first time. I think the problem with me ts that Intend to snap away without really considering my surroundings and the available light and how it will effect the final shot. Lots to think about.
@photographynewbie Yes, I don't think the whole image is over saturated though, it's really only his skin. Perhaps also the light green of the grass - which could in fact be in the yellows as @frankhymus pointed out. So if you have any tool where you can desaturate colours selectively (again as Frank mentioned - you can in LR), you could try bringing just red/orange/yellow down a touch. But really, the jacket looks fine, the dark sky is great and really makes him pop against it so you utilised the available light well ... like I said, lots to love about this image. I'd honestly be interested to see it without the processing (or an alternative take) just to see how bad the highlights really are? You could just be being hard on yourself? :)
(I'm editing a wedding as I speak so really getting into the guts of white dress and black suits!! Finding myself brightening images quite a bit - stopping short of blowing out the dress - and playing with the highlight/shadows sliders VERY little, for kind of precisely this reason ... not wanting to make the images look unnatural! It's a fine line to tread! Maybe I'll post a couple for critique.)
@aliha@laroque Changing hue and saturation especially when using "levels" or "curves" or just the lightness/shadow/ sliders occurs in every editor when using the standard RGB color mode. Color and Tone are inextricably linked as you alter any one of the three color channels. Lowering all three proportionally is a way of adding "black" to the color mix, which is just what "increasing saturation" basically is all about. The HSL panel in Lightroom/ACR is more complex than this, but there is still "leakage" one to the other even if you try just one color on the palette. It's usually not a great problem unless you want large shifts in tone.
If you have Photoshop, you can change mode to Lab (just an acronym for L + a +b for the two color channels (a - Magenta/Green, and b - Yellow/Blue) and the lightness (L) and you won't have the tone shift issue. Others emerge though. There are many other benefits to Lab, but it's a big area and not well understood even by pros, mostly ignored. Lightroom (along with most other editors) does not support Lab. Mike Margulis' (huge and complex) book is the final word on the subject, thought provoking ideas on every page, but not for the fainthearted.
If you want quick and easy, try Picmonkey! I'm well into my 4th year and always use it to process. Yes, yes, I'd like to get lightroom. However, I don't have the time to learn it, I'm not a pro, and it costs money. Picmonkey is free. Or $20/year for extras. That's pennies per day and all the fun you want. You can edit very subtly with it - or ETSOOI! And, use any camera - they won't care. Have fun! ;)
I also use LR and PS creative cloud and have recently started using Nic collection ( which is free). THere are tons of great You Tube videos on editing that are for the most part very useful.
Sometimes if you just can't get the color "right" try making it a black and white. That can work quite well sometimes, especially if your skin color tones are way off or you are very over or underexposed.
Above all, just know that with daily practice, you will improve.
I thought your pictures looked good. (That may be because Iove editing and you would prob think mine are overprocessed. :))
@laroque interesting! I did the same as you. Started with the stylus and now have the Omd em10. I love it. Gradually building up a collection of lenses. I process with olympus viewer and also pic monkey and light room. I love olympus viewer, it can be complicated the more you dig into it. It's nice to see a few olympus owners......we seem to be a rare breed!
@janemartin Yes you don't hear of that many Olympus owners but micro 4/3 cameras are slowly rising to the standards of Canon and Nikon. I just wish you can pick up reasonably priced second hand lenses but I hardly ever see any for sale.
I have used pic monkey a few times to make collages but that's really all. I do most editing with Olympus viewer but most of the time I'm just winging it. ;-)
@janemartin You are right, we Olympians are not too common. None in my photo club for example, except me. I look at their clumpy Canons and fail to see any reason for prefering those. But I think I still love my Stylus more than the EM10, probably because I spent more time with it, and it is so easy to carry around. I haven't really started acquiring lenses - I have a cheap telephoto zoom, and also the Olympus 9mm body cap. This I highly recommend, it cost me only 89€ and is great fun. I tag the photos I post using it, and you can see them here if you are interested http://365project.org/tags/9mmbodycap You will see that some of these are of my dog Jasper. So, since you have the good taste to have an EM10 and to name one of your dogs Jasper too, I really think I have to follow you!
