Oh, those d.... halos

[Donald]

If I reduce this down to 1024 pixels, which I normally do, the halos become terrible. Here, at 2048 pixels on the longest edge, they are still bad enough.

In my finishing the image I am pushing quite hard on the Amplify Blacks and Amplify Whites from Silver Efex Pro and that plays out with the halos. On the large original file , they just not there.

What do you to manage halos.

Apart from halos - your comments and critique about the image would be appreciated.

[billtils]

Small soft clone brush round the edges at pixel level zoom ...

[Donald]

Small soft clone brush round the edges at pixel level zoom ...

Yes. I was looking for a less mind-numbing solution, but ......! If I could try and stop them happening in the first place, that would be wonderful.

[Shadowman]

I believe when you apply Silver Efex it creates a blending layer, you could reduce the opacity until the halos are minimized.

[ScoutR]

OMG Donald, this is a wonderful shot. I love the direction you have taken with the last 3 shots that you have posted. Very striking, Very moody and as always so well composed.

Hope you get the halo issue sorted out to your satisfaction. I remember Dave trying to help me with halos, my solution ended up being to quit looking for them. If they were obvious, they had to be fixed, but if I had to magnify the shot and search for them, they weren't there as far as I was concerned I know that won't work for you, but I'm sure you will figure it out.

Wendy

[billtils]

Donald

I don't know how specific this is to my camera (+/- the way I use it) but following the "Halo help" thread I started a few weeks ago I now have all the in-camera processing switched off or to the minimum setting possible, and on the basis of (an admittedly small number) of shots since then, it seems to have been beneficial. And developing the raws has been more fun too ...

[lovelife65]

Beautiful composition Donald.

[TonyW]

When I have had halos like those I believe it has been because I have made a selection of the sky that was not quite accurate enough. At the time, my solution was to redefine the boundary and use cloning to remove the halo, but that was a dumb tedious thing to do. I think with photoshop, it is possible to use channel layers to manufacture a layer mask which does not produce these halos.

[DanK]

Beautiful composition, apart from the halos.

For those of us with commonplace monitors, the image is downsized even in the litebox, so I downloaded it from there, put it into photoshop, and enlarged it to 100%. At full size, the halos are much more apparent then they are on the forum page.

I haven't found a good description of how those two adjustments really work, but it appears that they are nonuniform contrast adjustments. Assuming that oversharpening isn't contributing, my guess is that the algorithm can't handle that strong an adjustment without creating halos, and the degree to which they appear depends on sizing.

What you might try is taking the raw image and making no adjustments other than one of these two. Gradually increase the amount of the adjustment while viewing an edge--like the edge of the log--at 100%. That might show you the maximum level you can use without this problem. YOu may not be able to use these particular tools alone to achieve the strength of adjustment you want without creating halos.

[Rita]

Donald, here is a fairly easy way to get rid of halos. Not necessarily the best video but the method has worked for me. Hope it helps.

https://youtu.be/xUCqvs3-H5s

[Donald]

Thank you Rita. Clever. It's late in the day here, but I will try that our tomorrow morning.

[Donald]

Rita - Your wonderful!

That tool is the answer to my dreams ... or should that be nightmares.

What a simple but effective way of dealing with the issue. Thank you so much for passing this on.

[Rita]

You are most welcome Donald, glad it helped you out.

[Donald]

We've put it a link we (Mods) have on the site, so that when the question comes up again, we can pull it down and put it a message.