"Tweak this image" CS2 RAW challenge

[tim]

I'm wondering if it's possible to tweak this image, using curves in CS2 RAW, to have both the building and the sky well exposed. I'd like to see a little detail in the clouds as well as seeing the building and what's around it. Is this possible? You can download the CR2 file here (http://mrwild.co.nz/unprotected/potn/temp/TweakMe.CR2) (8MB, fast server).

Here's a preview
http://mrwild.co.nz/unprotected/potn/TweakMe.jpg

[PhotosGuy]

Here's a quickie I did in RSE using 2 "exposures".

[redbutt]

I took a try at it, but there really isn't much you can do. The sky is too blown out. I did get some more detail ou of the hill behind the building though. To get what you want, you'd need to take two pictures, one exposed for sky and the other for the building and combine them.

[PhotosGuy]

To get what you want, you'd need to take two pictures, one exposed for sky and the other for the building and combine them. Maybe you missed the point of RAW? Which is what I did in RSE - I "took" two pictures. ;-)

[ByteTheBullet]

I was just messing with highlights and shadows...still has a halo around it though.

http://tinypic.com/5zjtpx
ByteTheBullet (-:

[CyberPet]

My take on it.....

http://the-halls.se/edited/TweakMe.jpg

I made two copies, one for the background and sky and one for the little building. Copied the one image over the other and removed the one part. So I copied the sky image over to the "ground" picture and on the sky level I removed the front. Added a 3 pixel feather to make the blend smoother between the two. I could have worked more with it, but I thought I'd just give it a go.

[tim]

Thanks everyone. I know the sky is pretty well blown, but at EC-2 or so it's not quite as bad. I can do a blended exposure technique fine, I was really wondering if it was possible to do something with curves in CS2 RAW to give the sky more texture without messing with the rest of the picture too much. Is that possible to do?

[CyberPet]

What no winner? :D

I thought at least the winner got to design your new business card. *winks* No honestly, It's hard to fix the sky directly in Raw... you could probabaly use the feature I was trying to do "manually" in CS2... I forgot the name now... it's like using two exposures and you compile them into one. Uhm... it's called... uhm... 32 bit Hight Dynamic Range (HDR) support. Dunno where it is, but it should be there and it should work with seveal mixed copies of one image from Raw.

[tim]

High Dynamic Range doesn't work with multiple exposures from the same RAW - or at least i've never managed to get it to work, which is consisitent with the googling i've done.

You want a winner? I like your one best overall CyberPet, though I like ByteTheBullet and PhotosGuy's sky better. If it weren't for the funny boundry on PhotosGuy's pic I think i'd like that one.

[PhotosGuy]

Well, I said it was a quickie. ;-) Just used the magic wand, which I hate, but it was fast. The technique works, but isn't the CS fix requested, so why waste my time doing more?
I haven't used curves in PS since I started processing in RSE. I love it!

[Nightcrawler]

Here is my try at the dynamic range. It lacks a little contrast, but that can be fixed.

[tim]

How'd you do that Jason?

[Nightcrawler]

I actually got the RAW to work in Merge to HDR with multiple conversions of the same RAW file. You just have to finesse it a little, or simply "trick" PS into thinking you took the picture multiple times. To do it, I did three conversions, one at -2.0, 0.0 and 2.0. Then I applied a slight curve on each of them. The reason I did this is so that when PS does an analysis on the photos, it doesn't find a direct correlation among the photos if we did just a straight exposure compensation. Then the next step was to save the photos in a format where EXIF isn't stored like PNG. Then I did the Merge to HDR feature. It comes up with a dialog box asking for the exposure values. I plugged in F2.8, 1/400, and ISO 200 for the EC 0.0 one and 1/100 and 1/1600 for the EC -2.0 and 2.0 ones. Then it did its thing and merged them. All that was left to do was to drop from 32 bit to 8 bit mode. I used the Exposure Compensation and Gamma setting with values of -4.5 and 0.6. Then I did a little local contrast enhancement to bring it out a little.

[tim]

What a great trick, thanks! Do you really need to save as a format that doesn't store exif information? What a pain.

I don't think this photo is salvagable, but that's a great trick to use for other times :)

[Nightcrawler]

I don't know for sure. I suppose I could try it without that step. The reason I did both of them is that I didn't want PS to get wind of the fact that I just converted the same RAW file three times. Try it and see, let me know if it works.

[kawter2]

Sorry to simplify this, but HDR ..... is exactly what you are doing in processing the raw.. you are taking a picture with "XX" amount of dynamic range and compressing it down to a "X" or standard DR

I think you are being redundant

[tim]

Sorry to simplify this, but HDR ..... is exactly what you are doing in processing the raw.. you are taking a picture with "XX" amount of dynamic range and compressing it down to a "X" or standard DR

I think you are being redundant

I disagree - can you come up with a way to do a similar thing without using HDR? I thought curves might be able to, but no-one's been able to do it with them so far.

[kawter2]

I disagree - can you come up with a way to do a similar thing without using HDR? I thought curves might be able to, but no-one's been able to do it with them so far.


