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Cornflake · August 4, 2012

I always appreciate feedback but I'd particularly appreciate it with this one, even if it's "that stinks." I'm mainly wondering if it seems natural and credible and if not, why not. Thanks in advance for any help.

Sam · August 4, 2012

Cornflake,

I just visited your website and think you have some wonderful images with very nice processing.

What I saw on your last image and to a lesser existent here is a rather flat image lacking contrast, but after viewing your website I am wondering if it's more about how the images are being sized and displayed here on SmugMug vs the actual processing.

Also I am using a 22" Lacie Blue CRT which is really good for print matching but is less bright than the LCD monitors most are now using.

As to this image it seems a little flat to me and as a general rule landscape images in portrait orientation don't seem to stir my interest, although in some cases like this one the river and canyon does seem to guide one into this type of aspect ratio.

In general I think an aspect ratio where the width exceeds the height looks more normal. I think more closely matches how we see the world.

Sam

Cornflake · August 4, 2012

Sam, thanks very much for the kind words and for the help. By the way, I've also started avoiding portrait orientation, simply because much of the life of my photos is on the internet, and monitors are much more receptive to landscape orientation.

I often have too little contrast so I suspect you're right. I'll try boosting it. I actually thought I'd overdone it in this case. The default RAW conversion looked like this:

The subject was many miles away, through a lot of haze. The detail was all there, though. Dealing with a low dynamic range has always been hard for me. The processing involves so much surgery that I tend to lose my bearings. When I thought I was done with this one, I let it sit overnight and it looked okay to me, but I wondered if I'd been numbed by overexposure to the image. I can fix "a little flat." Thanks again.

Hikin' Mike · August 4, 2012

Nothing wrong with portrait orientation. This is a great composition and I like the river snaking through the canyon. You did a great job pulling through the haze. My only nit is the yellow-ish tint. I obviously wasn't there, but it looks too yellow to me. Other than that, I like it.

Sam · August 4, 2012

I just came back and when I looked at the original processed image it doesn't seem flat to me?????

The original RAW file was really flat!

I do find that in many cases it is best to wait a day or even two after processing and then go back for a final view before delivery or printing. Our eyes will adjust to color and lighting very quickly and can provide a false sense of where our processing is really at.

This seems to be especially true with skin tones.

Sam

JC · August 4, 2012

Sam wrote: »

Cornflake,

I just visited your website and think you have some wonderful images with very nice processing.

What I saw on your last image and to a lesser existent here is a rather flat image lacking contrast, but after viewing your website I am wondering if it's more about how the images are being sized and displayed here on SmugMug vs the actual processing.

Also I am using a 22" Lacie Blue CRT which is really good for print matching but is less bright than the LCD monitors most are now using.

Sam

The real world naturally has a range of contrasts. Far too often, here, other forums, art shows, people take a natural image and apply a predetermined stretch to it, that doesn't match the reality of the scene. I spend a lot of time in the type of landscapes that cornflake photographs, sleeping there, for weeks on end seeing all the subtle changes in the light. In the early mornings, sometimes the late evenings, there can be a very delicate tone that comes over the landscape that is very difficult to capture on film. And when most people see their results, they immediately pump up the curves to make the shades black and the highlights white, run a local contrast filter, bump up the saturation or luminance, or run a mid tones contrast enhancement. All of those effects can be used to recreate what the eye can see, but which a linearly responding sensor doesn't, but they can also be used to create artificial contrast and light in a scene which is more remarkable for the subtle shading of light and color.

I was at a the mid-winter art show at Mammoth this year, and two of the local prolific photographers were displaying their work. Both had great scenes and good light, but one of them was deep in the throes of HDR, not overblown, but every single image he had up seemed to have some HDR, or strong contrast and saturation treatment. They looked artificial, but I'm thinking they sold well. I much preferred the other photographers work.

Computer screens lure us into this, I think, the difference between a backlit image and a front lit, reflected light image, and yes, smaller images look better with higher contrast because it lets you see the texture better.

