Help on this one please...

[brewmaster15]

Hey guys,

I retook my fry shots from that wild cross pair. Made a change in the tank. I didn't like the poorly painted white background. So I cut a piece of black acrylic I had and finely sanded it to a matte finish. I placed this inside the tank and took a bunch of really decent pics. The problem is using the black acrylic fixed the previous poorly painted white background, but added another problem! These fry eat like pigs and even after a 90 % water change the water still has particular matter. You don't see it in the pics with the white background... you do now!

I can't add a power filter, and don't want to stress these fry out with more water changing and mom flopping on them.

So heres what I have more or less on all my pics.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/452/32255706400_dc4770710a_b.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/R9jVJY)IMGP1534_03 (https://flic.kr/p/R9jVJY) by Al Sabetta (https://www.flickr.com/photos/130140749@N05/), on Flickr

The spot removal tool on my darktable software is great for a spot. I will go crazy trying to use it here. What would you do to remove the "stars" from this night sky! I'm just wondering if your lightroom or photoshop has a better tool for cleaning this up, if so I may be able to find the equivalent in darktable.

Permission to down load and edit here.

thanks,
al

[Second Hand Pat]

Al, I tried the adjustment brush in LR and masked out the fish and took the exposure slider all the way to black. It looks pretty good in LR but the exported image was not much better. :(
Pat

[rickztahone]

In lightroom, make your "black" the selection point with your wand select. Once you do that, simply lower the brightness of the image and it will only affect that area. If you have the RAW file I can do this for you.

This is an absolutely gorgeous shot btw

I wish the eye was a little brighter but that is just nit picking at this point.

[brewmaster15]

Al, I tried the adjustment brush in LR and masked out the fish and took the exposure slider all the way to black. It looks pretty good in LR but the exported image was not much better. :(
Pat

I had tried similar in Darktable but it didnt work well either.

[brewmaster15]

In lightroom, make your "black" the selection point with your wand select. Once you do that, simply lower the brightness of the image and it will only affect that area. If you have the RAW file I can do this for you.

This is an absolutely gorgeous shot btw

I wish the eye was a little brighter but that is just nit picking at this point.

Ricardo, I will have to see if I can duplicate that process with darktable tools.It sounds like what I was looking for. Something I could easily do. I have a bunch of keepers from this set.. once I deal with the white specs.

What i would love is to find a tool thst I could select a spot of black and have it propagate to surrounding areas. That would be perfect!

Thanks on the pic. Im running out of time for these shots. Moms going to get separated soon.

[Discus-n00b]

In Photoshop I use the Filter/Noise/Dust & Scratches tool. Only go enough pixels to do the job, otherwise you start putting artifact looking stylized marks into the image (for black it matters less). So you'd select all of the black, magic wand or the quick selection tool. Being borderline OCD I even zoom in 100-200% to get the correct outlines of the fins and everything. Then you use your Filter/Noise/Dust and Scratches option, select the amount of pixels (for small jobs It never seems to go above 10 or 11. Black it'd be fine this high or higher, other background and it starts looking a bit funky.) Then boom, that's it. On top of the fish though you are pretty much stuck free hand cloning though in my experience. You'd be surprised what the NADA pics look like before this. Just a mess of particles and microbubbles.

Here is my edit doing this including cloning. Sometimes the selection can't select the smaller fins so you may have to take the original pic and overlay it onto the edit and just have that part of the original showing, I did that in this edit....can't tell.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/529/32636404925_1e877e02e0_k.jpg

[Discus-n00b]

Y'all are making me give away all of my trade secrets! ;)

[BmoreBraap]

What an amazing pic Al. New desktop background

[rickztahone]

Looks great Matt. TFS your behind the scenes edit workflow :)

[brewmaster15]

Thanks everyone, That gives me some good info... The Post processing tools dark table gives you are powerful but not very intuitive.. Every time I encounter something different to deal with I have to really work through the options to find the tools....once I have done it, its cake and makes sense. Gimp is a bit easier and more photo shop like and what I used to use before dark table. I may play around there some more.

