Enhancing Clouds & Advice

[Pandabean]

Hey All,

I have recently returned from Rome, which is an amazing city and would recommend it to anyone.

Anyways after filling up a 4GB card with raw photos I now have the job of going through them all. Some of them need a bit of editing to get just right as the appeared a bit flatish/dull without any work to them. First off any ideas as to what I can do to improve the colours of a photo while taking the shot? Is this just down to a lens/camera thing?

My current Rig is a Canon EOS 400D, with the 18-55mm kit lens, a 55-250mm IS Canon Lens and a 70 - 300 Canon Lens. All I have filter wise is a polariser which is mainly planted on my 18-55mm lens. I would like to get a replacement for the kit lens at some point as to which I am not sure yet. Any advice from anyone on this?


The other thing I wanted to ask was about one of the photos I took while in rome:

http://pandabean.deviantart.com/art/Imperial-Rome-139711061

I was wondering if anyone had any advice on how to get the clouds looking better?

Apologies for the link to another site but I cant upload photos to any of the usual sites while at work.


Thanks,
Andy

 

[weekend_warrior]

The best bit in my kit bag for enhancing sky/clouds is my circular polarising filter. you'll need a circ one for a digital camera and buy the best you can afford, cheap isn't often very good at all.

HTH!

 

[Pandabean]

Thanks WW. I have one of those its a Hoya one and its the circular kind it works well, sometimes too well, kind of made one of my photos too dark with it.

 

[weekend_warrior]

Thanks WW. I have one of those its a Hoya one and its the circular kind it works well, sometimes too well, kind of made one of my photos too dark with it.

Yeah, you need to frame your subject, half depress the shutter button (exposure lock), then turn the circ polarising until you get it optimally filtering. If it's too dark then, release the shutter button and alter exposure to compensate (or release and let the camera do it if you're on Auto.) I always leave a UV or Skylight filter on all my lenses as it protects them (cheap to replace than a lens...) and helps remove haze.

 

[Tadpole]

Post production Photo improvment, there are hundreds of different routes, but all take time to learn, a quick fix is to try some Dynamic Photo HDR fakery. It can work really well, give a bit of practice

http://www.mediachance.com/hdri/index.html (down load the 14 day trial) near the bottom of the page

 

[xavierdoc]

Hey All,

I have recently returned from Rome, which is an amazing city and would recommend it to anyone.

Anyways after filling up a 4GB card with raw photos I now have the job of going through them all. Some of them need a bit of editing to get just right as the appeared a bit flatish/dull without any work to them. First off any ideas as to what I can do to improve the colours of a photo while taking the shot? Is this just down to a lens/camera thing?

My current Rig is a Canon EOS 400D, with the 18-55mm kit lens, a 55-250mm IS Canon Lens and a 70 - 300 Canon Lens. All I have filter wise is a polariser which is mainly planted on my 18-55mm lens. I would like to get a replacement for the kit lens at some point as to which I am not sure yet. Any advice from anyone on this?


The other thing I wanted to ask was about one of the photos I took while in rome:

http://pandabean.deviantart.com/art/Imperial-Rome-139711061

I was wondering if anyone had any advice on how to get the clouds looking better?

Apologies for the link to another site but I cant upload photos to any of the usual sites while at work.


Thanks,
Andy

A circ. polariser, as mentioned above, is the obvious option. If you are using auto metering on the camera, the polariser shouldn't make the pic too dark (although you lose 1-2 f-stops). Linear polarisers can mess-up the metering, though.

Bear in mind that the polariser has to be rotated to maximise or minimise reflections (and colour saturation). With some lenses, the filter will be rotated when focussing or zooming, requiring readjust of the filter.

Ensuring your exposure is optimal at the time you press the button is important: if you can afford the memory card space, set the camera to auto-bracket either side of the optimal exposure. If you set the bracketing to 1 stop or more you will find that in high contrast scenes (such as the one you posted) you will have one pic with good shadow detail, one for midtones and one for highlights (eg. sky.) You can then combine the best elements from each pic in photoshop. Cheating, but really just a digital equivalent of the Zone system that Ansel Adams used to optimise contrast range of film.

Careful use of photoshop (or equivalent) will allow you to enhance the sky as well as boosting colour.

Nice pic, BTW!

