A NEF challenge.

[ajohnw]

I'll do it again tonight if I get time (and take some notes), but the biggest issue I'm seeing with your edits John is that you're forcing the contrast of the building too much; the darker bits are too contrasty and lacking detail. I suspect you're either over-sharpening with a high radius and/or have a levels issue (I suspect the former). You shouldn't need any selections for this (not withstanding that I kinda separated the upper 1/2 of the scene from the lower 1/2 for different sharpening treatment of high-frequency grass -v- low-frequency building)

Thanks Colin. No sharpening on it at all other than a minuscule amount when I reduced the shot. I did try noise removal, reduction, sharpening in but it didn't work out. so instead I have worked on it full sized. I think the noise reduction I used includes some sharpening but need to see if there is any specific info on the web about it. The GIMP G,MIC stuff is a bit try it and see what it does. It blatted the clouds right out so for me it made sense to select out the building. The roof is as it came out of RT.. The clouds and grass went UK like easily with curves.

I did the raw development with Rawtherapee and I adjusted contrast, saturation and shadow recovery and sent that to the GIMP. I adjusted the CA in RT and got rid of it completely are far as I could see. One thing I have noticed is that I lost detail on the roof at the end - probably missed while adjusting in RT. Could that explain it?

My apologies on the plastic sign on the wall it's blown. I metered on the building wall using centre weighted. That's doesn't seem to have worked too badly but - 1/2 stop might have caught the sign.

Looks to me like I have an icc profile problem as well. If I adjust the building colour it all gets a pale blue cast. If you use OS software might be better to buy Canon. (Or Oly) I haven't tried messing about with bias curves yet though, landscape, portrait etc. This one is a little like ViewNEX2 landscape. I can sort of run that but can't save files and the windows etc don't update correctly.

John
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[Colin Southern]

Thanks Colin. No sharpening on it at all other than a minuscule amount when I reduced the shot. I did try noise removal, reduction, sharpening in but it didn't work out. so instead I have worked on it full sized. I think the noise reduction I used includes some sharpening but need to see if there is any specific info on the web about it. The GIMP G,MIC stuff is a bit try it and see what it does. It blatted the clouds right out so for me it made sense to select out the building. The roof is as it came out of RT.. The clouds and grass went UK like easily with curves.

I did the raw development with Rawtherapee and I adjusted contrast, saturation and shadow recovery and sent that to the GIMP. I adjusted the CA in RT and got rid of it completely are far as I could see. One thing I have noticed is that I lost detail on the roof at the end - probably missed while adjusting in RT. Could that explain it?

My apologies on the plastic sign on the wall it's blown. I metered on the building wall using centre weighted. That's doesn't seem to have worked too badly but - 1/2 stop might have caught the sign.

Looks to me like I have an icc profile problem as well. If I adjust the building colour it all gets a pale blue cast. If you use OS software might be better to buy Canon. (Or Oly) I haven't tried messing about with bias curves yet though, landscape, portrait etc. This one is a little like ViewNEX2 landscape. I can sort of run that but can't save files and the windows etc don't update correctly.

John
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If it's not sharpening that's doing it then be aware that the clarity slider essentially does the same thing (equivalent to a high-radius variable strength USM).

I didn't do any CA adjustment - normally it's a waste of time as it gets sampled out when images are down-sampled for internet display.

With regards to subtle things like building colour -- that's probably just the ICC profile not being totally correct for the camera; White-Balancing in and of itself can be a fairly blunt instrument; coupled with the supplied profiles for ACR there can be quite a noticeable difference between various profiles. Normally nobody worries too much so long as their isn't an obvious colourcast. If you want "order of magnitude" better accuracy you'd need to invest in a colour passport (I use one for nailing skin tones in studio sessions)

[ajohnw]

Had one more go. This time I tried to retain the building colour in raw which gave a more sombre image so upped the overall contrast a bit made slight adjustments to exposure, lightness and highiights from raw. I stuck to the camera white balance this time as well. Then gimp again doing all of the white wall noise removal in one selection excluding the plastic poster and made a curves adjustment + slight sharpening. Then switched to the rest of the image. Minor curves change and slight sharpening again. I did tone map the plastic sign up before doing anything else. Should have done the small paper one on the extension as well really. The result stands over a 50% reduction but there are some curious chomatic effects on the extreme left by the black pipes that spoil 100%. Not sure why these are there. Might be because I adjusted the filter to just remove the noise on the end wall.

