Class assignments.

[ggroess]

Please post each image in a separate topic so that comments about your image will match up to your specific images.

Greg

[Daniel Zuck]

Greg: I looked at the video concerning "neutral shopping" and found it difficult.  He said he thought the Lincoln statue was yellowish.  He put the hue clocks up so that there was a logical spread in the reds for highlight, shadows and neutral (all colors red: 95 in highlights, 35 in the shadows, and 72 in the midtones).  That seemed logical to me.  Then when he picked the neutral point it was a little hard to follow.  He wanted a more yellowish color.  I see that.  So he moved the mouse around to watch the hueclock to get it close to Y.  But can you explain what he was shooting for after that?  He says, "i got the midtones (green) almost down to 0, I got the highlight (greens) almost down to zero (all numbers refer to green, i think).  He seems to think green is the "enemy" color because he wanted the greens to be 0.  He was not happy with the shadows, he said they were off.  Why were they off? because he couldn't eliminate green and blue in the shadows?  He couldn't make them zero.  Was that what he wanted? He never explicitly said what he was shooting for.  What was the logic?  So essentially, what he is saying was, that when you go "neutral shopping" you want the spread of numbers between highlights, shadow and midtones to be available, the highest number in the highligts for red, the lowest number possible for the shadows in the color red, and for midtones, that red should be somewhere in between where the red was for the highlights and the shadows?  Does this always apply when one is "neutral shopping?"  And all of this is assuming that the color wheel is as close as possible to yellow.  So, if we don't know what the real thing looked like originally, it would be pointless, wouldn't it?
Those little dial hands are sure tiny.  Can't we make them bigger some how?

dan

[Daniel Zuck]

Greg: I want to decipher this video on neutral point shopping because i think it was the "missing" part of the first example you gave us the first week.  The example you gave us week 1 concerned how to fix everything when there is no neutral point.  The video that came with the second week assignment shows how to find the neutral point in the first place.  So I think it is important, and I want to amalgamate the two into my notes.  That's why i didn't fix the "duck" and send it.  I will.  Getting tired now. This weekend I won't be posting much.  Thank you for your first reply earlier today.  I especially liked the article "ETT  bull."  I'm not "flaming," that was the name of the article you sent us.  talk to you later.  will send duck, but probably not this weekend.

dan

[ggroess]

Dan,
I'll revisit the Honest Abe video and see if I can figure out your confusion.  I remember creating it to help people over the "here is my neutral and that is the end of the discussion" stance.  People set the neutral and expect it to "fix" the image.  The reality is that the neutral does "fix" the image but only if you get it right. 

The statue does have a yellowish cast to it in real life and so the green or red were bad things because the stone was not green or red in real life.

On images with no obvious neutral I will sometimes shop around for a neutral and this was how I showed that to people.  My real message here is that a single neutral choice without looking around might be wrong and deleting the point and trying again will be frustrating.  So drag it around and use the hue clocks to help you get close. 

The secondary concept is the "should be neutral" idea.  I generally have no idea if a certain item is truly neutral but I look for things that "should be" neutral.  Things that my eye accepts as neutral.  For instance everyone insisted that the Hawaii picture had no neutral but when I set one in the frame it improved the image. 

I was not 100% certain it was a neutral but setting it as neutral improved the image and that met one of the goals.  I found the neutral by shopping around in the area I saw as a near neutral.  When I hit the pixels I finally choose I let it be because the image got better.

Don't worry too much you have all week to post the duck.
Hope this makes more sense...If not keep asking...this is a case where the discussion on Friday will help. 

Greg

[Daniel Zuck]

Greg:

I am not hung up on "here's my neutral and that's the way it is."  I understand that this isn't rocket science.  We are dealing in human perception, which is not a cut and dry thing.  Otherwise, there would be no art.

Sorry for the confusion.  What I see the video doing basically is trying to turn the green outputs in shadow, highlights and mid tones to 0, because green is the "opposite" of yellow?  (don't want any trace of green in the photo because of its overall yellowish color). Whoever was showing this video was moving the neutral point around to zero out the greens but he wasn't too successful in the shadows, because the shadow output was 4.  "But at least the hue clock dial was pointing in the right direction," he said, it was pointing toward the red and magenta, that is, pointing up, instead of down, toward the blue and green.  So i now see what the hue clock divisions are.  Top of the clock, M, R and Yellow.  Bottom of the clock, B, C and Green.  The top vs. the bottom, because yellow and green are opposites.  I think that's what that means.  I could be wrong.
So he didn't like the shadow green being "4" and it needed to be changed he said. 

So I have one question.  Does he want to change the shadow green to 0 using the a channel of lab? 

Dan

[Daniel Zuck]

Greg:

If you don't succeed, try, try again. I didn't make any resizing changes on this image because if I changed one of the dimensions to 1024 the image was too big.  So I left it as is.  I hope you get this one.

I did the photo in rgb.  I used the master rgb verticals to locate the shadow and highlights.  I put hue clocks at those points, plus a hue clock for midtones where the silver band on the duck's leg.  Then i set the neutral point.  I moved it to where the midtones neutral was near.  Moved the neutral point around til I got what i thought was a decent pix.  then I applied CM changes.  Made a copy of the layer. Opened up lab.  reset thresholds.  Placed contrast buttons on the lightness curve.  Rotated it a bit to improve contrast.  Then went to the a channel.  Pushed the reds more.  For both layers blending was in the screen modes because the images were too dark.  So whad'ya think Greg.

Dan

[imported_Tanja]

Hi Greg,

I checked your curves some more times.
Understand, what they do, I think. It looks still different on my monitor, but mabe a problem of color management. I have none.

I can't see that duck anymore ;-) Can I try another example?

But one question to your curve:
Midpoint in a is quite clear, but in b you have a midpoint and move the endpoint.
I get a s-curve when I first set a midpoint and move an endpoint.
Same with a pin grid and delete all pins except the middle, but only a tiny s-curve then.
Your line seems to be absolutly straight.
Is the midpoint set after moving the endpoint, just for showing the numbers?

Greetings, Tanja

P.S.: Dan, your picture is now very little.


Edit: Oups, sorry... Wrong folder...

[Daniel Zuck]

Tanja:

Yes, i took the wrong duck.  I wasn't supposed to take from the zip file.  Anyway, I did it again on the larger file.  I really think your pictures are great.  You guys obviously have a lot of experience in this.  I hope I can learn from you all.

dan

[imported_Tanja]

Hi Dan,

now we are both in the wrong thread  ;)
I write something about your picture in the duck-folder, okay?

And thanks a lot for the compliment.
Hope, we all learn from each other.

Greetings, Tanja