quillfin blenny

Upon using this site, I have acquired Lightroom and CS4. I have been going through some older photo's and trying to see what I can do to improve them.

I took this quillfin blenny at Grand Turk 2 yrs ago. At that time, I was using a Canon A540, shooting jpeg with a YS-25 strobe. I could not get closer due to coral, etc. I did some lightroom work to get to this point, which is considerably better than the original.

Still hoping to find a way to bring the little guy more to life.

Any suggestions for processing would be appreciated.

The file isn't really big enough for me to play with and see what we could do. It real tough when the fish is designed to look like the bottom. I'd try lowering the exposure a touch, go to a medium contrast point curve and probably most important, add a vignette that will darken the edges of the image. Play with changing up the midpoint adjustment. You can make him pop a little more.

Steve

Steve,

Thanks for the suggestions. Here are the results of that attempt and it seems much better.

Of course, the main goal is to take a better photo in the first place.

I suspect I have the some of the same desires as others.....to revisit the locations of the past with the better knowledge and equipment of today.

The 'going back in time' clock does not cooperate any better than the 'expand for more diving' checkbook!

The 'going back in time' clock does not cooperate any better than the 'expand for more diving' checkbook!

That does look a little better Dave, Try warming up the WB about +20 with temp and tint. I really like your last approach though. Guess you'll just have to book another trip and try again.

Cheers,

Steve

When you say you have CS4, I assume you mean Photoshop. I'm not that familiar with Lightroom.

Bring the image in at an exposure that has the least blowouts. Create and adjustment layer. Add a mask. Mask off the blenny using the brush. Before you do any adjustments, make a copy of this adjustment layer. Click on the mask. Hit control-I or command-I on the Mac. Now the layer mask is inverted.

You now have two adjustment layers. One will adjust the blenny and the other will adjust everything that is not the blenny (negative space). You have a dark subject with a lighter negative space. The eye is drawn to; high contrast, lighter and sharper areas. On the negative space layer, reduce the exposure, add some Gaussian blur, and reduce saturation slightly. For the blenny layer, do whatever make the blenny look better, e.g. bump the levels, add some contrast with curves, bump vibrance, etc.

The objective is to draw the eye to the blenny, but still have a pleasing background. An over-exposed, crunchy sharp background isn't all that pleasing. So de-emphasize the background without impacting the subject.

Disclaimer: There are always multiple ways to achieve the same results in Photoshop. I may actually know more than one way myself. I will always concede that another way may be "better".