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Old 04-08-11, 01:05 PM
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MattUK MattUK is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Horsham, West Sussex
Posts: 1,342
Quote:
Originally Posted by dgazz View Post
Chris

I think you may have nailed it on the head with the overcooking of the adjustments in the raw/psd file & not to do with actual jpeg quality

As a novice it's quite difficult to know where to start when you initially open up the Raw file in ACR :-(

It looks soooo diiferent to the image that appears on my 500d lcd screen.
Daniel
Hi Daniel,

Check this link - it shows you how to use the histogram to identify whether a photo is under or over exposed - that's your first start point. Once you get a correctly exposed shot in camera, it's a lot easier to make adjustments in ACR or another package.

As a rule of thumb, I tend to do the following to my images:

Contrast - check if the image has a nice contrast. If it's too flat (the shadows and highlights are a bit grey and it lacks punch) then boost the contrast up
Saturation - are the colours as vibrant as you saw them in real life? Probably not - boost the saturation slightly, and maybe add a little vibrance. Don't over-do the saturation, or you'll make everything look plastic
Fill light - are the dark areas of the image lacking in detail? Boost up the fill light to recover that detail
Recovery - are the highlights blown out and basically pure white / very bright? Try adding some recovery to tone them down a bit
Exposure - Adjusting the contrast and saturation can often darken an image. Boost up the exposure or brightness
Crop - crop the scene to remove any clutter or distractions around the edge
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