Moose wrote:
> First I gotta ask. Is this image as far out of focus as it appears on my
> screen? Looks like handheld with a significant bump/jerk between parts
> of the exposure, or like two layers slightly offset in PS. I can still
> comment on colors, but am curious about sharpness. It sort of hurts my
> eyes staring at it closely.
>
I asked myself just the same Moose: the Ektachrome is track sharp, and I
remember having focused with extreme care. I might have go wrong with
the USM again ... anyway, seems I should start over.
> Fernando Gonzalez Gentile wrote:
>
>> Yes it does well with the statue, Chuck. But OTOH, it kills the red - orange
>> - yellow hue which is characteristic of almost every Italian architecture I
>> was able to see.
>>
>>
> I used to find that Auto-Color almost always gets the color wrong,
> sometimes by very little, sometimes by a lot. All it can really do is
> balance all the colors to average to a neutral gray. So if the subject
> has a predominant color, it gets it wrong.
>
> Here's an extreme example I did up using a shot of a single red clover
> against a very bright green, freshly painted barn door. As you can see,
> the PS Auto-Color function turned the door pure gray. It's an extreme
> example but I like to htink a clear one in showing why Auto-Color can be
> so wrong on many images.
>
> A much better option, in general, is to use Levels or Curves, select the
> middle dropper and click it on parts of the image that look like they
> should be neutral gray in tone. Bright or dark doesn't matter with this
> dropper, only a neutral balance of RGB.
>
> This can be slightly tricky and is going to be subjective if you didn't
> put a pure neutral reference into the image. One problem, more with
> film, is that an overall neutral colored area may be composed of a lot
> of little colored pixels, from film grain or digital chroma noise.
>
Absolutely, always found it difficult spotting a pure neutral reference
into an image.
> An other problem, as here, is that different parts of the image may be
> in different light. Here, the left side of the image and the back of the
> fellow in the brone horse are in shadow, while most of the right side is
> in sunlight. so if you want true color in both areas, you need to color
> correct at least two different layers differently, then paint at least
> one as a mask. Fortunately, our eyes are used to this moderate color
> difference, expect it, even, in this kind of image. In some others it
> does look better corrected at least partially.
>
> For this image, I found that clicking the neutral dropper on the center
> band of the no entry sign on the lower right or on the gray stone in the
> upper center got rid of the magenta cast nicely while maintaining more
> overall warmth than Auto-Color. You can easily play with the dropper
> until the overall color pleases.
>
Fine, I'll try that.
>> I did add a little blue to the sky, which is way burned out in the 16 bit
>> .tiff but faintly light blue in the Ektachrome .... fear this 4000ED is not
>> working as it should.
>>
>>
> Probably not the scanner. More likely the software and operator. The
> loss of subtle sky color sounds like the White Point is set wrong,
> resulting in unwanted clipping.
wellllllllllllll, yes: white point was somewhere in the sky area, where
I found level was the highest. Right now I'm learning that I should have
selected a *white* pixel - difficult task I guess.
> On the other hand, the shadows could use
> some judicious combination of multiple scanner passes, increased black
> point and/or noise reduction.
>
Increased black point was done, scanner passes were the most it can do,
noise reduction ... what's that?
Thanks a lot Moose.
> Moose
>
Fernando.
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