Morning Walk

[kap55]

For several years I would go for a (very) early morning walk with my dog down a trail to the lake - as a result I got dozens of sunrise images. My biggest problem in processing always seems to be dealing with the extreme darkness in the hills vs the brightness of the sunrise. This is one of my favorites - ISO 200, f 3.2, 1/160 sec - but I still think the sky is a little bright. C and C appreciated - especially suggestions regarding the intense light in an otherwise dark landscape.

Thanks,

Brian

[kdoc856]

Hi, Brian. It is indeed a lovely place to shoot. But it does represent some technical challenges given a relatively high dynamic range. It's a perfect spot to set up a tripod and get some bracketed shots for "exposure stacking", i.e. HDR fusion without necessarily using the tone mapping.

You didn't mention what focal length you used here, but it would be a fun place to go super-wide, up real close and low, perhaps using the shoreline debris in your foreground.

For early morning romps, I set my ISO to 800 and often 1600 as my default starting settings, and go lower if I have the light for it. But the newer cameras have such good noise control that using the higher ISO give us so much more flexibility with the exposure and shutter speed.

It would be helpful to know what your processing program is, as there are quite a number of ways to take advantage of this dynamic range. I'm sure you'll get some more input, and let us know if you'd like to see some alternative processing posted.

[kap55]

Hi Kevin,

This was taken with a Tokina 11-16 at 11 mm on a Nikon D90. I use ACDSee Pro as well as PhotoShop along with a Topaz suite of plugins in both programs. This photo was processed using the ACDSee/Topaz combo.

I would love to see some alternative processing methods - I should have put that in the original post.

Brian

[dje]

Hi Brian

There are a few ways of dealing with this sort of situation.

As you have done, make corrections in pp. Provided you have used a low ISO setting, you can bring up the shadow area in moderation without introducing noticeable noise.

You can use an HDR multiple exposure fusion approach as Kevin has mentioned. One complication with this is moving objects such as your dog.

Another approach is to use a Graduated Neutral Density Filter in front of the lens. There is a tutorial on using GND's in the CiC tutorials under Camera Equipment. Some people find this too much trouble but I have found that with practice, it is no trouble at all. You would have to invest in a square filter holder and some filters though. One issue with this approach is horizons that are partly obstructed with mountains. In a scene like yours, I would position the transition area of the filter on the water horizon. This would mean that the distant mountains would be a little dark but these could be brought up in pp a bit if necesary. Use of a tripod is essential with this approach.

Dave

[Ken Curtis]

Hi Brian. I use Topaz Labs Adjust v5 plug in with Photoshop, and it does a great job of bringing up shadows and reducing highlights.

[kap55]

Hi Dave,

I do have some Cokin GNDs that I could try - I hadn't thought of using them in this scenario, but it might be worth a try. Thanks for the suggestion.

Brian

[kap55]

Hi Ken,

Some of the Topaz filters are pretty amazing. I have a question about your workflow using Topaz. Do you edit in RAW and if so when do you utilize Topaz Adjust?

I edit my RAW photos using ACDSee because I much prefer the interface to PhotoShop's ACR. One drawback is that Topaz filters cannot be used from within ACDSee until I convert the photo to a tif or jpg. When you use Topaz with PhotoShop what format is your photo in and when do you convert it? Thanks.

Brian

[Ken Curtis]

Do you edit in RAW and if so when do you utilize Topaz Adjust?

Hi Brian. I use Photoshop CS6. The Topaz Labs (and Nik, aka Google) filters are installed as plug-ins. After downloading RAW files from the camera to my PC, I look at them with Bridge. If you use Elements or Lightroom, there is no Bridge program. Next, when I click on a thumbnail of the RAW photo, it opens into Camera RAW, an intermediate program, where I can make basic adjustments, such as shadows, highlights, sharpening, white balance correction, and much more. Lightroom has the same computational "engine" and lets you do the same things, only better. After making adjustments with Camera RAW, I have a choice. I can open the file in Photoshop CS6, I can save the file as a JPEG, or I can simply save the adjustments I just made. For all of those choices, Camera RAW leaves the RAW file untouched, but adds what they call a "side car" file that contains the adjustment information.

When I open the RAW file in Photoshop CS6, the first thing the software does is to read the RAW file and the side car file, if it exists, and converts the data to binary, which the program uses for it's processing. If all I did was to open the file in Photoshop and then save it, the software would save the file as a ".PSD" file, which has a proprietary format with all of the RAW file information plus any changes I've made with Photoshop. I believe Photoshop Elements saves the files as a ".PSB" file, which is similar to a ".PSD" file.

However, I rarely open a file and then save it without doing some manipulation. My first steps after opening a file in Photoshop is to run Topaz Labs Denoise software, another plug-in. My next step is to run Topaz Labs Adjust software. When those plug-ins complete their processing, the data is in binary form in your computer RAM. It has not been saved to the hard drive yet. I may or may not make more changes to the image. When I have the image looking as I want, then I save the file. Photoshop saves the file as a ".PSD" file (Elements as a ".PSB" file). Of course after saving the file in Photoshop, all my changes have been saved and I can re-open the file to print it or make more changes.

While I have the image open in Photoshop, another choice that I have is to save the file as a JPEG file. To do this, I use the menu function File > Save As. I always do this because I may want to post the image on Facebook, email it, or something else. When the file is saved as a JPEG file, it only contains pixel information. It does not contain any data about what adjustments or manipulations you made while it was opened in Photoshop. Only the ".PSD" or ".PSB" files contain history of what manipulations you did.

I do not know the format used by Lightroom to save files, so I am not sure how Lightroom saves changes made using plug-ins such as the Topaz Labs software.

Hope this answers your questions.

[kap55]

Thanks for the explanation Ken.

I have Photoshop CS4 and I use it with Topaz plugins to cleanup and enhance scanned photos and slides - in fact I pretty much use it for any image format other than RAW. In the past I used ACR to process my RAW images but always found the interface a little clumsy and non-intuitive. I had been using ACDSee Pro for quite some time as a viewer, database manager, batch processor etc. Eventually I started processing my RAW images with it and found I preferred it to Adobe Camera RAW.

Once I am happy with the RAW image I have to save it as either a jpg or tif and then use that file to apply any Topaz plugins. The reason I wanted to check your workflow for was to see if you were applying Topaz to RAW files - but I'm pretty certain that is not possible. It seems whether using Photoshop ACR or ACDSee you must process your RAW file, save in a new format and then use Topaz on the new file.