A Current Workflow to Rebuild Image of Dancers on a Dimly Lit Stage

Having lit dancers on a black background sure can be dramatic. That means the backcloth gets only a modest amount of light. Taken to the extreme, no front lights are used!!

Photographing a dimly lit stage is always a challenge. Worse is when it's lit unevenly and with little front light to open up the shadows on the faces from sidelights. Could it be more of a challenge? Well add in a mix of skin tones then one can easily run into trouble, even with todays digital sensors.

Here's one attempt to overcome these difficulties. First I used the Canon 5D Mark II at about 100 ft at 2.8 and 1/180 second, 3200 ISO. This allows one to stop motion and have a reasonable depth of field in focus. IS is on.

CS 4 ACR Has valuable Tone Mapping Capabilities:


Unlike Capture One 5.1 ACR allows altering the tonal curves in zones from very dark to the brightest pixels. If luminosity masks could be used instead, perhaps this would be an advantage.

ACR CS4 Curve Adjustments by Zone.jpg





Here are pictures processed from RAW with CS4



So far, we are showing all of the figures nicely but the hair is hard to make out! Also I miss the certain richness I see in Capture One!

Looking at Capture One we see the rich vibrant colors that we want to go for. However, there's less capability to map the tones offered in CS4

Here are pictures processed from RAW with Capture One

Of course, I'll rework the images in Capture One 6.1 and also try other RAW processors. But for now I'll use these images as the elements to attempt to rebuild the image to my satisfaction.

More to follow shortly.

Feel free to comment. Do0 not edit and repost... just yet as I'd like to complete my effort first.

Asher

Hi, Asher,

Nice work, and an interesting essay on technique.

Of the first batch, I like the most:


Best regards,

Doug

Refining the Hair, first to sketch in all of it and then add life!

Doug Kerr said:

Hi, Asher,

Nice work, and an interesting essay on technique.

Of the first batch, I like the most:

Click to expand...

Thanks Doug! Now let's see if we can improve on the hair. First we process another copy of the original RAW file in CS4-ACR just for any detail in the hair we can demonstrate. In the picture below, all but the wanted detail in the hair and some adjacent dark areas, is masked out.





This layer is simply added to the previous CS-4 blended result that you liked:



Now the hair is drawn in well. But can it be strengthened and made lively, especially in the lead dancer? So next I have used levels to advantage to put more of the 16 BIT file in the range of operations by bringing in the right end of the histogram, brightening the image. Then a curves layer is used to increase the contrast in the hair. The two layers are blended with "Lighter Color" until the ringlets of the hair stand out. Then, all but the lead dancer's beautiful curly hair is masked out.

This is where we advanced to in the last post.



We saw how the Capture One images have so much verve. Can we approach this with adjustments to a currently best image. Well to some extent we can:



Now we have a pretty attractive photograph. This, then is the best we have done so far with CS4. Doubtless, others might better this, just this is my best to date. Should we be satisfied?

So where are we? Well the tonalities of the figures have been reassembled. We've added some more life to the CS4 developed images and for now that's the best we have.

What's missing is the verve and color splendor seen in the high contrast C1 renderings of the dancers skin and dresses. Can we use the Capture One 5.1 results from post #2 to advantage in the CS4 blended image?

That we tackle in the next post! Again, feel free to comment!

Asher

I rarely use the curve tool in ACR for substantial changes, it's not designed for that, it's for very subtle tonal adjustments. The parametric curve tool is almost only contrast based as well which is a waste of the kind of processing this image could use. Caveat, I teach ACR and LR so tell me if I'm being too officious! ;-)

This image is actually very easy to process for a nice, clean and natural result. Firstly use the brightness tool to bring the skin up to what it should be. Forget the shadows for the moment. If there are any blown highlights first bring the image down with the exposure tool as that is the official method for highlight recovery with ACR/LR.

Next make sure the shadows is on '2'. The default is 5 in ACR which is way OTT. Lowering more than 2 does shadow recovery but in a rather blunt fashion. 2 or 3 is a good default.

Now adjust the contrast and saturation tool to taste.

