Well it looks like a few people have done a very good job already and processign your RAW Image.
I am pretty impressed with the detail from 30 second shots.
Here is another version.
I posted a jpeg and high res version of this modified image here for you:
http://www.dslrfocus.com/striker/Lagoonfull.tif
http://www.dslrfocus.com/striker/Lagoonfull.jpg
Processing steps in Photoshop CS are as follows:
- 1. Adjust levels. Slide left arrow inwards to darken background slightly. Slide right arrow inwards to lighten image slightly
- 2. Adjust Curves. From curves dialogue take bottom left part of curve and drag upward very slightly keeping top right of curve straight
- 3. epeat step 1
- 4. repeat step 2
- 5. Continue doing step 1 and 2 in very small amounts till you are happy with brightness
- 6. When you are happy with last curves adjustment, then go backwards using history and instead of changing the RGB curve, change just the red channel by selecting RED in the curves dialogue instead of RGB. Make same upward adjustment of lower left part of curve with red channel.
- 7. Now adjust image saturation using Hue/Saturation Dialogue. Slide Saturation to right by about 20%
- 8. Adjust hue if you want different red colour balance.
- 9. Use Colour Balance Dialogue to dial up the red if its not to your liking
- Once I am happy with image I then duplicate the entire layer and choose filter->other->high pass. Set pixel size of filter to about 7 and press ok. You will see a strange grey image
- 10. Set layer mode of this grey image to overlay and watch the details of the core suddenly pop out. You can see it by pressing the eye icon on this layer on and off which blinks the effect in and out
- 11. I then use a layer mask to hide the whole high pass effect and then use a white paint brush on the layer mask to paint the effect back into the core and selected areas.
- 12. I then select noisy areas of bottom layer (original image) with a lasso and Feather set to about 20px (original image) and run the noisy areas through noise reduction. I use a program called Neat Image that has a Photoshop plug in, but you can download free noise reduction programs like community edition of Noiseware, Noise Ninja etc….
I then flatten the image, save it and its all done. (these steps in total take about 10 mins once you are used to them)
Best Regards
Chris Venter