"zackiedawg" said:
Great grill shot - love the shine. ; Did you give that a Topaz treatment, or do the tone adjustments yourself?
I processed it in camera raw, version 7.3 which was in PS 6. When I got the D4 I found out that the raw files generated by the camera were not supported by previous versions of PS/Camera raw, so an upgrade was mandatory.
I don't use presets and I'm a total noob when it comes to photo
editing. One of these days I would like to take the time to sit through all the online tutorials to help me maximize my use of this software. As for now I'm just a slider monkey, trying this and that until I like what I see. I have Photomatix (version 4.1) that I use for my HDR shots and I have Lightroom 4 but I really don't like to use it for any kind of batch processing yet or file organization. If I use LR4 it would be for it's noise reducing function, that so far is beating the advanced capabilities I'm seeing in Camera raw 7.3.
I used to laugh when I would read about how some one would process something in Photomatix, import it to LR for some tweaks and then further process it in PS. I'm not laughing anymore since I've become just as obsessed with working on my pictures.
Some people might think that it's the camera that makes all the difference with shots like these but you and I know better. I've seen you do great things with your images so I know you are really good with the photo editing stuff. I'd like to encourage everybody on this board to take what they've got and learn how to manipulate the image using software. It can be very intimidating at first, but if you stick with it, you'll get the hang of it before you know it.
When I first set out to learn Photoshop I made the mistake of going to my local community college and taking a mini course. The guy had to fly through the material in 4 weeks and I was pulling my hair out trying to understand a very non intuitive software program. I thought about it for awhile and then I realized that the information I was looking for was not located in a bricks and mortar school, but it was on line on my computer.
There are a ton of sites on line that will get a person started learning how to use all different photo processing software. Perhaps others reading this can list some of the places that they have gotten great information from when trying to learn various types of photo processing/editing software.
(Tim that might make a nice sticky somewhere on these boards, sorry if it's already there but I am still new to the site and I'm still trying to get the lay of the land. A listing of software and a resource for matching online tutorials might make a great topic for the forum members for example http://www.lynda.com/ is good for Photoshop users)
In the end, the camera captures an image. If you are shooting raw then it's almost like a very flexible canvas that you can manipulate in many different directions. Most people are not aware that their camera takes an image and processes it with in camera presets to come up with a certain style of Jpeg image. If you shoot raw files and you have a software program that can edit those files, then you can experiment with things like color or contrast or any one of a number of neat manipulations. Shoot Jpegs on any camera and the software in that camera decides what the contrast should be or the color intensity or the clairity, etc.
So all of those of you that are new to photo processing software, I would encourage you to take the leap! It's the next step in advancing your photographic skills. The software required to do this is a lot cheaper than upgrading your equipment and you will be amazed at the results. All you need is a camera that has the option to shoot raw files and away you go!