To saturate or photoshop..that is the question.

gus · December 29, 2004

The only place my camera falls flat on its face is when i take a shot like below. It just flattens the image & gets the deep greens out. I have tried hundreds of times on many different settings ie f stops from go to wo but it still wont shoot it how i want it.

Yesterday i did try (for the 1st time) the cameras 'saturate' setting & i think i got a better result at lifting the greens than i do in PS. The camera can go to saturate +3 & i had it on +1.

Does changing the saturation sound a better way to do things ? To me i cant tell which is better & thought maybe someone knows a better way.

Typical 'untoughed' image im having trouble with...Im aware of the light filtering through but the camera tries to balance it. It was really dark in there with the deepest greens i have seen. Nothing i do with the settings seems to stop the deep green washout.

Make:OLYMPUS OPTICAL CO.,LTDModel: C5050Z Size: 2560x1920 Bytes: 1202413 Aperture: f/1.8 ISO: 125 Focal Length: 7.1mm Exposure Time: 0.0666s (10/150)JPEG Quality:normalFlash:16Exposure Program:Normal program

DoctorIt · December 29, 2004

i don't have a good, supported answer for this, but I always feel like I can do better in PS with saturation and that sort of thing than to let the camera blast it away on its own.

i would definitely like to hear some good reasons though

mercphoto · December 29, 2004

Try this

Humungus wrote:

Yesterday i did try (for the 1st time) the cameras 'saturate' setting & i think i got a better result at lifting the greens than i do in PS. The camera can go to saturate +3 & i had it on +1.

Does changing the saturation sound a better way to do things ? To me i cant tell which is better & thought maybe someone knows a better way.

Typical 'untoughed' image im having trouble with...Im aware of the light filtering through but the camera tries to balance it. It was really dark in there with the deepest greens i have seen.

I'm always a fan of getting it close in the camera, but then again, I studied discrete mathematics in college and I know what happens to numbers as they get manipulated.

You said it was really dark in there, but the image looks rather bright. Try an exposure compensation, have the camera underexpose by 1 stop, see what happens then.

ginger_55 · December 29, 2004

Bill, that is so basic, I really feel dumb.

Back to the seventies. Shooting trees, or kids in front of trees, I read, learned, was taught to underexpose.

The opposite is true in say shooting with a very light background. The silly camera is going to make that stuff 18% grey, if it dies doing it. So you gotta fool the camera.

Since I don't think technically. I just used to think the trees are darker than the sidewalk, gotta underexpose. Or, that white sky, paper, whatever, is lighter than the sidewalk, gotta over expose.

I wasn't shooting the background, I was just trying to get an exposure on the kids, so I didn't relate it to your trees.
Thank you, Merc.

Oh, to fool the camera, just underexpose a dark background and overexpose a light background. If you want to tax your brain, you can get into the technicalities. Oh, a grey card is great, I always lost mine, but it worked. Don't know how that would relate to your camera though. Also, since the trees are not moving around, you can bracket. Underexpose, and then underexpose some more. I do that now with my Rebel, I think you can do that.

g

tmlphoto · December 29, 2004

mercphoto wrote:

I'm always a fan of getting it close in the camera, but then again, I studied discrete mathematics in college and I know what happens to numbers as they get manipulated. You said it was really dark in there, but the image looks rather bright. Try an exposure compensation, have the camera underexpose by 1 stop, see what happens then.

Certainly, less exposure will equate to greater saturation. If you shoot RAW you can increase the saturation to taste and not lose any more than the "in camera saturation" boost. You can also try steepening the LAB curves to increase saturation somewhat selectively. Rutt has posted numerous threads on the topic ( try searching dgrin for LAB curves).

pathfinder · December 29, 2004

Humungus wrote:

The only place my camera falls flat on its face is when i take a shot like below. It just flattens the image & gets the deep greens out. I have tried hundreds of times on many different settings ie f stops from go to wo but it still wont shoot it how i want it.

Yesterday i did try (for the 1st time) the cameras 'saturate' setting & i think i got a better result at lifting the greens than i do in PS. The camera can go to saturate +3 & i had it on +1.

Does changing the saturation sound a better way to do things ? To me i cant tell which is better & thought maybe someone knows a better way.

Typical 'untoughed' image im having trouble with...Im aware of the light filtering through but the camera tries to balance it. It was really dark in there with the deepest greens i have seen. Nothing i do with the settings seems to stop the deep green washout.

