Image adjustment: light backround, dark interior

On Feb 18, 9:19 pm, Boppy wrote:

Hi guys, I had some good advice in response to my last question (thanks, Ragnar and Malcolm) so am hoping there might be similar good advice to this.

What do you guys do when dealing with a photo like this:https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/403824/prime%20lake%20view. JPG

Up till now I’ve masked out the light parts and applied adjustment layers to equalise the overall look but would be intererested to know what others do.

Thanks in advance,
Jo

I like to take pictures like this – at least from the standpoint of lighting. I like a dark foreground and a lot of depth. The weather was working against you on this day. My preference in post is to drive up saturation and contrast while eliminating detail in the foreground shadows.
Here is a version I did just for demonstration. I only spent a few minutes on it but you can see the direction I was going. It suffers from the low resolution and my rushed masking.

http://picasaweb.google.com/ronviers/DropBox?authkey=bvIqq9Z qsrs#

On Feb 21, 4:02 pm, ronviers wrote:

On Feb 18, 9:19 pm, Boppy wrote:

Hi guys, I had some good advice in response to my last question (thanks, Ragnar and Malcolm) so am hoping there might be similar good advice to this.

What do you guys do when dealing with a photo like this:https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/403824/prime%20lake%20view. JPG

Up till now I’ve masked out the light parts and applied adjustment layers to equalise the overall look but would be intererested to know what others do.

Thanks in advance,
Jo

I like to take pictures like this – at least from the standpoint of lighting. I like a dark foreground and a lot of depth. The weather was working against you on this day. My preference in post is to drive up saturation and contrast while eliminating detail in the foreground shadows.
Here is a version I did just for demonstration. I only spent a few minutes on it but you can see the direction I was going. It suffers from the low resolution and my rushed masking.

http://picasaweb.google.com/ronviers/DropBox?authkey=bvIqq9Z qsrs#

Hi, thanks for replying. Your image is interesting. What would you do though if the foreground was the bit you needed to see and the scenery was secondary?

What would you do
though if the foreground was the bit you needed to see and the scenery was secondary?

In that case and I know your question is about post, I would have exposed for the drapes and blown out the detail in the window – I like that look. If you would have pounded the drapes two or three times you may have been able to stir up some cool dusty sunbeams.

Hi Jo,

First question…. what is the intention of the photo…. is it a picture of mountains, or is it a picture of a restaurant

2nd Are you looking for a photo that might suggest you had lit the interiors….

From my own perspective.. I shoot a lot of interiors… What I do is bracket expose in RAW, at -3, -1, +1

then in photoshop I generate a brightness map of the picture using calculations, use this as as selection to copy highlights from the -3 picture (i.e. the mountains outside) into the +1 exposure (the bright interior and fade in the transitions using a highlight map from the -1 exposure.

Shooting in RAW gives you some latitude to adjust afterwards to get it just so, needs to be subtle though so as to avoid it looking "photoshopped"

J

johnnyblain wrote:

Hi Jo,

First question…. what is the intention of the photo…. is it a picture of mountains, or is it a picture of a restaurant
2nd Are you looking for a photo that might suggest you had lit the interiors….

From my own perspective.. I shoot a lot of interiors… What I do is bracket expose in RAW, at -3, -1, +1

then in photoshop I generate a brightness map of the picture using calculations, use this as as selection to copy highlights from the -3 picture (i.e. the mountains outside) into the +1 exposure (the bright interior and fade in the transitions using a highlight map from the -1 exposure.

Shooting in RAW gives you some latitude to adjust afterwards to get it just so, needs to be subtle though so as to avoid it looking "photoshopped"

J

I don’t know what the OP says, but base on your message RAW just won’t do the trick. Or in general, if you wanna brighten the background while darken the interior (I am guessing like though a door or window of a dark room).

If so, then all you need to do is separating the room & window then brighten the window while darken the room. How to separate? there are 1001 different ways to separate the window from the room, and using Quick Mask or Feather to help with the edge.

If it’s not "window" vs "room" then you can always use Layers and Masking technique to brighten/darken any part you wish. And RAW can’t do none of the above (unless the newer ARC comes with CS4 has Masking feature).

Joe wrote:

I don’t know what the OP says, but base on your message RAW just won’t do the trick. Or in general, if you wanna brighten the background while darken the interior (I am guessing like though a door or window of a dark room).
If so, then all you need to do is separating the room & window then brighten the window while darken the room. How to separate? there are 1001 different ways to separate the window from the room, and using Quick Mask or Feather to help with the edge.

If it’s not "window" vs "room" then you can always use Layers and Masking technique to brighten/darken any part you wish. And RAW can’t do none of the above (unless the newer ARC comes with CS4 has Masking feature).

The point to raw is that it saves the full dynamic range of the image, linearly. You can convert this in the computer to a 16bit per color image, and manipulate this instead of an 8 bit jpeg. Of courwse, if thgere were 16 bit jpegs, or if you could save in the camera as a 16 bit TIFF this would not matter.

But in reality it does matter, and matter very lot.

Also … in many cases Photoshop "highlight/shadow" may work, especially if you set the radius to a large number.

Doug McDonald

Doug McDonald wrote:

Joe wrote:

I don’t know what the OP says, but base on your message RAW just won’t do the trick. Or in general, if you wanna brighten the background while darken the interior (I am guessing like though a door or window of a dark room).
If so, then all you need to do is separating the room & window then brighten the window while darken the room. How to separate? there are 1001 different ways to separate the window from the room, and using Quick Mask or Feather to help with the edge.

If it’s not "window" vs "room" then you can always use Layers and Masking technique to brighten/darken any part you wish. And RAW can’t do none of the above (unless the newer ARC comes with CS4 has Masking feature).

The point to raw is that it saves the full dynamic range of the image, linearly. You can convert this in the computer to a 16bit per color image, and manipulate this instead of an 8 bit jpeg. Of courwse, if thgere were 16 bit jpegs, or if you could save in the camera as a 16 bit TIFF this would not matter.
But in reality it does matter, and matter very lot.

Also … in many cases Photoshop "highlight/shadow" may work, especially if you set the radius to a large number.

Doug McDonald

I think you give RAW converter way too much credit to realize that isn’t pretty much a babe comparing to Photoshop.

– The reason it’s call RAW *Converter* but *not* RAW *Editor* because it doesn’t have the right tool of an editor. Even Adobe has proved most RAW worshippers wrong by adapting some of the Photoshop editing option to the LightRoom and newer ARC, as well as both LightRoom and ARC can convert and do few editing the non-RAW format.

– You can’t save JPG to 16-bit *but* you can work as 16-bit or even more (I don’t do more than 16-bit to confirm this).

*But* I am not talking about RAW vs non-RAW but as the subject asking about 2 different parts of the image.

– Background (in this case) may not be a solid color but a regular image with another background of its own.

– Interior (in this case) may not be a main subject nor main forewound.

And none of those have anything to do with 16-bit vs 8-bit, and RAW Converter is not an editor to be the best choice for the job. And it’s very easy to do with Photoshop.

On Mar 13, 2:31 pm, Doug McDonald wrote:

Joe wrote:

I don’t know what the OP says, but base on your message RAW just won’t do the trick. Or in general, if you wanna brighten the background while darken the interior (I am guessing like though a door or window of a dark room).

If so, then all you need to do is separating the room & window then brighten the window while darken the room. How to separate? there are 1001 different ways to separate the window from the room, and using Quick Mask or Feather to help with the edge.

If it’s not "window" vs "room" then you can always use Layers and Masking technique to brighten/darken any part you wish. And RAW can’t do none of the above (unless the newer ARC comes with CS4 has Masking feature).

The point to raw is that it saves the full dynamic range of the image, linearly. You can convert this in the computer to a 16bit per color image, and manipulate this instead of an 8 bit jpeg. Of courwse, if thgere were 16 bit jpegs, or if you could save in the camera as a 16 bit TIFF this would not matter.
But in reality it does matter, and matter very lot.

Also … in many cases Photoshop "highlight/shadow" may work, especially if you set the radius to a large number.

Doug McDonald

Hi Doug and Jonnie, thanks for replying.

I have a Fujifilm Finepix A800. I don’t believe it has the ability to shoot in raw format, sadly.

Cheers,
Jo

(PS the purpose of this exercise is to show a restaurant with great views)

On Feb 18, 9:19 pm, Boppy wrote:

Hi guys, I had some good advice in response to my last question (thanks, Ragnar and Malcolm) so am hoping there might be similar good advice to this.

What do you guys do when dealing with a photo like this:https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/403824/prime%20lake%20view. JPG

Up till now I’ve masked out the light parts and applied adjustment layers to equalise the overall look but would be intererested to know what others do.

Thanks in advance,
Jo

I’m no Photoshop expert, but I’ve read of a technique where you take two photos of the same scene, one exposed for the highlights & the other exposed for shadows & then merge the two in PS. You’ve probably already thought of this. You’d need a tripod to do this.

Boppy wrote:

On Mar 13, 2:31 pm, Doug McDonald wrote:

Joe wrote:

I don’t know what the OP says, but base on your message RAW just won’t do the trick. Or in general, if you wanna brighten the background while darken the interior (I am guessing like though a door or window of a dark room).

If so, then all you need to do is separating the room & window then brighten the window while darken the room. How to separate? there are 1001 different ways to separate the window from the room, and using Quick Mask or Feather to help with the edge.

If it’s not "window" vs "room" then you can always use Layers and Masking technique to brighten/darken any part you wish. And RAW can’t do none of the above (unless the newer ARC comes with CS4 has Masking feature).

The point to raw is that it saves the full dynamic range of the image, linearly. You can convert this in the computer to a 16bit per color image, and manipulate this instead of an 8 bit jpeg. Of courwse, if thgere were 16 bit jpegs, or if you could save in the camera as a 16 bit TIFF this would not matter.
But in reality it does matter, and matter very lot.

Also … in many cases Photoshop "highlight/shadow" may work, especially if you set the radius to a large number.

Doug McDonald

Hi Doug and Jonnie, thanks for replying.

I have a Fujifilm Finepix A800. I don’t believe it has the ability to shoot in raw format, sadly.

Don’t need to be so sad as both newer ARC and Lightroom can handle both RAW and regular graphic format. Or it give JPG, BMP, TIF etc. an equal treatment as RAW formats.

Yup! someone may say JPG isn’t RAW which I may agree as some point, but in the hand of LightRoom and ARC neither gets any extra treatment.

Cheers,
Jo

(PS the purpose of this exercise is to show a restaurant with great views)

In article
,
Empedocles wrote:

On Feb 18, 9:19

Empedocles wrote:

On Feb 18, 9:19 pm, Boppy wrote:

Hi guys, I had some good advice in response to my last question (thanks, Ragnar and Malcolm) so am hoping there might be similar good advice to this.

What do you guys do when dealing with a photo like this:https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/403824/prime%20lake%20view. JPG

Up till now I’ve masked out the light parts and applied adjustment layers to equalise the overall look but would be intererested to know what others do.

Thanks in advance,
Jo

I’m no Photoshop expert, but I’ve read of a technique where you take two photos of the same scene, one exposed for the highlights & the other exposed for shadows & then merge the two in PS. You’ve probably already thought of this. You’d need a tripod to do this.

Actually Photoshop itself can make the image Brighter/Darker so you end up with 2 different brightness from the exact same photo. The techique I believe I already shared, but understanding how to use Photoshop or not is another story.

Barbara Sweet wrote:

I’m no Photoshop expert, but I’ve read of a technique where you take two photos of the same scene, one exposed for the highlights & the other exposed for shadows & then merge the two in PS. You’ve probably already thought of this. You’d need a tripod to do this.

It’s called HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging.

Not really. HDR is normally done with several images, not just two. If you use only two images, it’s normally for a masking technique called ‘exposure blending’.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.com

On Feb 18, 9:19 pm, Boppy wrote:

Hi guys, I had some good advice in response to my last question (thanks, Ragnar and Malcolm) so am hoping there might be similar good advice to this.

What do you guys do when dealing with a photo like this:https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/403824/prime%20lake%20view. JPG

Up till now I’ve masked out the light parts and applied adjustment layers to equalise the overall look but would be intererested to know what others do.

Thanks in advance,
Jo

There’s a great Website: http://www.retouchpro.com/ Lots of expert help on more than just "retouching" photos.

On Feb 18, 9:19 pm, Boppy wrote:

Hi guys, I had some good advice in response to my last question (thanks, Ragnar and Malcolm) so am hoping there might be similar good advice to this.

What do you guys do when dealing with a photo like this:https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/403824/prime%20lake%20view. JPG

Up till now I’ve masked out the light parts and applied adjustment layers to equalise the overall look but would be intererested to know what others do.

Thanks in advance,
Jo

There’s a great Website: http://www.retouchpro.com/ It has lots of expert help on many post-production topics. It’s not just about retouching.

Empedocles wrote:

On Feb 18, 9:19 pm, Boppy wrote:

Hi guys, I had some good advice in response to my last question (thanks, Ragnar and Malcolm) so am hoping there might be similar good advice to this.

What do you guys do when dealing with a photo like this:https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/403824/prime%20lake%20view. JPG

Up till now I’ve masked out the light parts and applied adjustment layers to equalise the overall look but would be intererested to know what others do.

Thanks in advance,
Jo

There’s a great Website: http://www.retouchpro.com/ It has lots of expert help on many post-production topics. It’s not just about retouching.

There is nothing can help the one not willingly to learn. As I have mentioned this is a very basic of Photoshop which doesn’t require retouchpro but understanding few basic commands.