DxO PhotoLab 4 and Candid Photos

[Wolfgang ([ Win10, PL+VP+FP, Nik6 (+3) ])]

@mikemyers

I have a question for you, and everyone else too. How much of a difference does it make to your photography, based on which camera you hold in your hands?

(I think it makes a big difference to me, but maybe I’m just fooling myself. For me, it’s as if I have a very different outlook on photography, based on which camera I am using.)

ok, keep it short

I use the Pana LX100 for quick family shots and easy to carry on the go.

But I do prefer my D750 with solid grip, clear optical viewfinder and centered eyepiece for stable position straight in front of my face. Whatever lens I put on it, I feel comfortable. The moment the subject is in the frame, I know I get the shot, period. But then, as doing concerts at the edge of light or people, it doesn’t always work …

If I wasn’t familiar with the camera, I couldn’t do this at all. And yes, the camera is set to AWB, Auto ISO, Aperture priority, all these suspicious settings to take pictures, not to ‘celebrate’ photography.

BTW, I sold my AF-S 2,8/24-70 mm and 2,8/70-200mm. They are way to heavy to handle.

now, photography is about fun and art
Wolfgang

[OXiDant (Peter)]

@mikemyers

I have a question for you, and everyone else too. How much of a difference does it make to your photography, based on which camera you hold in your hands?

-mobilephone is just for socialmedia and technical information sending by w-app don’t care much about framing, sharpness (it needs to be visible what i am sending), color, exposure. Non or nearly non of the image’s are kept over years.

All my other stuff is done by my G80 and lenses.
M43 is for me the perfect size. Good lenses, not too big and heavy, lots of features.
16mb or 20mb if you got the newer versions is good enough most of the time.
Shooting raw means enough stops in dynamic range.

Importance order is.
Photograper. ( good use is better then highend camera in AI.)
Lens.( quality lenses means quality latent images on the sensor =>good image in rawfile.)
Camera. I see great footage from guy’s who uses a smartphone so why bother to lugg a FF dslr with you?
Kidding, it’s as any tool important to have a tool which fits the task subscription.

[Wolfgang ([ Win10, PL+VP+FP, Nik6 (+3) ])]

@mikemyers ref to post #28

BTW, your first picture (when corrected …), concentrated on the subject and showing interaction / emotion is much better than this one with 2 boats – content matters.

[mikemyers]

@Wolfgang

BTW, your first picture (when corrected …), concentrated on the subject and showing interaction / emotion is much better than this one with 2 boats – content matters.

Yep, it’s like fishing. Sometimes you get a good catch, and other times you don’t. I just need to be at the right spot at the right time with the right camera gear/settings, but after waiting almost two hours, I gave up. I like the two-boat photo for different reasons, but the first photo has human emotions we can relate to. Just like with fishing though, there’s always tomorrow.

[OXiDant (Peter)]

@mikemyers

Can you please post your “dop” file so I can see exactly how you are using ClearView, and therefore “why”?

Clearview in locals is a very powerfull tool to extract detail in the distance.

What i did here is extract in the haze in the back more color and detail, some extra in both sides on edges wile the front and sky isn’t touched much/ the same strenght.
no clearview:

applied clearview:

Wile the overall look is nearly the same:

on big screen you see this: (100% look)

Now it’s a detailed “painting” like Monet.

So use global Clearview only very carefull, 15% and use local adjustment to extract the details in the objects.

[mikemyers]

Getting in close like that, the difference is clear. Pun intended.

I hardly ever get to see my images at full size.
It’s nice to know that I can do so.
I do zoom in on the computer quite often, but I don’t know how many people do that on my SmugMug gallery.

Several months ago, I thought ClearView was an excellent tool, and I know I over-did it - a lot.
Now I’m a lot more cautious.

[zkarj (macOS, PLe+FP+VP, Pentax)]

@Joanna

but things like replacing skies is beyond what I deem to be photography and into the realms of collage.

I tend to think the same way, but Flickr promoted this shot recently and when I read how it was created, it caused me to question “what is a photograph?” all over again. I think the answer is different for different people. And perhaps on different days.

@mikemyers

I have a question for you, and everyone else too. How much of a difference does it make to your photography, based on which camera you hold in your hands?

For me it’s very simple. Every camera I buy is an upgrade. While I technically have owned two cameras at the same time, the older one is simply awaiting my efforts to sell it, so I always own just one camera. And one phone that has a camera.

Photos I take with my DSLR are sometimes merely documentary but mostly I am trying to capture a great shot, with care, every time.

