Backlit Itoh peony

[DanK]

Minus the tick I posted earlier. This is a stack of 20 images. I used Zerene PMax because the DMap (depth map) algorithm I normally use for flowers couldn't handle the depth of the flower and the distance between parts well. C&C welcome of course.

[Manfred M]

Lovely image Dan. In my view, backlighting is often what makes flower images really stand out from the pack, like this one does. Lovely translucence and interesting shadows are shown here.

[Round Tuit]

This is absolutely lovely Dan.
Back lighting is my go to method when I shoot flowers inside. Did you add fill light or dodged to bring out the centre of the flower?

[DanK]

Andre,

I had a second light shining into a reflecting umbrella slightly to the front of the flower so that the reflection pointed toward the flower. That gave some light in the front, but not much deep into the center. I did still have to dodge the center and burn the outer petals. I'll paste the edits below. They are a bit haphazard (I normally would have had the high-pass filter at the very end), as this was just a first try with this image. The ACR filter is a fair dose of texture and a bit of vibrance.

Dan

[Round Tuit]

Andre,

I had a second light shining into a reflecting umbrella slightly to the front of the flower so that the reflection pointed toward the flower. That gave some light in the front, but not much deep into the center. I did still have to dodge the center and burn the outer petals. I'll paste the edits below. They are a bit haphazard (I normally would have had the high-pass filter at the very end), as this was just a first try with this image. The ACR filter is a fair dose of texture and a bit of vibrance.

Dan

Thank you Dan. This is very useful.
I haven't used fill light before on backlit flower for fear of loosing the translucent quality of the light. I will definitely give it a try on my next attempt.
Our workflows are similar. I usually combine global contrast and overall brightness in one curve layer at the beginning followed by cleanup, global texture/clarity/sharpening and then on to localized sharpening, dodge and burn as needed. I usually print directly from lightroom so I don't normally use an output sharpening layer.

[DanK]

Our workflows do sound very similar. One difference may be that I have greatly cut back on my use of clarity. I still use it, but less often, and when I do use it, I use much lower settings than I used to. The reason is that it mixes local contrast and midtone contrast, and the effects can be too heavy-handed. I've found that that the relatively new texture slider, which works on higher-fequency details and apparently doesn't fuss with mid-tone contrast, has much more subtle effects, even when the slider is taken to very high values. So my current approach most often is to add texture to taste and sometimes a very small amount of clarity in a smart object, in case later edits suggest reducing them.

Adding local contrast with unsharp mask in photoshop also avoids mixing in midtone contrast, and I often use that method. In theory, one can adjust the frequencies affected with the radius setting, but I haven't yet played systematically with varying the radius setting.

I also print from Lightroom, even when (as in this case) I have done my editing in Photoshop. I have consistently gotten very good results from LR, and the LR print workflow is simpler and provides lots of time-savers, in particular, templates. Given that you print from LR, you probably know all this, but for those who don't:

I have a set of templates for the papers I use most, varying in paper size and margins (larger margins if I'm going to sign). This is a huge time-saver (and mistake-saver). If I pick, for example, "Canson Baryta 17 x 22 signature", this sets everything in both the LR print panel and in the printer's firmware (via the OS print dialog). I then just run through both of those quickly as a check, change anything if I want to, and I'm good to go. These templates can be used as the basis for new ones--I can pick that one, for example, make only the relevant changes to print on Breathing Color River Stone Rag, and tell LR to save a new template.

[CatherineA]

I’m really glad that you posted workflow. I’m just starting to find my way around editing and photoshop and I wondered what you did as a levels adjustment. Maybe it is obvious what you would use it for here but I’m missing it. Thanks!

[xpatUSA]

Our workflows do sound very similar. One difference may be that I have greatly cut back on my use of clarity. I still use it, but less often, and when I do use it, I use much lower settings than I used to. The reason is that it mixes local contrast and midtone contrast, and the effects can be too heavy-handed. I've found that that the relatively new texture slider, which works on higher-fequency details and apparently doesn't fuss with mid-tone contrast, has much more subtle effects, even when the slider is taken to very high values. So my current approach most often is to add texture to taste and sometimes a very small amount of clarity in a smart object, in case later edits suggest reducing them.

Adding local contrast with unsharp mask in photoshop also avoids mixing in midtone contrast, and I often use that method. In theory, one can adjust the frequencies affected with the radius setting, but I haven't yet played systematically with varying the radius setting.

Reading the above especially about contrast, I was reminded of a technique that I've used for enhancing clouds and wondered what it might do to the posted image. The technique is called Contrast-Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE). It is a highly advanced version of the familiar technique of "stretching" a histogram - often in Levels - in order to increase the global contrast of an image.

Dumbing it down, CLAHE splits an image into a number of tiles and increases contrast locally based on each tile content rather than the whole image. The increase in contrast is limited to a given slope - which relates to the familiar technique of applying an 'S' curve in Curves such that the slope and therefore the contrast is increased in the middle of the curve (mid-tones).

While realizing that the below does not necessarily represent Dan's intent for the image, I found it interesting enough to post some results:



Original is at top left The captions in others show the settings: tile size, no of histogram bins, contrast slope limit. More here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adapti...m_equalization

Much deeper:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8269243

I doubt that Adobe products include CLAHE per se but it is available as add-ons to the GIMP or to ImageJ (Fiji).

https://imagej.net/Enhance_Local_Contrast_(CLAHE)

It also comes with ImageMagick.

https://imagemagick.org/script/clahe.php

Posted out of interest; not suggesting that Dan should have used it ...

[mugge]

Beautifully done, Dan

[DanK]

Thanks, all.

[Wavelength]

Superb image!!!