Digital Photo Post-processing Guide

Aviation Photo Editingand Digital Post-Processing Guide

© 2016 Shabbir A Bashar Sierra 2 Spotters; planeXplorer.net

Standard Disclaimer: All information is provided FREE OF CHARGE and its use restricted to Non-profit and Non-Commercial purposes ONLY. The user explicitly understands thatthe author of this guide cannot be held liable for any damages arising from its use.

CONTENTS• Who is this guide for?• Why Edit and Post Process?• Digital Photography Basics• What you can and cannot do by editing or processing?• What you’ll need: Software and Hardware• Understanding Camera Raw• Obstructions and Dust-spots• Color Space: Contrast, Brightness, Temperature• Sharpness and Noise• Re-sizing and Saving• Step-by-step Photo Editing

Aviation Photo Editing and Digital Post Processing Guide V1.2 © 2016 Shabbir A Bashar 2

Who is this guide for?

Aviation Photo Editing and Digital Post Processing Guide V1.2 © 2016 Shabbir A Bashar

“Plane-spotting” or aviation photography as a hobby, is starting to gain momentum in South Asia. People elsewhere in the world have been at it for decades. If you ever wondered how some people manage to get perfect looking photographs of airplanes and publish them on various websites, then this guide is for you. With a little effort, a mediocre photograph can be turned into something quite attractive!

Photography in general is all about presenting the picture in your head in a format so others can enjoy what you – the photographer – want them to see. By default, it is something that YOU alone create. There are no hard and fast rules about what is correct and what is not. It just has to be appealing to your viewers!

Aviation photography can be challenging: you are trying to capture fast moving objects and often in difficult lighting conditions. While you cannot control the situation, you can prepare for it based on your knowledge and experience. Hence, the more you work at it, the better you’ll get.

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Digital Photography Basics 1.


Photography is all about making light do what you want it to do! It’s a passionate love affair – the more time and care you give it, more reward you’ll get.

Camera: it’s simply a box comprising of all the parts that allow you to capture an image and let it be recorded or transmitted. It knowshow to interpret a raw image and turn it into something recognizable by the human eye. It knows what lens and sensor is being usedand how to make those conversions. And then there’s SLR cameras that use a single-lens-reflex mechanism for the view finder eye-piece and the film or the sensor: your eye sees exactly will be recorded. DSLR is simply a “digital” version of the same camera. BUTwait … most cell phones have “cameras” in them so why do I need to spend $1,000 on a DSLR camera?

Lens: it captures energy from an object and projects it on to a sensor. Since glass is the best material for transforming visible lightenergy and can be shaped in different ways to bend light and funnel it where you want it to go, most lenses are made of glass. Qualityof a lens depends on the quality of the starting glass and the workmanship in building it. Any tint in the glass material or irregularityon its surface will directly affect the quality of the image. A “zoom” lens is able to project objects at different distances while a “prime”lens has a fixed “focal length”. A “fast” lens is shaped (thicker and bulkier) in a way that enables it to bend light at a more sharp angle… less light is lost … as a result it requires less time to capture the minimum amount of light needed for the sensor or film todigest/interpret the information. A cell phone simply does not have the space to accommodate a decent glass lens; most use embossedplastic lenses or just rely on the “pin-hole” effect.

Shutter Speed: Have you ever blinked your eye? Or watched a strobe “freeze” a moving object in the dark? Well, that is exactly whatthe shutter does! The faster an object is moving, the faster you need to blink to freeze it. BUT, if you blink too fast, you may not getenough light needed to capture the details. A good photographer knows how to play with the shutter speed, the aperture opening andthe ISO setting to get exactly the image they want to record.

Lens Aperture: light reflected from two objects will interfere with one another by the time they reach your eye. If there is too muchlight, you’ll not be able to tell where one object ends and the other starts. So, it is necessary to block off light coming from thesurroundings to get a crisp image of your main object. Make it too small, you may not get enough light; make it too big and only a fewobjects will appear sharp – usually those very close to the point of focus. This is called “Depth of field” and can be used as tool to makethe picture look exactly how YOU want it. This explains why, as a child, I grew up seeing Dakua Shaheb looking through a blackplastic pipe with one eye when monitoring the work of his riggers on top of a 300 foot tall telecommunication tower on a bright day inthe middle of a desert: he was saving his brain from unimportant information. He was not the crazy mad pirate that I thought … but asmart guy indeed! So during the day, close your aperture, turn up your shutter speed and turn down your ISO setting; do the oppositeat night or in poor lighting conditions.

