Airliners.net photo help

[Guest 747-400 luva]

Hi Can someone please tell me what more I need to do to make this up to Airliners.net standard using photoshop.

[Chock 17,769]

You could do a few things, but I'd recommend playing with contrast, selective colour, hue and saturation, unsharp mask and film grain.First the contrast (Image>Adjustments>Brightness and Contrast). Tonally the fuselage looks a bit flat, so you might want to try making some adjustments to bring up the shadow on the underside, this would enhance the cylindrical shape of the fuselage. Depending on which version of Photoshop you have, you might want to try leaving 'Use Legacy' unchecked (that's if you have a recent version of PS). Using Legacy makes the Brightness and Contrast behave like it did in early versions of PS, where the contrast control is a bit harsh, whereas more recent versions of PS have intelligent limiters on the adjustment parameters, so it's harder to screw things up. If you have an older version of PS, you won't see that Legacy option, in which case, use the Brightness and Contrast controls sparingly. Be careful of using the Levels and Curves (which is a mistake many people make with PS, in believing that they only affect the contrast of things, whereas what they actually do is ramp ICC profiles onto your image for repro and correct for dot gain). That is not to say you cannot use them, just be aware that they can potentially have unwanted repercussions when it comes to printing, as they are really intended to correct for ink ranges in four colour separation artwork.Next Saturation (Image>Adjustments>Hue and Saturation). The colours are a little washed out on your image, which looks to have been caused by the fact that the lighting level on the day the pic was taken were a little flat with the cloud cover. You can use hue and saturation to sort that out, but it can be tricky, so a 'quick and dirty' way to do it is to use 'Selective Colour' (Image>Adjustments>Selective Colour). Selective Colour is really intended to address chromatic aberations from single CCD digital cameras and the like, but you can also use it to make seasonal shifts on images, and the easiest way to do that, is to select the 'Neutrals' from the Colour drop down menu on the Selective Colour palette. Play with the sliders and you will see that it is easy to make the picture look like a bright summer's day with very minor adjustments to some of the sliders (typically the yellow) when targeting the Neutral Colour range. If any colours get a bit unruly, go back to the Hue and Saturation palette and tone them down with that, by selecting individual ones from the drop down menu on that palette.Next Sharpening (Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask) You can use Unsharp Mask raw (i.e without selecting a specific area on the image on which to concentrate), and you should get away with it, but it is occasionally worth trying to select specific areas with the Lasso Tool, and then feathering your selection (Select>Feather) or on more recent versions of PS (Select>Refine Edge>Feather). Pick something like a 15-20 pixel radius and then try Unsharp Mask on your feathered selection, so that it is less apparent that you have been playing around with stuff. Try inverting the selection too, and putting a slight blur on the background to increase the apparent depth of field.Lastly covering up the traces (Filter>Artistic>Film Grain). Using Film Grain can serve two very useful purposes, first, it adds a bit of life to digital images by emulating the emulsion of traditional wet 70 and 35 mm film, but in addition to that, it can help to mask any digital screwing around you have done. Use it sparingly though, with very low Intensity settings.Don't forget that if it all goes wrong, you can 'step back' on the edit menu, or via the Histor Palette, and if you need to go all the way back, you have Revert on the File menu, as well as a localised revert with the Eraser Tool, which you can get by holding down the Alt key whilst using the Eraser.If all that sounds like a hassle, there is a very quick way around it, and that is to cheat. Find a picture you wish to emulate in terms of colour (maybe another pic of an Emirates Jet), load that up into PS, choose 'Match Colour' from the Image>Adjustments menu, save the statistics, then open up your image and choose the same thing, but instead load the statistic you just saved from the other image. Doesn't always work, but it can often get you in the 'ball park' very quickly.I don't think it's a bad photo actually.Al

[Guest 747-400 luva]

thank you very much for the help. Will play around a bit till I get the right one.thanks

[Guest fullstoplanding]

Here's what I did with it in PS2.Levels left and right to pick up the edges of the histogram, then slight adjustment of center triangle to taste.Saturation about +25.Unsharpmask: 400/.3/0 (notice the Hotel sign) These sharpening numbers are recommended for web pictures.Contrast: 5 or 6RogerAll images must appear in the first message of the topic, no subsequent messages may be posted that include images

[Chock 17,769]

Yup, that's looking better. In fact it is a lot better than many pics I've seen on airliners.net, and it actually wasn't too bad to start off with.I use a photo of a B737-200 I nicked off Airliners.net on Photoshop courses I run, as aircraft pics are usually good to demonstrate selecting areas with the pen tool when you can't get away with all that 'magic wand' malarkey on the underside where the shadows are. The definition in that area on your picture is much better than the example pic I tend to use, and that's quite impressive in photographic terms, since the A380 is incredibly wide and throws a lot of the underside into shadow, so you did a pretty good job there.I know it's probably the pinnacle of civil aviation, but God almighty the A380 has a face only a mother could love LOLAl

[Guest fullstoplanding]

"I know it's probably the pinnacle of civil aviation, but God almighty the A380 has a face only a mother could love LOL"Al,It's such a sad look, either having just cried or on the verge of. :( In my original post, PS2 should read PSCS2. Roger

[Chock 17,769]

Yup, I figured you meant CS2.Actually I prefer CS2 to the more recent versions; it has better export options.Al