Help a partially sighted noob learn post-processing

[MarkG]

I've done some limited post-processing of photos, but mostly leaving things on automatic and letting the software decide what's best (with a few tweaks if I disagree).

However, now I have a DSLR and RAW image files, I want to learn how to do things properly instead of relying on software to get it right.

Are there any good guides around to post-processing, or better yet, would anyone be willing to give me some help with post-processing if I post a few .CR2 files from my 450D?

The reason I'm asking for specific help is my eyesight. It isn't that bad, but it's not good either. The result is I can miss out-of-focus detail and I'm also partially colour-blind. If I know what it's supposed to look like and how to get there, I've a fair chance of being able to get decent results myself.

This is the best of the sort of source material I have (in-camera JPEG, crop and resize only)

I'm sure even this can be improved, but some of the others are going to need work to fix under-exposed detail and various other issues (some of which may not be fixable).

I'm not asking anyone to do my job for me. I'm asking how to do it, so I can learn for the future.

Thankyou.

PS - Yes, I know it's upside-down. It's meant to be that way.

 

[NeilB]

Hi,

First off, get yourself down to specsavers

Seriously, the Arrows pic is not a bad effort from anyone who was standing on the ground.

The Scott Kelby books are great guides to photoshop for beginners.

The colour is blindness is a difficult one, I did think about saying you might try working in the colour channels, bacause it's all in black&white, but I'm not really sure that makes sense (even though it's true)

There are "doing it by numbers" guides, not sure those will work either..

N

[EDIT] read that back to mself and it sounded more negative than I intended... Apologies! I'm sure this is do-able!

N

 

[martint]

An interesting question, how do you help someone who has poor eye sight?

I guess a good place to start would be to understand "how poor" poor is.

I took your Red Arrow shot and done a little PP on it, I have posted the result below, over all the shot seemed to have motion blur more than incorrect focus.

I guess the question to you is can you see the difference between the two shots? What PP program do you use?

This was about 10 min's work in Photoshop, not the best masking I have ever done but I hope you get the idea

 

[MarkG]

I hadn't forgotten this thread - just been rather busy.

I'm not that poor sighted, but poor enough that I've missed severe blemishes in images until someone pointed them out to me.

And yes, that last example is exactly what I'm after. I don't own Photoshop, nor any of the other more expensive tools, but I'm sure the techniques apply equally well to other software and guidance on how to do those is exactly what I'm after.

However, I'd also like to take things one step further and work with the RAW images. I have them, so it seems silly not to take advantage of them. However, I've never even opened a RAW image, let alone worked on one. If there was a 'postprocessing for dummies' book, I'd buy it.

PS - I'm not surprised about the motion blur issue - I'm still learning and it's a common fault. I simply can't pick up any more than the most obvious errors in camera so I have to make 'best guess' at the settings and hope I was right. More often than not I'm not right, but sometimes miracles do happen. There's been more of those miracles since I got the DSLR, but that is also partly down to knowing what settings should work. That's important when you're guessing.

 

[martint]

I am glad that the image is moving in the direction you are looking at

I am not sure how the steps I took will / would translate to other software packages, what do you use to PP images at the moment? If you could let me know I may be able to offer a solution that fits!