Bridge at Lovkin

[Polar01]

Out for a drive, first time in a while that we had sunshine, blue sky, and some fluffy clouds, instead of that dull covercast. This is a old bridge over the Canadian National line east of Newcastle (Ontario), just just closed to to thru traffic. It sure looked good in that sun blue sky and a little cloud to add a little something. Took a number of shots, however, nothing was giving me what I needed. Looking at them later I decided to run them through a HRD program to see what would result, just a little touch and it also looks good in B&W, try it and you will see. Anything that could improve, give me a shout.

[Tygart]

Cool photo, it might look good in sepia, it looks kind of old west.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Allan,

Ideally I'd like to see a little more of the structure, but I suspect you may have been limited either by lens angle of view, or had to crop to remove unwanted distracting things creeping into the composition.

However, the most obvious problem is that after the HDR process, you needed to reset the black point, currently it is 16, which is way too high and that's giving the 'washed out' look to the shadow areas under the timbers. Sure, I know the HDR has recovered those and that was the point, but this doesn't look natural to me.

Here's a histogram, which I feel should always be used (in the PP program you use) to check for odd problems like this before final output, e.g. the large flat gap on left hand side.



I like the idea though and would have taken the same shot myself.

Hope that helps,

[Polar01]

Thanks for the comments, yes to the left just and just out of the frame was a real witch of a tree, and to the right pan any more I was getting sun problems. The resetting of the black point is an excellent suggestion, however, I have only started using CS5 mid September of this year, have no idea of where you went to get the screen shot informantion or how to do what you suggest. If you could make some suggestions it would be very helpful, kind of tired of learning all the time by making mistakes, a push in the right direction would be nice for a change. Thanks

[Dave Humphries]

Thanks for the comments, yes to the left just and just out of the frame was a real witch of a tree, and to the right pan any more I was getting sun problems. The resetting of the black point is an excellent suggestion, however, I have only started using CS5 mid September of this year, have no idea of where you went to get the screen shot informantion or how to do what you suggest. If you could make some suggestions it would be very helpful, kind of tired of learning all the time by making mistakes, a push in the right direction would be nice for a change. Thanks

Hi Allan,

The screen shot is actually a "Add-on" in Firefox (the web browser), it is "Histogram Viewer 2.0.4".

I'm certainly no expert on CS5 myself, but I'll pass on what I know and others maybe able to improve upon it.

With the image open in CS5, if you click on menu Window > Histogram, that will give you the histogram view; explore its options while it's there.

To open the Levels dialog, the quickest way is keyboard Ctrl + L, or through menu bar Image > Adjustments > Levels.
Then you click and drag the little triangles below the graph.
The left hand one in the upper "Input Levels" section is what you want to use here drag it to the right slowly.
You can toggle the effect on image on and off by repeatedly checking and unchecking the "Preview" tickbox.
Have a play with all 5 of them, observing effect on both picture and histogram, then cancel out to restore normality.
Then go back in and set it properly and OK it.

One handy tip for Adobe products (Elements, Photoshop and most probably Lightroom too), if you click in one of the numeric entry boxes, you can type in a number, but while figures are highlighted, you can increase or decrease the values with up and down arrow keys one step at a time, or by 10 steps at a time; if you hold down the Shift key when using up and down arrows.

Cheers,

[Polar01]

Thank-you very much for getting back to so soon, I thought that maybe the Histogram in CS5 had a feature I was not aware of. A problem with your add-on is there is no corresponding number in CS5, because in levels black on that shot is at 29, could move back to 20, making the overall photo darker, I would not want to go lower, as the human eye lower than 20 can not see the difference between 20 and 0 (I read that somewhere). I found that if I went lower, I started to get a lot of lost of details as it was just too dark. Thanks again for the information.

[Dave Humphries]

I would not want to go lower, as the human eye lower than 20 can not see the difference between 20 and 0 (I read that somewhere). I found that if I went lower, I started to get a lot of lost of details as it was just too dark.

Never heard that one before, I would say that is bad advice, or at least, not applicable here.

It all depends how the viewer's monitor is set up - you should, in good viewing conditions, be able to differentiate each step almost down to zero.

If you can't, your monitor is probably set wrong, and/or you are viewing it in too much ambient light (e.g. with a window or lamp behind you shining on screen, or behind the monitor and shining in your eyes.

Have a look at this tutorial; Monitor Calibration, a little way down the page is a double block of gray scale shades with Shadow Detail and Highlight Detail sections on left and right. Can you see each (equal sized) step down to black on left? I can, although I'll admit to having to peer over the flare of my glasses to separate the first two on left. However, I'm not sure what levels they are, but it says I should be able to differentiate and I can.

There's possibly a better test here; Dry Creek Photo and with this I can see from 5 upwards.

Cheers,