Ullswater dawn (from 2 years ago)

[pschlute]

[Shadowman]

A bit dark in the foreground, otherwise nicely composed.

[Manfred M]

+1 to John's comment. That is exactly the same thing that jumped to mind when I looked at this image. A bit of dodging here and there, especially in the dark foreground areas and I suspect you will have a stronger image. Regardless, a very lovely image.

[lovelife65]

Just beautiful Peter.
Nothing to add. Wonderfully composed and stunning scene.

[pschlute]

Thanks for the comments. I did leave the foreground darker on purpose, but I think you are right it needed a little brightening. Looking at Manfred's edit and the original in large size and the edit has created more depth to the picture.

I have recently been learning new techniques in LR. I used the graduated filter tool from left to right to bring out more the sunlight breaking through on the left. Then in PS used curves layers to dodge the sun lit hills and water surface. The latter technique learnt on here

[xpatUSA]

Beautiful restful scene! The red channel is blown in some parts of the sky. Not that there's anything wrong with allowing stuff to blow when the scene has lots of dynamic range.

'To blow or not to blow, that is the question' ...

[Manfred M]

The red channel is blown in some parts of the sky.

It is? I'm showing a maximum red value of 250.

[pschlute]

I was watching the histogram during my edits. I didnt see anything blow out.

[xpatUSA]

I was watching the histogram during my edits. I didn't see anything blow out.

Peter, four of my apps show clipped reds on my computer.

The GIMP counts 635996 reds with a value of 255.

JPEGSnoop finds the brightest RGB values as 255, 240, 195.

RawTherapee shows me this (warning at 254):



Even Sigma's converter shows the same area as blown (it can open JPEGs) - same warning at 254.

I value these four results much more than Mozilla's add-on histogram which quite often differs to what I see from my computer apps.

I suspect working color space may have something to do with the anomaly.

[xpatUSA]

I suspect working color space may have something to do with the anomaly.

Mystery solved! It's not color space. Manfred's post is showing a max of 240 luminosity, irrespective of what Mozilla says it is. I get the very same value of 240 in ImageJ's histogram - until I change it to show red pixels only, which then clearly displays a max of 255.

Recommended reading (luminosity vs. RGB):

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...istograms2.htm
.

[Manfred M]

Mystery solved! It's not color space. Manfred's post is showing a max of 240 luminosity, irrespective of what Mozilla says it is. I get the very same value of 240 in ImageJ's histogram - until I change it to show red pixels only, which then clearly displays a max of 255.

Recommended reading (luminosity vs. RGB):

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...istograms2.htm
.

Ted - What I show is the histogram of the red channel only. Look at the histogram I posted; it's not a luminosity histogram...

[xpatUSA]

Ted - What I show is the histogram of the red channel only. Look at the histogram I posted; it's not a luminosity histogram...

Manfred, I had already looked; I saw the red band; I saw the 'red' selection; it's still wrong - I have no idea why.

I now have no less than FIVE apps that say the reds are blown in the posted image.

Here's ImageJ's analysis:



I'll say that I trust ImageJ over anything produced by Mozilla ...

Do I now have to go open the posted image in IrfanView, Photoshop Elements 6? - which would no doubt add two more to my list ...

[DanK]

A very nice image. I would open up the shadows even more than Manfred did. I brought up the shadows using the Photoshop shadows/highlights toil and then imposed contrast with a curve, which partially redarkened some areas. I used a luminosity blend mode for the curve to avoid adding saturation, but a normal blend looks good to.



Photoshop shows red clipping in the orange parts of the clouds. I wouldn't worry about it.I don't think it creates a problem in this case.

[Manfred M]

Manfred, I had already looked; I saw the red band; I saw the 'red' selection; it's still wrong - I have no idea why.

I now have no less than FIVE apps that say the reds are blown in the posted image.

Here's ImageJ's analysis:



I'll say that I trust ImageJ over anything produced by Mozilla ...

Do I now have to go open the posted image in IrfanView, Photoshop Elements 6? - which would no doubt add two more to my list ...

I went back and downloaded the image and found the same as you did Ted, using the Photoshop histogram tool. The red channel shows some limited highlight clipping and also shows a small amount of shadow detail being crushed in all channels, especially in the blue channel.

In my view there are two likely explanations:

1. The plugin I used with FireFox is wrong and doesn't capture the data in the image correctly; or

2. The image that is being displayed is not the image we have downloaded and the FireFox plugin works just fine...

I was watching the histogram during my edits. I didnt see anything blow out.

I work the same way as Peter does and watch what the shadows and highlights do so when I save a file for upload, I'm fairly sure the product is "clean". I don't know what additional processing the downstream sites like Flickr do to the image and it is quite possible that some additional compression takes place that blows out highlights and crushes shadow detail. If it is out of the user's control, there is not much one can do.

I've also noticed that changing colour spaces for web display (I virtually always work in a wide gamut colour space) can result in a small amount of clipping. Converting from 16-bit data to 8-bit data and compression algorithms that output JPEG data can also change values of pixels close to either end of the tonal range. Some websites also butcher the data even more when they store the image in order to reduce storage space.



The shadow loss I can live with, but I would have liked to have seen the highlights controlled a bit better, but that's just my opinion. I suspect Peter's edits are likely "clean" on both fronts.