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Photography is all about making light do what you want it to do! It’s a passionate love affair – the more time and care you give it, more reward you’ll attain.

ISO Sensitivity: We have cones and rods embedded in the retina of our eyes. One set is for seeing in the dark while the other is for gathering details in daylight. Each one needs a certain amount of light to be “triggered” to send a message to the brain to let us know presence or absence of light. In the film camera, the roll used to have different size of grains. The bigger they were, the less light they needed to be developed. Thus a ISO800 film could record a night scene without a flash; a ISO1600 could do even better!

BUT this came at a cost to the quality of your picture: the resolution or the fineness of the photograph had to be compromised. A bigger grain will “average” two fine objects … so you’ll lose detail. On the other hand, a ISO100 (or even as low as ISO50) will need more light to fall on it. How do you do that? Open up your aperture or slow down the shutter speed! Better still, if you have the option, wait for a bright day to photograph those planes …

Sensor: this has replaced the traditional roll of film that was used to capture an image; it’s like the retina at the back of our eyes. Instead of grains (or rods and cones), it comprises or individual electronic devices known as photo detectors. Each photo detector simply tells if there is light or no light and its intensity; they then send a corresponding amount of current to the processor micro-chip. They cannot tell color. However, there are prisms which split the incident “white” light into three primary colors: red, green and blue and send these to three individual detectors that are close to each other. The camera then records the intensity in binary digits along with the position of the detector. A group of three such detectors make a single “picture cell” or a pixel. The pixels are arranged in rows and columns on a flat plane that is known as the active area of the sensor (the retina). An array of 1024 x 1024 pixels = 1 Megapixel! Thus we have 5 Megapixel, 10 Megapixel, 24 Megapixel cameras … Hmmm … so why does sensor size matter?

Why is one 10 Megapixel camera give better quality image than its cheaper cousin? Remember those photo-detectors? Well, the closer you put them to each other, the closer the current paths or tiny electrical traces that carry their current to the processor have to be. This causes interference between two adjacent current paths and gives rise to pixel noise. In addition, light can bounce from one photo diode to its nearest neighbor if they are too close together. Both these effects mean that in a crowded sensor plate the colors are not rich and vivid.

ISO in a digital camera works by making a few pixels more sensitive while turning off the surrounding ones to avoid both electrical and optical interference between pixels. While the detectors are now more powerful, there’s less of them turned. Thus you lose resolution at high ISO settings.

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Photography is all about making light do what you want it to do! It’s a passionate love affair – the more time and care you give it, more reward you’ll attain.

Metering: now that you know how an digital sensor actually works, you can imagine that it can also be used to meter the amount of light. Knowing the amount of ambient light is important so the appropriate aperture, speed and ISO settings can be made to give you the perfect picture. A digital power meter can also be used to choose lighting from one or multiple portions of the field (in your view finder): a single spot in the center, a small rectangle or even the entire field. Again, this leads to more creative photography if you master the art.

Autofocus: DSLR camera bodies and lenses these days come with a “auto-focus” function. So how does it work? The brains or digital image processor in the camera interprets focus or sharpness by looking at the difference in contrast between two adjacent pixels. It continuously moves the lens objective back and forth, looks at the image and locks the lens at the position where that contrast peaks. So now you can select which part of the image is more important to you by choosing the appropriate autofocus mode in your camera and focusing will be done based on the corresponding part of the electronic data coming from the sensor. An extension of this mechanism allows you to do dynamic focusing on a moving object while keeping your camera still. Things like motion blur effects can be achieved in this way.

Image Format: The camera sensor captures all the tiny bits of electronic data coming from the individual pixels. Then it has to make it look like a picture. The processor has the choice (determined by you in the camera setting) to save it as a compressed file such as JPEG (which can be displayed on the LCD screen) or as RAW in the memory card. The amount of compression determines the file size; abigger file contains more information while a smaller file has less. The size of the RAW fie is constant and is hardwired in the processor bank. Once the data has been saved, it can be retrieved and “post processed” digitally.

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Why Edit & Digitally Post-Process?


While some gifted photographers can capture exactly what they want at first try, most people will need to make corrections before they are ready to present it to others. Professional photo editing houses will spend hours and hours perfecting a single picture before publishing it in a magazine or on a website.

