RAW Sunsets / Sunrises

windoze

If there is a thread or tutorial on here and I missed it - i apologize!
Anyway- I can "semi-handle" a RAW image with ACR and do what's necessary. But where do you begin with a sunset and or sunrise regarding any "fixing" to exposure / shadows etc.....
Im sure it differs for each image - im just looking for some hints / suggestions.....
for example-when i take a pic of my daughter and there is a blown highlight i can fix them but thats not what i want to do with these types of images that have the sun in them....


any help ideas appreciated,


troy

ziggy53

Troy,

Assuming that there are no people or other recognizable tonalities in the image, (people especially make those "magical" sunrise images a challenge in limiting tonality), I generally try to get a decent "exposure" in ACR first.

White balance is another good place to start. ACR and RAW allows one to discard "what the camera recorded" for WB, and you can concentrate on creating color like "what you remember" or what you want to portray, a mood for instance.

Once you get the colors to your liking, work on the Curves to get the "effect" you want regarding middle-tone relationships and also basic scene contrast.

Once you get the image fairly close using these parameters, I think you are ready to move to PhotoShop itself. Open the image as an enlarged (interpolated up) image in 16 bit depth.

I like to convert to CMYK color space immediately because I think the Hue/Saturation controls work much more predictably in that mode.

Sunrise images often need extra saturation so now is a good time to add that. If you have a color calibrated monitor, I think you can trust it, otherwise, use an image, even one you find in Google Images, to sample from and duplicate in your image to start with.

Fine tune the hues, and you should be close to done. You may have to "play" a lot to get things looking as you like, but try not to restrict yourself. PS allows considerable artistic freedom so use it accordingly. Save frequently and review the previous saves to see progress or disaster as it occurs. Mostly, have fun!

Don't forget to resample back to RGBs and 8 bit when you're done. Turn out the lights and go to bed (because it's probably the "wee" hours by now.)


Best,

arodney

First critical factor is understanding the role of exposure with Raw, linear data:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml

Then its important to understand the role of rendering an image to produce an appearance you wish to express:

http://www.color.org/ICC_white_paper_20_Digital_photography_color_management_basics.pdf

From here, you can now begin to discuss the rendering controls available in one or more Raw converters and how to set them to produce that desired color appearance.

Raw processing is rendering, its not color correction (its color and tone creation). Raw is Grayscale data. Raw is scene referred data. Given proper exposure and good Raw conversion tools, you should be able to render the image any way you wish.

LiquidAir

For sunset shots, there is no correct white balance, so I tend to adjust the WB sliders to maximize visual separation between the critial elements of the scene. I often crank the vibrance to something rediculous while adjusting the WB to exagerate the colors and then slide it back to zero while I adjust the brightness and contrast. Once I have the tone curve set, I tweak vibrance and saturation to taste.

In shots where I have blown out the sun (or anything for that matter), I tend to use a combination of highlight recovery and exposure to recover as much detail as I can around the sun while maintaining a smooth transition into the blown out areas. Then I test the fill light slider to see if I want a touch of that for the shadows. Once I have the edges of the histogram sorted out I use a combination of the brightness and the lights and darks in tone curve to get the overall tonality of image where I want it. I usually skip the contrast slider and go straight to the tone curve.