Storm Revisited

[supernova1965]

I decided to do a reprocess of a photo I took in 2006 after learning some more about processing and I just wanted to know if this is going too far. I am looking for any critique to help me improve

[supernova1965]

Please help a newbie by beating up on his photo the first one is the reprocess I promise I wont take it personally:lol:;):welcome:

[rogerg]

I think you've gone too far in the new one - too strong on the contrast and saturation. The original has soft pink which you've lost. Is this the full crop? I think the biggest improvements to be made would be framing - more surrounding landscape to give a sense of scale and position or crop some off the top, and reducing the noise (preferably using a filter which reduces noise but retains edge sharpness).

My 2c worth :)

[supernova1965]

Its not cropped at all they are photo's from a few moments apart could you please explain your comments on framing the software I am using only has very basic sharpness and noise reduction processing abilities I will be trying to get photoshop at some stage I am planing to do a course at TAFE to learn the ropes of Photoshop. Thanks for your reply:thumbsup:

[rogerg]

If the software you have is very basic then it might be worth you downloading "GIMP", it's a free image editing program yet is quite well featured.

The simplest way of reducing noise is to run a "median" filter. Most image editing software has that. But that will soften the edges. You can still use a median, if you can apply the median only to areas of the photo which don't contain edge detail. Perhaps even blend a median with a sharpen. Or even to use a softening pen/tool to manually smooth critical areas. Probably a little too complex for you at this stage, and relatively hard to explain in text without specific software to guide with. But perhaps some pointers there for you to look up help in the software you do have, or just play around.

As for the brightness and constrast etc I'm not sure what's best to be honest, not having seen the actual storm. The whole image is very neutrally toned so doesn't give much to go on. Perhaps slightly more contrast would be suitable, but I'm not sure. It's quite clear the camera has chosen to make the whole image neturally toned, as they do, but that the scene was likely brighter or darker than represented in the image.

By framing I mean composition. I would try to get the storm, the subject, out of the centre of the FOV (see 'rule of thirds'). Ideally it would be nice to have more space around the storm to do that, but as this is the full frame, I would crop some off the top making the image more landscape in shape.

really confused now? :)

I've attached one idea. Each to their own opinion though :)

[Lumen Miner]

I had a play for half an hour with your image, I would work on the original, adjust your white balance, levels, curves, de-noise.

Gimp is the way to go.

Love the image by the way.

[supernova1965]

I just installed Gimp haven't played with it yet I may ask for tips in the future will try to find the three settings you mentioned above:thanx:

[Lumen Miner]

Feel free to PM me, I only been using it for 5 months now, but have worked a few things out on the way.

Don't get to dissapointed, that image seems really noisy for some strange reason, high ISO? So i'm not sure what else you could pull out of it.