A Recent Trip

[Jim B.]

Some photos from my trip to Nevada and New Mexico.All were taken midday.Not the best lighting,but I had no other choice.
First, a set from Redrock Canyon Nevada a 1/2 hour from Las Vegas.







Next,the high desert on the Turquoise Trail in New Mexico.Approximately 8,000 feet above sea level.





The Devil's Throne,Cerillos NM


Regards,
Jim

[Colin Southern]

Hi Jim,

If these were shot RAW they'd be excellent candidates for processing in LAB colour.

[Jim B.]

Hi Colin,

All were shot in RAW.For LAB processing I would need Photoshop,correct?
Regards,
Jim

[Colin Southern]

Hi Colin,

All were shot in RAW.For LAB processing I would need Photoshop,correct?
Regards,
Jim

Hi Jim,

Photoshop has LAB - not sure about the others. If you'd like to flick me a copy of the last one in RAW I'll have a crack at it for you if your interested?

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Jim,

Oh please send Colin one, I'm intrigued to see what LAB proc. will "bring to the party", so to speak.

I could spend all day somewhere like that, I'd probably concentrate on detail/close ups though.
That said, you do need shots like this for context, there are a couple where something recognisable for scale would be useful, but I appreciate you didn't have the time to do the place to your normal standard. Why do I get the feeling the more I say the worse it sounds (and that's not my intention at all). I hope you get what I'm trying to say.

I wondered whether in #2 there is a vertical orientation crop that makes more of the middle distance rockface?

Anyway; a good series to show us what the places are like and whet our apetites, well done,

[Colin Southern]

Hi Jim,

Oh please send Colin one, I'm intrigued to see what LAB proc. will "bring to the party", so to speak.

Because the luminance is seperate from the colour pairs, LAB can be used to drive subtle colours apart without affecting luminance (which happens in RGB mode when the likes od a HSB layer is used).

It works well (IMO "Best") on images with subtle and subdued colour variations like parts of some of these images, but at the end of the day it's only ever going to maximise what's already there; it isn't going to suddenly make each and every image a candidate for the front cover of National Geographic.

Would be a fun exercise though

[crisscross]

Hi Jim

I wasn't going to comment on this group early on, partly jealous of such spectacular scenery.

However I would also like to have a play with 'clouds' RAW; even the posted reduction does seem to have scope for bringing back more local contrast on the mountain range despite the overhead sun not giving much obvious shading/3D. My play would be converting in DxO and just possibly titivating in NX2

Email in PM

[Jim B.]

Hi All,

I would love to have someone with some PP skills work some of the images.I'm still climbing the learning curve.The problem,my email restricts file size and Photobucket won't allow me to upload RAW files.Any suggestions?
Dave,I get your drift Both trips for photos were rushed.I would have liked to have had more time,especially in New Mexico.Vegas was a business/pleasure trip and New Mexico I had family obligations.My next trip out will be photography based.Hopefully by then my skills at landscapes will have improved.
Regards,
Jim

[Colin Southern]

Hi All,

I would love to have someone with some PP skills work some of the images.I'm still climbing the learning curve.The problem,my email restricts file size and Photobucket won't allow me to upload RAW files.Any suggestions?

That's an easy one to get around

Pop on to www.sendthisfile.com and create a free account. What happens then is you upload your file to their website - they send the recipient a link - recipient clicks link to download image. NO size restrictions (I've transferred 300MB+ files without problem).

There are a few restrictions on the free accounts, but luckily none that really make any difference for this kind of exercise. A slight variation that works a little better is to put your own eMail address in as the destination address, and then just copy the link it sends you into a PM for up to 3 people here (max of 3 downloads on free accounts).

[Wirefox]

I love the skies at that altitude. I was blown away by the colour of the sky at 10,000ft in the Sierra Nevada however, shooting in anything but the golden hours produced a harshness coupled with the misty blue mountain effect that we rarely seen to get in UK....to low probably. I agree that some processing may allow you to soften these images. I agree with Dave in that I gave up shooting in broad daylight except for the close-up shots.

[crisscross]

Thank you Colin for supplying the missing link and Jim for letting me play

My take on no4 which was my favourite; I must admit that when you wern't there you don't know what you are trying to achieve and this may be over-saturated or introducing wrong colours and not easy to tweak without introducing a lot of noise; anyway here tis

[Jim B.]

Chris,

I like! Your edit gave the mountains more detail.Colours are good.The rose tint you see in the lower mesas in front of the mountains is correct.Thanks for taking the time.
Regards,
Jim

[Colin Southern]

Thank you Colin for supplying the missing link and Jim for letting me play.