Matt, awesome job and thanks for the trade secret, I don't spend much taking tank shots so tips from a master is greatly appreciated. Thank you Sensei!;)

al

[brewmaster15]

A bit tough finding the best tools. I did find several methods that I could use, some were more labor intensive than others... Gimp has several brush options and they can be customized and saved. I ended doing this image with those, but still playing with other options.

One thing I found while searching was a pretty cool free open source software you guys might want to down load and play with it. Its free and works with Windows, Mac and Linux.. Its called LightZone. Its a bit different from typical processing software but has some pretty cool features.. I have only scratched the surface on it but I like it so far..

http://lightzoneproject.org/content/about


so here is what the image looked like before...

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/452/32255706400_dc4770710a_b.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/R9jVJY)IMGP1534_03 (https://flic.kr/p/R9jVJY) by Al Sabetta (https://www.flickr.com/photos/130140749@N05/), on Flickr

and this was after Gimp.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/749/31836906573_d598566a8f_b.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/Qvjt9i)IMGP1534GP1_01 (https://flic.kr/p/Qvjt9i) by Al Sabetta (https://www.flickr.com/photos/130140749@N05/), on Flickr

[Second Hand Pat]

That cleaned very nicely Al. This is a fantastic image BTW. :)
Pat

[rickztahone]

Looks good Al, but you can see some brush strokes in that last rendition. You can clean that up by brushing more i believe but I find it noticeable on my screen unlike with Matt's, his is solid black.

Matt, maybe you can show a step-by-step of your workflow for us?

Do you have LR as well? More people would have that than PS I think.

[brewmaster15]

Ricardo,
Thanks, I just upped the hardness on the brush.. Hows it now?
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/760/32650542105_e70f788018_b.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/RKdyD8)IMGP1534GP1_03 (https://flic.kr/p/RKdyD8) by Al Sabetta (https://www.flickr.com/photos/130140749@N05/), on Flickr

Only place I see it is a little around the tails?

al

[RogueDiscus]

For us less educated, can you direct us to the brush strokes you mentioned. Do you need to zoom in? I'm sure it takes a trained eye, but I'd like to learn. I had trouble seeing them in Pat's eagle pics too.

[brewmaster15]

ignore the fish color... just look at the background...

This one has the brush strokes that Ricardo mentioned...
106643

this one has them removed by using a harder brush...

106644

al

[LoGeek]

Al, the fish and the picture are stunning! You should be proud!

[RichT]

Really nice image. May be one of my all time favorites !!

[rickztahone]

Ricardo,
Thanks, I just upped the hardness on the brush.. Hows it now?
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/760/32650542105_e70f788018_b.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/RKdyD8)IMGP1534GP1_03 (https://flic.kr/p/RKdyD8) by Al Sabetta (https://www.flickr.com/photos/130140749@N05/), on Flickr

Only place I see it is a little around the tails?

al

Much much better. I do see some very faint ghosting around the tail as you mentioned. Honestly, I would work this image till you wouldn't see the tail ones either, simply because it is one heck of a shot and I'd consider even printing it.

[Discus-n00b]

Ricardo I'll see what I can do for workflow. I need to find some screen capture software, would make it so much cleaner than taking tons of screenshots lol. Going to research that more, been wanting something anyway so paid or not I'll see whats out there. And I have Lightroom, and access to the full adobe suite, but I mainly just do everything in Photoshop. I haven't really found a need to go with both yet. I'm fairly OCD with my files so I don't want any program cataloging for me. I already do that. I've heard Lightroom is faster, but I just feel more in control and confident with Photoshop. The camera RAW tools should all be the same. Photoshop is a big Caterpillar 993k loader and Lightroom is a Bobcat. They can accomplish the same goal, one just has a bunch more buttons and one is just a bit more nimbal and faster than the other especially when fully batch processing. I will do timelapses in Lightroom because of this. But if I'm only showing 1-2 images from any given set, especially when the lighting or scenery has changed I will use Photoshop. You know if Lightroom would get rid of it's constant cataloging I would be much more inclined to use it more......but I guess they wouldn't have a market for that beside photoshop.

It really is a striking image Al. Your final version there through that new software looks close or identical to mine tbh by my naked eye. Nice job there.

