Some pictures to be printed and hanged, C&C requested!

[Nicola]

Hello to all,
since I want to print in large (and a bit expensive) format some of my recent pictures, I would like to recieve your feedback on how I can improve those. Any kind of advise is welcomed, even the ones implying I've to shoot again with other settings or composition!
I start with just one sunset photo:

Thank you!

Horseshoe bend, HDR of 3 pics

[Shadowman]

Very nice, would work with or without the sky included within the composition.

[Wavelength]

Excellent

[bnnrcn]

Very nice

[Manfred M]

You have a beautiful, iconic view of the Grand Canyon taken from a well-known lookout, The colours are great and you have a nice view. I'm going to suggest some very minor tweaks that I would do to the image, but unfortunately I don't know what post processing software you use and how comfortable you are in doing some of these things. One thing you need to consider is that you are viewing the image as a transmitted light, RGB, additive image and in a print you will be looking at a reflected light, CMYK subtractive image, so boosting a few things will counteract the slight dulling you will see in a print.

Depending on the paper you end up printing on, you might want to adjust the sharpness accordingly. As well, unless you and the printer are in synch on how you are viewing the image, often prints come out too dark, and you really don't want this if it is going to be a large and expensive print.

Here are a few tweaks I might try that I've made to a copy of your image using Photoshop CC 2015 with the Nik Collection Color Efex Pro filter:




1. Find the image a bit flat so I used the Nik pro contrast filter to crisp up the image.

2. I find that the sky isn't revealing all if the beauty of the sunset, so a bit of localized tonal contrast and a bit of a gradient to bring out more detail.

3. I find the bright rocks in the foreground a bit distracting (too bring) so I've toned them down a touch.

4. I suspect you might want to brighten some of the dark shadows in the trees a bit so that they come out in the print.


If you click on the image to open it in Lightbox and use the arrows to toggle back and forth, you can see the difference between your edit and my edit.

[pnodrog]

Manfred has probably anticipated reasonably well the adjustments that will be needed to produce a pleasing print. The only other two things that I have found is the need to watch carefully (especially for very large prints) for the halo that can be visible along the edge between the sky and hills and artifacts that become apparent if too much clarity has been applied. Increased clarity works well with small prints but I have found I need to be very cautious about using it on large prints.

Good luck with this beautiful photograph.

[Geoff F]

Did you have any other shots which were a fraction wider?

Is the river just a little too close to the bottom edge?

Otherwise looks OK to me, subject to previous comments.

[Nicola]

Thank you Guys, I really appreciate your feedback!

@Manfred
I use CC 2015 and Lightroom 6, but not any of the Nik ones.
I've created a copy of the image processed to compensate (more or less) the printer+paper, basing the adjustments on the soft proof on my monitor. In fact I downloaded the icc profile of the printer+paper, but a problem is that the gamut of my (profiled) monitor is a bit narrower than the printer... I will buy an hard proof, printing on the same paper in a much smaller and cheaper format to test the result.

Your post processing is very good: I will definitely tone down the rocks in the foreground, maybe I'll lighten the trees a bit less than you did.
Thank you very much!

@Paul
You're right, I need to review the halo on the hills edge... it comes from the HDR settings, I'll need to run again the HDR tool

@Geoff
Geoff, this picture comes from a minor crop: I cut away a bit of foreground and left side to keep the ratio. It wasn't wide enough to see the U shape of the upper rim too, if you were thinking at this.

[Manfred M]

a problem is that the gamut of my (profiled) monitor is a bit narrower than the printer...

I use a wide gamut screen (close to 100% AdobeRGB compliant), and I can say the same thing. Most modern photo inkjet printers have a wider gamut than even AdobeRGB (thats why they use the 8 - 12 different ink colours), so every screen cannot match (in theory) the print gamut (assuming that some of the colours are actually out of gamut (OOG)).

Make sure that the commercial printer you are looking at using can handle colours wider than sRGB (most do not). Ask them and if they don't know, its pretty safe to assume that they can't. If the printer you are planning to use does have a wider gamut / AdobeRGB capability, then soft proofing is the best way to go. If they use sRGB, do the conversion yourself and send that to them.

[Nicola]

I use a wide gamut screen (close to 100% AdobeRGB compliant), and I can say the same thing. Most modern photo inkjet printers have a wider gamut than even AdobeRGB (thats why they use the 8 - 12 different ink colours), so every screen cannot match (in theory) the print gamut (assuming that some of the colours are actually out of gamut (OOG)).

Make sure that the commercial printer you are looking at using can handle colours wider than sRGB (most do not). Ask them and if they don't know, its pretty safe to assume that they can't. If the printer you are planning to use does have a wider gamut / AdobeRGB capability, then soft proofing is the best way to go. If they use sRGB, do the conversion yourself and send that to them.