You may want to correct the photograph because

•It looks titled to one side or rounded at the edges•There are “spots” in the sky portion•It looks too bright or it looks too dark•It does not look crisp or in focus•Or 200 other reasons!

Don’t worry, people have been doing this in the dark-room for since the birth of photography itself. There’s no shame editing your photo or no credit in not doing so. The only people who will judge your work are those who you want to show it to. If you want to publish it, you’ll have to convince the “screeners” that the quality is good enough to find a place in their publication or on their website.

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What you can and cannot do


You CAN•Make a good picture look outstanding•Remove dust spots•Remove unwanted objects from isolated areas

You CANNOT•Make a dreadful picture look great by digitally processing it.•Make an unfocused image look focused

So it’s best to start with a good image! 8

What you’ll need: Hardware and Software


CameraLensTripod – especially if you want to do night time photography

ComputerMonitor – a decent size, high definition monitor is very helpful for editing.Color Calibration Tool

Adobe Light RoomAdobe PhotoshopNik Collection

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Understanding Camera Raw


A digital photograph is only 1’s and 0’s!

The digital image processor in your camera converts into a recognizable image and save in a JPEG standard format which can be read using most display devices. This is only a fraction of the data that was captured by the sensor. By saving a compressed and automatically processed image, you’ll be limited by the capability of the camera’s image processing hardware and firmware.

But a RAW image can be manipulated in a number of ways to correct for white balance, color temperature, sharpness, contrast, highlights etc., So why settle for what the camera thinks the picture should look like?

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Work Flow Chart


Remove Dust Spots and Obstructions

Bright and Dark Curve Correction

Resizing

Global Correction for BrightnessSaturation, Contrast, Warmth

And sharpness

Fine Sharpening

Blur “jagged edges” for overtly sharpened areas

Revert to 8bit image

Convert to 16bit image

Save as JPEG

Import Image

Lens Correction

Color Temperature Correction

Sharpness and Noise Correction

Horizon Correction

Crop

Lens Filter

Horizon Correction

Crop

Is this a RAW Image?

YES

NO

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Obstructions and Dust-spots


Often times you may see dark spots appear on your digital image that were not in your field of view when you took the shot. These are caused by particles of dust sitting in the optical path between your camera lens and the sensor.

While the best way to avoid them is to make sure your camera sensor and lens surfaces are always clean and dust-free, it does take a certain amount of skill to do this without causing permanent damage to expensive equipment.

Post processing allows one to remove these spots. Several tools can be used in PhotoShop: “clone” and “heal” are the most common ones.

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Color Contrast


An image may appear dull when you try to view it. This may be for any number of reasons: bad lighting, bad choice of aperture and speed controls etc., However, post processing allows for remedy.

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BEFORE AFTER

Sharpness and Noise


Sharpness is the single most important factor in a photograph. While most other issues can be fixed in post processing, it is nearly impossible to fix this.

As explained earlier, digital devices interpret sharpness as differences in intensity between boundaries. If a boundary between a red and green patch is blurred, the color may transition between these two areas over many pixels whereas in the sharp image, the distance between them may only be a few pixels wide. A camera and lens combination that cannot resolve detail to begin with, can never be made sharp. The required information was simply never captured/saved. A high resolution sensor combined with a powerful lens may be what’s needed to capture the image you have in mind. A good starting image can always be made to look sharper, crispier etc.,

Noise is simply lack of information. An overtly compressed (several pixels’ information averaged into one to save space) will produce what’s called “JPEG Compression Noise”. In night shot, noise can be minimized by using long exposure times – provided the camera is held still using a solid support like a tripod.

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Re-sizing and Saving


For most applications, the file size needs to be decreased so it can be transmitted, displayed on a monitor or printed on media.

One has to be mindful of the end application to ensure the best rendering of the re-sized image.

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? ? ?