Ta

 

[teflon]

Curious as to what you mean by 'better'? I think the sky is fine, though first impressions says the whole picture has a tad too much contrast and perhaps a bit dark in the midtones - though I don't want to get too anal about it. Personally I love it. Has a nice 'painty' look. Wish I'd taken it. 8]

edit: Wanted to add that there is a tendency to overdo the polarizer effect. In your case it was late in the day, which doesn't help. And perhaps a linear filter, as opposed to circular, will give you more control. Just shoot and focus manually if it's a problem. Or, get an ND grad? There's no set way to do anything really - as I'm sure you know. Anyway, good luck with it. 8]

 

[Pandabean]

Teflon, I just felt that the sky looked over done with the photoshopping, seems a bit blueish. I guess I was hoping for big white fluffy clouds. For example see the panorama in the link below, it seems a bit off to me for some reason.

Click on the image to enlarge.
http://pandabean.deviantart.com/art/Foro-Romano-139808621

Here we go here is a before and after shot. As you can see the before shot looks a bit dull and flat, yet I have seen some photos that can be straight from the camera and very little editing has to be done to it. Is this a case of the lens or what?

 

[Wayland]

In PhotoShop add a layer and change the blending mode to Soft light.

Make sure the foreground pallet is set to black.

Now select the graduation tool, and choose the foreground to transparent, linear graduation.

On the new layer click and hold at the top of the frame and drag the graduation down to the horizon.

You should get a nicely burnt in sky.

If you need to remove the effect from any areas like the tower, you can create a layer mask and brush it off with a normal brush tool set to black.

If it all goes horribly wrong just get rid of the layer or go back a bit in the history pallet.

 

[Pandabean]

Thanks Wayland. That did help but seemed to make it a bit surreal. Maybe just me. I might post it up later this weekend.

 

[Wayland]

Don't forget you can back the effect off by reducing the layer opacity as well.

 

[teflon]

"Teflon, I just felt that the sky looked over done with the photoshopping, seems a bit blueish. I guess I was hoping for big white fluffy clouds..." Pandabean

I personally think it works as it is, though most computer screens do have a different 'look' and we all have different eyes and opinions on how things should be. My screen says you needed a tad more exposure and maybe a bit of a warm up in the original. If it was a commercial picture, someone may also have decided it needed a nice early evening sky put in - and if you like experimenting in Photoshop, maybe that's something you'd like to try.

I know I'd be interested to see what Wayland could produce with his method. I'm never too old to learn.

 

[Wayland]

OK just a quick and slight tweak.

Original reduced in size.

Graduated layer + edge burn + highlight adjustment + curves adjustment to neutralise colour

 

[Cobweb]

Panda, the reason your photos look flat and dull on the computer after you have you have downloaded them from the memory card is because you shot them in RAW. Raw is literally the raw image file, no colour correction saturation or contrast is applied at all. They look different from the back of your camera because the preview you see on the back is a virtual copy of the raw file with your current jpeg settings applied. this virtual copy is not on the card.

Depending on what you fiddle about with them in, Adobe RAW, Lightroom or something else you may be able to set up some default settings for RAW.

I tend to set mine to:
Exposure: +0.33
Blacks/Shadows: +10
Brightness: +50
Contrast: +30

This can be extreme for landscape shots, so salt to taste.

Another thing you might want to consider is calibrating your monitor.
There are a number of different programs and devices to calibrate, I use a Spyder 2 pro for mine, just google " Monitor calibration", you might be able to find one cheaper.

If you are on an LCD monitor everything will look a little blue, it's just the way it is. If you are serious about your photos looking perfect, get a CRT monitor and calibrate it.



There is something else you will really have to think about, camera calibration.
If you shoot in RAW mainly, then you will have to calibrate the program you muck about with the pics in.

In Lightoom and Adobe Raw there is a panel called 'calibration' there are six or seven sliders, red, green, blue and shadow tint.

You need to be working on a recently calibrated CRT monitor to do this.

The easiest way to calibrate is to take a well exposed and sharp photograph of another photograph or painting with plenty of colour variations.
Load this into your programme and go to the calibration set up.
Tweak the sliders until what you see on the screen is what you are seeing from the painting or photo in your hand. Set these settings as default.

Your RAW capture is now colour calibrated.


It's a lot of work and stress, you might have to change other settings as well.
There is no need to buy a gretag macbeth colour card, but if you want perfect colour then it's a good idea to get one.

Don't forget white balance, it takes seconds to hold up a piece of white paper, I use the back of a business card.
Take one shot with it in the frame and then take the main photograph. of course you ill have to be in a preset white balance instead of auto.
Once you get home, click the white patch with your white balance tool and then copy the white balance to the 'real' photo. it will be a bit too blue so add 50 to 100 to the main white balance, not the tint.


Wow an essay!
Hope it helps

 

[teflon]

Wayland's made it look even more 'painty' now and I think a nice improvement on an already good picture. I say get rid of the people, but there's always the danger of worrying something to death if you let it, so maybe time to let it be - but it's your piccy.

