Dealing with a low dynamic range

Cornflake

Living in the desert, I'm used to dealing with very high dynamic ranges. A couple of times in the past year, though, I've run into storm light. The RAW conversions have a small dynamic range. I've run into the same thing on the few occasions I've dealt with fog.

How do you approach processing such photos? Torturing the histogram until it has tones from 0 and 255 usually produces something harsh and unattractive that bears little resemblance to what I saw. It also screws up the saturation. Leaving the tonal range pretty much alone, however, produces a flat-looking image. I've usually wound up stretching the histogram some but not enough to get a full tonal range. Any thoughts about how to deal with this issue would be appreciated.

Richard

It might be helpful if you posted in sample for discussion. If you do a curve adjustment layer in luminosity mode, you should be able to avoid saturation side effects. You can also convert to LAB and only adjust the L channel. You don't necessarily have to end up with values from 0 to 255 if that does not reflect the reality of the scene. I generally do set the black point so that there are true blacks, though not always the white point. In any event, you can always adjust the opacity of the adjustment layer to taste.

Cornflake

Thanks for the response, Richard. You've already given me one idea.

By way of example, here's one I posted in Landscapes. I stretched the histogram as far as my taste buds allowed. I like it, but it still seems a tad flat to me, and this one worked better than some of the others taken in the same light.

zoomer

You could dodge and burn that one into line pretty quickly....although it looks fine as is, maybe a slight contrast bump.
Did you do a levels adjust on this?

Cornflake

Thanks for the response, zoomer. I did both global and local levels adjustments, as well as some local curves adjustments. I didn't do a luminance-only curve as Richard suggests (the closest equivalent to Lab mode in my software), and I'll try that.

Peano

Can you provide a raw file rather than one you've worked over? You could upload to www.Yousendit.com and post a link here for download.

eoren1

I have found great success from Nik Color Efex' Tonal Contrast to get shots like this to pop. Happy to show you the results if you end up posting the raw file.

Cornflake

Peano, I've never uploaded a RAW file but I'll see what I can do.

eoren, I used Color Efex (which is fairly new to me) but I was using the dynamic contrast slider in the pro contast feature. Maybe I should spend more time with the other tool.

Overfocused

Adjustments in either/both unsharp mask and midtone contrast may achieve what you're looking for

Cornflake

When I got home from work, I tried Richard's and eoren's suggestions, i.e., a luminance-only curve and the tonal contrast tool in Color Efex. Those in tandem helped a lot. I'd forgotten that the tonal contrast tool allowed separate contrast adjustments for separate tonal ranges. Part of my problem with this image and the series was that any further adjustment in global contrast tended to kill all the shadow detail, and the tonal contrast tool got around that difficulty nicely.

This edit isn't finished by any means, but I think I'll explore these solutions before imposing on the rest of you any more for advice. The advice that was given is greatly appreciated.

[Oops. The one I edited isn't the one I posted before. Oh, well.]

Peano

Cornflake wrote: »

Peano, I've never uploaded a RAW file but I'll see what I can do.

After the file uploads, copy the download link and post it here. That's all there is to it.