Maybe a moon

Crappy composite for @puppymeat (specifically his retweet here).

Lunar Eclipse over Orion

Mentioned in this post, an image of the lunar eclipse in its relation to other celestial bodies. Now that I’ve had some time to look over the images, I think that this is my favorite of the evening.  But it took some work.

One interesting thing: the street lights are all effectively done with tungsten lighting – they give everything a solid color cast.  But the moon & the stars – they’re reflecting what is effectively normal sunlight.  Completely different cast.

If you color balance for daylight (I usually have it at 5600K), then the street lights are orange, but the moon is proper.  Balance for tungsten and the moon is drab.

The solution: smart objects in Photoshop.  One for the main area, one for the sky.  Each one with a different color balance.  The original was created in RAW, so this didn’t damage the image.  Minor masking & everything displays as it should.

Does Orion look too bright?  It should, and it’s deliberate.  Several curve layers spiking the intensity there, just to bring ‘em out.  It’s almost overpowering on a large view, but when you look at a smaller view the stars disappear.  This preserves those stars in thumbnails.

Other post-processing: two-pass sharpening on the trees, and a mild blur/ghosting to the tree/snow areas. That was to bring out the calm/softness of the snow, while retaining sharp edges.

Oh, and this is cropped.  I was shivering so much when setting this up on the tripod that it came out crooked.

Trail closed, selective color

Or seconds, as the case may be. You may remember this post from a few days ago. It was also posted to my photostream on Flickr, where one of the comments expressed surprise that the selective coloring took no more than a few minutes relative to the rest of the image (total time was two hours).

The trick to getting the selective color so quickly was twofold:

1. I was fortunate in that the image is almost monochrome already (remember me saying that before?).
2. I was using Photoshop CS5

To explain: if I were to do this quickly, without the editing out of distracting objects and fine-tuned sharpening, the steps to create this would boil down to:

• Duplicate the original layer;
• Convert new (top) layer to B&W;
• Add a layer mask, showing all grey;
• Punch holes in the mask to let some color through;

Looking at it like this, you would think that I hand-painted each bit of color.  This should take a lot of time, no? Well, doing it that way would take a lot of time.

I did it a better way.  Remember that this is essentially a monochrome image.  Mostly green, with some blue and some orange.  That means we can almost safely use the Color Select tool in Photoshop to select the individual elements.  The sign, for example:

• Open Photoshop.
• Click “Select” in the menu, then “Color Range.”
• Click anywhere on the orange areas.
• Move the “Fuzziness” slider until all oranges are selected (you’ll get part of the trail and a few trees, too).
• Use the lasso tool (or marquis, which is what I used) to unselect (alt-click & drag) everything that I don’t want.

Repeat for the blues.

A View from the Kihei Boat Harbor

This is a crop from the original, but it has the important part (I’ll post the non-cropped version in a day or two).  Take a close look at the palm trees: looks like a great silhouette of a lone palm, right?  Well, the reality wasn’t so: there were two bunches of palms, one just to the left of the ones you see here.  I didn’t like these extra palms – I felt it distracted from the overall feeling of individual oneness: one set of palms, one Molokini, One Kaho’olawe, one ocean… so the extra palms needed to go.

In CS4, this would have been a ten to twenty minute job: mostly delicate work with the clone stamp tool, some patching and smoothing, and eventually a fairly well constructed section.  The background is fairly simple, so it wouldn’t have been difficult.

In CS5?  I merely selected the extra palms – and fairly loosely, might I add.  Then did the “Edit” -> “Fill” option, selected content-aware, and poof: full replacement of the palms.

Don’t think that it was perfect, mind you.  If you look extremely closely, you can see that it’s ever-so-slightly fuzzy at a part there.  Could be atmospheric diffusion, I suppose – but in reality, it was a bit blurrier than that.  A couple of extra strokes with the healing brush (set to content-aware), and it tightened up to what you see here.  A little more contrast work, and it could be even better – for printing, I’d certainly do that.

So, total time: under 60 seconds with CS5.  CS4: over 10 minutes.

That’s something to be happy about!

Underwater HDR, Redux

Following up on the thoughts on this post, witness the  image to right.  Now, I’m not claiming it’s the best image, nor am I trying to even state that I’m done with post-processing.  I am, but only because I’ve decided I’m not happy with the composition.

