Hanna toned down highlights

Sorry, I did not yet take a look at the previous thread.

My first reaction here is that she is much too orange - I think there is the usual indoors color balance problem that occurs when taking things like "Tungsten" or "Incandescent" manufacturer's settings and depending upon that to get it right. In this case a Custom White Balance would have given you a better balance, I think.

The highlights are still blown out in certain areas. Unfortunately, just trying to darken them in post processing doesn't always work. In this case they may have reached the clipping level and there would be no way to bring back lost detail no matter what you do. This is one reason for shooting RAW. You can still overexpose to the point of no recovery, but at least you get about one stop of forgiveness that JPG does not give you.

It is still and nonetheless a good composition with great interest and a strong mood.

The deep shadow on the wall, combined with the blown out highlights tells the whole story with the lighting - it was just too harsh for any recovery. For future reference, try to arrange for your lighting to be more diffuse (reflectors, bounce flash, whatever it takes). Usually, ordinary table lamps with diffusing shades and torchiere will provide better lighting than whatever was used here.

50% is far too much to use for darkening highlights with PSE (also too much for shadow lightening).

The most I will go on highlights is 15% and even that is rare - more often 10% max. It will have an adverse affect if done too much by giving odd color.

Max shadow lightening usually 20% but then you need to add back in about 12% contrast and some saturation to enrich the colors back in.

Prefered the original post, white balance and contrast look more natural.

Hi Bob, The light was a beam of sun coming through the front window, late afternoon. But there is a bamboo like shade on the window.I think thats where the orange is coming from. But I liked the look of this pic.It isn't perfect but it came out cool.And I did shoot it raw. (but this adds to my confusion lol..)Anyhoo... Hearing from you is always welcome. Thanks for your time.
PeACe

I have now gone back to your original thread and compared the two images.

As you can see in the two images when they are side by side, your efforts have darkened the midtones and the shadows but had little effect on the blown highlights other than make them shrink a bit.

Since you say in the other thread that you are not familiar with the idea of blown highlights, I will explain.

Once the brightness in the camera has been recorded as a numeric value, it can have a maximum of 255. That is the highest number that can be recorded as a brightness. If the light falling on a given part of the image is at a level of 270, for example, it will still be recorded as 255. Everything in the final image has to fit in the range of zero to 255.

The effect of that is that everything had a brightness of from 255 to 270 has now been compressed so that all of those different brightnesses are now rendered on the screen as 255, or pure white. No matter what you do to those areas in trying to darken them will bring back the lost detail. What you WILL get when you keep darkening the image is that the blown highlights will stay at that level of pure white and the near-white values will be reduced from 254 to 250 and the ones around 252 or 253 will be reduced to 240. So the surrounding values will get a little darker, but those that were "clipped" at 255 at the time the picture was taken are stuck forever at that value.

I hope that helps to explain "blown highlights".

The good news is that when shooting RAW you can clip to the extent of nearly a full f-stop and recover most of that detail in RAW processing. You will get into that eventually - no hurry.

Thanks AVmode, I did too.(imperfections & all) But I do love to hear from all the cool people here.

I understand the lighting problem.
What I am unsure of is how you did your RAW processing. If the highlights were this much blown out that you could not recover them in RAW processing, then there had to be some significant clipping showing up on the in camera histogram, which would indicate such a problem immediately, even if it is not noticed in the usual LCD view. The histogram is a great tool and the clipping display on the histogram is even greater. When it is flashing at you those flashing areas are being burned to a cinder -

If the image is still in the camera, this would be a good time to go back and look at them in the camera using histogram display.

Thanks again Bob, I think I will add that one to my notebook.
Jenny

Robert_Lay wrote:
I understand the lighting problem.
What I am unsure of is how you did your RAW processing. If the highlights were this much blown out that you could not recover them in RAW processing, then there had to be some significant clipping showing up on the in camera histogram, which would indicate such a problem immediately, even if it is not noticed in the usual LCD view. The histogram is a great tool and the clipping display on the histogram is even greater. When it is flashing at you those flashing areas are being burned to a cinder -

If the image is still in the camera, this would be a good time to go back and look at the
m in the camera using histogram display.

I'm going to check this now. After I find where that histogram thing is. So the little beeps i was hearing during this picture, were warning signs? I got to pay more attention.lol Jenny

I found it, well nothing was flashing but the little graph was off the chart on the left side. Is this the "blown highlights". ?

Robert_Lay wrote:
I understand the lighting problem.
What I am unsure of is how you did your RAW processing. If the highlights were this much blown out that you could not recover them in RAW processing, then there had to be some significant clipping showing up on the in camera histogram, which would indicate such a problem immediately, even if it is not noticed in the usual LCD view. The histogram is a great tool and the clipping display on the histogram is even greater. When it is flashing at you those flashing areas are being burned to a cinder -

If the image is still in the camera, this would be a good time to go back and look at them in the camera using histogram display.

One more thing, RAW processing. I barely figured out how to load the RAW pics into the program that came with the camera.PHOTO PROFESIONAL. Is there something else to do once the pics are in there???? I know this is a whole nother chapter : )

I have to operate on the basis of how it is implemented in the G5 - my understanding of the XT is based on the User's Manual only.

If I understand your description of what the histogram is telling you, then you would be seeing a picture similar to the one called "Dark Image" on page 108 of your User's manual. I see no mention of audible beeps being used to alert you to clipping. As mentioned at the bottom of that page, the image to the left of the histogram will blink in those areas that are clipping - which is at the extreme right in the histogram, since the extreme right of the histogram represents pure white and the extreme left of the histogram represents the pure black.

Don't feel bad about a limited understanding of RAW processing. It is a devil's brew of geek terminology and hi tech having nothing to do with traditional photography. The closest thing to it in the world of Ansel Adams would be when he used the water-bath development in order to give a very soft development of a high contrast negative in order to save the detail in the shadows and highlights. RAW processing allows you to do some of that in the digital equivalent by making early changes to contrast, white point and black point, etc., before converting to TIFF or JPG.

I suggest saving the CR2 file on your computer as a candidate for further work when you get familiar with RAW processing. No matter what you did or did not do while in the RAW processing stage, the CR2 file is still pure as when it came out of the camera. You can always return to that file and start over with any approach that suits your fancy.

One more comment about the clipping display.
In the image itself, as rendered to the left of the camera when in the histogram display mode, the image itself should show certain spots or areas blinking to black at about 2 blinks per second. Any art of the image that is NOT blinking would be OK, but any blinking areas would represent areas that have blown out highlights.

Now, there is one other possibility, and that is that during RAW processing you could have inadvertently set the white point too low. This would artificially produce blown out highlights. However, thanks to the engineers at Canon, the CR2 file RAW Processing concept allows you to go back and start over from the beginning at any time.

Beachgirl,

I suggest you try Raw Shooter Essentials 2006, it is a free program that is available at this site (pixmantec.com) it comes with a detailled PDF tutorial of
how to correct exposure with raw. (quite user friendly)

On some occasions, like sunsets or complicated lighting situations, it might be a good idea also to try exposure bracketing.
Can be set automatic on your'e camera all you have to do is choose parameters then take 3 continuous shots.

Cheers