I would like your deadly photo more if you cropped out the partial building at the right, and also the bottom, and maybe some more of the top of the trees:
Reminds me of the trick question “How many dead people are in this graveyard?”
Trick answer “All of them.”
see at the bottom of your screenshot →
and try 1.05 or else instead of 0.80
That might be the perfect answer for this image, but since I obviously don’t understand enough about “gamma”, how would I know what to do without asking you?
I was entering a new thread asking how to use the “gamma” tool when I got a notice about your post. I was adjusting the gamma setting up and down, but I don’t know how to select the most appropriate setting.
Should I post my new thread? I couldn’t find an existing one that explains this. Why 1.05? Why not 1.0, or 1.5, or some other number? Do I just try stuff on my screen until it looks best? Or is there an article that explains what I need to do, and why, and how? I doubt I’m the only person here puzzled about this…
Gamma 1.0 is the standard setting at least in Windows. Values below darken the dark tones and …
I just wonder why your screenshot shows 0.80 – seems, that you changed settings.
Reset all should bring it back to standard.
Play with it and see, what gamma value works for your untreated pic.
‘Experience’ is the result of experimenting, not from reading or watching videos.
Use virtual copies or copy some files into a new folder to play with.
Just me, trying to see what effect this would create. I think I’ve already reset it to 1.0 - is your view different than mine, because you’re on Windows?
Been doing that.
I still read and watch videos, but what I can actually DO sticks in my brain better - I’m much more likely to recall it. Eventually, maybe after a long time, some things become intuitive. Gamma is a long ways from being intuitive, and I think I need to do a lot more reading.
Hindsight is 20:20. I was a fool to continue to shoot JPG, but back then, I didn’t really understand all the implications. What I thought I knew was wrong. And nobody I knew back then pushed me to changing. Magazines - they all wanted jpg images, no exceptions. That’s all in the past.
Change of topic - I spent two days trying to capture a good image of the Chinese designed (centuries ago) fishing nets in Ft. Kochi, India - Kerala. For three days now I am trying to find just one image I really like, which is worth posting here and sending to my friends. Maybe in a day or two.
Here’s a video that shows these nets in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNQHXcmieYo
Maybe my new 20mm lens would have helped. Maybe not. PhotoLab helps with a lot of things, but I’m not sure why I couldn’t properly show them - maybe they are just too big, and I was too close. Maybe I’ll post one here tonight or tomorrow. I may never be able to post one image that explains what it is and how it works, and also looks like a good image.
Photography (for me) is just as difficult and challenging as bullseye competition, but at least with the bullseye, I know what to do. Actually DOING it is the hard part.
…and because of these discussions, I now think very differently. It’s more difficult to take a photo, because I keep seeing what I do NOT want to capture, and can’t find a way to do it right. Long ago, that didn’t bother me - I just kept doing the best I could, but I guess I was learning.
You’re aware that when editing a jpg you must use a copy.?
George
Why? PL is non-destructive. Any “changes” are written only to a sidecar, not to the original file.
Helen took this shot of what we call “carrelets” (fishing platforms), taken just to the south of Fouras, on the coast of the Vendée region of France
https://grandes-images.com/en/Landscape/Pages/France_2008.html#5
I have two simultaneous thoughts.
First, as a photograph, Helen’s carrelet photo is lovely in so many ways, and it’s interesting the way she used a long shutter speed to make the seawater look so nice.
At the same time, it lacks two things that are important to me - it seems to be a “static shot”, which I think was ideal for capturing such a lovely photo, but I would prefer to see the thing in action, with people, and hopefully enough detail so I can understand how it works. I realize that 99.9% of the people viewing it will see what Helen saw, and captured. They won’t ask the questions that I do.
My second question is that having stared at it for ten or fifteen minutes now, I’m not sure how the net system works. That has nothing to do with the beauty as a photo, but everything to do with how I see things.
I’ll try to post my one or two images later today, tomorrow at the latest. What I wanted, is a “live” photo showing the fishing net gear, and making it obvious how it works, and showing it in use, with the people operating it, as is shown so well in the video I linked to. That’s a very different goal. Helen’s photo is a perfect photo to post in this forum, as it will only be judged based on its qualities as a photograph. I want more, probably at the expense of not being as beautiful a photo.
Curious - maybe you can ask Helen if the long exposure was required to capture the image in what I suspect was low light, or was it to give the water a very different “smoothed out” look? Since the net is not in use, the smooth water blends right in with the image.
