RAWr Creativity! Show your raw self(ies)!

[AyelaNewLife]

7 hours ago, Seicher Rae said:

The thing I noticed was that in #2 & # that a light bulb appeared in the upper left, under the rope.  I like how you enhance things but keep it still SL. If I saw this without the explanation I would probably think screenshot, probably with Black Dragon but even FS. And I mean that as a compliment! Fun shot and I LOVE your styling.

I'm glad - as that's precisely what I'm trying to do! The viewer is just so powerful by itself, I just try to give it a little nudge to make things slightly better and more refined. 

Incidentally, this is why I try and get a near-publishable base shot to start with. My own skills and technique work far better when trying to enhance something good than create something good. About every half dozen photos or so, I'll try to cut corners and take a bunch of snaps, not one of which I'm happy with, in the hope that I can combine them to create something new (ie, significantly different lighting to any one base shot), and those ones almost always sucks. One day I'll get the hint.

[Marigold Devin]

On 5/11/2020 at 2:20 AM, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Ok, the final version of this has already been posted on the "How does your avatar look" thread, but I want to help get this rolling, so I'll post before and after shots here.

Ordinarily, when I am using Black Dragon (which I almost always do use now), I need to do very little post-processing. Generally, I'll crop and fix any clipping or rendering problems, and that's all that's needed. Occasionally I'll adjust the brightness and contrast a bit.

In this particular instance, however, I decided to take the pic in a radically new direction, so this one has a lot of processing: brightness and contrast, colour curves, saturation, levels, and photo filters. I'm far from sure that I shouldn't have stuck with the original, to be honest, but I decided I wanted a "day time" rather than a twilight shot.

So, here's the "before":

And here's the "after," which is the one I eventually posted:

I'd be interested to hear thoughts on which I should have gone with.

I must admit, I like the more rain-true coloured sky in the first photo - but it will always be the sludgy wheelbarrow that makes this picture for me - totally authentic. 

[Marigold Devin]

On 5/11/2020 at 8:09 AM, Annie Nova said:

Here is a completely raw shot, totally unedited, not even cropped and only Nam's Optimal Skin and Prim Windlight

Below the first one is cropped, with some messing with brightness and temperture.

 

My favourite windlight setting! Actually because it keeps me in virtual reality rather than being too "photo-realistic" - and just is pleasing to my own individual eye. Your hair is fantastic. 

[Marigold Devin]

On 5/11/2020 at 8:34 AM, Lewis Luminos said:

Pretty much every pic I do is raw, all I do is crop and resize to make them small enough to post on the forum.

Last Friday, Madison and I celebrated our 9th anniversary together, and I took a series of pics while we were dancing. This one is my favourite.

Congratulations on your 9th anniversary - quite an achievement. I LOVE photos like this, that truly capture a moment in time, and make a real life memory.  I adore the way your tie matches Madison's dress. Adds to the feeling of togetherness. 

[Ajay McDowwll]

Okay, I might as well bounce on in 🙂  I was playing around on one of my fountains this morning (I have WAY too many, because of course I do).  Here's the raw shot:

And here's the edited shot:

I usually just tweak the lighting a bit, with a touch of cropping.  This one I got all "I'm going to play with my stamp tool!" so I removed a random cube my husband had rezzed (he's trying to script something to explode into bacon, for reasons I do not entirely understand) and some buildings I kind of didn't like.  Looking at the end result though, I could have just removed the cube, maybe, and did the teensy bit of curve adjustment I did.

Edited to add that I'm still very much an SL Photography newbie.  I took the class on SL Photography at Caledon earlier this year, which helped with some setting issues... other than that, I generally just find where I want the picture, pick the pose, set the windlight I want (this was Daytime Shadows; Bryn Oh's Mayfly is another favorite), and commence to clicking.  I love how I got the dragonflies in this one 🙂

Edited May 12, 2020 by Ajay McDowwll
Stated above.

[kali Wylder]

I am not very sophisticated with my sl photography.  I know how to derender things that get in the way of my shot, and sometimes I will fool with the pre made windlights, but that's it.

I do wish I knew enough to be able to fix the hair here.

 

Edited May 12, 2020 by kali Wylder
typo

[Alexis Kiyori]

I don’t post unedited images often buuut I really liked this one so I thought I’d contribute to this thread 🙂

[Marigold Devin]

17 hours ago, Maitimo said:

The region in Bellisseria next-door to mine is "under construction" so I went to inspect the Moles' handiwork so far.

