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August 28, 2014 at 7:25 pm #7235Mr. QuebecParticipantAugust 28, 2014 at 7:49 pm #7240Ezra MorleyModerator
I personally like the second one best. It definitely looks more natural/true to life. In my opinion, the desaturated one looks far more unnatural than “too green”.
September 5, 2014 at 11:29 am #7413James StaddonKeymasterI do like the second one too. What program did you use to desaturate it? You can do selective saturation or hue adjustment in Lightroom or Photoshop if you want to just remove/change the green.
What does your histogram look like? I’d brighten it up a bit.
September 5, 2014 at 11:48 am #7418Ezra MorleyModeratorI was just going to say, you could use Lightroom’s ‘HSL’ panel to selectively desaturate the green, hopefully without affecting the rest of the colors.
I turned down the greens, and increased the oranges to make the bill stand out a little more. I also included the Histogram, which, as @JamesStaddon said, is underexposed.
September 5, 2014 at 6:35 pm #7427Mr. QuebecParticipantSeptember 5, 2014 at 7:32 pm #7430Ezra MorleyModeratorI think that’s Windows Live Photo Gallery
I used to use that before I invested in Adobe Lightroom. I don’t think you can edit specific colors with Windows Photo Gallery though. 🙁
September 5, 2014 at 7:46 pm #7431Mr. QuebecParticipantYes I think it’s that too.
Do you see a really big difference between these two programs? (I know you will say yes, but my question is more : is it a $150 difference? Is it really worth it?)September 5, 2014 at 8:11 pm #7432Ezra MorleyModeratorOh, there’s no question that Lightroom is better. How much better is a matter of how much photography you do, and whether you shoot in RAW or not. One thing that I really dislike about Windows Photo Gallery, is that it tries to be a “lossless” editor like Lightroom. But the way it does that is by saving JPG copies of your photos in a folder on your hard-drive so if you don’t like the edits you made, you can click ‘revert to original’ The problem is, that if you use it for several hundred photos, you’ve got a copy of every one of the original photos on your hard drive taking up lots of space! That may not be a problem for some people, but I work on a small SSD, so space is very precious. On the other hand, Lightroom saves a small 8kb or so file for the edits, so there’s very little impact on hard drive space.
Lightroom is just so much better, that there’s really no comparison. You don’t have to pay $150 for it, I got it for about $99. I just saw the older version Lightroom 4 on sale for $59.99! (Unfortunately it’s back up to $79.99 now at adorama.com But that’s still a pretty good price.) Lightroom is also a lot more powerful, it will let you control individual colors for one thing, and apply selective sharpening, noise reduction, local adjustments with brushes, cropping, watermarking, just about anything you can think of!
If you really want to edit RAW files for free, you should definitely give RawTherapee a try. It’s open source, and seems to be quite powerful. It has a much higher learning curve than Lightroom, but you just have to find a few tutorials. A video tutorial was how I learned to use Lightroom, I can’t tell you how confused I was when I first got it! I found a few video tutorials here which should help you out if you want to try it.
There’s also a wikipedia site dedicated to RawTherapee which you can find here. RawPedia
Please note that I did not preview them, as my internet access is slow right now. I have no idea if they might contain inappropriate content, etc. If they do, please tell me, and I’ll remove the link.September 8, 2014 at 7:47 am #7434James StaddonKeymasterYes, use what you’ve got until you start to feel limited with it. That’s a signal it’s probably time to upgrade. If you can’t justify spending $99, though, then make it a point to use the camera and program you do have to earn the amount you need for the upgrade. You’d be surprised at what you can do with what you’ve got.
To make a buck with your photography usually involves portrait stuff, so be available for opportunities that come up. Often doing stuff for free a few times gives you the know-how to do it paid. When I was getting started, I entered my photos into local contests at fairs and won some awards, but that’s a long shot. Keeping your ears open about photography needs in the people around you (real estate, food, business cards, newspaper, portraits) is the key to earning something with your camera.
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