Posted by Larry Gloth on April 19, 2008 at 3:54 AM
Stopped in and saw Mr. Hudon on Thursday, bought some good coffee, requested his prinitng services and got some helpful advice. I had been hanging out at Dalles Mountain Ranch where there was plentiful Balsamroot and Lupine down low. Still have some time on the Lupine higher up.
After talking to Mark, I decided to hang out in Hood River. With Mark's help, I found some nice Mt. Hood scenes but as the afternoon wore on, the clouds rolled in. Fortunately, the clouds were more pleasant on the North side and Mt. Adams was looking good as I drove all over the place.
It was a fun day for shooting and this is what I came up with. I'm not sure which composition works best and would appreciate any advice on which looks better, vertical or horizontal.
Hope the cold weather doesn't destroy the pear trees. They were looking real good on Thursday.
Posted by Larry Gloth on April 19, 2008 at 3:55 AM
Vertical
Posted by Jack Garrett on April 19, 2008 at 9:46 AM
Wow Larry, I really like them both but the first one is my favorite. I'm not as experienced as a lot of the guys on here but I would say the comp looks great...lots of lines and diagonals. There is one small dark area in the lower third that might use a little boost but otherwise I think it's a keeper. I'd hang this one on my wall.
Jack
Posted by Mark Hudon on April 19, 2008 at 10:30 AM
The first one is freakin' nuts, Larry! Maybe crop a little off the top but I'd say to post this at M&N on Monday and collect an EP on Sunday!
love the first one, but the contrast doesnt match on the top and bottom. The bottom is perfect, but the mountain and clouds are too flat. I'd do a levels adjustment and fix it right up.
Posted by Will Campbell on April 19, 2008 at 11:28 PM
I like the first one. I agree... more contrast up top would be good. Beautiful scene!
Posted by Larry Gloth on April 20, 2008 at 10:16 AM
Thanks for the tips. How's this?
Posted by John Williams on April 20, 2008 at 12:05 PM
I like the top half of the update, and the bottom half of the original. Are you using Local Contrast Enhancement on the mountain and sky? If not, that can help cut through the haze too. Very nice shot!
Posted by Adrian Klein on April 20, 2008 at 2:07 PM
I love the layers of the FG here Larry! Nice capture.
Wow, Larry, that's a winner, imo. Love the rolling hills and the lines created by the rows of crops. And Hood, well, how much better can you get than that. Way to go.
Posted by Larry Gloth on April 21, 2008 at 6:09 AM
John, thanks for the advice. Can you explain Local Contrast Enhancement to me? Feel free to E-mail me if you have the time and think it's more appropriate as most people here are probably already savvy. I think what I did here was create a new copy with enhanced contrast and saturation in the sky as well as a levels adjustment, then put the original on top and erased the sky and mountain, merged them and used a soft light layer at low opacity on the whole image.
I'm working in Elements 5.0 as I can't really justify the money for CS4 right now. I've patched together some plug-ins for curves and channel mixer and made Elements into a kind of frankenstein monster that I've become accustomed to.
I may have some tax money to spend if I can convince the wife and I'm deciding between getting CS4/Lightroom or getting the 24-70 F2.8L that I would really like. I'm leaning towards the lens.
Posted by Geoff Shapiro on April 21, 2008 at 9:36 AM
The first one, with a little more LCE (local contrast enhancement), is absolutely wonderful!
Posted by John Williams on April 21, 2008 at 9:54 AM
It's been a long time since I have used Elements, but I think you can do LCE there too? (In my rusty memory, it seems like I had to use an adjustment layer as a clipping mask, but that may not be true anymore.) I'll post here in case there are some who don't use this technique, and so that those that do can chime in as desired, many probably know how to do this more effectively than I do.
Local Contrast Enhancement is also called HIRALOAM sharpening by some, and is a technique using a "high radius and low amount" (thus HIRALOAM) with the Unsharp Mask filter to emphasize contrast. While traditional sharpening uses a small radius to improve edge contrast, LCE broadens that radius to improve overall contrast.
Here's one way:
1. Create a duplicate layer of the Background.
2. Use the Unsharp Mask Filter on the new layer. Start by setting the amount to 500, and then scrub the Radius slider back and forth to find the best contrast (I usually leave the Threshold at 0 for this). The photo will look garish at this point, but don't worry about that. Notice that both too low and too high of a Radius cause contrast to disappear. For me, I usually end up with a Radius between 6 and 40, depending on the detail I am after and the resolution of the photo. For your photo, I thought a radius of about 7 did the best for the mountain.
