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I've passed this image for processing many times, just for the simple reason of processing. I wan't sure the scene was worth all the work. I didn't bracket but 2 exposures here.
The sky was pretty decent this eve, and the color you see here in the sky was pretty close to what I experienced. I wonder about the foreground and cliffs, and how light or dark to portray them...so I roughly blended these together to see what you guys think, before I take the couple or so hours on blending the scene to it's final output...if it is worth it.
(I basically blended the 2 exposures, then quickly erased the portion of one layer with a 10% opacity with multiple swipes...hence the dark outline along the cliff edges)
Rick, maybe this will help - I've been working on a new blending method.
´ Generate 3 different exposure renderings from the same RAW or NEF image to cover the entire range.
´ Layer them into a single image from darkest at bottom layer to the brightest at the top layer.
´ Use Color Range to select the brightest part of the image and either use the "fuzziness" or the add selection cursor (the +) to add to the mask.
´ Feather settings anywhere from 100 -250 - the larger the feather, the better the edges will look halo wise.
´ Do a single delete from the layers above the background layer OR use the eraser to brush-delete the areas you want darker (this is nice since you can then fade the eraser to get a percentage back which you can't do if you just delete it).
I just used this technique on this shot and it looks WAY better than any previous attempt before learning this blending method.
I think the ground floor is too dark and you might want to try a technique like this to get more detail and color out of it - it's an awesome image, Rick.
I'm not that impressed with HDR yet - in my opinion, the size of the curve graph is too small to really work with all the tonal ranges - I've had way to many anchor points on that curve plane and it's a b*tch to work with. I think I've mentioned it before (here or somewhere) that I really hope Photoshop CS3 will provide a lot more USEFUL tools in the HDR process.....
The potential is there, but I feel like I'm doing surgery with 3 gloves on each hand.
Definitely lots of potential Rick. In a shot with similar problems, but not enough brackets, I found happiness in blending, but using only two layers. On one I adjusted for the sky, and on the other I used the shadow/highlight adjustment in CS2. There was a slight color shift between the two which I didn't detect until after the fact, but rather than trying to come up with a solution that worked simultaneously on both layers, I went back to the individual layers to do the work. Another worthwhile approach, especially for the foreground in your shot is Local Contrast Enhancement from Luminous Landscape.
Discussion
5 repliesThe sky was pretty decent this eve, and the color you see here in the sky was pretty close to what I experienced. I wonder about the foreground and cliffs, and how light or dark to portray them...so I roughly blended these together to see what you guys think, before I take the couple or so hours on blending the scene to it's final output...if it is worth it.
(I basically blended the 2 exposures, then quickly erased the portion of one layer with a 10% opacity with multiple swipes...hence the dark outline along the cliff edges)
´ Generate 3 different exposure renderings from the same RAW or NEF image to cover the entire range.
´ Layer them into a single image from darkest at bottom layer to the brightest at the top layer.
´ Use Color Range to select the brightest part of the image and either use the "fuzziness" or the add selection cursor (the +) to add to the mask.
´ Feather settings anywhere from 100 -250 - the larger the feather, the better the edges will look halo wise.
´ Do a single delete from the layers above the background layer OR use the eraser to brush-delete the areas you want darker (this is nice since you can then fade the eraser to get a percentage back which you can't do if you just delete it).
I just used this technique on this shot and it looks WAY better than any previous attempt before learning this blending method.
I think the ground floor is too dark and you might want to try a technique like this to get more detail and color out of it - it's an awesome image, Rick.
(Damn nice shot BTW, John)
THanks for process John. I'll give it a try tomorrow night. I'll post my results.
The potential is there, but I feel like I'm doing surgery with 3 gloves on each hand.