Try this image

[mikemeister_admin]

What's this Greg - no images posted?  When is the class going to start?

Unfortunately I'm not as good as you are in taking problem images - but will this do for starters?

Does anybody else have some images they would like played with?

Zog

[ggroess]

Hi Chris...
Thanks for the image...

I was waiting till Sunday to open the doors but what the heck...let the good times roll...
Everyone...Take a swing at this please...

Greg

[mikemeister_admin]

Oh dear - real old age, I thought the 'pre'-course started a week before the 5th!!
But as you say, what the heck

[ggroess]

Not a bit of a problem...by the way...Nasty little problem you have posted....

Almost as bad as one of mine...
Greg

[ggroess]

Greetings everyone...

As usual Zog has given us a good challenge that will show off some of the techniques we will learn in the CM 101 class and some that are a bit beyond the CM 101 class as well.  I'll start off with an overview of what I am seeing in the image and what I want for my goals on this image.

First of all the image appears to be under exposed but it really has a full range of exposure values.  You have everything from full on whites in the highlights to nearly complete blacks in the shadows.  The vast majority of the image is in the mid tones and the darker end of that range.

If you look at the Image I have posted you will see 3 Hue Clocks on the image.  In Curvemeister these hue clocks are sticky and can be displayed by holding down the "Alt" key while left clicking on the image in Curvemeister.  You can configure the display so that it shows whatever color space you want to using the wrench Icon and making settings in the configuration tabs. 

Currently my settings are showing the RGB color space and both the hue clock and the number values for each channel.  The Hue clock shows you a visual representation of the color.  The Arm of the clock points to the color in terms of Hue degrees.  It also shows rough saturation by the length of the arm.  A shorter arm is a less saturated color and a dot in the center of the clock is usually a neutral.

So, What am I seeing...

I am seeing that the highlights and shadows are neutral.  All values are equal in the RGB color space.  This is a good thing because it tells me that the color cast is located in the mid-tones which is where the majority of the correction needs to occur anyway.  The Middle Tone clock I chose was placed on the clouds in a common sense point where I would think logically that the clouds should be neutral.  Currently this is a subjective choice and it may change as I make adjustments to the image. 

What do I want to do?? 
I want to open the mid range of the image while not losing the highlights and opening the shadows considerably.  While they do have values, not quite zero; they are very close to zero and I want to open the shadows to see some interesting features on the castle. 

I want to make sure that I correct what I perceive to be overly "cold" meaning blue clouds based on the mid tone hue clock but, I do not want to extend any color shifts into areas where it will cause a noticeable cast. 

I want to maintain as much detail and texture in the image as I can and I have to decide If the highlights are worth saving or if I can live with the "blown out" colors in the brightest areas.

Lastly, the color is flat and lifeless, I want to make it brighter and reasonable "real" looking. 

So I started with a slight color adjustment.  Instead of just adding Red to the image I decided to remove some blue and green instead.  I based this choice on the fact that when I added red to the mid tones the rest of the image warmed up too much in my subjective judgment.  I tried subtracting the green and blue and found I liked the "feel" of the image better..again this is subjective but to me at this point...real. 

More to come....
Greg

[mikemeister_admin]

Wow Greg, you are giving us a great Master class on this image

It is going to be hard for us mere mortals to come up with a different approach.  I'm looking forward to accepting that challenge.

I'm off to photograph a church today, but will have a bash at it tomorrow.

[ggroess]

I'm trying to step it up a bit to keep up with the likes of you...lol 
Actually I am changing the approach a bit as I write and prepare the 201 stuff...

And...

We are showing off a bit this week right??

OK..So now I am going to work on the contrast range of the image.  There are a few ways I can do this part. 
I can apply a curve to the L channel in Lab to try to pull the shadows up into a better range but...When I tried that I was not satisfied with the rest of the image. I also tried applying a HSB curve using Curvemeister but again...no luck.  See attached shot.  The Green halo around the sky /tower edge would be impossible to work with...

I then moved on to trying to adjust the "Exposure" of the image with the Photoshop Exposure command.  When I tried the Exposure command and adjusted the Gamma; it blew out the sky and I really want to keep that part of the image as intact as possible.  No screen shot sorry...

All of these tests only take a few minutes to do and really eliminate bad choices at this stage.  I work with Layers to do this so that I do not destroy any of the work I have done so far.  I can add and delete a layer as needed to try out these adjustments.

I settled on using the shadow / highlight command in Photoshop.  I found that 1 application using conservative settings did not open the image enough for my taste.  This is partially a subjective adjustment.  I have my goals for the image your might be different...When I was done I had applied my S/H settings to the image 4 times.  Each step was slightly better and I probably could have done this in one step but I wanted to be conservative and not over adjust this part of the image.  See attached shot.

I'll post my Shadow highlight adjusted image in the next posting...
Greg

[ggroess]

Here is the resulted image after the shadow highlight command.

I would like everyone to note that this is one place where curves will not get you where you want to go. 

Why?? 

Well,  there is not enough range in the image data at this point.   The exposure has most of the data grouped into a very narrow part of the range.  Adjustments to that narrow range do not spread out over the image as well and you get results like the HSB curve with hard transitions or solarized parts of the image. 

Using Shadow Highlight forces Photoshop to recalculate the entire image and it spreads the pixel values out across the entire range of the image.  the result is nice so I'll work with that...

Greg

[leeharper_admin]

Hi everyone :)

Greg - I'd never considered applying Shadow/Highlight more than one time; I really like the results, but I've a question for you: why not just increase the Shadow Amount slider? Do multiple applications of Shadow/Highlight at low values get you to a different place than hitting the image just the once with more aggressive settings?

Cheers,
Lee.

[ggroess]

I have a hard time getting a good setting that allows me to do this in one jump.  I like the conservative settings I have for a lot of stuff and I have used S/H multiple times in the past...I like the "feel" of the stones in the foreground better this way...there seems to be a flatness in the 1 pass image that does not develop in the multiple pass version...
Is it better??  I'm not 100 % but for this image I think it is...
I have also applied the Screen layer mode to images to see if I can get better shadows. 

See the compare below.
Greg