Oh, and that there are four of these fishing carralets lined up, that makes for an even prettier image, but leaves me wondering why the one in the foreground (only) has three nets, not just the one at the end. Irrelevant question when viewing the carralet only as a photo…
Yes, I’m very much aware. However little I know today, back in 2011 I was even more ignorant. Everyone shot ‘jpg’. Magazines wanted ‘jpg’ images. In retrospect, I should have only shot in ‘raw’, where the original image is untouched when editing. I never checked if the Lumix could shoot in ‘raw’, and back them, memory card sizes were minuscule compared to what we have today - and they were expensive, too.
The only time I shoot in ‘jpg’ mode nowadays, is if it is photos I don’t care about, and are just for “giveaway”. Oh, and photos when I haven’t yet learned how to set up the camera, like my cruise ship photos. If I ever shoot photos for a magazine again, I’ll probably shoot in “raw+jpg” mode, so they can have their choice.
It’s not finished yet, but this is the best I was able to do yesterday. Any feedback, good or bad, or awful, is welcome…
I could say a lot more, but for better or worse, this photo speaks for itself. I have two more views that I like equally well.
Finally, this was my attempt to capture what one of these fishing machines looks like - very early morning photo. Very hazy, foggy day. I didn’t feel like “enhancing it”, as what you see here I pretty much the way it looked to me.
This was taken with my then new, Canon PowerShot S95 camera, from 2010. There was no ‘raw capture’, just jpg. Today, it’s just an “old toy” but in 2011 it was considered a good camera with a good lens.
That’s simple. There’s a winch inside the cabin, which is where the fishermen stay warm and cook their meals. All of which, combined with the fact that it was out of season, explains why you don’t see any action.
Shooting data:
Weather was almost clear blue sky with wispy high cloud.
They all have more than one net.
As I already indicated to George, this is not relevant to PhotoLab, which doesn’t touch the original file.
Your screenshot in post #1164 shows 0.80.
If it’s not the one from your published pic, I don’t know why you are posting it.
Mike, it’s up to you to take proposals. But stop to continously argue & looking for excuses.
This I disagree with - that’s a technical concern. PhotoLab will work on my jpg and tiff images and the PhotoLab controls do what is expected. PhotoLab will also work on my scanned photos from the 1960’s.
Not touching the original file is an important bonus and good reason for shooting in ‘raw’, but PhotoLab will edit my 1960’s images from back when raw images hadn’t yet been thought of. To me, editing non-raw images is a huge benefit of PhotoLab; but for that, I’d still be stuck using Lightroom for old images.
“Do the best you can, with what you’ve got”.
Sigh… I just wanted to understand the window that shows ‘gamma’ at the bottom. I was doing as you suggested, changing the gamma setting and viewing the results. Excuses are irrelevant, and I certainly wasn’t “arguing”. I copied the window you posted, and one of the windows I was viewing, and they are very different - I guess because you’re using Windows and I’m using Mac. I never messed with that setting before, and didn’t (and still don’t) know enough to “argue” about gamma. Pretend I’m a kid, in kindergarten, who has no idea what this setting does, or means.
I posted my screenshot because it is quite different from your screenshot. Posting them both side by side I hoped would make my question more clear.
In all the years I’ve used PhotoLab, I don’t think I ever went to this window and raised/lowered the gamma. I guess (now) that this happens whenever I adjust the tone curve?
OF course. Nobody’s arguing with that. What George said (incorrectly) is that you need to make copies of JPEG files.
You seem to be missing the point. PhotoLab is perfectly capable of editing RAW as well as JPEG, TIFF and other non-RAW formats. The point I am making is that regardless of the file type, none of them have their contents changed - all changes are simply recorded in the sidecar and the database, regardless of file type. So it is totally unnecessary to make copies of JPEG, or any other format, files before editing them.
Yep, you taught me that long ago. The files I post here are the “exported” files with changes. You convinced me long ago that the .dop file has all the editing information, so my original, un-edited images, remain on my computer.
That does bring up something I’m not aware of - what if I edited these images in PL3 long ago, and want to re-do my editing. Will PL5 and 6 accept the old .dop files, and update them, or will it want to create a new .dop file more compatible with the latest versions of PhotoLab?
I have files edited as far back as PL1 and editing them automatically updates the DOP files to whichever version I am currently using. But this is not a backwards compatibility and some older versions will not read some newer versions.
