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Challenge - Optimise this

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StuartRae

New member
Stuart has kindly updated the link to his challenging English countryside picture. So have a shot! ADK


Hello Everyone,

As a result of my post in the HDR Tone Mapping thread, Asher has suggested I issue this challenge.

Using the RAW converter and PP software of your choice, do your best with here

If I'd known it would escalate to this extent, I'd have chosen a better photo! In reality, it's a bit like making a silk purse........ But what's done is done.

What I'm aiming for is to bring out the detail in the stone wall, bushes and foreground shadow, and to see what's on the other side of the gate, while preserving the sky and clouds.

I suggest in order to save bandwidth for those with slower connections that files are limited to 800x600 medium quality jpegs.

No prize was mentioned, but a nice bottle of vin rouge would go down well ;-)

Regards,

Stuart
 
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Don Lashier

New member
StuartRae said:
sw.rae/examples/Aut05-0010.zip"]this shot[/URL]

If I'd known it would escalate to this extent, I'd have chosen a better photo! In reality, it's a bit like making a silk purse........ But what's done is done.
Click to expand...

This image is perfect for the purpose at hand. It doesn't need to be a work of art, just a good example of problems encountered, which this is.

In the spirit of evaluating plug-ins and methods I'd suggest that time spent working on the image be limited to 10 minutes or so. In any case, posters should give an estimate of the time they spent.

- DL
 
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StuartRae

New member
I'd suggest that time spent working on the image be limited to 10 minutes or so.
Click to expand...

To set the goal posts, it took me no more than 15 minutes to produce all 5 examples in my original post.

Stuart
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Although I like speed, if the picture is important, speed may not always be. So I'd be happy with the best result for the least effort.

Asher
 
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Don Lashier

New member
Asher Kelman said:
Although I like speed, if the picture is important, speed may not always be. So I'd be happy with the best result for the least effort.
Click to expand...

How about this then, it should be a result easily reproducible from a set of step by step instructions/parameters. eg no handpainting a mask.

- DL
 
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Roger Lambert

New member
Here you go,

EDITED:

I forgot to say that I processed the original in two ways:

1) Left it "as is" and called it "Dark"

2) Processed with "levels" tool to expose the brick wall shadow detail. This exposure was renamed as "Bright".

I then used an automated luminosity mask procedure. (I have Photoshop CS1)

The blend itself took me about one minute. No hand painting. Then flattened, a tiny bit of levels, resize to 800 pixils on long size, re sharpened, posted at pbase. :)

My goal was to use a blended exposure to reveal shadow detail in the photograph in a natural way, but was not an exercise in changing or improving the nature of the original image using Photoshop.

64846626.jpg
 
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David Bostock

New member
Another Take

Aut05-0010_ACR__1__2.jpg



Here's my take. The Workflow was:

Adobe Bridge, Process three versions of the Raw, one 2 stops over, one at exposure, and one 2 stops under.
Bring the three versions into Photomax Pro and blend them using HDR.
Pull the resultant image into Photoshop
Apply Levels
Selective Color--Black +3, Neutrals +12
Add a touch more contrast
Capture Sharpen
Noise Ninja (Auto Profile, then dialed back)
Resize
Output Sharpen for web
 
D

Diane Fields

New member
Andrew Rodney said:
Best part of this is showing how damn subjective RAW rendering really is.
Click to expand...

How true. Its totally subjective and anyone who says what is 'correct'--well, has to be 'wrong' LOL. The closest one could be to 'correct' would be the OP and then--even he would have a 'bias' as to his remembrance of the scene--or even if he would want it to be as close as possible to reality. Then--we each will like some more than others--which is influenced by a lot of other things. Asher will have a problem handing out a prize on this one methinks.
 
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Stephen Eastwood

New member
aut05-0010.jpg

two conversions in acr
dropped one on the other and masked off bright areas
applied a brighter contrast curve and masked off areas as needed
applied a darker contrast curve and masked off areas as needed
adjusted overall contrast with curves and added a hue saturation adjustment to add +3 saturation and a +10 in the blues

about 5 minutes

I don't do much landscape I mainly only do people so I am sure there are much faster and better ways to do all this.

edited to add a BW version

for this I added a channel mixer adjustment layer that simulates pan f
under that I had a curve layer to darken everything and masked off as needed with a large soft brush at 30% opacity

aut05-0010bw.jpg


Stephen Eastwood
http://www.PhotographersPortfolio.com
718-591-1218
 
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Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Impressive array of truths we see! There's a lot of delicacy in the clouds there which some of the results show very well.

Asher
 
D

Don Lashier

New member
Aut05-0010-web-1.jpg

Here's mine, using the dual conversion layer masking technique I referenced earlier

- Dual C1 conversions, -0.75ec 0cc, +1.25ec +12cc
- Layered in PS, dark on top, light copied to mask on dark
- gaussian blur mask 58, contrast mask 33
- contrast curve on light (bottom) layer
- top (dark) sat + 11
- slight overall contrast curve

flatten, resize, moderate USM, add black border, save as jpeg 7

Time, about 10 minutes.

edit: remove black border to equalize with others

- DL
 
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Dierk Haasis

pro member
Aut05-0010.JPG


1. RAWShooterpremium:
- set WB 7200, -1
- Exposure Compensation -0.5, Fill Light 45, Shadow Contrast 25, Highlight Contrast-21
- Curves 16, 0.83, 246
- converted to TIFF

2. Opened TIFF in Capture NX:
- set four U-Points, 3 on the left edge to darken the sky, tint the cloud reddish, open up the shadows in the bush and wall; fourth set on the cloud in the middle to darken and tint it slightly

Effect gone for: early summer evening with the sun not quite setting but giving a warm light. Matches the shadows.

Time taken: 5 minutes.
 
