Editing Help?

[isuzurover]

How can I improve these images. Note the spiders are only a few mm and were moving. (Also - who is good at spider ID???)

I have Adobe photoshop pro.

https://www.aulro.com/afvb/

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p29/isuzurover/Spider_1_.jpg

(for those interested:
Taken on a D300s with 105mm macro and diffused flash TTL. Manual focus, all other settings auto)

[Slunnie]

You could press them between glass to decrease the movement and depth of field.

Are they Orb spiders?

[isuzurover]

You could press them between glass to decrease the movement and depth of field.

Are they Orb spiders?

Lol...

All the (serious) image processing I have done before has been in MATLAB. I was hoping some of the photoshop gurus would chime in... The images are just cropped from the main photo - nothing more at this stage.

I think they are too small to be orb spiders???

[Tusker]

I like the cat's face in the dark one...

I doubt any PP will improve these.

Manual focus or auto? Try manual on a monopod or even better a tripod with one leg folded up, physically move the camera back & forth rather than using the lense focus ring.

But first.. The aperture depends on the depth of field you want i.e just spider's head, whole of spider plus a few drops etc. Download a DOF calculator & work out the lense to subject distance, DOF, & aperture relationship.

Then you'll get a much sharper pic I'm sure, that you can tweak in PP.

Regards
Max P

[WhiteD3]

More light or higher ISO, then DoF as others have suggested.

Online Depth of Field Calculator (http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html?format=0.019&focal=17.0&aperture=8.000000&distance=2&units=1.0)

Use the Unsharp mask in PS.

Cheers.

[slug_burner]

https://www.aulro.com/afvb/

sharpen x2

adjusted contrast and brightness. I think that each image needs it's own individual adjustments, here the same has been applied to both although I concentrated on the one on the left.

https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/imported/2012/04/685.jpg

Arthur (chucaro) who does a lot of flora suggested that contrast always help make the image pop a bit and sharpening can help. I am no wiz, I just ran CS6 Beta over it.

Other things to try would be to change the background to black, that makes the colours appear more intense.

[isuzurover]

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p29/isuzurover/Spider_2_.jpg

sharpen x2

adjusted contrast and brightness. I think that each image needs it's own individual adjustments, here the same has been applied to both although I concentrated on the one on the left.

https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/imported/2012/04/685.jpg

Arthur (chucaro) who does a lot of flora suggested that contrast always help make the image pop a bit and sharpening can help. I am no wiz, I just ran CS6 Beta over it.

Other things to try would be to change the background to black, that makes the colours appear more intense.

Thanks - that was exactly what I was looking for! I will give that a try.

[dullbird]

more to the point though and as suggested I would say put your camera on a tripod and use the timer so you dont touch the unit when photo is taken.. that way you will get better sharpness which means less PP.

[isuzurover]

more to the point though and as suggested I would say put your camera on a tripod and use the timer so you dont touch the unit when photo is taken.. that way you will get better sharpness which means less PP.

Thanks. However I needed to take photos at specific time points to capture specific occurances (sorry if that is vague - I can say more when the publication is accepted).

Static focus or a tripod/monopod would be no use as I needed to continually reposition and refocus.

The events are not easily reproducible, so what I was looking for is how I can best polish these (and similar) images, moreso than how I can take better images next time (though such comments are appreciated).

[Sue]

The do look like a member of the orb family..

But unfortunately the images look like they are cropped in too much and not sharp enough to be able to do much to salvage them in photoshop etc.. Sadly many people think that photo editing will make a not so good picture great when in reality the starting image has to be good straight from the camera and the editing program will merely improve it.. :)

and for next time..

What kind of lens are you using? To get really good shots of something small like this then a macro lens would greatly improve your chances of a nice clear sharp shot of the spiders.. if you don't want the hassle of using a tripod etc try using a remote shutter release or cable release as even the motion of your finger pushing the shutter button on the camera will make it move increasing your chances of a not so sharp image.. :)

[Chucaro]

I would go very gently with the contrast adjustments.
I just done some very basic PP on the top left image.

Levels are out, so to recuperate some of the missing pixels adjsut the levels on the LHS point.
After doing that go to layers, new adjustments, curves and select linear contrast and use the default parameters.
Last select the the spider and do a unsharp mask and adjust it.

There is not use for me to post and example because the info (pixels available) on the posted image are not enough to have an optimun result.

Do the adjustments on the tiff file and after converting it to jpg do the necessary sharpening adjustments for the web.


Cheers

[isuzurover]

I would go very gently with the contrast adjustments.
I just done some very basic PP on the top left image.

Levels are out, so to recuperate some of the missing pixels adjsut the levels on the LHS point.
After doing that go to layers, new adjustments, curves and select linear contrast and use the default parameters.
Last select the the spider and do a unsharp mask and adjust it.

There is not use for me to post and example because the info (pixels available) on the posted image are not enough to have an optimun result.

Do the adjustments on the tiff file and after converting it to jpg do the necessary sharpening adjustments for the web.


Cheers

Thanks! - you have a PM.


...

What kind of lens are you using? To get really good shots of something small like this then a macro lens would greatly improve your chances of a nice clear sharp shot of the spiders..

Thanks for the comments. At the bottom of the original post I said what I used. Nikon D300s, Nikon 105mm macro, Nikon external flash with diffuser TTL.