Whites in Flowers- an Experiment

[davidedric]

Hi Lukas,

When the upload button doesn't work, clicking on "go advanced" usually gets a version that works.

Dave

[lukaswerth]

Dave,

thanks! that seems to work:



the picture goes down again from flickr!

Lukas

[davidedric]

Hi,

Again just for interest, this is an attempt using the "two concentric radial filters" that I commented on before, plus one or two other cosmetic changes. It's beyond my skills to get it any better, I think, without some very detailed pp.

Dave

[Brev00]

I am not sure if this relates but one thing I like to do with whites that are appearing free of detail is not just to lower the highlight slider (some but not too much) but to cool off the image with a white balance adjustment. With reds, I will also slightly desaturate but with whites probably not. In post, I will use Topaz Detail to add contrast and adjust colors. Here is one example, although it does not have the white edges. It is almost entirely white:
[IMG][/IMG]
Much of the highlights were blown in the initial raw window. I dropped the white balance from daylight to 4400. Doing this also allows me to keep the brightness which I would have to drop considerably at the daylight wb. I don't know if this helps. With Topaz Detail, I could add any amount of crunch to the image but try to use some restraint.

[xpatUSA]

Thanks to all for having a go at my images. I've taken the liberty of downloading some and comparing them in FastStone Viewer:



A most interesting exercise - I was particularly impressed by the different methods used to recover the detail albeit with some other losses. In my original composite shot - next to no color, of course. In another shot, 'pure' purples indicated a bottomed out channel. OT, but the color variation between images is worthy of note - top right being closest to the actual subject, IIRC.

Since I posted last, I've been trying create a profile in RawDigger to 'colorize' my raw composite image and failed miserably - I am now unconvinced that it is a practical approach - the necessary hue and saturation shifts are just too great. Anybody familiar with the drastic color matrices that are used to get decent color out of Foveon raw data will understand why.

My best efforts have been with saving the X3F from Sigma Photo Pro as a 16-bit TIFF in ProPhoto color space and working in RawTherapee (16 bit floating point, ProPhoto working space) - playing with top end of the RGB or the L* (Lab) curve - but there are so many options in RawTherapee that I'm not done yet. Also, RawTherapee has a huge number of sharpness and local contrast options that some time is needed for playing with those in this image. In the end, though, at least a successful set of adjustments can be saved as a profile for later use on other shots of this type.

I certainly agree that a simple lowering of the 'highlight slider' does not produce a pleasing result - once glance at the resulting histogram tells us why . . .