Anyway reduced and microcontrast type unsharp mask levels used on it. I might get the hang of this sort of thing when I get a shot that's worth it. Actually I like this one but on the other hand I did it.



John
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[Black Pearl]

I've tried to make this look as natural as possible - though not being there when it was shot I'll agree this is an assumption. I have lightened the shadows a little as they were very harsh upon importing the file into LR5 but kept them as shadows choosing not to go the tone mapping route as again I feel again this keeps the image looking real. The white balance was a little odd so I've split it keeping a warmer building but cooling the grass a touch. I have reduced the noise which was very prominent though downsizing the file did most of this meaning there was little need to be blunt with it. Sharpening wise I've used a small radius but rolled it back back where areas ended up looked edgy.

[ajohnw]

I shouldn't have said Colin won really as Raul easily got the most out of it. It's too bright really but that's just adjustment.

Like him I aimed for a full sized image and I think that the only way that can be done is by sectioning it and treating bits individually. Either way the results seem to make the building creamy and whites a little pasty. I did see a review that showed D7000 colours when a test swatch was photographed. There was rather a lot of difference on some. It's some where down this page.

http://www.photoreview.com.au/review...ed/nikon-d7000

I think I will be buying a target from here and using argll colour management software to generate my own icc file.

http://www.targets.coloraid.de/

I always try and make shadows more "eye view like" but it always causes problems when most of the dynamic range seems to be used up. I did use a bit of tone mapping on the grass in shadow to restore it a little. Not much as it would be obvious. I use a fair amount on the plastic poster as can be seen - the shadow from the drain pipe is darker than the actual drain pipe - should have included it in the selection.

I do have a couple of shots showing the building as it is. This one taken with an old manual Tokina 35-200mm at 200mm on m 4/3. There are also some crops in the same set. jpg's


TokinaSD_at200mmF8FullScaledUSM by
ajohnw, on Flickr

I think the clock face and roof have been cleaned up some what since that was taken.

John
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[Colin Southern]

I've tried to make this look as natural as possible - though not being there when it was shot I'll agree this is an assumption. I have lightened the shadows a little as they were very harsh upon importing the file into LR5 but kept them as shadows choosing not to go the tone mapping route as again I feel again this keeps the image looking real. The white balance was a little odd so I've split it keeping a warmer building but cooling the grass a touch. I have reduced the noise which was very prominent though downsizing the file did most of this meaning there was little need to be blunt with it. Sharpening wise I've used a small radius but rolled it back back where areas ended up looked edgy.

Looks good to me Robin - only change I'd make is a touch of output sharpening on the down-sampled final image.

[Colin Southern]

Had one more go. This time I tried to retain the building colour in raw which gave a more sombre image so upped the overall contrast a bit made slight adjustments to exposure, lightness and highiights from raw. I stuck to the camera white balance this time as well. Then gimp again doing all of the white wall noise removal in one selection excluding the plastic poster and made a curves adjustment + slight sharpening. Then switched to the rest of the image. Minor curves change and slight sharpening again. I did tone map the plastic sign up before doing anything else. Should have done the small paper one on the extension as well really. The result stands over a 50% reduction but there are some curious chomatic effects on the extreme left by the black pipes that spoil 100%. Not sure why these are there. Might be because I adjusted the filter to just remove the noise on the end wall.

Anyway reduced and microcontrast type unsharp mask levels used on it. I might get the hang of this sort of thing when I get a shot that's worth it. Actually I like this one but on the other hand I did it.



John
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Not sure what you're doing, but something in your process is still clamping the dark tones down waaaaaay too low. Case in point - look at the tile detail in the roof to the right of the image. In Raul's, Robin's, and my edits it's clearly visible -- in yours 1/2 of it is clamped down, which is repeated in other dark areas.

[rdc]

I shouldn't have said Colin won really as Raul easily got the most out of it. It's too bright really but that's just adjustment.
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Hi John,

I think the trap is that we (or at least I do) tend to overprocess images - sometimes it's difficult to know when and where to stop. Here I spent less than 10 minutes and my approach started from assessing the general quality of the image. I know my limits and one of them is that when I work too much on an image I tend to become "blind" and unable to assess whether I am making it better or worse. So I attacked this one in areas where small changes would make a big difference, all done in PS CC (I think any other editing software capable of 16bit processing and layering would have achieved the same), copying layers and masking here and there. I am glad the outcome matched your expectations and taste.

