The life of a cow.

[fx101]

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Coming back from my long trip in Europe I kept encountering photos I never knew I took. This was one of the surprisingly good ones. The setting is Bernex, France (about 30 minutes from Geneva and 10 minutes from Evian, source of the water). I edited the photo somewhat as originally the bright green swiss grass (greener than you can imagine) showed up with a bluish hue. Other than that and some brightness/contrast editing the rest is original. I would like some feedback on the composition and overall impressions (don't complain about lens choice as I took this with a point and shoot because I didn't want to lug my D80 around on a 6 hour long hike).
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New (Processed in Photo Ninja).

[pympster]

Excelent shot IMO!! sky a bit grainy but as its a PAS cant complain there!!

[Don Schaeffer]

I think this is rich and glorious, almost a super photo. I can hardly believe it is real it looks so real.

[mn shutterbug]

I agree, very nice photo. However, that does seem like an abundance of grain considering you shot at just ISO 100.

[MrEastSide]

The grain in the sky was the first thing that grabbed my eye. Other than that it's a very nice shot!

[fx101]

I can explain the grain lol . It turns out lightroom applied some presets to it on import, the original is actually quite a bit darker. So this, I must add also has a software correction of +.5 exposure, +20 contrast, and +8 black. I figured this out because lightroom applied this to some other photos, with less than splendid results . Unfortunately I must say that the grain is camera born (darn you nikon 4300!) and since it was underexposed the sky suffered. Can anyone give me tips on removing the grain? If nescessary I can provide the non lightroomed version.

[mn shutterbug]

I know nothing about CS3, but with Elements I can just go to "noise", and then "despeckle". It smooths things out pretty nicely. I've seen a program recommended on here called "Noise Ninja".

[fx101]

I am working on re-editing it to match the colours on this one but without the grain. I will post the new version later today.

[fx101]

The new version is now up. What I did is take the original, work with the exposure in lightroom (it was jpeg so no raw editing ) which has the next best exposure addition next to camera raw. Then I loaded the colour statistics from this photo and matched the colours to the original. This resulted in like colours bit with a purple hue. I corrected this with the selective colour feature and a change in hue. I hope you like it.

[gahspidy]

Excellent composition. The grain does not bother me. i like the tones and color balance of the grainy image best. the other one seems to have a little too much magenta? in it. and loses the impact of the blue sky and green grass combo.
There a re few different noise reduction programs. noise ninja is supposed to be very good. I personally have been using NeatImage for a few years and like it alot. you can creat a profile for each iso setting on your camera and it wipes out the noise without hurting the sharpness in your pic. On my website, i have a side by side comparison between two pics one with noise reduction and one without. (digital VS. film section)
One thing though, underexposing brings about more noise especially in blue skies and darker areas and when it gets to a certain degree it can be just about impossible to rid it all without sacrficing the rest of the image.
Good work here.

[fx101]

Well, following many of your suggestions I tried out noise ninja. I liked the result (with the grid) so much I bought it. I had to make a manual noise profile so it didn't recognize the grass as noise. This way I eliminated all noise contained in sky blue colours. It worked flawlessly. The image is the second one. Definitely try Noise Ninja, it did wonders for this shot. I will be using it on many other grainy pics in my collection.

[jkriminger]

that did wonders...very surreal..kinda teletubbies graphic. Have you any thought of a small crop from top and bottom..might acentuate the cow more and you have plenty of sky and grass to keep whatever ratio you wanted. Nice shot anyway!

[gahspidy]

Well, following many of your suggestions I tried out noise ninja. I liked the result (with the grid) so much I bought it. I had to make a manual noise profile so it didn't recognize the grass as noise. This way I eliminated all noise contained in sky blue colours. It worked flawlessly. The image is the second one. Definitely try Noise Ninja, it did wonders for this shot. I will be using it on many other grainy pics in my collection.

The noise reduction in the sky looks well, but the trees in the bg, fields and the cow seems to have gotten a little too smooth. These NR programs can make things look like plastic.
the pic does not look bad though, but i had no problem with the noise in it. You could just select the sky and reduce the noise in that if Noise ninja is a plug-in.
To get a good profile for your camera just shoot into a clear blue sky at each iso setting. then creat a profile for each using the images. then everytime you want to reduce noise you just go to your same iso profile and the results are very good.

[fx101]

The noise reduction in the sky looks well, but the trees in the bg, fields and the cow seems to have gotten a little too smooth. These NR programs can make things look like plastic.
the pic does not look bad though, but i had no problem with the noise in it. You could just select the sky and reduce the noise in that if Noise ninja is a plug-in.
To get a good profile for your camera just shoot into a clear blue sky at each iso setting. then creat a profile for each using the images. then everytime you want to reduce noise you just go to your same iso profile and the results are very good.