3. Once you are happy with the radius setting, reduce the Amount. While you can fine-tune the Amount to perfection here, I usually set it to 100 and then fine-tune by adjusting the layer's Opacity once the filter has been applied. This let's me increase or decrease the effect if I change my mind in the future.
4. As a final but important step, look for inappropriate halos and mask them out. LCE is similar to Shadows/Highlights in how it creates better detail, and similar to S/H you have to watch out for areas that already have good contrast because this technique will over do them. To make the point, in your photo above I left the border halo between the sky and earth on the right of the mountain, but masked it out on the left (I also masked out the LCE from the rest of the earth in your photo, as it already looks good to me).
While subtle amounts of this technique can make good detail, such as the earth in you photo, pop a bit, I like it the most when detail is vague. The haze between you and the mountain in this photo is a good example.
Down the road, if you like this technique, you can squeeze a bit more out of it by doing it in the lab colorspace and adjusting the color and luminosity separately, and by using Apply Image to cut back on how much this technique affects the highlights as apposed to the shadows. But that's for later...
Posted by Larry Gloth on April 23, 2008 at 2:29 PM
Thanks for the lesson John. LCE is definitely a valuable tool and I look forward to experimenting with it.
Posted by Darren White on April 24, 2008 at 10:41 PM
Discussion
14 repliesAfter talking to Mark, I decided to hang out in Hood River. With Mark's help, I found some nice Mt. Hood scenes but as the afternoon wore on, the clouds rolled in. Fortunately, the clouds were more pleasant on the North side and Mt. Adams was looking good as I drove all over the place.
It was a fun day for shooting and this is what I came up with. I'm not sure which composition works best and would appreciate any advice on which looks better, vertical or horizontal.
Hope the cold weather doesn't destroy the pear trees. They were looking real good on Thursday.
Jack
I'm working in Elements 5.0 as I can't really justify the money for CS4 right now. I've patched together some plug-ins for curves and channel mixer and made Elements into a kind of frankenstein monster that I've become accustomed to.
I may have some tax money to spend if I can convince the wife and I'm deciding between getting CS4/Lightroom or getting the 24-70 F2.8L that I would really like. I'm leaning towards the lens.
Local Contrast Enhancement is also called HIRALOAM sharpening by some, and is a technique using a "high radius and low amount" (thus HIRALOAM) with the Unsharp Mask filter to emphasize contrast. While traditional sharpening uses a small radius to improve edge contrast, LCE broadens that radius to improve overall contrast.
Here's one way:
1. Create a duplicate layer of the Background.
2. Use the Unsharp Mask Filter on the new layer. Start by setting the amount to 500, and then scrub the Radius slider back and forth to find the best contrast (I usually leave the Threshold at 0 for this). The photo will look garish at this point, but don't worry about that. Notice that both too low and too high of a Radius cause contrast to disappear. For me, I usually end up with a Radius between 6 and 40, depending on the detail I am after and the resolution of the photo. For your photo, I thought a radius of about 7 did the best for the mountain.
3. Once you are happy with the radius setting, reduce the Amount. While you can fine-tune the Amount to perfection here, I usually set it to 100 and then fine-tune by adjusting the layer's Opacity once the filter has been applied. This let's me increase or decrease the effect if I change my mind in the future.
4. As a final but important step, look for inappropriate halos and mask them out. LCE is similar to Shadows/Highlights in how it creates better detail, and similar to S/H you have to watch out for areas that already have good contrast because this technique will over do them. To make the point, in your photo above I left the border halo between the sky and earth on the right of the mountain, but masked it out on the left (I also masked out the LCE from the rest of the earth in your photo, as it already looks good to me).
While subtle amounts of this technique can make good detail, such as the earth in you photo, pop a bit, I like it the most when detail is vague. The haze between you and the mountain in this photo is a good example.
Down the road, if you like this technique, you can squeeze a bit more out of it by doing it in the lab colorspace and adjusting the color and luminosity separately, and by using Apply Image to cut back on how much this technique affects the highlights as apposed to the shadows. But that's for later...