Dark Day in Duck Land (Lesson 1)

[mikemeister_admin]

Hi all,

Guess I'll kick off ... I'm a British expat living in Asia & I'm constantly challenged with contrasty situations.

It's no surprise then that I've chosen to use the quadkite piccie.  Here's my work flow & rationale and I'd love for any one to contribute to the discussion - its half the fun after all.



I started with the wizard, then had a go manually.

The black point was easy I hazarded a guess instinctively>looked for the 'island' as Mike>confirmed it by sliding the walls of the curves grid to see the threshold levels.

The neutral was confusing - I went for under the bike as I know the seat has grey on it (just like mine)>then I moved the neutral point around & watched the curves dialogue, when it hit the the centre of the line in the curves grid I set it on the arm (which was a surprise to me).

I've no idea with the highlight point.  I went to the spectacular bits for ages until I realised that Mike had warned us against this!  Again I dragged the walls of the curves dialogue box to give me a clue.  I also tried to look at the numbers and avoid the 245-255 white point area.

After all this - I played around to see how I would deal globally with this piccie and didn't find any solution.

I'm sure this doesn't make any sense at all - but it will give you some thing to laugh about as you think of me sweating over it in Asia whilst its probably snowing else where!

Over and out

[ggroess]

I started with the wizard, then had a go manually.

The black point was easy I hazarded a guess instinctively>looked for the 'island' as Mike>confirmed it by sliding the walls of the curves grid to see the threshold levels.

Manda can you post the individual jpgs for this image.  the combo is nice and all, but it is hard for me to open the image and see the curve(s) you applied to it.

The neutral was confusing - I went for under the bike as I know the seat has grey on it (just like mine)>then I moved the neutral point around & watched the curves dialogue, when it hit the the centre of the line in the curves grid I set it on the arm (which was a surprise to me).

Some additional reading for you on neutral selection....It does get easier...
http://www.curvemeister.com/wiki/index.php?title=Neutral_Thresholding

I've no idea with the highlight point.  I went to the spectacular bits for ages until I realised that Mike had warned us against this!  Again I dragged the walls of the curves dialogue box to give me a clue.  I also tried to look at the numbers and avoid the 245-255 white point area.

Here is some more information on Highlight and Shadow Points.
http://www.curvemeister.com/wiki/index.php?title=Thresholding_Using_Highlight_and_Shadow_Points

After all this - I played around to see how I would deal globally with this piccie and didn't find any solution.

I'm sure this doesn't make any sense at all - but it will give you some thing to laugh about as you think of me sweating over it in Asia whilst its probably snowing else where!

Over and out

I hope we only laugh at the right times...
Right now I feel like you have biten off a very large chunk and need to maybe back up a bit.  I currently have no Idea what your experience is and hope to not offend you...

Greg

[mikemeister_admin]

Wow - thanks so much for every one's comments and generosity to share.  I must admit the first thing I did was check out your comments (yes, I'm that sad).

I had another go - you can't save curves in demo mode, so this is my first try at screen shots.  I've saved jpgs at high res so I hope this makes ur assessment easier.

Work flow: I attempted the lab curves from the Greg's screen shot for Gremurphoto - but couldn't get it to work.

I copied Gremurphoto B, W, neutral points and moved them around to my own taste.

I'd move my cursor around key areas like the faces and set manual points which were then tweaked again.





Things I've learnt:
Fritz reminded me white can be a neutral point.
LAB wouldn't be the first choice for 'bright' pictures.
I read the links Greg posted which is great help.
Greg's a gentleman ;)

[mikemeister_admin]

Manda,

I see , You use a old demo version.
I think there is a new demo  version 3.01.

frits

[mikemeister_admin]

Hi Mandy - I'll let you into a secret (dont tell Mike!)

You can save curves with the demo version (at least I could with CM2)
Right click on the curves and select Copy>Copy All Curves
that will put it on the clipboard, so you can copy/paste them into your messages to us

It also allows you to re-work things you did, by picking up those lines (saved in notepad) and then doing paste!

Shh...

[mikemeister_admin]

Manda,

you can also look in c:program filesCurvemeister.comcurves 3HistoryJanuary-2008*.*

in there are all curves you used with the names of the pictures.

For you is it Curves 2

Frits

[mikemeister_admin]

Thanks Frits - I had completely forgotten about the History facility!
Chris

[mikemeister_admin]

Manda,
studying you last picture, I think i see a little blue cast residue.
You used the curves insteed of the wizard.
Because you use the curves, you don't know yet you can use more neutral points in only RGB mode.
Perhaps that will help you to solve residue casts.

frits

[-default]

The demo does not save history, but zog's trick with copying the curves to the clipboard does work.

For this first session, the Curvemeister 2 demo will work just fine.  Later on there will be features that need the Curvemeister 3 demo.

manda's second image is about as good as it gets, and very close to zog's version, using a single pass in RGB.

[ggroess]

Things I've learnt:
Fritz reminded me white can be a neutral point.
LAB wouldn't be the first choice for 'bright' pictures.
I read the links Greg posted which is great help.
Greg's a gentleman ;)

BTW black if you know it's really a black..can also be a neutral..Remeber the bumble bee in the thresholding article.
Greg