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Wildlife in Fog, Difficult Editing

photomagicphotomagic Registered Users Posts: 257 Major grins
edited September 8, 2009 in Finishing School
Hello,

I have some Orca photos of them in the fog shot at iso 400 using 40D Canon. Histogram of course is in the middle of the diagram. Any type of adjustment I get what looks to be a lot of noise, a purple tone and just not a smooth image.

Here is a sample of before adjustments and then one with very slight level adjustment in photoshop. If I bring the levels "mountain" to the edge of the histogram the way it should be, then the image is really bad. And it looks like there is some kind of noise.

Hope that makes sense.

Any kind of help is greatly appreciated!

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    photomagicphotomagic Registered Users Posts: 257 Major grins
    edited September 8, 2009
    with slight adjustments
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    cadredcadred Registered Users Posts: 77 Big grins
    edited September 8, 2009
    What I would do is the clip the blacks (and perhaps whites) until you have decent contrast and adjust the midtones until you are happy. You have a pretty extreme example, so you are not going to recover a ton of detail regardless.

    Good luck.
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    pathfinderpathfinder Super Moderators Posts: 14,698 moderator
    edited September 8, 2009
    While we generally want a full range of white to black in our images after editing, to make maximum use of the limited gray step scale printable on paper, there are images that are exceptions to this.

    Images in low contrast fog, will frequently not tolerate a full range of gray scale steps. So be careful with Curves or Levels in Photoshop. You can increase the contrast of your image slightly, to artistic taste, but too much and the image just breaks down as you are finding.
    Pathfinder - www.pathfinder.smugmug.com

    Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
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    photomagicphotomagic Registered Users Posts: 257 Major grins
    edited September 8, 2009
    pathfinder wrote:
    While we generally want a full range of white to black in our images after editing, to make maximum use of the limited gray step scale printable on paper, there are images that are exceptions to this.

    Images in low contrast fog, will frequently not tolerate a full range of gray scale steps. So be careful with Curves or Levels in Photoshop. You can increase the contrast of your image slightly, to artistic taste, but too much and the image just breaks down as you are finding.


    Thank you so much for your help. That really is a relief and makes sense... I was always told that all images needed the full range. SO glad I asked! :):)
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    pathfinderpathfinder Super Moderators Posts: 14,698 moderator
    edited September 8, 2009
    I think yoiu might want to increase the contrast in the water, more closer to the viewer, and the orce - maybe a gradient mask and leave the sky as foggy as it is.
    Pathfinder - www.pathfinder.smugmug.com

    Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
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    photomagicphotomagic Registered Users Posts: 257 Major grins
    edited September 8, 2009
    pathfinder wrote:
    I think yoiu might want to increase the contrast in the water, more closer to the viewer, and the orce - maybe a gradient mask and leave the sky as foggy as it is.


    Thanks for the tip.... We had 3 mornings of fog with the Orcas... I will have to give that a try and see what happens, but I like the idea... :):)
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