Hey Raw fans! I've got a group project, if you want to join in!
There has been a cold snap here in the Pacific Northwest (lows here in the lowlands around the Columbia River in the 'teens), which often means that the area waterfalls will get iced up, including the gorgeous Multnomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge.
So, yesterday afternoon I grabbed my gear and headed out. It was midafternoon when I left, which meant that the sun would be low, below the hills and cliffs of the Gorge -- not so good light and chilly, although the wind and chill factor were down from the day before. I figured though that I'd take my best shot.
I bracketed my exposure for every shot of every scene, because I was dealing with shadowy scenes and bright ice. I didn't plan on using DDR or manual blending, but I wanted to pick the best "starting point" shot and then take it from there in Lightroom.
I haven't got a lot processed yet, but I did pick one scene that would be a nice shot for me to start with, and for you all to play with if you so choose (the link to the Raw file will be at the end of the post).
I'm going to post three bracketed shots first, so you can get a feel of the conditions and how I might approach getting the best place to start with. My first shot was a "best guess" of the overall lighting, then I let the camera do AEB in one stop brackets, first "underexposed" by a stop, then "overexposed" by a stop.
So, here's the first, "best guess" shot:
Well, that's not bad for an overall exposure, in fact you could call that underexposed for much of the scene. I was bothered by the bright, blown out snow, but maybe really amping on highlights could save it...?
The second, lower by a stop shot:
Definitely underexposed, but look at the nice detail in the snow!
My third shot, one stop up from the first:
Oh, my, nice brightened scene, but look at that blown snow! Even with Raw, some of those blown highlights were not recoverable!
So, my decision was between the first shot and the second lower exposed shot.
Now the fun part is that I decided to take two approaches -- the "old fashioned way" (using LR1 tools rather than LR2/3 local brushes) and then take the same shot and process it with LR3.
I played around with the first one, but with the global adjustmenst I felt that when brightening the scene I gave up too much of the highlights and I had a hard time finding the balance. Overdoing Recovery and Highlight tone lowering can get really flat when you also have a surface such as the cliff face. So, I decided to work on the second shot with the nice highlight details. Because I had a fair exposure at ISO 200, I didn't think noise was going to be a real problem as I worked on shadows and darker areas with highlight Recovery as needed.
So here goes "Part I" (LR1 approach):
Before:
(DUPLICATE IMAGE)
After:
Not too shabby, considering the lighting, ice, cold, etc.
Before I get to the LR3 version, here are the adjustments I made to this. Note that I still cranked on Exposure, Brightness, and then Recovery and Highlights, but not as much of the latter as I would have with the first shot:
OK, now for the LR3 version: I replicated the crop and the basic settings I used above, but then out with the brushes: first I used a burn brush with a quite low exposure value along with upped contrast and sharpening on the ice and the flow of water. Burn is not as brutal as using a straight exposure brush, I believe. I wanted to bring out as much detail as possible without making the ice look plain dull.
Then, I used a Custom brush on the cliffs and set levels of Brightness, Conrast and Saturation to give what I felt was a bit more "spring in the step" of those glum cliffs.
Lastly, I used a New Custom brush, starting with the values of the last one but increasing the Brightness by quite a bit to, well, brighten the dark trees and brush.
So here it is -- not dramatically different, but those brushes (the same as in LR2) did help:
So, gang, aside from the always welcome C&C (this isn't a "finsished" project, more than a quick do-ever), I will toss this out for any of you who wants to play.
I'm posting the link here of the Raw file that I ended up using. Check it out, but if you'd like to work on one of the other files, speak up and I'll post it!
Have fun!
<Edit>I accidentally left out the link to the Raw file. I included it in the post below, but I'll link it here also:
http://www.yousendit.com …ad/MVNlak8zQzNkMnNLSkE9PQ
</Edit>
!
