Dornie from Totaig Broch

[crisscross]

while slightly ill I have been rescuing some 350D 'orphans' which I couldn't get a decent pic out of at the time using DPP+PSE4, now using Aperture for conversion, raly good on levels correction, then fine tune in NX2

This is one of the sort of 'overviews' that are one of the joys of fell walking. Of course the weather is not always perfect in Scotland, but as it doesn't stop me enjoying fell-walking why should it stop one shooting?

In the unlikely event of any fellow broch lovers on CinC that is covered at http://www.pbase.com/crisscross/broch

Also in view of posting problems takled in wiki, this is direct from my own webspace and didn't take any longer to get it there than to imageshack using (mac) classic FTP

[CNelson]

That's a very nice picture and it looks like a lovely place to hike with a camera. With the changing weather you would likely have a new scene every few minutes. Thanks to your post and a dictionary I now know what a broch and a fell is. Dornie appears to be in an aesthetic location.

Chuck

[rc53]

Very pleasant scene, Chris; but a bit flat perhaps. Would a contrast boost or clarity boost not help?

[crisscross]

Very pleasant scene, Chris; but a bit flat perhaps. Would a contrast boost or clarity boost not help?

Its pretty delicate Bertie and possibly getting to the boundary of where/how you are viewing it kicks in, ie for starters are you using Safari or Firefox with 'Color Management' set to Adobe RGB? If not probably losing most of the edge as I refuse to pander down to sRGB for IE slaves.

I know the postcard companies are not going to be on the phone, unless to complain how one can cut the RH short of Eilan Donan. I think the house colours stand up pretty well considering and I would have to bin 2/3 of my collection if I didn't include the murky light stuff....then that central fell goes even more forbidding if contrast is upped.....but next time i look at it who knows?

[Daniel Salazar]

Hi Chris, nice picture. I'm at my office using a PC with a calibrated monitor (I think I'm the only accountant in the world with a "calibrated monitor" at his office).

I can see the color of the picture really nice, you can even see perfectly the yellow color on both sides of the river and some orange one.

So it seems that now you're convice about using Aperture? good for you, I really like it, however I'm still unsure if I should use PSE as an external editor or just Aperture with Nik plugins and Noise Ninja.

Cheers,
Daniel

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Chris,

I'm using Firefox (3.0.5), although not in a colour managed environment; is that why I cannot find anything to choose a colour space in the Firefox options?

Just wanted to see what difference it made to the pic.

Thanks,

[crisscross]

Hi Chris,

I'm using Firefox (3.0.5), although not in a colour managed environment; is that why I cannot find anything to choose a colour space in the Firefox options?

Just wanted to see what difference it made to the pic.

Thanks,

Tools menu> add ons
That brings up a dialoque box with 'get add-ons' button.
The colour one is called Color Management (make sure you spell it wrong); once downloaded it allows you to browse all colour profiles on your box (if a mac dead easy, don't know about a PC) Find and check Adobe 1998

Also thoroughly recommend Ad-block plus which automatically blocks the common types, but may need to identify and individually block more virulent stuff. Not a problem here than goodness & Sean

[Dave Humphries]

Thanks Chris,

OK, I successfully mis-spelt (I LOL), found and installed it.

Under options it had a Browse button which was looking for a file, I assumed it wanted an Adobe1998 picture so I downloaded yours and gave it that (cheeky I know), but the file properties seem to show 'uncalibrated'.
I did all the restart Firefox's requested.

Do I need to do something else d'ya think?

Sorry, I know windows isn't your scene, perhaps Colin can advise.

Thanks, Dave

PS, it may be my imagination but it looks better now (in the post above I mean)

[Colin Southern]

Sorry, I know windows isn't your scene, perhaps Colin can advise.

[snip]

PS, it may be my imagination but it looks better now (in the post above I mean)

Sorry Dave, I'm probably not going to be much help as I only use IE7.

In theory, colour management should only show a significant difference when you're trying to display Adobe RGB tagged images because they're the ones that need converting by the browser to sRGB to display properly (most monitors can only display the sRGB Gamut), so in a way it's helpful in that Adobe RGB images won't appear toned-down and partially desaturated, but you won't see any extra colours because only very expensive monitors like Eizo are capable of displaying them.

And as a side note, unless you're running any of this on a calibrated/profiled monitor then you're also at the mercy of whatever black and white points are currently set - which is usually the bigger culprit when images display poorly (our eyes are far more sensitive to incorrect levels / contrast / brightness issues than they are to subtle hue changes)

[rc53]

Ii've tried Safari and Firefox [on a PC]; I've colour managed Firefox, but I'm not certain if this is automatic on Safari. Anyway, it makes no difference to the pic; and as Dave says, the EXIF says that the colour space is 'uncalibrated'.

[Daniel Salazar]

May I know how are you able to check the EXIF data, I've tried everything and I really don't know PC nor Mac.

I would appretiate iit f somebody explains it to me.

Cheers,
Daniel

[rc53]

There are several free EXIF viewers available on the net -- I only know about PC ones -- for example PhotoMe
http://www.photome.de/
but this requires you to save an image -- say by dragging onto an empty area of the screen, then dragging it into PhotoMe. It does seem to give more information than Kuso
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multime...f-Viewer.shtml
Kuso works from a right click on the image.

