What more can be done to this shot?

jlg84

This shot was taken this past May in Yangshuo, Guangxi, China, from a balloon. As you can tell, it was a very overcast day, with lots of cloud. Is there a Photoshop technique that will help make it stand out a bit better?



(http://shuanglong.smugmug.com/gallery/3170066#174353125)

pyrtek

It's a tough one. Maybe something like this?

nikos

Familiarize yourself with this thread
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=18308

It has some great information to get you started in the right direction.

Nikos

BinaryFx

Yes, something can be done - but the fog lends to the "atmosphere" of the shot (sorry, pun intended), so one would not wish to kill it...reminds me a lot of a correction in an older version of Professional Photoshop from Dan Margulis, of a shot of a bridge.

Do you have a camera raw file, or only an in-camera baked JPEG?

I will post something later!


EDIT: Here is a quick sample, is this moving in the direction that you want? I went rather extreme, one can layer over the original and reduce opacity to taste to reduce the effect. Basically a quick 4 step RGB edit to the original largest size image:

1. Reduce colour noise. (http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/howto_colourblur.html)

(In hindsight, the shadows should be opened up a bit first as the next step, it is good that this image is flat and not blown in values at the endpoints, as it is easy to plug things up when correcting and editing room is needed)

2. Linear light blend of original layer, high pass filtered at a large radius 100 pixel or so on the original 3504 x 2336 pixel image (experiment with overlay, soft light, hard light, vivid light blends).

3. Large radius USM midtone sharpen/small amount value with endpoints masked with blend if or endpoint layer mask.

(http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/howto_midendmask.html)
(http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/blendif.html)

4. Neutralize endponts and neutrals with global curves and a minor tonal range expansion, add a minor amount of sharpening.

No midtone lightening or shadow/hightlight or contrast masking has been done, I just wanted to cut through the haze but keep the general feel of the dim lighting intact.

My next edit would be to lighten the midtones and shadows first, before correcting in similar steps to above - which will bring out more detail.

Similar general results would be obtained using LAB mode edits - while the new Clarity command in ACR4.1 ALR1.2 does similar as the high pass light blend step.

It is probably good to add noise reduction too, perhaps layered over the top with a linear gradated mask so that the upper section has more filtering applied than the lower section.

Hope this helps,


Stephen Marsh.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/