Retouching and post processing of digital photographs

Retouching Digital Photographs

After a once in a lifetime encounter with the world famous Red Arrows that produced some rather average photos I decided to seek advice on digital post processing, the art of using a product such as Adobe Photoshop to improve digital photographs.

I posted a message on one of the leading digital photography web sites and received some good advice from Chuck Gardner.

You can see the results below.

Original Image (cropped, but little processing)

Image after applying the following post processing (Thanks to Chuck Gardner for the tips!)

Duplicate backgroud, change mode to hard light, adjust opacity to 30%
Unsharp mask, 500%, .2, 0
Edit>Fade USM (Luminosity)

This gives the image above.

Finally, I adjusted the levels a little and increased saturation to give the image below. The red of the Red Arrows may be a little over saturated now, but given the poor quality of the original image I am very pleased with the result below.