For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS<<link SmugMug Gallery.  

For a SmugMug slideshow click HERE<<link  When you click the link, it will open in a new window and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos.
2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button/symbol at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos as this will pause the slideshow.

The first post in this two posts series is at this LINK. In that post, I specified that the photos in the SmugMug Gallery are the same size as what was in the blog post.

Well, no longer . . . these reworked photos were run through Topaz Lab Gigapixels AI to double their size. That means that even a crop of the photo is still substantial For example, this photo (JPG output of the RAW file as it came out of the D7000 camera) . . . .

Turns into this cropped, cleaned, enlarged, and processed photo . . .

That photo is roughly 850×1280 pixels (click any photo to open the larger version in a new tab or window), but the version in the SmugMug gallery is twice that size.

By the way, both of these hawks (and their photos) were considered as entries for a contest. You can read about it (and see the original processing) in THIS<<link post.

Here is a gallery of four photos of that hawk processed with a combination of Topaz Labs DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI, and Gigapixel AI (not necessarily in that order). I also used Color Efex Pro to add a slight frame. The touch of vignetting was added in Lightroom. I’m showing the original followed by the processed version.

In creating the last post, I was impressed with DeNoise AI and doubly so here. They have more options (models) for noise reduction so you can tailor the processing to the particular photo.

While I was at it, I figured I keep my hand in processing monochrome versions. I used Silver Efex Pro 3, my old standby, but eventually I’ll be playing with the new Lightroom capabilities and presets.

The other hawk hawk in this next series is one of my favorites but that also suffers from the hawk having been some distance away when I snapped the photos. I’ve tried enhancing and enlarging it before (I don’t remember the particular post), but this effort offered the best results by far.

Again, a gallery with the original photos and the enlarged and processed versions.

As a reminder, those are roughly 1280×850 pixels but the Smugmug versions are twice as large.

While viewing the gallery, the photos are sized to fill your browser window. You can choose to see the larger version while in the gallery: on a PC, click on the “i” in the lower right corner below the photo, then choose view full size and the photo will be shown on its own in a new tab or window. I believe it works the same way on tablets and iOS devices.

Understand, it’s difficult getting enlargements to be the same quality as an original of the same size. Meaning, if I’d been half the distance to the hawk, the original photo would have been twice as large out of the camera and probably better and cleaner at the pixel level than the enlarged version.

Typically, photographers crop and enlarge both to show more, and to print. But, in this case, it’s strictly to have a larger version to share, and the Topaz apps do a good job of producing versions I don’t mind sharing.

And, yes, I monochromed these as well . . .

What these capabilities mean is that many old photographs can be reprocessed and showcased better and more impressively than before.

There are limits, of course. Not all photos are suited for these new tools. Sometimes the denoising and sharpening create artifacts, and crappy photos won’t magically be turned into diamonds . . . but, by golly, it sure feels like these tools are getting closer and closer to making it so.

Anyway, here are color and monochrome galleries of the above (minus the originals).

 

That’s it. This post has ended . . . except for the stuff below.

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Note: if you are not reading this blog post at DisperserTracks.com, know that it’s copied without permission, and likely is being used by someone with nefarious intentions, like attracting you to a malware-infested website.  Could be they also torture small mammals.

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