Iceicles in Glenfarg

[Donald]

Does this work?
C & C welcomed. Any thoughts you have will be appreciated. I'm trying to get this B & W thing (consistently) right.



40D, 17-85 f4-5.6 IS USM Kit @85mm. ISO 100. 1/100@f11. Manual. Spot Metering.
Platinum/Palladium 01 tone painted onto stonework of the house

[Sahil]

Even I wish to know, what points are to be taken into consideration when an image is converted into a black & white. The one above looks great to me.

[Shadowman]

Donald,

Does your camera have a highlights feature or histogram which would indicate areas of overexposure? I've taken photos under similar lighting conditions and there are always areas that appear washed out. I like the photograph for what it is, but the title would suggest that the icicles are your point of interest and I would do a closeup of the frozen water.

[Steve S]

Hi donald. I have yet to find a good way for b&w with gimp. It looks good, but with that amount of light, the shadow detail looks too dark to me. Maybe a layer mask and a levels adjustment will work.

[arith]

Looks great to me; maybe a tad too dark in shadows. I always thought B+W was different to colour and had to be converted first, then processed. Which you probably do.

But it is a really good photo and I like it.

[Wirefox]

Thats it you are making me green now!! Beautiful image in your very distinct style. I am going to fly in the face of opinion here and say forget the over/under exposed discussion. That is what gives the image guts and individualism. I love it. I can take or leave a perfectly exposed cottage scene but this is difficult to walk past. Well done!

I have yet to find a good way for b&w with gimp

Steve, do the conversion in the UF Raw converter not in GIMP itself. I gives the standard conversion options but also allows you to mix channels. You will be surprised at the results. You still need to tinker with contrast, curves and USM once in GIMP.

Steve

[Steve S]

Thats it you are making me green now!! Beautiful image in your very distinct style. I am going to fly in the face of opinion here and say forget the over/under exposed discussion. That is what gives the image guts and individualism. I love it. I can take or leave a perfectly exposed cottage scene but this is difficult to walk past. Well done!



Steve, do the conversion in the UF Raw converter not in GIMP itself. I gives the standard conversion options but also allows you to mix channels. You will be surprised at the results. You still need to tinker with contrast, curves and USM once in GIMP.

Steve

How are you mixing channels in UFRaw?

[Jim B.]

Beautifully done.Another vote to leave it "as is".

[Donald]

Thank you for your constructive and complimentary comments.

In response to the questions/points, I offer the following;

Notwithstanding Steve's appropriate advice re conversion in UF RAW, I in fact converted this in GIMP. Note of the workflow appended below.

Shadowman -

Does your camera have a highlights feature or histogram ...

Yes, I use the histogram exclusively to check as I shoot. The only reason I use the small image on the LCD screen alongside the histogram is to check where any 'blinkies' that may be there, are in the image.

Processed in Canon's DPP - very little done at that stage.

Re the steps taken (NB - All figures/info refer to the GIMP. Photoshoppers and others need to translate):

1 Capture Sharpening - 0.02 ; 2.2 ; 0
2 Levels - Multiple 'S' curve; i.e. lots of little ones all the way along the line (can't remember where I got this hint, but it was via this site)
3 Local Contrast Enhancement - 1.00 ; 0.05 ; 0
4 B & W Conversion - Channel Mixer: R=5 ; G=85 ; B = 10
5 c2g GEGL operation (GIMP tool) - Radius=1002 ; Samples=25 ; Iterations=10. Layer mask in place - 100% (white) brush on the snow, 40% (50% grey) brush on the wall at the left hand side of the house, just to get a bit of detail (original had no detail)
6 Clone - Shadow area at right hand side of house. There was a small shed behind the house which created a significant imbalance in the image. Wouldn't normally do such a large clone, but felt it was worth it in this case.
7 Platinum/Palladium Tone applied (obtained from http://gimpguru.org/Tutorials/SampleToning/). Layer mask in place - Tone applied (45 opacity) to stonework of house to warm it up/give it more 'depth' and richness. Wanted to keep the snow white; i.e. not given a cast by the tone, hence the mask.
8 Content Sharpen - 0.01 ; 0.8 ; 0
9 Re-sized a copy and output sharpened.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Donald,

My analysis goes thus:

Nice composition

I have to say when I very first saw it, I didn't think it was quite vertical, but it absolutely is, so it must be an optical illusion, probably caused by the rising white edge towards the right rear of shot

I think the exposure is fine, there is detail in the dark areas, maybe there is just a tad of black (and white) clipping; but nothing I'd worry about (I've done far worse).

