Not sure about this processing

[Geoff F]

That looks good to me. Sometimes just a little tweak makes a considerable difference to a photograph.

Once you get familiar with masking you will be using it on most of your images. Do you have a drawing tablet such as a Wacom etc? They make the fine adjustments of masks so much easier.

[Thornton]

That looks good to me. Sometimes just a little tweak makes a considerable difference to a photograph.

Once you get familiar with masking you will be using it on most of your images. Do you have a drawing tablet such as a Wacom etc? They make the fine adjustments of masks so much easier.

Thanks Geoff. I have got an old tablet which I’ll try out (not used it for ages). The only problem is that something has caused the rubbery coating on the stylus pen to become tacky, but maybe some talc will make it useable again.
I’ve just been watching some videos on masking and hopefully it looks more straightforward than I’d imagined.

[xpatUSA]

The only problem is that something has caused the rubbery coating on the stylus pen to become tacky, but maybe some talc will make it useable again.

Might not be quite so simple, young man. See my post on stickiness here:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/61981886

[Cantab]

Might not quite so simple, young man. See my post on stickiness here:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/61981886

Ted, that's an interesting thread on the other forum, especially the explanatory comments I believe you quoted from a chemist. Fortunately, my only experience with this problem has been a couple of inexpensive thumb drives. Now I know what happened -- even though in an ideal world it shouldn't have happened.

[Manfred M]

Thanks for the replies. The shot was taken quite a long while ago in pretty poor photographic conditions, very gloomy weather. I used to use centre weighted a lot in those days but normally use evaluative nowadays. I thought I’d have a go at re-processing it. By pseudo HDR I mean that I’ve made 3 conversions from the same raw file and then combined them using an HDR tool. The colours at the time of capture were not very saturated and there was little contrast. I could probably have produced a punchier conversion but it would not have reflected the conditions at the time. I feel that I used to oversaturate my processed photos in the past

A few thoughts for you dealing with post-processing.

I very rarely use HDR technnology any more. I find it rather "brute force" and the algorithms do not give the photographer sufficient control over the final look of the image. Sensors on higher end cameras have been capable of producing a dynamic range in the range of 14 ev (stops) since around 2012, when shooting at the camera's "based ISO". I rarely find I need to take bracketed exposures to pull out sufficient information found in the raw data. One also has to remember that a typical computer screen with its 1000:1 contrast ratio only displays 10 ev in optimal conditions, so you can definitely manipulate the data to pull out more data by dodging and burning. Unless your histogram shows significant clipping at both ends, there is no needed to resort to anythings as drastic as HDRI. Simple dodging and burning will allow you to access the same data as your "artificial" HDRI approach without the side effects you see in your initial posting.

When it comes to contrast, unless you are shooting a scene that is misty or foggy, in general, more contrast usually works better than too little contrast. There are three types of contrast we generally look at in our images; global contrast, mid-tone contrast and micro-contrast. Without getting into too much detail, global contrast is what you get when you set your black point and white point. Most of the shots that I see that are not working well usually have not addressed this issue properly. Mid-tone contrast is set using a curves adjustment using an "S" shape and affects only the mid-tone values. Micro-contrast is a bit more complicated but if affected with a number of tools. Microcontrast is simply the intensity of areas where dark areas of the image meet light areas. Sharpening impacts micro-contrast as does clarity and dehaze.

Dan is quite right that increasing contrast will also increase saturation. In RGB images, as we increase contrast, we also boost saturation because "colour intensity" is buried in this adjustment. Dan's method is one approach to minimize the impact of increased saturation (i.e. use a luminosity blending mode when applying the aforementioned adjustments rather than using a normal blending mode). I prefer to do this in two steps; increase the contrast using the methods that I've mentioned and then using a separate adjustment layer to tweak the saturation using a saturation adjustment layer. I find that gives me better control. Just as an aside, I virtually never use the saturation tool to increase saturation; I tend to only desaturate. On the rare occasions that I want a touch more saturation, I will use Vibrance rather than Saturation.

[Thornton]

Might not be quite so simple, young man. See my post on stickiness here:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/61981886

Thanks for this explanation. The stylus wasn’t kept in the dark but it was kept in the gloomiest part of a north-facing room. The other item I’ve had this issue with is a pair of Bushnell binoculars, always stored shut away in a case. The significance of storing shut away seems to be borne out by the fact that my sister has an identical pair which are never shut away, and they are still fine. Oddly, whilst my originally satin-feel Wacom stylus feels sticky, the binoculars suffer the issue with what was originally hard non-satiny black plastic, and this now actually comes off on my fingers like sticky ink. I’ll put both items on my window sill in the light and see what happens.

[Thornton]

Thanks Manfred, for your explanation. I am going to make a determined effort to get to grips with layer masks so that I can work on the single exposure approach (starting this afternoon, hopefully).

[Manfred M]

Thanks Manfred, for your explanation. I am going to make a determined effort to get to grips with layer masks so that I can work on the single exposure approach (starting this afternoon, hopefully).

While I do use layer masks quite frequently, the edits I wrote about are generally global and use adjustment layers without masks.

[DanK]

While I do use layer masks quite frequently, the edits I wrote about are generally global and use adjustment layers without masks.

I would start with global adjustments. Local adjustments, for example, those done with masks, are just localized versions of global adjustments, so if you haven't mastered the global ones, you won't have much luck with the local ones.

I don't know how much you already know, but I often suggest to newbies that they start by becoming really comfortable with tonality adjustments, which include all of the ones we are discussing here other than saturation. They are in some sense the most fundamental (which is why they are at the top of the developing pane in Lightroom.

Re what to do about unintended saturation: this is not always an issue. In many cases, the change in saturation that happens with tonality adjustments looks just fine. However, there are some cases in which it can be a problem, and you found one: images that require a large boost in contrast.

Manfred and I suggested two different ways of dealing with this. Mine is to avoid adding the unwanted saturation in the first place by using luminosity blending for contrast adjustments and then adding vibrance or saturation to taste. Manfred works in the other direction, letting the extra saturation happen and then removing it. Either will work; it's just a question of which you end up finding easier.

To complicate matters a bit, you can do both. For example, you can apply a curve to get the contrast you want using luminosity blending, then duplicate that adjustment layer and change the blend mode on the duplicate to normal. Together, they will be too much, but you can reduce the effects by lowering the opacity to mix them in whatever proportions you want. I recently taught this in a short class, and the image I used looked garish when I used normal blending and oddly flat when using luminosity blending. doing both with reduced opacity looked better.

[Thornton]

Many thanks for the tips.

[Thornton]

Might not be quite so simple, young man. See my post on stickiness here:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/61981886

Just a quick update on this. I followed the advice I found online about using a paste of bicarbonate of soda to gently rub at the sticky mess. I've tried it on the stylus, using a soft disposable cloth (J cloth). I was skeptical, but it has actually done a brilliant job and quite easily totally removed the mess down to the plastic. Maybe the sticky stuff was just a thin coating of the soft stuff applied to a normal plastic, but whatever it was has now come off leaving a perfect result and the stylus works fine. I may try this approach on the binoculars in due course. It won't be as easy, but they're now only fit for the bin unless this works, so nothing to lose really.