Posted by Chris Duncan on January 16, 2009 at 10:03 AM
First post on NP BTW. I was sitting here thinking, as it is a balmy three degrees outside, about summer. I thought I would post an image from last June to warm things up! This was sunrise from Round Bald near Roane Mt. Shot with a Nikon D3, Nikon 24-70, SB-800 1 2/3 stops down for fill on a SC-29 cord, .9 soft grad + .3 hard grad. C&C welcome!
Posted by Thomas Biggs on January 16, 2009 at 11:35 AM
Looking forward to seeing more of your work.
Beautiful shot!
Dave Bartlett
www.redpixelmontage.com
Posted by Don Mullaney on January 16, 2009 at 1:30 PM
Been there many times, you did it justice!......Nice job!
Posted by Leann Greene on January 16, 2009 at 2:26 PM
Hey Chris ,
nice to see you posting here also. :-) That's some color you got here.
Posted by Chris Duncan on January 16, 2009 at 8:07 PM
Thanks Thomas, Dave, Don, and Leann!
Leann, I utilized the Landscape Picture Control in the D3 with +1 Saturation to take the shot. I then dropped the midtones a bit in Curves, which really popped the colors a bit. Afterwards I worked on an slight S curve in the blue channel for the sky and mountains with a layer in Photoshop. This changed the mountains from a slightly purple tone to a bit more blue tone. This also moved the sky from a deeper orange to a bit more yellow. The pic above is quite a bit more saturated, with bluer mountains and darker greens than the original due to sRGB conversion. I will post an Adobe RGB version to take a look at also. I assume I will need to wait my 48 hours before posting the Adobe version?!?! LOL
Posted by Matthew Cromer on January 16, 2009 at 10:51 PM
Lovely photo Chris!
Posted by Leann Greene on January 17, 2009 at 9:57 AM
Very nice of you to include your process and informative also.
Posted by Chris Duncan on January 17, 2009 at 11:56 AM
Thank you Matthew! I appreciate it!
Leann, my pleasure. We all have information to share, if we all share, we are all the wiser!! In my spare time, I teach photography classes locally and lead small workshops. I almost enjoy helping others where I can as much as taking the photos myself - almost!!
Posted by Chris Duncan on January 18, 2009 at 6:06 PM
Here is a shot at uploading a Adobe RGB version of the image with the ICC profile attached - hopefully! You should be able to see the difference in the two if you have a color managed browser, such as Safari or Firefox 3. If you don't, you can download it into a color managed app and take a look. I usually use an action that I created to downsize for the web, however for kicks I thought I would try out the Photoshop tool "Save for Web&Devices" for the image above. It stripped the ICC profile and converted to sRGB by default, which creates an unmanaged color space file with it's normal color shifts. You can adjust both of these properties though, so I will have to play around with it a bit more. Hopefully after posting you can see a difference in the two images. I would love to hear any feedback you might have, or if anyone has used this tool and their thoughts or success with it? THX everyone!
Posted by Leann Greene on January 19, 2009 at 3:58 PM
Both are very nice-the 2nd one looks more natural I guess but I liked the drama of the colors in the first one.
Lovely scene and image, Chris. I've shot form this exact spot many times myself.
The second version is a bit too color saturated for my personal taste, so I prefer the first. Great to see you here and looking forward to seeing more of your work.
Posted by Chris Duncan on January 19, 2009 at 8:07 PM
Thanks Richard! You take enough shots at popular places and you are bound to end up in someone's old tripod holes!!
I think I finally figured out what was going on with the color shift. About five months ago I replaced my old monitor with a new wide gamut NEC 2690WUXi monitor. Since I have been using it, almost all of my focus for processing has been on prints, which it does a fantastic job with. However it struck me over the weekend to do a bit of A/B comparison with the monitor on my laptop, which was showing substantially different color than the new NEC with sRGB files. And then I remembered what a tough time the wide gamut monitors have with sRGB, in fact some unmanaged sRGB files with IE look almost nuclear!! LOL Safari does a much nicer job and renders even the unmanaged a bit closer to my color managed apps, as I think it maps unmanaged files to the monitor profile. The first shot is closer to how the scene came out of the camera on a normal gamut monitor, still with a bit of color shift and desaturation, which you generally expect out of an Adobe to sRGB conversion. The second version looks much better in Safari on the NEC. I will play with rendering intent and few other things and see if I can "dial it in" a bit closer but this may be interesting! Sorry for all my diatribes around this, it has been driving me a bit crazy trying to figure it out!!! :-)
Chris, I am viewing both on a 24" Dell ultrasharp. I see the second exactly opposite from Richard, On my monitor the SRGB profile shot is deeply saturated. The second, Adobe RGB, is smoother and softer, with I would estimate 15% to 20% less saturation. I vastly prefer it.
A keeper, whether you hang it on your wall or the Internet!
Posted by Chris Duncan on January 22, 2009 at 5:42 PM
Discussion
14 repliesNice shot btw!!
Beautiful shot!
Dave Bartlett
www.redpixelmontage.com
nice to see you posting here also. :-) That's some color you got here.
Leann, I utilized the Landscape Picture Control in the D3 with +1 Saturation to take the shot. I then dropped the midtones a bit in Curves, which really popped the colors a bit. Afterwards I worked on an slight S curve in the blue channel for the sky and mountains with a layer in Photoshop. This changed the mountains from a slightly purple tone to a bit more blue tone. This also moved the sky from a deeper orange to a bit more yellow. The pic above is quite a bit more saturated, with bluer mountains and darker greens than the original due to sRGB conversion. I will post an Adobe RGB version to take a look at also. I assume I will need to wait my 48 hours before posting the Adobe version?!?! LOL
Leann, my pleasure. We all have information to share, if we all share, we are all the wiser!! In my spare time, I teach photography classes locally and lead small workshops. I almost enjoy helping others where I can as much as taking the photos myself - almost!!
The second version is a bit too color saturated for my personal taste, so I prefer the first. Great to see you here and looking forward to seeing more of your work.
I think I finally figured out what was going on with the color shift. About five months ago I replaced my old monitor with a new wide gamut NEC 2690WUXi monitor. Since I have been using it, almost all of my focus for processing has been on prints, which it does a fantastic job with. However it struck me over the weekend to do a bit of A/B comparison with the monitor on my laptop, which was showing substantially different color than the new NEC with sRGB files. And then I remembered what a tough time the wide gamut monitors have with sRGB, in fact some unmanaged sRGB files with IE look almost nuclear!! LOL Safari does a much nicer job and renders even the unmanaged a bit closer to my color managed apps, as I think it maps unmanaged files to the monitor profile. The first shot is closer to how the scene came out of the camera on a normal gamut monitor, still with a bit of color shift and desaturation, which you generally expect out of an Adobe to sRGB conversion. The second version looks much better in Safari on the NEC. I will play with rendering intent and few other things and see if I can "dial it in" a bit closer but this may be interesting! Sorry for all my diatribes around this, it has been driving me a bit crazy trying to figure it out!!! :-)
A keeper, whether you hang it on your wall or the Internet!