Step-by-step Photo EditingRAW Image Import


Click on the “Lens Corrections” tab

Step-by-step Photo EditingRAW Image LENS CORRECTION


Select “Enable Profile Corrections”

Select “Remove Chromatic Aberrations”

Step-by-step Photo EditingRAW Image WHITE BALANCE and COLOR TEMPERATURE CORRECTION


Select “Auto” for White Balance

Select “Auto” for Tint; adjust “Recovery”, “Blacks” to remove clipping from histogram

Click on the “Basic” tab

Step-by-step Photo EditingRAW Image BEFORE SHARPENING


Change Magnification to 100% and Click on “Detail” tab

Step-by-step Photo EditingRAW Image AFTER SHARPENING


Adjust “Radius”, “Masking” and “Luminance” until you reach a smooth but detailed texture

Slide “Amount” to 100; Keep “Detail” at 25

Step-by-step Photo EditingRAW Image HORIZON LEVELING and CROPPING


Select “Leveling” tool and run it along horizon

Change Magnification back to “Fit Image” and Click on “Basic” tab

Select “Crop” tool and select the portion of image you want

When done, click on “palm” and click “open image” to import it to Photoshop

Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop Image Depth Conversion


Change Image Mode to 16bits/color channel

This will give you much better rendition during subsequent editing.

Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop THRESHOLD CORRECTION


Make a copy of the Background Layer

Then click here and select “Threshold” from the drop down Menu

Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop THRESHOLD: Dark Point Determination


A third Layer named “Threshold” will be automatically created

And a new histogram window willopen; slide the arrow to the left to reveal the darkestParts of your image.

Make a note of these spots(like the x,y co-ordinates)

Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop THRESHOLD: White Point Determination


And a new histogram window willopen; slide the arrow to the right to reveal the BRIGHTESTParts of your image.

Make a note of these spots(like the x,y co-ordinates)

Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop THRESHOLD CORRECTION USING “Curves”


Delete the “Threshold” Layer

Open “Image” / “Adjustments” / “Curves”

Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop THRESHOLD CORRECTION USING “Curves”


A “Curves” Histogram Window will open

Select the left most “eye-dropper” tool and use it to click on one of your “dark spots”

Recall these DARK SPOTS? BRIGHT SPOTS?

Then select the right most “eye dropper” and repeat for “Bright Spots”

Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop IMAGE AFTER THRESHOLD CORRECTION


Step-by-step Photo EditingNIK IMAGE AFTER BRIGHTNESS, CONTRAST, WARMTH CORRECTION LOCALLY/GLOBALLY


Step-by-step Photo EditingNIK IMAGE AFTER FIRST NOISE REDUCTION


Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop SELECTIVE EDITING


Select part of the image you want to edit and draw a boundary

Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop SELECTIVE COPYING ONTO NEW LAYER


Copy the selection into a New Layer

Step-by-step Photo EditingNIK SELECTIVE DETAIL EXTRACTION


Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop MERGING TWO LAYERS


Select the “Detail Extractor” Layer from previous step

“Brush” away the edgesin preparation for merging this layer

“Opacity” should be “100%”,“Size” large enough to cover edges”

Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop RESIZING


Flatten the Image

Then RESIZE with these settings

Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop POST RESIZED SHARPENING


Select “Filter” / “Sharpen” / “Unsharp Mask”

Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop POST RESIZED SHARPENING SETTINGS


A New Window named “Unsharp Mask” will open

Select “Radius” of 0.3; “Threshold” of 3; then slide “Amount” up or down till there’s only a few JAGGED edges on the ZOOMED Image (Balaka)

Hover your mouse over an Area with sharp edges; increase mag to 500%

Step-by-step Photo EditingNIK NOISE REDUCTION AFTER POST RESIZED SHARPENING


Step-by-step Photo EditingAFTER SECOND NIK NOISE REDUCTION


Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop: READY FOR LAST TOUCH-UPs


Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop REMOVING JAGGED EDGES, TOUCH-UP SMOOTHING/SHARPENING


Select “Blur” Tool

Strength 67%Size “3px”Hardness 4%

Increase image magnification to 500%

Then “Blur” the JAGGED EDGES away.

Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop AFTER JAGGED EDGES REMOVED


Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop VIBRANCE AND SATURATION ENHANCEMENT


Switch back to 8bit/Channel Mode; Save As “JPEG”. And you’re DONE!!

Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop Revert back to 8bit/Channel Mode


Step-by-step Photo EditingPhotoshop Final SAVE



JPEG: 13MB; RAW: 47.3MB 1MB

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Standard Disclaimer: All information is provided FREE OF CHARGE and its use restricted to Non-profit and Non-Commercial purposes ONLY. The userexplicitly understands that the author of this guide cannot be held liable for any damages arising from its use.

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Digital Photo Post-processing Guide