SP reader Deoyani Deokar from Mumbai says: “This photograph of a half broken old tree trunk was taken in ‘Van Vihar Park’ at Manali in the late afternoon/evening time, as I wanted to capture its different shape.
The picture is edited by “Enhance picture” effect with slightly less exposure. No other editing has been done on it.”
I appreciate your effort but there are a few questions you must ask yourself before you take a picture. What is it in my picture frame that is most important? Obviously, in your picture, it is the broken tree trunk. If that be so, that area has to be sharp (which, unfortunately isn’t in your picture).
Is the lighting perfect (or near perfect)? In your case, the light is dappled (filtering through the trees and causing very Old Tree Trunkuneven lighting). The mid-area of the tree trunk in the foreground is overexposed. The trees in the background are a bit too dark (possibly because the camera meter ‘saw’ the brightness in the center of the frame and adjusted the exposure).
Original Image |
 Edited Image |
So what is the solution? The solution is to avoid contrasty lighting if possible. Secondly, you have used a shutter speed of 1/60sec. As far as image sharpness is concerned, this is a dicey shutter speed (its not that you cannot get sharp pictures at 1/60sec; but higher shutter speeds will definitely improve on the image sharpness). So instead of using ISO 80, you could have used, say, ISO 200 which would have improved your shutter speed by about 1 1/3 stops, leading to a sharper picture (and ISO 200 would not have made the picture noisy!).
So now the only solution was to improve the picture using Photoshop. Photoshop should not be considered a ‘stand-by’ for poor photography techniques, but it can come to our rescue in difficult lighting situations such as this.
I selected the bright areas on the tree trunk, feathered the selection (to have a better blending of tones), and darkened the area using Levels. Similarly, I also lightened the trees in the background. Then I applied a bit of sharpening.
 Original Image |
 Edited Image |
The Bird
Dr.Prakash Lalpotu from Basmathnagar, Maharashtra, sent us this photo of a bird resting on a tree on a hot summer afternoon. He wants to know how this picture could be improved.
First and foremost let me say that this is a nice picture. I like the fact that the background is (reasonably) fuzzy, which forces the viewer’s gaze on the bird. The bird itself is quite sweet and alert. There is a hint of catch-light in its eye and that adds to the picture.
Unfortunately, there is a out of focus leaf in the foreground, which is quite disturbing. In a picture of this type, there is nothing that a photographer can do. Very often he cannot even try a different viewpoint because by the time he tries to do that, the bird may fly off.
To improve this picture, I brought out some detail in the bird’s eye (used the Dodge tool for that), and using the Sponge tool, I improved the tones on its beak. Then the image was sharpened.
The Butterfly
Let’s take a look at SP reader Karthik G’s butterfly. The butterfly is beautifully captured; its body and wings are parallel to the camera sensor plane and hence is sharp all over. This is not always easy as butterflies generally keep fleeting from one flower to another as they gather nectar. The background could have been more de-focused, but is acceptable. The flowers at the left bottom of the photo are cut off but that does not seem to bother me; what bothers me is that they are somewhat overexposed.
So how can the picture be improved? What would I have done if I were you?
Considering that this is not a posed picture and that a photographer does not always have the best of shooting conditions, I think the only way to improve this picture is to take help from our old friend – Photoshop.
 Original Image |
 Edited Image |
To me, the original picture seems somewhat light in tone. So I first made a copy of the Background layer and changed the Blending mode to Multiply. This darkened the picture, but more than what I wanted. Hence I reduced the Opacity (to 64 percent for this picture), at which point, the butterfly seemed perfect in tonality but still, the background was too dark. I wanted the butterfly to be darker but the background to be the same tone as in the original photo (to create a better contrast).
So I created a white Mask by clicking on the ‘Add layer mask’ icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Then using a medium-soft brush (with black as the Foreground colour), I painted the background at 100 percent opacity, which brought it back to the original tone.
Next, I selected the overexposed flowers at the lower end of the picture, and brought back the lost tonality using Levels. Finally, I added a bit of sharpening to complete the edit.
