[wulinka]

Hey everyone,

I am just back from a one week trip to the south of our province.
One day I climbed the famous Yellow Mountain, it was pouring rain all the time, there was no sunrise the next morning, so I had got up at 5 for a bucket of fog....

but after all, the cloudy landscape produced some stunning views.
the problem is that the contrast between the rocks and the clouds was too strong,
and I have never done anything like this. Don't know if I would have needed filters? What filters? grads?

anyway, I am back with a bunch or raw files from the 5D that all look sort of flat, often burnt... I tried some processing on a couple, and even though I am very conservative (also unexperienced in this kind of work),
they already look overdone to me. Especially the first one, the rocks are fading into grey....

Here I will just show you the couple of jpegs I have produced so far, mind the reduced size.
if you need to see more, let me know.

I wonder if anybody has some advise for me of how to get anything remotely as stunnin as the view was out of these raws?

I will be very grateful for any advise, for now I will turn to other pictures from some of the historic villages I visited that week which had an impressive range of colors and textures to offer.

Greetings!!

Uli

[Irma]

Hi Uli,
I think the info in the highlights in #2 is a bit lost... I don't really know but it looks like so.
I worked with your first picture. Maybe working with white balance and enhancing colors like magenta?

Here is my try. I did it with lab color, but this is the idea, probably you get better results and more to your liking and what you saw working in the raw file.

[Wedding Shooter]

Hi Uli,

The place looks s beautiful. The first one has some hope I think - happy to work on the RAW file if you want to e-mail it to me (big file though - no problem at my end). The second is gone - there is too much dynamic range in it. Although the RAW file could make a difference.

I think I prefer your edit the best. Irma's is too magenta for me - but very difficult to work on a low res jpeg of course.

[matthew]

I admire your dedication -- I can't tell you the last time I saw 5am. (Without going back to sleep for a couple of hours.)

Something to try would be a contrast enhancing unsharp mask; I often use a radius of 30, amount of 60, and threshold of 0. There's a very long and somewhat rambling tutorial on it here: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutori...ment.shtml

[wulinka]

thanks guys.
Chris, my gmail is not working right now... I could send you a slightly smaller tiff on yahoo.
Actually I put these to the side for now, it is too much work. I will get back to them I think after I take my Chinese exam this weekend.
Also next week I am getting my new laptop!!!!!! (One less topic on shuttertalk, Uli finally got her computer....... )
so then my workflow should be significantly smoother.

Uli

[NT73]

It is similar scenery to Guilin, but we did not go that high.

I think, that to get the detail you want, you have to select small sections of the photo and using masks work on each section seperately. It takes quite a bit of time, but sometimes, the results are worth it.
Alternatively use 'Bracket function' when you are taking them.
They have a dream like quality though.

[Wedding Shooter]

Did you end up going with the MacBook Pro Uli?

[wulinka]

Macbook pro, 15", 2.6Ghz, 7200rpm hd, and I will buy 4GB ram.
going to Hongkong in two weeks, I caaaaaaaaan't wait!
It's ordered already.


I have had a glance at PS CS 3 with its camara raw, I like the vibrance and couple of other functions that were added after CS2, so I'm looking forward to that. especially for some of my abstracts.


NT, that's what I was trying to do, but yes, it's a heap of work and sometimes you get overlaps at the edges or your selection. I haven't entirely figured out for me the right amount of feathering at a stark contrast edge.
I vary between as low as 7 and as high as 42 pixels (for 5D pics) depending on what the situation is.

Irma also suggested bracketing. I can't believe I didn't think of it at the time.
Wonder if I can post-bracket in camera raw... ?

Uli

[Irma]

Uli,

Yes, you can make a post braketing in your raw file, and then merged and then maptoning and you will have an HDR....
There is a How to post from G in this forum. It explains what you could do with your picture too.

CS3 actually has the option that you can merge jpg or tif from one RAW file, this feature was not possible in CS2. So you make from your raw file three picture with + and - exposures and ask photoshop to merge them for you.

File>Automate>Merge to HDR

You will get a 32bit image and when you change it into 8 bit image it will appear a dialog box, work with local adaptation option. It will give you the chance to work with curves to get the right contrast in the picture.

I personally don't like this treatment, because you need to have a very good understanding about curves, which I don't have really.

But also you can do it in photoshop with mask and I would suggest you try it in lab color as you can work with light only, and then colors.

Get those three tif with different exposures and maks the highlights and the darks. I am sure you will get a nice result.

Here is an interesting tutorial from luminous landscape Understanding digital blending. This is the idea but I would work with three images.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutori...ding.shtml

Hope this helps...

[wulinka]

thank you Irma!

well, I am definitely not going to try to do that on my old laptop.....
but I will get back to them when I have the new machine, it would be a shame just to
think they are all lost.

Uli