White Feather Fury

windoze

so yesterday I took pics of a snowy owl and i was careful to use -EC not to blow out the white feathers shooting at ISO 800 for a shutter speed not much higher than my focal length. anyway on the20D cam's histogram preview - they looked ok.......

When CS2 opens my RAW images for some reason ( I think i can probably change this ) it does an "auto" adjust for exposure, contrast yadaa yadda which often results in a VERY WHITE Snowy owl ( Graph banging on the right vertical axis ),

so what i do is I decrease considerably the exposure and I play with some of the other values until i get an image that looks ok but by the time i then make some adjustments with contrast, curves yadda yadda - im back to a blown out image........

so what am i asking ? ? ?


im an unexperienced CS2 user - based on what ive explained - how might i proceed with this type of image??

troy

USAIR

windoze wrote:

so yesterday I took pics of a snowy owl and i was careful to use -EC not to blow out the white feathers shooting at ISO 800 for a shutter speed not much higher than my focal length. anyway on the20D cam's histogram preview - they looked ok.......

When CS2 opens my RAW images for some reason ( I think i can probably change this ) it does an "auto" adjust for exposure, contrast yadaa yadda which often results in a VERY WHITE Snowy owl ( Graph banging on the right vertical axis ),

so what i do is I decrease considerably the exposure and I play with some of the other values until i get an image that looks ok but by the time i then make some adjustments with contrast, curves yadda yadda - im back to a blown out image........

so what am i asking ? ? ?


im an unexperienced CS2 user - based on what ive explained - how might i proceed with this type of image??

troy

Troy I never use the auto in CS2 you can always adjust to your liking
And yes you can set up CS2 not to do this automaticly

While you adjust the exposure slider you can hold down the [alt] key in windows and see what is blownout.
This holding down the [alt] works for other sliders too...I think for shadows where there is no detail.

Just give at try with the sliders and you will see.

Fred

nikos

windoze wrote:

When CS2 opens my RAW images for some reason ( I think i can probably change this ) it does an "auto" adjust for exposure, contrast yadaa yadda which often results in a VERY WHITE Snowy owl

When you open up the RAW image, hit CTRL+U or CMD+U. This will reset the parameters of your original image without any auto compensations. You'll see that all the Auto checkboxes will be unchecked.

windoze wrote:

so what i do is I decrease considerably the exposure and I play with some of the other values until i get an image that looks ok but by the time i then make some adjustments with contrast, curves yadda yadda - im back to a blown out image........

If you're working with a sensitive image in RAW, you just want to set the correct white balance and exposure. Don't get too tied up messing with all the other controls because your final image tweaking is going to be in Photoshop itself.

With that in mind, expose for the main subject (the white owl). Make sure that the white balance and exposure is set so that you're not blowing the highlights. When you're satisfied with the results, use the SAVE button to save a copy of the RAW file with its current settings as a PSD, TIFF or JPG and then hit DONE.

Open the saved image in Photoshop and now tweak for the rest of the image. Learn to use the SHADOW/HIGHLIGHTS corrections in the "more options" mode. It's very powerful and it will help you yield great results towards your final image.

HTH,
Nikos

windoze

nikos wrote:

When you open up the RAW image, hit CTRL+U or CMD+U. This will reset the parameters of your original image without any auto compensations. You'll see that all the Auto checkboxes will be unchecked.


If you're working with a sensitive image in RAW, you just want to set the correct white balance and exposure. Don't get too tied up messing with all the other controls because your final image tweaking is going to be in Photoshop itself.

With that in mind, expose for the main subject (the white owl). Make sure that the white balance and exposure is set so that you're not blowing the highlights. When you're satisfied with the results, use the SAVE button to save a copy of the RAW file with its current settings as a PSD, TIFF or JPG and then hit DONE.

Open the saved image in Photoshop and now tweak for the rest of the image. Learn to use the SHADOW/HIGHLIGHTS corrections in the "more options" mode. It's very powerful and it will help you yield great results towards your final image.

HTH,
Nikos

Thanx FRED and NIKOS !!!

i took a REALLY nice image of a white snowy owl that i'd love to show...
im going to try the suggestions tonight when i get home!


troy

pathfinder

USAIR wrote:

Troy I never use the auto in CS2 you can always adjust to your liking
And yes you can set up CS2 not to do this automaticly

While you adjust the exposure slider you can hold down the [alt] key in windows and see what is blownout.
This holding down the [alt] works for other sliders too...I think for shadows where there is no detail.

Just give at try with the sliders and you will see.

Fred

I agree with Fred. I almost never use the AUTO settings chosen by ARC.

Hold down the ALT key as you slide the slider for exposure and you will see the blown highlights as white and the rest of the image as black. Adjust the slider until you just see a few dots of white. Then hold down the ALT key and adjust the shadow detail slider - Adjust this slider until you are seeing black in the areas of the image that you think should be black, and the rest of the image is white. It is easier to do than to explain.

Now with the black and white points set, you can adjust the saturation and contrast to taste. If you don't like the color balance, click with the eyedropper on a neutral midtone and make it a grey tone.

This should help get your owl's highlight details in line if they were not overexposed at the time of shooting. With a little - EC originally, you should be golden, Windoze!

windoze

pathfinder wrote:

I agree with Fred. I almost never use the AUTO settings chosen by ARC.

Hold down the ALT key as you slide the slider for exposure and you will see the blown highlights as white and the rest of the image as black. Adjust the slider until you just see a few dots of white. Then hold down the ALT key and adjust the shadow detail slider - Adjust this slider until you are seeing black in the areas of the image that you think should be black, and the rest of the image is white. It is easier to do than to explain.

Now with the black and white points set, you can adjust the saturation and contrast to taste. If you don't like the color balance, click with the eyedropper on a neutral midtone and make it a grey tone.

This should help get your owl's highlight details in line if they were not overexposed at the time of shooting. With a little - EC originally, you should be golden, Windoze!

using everything from yours and all above....

pathfinder

Looks good to me:):

USAIR

I agree looks good to me too
Another reason to love RAW

Fred