Help to enhance digital images

[Nacoya]

Hi,

I don't usually enhance digital images from my camera (though no doubt i should). It is a 3.2 meg oly 3020z, and my skills usually result in under or overexposed images
I have 2 completely different images take this weekend and would like to know your views/tips etc on maximising them.

The first is a pic of my dog i'd like to look rich and health/warm.
The second a very green 'forrested' area i'd like to get more 'depth' from.

Can anyone give me pointers and their interpretations of what needs to be done to achieve maximum effect from these images. (feel free to 'have a go' at what you think.)

thanks,

nacoya

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Nacoya, had a go with your second image. Adjusted levels in blue channel to bring a little contrast into the greens in your image. Sharpened a little. Then copied to new layer, blurred and applied graduated mask to give a little depth of field. Painted on mask to reveal foreground foliage.

Had to compress a lot to get inside 100K limit, hope it doesn't have too many artifacts because of it.

[Nacoya]

Thanks Gary ,

you've given me a few good tips i'm just going to attempt to apply them to the original image.
Increasing the depth of field was one thing i wanted to know how to do.
I'm not very sure on the whole 'mask' process to be honest. It's something that i've been advised to use on a few occasions but never actually spent time getting to grips with.
So when you say 'graduated mask' is it simple enough for you to step me through it in this instance.

cheers,

nacoya

[tb5821]

here's mine...

[Cameraken]

Gary. Great job. It Looks 3D. I pinched you picture and used it as the background for mine

Ken

[PatrickB]

When you said "warm", did you mean something like this?

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Nakoya, happy to walk you through the process.

1. Duplicate image to new layer.
2. Apply Gaussian Blur to layer, (can't remember offhand what radius I used, just blur it to the max amount you want in your image.)
3. Now add layer mask, by clicking on the mask symbol at the bottom of the layer palette (dotted circle).
4. Apply gradient to the mask. First set foreground/background colours to black/white, now click on gradient tool (Alt click Paintbucket to reveal it), select linear gradient with black/white transition from list on your tool bar.
5. Apply gradient from bottom to top of image, (on this one I started about a quarter way up the image).
6. Used a soft black brush set to about 20% opacity to paint on mask to reveal some of the foreground foliage.

Hope this helps, any questions just ask.

Ken, nice one, like it a lot.

[Nacoya]

Thanks guys thats gr8.

Can't really decide which i like the best, each one has a different feel to it. Glenn's coat is already a 'warm' colour but that enhancement gives more body.

Hehehe@ken, that's one big dog .. almost the same size as the tree.. cool..

Gary, i'm going to go through that tonight see how i get on..

cheers,

nacoya.

[Nacoya]

Just revisiting this to say thanks guys again and to mention as a FYI (especially Gary - who was concerned about the artifacts in his enhanced image). I used the noise reduction tool in CS2 and especially the new jpeg artifact remover and saved it straight away. And for the same size of file this is the resultant image.

Great tool that new artifact remover (jpeg)... ...

[Gary Richardson]

Nice one Nacoya.

Also in CS2, you'll have Photgraphic Blur, which I don't have in PS7, should give better results.

Doug posted a tutorial on creating DOF using CS2, its well worth reading.