I couldn't get it to work at all last night either....I tried and tried. It
would just flash at me occasionally. I use Internet Explorer
Candace
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jez Cunningham" <jez.cunningham@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <olympus@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, August 18, 2006 7:18 AM
Subject: [OM] Re: Multiple RAW conversions? [was Lily pads]
>
> I always love your tutorials Moose - and the mouse-over trick is so
> useful for the before/after. This tutorial was even better 'cos it
> was my pic that you fixed upf or me!
>
> [But I'm having difficulty with the mouseovering - the image flickers
> briefly as I move the mouse across the button borders but doesn't stay
> :-( I wonder if it's my IE6 browser or something else - anyone else
> got it working ok?]
>
> I'm going to take my time and experiment with your suggestions - both
> PS-wise and compositionally - they're greatly appreciated.
>
> with many thanks
> jez
>
> ps - I didn't see where the frog trail came from but you could well be
> right in thinking it's poop. The picture is more nicer without it.
> And it could be more frogs or fishes under the pad - the pond was
> teeming.
>
> On 8/18/06, Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> I suggest that the two RAW conversion approach is overkill for this
>> image. Looking at image, this is not a very high brightness range
>> subject, particularly considering the light illuminating it.
>>
>> Looking at the histogram, there is only a very small bit of clipped
>> highlight. Just a slight adjustment of the white point (often labeled
>> 'exposure') in conversion should correct that. Even without that, and
>> working from an 8-bit jpeg, it's not difficult to bring more tonal
>> detail to the lily while making it less of a hot spot and bring up the
>> interest level of the frog and pads.
>>
>> Here's a little experiment in broadening my very limited HTML skills to
>> show a simple work flow for processing this image. I couldn't figure out
>> how to make the boxes different colors, oh well
>> <http://www.moosemystic.net/Gallery/Others/JezC/lilypad.htm>.
>>
>> 1 - Original image. Note the tiny bump at the very top of the histogram.
>> There is a bit of lost detail, but not much. The sharp 'hill' a little
>> lower down is most of the lily. Convert to 16 bit before going any
>> further.
>>
>> 2 - I've applied only the highlight part of Highlight/Shadow quite
>> strongly. Notice how it flattens and spreads out the hill and compresses
>> the lower part of the histogram. How PS decides to allocate the few
>> values that appear to be maxed out in the histogram, I don't know, but
>> it manages.
>>
>> This makes the image very flat/washed out. That's intentional as
>> preparation for later steps. I think Amount was 50-60, Tonal Width 50
>> and Radius quite low. Radius is very sensitive for the lily in this
>> particular image. Small changes make a big differences in the shading of
>> the petals. Someone else might easily make a slightly different choice.
>>
>> At this point, I also used Select=>Color=>Highlights & Layer=>New=>Layer
>> via Copy to create a new layer with the low highlights from the very low
>> key lily, leave it at the top of the layers and turned off. I know from
>> experience that I may need it later. If you work with lots of layers,
>> this can be done later from the S/H layer, if needed.
>>
>> 3 - Here, I've applied both some LCE and Curves adjustments. Notice how
>> the central part of the histogram is back to looking more like in the
>> original. I've intentionally let the bottom clip, as I want those dark
>> areas that have no detail of interest to go black for dramatic effect.
>> The hill at the top has also reappeared in mure spread out form, giving
>> nice tonal graduations in the lily petals. The rest of the image now has
>> much more inner contrast detail, giving it the visual interest to
>> balance the lily.
>>
>> 4 - Finally, I thought the lily was still just a little too intense in
>> the overall composition. I turned on the level with just the highlights
>> from step two and adjusted it's opacity to get the effect I wanted. It
>> ended up at between 25 and 30%. You can see in the histogram how the
>> "lily hill" moves just slighly to the left, but still leaves some values
>> all the way to the end.
>>
>> I'm sure my result is not quite what anyone else would choose, but I
>> like it much better than the original. And more to the point, the lily
>> has been tamed and the elements of the image brought into better tonal
>> balance without any need to do any fancy multiple conversion blending.
>>
>> I do occasionally blend images with different exposures when using a P&S
>> with only JPEG capability. I really don't think it is necessary with RAW
>> images, no matter what those selling you their technique or software
>> say. The camera only records 12-14 bits from the sensor. So proper RAW
>> conversion should allow outputting all of that data in a 16 bit TIFF
>> without any loss of tonal data at all.
>>
>> From there on, it's just a matter of redistributing the tonal values as
>> necessary to fit your own vision of the image. It may, in fact, be
>> quicker and/or easier to do two RAW conversions and feed them into an
>> automated merge function/program/plug-in, particularly for someone with
>> limited editing skills*. I don't know, because I haven't tried any such
>> tools. My bet is that they will still need work to get everything in
>> place.
>>
>> Finally, is that stuff behind the frog what I think it is? Anyway, I
>> took it out of the final image. And what is that thing peeking out under
>> the lily pad, frog? fish?
>>
>> Moose
>>
>> *Well, more limited than mine. There is still a lot I don't know.
>>
>
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