[Second Hand Pat]

Matt, if you are on a Microsoft OS try srip32.
Pat

[brewmaster15]

Thanks again everyone for the suggestions and feedback... I've settled on at least one method so far...


https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/653/32656897605_ceda880453_b.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/RKM8UH)IMGP1520_01 (https://flic.kr/p/RKM8UH) by Al Sabetta (https://www.flickr.com/photos/130140749@N05/), on Flickr

[brewmaster15]

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/672/32616306476_e055b28d8d_b.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/RGc6zE)IMGP1518gp1_01 (https://flic.kr/p/RGc6zE) by Al Sabetta (https://www.flickr.com/photos/130140749@N05/), on Flickr

[Discus-n00b]

Al you have some perfect posters here lol These are excellent.

[Second Hand Pat]

They are excellent Al, love them all. :D
Pat

[Jack L]

dust and scratches + magic wands is what came to my mind, is that what did it? i see i mentioned above.

[brewmaster15]

Thanks again Guys. I got lucky and got a few more in this set, maybe I will hold out on them until the calendars :) Yesterday I separated the female from the fry and put her back with the male. Maybe I will have a take-2 in a few weeks with more fry.

Jack,
Theres alot of ways to post process pics... The ones you mention would work here. My software is open source linux software so I run in different pack than the rest of the team here. The software does the same thing but alot of the tools are different... I relied on using "brushes" of various hardness, mainly to blend the edges of the fish a little as I subtracted all the junk from the open water. Like Matts Technique, I had to zoom in really close as I worked the edges.

hth,
al

[Debow]

These are worthy of the Simplydiscus calendar.

[Jack L]

Thanks again Guys. I got lucky and got a few more in this set, maybe I will hold out on them until the calendars :) Yesterday I separated the female from the fry and put her back with the male. Maybe I will have a take-2 in a few weeks with more fry.

Jack,
Theres alot of ways to post process pics... The ones you mention would work here. My software is open source linux software so I run in different pack than the rest of the team here. The software does the same thing but alot of the tools are different... I relied on using "brushes" of various hardness, mainly to blend the edges of the fish a little as I subtracted all the junk from the open water. Like Matts Technique, I had to zoom in really close as I worked the edges.

hth,
al

So you run Linux instead of Windows then and i assume the open source photo sw won't run on Windows. My version of Photoshop is so old, not sure if it will even run on Windows 10 anymore

[brewmaster15]

I run Linux, though I have a small laptop with dual boot windows and Linux for presentations...I am a die hard Linux OS user.:) I use open source where I can. Darktable, RawTherapee and Gimp Mostly. Recently started playing with Lightzone,

You can download Gimp for Windows...its very similar to photoshop.
https://www.gimp.org/downloads/
I highly recommend it. There are plenty of tutorials online as well.

The software I mentioned earlier this thread ... Lightzone does also offer windows versions.

http://lightzoneproject.org/content/about

for the budget minded.. GIMP and Lightzone are FREE:) though I always try and support open source where I can. Free to use doesn't mean resources didn't go into it. But you can try it all you want free.

These are very powerful processing engines.

al

[SMB2]

I did a quick pass with brushes in LR as well as spot tool. Added a slight eye shine.
Used to have this problem with UW images and backscatter.
PS with a black mask etc is the way to go, I just don't know how. Matt's looks great.
106725

[Jack L]

I run Linux, though I have a small laptop with dual boot windows and Linux for presentations...I am a die hard Linux OS user.:) I use open source where I can. Darktable, RawTherapee and Gimp Mostly. Recently started playing with Lightzone,

You can download Gimp for Windows...its very similar to photoshop.
https://www.gimp.org/downloads/
I highly recommend it. There are plenty of tutorials online as well.

The software I mentioned earlier this thread ... Lightzone does also offer windows versions.

http://lightzoneproject.org/content/about

for the budget minded.. GIMP and Lightzone are FREE:) though I always try and support open source where I can. Free to use doesn't mean resources didn't go into it. But you can try it all you want free.

These are very powerful processing engines.

al

Downloaded GIMP, initial impressions positive. Obviously not the same as PS, but feels a similar and runs MUCH faster than PS elements i used after PS version i had got so old.

Thanks