Best way to process images with soft blue sky and tranquil water

[ajohnw]

This is rather curious as dng should send everything to the editor. So curious I just looked at the specification. It seems there are options, uncompressed, zip compressed, jpg compressed - lossless or lossy. As I mentioned earlier if I saved a jpg from raw and then tried to edit it banding appeared. When I loaded it up into Rawtherapee and hit an auto button as it does all sorts of things over the full tone range no banding at all. That is because it is working from the whole raw file.

Perhaps people aught to check for options on the dng format. Looks like there may be one that uses lossy jpg. It seems it will also do similar things to floating point formats. These would mostly be of interest to certain users of larger format high colour depth cameras as the raw file can be huge. They make the files of say a 5D mk3 look silly, I know some one who has that problem every time they have work published.

Also note that the fact that I use "different" software is irrelevant. The raw file is the raw file and more importantly the output at the end is sRGB.

John
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[Brownbear]

Thank you John... I need a little time to learn about all these files, but I will do.

[Brownbear]

Actually, John I believe the DNG file was the correct type, and raw because it opened up under Adobe Photoshop CC when I exported it.

[Macmahon]

Christina

I, for one, would be sad to think you deleted the images on the basis of some banding (which I've yet to see, but i accept that you and others have) when the RAW clearly does not have the banding and you could print this direct from Lightroom and make, IMHO, a quite beautiful print.

One last thing you could try is to make your jpeg from LR through the print output module. After you go through all the print settings, in the last pane (called 'Print Job') select Print To: JPEG File. Turn off print sharpening and set JPEG Quality to 100% and the output profile to sRGB (if that's your preference) and see what happens.

Tim

[ajohnw]

It should open any of the dng formats. If there is anything that can be changed it will be an option somewhere in the application you exported from. I often work on camera jpg's rather than ones that I have produced from raw myself and never had any problems with them other than what I would expect - colour artefacts when pushing dark areas up too much or highlights clipping for the same sort of reason.

I just did a little experiment. I loaded a 7.4mb D7000 camera jpg up and saved it at 90 and 99 quality levels. These reduced in size -2.6mb and 6.6mb. This strongly suggest that if some one wants to export jpg's from raw they should set the highest quality possible and if that can't be set compare the size with the cameras jpg's. If not broadly similar don't do it. On the other hand I have reworked the same 90% quality jpg's several times with the bulk of the mods on the 1st save originally from raw - no problems.

If Chirstina and others want to produce shots like the storm clouds I feel there will be a need to add another processing step. The problem is that cameras typically capture 12 bit colour and images show 8. Some refer to bits as stops. The fact that 12 --> 8 means all images are hdr really but something has to be compressed to make it fit so highlights / dark areas get clipped or compressed. Compression reduces contrast so things like clouds and dark areas get flatter and don't look realistic. One answer is to make the clouds perfect from raw and then brush a high contrast curve onto the dark areas until they are correct or use luminance masks etc to apply a higher contrast curve to them. Another I think often easier and quicker method is to generate 2 different exposures from raw and use hdr software to merge them. The easiest one to use is Enfuse. I believe that there is an Adobe Enfuse plug in and there is MacroFusion for Linux and maybe other platforms too. It can also be done with layers where the contribution from each image can be adjusted.

The 1st image needs to be something like this. A bit darker than needed with plenty of cloud detail. Obtained by exposure alterations from raw. A curve could be applied as well to increase cloud contrast. Just forget about the dark end but it's best if that isn't clipped.



The 2nd image needs to show the detail at the dark end. Often the same exposure and a curve which just drags up the dark end only with one anchor point. Ideally it wants to be a bit brighter than needed but this shot is clipped so just bring it up to a level where that is just evident. There is still detail at the bright end as the top of the curve was left as is.



Then merge them. This is what MacroFusion gives with an exposure weighting of 0.25. I should have gone for a brighter dark end really. Or better still produced 2 or 3 and then tried merging each. There is a preview which runs quickly.



I opened that in an editor and saved 90%. It's a 1/4 of the size of the MacroFusion one which would be more suitable for further work if needed. Looks like MacroFusion is only available for Linux here. It very easy to use.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/macrofusion/

There is most definitely an Enfuse plugin for Lightroom. Hugin also includes HDR merging and also makes an excellent job of stitching panoramas. If real two camera exposure HDR is needed both will auto align. Just keep the camera where it is and wind on some exposure compensation. For this one I would try for a slightly dark sky and +2 stops for the dark end but 3 would often be ok. I stop generally isn't worth it. The slightly dark sky leaves room for adjustment if needed. The dark end just needs to be well into the tone curve again leaving room for adjustment. I would probably use camera jpg's.

Interesting aspect is that the end result wont look anything like a typical HDR image. That takes real effort and tone mapping to obtain cartoon type colours as they are often called. An abuse of the technique really.

John
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[Brownbear]

Tim,

I will try that. Even for a small print for myself for the memory. That cloud was about a 1 1/2 kilometers (~ mile) long and just as high.

John,

Thank you as always for sharing. Appreciated.