The fill light tool is what you want for getting the detail back into the hair. Unlike the parametric tool it is a shadow recovery tool rather than just lightening the shadows, it is far far more powerful. It is however global, a trick I find if it is lightening the detail in your background for example then bumping up the shadows tool will bring it back in line without losing your hair detail.

Once you have the main adjustments done, if you use the curves/paramatric tools for further subtle adjustments you will get there perfectly. The point is that the sliders are far more powerful for use working on an image and should be preferred for when information needs to be accessed nearer to either end of the histogram scale.

This is even before we use the Local Adjustment tools which is what makes ACR/LR so incredibly powerful and after begging for dodge/burn for so many years in the raw converter, I couldn't live without.

The trick is to not have to use photoshop to layer for work that can be done, better, in the raw converter.

Oh and Asher, get CS5 already, the raw processing is soooooooooo much better for colour, highlight and shadow detail, tonality and most of all noise control!

Ben Rubinstein said:

I rarely use the curve tool in ACR for substantial changes, it's not designed for that, it's for very subtle tonal adjustments. The parametric curve tool is almost only contrast based as well which is a waste of the kind of processing this image could use. Caveat, I teach ACR and LR so tell me if I'm being too officious! ;-)

This image is actually very easy to process for a nice, clean and natural result. Firstly use the brightness tool to bring the skin up to what it should be. Forget the shadows for the moment. If there are any blown highlights first bring the image down with the exposure tool as that is the official method for highlight recovery with ACR/LR.

Next make sure the shadows is on '2'. The default is 5 in ACR which is way OTT. Lowering more than 2 does shadow recovery but in a rather blunt fashion. 2 or 3 is a good default.

Now adjust the contrast and saturation tool to taste.

The fill light tool is what you want for getting the detail back into the hair. Unlike the parametric tool it is a shadow recovery tool rather than just lightening the shadows, it is far far more powerful. It is however global, a trick I find if it is lightening the detail in your background for example then bumping up the shadows tool will bring it back in line without losing your hair detail.

Once you have the main adjustments done, if you use the curves/paramatric tools for further subtle adjustments you will get there perfectly. The point is that the sliders are far more powerful for use working on an image and should be preferred for when information needs to be accessed nearer to either end of the histogram scale.

This is even before we use the Local Adjustment tools which is what makes ACR/LR so incredibly powerful and after begging for dodge/burn for so many years in the raw converter, I couldn't live without.

The trick is to not have to use photoshop to layer for work that can be done, better, in the raw converter.

Oh and Asher, get CS5 already, the raw processing is soooooooooo much better for colour, highlight and shadow detail, tonality and most of all noise control!

Click to expand...

Ben,

Thanks so much!

I'll try your prescription! first in CS4 then in CS5 once I install it in the new year.

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

This is where we advanced in CS4-ACR and CS4 layers the before your CS4-ONLY workflow you kindly shared in your last post.

Click to expand...

Well, I've now used your instructions to get the following "CS4-ACR ONLY BR-AK" version




Thanks so much Ben. It's a richer file, in the direction of some of the sensibilities of Capture One 5.1. Furthermore, it's likely a far more robust file, having been processed from just a single RAW processing set of calculations. I appreciate your generosity in sharing!

Asher

Wooow, holy saturation batman! You can get the file to look exactly like your photoshop processed one but just in the RAW converter, should be easy to match the WB/contrast/saturation but still have access to the same detail.

Any chance of a play with the RAW file Asher? Interested to show what can be done in the raw developer alone. I'll document what I've done and post up here.

Hi, Asher,

Asher Kelman said:

Asher Kelman: Dancers

As Above but hair of Lead Dancer enhanced to show ringlets​

Click to expand...

Way superb result!

Best regards,

Doug

I liked it darker

I brought the raw file up in Capture One 6.0.1 64-bit, using only the Film Extra Shadow profile, which lifts the floor so that you can see that they are standing on something. The skin tones were lovely, the faces nicely modelled. The pose is a little graceless, but the dresses were also nicely textured and shaped. The grain is nicely handled for ISO 3200. To my taste, all the subsequent additions of lifted shadows on the faces and bright hair produce a less pleasing picture (although the dancers themselves might like it better).

