A while back I asked for and received a lot of help about a candle shot.

[JBW]

I have been trying a lot of things and have realized that if it requires fine motor skills I am not going to achieve very much. However Picasa 3 has a lot of built in adjustments that can be made to a shot. I have been playing with using them as new layers and masks in Gimp. I obviously have a long way to go but here is a shot that at least shows the potential.

and the original for comparison

[Shadowman]

Brian,

That's a nice composition to work with. You've got a lot of void space so try adjusting the position of the candle to fill some of that area.

[JBW]

Brian,

That's a nice composition to work with. You've got a lot of void space so try adjusting the position of the candle to fill some of that area.

as in a different crop?

[HaseebM]

Probably he means to move the candle so the light can be distributed a bit more? Anyway nice image and processing looks very akin to what one can achieve by using Topaz Re-style.

[JBW]

Probably he means to move the candle so the light can be distributed a bit more? Anyway nice image and processing looks very akin to what one can achieve by using Topaz Re-style.

I looked up topaz re-style and you are right.

[Shadowman]

as in a different crop?

What Haseeb said.

[JBW]

What Haseeb said.

the problem (minor) is the brownouts. The candle is gone. But yes it is worth a re-shoot.

[ajohnw]

I think you may have a bit of a problem with that shot Brian. I loaded the original in Rawtherapee just to see. The bright area of the candle is clipped and over exposed. That might explain the other odd thing. The colour temperature of the candle flame should be something like 2000K. It seems to have gone for 4000 odd Playing about in Rawtherapee I went into the colour management tab and selected no input profile and then messed with the colour temperature slider. I tried that before selecting no profile as the colour balance seemed odd. Selecting no input profile did this in one go but I also upped the colour temperature to 10,000K with the slider - must be a nuclear candle. Seriously I suspect the main problem is the over exposure so it would pay to bracket shots like this say - 1 and - 2 EV



Just selecting no input profile brightened up the shadows.

The reason for having a look like this was some odd problems using GIMP layers on the original to add another technique for you. The set up was like this



I've mentioned the luminosity desaturate and invert copy of the original in overlay or soft light mode before to just brighten dark areas and that this can then be duplicated. Just how many copies depends on the image.. The top 2 layers are a GIMP style contrast adjustment layers again in overlay or more usually soft light mode. One controls the intensity of the bright areas underneath and the other the dark areas. As they are described each is just a new layer filled with either foreground or background = black or white.

One thing that may help you with layer masks at times. The magic wand selector. It selects colours to a boundary. So if you set the add to selection mode - 2 overlapping red squares - you can keep adding to the selection, If you increase the threshold more range of colour will be selected. If you select to much switch to the mode showing a white and red square with a white overlap - this is unselect so if you reduce the the threshold you can remove colours close to the ones that you want to keep. It's easier and quicker to initially select with a coarse threshold to get a lot in but not all even if it over does it. when you use add to selection. As you might want it again the next thing is to do a save selection to channel. Then add a layer mask and choose from selection. Then deselect. The mask may come out the wrong way round as the part selected will be white so will block. If the opposite is needed select the layer mask and also click show layer mask. Then use colour invert to reverse the black and white and uncheck show layer mask to get back to normal..

If you want the selection again go to channels and right click on the one that will be added below the colour ones and select channel to selection. If you want it in another layer mask check from channel when creating it.

Some edge feathering on the selection may be a good idea, depends. You could also invert the selection and save that to a channel before cancelling it. Also of course when creating the layer mask you could just use from channel rather than from selection.

It needs fairly distinct colour boundaries to work well but cleaning up the final selection with deselect usually means clicking on reasonable sized areas. Any odd bits in the mask can also be painted out using show layer mask and selecting it. Always a good idea to check what has been selected - the marching ants can be missed. The biggest problem is using too small a threshold for the initial selection so tiny areas get selected and there are marching ants all over the place and no way of see which is included and what isn't.

John
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