Photo with severe haloing . . . what causes this?

[Kathy O]

Doing some experimenting with my lightroom 3 editing program to see what function does what to a photo and when I was done I noticed severe haloing above the mountains and trees, (I think that is what it is called) can anyone tell me what I did to cause this so I don't do it again. Thanks for the help!

[ScoutR]

Hi Kathy, I hope you get some replies on this, but while you are waiting you might be able to check it out yourself.

Open your photo in the Develop Tab in LR, make sure you can see the History panel at the left hand side of the screen. It lists all the editing changes that you made in sequential order from bottom to top. If you click on each step you will see the changes in the photo and you will be able to see at exactly what point the halos appeared.

Let me know if you have any trouble finding the History or clicking through the steps.

Wendy

[Kathy O]

Awesome!! Did not know I could do that!! Thanks again Wendy!!

[ScoutR]

No problem, hope you get the results you want it's a good shot, beautiful scenery you have to work with there. I'm envious.

Wendy

[Goldcoastgolfer]

Did you turn the saturation up on individual colours? I find that I get a bit of haloing sometimes when I try and deepen the colours too much on a photo where the colours are quite light and border along another distinct colour. The area of the photo that this usually happens is usually quite whitish and there isn't enough information for Lightroom where the colours meet to tell which colour to work with.

I usually end up using the adjustment brush instead of the HSL panel and add a bit of feathering in the transition area of the two colours so the halo isn't as prominent.

I'm sure someone more knowledgable can give a better answer though

[knifebox]

In my experience, I usually get halos after heavy sharpenning, particularly using the High Pass sharpenning in Photoshop CS5
Kindly check if you might have oversharpenned your image in LR

Cheers

[revi]

Or local contrast enhancement? Tone mapping also could cause it (as seen in some 'HDR' styles)

[Rob Douglas]

It could be a few different things. If you up the value of vibrance, saturation, or sharpening (or a combination of all) too high you will get that. Also, I see some vignetting in the corners, was this intentional? I'm not sure a shot like this benefits from vignette since there is no subject to have your attention drawn to.

[Kathy O]

Thankyou to everyone for all the good information!! I will be out of town for a few days and when I get back I will check into all of these things (I am sure I have done all of them) and see which one caused the problem!! Thanks again.

[Dave Humphries]

Thankyou to everyone for all the good information!! I will be out of town for a few days and when I get back I will check into all of these things (I am sure I have done all of them) and see which one caused the problem!! Thanks again.

Hi Kathy,

Add Clarity to the list of things to check.

Cheers,

[Kathy O]

Thankyou everyone for your advice, I think it was mostly my clarity adjustment. I made a few adjustments with my photo and here is what I came up with, I am showing the before and after photo. It still shows a little haloing but not like before. The mountain is not as clear as in the first photo but I think it is okay. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Before photo with haloing




after photo with less haloing

[FrankMi]

Much better Kathy! If you can do layers, you can cut some of the atmospheric haze by selecting the back group of mountains and increase the contrast a healthy amount. You may need to readjust the brightness afterward to compensate.