What, no textures?

[mythlady]

Nope -- just Color EFEX. This is a little Tequila Sunrise rose from my garden (and I do mean little -- the whole plant is not much more than 6"), for those who are still digging out from under snow (is there anyone left?). Is the blurry vignette too much?

[MiniChris]

The whole image looks a little overcooked to me...and that shadow to the left really pulls the eyes away from the flower.

[mythlady]

Well, here it is pretty much straight out of the camera -- minus the shadow. The flower is very bright. I toned down the exposure a bit.

[ilovelucydog]

Yes, Elise, there are those of us that still have snow... lots of it and a another 10-12 inches or so coming tonight. Enjoy your flowers for all of us.

[tameigh]

The snowbells in my yard haven't even bloomed, and here it is almost April, so yes, Elise, keep rubbing it in. I just hope that summer falls on a weekend this year.

[Katy Noelle]

I think that this is better, Elise. Last night, I had had the very same thoughts as Chris. Removing the shadow and toning it down helped. Maybe, someone else has some insights beyond those. It's a lovely photo! Also, it does seem hard to get such a vibrant color as this and not lose the detail or blow the color. The rose is beautiful but, also, the gray of the wall and the shade of green in the bokeh-y leaves all adds up in a nice way.

[ScoutR]

I like the rework better too Elise. I'm thinking this looks like a good canidate for a texture. If that is in the plans, I'd love to see the progression.

Wendy

[Steve S]

Elise....................WB,WB,WB!!!!! The red channel is severely clipped. A neutral WB is very important to get all the detail you can in flowers.

[mythlady]

Steve, please explain in words small enough for me to understand -- white balance is something I am sadly deficient in, I am sorry to admit. Here's the histogram for the red channel:



I see that it's clipped a little on the right, but severely clipped? Am I looking at the wrong thing? The blue channel is much more clipped on the left. Please help me understand this better, seriously.

[tameigh]

I don't see it either. The leaves and stems of a rose often have a reddish tint. The above looks perfectly natural to me.

[Steve S]

Steve, please explain in words small enough for me to understand -- white balance is something I am sadly deficient in, I am sorry to admit. Here's the histogram for the red channel:



I see that it's clipped a little on the right, but severely clipped? Am I looking at the wrong thing? The blue channel is much more clipped on the left. Please help me understand this better, seriously.

When the right side of the histogram is even, your WB is neutral. The red is to the right and the green and blue are to the left. This image has a strong reddish cast because of it, which is muddying your yellows and warming the image .

I find that i get the best color and detail when all the histograms are even on the right (neutral). This allows me to push the exposure on all three channels without clipping one)to get the most contrast and detail. You can always tweek it later in post, but you can never bring back lost detail.

[mythlady]

When you say "even," do you mean the same in all three channels? I'm not sure what you mean (I don't mean to be dense). How do I make it "even"? When I hit "auto" white balance in Lightroom, it changed the colors to be very blue, and the colors were very far off from the actual, in life colors. ??

I really have not used channels much to this point, so any help you can give me in this area is most welcome. If I go into the channels in PS and adjust the red, it very quickly becomes green and unnatural. The original picture, to my eye, is the most correct in terms of what I actually saw. Help, please!

[Steve S]

Can you see the red cast now.......................






I clipped the right side of the green and blue channels about the same amount as the red. Now look at your yellows.

[Steve S]

When you say "even," do you mean the same in all three channels? I'm not sure what you mean (I don't mean to be dense). How do I make it "even"? When I hit "auto" white balance in Lightroom, it changed the colors to be very blue, and the colors were very far off from the actual, in life colors. ??

I really have not used channels much to this point, so any help you can give me in this area is most welcome. If I go into the channels in PS and adjust the red, it very quickly becomes green and unnatural. The original picture, to my eye, is the most correct in terms of what I actually saw. Help, please!

What i'm saying is when you see your histograms are not very close to even on the right side, switch to custom white balance and get things right "in camera" and you will have much better results.

[mythlady]

How do I go about adjusting the channels? We have reached the limits of my PS knowledge, here. Please give me a step-by-step.

Also, if I put your bottom edit next to my edit in post #3, I don't see a whole lot of difference -- ?

[Steve S]

How do I go about adjusting the channels? We have reached the limits of my PS knowledge, here. Please give me a step-by-step.

Also, if I put your bottom edit next to my edit in post #3, I don't see a whole lot of difference -- ?

The bottom one "is" the image in post "3. The top one i tried to correct, but because some of the info is lost , it doesn't look too good. As you can see the reds , greens, and yellows look more accurate.


All i did to correct was adjust the levels for each individual channel.(R G B ) Set your blend mode to normal and just adjust the left and right sliders to touch the edge of the histogram. Then go to RGB channel and adjust the midrange where you want it. This will give you a neutral WB, but if some of the channels are clipped , the colors won't look right, just like this image.

[mythlady]

Okay, I think the light is starting to dawn. Sorry to be dense.

In the one you edited, in fact, they don't look more accurate -- at least the leaves don't. The leaves on the plant are not actually green at this moment -- they are the color of #3.

Maybe this will all be in my next Photoshop class. It's embarrassing to me, because I've just tried to teach myself these things, and there are huge gaps in my knowledge.

[tameigh]

I agree with mythlady. There is not a "red cast," at least not an obvious one. That is the color of rose leaves and stems most of the time. Since she said it was "right out of the camera," I will not worry about the rest of it except to say that the reddish leaves were one of the nicer elements of the photo.

Elise,
If you do want to get the most accurate color, you can use a grey card, combined with ACR or Lightroom. I am sure you will get to that in your photoshop class, but a quick google will get you there and they are easy to use, and WB is an important concept. Jiro has done a couple of WB edits that were very subtle, but amazing in how they improved a photo.

[Wirefox]

Elise

This is confusing me also. I dont know whether this helps to illustrate what Steve is talking about. Note the position of the white (righthand) sliders on the green and blue channels to get the image below. You can see much better by isolating the blue and green channels that the red is pretty well clipped. There is a red cast but I believe that the predominance of the orange in the main subject is confusing the eye into ignoring the cast in the rest of the image. Now whether this is how you saw it or evenwant it is a different matter. Personally I think I may of gone a little far but I am trying to illustrate the clipping

[mythlady]

Thanks, Steve -- that's helpful. But I've understood "clipping" to mean that the histogram is really pushed up against the right or left side -- in the red channel, I see that there's a little bit touching the side, but not a lot. I do see that the red histogram looks different, with much more of it over to the right than the blue or green. Is that what's representing what you and Steve are saying is a color cast? And is that reflected in the fact that the blue and green histos are similar, but the red one is different?

[This is great -- it's turning into a channels masterclass . . . ]