Capture One 6 has a full curves tool and local adjustments as well, so I am sure that you could relight it to taste without needing to go to LR or Photoshop.

scott

Here is about 10 minutes of work in ACR 6.2, to be honest due to the level of underexposure and the lack of focus there isn't all that much to work with to be honest.

Here is the pic:


and here is the .XMP file if anyone wants to see in detail what I did (a lot). http://www.studio-beni.net/_MG_1361.xmp

I'll document it in detail if anyone wants but at the moment I have to run to work.

Thanks so much Ben and Cem for taking time from family to add their ideas. We'll designate my versions A and B and then subsequent contributions by C, D etc.


Then, using Ben's instructions for a single software process in ACR from CS4:



A richer file, in the direction of some of the sensibilities of Capture One 5.1. Furthermore, it's likely a far more robust. (May seem over-saturated on a laptop monitor and even posterized on the lead girl's face. The picture has none of that on an Eizo monitor).

Now, Ben your quick 10 minute, but highly detailed, (many step), effort

Ben Rubinstein said:

Here is about 10 minutes of work in ACR 6.2, to be honest due to the level of underexposure and the lack of focus there isn't all that much to work with to be honest.

Click to expand...

Here in Ben's "version C," there's a much better exposure in the faces of the faces of the last two dancers and the hair. A lot of the elements have been expressed well. I have to study the large accompanying multistep file. an explanation would be helpful! amazing how many individual adjustment steps one needs!

I'll return to comment on Cem's contribution. Just great thanks for now. Will be back!

Asher

OK I'll work through what I did, nothing over special to be honest.

I am working this image in 16bit for maximum detail/tonality and Adobe RGB for the same reason (Profoto RGB is technically better but you get suprises when converting for print or screen and suddenly your file look weak).

1) Firstly I want to address two key issues with adobe skin colour which were fixed in the 'Camera Calibration' and HSL (Luminance) tab. Those are standard for my way of working as I find Adobe skin colour very over red.

2) Next a simple 2X3 crop and using the spot cloning tool to get rid of most of the junk on the floor.

3) Next and very important before we even touch anything else, we need to get the WB in the ballpark otherwise the histogram will be lying and very misleading! I can eyeball WB pretty quickly, I immediately dialed in 2000 then adjusted in 50K steps till I was happy.

4) Next realising that the file was troublesome I chose shadows=2 and contrast=0 to give me a very flat starting point. I pulled up the brighness till it was good globally. My saturation of 10 is my personal default.

5) I realise at this point that the hair is going to be more trouble that I thought. I try using the fill light tool but it isn't helping, it's too drastic, too heavy handed. I instead drop the shadows to '1'.

6) I move on to the Local Adjustment Tool. Firstly I darken the chest of the middle dancer which looks too hot. I then open up the shadows on her face and eye slightly. The girl on the right's hair is a serious problem. ACR can find practically no detail but the noise actually works for us rather than against us as lightening it brings up artifacts that look like detail. The hair has a nasty colour sheen due to the artifacts so I dial in desaturation on the same mask that I've used to lighten, to make it look more natural I drop the contrast slightly.

7) I open up the hair of the middle dancer but less so. I also lighten slightly the dress of the right hand dancer which looks rather muddy.

8) The picture is looking somewhat flat so I give a global +5 of contrast.

I do some noise reduction but only quickly as I have to run out for a job in the college at which my Canon 5D commits suicide (specifically the shutter).

I usually run an action on all my work as standard applying a curve to the highlights and boosting mid tone contrast for a great look, I didn't do it on this image as it was to be shown as ACR only. I have specifically not used the tone tools in ACR even though I could have, to show what I meant to Asher about using the regular sliders. This file has a lot of tonality which provides room for further work should it be needed. Preserving tonality is vital in the RAW processing stage.

Asher, just put the XMP file with the raw file, open in ACR and hey presto it will show all the stuff I did, no need to try and decode it line by line!

Thanks Ben for giving more detail!

Ben Rubinstein said:

4) Next realising that the file was troublesome I chose shadows=2 and contrast=0 to give me a very flat starting point. I pulled up the brighness till it was good globally. My saturation of 10 is my personal default.

Click to expand...

I also went for low contrast, but by "zero" do you mean slider totally to the left. That's "-50". When you refer to "Shadows" do you mean black or the shadow setting in the curves dialog box?

