Get the red out

TonyCooper

So I open a .dng file in CS4 and there's lottsa red because I'm shooting in the middle of the day in sunny Florida. I can push that "Recovery" slider over to the right, but somewhere I read that there's a better way. Change the "Exposure" on the minus side? Something with a combination of sliders?

Did I read that here in "Finishing School"?

pathfinder

TonyCooper wrote:

So I open a .dng file in CS4 and there's lottsa red because I'm shooting in the middle of the day in sunny Florida. I can push that "Recovery" slider over to the right, but somewhere I read that there's a better way. Change the "Exposure" on the minus side? Something with a combination of sliders?

Did I read that here in "Finishing School"?

Tony, I do not see how the Exposure Slider or the Recovery slider will affect the amount of red only in your image.

How about dialing down the Saturation in the Hue slider in the Red channel instead? Or the Luminosity, or both.

I darken skies a touch by sliding the Luminosity slider to the left in the Blue channel sometimes in ACR -- sshhhhhhh!:D

How about trying your Sunshine color balance for sunshine rather than AWB when shooting as well?

Not sure that Florida sunshine is really that different than Arizona or Utah sunshine. There is a lot more red rock to reflect red in Utah or Arizona than in the nice green vegetation in Fla I would suspect.

Just a few thoughts off the top of my head, anyway.

TonyCooper

pathfinder wrote:

Tony, I do not see how the Exposure Slider or the Recovery slider will affect the amount of red only in your image.

Oh, dear. I misled you. The red is the area in the .dng file where the highlights in the image are so bright they lose detail. Some references call it the clipping warning. It has nothing to do with the color red in the image. In fact, uncorrected, the area will be white.

Scott Kelby suggests moving the Exposure slider left (- area) a bit and the Recovery slider to the right until the clipping warning is gone. (Red areas gone or the clipping warning triangle turns from red to black)

I'm sure, though, I read some other suggestion on this subject.

pathfinder

I'm sorry, I misunderstood your reference to red. I assume we're talking RAW rather than jpgs.

If you are over exposed, slide the exposure slider to the left a bit, and if needed your Recovery slider to the right until the over exposed areas are more properly rendered and your red disappears. Hold down the option key while you do this and you can see the blown highlights and how they disappear as you adjust the sliders. I guess I'm with Scott on this. Reichman and Schewe also.

Actually the sequence should be, color balance, exposure slider, black slider, then recovery slider, and finally the fill light slider to open up your shadow detail. If the midtones are still too bright, dial back the Brightness slider as well.

TonyCooper

pathfinder wrote:

I'm sorry, I misunderstood your reference to red. I assume we're talking RAW rather than jpgs.

If you are over exposed, slide the exposure slider to the left a bit, and if needed your Recovery slider to the right until the over exposed areas are more properly rendered and your red disappears. Hold down the option key while you do this and you can see the blown highlights and how they disappear as you adjust the sliders. I guess I'm with Scott on this. Reichman and Schewe also.

Actually the sequence should be, color balance, exposure slider, black slider, then recovery slider, and finally the fill light slider to open up your shadow detail. If the midtones are still too bright, dial back the Brightness slider as well.

I'm using a Nikon D40, shooting RAW only, and converting the NEF files to DNG files on opening them in Bridge. I forget how I set it up, but I don't have to hold down the ALT key...the red areas automatically show up.

I follow a shortened version of your path: WB, pump up Clarity and Vibrance if appropriate, Recovery, and then (very infrequently) Fill Light. I can't remember ever adjusting Brightness at this stage. From then on, all editing is done in CS4 using Adjustment Layers.

Here's a shot from earlier today (about 2 PM). Not a macro. I had the 55/200 lens on and cropped this quite a bit to get this composition. The butterfly's wing and the leaf were mostlyl "red".

As usual, I was after something else and just happened to see the butterfly alight across the drainage ditch in front of me. Couldn't get closer or I'd be in the water. I wasn't really ready to photograph anything, so I hadn't changed to a manual setting.