Tag Archives: Acadia National Park

Lighthouse Before and After

Maine, Technique, , ,

Lynn and I wanted another print for our walls and we both liked a photo of the Bass Harbor Head Light Station that I made on a trip to Acadia National Park back in August of 2014. Looking at the file in Lightroom, I wasn’t happy with the colors, and the resolution wasn’t quite enough for the size print that we wanted. I dug out the original RAW image file and reprocessed it with my current software and techniques. Here’s a comparison slider showing the full image (before is on the left):

Bass Harbor Head Light Station, Acadia National Park, August 2014

In Lightroom, I used their recently added “enhance” capability to improve RAW details and upsize. I also did basic adjustments including a slightly larger crop, white balance, and exposure. Then I opened it in Photoshop for final edits – which included texture / clarity tweaks and a pass through the Topaz Sharpen AI filter.

Here’s a small crop showing detail down by the water:

Software has improved a lot since 2014. I’m glad I saved the RAW file in my archives. We’ve already made the print and it looks good up on the wall.

A higher resolution version of the finished photo is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/edrosack/51514669988/in/dateposted-public/.

If you’re interested, this link will take you to other blog posts I’ve written about reprocessing: https://edrosack.com/?s=reprocessing.

And I’ve collected some reprocessed examples in this album on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/edrosack/albums/72157622798164562

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Please take care of yourselves and each other. And if you need to – reprocess some photos!

©2021, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Keeping up

Cameras and Photography, Maine, , , , ,

Photography and image processing software innovation continues at a staggering pace.  It’s hard to keep up!  Companies are coming out with new versions and even completely new programs to compete with the Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom standards.  And Adobe is fighting back with new updates to keep their customers happy.

Bubble Pond, Acadia National Park 2Bubble Pond, Acadia National Park (2).  16×9 crop from a 7 frame IR panorama, processed in Lightroom, Photoshop, and Topaz Sharpen AI 

This is almost all good for photographers.  Competition results in new innovations that genuinely help us with our images.  If you save your RAW source files, you can reprocess a photo and often get improved results.  What’s not to like?

A small, quiet spot in the forestA small, quiet spot in the forest. Along Great Head Trail, returning from Sand Beach. Single frame, processed in Lightroom, Photoshop, Luminar, and Topaz Sharpen AI

There are a couple of downsides I can think of.  First, we usually have to pay for  the changes.  If you use Adobe’s products, their subscription model makes sure you have the latest.  Some other companies are moving to subscriptions too, but many are still charging by the upgrade.  Either way, it takes money to keep up.  You also have to invest your time.  Just knowing what software is coming out takes effort.  And having the software doesn’t do a lot of good unless you understand the new features and when / how to use them.  You have to spend time learning the new software. Time that you could use making photos with your camera ends up being spent in front of your computer.

Bubble Pond, Acadia National Park 1Bubble Pond, Acadia National Park (1). A second 16×9 crop from the same 7 frame IR panorama, processed in Lightroom, Photoshop, and Topaz Sharpen AI.

So is it worth it?  I think so.  If you want to make the best images you possibly can, then you can’t afford to ignore progress.  But of course, it depends on you, your needs, and your available resources.  And it depends on what’s changing in the software too.

Anyway, a large number of recent product releases made me think about this again.  I decided to update one that I often use (Luminar) and skip a version of another (DxO Optics Pro).  After downloading the software, I dug out some photos from the archive so I could play around and learn about the new things.  A friend’s recent visit to Acadia made me re-look at my images from there.  These three photos haven’t been on the blog before and result from processing old images in new software.  Better? Probably.  Revolutionary? Probably not.  Worth the time and money?  I think so.  Your mileage may vary.

And don’t get me started about camera upgrades.  That’s a completely different story!

By the way, Happy Thanksgiving – enjoy spending time with friends and family next week!

I’ve put many more of my images from Acadia National Park in this album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/edrosack/albums/72157646280743144.  And please click on the photos in these blog posts to view them in higher resolution on Flickr.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!

©2019, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Boundary Warp

Maine, OUTSIDE FLORIDA, Technique, , , , , , ,

There’s a new feature in the latest Creative Cloud versions of Lightroom and Camera Raw, and if you stitch together multi-frame panoramas like I tend to, then you should take a close look at it.

It shows up as a new slider called “Boundary Warp” in the “Merge to Panorama” dialog and it’s designed to help fix the empty areas along the edges of some stitched panoramas.  You can see an example in the first image below.

The Tarn - This is a three frame panorama from Acadia National Park that I'd never processed. I used it to test the new "Boundary Warp" feature
The Tarn – This is a three frame panorama from Acadia National Park that I’d never processed. I used it to test the new “Boundary Warp” feature

An easy way to fix this is to crop out the empty portions of the frame, like this:

The Tarn - This version has been cropped to eliminate the missing portions.
The Tarn – I cropped the missing portions out of this version.

But that throws away pixels that you may want to keep.  You can also try to fill in the empty areas with content aware fill or the clone stamp, but that often leaves some anomalies that take time to clean up.

Using the new function is easy.  It keeps all the pixels in the image and warps the edges to fill in empty areas.

The Tarn - I used Boundary Warp on this version to fill in the missing areas.
The Tarn – I used Boundary Warp on this version to fill in the missing areas.

I like the way it works. It’s better than cropping or trying to fill in missing portions with the clone stamp.  Try it – I think you’ll like it too.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos and warp some boundaries!

©2016, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.