Ben Rubinstein said:

6) I move on to the Local Adjustment Tool. .........The girl on the right's hair is a serious problem. .... noise actually works for us rather than against us as lightening it brings up artifacts that look like detail. ...... I dial in desaturation on the same mask that I've used to lighten, to make it look more natural I drop the contrast slightly.

Click to expand...

Fascinating! I did the same but more aggressively!!

Ben Rubinstein said:

I usually run an action on all my work as standard applying a curve to the highlights and boosting mid tone contrast for a great look, I didn't do it on this image as it was to be shown as ACR only.

Click to expand...

That sounds interesting!

I used zero '0' on contrast, the base setting, once you hit minus you are actually reducing contrast rather than starting with a level field. By shadows I mean 'black', sorry.

Ben Rubinstein said:

I used zero '0' on contrast, the base setting, once you hit minus you are actually reducing contrast rather than starting with a level field. By shadows I mean 'black', sorry.

Click to expand...

In rebuilding the overall forms, I like the idea of reducing contrast, -50, that is, especially if there's there's data to fill the broader histogram. Once one has the entire form of the subjects, contrast can be subsequently added, where needed, for dimension and revealing detail.

Asher

I feel compelled to comment on the overall undertaking here.

First, it is wonderful to see so much insight into the two, both very complex, matters, "what would I like to have" and "how can I get that".

It is then astounding to see the gigantic arsenal of tools we have at our disposal, housed in our image editing programs, and the ingenuity in their application, tedious thought that might be in some cases.

At the same time, it is sobering to realize that there is nothing even close to a universal "metric" for "how good is a certain result" (and that is in part due to a wide range of answers to, "for what?"). It is far from the situation when the ophthalmologist, flipping the Jackson cross cylinder in the phoropter, says, "Which is better, one [click] or two?".

And so there are two orthogonal thoughts I experience while observing the different results:

• Wow, that really is better than the previous one, and
• Wow, these are (mostly) all so nice

The faint of heart might be baffled, or frustrated, by all this richness of choice and ambiguity. But there are many ways to achieve. Much wonderful photography is attained with out-of-camera images. Beautiful music is performed by those who cannot read musical notation.

Perhaps most important is the need to see all this in perspective - to know what we can do with a scalpel and, when necessary, how to do it with a pocket knife, or with two aspirin; to know what we know and what we don't know; to say, "now, that's not it yet"; but ultimately to know when to stop kneading the dough.

That subset of medical practice that has such a concentration around where Asher lives often says, "The perfect is the enemy of the good". That's as banal as much of their other output. The perfect is in fact the propellant of the good. It is only an enemy in mindless hands (now there's a mixed metaphor for ya!).

So press on, gang. You are a formidable army of artists, and artisans, and craftsmen, and philosophers, writers and painters, and even engineers.

"Is there anything better than music? Maybe ballet."

Finally, the quote of the day, from Fahim Mohammed (discussing composition and cropping technique in portraiture):

"I like intimacy . . . especially with women".

Now to breakfast. Carla is in the advanced stages of refining a special process for preparing steel-cut oats. Irish material in the hands of a Cherokee. Success is assured.

Best regards,

Doug

In rebuilding the overall forms, I like the idea of reducing contrast, -50, that is, especially if there's there's data to fill the broader histogram. Once one has the entire form of the subjects, contrast can be subsequently added, where needed, for dimension and revealing detail.

Asher

Click to expand...

Problem is that reducing contrast does not recover anything, it's a quirk of the adobe raw engine but contrast only works within the data already held in the present histogram. You don't achieve anything with the contrast tools, including the curves other than the 'look', if you want more data as a starting point then you need tools other than contrast. Adobe know and have conceded this point and a more powerful curves tool has been eagerly waited for with the last two versions, alas, we still wait. I assume Adobe's position is that contrast and curves should work like in photoshop, using the data present in the image. If it would recover data then it would be extremely difficult to plot an accurate curve as the underlying histogram would keep changing. I happen to disagree but all we can do is hope.

