Sooooooo... yesterday when I took my camera out for walkies, I got 3 or 4 images / scenes that I quite liked... you saw one of them yesterday... the other two turned out to be the stuff of nightmares - apparently my ability to hold the camera straight abandoned me somewhere along the way... and no amount of playing with the perspective in LR or PSE could take away the nausea factor...
That leaves me with this photo... which is a sort-of redo of a shot I took last May before I discovered Lightroom, Nik Silver Efex or RAW... yes - I have a thing for grit and back alleys... I have no explanation for this...
Thank you for all the feedback on yesterday's shot... for the record - I had converted it to black and white before I started playing with the sliders ;p
so perfectly urban. . .you are so great with shots like these. This really does look almost like something out of the Matrix or some other futuristic wasteland!
@kwind no worries... it's perfectly safe... broad daylight... busy downtown area... and to tell the truth, i haven't really wondered down the alley very far... but even if i did, i'd feel perfectly safe at this time of day :)
@jase_h yeah... me too! i really wanted one for the garbage SPN theme back last spring... haven't come across one yet, tho...
@abirkill tx Alexis... i'm still never sure i'm doing the processing "right"... i'd love to take a course but noooooo time... so i've been gradually watching (and re-watching) the adobe vids and hopefully catching on...
can i ask you a quick question? there's been that discussion thread a while back where you explained the risk in changing the settings in camera for saturation, contrast, etc. because the end result will be loss of data that might come in handy later, and because in general one could get the same effects in post processing...
does the same hold true for photos shot in RAW? and if so, should i just be picking a picture style where all the sliders are set to 0?
@northy There isn't really a 'right' way, I don't think! In Lightroom, the sliders are arranged in roughly a 'sensible' order -- that is it generally is a good start to adjust the sliders from the top down, but there's absolutely no need to do this if you don't want. Lightroom is also smart enough to apply the changes in the correct order, regardless of how you use it -- for example, in some software, sharpening before noise reduction would be a huge no-no, but in Lightroom, even if you adjust the sharpening first, under the covers it will perform the actions in the optimal order.
In answer to your question, picture styles do not alter the RAW files. If you are shooting in RAW + JPEG, then the JPEG files will have the picture style applied, but not the RAW files. Also, the preview on the back of the camera will also have the picture style applied (so if you apply a black and white picture style, the photos will show up black and white on the back of the camera -- but the RAW file will still be in colour).
If you open the RAW files in DPP (Canon's free software) then it will apply the same picture style alterations to the photo at that point, but that's really just a starting point for the sliders -- you can undo the changes made without any loss of detail (whereas with the JPEG the changes have been stored irrevocably). If you open the RAW files in any other software (such as Lightroom) then it won't even do that -- you'll just see the image straight as it came out of the camera.
Hope that makes sense, let me know if you have any questions!
After viewing this, I expect Rick Mercer to come flying out with one of his rants! :) want to find a back alley - so need time to shoot downtown. Never enough time...
@russianblue there are back alleys all around downtown... ya just gotta look... mostly, i think, we walk on by without thinking 'cos the whole point of back alleys is where you put the stuff no one really wants to see :)
Grit and back alleys... a great subject and you have done this so well. I remember the first one of this... I liked it and suggested you fill the foreground. You've certainly done that here and it looks great large.
January 24th, 2013
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I recognised this location straight away - I remember the other shot from early in the SPN challenge. One of my Favs. ;)
@kwind no worries... it's perfectly safe... broad daylight... busy downtown area... and to tell the truth, i haven't really wondered down the alley very far... but even if i did, i'd feel perfectly safe at this time of day :)
@jase_h yeah... me too! i really wanted one for the garbage SPN theme back last spring... haven't come across one yet, tho...
so much to see
can i ask you a quick question? there's been that discussion thread a while back where you explained the risk in changing the settings in camera for saturation, contrast, etc. because the end result will be loss of data that might come in handy later, and because in general one could get the same effects in post processing...
does the same hold true for photos shot in RAW? and if so, should i just be picking a picture style where all the sliders are set to 0?
In answer to your question, picture styles do not alter the RAW files. If you are shooting in RAW + JPEG, then the JPEG files will have the picture style applied, but not the RAW files. Also, the preview on the back of the camera will also have the picture style applied (so if you apply a black and white picture style, the photos will show up black and white on the back of the camera -- but the RAW file will still be in colour).
If you open the RAW files in DPP (Canon's free software) then it will apply the same picture style alterations to the photo at that point, but that's really just a starting point for the sliders -- you can undo the changes made without any loss of detail (whereas with the JPEG the changes have been stored irrevocably). If you open the RAW files in any other software (such as Lightroom) then it won't even do that -- you'll just see the image straight as it came out of the camera.
Hope that makes sense, let me know if you have any questions!