Topic: A muted fall image for openers...

[Greg Groess]

let's try to brighten this up a bit...
It could use a bit of sharpening as well

Greg

[gremurphoto]

Hi Greg.A straight foreward solution is to pull in the ends of the lightness channel a bit, then add some saturation.On a second pass I took magenta  in the a channel down a bit,it had gone a bit neon.Sharpening was amount 100,radius 1.1.I've got a new 22in monitor and it really helps see what going on in an image.GregM

[Greg Groess]

Greetings Greg...

Nicely done for openers...now....

Drama....can you make the image more dramatic and draw the viewer into the leaf more....

Greg

[derekfountain]

Well, it's a drab Sunday morning in England, so I thought I'd spend a bit of time on this one. It took several passes.

First was a standard highlight/shadow fix. There's no neutral, and HSB looked best to my eye.

Next was an LAB colour break up, as per Chapter 12 of the LAB Color book. I wanted to push up the colours in the foremost leaf while easing down the colours in the blurred out background leaves.

Then I did another pass in LAB to add some contrast to the L curve.

At that point I thought that the magenta was starting to over ride the yellows too much, so I tried turning it down. That made the image a bit flat, so I boosted the yellow instead. That looked better.

One more pass the brighten the whole thing, and I was happy with the colours.

I then did an edge sharpen to bring out the leaf edge definitions without making the faces of the leaves go grainy (as a standard USM did), then put a vignette around it.

[Greg Groess]

Very nice... Does the Blue in the upper right bother you at all??
Just curious mostly to get at the decision process...

Greg

[gremurphoto]

Redo.Hadn't used adjust sharpness much before,didn't have a context.

[Greg Groess]

For the new class members...

Begin with the Curvemeister wizard and see how far you can get the image...
We'll begin by looking a the image and describing the general process used to adjust the image.

1) Overall the image is flat. There are few pure whites and few pure blacks.  There seems to be a neutral density filter over the image.
2) Depth of field is short and indistinct.
3) Colors are muted; currently this is related to the overall flatness, but once we begin we need to keep the color saturation in mind.
4) Sharpening needs to occur at some level.

These are my goals.  sometimes i write them down, sometimes I just say them out loud.  I need to keep them in mind as I process the image so that i do not get distracted or forget one of the goal along the way.

I am going to work on fixing each of these problems in the image.  Using Curvemeister I can attack all of them, even to some extent the sharpness.  The first problem for me is what color space do I use.....

I'd like some suggestions and any questions you have...Feel free to post away...

Greg

[derekfountain]

Very nice... Does the Blue in the upper right bother you at all??
Just curious mostly to get at the decision process...

Actually I hadn't even noticed it. It probably doesn't belong there, but there are enough colours in that image that it doesn't really register to my eye.

I quickly went back into CM and found it's easy to remove that blue with either a lizard tail on the B of RGB, or locking the LAB B channels' yellow side then flattening off the blue side. But I spent enough time on that image yesterday!

[Greg Groess]

Greetings

Since the response has been overwhelming and silent.....
I shall make some choices for myself and proceed to correct this image in Curvemeister.

I'm going to choose LAB as a color space for this image since it has the advantages of being able to correct the contrast and brightness of the image without changing the colors in the image.  I am also choosing the LAB space to introduce it to the new students and show what LAB can do quickly.

First I will adjust the Shadow Highlight and Neutral of the image.  (SHN) This step is 1st because until it is done it is very difficult to assess the overall image and see what is really in need of correction.  Many times the SHN correction will fix most of the issues you are having with your images.

Shot 1 is the image after a "reasonable"  SHN adjustment using the thresholding feature of Curvemeister (CM).

Here is a good article about Thresholding with CM
http://www.curvemeister.com/wiki/index.php?title=Highlight_and_Shadow_Thresholding

More to Come....

Greg

[Greg Groess]

From the Shot 1 image you can adjust the saturation of the colors in LAB using the saturation slider.  It is found in the Curvemeister wizard or in the lower right panel of the CM window.

Shot2 is the color pushed way too far using the Saturation Slider.

Shot 3 is where I will settle on the saturation for now.

Next we will sharpen a bit...

Greg

[Greg Groess]

Onward....

Next I will increase the contrast further in the L channel of LAB this has multiple effects.

• It increases the contrast
• It add some sharpness to the edges of the leaves.
• It allows me to increase the saturation further without blowing out the colors on the leaves.

The way that I increase the contrast was to use a "Contrast Pin"  the contrast pin is created by hovering the mouse over the image until you find an area that has a long color worm. You then right click on the image at that point and select Contrast Pin from the menu.

Here is an article about the color worms
http://www.curvemeister.com/wiki/index.php?title=Color_Worms

The next step is to place the mouse in the frame of the curve window below the grid right in the 75-50 numbers.  Your mouse will turn to a double arrow and you can adjust the contrast.

Here is a article on Contrast Pins
http://www.curvemeister.com/wiki/index.php?title=Contrast_Pinning

After adjusting the contrast a bit you can increase the saturation using the slider some more.  The saturation values in the box in my screen shot are "false" because I had to close CM and reopen it during the process of creating these screen shots.  Yours will be different unless you also close CM and come back in.

This basic sharpening and saturation increase have a dramatic effect on the image.

Greg

[derekfountain]

This basic sharpening and saturation increase have a dramatic effect on the image.

Not that I want to nit pick, but the remaining problem with your image is that the leaves in the foreground aren't in any way isolated from those in the background. It's a large colourful blob which leaves the eye nowhere to home in on. IMHO.

I've been very impressed with the subtle yet effective method used in Chapter 12 of the LAB book to break close colours apart. I thought this image benefited from that.

[Greg Groess]

Ahhh..but I am not yet done....

Today was going to be the Drama part....stay tuned....

Greg

[themightyzog]

Sorry I could not join in earlier - here is my 2d worth (for those that know what that means!)

7 pixels of local contrast -> CM lab curve -> 2 pixels of Focus Magic + a touch of Man from Mars (by just doing Equalize on each channel!)

However I think I've over done it as usual - so I prefer a touch of blurring to frame it

[Greg Groess]

Stylish yet over stated...
I like the heavey handed approach to this...I wanted you guys to push it around since in real life it was tremendously colorful.

You may have gone too far but in a good way...
Greg