On 2015-07-28 18:29:55 +0000, Bill W said:

On Tue, 28 Jul 2015 05:41:45 -0700, Savageduck
wrote:

On 2015-07-28 07:25:49 +0000, Bill W said:

Okay, I was forced to post some air show photos:

;-)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/489821...7654121813454/

Comments

are

welcome, but on the processing, of course. They're just
planes in the sky, not much you can do with those as far as
composition goes.

Don't worry about that. It looks as though you were positioned near the
end of the runway where all the planes were on final approach. You had
some interesting captures.

Yes, right outside the base.

The shots of the "Buffs" B-52s reminded me of the days in the 60's and
70s, when at about 3 PM-4:30 PM everyday, there was an endless stream
of B-52s overhead on the approach to Griffiss AFB returning from their
SAC mission,

Anyway, all work was done in LR, all photos were cropped, and all had
at least some of the following adjustments: color temp, exposure,
shadows, highlights, clarity, vibrance, saturation, and sharpening,
and one photo used the haze removal slider (the one with the sun in
the upper right corner). Those are the things I'm interested in
comments on. I see after posting them that there is noise in the sky
in some of them. I really need to look into that, but it might just be
aggressive sharpening. I also failed to remove spots in a couple of
the photos. I do need to learn to clean those lenses...

There are some shots which have great potential; The F-16, The F-18,
the F-86 (that has some highlight clipping which needs fixing), and The
F-22. I am not clear on the ID of one of the older fighters, but I
think it is either an F-80, or an F-94.
Also the B-52 & B-1B are impressive, but need some dust spot clean up.

I did overlook various spots in some photos. You say some shots have
potential, but did any of them look okay as finished photos? My
opinion was that a couple of them did, but others were just sloppy
work.

Certainly there were quite a few which were fine as presented. The
deciding factor is your intent for presentation. Those would be fine
for online viewing via Flickr, but might need a whole bunch of
adjustment and cleaning up for print.
Here I was thinking particularly of the F-86, the F-18, and F-22 shots.

The P-51 shot was spoilt by the sun flare.

That's the one I used the dehazing slider on. It actually worked
wonders (it was a borderline delete photo), and I sort of like the
effect. Have you tried it on any photos yet? I though it gave this
photo a sort of artsy look.

I ahve tried it on a few landscapes with atmospheric haze. However, I
was not particularly happy with the results as the changes to contrast
were not particularlylocalized, but total. That seems to deepen
saturation and I don't like that after having made adjustments in the
Basic panel.

On to LR Post.
Are these RAW or JPEG originals?

Raw. I never touch the jpegs anymore. I'll probably just go to raw
only in the camera settings.

Great!

Spots (dust spots anyway) are more likely to be on the sensor than the
lens. It is worth learning how to clean the sensor if you are using a
DSLR or a mirrorless system.

There were spots on the lens, but I did notice that there might be
other problems. Unfortunately, it looked more like pixel size, which
worries me.

Most lens dust is not going to show on the image unless it is plastered on.
Sensor dust spots are quite typical and easily recognized once you are
familiar with them.

This might help. Select the Spot removal tool, then under the workspace
you will see "Visualize Spots", check that box and you will see what
those pesky spots really look like. Here is what that looks like in a
2005 shot with my D70 (AKA "The Dust Magnet")
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1295663/FileChute/screenshot_235.jpg
....and the cleaned up version.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1295663/FileChute/screenshot_236.jpg

....and the cropped & cleaned final result, that is the dust battle
field where I learned my sensor cleaning
https://db.tt/XKRfzt31

Most of those can be addressed in post.

Where I bothered, they came out easily.

Good.

Since you are using LR for post remember that all adjustments are
non-destructive and reversable and can always be revisited and tweaked.

Obviously, you are using a workflow you are comfortable with but here
is a little input from me .
In LR my RAW workflow goes something like this:
1: Set "Camera Calibration".
2: Check "Lens Correction" which includes correcting CA, zoomed in to
1:1 on contrast edges/fringes.
3: "Basic" panel:
a: Set Black Point, with the cursor on the "Blacks" slider, hold down
the alt/Option key, then adjust until you have one or two areas of
black spots on the white background.
b: Set White point, repeat the procedure above.
c: Check highlights the same way sliding to the left until hot spots
dissapear and clipping is dealt with.

For the following the alt/Option key technique isn't used.
d: Clarity, adjust for taste but don't over do.
e: Shadows, sliding to right is going to open up some of the shadow
detail without adjusting exposure.
f: Exposure, tweak if needed.
g: Contrast, Tweak if needed.
h: WB (Temp, & Tint), Tweak if needed.

4: "Detail"
a: Sharpening, again use the alt/Option key while moving the slider to
the right to between 60-115. Then do the same with Radius, setting from
1.0-1.5. Finally with Masking hold down the alt/Option key and slide to
the right, usually to 80-95 so that only the area needing sharpening is
sharpened.
b: Noise, pick an area of sky and zoom in to 1:1, hold down the
alt/Option key and the image will apear grey. If you see any noise move
the luminance slider to the right usually somewhere between 25-40.

FINALLY crop to finish.

I'll give all this a try - there's a few things in there that I wasn't
even aware of - maybe doing some over again. I also think that some of
them ended up looking a bit HDR-ish, and I think it's because I
overdid the shadow adjustment. And why do you crop only at the end?

Just habit.

--
Regards,

Savageduck