Grand Canyon Post Processing Help

Helvegr

Hi -- so after a trip to the Grand Canyon with some very raining and cloudy weather, I didn't feel that any of my shots were very good.

However, I'm not very knowledgeable about many post processing techniques, so I thought it would present me with a good opportunity to learn by trying to "save" some shots.

Here is a simple before and after. Using LR3, i upped the clarity a good amount, the vibrancy a touch to try to pull out some of those colors from the rock. After that it was messing with the tone curve, because the higher contrast seemed to help cut through the haze of the weather.

How does this look? Does it look unnatural? When dealing with landscapes such as this are there any other aspects in post processing I should be focusing on? I know the clouds seem blown out, but I wasn't having much luck balancing them out.

Thanks for any advice!

BinaryFx

I don't think that the edited image looks unnatural in a quick viewing in my browser (taking more time by inspecting the colour values in Photoshop via the info palette may be a different matter).

I personally wish to see more detail in the clouds, however the image is all about the canyon - not the clouds, which tend to frame the shot.

I presume that you were working with raw camera data? If so, you could try setting a negative exposure value and or introducing highlight recovery to gain more tone in the highlights to quarter tones, so that when you adjust the contrast you will have less tonal loss in the clouds.


Stephen Marsh

http://binaryfx.customer.netspace.net.au/ (coming soon!)
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

Helvegr

Thank you so much for the feedback. I did what you suggested (or at least tried to). I ended up reducing the exposure and then adding quite a bit of fill light. Considering this was a stormy day, I think the clouds look far more natural and a bit less "highway to heaven".

Additional thoughts?

malch

Some thoughts on this type of image...
Here's how I approach images like this:

1. Bump up the shadows. Best done in RAW if you can.

2. Start tweaking the curves, quite a lot. Look to steepen the curve in the areas of interest. On an image like this, I would work on the individual channels.

3. Take down the blue channel. Haze is blue and your original image looks a bit cold anyway. Reducing the blue will really help with the haze.

4. Some high-radius low-amount sharpening will also help with the haze.

5. Pump up the vibrance/saturation to taste.

Here's a very quick and dirty attempt although I don't know whether this is the kind of effect you're looking for:

malch

Here's another take on this image. The MediaChance ReDynaMix plugin did an impressively good job of pulling out the rock details:

Helvegr

malch wrote: »

Here's how I approach images like this:

1. Bump up the shadows. Best done in RAW if you can.

2. Start tweaking the curves, quite a lot. Look to steepen the curve in the areas of interest. On an image like this, I would work on the individual channels.

3. Take down the blue channel. Haze is blue and your original image looks a bit cold anyway. Reducing the blue will really help with the haze.

4. Some high-radius low-amount sharpening will also help with the haze.

5. Pump up the vibrance/saturation to taste.

Here's a very quick and dirty attempt although I don't know whether this is the kind of effect you're looking for:

Great information! Very helpful. Question though, without needing to jump into Photoshop, do you have any idea if you can adjust the curve in individual color channels in Lightroom? The only curve I seem to use is the tone curve in lightroom.

I thought it was very interesting that the haze is in the blue channel as you mentioned. I'd really like to experiment a bit more with that idea, within lightroom if possible.

Thanks again!

BinaryFx

Helvegr wrote: »

Great information! Very helpful. Question though, without needing to jump into Photoshop, do you have any idea if you can adjust the curve in individual color channels in Lightroom? The only curve I seem to use is the tone curve in lightroom.

I thought it was very interesting that the haze is in the blue channel as you mentioned. I'd really like to experiment a bit more with that idea, within lightroom if possible.

Thanks again!

My understanding is that Adobe do not believe that their raw camera products need individual channel curves as in Photoshop or many other raw converters - instead they offer abundant sliders for rendering colour and tone.

I personally would like to see individual channel curves in ACR or Lr, however the proponents of the sliders will likely tell you that there is no need.

Clarity is usually used for "haze busting" in ACR/Lr.

One can obviously do a lot with Photoshop which can't be done in the simplified by design approach of ACR/Lr (which is partly by design and partly due to the nature of "parametric editing"). Sometimes there is a different but similar end result from the ACR/Lr approach, other times there is no equivalent to the "good old" Photoshop methods.

If you can post a link to the raw file, then it would be easier to compare the two approaches.


EDIT: I had a quick go at editing in Photoshop too, backing off on the saturation is this appears to be a "moody" shot (I would use ACR for the raw data to compare)...


Regards,

Stephen Marsh

http://binaryfx.customer.netspace.net.au/ (coming soon!)
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

malch

Helvegr wrote: »

Great information! Very helpful. Question though, without needing to jump into Photoshop, do you have any idea if you can adjust the curve in individual color channels in Lightroom? The only curve I seem to use is the tone curve in lightroom.
Thanks again!

I don't really know Lightroom well enough to guide you. But one additional thought: don't be afraid to hit the blues selectively. In Photoshop, I have often pulled down the blue channel and then used a mask to localize the change, for example, along the horizon where the haze is strongest. This protects the desirable blues in the foreground and/or sky.

So... playing with the localized adjustment brush in Lightroom might be productive.

Stepping further back... playing with the white balance could be especially helpful on this image (even more so if you have a RAW file). The original looked pretty cool to me. Warming it up will help reduce the haze *and* give more strength to those wonderful reds in the rock formations! Again, masks or localized adjustments can be used to protect the clouds and keep them reasonably "white".

kwcrow

969122535_Dj7gw-M.jpg

JGS2N

My try. I have been reading Dan Margulis Canyon Conundrum book and messing around with LAB mode. The whole thing is confusing to me but sometimes the results are great. I probably need to read this book a couple of more times and even then I am not sure I will really understand it. The sky in this picture is difficult to know how to deal with.

DonRicklin

A lot of this advice is really good. Many pleasing changes from the original. The one bit of advice still missing is to level the horizon line. The image is disconcertingly tilted! Especially for such a wide/distant landscape view.

Don