Fork in the Road

[asnow]

Do I go left, right, or into Lord Byron's

[theantiquetiger]

Great photo, makes me so ready to go to Italy (38 days BTW).

And of course, go into Lord Byron's for a pint

[asnow]

Thanks AT.
This is Portugal but I'm sure you will find equally great places in Italy. Have a pint (or a glass of wine) for me as well.
38 days - Can't wait to see the pics you are going to get.

[Marko]

Wonderful composition - pp looks flat to me though and if it were mine i might try to boost the levels. That said...... - It might have looked that way in reality so I'll leave the desired level of realism to you.

[asnow]

Thanks Marko. I admit it does look a little flat in the posting. Looks much better in Lightroom and exported jpeg. For some reason all my pics seem to lose quality (lose highlights) when they they get posted in the forum. I am keeping them under 1024 and 325 meg so it should't be that. Mind you it was a dull, cloudy, rainy day so there wasn't a lot of light contrast. I will try upping the contrast to compensate and see how that works.

Doesn't look any better.... I'm baffled as to what to do to make the forum posts look better.

[asnow]

One last try..... Still sucks. I give up with this pic. As long as it looks good in Lightroom and the exported jpeg, I'm less concerned.

[Runmonty]

I am a little late to the party, but I do like the scene captured. I am intrigued by the road on the right. It looks like it was built up after the building was built and covered in half of the walls.

Asnow, I too have found differences in displaying photos here as opposed to looking at them elsewhere. I have often wondered if it is the white background, as we tend to edit (and view) with a darker grey background.

From what you have said, I assume you are using Lightroom for your b&w conversion? Have you tried using silverefex? I find that the structure and contrast sliders give a great deal of control to give greater "punch" without over-processing (of course you can do that too if you want).

Finally just wondering why b&w for this shot? In my minds eye I am picturing this to be a colourful scene (walls, paving, signs and flowerpots)that would only add to the character of the photo.

[Marko]

Last shot is superior to the original - PP wise. Unless you are looking for 100% realism, most photographs look best with a nice range of tones from black to white. Look to Ansel Adam's work for examples and inspiration.

My quick and dirty edits usually take 5 min or less.

(I work on the global contrast - then on the local contrast...I do this 100% of the time.)
Then sometimes I'll work on the global colour and then the local colour - I'll do this 30% of the time because I find most of my shots are decent colour-wise..... I try to get as much right in the camera as possible...I use almost no 'tricks' except dodging burning sharpening)

1 - I use curves/levels to obtain the general contrast of the shot.
2 - I DODGE areas that are too dark or muddy - if I want to make them lighter. If I want to hide them, I burn them. But I also dodge Highlight areas if i feel they should be brighter...or shadowed areas
3 - I burn in stray highlights that are stealing attention (UNLESS they belong there - like the sun, specular highlights on chrome - I am also keenly aware of those bright zones before I press the shutter release) I will also burn in shadows if I feel it will help.

Every photo is a child that needs some instruction.... But after you process a few of them properly (with good exposure and dynamic range thoughout the image).... the same patterns...and thus a similar workflow - emerge over and over.

Levels play...and dodge/burn. maybe selective sharpening. That's all you need.... but you need it for every single image. Ansel knew it well. Hope that may help.

[asnow]

Sorry guys for being so negative. It seems I am easily frustrated these days.
As I pointed out these aren't as bad in Lightroom (and the exported jpeg). They seem to lose quality when posted on the forum. I was trying to make changes to compensate for that lost quality.

Runmonty - Yes this was converted to BW in Lightroom. I used to have Silver Effects Pro, but somewhere in the Lightroom upgrades (or perhaps it was when I upgraded to Windows 10) I lost the linkage to SEP. I may have to try setting that up again. As for B&W vs Colour. I have been doing primarily street photography the last couple of years. As most street photography is usually B&W, I may have gotten in the bad habit of converting to B&W too often. I have redone this pic in colour and here is its post

Marko - That is basically the process I do. I will see if I can describe what I do
1. Adjust the overall brightness
2. Adjust the highlights and shadows sliders as required
3. Adjust the contrast, black and white sliders
4. Adjust clarity
5. May have to go through another iteration of 1 to 4.
6. For colour adjust saturation
7. Do local (spot tool) on certain areas.

If there is a better order I am certainly open to it.

p.s.
I usually convert to B&W as the first step. Would it be better if I process in colour first, then do the conversion.

[Runmonty]

I prefer the colour version asnow (although there is something funny going on with the sky top right)