Make:OLYMPUS OPTICAL CO.,LTDModel: C5050Z Size: 2560x1920 Bytes: 1202413 Aperture: f/1.8 ISO: 125 Focal Length: 7.1mm Exposure Time: 0.0666s (10/150)JPEG Quality:normalFlash:16Exposure Program:Normal program

'gus - I think the comments about underexposure, underexpose for shaded places, overexpose for snow are all dancing around the question of what is the correct exposure for this scene.

Sunny f 16 says -- 1/ISO at f16 for average neutral grey scene in full frontal sunlight - Used to see this formula inside the boxes of Kodachrome when you opened them and it has not been repealed yet. For shade you need 2 full stops more exposure so 1/ISO at f8....

You shot at f1.8 for 1/15th sec at ISO 125. So for deep shade here you needed f8 at 1/125(1/ISO) or for really deep shade - f5.6 at 1/125th
You actually were shooting 3 to 4 stops more exposure than that. Was it really that dark in there? If it was then it was really dim - was the sun shining above the arboreal canopy or was it overcast above tree level?

At any rate I cannot reliably estimate the proper exposure from the information here ( is the sun really weaker in OZ???

- or do you just sun burn that easy??) Enquiring minds want to know!

So I will assume the exposure was reasonably close. Was your camera set to use Average White Balance or did you set the camera to shade or overcast rather than sunlit? I find color balance much more reliable when I set the cameras color balance rather than letting the camera use its own AWB setting.

And lastly, you were shooting in-camera jpgs, not RAW, correct?

Better cameras( and I include the Oly here) tend to save rather desaturated images - this allows the files to have a larger contrast ratio on the lighting side of the equation. I find I have to increase my Canon from the standard setting to a more saturated setting to get the type of color image that I prefer. So I would bump up the in camera jpg processing to get higher saturation.

Also Ginger is right that Rutt taught us to increase the steepness of the 'a' curve in the LAB color space to increase the color of vegetation in images.
You have PS - Click Image>Mode>Lab Color then Type ctrl-M and you will see the 'curves' dialoge box. Click on the 'a' channel and steepen the graphical line and you will increase green and decrease magenta in the image. Just try it and see how you like it!!

gus · December 30, 2004

Thanks all..PF..i will have to look into the awb setting. I pretty much only use prog or shoot in bracket. I went & checked out a lot more of the shots i was unhappy with & all were 1.8 so its my own fault.

I didnt know white balance would have an effect....what is the best setting for deep shadows in your opinion ?

I tried that lab ..ctrl-M..a

It did certainly work on the greens but it wouldnt save in Jpeg & thats all i work in (i can just make my way around them ...so i dont need any more trouble) My camera will do RAW but i tried it & ended up with these huge 'ORF' files floating around.

I think the best i can do is go back for another hike & try working the f stop.

I have attatched a photo by Steve Parish from his website. He is in my opinion australias best wildlife photograpger. Now that i look at it i could see how he may lift his greens also.

Its not the greens but the shadows with the lightbeams i guess i am having trouble with....shadows & light ??? Isnt that what photography is about

Steves site if anyone wants to have a look at some of his work.
http://www.steveparishexhibits.com.au/sppe.php

Michiel de Brieder · December 30, 2004

'gus,

how 'bout a slight s-curve? It seems to work quite nicely, I've uploaded your shot into photoshop and I've done an s-curve adjustment with a very slight curve at the top and a bit deeper curve at the bottom. like so:

you can pull down the bottom point a bit more to deepen the shadows. If you need more saturation afterwards you can always add a new adjustment layer for that

You might even consider to bring down the exposure more and then do some selective adjustment on parts of the photo to undo the exposure tweak.

Hope this helps some, it's just my way of doing things

gus · December 30, 2004

Michiel de Brieder wrote:

'gus,

how 'bout a slight s-curve?
Hope this helps some, it's just my way of doing things

Tks Michiel...thats pretty well what i do. I think i can get better results with a higher aperture setting thus allowing some better curve work as you mentioned.I like what you did with that curve though...nice. My daughter is at the base of the tree & i could barely see her in the forest.

Watching me take photographs is like watching a speedway car crashing into a crowd. So a friend told me....

To saturate or photoshop..that is the question.

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