A Snowy Scene

[Kaye Leggett]

I took this picture a couple of year's ago....but only today come around to processing it being inspired by an reading article on snowy/foggy scenes and how to processing them.

So on this image, I cooled the WB a little and then lowered the black point whilst reducing shadows and setting the white point, adjusting for perspective and sharpening. C&C welcome

[Wavelength]

Forgive me for my excess...i though of increasing contrast a bit; hope you don't mind; loved the original too



I must say the snowy feel has lost and a noon time feeling has come here

[chauncey]

It has an architect's drawing feel to it.

[Manfred M]

Kaye - this is a tough one. You were shooting in a situation where the lighting was quite frankly, not very good; it is flat. The sky is overcast and has no texture. Definitely not great shooting conditions.

When I opened your image, the first thing that came to mind is that while there are whites (snow) and blacks (parts of the rooms seen through the windows), your image does not reflect that. The snow white values are there, but the black in the windows looks gray. The histogram of the image confirms this; all the data is on the right side of the histogram.




This is really the first thing I look at on virtually all of my own images. I will then adjust the black point and white point by moving my sliders to where there is meaningful data. In this image, only the black point needs to change.




All of a sudden, you start getting the missing detail back into the image. In this case, I got a bit of a strange colour cast (that can happen, especially when editing a jpeg), so I desaturated the image slightly and also straighted it out a bit.

[Shadowman]

It took me a while to realize this is a wintry/snowy scene, I was wondering why so much white in the foreground and noticed the snow on the rooftops. The sky was so bland that I naturally started looking for something besides the building to capture my interest. Now I see that the white foreground serves as a compositional device and see the image as a whole. Nicely done.

Title totally eluded me.

[Kaye Leggett]

Thanks all for the feedback. Manfred especially for the explanations - I will play with the image again as I like your rendition better. Actually as my reading has gone on today, someone else was saying to desaturate in PP for snowy conditions - you have just helped me as to how to do this.

[DanK]

Well, I don't know. I also generally adjust white and black points at the outset when the tonal range is limited, but in this case, I am torn. The original has a different feeling than the ones with more tonal range and more contrast.

I tried two things. first, I added local contrast via USM in PS (amount 20, radius 50, threshold 0) to add a little bit of snap. The effect is subtle:



I then made a slight adjustment to the black point using a curves tool, increasing it to a value of 24 (more than my first post). I did not change the curve in other respects, i.e., I left it linear:



I'm not sure I would opt for any more contrast than that. True, this shows less detail than the ones with more contrast, but it has a different mood.

[bnnrcn]

Although I like both Manfred's and Dan's edits, I have to say that Dan's edit has a different mood and I can feel the snow and cold weather.

[IzzieK]

I like both methods...when I saw the first one, it reminds me of William W's snow image in another post. This is neat, a good topic for conversation...and learning to process.