Sample # 2 is after I got it into photoshop and did my dodge and burn and B&W conversion thing. At this stage the only thing I did was adjust the levels. Sample #1 is raw what came out of the graphic based on my metering of the village down on the edge of the lake.
Any observations/opinions/suggestions greatly appreciated.
Image raw from graphic:
Image with levels adjusted in Photoshop:
Raw:
Levels adjusted in photoshop:
Was it a hazy day?
Where was it made?
Wilhelm (Sarasota)
Yes it was a hazy day, and hot as heck. These were made at Lake George in the Adirondacks, NY.
If there's a scheduled event that means that you have no choice but to shoot under such sub-optimal lighting then the use of a polarizer and/or negative film emulsions can help a good deal (as can tweaking the curves in Photoshop later); but for landscape photography the basic fault seen here is that the time of day conspired with the haze to truly suck for good photography.
Half an hour before and after sunrise/sunset are your 2 golden hours per day--use them well.
Judging from your raw scans I would say, assuming that the actual transparency colors look natural, that you are not using the profile for Provia film when you do your scan. The correct film profile would correct for brightness, contrast, and color balance. From my experience, I would say that your raw files need less cyan overall with more yellow to enhance the greens, just for starters. Then, maybe some additional blue to help the sky.
You need to be careful here, because yellow and blue are opposites and cancel each other. If your software has a slider for, say, blue, move the right indicator to the left to increase the blue and the left indicator to the right to increase the yellow. This will shorten their brightness range which will increase the separation between these two colors.
al
I copied your raw file and did a few manipulations in Elements 2, my tool of choice.
First of all, the range of your histogram is very short. You are not obtaining the whole brightness range either on the dark end or the bright in your scan. This is an excellent indication that you do not have a good scanner profile for Provia.
Next I reduced the cyan, but only a few units, not as much as I thought.
The biggest improvement came by adjusting the yellow/blue.
Then I reduced the brightness by -4 units and increased the contrast by the same amount to tame the cloud highlights. The goal with clouds is to retain as much texture as possible. There will usually be some small specular highlights, but that is acceptable. Smaller is better. The result is below.
Further improvement can be made by implementing the unsharp mask filter. I tested this and the improvement was significant, but this is the file I wanted to show. The unsharp mask is used to tame the contrast and bring out the shadow details as well as give the appearance of sharpness.
These few brief changes do not compensate for a bad scan. A good scanner with the correct profile would give you a file with better color, contrast, and brightness range than I have created here.
al
I did a little overall editing in Photoshop on one of the images.
“You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
― Alexander Den Heijer, Nothing You Don't Already Know
The midtones are still terribly out of whack. Again an indication of a bad profile. What is now ailing are the midtones.
From the previously posted image I adjusted the midgreen by moving the slider to 1.08. The midblue slider to .90 to bring out the yellow for the trees. Then moved the RGB slider to 1.16. Finally I used the unsharp mask to bring out the shadow details in the tree, setting the Amount to 60% and the Radius at 2.2. The final result is shown below. Your taste may vary. Can you get a better raw scan of this transparency?
al
Ivan, I think this is good advice.Originally Posted by Ivan J. Eberle
Al and Peter you did really nice jobs with these images. I have to look at my scanner a bit closer. I'm using an Epson v700.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks