Fall Glow

[janis]

I hate posting after Rob. Oh well, I need to wrestle this white balance thing into the ground. What do you think? Too warm? This was shot auto white balance with my S95 last weekend. I should have upped the ISO to give me more DOF and/or shutter speed, but it was one of those situations where my reflexes are not fast enough for the changing light. When one is wanting to take a white balance off the clouds, what does one look for? A spot where the luminance measures 128 or all four values are in that neighbourhood, or what?



As I may get an opportunity to take some sunset and dusk shots on the lake tonight, how would you advise me to proceed?

[Stevewebb]

It should be easy enough to sort it out in photoshop. I don't know about picking the right colour values but find it better to do it by eye.

In this example I just added a single color balance adjustment layer and changed it to the following values-

Shadows, Blues +11
Midtones, cyan -25, green +22, yellow -20
Highlights, cyan -44, magenta -29, yellow -20

HTH

[nickjohnson]

….. or – Curve layer in PS. White and Black point's more or less as is. Grey point set from sand – just to the left of the gent's legs. Then add a levels layer with the output set to White limit set to 247 so as to prevent blowing the highlights.

HTH.

[chrisc]

I went for a far more radical desaturation approach and sure there is a happy median between all three edits.

[janis]

Steve, your edit is comparable to what I get when I use Aperture 3's auto white balance feature, but it doesn't look true to life to me, i.e. true to the actual scene. Not that I can trust my lying eyes.

Nick, yours comes closer, but I think I might like it a touch warmer.

Sorry Chris, but given that this is a sunset scene, you've gone off in the wrong direction for me.

I think I have completely misunderstood the whole concept of taking a white balance from a grey point in the RAW image. I gather it is matter of deciding what should be middle grey. On that basis, your intuition is looking pretty good to me, Nick.

My eldest niece is in fashion school and as part of her curriculum she has to learn to distinguish subtle differences in Pantone hues and tones. She gets tested on it. I could really use that kind of education.

[Stevewebb]

The easy way around it next time might be to take a grey card with you. Then you know what the grey point is and can apply it to each image.

[janis]

Sept 24, 2012 17:38:11 GMT Stevewebb said:

The easy way around it next time might be to take a grey card with you. Then you know what the grey point is and can apply it to each image.

The irony is I almost always have it with me, I just don't use it. First, there is the problem of using it properly. Then there is the question of whether the card I have is even reliable. But you're right. I will try to make that the focus of my next learning project.

[chrisc]

I use a gray card frequently...sometimes all three - gray, white, black.

I knew my edit was was desaturated but was waiting for other edits to come in to see where you really wanted to be. I took nick's edit, layered over mine, made a layer mask and only dumped a little of the orange from his face and the foreground sand as well as playing with the sky a bit more...maybe this is closer to what you had in mind.

[nickjohnson]

Janis, thanks for providing us all with this valuable learning tool. The more I see and use the PS curves tool the more I'm convinced that it is the key to getting the look that I seek in any given image.

[janis]

Thank you, Nick, for making me feel a little less bad about being so obtuse.

Good effort, Chris, but the rocks are looking too yellow to me. I had a friend with me when I shot this, so I am going to point her to this thread and ask her what looks most accurate to her. I'm also curious to know how her p&s processed the scene.

[maryloveslucy]

It's fun to see all the different edits on the same image.

[jeeperman]

Ok I had to have a little play myself. Really very close to many already posted, slight levels adjustment and a little selective burning of the sky.

[janis]

Congrats, Paul. My friend says Nick's and your version come closest to matching what is in her mind's eye. She, too, remembers the rocks being on fire. It was a gorgeous scene and I am sorry I did not do a better job of capturing it. I will try to prepare for next time.

Thanks all, for your contributions. It is always interesting to see multiple interpretations of one image.

[janis]

I watched a little tutorial tonight on the Remove Color Cast filter in CEP4 and decided to have another go at this shot from last fall. This is the closest I've come yet to reproducing that scene. The rocks were on fire when I took this shot, so after removing the cast from the scene as a whole, I put a minus control point on the rocks to bring some of it back. I meant to bring some of back in the clouds as well, but forgot.

[Stevewebb]

Well done Janis. It's always good to go back over some old images with new PP skills I think.