Simple Digital Enhancement
I found a fabulous photo today posted by one of my Facebook friend on one of his blogs. I am sure that he would not mind me nicking it to demonstrate just how simple it is to really enhance a photo, and give it a bit of punch. For some time now I have been using FastStone Image Viewer to organise my photos, but have recently discovered that it is also a great tool for quickly giving the photos I blog a bit of a lift without having to resort to Photoshop’s time consuming techniques. It also has the added advantage of being FREE!
The original photo:-
My only criticism is that it looks a little soft for my taste...
Now, don’t get me wrong here, this is a fabulous photograph; but for my taste it just has a haze to it which takes the edge off it. So, I had a little mess around with it; first off I just darkened it up a little, gave it some contrast and saturated the colours somewhat:-
Screenshot 1
Which as you can see can all be achieved from the same screen, no messing about doing one thing at a time here, it is all in the same place.
Next I decided to sharpen it just a touch, well maybe a little more than a touch:-
Screenshot 2
Voila, the trasnformation is complete, and this took me less than five minutes, and that includes saving the image and sourcing the links for this post…
The end result:-
Well, I like it...
Personally I think that has a slight edge on the original version, but that is just my preference, and many others may disagree with me. I know this spot pretty well, and this reminds more of how it looked that last time I was there.
You’re right, yet you’re wrong. While the treatment does give it a certain punch it’s not what I saw when I took the picture and wanted to show. The haziness is to a large extent from the humidity in the air, the spray from from the waves and the sea. It’s also due to the time the picture was taken, very late in the afternoon (some would call it early evening), which gives the light and the contours a certain softness.
But as you say, opinions, preferences and styles are different.
Inded Armin, that is precisely the point, we all shoot what we see, and what we want to show. I suppose that at the end of the day our individual preferences say more about us than we would like; I know for a fact that my preferences convey me as the harsh spiky character that I am, and that is truly reflected in some of my photographs. I was not trying to detract from what is a truly, fabulously superb photo, just trying to show an alternative. And, now, on comparing the two side by side, they do give very different impressions of the same palce.