pixelation problems

skruf88 · March 24, 2008

I wonder if anyone could shed some light on a problem I have....

The basics:
Camera - Canon EOS 5D - Canon 70-200L 2.8 is
Shot RAW, converted to PSD to edit
EXIF basics: shot 1/250 at f10
16bit 240dpi
No filter - only UV

The problem...the sky is pixelated. In it's natural state the blue sky is pretty spotty and even more so once it's desaturated to black and white. I want to send this file to a lab to print but I am at a loss as to how to either get rid of the pixelation, or how it turned out so pixelated in the first place.

Here is the offending photo - http://www.joemazzaphotography.com/7889.jpg

Can anyone give me some advice?

Thank you so much!

joe

Scott_Quier · March 24, 2008

Any chance the problem came about as a result of the B&W conversion? Getting a glimpse of the photo SOOC, before any PP would be a lot more helpful in providing some clues (the full EXIF is embedded in the image - thanks).

Richard · March 24, 2008

skruf88 wrote:

I wonder if anyone could shed some light on a problem I have....

The basics:
Camera - Canon EOS 5D - Canon 70-200L 2.8 is
Shot RAW, converted to PSD to edit
EXIF basics: shot 1/250 at f10
16bit 240dpi
No filter - only UV

The problem...the sky is pixelated. In it's natural state the blue sky is pretty spotty and even more so once it's desaturated to black and white. I want to send this file to a lab to print but I am at a loss as to how to either get rid of the pixelation, or how it turned out so pixelated in the first place.

Here is the offending photo - http://www.joemazzaphotography.com/7889.jpg

Can anyone give me some advice?

Thank you so much!

joe

Hi, Joe, and welcome to Dgrin.

Scott is right that it will be easier to help if we can see the original, plus a detailed description of the processing you applied. It looks to me as if this could be fixed fairly easily in Photoshop. Selecting the sky shouldn't be difficult. Then you can either use surface blur or reduce noise in the blue channel. Then do your conversion to B&W.

Hope this helps.

skruf88 · March 24, 2008

Richard wrote:

Hi, Joe, and welcome to Dgrin. Scott is right that it will be easier to help if we can see the original, plus a detailed description of the processing you applied. It looks to me as if this could be fixed fairly easily in Photoshop. Selecting the sky shouldn't be difficult. Then you can either use surface blur or reduce noise in the blue channel. Then do your conversion to B&W.

Hope this helps.

Thank you guys very much for the help. Here is some more information:
I processed this in photoshop in a few different ways to see if I could eliminate the problem. The files were 16bit in camera raw so convreted them to 8bit. I did bump up the saturation a bit in camera raw but when I play with the original in raw and keep my eye on the sky, it doesn't seem to matter with the pixelation how saturated the blue is.
The two ways I processed.
Option 1. Opened them it in it's original color state and processed it soley in photoshop. Saturated some of the reds and blues a bit, brought the blue 'lightness' down. Dodged and burned a bit, then desaturated. The sky looked terrible. The only filter I added was a slight difussed glow with no granieness.
Option 2. I did all of the color, saturation and desaturating in camera raw first, then did some light processing in photoshop.

Some of the options I converted to grayscale, some I left in 8bit color mode and just desaturated. I tried a few things to see if I could get rid of it.

Any help to fix it would be SO appreciated, I love this image and would like to see it printed. I am unfamiliar to reduce "blue color noise" so don't be affraid to lay it out.

Thanks again! Joe

Here is the original: http://www.joemazzaphotography.com/7889_original.jpg

Here's the pertinent EXIF data as well:
Convererted from TIFF
Adobe CS2
Dimensions 3375x2411
Resolution: 300 dpi
Color Mode: Grayscale
Color Profile: Dot Grain 20%

Exposure: 1/200 s at f/10
Exposure Mode: Manual
Exposure program: Manual
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 70mm
Lens: EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM
Max aperture Value 2.8
Metering Mode: Partial
EXIF color space: uncalibrated
Custom Rendered: Normal Process
WHite Balance: Auto
Scene Capture type: Standard
Canon EOS 5D

Temperature: 5300
Tint +1
Exposure 0.00
Shadows 8
Brightness +50
Contrast +47
Saturation +15
Sharpness 25
Luminance smoothing 0
Blue Saturation +25
Tone Cure Medium Contrast

Richard · March 24, 2008

Hi Joe,

I'm not sure what caused your problem, though I suspect Scott was right that it was introduced in the B&W conversion. I downloaded your JPG and played with it a bit. I'll send you a PM with my results.

In CS3 the steps were:

1) Duplicate the background.
2) On the new layer, Select->Color Range and muck with droppers and fuzziness slider till all the sky was selected.
3) In the channels palette, select the red channel, which is where all the noise is. (I mistakenly referred to the blue channel earlier. My bad.)
4) Filter->Reduce Noise. Preserve detail = 0, full strength
5) Just to really make sure, I applied Filter->Surface blur to the same layer,
6) Then I added a B&W adjustment layer. I liked the way it looked with the green filter preset. You can, of course, tweak the settings to taste.

There is still a bit of granulation around the edges, but I don't think that's a bad thing. You don't want the sky to look like a fill layer.

Hope this helps.

Oh, and by the way, that's a terrific shot. Well done.

pixelation problems

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