From this RAW photo to ...

Antonio Correia

Straight from RAW

Antonio Correia

Into
this.
It's 2 photos stacked together one for the roof the other fom the darker area.
Not very good ...

DavidTO

This thread has been relocated from The Whipping Post.

Antonio Correia

DavidTO wrote:

This thread has been relocated from The Whipping Post.

Thank you

jfriend

Not sure you need or benefit from stacking on this one

Antonio Correia wrote:

Straight from RAW

First off, your original was posted here as AdobeRGB so it looks more washed out than it really is if you see it on the web as sRGB.

Second, I don't know if you really want to do stacking on this. Here's your original photo with a curve applied to it (boost the low to mid tones) with no mask and no stacking. Compared to your stacked image, notice that the ribs of the roof are a more natural color (not so black and the things hanging from the ceiling now look red instead of black). This rendition doesn't have quite as much contrast as your stacked image, but you could tweak the curve to have as much contrast as you wanted. I thought the shadows were a bit plugged in your stacked image so that's why I did it this way.

Antonio Correia

Thank you for the simple and effective way to turn a bad into a good picture.

Antonio Correia

Better considering what I have done before ...
It's an improvement, is it not ?
As a matter of fact I read the light to the top of the tent (hight lights) hopping to be able to get detail from the shadows.
It is not perfect yet... Some detail of the cables is missing ...
But I'm happy with it... by now :

Thank you John Friend !

jfriend

IMO, the floor is too dark

Antonio Correia wrote:

Better considering what I have done before ...
It's an improvement, is it not ?
As a matter of fact I read the light to the top of the tent (hight lights) hopping to be able to get detail from the shadows.
It is not perfect yet... Some detail of the cables is missing ...
But I'm happy with it... by now :

Thank you John Friend !

I think you just need to decide what's the most important part of your photo, adjust for that and then see what you can do to make the rest of the photo look as good as possible. I assumed you were shooting a shot of the floor, but wanted to capture the mood and geometry of the roof too. If that's the case, I think you still have the floor underexposed in your latest adjustment. If you lose a little detail in the ceiling in order to fix it, that's no big crime here, but you can probably find a curve that will accomplish both.

Sometimes, I think we come online and start reading about never blowing highlights and we think that's the holy grail of a photograph. It's usually nice to preserve detail in the highlights and it's essential if the main subject of the photo is in the highlights, but it's not worth preserving to the detriment of the main subject of our image. So, I try to figure out what I most want to get right and then find a technique to get the rest of the image as good as it can be without sacrificing the main part of the image.

BTW, you can also use shadow/highlights fairly effectively on this image too. You can restore the visibility of some of the detail with the higlight control or you can lighten the floor with the shadow control.

Antonio Correia

jfriend wrote:

I think you just need to decide what's the most important part of your photo, adjust for that and then see what you can do to make the rest of the photo look as good as possible. I assumed you were shooting a shot of the floor, but wanted to capture the mood and geometry of the roof too. If that's the case, I think you still have the floor underexposed in your latest adjustment. If you lose a little detail in the ceiling in order to fix it, that's no big crime here, but you can probably find a curve that will accomplish both.

Sometimes, I think we come online and start reading about never blowing highlights and we think that's the holy grail of a photograph. It's usually nice to preserve detail in the highlights and it's essential if the main subject of the photo is in the highlights, but it's not worth preserving to the detriment of the main subject of our image. So, I try to figure out what I most want to get right and then find a technique to get the rest of the image as good as it can be without sacrificing the main part of the image.

BTW, you can also use shadow/highlights fairly effectively on this image too. You can restore the visibility of some of the detail with the higlight control or you can lighten the floor with the shadow control.

Thank you.
Your point of view is correct.
I'll have it in mind and try to learn on more and more on curves and ... many other matters.