I do also use my phone to take photos, but they are taken with much lower expectations, even if in many cases the results can be very pleasing. Phone photos are mostly “snaps” of situations or things (if they are close enough) which I rarely do anything to post process.

A key decision for me is often “do I take my camera?” On a recent trip away, I visited Government Gardens which I have seen before and likely will again, but maybe once a year at most. For this I elected to save weight and took my DSLR with a single lens.

Closer to home I visited our local botanic gardens, where I have been often and can go often, and because the goal of the visit was a walk through the gardens, I did not take my camera. But I did, of course, have my phone, and took quite a few shots of flowers and trees. But as I have relatively little control during shooting or post processing these are more opportunistic and I have less care over whether they will be great photos I will publish, except perhaps on a fleeting social media post.

[George]

@mikemyers

I have a question for you, and everyone else too. How much of a difference does it make to your photography, based on which camera you hold in your hands?

Let’s join the party.
Artistic none. The eyes are the same.
Technical yes, could be.
I own a D700 and a D750. Looking back to the images I mostly prefer these of the D700.

George

[mikemyers]

@zkarj

I tend to think the same way, but Flickr promoted this shot recently and when I read how it was created, it caused me to question “what is a photograph?” all over again. I think the answer is different for different people. And perhaps on different days.

I see things differently - to me, this is not a photograph at all. It’s a Photo Illustration. She could have included Godzilla in the background, and it would still be a photo illustration, although it would then be obviously not a photograph. She proves, as Hollywood does all the time, that totally “fake” things can look very real, and appear to be a normal photograph - if done well. I could put on an Army uniform and appear to be a soldier, but that’s just an illusion - so even a real photograph may not be “real”, but it is still a “photograph”.

For advertising, which is her specialty, the goal is often to manipulate things to look even better than they really look. I did it for a while, and it’s difficult. The image needs to have an affect on people’s emotions, and there are lots of tricks to achieve that. She is obviously very good at this, as all the components of that image fit together in a way that appears to be real - but isn’t.

[mikemyers]

@mikemyers

How much of a difference does it make to your photography, based on which camera you hold in your hands?

Maybe I should have asked “How much of a difference does it make to your photography, based on which TYPE OF camera you hold in your hands?”

This would include phones, DSLR, Rangefinder, Twin-Lens Reflex, or Large Format.

(I think it makes a huge difference, but that’s just me. If I take my phone out of my pocket, or use my Leica rangefinder camera, or my Nikon DSLR, I do things very differently, even the way I compose the image.)

[Joanna (Joanna Carter)]

Which then leads to questions about should an artist paint a photo-realistic image? Why poach on our (photographers) territory?

I tried to sell my photos in one gallery that sold mainly paintings and they refused them because they were not “painted”. They were very happy to charge a couple of hundred pounds for a photo-realistic painting but felt that a photo-realistic photo wasn’t worth even displaying, let alone asking more than a couple of tens of pounds.

One day, while I was in the gallery, someone came in and asked if they could photograph some of the paintings, in order that he could paint them himself!!! Presumably instead of paying for the “original”.

So, you can end up with a painting that is copied from a photo of a painting that is copied from…

Artists get away with re-composing the landscapes they are painting and nobody bats an eyelid. Why is it not allowed for photographers to improve their images?

Maybe you don’t feel comfortable with interpreting a photo to produce an image. But you have to ask yourself, when does manipulation start? The world is not monochrome but, until someone invented colour film, every photograph represented the world in black and white. Realistic? By no means.

It’s up to you what you do to an image but don’t forget that, if you really don’t want to manipulate what you shot in the camera, then just print up reams and reams of paper with the binary code that makes up a RAW image. After all, decoding that data depends on someone’s interpretation of how those bits and bytes should look when they hit the screen. hence the differences when you use different software to process RAW files.

If nobody told you that the Blaise Arnold shot was manipulated, would you have known? Or would you have accepted it as a beautiful image and admired the skill of the photographer who set everything up in one place at one time to press the shutter only once?

Even if an image is obviously manipulated, does it make it any less valid as the work of a skilled artist

Even if the photo was taken for journalistic purposes, does that preclude manipulation, if that manipulation is for the purpose of conveying something that could not be taken in one shot? Frank Hurley is famous for his portrayals of WW1 in which, being unable to capture the full horror in one shot, assembled several to get the point of the story over to people who could never imagine the true horror of a day in such a place.

