It seems to me that virtually all static shots on this website these days have had the background brightness photoshopped down to make the aircraft stand out and look a brilliant white. You get photos that do look stunning - albeit slightly unnatural.

Is this what people are doing? I'd also be interested to hear about what people are doing in post from a general sense. I personally usually make fairly minimal adjustments in Lightroom only, but maybe I need to up my post-processing game a bit

Cheers

Can you point to some examples? I can't say I've noticed anything out of the ordinary.

If anything, I think this site prefers the less edited, more natural looking photos, as opposed to over-edited, over-saturated images.

Would be interesting to see examples.

Thanks guys. Here's a couple of examples uploaded in the last few hours

https://www.airliners.net/photo/Emirates ... 0tGA%3D%3D

https://www.airliners.net/photo/Azores-A ... 0tGA%3D%3D

Both are very pleasing images. But in both of them, it's as if there is a magic light source that has allowed to aircraft to be brightly lit and well saturated....... whereas the entire remainder of the photograph (background and foreground) are darker and less saturated. It's not just the fact that the aircraft is white - any colours on the aircraft also come across as bright and well saturated; whereas the grass, tarmac etc all look a bit drab, under a stormy dark sky.

It's pleasing, and doesn't look immediately "unnatural" - but I suspect it is. It seems to me that a photoshop layer/mask has been applied, de-emphasising the background while making the aircraft look more vivid than the prevailing light would have done on its own.

I only ask, because if this is what people actually are doing I might start doing it too - which will require me to learn Photoshop properly (I currently only use lightroom)

Regards

In the Azores, I can say with absolute certainty that no selective editing has been done. That day saw a number of thunderstorms mixed with broken skies over all the Frankfurt area, and the photographer had the luck of catching a sun ray with all the dark clouds in the background. You can also see in the foreground that parts of the tarmac are still wet, again from a passing shower. I see the expected saturation and colors for both foreground (lit) and background (in shadow).

With regards to the Emirates, the grass and forest look natural to me. They are not bright green but that is to be expected after the summer. If anything, I think a bit more contrast would make all colors "pop" some more, and that includes the aircraft, of course.

My opinion.

Cheers,
Miguel

The photographer of photo #2 visits the forum at times, so I'm sure he could explain his editing process (if he wants).

Miguel1982 wrote:

In the Azores, I can say with absolute certainty that no selective editing has been done. That day saw a number of thunderstorms mixed with broken skies over all the Frankfurt area, and the photographer had the luck of catching a sun ray with all the dark clouds in the background. You can also see in the foreground that parts of the tarmac are still wet, again from a passing shower. I see the expected saturation and colors for both foreground (lit) and background (in shadow).
Cheers,
Miguel

Thanks, but unless you're the photographer you can't say for certain and I disagree. Look how brightly lit the engine is. Yet anything immediately adjacent to it that isn't aircraft - including the brightly painted yellow light - is distinctly drab. I suppose it's possible that there was a ray of sunshine that lit the aircraft and absolutely nothing else; but my guess is it's unlikely - especially as there seems to be a lot of such sunshine on a*net these days

Speaking fo my Azores: Miguel can say that for sure, as we are friends and send him a WhatsApp of the original shortly after taking the shot. Ok you cannot know that,

Absolutely no selective edtinng has been done, I added some contrast by pressing auto-contrast (to bring it up to a.nets requirements) and did change the colour temperature slightly as the original was too yellow for my likings and (more importantly) way more yellow than my previous two shots (also online). And some Noise reduction (also to meet anets requirements).
This is it.


The sun was playing hide & seek and yes I was more than lucky that the aircraft was still illuminated (what you can also see by the strong shadows on the ac) and yes the foreground was already dimmed (by thin Clouds), so guess what happend a fews seconds later: sunshine gone. That's why us photographers were waiting rather impatiently for the Azores to have its turn.

And don't forget this was a Weekend where some heavy storms did severe damages in Germany, you can check that out anywhere if you don't believe me.

And yes there is only sunshine in my shots, if the sun doesn't cooperate (yes that happens) I don't shoot or if I do so I don't upload. I am pretty old-school when it comes to that.
And yes I've been lucky lately with weather condtions, but you can search the net for others shots from these days (don't want to link other db's here) and you'll find other shots with such a weather / contrast.

Thanks so much! Great shot, great light. Perhaps I'm doing too *much* editing instead of not enough....

RAW or JEPG?

I'd be interested in the EK shot's workflow too.........

The SATA was shot in JPEG.

Overall sometimes I shoot in RAW (when I struggle with colours or feel or shoot with a higher ISO which I rarely do though), often also in JPEG only like on that day.
For the colour adjustmend I used the sliders in Photoshop CS6 and for the noise.reduction NIk's DFINE plugin.
So here is the exact workflow for this shot (not the most sophisticated ever).

Good night!

Gasman wrote:

Thanks guys. Here's a couple of examples uploaded in the last few hours

https://www.airliners.net/photo/Emirates ... 0tGA%3D%3D

https://www.airliners.net/photo/Azores-A ... 0tGA%3D%3D

Both are very pleasing images. But in both of them, it's as if there is a magic light source that has allowed to aircraft to be brightly lit and well saturated....... whereas the entire remainder of the photograph (background and foreground) are darker and less saturated. It's not just the fact that the aircraft is white - any colours on the aircraft also come across as bright and well saturated; whereas the grass, tarmac etc all look a bit drab, under a stormy dark sky.

It's pleasing, and doesn't look immediately "unnatural" - but I suspect it is. It seems to me that a photoshop layer/mask has been applied, de-emphasising the background while making the aircraft look more vivid than the prevailing light would have done on its own.

I only ask, because if this is what people actually are doing I might start doing it too - which will require me to learn Photoshop properly (I currently only use lightroom)

Regards

This can be completely natural. If you go and buy the Herpa 1:400 model of Qantas 737-800 VH-VZD, look at the photo on the box, bright white 737 with a dark background. There were storm clouds brewing but the light from behind me was still bright and sunny, so hence this look similar to the Azores image.

You just need the right conditions at the right time. As these ones were too:

Morning:



Evening:


The last one was one with ISO10000 so making the most of the available ambient light, which wasn't much and the lights on the plane itself.

Some other people have captured some really extraordinary photos over the years that are way more bold than the ones we've seen so far. It's just luck of getting perfect conditions.

Also, it's very easy to accentuate that look. Using the "Levels" function in Photoshop (which I use to adjust contrast on every photo), bring the whites up to just-under-overexposed, and bring the mids down a bit.

This will make the aircraft stand out even more, and is ridiculously easy to do - no masking or selective editing necessary.

Gasman wrote:

It seems to me that virtually all static shots on this website these days have had the background brightness photoshopped down to make the aircraft stand out and look a brilliant white. You get photos that do look stunning - albeit slightly unnatural.

Is this what people are doing? I'd also be interested to hear about what people are doing in post from a general sense. I personally usually make fairly minimal adjustments in Lightroom only, but maybe I need to up my post-processing game a bit

Cheers

I would say virtually every photo on this site has been tweaked, read edited, in some way. I concur, sometimes it does look unreal as for instance, I've been shooting the same subject matter as another photographer, and their results are completely different to the actual conditions. As VikkyVik mentioned, this is achieved by adjusting levels in Photoshop, either manually or automatically and removing the colour cast.