Filters Gone Wild

[mbrager]

When I took this shot of Victoria's inner harbour during a visit there last week, I couldn't wait to get home to process it in the new Color Efex Pro 4, as discussed in several other threads this week. I discovered the Reflector filters, the Polarizing filters (even though I shot this with a CP filter) and best of all, the Skylight filters. These do an impressive job of saturating the colors without going overboard. I thought it was a nice solution to very, very bright sunlight. The gradient filters are also very helpful. Your thoughts would be welcome. I'd also be curious about peoples' experiences with the software bundle as a whole, since it seems like a steep learning curve to understand everything it can do. Perhaps that's for another thread.

[Runmonty]

Really like the shiny water, and yes the colour is popped nicely.

I haven't used the reflector/ polarising/ skylight filter much. I find I use the tonal contrast filter in Color Efex a lot, often eliminating the need to play with curves. Glamour glow can be really effective on the right shot too.

HDR Efex is my favourite HDR software and I use realistic/deep setting the most.

Silver Efex is brilliant for B & W but also for enhancing color images when used on different layer with the right blend modes

If you can, really try to use the control points, as they make this software sing.

Still learning noise reduction and sharpening options as they are new to me this week.

I recommend the webinars I mentioned on another thread, for lots of little tricks. I would love a discussion to open up about this as after several months I am still learning a lot as I go.

[Marko]

For bright light like this I think the PP is quite good. Nothing looks washed out and shadows are good.
Colours are a just a bit oversaturated for my personal taste. (just a bit though...and I'm likely in the minority).
I've been playing more with the Topaz suite of filters, but I'm going to give Nik another try (I have played with some of their stuff in the past but concentrated mostly on silver effex).

I recommend the webinars I mentioned on another thread, for lots of little tricks. I would love a discussion to open up about this as after several months I am still learning a lot as I go.

Can you repost that link again RM? thx.

[Runmonty]

Can you repost that link again RM? thx.

Over 200 videos of length from a couple of minutes to over an hour here Webinars

Scroll down to to see the list of archived webinars.

[mbrager]

I've been finding the comments about filters, etcetera particularly useful in terms of helping me decide how to process images. The webinars linked above are excellent and very helpful in detailing what the software is capable of. RM's point about using the Control Points is extremely important, I have found, in giving detailed control over smaller areas of a photo. Here's another image from the same trip. I used the contrast only filter, and the warming filters for the area outside the stone face. It could fit in this month's assignment, framing, but I did shoot it last month so I'll (happily) just have to shoot another image. I would add that I'm understanding that no amount of processing replaces a good composition in the first place.

Kitsilano, Vancouver

[kevinobrien]

I like the image M. I personally think its a bit top heavy although I can see that you have tried to keep the reflections in the image, As for the effect I'm old school I'm afraid and I think you have popped the colours just a tad too much but I know there will be a lot of others that agree with you, just my opinion.