Much closer to home…

Shot in a studio setting, this is a composite of two shots, blended in the camera - one with an overhead light to illuminate the candle holder and gourds, another, with no lights, for the candle flame. Does that count as skilled photography or photo illustration?

In all this, it’s great to discuss, not only technical, but sometimes ethical matters. And everyone is entitled to their opinion - even though I am always right

[mwsilvers (Mark - New Jersey, USA)]

@Joanna

In all this, it’s great to discuss, not only technical, but sometimes ethical matters. And everyone is entitled to their opinion - even though I am always right

Well, at least sometimes right. Seriously though, I agree with every word you said in your post above this.

Mike wants to adhere to his personal standard of what he perceives as “real” yet time and time again here he has indicated his preference for versions of his images edited by others that differ from what he actually saw.

Photography is not about capturing what you saw in absolute fidelity because that is not possible. It’s more about creating images of interest which draw in the viewer.

If an image is not interesting and nobody wants to look at it, it’s a failed picture. That does not mean that a compelling image has to have things added to it or things taken away, or cropped in a way that might change its meaning. But it can mean that, and that’s all right. If we were professional sports photographers or photojournalists we probably wouldn’t even be on this site talking about Photolab.

If Mike wants his images to look more interesting to himself and to others perhap he should reevaluate his arbitrary perception of “real”.

Mark

[mikemyers]

@Joanna

Maybe you don’t feel comfortable with interpreting a photo to produce an image. But you have to ask yourself, when does manipulation start? The world is not monochrome but, until someone invented colour film, every photograph represented the world in black and white. Realistic? By no means.

Joanna, the first thing that popped up into my mind when I read that, is photos can never be “real” as they are only two dimensional, and the world is three dimensional.

Then it hit me - even so, the photo is a single moment in time, and to capture the event, we also need the “before” and the “after”.

All of the above can completely change the “emotion” that goes with the photo. What my mind is thinking of as I write this, is that I could have a lovely photo of a young child picking a flower, with a large rock behind her. Beautiful, lovely scene. But what if the camera had move a few feet to the side, to also capture the crouching tiger getting ready to pounce? Yikes, one’s emotions would start screaming. And if this was a video, a combination of still images frozen in time…

My thoughts - manipulation can be good or bad. The photographer always manipulates their point of view, along with selective focus, and good timing. This is a good thing. But the photographer can also manipulate the instant when the photo is taken, to have a good or bad expression on the person’s face.

The only “rules” for this sort of thing are the ones I posted earlier, for honest journalism, a “Code of Ethics”. It’s what I have accepted since the 1960’s, and I see no reason to change:

Code of Ethics

I love what you wrote. I don’t have an answer, beyond what’s in that list. …and having said that, I’ve got to accept that most of the photos I get to see in this world have been composed to get me to think in a certain way. That’s especially true in anything to do with politics. As for taking a photo of something, so one can do it on their own, as if it was their original idea… I don’t know what to say. I get lots of ideas from other people’s photos, how they did something especially well or poorly, and I often find myself wanting to take the same type of photo, but doing it “my way”.

[mikemyers]

@Joanna

Shot in a studio setting, this is a composite of two shots, blended in the camera - one with an overhead light to illuminate the candle holder and gourds, another, with no lights, for the candle flame. Does that count as skilled photography or photo illustration?

To me, technically, that certainly makes it a photo illustration. You could have even added a moon off in a corner from yet another photo had you wanted. To me, a photograph means a single image captured at once (as well as a lot of other things). Of course, you don’t have say anything about it, depending on where it will be seen. For your own gallery, it stands as it is. For the National Geographic, knowing how you did it would exclude it from their use, unless you identified it as having been manipulated the way it was.

I’ve already posted this link, but it’s as true today as it ever was:

Conscientious | When do photographs become photo illustrations?

Maybe we each need to develop our own rules, or follow the rules of whoever we are submitting the photo to. There was a big fuss when a photographer for the National Geographic moved the location of a pyramid because of the way the image would be printed in the magazine. Calling it a “photo illustration” eliminates that kind of embarrassment later, when it is “discovered”.

I’ll shut up about this. In no way do I think of myself as any kind of expert - I accept what I was taught, and what I learned in the past. Having said that, when I post what I feel to be an overly manipulated image, I’ll call it a “photo illustration” and leave it at that.