Something I haven't done but that could pay dividends is to process twice the RAW file with two different exposure settings and then merge the two resulting layers. From there you can then get a new fresh layer to further refine. For this image I think it would be too time consuming for a small improvement but I think it would be an interesting experiment to run even if just for the sake to see what happens.

All the best.

Raul

EDIT: I also used the Nik tools to refine.

[Colin Southern]

Hi John,

I think the trap is that we (or at least I do) tend to overprocess images - sometimes it's difficult to know when and where to stop. Here I spent less than 10 minutes and my approach started from assessing the general quality of the image. I know my limits and one of them is that when I work too much on an image I tend to become "blind" and unable to assess whether I am making it better or worse. So I attacked this one in areas where small changes would make a big difference, all done in PS CC (I think any other editing software capable of 16bit processing and layering would have achieved the same), copying layers and masking here and there. I am glad the outcome matched your expectations and taste.

Something I haven't done but that could pay dividends is to process twice the RAW file with two different exposure settings and then merge the two resulting layers. From there you can then get a new fresh layer to further refine. For this image I think it would be too time consuming for a small improvement but I think it would be an interesting experiment to run even if just for the sake to see what happens.

All the best.

Raul

It's been said by some that "photographs are never truly finished -- they're just abandoned by their creators at some point". I can relate to that

I think there's a little bit of compulsive/excessive disorder in all photographers (I know that there is in me) -- working on many images eventually helps with that as you learn (past a certain point) to "just let it go"; if one doesn't "call time" on an image then you run the risk of running around in ever decreasing circles -- and missing out on other images that one could be capturing and preparing.

[rdc]

It's been said by some that "photographs are never truly finished -- they're just abandoned by their creators at some point". I can relate to that

I think there's a little bit of compulsive/excessive disorder in all photographers (I know that there is in me) -- working on many images eventually helps with that as you learn (past a certain point) to "just let it go"; if one doesn't "call time" on an image then you run the risk of running around in ever decreasing circles -- and missing out on other images that one could be capturing and preparing.

Agreed, good images start from good captures, and the more you shoot and the more you learn how to get your images better just out of the camera.

We have a little bit of sun this morning, I better go check my camera bag and go out before it gets grey and dark again :-)

Cheers

Raul

[Colin Southern]

We have a little bit of sun this morning, I better go check my camera bag and go out before it gets grey and dark again :-)

Cheers

Raul

Give me a gray and dark day over a sunny one anyday for photography!

[rdc]

Give me a gray and dark day over a sunny one anyday for photography!

...you mean one like this? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26095937

No, you wouldn't be my friend after that :-)

[Colin Southern]

...you mean one like this? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26095937

No, you wouldn't be my friend after that :-)

Hell yeah - get some great dramatic shots around that lot!

[ajohnw]

On the last one I feel I have the building, shadows, grass etc correct. The roof is a different matter. I should be able to get detail in all of it but there is next to none in the extension on the end. Some problem in raw development but I'm not used to using Rawtherapee. There after it's 32bit floating point colour. Raw comes out as 16bit png or tiff. Looks like open source will be using 32 bit FP end to end soon. GIMP went to that from version 2.8.

Sunny day - the shot was taken in what i would call weak wet some what sunny conditions. Cameras always augment shadow. Raul's right. Yesterday wasn't too bad. Ok at the moment too but more crap is on it's way. We need fully waterproof gear in the UK. None of it is. I often use fake HDR but I don't think it should be needed on this one.

Perhaps I should have another go using Fotoxx -> GIMP as I am used to that until he changed brightness and contrast adjustments. He did present a preset S curve as a straight line across the tone range that could be changed at will. Worked well but now it's pure curves for brightness and contrast with sliders automatically shaping the S curve. Get it more or less right and then adjust manually if needed. I feel he is deciding how a shot should be adjusted without considering the variations but the initial anchor points can be moved. The other way they were added as needed.

John
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[Colin Southern]

On the last one I feel I have the building, shadows, grass etc correct. The roof is a different matter. I should be able to get detail in all of it but there is next to none in the extension on the end. Some problem in raw development but I'm not used to using Rawtherapee. There after it's 32bit floating point colour. Raw comes out as 16bit png or tiff. Looks like open source will be using 32 bit FP end to end soon. GIMP went to that from version 2.8.