Raw shot:

Edited, though not very much. Reduced the saturation, lightened it a little, touched up some jagged shadows under my chin and re-saturated my eyes and mouth to brighten the make-up.

 

I am totally fascinated by all the pictures in this thread that show before and after processing. The tiniest of tweaks can make the biggest difference, undoubtedly. 

Your feet look incredible in those shoes, by the way, and the dress is so vibrant, almost can see it swaying in the slight breeze there always is on Bellisaria. 

[NiranV Dean]

On 5/11/2020 at 2:41 PM, Seicher Rae said:

As Emma said, you may be talking about anti-aliasing. I have mine as high up as it will go in Firestorm, and I think (won't swear to it) that in Black Dragon it is either on or off and I assume if on it is high. Also, taking shots at high resolution, like 2000 pixels, will help the photos look smoother when seen posted online. Some people shoot very high, like 6000, but that can make your computer scream (or die). For my shots here, like on pg 1, for posting on the Feed I *will* take the photo to Windows Paint and if the original png is over 2000 then I will reduce the size by 50% and then save it as a jpg and then post it to the feed. That way I can post a couple of photos in one comment frame. I don't consider changing size and format to be editing (although it is done in an editing program). I also shoot in png, which as I understand it has more info in it than a jpg. When I post to Flickr I post pngs.

in Black Dragon you can either enable Antialiasing (FXAA) or disable it, there are no steps because steps don't exist anymore since...6? 7 years? Most Viewers still show the old 2x/4x/8x/16x antialiasing dropdown but only Firestorm i know actually still uses the old MSAA when setting anything but 2x.

The reason i'm not offering any other AA is simply because LL doesn't and FXAA is good enough, MSAA is a complete performance killer and would only be good for pictures but with pictures it would be useless again because you'd want to take your snapshots at high resolutions which automatically solve the aliasing issue anyway, making MSAA pretty much obsolete.

Also, quick and dirty test 12K shot here:

Edited May 12, 2020 by NiranV Dean

[Annie Nova]

1 hour ago, Marigold Devin said:

My favourite windlight setting! Actually because it keeps me in virtual reality rather than being too "photo-realistic" - and just is pleasing to my own individual eye. Your hair is fantastic. 

It's the one I use consistently because of the way it makes my avatar look and the hair is from Doux, I totally am in love with it!

[Lewis Luminos]

1 hour ago, Marigold Devin said:

Congratulations on your 9th anniversary - quite an achievement. I LOVE photos like this, that truly capture a moment in time, and make a real life memory.  I adore the way your tie matches Madison's dress. Adds to the feeling of togetherness. 

Thank you. And I always try to match my tie or vest with Madi's dress, if possible. My inner artist cannot bear clashing colours.

And that pic is now on the wall in my SL home, next to a pic of us dancing on our first date, May 8th 2011.

[Lewis Luminos]

31 minutes ago, kali Wylder said:

I do wish I knew enough to be able to fix the hair here.

 

The only thing you can really do with that is change your pose.

[bobbiestarrz]

Enjoying the sun!

[Maitimo]

52 minutes ago, Marigold Devin said:

I am totally fascinated by all the pictures in this thread that show before and after processing. The tiniest of tweaks can make the biggest difference, undoubtedly. 

Your feet look incredible in those shoes, by the way, and the dress is so vibrant, almost can see it swaying in the slight breeze there always is on Bellisaria. 

Thankyou! The dress is from a full-perm mesh template that I textured myself. I love that dress so much. Buying a full perm kit and making my own, whatever colour and pattern I fancy on any given day, is working out to be a much cheaper way of extending my wardrobe rather than buying fatpacks.  Maybe one day I'll get organised enough to put them up for sale. Unfortunately, while making the texture takes me less than thirty minutes, texturing a whole pack of multiple sizes, making demo versions, making a texture-change hud, making an ad photo and setting up a marketplace listing takes hours.

And the shoes are from KC Couture; they look so good because they are the best shoes in SL, IMO.

Edited May 12, 2020 by Maitimo

[Maitimo]

20 minutes ago, Lewis Luminos said:

The only thing you can really do with that is change your pose.

If you use Black Dragon, there's a pose editor built in to the viewer. If not, you can still buy huds that have some (more limited) adjustment ability. I use Animaire, when I can't be bothered to log out of Firestorm and into BD.

The other option is to change your hair for a style that goes behind the shoulder instead of in front.