[Round Tuit]

Just to throw in my 2 cents worth, I use the same Firefox plug-in as Manfred to take a quick look at pictures posted on the web. If I use my laptop which is calibrated and fully sRGB compliant, the red channel of Peter's posted picture shows severe clipping. However, if I look at it on the wide gamut monitor of my desktop the red channel does not show any clipping. I am at a loss to explain why the histograms are different unless they are calculated relative to the monitor's gamut.

[Manfred M]

Just to throw in my 2 cents worth, I use the same Firefox plug-in as Manfred to take a quick look at pictures posted on the web. If I use my laptop which is calibrated and fully sRGB compliant, the red channel of Peter's posted picture shows severe clipping. However, if I look at it on the wide gamut monitor of my desktop the red channel does not show any clipping. I am at a loss to explain why the histograms are different unless they are calculated relative to the monitor's gamut.

Very strange behaviour - I got identical results with my sRGB and wide gamut (Adobe RGB) screens.

[lovelife65]

Thanks for the comments. I did leave the foreground darker on purpose, but I think you are right it needed a little brightening. Looking at Manfred's edit and the original in large size and the edit has created more depth to the picture.

I have recently been learning new techniques in LR. I used the graduated filter tool from left to right to bring out more the sunlight breaking through on the left. Then in PS used curves layers to dodge the sun lit hills and water surface. The latter technique learnt on here

I can see why you would want to leave the foreground a little darker, but that's just me.
I wonder about lightening up the foregrounds in images taken at dusk/sunrise/sunset. Isn't a dark foreground what we see?
I often feel doing too much processing and lightening up a foreground that is indeed dark because of the time of day, makes it feel fake and like one is viewing a sunrise/sunset/lighted up sky as if we were viewing it in the middle of the day... which is not the case.
Of course, this is just an opinion from a hobbyist and not professionally trained at all, with very poor post processing skills.

[xpatUSA]

I went back and downloaded the image and found the same as you did Ted, using the Photoshop histogram tool. The red channel shows some limited highlight clipping and also shows a small amount of shadow detail being crushed in all channels, especially in the blue channel.

In my view there are two likely explanations:

1. The plugin I used with FireFox is wrong and doesn't capture the data in the image correctly; or ...

Seems like I use a different plug-in than yours, Manfred. Mine shows red all the way to the right (by virtue of the yellow counts):

2. The image that is being displayed is not the image we have downloaded and the FireFox plugin works just fine...


<>

I took a screen-grab in FireFox and opened it in FastStone Viewer. The red histogram also shows blown values:



Maybe your FireFox color-management options are set different than mine ...

... and then there's still Andrés post #15 and your #16 to consider.

[Manfred M]

Seems like I use a different plug-in than yours, Manfred. Mine shows red all the way to the right (by virtue of the yellow counts):





I took a screen-grab in FireFox and opened it in FastStone Viewer. The red histogram also shows blown values:



Maybe your FireFox color-management options are set different than mine ...

... and then there's still Andrés post #15 and your #16 to consider.

Obviously there is something strange going on with the browser plugin I am using, but frankly I don't really care. There are other issues with the image that I find more problematic than a bit of clipping in the red channel.

Ultimately the question I always want to answer is how well the image is working; what works well and what does not. Those problems cannot always be measured by looking at a histogram.

If I were shooting commercially and I saw clipping in the company's logo, I would definitely look at fixing that.

[Manfred M]

I can see why you would want to leave the foreground a little darker, but that's just me.
I wonder about lightening up the foregrounds in images taken at dusk/sunrise/sunset. Isn't a dark foreground what we see?
I often feel doing too much processing and lightening up a foreground that is indeed dark because of the time of day, makes it feel fake and like one is viewing a sunrise/sunset/lighted up sky as if we were viewing it in the middle of the day... which is not the case.
Of course, this is just an opinion from a hobbyist and not professionally trained at all, with very poor post processing skills.

You ask some very good questions here Sharon and a lot of the answer will be an opinion. Who is to say my opinion is any more correct than yours?

When it comes to how we view a scene, it is important to remember that human vision functions quite differently than how a camera records a scene. We effectively see a composite image as our eyes stop up and down quite quickly as we look at brighter areas and then darker, shaded areas. We don't notice colour temperature differences through a process called chromatic adaptation.

Photographers present what they saw and photographed in a variety of different ways. Some try to stick with what they get straight out of the camera whereas others (like me) try to show what we remember seeing. In general that group tends to try to come up with a scene that is less extreme and more refined by opening up the darker areas and taming the brightest areas of the shot.

When I compare the three edits, Peter, Dan and I all had slightly different views of what the scene should look like.

I suspect that Peter was going for a very moody look, whereas Dan's approach is more focused on what a scene like that would have looked like to him and bringing out the colours and textures was important to his view. In my edit, I tried to stay a bit more true to Peter's vision and tried to keep a bit of the moodiness in the original. Had it been my own image, I suspect I would have ended up a bit closer to Dan's point of view. If you look at where the sun likely is, based on the brightness of the clouds, I suspect that the scene would not have looked nearly as moody as in Peter's image; it was probably a fair bit brighter out.

What training (and observation) do for a photographer is to make them more aware of what the scene likely looked like versus what the camera. I just had a look at the location and time of Peter's image using a tool I frequently use for landscape photography work. This shot was taken in England's Lake district about 20 minutes after sunrise in early September. Here is a shot I took about 20 minutes after sunrise at the end of March and the position of the sun above the horizon is going to be in a somewhat similar position (early spring versus late summer).