Help! Can i rescue this?

[jjnic]

I took this photo, (first shot), just a quick shot, no filters or tripod with me and i've done everything wrong except for the composition which i love. Ive tried to highlight it it bring out the forground but it turns out all speckly. Is there anything i can do to rescue it or would it be easier to build a time machine to turn back time and do it properly?

jj

[Lani]

Did you shoot in jpeg or raw?

[Miaow]

Yeah as Lani asked if you took it in raw you'll be able to do a lot more editing to improve things than if you did it in jpeg...

One thing I just tried is to put it through a pseudo hdr which brought up a bit of colour ?

[jjnic]

I shoot in raw so i'ts a nikon .nef file and i used paint shop pro to bring out the shadows. the sky looks ok but the bit that was in shadow is not, it has a stripy sort of speckly look to it. Would photohop be better for handling .nef files? or am i missing something?
jj

[Miaow]

Im not a nikon user but wouldn't the camera have come with software that would include a raw editor? hmm Capture NX?

[jjnic]

Im not a nikon user but wouldn't the camera have come with software that would include a raw editor? hmm Capture NX?

It comes with a 30 day trial which of course was over long ago :-)

[chris_m]

If you dont want to spend a lot of time/money on Photoshop then look at Faststone.org for their free editor. It will do some of the very basic things for you, certainly allow you to adjust this image. Very easy to use. No problems with raw files, it will view and edit quite happily.

[ving]

gday jj, i use PSP 12 too. it handles nefs pretty well. did you do a noise reduction at the end of your processing? these small pictures dont really show the speckling you are talking about but i reckon a noise reduc with psps own will tidy it up quick smart

psp12 has 2 niose reduction thingies.. and auto one which aplies NR to the whole image and the digital camera NR which allows you to select target areas. you are going to get noise when raising an almost black image to the level you have but at least you will get rid of the noise (most of it) with a quick NR.