Rooftops

[DanK]

Spending some of my seclusion going through old images, discarding many and processing or reprocessing a few.

C&C welcome, as always.

[LePetomane]

Dan, very nice image. How would it look if you cropped out the sky?

[billtils]

Dan

I like the colours and shapes but find the roof tiles in the buildings at the rear are creating a somewhat jarring effect. And the sky ...

[DanK]

Thanks for the comments.

Bill, do you mean the modern dormers on the roof in the back? The tiles themselves are a principal compositional element, but the dormers are from a different era.

Re the sky: I cropped as much as I could without losing the geometry of the buildings. But this raises an interesting question that I would love to hear people discuss. I thought about this quite a bit when processing the image. Is it always a bad thing to include a gray sky? If you know Bergen, where this was taken, you know that it is in an area where gray skies are extremely common. Moreover, the lighting in the scene is only consistent with a heavy cloud cover; replacing it with something bluer or brighter would be unrealistic. Does that mean one should always avoid skies in images of Bergen, or places like it?

I'm going to go back to this image to increase the contrast in the sky. That will lessen the sameness, but not the grayness.

I've never had the chance to travel to Scotland, unfortunately, but people have told me that the weather in parts of Scotland is similar to that in Bergen, so I am guessing that a few of the participants in this forum have thought a good bit about this question.

[Manfred M]

Dan - I find it to be less of a gray sky issue than it is an area of excessive brightness that attracts my eye. Same comment goes for the white wall at the bottom right.

While my solution of darkening both may not be what you saw when you took the shot, I think that it improves the visual impact of the image.

[DanK]

Manfred,

Thanks. The fix you did on the sky is similar to what I had in mind, although a bit more extreme. I hadn't yet turned my attention to the wall at the lower right, but I agree with you. It's something that I thought about when I first processed the image, but I hadn't gotten back to it. The real crux of the image is the shapes, textures, and colors of the rooftops and center wall, and that's where I want the viewer's eye to go.

Dan

[Manfred M]

The fix you did on the sky is similar to what I had in mind, although a bit more extreme.

Dan - my usual technique is to push a bit harder than I think is necessary and will then sit on it for awhile. Sometimes it grows on me, sometimes I push harder and sometimes I pull back. It really depends on the vision I have for the image. Right now, I usually push my skies fairly hard to bring out the textures in the clouds.

That's why I like using a non-destructive workflow as I can easily go back and check my decisions as I move on with an image.

[billtils]

Bill, do you mean the modern dormers on the roof in the back? The tiles themselves are a principal compositional element, but the dormers are from a different era.

Re the sky: I cropped as much as I could without losing the geometry of the buildings...If you know Bergen, where this was taken, you know that it is in an area where gray skies are extremely common. Moreover, the lighting in the scene is only consistent with a heavy cloud cover; replacing it with something bluer or brighter would be unrealistic. Does that mean one should always avoid skies in images of Bergen, or places like it?

I'm going to go back to this image to increase the contrast in the sky. That will lessen the sameness, but not the grayness.

I've never had the chance to travel to Scotland, unfortunately, but people have told me that the weather in parts of Scotland is similar to that in Bergen, so I am guessing that a few of the participants in this forum have thought a good bit about this question.

Dan

Re the tiles, no I meant the ones on the building that has the dormers. It's not a critique really, more just personal taste thing.

Yes, I've been in Bergen and (more frequently) Stockholm, and of course the length and breadth of Scotland (other than Orkney and Shetland) and am all too familiar with grey skies . I'd go with your idea of increasing contrast/darkening, as suggested by Manfred too, but it's always going to be a problem (did you try the opposite, and lighten it to give a plain backdrop to set of the intricate colours and shapes of the main image?).

[DanK]

Manfred, I use nondestructive editing for such things as well. In Photoshop, I turn the selection into a mask for a new adjustment layer.

Bill--I have only spent a few days there, but from what I have read, Bergen is gloomier than Stockholm. This effect comes from being on the leeward side of the shore and can be particularly substantial when the shore has hills or mountains. It's why the coast of the Pacific Northwest is so gloomy half the year, and it also accounts for the very heavy snowfalls east of the Great Lakes (where I grew up).

I intend to play more with this image. The only other image I have finished from that day required a lot of postprocessing to get it to the point where I was satisfied. In this case, I want the sky not to be distracting, and too much contrast, like excessive brightness, can make it more distracting. I think it may be do for some additional dodging and burning as well.

One thing that makes this image tough is that I took it with my 12 MP Lumix LX-100 at ISO 400. Even going only to 400 damages the image quality, and that becomes apparent when one starts to crop. I almost never have to use noise reduction, but I had to with this one. And when I use noise reduction, I often retreat to use a high-pass filter with a small radius for sharpening, to avoid re-creating the noise I have smoothed out.

[Manfred M]

Bill--I have only spent a few days there, but from what I have read, Bergen is gloomier than Stockholm.

On the other hand, that means nice, diffuse lighting and no harsh shadows to deal with.

The one thing that does strike me though is the small amount of glare off the roof tiles. While the Lumix unlikely takes filters, so a polarizing filter is out of the question. I find that even in cloudy conditions, certain types of materials, for instance leaves and in this case the roof tiles, are still reflective enough to impact parts of the image. That is one reason I have my polarizers with me virtually all the time, even on overcast days.