Sorry if i offended you or got the wrong idea,

I didn't have a ton of time but IMO looks prety similar to the others and it was done 100% in raw conversion

[tim]

Sorry if i offended you or got the wrong idea,

I didn't have a ton of time but IMO looks prety similar to the others and it was done 100% in raw conversion

I wasn't offended. How did you do your conversion? ie curves, or just playing with the standard parameters?

[LadyHawk]

I think Cyberpet did an awesome job. Great work, Petra!

[CyberPet]

Jason, I haven't tried the HDR, but can't you just make duplicates of an image (it gives you new names, or you can name the duplicate #1, #2, etc) and that way get Photoshop to think you have several images of the same subject, but different exposures (after working with them in Raw)??

I might be wrong of course.... so correct me if I've took sail and went off with the banana boat instead of the cruise boat. :D

Karen, thank you! :)

[kawter2]

yes i too think that out of everyone that Cyberpet did the best job..



Tim, i did use the ACR curves, I ctrl clicked the overexposed sky and pulled that value down... other than that I just adjusted the standard settings

[Goofup]

Yup, CyberPet did good.

But to answer the original question, can you fix this using only curves in the raw converter? I don't think so. I messed with it for an hour using CS2. There's so many other settings (temp, saturation, etc.) in raw that you can change that has major effects any curve settings I never could get all the parts to look good at the same time.

Course I'm one of those that don't believe that raw is The Holy Grail, and just because it's raw you think you should be able to make it into anything you want. Can this picture be fixed? Of course it can, but using only raw- it's not worth the hassle.

[tim]

Of course it can, but using only raw- it's not worth the hassle.

I know, I just wondered it if were possible. I can fix it using a blended exposure technique, or just straight out replacing the sky with a better background from another photo.

[tommy6206]

here's my quick attempt

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0803/tommy6206/Temp/TweakMe.gif

[blue_max]

I tried, but didn't post. There is actually nothing really there in the sky. It would be artistic ability to add it and it is not what you requested.

I think you blew the highligts too much in this shot, the rest is perfect as is.

Graham

[R1 Kid]

Dude, you've got the perfect line to trace and replace a new sky with one that is not blown out. Take advantage of the opportunity.

[jfrancho]

I took a different route with this. I did only one conversion. It looks a little weird at first until you see the end product. The goal here is to try and make something usable out of a difficult capture. I may have broke the rules, but I wanted to try something completely different. I'll start with each phase of the process. I'll warn you, I didn't really succeed, but the outcome is interesting. I made jpegs at certain intervals of the process so you can see what I did.

First, here is a jpeg snapshot of the file after I made the changes in ACR 3.1.

http://plan-b.smugmug.com/photos/25279178-M.jpg

[jfrancho]

Next I set a dark point and midtone in curves, using a threshold layer for reference. Then some slight adjustments in levels. I added a layer to adjust contrast and brightness, too. I think these changes severely damaged the file, but I did bring out some shadow detail without losing some range in the sky.

Here is a snapshot at this point:

http://plan-b.smugmug.com/photos/25279170-M.jpg

[jfrancho]

Finally, applied some USM to the lightness channel. I tried some gyrations with calculations, but these ruined all the detail, so I turned to the channel mixer. Here is the end result. It's a mess, but I spent some time on it and wanted propose a different path. You win some, you lose some. It's not that bad, I just didn't get the dramatic effect I envisioned. You can be the final judge.

http://plan-b.smugmug.com/photos/25279167-L.jpg

[PacAce]

Tim, near as I can tell, the raw file does not have any blown sky in it. As a matter of fact, the image you shot doesn't even exceed the full dynamic range of the camera. The whitest white is well below the "blown" point and the blackest black is just barely on the black point. What that tells me is that the image probably looks exactly like it was when you shot it.

[kawter2]

Tim, near as I can tell, the raw file does not have any blown sky in it. As a matter of fact, the image you shot doesn't even exceed the full dynamic range of the camera. The whitest white is well below the "blown" point and the blackest black is just barely on the black point. What that tells me is that the image probably looks exactly like it was when you shot it.


I agree.. I actually didn't push the exposure down much at all..

TIM: sorry i didn't answer you.. all i did in curves was selected the range of the sky and pulled it down a bit. that is all i did in curves

[tim]

JF - I love the B&W conversion, it's pretty nice!

Pacace - the red channel's blown in the sky, especially when I tweak the image EC+0.4 to expose the little hut correctly. You're right, it looks pretty much exactly as it did when I took the photo. I've found though that if you use EC-2 or so, the clouds become more textured and interesting, which is what I was really after.

Thanks for everyone's efforts. It seems that you can do some things in curves, but not enough to fix this picture up properly. The Control-Click is a great thing in ACR curves, I watched a video about it a couple of days back, it helps a lot. I'll drop out the sky completely and replace it with a nice blue sky with fluffy clouds I think.

Thanks again everyone :)

[Lotto]

Oh boy, am I late? Did I miss the party?

[PacAce]

JF - I love the B&W conversion, it's pretty nice!

Pacace - the red channel's blown in the sky, especially when I tweak the image EC+0.4 to expose the little hut correctly. You're right, it looks pretty much exactly as it did when I took the photo. I've found though that if you use EC-2 or so, the clouds become more textured and interesting, which is what I was really after.