[OXiDant (Peter)]

Mike,
Don’t get me wrong, i am reacting positively to your posts but…
You starting a lot of dxo photolab 4 and… Threads and most of them are about editing and manipulating a rawfile to a certain point.
So all photo illustration’s in progres or bordering towards photo’s.
All great and good. But raw editing and restricting your self to “photo’s” will torment your mind and restrict your abillity to learn. Because the only way to learn a powerfull program from top to bottom is exploring all corners , dead ends, attic’s, basements, loft’s, terras’es.
Choose challenceing rawfiles and try every tool there is to make something.
Mono color, high key, low key, blistering color boost, hdr look, clone and repair, local adjustments… Arteficial blur or local sharpening.

What i try to say is pick a tool and explore it’s bounderies , it’s strongholds, it weaknesses using serveral rawfiles. Forget about making a sensible image or a “photograph” just push and pull untill the rawfile breaks.
This way you learn dxo PL’s toolset to use.
And then you can make decisions how to attack a rawfile and forecast how it will look when you done. Adjust on the fly direction and change tools to get better result.

When you have reached that level of skill you can tiptow through your image’s , scrape here, lift there, coloring this, sharpening that, compres such, mold a rawfile to a photograph and Virtual Copy at that point and build to a illustration version.

Some key things.
Always stack adjustments like bricks. Don’t push one tool slider to it’s end but use more tools moderest. As in don’t blow one trompet very hard and raw better to blow 10 clear and pure for the sound. An orchrestra sound is build with many groups of musical instruments to create that unique sound not just one instrument and a amplifier for each type of sound.

Controlpoints are working at best in large outer circles and placed on a carefully picked spot. Use desaturation (graying out effected area’s) and “m” to see influences and build a mask.

Use masking and feadering/erasing.
Remember you can lift a color with controlpoint and lower it at some spots with a mask brush at the same time!

And don’t try too much replicate others image’s. The build to that point it’s finished is every time different.(atleast for me.)

Most important Have fun.

[zkarj (macOS, PLe+FP+VP, Pentax)]

@OXiDant

Most important Have fun.

I would take that further and suggest that you should enjoy both the act of creation, from your first thought of the scene through to ‘publication’ (whether it be public or just for your own benefit), and also the result.

If the result is pleasing to you, and you didn’t tear your hair out creating it, then it’s a job well done, no matter what it took, no matter whether anyone else likes it.

@OXiDant

Remember you can lift a color with controlpoint and lower it at some spots with a mask brush at the same time!

Hmmm. In a single adjustment, or by creating a second negating the first?

[OXiDant (Peter)]

@zkarj

Hmmm. In a single adjustment, or by creating a second negating the first?

Say you have selected a orange tint with a controlpoint and a red tint is also effected by that choice.
Place a second, new controlpoint on that red tint and check how that mask is effecting the orange tint. By counter set the red tint you effectively push the orange tint mask to effect the yellow part of orange more and nutralise the effect on the red part of orange.
Wile a negative controlpoint is blocking red and orange part al together.

Especially flowers are benefitting from this aproach because of there colors which are not hars edged but merched.

[mikemyers]

@OXiDant

But raw editing and restricting your self to “photo’s” will torment your mind and restrict your abillity to learn.

I agree with the above, along with everything else you wrote. I guess I can throw away my own boundaries and limits, and just use the image as modeling clay, pushing and pulling on the tools up and down as far as they go, just to learn the tools better. I doubt anyone would want to watch it, but I could even record the whole session using my Camtasia program. It would probably make my efforts look rather silly, but then again, that’s how you say I will learn, by pushing beyond my limits.

I’ll try your idea - it’s quite different from what I’ve been doing. I currently look at my image, decide what needs to be done, and little by little start pushing it towards what I think I want, and sometimes I change my goal based on what I see is developing.

Ignoring any boundary between photo and illustration sounds like fun. Painting with light and color, with PL4 as my brush. Why not…

[mikemyers]

@zkarj

If the result is pleasing to you, and you didn’t tear your hair out creating it, then it’s a job well done, no matter what it took, no matter whether anyone else likes it.

Well, I don’t have enough hair left to throw any out, but more seriously, the times I’m most likely to fee frustrated are when I have a specific goal, and I’m not sure how to achieve it. I’ve learned many of those answers in these discussions. We’ll see…

[Wolfgang ([ Win10, PL+VP+FP, Nik6 (+3) ])]

@mikemyers

from post #54

Maybe we each need to develop our own rules, or follow the rules of whoever we are submitting the photo to.

You are fully entitled to enjoy smugmug followers with photojournalism pics, but don’t forget there is more – and now, let me help you to find your ‘position’.

have fun, Wolfgang

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(believe it or not – from true snapshots)