An Australian Garden

[mugge]

We went to a large garden in Melbourne that had only Australian plants. I love the earthy colours. C&C most welcome

An Australian Garden by Ole Hansen, on Flickr

[Chataignier]

Amazing colours - perhaps a wee bit oversaturated, but I was not there to see the original.

[mugge]

Amazing colours - perhaps a wee bit oversaturated, but I was not there to see the original.

Yes the colours are very strong. You travel the Aus outback and you will find very strong orange and yellow colours.

[lovelife65]

Beautiful... It does seem over saturated at first look, as David suggests, but as you say Ole, it's just reality

[Wavelength]

Brilliant colors, sometimes Nature is like that - super saturated in colors...

[Manfred M]

Ole - it would be interesting to see the original image. I'm of the same mind as the others, this shot seems to have many of the hallmarks of having been pushed too hard. The colours seem oversaturated. The mulched areas of the foreground seem far darker than one would expect in the more orange coloured middle and background. The whole image seems over-sharpened.

Something strange is going on here. The hard shadows we see here would have me looking for a different and more burned out colour palette than you show here.

[mugge]

Original by Ole Hansen, on Flickr

[Manfred M]

Thanks for posting the original. Now I can see what happened in your edit, when I look at the histogram in ACR.






This is a high dynamic range image; there is a bit of clipping on the shadows and a bit of clipping in the highlights but with virtually no mid-tones. If you brighten this image in a normal RGB colour space, you get an increase in saturation as well. If you either edit this in the L*a* b* colour space or increase just the luminosity (something that can be done in Photoshop using a Luminosity adjustment layer), the saturation stays unchanged.

This is what the image looks like when I increase the Luminosity only. Not a great image, but it does demonstrate how much additional saturation increase one gets by pushing up all three colour channels. A "good" image lies in between these extremes.

[xpatUSA]

If you brighten this image in a normal RGB colour space, you get an increase in saturation as well.

Sorry, but I think the opposite occurs, Manfred. At least in HSV/HSB.

[Manfred M]

Sorry, but I think the opposite occurs, Manfred. At least in HSV/HSB.

You are right Ted. Lightening an RGB image should decrease the saturation as well, whereas darkening it will decrease the saturation.

I suspect what has happened here is very much like a trick we used to do in film photography. People would overexpose film by 1/3 stop by setting the ISO on the meter to 80 ISO for a 100 ISO film and then on printing the print would be a touch more saturated. A similar effect would happen with reversal films. There was no way to change contrast or saturation of dye-coupled colour papers.

I suspect that opening up the mid-tones must be where we are pushing those saturated values as the initial SOOC doesn't have particularly saturated colours. The only time I have seen colours like in Ole's image was from the iron oxide in the sand dunes in Namibia at sunrise and sunset, when the colour of the light was high in reds and yellows. I don't see that effect here, given the lighting conditions.

[xpatUSA]

Originally Posted by xpatUSA Sorry, but I think the opposite occurs, Manfred. At least in HSV/HSB.

You are right Ted. Lightening an RGB image should decrease the saturation as well, whereas darkening it will [increase] the saturation.

Indeed, for example at pixel location x,y = 1064,628 in Ole's #7, brightening (only) from RGB 70,36,24 to 100,71,61 does lower the HSV saturation from 65.7% to 38.7% according to the GIMP color picker. Don't know what it does in ACR ...

This simple tool is quite good for playing with:

https://pinetools.com/lighten-color

Put in a mid-tone earth color, play with the slider and watch the numbers change ...

[pschlute]

I like the bold colours. Would look great printed up large.

A question about using a luminosity adjustment layer in PS. Is it simply a case of using a normal "levels" or "brightness/contrast" or "curves" layer and changing the blend mode to Luminosity ?

[Manfred M]

I like the bold colours. Would look great printed up large.

A question about using a luminosity adjustment layer in PS. Is it simply a case of using a normal "levels" or "brightness/contrast" or "curves" layer and changing the blend mode to Luminosity ?

Yes, Luminosity blending mode ensures only luminosity is affected. I use curves in all my work.

[DanK]

I think I see what happened here.

First, I just lightened the image by pulling up midtones with a levels adjustment, using normal (RGB) blending. The image is if anything less saturated:




Next, I applied a curve to increase contrast, again using a normal blend. This increases saturation. Here's the result:



I'd probably mix normal and luminosity curve adjustments to avoid this degree of saturation.

[xpatUSA]

I withdraw my posts #9 and #11. If we were actually talking about luminosity masking along with levels and/or curves, my statements were not really applicable and could be confusing for Ole.

[mugge]

Thank you for all the replies. I wanted to know what people thought of the image. I was fully aware of what I was doing (and what I was not doing). In the end I achieved what I was looking for.

The red center in Australia is indeed red and when the light is right extremely so. That is what I wanted. By including the sky in the original image was not a good idea at all.

[FootLoose]

Thank you for all the replies. I wanted to know what people thought of the image. I was fully aware of what I was doing (and what I was not doing). In the end I achieved what I was looking for.

The red center in Australia is indeed red and when the light is right extremely so. That is what I wanted. By including the sky in the original image was not a good idea at all.

I think you did a pretty good job, Ole, the colours look completely natural to me.