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Petter Stahre

New member
Fun thread!

Here's my contribution:
aut-05-0010-ps1.jpg


...and:
aut-05-0010-ps2.jpg


Workflow:
Made two exposures in RAW Developer, at slightly warmer color temp and a little saturation gain.
Imported as layers in Photoshop.
Added a layermask to the darker exposure ("sky layer") and kept only the sky.
Added extra saturation to the sky layer using the B+W filter Enhance Colors.
Added contrast to the lighter exposure (using curves).
Saw that the cloud still missed details and tried ACR which gave me an third image with better clouds.
Imported the ACR as a new layer, added layermask and painted in the cloud details. I then corrected the colors of the ACR-layer to match the sky layer.

For finetuning I flattened the image, and took away a little saturation globally and then again to desaturate greens only.
I gave the whole image a little more contrast and black shadows (using curves).

Resized the image and used Smart Sharpen (500+0,3+Gaussian / 100+40+1 / 100+40+1).

I then made a BW-version using The ImagingFactorys Convert to BW Pro in which I also gave it a little warm tone.

Voilà. Approx 15 minutes for the color image and 1 minute for the BW. My aim was to keep the image natural looking while enhancing contrast. I'm not fond of detailed retouching of images so I stopped there.

Very nice photo by the way!
And nice contributions in this thread! Lot's of fun to look at.

:) Petter

EDIT: Language.
 
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Don Lashier

New member
Diane Fields said:
How true. Its totally subjective and anyone who says what is 'correct'--well, has to be 'wrong' LOL.
Click to expand...
I think the real lesson here is that "plug-ins" are no magic bullet. The real determiner is the skill and vision of the operator.

- DL
 
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Dierk Haasis

pro member
Don Lashier said:
The real determiner is the skill and vision of the operator.
Click to expand...

Strike 'skill', I have always said and written it is about the vision. Reluctantly I put in the specifics of my fiddling but most important to me is the part about what my goal was. From what I see that's exactly what everybody else went for: interpreting a bunch of data to convey a specific information, a scene instead of a picture.

This is particularly obvious with those making available several versions. And the one who first came up with the idea to render the photo as black and white.
 
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Roger Lambert

New member
Don Lashier said:
I think the real lesson here is that "plug-ins" are no magic bullet. The real determiner is the skill and vision of the operator.

- DL
Click to expand...

I respectfully disagree.

I think the real lesson here is that you can't put a bunch of digital photographers in one room with a simple PP project, before everyone's creative energy is no longer contained, and bursts out of its protective container like a radiactive plutonium plasma. :)

There "oughtta be a law" as well for the collective brain-warping phenomena that occurs when you get a certain quanta of photoshopping-crazed artists out-reaching each other in a contest-driven frenzy. :D

I think it should be called " Disney's Law. "

In Disney's Law, Warpage, W, =

C x 1/t
n squared


where C = the coolness of the effect, t = the time needed to produce the effect, and n = the number of Post Processing Digital Photographers producing Brain Warpage .

It doesn't take too many digital photographers to really pump up the warpage, according to Disney's Law. :D
 
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Diane Fields

New member
Dierk Haasis said:
Strike 'skill', I have always said and written it is about the vision. Reluctantly I put in the specifics of my fiddling but most important to me is the part about what my goal was. From what I see that's exactly what everybody else went for: interpreting a bunch of data to convey a specific information, a scene instead of a picture.

This is particularly obvious with those making available several versions. And the one who first came up with the idea to render the photo as black and white.
Click to expand...

I tend to agree with vision as opposed to 'skill'. Also---the choice of an RC and how it was used had an enormous bearing on the final image.

I used 3 different RCs to process--ended up preferring one over another (all with +EC, -EC and no EC), pulled into HDR as David, then used TM, added curves, color balance adj. layer, then adj. layer for selective color (never happy with the greens from any RC--but then this camera had no camera profiles in C1 or RSP) and masked out everything but grass from that layer. Resized, PKS masked and adjusted to suit.
64879431.jpg
I saw it as a very early Fallish day due to the dried grass stems, bound to be warmer light due to the shadows/time of day--and therefore felt it needed to be less 'light'--I'm sure we all had some approach like this--whether conscious or not.


I could have ended up with totally different 'look' by blending those files in PC, masking, layering, and certainly by choosing C1 or ACR conversions over the RSP. I meant to add the following:
2 used LR, 1 used Silkypix, 2 used ACR, 1 used C1 (I tried it but was less happy with it than usual--esp. sky), 2 used RPS, 1 used Raw Developer. There were a variety of approaches--2 of us using the standalone Photomatix for the original HDR/tonemapping after RAW processing--and we all did additional PS processing----and there's not any image here that is really close to another in the end.

Diane
 
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Dierk Haasis

pro member
Roger Lambert said:
I think the real lesson here is that you can't put a bunch of digital photographers in one room with a simple PP project, before everyone's creative energy is no longer contained, and bursts out of its protective container like a radiactive plutonium plasma.
Click to expand...

It proves that there is no "correct" colour, and a lot of roads leading to Rome.
 
Andrew Rodney

Andrew Rodney

New member
Multiple converters and layering of each in Photoshop? Wow, I thought this was supposed to be a 5 minute exercise.

Can we stick with a single rendering from a single processor for now?

I didn't mention (sorry) that of my two attempts, one was using Lightroom, the other RAW Developer. And yes, they look quite different.

A difficult task is taking the same RAW file and using say 3 converters and attempting to match as closely as possible the rendering. That takes a lot more than 5 minutes each! I've got an "Iron Chief" RAW converter session in the works for PhotoPlus Expo in NY later this year where two very well know photographers will have four different companies attempt to produce a rendering they like, all the way to output. Should be a fun one.
 
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