But I am happy with the results of my tests.  In this case, I now know: when doing handheld bracketed shots, Photoshop CS5′s “Merge to HDR Pro” function is incredibly more useful than Photomatix 3.2.  It’s not just the ghosting, although that sure cleaned up a lot.

No, it’s how easily CS5 finds like components and merges them together.  Seriously, it’s just incredible: this is a three-frame HDR, in JPG.  Compare the sharpness (not the contrast) and the merging to this:

Underwater HDR, Try #1

I’m not really sure why there’s such a huge difference, but look at the background.  You can see ghosting in the coral when processed in Photomatix 3.  None of that in CS5.

For what it’s worth: yes, I’m aware that Photomatix 4 will fix the ghosting problem – or so Trey says. And yes, I did try to get Photomatix to do its fixes.

I’m really looking forward to Photomatix 4 now…

Evening HDR

Just a test shot that I thought I’d post. I may be putting up a couple more over this evening. Testing CS5′s “Merge to HDR Pro” function, comparing it to Photomatix Pro. This one is an excercise in rescuing a screwed up frame: I had the color balance set to tungsten when I took this, so everything was hyper-blue. Arguably still is, but that’s the HDR saturation effect.

OK, so here’s the thing: since I could fix this in Bridge, then tell PS to merge it, this came out fairly well. Because of the screw-up, when I tried this in Photomatix, it came out… poorly. I originally trashed it, but PS made a completely useable image.

PS was significantly slower, though.

The HDR effect: it’s really only evident in the lack of noise in the shadows. The light wasn’t that far ranging as to justify needing the HDR effect itself.

Crop #1

Crop #1

By removing distracting elements (fish, translucence), the overall composition is made simpler, yet stronger.  Mostly yellow, with red touches to break up the monotones.  Some smoothing and simplifying of details brings it together.

Crop #2

Crop #2

This required a full rotation (180 degrees) and some work to bring out the details.  From a distance, it’s a landscape.  Up close, strange and compelling details are revealed: the fish in the pond, strangely-upside-down lily pads.  And yet, the rest looks normal.  A feast for the eyes (well, my eyes)…

Koi Pond Reflections

Permit me, if you will, the opportunity to share a failure with you.  The image (to the right) is to what I refer to: abuilding reflected on a koi pond.

This was taken at sunset on our recent trip to Hawaii.  The sun had just passed behind a building and the reflections were strikingly strong.  There is no amplification of the effect here. A quick shot and on I went, chasing a tired 5-year old.

Looking at it later, I noticed that something was… missing.  But what?

A commenter on Flickr pointed it out for me: it’s too busy. There are great elements, but it’s compositionally poorly executed.

Contrast that with this:

Bubble Globe

Here is a good example of a complex subject and presenting it simply. So many details in the bubble, yet they  blend effortlessly.

It’s your post processing.

The thing I’ve noticed over the year & a half since I went to NAPP, is that my photos immediately jumped in quality. It’s not just the ability to introduce contrasts.  It’s also the sharpening techniques, color awareness, painting techniques, dodging and burning.

All of that came together in this, a favorite (recent) image:

Fiery Icicle

Post processing: slight saturation increase in reds and oranges.  Slight luminosity increase in blues, decrease in reds and oranges.  Addition of clarity filters, slight increase in overall contrast.  Reduction of global saturation and luminosity across houses.  Increase in luminosity on icicle. Single-pass sharpening on luminosity layer.

It took less than three minutes.

Continuing with online printers: this is the last company that I’ll review, and my favorite.  You’ll see why:

Color shifting: Want to avoid it altogether?  Download their color profiles (one per paper/print type). Output your images with that color profile, and what you’ll see, you’ll get.  Take that back: one time their printers were out of calibration.  They re-printed free of charge. Thumbs up, obviously.

Crops: for smaller pics, maybe a pixel.  Larger pics (up to 16×20, in my experience): maybe three pixels. As good as it gets.

Paper quality: all quality papers (Kodak, usually), and you get your choice of finish.  Includes metallics, glossy, others… More thumbs up.

Sharpness: I’ve generally had it hit or miss with them until the most recent print job.  I finally found that they’re considered a “contone print shop”, and you do “contone sharpening”. More about that another day, though.

Overall: AdoramaPix has pretty much earned my loyalty.  Some prices might be higher than with competitors, but the quality is there and they cater to the more advanced amateur & pro alike.