Sunny day - the shot was taken in what i would call weak wet some what sunny conditions. Cameras always augment shadow. Raul's right. Yesterday wasn't too bad. Ok at the moment too but more crap is on it's way. We need fully waterproof gear in the UK. None of it is. I often use fake HDR but I don't think it should be needed on this one.

Perhaps I should have another go using Fotoxx -> GIMP as I am used to that until he changed brightness and contrast adjustments. He did present a preset S curve as a straight line across the tone range that could be changed at will. Worked well but now it's pure curves for brightness and contrast with sliders automatically shaping the S curve. Get it more or less right and then adjust manually if needed. I feel he is deciding how a shot should be adjusted without considering the variations but the initial anchor points can be moved. The other way they were added as needed.

John
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The "trick" with RAW converters is to not over-clamp shadow detail (and same for highlight detail) in the RAW converter; it always pays to leave a little wiggle room if there are uneven areas. You really have to develop for the worst area (in this case probably the roof or the grass shadow areas), and then clamp down other problem areas with something like a burn tool set to shadows (they're GREAT for local contrast enhancement in any number of situations).

In THEORY it's less damaging to get the levels exactly right in the RAW converter, but in practice, there's more than enough safety margin if one gives oneself some maneuvering room.

[ajohnw]

...you mean one like this? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26095937

No, you wouldn't be my friend after that :-)

I visit west wales once a month and have hoped to catch something like that but have missed so far. It doesn't usually cause the same degree of problems there as elsewhere. A few places have suffered this time though. I took some throw in the bin shots of seagulls in flight at New Gale recently. Stood side on to the wind for 15min or so and came away with ear ache.

John
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[rdc]

On the last one I feel I have the building, shadows, grass etc correct.

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Me again...

I have a question, John. It may be a silly one and please forgive me if that's the case.

I see in the exif of the file that I worked on, that the image was captured at 1/640sec, f/13, ISO1270. May I ask why you chose these settings? I also see that you used the camera in Auto mode, was there a particular reason behind this choice?

Thanks

Raul

[ajohnw]

I use P mode so select aperture and speed via the thumb wheel and add exposure compensation with the other thumb wheel. If I can't get the aperture or speed I want I change the ISO. In this case I selected f/13 for dof. In terms of exposure compensation I've only had the camera a few weeks so no idea what the metering does yet. I tried centre weighted on this one and a few others at the same time. Also matrix on a couple of others. Both seem reasonable which is odd given some of the comments about on the web. On the EM-5 I would expect slight clipping on the plastic poster straight from matrix and maybe some in the sky but probably not in this case. The EM-5 is my main camera.

I usually approach ISO from the bottom up but I had taken a couple of shots at 2000. Noise in mid tone whites but mostly not there at larger web size so thought try 1250. NVG going on this shot. The 2000 shot was this one using matrix. The tanker white to the white behind is much more defined than the camera jpg. No noise reduction and there are hardly any signs of it.



Just a lens test shot taken outside the camera shop. Given the weather of late I only have odd test shots to play with. I did manage to get an amazing slightly clipped car bonnet out of one shot which helped sort the icc file out. The pavilion is the next step.

I reckon there must be something wrong with Colin's monitor. I can see slight shape in the dark parts of the roof but would agree that maybe they are a little too dark but then these types of tile do go dark after rain.

John
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[ajohnw]

It needs touching up in the bench area but roof detail there and brighter as a result. Similar to Robin's approach but larger. I denoised in the raw converter which appear to do it on linear rgb from the camera and then debayer it again. I am used to Ufraw but lost a bit of cloud tone. Then used Fotoxx to take the noise out of the white and green doors and remove a bit more noise with a top hat filter all over. It tends to keep detail well. Then reduced and sharpened. Reduced to this size and sharpened for micro contrast. The row of doors are fuzzy, down to the lens I suspect, so selectively sharpened rather heavily.

Didn't do anything about the CA but that could be cloned out but the processing has augmented it a bit.



I received a full refund from the seller but can't make my mind up about having another go with a similar lens. Probably wont as really this shot is pure EM-5 territory. The D7000 is really for when I just have to have a viewfinder. My DSLR's were rather old.

John
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[Black Pearl]

That looks very pale and washed out, with no bite to the darker areas of the building. It is also rather granular in the darker/plain areas which is odd as its down sized and that usually hides noise also it could do with a sharpen.