No worries Chris. It's a great service that they provide; to be honest, I feel a bit guilty using them - but I guess that they must be happy with the "rules of engagement" (I don't use them enough to justify purchasing a subscription).

[Colin Southern]

Hi Jim,

Here's my quick attempt using LAB colour. As always, difficult to know how you would have interpreted it, but what I've tried to do is bring out the subtle colour variation in the rock face whilst trying to improve the contrast of the clouds. The nice thing about LAB colour is that it's possible to bring out the colour variations by steepening the curves in the Green/Magenta axis which leaves the Blue/Yellow axis along (ie doesn't touch the sky, which I darkened a little another way).

The harshness of the light made it difficult to sharpen, but LAB helps with that too in that you can sharpen more agressively by only attacking the luminance channel.

I hope it looks OK here - down-sizing will no-doubt hit high-frequency parts quite hard - I'm currently uploading the full res 16 bit *.tiff for you which I'll send a link to if your interested.

[joec]

Ok, fellas, I give up. I guess I'll have to ask. What is LAB?

Thanks,
Joe

[Colin Southern]

Ok, fellas, I give up. I guess I'll have to ask. What is LAB?

Thanks,
Joe

Hi Joe,

To be more exact it should be written as C.I.E.L.A.B. ("LAB" or "L*A*B" for short). It's a very large colourspace - and in fact one that Photoshop uses to internally represent images whilst we're working on them.

What makes it unique to work with is that Luminance ("L") is manipulated seperately from the colour infomation (the "AB" Channels) (The "A" Channel is the Magenta / Green Axis, and the "B" Channel is the Blue / Yellow Axis).

It's quite interesting to note that our eyes see colour in RGB, but our brain processes them in LAB.

As a working colourspace it's quite controversial - many seem to either love it or hate it. It's very powerful (understatement) but takes a bit of getting ones head around, and has more scope than any other space for stuffing things up in record time if not used carefully!

Personally, I like using it - I find it easier than RGB for many images where subtle colour enhancement is required.

For the brave ...

Does this help?

[crisscross]

Here's my quick attempt using LAB colour. As always, difficult to know how you would have interpreted it, but what I've tried to do is bring out the subtle colour variation in the rock face whilst trying to improve the contrast of the clouds.
The harshness of the light made it difficult to sharpen, but LAB helps with that too in that you can sharpen more agressively by only attacking the luminance channel.

I am getting really curious now. The cloud contrast is certainly increased/improved as is the rock colour in the lower shaded portion. But this is at the expense of loss of saturation everywhere else.

Likewise the sharpening is more effective (that jet trail has appeared from nowhere!) without being as obvious.

Having looked at the 'for the brave' website, (maybe re-name for proper scientists/mathematicians) I wonder if we could class CieLab as 'nearly unique'? I think it is partly doing what NX2 is doing in 'LCH' (=Luminence/Chroma/Hue) except that the latter is designed so that you CAN see what you are doing through (a) ideograms of each variable (b) instant toggle on each panel for before and after. The 'Master Lightness' allows curve type manipulation across all colours, 'Colour Lightness' for pipetted+user defined ranges and 'Hue' overall or user defined change on Red>Green axis. 'Chroma' is saturation o/a or u/d and more powerful than quick fix saturation. Change of hue on other axes (in NX2) can be done better in Colour Temp (on RAW) for Blue-Yellow and I often pair LCH on a selection with 'Colour balance' which also has Magenta-Green & Cyan-Red sliders

[Dave Humphries]

Chris,

I haven't read the link and I'm not familiar (yet) with NX2, but I'd say the difference between these two systems is what the 3 figures represent, but I do have a background in TV image colours.

L and Luminance are going to be effectively the same in both systems.
However, the colour will be described differently.

Think of a map where X marks the spot of buried treasure, or in our case, the desired colour.
Hue and Saturation is giving directions from a know starting/zero point and facing a known direction and it says, turn right so many (Hue) degrees and walk so many (Saturation/Chroma) steps.
Whereas the A and B are more like map co-ordinates.
Both methods should get you to X, but converting between them is a PITA.

Clear as mud?

No doubt that analogy isn't 100% applicable, but I think it conveys the basic difference.

Cheers,

(Dave now waits to be shot down in flames/educated in the error of his thinking)

[Jim B.]

Colin,

Thanks for working on the image.Definitely looks much better than my attempt.My version looks way over sharpened and the sky color is off.
Chris,the reason the contrail is visible in Colin's edit is that I cloned it out in my version
Regards,
Jim

[crisscross]

PITA Dave??

I quite like jetstreams Jim!!