Help With 4x5 Scan

[michaelnel]

Hello Folks

I no longer shoot large format stuff, but back in the early '80s I did a lot, hauling my Zone VI field camera outfit all around California and Utah. A couple years ago I dug out my old negatives and transparencies and scanned them on an Epson V-750 scanner.

Recently I have been trying to see what I can do with them in the digital domain. I have Photoshop CS5.1 and have done some processing on them (cleaning up dust spots, a little sharpening and color correction).

One particular image that I do like was shot near sunrise in the Alabama Hills in California, near Lone Pine. I am kind of stuck as to what it needs in terms of PP. Unfortunately, the morning I was there had a pretty clear, uninteresting pale blue sky, and the foreground rocks were in morning shadow while the mountains were in direct sunlight.

I am posting a reduced-sized image here, about 800x600. The original is a .tif that is pretty large, about 4500x3600 and 40MB. I can make it available to anyone who wants to do some editing on it. In any case, I would sure appreciate some constructive criticism on the image and suggestions as to how it can be improved, short of going back there and reshooting it.

Thanks!

[Daniel Stone]

to be quite honest, except for the "bland" blue sky, I think your exposure is dead on! Why not get back into LF ? Seems you've already got enough experience to warrant knowing how to expose film correctly

-Dan

[michaelnel]

to be quite honest, except for the "bland" blue sky, I think your exposure is dead on! Why not get back into LF ? Seems you've already got enough experience to warrant knowing how to expose film correctly

-Dan

Well, thanks for the compliment. In those days I was using the Zone System and a spotmeter, so I would pretty much expect the exposure itself to be pretty close.

I would love to get back into LF, but I have been laid off / unemployed for quite a while now, and LF is a real expensive neighborhood for an unemployed guy.

Anyway, looking at the picture I posted, there's way too much blue in the shadows and not enough in the sky. So, I pulled down the saturation of blue and raised the red, yellow, and green. Then I made a selection of the sky and brought some blue back up in the sky. Looking at it here on my monitor it seems to be a pretty big improvement, but when I reduce it to 800x600 and save for web and then link it here it looks kinda crappy. I think it has to do with converting it to sRGB. The big version doesn't have pink mountains and turquoise sky, it looks way better than this version:

[Corran]

If you want more intense, pure blue you can add a Hue/Sat layer and move the cyan more to the blue side and the blue a little more to the right too, and add some saturation. Also darkening it helps a little. Obviously works better with full rez and 16-bit but here is what I got:

[Ken Lee]

The sun had already set where you were standing, bringing a slight chill. Darkness was coming upon those foreboding rocks.

At the same time, the distant hills were bathed in a faint warm light.

Perhaps a less literal interpretation would be rewarding to explore: more feeling and less fact?

[Joel Truckenbrod]

I think what ultimately is needed is a lot of localized work - both contrast and color. This is pretty common for film scans in my experience; especially scans off of flatbeds. Regardless, the process is extremely subjective to say the least. Here's a rough idea - I can email you the PSD if desired.

[Jan Pedersen]

Here's a little more variation to the blue sky and some local contrast to the rocks in the foreground.

[Peter J. De Smidt]

Here's a quick alternate version:

[sully75]

I vote for Peter's. My issue isn't a color issue, but that it looks like two different photographs together as one. I'd probably bring the front up and the back down and try to make them look more consistent. Either exposure would be fine, but together they look cut out from each other.

[Peter J. De Smidt]

I'm not sure that I like mine. It was just a quick riff to give an idea. What hit me when I saw the picture was the contrast between the foreground rocks and the background, and so I exacerbated it. Ken's much more subtle version highlights the mountain range, whereas mine highlights the foreground rocks.