[DanK]

Manfred,

The Lumix does take filters, and I usually either have a CPL on the camera or with me. (I like Marumi filters, and they make one small enough--43mm--for this camera.) However, while I don't recall, I suspect I had it off that day because the camera handles low light so poorly.

My wife and I have talked about going back to Norway if that becomes possible someday, and if so, I intend to lug higher-end camera gear next time. In addition to wanting a better sensor, I will want a longer lens. However, the way things are going, there's no need to plan now.

Dan

[xpatUSA]

Originally Posted by DanK Manfred, the fix you did on the sky is similar to what I had in mind, although a bit more extreme.

Dan - my usual technique is to push a bit harder than I think is necessary and will then sit on it for awhile. Sometimes it grows on me, sometimes I push harder and sometimes I pull back. It really depends on the vision I have for the image. Right now, I usually push my skies fairly hard to bring out the textures in the clouds.

That's why I like using a non-destructive workflow as I can easily go back and check my decisions as I move on with an image.

From a color contrast point of view, I might have changed both the sky and the wall to have a blue-ish color cast (blues being opposite hues to the majority of the image's colors). Then darkened or even lightened the sky and the wall to taste.

[Lon Howard]

Sorry for being late to this thread, just now rejoining the community after a long absence. This is a minimalist interpretation of Dan's rooftops, with a number of elements removed that could be distractions to some - well I guess that means me. I'm not super fond of the "hdr look" (can't explain it but know it when I see it) so this may appear flat to some. I'm more interested in whether or not people might think this is taking the idea of cleaning up distractions a little too far. Thanks!

[DanK]

Lon,

Welcome back.

The way you have posted this makes it hard to see details, such as whatever you cloned out. Even in the lightbox, it's quite small.

Re distractions: I'll be interested to see people's comments. The only detail I found distracting and removed was an antenna sticking off the top of the back roof.

Re this:

I'm not super fond of the "hdr look" (can't explain it but know it when I see it)

I'm not certain I understand what you are referring to. There is no HDR in this shot. Actually, I virtually never use HDR because I too hate the HDR look. When I blend exposures, I generally use exposure fusion, which is an automated version of a manual blend and does not change colors. The one exception is the "merge to HDR" function in Lightroom. I've done A/B comparisons, and that has yielded results very similar to exposure fusion, so I use it on rare occasions. This is a single exposure, and I didn’t use any of those methods.

BTW, I posted a later version in another thread, toning down a few areas in response to comments from Bill. To make it easier for people to compare your version, I'll re-post the later version here.

Dan

[selig1656]

Nice improvements, love the various angles and variety of textures in this well done capture.

[Manfred M]

Dan - there are no significant distracting elements in this image, i.e. parts of the image that draw our eyes somewhere that they shouldn't go. I still feel that the roofs are "too hot".

[DanK]

Manfred,

thanks. You may be right. I have to think about this more. I deliberately made the roofs hot to draw the eye toward the center but may have gone overboard. I have a test print on the wall, so I'll stare at that a bit to decide what to do.

Dan

[Lon Howard]

Thanks, Dan. I've been out of the photography loop for some time and am relearning some concepts, so bear with me. I'll also have to re-learn how to post images - the last time I participated, a program called Tiny Pic was being used. I'll bone up on the new process. I did eliminate two additional things - the two dark vertical lines on the white building at the lower right, and also a small attachment to the top of the smaller rooftop on the left. As I said, perhaps went overboard.

I really need to study the hdr concept some more. I tried using Photomatix way back when and most outcomes looked unnatural. Aurora HDR seems to be an improvement but I always end up using it at about 15% opacity, if at all. Thank you again.

Thank you again!

[DanK]

Lon,

Thanks. Now that you point to them, I am finding the blank lines distracting.

This will be my most time-consuming salvage job ever, I suspect. I am tied up today--have to prepare an online ESL class for tomorrow, and I am teaching an online postprocessing class tonight--but tomorrow, after class, I'll probably do yet another edit of this, mulling over both your comments and Manfred's.

thanks again

Dan

PS: re HDR: with the exception of LR, the few HDR software packages I have tried all often distort colors. Sometimes they create that awful-painted-on-velvet grunge look if pushed hard; sometimes they simply screw things up, like turning a sky turquoise. The beauty of exposure fusion--or manual blending if you take the time--is that it does nothing whatever to colors. It entails simply selecting from each image areas that are well exposed. You often need to do substantial tonality adjustments afterward using an automatic procedure, as it may select "optimal" exposure where you want something lighter or darker, but at least the raw material isn't messed up. I have no idea why LR's HDR, which does use tone mapping, doesn't mess up colors, but by and large it hasn't in my experience, and its auto tonality adjustment is often a fairly good start. For exposure fusion, I use the "Lightroom Enfuse" plug-in.

[Manfred M]

Dan - a well lit test print is the only way to go here. The screen is a guide and the test print is the proof.

With the vibrant reds in the shot, I would probably look at both relative colorimetric and perceptual rendering to see which one is more effective, especially if you are going with a matte finish paper.