[kali Wylder]

47 minutes ago, Lewis Luminos said:

The only thing you can really do with that is change your pose.

Thanks Lewis, but I don't use poses, I just take candid shots when I'm out and about.  But just remembered the other thing I do to fix things - I crop out that bad part.

[CaerolleClaudel]

1 hour ago, Ajay McDowwll said:

Okay, I might as well bounce on in 🙂  I was playing around on one of my fountains this morning (I have WAY too many, because of course I do).  Here's the raw shot:

And here's the edited shot:

I usually just tweak the lighting a bit, with a touch of cropping.  This one I got all "I'm going to play with my stamp tool!" so I removed a random cube my husband had rezzed (he's trying to script something to explode into bacon, for reasons I do not entirely understand) and some buildings I kind of didn't like.  Looking at the end result though, I could have just removed the cube, maybe, and did the teensy bit of curve adjustment I did.

Edited to add that I'm still very much an SL Photography newbie.  I took the class on SL Photography at Caledon earlier this year, which helped with some setting issues... other than that, I generally just find where I want the picture, pick the pose, set the windlight I want (this was Daytime Shadows; Bryn Oh's Mayfly is another favorite), and commence to clicking.  I love how I got the dragonflies in this one 🙂

Some of the very best SL phtogs are posting here, I am sure they would be happy to give you some tips! 🙂

[Panteleeva]

😃

[Seicher Rae]

On 5/11/2020 at 8:52 AM, AyelaNewLife said:

This one taken in a previous incarnation of Drune illustrates another technique I tend to use - layering with inworld lighting on and off. Projected light in SL is often terrible, particularly lights placed by sim creators. It's overpowering, and burns everything it touches with it's crass glare. I dislike it. However, by layering a shot with the projected light on and off, you can tone it all down and create some pretty neat effects. This must of course be repeated for every windlight layer I take, and given that I already duplicate each shot for the alpha overlap layering trick, I can quite often end up with dozens of shots to condense down into one.

Other than that - and the unfortunate slice of translucent blue that exists because... not sure why - I've once again let the viewer do the heavy lifting, and just applied a thin layer of polish afterwards. And not just because I suck at editing, either  but because I genuinely like the way my shots turn out.

 

 

I love how you showed the various layers. I've heard people talking about this technique, and honestly... while I understand on one level--translucent layers, mmhmm, I totally do NOT get how it is done in RL. You wouldn't, by any chance, have a good reference link to step-by-step it, would you? I'm afraid I'm in need of more hand holding than the scope of this thread, so a youtube or blog article or something. I'm not actually being too lazy to look, but instead there are thousands of such references out there and most of them are only meh. Since you know how to do this, maybe you have a good source (ok, so yeah, I can be lazy and not drive myself crazy by piecing through the thousands)?

[Seicher Rae]

On 5/11/2020 at 9:16 AM, Skell Dagger said:

I primarily use an image editor called ON1 Photo 10 (now sadly no longer available in that format, although you can still buy the Effects section of the program, which is the bit that I mostly use). It allows me to layer tons of different filters, edit and tweak each filter to the enth degree (like @momomoonusagi, I enjoy doing that kind of post-processing work; it's another part of the creative process for me, and I treat it as an extension to my inworld photography in the same way as setting up the pose, background, and lighting/Windlight), and then I save each new/tweaked combination of filters as a preset. I have a large collection of self-made presets that I (somewhat lazily!) keep going back to - the one named 'Heavy Fire' now has multiple tweaked variants and is my most frequently used preset - but I still create new ones now and then. Here's a quick video showing a scroll through some of my saved presets to show how each one affects a single image.

I edit according to the mood I want to set for the image, be that a bright and almost blinding high-key effect when I want sharp focus, or something more shadowed and nuanced. Always I have to bear in mind that for many of my shots I'm promoting creators' products, so my images need to be clear and show those products without too much over-editing.

Some examples of how filters affect one recent image, with descriptions beneath:

1. This is the raw inworld shot, taken using projected lighting and whichever Windlight suited the mood best (I honestly don't remember which one!)
2. This one uses one of the 'Heavy Fire' presets. Heavy Fire comprises: glow, HDR, bleach bypass, and vignette filters
3. This one is more stylised and complex and uses the 'Syd Deep 01' preset, which comprises: glow, HDR, colour enhancer, two lens flares, another colour enhancer, tone enhancer, bleach bypass, and vignette. Video here showing before and after.
4. This one is again stylised and uses the 'Vaporwave' preset, which is overblown and highly-lit. This preset comprises: glow, HDR, cross process, adjustable gradient, polarizer, 'sunshine', and gradient. For posting above I edited the filter a bit, reducing the cross process opacity by half. Video here showing before adjustment, after it, plus the original.

