help with haze

firststring74

My father and I spent a day earlier this week and went to skyline drive in VA for fall colors. There were some great shots, but it was a hazy day and it muted the colors in many of the shots. Is there anyway to remove, or decrease this in lightroom? Or in photoshop? Thanks

C

Toshido

Try upping the black point. I found that works nicely to get through smoke and dust.

firststring74

Toshido wrote: »

Try upping the black point. I found that works nicely to get through smoke and dust.

sounds like a good idea. I am working on another set of photos for an event that I did and then I get to work on my own photos so I'll try that latter and report back. Thanks Toshido

pathfinder

Increase the steepness of the Curve in LR, especially the mid tones. This is kind of what you are doing when you raise the black point, indirectly.

MarkR

Also, play with the Clarity slider.

bgarland

One tip I have read but not tried yet it to reduce the blue saturation a tad since haze typically contains a lot of blue.

paddler4

haze is VERY frustrating. I do several of the things listed above, and one more:

--make sure you have the full tonal range by setting both black and white points (in LR, "exposure" is the closest to a white point adjustment.
--play with the gamma adjustment in levels or the 'brightness' in LR if the haze makes too much of the image bright.
--use curves to increase contrast
--increase local contrast, either with the clarity slider in LR or using a small amount ,zero threshold, very large radius unsharp mask in PS (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/contrast-enhancement.shtml)
--fiddle with blue saturation

The blues are primarily an issue if the distances are large and the haze is partly humidity. The farther the light has traveled through humid air, the bluer it is.

That said, all of those taken together do not necessarily do the trick.

One nice thing about doing as much of this as you can in Lightroom is that it is nondestructive and easy to go back of something you try does not help or looks artificial, without the hassle of lots of layers. The drawback is that sometimes portions of the image are particularly affected, so you need layer masks.

good luck.

pathfinder

I agree. It is hard to get great images if the humidity is high and the air very thick and hazy. That is why the light in the dry air of New Mexico is so nice.

Sometimes you just have to pack up and come back another day.

firststring74

thanks everyone, finally have time to work on photos this weekend. I'll try the recommendations and report back. I think that this will become a yearly outing so next year hopefully will have less haze. It is a 2-3 hr drive though so not something we can do on a more frequent basis and still work a full time job!