Dreaming of an Ideal World!!!

We always think that a couple of hours drive to Manchinabele dam ares is always productive.  The scenario was not any different today.  While I have a lot more images to process, this image was something different.  We came here to shoot our famous king fisher.  Instead, we saw this curios squirrel.

All that I use is DPP (Digital Photo Professional), a Canon image processing application that comes with Canon SLR range cameras.  Usage of Photoshop is limited to running Neat Image and automating some process to add a border and copyright messages.  Mahesh suggested some changes in the order and steps that I do in order to get more lively colors; and I think it works.  Here is an image that I post processed earlier using my fast and DPP oriented methods.  I re-processed the same image today.  Here is the new image.

You can clearly see that the bird (brownfish owl) stands out in the new image.

Basically, the new workflow is as given below

• Use DPP to adjust the following
• Adjust white balane (I use cloudy or shade as it gives a warm color)
• Adjust picture style if required.
• Change sharpness level (a little)
• Save the image with sufficient size and 16bit TIFF format.
• Take the image into PhotoShop CS3.
• Find out and fix black and while points of the image
• Fix Shadow and Highlight
• Above operations can be done on the master image or duplicate layers.  As Mahesh suggested I do it on a layer
• Use unsharp max, and do a selective sharpening.  Also attempt to do multiple levels of sharpening if required.
• Add border and copyright string
• Take the image through Neat Image
• Save the image for web and Devices

I see the difference in image quality.  The color rendition is more pleasing and crisp.