I'm enjoying this. 8]

 

[Overlander30]

there is a right way and a wrong way to improve a shot like that, and whilst I don't like to appear critical of others, the wrong way is to simply add contrast using any kind of "contrast" tool.

the correct way to do it (to ensure no loss in print) is as follows:

go to the green channel in your layers palette and click it. your image will go bw.
keeping your mouse clicked on the green channel, press the ctrl key (if using a pc) or the apple key (if using a mac).
a mask will appear.
now click your mouse on rgb (just up a centimetre or two from where your cursor is)
then click your options button (its a circle half blacked out) and choose curves. a box appears.

this curve is your highlights from the green channel only, and its the channel you use to increase contrast. so, to make your highlights brighter, click in the middle of the line and drag it upwards until youre happy. doesnt matter how accurate you are, you can readjust it in a minute.

then click ok. next, click and drag that layer onto the square lower down on the right with the corner folded back. drop it on there. this is going to be your shadows. you ll see right away that your highlights will go brighter but dont worry.

press ctrl i or apple i if on a mac. this makes it opposite double click that layer then drag the middle of the curve down below the middle. you ll now see the effect of what you ve done. you can then play about with both curves until you get the mix right. when youre done, flatten the image and save it, but make sure you have a copy of the original first.

this is the method to use when doing anything like this which is contrast related. same method to enhance colours as well. never ever ever use the saturation tool, it isnt accurate and can give artifacts on the print.

the way to see what you want is to highlight each channel and see what gives the most contrast in bw. to advance things, you ll need to learn about how to use image,calculations in order to mask the items you want to adjust so your image remains balanced at all times.

i m not a fan of hdr, i think it makes things look totally fake. some like it though, its whatever floats your boat really.

bear in mind that changes you make on screen may not replicate exactly on a print. eg you need to ensure that you arent blowing out highlights or losing shadows. you do this by using the levels tool to see where your spikes are and if there is anything off the ends.

 

[scanker]

Some great techniques in here to try - thanks guys.

 

[Overlander30]

the other thing you can do as a quickie to see the effect is an a selective colour layer. choose blue and then just use the slider to see what happens. this keeps the blue in proportion and retains any gradation of colour. you can use it to increase the contrast in the sky but dont go mad with it or you ll get an unnatural look as if there is other blue in the scene it will affect that too. you can mask off other areas using the technique i mentioned earlier though

 

[Pandabean]

Thanks all for the advice. I will certinaley give them a go. But Cobweb, I may pass on buying the fancy gizmos to calibrate the monitor and that. These prints will mainly be for myself, its not as if they will go in the tate or some photo gallery...im not saying that you can't suggest me for such a place.

Overlander - I will give that a go sometime this week and see what I get. When editing an image I don't go straight into PS and move the contrast slider. I check the levels, curves etc, which does make a difference to the image. What I have done in these images is selected the sky and land seperately and adjusted them using layer masks and such seperately.

One thing that I would be interested in finding out is how to use the power of the RAW tools. Im not quite sure what I can do in there with the only thing I have done is change the exposure and WB. In some photos I have seen people do a kind of HDR based on 1 RAW image, setting one lighter than the other and merging them. Again has anyone done this and could perhaps suggest a way of doing it? Obviously the easiest answer is geta graduated ND filter, but I have no experience with these yet.

Thanks,
Andy

 

[Overlander30]

Panda, be careful with just using the curves on the whole image as they affect all the channels. It's better to work on one channel so you can see the effect, and to mask off other areas. Bear in mind too that unless you are calibrated to you printer, there is very little point in using any calibration tools at all, since the print machine won't match what you see on your screen. Any pro lab can send you ICC profiles so you can do this. Only then will get a ood match to screen and print.

In terms of "using" raw, the obvious things are white balance etc but bear in mind that you can very easily correct white balance by looking at your histogram, changing the view to "colours" and seeing whats at the right hand end. eg if there is a block of red at the extreme right, add a colour filter layer of cyan and use the slider until the red retreats back into the other colours. then you know that the colour is right, no matter what your monitor is showing. You use the opposite to correct, so, too much red, add a cyan filter, too much blue, add yellow etc.

Keep in mind too that camera chips really arent that clever. they can capture around 5 stops of light whereas the eye can deal with about 12. some scenes just cant really be captured with a camera at all, even with a graduated nd filter, and learning what not to shoot and the limitations of the chip is just as important as trying to use gizmos to counteract the stop range in a scene. something might look great to your eye, but with a landscape shot, if the stop difference between ground and sky is say, 8 stops (which it can be), then even with a graduated nd, it may not be possible to capture correctly, and even if it is, it can look very unnatural.