Lots of others - try a google on Exif viewers.

There should be an option when resizing images for uploading to the web to 'strip out' the EXIF, or to minimise it -- the resulting information is very limited.

[crisscross]

Ii've tried Safari and Firefox [on a PC]; I've colour managed Firefox, but I'm not certain if this is automatic on Safari. Anyway, it makes no difference to the pic; and as Dave says, the EXIF says that the colour space is 'uncalibrated'.

Safari is automatically colour managed by default. Firefox needs 'Color Management' add-on to pick up suggest Adobe 1998 colour profile from the icc colour profiles folder.

In this case, I have been outwitted, I suspect another black mark against Aperture cos as you say this pic has come through without a colour profile. Grrrr. I have used Adobe RGB setting ever since getting a DSLR and always set it in DPP & NX2 preferences. Never occured to me that Aperture of all things would strip it off....but I had better check that it is the culprit before casting any more nasturtiums.

Daniel - just pull any image off onto the desktop and open it in graphics prog that can read EXIF. There is a Firefox add-on 'EXIF reader', but not worth the hassle.

Dave: you need the icc profile and my pic especially useless not having one!

[Daniel Salazar]

@ Robert, I've downloaded Kuso for my PC. At home for my Mac will check what they have.

[Daniel Salazar]

@ Chris, about Aperture, if you check all my pictures have a profile, the ones worked with Aperture and the ones with PSE.

I think that your problem might be:
1. that Capture NX is not aplying a profile, or
2. when you're exporting from Aperture and posting, you haven't selected the profile to be applied to the picture.

please follow the link and go to page 500:
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/...ser_Manual.pdf

If I'm not wrong, Aperture is not applying a profile per se, when using aperture, you should set your profile when viewing in your screen. That means, if you are e.g. working to export to the internet and you're planing to use a sRGB profile, then you should onscreen proof use sRGB and then when exporting choose the same proofile.

As mentioned, if you never apply a profile Aperture will never know what you want and therefore won't apply anything.

I, for example, when printing then choose the icc profile I need to print the picture and when just want to keep the picture for the computer use the screen profile.

Hope it works. Please let me know if you need help with this.

[crisscross]

@ Chris, about Aperture, if you check all my pictures have a profile, the ones worked with Aperture and the ones with PSE.

I think that your problem might be:
1. that Capture NX is not aplying a profile, or
2. when you're exporting from Aperture and posting, you haven't selected the profile to be applied to the picture.

I have looked at the .tif generated by Aperture from the CR2 on DPP, NX2 & GraphicConverter. DPP & GC pick up the Adobe 1998 profile, NX2 doesn't. NX2 also doesn't like tif generated by GC at all. I come to 2 conclusions, 1 is that tif is not as standard as it used to be

2 that for my old CR2 stuff, I get out my faithful old G4 PowerBook, where despite OS10.4 (yuk) DPP conversion works and I can print onto my old favourite paper Ilford Classic Pearl . But with absolutely no changes to settings, the MacBook + OS10.5 just doesn't produce as fully saturated a result.(no joy there on Apple discussions).

So much for standardisation and progress in IT

[Dave Humphries]

Colin,
I am fairly confident about my uncalibrated screen's white and black points being OK; it is a laptop LCD (so not ideal), but as long as I keep my eyes exactly perpendicular, I know I can see all the levels (just) around the top 255 and bottom 0. There's a check strip somewhere in the tutorials here I have used to satisfy myself. I know that if I slouch it black crushes and conversely, if I sit up too much, it lifts the blacks.

I was only imagining a bit more saturation, I wasn't expecting colors I have never seen before

Chris,
So it looks like what I pointed the FF add-in at won't work!

Daniel,
I don't have an EXIF viewer plugin either, I basically just use windows, if I have the file in a folder, I don't even have to open it in an image programme to view the EXIF data; just right click and view the Advanced or Details tab in the file's Properties dialog, obtained by right clicking in a folder view (as per the Colin/Phillip instructions for posting images elsewhere). I suppose I might give one a whirl as I know where to look thanks to rc53

Regards to all,

[crisscross]

Chris,
So it looks like what I pointed the FF add-in at won't work!

This one got away, but at least it alerted me to the problem - keep that add-on working and maybe try one or two other settings, even sRGB, and see what you get.

Daniel: I have tried editing the settings for export as suggested, but they make no difference.

[Lincs1]

Safari or Firefox?

Looks good on Safari, with just enough contrast to make such a lovely scene work, alas on firefox the whole thing looks bland with very muted colours.

like the island pulling you into the frame, followed through to the light in the water and onto the bridge.

Lincs1

[crisscross]

Safari or Firefox?

Looks good on Safari, with just enough contrast to make such a lovely scene work, alas on firefox the whole thing looks bland with very muted colours.

like the island pulling you into the frame, followed through to the light in the water and onto the bridge.

Lincs1

I have a slightly more lively version having used DxO as converter instead of Aperture; not checked whether colour profile has survived that. NB for Firefox you need Color Management add-on too. Will post a few more things this afternoon I hope.