Thank you Manfred,
I downloaded a trial version of a program you can compare the icc profiles with. It displays the icc profiles on a 3D plot, and you can plot two profiles on the same graph, in order to clearly see which is wider and on which colour. At the moment (I'm at office) I recall the name "GamutViewer" but I can't swear on it.
The icc profile of the printer I'm looking at is contained in the Adobe RGB, while my monitor covers about the 80% of the Adobe RGB. I will update it...

[Nicola]

Here I applied some of the suggestions you all gave me, even trying a wider view.

[Manfred M]

Looks better to me. Ultimately you are the only one who can decide how your image looks.

[Nicola]

And now I'd like to post a new similar image, still of the colorado river, still HDR.
Any criticism?
Which one do you prefer?

Thank You

[Manfred M]

Your latest image seems a bit "overcooked" with the HDR getting a bit out of hand. The shade of yellow in the sky does not look real. I definitely prefer your first image.

[Nicola]

I've had some trouble with this HDR... with the sky, mainly due to the colours hue and shade.

So I tried just blending just two pictures in two different levels on photoshop, one picture for the sky, the other for the ground.
I've also considerably changed the colour temperature.

I've still to work on some tips, as the vignetting resulting from the CPL filter (mounted in addiction to a UV )

[mknittle]

I've had some trouble with this HDR... with the sky, mainly due to the colours hue and shade.

So I tried just blending just two pictures in two different levels on photoshop, one picture for the sky, the other for the ground.
I've also considerably changed the colour temperature.

I've still to work on some tips, as the vignetting resulting from the CPL filter (mounted in addiction to a UV )

Looks better to me Nicola.

[Geoff F]

I have never found any auto HDR software which produces exactly what I want, Nicola. So I do the same thing and merge layers with edited masks. Sometimes referred to as Hand Made HDR.

[Manfred M]

Nicola, I do like Mark with a lot of my landscapes. I bracket like I were planning to do an HDR image but blend manually, It takes longer but I generally like the results a lot better.

I've taken your image and played with it for a few minutes in Photoshop and used the Nik Color Efex Pro Pro Contrast filter to do some of the heavy lifting to bring out some detail in the main parts of the canyon.

I used the ACR dehaze to crisp things up first and knock out some of the lack of clarity caused by the haze in the air. I pretty well left the sky alone as any enhancements gave an overcooked look to it. I also sampled the colour from the rock in the background and lightly painted that in to make them a bit better match with the colours of the rock in the rest of the image; I do this on a separate blank layer using a brush flow set to around 10%.

I finally made some selections of the vignetted areas in the top left and right and used a combination of content aware fill and the clone stamp to remove the vignettes. Do yourself a favour next time and remove the UV filter before putting the polarizer on the reduced / eliminate this issue.





Again, I suggest opening the image in Lightbox by clicking on it and then using the arrows in Lightbox to move between the images. I find this an excellent way to compare the different versions.


Here is a screenshot of how I stacked my edits in layers.

[Nicola]

Nicola, I do like Mark with a lot of my landscapes. I bracket like I were planning to do an HDR image but blend manually, It takes longer but I generally like the results a lot better.

I've taken your image and played with it for a few minutes in Photoshop and used the Nik Color Efex Pro Pro Contrast filter to do some of the heavy lifting to bring out some detail in the main parts of the canyon.

I used the ACR dehaze to crisp things up first and knock out some of the lack of clarity caused by the haze in the air. I pretty well left the sky alone as any enhancements gave an overcooked look to it. I also sampled the colour from the rock in the background and lightly painted that in to make them a bit better match with the colours of the rock in the rest of the image; I do this on a separate blank layer using a brush flow set to around 10%.

I finally made some selections of the vignetted areas in the top left and right and used a combination of content aware fill and the clone stamp to remove the vignettes. Do yourself a favour next time and remove the UV filter before putting the polarizer on the reduced / eliminate this issue.




Again, I suggest opening the image in Lightbox by clicking on it and then using the arrows in Lightbox to move between the images. I find this an excellent way to compare the different versions.


Here is a screenshot of how I stacked my edits in layers.

Thank you very much Manfred for this procedure!
There's some work to do for me, expeccially I've never tried to sample and paint a colour as you did for the rocks.

Of course I nomore put the CPL onto the UV since I reviewd these pictures. I was used to do so with this lens (17-40) on my previous camera, because it was an aps-c: there wasn't any chance to get vignetting. These set of pictures are my very first use of a FF camera!

[Nicola]

Different scenario this time. C&C always welcomed!
Thanks