I went up yesterday to take a few photos of local balloon flights, couldn't catch them as the wind was a bit strong, but did managed to catch a quite nice shot of my local town, and surrounding area. I've played with the levels a bit in iPhoto but am not entirely happy with the results, is there any chance someone could show me the error of my ways and perhaps persuade me to purchase better software, any lessons appreciated.

Canon IXUS 750

Picture after my efforts
http://www.californear.com/pics/IMG_1498.jpg

Original File (http://www.californear.com/pics/IMG_1498l.jpg)

And to keep it slightly Scooby related, you can play a game of spot Adams of Aylesbury.

A couple of mins with Photoshop.

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y58/69wrx/town2.jpg

That version makes it look like a thermonuclear device has just expoded over Slough, which would be an improvement ;)

[edited as I didn't realise at first it was looking south]:o

And to keep it slightly Scooby related, you can play a game of spot Adams of Aylesbury.


Er, would that be at the top of Oakfied Road, on the left?:wonder:

I've worked in Aylesbury long ago but I have no idea where the Scooby dealership is:confused:

It does look like a bomb has gone off doesn't it, almost over Chequers, the PM's country hang out is in the picture, top right.

If you follow the road up from the bottom right of the screen to the T junction, Adams is on the left.

Jack,

What specifically aren't you happy with - FWIW I reckon it's pretty fair. Only things I'd maybe do would be to mask the sky/ground and level them separately to maintain a little more detail in the sky, and level the horizon (which is pretty close given I know what your camera platform is!)

Thanks Mark. I'm not unhappy with it, just wondering if I could do better with updated software and skills. The ability to mask and adjust different areas may be enough for me to part with some hard earned.

There's a lot going on in that shot, lots of small detail and high contrast because of the low altitude of the sun. I had a quick go in PS Elements - selective levels, reduction in saturation and finally some unsharp mask. Scoobynet's patented 'picture quality reducer' doesn't help ;)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v190/homerdog/apic1.jpg

Scoobynet's patented 'picture quality reducer' doesn't help ;)

I'd forgotten about the 'picture quality reducer' ! I just had a look at this thread in Internet Explorer - not nice...

Simple to bypass the reducer in Firefox, it makes the Photography section workable. See Andy's original thread http://bbs.scoobynet.com/photography-360/574964-firefox-users-fix-automatic-image-resizing-problem.html

Ok, so for whatever it's worth, here's my (literally) 10 minute interpretation. Photoshop CS.

http://www.sw-projects.co.uk/imgstore/IMG_1498.jpg

Wot I did:
1) Measure tool across horizon, rotate arbitrary (automagically fills in the degrees off horizontal.) 0.38deg counter clockwise (not bad hanging under a glorified parachute ;) )

2) Rectangular selection of sky, feather 5px, make new layer.

3) Gradient fill layer black-white.
4) Blend mode colour burn, 80% opacity (no science, toggled through the blend modes until one gave what I wanted)

5) Invert selection (to get the rest of it)

6) Apply unsharp mask - very low level (8%), large radius (170px), 0 threshold. Works as a contrast enhancer. This is the only scientific bit: basically the histogram for that area's pretty good. Therefore any level adjustment is going to start clipping things. All you're looking to do is slightly rearrange the levels to make it pop a bit. This is my pet fave.

7) Crop 'cos after rotating we've got funny edges.

What I'd do differently: Work harder at the sky - perhaps using a duplicate of the image it's self and blending, or some dodge/burn. I don't like the grey of the gradient showing through BUT it has popped some detail back into the clouds. Fundamentally that area's in a bit of trouble as it's clipped a fair bit. As I said earlier, the sky's the only bit that really needs that much work.

/Mark.

Thanks Mark, that looks great. Looking like I'll invest in some software, and I should probably buy a real camera.

Jack,

I reckon the biggest issue is learning to use the software :) I've been meddling for a couple of years now, and still don't necessarily know which way to go.

As for the camera: By all means get a 'proper' camera, but don't do it for flying! I'm also a pilot, and own a DSLR camera - I finished up buying a compact to fly with. Don't knock the ixus!

If you're referring to the sky, don't blame the camera - it's a scene with too much dynamic range (too much difference between darkest and lightest tones - the sky is bright and the ground darker. Any camera would do the same. The ground dominates, so the camera will favour the ground. If the sky was correctly exposed, the ground would be dark. However, you can recover that better as there's generally more detail in the shadow area. Setting some -ve exposure compensation is probably the way to go.