Thanks for everyone's efforts. It seems that you can do some things in curves, but not enough to fix this picture up properly. The Control-Click is a great thing in ACR curves, I watched a video about it a couple of days back, it helps a lot. I'll drop out the sky completely and replace it with a nice blue sky with fluffy clouds I think.

Thanks again everyone :)
Tim, you are absolutely right. I looked in DPP and EVU and sure enough, the sky was blown. I was viewing your raw file in ACR 3 and it looked OK, I guess because it already had your "fixes" applied to it. :)

Anyway, I just learned something here, thanks to you. I didn't realize that CS2 had curves in ACR and that that is what you were talking about when you mentioned curves. So, I gave it a whirl and here's what I did with ACR curves with your image. Is this what you had in mind?
.

[PacAce]

And here's the final image after I ran it through my regular workflow without any extra tweaking, etc.
.

[CyberPet]

Oooooops.... :D

http://the-halls.se/edited/TweakMePosterized.jpg

[Tom W]

I had to give it a whirl, though I used DPP first, then tweaked a bit in PS elements 3 as a JPG (OK, I cheated a bit by using different software). I hope that this looks sort-of real:

http://www.pbase.com/photosbytom/image/44973751.jpg

[Tom W]

Leo, here's my screenshot of the original opened in DPP - It doesn't look to me like the highlights are blown:

http://www.pbase.com/photosbytom/image/44973940.jpg

[PacAce]

Leo, here's my screenshot of the original opened in DPP - It doesn't look to me like the highlights are blown:

http://www.pbase.com/photosbytom/image/44973940.jpg
Tom, that's luminance histogram that you're looking at. If you click on the RGB Image Adjustment tab, you'll be able to see that at least the RED is right up there at the edge. But you're may be right, though, as it's really hard to tell if the highlight are blown or not. If it is, then it's not by much. EVU shows the same "at the edge" RGB histogram. :)

[EDIT: I just ran a Threshold on a linear image from the raw file and the sky, in fact, is NOT blown. The sky goes from a pinpoint "white" to a sort of mid-gray gradually instead of from a large blotch of white to gray as would be the case with blown areeas.]

[Tom W]

Tom, that's luminance histogram that you're looking at. If you click on the RGB Image Adjustment tab, you'll be able to see that at least the RED is right up there at the edge. But you're may be right, though, as it's really hard to tell if the highlight are blown or not. If it is, then it's not by much. EVU shows the same "at the edge" RGB histogram. :)

[EDIT: I just ran a Threshold on a linear image from the raw file and the sky, in fact, is NOT blown. The sky goes from a pinpoint "white" to a sort of mid-gray gradually instead of from a large blotch of white to gray as would be the case with blown areeas.]

Well, what I noticed by messing around with it is that if you lower the brightness by about 1/2 stop in the raw and then switch to the RGB, the entire RGB curve is lowered similarly. I haven't got a clue what that means in the real world though.

[PacAce]

BTW, here's another set of RAW corrections using curves, this time in DPP. :)

[Edit: BTW, this is just the raw conversion output, no post processing done yet.]

Hope people aren't too curved out by now. :mrgreen:
.

[PacAce]

Well, what I noticed by messing around with it is that if you lower the brightness by about 1/2 stop in the raw and then switch to the RGB, the entire RGB curve is lowered similarly. I haven't got a clue what that means in the real world though.
Yes, that's true but that in itself really doesn't prove anything because the same thing will happen even with blown highlights which have been clipped at the high end. :)

[Tom W]

Yes, that's true but that in itself really doesn't prove anything because the same thing will happen even with blown highlights which have been clipped at the high end. :)

Thanks, I wasn't really aware of that.

[tim]

Thanks guys, that's some great tweaking and great info on how I can do it myself :)

[marie]

"I'd like to see a little detail in the clouds as well as seeing the building and what's around it. "



How's it going Tim?

I don't think there were any clouds to talk of

http://www.photography-on-the.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_confused.gif




not tweaked, just squeaked >

http://www.photography-on-the.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_lol.gif


http://www.photoshare.co.nz/PhotoShareGallery1/100543/104697/TweakMey2885.jpg

[tim]

Not bad, thanks, but it looks a little fake.

[AjP]

I think there were enough of tweaking and squeaking and not much esle to do with this image, how about, if you what coulds, here it is for you, lots of coulds :)
http://st.a-j-p.net/pic/TweakMe.jpg

[tim]

Thanks, I have stock shots of clouds I could put in, the point was to see what people could do with curves. Nice change though :)

[AjP]

Thanks, I have stock shots of clouds I could put in, the point was to see what people could do with curves. Nice change though :)
I know Tim, just messing around with pic.

[tim]

I know Tim, just messing around with pic.

:)

[AJ Montgomery]

My attempt:

http://www.kajmonty.com/gallery/albums/Post/TweakMe2.jpg

[michapma]

Not bad at all Montgomery, nice balance and far less contrast/edginess around the roof than some other attempts. Looks quite natural, I'm impressed.