If I were re-editing that shot to post it again I would probaby opt for some tweaks to No.3 because I love the way that one has some hints of red and yellow tones to it that really counter the pastel pink in the image. It's slightly surreal and really catches the eye, so that makes it a winner. Below - for better comparison (and behind a spoiler tag, so I don't take up half the thread!) - are larger versions of the original and that No.3 shot:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

Presets? In PhotoShop? sigh... such a Luddite noob here.

I agree with #3, the skin just has a lovely glow, and there's more depth. I do not see the lens flares!

[Seicher Rae]

On 5/11/2020 at 9:37 AM, CaerolleClaudel said:

I think as long as you stay out of what other people see as their sandbox you are usually ok.

I have to say I still hesitate to post anything, and feel stressed waiting for the lectures, just based on my experience with the other thread. I hope this one continues to be more friendly and casual, with discussion around SL photography and other stuff accepted, and not policed as just a pure photostream.

I truly hope there will be NO lectures. I cannot control what other people post, though. I didn't see other photo threads with a "theme" OP and that is why I created one, so that there is no doubt what's allowed. There's still a lot of gray area, and the Forum will be what the Forum always is.  But I pray this is a tsk-tsk free zone. The LL mods get to tsk all they want though, and I hope people are cognizant of that and post accordingly.

This thread came out of a chat several of us had in another thread. It also came out of a hope for some of the Forum Kerfuffle™ to settle down. It is obvious that there are people who prefer a more "photos only!!!!" environment and so, even though there isn't a stated theme, there's places for those folks to post in peace. It is also obvious that there are people who like a little more laid back approach, and now there is a place for that here. And it is obvious that there are people who don't give an eff and simply like posting pictures and looking at other people's pictures, and so, cool, now there's another place to do that.

Funny, but by adding the STRUCTURE in the OP I hope to provide more freedom to post, rather than less. We'll see. Early days still.

[Ajay McDowwll]

44 minutes ago, CaerolleClaudel said:

Some of the very best SL phtogs are posting here, I am sure they would be happy to give you some tips! 🙂

Oh I know -- that's one reason I'm following this thread 🙂  I've read Skell's photography tutorial at least.  Sadly, composition and everything isn't a skill I really have inately.  It's one I'll have to cultivate, if that's even possible as my artistic sense is negligible.  Still, there's nothing like education to at least assist in one's understanding, even if it's just from a technical standpoint 🙂

[kali Wylder]

10 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

This thread came out of a chat several of us had in another thread. It also came out of a hope for some of the Forum Kerfuffle™ to settle down. It is obvious that there are people who prefer a more "photos only!!!!" environment and so, even though there isn't a stated theme, there's places for those folks to post in peace. It is also obvious that there are people who like a little more laid back approach, and now there is a place for that here.

as a strictly amateur picture taker, I keyed in on post raw shots, since that is the only kind I can do.  All these picture threads intimidate me but I love to take pictures. So I think today is my first time posting a pic of mine. 

[Seicher Rae]

On 5/11/2020 at 10:38 AM, Eva Knoller said:

Fun idea, Seicher! I LOVE working in PS and other editing programs so my photos will always be post-processed, but I can do before/after.  Like others have said, I think I enjoy the editing as much, if not more than the inworld photo process.

My most recent before/after.

 

Thanks for liking the idea behind the thread, Eva. And glad to see you dipping your toes in these here waters. I love the example you gave here. I keep saying the word "luminous" and will again, because in this one the edited version definitely has more of a feeling of light. Your styling is great, too. Where's the hair from, may I ask? I have a horrible feeling this thread is going to lighten my inworld wallet quite a bit.

[Eva Knoller]

34 minutes ago, Seicher Rae said:

Thanks for liking the idea behind the thread, Eva. And glad to see you dipping your toes in these here waters. I love the example you gave here. I keep saying the word "luminous" and will again, because in this one the edited version definitely has more of a feeling of light. Your styling is great, too. Where's the hair from, may I ask? I have a horrible feeling this thread is going to lighten my inworld wallet quite a bit.

Thanks, Seicher! The hair is Eleni by Doux. He does wavy and curly styles very well.