Ken Norton wrote:
> Personally, I would like the tonal adjustment to be turned down a notch. The
> control only goes to 10 and this one looks to be set on 12. I understand
> that this adjustment is for illustration purposes so it is exaggerated a bit,
> but it does represent one thing I find most grating to me.
I may back off a bit in the final version, but probably not too much.
Perhaps we have different tastes. Then again, I was there, and am at
least partially tied to my memory and impressions of the scene. It just
knocked me out.
> The clouds look too crunchy with the amount of highlight recovery done on the
> image. This is not only unnatural but doesn't even remotely look comfortable.
> The clouds, when processed that way, snap and pop in the scene
> giving that "wow factor" when you first see the image, but the image then
> becomes old in a real hurry.
>
I continue to struggle with presenting landscape and foliage images in
small sizes on the web. There just aren't enough pixels to do a credible
job with the detail of an image like this. Viewed full screen, 25% of
the 5126x3445 pixels, I find it just delicious, and I doubt you would
find the clouds or anything else too crunchy.
I take your point about the choice of tonal treatment of the clouds,
although there wasn't highlight recovery involved. None of the RAW
images had the highlights even quite touching the top of the histogram
when loaded into ACR. My attempt at freezing the exposure failed a bit
and in conversion I even increased the basic exposure of a couple of the
images to match with the others. The "Original" version is literally
that, very straightforward RAW conversion with only slight upward
exposure tweaking of a couple, PTLens distortion adjustment and merging
into panorama.
Downsample to 1000 pixels across, and they look like crap. I have the
choice of having them look like mush or crunchy. So I've tried all sorts
of strategies for sampling and sharpening, but haven't yet found a real
solution. I'm sure my 20/10 vision continues to be a problem. I set
sharpening to what I like, then back it off, and some people still find
it too much. The world we live in simply looks "crunchier" to me than to
you. Maybe I just have to cover my right eye when preparing the web
versions?
> But what about Ansel Adams pictures? Aren't they the same way? Yes, they
> are. In fact, I also crunch the snot out of the clouds in my B&W pictures
> too, but there is one very important difference:
>
Wow! My images may not be as good as St. Ansel's, but they are as
crunchy! Taste good too!
> B&W images are abstract by their very nature. The fact that they are already
> abstract means that you have freedom to bend reality a bit without disturbing
> the viewer.
>
> Color images, on the other hand, are not abstract by their very nature, but
> can be made to be abstract when you remove the tonal point-of-reference.
>
> The tonal point-of-reference in this image is the sky. Everybody, except
> those in the UK, know what a blue sky looks like. It is firmly ingrained in
> our visual processing centers.
Vewwy interesting! I thought someone, most likely you, would comment on
what I did to the sky. In the original, it has a quite wide brightness
range, typical of very wide angles images (11mm eq.) taken looking away
from the sun. It's dark blue at upper right, a bit confused in the upper
middle from the panorama process and so light at lower left that some
light, subtle cloud detail is obscured.
I took the whole blue area and heavily adjusted it with mostly gradient
to an almost even color, and I'm becoming convinced as I get used to the
image, a bit too dark. There's also some sloppy detail along the
transition on one part of the clouds.
> When we look at a photograph like this we instantly calibrate our vision to
> the point-of-reference, which is the blue sky. We know in our minds what
> clouds are supposed to look like. Unfortunately, a highly processed image
> like this has the clouds moved too far down the tonal scale in relation to
> what the mind knows is correct.
>
How is that affected by what I've done to the blue sky? What would
lightening the sky do?
The point is, I consciously had the classical abstraction of the color
postcard of bygone days somewhat in mind when I did the sky and clouds.
How might it change your perception of the image, knowing I was
consciously creating an abstracted image in an old popular art tradition?
When I find a knockout scenic image, I'm often reminded of the picture
postcards of my younger years, perhaps even of early Technicolor movies.
Sometimes, that has an effect on my visual presentation of the scene I
capture. This one might fit right into Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
> What if? What if you were to tightly crop the image on only one cloud and
> process it heavily. Is that OK? Yes it is, because the point-of-reference
> (blue sky and other known objects) have been removed. Once you remove those
> elements, you end up with an abstract image which is this free game for
> artistic intent.
>
I believe I see what you are getting at. I suppose I simply disagree
artistically. Then, I may try a PG rated version, too.
In any case, I very much appreciate the time you took to look, think and
comment.
Moose
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