How much contrast is enough?

Pindy

I'm not making any claims on the photo, but which rendering do you prefer, if you had to make a judgment? When does contrast go too far?

The first photo is where I arrived on the first pass. Something, however, always compels me to squeeze more contrast out (photo #2) and although there's something pleasing about that, I think that contrast might be a kind of addiction. I'm curious to hear your opinions on how much "fog" is okay. I sort of feel like too much contrast and you get this kind of "postcard" effect.

#1


and #2

Pindy

FWIW, the unprocessed JPEG rendering of the RAW is HERE

The Curious Camel

The only real answer I could give you is what I like and I like number 2.
I am wondering though if I like it more because my eyes aren't as good as they use to be.

Peace, gail

edgework

The darkest regions in the trees are coming in around 60%. The dark streaks in the masts are hitting about 80%. So you are correct in pushing the shadows harder. But you've lost all the detail in the trees and given the image a thickness and weight that might be desired for asthetic reasons (not my domain), but from a purely technical point, you've overlooked the other half of applying contrast, which is to stretch the lighter regions as well. The brightest point seems to be the sunwashed side of the leftmost boat, and next are the two planks on the dock also facing the sun. The side of the boat is pretty much blasted out already, and there's no detail to be missed in the plank faces. After that, you're talking 25%, 30% and up for the "light" areas. Lots of room to stretch the range there.

I did this version in lab. The gauzy, low-contrast original is expectedly low on saturation as well, and works for that effect, but once detail starts showing up, you want to see colors as well. Lab works best for that.

The question still to be answered: Does higher contrast make for a better shot? Fortunately (for me) that's not the question you asked.

Pindy

Are you referring to shot #2, or both of them?

There are unexpected aspects of your go at it that I like a lot, namely the mistiness amidst the trees, which has a wintry feeling about it (it was 2 weeks ago). I do see a lot more detail and am goign to go back and inspect my versions. Thanks much.

edgework

Pindy wrote:

Are you referring to shot #2, or both of them?

There are unexpected aspects of your go at it that I like a lot, namely the mistiness amidst the trees, which has a wintry feeling about it (it was 2 weeks ago). I do see a lot more detail and am goign to go back and inspect my versions. Thanks much.

It looked to me like your 2nd version got a lot darker than the original. That's what I was referring to.

Duffy Pratt

I'm always amused by Edgework's protesting that he is not competent to make aesthetic judgments, while simultaneously posting astonishingly good work.

Duffy

edgework

Duffy Pratt wrote:

I'm always amused by Edgework's protesting that he is not competent to make aesthetic judgments, while simultaneously posting astonishingly good work.

Duffy

Aw, shucks...

I appreciate the comment, but, I know my strengths and limitations. I've worked with artists: photographers and designers; in fact, I make my living working with them. I know what they do. That's not what I do. I'm cool with that. There's always a need for a creative mechanic.

Truth is, I think Pindy's initial image was quite appealing. At some point, technical issues give way to asthetic considerations; like everyone, I have my opinions but sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.

Duffy Pratt

I know the question here was about contrast, but it looks to me like there are some cast problems with this shot. I doubt that either the boat on the right or the house in the background are anywhere near as blue/green as the numbers show. And I think that the problem may not be so easy to fix. The pine trees, which are certainly some kind of green, are not coming up as green as some things which are almost certainly neutral.

If I get a chance, I might try to play with the color some.

Duffy

Duffy Pratt

OK, I gave it a shot. There are alot of things in this picture that should probably be neutral, but are all over the place. The Johnson and Evinrude motors, the white signs, the white letters in the green sign, the tops of the buoys, the staircase down to the water, parts of the house siding.

In the end I decided that at least some of the motors had to be white, the side of the house should be as near neutral as possible without creating bizarre results, and that the pine trees had to be green. And I decided that the vertical piles on the dock should be much darker, but still lean towards brown/red.

With those things in mind, I wrote a set of curves in RGB. Then converted to LAB to boost contrast and saturation very slightly (with curves), and to sharpen. I may have oversharpened some.

Unfortunately, for some reason, it appears that I can't upload the file (says that I have already uploaded the maximum number of files, which I guess for me is zero.)


Did you take this picture near dawn or dusk? I'm thinking it must be something like that to explain why the neutrals appear to be all over the map.

Duffy

Pindy

Looking forward to seeing what you did. I took that around 9 in the morning with a 30D and a 70-200 f/4L IS. not at all sure why the color casts are like they are.

Duffy Pratt

It looks like the attachments feature has been down since the 14th or 15th. When it comes back up, I will try to remember to post what I did. But two weeks is a long time for something like that to be down. Unfortunately, I don't have my own site to put it on and create a link.

Duffy

Pindy

Duffy Pratt wrote:

It looks like the attachments feature has been down since the 14th or 15th. When it comes back up, I will try to remember to post what I did. But two weeks is a long time for something like that to be down. Unfortunately, I don't have my own site to put it on and create a link.

Duffy

If you right-click the photo from your SM gallery and "Copy address", you then click the "insert image" icon to paste a photo link and voila. Works from other services too. I keep a private, invisible gallery for this purpose.

Duffy Pratt

Attachments are working again;

Here is what I did a while back, using the techniques described in the post above.

Duffy

Pindy

Thanks for putting that up there. Looks really good. In retrospect, I'm not sure what I did to kill the leafy colors but both yours and edgework's versions treat them more as an important component, which I prefer. Must re-read your methodology and try for myself.