Ben Rubinstein said:

Problem is that reducing contrast does not recover anything, it's a quirk of the adobe raw engine but contrast only works within the data already held in the present histogram. You don't achieve anything with the contrast tools, including the curves other than the 'look', if you want more data as a starting point then you need tools other than contrast. Adobe know and have conceded this point and a more powerful curves tool has been eagerly waited for with the last two versions, alas, we still wait. I assume Adobe's position is that contrast and curves should work like in photoshop, using the data present in the image. If it would recover data then it would be extremely difficult to plot an accurate curve as the underlying histogram would keep changing. I happen to disagree but all we can do is hope.

Click to expand...

I'll check what happens to file size when we change the contrast. That might be an indirect window to what's going on. Still, if folk recognize already that -50 to zero is pointless work, then I am learning something new. It just seems that there is less contrast as posterization gets healed. But that's just my impression and I don't know what's going on with the actual data.

Asher

I had a quick try with acr only, I'm currently processing the file in PSCS4 with mask, which will take me a little longer. However the starting point is the file I edited with ACR.
The result so far:



to be contin'd


I started with the file that Asher gave me, starting from his own changes.

I'll post the final processing maybe tomorrow.

here's the rest

here's the final image, honestly I don't know if I've gone too far or if the result is worth the effort, You'll tell me... I made some screenshots that'll prevent me to give any explanations



The layers marked "darken" and "lighten" are curves with basically the middle point "up" (lighten) or "down" (darken) with masks to lighten the hair and darken the "fringe" around the figures.
The hue/saturation attached to each is made to lower the saturation caused by the curve layer - actually there is none on "darken", this is simply an action that made this up for me and I was lazy enough not to remove the unwanted layer.
+ a basic levels layer on top 1 - 1.16 - 221

Thanks so much Sandrne for sharing n such detail your workflow and the this final image.



I'm studying it all. Right now, I'm so impressed. I need to look at the full size files with this method.

With gratitude!

Asher

Versions so far!!

Thanks so much Ben, Sandrine (and Cem who's picture is missing) for taking time from family to add their ideas. We'll designate my versions A and B and then subsequent contributions by C, D etc.


Then, using Ben's instructions for a single software process in ACR from CS4:



A richer file, in the direction of some of the sensibilities of Capture One 5.1. Furthermore, it's likely a far more robust. (May seem over-saturated on a laptop monitor and even posterized on the lead girl's face. The picture has none of that on an Eizo monitor).


Now, Ben your quick 10 minute, but highly detailed, (many step), effort

Ben Rubinstein said:

Here is about 10 minutes of work in ACR 6.2, to be honest due to the level of underexposure and the lack of focus there isn't all that much to work with to be honest.

Click to expand...

Sandrine,

I'm studying it all. Right now, I'm so impressed with the quality of the final file and so detailed screenshots! I need to look at the files in full size to understand the differences.

With gratitude!

Asher

I'll send all the files needed, so you can choose whatever suits you more...
For my part there is not a mathematical approach to this (from now on, I'm banned from Doug's list )
I know more or less by habit where to start from, and then it's all trials and errors.

I just took a real deep drown at ACR a few months ago, through a book dedicated to, so now it helps me a lot with this program...

Sandrine Bascouert said:

I'll send all the files needed, so you can choose whatever suits you more...

Click to expand...

Sandrine, you are most generous! I appreciate that so much and the extra effort you have taken to share each step so others can follow your approach.

Sandrine Bascouert said:

For my part there is not a mathematical approach to this ..... I know more or less by habit where to start from, and then it's all trials and errors.

Click to expand...

For sure, but the tools you use and your perspective for looking at an image are interesting and helpful. I for one will try to follow though your adjustment steps to see how you wandered through choices.

Sandrine Bascouert said:

I just took a real deep drown at ACR a few months ago, through a book dedicated to, so now it helps me a lot with this program...

Click to expand...

Which book or guide? Have you spent simlar effort with DXO or Capture One 6.1. The latter bursting with new features as Bart has touched on here.

Sandrine Bascouert said:

(from now on, I'm banned from Doug's list )

Click to expand...

Oops! Doug Kerr might still let you in! Besides, he's a pretty good lone sailor! Look at his sheer breadth of contributions here. He loves people but knows how to read the stars and navigate alone and lead the way for others.

Thanks again for all the sharers and guides in OPF!

Asher