Reef Discussion

[Wrangy]

Alrighty so I thought I'd make a bit of a thread about what I do with my photo's once they've been taken. This is largely borrowed and learnt from a post made by someone else but I've changed it up a little for this and to give it my own spin haha

There's a freeware app called "Paint.net" which has many of the features photoshop has but is much more beginner friendly and a little more straight forward to use, heck even I find it easy as the process is literally 4 steps! I don't use any photoshop post-production for my pictures and pretty much solely process them through paint.net to get the shots you see in my thread :)
The first step to this procedure is to find a photo you want to touch up! My example is one of my old zoa garden under daylights:
[URL=http://s1367.photobucket.com/user/Wrangy/media/Aquarium/IMG_8957_zps53a59fb4.jpg.html][Broken External Image]:[URL]http://i1367.photobucket.com/albums/r793/Wrangy/Aquarium/IMG_8957_zps53a59fb4.jpg[/URL][/URL]

Next step is to open up paint.net for yourself and add the photo, I right-click on my photo and open with paint.net:


After that it's all about the adjustments tab! The whole process is based around the options in this tab:


Now the first step is to hit that lovely Auto-Level option and let the software adjust the levels a little, don't worry if it looks crap though:


Now that the photo has been levelled, it's time to bring it back a little bit to looking good again, this is done with the levels option. You'll be moving the middle slider of the right side:


As you can see now that the levels have been adjusted, the middle slider having been brought down to change the face brightness of the image:


The next step is to tweak the brightness and contrast, I like to turn the face brightness down a little so I bump the brightness up but if you don't push that level so far you can bring it down or how you like to taste. I always bring the contrast down 5-points as it gives a good result!


The final step is to bring the hue of the image down 5-points and the lightness down 5 as well, it gives a nice tone to the image, now the saturation is something that is completely up to personal preference! You'll get a better balanced and truer image if you turn it down a little but I like a little bit of saturation so I bump it up a little, especially if I'm using zoa's ;)


So from all of that you end up with an image that goes from this:
[URL=http://s1367.photobucket.com/user/Wrangy/media/Aquarium/IMG_8957_zps53a59fb4.jpg.html][Broken External Image]:[URL]http://i1367.photobucket.com/albums/r793/Wrangy/Aquarium/IMG_8957_zps53a59fb4.jpg[/URL][/URL]

Too looking like this :)

A pretty decent outcome given it was taken completely under the lovely daylights of the tank!

Given how much I love my zoa's and how amazing they look under those lovely blue led's, I always want to get the good pics of them at their best. I use a proper low-end DSLR camera with the standard lens, setting it to AV (aperture priority mode) and always use a custom white balance to find the right level for the photo. If you can get the shot with your phone or digital camera without that heavy blue noise (turn the blues down a touch and the whites up a little) this will allow you to get a close to blue photo to then edit into glory!
This is how a zoa pic usually starts:


And after a little magic, you can understand why I adore my zoa's!


Now that you've all had the chance to be given a run through of a little bit of software magic I expect to be seeing some amazing shots from EVERYONE now!! haha I really implore everyone to give it a red hot go and post some of their own before and after shots in this thread so that we can get the ball rolling and get everyone taking some really nice high-class photos :)

 

[Buddy]

Really good post @Wrangy
I find the most important thing is getting a decent shutter speed and using the correct white balance.
Then if it needs editing I will use Photoshop CS6 and Bridge.

 

[Wrangy]

Really good post @Wrangy
I find the most important thing is getting a decent shutter speed and using the correct white balance.
Then if it needs editing I will use Photoshop CS6 and Bridge.

Thanks :)
Yep, I usually play around with ISO, aperture and exposure to get the desired results from my shots :) White balance makes a huge difference, sometimes I spend 10 minutes trying to find the right white balance haha

 

[Buddy]

Thanks :)
Yep, I usually play around with ISO, aperture and exposure to get the desired results from my shots :) White balance makes a huge difference, sometimes I spend 10 minutes trying to find the right white balance haha

If you want, you can set a custom white balance on your camera. You need to take a picture of something white in your tank using the appropriate setting menu on your camera.
I used an old skimmer lid. Then every picture you take uses that white balance and the pictures should be pretty spot on as long as your lighting hasn't changed.

 

[Wrangy]

If you want, you can set a custom white balance on your camera. You need to take a picture of something white in your tank.
I used an old skimmer lid. Then every picture you take uses that white balance and the pictures should be pretty spot on.

Yep I sometimes use the sand :) Most the time I take a photo of the subject, then use that as the basis lol it's the lazy way but it works and I can usually get the right balance in the end even if it takes a few goes :p I only use custom white balances now though

 

[RobbieMVFC]

So that means that I don't need zeo ?...lol

 

[Wrangy]

So that means that I don't need zeo ?...lol

You still need to have the colours to make look good and zeo is excellent for that :p haha you do have the colours already though, zeo would just make them better haha

 

[ReeferRob]

Do you have a direct link to the site? I copied that and opened it in a new window, came up a custom paint mixing company in the Bronx, New York, lol.

 

[Wrangy]

Do you have a direct link to the site? I copied that and opened it in a new window, came up a custom paint mixing company in the Bronx, New York, lol.

Haha here you go Rob :)
http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

 

[Bungee]

My first crack at using the program and following @Wrangy instructions. It was very easy.
Before and after pics

(Edited by mod to include the images in the post - makes it easier to see the comparison)

 

[Wrangy]

My first crack at using the program and following @Wrangy instructions. It was very easy.
Before and after pics

Very nice!! :) It's dead easy, isn't it :)

 

[cnidaria_chris]

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