I read an interesting post today by a fellow blogger from Australia who I follow, Leanne Cole (Leanne Cole’s Photography Field Trips), about reprocessing an old image. I generally do not go back through my pictures, except maybe vacation or Disney, but she wrote about applying new techniques she had learned and seeing the affects her current method might have on an image (Restructure).

Surprisingly for Leanne the changes were more subtle than she anticipated. It was more of a refinement but the results, in my opinion, were better on her second image. There was more detail in the subject and a slight change to tone which I really thought enhanced the image. Seeing the results of her ‘redo’ I decided to give it a try myself.

I wanted to see what I could do with an image from my Disney trip in January. I had been exploring photography for about seven months by the time we made the trip and I was still using my Sony point & shoot camera. I had a blast on that trip! I came away with quite a few images I am really happy with. The particular image I chose was of the reverse waterfall in front of the Imagination Pavilion in Epcot’s Future World. I have always admired pictures of this area for the colors and the ability of the photographs to smooth out the water. I was able to achieve the same effect with my camera, sans tripod, but reviewing the image today I think I pushed the processing just a little too far.

I had just ‘graduated’ from simple Lightroom image processing to utilizing the Topaz Labs filters and I believe I went a little crazy with the Adjust module. I reset the original and set about processing the image with LR4, PS Elements 10 and the Topaz Labs filters. The finer control to the exposure offered by LR4 definitely helped me improve the base image prior to finishing in Elements.

Here is the image straight out of the camera:

Imagination Falls – SOOC
Sony DSC-H20, 1.3s, 6.3mm, f/8, ISO 100

This is my original processing of the image:

Imagination Falls – Original Processing

I obviously lost the great glossy look to the water by over processing. Comparing the two images side by side I also see that I de-saturated the colors a little, which really was part of the appeal of the scene. I over sharpened to the point of inducing a grainy look to the image.

Here is my second attempt:

Imagination Falls – Re-processed

Now I have to stop myself from returning to all my pictures to see what I could do to ‘improve’ them. I can’t dwell on the past images but should continue to move forward. I might sneak in a few now and then, especially if I want to use the image for something else, like that book I keep threatening to make to share with my family.

Thanks to Leanne Cole (Leanne Cole’s Photography Field Trips) for her article earlier today which started me down this road.