It might be just a tad oversharpened, or maybe I'm just getting too close to the screen .
At 1024 pixels and 1:1, you can see square pixel edges to the icicles. This may warrant less down sizing, say make it 1500 across to reduce there 'blockiness'.

It is definitely a "Donald" signature shot.

Well done, I like it as it is when I view it at a sensible distance

[PopsPhotos]

This is one of those where I get torn and twisted, b'twixt and between.

The human eye doesn't see as does the camera, whether film or digital. When we look at a scene with high contrast, our eyes (brain) can adapt and adjust to the different light levels and see into the darker areas when we focus on them. However, when we focus on the scene as a whole, the detail in the darker areas will not show up in our consciousness and appear much as it will show on the phtograph.

Thus, the question comes up: Should the photograph be processed to show the detail, as if we were concentrating on the dark areas or left to appear as if we were viewing the scene as a whole? (insert large dither emoticon here.)

I don't know if this makes much sense, but it is something I have dithered over since the late 40s. I learned photography in a very bright, contrasty environment, the American Southwest deserts. This kind of decision is common there. Dodge and burn to bring out every detail? Or, leave it as a general scene, to be observed as a whole?

The final decision comes down to what the artist wishes the viewer to see.

Pops

[Wirefox]

Steve, once the raw file is opened click the grayscale icon about a third of the way down. All the options are there including the sliders (GIMP v2.6)

Steve

[Donald]

Dave, Pops

Thank you both for taking the time to comment.

Dave - Well spotted. I hadn't seen the square pixel edges. Feel I've still got a lot to learn about re-sizing.

Pops -

I don't know if this makes much sense

Thank you for shining a light (no pun intended). It makes absolute, total and complete sense. In a few well chosen words you have described (for me at least) something that I felt, but did not have the capacity/ability to describe. You have put into words exactly the issue I was feeling. But I didn't understand what that issue was. Now I understand my images, and what I'm doing, so much better. I hope this is making some sense, and thank you.

[arith]

You might actually already know about it but I only found out today; there is a photoshop plugin that can convert as if you used a filter on the lens. I used to use a red one all the time.

It works with photoshop elements and might be useful I don't know:

http://www.cybia.co.uk/bwplus.htm

[arith]

Just some examples very quickly done:

Greyscale desaturated only;



BLUE filter



Magenta filter



It is easy to get hold of a copy of Photoshop Elements and it can work on Tiff; but I think there is a free plugin for Nikon to work on RAW files. Not Canon though

I suppose you already know all this but I used to use a red filter all the time when I was at school and couldn't remember why; apart from making Midland Red buses look better.

[PopsPhotos]

Donald, My mentor when I was about 8 years old until I was 14+ was Bill Belknap. He was White House photographer for the US Navy in WWII and then moved back to Southern Nevada to open a photography studio. He shot much work for National Geographic and for the Native Indian tribes throughout Nevada, Arizona and Utah. As just one example of our problems, Zion National Park is overexposed on an overcast day. In bright, full sunlight, it is almost blinding. Getting good pictures is difficult at best, and producing prints that show what a human sees is really tough.

Bill shot mostly in color and I shot almost exclusively B&W.

http://www.nau.edu/library/speccoll/...b/belknap.html

Pops

[Hans]

Donald,

Having looked at your albums I think this photo is another example of your distinctive style (I love your monochrome and BW). Last week I was fooling around for hours trying different BW conversion methods and didn't come up with anything remotely as powerful as this one (or any of the BW photos in your album).

If you don't mind I'll play with your baseline "formula" to give me a starting point. Couple of questions though...

I noticed you contributed to the sharpening discussion last week and was wondering if your Capture sharpening of 0.02, 2.2, 0 and Content sharpening of 0.01, 0.8, 0 has been informed by this discussion or does this represent what you have always been doing?

Also, did you apply any exposure compensation to this image? I'm assuming you shot it in RAW.

Also, can anyone tell me what the maximum image size I can upload to this site is? I think I read 1200 width but couldn't find it again.

Thanks again and, again, love the BW photo(s)

[Donald]

Hans

If you don't mind I'll play with your baseline "formula" to give me a starting point. Couple of questions though...