On this image, the bottom half looks slightly too cyan or blue to me, but I'm not on a calibrated monitor. What did you do to this image to reduce the haze, increase the contrast? Your histogram looks pretty natural for a scene like this should be, but I think you still have a bump in the blue from the excess scattered blue light in the scene.

Cornflake · August 4, 2012

Mike, thanks for the comment. I'll give some thought to the color.

Sam, thanks. I've learned the hard way to give an image a rest before doing anything with it.

kolibri, I think we share many of the same qualms about a lot of current images. I have no philosophical objection to aggressive processing, but I never seem to like the results much with landscapes, whether they're my own images or others'. But with an image like this, aggressive processing is unavoidable. Reducing the haze was mostly a matter of luminance curves and the tonal contrast tool in Color Efex Pro. Nik doesn't explain exactly what the tools do, but tonal contrast permits separate contrast adjustments for highlights, midtones and shadows. I then did a lot of fine-tuning of the tones in Lightroom and Paint Shop Pro (the poor man's Photoshop).

JC · August 4, 2012

Cornflake wrote: »

kolibri, I think we share many of the same qualms about a lot of current images. I have no philosophical objection to aggressive processing, but I never seem to like the results much with landscapes, whether they're my own images or others'. But with an image like this, aggressive processing is unavoidable. Reducing the haze was mostly a matter of luminance curves and the tonal contrast tool in Color Efex Pro. Nik doesn't explain exactly what the tools do, but tonal contrast permits separate contrast adjustments for highlights, midtones and shadows. I then did a lot of fine-tuning of the tones in Lightroom and Paint Shop Pro (the poor man's Photoshop).

I'd like to see what Galen Rowell would do with modern digital cameras. In one of his essays he imagines a camera that could take three images in quick succession, exposing once for shadows, once for mid-tones and once for highlights.....

I don't know what these black box tools do either, are there any photographic based editing tools that let you do bandmath directly?

I think you did a good job on this image, I just think the blue channel needs more filtering. All the aerosols in the canyon are scattering excess light into the sensor. What you need to do to reduce haze is subtract a constant value from each pixel in the hazy areas. Each pixel is measuring a reflected light value, plus the scattered light value, and you need to subtract that sccattered light value, then stretch the remaining values out over the expected tonal range for a scene in the shadows. Except blue light scatters more, so you need to subtract slightly more from the blue channel. Now tell me which black box tool in the commercial editing programs do that??????

You can do that in curves/levels, but not that precisely. I did a quick job on your original image, and moving the lower end of the slider for the blue channel more than the red or green gave me better color fidelity, at least on this monitor, and using the histogram as a a guide.

CoreyD · August 4, 2012

Cornflake,

I think you did a great job pulling the detail you did out of this after seeing the raw file.

While I agree with most of what Kolibri has said and have a personal aversion to "over" processed images, a little trick I sometimes use on images like this (if you are working with photoshop?) is to use the Unsharp Mask filter with settings of Amount:20, Radius:50, and Threshold:0

This technique increases local area contrast and is a subtle but effective way to add the impression of more detail without over doing it.

Corey

Cornflake · August 4, 2012

kolibri, Corey D, thanks for the suggestions.

kolibri, I understand what you're saying about the blue channel. I need to become more adept with color curves.

On edit: I tried to implement some of the suggestions and decided to make a few other changes as well. I don't think it's done, but it's better, at least mostly.

kdog · August 7, 2012

I think you did an incredible job on the processing of this shot, both in the original and the rework, Don. I played around with your "raw" image briefly and couldn't get anywhere near what you did. Is this the Grand Canyon?

Cornflake · August 7, 2012

Thanks very much, Joel. I had a lot of help from the excellent photographers here. Yes, it's the Grand Canyon. Maybe some people have been there on a day without haze but I've never seen one.

DaddyO · August 7, 2012

Agreed... I think you did an awesome job getting the result you did from what you had to work with from the start. I also think the shot works great in the vertical. Very thoughtful composition. Nice balance. Sweet shot.

Cornflake · August 7, 2012

Thanks very much, Michael.

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