I will try this when I get the chance, right now it is getting dark out. I am going to try this method and actually making a seperate "sky layer" in CS3 and just NR'ing that. Probably be up tomorowish.

[fx101]

I have worked on this long and hard, and I think I have it like I want the picture to be, powerful yet not plasticy/teletubbylike as a previous poster described it. How did I do this?
1) I began by taking my original post picture and in Fluid mask 3 extracting only the sky.
2) From this sky I used "match colour" to get a statistics .sta file in photoshop.
3) Then, I masked out the sky and extracted the rest of the picture (eg; everything but the sky).
4) I extracted the sky from my original camera picture in Fluid Mask 3.
5) I used the shadow/highlight tool to slightly enforce the clouds.
6) I then used the "Match Colour" tool to load the .sta file from the reference sky and match the colours to that.
7) Now that I had a noise free colourful sky I converted this to Working RGB.
8) I pasted this new sky layer on top of the exracted land picture (step 3).
9) I feathered as nescessary and made some minor brightness contrast corrections.
10) A low noise picture without the need of noise-ninja was my result. Here it is:

Note that it is not completely noise free. It is however, significantly lower in noise than my original post and significantly sharper than the Nr'd one.
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[gahspidy]

It looks like a winner. colors are great, textures still evident, and noise not an issue at all.
A great looking shot.

[livin4lax09]

boo on the noise ninja. looks too processed. noise processing is a very very hard skill, and most people dont know how to process it (including me) and still retain a realistic look. I like the last edit for the color of the sky but wish that the cow and foreground were just a hair brighter. Try creating a new curves layer, bumping the mids just a hair, mask it with white, and then use a black>white gradient on the layer starting from the bottom. Should solve your problem.

good luck.

[fx101]

boo on the noise ninja. looks too processed. noise processing is a very very hard skill, and most people dont know how to process it (including me) and still retain a realistic look. I like the last edit for the color of the sky but wish that the cow and foreground were just a hair brighter. Try creating a new curves layer, bumping the mids just a hair, mask it with white, and then use a black>white gradient on the layer starting from the bottom. Should solve your problem.

good luck.

livinlax, I have tried brightening up the cow/landscape but the problem is there is not enough shadow detail to do this, i.e. when I lighten you get very, very, very bad noise. Also, the lighting looks unnatural if the foreground is lightened. I will try and see if I can work the same colour process with the sky on the foreground, but no promises...

[Overbeyond]

I have worked on this long and hard, and I think I have it like I want the picture to be, powerful yet not plasticy/teletubbylike as a previous poster described it. How did I do this?
1) I began by taking my original post picture and in Fluid mask 3 extracting only the sky.
2) From this sky I used "match colour" to get a statistics .sta file in photoshop.
3) Then, I masked out the sky and extracted the rest of the picture (eg; everything but the sky).
4) I extracted the sky from my original camera picture in Fluid Mask 3.
5) I used the shadow/highlight tool to slightly enforce the clouds.
6) I then used the "Match Colour" tool to load the .sta file from the reference sky and match the colours to that.
7) Now that I had a noise free colourful sky I converted this to Working RGB.
8) I pasted this new sky layer on top of the exracted land picture (step 3).
9) I feathered as nescessary and made some minor brightness contrast corrections.
10) A low noise picture without the need of noise-ninja was my result. Here it is:

Note that it is not completely noise free. It is however, significantly lower in noise than my original post and significantly sharper than the Nr'd one.
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I think this excellent shot survives with grain or without because the composition is so good. I agree with gary about noise removers; while removing the grain they seem to melt the colours somewhat, and yes, makes them look like plastic..
I think this image has a lovely "nursery rhyme" feel to it and you should be well proud of it.
Tom

[Tyson L. Sparks]

Well earned, great shot and nice editing.

[fx101]

Well earned, great shot and nice editing.

Thanks. . I should give a lot of thanks to the thread responces which helped me edit to the final image though. I must say I wouldn't have discovered noise ninja otherwise. On this image it wasn't incredibly useful but for many others it has been great (on softer subjects).

[Greg McCary]

Congrats on the feature. I am not a big fan of all of the noise in the sky but the composoition is super. You got a small spot in the sky that bothers me some, I would clone that.
Greg

[jonpugsley]

In my opinion just a great shot, the colours are really rich and eyecatching. I also think that with the cow not being in the centre of the image allows more of the landscape to come through in the photo.

[fx101]

Congrats on the feature. I am not a big fan of all of the noise in the sky but the composoition is super. You got a small spot in the sky that bothers me some, I would clone that.
Greg

Thanks . If you look at the last "edit" version you will notice the noise is significantly reduced in the sky though. I tried cloning that spot before but it just made it obvious that it was cloned. Maybe its because my hand gets so twitchy when doing detailed work in photoshop (or it could be caffeine) .