Contrast/Exposure Question

Phyxius

Okay, these haven't been cropped at all so I'm not asking about composition. This was the first time I've shot RAW and I was also expirimenting with a new lens. These looked really nice when I was chimping, and when I uploaded them on to my computer at home I upped the exposure on most of them by .33 or .67 if I went any higher I got blown out whites and grey-ish blacks. This is not all of them, but I only got through the first 80 pictures. I think they got better as the day went on.

Any suggestions though? It's hard when the background is brown (trees) and the horses are brown, but people are wearing WHITE. (and some horses have white markings).

On this computer it looks like this one could have been boosted at little more, but look at her face. More exposure would mean a blown out face.


Then, this horse was particularly dark, mostly black with some bay/brown points. But, with her the white sleeve of her shirt make it harder to go any brighter.


Then, you get a horse with a lot of white like Kahlua here... I think exposure is okay on this one, but there is not "pop".


And Chico too,


:scratch

**I posted this here instead of in a technique folder since I was referring to high shutter speeds, outdoors, etc. If this thread doesn't belong here, please move it to another section! Thank You!!

Steve Cavigliano

These look very nice Christina

When working with images with a large dynamic range, you can use a levels layer mask (Layer>Adj Layer>Levels) to brighten the shadows and mid, while erasing the areas that get too bright. Those white sleeves and such. The global brightening you did looks, OK. But you could have done a bit more using a layer mask.

Steve

Phyxius

Steve Cavigliano wrote:

These look very nice Christina

When working with images with a large dynamic range, you can use a levels layer mask (Layer>Adj Layer>Levels) to brighten the shadows and mid, while erasing the areas that get too bright. Those white sleeves and such. The global brightening you did looks, OK. But you could have done a bit more using a layer mask.

Steve

Ah, levels! So maybe moving over the middle slider to the left (and possibly even the far right one to the left a tad). And moving the left output tab a little bit to the right?

Thanks Steve!!!

Andy

The first of each pair is your shot. SmugMug Auto Color is the second version of each pair. This is not your father's auto color We use a great program, called I2E, and it works wonders in these situations. Keep in mind, these were done on the -L resized images. They'll look even better in print from the originals

Phyxius

Andy,
Yay!! I think the SmugMug Auto is an improvement on all of the images, except the first one.

Here's the same photo with levels adjusted.

Original-


Smugmug Auto -




The other ones are great though!! Thanks Andy and SmugMug!
-Christina

mercphoto

Andy wrote:

The first of each pair is your shot. SmugMug Auto Color is the second version of each pair.

Holy smokes Andy!

But back to using the RAW converter, I think if you are getting greyish blacks as you up the exposure you might want to move up the "shadows" slider to get your blacks back (assuming you are using Adobe Camera Raw). Don't worry if you blow out SOME highlights, or plug SOME shadows, especially if those areas are small and in the background. ACR will also let you add in contrast and saturation and even apply a curve. Then in Photoshop you can use shadow/highlights to help add back in shadow detail if you need.

Your problem with brown trees, dark horses and white jerseys is what I hear a lot of wedding photographers complain about: white dresses and black tuxes.

Andy

mercphoto wrote:

Holy smokes Andy!

Pretty good, eh?

Phyxius

mercphoto wrote:

But back to using the RAW converter, I think if you are getting greyish blacks as you up the exposure you might want to move up the "shadows" slider to get your blacks back (assuming you are using Adobe Camera Raw). Don't worry if you blow out SOME highlights, or plug SOME shadows, especially if those areas are small and in the background. ACR will also let you add in contrast and saturation and even apply a curve. Then in Photoshop you can use shadow/highlights to help add back in shadow detail if you need.
.

My problem is probably lack of RAW/PS knowledge. But, what I see is this:


Am I missing something with shadows and such or am I not using Adobe Camera Raw?

mercphoto

Phyxius wrote:

My problem is probably lack of RAW/PS knowledge. But, what I see is this:


Am I missing something with shadows and such or am I not using Adobe Camera Raw?

I have no idea what that is, but its not ACR.

Phyxius

mercphoto wrote:

I have no idea what that is, but its not ACR.

I have no idea either.


Another question though... I uploaded the convert RAW files to my smugmug account and there is no EXIF info. Is that normal?

xtnomad

Looks like Nikkon Capture or Capture NX. I rarely shoot raw and dont use Nikkons software enought to coment. I do like SM auto color and have ordered some test prints to see witch way they differ from my monitor and compensate one direction or the other for auto color and prints come out great.

mercphoto

xtnomad wrote:

I do like SM auto color and have ordered some test prints to see witch way they differ from my monitor and compensate one direction or the other for auto color and prints come out great.

Using auto-color is fine. Compensating your monitor based on a color-shifting algorithm from some printer is not a good idea at all.

gus

Andy wrote:

SmugMug Auto Color

Way too much reading for me but i will buy it. Where is the SmugMug Auto Colour Button ? I WANT A BUTTON !!!

slapshot

I2E Plug-in for PS

gus wrote:

Way too much reading for me but i will buy it. Where is the SmugMug Auto Colour Button ? I WANT A BUTTON !!!

The SmugMug AutoColor Andy refers to, I2E, is great. You can purchase the I2E plug-in for Photoshop at www.colour-science.com. They also have applications for batch processing files as well.

I use the I2E plug-in for most shots. It is great for when you don't have the time to go through various manual adjustments.

ivar

gus wrote:

Way too much reading for me but i will buy it. Where is the SmugMug Auto Colour Button ? I WANT A BUTTON !!!

Try this:

gus

ivar wrote:

Try this:

I'd never seen that before..wow made a big difference.

Phyxius

Oh Yay My thread is USEFUL!

Anyone know what happens to EXIF when converting RAWs?

ivar

Phyxius wrote:

Oh Yay My thread is USEFUL!

Anyone know what happens to EXIF when converting RAWs?

Depends on what way you save it. If you use 'save' in PS for instance, all the info is nicely embedded in the file. If you use 'save for web' you don't get any exif.

Phyxius

ivar wrote:

Depends on what way you save it. If you use 'save' in PS for instance, all the info is nicely embedded in the file. If you use 'save for web' you don't get any exif.

Neither I "save as" in PS. I just HAVE to be difficult.