Editing Fog Photos

[CatherineA]

I wonder how people go about editing their photos taken in fog. I don't want to set a pure black point and a pure white point because that loses the effect. I don't want to sharpen, for the same reason.

I have a few photos that I quite like but have left unedited because I am not sure how to approach editing these. What kind of potential am I missing out on by not editing?

Thanks!

[pschlute]

I wonder how people go about editing their photos taken in fog. I don't want to set a pure black point and a pure white point because that loses the effect. I don't want to sharpen, for the same reason.

I have a few photos that I quite like but have left unedited because I am not sure how to approach editing these. What kind of potential am I missing out on by not editing?

Thanks!

Photographing in fog is like using a huge diffuser for the available light. Fog, like any diffuser has the effect of spreading and softening the light, so generally you do not have harsh shadows or extremes in lighting where ordinarily a picture would benefit from some selective lighting adjustment. Remember that the diffuse light in a foggy scene will often fool the meter, and the whole image will tend to be under-exposed, so a little global brightening may be a starting point.

That is not to say that an image cannot be improved. If you want to emphasise a subject in the fog then adjusting contrast selectively is very effective. Applying more contrast to objects closer to you, and very little (or none) to distant objects will give the image depth.

For sharpening, there is often little point, except for close objects.

In the first image below I did as I described above. The second image much less so, because I wanted the subject (the same building from a different angle) to be barely visible.

IMGP1052 by Peter Schluter, on Flickr

IMGP1077 by Peter Schluter, on Flickr

[CatherineA]

Thank you very much for illustrating your approach, Peter. Now I know how I will proceed. I will decide what path I want the eye to follow through the photos and then use selective brightening/darkening and selective contrast to achieve that.

[tclune]

Thank you very much for illustrating your approach, Peter. Now I know how I will proceed. I will decide what path I want the eye to follow through the photos and then use selective brightening/darkening and selective contrast to achieve that.

That sounds right to me. I would just add a couple of things. First, you may also find selective saturation useful. I applied some of that to the tree in the included photo.

I also had that image printed on acrylic, which is very effective with this kind of photo. Just be sure that it is printed directly on acrylic -- some services call photos printed on paper and then encased in acrylic "acrylic prints." But they don't have the same translucent glow when lit from behind, which is what makes acrylic prints so effective with fog photos. FWIW

[Manfred M]

Fog and mist are tricky and Peter and Tom have given some good advice.

Your comments on black point and white point are correct; these adjustments will increase contrast, which is the exact opposite of what most foggy scenes need. The same goes for sharpening; sharpness in a foggy scene does not work as lack of sharpness is what makes the scene so interesting (outside of input sharpening to overcome the softness of the de-mosaicing of the sensor and very, very gentle output sharpening for prints (to counter ink spread, especially on matte papers).

Gentle global adjustments can work and at times, I will soften the fog by using an inverse S-curve adjustment.

When the fog is in the background, like in Peter's first image and Tom's image some local adjustments in the foreground objects can be quite effective, but in Peter's second image, gentle global (slider only) adjustments are really the only option here. You don't want to destroy the softness and local adjustments of objects in the fog generally look a lot worse than just leaving them alone.

[CatherineA]

Thanks very much Tom and Manfred! Those are great points for me to know and keep in mind. I didn't know about acrylic paper.

Tom, how do you go about adding light from behind?

[tclune]

Acrylic prints are about an eighth of an inch thick. They're basically like a pane of glass. You can mount the print in your window or get the print mounted on pegs that hold the print about an inch away from the surface. The pegs allow light to come in behind the photo and illuminate it from behind when it is hanging on a (white) wall.