I noticed you contributed to the sharpening discussion last week and was wondering if your Capture sharpening of 0.02, 2.2, 0 and Content sharpening of 0.01, 0.8, 0 has been informed by this discussion or does this represent what you have always been doing?

There have been a number of sharpening discussions on this site and my settings are directly informed by them. Colin's very helpful inputs on this included his stating what sort of settings he used. These of course were in relation to scales and values in Adobe products. So I asked, on here, what the relative values represented; i.e. when Colin spoke of 300%, what did that mean in terms of the total available range; e.g. 0 - 500, or 0 - 1000, etc. As always, people on this site were totally helpful and once I understood what the 'range' of sclaes were on the Adobe products, I could translate this into GIMP figures. Also, other GIMP users were contributing their knowledge and experience.

So I got my starting point and use this as the baseline. The figures above are in the range of normal settings. I keep the respective radius figures (0.02 and 0.01) the same. The 'amount' I set for capture sharpening can range. I think the lowest I've used for an image has been 1.7. The highest has been 3. All depends on the image.

Also, did you apply any exposure compensation to this image? I'm assuming you shot it in RAW.

No, there was no EC applied.

Also, can anyone tell me what the maximum image size I can upload to this site is? I think I read 1200 width but couldn't find it again.

From memory, I think the size is 800px on the longest side. The size for albums (in Community) is smaller. I load my images onto a Flickr page at 1024px and, from there, onto this site.

[Hans]

Thanks again Donald,

So I asked, on here, what the relative values represented; i.e. when Colin spoke of 300%, what did that mean in terms of the total available range; e.g. 0 - 500, or 0 - 1000, etc.

On GIMP you have 0.00-10.00 for range/intensity. I've been using around 2.00 - 3.00 and that is looking prety good to my untrained eyes. On that basis I am assuming that 3.00 is close to PS's 300% (from Colin). Is that what you are finding? Seems to deliver the right results.

Also, when you load a RAW file, and capture sharpen, do you save it before applying content sharpening? I thought this would best be done by saving as RAW, then reopening and resharpening, but my GIMP only allows me to save as a .jpg, so subsequent sharpening has been of that .jpf file. Is that what you have been doing?

In Capture NX2 the range is only up to 100%. This is probably equal to PP's 100% going by the visual results, so I just open the USM and apply 100% as three separate tasks and then save it as a NEF (RAW) again which may be the way I'll end up going. The minimum radius is 1.0 so that is a bit concerning, but I probably won't notice the difference

Thanks for any input and regards,

[Donald]

Hans

On GIMP you have 0.00-10.00 for range/intensity. I've been using around 2.00 - 3.00 and that is looking prety good to my untrained eyes. On that basis I am assuming that 3.00 is close to PS's 300% (from Colin). Is that what you are finding? Seems to deliver the right results.

That's exactly the way I started working out the relative values (Adobe v GIMP). I assumed that it wouldn't be possible to do a straight translation and expect exactly the same results, so that's when I started playing aroung with the sliders. I found 3.0 a bit much for all but a few images, hence my more usually operating at around 2.2 to 2.7.

Also, when you load a RAW file, and capture sharpen, do you save it before applying content sharpening? I thought this would best be done by saving as RAW, then reopening and resharpening, but my GIMP only allows me to save as a .jpg, so subsequent sharpening has been of that .jpf file. Is that what you have been doing?

Don't understand the problem re only saving as jpg. If you go 'File', 'Save As', the window that appears has, towards the bottom left, just above the help button, 'Select File Type (by Extension)'. Click on the '+' sign and you get a menu of all the extensions, from xcf, to tiff, to jpg, etc etc.

If I process with Canon's DPP, I 'Convert and Save' as a TIFF (GIMP only operates with 8-bit at the moment, but v2.8 is expected to be 16 bit). As soon as I import the TIFF into the GIMP, I save it as XCF (GIMP's own format). And that's what I use all the way through. I then keep the XCF (delete the TIFF) and, at the end, make a JPEG from a resized, temporary copy of the XCF (then delete that copy XCF). So I don't keep any TIFF copy. I have a) the RAW, b) the primary XCF and, c) the JPEG.

I'm a regular 'Press-the-Save-button' person, hitting save after almost every action (just a habit). So, if the lights go out, I've got what I've done in the bag.

When processing with UF Raw, I save as an XCF as soon as I get into the GIMP.

Hope this makes sense.