Ha ha! Made me smile about your dog Jasper! I'll keep my eye on your project too! It will be interesting to see someone else's pictures taken with the same camera. Just about to click on your link now.
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Hi Francesca,
Thanks for your help with adding a pic. I hope this works. Here is one example of a photo. I feel it doesn't look very natural. Maybe the tones look a little off. What does everyone think? FYI I adjusted the contrast and brightness and added a warm filter.
I am into my second year of photography and in February moved from an Olympus Stylus to an Olympus OMD E-M10, which is a micro 4/3 mirrorless camera. When I got the E-M10 I started to investigate shooting RAW images rather than jpegs, processing them in Olympus Viewer. I did a net search and whilst not unanimous, there were plenty of bloggers and professionals who wrote that Olympus Viewer gave the best results for processing RAW files taken with an Olympus camera. I was happy to take their word and save myself some money. I have been happy with the results. I see that your camera, like mine, has a micro 4/3 sensor and is capable of producing RAW files. I don't therefore think you will be limited by your equipment and that shooting RAW and learning to properly use Olympus Viewer is the way to go. Unfortunately, I found no one resource suitable for this, and I suppose that is the major disadvantage compared to other RAW editors. There is some info on the US Olympus site, a blogger called Robin Wong and a good site at http://www.ayton.id.au/wiki/doku.php?id=start . This also deals with camera settings. Good luck with your photography.
Regarding filters, I have found that some of the preset filters in Lightroom do make an image look a little overprocessed, but I can't speak for other editing programmes. Hope this is of some help :)
That is unless I want the image to be "over-wrought" but that is not very often if I am working in color.
Look for something in your software to see if you have a panel that can individually adjust saturation and lightness for the different colors. It's called the HSL (Hue, Saturation and Lightness) panel in Lightroom. It's certainly not that you want to remove certain color contrasts and separations, indeed successful color composition relies on them especially for the main subject. But if everything is "in your face," especially in the non-subject part of the frame, then you really can't get that contrast or separation. Like eating too much candy or ice cream.
I see your camera does shoot raw, so I'd try to migrate to that if you haven't already. It gives the editors much more headroom than processing jpegs out of the camera.
If you are shooting jpeg, you can often choose a different camera processing especially of the color. Different cameras call it different things, Picture Controls is a common name, and the individual choices come with names like "Standard," "Vivid," "Neutral," "Portrait," or "Landscape." You can change the one selected in the menus, and then you can (probably) go on to make custom ones if you become adventurous.
Here is another picture I took recently while on holidays. It was middle of the day with some clouds and I was crouched down near a rock looking up so the effect was a bright (slightly overexposed) photo. Any tips on how to improve this photo? I won't let on what I've already done but you can probably tell for yourself. Any suggestions on how to get a more natural feel to it? Is it a little oversaturated in your opinion?
(I'm editing a wedding as I speak so really getting into the guts of white dress and black suits!! Finding myself brightening images quite a bit - stopping short of blowing out the dress - and playing with the highlight/shadows sliders VERY little, for kind of precisely this reason ... not wanting to make the images look unnatural! It's a fine line to tread! Maybe I'll post a couple for critique.)
If you have Photoshop, you can change mode to Lab (just an acronym for L + a +b for the two color channels (a - Magenta/Green, and b - Yellow/Blue) and the lightness (L) and you won't have the tone shift issue. Others emerge though. There are many other benefits to Lab, but it's a big area and not well understood even by pros, mostly ignored. Lightroom (along with most other editors) does not support Lab. Mike Margulis' (huge and complex) book is the final word on the subject, thought provoking ideas on every page, but not for the fainthearted.
http://www.amazon.com/Photoshop-LAB-Color-Adventures-Colorspace/dp/0134176103/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1461499058&sr=8-1&keywords=margulis
Sometimes if you just can't get the color "right" try making it a black and white. That can work quite well sometimes, especially if your skin color tones are way off or you are very over or underexposed.
Above all, just know that with daily practice, you will improve.
I thought your pictures looked good. (That may be because Iove editing and you would prob think mine are overprocessed. :))
I have used pic monkey a few times to make collages but that's really all. I do most editing with Olympus viewer but most of the time I'm just winging it. ;-)