Sorry to flood the forum with threads today, but have finally got some time. This is a half crop of the original and I have done some slight levels adjustment in Paint shop pro. Enjoy, comments welcome as I am learning how the whole processing thing works.
Nice image
I hope you dont mind, I have taken the liberty to play around with your image a bit.
Its quick and dirty but gives you the idea.
I have enhanced the detail a bit in the shadows and highlights.
Because the image has already been compressed to jpeg and downsized there wasn't a lot of information to play with
But had the image been larger and especially if it was in raw format there would be a lot you could do to it. ie to say 8 bits verses 12/14 bits and more unprocessed pixels.
To give it a more natural look - I cloned out the rope at the bottom and the irrigation pipe at the top.
I think I oversharpened the kanga trying to bring out the hair detail - its there in your original image I am sure.
I also reduced the border size as I found that it was distracting my gaze away from the principal object the Tree Kangaroo. But thats a matter of preference.
I also thought that the image overall was a bit dark - unless you have a calibrated monitor you can never be sure how an image is going to look on other people's monitors or what the base reference is.
Mine is calibrated although having said that I am having some minor problems but the problem is it is rendering things ever so slightly brighter than it should be.
No Rally I don't mind at all. I will play with the original and see what I can do. I played off getting extra light against loosing detail, but I can see now that I didn't take it far enough. This was taken with a 3 megapixel point and shoot camera so hopefully I will have enough info in there to lighten it a little.
Thanks everyone for your comments, I can only get better from here.
Just keep experimenting and asking questions - thats the trick.
I forgot to mention there was a bit of chromatic aberration (CA) - purple fringing, where the dark leaves were silhouetted by the bright light. Nothing much you can do about this, even the semi pro lenses can have some CA in those conditions
I removed a percentage of it as well - not elegantly but it half worked.
Post Processing is a wonderful thing !
If you enjoy photography, you will soon want to go down the DSLR path - so much more control over lighting, depth of field, lens choice etc etc
And more money !
