I made a preset! Feedback?

[Carol]

I left work this evening to get some meds from the pharmacy...and saw an unexpected sight in the evening sky! My DSLR wasn't with me, but my Powershot was.

My first LR preset. I've named it....Balloon Velvia.

The processing, unfortunately, does bring out the distortion from the digital zoom...both digital zoom and optical zoom were maxed out to capture this guy. Noise reduction helps some, but not that much.

Thoughts?

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I left work this evening to get some meds from the pharmacy...and saw an unexpected sight in the evening sky! My DSLR wasn't with me, but my Powershot was.

My first LR preset. I've named it....Balloon Velvia.

The processing, unfortunately, does bring out the distortion from the digital zoom...both digital zoom and optical zoom were maxed out to capture this guy. Noise reduction helps some, but not that much.

Thoughts?

First, congrats!

Second, uh, what's a preset? I'm going to guess it has something to do with post-processing?

Third, great you had a camera with you. I have been lax lately, but it is best to always have *something* handy to take photos with.

The photo on the right is indeed somewhat Velvia-like. Bright punchy colors. You're right, it does reveal the limitations in the camera. As good as modern compact cameras are, they have very small sensors, and that does make a difference in some circumstances, this being one of them. I try to avoid digital zoom; I turn it off in my compact digital cameras. Granted that you won't be able to zoom as far, but, it's just a trick anyway - it works by cropping the size of the photo in the camera, so it's just using a portion of the already-small sensor and then it 'interpolates' (fancy word for 'guesses') what the missing data should be to make it a normal dimension file again. You could do the same (or even better) later in post-processing. The real downside to digital zoom is that once the data is gone, it can't be restored later. With cropping post-processing, you can always tweak and test and tweak again as required.

Anyway, nice balloon!

 

[Carol]

I've been doing some shooting...but very little processing. Nothing like a move to interfere with the important stuff in life, eh?

A preset relates to post-processing. Lightroom is the post-processing software that Bob, Shelley, and I use. All of the processing settings that are used in the photograph can be saved to a flat file. Lightroom interprets the file one-touch way of restoring the settings. Since the output produces a simple text file, it can be shared (or even sold) with other Lightroom users, or even hand-edited.

It can also give you the power to add setting en masse to a series of photos. With my hiking photos this is a useless feature because the light is different in each one, but with something like this where the subject and lighting is steady, it can make post-processing a bit more expedient, if less individualistic.

Thanks for the tips! :asian: I'll try turning off the digital zoom.

Here is the set...it was a delight to see.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sikaranista/sets/72157624550004024/

 

[ShelleyK]

Nice coloring Carol! I have made a bunch of my own presets as well!

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Now I understand. I don't have any presets - I run Linux and use The GIMP to process my photos. Very basic stuff for me; being color-blind, I can't get too fancy or I'll wreck the photo. Crop, balance, maybe some minor sharpening mostly. If it's scanned photo negatives instead of digital images, I might use the clone tool to get rid of dust marks.